Geekshow

To Make Or Remake: The Dark Is Rising

When the Dark comes rising, six shall turn it back.

When I was in high school one of the first books I remember being made to read for English was Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising. It was one of my first tastes into the world of fantasy and even though we were being forced to study it and so all these homework assignments on it, I really liked the book.

I later found out that it was the second in a series of books and eventually I read the other four in the set. The others were ok but not as gripping as The Dark Is Rising was. It wasn’t unlike the Narnia books whereby the second in the series was the most popular and well known of the sets.

But I digress. Years passed and I forgot all about the book until in 2007 I discovered that it was going to be remade into a major motion picture. By then I was completely removed from the target audience that the movie was being aimed at, and I wondered if it was really worth a look. Now that I have seen the film I can say that it really wasn’t overly worth watching, at least not if you were expecting a faithful retelling of Susan Cooper’s captivating tale of one young boy’s coming of age as an Old One and agent of the Light.

The novel The Dark Is Rising is the story of ten (almost eleven) year old Will Stanton. He is the seventh son in the family (in fact he’s the seventh son of a seventh son) and has to jockey for position for everything. Unremarkable as he is, Will can’t help but notice that strange things are beginning to happen around him. The animals are all afraid of him and there’s a strange tramp following him.

The winter cold is closing in and it looks like Will might just get his wish of birthday snow. But with the cold a malicious force is also closing in. The Dark is beginning to rise and as it turns out, Will is the last of the Old Ones of the Light whose charge it is to turn them back. More than that, fellow Old One, Merriman Lyon, informs him that he is the Sign-Seeker who must find all six Signs of the Light before the Dark can if they are to have a hope of driving them back.

It isn’t an easy task for young Will. The tramps is still following him and then there’s the malevolent Rider who tries to thwart his efforts at every turn. But being an Old One certainly has its advantages. Will has powers that he has to learn how to control, as well as times and places he has to visit (quite literally), all of which help him to gain the six Signs of iron, bronze, wood, stone, fire and water.

Unlike the movie, Susan Cooper’s novel delves deeper into the human condition. As Old Ones, Merriman, Will’s mentor and friend of sorts, reflects often on how humans get caught up by their emotions and how it can get in the way of the things they are trying to achieve. This is seen in great example in teh relationship between Merriman and his manservant Hawkin whom he entrusts to help in a great mission of the Light, but ultimately goes awry and spells the dramatic change of fates of all involved. Without having to go into too much detail, Hawkin feels betrayed by the objectiveness Merriman displays in the task that very possibly could have cost Hawkin his life. As a result Hawkin turns to the Dark and new masters causing great problems as Will’s story unfolds.

Now I understand creative licence and how the difference between the mediums of novels and films can affect the translation of certain materials, but I felt the movie makers really went too far with this one, at least in terms of capturing the real essence of the story and the things that make it so powerful.

Will is no longer turning eleven but fourteen in the film. I really didn’t like this as I feel there was no great need to make the central character older. Perhaps they were trying to steer clear of a Harry Potter-esque model, I don’t know, and I guess that makes sense, but this story has been around so much longer than Harry’s has so why not stick closer to the original? Being now fourteen I guess the filmmakers felt he needed a love interest so they created one in a character whose purpose was very far from that, at least in relation to Will as a character anyway. Again stupid and unnecessary.

Another thing I disliked in the film is that Will and his family are no longer British but American simply living in the country as new inhabitants. Again for the story it made so much more sense Will being a Brit as he had a greater connection to the land and the places in which he was questing, as even throughout all the time travelling he does, it was still the same land he was travelling over even if they changed physically over time.

Like Will, the character of Merriman has changed in some ways for the film that I really didn’t understand. Again perhaps it was an attempt to diverge from the Dumbledore/Potter dynamic as certainly the parallels can be drawn between these two sets of relationships but again I feel it was unnecessary to change things. Still a mentor of sorts, Merriman (in the film) has great doubts about will’s abilities and possibilities of success in his mission. Not to mention the fact that the actor they cast looks physically nothing like the striking description given by Cooper. In addition, Merriman almost seems to play second fiddle to another Old One who was a much lesser character in the novel and for no great reason other than to amp up the female involvement in this tale.

As for the aforementioned tramp (known as the Walker) and Hawkin, Merriman’s manservant, both are mysteriously absent from the film. Though the DVD does contain a deleted scene that features the Walker, there is no explanation as to why these omissions have been made. Frankly I can’t work it out an can only surmise they felt it was too complicated a subplot to go down in the film, which I guess I can understand.

But I think the biggest change between the novel and the film is the morphing of Will’s quest for the Signs altogether. There are still six of them, he still has to travel thru time to find them, and he still has to beat the agents of the Dark that are trying to stop him at every turn. But instead of the six elemental Signs, Will has to find five elementals with the final being the soul of a human being. Very strange given the six elements stuff was deeply ingrained in the folklore of the Old Ones. Add to that the fact that Will suddenly has a twin brother he didn’t know about (which makes him the seventh son in the family, not the sixth like he believed) who as it turns out has been held captive by the Rider for years and not missing or dead like the family originally thought.

Having made all these objections, there were a few things about the film that I think were done very well. For one the visual effects were very good, particularly the time travelling and the explosions of fire as Will gets angry over his quest and comes into his full powers as an Old One. These things certainly would have failed in earlier film attempts if they had been made due to today’s advanced film technologies.

I also really liked the young actor they cast to play Will. I think he did a really good job with what he was given and you couldn’t help but root for him. Likewsie, while dramatically younger in age than the Gwen described in the novel, the little girl they got to play Will’s sister and confidante was very sweet and talented for her age.

Call me a purist, and I really feel I haven’t commented very extensively in this very long article, but I just can’t get beyond all the changes that were made to the story of The Dark Is Rising between the novel and the film. In my opinion it was only very loosely the same story and the one that came out in the end was only half as powerful and entertaining as the original. Perhaps that is why the film flopped. It just lost something critical along the way.

My advice – read the book, read the whole series even, but don’t bother so much about the movie. Kids might like it but personally I couldn’t help but be massively disappointed. Another wasted remake.