Have you seen the movie trailers for Bridge to Terabithia? Looks like a great high fantasy. And it is. Sort of. I vividly remember reading and enjoying the book as a kid. But it is a memory tinged with sadness. And I find the trailers to be quite misleading. Yes, there is fantasy and adventure, however parents are going to take their kids to this movie unprepared for the fact that ****spoiler alert**** one of the main characters, a child, dies. I guess it will make for great conversations between parents and children about death. I just think parents ought to know ahead of time and decide if they and their kids are ready for it. Of course, as a young reader, I was blindsided by it. And it sure gets in deeper when you are unprepared. If you know a character is going to die, you have the chance to steel yourself. To guard from getting to attached to them, so that when they die, it doesn't hurt so bad. Heh, I can think of two other literary deaths that will still get me weeping every time. In fact, when I re-read these books as I am want to do occasionally, I will read all the way up to the death and then stop. I am talking about Lonesome Dove, of course, and David Eddings Sparhawk series which if you don't read fantasy you won't know what I am talking about.

I am just rambling, since I just saw that movie trailer and wondered how they could take such a powerful book and turn it into a 35 second adventure trailer with no reference to the true theme of the book.

I may be extra sensitive to this since I recently saw Pan's Labyrinth. It was a truly brilliant movie. Powerful and heart breaking. And I went in totally unprepared for the brutal, realistic violence. It was marketed using little but the high fantasy adventure aspect and I didn't expect that the movie was really about the evils that men do and the lengths that innocents must go to, to rise above and escape them. The fantasy aspect is almost minor and as a viewer you can either choose to believe it is real or not and it doesn't matter to the power of the movie either way. It really is brilliant and one of the most powerful movies I have ever seen. I am glad I saw the movie. I have told others that they must see it. But I am not sure if it wouldn't have been easier to take had I understood going in that I was not really seeing a fairy tale movie.

Ok. Gotta cook dinner, I'll leave the discussion to other armchair intellectuals...