Bag of Bones Disappointing (Spoiler Alert)

I hate the "Stephen King movies suck" bandwagon, but I'm afraid they may have a genuine point here.  Bag of Bones fell flat.  It wasn't all their fault, though.  It's hard to translate a book that took place in a man's head and turn into a four hour movie.  To my surprise, Pierce Brosnan did okay as Mike Noonan.  He was a bit too smooth,  but handled the scenes pretty well.  The only real casting error was Ki, who was about twice as old as she should have been.  She went from a toddler in the book to at least seven or eight in the movie, and still acted like a toddler.  No bueno, though the little actress did a phenomenal job of holding "terror face" for a long time and keeping it genuine.

The heavy-handed plot changes took their toll, that's all.  I can't see why they made Noonan a stranger to the land, it made little sense.  He would have had knowledge of these people, he would have had friends and family friends at Dark Score Lake, which is how it was originally written.  This was nothing but a ploy to have some discovery dialogues and it failed miserably.  Some of the best scenes were lost because of this.  His argument with Bill, his uneasy relationship with the townsfolk, etc.  Some of the other plot changes were just damn stupid.  Making Lance try to kill his daughter?  Having him shot to death in front of her?  Conveniently never really talking about it after that came out?  Did these guys even read the book?

I knew there would have to be some muttering to himself segues and I accepted it, but they still went overboard.  In this world, he didn't know Bill at all.  So why would he tell him something so intimate as "when we got frisky on this couch she would say we were ringing Bunter's bell?"  That's not the sort of thing two men share, especially not old Maine farts full of Yankee pride.  And Jellison's where he got an unexplained updated on what had happened on the TR for the last several years was unbelievable.  They were cheap tools used to scar a masterpiece.  It also barely touched on the most terrifying part of the story, the collective "village" mentality that allowed all of this to happen in the first place.  I can think of several ways they could have included that in the story but decided to avoid it at all costs.

The end was unforgivably lame.  The epic battle between Sara and Jo, not even mentioned.  The owls never came into play.  The amazing moment of understanding, when he realized his dead wife had been talking to him all along in their own language, we were robbed of it.  Realizing he was the character from his nightmare was one of the most powerful moments of a book that was full of them.  Not even mentioned.  He poured some dust and the war was won.  I'm sorry guys, but you could have done better even with your limited ability to tell the story.  "Mattie had come to her daughter one last time, dressed in the lake, to tell her goodbye" was reduced to "ghost in bathtub whispers something."  Inexcusable.  Not since The Shining have they failed so badly at bringing a beautifully crafted finale to life.

Having gotten all of that off my chest, the sets were perfect.  Whoever took his descriptions of the buildings and the grounds did a perfect job.  From Jellison's cafe to the color of the ribbon on Bunter's bell, it was dead on.  I can't think of a thing that could have been better.  Even though her taste in art never came up, the paintings in Mattie's house were exactly as described, and told a bit about good taste and a K-Mart budget.  It's too bad that amount of detail couldn't have been put in other places as well.

My other hope is that this doesn't derail any efforts on the Dark Tower movies.  Unlike these books, that is the one time he told a story that would translate over to film beautifully.  For once he let situation and environment move the story instead of deeply private character knowledge.  Don't get me wrong, I love getting into his character's heads and learning their secrets but Roland is a shallow man, his single-mindedness is his super power.  Everyone around him is the real story, and it can be done. I will hold out just a little bit of hope just in case.