It’s actually been a while since the last Harry Potter film, and even longer since the 7-book series ended. While we middling Potter fans look forward to whatever The Half Blood Prince brings in July, there are a bevy of movies that are aimed to fill the space of kid-friendly fantasy.
There is, of course, the classic Chronicles of Narnia, also based on books, but dredged up from C.S.Lewis’ writings in the 1950’s. The two movies so far are nice to look at, and have the same characteristic qualities of the books. As an adult, the story doesn’t quite hold up in a few places. There are just a few too many strange moments where I’m left asking, “Why would that be?” And it’s hard to avoid the religious undertones.
My kids really liked like A Series of Unfortunate Events, which is not a fantasy in terms of magic and monsters, but is itself somewhat fantastic and fits into this grouping if only because it’s a movie based on a popular children’s book series. We didn’t read the books, but friends have, and I’m told that the movie has condensed several books into the single film. What irritates me about this movie is that there are so many high-powered stars in it, but all of them seem to pander their roles to children. Meryl Streep is the worst of the bunch, making me cringe just thinking about it. Nonetheless, the whole movie is worth the price of admission just to see the end credits and hear the soundtrack, which are amazing.
I saw City of Ember in the bookstore long before the movie came out this year. The book sounded interesting, but not quite interesting enough for me to buy it, instead going onto my mental “one day, when I have no other obligations” list. City of Ember is also based on a series starting with the book of the same name, and seems to have four books to the set so far. I will be watching this movie soon, and if it’s worthwhile, I’ll write more. Still, even without having read the book, I’m disturbed by having both Bill Murray (bad?) and Tim Robbins (good?) in the movie.
Eragon came out as a movie after the Harry Potter series finished also. My goodness, that was a terrible movie. It wasn’t the movie quality that was terrible, but the story. The story was simply awful. I really hope - and must assume - that the books were simply not translated well, because there are three books in the Inheritance trilogy.
The problem as I see it, is that there is a lack of good fantasy story in general. When you really look at it, Harry Potter isn’t all that great of a story. In particular it tends to explain away all of the weird stuff that happens in the last five pages with some unknown knowledge. They’re kind of like the Scooby Doo episodes where the guy who “done” it is someone you’ve never seen before.
Is the problem even more basic in that people have forgotten how to craft a plot? Writing good kids’ plots is hard. You can’t talk down, but you don’t want to be too complicated. I can see how that would be difficult. Still, with all of the writers in the world, you would think that there would be some new epic children’s novel to get excited about at least every year. Keep an eye out.
