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Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising was the first novel I ever read that celebrated the darkest days of the year. Cooper's story combined Celtic mythology, Arthurian legend and Christianity in a heart thumping fantasy.
It makes sense to me that all over the Northern Hemisphere, people celebrate at this time - with lights, and fires and revelry. After all, it feels as if the sun is leaving us. Call back the sun with noise and joy, warmth and light, peace and truth.
That's what I wish for you now and in the coming year - Light, and Peace, Warmth and Truth, Joy and Love - oh, and noise, too, of the happiest sort.
Fight the Dark!
By:
Betsy Bird,
on 4/17/2016
Blog:
A Fuse #8 Production
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It’s happened to us all. You hear that one of your favorite books for kids or teens is being adapted to the silver screen and you are struck with a simultaneous feeling of hope and fear. You go to see it and it’s even worse than you imagined. Then you leave the theater and realize that this was based on the first book in a series. Are they honestly going to keep going, even if this is a flop?
Thankfully, the answer is usually no. But what happens is that you’re left with a lot of series just ah-blowing in the wind. Here then is a tribute to those book series that are just not going to see any more sequels. Unless, of course, they get a reboot. Which, in at least one case, may happen.
The Seeker a.k.a. The Dark Is Rising
Remember this? Or has your brain done you a favor and allowed you to forget? One of the more egregious adaptations out there. In the midst of the Harry Potter films, studios were looking to recreate that same magic for themselves. And lo and behold, here is a fantasy series starring a special boy who learns he has the power to defeat a dark and ancient evil! Perfect! So what did the studios do? First, they made it American (one can only imagine the conversations that took place to make this happen – “I bet Harry Potter would have been MUCH more successful if he’d been from Jersey!”). Then they mucked with the plot so much as to render the film unrecognizable from the book. No Under Sea, Under Stone for you, kids! Which, technically, should have been first anyway . . .
The Black Cauldron
Not that when Disney animated it they were really prepared to make any sequels. Many consider this film the moment Disney animation hit rock bottom. They also combined two of Lloyd Alexander’s books together to make it in the first place. I heard a rumor the other day that a new version of The Book of Three is in the works somewhere, but was unable to find any proof of it online.
The Seventh Son
Apparently this was years and years in the works, much good it did it in the end. A real pity since the book was so great. What could have been a really good creepy film was instead yet another big budget war against an evil blahfest. Ah well.
A Wrinkle in Time
Oh yeah. It was straight to television, so hopes couldn’t have been all that high anyway. In a 2004 interview with Newsweek Madeleine L’Engle was asked if the film met her expectations. She said it had. She was pretty cheery about it. “I expected it to be bad, and it was.” Rumor has it that another is currently in the works. I dunno, folks. Mixing religion and science and fantasy into a single book is hard enough. Short of animating it, I don’t know how a film could even come close to doing it right.
Voyage of the Dawn Treader
This one is unlike the others mentioned here for a number of reasons. First off, these movies aren’t all that bad. They seem fairly aware of the books that they’re based upon, for one thing. And admittedly they managed to get through three books in the Narnia series, and even then only by the skin of their teeth. Amazing that they got that far! It’s too late to keep ’em coming at this point, so the series is pretty officially dead (sorry, Silver Chair, fans).
The Last Airbender
I’m cheating by including this since it’s not based on a book originally but a television series (Avatar: The Last Airbender). That said, the graphic novel sequels (penned in part by our current National Ambassador of Young People’s Literature, Gene Luen Yang) are fantastic and deserve mention. The movie adaptation of the first season was problematic not the least because all the villains were people of color and all the people of color who were heroes were played by white actors. [My husband points out that if you look at the voice actors for the original TV show it’s not much different, but that’s only if you think Iroh and Zuko are villains, and anyway the true baddies were Mark Hammil and Jason Isaacs who are the whitest white guys to ever white a white].
By the way, notice how all these series star white kids, usually of a male persuasion, and are fantasies or science fiction. So while I’d love to see the One Crazy Summer books adapted, my hopes are not currently very high.
There is nothing like being in a school library before school starts.
Teachers start coming in, long before their contracts start, to set up their rooms and begin planning for the year to come. Even though the librarians start work a week before the teachers, there is precious little time to work for the library itself which is why I found myself cataloging a load of new material for a very busy librarian at an elementary school this week.
The librarian at this school runs a fun "Books to Movies" reading club every year. She was telling me of her plans to use The Dark is Rising as her first book in conjunction with the movie The Seeker: The Dark is Rising, aka Will's Excellent Adventure, when it comes out.
Wow, have you heard about the brouhaha surrounding the movie I ask?
I ended up feeling badly because she is now pondering using another book to start the year. I don't think she has read the story yet so I told her not to decide until she had.
The club is really popular so it would be a chance for lots of kids to experience Cooper's work. Maybe learning that the movies are not faithful conveyors of a beloved story is a good thing to teach kids.
Maybe it is not so bad to reward feckless studios who are counting on librarians to promote their offerings in scenarios just like this one?
Maybe the movie is going to be so alien from the storyline that it will not spoil the book for them.
What do you think?
In case you haven't heard, Walden changed the title of the forthcoming The Dark is Rising movie to The Seeker: The Dark is Rising. I'm not sure what the reason is for the change is, but I hope that it's not because they want to differentiate it so they can make sequels. I just wish they would remove "The Dark is Rising" from the title all together.
Camille at Book Moot has created a great parody movie poster that captures so well everything about this movie that has fans of the book so upset. It's really funny; you have to check it out here.
The poster makes a lot more sense if you've seen Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. If you haven't seen it, you can get a flavor of it in this trailer on YouTube. It's worth watching just to see a young Keano Reeves. (Yes, I know I'm supposed to embed the video here, but I can't bring myself to do it. You'll just have to click through to see it.
E-xcellent!
If you're just coming in and you don't know about the controversy surrounding the Dark is Rising movie, click on "the dark is rising" label below to see my previous posts on the subject, including links to more information and other posts.
I just can't seem to look away from this car wreck. Everything that I've read about The Dark is Rising movie seems to indicate that it's going to be a really bad adaptation. To add fuel to the fire, A Blog of Authors has posted a thorough, highly detailed comparison chart of the differences between the book and the movie, complete with sources for each of the items. If you haven't had enough pain, check it out here.
Last night we went to see the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix movie. One of the trailers that played before the movie was a preview for The Dark is Rising movie - and from the preview it looks like it's going to be as bad as we feared. I almost wouldn't have recognized it if they hadn't called the boy Will Stanton early in the preview. There was very little there that I recognized, although I admit it has been a few years since I read the books, and I don't have a good memory for details. There was this whole mall/security guard thing going on that made me think, "What the heck?" (And I thought that I read that in the movie Will was an American living in Britain - if so, why do the people in the mall speak with American accents?)
Even worse, the character of Will looks completely different. In the book, it always seemed to me that he had a depth to him even from the very beginning, that made it totally believable that he was an Old One. The Will in the movie trailer seems to be a gee whiz teenager who thinks it's really cool to be able to do magic stuff.
Looking at the trailer objectively, if I didn't know the book I'd think it looked like a pretty cool movie. Which, unfortunately, doesn't bode well. There will probably be enough people who haven't read the book going to see the movie that Fox Walden will feel vindicated.
View the trailer here and judge for yourself
Other The Dark is Rising movie posts:
The whole distressing news about the "changes" to The Dark is Rising set me to thinking about other beloved books in our Entwood that have been translated to the silver screen.
Nothing compares to the breadth and depth of the story in written form. Most of the time I do note what was left out and what was changed when a book is made into a movie but overall I enjoy seeing another creative mind's interpretation.
I enjoyed Stormbreaker, even though I didn't think the actor fit my idea of Alex Rider but I enjoyed the movie for what it was.
The Harry Potter movies had their drawbacks but I saw them and enjoyed them. When they pop-up on TV (like tonight) I find myself watching them.
Overall I have liked the Walden Media movies I have seen. I even liked Hoot though I felt they got the casting of Mullet Fingers very wrong.
Which brings me to our most beloved of all stories that have been movie-ized, The Lord of the Rings. Peter Jackson decided, for sake of dramatic effect, to change some aspects of the story and these changes STILL annoy some members of this household. Aragorn's motivations, Gandalf's confrontation with the Witch King at Pelennor Fields, and Denethor's character spring to mind.
But we all knew that Peter Jackson loved the books. We knew he had read the books and had dreamed of bringing this "unfilmable" story to the screen. The involvement of the fans was nurtured from the very beginning of the project. He knew their interest and support was important to the movies' success.
Jackson infused his project with Tolkien's own words and brought the essence and spirit of the story to life. It was a work of love and it showed in every frame.
I reflected on this as I read this interview with John Hodge, the screenwriter for The Dark is Rising:
Are there other elements from the books that you used. With regards to back story or stuff like that?
I haven't dipped into the other books at all.
So you just focused on the 'Dark Is Rising?'
Just 'Dark Is Rising', yeah.
Studios that are trying to achieve their own fantasy franchise à la Harry or LOTR should take a page out of Peter Jackson's play book.
Oh well.
"But now his slow wrath is brimming over and the forest is filled with it. The coming of the hobbits and the tidings they have brought have spilled it.: it will soon be running like a flood; but its tide is turned against Saruman and the axes of Isengard. A thing is about to happen which has not happened since the Elder Days: the Ents are going to wake up and find that they are strong. -- "The White Rider", The Two Towers
Well, this topic has certainly gotten this entfamily in an uproar. Don't know how "strong" we are but enraged, absolutely.
"When Treebeard had got a few arrows in him, he began to warm up, to get positively "hasty", as he would say." -- "Flotsam and Jetsam", The Two Towers
I tend to think of Entling no. 2 as our resident
Lord of the Rings expert but she felt compelled to weigh in on the DiR movie, in particular:
First:And what of Will's family? His being the seventh son of a seventh son (a fact not readily apparent since the first born died young) is also a very important point. Just how will they make that work if Will has a twin, as one picture suggested?
Plus:And they've changed Will's father from a jeweler to a physics professor! His being a jeweler was actually very important to the plot!
Plus: (Mother's note: this is from the kid who chided me for skipping the songs and poems in LOTR the first time I read it)Will they have the poems?
When the Dark comes rising, six shall turn it back;
Three from the circle, three from the track;
Wood, bronze, iron; water, fire, stone;
Five will return, and one go alone.
When the Dark comes rising, six shall turn it back;
Three from the circle, three from the track;
Wood, bronze, iron; water, fire, stone;
Five will return, and one go alone.
Iron for the birthday, bronze carried long;
Wood from the burning, stone out of song;
Fire in the candle-ring, water from the thaw;
Six Signs the circle, and the grail gone before.
Fire on the mountain shall find the harp of gold
Played to wake the Sleepers, oldest of the old;
Power from the green witch, lost beneath the sea;
All shall find the light at last, silver on the tree.
Finally:It's as if they finally did
The Hobbit and Bilbo was no longer a hobbit, but was a plucky young mortal human starting out on a quest with his faithful dog Spot and the wise, cantankerous grounds keeper from his father's estate.
Oh, and the quest is to just get from point A to point B. There's no dragon treasure, really.
And while Gandalf does make an appearance, Radagast is far more important and slightly evil.
--- --- --- --- ---
Camille is now trying to remember who the heck is Radagast?
Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising series was one of the first children's book series I read as an adult. It was BC (before children) and this novel made me want to sleep with the lights on for several nights.
I am also interested in the book-to-film progress of The Dark is Rising because this series was one of Entling No. 1's favorite reads of all time. Her copy of Silver on the Tree was a sight to behold: cover hanging by a thread and then gone all together, pages softened from innumerable turnings. These books "fit her just right" to quote a fan's letter to Susan Cooper.
J.L. Bell always writes thoughtfully about the subjects he takes up so I sent his "The Hype is Rising" post to my No. 1 and asked for her take.
For the record my daughter is a twenty something young professional. She said I could share her thoughts that I received over a course of several emails. They were arriving fast and furious.
First take:
I'm only half way through, but if Will has a twin I'll throw up.
And another thing:
Ok, first of all Will has to come from a big family. One of the important themes is that he's the 7th son of a 7th son (or 11th or some number). That's why he's important. And he doesn't ever complain about it - his brothers and sisters do.
That's what makes Will different. He gets along with everyone, has patience and understanding and is more grown up than many of his older siblings. He worries about what he's getting everyone for Christmas because he loves his big family so much he wants to get all the right presents. He understands and accepts what he has to do at such a young age because he wants to protect his family - there's actually a scene where he wants to leave and give up but then sees The Rider with his sister and it propels him into doing what's right for the cause.
The Walker having a love interest is ridiculous - he's actually one of the semi-enemies in the book, and he's not THAT big a character so it doesn't make ANY sense that they would change that. He used to work for the Old Ones, specifically Merriman, but betrayed them and was cursed.
He learns the hard way that an immortal life is not a blessing, and it drives him mad so he actually works for the Dark until Will and Merriman work to bring him back to the Light.
Making him younger, as this post seemed to suggest, is beyond dumb because it takes away the reason for his suffering - he's lived too long and aged too much, but he can't die. He's mad. Adding a love interest makes no sense.
At all.
Ever.
Will being an American is not that big a deal, though it seems more like a casting cop-out than an actual plot addition. Of course the reason he's British in the books means he has a physical connection to important people and places from King Arthur's time.
But, oh wait, they don't need that (see next paragraph). I don't know why they made him 14 or 13 instead of 11 - the whole deal in the book is that he's not even a teenager yet - that's why it's so hard for him.
Getting rid of the Arthurian themes is unbelievable. First of all Merriman, as we learn in the later books, is also MERLIN. It also means they won't be making The Grey King or Silver on the Tree, since those all involve KING ARTHUR'S SON!! (brought to our modern times by Guenevere with Merrimen's help.)
And Bran has to be King Arthur's son or nothing else makes sense - for example, that's why he can use King Arthur's sword. He's important because he's King Arthur's son - he's the Pendragon and it gives him more abilities and powers than other people. If you take this away and make him just an ordinary kid, why is Bran more special than Will? Why does it have to be him who has to do everything in The Grey King and Silver on the Tree - just cuz he's Welsh??
That's all I can think of in 10 minutes. I'll ponder more if you want.
And another thing:
As a side note - [Ian MacShane's] whine about Cooper's books being too hard to read obviously never tried to read the Narnia series. Cooper's books are not dense or hard to get through, they are not boring, have plenty of action in them already and don't need any random changes to make them more exciting.
It's not a Die Hard type fight with huge action sequences. The Light and the Dark don't use bombs or guns or plastic explosives or snipers to fight each other. It's a more subtle kind of fight, fought in the old ways with cunning and faith. There are rules each side has to follow, including keeping the fight on the down-lo, or risk getting cast out of the universe or something.
In Silver on the Tree, each of the good guys (Simon, Jane, Barney from Over Sea Under Stone and Greenwitch, Will, Bran and Merriman) take one of the Signs (found by Will in Dark is Rising) and they all stand around the most important tree in the world (not actually named the Tree of Life by Cooper, but the symbolism is there.) And all around them they see the other warriors of the Light and the Dark fighting - King Arthur, etc. And the point is that the Light prevented the Dark from taking control of the tree, which exists out of time. Thus they saved the past, present and future.
Or in other words, the fight is never ending and a lot more complicated than just a random good-guy bad-guy fight.That's why it's a quest - you're supposed to have to think about it - it's not supposed to be easy.
And another thing:Sorry it's kind of a stream of consciousness. But I LOVE these books and the thought of someone messing them up actually makes me want to cry.
And another thing:Also, please clean up my typos and grammar errors. That post got me so riled up I just started pounding the keyboard.
And another thing:Merriman is the only character who appears in all 5 books. If the actor hasn't even tried to read them how true will his performance be?
A few hours ago, a commenter who identified himself only as "nick" left a comment on my post about The Dark is Rising movie. In my post, I had expressed concern about the changes made to the movie, leaving very little of the original story intact. "nick" expressed his opinion that the movie would be bigger than the book. Fair enough. He's entitled to his opinion, and unfortunately, he could be right.
But then "nick" gushed about a new MTV reality show about the lives of six interns on The Dark is Rising set, including a link to the MTV web page about the show. Something about his post set off alarm bells in my head; my first thought was that it was an attempt on the part of either the movie marketing people, or more likely, MTV, to artificially generate buzz for the movie or the reality show. When I read that J.L.Bell has had similar comments on his The Dark is Rising posts, I felt fairly certain that this is a marketing stunt.
"nick" has since responded to my cynical reply to his comment, expressing his outrage that I doubted him. He claims to be a movie critic, but his poorly written posts and anonymity seem to belie that. But, I could be wrong. He could really be a movie critic, or a teen excited about the new movie and related reality show.
If it is a marketing stunt, though, it's likely to backfire on them. I believe that teens today, having grown up in a marketing-saturated environment, are sophisticated enough to be able to tell the difference between real buzz and marketer-generated hype.
I'm curious: has anyone else had similar comments posted on your blog?
You can read my discussion with "nick" in the comments at this post.
Uh-oh. Bad news, guys. I know we were getting all excited about The Dark Is Rising movie coming out. I mean, Walden Media's doing it, but they were so nice with Bridge to Terabithia that we were willing to forget about what they did to How To Eat Fried Worms. Well, we shouldn't have. In this woeful rehash of the book-to-film translation (I guess the misspelled Newbery Award in the first sentence should have been a tip-off) we learn that Cooper's novel has had a couple nips and tucks here and there. It reads:
But within those broad story strokes are major changes, including much more action than Cooper ever imagined, changed relationships and motivations, including the addition of a love interest for The Walker (who is much younger in the movie) and a new reason for him to betray the Light, a very different take on Merriman (in the books he’s essentially Merlin; screenwriter John Hodge told me they dropped all the Arthurian stuff from the film), new abilities for The Rider, and plenty of adventure elements – the impression that I got from what we saw was Indiana Jones meets Harry Potter.
Oh. I will rewrite that one for you so that you feel the full weight. It said, "the addition of a love interest for The Walker". In their defense,
Christopher Eccleston is hot as hell. So.... there's that. Then my eyes drift back over the sentence and I shudder in the very depths of my soul.
And they're dropping the Arthurian stuff? Dude, when your poster looks like this
do you think it's the brightest idea to drop all connections to the essential mythology of the book? I mean, what if this movie's a hit and you want to remake the other titles in the series? How's that whole Grail/talking to the friggin' son of Arthur himself idea gonna work out for you?
Thanks to
Oz and Ends for the link.
The Husband reads Ain't It Cool News with far more regularity than I. We all have our favorite film sites. I just happen to prefer the cool heads at Cinematical and Dark Horizons, that's all. But recently hubby o' mine alerted me to a bit of fine The Dark is Rising information out there. Site creator Harry Knowles is the belle of the film studios. They fly him out and let him interview the cast and crew of whatever film it is he's discussing at a given moment. As such he tends to be a tad... effusive, let us say.
The choice of latest film was interesting to me because Harry always takes a singular pride in having not read any of the fantasy novels whose movies he reports on. I suppose he feels it gives him a clean slate or some such nonsense. He's gotten away with mentioning not reading the Potter books with a sneer that would do Harold Bloom proud, but when it comes to Cooper he is oddly impressed. He thinks that this is a good film. I am glad to hear it, though I wonder if he'll ever go out and read the book for a compare & contrast session. Probably not.
Read the post. Anyone else catch the throwaway line about Will getting chased in a mall?
Yeah. Well. He does.
Apparently Christopher Eccleston (I love him for Shallow Grave and you love him for Heroes or Dr. Who) is going to play the Black Rider in the upcoming filmed version of The Dark Is Rising. Cinematical has the scoop on the full cast and how you might know them. Quick question for you, though: How exactly do you feel about Ian McShane playing Merriman? I mean, great actor. No contest. But a youngish Merriman ... I kinda like it.
Thanks to Cinematical for the link.
Omg. You referenced Silverchair.
Well, there is the story of New Line’s plan to do His Dark Materials, and then ditching after its highly uneven film of The Golden Compass. Fortunately, the BBC is taking a new tack — not yet clear how far they plan to go with the trilogy though.
Arg! Can’t believe I forgot that one! Of course the BBC is perfect but yeah, how deep do they want to go? They could Game of Thrones it pretty easily.
Is why you love me.
I get three points for turning “Game of Thrones” into a verb, by the way.
Eragon never got a sequel, did it?
Philip Pullman always was largely in public (as far as I can tell) very stiff-upper-lip regarding The Golden Compass movie. Rick Riordan, on the other hand: http://rickriordan.blogspot.com/2016/03/a-letter-you-can-share-with-your-teacher.html
I’m sorry but Disney animation hit its low point with Robin Hood. All that talent and they produced one of the dullest animated movies ever.
I was just going to point out the Riordan post
The first book in Susan Cooper’s Dark is Rising series is Over Sea, Under Stone, just fyi.
I’ve never been a fan of Riordan’s books, but this… this makes me like him. A lot.
I can see One Crazy Summer done by Disney as one of their Black History Month movies.
But you are probably right.
The Silver Chair was my son’s favorite of the series, and for one birthday he wanted a Silver Chair party. I persuaded him to make it a Narnia party, since most of his friends were only familiar with The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe at that point.
He was older by the time the movies came out, but he went to them and would have liked a Silver Chair movie.
Boom. Well played.
It has one significant advantage over The Black Cauldron, however: The music. Granted, it makes no sense. A Southern influence on what is supposedly England (watching the accents flicker on and off is fascinating).
Yeah, I know. But that wasn’t the order. I figured if they had continued they’d have doubled back, but come to think of it they probably would have scrapped that entire second storyline entirely and just kept everything Will-centric. A pity since the Greenwitch would be fantastic on screen.
Well, there was always that old BBC version. They had their flaws, but I remember vividly the scene of the prince wearing the mask in the chair, begging the children to believe him that this was the only time he was capable of telling the truth.
Shoot. How did I miss this? It would have been a perfect addition to this post.
Yeah, but even the music couldn’t keep it from being dull. Maybe I should just listen to the soundtrack. We showed it in our library once and everyone except one family left after 20 minutes. I closed my eyes for a while and found it was a lot more entertaining to listen to the great voices! (accents or not)
Brian Bedford (the fox) died around the same time as Alan Rickman and David Bowie. I always thought there would be more tributes to both Robin Hood and The Sheriff (albeit from different films) dying at the same time.