The Seeker

[girlyswot]

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!

Comments

[rhetoretician.livejournal.com]

I've not read the books, but I gather from an interview with the screenwriter that they were afraid that the movie would look like it was trying to clone Harry Potter if it was about an 11-year-old English boy who learns about magic. (The great majority of the audience would very likely be people who had not read the books.) So, weirdly, their goal was to avoid looking like another typical genre film.

John Irving once said that there's no way of comparing a novel to a film based on it -- the constraints and needs of each medium make the two fundamentally incompatible. It's better to look at the film and ask whether it's a good film qua film, using the book as a prompt or starting place.

The thing that bothered a lot of people about the film of Sorcerer's Stone is that it attempted so much loyalty to the underlying novel that some of its potency as a piece of cinema was lost. By contrast, the films of LotR make some very interesting choices that deliberately deviate from the novels (e.g., making Aragorn a man filled with self-doubt, who does not want to accept the mantle of kingship; giving Arwen a role that is much more compelling than what she's allowed to do in the books; inventing a scene in which the Denethor-Boramir-Faramir triad is explicated with much more psychological realism than Tolkien envisioned) and almost cetainly make them better as cinema.

This is cold comfort if one of your favorite texts looks like it's being cheapened or torn to shreds. But I offer it for what it's worth.

[tdu000.livejournal.com]

I wasn't going to comment because i haven't read the book or seen the film (though it's on my emergency school holiday entertainment list - moved several places down after reading your post!). I would also have said I had never heard of Susan Cooper but that isn't true. I'm actually reading a book by her at the moment although, I'm ashamed to say, I didn't know she had written it. I'm reading Little Tyke's set book for next term about a boy who is transported back in time to act in A Midsummer's Night Dream ast the "new" Globe theatre (The King of Shadows). I've only just started it but it's pretty good. I was talking to Dad on the phone and noticed the book on the coffee table. I nearly squeaked! If Little Tyke enjoys it (she hasn't read it yet), I'll put her onto thse books. She likes fantasy so I think it might appeal.

[dogstar101.livejournal.com]

I haven't read The Dark is Rising for years although I found a copy recently. The film coming out will probably prod me into re-reading but I won't be going to see the film - I'm always very wary of adaptations of favourite books.

Ignore it and try not to think about it, is my advice - although perhaps that's easier said than done. On the positive side, it's an old book - if anything it'll bring the series a new audience and at least some of today's children will end up preferring the book or even loving it.

[petitecrivan.livejournal.com]

Ugh, that's awful. I absolutely loved that series. One of my favorite parts was all the Welsh stuff, learning how to pronounce names, words, etc, and just the world that it was set in. It doesn't work in the US. You need that magical sort of setting.

Definitely will not be seeing that movie.