When I was a young boy, face full of freckles and and a mind full of clouds, we would head to the other side of town for our weekly swimming lessons, once a month we would head, eyes streaming from the chlorine, to the nearby barbers for a haircut. But neither of these things could compare to our regular trips to the massive (well I was only weee) library. This was the place where I discovered masses of short easy to read Doctor who novels, roman centurions, ghost stories and legends of King Arthur. Most of which (excluding doctor who) was bound together in Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising collection of books.
The five novels deal with an epic battle of good vs evil mostly seen through the eyes of children. There are quests, rabid giant foxes, witches, magicians, dogs that see the wind, and men who have traveled the Earth for centuries. You know, the usual.
It's been many years since I visited the world of Will Stanton so my memory of the books are a little dim. But by far my favourite book was The Grey king, dealing with landscape as much as it does the supernatural battle. The way heavy welsh landscape seemed so alive, crawling with mists, mad men and ghosts alike. With the success of the potter series (and potentially the Narnia chronicles) it seems the film industry has found its next cash cow, children's fantasy novels.
To be honest I hadn't heard anything about a film adaptation until it was mentioned on the always good written word site which also gave me the first worry that things might not be right. Basically the director appears to have decided to remove most of the King Arthur legend bits out of the movie. Or in other words some of the most important parts. Well I thought it might still be good, after all Christopher Eccelston, Ian Mcshane it can't be all bad.. can it?
Then I saw the trailer. ... hmmmmmm maybe its the American rock music, maybe its that terrible American voice over guy, maybe its annoying one liner that the American kids keeps saying... oh no wait now I know WHY IS DOES IT HAVE TO BE SET IN AMERICA AT ALL!!!!???!!
Now I should say that I understand why massive unwieldly tomes that takes days to read have to be trimed and altered for a 2 hour movie. And I'm not opposed to changes in locations if its needed, and thats the thing, if its actually needed! For example High Fidelity is one of the best adaptations/transportation of an English novel to the states (in my empty head anyway). The reason it works because the novel isn't centred in English history or locations, its story is about vinyl obsession, collections and love doesn't centre itself around being in England it just happens to be set in there. But try writing and filming something like Wuthering Heights, a book steeped in landscape and English heritage as it is love and obsession (and having recently read the book for the first time, there was a lot of obsession but where was the love?) that doesn't feature the landscape? So why is it that American companies/producers/directors and story writers seem to think that they can't make a film that doesn't feature some Americanisms
Do they think the American public can't handle English accents? Well the Harry potter films have shown you can have an English cast, and while Hogwarts seems very far from England, the Narnia film (which I must say I haven't seen but have heard about) apparently is very English in its presentation. Is it that if the main protagonist isn't sprouting American catch phrases every few seconds the audience gets bored? It just seems to come across as a lack of faith in the general movie going public, particularly the younger movie crowd.
Hey I might be wrong. It might just be this movie, (although U571 still annoys me, still, there's always Das Boot) I might just be too old for this movie or two much in love with the original books. Still it might not be me.
Although I may have fled from my other morals I still cling to optimism, so a small part of me is hoping that the movie works that it pulls something amazing out the bag, and we're given a fantastic spectacle. fingers crossed, because let's be honest here when it comes down to it, all we can do is hope.
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2 comments:
Oh, geez. I read these books when I was kid too and even though I don't remember much...man, that looks terrible.
As for why movies change the locales to America or the characters to American...well, who is Hollywood's target audience? This is nothing new and also a big pet peeve of mine. One of the big positives I'd hoped would come from the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings adaptations would be that this trend would end. Sadly, it doesn't look like it will and many more classic tales will be ruined in the name of the almighty dollar. Ian McShane, what are you doing?!?!? Go back to spouting profanities every other word!
This is why we're still waiting for a good Rhoald Dahl adaptation.
Although (and it kills me to do this), to defend U571, I believe it says it's a fictional attempt of stealing the codes and that they don't succeed with a brief coda saying that the English went on to successfully do so. Either way, it's a crap film that doesn't deserve a second thought.
Okay, rant done.
T.O.H pointed out last night after she watched the trailer is that they are clearly trying to make Harry Potter...The Amercian years. And I've never noticed how many parallels there are to them, why they couldn't write their own stories I'll never know.
As I said I could kind of understand why they change books but to remove most of the elements that make the book special (in my opinion anyway)
oh and yeah I forgot that U571 does mention that, it just realllly annoys me as it folllows the trend and seemes to ignore the involvement of any other country during WW2.
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