The Enid Blyton Society

I don't mind if it's a faithful recreation or not, as long as it's a good film. The Dark Tower was criticised for not being faithful to Stephen King's books, but that didn't bother me, and I enjoyed it despite the flaws.

I'm glad the film finally looks like it's going ahead. The last time I Googled about it must have been just before the November announcement, so I thought it had stalled.

I agree - although I'd rather see a faithful recreation of the books, I think any film about an Enid Blyton book is better than none. It will but her firmly back in the spotlight - in hopefully a positive way, and will renew interest in her books, which can only be a good thing!

Rob Houghton wrote:I think any film about an Enid Blyton book is better than none. It will but her firmly back in the spotlight - in hopefully a positive way, and will renew interest in her books, which can only be a good thing!

I couldn't disagree with you more, Rob! I take your point about putting Enid in the spotlight, but I think it would deter potential readers from ever picking up one of her books. She was an author, not a film-maker. None is definitely better than dire!

We'll have to agree to disagree, lol. I think that a movie would open her books up to a much wider audience, and encourage people to buy her books. I'm hopeful the film won't be 'dire' purely because it seems at the moment that the portents are good...but if it was 'dire' then I would agree that no film would be better. However, The Lion the Witch and The Wardrobe film didn't seem to do the book any harm. And often there is a lot of film merchandise which again will fire people's interest in Enid Blyton. I see mainly positives in my 'half full' glass!

Has there been any update on this series coming to the big screen? It seems to have gone awfully quiet sadly.

Just a note on the widespread public awareness of the Magic Faraway Tree even in 2020, which should add to its potential audience and so reassure any 'risk-averse' investors in a Blyton cinema or TV project. In the new BBC 2 Monday night cultural discussion show (730 pm) led by ex-DJ Sara Cox, the discussion on which favourite childrens book character the guests would like to meet immediately led to one guest - I think singer Sophie Ellis Bextor, daughter of 1980s BBC 'Blue Peter' presenter Janet Ellis - saying 'Moonface from the Magic Faraway Tree'. They then did a montage of Moonface next to similarly looking, bald, suited TV presenter and 'wit' (though I find him too harshly sarcastic rather than really funny) Tom Allen, who does commentary on 'The Apprentice' and the 'Bake Off' review shows.

So the M F Tree was clearly well within the 'best loved books' parameters of stars born in the early 1980s!

No cinema will be as good as the Blyton books-- They will come nowhere near the.original-- not the revised ones

According to an article in Deadline, the long-awaited Faraway Tree film is finally going to be made by Elysian Film Group and Neal Street Productions, with a script by Simon Farnaby (who co-wrote Wonka with Paul King).

To quote from the article:

Updated for a contemporary audience, The Magic Faraway Tree will follow Polly and Tim and their children Beth, Joe and Fran – a modern family who find themselves forced to relocate to the remote English countryside. Soon after their arrival, the children discover a magical tree and its eccentric residents such as the characters Moonface, Silky, Dame Wash-a-lot and Saucepan Man. At the top of the tree, they are transported to spectacular and fantastical lands and, through the joys and challenges of their adventures, the family learn to reconnect and value each other for the first time in years.

The idea, we hear, is for a modern tone akin to that Farnaby achieved on his Paddington 2 script, which was also co-written with King.

https://deadline.com/2024/01/wonka-magi ... 235715778/

Thanks for the info Anita - another one for me to avoid I think!

Simon Barnaby might work for the Faraway Tree. He's a bit quirky and isn't afraid of making it a little bit dark in places, which it needs.

To get the full atmosphere for the Faraway Tree, it needs to have the dark lands where they are scared, to get the nervousness about what land is up there, and the times when it turns nasty. If you go for just the nice fun times then it becomes too bland.

I'm not sure about:
through the joys and challenges of their adventures, the family learn to reconnect and value each other for the first time in years.

But in some ways the Faraway Tree books are a set of separate chapters. You have the redemption of Connie and cousin Dick over the second two books, but they're only a fairly minor parts of it.
You could use the capture and freeing of the Faraway Tree to create suspense towards the end, which might work well, but unless you're turning the first part of the story into a lead up to this rather than the rather nice meeting new friends, then it is only an episode, so no full character arch.
It may be that using the family as something to tie all their adventures together, that it works as a film.

Edited to say: I think it would work better set in the era in which is was written though. I'm a bit nervous about the "modern family" and "updated for a contemporary audience".

I also feel like rolling my eyes at "updated for a contemporary audience" — as if there was anything in the original Faraway Tree books that might seriously offend modern sensibilities??? (Actually, I think there were golliwogs in just one chapter of one of the original trilogy — it's so long since I last read them that my memory is a bit blurred — but they're certainly not an essential part of the overall story.) And having the children's parents involved would be something that, while it wouldn't necessarily make for a bad film, would still make it totally different from an Enid Blyton book. In Enid's stories, as in most classic children's literature, the children get caught up in all the fun and magical adventures while the stodgy old grown-ups are strictly kept OUT of it!!

However, I must say I've seen Paddington 2 and it was EXCELLENT — one of the best children's films (or one of the best films, hands down) I have watched for years. It was hilariously funny, intriguing, well-paced, heart-warming, poignant, triumphant, everything you'd want in a good film, and managed to have a "timeless" feel about it — neither old nor new, with nothing that would upset ultra-modern audiences but nothing that would upset traditionalists either. If the same script-writer can manage to do the same sort of thing with the Faraway Tree — even if it isn't exactly like what Enid herself wrote — I'd be all for it.

I've never read The Magic Faraway Tree (or any of the Fantasy series of books), so I won't mind not watching this one. But it is still annoying to see they can't just do an adaptation of any of these classic stories without the usual "modern, diverse, updated for a contemporary audience" angles. I see they're currently doing similar with remakes of Wizard of Oz and It's A Wonderful Life as well.

I say it each time, but surely there's enough channels / other entertainment options for people to choose other things if the original settings / time period / characters of a particular classic story doesn't appeal - rather than everything having to 'reflect the 21st century audience', regardless of when they were originally set and the original characters of the story. It very much feels like a main reason behind doing them is to make those changes, and therefore get to make statements and social points about the 'modern' changes, etc.

But that's not going to stop any time soon. In fact it's clearly going to happen more and more. At least this time it's not one of my favourite Enid series that they're messing about with. And at least it's another TV show that keeps 'some form' of Enid's work in the public psyche. Which is the positive. The negative(s) likely to be all the unnecessary changes that'll be made, all probably to the detriment rather than improvement of the original.

I agree with all the above comments.

As I've said before, I can't understand why such good books have to be modernised/altered so much.

Maybe I'm just odd, but I find the 'contemporary/modern' argument worthless. I grew up watching a mixture of programmes and films on TV. I loved the Carry On films, most of which were made before I was born, or certainly too young to have watched them new. My daughter loves watching them with me, even though they are in some cases over 50 years old. Today I watched the black and white film 'The Lavender Hill Mob' - again, something that was filmed long before I was born.

Another favourite film was Passport to Pimlico - it is filmed against a background of rationing and bomb sites - something I've never experienced. If I could enjoy and understand films and TV programmes that weren't contemporary or have 'modern twists', why can't modern children and families enjoy something that is set in the past?

If someone feels they need to make a film about a family learning to value and reconnect as a result of visiting magical lands, then that's fine, but why drag the Faraway Tree into it? When Eddie Izzard's version of Five Children and It was made, it didn't feature a modern family - they stayed in a period (although I seem to recall they did muck about with the plot a little bit)!

I recorded Lavender Hill Mob, Katharine, and plan to catch up with it tomorrow. I've seen it in the past, but it's one I haven't watched for a good long while so I'm looking forward to that.

As regards 'can viewers nowadays still appreciate something from a previous era without it being changed?' I'm sure plenty could, yeah. Unfortunately it's a media / social media age, where those who yell the loudest, or whose complaint is given most attention / credibility, are the ones people fear upsetting and so are the ones pandered to. So portraying books or shows as written, reflecting a different era, is seen as a huge no-no and just won't be commissioned because of the negative response from the loudest, and most feared upsetting, demographics. And the preferences of those who'd still love to see a portrayal like that aren't given much creditable consideration.

Not to mention many of the modern writers, directors, etc, fall into those same demographics and so have their own personal reasons in order to want to choose to make those changes and get to discuss the social reasons behind making and highligting them. So as it's a policy that seems to pretty much have got carte blanche, then it's obviously going to keep on happening more and more... Which is a shame, as there should still be room in the crowded schedules for an accurate portrayal of something set in different centuries.

As regards 'can viewers nowadays still appreciate something from a previous era without it being changed?

Digressing a little (sorry). I think modern audiences, including children, can definitely appreciate different eras. My son's favourite book for a while was Mystery at Witchend which is firmly a WWII book. In fact he preferred historic books; I think Cherub and Alex Rider were the only modern books he's liked.

But if people always assume that they need to be updated for the modern audience, then I think it will become self-fulfilling. So as people see less that does get set in the past, they will then find ones that are do look wrong, and they'll be uncomfortable because there'll be things that they just don't understand because they've never come across it. That's fine for a few things in a book/film, but when it becomes too many things then watching/reading becomes a chore because of constantly having to work things out.

Things like old money, I learnt from reading about it; boarding school, scullery maids, darning, old traditions like stir up Sunday, steam trains with individual carriages etc. All things that were out of my modern knowledge but I learnt about through books.

I'm thinking about a discussion I had with an American over word usage. Typically if there is an English book published in America they change the words to the normal American word for words we use differently. Think of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
So many of the words that they know, they had no idea that in the UK we used nappy instead of diaper, hood instead of bonnet, sneakers instead of trainers etc. I did know these because American books typically aren't "translated" when they are brought to the UK. So having read lots of Hardy Boys etc I'd come across these. And some of them confused me for a while (I remember "bangs" confusing me for ages) but I asked, I looked at context and I learnt.
And the person I was talking with felt that by infantising their readers by assuming that they couldn't understand they were actually depriving them of the opportunity to learn.
But also because most books did this in America it meant that one which didn't potentially was inaccessible to a child reader simply because they weren't used to it.