Wrong Answer in Spiderwick Movie

While traveling last month, I saw the film adaptation of The Spiderwick Chronicles on an airplane. Not the best place to see any movie, to be sure, but in this case I didn't feel I'd missed too much. The movie had far too little griffin, and the story felt small compared to the books. Of course, when most of the speaking roles are handled through computer graphics and the two main roles are played by the same actor, the cast is bound to seem small.

However, what really bothered me about the movie adaptation was the ending. Did that happen in the books? I wondered. This week I found an essay on Nick Owchar's Jacket Copy blog for the Los Angeles Times that expressed my feelings very well [***SPOILERS*** and all]:

In both cases -- books and movie -- the villainous ogre, named Mulgarath, is confronted by the children. And in both cases, the wily shapechanger tries to fool the children by taking the form of their father. It doesn’t work. In the books, Jared suspects that "Dad" is a phony and tells him so, causing the ogre to give up his ruse and resume his monstrous shape, tree-limbs and all. A showdown ensues in the ogre's shabby palace.

In the movie? Quite a different climax.

Here, we get a heavy undercurrent of family unhappiness, of marital collapse; the mother is a wreck and the father’s absence is painfully felt. When the father (played by Andrew McCarthy) finally does appear at the movie’s end, he gets asked a question by Jared as he walks through the mansion’s front door. Jared’s question is extremely general: He wants to know what message his father promised to give him when he arrived at the estate for a visit. Of course, it’s a test to confirm his father’s identity.

With a puzzled look on his face, Mr. Pretty in Pink says plainly: “I love you.”

There is no menace, no sarcasm nor any irony, nothing to cue us that lurking behind his aging boyish face might be a yellow-eyed creature of nightmares. He sounds like any beleaguered parent facing a child unhappy that his parents have split up.

What is Jared’s response?

“Wrong answer!” he declares, and then -- the horror of it -- he stabs his father in the chest with a kitchen knife. The father gasps in disbelief, and then, he hunches over and begins a transformation that makes his skin bubble and stretch as the true villain is revealed.

What’s going on here?

Why turn Jared's defiant challenge into a stabbing? Kids are savvy, I agree, but why force such an ugly scene on them?

Irony rules the day in Hollywood. I’m sure that Jared’s stabbing of “his father” was explained in some concept meeting as being a powerful expression of how much pain he feels because of his father’s desertion.

On the screen, though, it only makes Jared seem vicious, especially because it comes in response to being told he is loved. Jared’s brilliant ability to detect elfin fakery is never established, and Mulgarath’s shapechanging early in the movie is so minimal that it’s easy to forget. This change to the story loses sight of the bright tones and adventurous spirit in the series. The filmmakers evidently forgot something important: This is a story for children, not adults. Save the parricides for your R movies. Oedipus doesn’t play well with kids, ok?

And right after the stabbing, Andrew McCarthy reverts back into Nick Nolte--which is even more scary.

Highmore on Highmore as Jared and Simon

Newsarama posted an interview with Freddie Highmore about his experiences making the imminent movie version of The Spiderwick Chronicles.

As Oz and Ends reported a year and a half back, the producers originally looked for American twins to play Simon and Jared, but finally decided the movie would work better with one British actor playing two American boys. Which doesn't say much for American twin actors.

Highmore addressed that acting challenge in this interview:

NRAMA: Which twin did you relate to more?

FH: I guess a mixture between the two. Jared smashes holes in walls and I wouldn't do that. But I do sort of have the drive that he's got to push himself on - and to help his family. When he's in a dangerous situation, he takes control and gives it his best shot.

NRAMA: How did you manage to make the two characters seem so different?

FH: Jared's the squeaky wheel. He's always running around showing off his anger in quite an extroverted way. Simon is still hurt by his parents splitting up too. He's just more internal, perhaps.

NRAMA: How long did it take you to switch between the two characters?

FH: I was quick. I was like a Ferrari. After they shot me [as?] one twin, I'd run away, change in this little tent and I'd be back out again 29 seconds later.

A Hairy Situation with Spiderwick

Fuse #8 alerted me to the new Spiderwick Chronicles movie trailer on Yahoo!, so I checked it out. "Wow, they're really playing up the darkness of the books," I thought, before realizing that for some cyberreason my browser wasn't showing me a picture.

So I sought out the same trailer on YouTube. This peek at the movie emphasizes the story of troubled twin Jared over nerdy twin Simon, to the extent that you'd have to read the books to know that Freddie Highmore is playing two parts. Perhaps special-effects shots of the two boys interacting are still being worked on.

As shown in the cover above, Tony DiTerlizzi drew Jared with a messy part in his hair, Simon with a neat one. In the movie, Jared has no part at all, just unflattering prepubescent bangs. Back in college my theatrical roommates called that sort of sacrifice "follicle realism." Judging by Highmore's own hairstyle at a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory premiere in Europe, however, he already understands hair as an artistic expression.

Shooting Spiderwick in September

The Spiderwick Chronicles, by Caldecott Honoree Tony DiTerlizzi and Norton Award winner Holly Black, is a recent fantasy series that transcended its initial impression (to me, at least) of Harry Potter dressed up in Lemony Snicket packaging. It never got deep, I thought, but it got darker than I expected, and many of the fantastic details are truly chilling. I think my favorite is how goblins stick broken glass, metal, and stones in their gums in place of teeth.

The inevitable movie adaptation has come from the word processor of John Sayles, of all people. The director will be Mark Waters, best known for the superior remake of Freaky Friday. In May, Hollywood North Report ran an interview with Waters in which he said:

For Spiderwick in particular, the reason I'm talking to you is because we're heading into the big unknown of finding these identical twin brothers and you're just not going to find identical twins who have acting experience and are ages 9-11 that have the look and the quality that is necessary for this movie.

Translated, that meant the Sprouse twins had no chance at the roles.

But Waters evidently gave up on finding North American twins who could act, and chose a young British actor who has the chops to act for two: Freddie Highmore of Finding Neverland and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Highmore looks right, too. Older sister Mallory the fencer will be played by Sarah Bolger of Jim Sheridan's exercise in personal nostalgia, In America--another young actor from the British isles. Will the script be rewritten to make the children British? Or will there be dialogue coaches galore when shooting starts in September?

More news via Waters and Hollywood North Report:

I know that Tony and Holly are writing another trilogy on top of these five, which means the (people) we cast in the movie could most likely be in more movies down the line if it becomes a big franchise.