AAAAAAARGH!

[intertext]

Another movie based on a beloved children's book that I'm DEFINITELY not going to see! Only the trailer for The Dark is Rising made me spitting mad. (I'm not going to link to it, because it takes about three hours for the official site to load - you can Google it)

Well, no doubt, you'll love it if you haven't read the books - the screenwriters obviously haven't.

My suspicions were raised when it was clear that someone had decided it wasn't politically correct to have a sign of the cross in a circle be the symbol for the movie - oh dear, might make people think it was Christian, and put off the non-Christians, or, just as likely, might offend all the fundamentalist Christians who are potential viewers. It's quite clear that the whole thing is driven by a "paint-by-numbers" approach to popularizing the story. And Americanizing it in the worst kind of formulaic, predictable way.

Harry ... oops, no, I mean Will Stanton, is a "typical American teenager": the opening scenes of the trailer trite and predictable bits of high school and suburban family homelife. There's a crush on a girl that gets mentioned about three times. He gets picked up for shoplifting in a department store. WTF?

I was only having a bloggy conversation with brisingamen was it last week, the week before? about how essential the Thames valley landscape was to that book. Oops. It's gone. All the quiet power and atmosphere of the book - whoosh! Turned into bonzo special effects, pyrotechnics and rubbish.

My favourite scene in the book - where they go carol singing, and Will's voice falters when he comes to the verse of "Good King Wenceslaus" where the page sings "I can go no further" and then Merriman's voice, rich and powerful comes in and strengthens him - couldn't possibly happen in this world they've created.

There seem to be a couple of other teenage characters from somewhere or other. WTF?

The only good thing? Christopher Eccleston is the Rider. Excellent bit of casting.

The funniest thing? The mysterious voice-over right at the end saying something like "Even the smallest light breaks the darkness" Yikes! Haven't we heard something like that somewhere before??? (well it worked for Peter Jackson...)

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Here's what pisses me off--my brother in law, who is in film, tried for years to get some money people behind it. He had the rights for a time, but finally when interest in kidzfilms perked up again, this bozo comes along and throws major money....and instead of doing a faithful story (and the book is intensely cinematic) turns in a piece of crap that could just as well have been made up from scratch, as it's pretty much all cliches. Or why didn't he get the rights to the sequel to Eragon, where the cliches are right there for anyone to use?

[intertext.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you wonder why they bother even calling it by the same title - they've changed so much. Poor Susan Cooper (though maybe she got nice lots of money and doesn't care - but how can she NOT care)

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

She probably took the money, shut her eyes, and pretended the film doesn't exist. Maybe she hopes someone else will do it right some day.