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27/7/07 11:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
minervasoloPrecursor to this post: Read The Dark is Rising Sequence. It's great. It's better than Harry Potter, to my mind. It has a nice Arthurian base, lots of really evocative descriptions of Cornwall and Wales and Buckinghamshire. It has smart, proactive, imaginative, and sensible kids (not all qualities ppear in all children). It may teach you some Welsh.
If this is enough to persuade you to read them, and you are a spoiler-allergic person, ignore the rest of this post. If you're only have mild spoiler aversions (e.g. explicit plot details, rather than what te characters are called) then you should be alright.
Also, don't go see the movie. Please. By the sounds of it, even people who haven't read the books won't think much of it.
I'm kind of dithering over whether to join![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
thedarkisrising. On the one hand, HP has left me wanting to reread the books (I almost started last night, because I was struck with sudden curiousity with regards to the relative ages of Barney, Jane and Simon). On the other hand, the comm is filled with nothing but movie hate. Justifiable movie hate. There's list of changes made here, and while I can accept some changes in book-to-movie, trying to remove the Arthurian element from a film when one of your characters is frickin' Merlin? I thought changing the main character to American was unfortunate (even US fans aren't happy about this), and switching from a large, loving family to a hoard of Dursley ripoffs (losing the whole seventh son of a seventh son element in the process) was really stretching it. Oh, and apparently the books are really dense and hard to read. For adults. Should I mention that they're aimed at kids? Kids who lke reading, obviously, and can follow a plot and appreciate characterisation and like a bit of actual myth amongst their fantasy* and so on, but still kids. It's kinda telling that only one of the cast has actually read all of the books (even the guys adapting and directing and so on haven't); most people are wondeing why she's agreed to be in it!
Big Spoilerific Change, even worse than the Arhturian one: Instead of being a seventh son of a seventh son (subtly done, thanks to an older brother who died in infancy), not only is Will the second youngest of six, but, dun-dun-duuuh, he has a twin. An evil twin. Who he doesn't know about, because The Dark have him. Will's evil twin. Long Lost Evil Twin.
The fuck? Don't claim to be adapting the books when you're clearly not. You know, its not really so terrible to be original. You piss fewer people off. Of course, when the film bombs, you can't blaim it on the source material, but anyone with even a passing acquaintance with such in this case is going to be able to fend off any such claims.
I'm kinda hoping this bit is still a joke, but who knows.
I'd complain more, but I really want other people to read these books, and I know some people don't like spoilers (warning, don't follow the above link, if that's the case!). Also, they've started with the second book, and probably aren't going to do the rest (it'd be impossible, without the Arthurian element), which means my favourite character Barney is nice and safe. The sad thing is, some of the casting sounds quite good.
*Not actually an HP jibe, if anyone thinks it is. A 'how-the-hell-can-they-remove-the-arthurian-aspect-when-it-dives-the-plot?' jibe. People who like HP will probably love these books; they are a little denser, but not as much as LotR. The sad thing is, interviewers seem to think the books are just like HP, being children's fantasy, so are asking questions like "How did you make Merriman not like Dumbledore?" And the filmmakers are doing their best to make if 'just like HP', so that's not helping either. It's not like HP, any more than Jane Eyre is like Pride and Prejudice. Same genre =/= same story.
If this is enough to persuade you to read them, and you are a spoiler-allergic person, ignore the rest of this post. If you're only have mild spoiler aversions (e.g. explicit plot details, rather than what te characters are called) then you should be alright.
Also, don't go see the movie. Please. By the sounds of it, even people who haven't read the books won't think much of it.
I'm kind of dithering over whether to join
thedarkisrising. On the one hand, HP has left me wanting to reread the books (I almost started last night, because I was struck with sudden curiousity with regards to the relative ages of Barney, Jane and Simon). On the other hand, the comm is filled with nothing but movie hate. Justifiable movie hate. There's list of changes made here, and while I can accept some changes in book-to-movie, trying to remove the Arthurian element from a film when one of your characters is frickin' Merlin? I thought changing the main character to American was unfortunate (even US fans aren't happy about this), and switching from a large, loving family to a hoard of Dursley ripoffs (losing the whole seventh son of a seventh son element in the process) was really stretching it. Oh, and apparently the books are really dense and hard to read. For adults. Should I mention that they're aimed at kids? Kids who lke reading, obviously, and can follow a plot and appreciate characterisation and like a bit of actual myth amongst their fantasy* and so on, but still kids. It's kinda telling that only one of the cast has actually read all of the books (even the guys adapting and directing and so on haven't); most people are wondeing why she's agreed to be in it!Big Spoilerific Change, even worse than the Arhturian one: Instead of being a seventh son of a seventh son (subtly done, thanks to an older brother who died in infancy), not only is Will the second youngest of six, but, dun-dun-duuuh, he has a twin. An evil twin. Who he doesn't know about, because The Dark have him. Will's evil twin. Long Lost Evil Twin.
The fuck? Don't claim to be adapting the books when you're clearly not. You know, its not really so terrible to be original. You piss fewer people off. Of course, when the film bombs, you can't blaim it on the source material, but anyone with even a passing acquaintance with such in this case is going to be able to fend off any such claims.
I'm kinda hoping this bit is still a joke, but who knows.
I'd complain more, but I really want other people to read these books, and I know some people don't like spoilers (warning, don't follow the above link, if that's the case!). Also, they've started with the second book, and probably aren't going to do the rest (it'd be impossible, without the Arthurian element), which means my favourite character Barney is nice and safe. The sad thing is, some of the casting sounds quite good.
*Not actually an HP jibe, if anyone thinks it is. A 'how-the-hell-can-they-remove-the-arthurian-aspect-when-it-dives-the-plot?' jibe. People who like HP will probably love these books; they are a little denser, but not as much as LotR. The sad thing is, interviewers seem to think the books are just like HP, being children's fantasy, so are asking questions like "How did you make Merriman not like Dumbledore?" And the filmmakers are doing their best to make if 'just like HP', so that's not helping either. It's not like HP, any more than Jane Eyre is like Pride and Prejudice. Same genre =/= same story.
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no subject
Date: 27/7/07 11:12 am (UTC)But yay, DiR. It's been unfairly overlooked, and I used to consider it the LotR for children - not like the Hobbit was, but more like the actual LotR trilogy. If that makes sense!
no subject
Date: 27/7/07 11:26 am (UTC)But nice to know someone else loves them too! *toddles off to check the comm*
Oh, and I wanted to ask - how did you get the nifty 'word count' bar thingy that you used for your essays? I'd kind of like one to track the dissertation...
no subject
Date: 28/7/07 09:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 27/7/07 11:44 am (UTC)The film does look pretty dire. I think I'm just going to ignore it, since I didn't know they were even making it until somebody on my flist posted about how terrible the trailer was..
no subject
Date: 28/7/07 09:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 27/7/07 06:16 pm (UTC)'Just like HP' annoys the shit out of me, partly because I believe kids are smart enough to make their own judgements about books, even if only based on the front cover or title, but it especially annoys me when it screws around with chronology - DiR happened before HP, therefore, if anything, HP is like DiR. Which it isn't, except that they both have magic in.