In recent years, the resurrection of half-forgotten stories from the childhood of millennials has become something of a trend: just last year, two legends returned to the small screen – Robert Lawrence Stine’s Goosebumps and Ricky Riordan’s Percy Jackson. Both series found their home on the Disney+ streaming platform and received different responses from the audience. A new film adaptation of The Spiderwick Chronicles, based on the book series of the same name by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, was also initially put into development by the Mouse Studio producers. However, something went wrong in the process, and the finished series moved to the online service The Roku Channel, known, in particular, for the eccentric comedy “Weird Al” and the psychological drama “Among the Sharks.” After watching the first episodes of the new “The Spiderwick Chronicles,” it becomes clear why Disney+ decided to refuse to broadcast the series – it does not fit the platform’s target audience. However, The Spiderwick Chronicles is also unlikely to be successful on The Roku Channel.
Lion Daniels as Jared in a still from The Spiderwick Chronicles
The show revolves around the Grace family, Helen (Joy Bryant) and her three children – 17-year-old Mallory (Mikala Lee) and 15-year-old twins Jared (Lion Daniels) and Simon (Noah Cottrell). After a difficult divorce, the Graces move from noisy Brooklyn to the old house of their Spiderwick ancestors, where, of course, all sorts of devilish things happen. Jared, the most naughty and problematic of the Graces, keeps bumping into the magical inhabitants of Spiderwick, but no one believes him. Fortunately, his great-aunt Lucinda (Charlayne Woodard) comes to Jared’s aid; she tells the boy about the Spider-Man family heirloom – an old book that confirms the existence of magical creatures. The only problem is that the book has already been hunted by the evil ogre Mulgarath (Christian Slater), who poses an incredible danger to both Jared himself and his entire family.
Christian Slater as Mulgarath in a still from The Spiderwick Chronicles
In the line of classic children’s fantasy, The Spiderwick Chronicles stands somewhere between The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by Clive Lewis and The Keys of Locke by Joe Hill, representing a light tale about the vicissitudes of the big adult world. In the prose of Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, goblins, ogres, gnomes, boggarts and other otherworldly creatures were a kind of allusion to the dangerous reality that awaits a child around every corner. The 2008 film adaptation of the same name from Mean Girls director Mark Waters clearly followed the moral message of the original text, choosing childlike spontaneity and an abundance of eccentric CGI monsters as the main tool of dialogue with the viewer. Waters’ “The Spiderwick Chronicles” could hardly be called an exemplary film adaptation: it lacked elven magic, and in general the atmosphere of magic. The new series from showrunner Aron Colate – a comic book author, screenwriter and producer of “Heroes” and “Breaking Dawn” – does not even try to enter the Waters plane and is very evasive in its approach to the original’s originality. “The Spiderwick Chronicles” is trying to do everything possible to ensure that the plot corresponds to the spirit of the times: in the books, Jared was an ordinary troubled teenager, in the series he was “given” a diagnosed mental disorder and even a separate arc with treatment in a hospital. Colate builds some pretty compelling metaphors between mental health, extrasensory perception, and providence. Pays attention to the social aspect of the topic, challenging the viewer to a difficult conversation about the stigmatization of people with mental illnesses, and at first glance it does everything right. The only problem is that the more The Spiderwick Chronicles tries to assemble a collection of relevant social theses, the less the series gravitates towards its original source.
Alyvia Alyn Lind as Kaleopa in a still from The Spiderwick Chronicles
Colate does everything possible and impossible to abandon the roots of The Spiderwick Chronicles, changing not only the age, but also the culture, and even the nationality of the main characters. In the end, the narrative is completely unreasonably directed towards the villain – the charming Christian Slater, who made his debut as an ogre – and increasingly loses the feeling of a good old fairy tale, for which, in fact, the series was released. In the fantasy series by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, there were a good dozen stories that did not have time to come into contact with Waters’ film, but for some reason Colate does not want to bring them to the screen. Instead, he deconstructs the Spiderwick Chronicles film universe, leaving only beautiful scenery from the authors’ legacy. However, for those who did not have time to feel the delight of the original, the new “Spiderwick Chronicles” may seem like a completely acceptable way to while away a lonely evening, others will probably be disappointed.
Text:
Olya Smolina
Tags: review series Spiderwick Chronicles
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