The Dark Has Risen

I learned the other day of an imminent film entitled The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising. A glance at the poster made me excited: it was clearly an adaptation of Susan Cooper’s classic. Don’t ask me why, but film adaptations of favourite books always make me wide-eyed in anticipation. Actually, do ask me why. Why?? Experience should have taught me to dread such things. It looks as if I am right to dread “The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising” (“Even the smallest of lights… shines in the darkness”).

To be fair on me (and you should be) I blame Peter Jackson. He bucked the trend of lame literary adaptations in the most spectacular fashion. After “The Lord of the Rings” it seems less unreasonable to expect classic fantasies to make it to the screen more or less intact. Jackson may have changed as much as he preserved, but he nailed his colours to the spirit of the original story, defiant in the face of forces under which most directors would have crumbled. Jackson knew that the spirit of the story was his greatest ally. Not so the makers of The Seeker. No, they’re after the mass market.

But… butbutbut… hang on. I was just talking about “The Lord of the Rings”. One of the most financially successful film trilogies in the history of history. A hit with both the critics and the paying public. You don’t get more mass-market than the Rings. Surely it set a precedent? Surely it proved that to sell tickets you don’t need to pander to an outdated Hollywood rulebook, just take a well-loved text and bring it to the screen as best you can? And, for the love of almighty Bob, surely it demonstrated that you don’t have to feed your young hero lines like the following: “I’m supposed to save the world? I don’t even know how to talk to girls!” No, I didn’t make that up. I wish I had.

Before I get into the horror of imagining young Will Stanton on the pull, I want to try and crack this mystery. It has been proved categorically that you can make ultra-commercial cinema by a broad faithfulness to literary sources. Yet the same old tired mistakes continue to be made. Why, when you have an existing fan base that must total millions worldwide, do you start off by alienating the lot of them? Why, when they could be your greatest free marketing tool? (“Go and see this film! It’s based on this great book, here, borrow it, read it, then go and see it.”) But no, the enigmatic, introspective Will is replaced by a walking cliché, an American teen with a messed-up family and (oh the originality) girl problems. (Ain’t nothing wrong with Americans, of course, but I notice they’ve still got a Brit as the baddie. Could it get any more Epic Movie?) He has to be a teen, of course, because an 11-year-old protagonist might alienate that vast teenage audience (strangely this logic didn’t apply to Harry Potter). Also, if Will is 13, they can give him that all-important lurve-interest. Welcome to the final statement from the bankrupt Hollywood imagination. Let’s graft adult problems onto juvenile protagonists, because we’re too dim to remember what it was really like to be a child.

Oh, I’m sure the film will be great fun. I haven’t seen it and would love to be proved wrong. I’m sure that if it retains even a trace of the original Cooper mythology it will have something going for it, and, well, Christopher Ecclestone is always fantastic. I’m just puzzled, that’s all. Why take a classic novel, tear out its heart and replace it with canned spam? I suggest that some books, like many old buildings in the UK, should be classed as “listed”, with certain renovations that are simply not allowed.

p.s. The film rights to “The Cat Kin” are available if anyone wants ‘em.