I take a trip to the CITY OF EMBER...
Monday, October 13, 2008 at 6:00PM | Will LeBlanc ...and am pretty sure nothing happens there.
I'm one of those people that likes to read books before seeing film versions of them. It's fine if a movie is ruined for me because stuff was changed from the book. I really have no problem with that as I believe that any good adaptation should live up to its source material, and if it doesn't, then I shouldn't fucking like it, and the producers should be ashamed that they ruined something so easy, which is the case here.
I loved the City of Ember book. It's book one in a series that currently has four installments; I'm not sure if more are planned. I'm almost finished with the 3rd book now and each book is well written, feels different than the others making each sequel more than just a retread of the earlier parts, and they are aimed at the early teenage who are forming their opinions on God, morality, and human nature, of which these books have serious undertones of. Unfortunately, the movie, that I'm sure will be the only installment of the series made into a film, has none of this underlying meaning, moves so quickly you barely know what you're watching, and feels like someone summarized the book in one paragraph and that was what they based the movie on.
In very, very brief form, the City of Ember is a city built underground just before the onset of WWIII, a nuclear war which destroys 98% of humanity (A fact discovered in book 2). 200 elderly couples are each given two babies to raise, and from there, a society is born underground as the world destroys itself. 200 years later, the city's generator is failing and people are panicking. Two teenagers find clues leading them to a way out of Ember, and when the corrupt mayor tries to arrest them, they take matters into their own hands.
And that there is about as much information as it seemed the producer's of this film had to work from. The first major league issue I had was the casting of one of the kids, Dune Harrow. They're 12-years-old in the book. The girl, Lina Mayfleet, played by that chick from Atonement, maybe looks 12, I'd say closer to 14, but that's nitpicking. Dune looked like he was about 20. It was incredibly awkward to watch.
The plot developed in such a way that I felt like I was watching a toddler play with action figures; "And then Sgt. Slaughter kicks Cobra Commander in the face, and then Duke rides in on his motorcycle, and then the ejector seat throws him into the fight, and then they're in Antarctica battling velociraptors, and then the ice breaks and there's lava, and then you fucking get the point." There was no adventure to it at all, and it wasn't for lack of effort on Hollywood's part. They tried throwing in so many adventury things that I just had to laugh at how hard they tried to make it 'more interesting' than the book, which is already really fun and exciting. Seriously guys, giant mutated moths and rats? Nowhere in the book, all over this movie. Shenanigans.
Now I've never made a feature film, let alone one based off someone else's material, but I just don't understand how you can fuck something up this badly when you're handed such excellent source material. It could have been saved if someone grabbed the movie at both ends and pulled until it was about a half an hour longer so there was a little room for plot and characters to actually develop, but instead the whole thing feels like it was shoved into a tiny bottle when it was little, and not given enough space to grow into a full size movie. Nice atmosphere and set design, shite acting, terrible adaptation of quality material.
2.5 stars
PS. MS Word doesn’t know what velociraptors are. What an idiot!
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