And so Harry Potter is finished, cast his final spell, and in a conjoining of time better suited to the pages of a novel, so too is Susan Cooper’s Newberry-winning The Dark Is Rising series. Thirty years since its last word was penned, the movie trailer for an also beloved, also epic tale of good and evil has just been released, and if the invective of fans is anything to go by, the series is finished as surely as the Titanic in the North Atlantic.
During filming in Bucharest, Romania there was a joke on The Dark is Rising set that only three things have been changed from the original 1973 novel: the nationality of lead character Will Stanton, changed from English to American; his age changed from 11 to 13; and everything else that happens in the story. A solo quest by an 11-year-old is no longer solo; family values have been deemed out of date — the happy, loving Stanton family rewritten dysfunctional; a series of five books bereft of a single love interest has been re-imagined with the lead character chasing the fairer sex, pleading in the trailer “I can't save the world! I don't even know how to talk to a girl!” Angered, disgusted fans are reporting little interest in their hero’s new, most ordinary of plights.
Indeed, for the many who claim the deepened, mythic sense of the world in The Dark is Rising actually changed their livers, something less poetic is on the rise — bile. Sickened at the sight of the trailer, one fan reported that they were a whole minute in before they realised what movie it was. Complained another, “My daughter was all like ‘that looks great!’ and I was pounding my head into my husband’s shoulder. It looks awful.” One heart-broken reader of the original books reported that upon watching the trailer, a part of them died.
More contentious than Will Stanton’s womanising ways, the film has changed the very source of the magic in a most magical of series — all traces of Cooper’s beguiling, haunting blend of English, Arthurian, and Celtic mythology removed, recast as hip hop and Humvees. Bemoaned one reader, aggrieved at the trailer’s depiction of a modern day Merlin wielding a mace, this most fascist of adaptations is tantamount to Peter Jackson taking the hobbits out of Middle Earth and getting rid of the elves. A series that the author said almost wrote itself, arose mist-like out of the English landscape of her birth without conscious imagination or invention, appears to have been rewritten completely without imagination, rewritten as just another action and love story. This tale of coming of age could now only be from a more present, soulless Age.
Article comments
1 - Olivia
Indeed. One can only hope this pathetic movie disappears quickly, or better still just goes to dvd where it can be lost forever.
2 - Anon
As one of those fans whose lives were changed by the Dark is Rising Sequence (I was 11 just as Will was, going through a new phase of my life, when I discovered them), I was appalled by the trailer, and I hoped that it was all just a bad dream. I too can only hope that the movie is forgotten, or if not, perhaps it can spark more interest in a beautifully written series of books.
3 - Sabriel
Amen
4 - delilah
Thank God for this article. It made the monstrosity of "Seeker" feel a bit less like a funeral and a bit more like a chance to laugh at hollywood. One good thing: if the trailer alone has given me an urge to reopen the Dark is Rising, the movie might actually make it a bestsellers.
5 - Michael
Thanks a lot for this great article, the message needs to be spread further before October... A huge fan of the books from Germany.
6 - John Gillespie
Thanks a lot Michael and Delilah. I'm a huge fan myself, which is what led me to write the article.
7 - jim_mathews
Beautifully written and argued; my guess is that Susan Cooper didn't have enough guile to fight back when she discovered that she had signed away all creative control over the Dark Is Rising sequence.
Now I am in the position of forever having to explain to the legions of idiot Americans who will flock to this film that no, in the real book, Will is a confused and bewildered boy trying to come to grips with his new reality...not a typical American mall-rat punk.
Everything that was lyrical, beautiful, moving and transcendant has been ripped from the story; and we ordinary readers are powerless to correct the misimpressions about what the "Masses" will come to believe was Susan Cooper's vision. We're not talking about the typical whining of The Compleat Fan, who can go on and on about minor details like the color of a scarf in a background character. Fundamentals of plot, motivation and message were utterly discarded.
What a shame. I wish Susan Cooper would come out and condemn it...
8 - John Gillespie
It turns out Jim Henson Pictures originally purchased the rights to The Dark is Rising, and then on sold them to Walden Media after failing to make a film themselves. Susan Cooper probably no longer has a say in the adaptation, having sold that right originally to Jim Henson.
9 - Cyn
I was so excited when I first saw that "The Dark is Rising" was going to be made into a movie; but I am not planning on seeing it...not ever, if I can help it. I'm currently re-reading the entire sequence and am just as caught up in the story as I was when I first read it. It breaks my heart that something so wonderful can be made into such trash by someone who openly admits that he didn't even read the book.
10 - Ashura
As one of the ones who can say my life was changed (why do you figure I'm getting that Masters in Medieval Welsh anyway?) I must say the one bright spot in all this is the discovery of so many people all over the world who are just as hurt, just as outraged, and just as attached. We will be here long after the last memory of this travesty of a movie has faded.