At its best, The Seeker is a pretty vivid fantasy book come-to-life; it does a decent, passable job of adding to the canon of kid-lit flicks. —Kelly L. Carter, Chicago Tribune
The Seeker: The Dark is Rising is the first eye-popping, jaw-dropping installment in a film fantasy series that could turn out to be the new Harry Potter. Tautly scripted, smartly cast, beautifully shot in an England of snow and fog, it’s a dazzling slice of cinematic imagination. —Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel
It seems to me that it was intellectually dishonest for Ms. Carter and Mr. Moore to give a review of John Hodge’s adaptation of The Dark Is Rising without actually having gone to see the movie. But I’m sure I cannot blame them; if I had press privileges, a free movie pass, and the choice between seeing The Seeker or 3:10 to Yuma, I’m not sure I could have resisted the temptation myself.
In point of fact, Mr. Hodges fell short of “dazzling,” and apparently thought “passable” too high of a goal.
There are 17 laws of making a film out of a popular book. Mr. Hodges broke all of them, and then—perhaps feeling he had not done enough for cinema—invented 3 other rules so that he could trample upon them as well.
Picking out just a few:
- It is understood that a two-hour movie cannot contain the full length of narrative from a 200+ page book. Some cutting—of depth, of secondary plotlines, of characters—is a necessary evil. But the Seeker movie felt the need to ADD several characters mentioned nowhere in the book, none of whom added anything meaningful, all of whom distracted from the ultimate goals of the story.
- In addition to adding new characters, The Seeker added new plotlines to the story, all of which were shockingly inferior to the original plotlines of the book.
- The main character drives the story, and is generally the main reason people are fans of the book in the first place. In the movie, John Hodges decided to change the main character’s age, nationality, family system, personality, hobbies, talents, physical features, goals, and love interests. The spelling of the protagonist’s name is about the only thing which survived the transition unscathed.
- One shall assume that the intelligence level of the book’s readers is a good baseline to keep the movie at. One will not dumb down the movie in the hopes of catering to the illiterate masses. Illiterate masses don’t like movies based on books anyway, and the original reader base will become disgusted at your pandering attempts.
- For all of Hollywood’s revenue models predictions, good explosions can not cover for bad dialogue.
- Narrative arc in movies moves more quickly than in books. But this should not be a reason for throwing away all arcs completely.
- Artsy filmography can be a useful tool for prosaic story. But when presenting a fantasy story, more straightforward techniques are required. The fantasy parts of the story can carry the film on their own. In other words, if you already have dragons, you don’t need to further dazzle the viewer with stylistic zooming.
On top of all these glaring mistakes, John Hodges showed a lack of understanding on the basic art of storytelling, aside from his sins against the original novel.
A quick recap: In the book The Dark Is Rising, Will Stanton, a young boy from a small English town, turns 11. On his birthday, he discovers that he is the last to be born of a race of magical protectors of humanity, The Light. They fight to protect man’s free will against the powers of The Dark, who wish to see mankind a slave to its own darkness and sin. Will, and the rest of the Old Ones of the Light, have powers which make Harry Potter and Dumbledore look like carnival magicians. Will’s quest is to be the Sign Seeker, and find six ancient artifacts which can help rout the forces of the Dark. This series of books is the reason I’ve never fully been able to enjoy the Harry Potter series, because it handles similar themes in a vastly superior way.
And to clarify that I’m not just a book snob, who hates all movie adaptations, I thought that the Harry Potter movies and The Lord of the Rings movies did very good jobs with their original source material. I might not have agreed with every artistic decision, but it was clear that the movie-makers respected the books they were adapting.
Hodges clearly had no respect for the original book, his intended audience, or the magic of a good fantasy story.
Even ignoring their differences from the book, Hodges’ characters fall flat and act illogically even within the simplistic plot. At one point Merriman (in the book, a wise and compassionate mentor) refuses to answer Will’s question about his new powers. Then later, he complains that Will is using his powers immaturely. Considering Will has only known about them for a day, and his one mentor insists on being mysterious rather than helpful, who can blame Will?
The new movie story line relies on Will being as ignorant as possible, so he can accidentally stumble on the right answers in his quest. This is not fulfilling for the viewer. We don’t want to watch a series of accidents, which somehow result in a happy ending for everyone. We want to see characters with power over their destiny, who are able to work together to overcome the Dark. In this case, because Will has been painted as a stupid, shallow American for the whole film, his final epiphany on how to beat the Dark comes across as nothing but an ass-pull.
Will has been given unbelievable magical powers. Yet, in the movie, he does NOTHING with them, except have a temper tantrum where he blows up a building. Also, he somehow accidentally time travels. It’s like Chekhov’s Gun—if in the opening of the movie, we see a kid get super powers, we want to see him USE them. In the book, Will uses his new powers for all kinds of cool things: he stops time, he erases memories, he controls fire, he speaks with animals, he travels through time and place, he flies. It’s inexcusable for a movie which could have shown these things so fantastically to turn Will’s quest into a haphazard hide-and-seek, where he mostly just rummages through things to find the Signs. No powers necessary for this quest.
J.K. Rowling believes that there is magic in reading about an 11-year-old discovering a higher destiny, and powers beyond what mere mortals can hope for. Susan Cooper, the author of The Dark Is Rising, believes that there can be a maturity and amazement in a coming-of-age fantasy story. John Hodges believes that enough money can be made on opening weekend, before critics warn everyone how bad a movie is.
Here’s hoping that someone in the near future will be willing to relaunch the franchise. Maybe the movie’s 11% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes will be a persuasion.
