Dark is Rising movie: Christianized, or Tashlanized?

So I was thinking a little more about this whole Dark is Rising mess, and upon further consideration the niggling sense of massive incongruity suddenly snapped into focus. If you haven't read the books, it may be difficult to convey just how great a gulf there is between Ave et Eva, between the book/s (they seem to claim to be taking bits from several in the series, just like Disney did to Prydain) and what we know so far of the film treatment, from the online trailer/s as well as interviews with the director, screenwriter, and actors. But I will do my best.

kiandra_fire has helpfully made a comprehensive table breaking down all these known discrepancies, and providing necessary context. The most prominent point has been the claim of eliminating or "downplaying" (whatever that means) the pagan elements in the originals, by an admittedly-evangelical-Christian company dedicated to producing works of sound Christian entertainment - at least as they define "Christianity."

So what exactly have they downplayed, and what added, that would constitute taking out the heathenry and putting in the Gospels?

Well, judging by the trailer and the descriptions of the script and shooting by those who are making it, they have taken out - in addition to the King Arthur element , which I might remind you was according to Tolkien too Christian a mythos to work as proper epic fantasy - they have taken out all of the moral ambiguity and inner struggle in the originals, and replaced it with sex, greed, and violence.

This is not a joke, not me being silly here. Will in the books is unselfish, concerned for his family's well-being ahead of his own, a serious and recollected kid who looks out for others. In the movie, at least from the trailer footage, he's a thoughtless brat who only sees in his newfound powers a chance to show off cool superpowers and give nothing in return, whining worse than Young!Luke to Ben Kenobi about having to go save the world. And Luke had more responsibilities, and fewer allies and resources, at the time!

Then, there's the question of motivation: to make sense to stodgy unimaginative grown-up Middle Americans, "make it appeal to young people today™", they've made Will older, from middle-school to a hulking high-schooler*. And, of course, he both wants sex in the person of the introduced love-interest for him, and is stereotypically afraid to talk to girls...and the motivations of the Rider are also reduced, as reported, to sexual jealousy, and all the complexities of jealousy and betrayal and devotion-gone-awry, all the themes of Rivalry (in the Taoist sense) and Redemption, and the question of the past failures and mistakes of the Good Guys, are thus eliminated.

But this is small potatoes, or at least not as flashy as the other big changes, tho' they're all part of the same problem. In the books, the Good Guys are limited because they can't wield the same brutal powers as the Bad Guys, part of that whole "being Good Guys" thing you know, and their weapons aren't weapons at all, but mystical forces which, in the end, come down to loyalty and trust and generosity - aka faith, hope, love, and the greatest of these is love.

In the film, so we hear, Merriman "Merry" Lyon's favorite weapon is a mace. The elder lady who in the books is wheelchair-bound, frail with age and ill-health, but still valiant...in the film is fully ambulatory - and reportedly wields a sword-cane. And Will uses The Force to fling his enemies and rivals about like ninepins, in the clips we see in the trailer. We are told that it is a cross between Harry Potter and Indiana Jones, which bodes not well for a story which is originally as much about the interior life as it is about Celtic mythology...

It may well be, that The Dark is Rising is unfilmable, faithfully, and that it were better to have left well enough alone. Myself, I tend to think that (having seen film adaptations of Austen novels and Shakespeare plays that mirabile dictu, worked, not to mention Kurosawa) it is not necessarily impossible to make a moving, dramatic, interesting movie where the magical and miraculous shine like small diamonds in the mundane world, that is to say casting rainbows upon everything, when the light strikes them, rather than loading on the mana-powered explosions like a supernatural Michael Bay.

But it truly is fascinating that, in the interests of Christianizing the paganism of Cooper, they have replaced selflessness with grasping ambition ("Kingdoms of the world? Gimme! Oh wait, what's this sacrifice stuff? Noway!") and weakness of the body with worldly power, in Our Heroes - and the nonviolent (though very much "grey" and disturbing) spiritual power and authority of the Old Ones with mere brute battle and force. ISTR something about "those who live by the sword," but that must have been in one of my pagan philosophers or myths...

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_{* Someone on a thread equated all this to having a film of The Hobbit in which Bilbo is no longer a halfling, and goes on a quest with his dog Spot, and all that Old English literature stuff is taken out, and he kicks the dragon's ass in a fight - which is a pretty good way of describing it. It's important that the heroes be small, and weaker, and improbable, and the brute force and earthly advantage be on the side of the Dark - no matter how uncool it makes the Good Guys look, and how much we'd rather Identify with the hulking musclebound swaggerer...}</lj>