Very torn about the prospect of seeing this book adapted for the cinema. Feeling the same trepidation as I did five years ago when I heard Peter Jackson was having a go at making The Lord of the Rings. If it's good...it'll be bloody amazing. But the problem is, if it's anything less than nearly perfect, it will be such a disappointment. Mediocrity can't be tolerated when you're dealing with a masterpiece of children's literature.
Pros?
- The special effects are being handled by the WETA Workshop, the same team who did the effects for LOTR.
- The director is the guy who did Shrek and Shrek 2. Wait...maybe this should be a con? This is actually about as comforting as when I first heard Chris Columbus was set to direct the first Harry Potter film. ("But he's the guy who did Home Alone!" Erm...OK)
- The fabulous Tilda Swinton is playing the White Witch. Pretty good supporting cast also, with Ray Winstone, Dawn French, Rupert Everett and Jim Broadbent.
- It's being made for Disney. Nuff said.
- The four central characters are all kids. While the little girl playing Lucy certainly looks the part, who knows how she and the others will actually act? Child actors are always risky. Look at the Harry Potter films - out of the three main characters there, only the kid who plays Ron Weasley really shines.
- The director is a New Zealander, and the film was shot in New Zealand, with a largely NZ and American crew. Am rather worried that the story's intrinsic Englishness (which is the source of much of its charm) will be lost, reduced to a pastiche of tea-time, funny accents and eccentric customs. (Speaking of which - what the hell is with the accent of Mrs. Macready, the housekeeper, in the trailer? West Country? North of Ireland? Middle America? Who knows?)
- Not much info on the scriptwriters. I'm confident the film will look spectacular, with WETA at the helm, but I wonder how successfully the story will make the adaptation to the screen.
2 comments:
How, I wonder, are they going to handle the transparent Biblical allegory, particularly in the later books? (I didn't notice the religious material when I read them as a child, but I reread them recently, in anticipation of said film, and hoo boy.) That's the sort of stuff that doesn't make an easy transition to film (His Dark Materials, I'm looking at you).
My fear is that the Christian allegory will hit kids over the head with a sledgehammer, if the right-wing nutbars have gotten to the scriptwriters.
I must admit that this is an aspect of the books that I've been aware of from the very beginning. They were first read to me by my Grade Three teacher, when I was at (*gulp*) Catholic school. So you can imagine how the book got woven into our religion lessons...
Incidentally, His Dark Materials is the last great book I read before Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell!
Post a Comment