Make sure you don't use a beloved series that bares little to no resemblance to either the books OR the films. Make something up from scratch (completely, as in don't script an AU version of some poor children's classic you've somehow managed to blag the rights to) or film one of the bajillion copy cat books that came out after it rather than forcing the boy who lived template onto other things it doesn't belong on.
shareYou're one of those annoying people who likes to compare everything to something else, even if there's absolutely no slight resemblance. I'm kinda surprised that you didn't compare this to Twilight, since that's the cool thing to do these days.
FYI- The Dark Is Rising series by Susan Cooper, what this movie is based upon, came out long before Harry Potter. The first book in the series, Over Sea, Under Stone came out in 1965, which is the year J.K. Rowling was born. So clearly, Seeker is not a HP rip off. Not just due to the fact that they really don't have much in common.
OMg did you even read my post? My whole point is they turned an awesome series of books into yet another boring Harry Potter clone. I never do 'what is cool these days', I say what I think regardless of whether it's trendy or not and if you can't see the blantant parrallels between this film (yes film not books because I'm well aware they were around way before J.K. Rowling picked up a pen and are nothing like her work... or this travesty) and Harry Potter then the studio didn't do it's job properly.
sharePerhaps there are blatant parallels because of the genre? Harry Potter is the guide by which all fantasy movies are judged these days, it's kinda getting annoying. Let's face it, Twilight has been compared to HP.
I liked the movie, and I didn't really see the parallels. But that's probably because I wasn't looking for them.
Neither was I, they were just there, compare the original storyline of the book with the film and then compare the changes they made with Harry Potter, it's obvious were they are trying to key into the HP formula. Honestly I don't judge all fantasy films by Harry Potter just the ones that are trying to ride on it's coat tails an let's face it there are tons of them (though Twilight isn't one of them, if Twilight were ripping anything off it would be L J Smith).
shareI've never read the books, so I can't compare there. There's no denying that a lot of fantasies are trying to follow Harry Potter, it was extremely successful, and lately it seems that in Hollywood original is bad and copycat is good.
shareTo be honest, I think I would have found this movie unwatchable even if I hadn't read the books, but I came across The Dark is Rising Series almost 20 years ago and loved them from the start. If anything, I felt like J.K. Rowling was likely to have been influenced by Susan Cooper, among others, yet she has basically gotten the lion's share of the contemporary credit and success, being a writer in an age of better publicity and successful commercialization. I'm not getting into a discussion of talent or quality of the written source material, just circumstances. Anyway, I am throwing my support behind senua's comments.
share^ Seconded - as soon as I saw the poster at the cinema my heart sank, as it was the now-cliched line-up of three kids across the bottom centre, two boys and a girl, with glowing baubles floating magically around them.. even if two of them are far more peripheral characters than the image would seem to indicate, seeing how the whole thing revolves almost solely around Will Stanton. That was the first big indication for me that, as if it weren't predictable already, this was going to be a great big slab of Potter-lite; regrettably, as the books are distinctive and original timeless classics of children's literature. But that's the way marketing works; you only have to look at a poster/DVD cover for Percy Jackson & the Lightning Thief to see the same tropes being played out.
Regarding the "lion's share of the contemporary credit and success, being a writer in an age of better publicity and successful commercialization" comment, it's particularly amusing how this has affected even someone as wildly successful as Terry Pratchett, who was the best-selling author in Britain for a long time until being caught by J.K. Rowling, yet who has been accused numerous times since of 'ripping-off' Harry Potter in the Discworld - despite his wizards and witches having been around for nearly 15 years before the first Potter book was published!
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Hear! Hear! I published my first novel last year and Kirkus Review said that the mind hacker in my book was a "straight Harry Potter rip off" and I was so pi$$ed I sent them an email saying my novel was adapted from my own script that I wrote in 1991 and that had the mind hacker in it then and that was before Harry bloody Potter became so ubiquitous or before I'd ever even heard of it! Those a$$es!
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You'll find that Rowling copied off from this book.
shareI'll just repost my earlier reply:
My whole point is they turned an awesome series of books into yet another boring Harry Potter clone. I never do 'what is cool these days', I say what I think regardless of whether it's trendy or not and if you can't see the blantant parrallels between this film (yes film not books because I'm well aware they were around way before J.K. Rowling picked up a pen and are nothing like her work... or this travesty) and Harry Potter then the studio didn't do it's job properly.