DARK IS DERIVATIVE

Susan Cooper’s Dark is Rising
series was one of several kiddie-skewing fantasy series I tore through
between grade school and junior high, and I recall preferring Madeleine
L’Engle’s "Time Quartet" (though I never read Many Waters) and Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain. Silver in the Tree
was easily my favorite of Cooper’s books, which probably had something
to do with it being the final installment in the cycle. For those of
you who never read them, it’s about the eternal struggle between The
Light and The Dark; the reader’s way into this world is Will Stanton,
who, as one of "The Old Ones", is equipped to battle the evil forces of
The Dark. This series was such an indelible part of my childhood, I
just looked up the basic plot summary and still couldn’t remember a
single bit of incident from any of the books.

So if Fox is going to fuck up a beloved YA fantasy saga, they might as
well lay the lumber to Cooper’s work (some of you will surely disagree;
please take it out on Fox, not me). Though they’ve hired a decent
writer to adapt the books in John Hodge (Danny Boyle’s collaborator
from Shallow Grave to Alien Love Triangle),
I’ve got serious issues with director David L. Cunningham, the
evangelical Christian slab of shit who helmed last year’s
neo-conservative apologia, The Path to 9/11. It’s hardly a surprise to find him catching on at Tom Rothman’s House of Whores.