Friday, April 16, 2010

Superman: The Quest (Update)

After more than a year, the second part of the prologue to my Superman fan fic is posted. Other projects have kept me busy, but this is finally up. One more part remains before the story itself begins.

Thanks for the patience. :)

Thursday, April 15, 2010

What About Lloyd Alexander?

With the success of 'Lord of the Rings' as a movie franchise, the expectations of Guillermo Del Toro's film adapations of 'The Hobbit', and the ongoing production of 'Chronicles of Narnia' movies there has been a massive revival of Hollywood interest in young adult fantasy literature over the latter part of this decade. This has had some excellent results (in my mind the best thus far is the 'Harry Potter' franchise, which are completely true to the books even if they cannot include every detail), some mixed results ('Eragon' was an enjoyable movie, but the source material is somewhat derivative and the movie too slick and modern in its 'feel'), and some just plain bad ones (I've heard 'The Spiderwick Chronicles' are fun books, but turning such a long series into one movie did not do justice to either books or the finished movie... and let's say nothing about 'The Golden Compass' except that people who saw the movie should not let it stop them from reading the books) when all is told.

People my age or a bit older will remember (or have deliberately forgotten) Walt Disney's 'The Black Cauldron.' Wikipedia claims that come critics blamed the movie's failure on 'the dark nature of the book', but we're talking about a Disney movie so let's keep in mind the source material and the final product had relatively little in common except names of characters and some very broad concepts. Nor is the source material in question substantially darker than "Lord of the Rings' or 'Harry Potter.' Indeed, it has quite a lot in common with the latter.

'The Black Cauldron' is a mish-mash of the first two books in Lloyd Alexander's 'Chronicles of Prydain.' The fact that the two books have completely different stories and entirely disparate supporting casts (though the young hero and his small cadre of friends remain the central protagonists in both) did not lend itself to a very polished final product. In the revial of interest in young adult fantasy literature, both on and off screen, I am often surprised to hear

There are five books in the series: The Book of Three (on the story of which the Disney cartoon was largely based), The Black Cauldron (some elements and characters of which were combined with the basic plot of the first book to produce the final movie), The Castle of Llyr, Taran Wanderer, and The High King.

Whereas Tolkien and Lewis peak early (I still believe The Fellowship of the Rings to be the best book in LotR and that Narnia is all downhill after* The Horse and His Boy), Alexander's series improves with each volume. More importantly, like Harry Potter after him, Taran the Assistant Pig-Keeper grows up over the course of his series and the books grow up with him.

The Book of Three
is a rather standard fairy tale story with the dark elements of traditional European fairty tales but a heroic, happy ending.

The Black Cauldron
is a darker book in which the hard facts of death, loss, failure, and the real cost of heroism are faced without flinching... but once again the ending is happy and heroic for the protagonists and good conquers evil.

The Castle of Llyr
is more complicated. It is a break from the titanic struggle of the first two novels. There is no grand conflict between good and evil, but petty court politics and ugly revenge plots. There are touches of high adventure and romance, but the core of the story is the ambiguity of early adolescence and the knowledge that those closest to us are not necessarily there forever. Here the end is bittersweet rather than happy: though Taran has foiled the villain and saved the life of his best friend (with whom he comes to accept he is a bit in love), he is still left with the fact that he must go home and she really has moved away.

Taran Wanderer addresses the hard part of adolescence: those years when we stop being defined by our family life (in this case Taran's rather idyllic farm life with warrior-turned-farmer Coll and ancient enchanter Dallben) and begin to decide who and what we want to be. The conflict with good and evil is reduced to individual encounters with adults who seek to instill their own values in the protagonist. The hot-tempered, larger-than-life, and soft-hearted King Smoit offers Taran what he wants most, at the cost of abandoning his search for who he really is. The amoral, sensualist Dorath illustrates the dangers of freedom bereft of a moral compass. The wicked sorceror Morda provides a stern challenge that Taran must truly face and conquer on his own without the aid of those on whom he has long relied. Most dangerous of all, the heroic but terribly flawed Craddoc (a crippled farmer scratching his livelihood from a near wasteland) demonstrates the dangers of finding what we're looking for and not liking it one bit. The folk of the Free Commots instill the value of hard-work, responsibility, and independence... and each craft that Taran studies teaches him something about life far more valuable than the mere crafts themselves. Gazing into the Mirror of Llunet, Taran finally sees who he really is. Yet, in the end, Taran returns home to rejoin his family eager for the reunion. The happiness, sorrow, heroism, and tragedy are not in the destination but the journey.

The High King returns to the grand struggle between good and evil with renewed urgency and the greatest threat of all. The tragedy of life is faced as friends and family are lost to the horrors of war and the ravages of time. The final triumph does not bring the happiness that the hero thinks is his; though the ending is certainly a happy one it also teaches the last and hardest lesson of growing up. As children, we think it will all be easier when we have grown up. As adults, we discover the real work is only beginning and it was childhood that really offered us the ease and shelter we never appreciated as children.

The series would be better served by live action treatment than a cartoon and by screenwriters interested in telling its stories rather than using its trappings to tell pleasing heart-warmers. Disney may still have the movie rights tied up, I don't know, but a studio looking for a good young adult fantasy property could do far worse.

What is important, however, is not that more movies be made. If someone is actually reading this, they should go out and read the books at their library or buy them for their kids. I can say from experience that children of all ages could do far worse.


* C.S. Lewis said, during his life, that he felt the books should be read in the proper chronological order of the stories rather than the order of their publication. The single volume of the series published to tie-in to the release of Prince Caspian was so ordered at the request of his literary estate. However, most editions use the chronological order of publication. Thus, when I criticize what comes 'after The Horse and His Boy' as inferior, I specifically mean the last two written: The Magician's Nephew and The Last Battle. This is not because of their religious allegory, which I find very simple and sweet, but because they (especially the latter book) are simply not as tightly plotted and well characterized as the better books in the series.