:hugs her bottle of vodka:
Jul. 13th, 2007 10:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
burntcopperCertain 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.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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.
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.
