read the series in jr high in the early 80's.
apparently i remember nothing of the series because i dont remember big ass oil tankers rotting in the wilderness.
and im surprised John Reys-Davis is in it. or actually would be allowed to be in a film so closely related to LOTR/Hobbit.
Agree, I thought the series was pretty decent
Elfstones was my favorite. Looking forward to it.
In case you have on-demand with your cable provider, episodes 3 and 4 are online. Enjoying the show so far. I read these early shannara books a long time ago, which I really enjoyed. Glad to see they're finally making a series out of it.
Curious to see how the series is going to pan out. They seem to be going through Will Ohmsford's story pretty quick. With all the mini-previews they've been showing through each episode, it sounds like this entire arc will be done by the end of the season. Any idea how many shows are slotted for this season? Next season will be about the Wishsong of Shannara...if I remember the order of books correctly.
I'm really thinking Eretria is super hot for some reason...
I guess it was inevitable that someone would try to do a fantasy series. The LOTR/Hobbit movies kicked ass at the box office and GoT is big on TV. I just wish they had picked a different series. Eddings or Feist would have been a better choice.
I would like to see someone do the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant:thumbsup:
I would like to see someone do the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant:thumbsup:
I've read through both series of books as well (Shannara and Covenant), great stuff. Will have to check this out.
Just watched 15 minutes of the first episode and that's all I can handle.
Says New Zealand, but then there's the Seattle Space needle just laying around.
Just started watching this on Netflix. I didn't have high hopes for it, but it's actually turning out to be pretty fun! I never read the books, had a hard time getting into them, although I am a huge fan of the prequels (the Word & the Void series). This was next on my list of things to try watching when I was feeling bored because it looked interesting enough to give it a try, without having much in the way of high expectations for it. I am going to be a bit critical in this post, so don't take that as a completely negative rating of the show, just of what's bugging me at this point.
Two things that really turn me off in the show so far are the way they use plain English language & the crummy color grading. They use 2017 young adult American English...it doesn't really fit & feels really out of place at times. But I guess that's better than faking old-timey accents in a bad way. And so far I'm not a huge fan of the cinematography...the visuals are kind of all over the map. The biggest thing that stands out is how they handle the color editing...it looks like they're using something like Magic Bullet in 90% of the scenes; the shots are just over-saturated with a loss of picture detail. There's just no excuse for that these days, with amazing cameras like the Blackmagic 4K going for six grand and relatively cheap color grading software like daVinci being readily-available...you can take amazing images even on a budget with today's hardware & software offerings.
Same with the compositing & camera work...they nail it sometimes (the graphics on things like the Furys & the henge of stone are great), but a lot of times it feels like it's being done by an advanced high-schooler. I thought that this show was produced by the SyFy channel because it looks like one of those bad SyFy-channel series, but it turns out MTV made it.
Not a super huge fan of the acting either, although I think part of that has to do with the camera work & the editing. Like, I love John Rhys-Davies, but they don't really take full advantage of doing stuff like lingering shots to let the full weight of certain scenes sink in. Then tension they try to build with Eretria & her dad feels like George Lucas wrote it. OTOH, the pacing is quite good, which is a big reason why I think I've enjoyed watching it so far...they keep the story moving & unfolding.
I also thought the opening foot race was the dumbest thing I've ever seen. It just looks super idiotic to someone like me who hasn't read the books. It came dangerously close to feeling like a College Humor spoof video.
There was no footrace in the books.
I watched the series, and have read all the books. This series is basically book 2 for this season. There are more than a few changes between the books and the show. It was designed for the MTV audience, so a lot of young adult stupidity stuff was added for the show. The teen angst, rave scenes, foot races, and other commonly associated strange scenes are not in the book at all. All there to draw in the MTV crowd and nothing more. Then again MTV fronted the money and they got to make those changes.
All in all, the show was alright. Nothing spectacular, but it got much of the major plot line of the book across.
There was no footrace in the books.
That makes it even weirder then...I thought it was a really stupid visual that they kept in the show because it must have been a key point in the books or something lol.
Amberle was a chosen in the book, but she was a chosen who had left the job because the Ellcrys (the tree) showed her what was going to happen and she didn't understand it and was frightened. She was shunned because she left the from the 'chosen'.
They totally screwed the story.