Today I happened to walk past a movie poster with the title The Dark is Rising. Something clicked inside my head, and I had to go up to it to read the poster’s small print. “Story by Susan Cooper”.

No. Way.

There are two books that defined my childhood: The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper, and Programming the Z80 by Rodnay Zaks.

The Dark is Rising is a fantasy novel (actually a sequence of five shorter books) about a boy, Will Stanton, who is made aware that he is no ordinary boy. The evil forces of the world, The Dark, is rising, and only with the help of the special powers Will will inherit on his eleventh birthday, the forest spirit Herne the Hunter, the power of the six Signs, the six awakened Riders, the Grail coaxed from the Greenwitch in the sea, and the birthright of the strange little boy with the raven eyes can the Old Ones from The Light win the final battle by the Silver tree.

When light from the lost land shall return,
Six Sleepers shall ride, six Signs shall burn,
And where the midsummer tree grows tall
By Pendragon’s sword the Dark shall fall.

The similarities to Lord of the Rings is apparent (each book begins with a prophetic verse, much like in Lord of the Rings) and not so strange; Susan Cooper was a student of JRR Tolkien.

The books have won multiple awards and many, like me, cherish them and re-read them over and over.
I’ve always hoped that someone would make a movie out of Susan Cooper’s books. The movie adaptation of Lord of the Rings shows that it could be done.

And now Cooper’s epic has been turned into a movie. There’s a trailer available.

Watching the trailer, it’s painfully obvious that the production company has completely raped it.

They’ve changed the story to present, changed most of the characters (Will is now American!), and in an effort to appeal “to a new audience” turned it into an action movie (explosions!) that resembles those Hollywood crap magician kid movies. Likely extremely intended.

Why do they keep picking these masterpieces and turning them into manure?

I think I’ll go cry myself to sleep now.