Akela Explains It All: Ron Howard and H.P. Lovecraft

By Akela Talamasca on September 25th, 2009

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From the abyssal gulfs of strange aeons comes the terrifying news that Ron Howard is attached to direct the movie adaptation of the graphic novel “The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft”.

Now, excuse my going off on a rant here … like you could do anything to stop me. Ron Howard is a man of some ability, no question. He directed “Apollo 13″, which I thought was pretty tense for a good portion of the running time. And “Backdraft” did a great job of glamorizing the firefighting industry in an entertaining way. However, he also directed the far too long “Far and Away” (see what I did there?), and completely ignored the homosexual element in “A Beautiful Mind”. And, of course, who can forget his contributions to cinematic history “The Da Vinci Code” and “Angels and Demons”?

At best, you could characterize his directing style as “bland”. And “bland” does not at all represent the work of H.P. Lovecraft. Ol’ Howard Phillips’s work is obviously informed by his hatred/fear of vaginas and sea creatures. Throughout his most famous stories runs a pervasive dread that never quite gets off the ground enough to truly frighten, but that’s what makes reading him so much fun. That, of course, and his hardly-suppressed distaste for ethnicities and cultures other than his own.

So, obviously Ron Howard is the perfect man to helm anything having to do with the New Englander’s particular wheelhouse. I can name at least five other directors who would be far better suited to this project than Our Opie; David Lynch being at the top of the list.

Now, it’s still really early in its lifecycle, so this thing could still drop outta Richie’s hands and into the mitts of someone more capable. One can only hope. But to take a wider tack on this subject, consider this: when a writer’s work gets turned into a movie, his book sales usually take a huge jump up. But Lovecraft is a writer who’s best experienced at the age of, say, 12, generally before serious critical thought sinks in. I tried to re-read the man’s short fiction a couple of years ago and found it very nearly unassailable. He was not the supreme wordsmith I remembered him being. So when this movie shambles into the light, exposing a less-geeky audience to H.P.’s febrile mind, will it spell the end of the eldritch mystique those books have managed to maintain all these years since their creation?

No! The cyclopean terrors, scrabbling at the very periphery of the illimitable depths of sane men’s nightmares! I cannot bear them! My sanity has broken at last! AIIEEEEEEE!