:hugs her bottle of vodka:

[burntcopper]

Certain people will have heard me screaming about the adaptation of The Dark is Rising by Walden media. For those who nothing about this, it started as 'Huh, the people who did the narnia film? sounds good...' Christopher Eccleston had been cast as The Rider, which made many of us nod in approval, even if he didn't have red hair. And then we heard that Will would be aged up to 13, american and that they'd be updating it a bit. We winced slightly but thought 'well, hollywood.' First couple of pics weren't bad. Good thematically, and Maggie the Witch-Girl looked perfect. And then it got worse. Boy did it get worse. Everything from turning his family (who love each other to pieces and spend their time gently squabbling) into bitter and picking on him and his parents barely there, to cramming it with action sequences to... and then we heard about the removal of all Arthurian stuff. (which is just slightly important to the plot of future books) By that time the comms were actually cheering because this meant that they'd completely disqualified themselves from using one of the main characters of the later books and we really didn't want to see what they'd do to him in the name of Hollywood and updating.

A couple of days ago they released the trailer. The US one. which is... oh god. I put the link up on the main comm. I've never been the cause of that many people reaching for the vodka or going 'KILL IT. KILL IT WITH FIRE'. There are... what appear to be american shopping malls. ...near a small Buckinghamshire village? No English accents. American security guards. Cod-Harry Potter bits. God, not even the Stanton *house* looks like it belongs. The action scenes... argh. There are vikings. Time travel. WTF? The international trailer is marginally better, but we've all seen the US trailer now and don't think you can get around us by trying to ape LOTR.

..Seriously, it's got nothing to do with the book beyond the title. Why did they even bother keeping the title? They've made a generic cashing in on Harry Potter film. and bludgeoned a bloody brilliant series of books to do, which are not about action sequences, they're about slowly encroaching fear and spookiness and ... oh, *stuff*. Fuck you, Hollywood producers. mrmrsmith always accuses me of ruining his childhood by running the slash archive for The Dark is Rising Sequence. I damn well respect and love the books and characters. It's more than this film does.

And what's really weird? They can't even be bothered to use the proper sign of light, which is probably the most simple symbol to reproduced out there. circle quartered by a cross.

People have been suggesting that it might be more faithful to the books to have a film done where the main characters were transformed into Last of the Summer Wine types, with Miss Greythorne going all Nora Batty and Merriman being Compo. Or one where they went all League of Gentlemen and Little Britain, where the Dark were really only out to keep the nasty Americans out of their village. Come on, you can so picture it : Christopher Eccleston doing the 'Local place for Local people' line.

:ponders setting up a guide to the books and characters: Fox has bagged the .co.uk to direct people to the generic fox site, and thedarkisrising.com is a susan cooper site. It would be wrong of me not to educate the masses.

Comments

[grondfic.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think you should.

I've been hearing bits about this film for ages; and resolutely ignoring them. Seems I should go on doing this - for my own sanity. Those books are SACRED. No one should mess with them.

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

it's one of the few films I actually sat there and went 'fuck it, I will suffer through it just to get the full horror. BUT I WILL TORRENT IT, because they're damn well not getting a penny off me.'

[cidercupcakes.livejournal.com]

They showed the trailer before OotP, and it seriously took me until they showed the title to realize what it was. And then I wept tears of blood.

Fortunately, they then showed the Get Smart trailer, and that helped ease the pain.

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

I was actually crying after the first watching in a '...what did they just do to one of my all time favourite book series on this earth?'

But still, this means they cannot have arrogant albino welsh boys. (because if they did this to Will, imagine what they'd do to Bran, who has enough angst to beat an entire class of emo goths) Then there is the crushing on Maggie thing. :head spins: I'm sorry, *Maggie*? The girl who everyone in the entire village knows is bad news and wouldn't trust as far as they could throw her and only tolerate because she's part of the destiny thing? they're casting her as Hermione in the trailer. I seriously, seriously hope they're only doing it so that they can throw the naive part of the audience for a loop.

[celiaka.livejournal.com]

Well, it's almost better this way. I can't be just be a bit disappointed, I can just avoid it completely. Doesn't exist. La la la.

[celievamp.livejournal.com]

thanks for saving me a fiver. I'll stick with the film version that plays in my head whenever I reread them.

[alysscarlet.livejournal.com]

I feel your pain. It's an utter travesty. I can only hope it sinks without trace.

I thought in the post-LOTR days they'd got past the idea of modernising and Americanising everything. *sigh*

And where is all the snow?????

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

er. you see tiny, tiny bits of it. if you squint. plus Will apparently goes christmas shopping at the mall.

chances of the flood bit where all the gifts that actually *meant* something to everyone get swept out in the thaw? nada.

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

I'm just going to be over here, weeping quietly into the carpet.

(It's what I normally do on a Friday night anyway. Just, now it has focus.)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/]

Do it!

[eruvadhril.livejournal.com]

I thought that the Signs looked wrong! I mean, I knew that they were incredibly small, but I assumed that I just couldn't see the circle-and-cross properly because they were all shiny. I thought that there's no way they couldn't get something like that right.

So... how does he carry them around now? Just in his pockets?

[littlerhymes]

Ah, fuck. Everything is awful but I can't get over how WRONG they have got Will.

Hopefully it will sink without a trace. Or at least get more people reading the books and realising how awesome they are.

[kestrelsan.livejournal.com]

Damn it, you made me go watch those trailers! I've been in denial about it for ages.

I guess it's better that it's *so* wrong than if it had only been a little bit wrong. At least now I can separate it completely in my mind from the book, though it pisses me off that such a lovely title is being used for such a crap film.

[mrmrsmith.livejournal.com]

Why couldn't HBO turn the whole sequence into a mini series? Then life would have been so much easier.