Legend of the Seeker: Prophecy/Destiny (1)Nov.2008

[Felon]

I'd be surprised if they made many changes of that level, since it would make shelling out for the rights to the story fairly pointless. That being said, they could stand to punch things up. The humour has been kind of weak so far. And they have been deviating from the plots of the books somewhat (so I've heard), so there's nothing stopping them from making things more interesting there either.

A lot of what you pay for with a license is just the name. Starship Troopers would be one extreme example. A more moderate and relevant one would be Lord of the Rings, where characters were added from whole cloth (like the orc general--Lutz or something like that) while others were expanded from bit parts (like Aeowyn, to provided that much-needed heroine element). In the end, you try stay faithful, but few people are going to be faithful in the face of focus groups saying "change this".

It's a handsome production, but a little, well, dull.

Well, you probably summed the show's problems up in that sentence better than my whole post did. It's just dull.

 

[Orius]

What I got was moderately high production values, a hot Confessor, and more thinly-veiled New Zealand travelogue.

What's wrong with a hot Confessor?

But yeah, the dullness is pretty evident in the first episode, and I suspect it's from following the books rather closely. The subsequent episodes have been a bit better, but the biggest problem overall is that its an adaptation of a book series instead of something original, so that limits the creative freedom the show has.

 

[Zog]

Hulu - Watch your favorites. Anytime. For free. has all of the eps so far.

Its OK - nothing brilliant yet, but I've only seen the pilot and the next ep.


And I'm very curious to see where they go with the story - as MAJOR changes have already been made. Namely, the main Plot / MacGuffin of the first book has been discarded or ignored.

In the book, the 'mysterious vine' grows because of some major 'The World Will Be Mine' Ritual the Darken Rahl has started - info on this in in the book of Counted Shadows - Which Richard HAS SPENT HIS LIFE MEMORIZING.
No mention of the macguffins (boxes of Ogden) and the book of counted shadows is introduced directly counter to how it is in the book series.
Also, Zedd created the magical boundry. Other things may come out as in the series slowly. We shall see.

 

[Merkuri]

No mention of the macguffins (boxes of Ogden)

They actually introduced those in the last new episode.

 

[Orius]

Second part this week.

 

[Steel_Wind]

I finally got around to watcing this. I did read the books back in the 90s until I finally had my fill of them around book 5 or 6. I don't remember exactly where I stopped.

The first of the series, Wizard's First Rule, was pretty good and original enough at its time. It was also not planned as a series, and the author had a helluva lot of uncomfortbale retconning to do after the first novel to make it into a series.

Unfortunately, Goodkind got increasingly derivative of Jordan in the balance of the series, and the recurring plot devices of dividing Richard and Kahlan in some fashion while somehow putting Zed out of commission (so he didn't do Richard's task for him) put me off until I lost interest. It was also obvious that the man didn't write with an outline and that he was more or less making it up as he went along, novel-to-novel.

In complicated fat fantasy fiction, you can't get away with that approach for long until the inconsistencies break the tale or, at the least, the setting.

Okay. That's the books. But that's rushing to the end of a very long tale. The series is new and is not (yet) being crushed under any of that weight; moreover, the screenplay writers have the benefit of something that Goodkind never had - an outline of where this is all going. So the series writers can avoid those pitfalls, if they care to try.

The series is principally concerned with the first novel, which, to be fair, is a very decent stand alone tale.

Episodes 1 and 2 had remarkably decent production values for a Fantasy TV series. For a movie? No. For a HBO style miniseries? No, not really.

But for syndicated TV? Hell yes. I'm there.

It's been quite a while since I read the series in general and Wizards' First Rule in particular. I am certain they are breaking up the plot here and there and rewriting things to suit the pacing of TV.

But for all that - it was enjoyable enough and worth watching. It's not like it costs a $10 admission fee.

This one is worth my time. Your time? That's up to you.

 

[Orius]

The first of the series, Wizard's First Rule, was pretty good and original enough at its time. It was also not planned as a series, and the author had a helluva lot of uncomfortbale retconning to do after the first novel to make it into a series.

Unfortunately, Goodkind got increasingly derivative of Jordan in the balance of the series, and the recurring plot devices of dividing Richard and Kahlan in some fashion while somehow putting Zed out of commission (so he didn't do Richard's task for him) put me off until I lost interest. It was also obvious that the man didn't write with an outline and that he was more or less making it up as he went along, novel-to-novel.

That does not sound good. I've also read that as time went on, he got on some kind of kick that he isn't writing fantasy either, but high-minded philosophical tracts or some such nonsense. And getting derivative of Jordan (who did know where he was going with it, more or less) is probably not a good idea if you lack the writing skills to do so.

In complicated fat fantasy fiction, you can't get away with that approach for long until the inconsistencies break the tale or, at the least, the setting.

Episodes 1 and 2 had remarkably decent production values for a Fantasy TV series. For a movie? No. For a HBO style miniseries? No, not really.

But for syndicated TV? Hell yes. I'm there.

Syndicated TV is not going to be anywhere near on the level of pay able or movies. There's only so much money one can get out of ads. But the producers have plenty of experience with doing Hercules and Xena, and they're showing that they're up to the task here. They've been consistantly delivering a solid show that's worth watching. Also, it looks like they've been using a lot of talent from those shows as extras and guest stars so far in this series, and this week's episode was directed by Michael Hurst (Iolaus from Herc).

That brings me to something I've been wondering for a while. IIRC, Hypersmurf did stuntwork or something on Xena. I've been wondering if he's done anything in this show so far.

 

[Orius]

Well, the first season wrapped up, so back into the summer repeat cycle. And we start back at the beginning ... again.