Comments | dotsomething: Some words about The Dark is Rising movie. (Oh, and um, hi.)

dotsomething

Some words about The Dark is Rising movie. (Oh, and um, hi.)

Jan 13, 2007 12:40

Hi. I swear I meant to do a real update and don't mean for my first post in a while to be only film-related.

But I'm having an unpretty film moment.

Unlocked, please link away.

Thank you sistermagpie for alerting me with her post with the info. Originally found by charlotteschaos and posted here. Here's the page ywith the original information, the audition casting notes ( Read more... )

Comments 16

anirien January 13 2007, 21:16:00 UTC

Oh barf. You know it's been ages since I read the books but even I remembered that Will's family was not like that. And certainly not fucking American, that's just ridiculous. I'd kind of hoped we'd gotten beyond the point where Hollywood feels compelled to make British characters American just to appeal to their audience, it didn't seem to be a problem with The Lion, The With, And the Wardrobe. Ugh. Though honestly, just from looking at the IMDB page I'm doubting I will ever spend money to see this movie. For starters Walden Media is a right-wing Christian based conglomerate trying to create media with Christian content, which I suppose was acceptable for Narnia, but dude, The Dark Is Rising series is full of pagan myths and themes. Then I looked at the director they've got on this thing and the only thing I even recognized that he'd directed was The Path to 9/11 which, if you recall, was basically a completely distorted, controversial right-wing propaganda piece that ran on ABC not long before the last election. BARF.

dotsomething January 13 2007, 23:07:10 UTC

Before TLTW&TW was finished, I remember joking with a friend that they'd probably make the Pevensies American and set it modern day. And then the movie turned out to be this lovely thing true to the time period, even with additions that were intelligently derived from the book, like the war theme.

There's an element of this where I'm insulted as a fan of Cooper's work. C.S. Lewis gets the full, respectful treatment with red carpet, but Cooper's work gets bastardized and rearranged? WHY? What the hell is wrong with TDIR? It's not like it's unfilmable if they only alter the plot points but not the characters. Some fiddling would be necessary, I see that. But these changes aren't even necessary.

Walden Media. Pah.

anirien January 14 2007, 01:02:04 UTC

I feel like the reason TLTW&TW got treated so well was in part because the books are so well known that a lot of the people going to see the movie have read the books, they couldn't get away with making too many changes. Plus they also had a director who seemed to actually be, you know, good. Sigh.

sistermagpie January 14 2007, 05:04:11 UTC

I think I heard somebody say that Narnia might have been Americanized too, or was going to be, until they realized that there would be a very negative reaction to that. It's just so annoying that we have to fight for the production company to respect the story that's already there when aren't they buying the books because they think got something to it? Ugh.

Thread 6

ljcygnet January 13 2007, 22:17:37 UTC

yech.

I've never heard of myentertainment, for what it's worth.

dotsomething January 13 2007, 23:14:10 UTC

Yeah. Some people in the discussion threads on those other posts suggested it could be a troll or a hoax. But I'm worried it's NOT.

Why don't they just hire a scriptwriter and write an original story if Cooper's isn't good enough for them? I feel terrible for her.

God, I get more angry the more I think about this.

Walden took so much care with C.S. Lewis. Different company, but the Harry Potter books were cherished and they tried very hard to keep them intact. I remember the apologetic way it was announced that Order of the Phoenix would be trimmed for the movie; an awareness that they were touching something that mattered to people.

But Susan Cooper gets her work treated like THIS?

chaos_wrangler January 15 2007, 17:02:22 UTC

I haven't read the original book, but the description you've posted made me think of an Americanized Harry Potter... *ugh*

dotsomething January 15 2007, 23:59:33 UTC

You've assessed it right.

So long as the movie doesn't *hurt* the rep of the books, okay, fine, nothing will have changed. I'll reread the books every few years the way I usually do. What. Ever. Silly Walden Media. :p

brynnmck January 17 2007, 19:34:46 UTC

Here via voleuse... I saw the character notes last week and I've been distraught about it ever since, for all the reasons you mentioned. It's a wonderful story as it is--why change it so extensively? I love that Will is ordinary. That's half the point. I love that he loves his family, and they love him. I just... I don't know why they would DO this.

dotsomething January 20 2007, 17:43:31 UTC

Hi! Yes, it's upsetting. I try not to be blindly purist about these things. Changes sometimes need to happen for a movie to flow but that's not what these changes are. This is a complete reworking of every reason I fell in love with these characters in the first place.

They've boiled down a complicated family to an oversimplified "bullies and a geek." Meanwhile the whole point of Will isn't that he's not anything in particular, he just is Will. Not a geek. Not a jock. Not a brain. He sings well. He's a real kid and that's part of what's so magnificent about the story.

::sigh::

raincitygirl January 17 2007, 20:58:29 UTC

In the book(s) Will's father was the son of a Buckinghamshire farmer and he owned a small jewellery shop in Windsor. He and his wife didn't have an actual farm, but did have some land on which Mrs Stanton raised poultry, rabbits etc. for extra income. She was also the child of a farmer. Neither of them seemed to have a whole lot of formal education or privilege, possibly because they'd grown up in an era with much less social mobility than the UK circa 1970, an era in which becoming a jeweller's apprentice was probably a step up the socio-economic ladder for an intelligent, ambitious youth. Free secondary school education and grants for the tuition of university students whose parents couldn't afford to pay for university didn't come in until after 1945 ( ... )

dotsomething January 20 2007, 17:49:30 UTC

Thank you! That's some terrific analysis. I don't know that much about the social-political background of England but Cooper seemed so particular about it being a real England and the decade the books were written is relevant.

That's right, jewlery store. I had the impression they didn't have bundles of money, but enough to feed and clothe all those kids. They weren't suffering but they weren't affluent either.

The retooled version takes away that nicely real complexity of the Stantons. They are rural, Mrs. Stanton is descended from farmers, and this is not at all incompatible with being artistic, musically inclined, gentle.

It's a gross exeraggeration in the other direction to make the Stantons stereotypical cold, successful academics.

I love Mr. Stanton's pride there, his reverse snobbery. Which does seem like it would be tied to a particularly 1970's England and his instinctive reaction to social history.

raincitygirl January 20 2007, 21:11:58 UTC

I think the book is very specifically placed in its setting for a reason, and there's just like in tDiR there's subtle class commentary in the later books in the series. The shifting economic and class structure in Britain in the past, say, 150 years, is just fascinating. And the evolution of education policy in the UK during the whole of the twentieth century is wonderful microcosm of class as a systemic barrier to social mobility, how that gradually changes, and the consequences ( ... )

raincitygirl January 20 2007, 21:47:35 UTC

Oh, and in the book the Rider doesn't masquerade as the local doctor, he masquerades as a gem dealer who has met and cultivated the acquaintance of Mr Stanton in his professional capacity. To the point where he maneouvres Mr Stanton into letting him (the Rider) into his home on Christmas Day, to drop off a jewellery present that wasn't finished on time when Mr Stanton had to leave on Christmas Eve. And the Rider conveniently happened to be in the shop on other business, and helpfully offered to wait around for it to be finished, and then drop it off on Christmas morning as he'd be driving near their house on the way to his own Christmas Day plans anyway ( ... )