Shannara

[bunn]

Pp wanted to watch The Shannara Chronicles.

"It'll be terrible!" I warned him.

"It might be good!" he said.

The look of dawning horror on his face as we watched the first fifteen minutes was a thing of beauty, but now things have pretty much dissolved into helpless giggling.

Pp's conclusion: There should be more lines like: "Are there any elven traditions you respect?" "Only the ones with parties." Or "I was expecting something more woodsy".
And characters named after minor African countries.

My conclusion: MAKE IT GO AWAY! THE HORROR! THE HORROR!

I think the very worst bit for me was the Elventhrone of Obviously Moulded Plastic, surrounded by garden centre silk plants. You feel that there should be an overpriced tea-room and a shelf of new age music just around the corner.

Comments

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Well, I suppose that as bad books often make good films (and TV series) Pp might have beeb right to hope. But I honestly think the Shannara books are pretty much unreadable, so...

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I haven't tried in over 20 years, but that was my recollection too. If the measure of success of a TV show was to live up to the quality of the original book, then this one has definitely ticked the box.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

*snork*

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, even as a kid I couldn't get through the books! I saw that it was on and didn't investigate further, although I'm now wondering whether 5 mins to laugh at the Boy's face might have been *maybe* worth it ;)

[bunn.livejournal.com]

There is no reason, on the face of it, why elves should not look and sound like clean-cut and muscular American youth.

AND YET.

[purplecat]

A friend of mine has been watching. I can't say I've read her reviews, but I've been amused by the increasing levels of invective that appear above the cut each time she talks about it.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I think I have a fairly high tolerance of the kind of bad TV you can watch while doing other things, but this was on another level. The thing is a venomous pollutant, and deserves to die screaming.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

But is it the sort of awful that would actually be great fun to watch (at least for a little while) with a group of people - people who are gathered together for a roleplaying weekend, for example? :-D

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm. Well, I'm definitely not watching it again sober, that's for sure.

[natsuko1978.livejournal.com]

I only watched for 5 minutes, but I think if you took a sip every time there was a line of naff Mr/Ms Explainer dialogue - like someone telling another person what the relationship between the two of them was - you could get pretty drunk very quickly. And very drunk by the end of an hour.

It was like a lesson in How Not To Write. :(

[bunn.livejournal.com]

YES. The writing was baaaaaaaaaaad. I think that's the killer blow really, naff sets and stupid plots can be overcome.

[natsuko1978.livejournal.com]

I'm a fan of opera and Classic Who. Naff (cheap!) sets and stupid plots can be charming! :D (Character has TB - and SINGS about it... of course she does. But the music is glorious.)

And to get over the whole "Sci-Fi is very expensive thing to make" when trying to sell Red Dwarf to the BBC, the trial scripts had comments like "HE WALKS DOWN A CORRIDOR [it's a very plain and ordinary corridor. It could be a corridor anywhere, really. Even Television Centre.]"

If the writing and characters grab you, sets and even plot are distinctly secondary. But Person A telling Person B what her race and rank are, is just dire and cringe-worthy: "You are an elven princess!"; "I am your friend and servant!"

Oh, God! Make them stop.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

That's the worst thing about it. Once watched it infects your brain...

I'm more of a Blakes Seven person than Who, personally, but yes +1 on the 'cheap sets are fine!'

Also, I was a BBC Merlin fan, so it's not like my fantasy bar is set unrealistically high :-D

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

Hmm, this post is the first thing that has actually made me interested in watching this :-D After all, it's not like the abomination that was the Earthsea miniseries, in that the Shannara books are *not* a series I'm personally invested in :-)

Skordh adds: it sounds as if they have borrowed the stage sets from Beastmaster 3: The Eye of Braxus. That had similar quality of sets/props, and indeed dialogue.

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

Sample dialogue:

Beastmaster: "Where does Lord Agon keep his prisoners?"
Random Castle Person he accosted: "In the dungeons!"
Beastmaster: *lets RCP go and dashes off, without asking for directions to the dungeons or preventing RCP from sounding the alarm*
Us: *facepalm*

[bunn.livejournal.com]

You'd be taking your life in your hands, unless your alcohol allergy problem has gone away... I think this is beyond 'so bad its good' territory. I think it might be so bad it's really really bad...

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Do things explode? I do like a good explosion in a terrible movie.