You know what story hasn’t really been told properly in the previous 20 times it’s been filmed? Jane Eyre!

Well, blackjack.

At first glance, this trailer seems to be mostly, “Oh, PLEASE, Lit Majors, PLEASE come see this movie twice so we can recoup some of our financial outlay! Look how accurate!”

And in some ways, trying to advertise a Jane Eyre adaptation by emphasizing “authentic” moments from the book seems like a waste of time – I mean, your favorite line might fall by the wayside, but you generally don’t worry that Mr. Rochester will open the attic door and reveal his illegal puppy mill.

On the other hand, the last feature-film adaptation of Jane Eyre had freaking William Hurt in it, and they must know they have a little groveling to do if they’re going to get butts in the seats for that. (Especially since there was a questionable-taste-licious A&E TV movie and a perfectly serviceable miniseries adaptation in the meantime. MY GOD, HOW MANY ADAPTATIONS OF THIS THING DO WE NEED?)

But, in defiance of my all-caps, there’s still plenty to chat about. Let’s!

“But sir, I heard a sound in the hall, as if a hundred adorable puppies were playing at once. It’s Grace Poole, sir, I’m sure of it!”

The trailer doesn’t even pretend it’s not a Cliffs Notes of the movie, so we go pretty much straight along the plot, beginning when Jane is a youngster and going right on through to the moor-wandering. This makes recapping super-handy!

I am a terrible Lit Major and have never been remotely interested in the baby Jane segment (except maaaybe when she was Georgie Henley), but this shot caught my attention:

It’s always nice to think that someone really cares about how everything is framed as well as just raking in your Lit Major dollars. But things are otherwise pretty standard, and that was really the only thing about the first half of the trailer that caught my eye, until:

Surprise Sally Hawkins! She plays evil aunt Mrs. Reed, though as always, sleeves that awful are a mitigating factor. The 1830s: the ugliest decade. (Well, top ten.)

Blah blah childhood blah. As if in an instant, our grown-up governess Jane is on her way to meet her gruff employer Mr. Rochester!

That’s going to go super-smoothly and not be creepy or unfortunate at all!

Now for the biggest controversy so far. Mr. Rochester is supposed to be less than handsome. Because they cast this movie on Opposite Day, he is instead played by Michael Fassbender:

This is the moment when he asks Miss Eyre if she finds him handsome, and she replies, “No, sir.” Fassbender is duly amused, because he owns a mirror.

Despite knowing how bizarre this is, I have to say – let’s be fair. This is the movies. Most people in the movies, even if they are not marquee-chiseled, are generally compelling to look at, because that’s their job. Thus, most Rochesters have been relatively good-looking. (Though their interpretations have varied wildly.)

I’d say Ciaran Hinds is one of the most physically true-to-type Rochesters, because you could make a solid case that Ciaran Hinds has a face that has to grow on one (even though I personally think he’s a stone fox). However, other people who have played Mr. Rochester include Timothy Dalton and Toby Stephens, and no matter what things you have to say about Timothy Dalton and Toby Stephens, “off-puttingly unhandsome” is probably not one.

On the other hand, based on this trailer, Fassbender seems to know he has an uphill battle trying to be unhandsome, and so rather than go the blustery route (covered extremely well by Ciaran Hinds, to the point of Ham-Off), he decides to go for a little of the old Hannibal Lecter and handsomely creep the shit out of Jane until she gets Stockholm Syndrome.

“So, when you say you could just eat me up, we’re speaking metaphorically? Just checking.”

He also psychologically tortures her by pretending to love someone else! (He’s a real catch.)

These facial expressions are amazing out of context, aren’t they? It’s like a drunk Facebook photo.

Also, if Blanche Ingram looks familiar, it’s because we’ve seen this pair together before in Centurion, where they had no chemistry. I’m willing to chalk that up to the fact that the movie sucked appallingly, and hope for better things here. (On the other hand, Imogen has her work cut out for her, because in the 2006 miniseries, Christina “I Play All the British Bitches Now” Cole knocked Blanche Ingram out of the park. YOUR MOVE, POOTS.)

So things are looking up! But after the chaos of the running-away portion of the trailer and before we can see Jamie Bell and Holliday Granger bringing two Venn Diagrams of Awesome British Actor Camp together, a French Expressionist film breaks out and ruins everything.

IT’S A SYMBOL.

Oh well, I guess when you get a director who wants cross-dye drapes, you get a director who wants flies crawling over symbolically abandoned reference texts. We’ll pick our battles and give this a pass.

Frankly, all in all, most of the movie seems to be in order so far. The two things we can’t tell from this trailer that will make or break this movie are:

- How well the movie manages to fit four hours of material into a two-hour film. I hold the Samantha Morton version close to my heart because I like both her and Ciaran as the leads, but that thing is only two hours long, and it shows, because baby Jane and St. John Rivers each get about 10 seconds of screen time and there’s a lot of, “Oh, there you are, back from that enormous Mrs. Reed interlude we entirely cut out!” We’ll see if this movie manages to compress the plot and still keep some balance.

- Mia Wasikowska’s performance.

I actually have decent hopes for the latter. I would be inclined to say she’s more suited to modern stuff than period pieces, but that’s not entirely fair since it’s based on Alice in Wonderland, when she was constantly on green screen and having whimsy forcibly squeezed out of her pores. I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and say that she might not be the best Jane Eyre of all time, but I think she’ll be fine. It’s really all up to the script at this point.

Not that it matters – I’m still going to throw my 12 bucks at this movie to watch Awesome British Actor Camp convening inside a dank abbey, and I’m only a little ashamed of it.