Background: “Andy Serkis is set to develop a series adaptation of Robin Hardy’s 1973 horror movie classic The Wicker Man. Serkis will develop the series with producer Jonathan Cavendish and writer Howard Overman (Misfits and War of the Worlds).” I’m not objecting to an adaptation of THE WICKER MAN per se, mind. I think it could work, as long as the following assumptions are made:
- The bad people are in fact pagan fertility god worshipers with a taste for human sacrifice. Straight up, no evasions, no updating for modern sensibilities*.
- What they are doing is bad.
- And, possibly most importantly: what they are doing will not work.
Do all of that, and the show will avoid a bunch of pitfalls. Don’t, and it.. won’t. Your guess is as good as mine whether they’ll get away with it, though. Andy Serkis might; you never know.
Moe Lane
#commissionearned
*Or somebody’s opinion about what modern sensibilities ought to be. Actual modern sensibilities is often quite keen about seeing pagans acting badly and so forth, especially if they’re evil young witches with a regrettable lack of clothing.
I think there’s wiggle room with #3, but yeah.
(Shrug) I wouldn’t mind neopagans nearly so much, if they’d stop trying to appropriate and sanitize what my ancestors believed.
(And if they’d stop doing the same with other myths and folklore I’m interested in.)
This year, Samhain starts at sunset on November 6 in the US. (It varies a bit. The Celts didn’t use the Julian calendar.)
I rather enjoy criticizing the poor scholarship of someone trying “to freak the ‘danes”. Since they’re fishing for a reaction, they deserve to have it blow up in their face.