I have not read The Spiderwick Chronicles nor have I seen the entire movie adaptation. I hadn’t even known about that series until I heard about the new remake that was coming out and decided to research it a bit. With that in mind, for those of you who are die-hard Spiderwick Chronicles fans, please know that I’m only coming at the reboot in terms of content instead of accuracy. By no means is this going to be an exhaustive deep dive into what the producers got wrong in terms of the lore of the original story and how the books line up with the adaptation. But even with that said, this show is so bad that I only got through one episode before having to reevaluate my life decisions.
#1: Race-swaps for clout
For those of you who have been following this blog for awhile, you’ll know that I talk a lot about how Hollywood loves erasing canonically white characters to be more “inclusive” and “equitable”. The Spiderwick Chronicles is no different.
According to my sources, the main characters/family (Jared, Simon, Mallory, and their mom, Helen) in the books were white. However, in the reboot they have been race-swapped and while I would’ve been fine with this if the acting and script was good, these characters were clearly swapped so the writers could put in unnecessary discussions about racism.
For example, within the first few minutes of the show, we meet Jared, the troubled main character and we see him completely vandalizing a gas station bathroom with a Sharpie. He then walks out of the gas station to where his family’s car is parked, they ask him what took him so long, he lies about trying to download a podcast, and then the gas station attendant comes walking up behind him. Now, this isn’t just any gas station attendant. No, no, no. She’s an evil white gas station attendant who accuses Jared of stealing a pack of gum. Jared’s family immediately swoops to his rescue and says that he would never steal gum (since he hates it), and the gas station attendant walks off.
Now, while this might seem like something trivial, if you watch the show, the entire scene is shot in a way that is obviously supposed to imply that this was clearly an act of unadulterated racism and racial prejudice. The only problem with this is that a few seconds later, we find out that the gas station lady was right, and he had stolen a pack of gum for funsies and had just hidden it on his brother, Simon. She didn’t have any racial prejudice or bias against him, she was just doing her job. But the show still insists that this was racist behavior because apparently black people can’t do anything wrong. They’re perfect and all their problems are just from the systemic oppression inflicted upon them by white people. Nothing is their fault in this universe.
Hollywood morality, everybody!
And it doesn’t just stop there. The “racist” moments continue throughout the show like when the white villain-in-disguise stares at Jared and Simon for a few seconds before walking off and Jared blames it on the fact that they’re two black kids in a mostly white town and the evil, white, male HOA guy makes an actually racist joke that Helen and her kids should be living in a condo somewhere.
Seriously, why is this in a kid’s show? It’s unnecessary to the story and just makes the characters even more insufferable than they already are from the actor’s bad acting. Yes, there are racist people out there, but framing every white person as a racist in your T.V. show doesn’t solve the problem. It exacerbates it.
#2: Mulgarath/Dr. Braurer and his minion, Calliope
These two are the most awkward people in the entire show. The strange romantic tension (if you can call it that) between them is creepy and uncomfortable to the point where you want to remind the producers that it’s a PG-rated show. Throughout the show these characters will say something in a weird or overly dramatic way then proceed to stare into each other’s eyes for an uncomfortable amount of time. It was so bad that at first, I thought, “Okay, maybe I’m just reading too much into this scene. Maybe it’s not actually that bad.” Then I watched some other people giving their reviews of the first episode and I’m not the only one that’s picking up on the creepy, obvious, undertones between Mulgarath and his servant. If you want to see what I’m talking about, I suggest watching the first episode on Roku so you can decide for yourself if this is just the actors hamming it up too much, a really bad script, or both.
#3: CGI
Somehow, even though this show was produced in 2023 and just came out, the CGI is still the same quality as it was in 2008. From the clips I’ve seen of the original movie versus the Roku version, though the character Thimbletack definitely has a better, much cuter design than he did in the movie, he still looks objectively bad. He doesn’t look like he could be real flesh and bone at all. He looks fake.
Basically, I think this show has the same problem with CGI as the Percy Jackson reboot on Disney+ has. As long as the CGI is shrouded in darkness and is only a silhouette of what would take aa lot of time and detail to make look real, it looks fine, but the minute it is used to create something close-up, it looks like crap.
#4: The Pacing
The pacing in this show is also pretty bad and really showcases what I think is a pretty common problem in modern T.V. Plot points and exposition are just thrown at the audience and often don’t serve any purpose to the larger plot at all or if they do, they’re so disjointed from one another that it’s hard to figure out why they’re there. The audience isn’t left to figure things out on their own with the characters. Instead, we’re just force-fed information and it really hurts the effect that the reveal could’ve had later on.
#5: The Background
Sadly, the only good thing I can say about this show is that at least the sets look really good. The house looks beautiful, like it could lead to fairyland, the atmosphere whenever Mulgarath is around reflects a sense of foreboding, etc. However, this unfortunately isn’t enough to save the first episode.
Until next time,
M.J.
The Tanuki Corner 
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