further DIR outrage

[winterbadger]

Dark Rises Differently

David Cunningham, director of Fox Walden's upcoming fantasy film The Dark Is Rising, told SCI FI Wire that the film takes a few liberties by changing elements of Susan Cooper's Newbery-winning 1973 novel. Adapting the trippy fantasy book, the second in a five-volume series, called for some rethinking, Cunningham said in an interview on the film's set in Bucharest, Romania, on May 15.

"Susan Cooper's world is incredibly rich, and, really, the mythology is the plot in her book," Cunningham (The Path to 9/11) said. "And our goal has been to try and make this story more accessible to today's audience and introduce a new generation to her work. And what that means is someone like [writer] John Hodge building on that incredible world and creating moments and some interpretations of her book for us to be able to run with it."

Among the changes: Hero Will Stanton (newcomer Alexander Ludwig) is now 13, not 11, and he is an American living in a small northern English village, instead of a native-born Brit. The character of the Walker (Jonathan Jackson) has been made younger-appearing and given a new story arc involving the loss of his soul. The movie also beefs up the action by adding new special-effects-enhanced sequences to Cooper's narrative, Hodge said.

Beyond that, the spine and spirit of the story remain, writer Hodge said in a separate interview. Stanton discovers on his midwinter birthday that he is special: the last "Old One," imbued with special powers and a crucial person in the ongoing battle between the forces of Light and Dark.

Why make Stanton American? Because it's fitting that he is more of an outsider than in the book, Hodge said. Stanton should be culturally alien to the story's setting, which compels him to question why he is there and doing what he must do, he added.

The film also adds several action sequences, including a chase in a modern mall and a fight among snakes in a medieval church, leading to the discovery of a secret crypt.

As for other changes, Cunningham said: "As the director, [my challenge] is then to try to take all of that rich mythology, all of that rich ambiance and all of that, and try to do something in such a way that translates to film. And what ... my attempt has been is to try and do it through a more modern lens, so that the filmic style is much more today, versus much more classical, as many fantasy films are shot. And so we're really trying to make this ride feel not like a fantasy film, feel very today, like it's happening to someone you would know and recognize and understand."

I feel ill...

Comments

[justjayj.livejournal.com]

"...make this story more accessible to today's audience..."

There's your kiss of death right there. It translates as, "The audience is stupid, so we had to make it simple and shiny."

/haven't read it
//really should

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

Really really should read it, yes you should, tis wonderful stuff

[winterbadger]

Agreed.

[winterbadger]

What I don't understand is why he feels that a story that was written as set in modern England is "classical" and needs to be updated. The man is an idiot.

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

Aren't those changes similar to saying, "Right, hobbits are a bit weird, those hairy feet and all that eating, we'll make them.. surfer dudes, yeah, and then Gandalf should ride a Harley, and the one ring? Its a metaphor for drugs, so we'll have Gollum be a spaced-out junkie, yeah... It'll be very today, oh yes.."

*shudder*

Also, why shift the Stantons to a Northern english village? Going to be all flat caps and ecky thump and stereotypes, are they trying for Secret Garden or that film with the stripping steelworkers do you think?

*goes off to cuddle her book protectively*

[winterbadger]

I think the problem is that Hollywood directors are morons and think in stereotypes. They think southern England = London = urban and northern England = rural.

I would bet money that this guy never actually read the book, that he just read a summary of it that someone wrote from reading the blurb on Amazon.

What do you bet there are no crows in the movie and that it never snows?

[wolfette]

Why make Stanton American?

Because, as usual, Hollywood thinks that you need an American character to sell movies to the US audience........ despite the evidence of the Harry Potter movies.

And because they want to use an American actor (who will probably be 16, pretending to be 13... heck, he could be 20, going by previous "teen" characters in US made tv and movies) because it's too much trouble to cast a young English actor....... and his parents.

Cynic? Moi?

[winterbadger]

It's so sad that Henson & Co. never made it. I would trust them to get it right.

Walden Media only partly mangled LW&W, but they totally changed Bridge to Terebithia, and I hate to guess what they're going to do to Prince Caspian. It looks as if their next film, The Water Horse, relocates Duart Castle from Mull to Loch Ness, but that's a minor crime compared to making yet another cutesy, feel-good movie about Nessie....

[sioneva.livejournal.com]

HE'S AN AMERICAN?!!!

Bloody hell, remind me NOT to go see this film.

[winterbadger]

Indeed. He's an American kid who gets in a fight with two mall security guards and then uses magic hoodoo to get away from them. Which is, of course, just the story Susan Cooper was telling.

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

It gets worse. It gets much, much worse. Seen the trailer?

This "northern" village has a shopping "mall" that.... well, the word "mall" tells you all you need to know. It's American. Will gets into a fight with security guards (American ones), who he beats by using his Kool Superpowwas.

Will's family aren't close and supportive, they're the Dursleys. The house they live in is huge, and has American architecture. His father isn't a jeweler, he's a professor (so there goes that bit of plot).

Gaaah. I will not be watching the film.

[winterbadger]

Me neither. :-(

[wolfette]

sometimes you have to watch a train wreck, just to see how bad it really is.