Until recently, I didn’t know that a The Dark is Rising Movie was in the works, until I heard it was slated for an October release this year. When I first saw the IMDB listing I thought “Cool.” Then I watched the trailer.

Okay, this movie is not The Dark is Rising (read the book yourself). Here are a a few points:

• In the book, Will Stanton lives in a Buckinghamshire, England. In the movie, he’s an American who just moved to England.
• Merriman Lyon is supposed to be an old, wise, Merlin-like character. Why does he look like Aragorn in the movie?
• The Dark is Rising has a serious Arthurian base. Does the movie? NO!
• The Old Ones’ magic is subtle and powerful, they don’t throw fireballs and blow things up.
• Will Stanton doesn’t have an iPod. Why the heck did the “modernize” it?
• Will Stanton is supposed to be wise, despite being only 11. In the movie he’s 13, and very un-wise. He’s too “typical American 12-year-old.” Sorry, Walden Media, thanks for playing.
• What happened to keeping the powers of the Light secret? In the film, Will (”disgusted at not being able to tell anyone”) blows up a car.
• Will Stanton, in the movie, is basically Superman without the power of flight. Oh, andhere’s a quote from the actual movie: “Can I fly?”
• Merriman Lyon “relies on wit, magic, other Old Ones, knowledge, experience, etc.” In the movie he relies on a bit of magic and a mace, his favorite weapon.

You can see more differences here.

Maybe they should change the name to “The Seeker: A film loosely based on The Dark is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper.” How can they get rid of the Arthurian base? The whole series revolves around that! Why did they think they had to change the characters beyond recognition? Hollywood magic instead of the subtle variety in the books? How could they?

The Seeker: The Dark is Rising is yet another movie “based” off an otherwise great book. Thank you, Walden Media, for giving us a Narnia/Harry Potter/Lord of the Rings/Superman/any fantasy film on the planet knockoff instead of The Dark is Rising.

Edit: Just a note. A bunch of IMDB forum users have been saying that the Dark is Rising series is “basically Harry Potter,” except DIR has been around since the ’70s. If you know how to read, then it’s apparent that they’re in no way similar.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 22nd, 2007 at 7:45 am and is filed under Uncategorized, Upcoming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.