They're not dumbing them down for children - they're dumbing them down for the general audience, applying the usual formulaic movie treatment to every book.
I totally agree.
But, the end result, as you said, is the same.
The Lightning Thief was shredded, and my DH and DS12 were disappointed.
Oh boy, us too! I saw
The Lightning Thief on opening day with DD10, DS7 and a family with two children of the same age. The 4/6 of us who'd read the series were horrified--At one point I looked over during the movie and saw DS 7 emphatically waving his hands and whispering to the other seven year old (who hadn't read the book)--it was clear he was going on at length about what was wrong with the movie. I personally think it was one of the worst adaptations I've ever seen, and one that didn't make any sense to me since they removed all of the parts that run through the books and make the series a series (along with most of the humor, some of the key characters and Annabeth's entire personality). Wouldn't you think they would focus on the things that would support a series of movies? Afterwards, the two ten year olds were foaming at the mouth all the way to the car while drafting vicious letters to the movie's producers
Of course, DD was somewhat prepared for the experience years ago when she witnessed the demolition of
The Golden Compass .
We actually didn't bother to go see
The Tale of Despereaux since the trailers seemed bizarrely comedic relative to the tone of the book.
We are a
little bit lenient with the HP films given the length of the books, but can't say we've actually enjoyed the last few. Sometimes I can't figure out why we are so excited to see them when they come out, but we are obsessed and will certainly be there for the last two movies too
The fifth and sixth movies have particularly annoyed us. We thought the fifth would be great with all the potential slapstick scenes, but no such luck. I hated that movie. Is there no other way to strike an ominous tone than to shoot a film with dim lighting so that I end up squinting through the whole darn thing??? The sixth just confused us. We get that scenes have to be left out with such a long book, so what's with adding an entire scene that never happened?
Gee. This is long. Can you tell this thread struck a nerve?
