Wanna see a few?

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Well, whether we like it or not, the Disney/Touchstone/Buena Vista 2002 movie is the ONLY Monte Cristo that a lot of people had experienced. The overall ratings are higher than I expected on IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, and even on some less-Monte-Cristo-specialized subreddits. Some people genuinely LOVE the movie. Now personally, I think it's a fun adventure film, but it just ain't the real thing. I take issue with the HUGE SLEW of rewrites, missing characters, missing sublots, characters altered beyond recognition AND added violence like whippings and unnecessary swordfights.

To take advantage of the influx of Monte Cristo noobs, I'd noticed that there are a bunch of dodgy e-books floating around. In this day and age, anyone with a computer can create and sell an e-book. They mooch a photo or two from the movie, grab a text version of the book in public domain and sell it. It's like printing money. HOWEVER, at least 4 of these dodgy e-books shamelessly pilfer their cover art from the movie, with no credit or permission from Disney/Touchstone/Buena Vista. I thought that Disney was big on defending their IP?

There is ONE "authorized" movie tie-in book, from Penguin Books, but the text contents are not from the movie's screenplay or script. Instead, it's just yet another reprint of the "Standard Abridged edition" (circa 1928) that has a decent resemblance to the original, with more modern language but missing chapters and subplots. So people buying it, hoping to read the movie-version of the story will be sorely disappointed. Revenge? Why is it taking so long? Who's Maximilian and Valentine and Haydee?

Just seems to me that, if Disney/Touchstone/Buena Vista were marketing an authorized movie tie-in book, they should have gone the route of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Dracula's movie-book marketing seems confusing, but it goes like this: 2 different versions exist, both using graphics from the movie. One is the real Bram Stoker novel, but the other is a novelized version of the movie screenplay. People who LOVED the movie and wanted to read about Prince Vlad and his romance with Mina can enjoy the novelized screenplay. People who want the real thing can get the real thing, with movie graphics on the cover. Win/win.