It is undeniable that the new millennium has seen fantasy novel adaptations reign supreme over Hollywood territory. It began in the year 2001 when the British again invaded America: now in the filmmaking industry. This time, the invaders took the many shapes of a young, bespectacled wizard and a ragtag team of Middle-Earth journeymen from the Harry Potter saga and Lord of the Rings trilogy respectively. Just like when the Beatles rocked the Ed Sullivan Theater in 1964, these films quickly cast filmgoers under their infectious British spell. Since then, Hollywood never looked back.
On the other hand, there are the other more unfortunate adaptations. They started off as widely-revered bestsellers, but quickly fell at their first hurdle in film form. This is what seems to have happened to Joseph Delaney‘s “The Wardstone Chronicles”, which spawned seventeen novels in its ten year stint before Universal gave the go-ahead for a silver screen treatment, titled Seventh Son.
Unfortunately, fantasy fans will probably agree with me that Seventh Son is better off shelved. Sergei Bodrov‘s version ended up to be a Lord of the Rings wannabe and even tarnishes the name of fantasy genre itself.
Once upon a time…
Apart from the Wardstone series’ cult status, what attracts people to Seventh Son is the inclusion of award-winning actors like Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore in main starring roles. Jeff Bridges stars as Gregory, a bounty hunter (referred to in the Wardstone universe as a Spook) bound to a lifetime task of hunting down supernatural creatures of all sorts.
Despite years of successful kills, his arch-nemesis Mother Malkin (Julianne Moore) still eludes him. After another encounter between the two, which sees Gregory’s apprentice perish at Malkin’s hands, Gregory must seek a new apprentice to aid his quest. Though, it’s not without the most essential criteria: the apprentice must be the seventh son of the seventh son.
Eventually, Gregory stumbles upon farmer’s son Tom Ward (Ben Barnes). Racing against time, Gregory must turn the ordinary boy into an extraordinary Spook before Malkin and her legion of shape shifting supernatural beings lay waste on the once peaceful realm. Predictably, their quest is complicated midway when Tom falls in love with one of Malkin’s witches, Alice (Alicia Vikander).
Uncharted territory
Any adaptation, like the Seventh Son, needs to first properly introduce the original story’s universe. This means answering the fundamental 5W 1H. To this end, the film’s screenwriting duo Charles Leavitt and Steven Knight‘s job is to ease the new audience into Delaney’s story. Furthermore, in order to avoid alienating the books’ loyal readers and fans, various subplots from the books are retained for the film’s main plot. Unfortunately, Seventh Son wound up to be a choppily-edited story that fails to provide the audience with the depth and knowledge of the Wardstone universe. Furthermore, the hurried pace of the narrative doesn’t allow for the hero and villain to develop beyond their one-dimensional facade, which means it’s very hard to concern yourself over their fates.
An example of the script’s weak characterization is the relationship between Gregory and Mother Malkin. On the surface, their relationship is as black and white as hero and villain, good versus bad. Though, in the opening sequence, we’re shown how a young Gregory is forced to imprison Malkin in a dungeon somewhere on the mountains: it shows the potential of a love-hate relationship worth further exploration, even in the shape of flashbacks to strengthen the history between the two characters.
Ahhh… Dragons !!!
The fantasy genre is so often criticized with the phrase, “style over substance.” Considering the financial backer of Seventh Son is Legendary Pictures, responsible for bringing a revamped Godzilla back to its rightful life, you would expect a film production with high aims like this one would score highly on technical achievements. However, it’s fair to say only A.R. Rahman can keep his head held high. The Indian-born composer tried his best to spring some tension into our heroes’ quest through a string of bombastic fanfares, but ended up useless in the tension-free atmosphere.
The CGI of Sevent Son is one of the weak links that derails it. Special effect artist John Dykstra‘s took the Wardstone universe from the sword and sorcery glamour into grittier dimension, which sounds good in theory. The result, however, is an eye-searing cinematic experience: green screen and CGI are overused to a degree that it’s amusingly cartoonish. Even when the piercing cry of a dragon blast through the cinema’s stereo, it can do little to wake the audience up from an ultimate yawn-fest.
Big stars don’t shine
Add to the film’s technical and structural woes, the pool of talents from Seventh Son produces perhaps one of the most wooden acting ever in the cinema. While it cannot be denied that they were given a shallow script to work with, the individual performances of MVP’s like Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore are sadly disappointing.
Jeff Bridges’ version of Gregory comes across as an odd combination of his stoner persona of the The Big Lebowski days and Master Yoda’s speech lisp, which ends up being a poor imitation of both. At the same time, his co-star Julianne Moore is far from glorious. Considering how she’s been sweeping the awards this season, it is a shame that she could potentially add Razzie 2016 to her list. I remember how Angelina Jolie‘s great portrayal in Maleficent last year helped bring life to the cartoon character; Moore’s portrayal of the Maleficent-like Mother Malkin is contrastingly cartoonish.
Where the seniors fail, so do the juniors. The casting of Ben Barnes as Tom Ward was already questionable from the get-go. In a time when a lot of successful novel adaptations cast younger talents to front the production, Ben Barnes somehow looks too old for the part. At the end of the day, it is a tale of a boy’s quest, not a scruffy guy in his mid-20’s, add to that his flat performance and he never truly convinces as the lead to build a franchise upon. Alicia Vikander‘s Alice is similarly robotic. Their screen time together is like a telenovela cliche. Their Edward/Bella-like characters will end up being forgotten like so many sequences of the film.
Conclusion
Eragon. The Golden Compass. Mortal Instruments. These are just some of novel adaptations which failed to break the fantasy film’s barrier. Disappointingly, Seventh Son will most likely join the league of those forgotten sons. Sergei Bodrov managed to ruin the Wardstone universe’s legacy with a film adaptation laced with shallow narrative, cartoonish CGI and wooden acting. Rephrasing a Bon Jovi song, “you give fantasy a bad name.”
Let me know what you think of Seventh Son? Does it serve the Wardstone Chronicles justice?
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