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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.
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Date: 2007-02-20 08:11 pm (UTC)Yes, exactly. I'd rather see a story that focussed on a fictional Roman, or a historical king, or some variation of that, than tacking the trappings Arthurian legends onto a historical setting where it really doesn't belong. I'd be happy with a warrior-hero worthy of being remembered as Arthur centuries later, but in that case, I don't want the 12th century trappings of courtly love, Crusades, and Christian mysticism.
And of course, as a great lover of the 12th century, I do love those trappings. So - bring it on! For this reason, I prefer something like "Camelot", with the world-view of 1950 rather than the middle ages, to "King Arthur", which tries to be sort of Arthurian and sort of historical and gets lost in the middle.
They mixed their metaphors, so to speak.
Yes, and rather badly.
I do love debating the Arthur questions of history. I love the story as a study in the historical development of a fictional series that takes on a different flavour in each century it passes through - and it started, when, in the 9th century or so? Maybe the eighth? (I used to be up on all the sources, but my memory fails me now.)
I think "King Arthur" was playing with various ironies about society, culture, and religion, but didn't cope with it very well and ended up being a rather murky adventure/war story.