Evil Mutant Monster Movies

[bunsen_h]

You know all those bad sci-fi movies with evil mutants, pod people, alien creatures taking over people's bodies, that kind of thing? Where you end up with people who look kind of familiar, but inside, they're completely different -- the good, kind people are gone, replaced by something that's twisted and violent?

That's what they've done, metaphorically, to the story of The Dark Is Rising in adapting it to a movie.

(I saw the preview yesterday, shown before Stardust... which, in contrast, I thought did a nice job of capturing the heart of the story. So to speak.)

"Authors, don't let your stories get made into movies..." Gotta write that sometime soon.

Comments

[beable]

It was so unfamiliar that even though:
- they started the trailer with the "adapted from the bestselling novel" bit and I was watching the trailer trying to see if I could recognize what book it was from even if I hadn't read it
- I knew from intertext that they were making a movie and that her take on the trailer was that it looked all twisted and horrible

I still did not recognize what movie the trailer was supposed to be until I heard one of the main characters being called Will. At which point I remembered and frothing at the mouth ranting and hatred (to the mild amusement of Cheflad and Meloncolliepoet) ensued.

[bunsen-h.livejournal.com]

What the hell was that bit about using Mystic Powers^TM to throw his brothers around the room? Ripped off from a bad Tolkien adaptation?

[beable]

I was too busy ranting to notice specifics.

About the only think they have done right is casting Christopher Eccleston as the Rider.

[bunsen-h.livejournal.com]

Insufficient information. The preview is a hodgepodge of action scenes; what little of the plot shows through comes across as a generic young-nerd power-fantasy "I am important after all!" story.

But they're clearly trying to market it on the strength of the books. If they'd just done their own story without mangling TDiR, I could simply ignore it.

[beable]

From what I saw of the trailer, it would be enjoyable in a very cliche hollywood only knows one kind of story and one kind of hero way. Which might be enjoyable if you didn't have any other expectations.

E.g. Constantine (which caused my sacred cows to not only moo but to become angry rather than mad) was a good movie when I pretended the main character was not named John Constantine. It told it's story well, did not fall back on all the obvious cliches, and was well filmed and enjoyable.

Another e.g: The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe. I know you had your sacred cows about not seeing this, but it was well adapted and quite good. They did an excellent job of bringing the meat of the story into the movie. It didn't inspire me to finish reading the series (I gave up in absolute disgust on the 3rd book as a child) than I will probably watch the next movie - I think they are skipping the 3rd book.

PS: Icon copycat! :-P