Well, this page has the description of the story accurately: The Dark is Rising movie.

For folks that haven't read the books, or don't like that type of novel, this is a five-book British fantasy series that leans heavily on British and Welsh myths. The main character in this particular story is eleven-year-old Will Stanton, who is from a close, loving British family.

However, the following is apparently a description of the characters they are casting in the movie. I say "apparently" because although this is all over the net and supposedly has been corroborated, it reads as if it were written by someone with a poor command of English (or a badly-educated schoolchild) and the repeated "American" seems like overkill (but may be scornful emphasis). (Come to think of it, change a few things: swap Will's and Gwen's sex, lower the age of Robin and Paul, and take away Max and James, and you've pretty much the characters in Disney's—not Madeleine L'Engle's—version of A Wrinkle in Time.) However, I wouldn't put it past the production company:

• Will Stanton: 13. Will is an American who lives in England with his family. Will is bullied and/or ignored by his older brothers, and...is gloomily convinced that he's doomed to be a bookish, gawky oddball at the bottom of the pecking order. However, he is actually an innately cool kid who has not yet grown into his coolness.
• Professor John Stanton: 45-55. Will's father. Professor Stanton is an American physicist and college professor and he's paid a price for it. He is emotionally cool, authoritative and very remote from his children.
• The Rider: 30-40 years old man with icy malevolence who is masquerading as a simple village doctor when in fact he is an agent of Evil.
• Mrs. Mary Stanton: 40-50. She is the American mother of the Stanton six children. She works hard at protecting her husband and her family. She is similar to her husband, not emotionally available to her kids and is very distant
• Gwen Stanton: Will's younger sister, Gwen is an American, neat, upright girl of about 8 or 9. Unlike her brothers, who treat Will with amiable contempt, Gwen looks up to Will, loves him and dotes on him.
• Max Stanton: 19 or 20, an edgy young man with piercings and tattoos. Will's older brother. Max is the American, bohemian of the family. He is always inclined to question his father's authority.
• James Stanton: 17. Will's older American brother. James is mature, muscular and good looking, the object of admiring eyes. Busily looking for a girlfriend, James barely interacts with Will - especially when Maggie Barnes becomes the object of his affection.
• Robin Stanton & Paul Stanton: 15, Male. A pair of grungy American adolescents, Robin and Paul are identical or fraternal twin brothers, and they're still at the "horseplay" stage of development. Always ready to tease Will about his bookish ways, always willing to reinforce his fears of being a gawky oddball, Robin and Paul tease and bully and sometimes blow off Will.

If this is true, I see my rant from four and a half years ago, when I sounded off about Disney's version of A Ring of Endless Light, is still valid. One can't have a supportive family. The adolescent hero always must be rebelling against his elders because they have no feelings or are restrictive. Plus instead of a warm English family we get what sounds like a crass stereotypical American family. You would have thought the success of Narnia and the Harry Potter films would have gotten it into the thick heads of Hollywood producers that juvenile heroes of American childrens' films DO NOT HAVE TO BE AMERICAN to be interesting.

Unfortunately, I'm inclined to believe this rot is true after watching the previews for the upcoming version of Bridge to Terabithia, which is a touching novel about being different and true friendships and which, apparently from the commercials I've seen, has been turned into a fantasy epic with monsters and creatures. (Yes, yes, I've heard that the monsters and creatures are actually the children's perceptions of the troubles that beset them in the real world translated into fantasy terms that they overcome so that they may overcome their actual problems. It's a psychological thing, you see.) The book didn't need this fantasy rot to tell its story and tell it well. Ergo, the writer(s) of the film is apparently not up to telling the excellent story of the book and instead must rely on a fantasy crutch to do so instead. How nice.

(Hmn. Hollywood has done this before, in a little obscure film they made almost seventy years ago, to some success. You might have heard of it. 1939. The Wizard of Oz. However, Oz was always a fairy tale. Terabithia is about real life.)

So I'll be interested to hear more about this project and if all this horrified speculation is true. But I fear the news will not be happy...

Labels: books, movies

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:08:00 PM

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