![]() ![]() Take, for example, Lord of the Rings in the books Frodo had the ring for over sixty years before he had to do anything with it - in Jackson’s nine hour opus it was more like six days! So, when we look at ‘Embers opening sequence, it might be natural to think that we are skipping time compared to the book. Books can take their time with everything, from getting to know characters to building entire worlds – with film, even ‘epics,’ there simply isn’t enough time. ![]() That is the opening of Gil Kenan’s filmic take on Jeanne Duprau’s 2003 novel City of Ember.Įveryone knows the problems inherent with adapting a novel to a screen play, but of them all, I think timing has to be the most problematic. a group of scientists (known as "Builders") place, in an impenetrable box, instructions to escape from the City, for the 'good of mankind', setting the timer for two hundred years hence and entrusting it to all future mayors of the City – but with the unexpected death of one of the mayors, the lineage is broken and the box becomes lost. ![]() ![]() And if that wasn't bleak enough, as a result of what has happened to the world, the human race has had to abandon the surface in favour of an underground city - the City of Ember and this is where our story takes place: a crumbling city and the struggle of its inhabitants as they cope with food shortages and power outages. Just a dead world, or at least an uninhabitable surface. We don’t know why, or from what, or under what conditions, but it has died nevertheless. Wanted by the police, Lina and Doon have no choice but to set out, follow the instructions, and hope they don't find anything worse on the surface of the Earth.The world has died. They find out the reason the box is in their possession is because their families once attempted to escape Ember, and the paper inside the box holds the directions of how to get back to the surface. This sends her on the run with Doon from the authorities. The mayor sees the box in Lina's possession and demands it be handed over, but she refuses. She soon comes to realize that the box has been in the possession of every mayor of Ember throughout history, until a few mayors ago, when it was lost, apparently stashed in her grandmother's closet. At her grandmother's house, she finds a special metallic box, and on the inside are torn pieces of paper. As she runs around, she notices the city-wide blackouts are getting longer and longer, and she suspects that the city's electrical generator, built hundreds of years ago, may be failing- perhaps for good, soon enough. Lina is, sadly, tasked with repairing pipes in the underbelly of the city, but her friend Doon, assigned to be a messenger, switches jobs with her, granting her her dream. Lina's main goal is, when job assignments are handed out to the young people of Ember by its powerful mayor, to be assigned the role of Messenger- Messengers get to interact with others, and they get to be in direct contact with the mayor himself. However, her hopes and dreams are different from ours, as she lives in the City of Ember, a huge underground city built hundreds of years ago to provide a home for survivors from worldwide catastrophe on the surface of the Earth. Lina is a teenage girl with hopes and dreams. A teenage girl unravels a conspiracy in her post-apocalyptic underground civilization. ![]()
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