Andrew Liptak wrote an interesting article titled "The Real Reason Why Shannara Chronicles Failed to Copy The Success of Game of Thrones" for io9.com. And though I haven't watched the whole season of The Shannara Chronicles, I found myself agreeing with everything Liptak wrote. Here's an extract:
The Shannara Chronicles isn’t really covering the same ground. The epic struggle between good and evil is fairly abstract. And it’s harder to hit that theme with the same weight as with what we’re seeing in other, top-tier shows. Just as A Song of Ice and Fire made older epic fantasy series look a bit simplistic, Game of Thrones makes Shannara look obsolete.
[...]
By the end of the season, The Shannara Chronicles simply feels like a missed opportunity—and like a sad cash grab from executives who watched Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones, and simply wanted to compete by creating their own show. As a result, they pulled all the wrong lessons of the successes of those franchises and came away with something that’s entertaining, but not memorable.
Follow this link to read the full piece.
2 commentaires:
Interesting article. Thanks for the link.
Sadly, I tend to agree with a lot of what's said...and sadly I don't know that we'll see a second season or an attempt at a movie adaptation. That's really sad since I've been following the books for 30+ years and have thought about the possibility of an awesome movie series in the world from time to time.
I generally enjoyed the series for what it was but I could see that there were many times the writers/producers were trying too hard to mimic Game of Thrones TV or other popular elements that they thought would help draw in new viewers with "shock and awe" rather than trying to flesh out the characters and plot in an effective way. Throwing in sex for the sake of sex and taking the violence over the top were obvious ploys to grope at certain demographics. One thing I've loved about the Shannara books since I was a kid (and now that I have kids of my own) is that they are fairly "family friendly" and I have had no hesitation introducing them to my young kids. This series, however, pushed beyond the limits that I want my kids watching...which saddens me. (Granted, if they had made an "epic movie" version, I suspect they would have tried similar tactics in an attempt to mimic LotR...at least with sweeping battle sequences, though perhaps not the sex which was more a mimic from GoT)
I also agree that making this an episodic TV series was problematic especially when they tried to make each episode not only fit into a bigger plot but also have its own individual plot arc in those ~40 minutes. Some of those episodes really pushed the limits and only minimally progressed the overall plot.
Oh well. It was fun for what it was...back to the books for me. C'est la vie.
I agree that the show sucked. But the fact that this writing seemed to believe Sword of Truth was an okay show. Yikes. That really calls into question his taste. Pat I know you have a strong dislike for Goodkind so I'm surprised you didn't mention that above.
This show was all over the place. It suffered from poor writing, incorrect casting, and awful acting among other problems. I also think they chose the wrong Shannara book to base the show on. They would have been better off with book three maybe. Or just done an original adaptation with Brooks stepping in to help them plot it out better.
Honestly I feel bad for the author and his fans who have probably been waiting a long time for a show and now that it sucked they probably won't get anything like it ever again.
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