&lt;div class=&quot;track&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; src=&quot;http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.2/40411?ns=guardian&amp;pageName=This+steampunk+take+on+The+Three+Musketeers+doesn%27t+buckle+my+swash%3AArticle%3A1643432&amp;ch=Film&amp;c3=Guardian&amp;c4=Film%2CCulture&amp;c5=Not+commercially+useful&amp;c6=John+Patterson&amp;c7=11-Oct-08&amp;c8=1643432&amp;c9=Article&amp;c10=Feature&amp;c11=Film&amp;c13=&amp;c25=Film+blog&amp;c30=content&amp;h2=GU%2FFilm%2F&quot; width=&quot;1&quot; height=&quot;1&quot; /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p class=&quot;standfirst&quot;&gt;And there&#039;s more bastardisation of the classics to come: Pride And Prejudice And Zombies anyone?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;From the classic novel by Alexandre Dumas,&quot; read the credits for the umpteenth version of &lt;strong&gt;The Three Musketeers&lt;/strong&gt;. What they really mean is &quot;about a million miles from the classic novel by Alexandre Dumas.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This time around &ndash; and I think we&#039;re on the 22nd remake now &ndash; they&#039;ve steampunked it, gussying it up with much retro-futuristic silliness and cheap-looking CGI, anachronistic weaponry and ordnance, by-the-numbers action-heroics, and a sky teeming with armadas of heavily armoured hot-air balloons reminiscent of Zeppelins. And all this, mind, a century before the Montgolfier brothers ever hoisted themselves aloft, so expect your time frames and tenses to be concertinaed as your credulity is stretched to its breaking point. Fans of the still effervescent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/1999/nov/08/guardianinterviewsatbfisouthbank3&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Dick Lester&lt;/a&gt;/George MacDonald Fraser adaptations of the early-70s will be forgiven for looking at the cast of the remake and going, &quot;Oooh, this guy was Oliver Reed back in the good movie, and that was Faye Dunaway &hellip;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I shouldn&#039;t complain. Steampunk is a legitimate genre, even if it does bore me. But where does this compulsion come from, to adorn to the point of suffocation a story that seems to have pleased an awful lot of people in a hundred languages in the century and a half since its original serialisation? Is it because kids can&#039;t sit still for five minutes any more and enjoy the buckling of old-fashioned swash? Or is it because the suits in the front office don&#039;t believe they can sit still, and must therefore be appeased with ever more spectacular and ridiculous embellishments?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I foresee now the next wave of literary adaptations and, reader, it isn&#039;t pretty. I think we&#039;d all agree that any future adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby could really use the addition of a Glee Club and a Wizardry Department. (Oh wait, they filmed it absolutely straight a few years ago and, by common consent, it was one of the best Dickens movies in decades.) Must we really hand a plasma-gun to Prince Hamlet, just so he can keep up in the bloodbath stakes as Shakespeare&#039;s corpse mound rises ever skywards in Act V? Will Tess Durbeyfield be reincarnated as Ms .45 of 1890, poppin&#039; caps in Alec D&#039;Urberville and Angel Clare&#039;s chauvinistic lily-white asses as retribution for their crimes against her purity and maidenhood? Might Framley Parsonage and Barchester Towers be more interesting places all round if they were thronging with werewolves, werebears and were-whatevers?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;If that sounds ridiculous, consider the current boomlet of zombie-inflected, public-domain classics that has flourished in the wake of Seth Grahame-Smith&#039;s bestselling &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/apr/09/austen-zombie-pride-prejudice&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Pride And Prejudice And Zombies&lt;/a&gt; &ndash; the movie&#039;s due next year, with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2011/jan/02/observer-profile-natalie-portman&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Natalie Portman&lt;/a&gt;, reportedly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Someone out there is having fun with all of this. I just know  it isn&#039;t me.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;author&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/johnpatterson&quot;&gt;John Patterson&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;terms&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk&quot;&gt;guardian.co.uk&lt;/a&gt; &amp;copy; 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our &lt;a href=&quot;http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html&quot;&gt;Terms &amp; Conditions&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds&quot;&gt;More Feeds&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;clear:both&quot; /&gt;