The Bridge to the What Now?
I'm a little uncomfortable posting this. I haven't seen the new Disney film Bridge to Terabithia, and it feels Bob Dole-ish to criticize a movie I haven't seen.
Still, I have to say that I really liked the book Bridge to Terabithia when I first encountered in the fifth grade. It was smart and challenging and a little strange. Without spoiling anything, it's also a genuine heart-breaker of a book. It's one of the books-- along with the Encyclopedia Brown series, the Chronicles of Prydain, and others-- that got me used to the idea of strong women.
The basic plot is about two loners, a boy and a girl. They're both weirdoes, and so end up drawn to each other. She is smarter, faster, and above all braver than the boy, but also even more of an outsider than he is. They end up co-imagining a "magic kingdom" on the far side of the creek; the girl names it Terabithia.
There's never any ambiguity in the book. Terabithia is not a real place, this is not a fantasy story. It's a friendship story about two kids with active imaginations.
I saw this trailer yesterday. Dude, wtf? There are a few possibilities, none of them good. One is that Disney decided they needed their own Chronicles of Narnia, and made a few... adjustments to a property they already have the rights to. Or they wasted a lot of CGI "illustrating" children's imaginations, thus providing a more visceral but ultimately less rewarding substitute for actual imagination.
So, with my previous statement about prejudgment in mind: yeah, I haven't seen it. And I'm pissed. In order to justify my pissed-offedness, I might have to see the movie. Crap.
Still, I have to say that I really liked the book Bridge to Terabithia when I first encountered in the fifth grade. It was smart and challenging and a little strange. Without spoiling anything, it's also a genuine heart-breaker of a book. It's one of the books-- along with the Encyclopedia Brown series, the Chronicles of Prydain, and others-- that got me used to the idea of strong women.
The basic plot is about two loners, a boy and a girl. They're both weirdoes, and so end up drawn to each other. She is smarter, faster, and above all braver than the boy, but also even more of an outsider than he is. They end up co-imagining a "magic kingdom" on the far side of the creek; the girl names it Terabithia.
There's never any ambiguity in the book. Terabithia is not a real place, this is not a fantasy story. It's a friendship story about two kids with active imaginations.
I saw this trailer yesterday. Dude, wtf? There are a few possibilities, none of them good. One is that Disney decided they needed their own Chronicles of Narnia, and made a few... adjustments to a property they already have the rights to. Or they wasted a lot of CGI "illustrating" children's imaginations, thus providing a more visceral but ultimately less rewarding substitute for actual imagination.
So, with my previous statement about prejudgment in mind: yeah, I haven't seen it. And I'm pissed. In order to justify my pissed-offedness, I might have to see the movie. Crap.