girlyswot | The Seeker

I just watched the trailer for the new film loosely based on Susan Cooper's wonderful, wonderful 'The Dark Is Rising.' I feel physically sick.

Will is American. He's trying to ask a girl out. He hangs out at the mall. His brothers are mean to him. Does any of this remind you of Will Stanton? No, me either. What else? Ian McShane is pitiful as Merriman. I mean, honestly, Lovejoy was his niche. The Lady didn't do much for me either.

The soundtrack and the visuals made this look like any other genre fantasy. But 'The Dark Is Rising' isn't like that. There aren't big action sequences (there's the Hunt, of course, but that's the only one I can think of) or many weird and wonderful visuals. Lots of times, the weirdness is in the normality. Especially Will, who is the most normal, ordinary, well-adjusted 11 year-old boy whose family love him. Oh, and they all happen to be English and, conveniently, live in the English village where the book and, bizarrely, the film are set. I can't begin to imagine how they work that one out.

I shudder to think what Hollywood will do to 'Over Sea Under Stone'.

The only redeeming feature is that they seem to have retitled the film, 'The Seeker', so hopefully no one will be put off reading the books by this rubbish!

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Well, I've only seen the trailer, but to me it looks exactly like an HP-rip off, so if that's what they were trying to avoid, they failed! Plus, the book is nothing like HP and it seems like some of the changes they've made (turning the loving, sympathetic family into one that's harsh and unfriendly, for example) clearly make it more HPish, not less! The story arc through the series is quite, quite different and Will as a character could not be less like Harry.

However, if what they were trying to ensure was that the great majority of the audience haven't read the books, they've certainly gone about that the right way!

I don't object in principle to things being changed for a different medium. I even quite enjoyed the Keira Knightley 'Pride and Prejudice' which all the real Austen-ites loathed. I just don't think this looks like it's even going to be a good film.

*sigh* Never mind. I'll just imagine it in my head. That's worked pretty well so far.

Oh, and I think you might enjoy reading these if you ever come across them. The first in the series is actually 'Over Sea Under Stone' but the first two (the second is 'The Dark Is Rising') can be read in either order I think.

Never trust a trailer or a dust jacket. I don't think that's supposed to be his real family, if I remember the interview correctly.

You can read the text of the article I mentioned here, but here's a relevant snippet:

Early indications are that the film will be very different from the dreamy and timeless novel.

In the film, Will Stanton is 13, not 11, and he is American, not British. Screenwriter John Hodge first looked at The Dark Is Rising many years ago. At that time, it just didn't seem like the right project for the man who wrote the screenplay for Trainspotting, a gritty film about heroin addiction. Hodge didn't like fantasy anyway.

And even when he approached the book 10 years later, Hodge found many problems. First of all, he thought, even though the book was written more than 30 years ago, the premise of an 11-year-old English boy who finds out he can do magic seemed too familiar.

"One of the things I didn't want it to be confused with was Harry Potter, because I just think the world doesn't need another English boy involved with fantasy adventures," he says.

Hodge felt that Will would be more understandable if he was experiencing things as an outsider, as an American living in Britain.

As for Cooper's story, Hodge says that "a lot of it would have to go because it was written in this quite lyrical, poetic, kaleidoscopic fashion." He also says the novel, as written, proved difficult in other respects: The action doesn't take place in fixed locations and, he says, Will "doesn't really do very much."

But further on in the article it's implied that Cooper's own feelings may be similar to yours.

That's an interesting article, Ken, thanks for the link. I don't think it's a terribly good sign if Susan Cooper herself doesn't like the changes that have been made.

One of the big themes in the book is the familiar suddenly becoming unfamiliar: people, places, names that Will thought he knew are seen in a different light with a new significance. It's clear from that interview that for Cooper this is linked with Will's 11th birthday (around which the action of the book takes place) as a symbol of trying to find out who he himself is.

I guess that's not going to come across if he's an outsider. And if he's preoccupied with girls, that's going to be a big shift too.

Kaleidoscopic is a good word for the books, and I do see that you would have to pin a lot of things down to make a film, but still...

I know you're right about not judging from the trailer. I just don't know if I can bring myself to even give this a go.

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