(Editor's note: I hereby, as of this date and with this post, copyright the phrase There Will Be Butt as a title of the inevitable porn film knockoff of every Hollywood blockbuster.)
I saw There Will Be Blood. While I found it to be somewhat overrated, it is still excellent.
If anything it suffers from the excessive god-this-is-the-finest-film-ever hype that surrounds it. But it remains an outstanding film. The final 20 minutes (SPOILER COMING) felt rushed and perfunctory – the stereotypical "descent into madness" that Hollywood Law dictates must end all films about bitter, somewhat evil loners who have trouble relating to other people. Yawn. Seriously. I felt that the character was far too self-posessed for the audience to plausibly swallow the idea of him turning into a drunken lunatic sitting in an empty mansion and firing a shotgun at nothing in his underwear. How he transitioned from Daniel Plainview (first 2:15 of the film) to Crazy Old Daniel (last 20 minutes) in about 10 or 15 years is left unstated. I suppose audiences, and particularly American audiences, aren't capable of accepting a movie about a compelling but vicious asshole who loses his internal battle of Good vs Evil without a "happy ending", i.e. said character ending up pitiable, miserable, and despondent/insane. For most oil tycoons of that period, their lifetimes of cruelty and avarice worked out just fine.
Pretty sure they were happy with it.
And if you're the sort of person who cares about this, the film had next-to-nothing to do with the book. To call it a "loose" adaptation is generous. The only thing they share in common is the presence of crude oil. The novel, unsurprisingly given Mr. Sinclair's complete lack of subtlety, is about H.W. turning into a Socialist after 10 years of watching how his father treated his workers.
Yeah, that's not quite what the film was about.