Non-Comic: Dark is Rising

I've never really been a huge fan of Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising series, unlike certain others. No big reason really, just for whatever reason, it wasn't to my taste.

I'm sympathetic to the fans though. I've personally never gotten over the trauma of seeing my favorite childhood movie (Escape to Witch Mountain) remade in the nineties into some tv-movie monstrosity involving twins and stupid purple light.

I might have gone to see the movie, despite that, like I plan to see Golden Compass (another YA classic I've never read) which looks tremendously awesome.

Except that this really doesn't look like it'll be any good. It's not so much because of the changes, though even I can't figure out how it can really be "Dark is Rising" without the pagan overtones and Arthurian elements. I don't really get the point of making a brand new story and just keeping the names the same. It just means that the original fans of the story, the people most likely to go see it, will be pissed off. And it doesn't seem like it's going to be mainstream or epic enough to draw in many non-fans.

It's that it really seems poorly thought out. There doesn't seem to be any reason to change Will from an eleven year old British boy to a fourteen year old American living in England.

Considering that the setting's still going to be England, what's the point? Except possibly to avoid confusion with a certain other supernaturally-inclined eleven year old British boy. Even though they have nothing in common.

They are saddling him with a large family that picks on him and neglects him, but I'm going to assume that's more "quiet middle child drowned out by chaotic siblings" sort than anything Dursley-esque. He's described as feeling "lost".

The one thing that really bothers me though and ensures I'm probably never going to watch the movie no matter how good it reputedly will be is that apparently they're giving Will a twin that was kidnapped or taken as a baby. (I'm going to personally guess the twin will be the Walker, as he's suddenly younger and with a new motivation. Since it's just that cliched.)

It's not the twin thing that bothers me. I read comics, I can deal with cliche. It's something else that ruins my suspension of disbelief...

Apparently this very large family with many siblings lost a child. And they neglect its surviving twin. I repeat. They lost a child and they're neglecting the other?

How does this make any sort of sense? Are the creative minds really so blessed that none of them ever lost a sibling or child? Or knows anyone who has?

It's just...it doesn't sound like Will's family are supposed to be evil or monstrous. But the kind of people that would be so cavalier about the loss of a child to neglect another, they have to be monsters. I truly believe that.

And the thing is, either idea on its own could work fine! There's a wealth of psychological issues inherent in being the overlooked, forgotten child. Being the surviving child when one's sibling is kidnapped or killed ALSO pretty much means there's a mess of unhealthy aftereffects that can be used to isolate a young adult protagonist in order to make the dangerous adventuring aspects of this sort of fiction plausible. (Easiest way would be to have the parents smothering and overprotective to the point where the child feels like he needs to go to great length for independence enough to keep sane.)

Together though? They're oil and water. They're insoluble. It just doesn't work.

And oddly enough, it's a deal breaker for me. There are times when a complete transformation of the source material for an adaptation works for me, but it has to be good and appealing. This...well...if the creators aren't even going to spare an effort to make a familial history that makes any sort of logical sense, why should I trust them to make a good story at all?