Christopher Eccleston and The Dark is Rising...

[fajrdrako]

You may have noticed that I love, absolutely love, Christopher Eccleston as Claude in Heroes. Not as much as I loved him as the Doctor, but hey, nothing could match that. And there's a new episode tonight - great! Last week distressed me by not featuring Claude and Peter at all. This week, I live in hope.

But I keep seeing news items about Eccleston's role in "The Dark is Rising". And I keep trying to feel confident about this, but really, every item I hear makes it harder to fight my dismay.

First of all - and I think this may be heresy, considering how many people recommended this book to me - I didn't much like The Dark is Rising. It was... not terrible. But it didn't match the standards of Diana Wynne Jones for British fantasy. Considering the recommendations I'd heard, it disappointed me.

Secondly, it is clear they have made a lot of changes to the characters and updates to the themes - making the main characters Americans, for example. The updates might make me like the story more. But it annoys me. Why adapt a book as a movie if you're going to change everything? Why not just make an original fantasy movie about American kids in Cornwall? (Er... it was Cornwall, wasn't it?)

Thirdly, this does not bode well for Eccleston having a long tenure on Heroes, which is too bad, since I like Claude so very much.

Comments

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I begin to think that the less resemblance the movie has to the book in any way, the less painful it will be. We will all be able to pretend that it's just another story that coincidentally has the same title as the Cooper book.