Sci Fi Channel Plans 'Earthsea' Miniseries 308
Gumpy writes "The Sci-Fi Channel has started producing a TV miniseries based on the first two books of Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea series. The Earthsea miniseries is supposed to start on the Sci Fi Channel in December 2004."
DragonLance (Score:2, Insightful)
This is good news... but I want to see the movie (Score:1, Insightful)
Hate to be a Cassandra (Score:5, Insightful)
Hate to say it. It is likely to be a flop. Compared to Earthsea the Lord of the Rings is simple. I(very biased)MO this is the second most impossible movie after the Lord of Light. The reason is that you have both an extremely complex, logical and well described world along with a complex story line and complex characters.
I love the rings, but the rings characters are like cartoons compared to the Earthsea (or nearly any Ursula Le Guin book).
Don't get too excited (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd love to see a big-screen version, though. I think there would be a better chance of getting it right in the larger format. Not because of "action" scenes or dramatic landscapes or any of the usual things people want to see in a movie, but because to do these books justice, you really would need to immerse the audience in the film in a way that isn't possible on a typical 29" screen.
Re:Never really clicked for me (Score:4, Insightful)
That's rather the problem for a visual adaptation. They aren't really plot driven. The plot is just an excuse to watch the characters grow. The first three are little studies of three aspects of becoming adult (responsibility, identity, mortality).
The fourth never spoke to me, and I haven't yet read the fourth.
I can't imagine them manageing to recreate that when the temptation to jump at magic battles with dragons is there.
Re:DragonLance (Score:5, Insightful)
Read the books whilst you can... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not suggesting that the books are about to disappear. Nor am I implying that the TV series will be terrible. I have no idea how well the product will turn out, and the books will be as available after as they are before.
No, what I'm saying is that pretty soon this series will influence your view of things, whether you want it to or not. I'm seeing this with my nephews, who are reading Lord of the Rings directly after seeing the films. They're seeing the book as much more action-packed than I did, and I'm sure that this is due to expectation after watching the films.
So read them now, and then watch with interest. You're going to be influenced - can't help but be, but at least you'll have your own ideas in place beforehand.
Cheers,
Ian
Re:Prepare for disappointment (Score:5, Insightful)
I find Ursula LeGuin's books utterly painful, the most boring things this side of, well, Robert Heinlein. Even Left Hand of Darkness, pretty much a consensus all-time top ten, bored the hell out of me.
(As an aside, where's Connie Willis' rabid fan base? Her books range from excellent to mindblowing, but I've never heard people fawn over her like they do LeGuin or the other tedious female sci-fi authors. Is a general warmth towards tradition and religion too politically incorrect to be assigned in those classes that are always pushing LeGuin? It's not like she's Margaret Thatcher.)
Re:Fantasy, SciFi (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:SciFi Channel (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, it has nothing to do with personal choice, freedom, pursuit of happiness, being allowed to chase the American Dream, not having to wait in bread lines and being able to buy as much toilet paper as you want. The real reason capitalism is great is because we get to watch shit on TV. BWHAHAHAA! What a fucknut.
Re:Prepare for enjoyment (Score:1, Insightful)
Every time someone tells me that the reason Peter Jackson butchered Lord of the Rings is that "it's too hard to make a book like this into a movie", I point them to ScFi Channel's production of Dune -- which was done with a very small budget and with (excellect!) no-name actors.
Making a good movie is really about having a great script and great actors. The rest of the Hollywood crap is just eye candy for restless nine year olds.
I wonder if they'll use black or dark Polynesian actors like the books call for?
Re:Nice synopsis for Earthsea Trilogy newbies (Score:3, Insightful)
Lordy! What a bucket of absolute toss.
not really suited for SciFi (Score:3, Insightful)
It's truly a pity that the BBC never picked up an option -- that have been a perfect combination.
What about a bit more science? (Score:1, Insightful)
Cautious optimism is called for (Score:2, Insightful)
If you haven't read it yet, I envy you.
The SciFi Channel did an amazing job with Dune, another very cerebral book, so there's hope that they'll take the same intelligent approach with Earthsea. That clown Peter Jackson could learn a lot from these people: respect the books, have a great script, and don't spend so much time wanking around with special effects.
Re:DragonLance (Score:2, Insightful)
Just replace dragonlance with belgariad, I enjoyed these books as a teen only to reread them and realize that what I once thought was fantastic foreshadowing, was more along the lines of a plot summary, and the characters were written to be oblivious to it. Its as if the prophacy were as follows
A great hero will come, he is standing right beside you, he is that kid, you can't miss him, yes him, the one pointing to himself and shaking his head, yes he is the next great wizard and hero and is going to marry that chick over their, yeah her. He is going to defeat the big bad guy, yeah that one over there, yes you mr brooding arch type, the string bean kid is going to whip your butt. Just to make this more prophecy like, it will all happen after the sun rises in the east, your cat coughs up a fur ball that looks like jay leno, and the ground hog sees his shadow runs and hides but spring come early anyways because he is in fact just a ground hog and not soothsayer of doom and weather.
Re:DragonLance (Score:3, Insightful)
What a bizarre non-sequitur.
Earthsea is widely regarded as a classic, and not just within the genre. Dragonlance is somebody's D&D campaign written up with pedestrian prose, shallow characterisation and a corny plot.
Though I admit Ged doesn't roll nearly as many natural 20s as whoever those PCs were.
When did miniseries become a cable thing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Back in the day, Shogun and Roots and that kind of thing were big money makers for the three broadcast networks. Now it's the SciFi Channel and that kind of venue putting out new series, or first-time-in-the-US ones anyway. (A&E ran the [fantastic, literate, well-acted] BBC Pride and Prejudice, for example.)
How long ago did this happen? Personally I'm not so sure it's a bad thing. The production values are lower, okay, but CGI can fill in rough edges for this science fiction or fantasty stuff. A miniseries is much better, much much better, for most books, and for characters in general, than any film release. The Aubrey Maturin movie this spring was pretty good, really, but there's just no way to do that in two-plus hours.
Maybe in 25 years we'll get Harry Potter miniseries done by some sort of children's network, and the plots and characters won't feel like they're being crammed inside of three hours to cash in at the box office. That first HP movie in particular was way, way frenetic.
Re:Hate to be a Cassandra (Score:3, Insightful)
If the writers, director, and actors of Earthsea can use this to their advantage, they have an opportunity to give strong, interesting performances.
The strength of LotR is the depth of its background material. That allowed them to create extraordinary visuals, and that's the real reason for the success of the films. Not that I have any particular faith in the Academy, but they roughly reflected its strengths: many awards for visual elements, zero for acting. Not that the actors were bad, but the roles don't give them many opportunities to really succeed.
Earthsea, on the other hand, was written more like a modern story and less like an ancient epic. They've got a real opportunity here, a great work by a master storyteller. I hope it works out.
Re:Prepare for disappointment (Score:2, Insightful)
I didn't particularly like Tehanu either, but I don't think her "message" did the book in - I think it was just that my memories of the original Earthsea trilogy come from my childhood, and Tehanu took a point of view that tended to stomp those rather naive memories into the ground.
Re:SciFi Channel (Score:1, Insightful)
Be humorous, but drop the rudeness. You had a point, but now you're a troll.
Re:DragonLance (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:DragonLance (Score:3, Insightful)
I tried re-reading the Belgariad just recently, nearly twenty years after I initially read it.
I loved it when I was a pre-teen; now it just gets up my nose. All the twee repartee, the fantasy cliches piled on top of each other, the utter lack of anything approaching suspense in the plot... taken all together, the books are just unbearable.
Re:Prepare for disappointment (Score:2, Insightful)
I was disappointed with it initially too, it's a jarring change in tone from the original trilogy. It went down better on a re-read, and with the last two books in place, it fits pretty well (even the deus ex machina at the end of Tehanu makes sense at the end of the The Other Wind).
But I don't have high hopes for this miniseries - they're doing A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan, which means a lot of restructuring to get a single plot line out of both books. (The ending of A Wizard of Earthsea still amazes me almost a quarter-century after I first read it.)
devastation (Score:2, Insightful)
i reread Wizard this summer. beautiful little Man v. Self. but there's no way they can lace the movie with all the subtle surrealism of the book.
Myren
Re:Never really clicked for me (Score:2, Insightful)
Taran's is a straightforward tale of becomming a man. Ged's is a complex tale of becoming a wise man. So yeah, you might have been too young to realize the character development. :-)
I might re-read The Prydain Chronicles for fun and escape if I came across a copy; but even now as an adult, each time I re-read the Earthsea novels I feel a little wiser.
Re:DragonLance (Score:3, Insightful)
The big problem I had with the books is that not only are the characters stock characters, but the world they lives in demand that they be that way. Any person born in *that* country must act like this. Sure, it made sense within the book that the people would be affected by their patron god and take after him in personality, but it made the characters that much flatter. Not only are they stock, but they can never grow beyond it because they are limited by the rules of the world they live in.
Rereading the Belgariad and the Mallorean is like reading a checklist. You just check things off as you go. Flowers supposed to bloom? Check. Person supposed to be saved? Check. Evil defeated? Check.
Re:My Lord... (um...) (Score:3, Insightful)
That's not a flame, just pointing out the obvious...
Re:DragonLance (Score:1, Insightful)
Narnia: Written by a professional author who was also a college professor, in an attempt to produce quality literature for young adults. The 'infantile' segue, which is a very common literary device in classic fantasy, serves as a mechanism to help the reader understand that they are transitioning from the real world to a fantasy world, so that they know to suspend their disbelief.
MKFS/S: Written by a professional author who was trying to sell books by creating a humorous line of fantasy novels. The 'infantile' segue is meant as a parody of other fantasy novels which use similar techniques and have among their respected ancestors the Narnia books mentioned above.
Dragonlance: Written by a couple of former game designers, with very little writing experience, in an attempt to make some extra money and help their company sell more games. Continued by numerous other authors also employed by that company, in order to sell more games. Sold by that company to bookstores by using the term 'soap opera' in their marketing literature. Full of infantile segues of the quality of soap operas from scene to scene, even if they do not try to segue from reality to fantasy.
I did enjoy Dragonlance series at the time, but the quality of writing and plot definitely do not compare to Narnia. Although it may compare to MKFS/S.
All three are definitely escapist, but name one piece of fantasy literature which is not. Then tell me why it's not escapist, and explain why Dragonlance also fits that reason.
with all of SciFi's funding... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why can't they [SciFi] put the funds to good use, like co-financing the Beeb's revival of "Doctor Who" slated for 2005? SciFi would be a better outlet in the States for it than BBC America...and reach a larger potential audience since SciFi is a basic cable channel and BBC America is usually treated as something reserved for digital cable packages. Yep, load up 10 Spanish-speaking stations in basic cable, but make the Beeb a premium cultural channel. Nope, that's not discrimination at all! Damn you to hell, Comcast!
Re:When did miniseries become a cable thing? (Score:4, Insightful)
In 25 years, no one below the age of 30 will know what Harry Potter is. (Kid living with mean family discovers he has magic powers, secret history. It's been done better before, and it will be done better again. Don't get me wrong -- I liked [most of] the books -- but don't confuse them for something they aren't.)
Re:better, by far, than harry potter (Score:5, Insightful)
hey, what a good idea! let's trash a book we've never read!
i heard that wizard of earthsea has a wizard in it that fights dragons! that sounds a lot like the hobbit! tolkien's estate should sue!
it's great that you recommend that parents have their children read earthsea; it's a great book that's perfect for readers from curious pre-teens to fantasy-minded adults. but rowling writes some fine fiction for children, and for you to discount it without reading it is pretty lame.
here's a tip--try not to be so pretentious.
Re:DragonLance (Score:3, Insightful)
Not trying to flame or anything, seriously, but I think that if this is the case, there's a whole 'nother level to those books that you may not have been able to catch when you were young. I know I didn't. Now bear in mind, I think Lewis' heavy-handed Christianity as displayed in his other works kind of makes me leery of actually taking on the undertaking of reading them all again, and they are children's literature, after all, but having to listen to endless analysis after analysis of C S Lewis' books over the last semester or two from my mother has given me a different viewpoint on them than the you seem to have.
Another thing that I think a lot of people don't think about with the Narnia series is that they were written in the 50's. They predate pretty much all of the modern fantasy genre. Even if they don't seem that fresh or thought provoking to you, (though they do to me), they were astoundingly original at the time, and helped shape a generation of authors. Don't get me wrong, I loved the Dragonlance series, but I don't think that a hundred years from now they will be considered classics. I imagine the Narnia series still will.
Re:Very cool (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree, however, with the majority view in that I can't see how they can possibly pull this off. Here's an example: LeGuin uses the concept of everything having a true name, that is, a name in the true speech, the language the dragons use, the language that Ea used when he spoke the world. This is not just some interesting concept found throughout the novels- it defines them and binds them together as a coherent whole. The first book is Ged's quest to find the true name of the Gebbeth and thus bring about its absumption. The second book's most inspiring moment is where he gives the girl her true name. In the third, the drama is made more intense when Ged discovers that the dragons lose their speech. How can these be communicated (meaningfully) in a visual medium? I think it would be quite shameful for this central theme to be made irrelevant or worse transformed into something entirely different from the author's intent. At best, you get dialogue that completely confuses anyone who hasn't read the book. At worst, you either leave it out (which makes the mini-series pointless) or you turn it into something completely different and piss off the very-vocal fans of the book (e.g. "Wierding Modules" in the original Dune movie). And this is only one of many important themes LeGuin weaves into these books. Leave them out and all you have left is a "Magik Island Adventure" story.
Anyone who trusts the sci-fi channel to remain true to the book should look at what they did to Battlestar Galactica (yes, I know it was a series, not a book). To quote Edward James Olmos, "I know the Sci Fi [network] wants to say that everyone's going to like it, but in the case of longtime fans, they're not." I think the same will apply to Earthsea.
My Predictions (serious and otherwise):
Re:STOP AT THE 3rd BOOK!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Deliberately. LeGuin wrote it as an adult looking back on her juvenile work and finding it less than satisfactory, with the intent of allowing all of her readers to see as she did. Difficult, yes. I found it very powerful. Few people, especially creatives, have the self-discipline to critique themselves in that way.
It is neither utter crap, nor anti-men. That said, the Deus Ex Machina style ending, while foreshadowed adequately, is predicatble and a little tedious -- it is how the third ended, after all.
Re:Prepare for disappointment (Score:3, Insightful)
In the Earthsea books, Le Guin really captures the wonder of magic and the danger it's use carries. Another set of books that really explore the whole consequences of power is Phillip Pullman's Dark Materials [amazon.com] trilogy. Would like to see a big screen version of those books.
I hope this production doesn't miss out on that as well.