![]() Langdon is a character who travels the globe and usually is racing against life-and-death stakes, but at the same time he’s a character whose modus operandi is staring at things, saying 'I know these symbols' and then explaining them to everybody in the room, whether they care or not. The Lost Symbol is a straightforward adaptation, held back by many of the same things that stymied Ron Howard’s three (apparently, though I remember only two) attempts to adapt Dan Brown novels for the big screen. That one of those three shows somehow became a towering artistic achievement with almost no broadcast compromises is one of the great oddities of 21st century TV, but the Hannibal formula isn’t one that anybody is trying to reproduce here. Think Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector. The Lost Symbol never finds an enjoyable way to interpret Dan Brown’s trademark reliance on a main character whose superpower is mansplaining: "This is the kind of book-to-movie-to-TV brand-mining that NBC has tried to do repeatedly," says Daniel Fienberg. ![]() The Langdon of The Lost Symbol is a dork who labors under the youthful delusion that he is either not a dork or the king dork to whom all other dorks must bow." He's older, a little awkward, and when played by Tom Hanks, he has a wry sense of humor about what a huge dork he is. Other portrayals of Robert Langdon have worked because he's an unlikely hero. This is all par for the course for a Langdon adventure, except that this time Langdon is around 30 years old, which makes his Harvard-tested competence come off as arrogance and his nerdy need to explain things comes off as mansplaining nonsense. Naturally, this becomes Robert's problem, so he teams up with Solomon's daughter Katherine (Valorie Curry) to follow an ancient path of enlightenment hidden in the Mason-inspired art and architecture of Washington DC. In The Lost Symbol, Robert Langdon's (Ashley Zukerman) wealthy mentor Peter Solomon (Eddie Izzard), a high-ranking Freemason, is kidnapped. Not only is The Lost Symbol the novel the weakest of Brown's five Langdon adventures (which is probably why no one made it into a movie), The Lost Symbol the TV show makes a critical mistake that renders the show difficult to watch: It makes Robert Langdon a total a**hole. This will be regarded in the future as a bad move. The Lost Symbol on Peacock is the first time anyone has tried to stretch one of Brown's books into a television series. The international locations and cheesy thrills of the series lend themselves easily to adaptation, and three of the five ( The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons, and Inferno) have appeared on the big screen in zippy, fast-moving films starring Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon. ![]() "All five of them adhere to the same formula, wherein Langdon, a middle-aged Harvard professor of 'symbology,' gets wrapped up in an age-old conspiracy involving a secret society and must follow historical clues hidden in famous landmarks or artworks to solve a mystery with his attractive lady sidekick before a zealot of some form or another murders him. ![]() "Dan Brown's Robert Langdon books aren't complicated," says Alexis Need of the Peacock drama starring Ashley Zukerman as Langdon. ![]()
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