Perhaps you’ve seen the previews for an upcoming kid’s movie called Race to Witch Mountain. There was a book I loved as a kid. It was called Escape to Witch Mountain and there were some campy Disney movies and all was well. Now, thanks to Hollywood magic, I didn’t even recognize what I was seeing on the TV screen until they got to the end of the preview. Apparently they got caught, because now it’s a “modern re-imagining” set 30 years after the first book. Even if they hadn’t told me that, I would have figured it out pretty quickly and here’s why:
Book: The boy can talk normally, but the girl can’t. (Apparently she uses the power of her mind! Spooky! And weird!)
Movie: Girl can talk. It’s hard to say if the boy can or not. He is all like “this is my serious face, yarrr.”Book: Boy and girl are aliens, but (and this is the important part) they don’t know this when the book starts. I mean, they eventually figure it out (their weird powers are a big red flag that something is up), but it’s like a mystery that they have to unravel.
Movie: Not only do boy and girl know they are aliens, if they don’t get to Witch Mountain, there will be an alien invasion! It will be terrible!Book: The children are on the run from an orphanage and the forces of evil/adoptive parents with the help of a kindly priest, Father O’Day. (This also leads into an important life lesson: if you live in an orphanage and have freaky powers, and if a millionaire wants to adopt you, it is because he wants to use your powers for evil.)
Movie: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is giving the kids a ride to Witch Mountain. He’s apparently a taxi driver, stuck with thepassengers from hellwhiny alien orphans. I really hope we’re not supposed to believe that he’s a kindly Irish priest too. IT’S JUST WRONG.
So, yeah, thanks, but I managed to figure out that Race to Witch Mountain and Escape to Witch Mountain had nothing to do with each other and I did it all on my own. It wasn’t hard.
Butcherings of the Recent Past:
The Seeker: The Dark is Rising is a great story. The movie added more “action,” an unnecessary love interest, changed the character’s nationality, condensed multiple books into one, and removed one of the major characters. According to Wikipedia, “Susan Cooper was reportedly not happy with the adaptation of her book.” No kidding. Leave my childhood alone!
Inkheart: Wow, they totally miscast this one. Brendan Frasier is way too well nourished to ever be Mo. More plot smooshing, as usual, and Meggie gets kind of sidelined as a character. Maybe this movie just needs less Brendan Frasier. Anyhoo, despite the fact that this movie stars Brendan Frasier, no mummies appeared. Which is a shame, because it might have actually improved things. Particularly if they ate him and let Meggie do all the work like she did in the books.
Bothersome:
The ads for Bridge to Terabithia: The ads for this movie were so bad that I never brought myself to actually watching the movie. All I could think was, OK, so the book had a depressing ending, but postponing the inevitable and distracting from their sweet and simple friendship with CGI monsters and fairies? WTF? I’ve since heard that the movie was quite good, but since I’d already read the book, I knew how it was going to end and really didn’t want to compound that memory with, well, more depressing memories.
February 28th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
I agree with all your statements! In a Brenden Frasier movie, you expect him to whip out a gun and shoot the bad guys. Mo does not do this; he’s too passive. So BF as Mo just seems totally wussy and lame.
I didn’t want to see Bridge to Terabithia either. It looked as though they changed the focus of the movie from the kids’ real lives to the stuff they imagined, which was only barely discussed in the book.
I was warned not to watch The Seeker. I loved the Susan Cooper books BECAUSE of all the stuff they took out of the movie, especially the Celtic mythology.
Did you hear that they are doing to do a new “Neverending Story” movie?
February 28th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Here’s a link:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090226/film_nm/us_neverending_1
March 1st, 2009 at 12:43 am
I’m very afraid. We should be afraid. No good can come of this.
They’re doing a new G.I. Joe movie too, which is making my friend Katie very very sad.
March 1st, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Jeremy and I re-watched the old GIJoe movie a few years ago, and it was very silly. When I die, my last words will have to be “Yo Joe!”
May 12th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
Okay, so now that I’m caught up with you . . . I haven’t seen the new Witch Mtn movie, but I thought it happened after the first one and they came back for some reason. I’ll have to rent it, I guess.
The Seeker was good, unless you read the books, like we have. I wanted to see that one chick go in the river! (okay, so she didn’t in the book either, but that would have been neat to see them try).
I think Hollywood has run out of ideas so they are going back and raping old movies. Very sad.