Dreading “The Seeker”
September 30th, 2007 by HenThere’s a new movie coming out, The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising, and the trailers look terrible. It’s based on the 5 long Dark Is Rising series by Susan Cooper - my favourite books from childhood before I got lost in the world of scifi/fantasy. I re-read the ones I have when I was back in the UK last year, and I need to go ahead and buy the missing ones one of these days.
The film however looks like one of these classic “Yeah, but the movie going public won’t like that… jazz it up a bit… how about if he’s American… and he has these major powers like fire and ice and telekinesis… and we can’t have some old guy as the Merlin character, let’s use Lovejoy. Oh.. and he’s not an Old One… he’s an immortal warrior. Reading imdb, I also see: “Max (Gregory Smith), Will’s older brother — a benign character in the book — is now an agent of the Dark who accompanies Will on his quest with the secret purpose of thwarting him”. Gah.
The single one redeeming feature is Christopher Ecclestone as the Rider (though I thought the book had a Dark rider and a White rider on the side of evil so that might be yet another are for complaint).
*sigh*
October 1st, 2007 at 11:46 am
Worst awesome-book-to-crappy-film bastardization ever. This film was easily makeable twenty years ago; with today’s technology it should have been that much better. Peter Jackson screwed up a few things in the LoTR films, but nothing on this scale.
I’ll be taking the money I save by not paying to see this turkey, and buying the books instead. Then I can just watch the movie in my mind.
Likewise *sigh*.
October 6th, 2007 at 12:12 am
This movie was so bad that on opening night there were only 4 people in the theater. I hope to god that this is a sign that it will bomb so horribly that the studio might get a clue.
I reallly wish people would stop saying that the movie is based on Susan Coopers books and instead say it is based as loosely as possible on Coopers book. Other than maybe the most basic of concepts and names, there is nothing from the book in this movie. The story is different, the characters personalities are different, and the setting is different.
I tried to watch the movie as separate from the books, but even on its own it is a jumble of special effects with no story to support the movie. I know the studios only respond to money, so my only hope is that they take such a huge loss on this film, they never, ever let a screenwriter ruin a script this bad. Of course they are so deluded they will probably blame the movies failure on Susan Coopers story and say that it just was current enough to sell to todays audiences, which of course would be complete crap.