Stardust trailer rant, part I

[madbaker]

Following the forty minutes of pre-movie advertising for people with the attention span of a four-year-old with ADD, we had twenty minutes of upcoming movie trailers. There were two that stood out and prompted these musings rants.

The first was one that I was glad to see: the trailer for The Dark Is Rising.
A bit of backstory: Susan Cooper's kid story about good and evil was one of my early favorites. I have no idea how early - because I read and re-read the series long before I got into science fiction (which was when I was ten I think). Anyway: assume I was nine; I read all of them repeatedly, but most of all the second and the last two. The second is The Dark Is Rising and the last two star the main character Will. The idea that you turn eleven and find out you're magical - well, it's awfully appealing. (The first and third novels felt shoehorned in in an attempt to broaden the cast of characters and make ordinary eleven-year-olds the center; I never liked them as much.) I still have all five novels with their browned pages and '70s-something printing dates.

So, now you know the cherished place that this series (and this one book in particular) hold in my childhood mythology.

If you haven't seen the trailer, here's what IMDB says:

"Based on the acclaimed novel by Susan Cooper, THE DARK IS RISING is the first film adaptation of the author's acclaimed The Dark Is Rising Sequence. The film tells the story of Will Stanton, a young man who learns he is the last of a group of warriors who have dedicated their lives to fighting the forces of the Dark. Traveling back and forth through time, Will discovers a series of clues which lead him into a showdown with forces of unimaginable power. With the Dark once again rising, the future of the world rests in Will's hands."

Shall I translate?

"An American named Will turns eleven and becomes a mini-Gandalf. And a mini-Aragorn. He has more power than anyone else in the world, especially his mentor Merriman Lyon (aka Merlin, hello?) and must develop his magickal powers to save the world."

In summary: this will be yet another piece of my childhood shredded, thrown on the ground, and stamped upon. It will be bad. Not "Black Cauldron" bad, which similarly raped the Prydain books of Lloyd Alexander so poorly that even Disney refused to acknowledge it for years. But it will be "The Secret of NIMH" bad, which failed to translate anything of worth from "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH".

I am glad I saw the trailer because now I won't waste any more of my time thinking it might do justice to the book.

(pant, pant, froth)
Part II to follow when I've recovered a bit of composure. I thought this rant was going to be the short one...

Comments

[otherwind.livejournal.com]

OMG! I sooo agree with you on this rant! Well said!

I too read those books over and over and over as a child--the second one every christmas for probably six years. Unlike you, I liked the other children and I really liked the references to early Cornwall mythology so I liked the first and third books. I thought the last book lost focus a little though, and my boys never liked it as much...

BTW, I think Cooper makes it pretty explicit that Merriman _is_ Merlin in _Th Grey King_ (in the account of how he took Bran's mother back into the past)--just sayin'

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

It's made explicit in Over Sea, Under Stone as well. That's another thing bugging me about the movie - that freakin' Merlin is nowhere as powerful as Boy Wonder.

[albionwood.livejournal.com]

I never expect a movie to do justice to a book any more, so I don't ever get very excited about such movies - nor am I disappointed when they turn out to be the typical Hollywood crap that we should all expect by now. In fact I am pleasantly surprised when a movie-from-beloved-book turns out to be any good at all, on its own merits (LotR). Any story that involves a kid saving the world is doomed from the start, for me anyway.

Any movie-from-book in recent years that you think really did justice to the book?

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

Stardust achieved the same feel. Princess Bride worked better as a movie than a book, I thought.

[caprine.livejournal.com]

Oh. My. God.

Right. Never seeing the movie of The Dark is Rising. Just as I never saw Constantine and deeply regret that I cannot scrub League of Extraordinary Gentlemen from my memory.

Hollywood. They're all bastards.