Moments ago I mentioned to Mrs. Plant that Earthsea is the only Sci Fi Channel effort that fellates with more allacrity than Battlestar Galactica.
How do the torches and fires and stuff in there keep going? Pyromanic rats?
No kidding. She was actually very polite about the Unpleasedness, but you can really tell she isn’t happy about it.
I read the summary on the Sci Fi website, eye twitching more and more toward the end. I’m not sure they couldn’t have bastardized the books more if they’d brought in, say, Pauly Shore.
(ok, I take that back. they could have… 
)
At first I was crushed that my schedule wasn’t going to allow me to see this. Apparently I have been spared a fate worse than death. whew
As payment for the boat, Ged cured the old man he bought it from of cataracts. "Then the old man, rejoicing, said to him, “We called the boat Sanderling, but do you call her Lookfar, and paint eyes aside her prow, and my thanks will look out of that blind wood and keep you from rock and reef. For I had forgotten how much light there is in the world, 'tll you gave it back to me.” Shit – how could they leave that out?
Yep. The dragon swore on his name that neither he, nor his sons, would ever come to the Archipelago. After Ged sailed away, “…in rage the old Dragon of Pendor rose up breaking the tower with the writhing of his body, and beating his wings that spanned the whole width of the ruined town. But his oath held him, and he did not fly, then or ever, to the Archipelago.” They changed this and had the dragon battle on after he knew Ged held his name? I am gladder and gladder I went to the freaking mall last night – and I loathe the mall – instead of watching this!
You should – I am enjoying the hell out of them.
Now, that was somewhere in the east reach, after the shadow had shipwrecked him. There shouldn’t have been any eyes on his boat when he went sailing out to challenge the dragon of Pendor, for instance – that was a different boat, though ‘lookfar’ also figures in “tombs” and “shore”, it is the last of maybe three different boats he’s sailing around in in “wizard”.
Speaking of which… I always wondered if anyone made it to Selidor and found Lookfar tied up somewhere… considering that Sparrowhawk and Arren came to Selidor on the boat and left flying on dragonback. 
To be precise, (which I can’t help,) this was not immediately after Sparrowhawk said the dragon’s name… the dragon tried several tricks to convince Sparrowhawk to trade his use of the name for jewels, or for the dragon’s help in discovering the shadow’s name – apparently he could only bind a dragon to one thing, even with the name. Only after Sparrowhawk refused these temptations and insisted that the dragon swear safety for the archipelago was it finished. But the big dragon Yevaud didn’t attack physically after Sparrowhawk proved he knew the name (or before,) – it was all a battle of wits and wills.
So was this a better or worse adapatation than “Wrinkle in Time”?
Because I have that on tape but have not had the courage to watch it.
Brian
You are quite right. If the complaint was that the boat he used to confront the Dragon of Pendor had no eyes, then the mini-series got that right. And, if in the crush of time, they left out Ged’s aquiring Lookfar before doing final battle with his Shadow, I’m willing to let that go – I do understand the need to compress things to make them ‘fit’ a movie. But they apparently put so much extraneous stuff in, and left out so much good stuff from the book. And I especially love the old man’s words that I quoted above – I always tell my husband he can buy a boat anytime, if I can name it.
Again, you are quite right. I didn’t watch the mini-series, but I understood that the battle went on after Ged revealed the dragon’s name. And there was no battle; just bargaining – as you say, a battle of wills. So, in the mini-series, anyone, did the battle continue after the naming? And, I wonder, did Ged kill Yevaud?
I enjoyed the ‘wrinkle’ movie very much… I actually saw it before it was shown on television, at the Sprocket’s children’s film festival in toronto, where it won for best feature. (I was 28 at the time, and went with my mother, who’s nearly 60 now, and neither of us felt particularly odd attending this movie at the children’s film fest… both longtime fans of Madeleine L’engle.)
The material was adapted fairly liberally, but the movie kept most of the magic of the book intact… making most of its changes either to keep things visually interesting on the movie screen, or to update the story from the 1960’s to the 21st century. (I especially liked the brief moment where, after Mrs Whatsit’s first visit, we see Meg on the net, googling “tesseract”; of course, when we try that in the real world, the #2 link is a madeleine l’engle website.)
The casting seemed particularly strong… the three Mrs, Meg’s mom and dad, charles wallace all seem spot on. And I loved Katie Stuart and Gregory Smith as Meg and Calvin… whenever I read the book or listen to the audiofile now I can’t seem to help but mentally insert their voices over the dialog – even dialog that wasn’t in the movie.
Probably the best comparison… well, I can’t find it on her website any more, but around the time of the Sprockets showing, Madeleine had a letter to fans up gushing about how excited she was with the movie, how well it had come out and that they were in talks with ABC. Compare that to the letter making the rounds of how displeased Ursula is with sci-fi. (sigh.)
The dragon kept shooting flame at Ged and Vetch after Ged named him. He bargained to give Ged not the true name of his shadow, but the location of the amulet in the tombs. The only relation I can recall to the book is that Ged knew the name of the dragon…and Vetch helped him at that.
OMG, Vetch was with Sparrowhawk at Pendor? Somehow that seems worse than anything in my mind… and yes, in the books Sparrowhawk had found the name of the dragon all by himself.
On the other hand, having the dragon of pendor tell him about the ring in the tombs seems like it might be possibly excusable… he was told about it by a dragon, after all, and that incident with Orm-Embar, along with sailing the dragon’s run the first time (which I think was at about the same time) is one of the most interesting events never directly shown to us in the books.
On the other hand, it would make complete hash of the “wizard” timeline, because he hadn’t even got the first half of the ring when he was at Pendor. Did he still get half the ring from the castaway woman, or was the entire amulet hidden in the tombs??
sigh
Apparently you missed the project story they called Riverworld. I read a whole series by Phillip Jose Farmer of the same name, and this had a passing resemblence.
Since it’s been so long since I originally read the EarthSea series, I’m missing the depths of disappointment the rest of you are. But I did find myself saying, “I don’t remember that happening.” But it’s still not as bad as having horses on the Riverworld.
Afraid so. Worse than you could imagine with side kick comic relief.
Yes.
No, but I couldn’t get into the novels. All I remembered was Esperanto and building computers from a meteorite and an airship.
Not quite. That wasn’t Pendor, and it wasn’t Yevaud. It was Orm-embar. I just read the books for the first time recently, and I don’t recall actually when Ged met Orm-embar, but Pendor was the place where he was the town wizard for a time and convinced the dragon Yevaud to leave them alone, right? That whole part was cut. In the movie, Ged and Vetch are on Lookfar, searching for the gebbeth when they are drawn to an island with a dragon, and have to bargain with it.
Well, from a castaway woman, but not the castaway woman. If I remember right, after he sailed from gont, he found a small island with a castaway man and a woman (who were revealed in a later book to be the children of the deposed king of Karg? or something like that?) and that woman gave him the half of the ring.
In the movie, the castaway woman is the wise woman of Ged’s village on Gont. (I think she had a name in the book, but I don’t remember. Was she his aunt or something?) They combined the two characters and made her a castaway with amnesia, and a former priestess of Atuan.
I still have yet to force myself to see the last hour of this travesty. But so far it looks like they took everything good and special about the books and genericized it for no good reason. They cut out huge subplots (Pendor, that place in the north where Ged is tricked by the woman and her husband, the Otak, the aforementioned island with the two castaways, Tenar being “she who is eaten,” the darkness and isolation of the tombs, the eunich whathisname, Manon?) and added a bunch of subplots that I don’t remember from the books (Ged has a love interest on Gont to say goodbye to, the king of the Kargs attacking Roke, and conspiring with Kossil, who is his lover, to unleash the nameless ones so they can be immortal. Kossil tricking one of the girls into poisoning Thar, so she can be named high priestess, then killing the girl when she figures it out and framing Tenar for it.)
The list goes on. Nevermind the random unnecessary changes like swapping the names Ged and Sparrowhawk, making Tenar an orphan, not havign eyes on the boat…
But the most egregious error to me is not having the Archmage die from saving Ged from the shadow. It was the crucial character point for Ged. Where he learned the error of his actions, and became more than an arrogant child. And apparently they skipped it so that they could put in a silly plot about Jasper betraying the Archmage to the Kargs and the Archmage sneakily getting the upper hand. grumble.
Even having not read the books for probably 30 years, the adaptation was pretty bad. When a fantasy movie opens with a voice over describing an Ancient Prophecy, you can pretty much always just assume you’ve seen the whole thing before and change the channel. It seems as though they took a few basic plot points and characters from Earthsea and cut&pasted them into generic fantasy script #4. They left few cliches unturned, what with the evil king who ruthlessly slays subordinates who let him down, and the Evil Badness that’s powerful enough to take over the world but can be defeated by soldering together some cheap piece of costume jewelry.
Quick off-topic comment… The new Battlestar Galactica series is actually pretty good. Admittedly, I’ve never seen the original '70s version so I can’t compare it to that, but I have managed to see the 10 or so remake episodes on Sky and I’m impressed. The actual series is decidedly better than the introductory mini-series. I’d recommend at least giving the first episode a look-see when it’s aired on SciFi in January, it’s a good one.
Can we pit you if it sucks?
The pilot had the Cylon woman’s spine light up when she had sex. Now, did that suck or what? Those of us who saw the first series have traumatic memories of Loren Greene “Battlestar Ponderosa”. I shudder to remember. I’d take you to the pit for making me remember, but Mother won’t let me post there.
My wife and I are friends with Ursula LeGuin’s daughter.
She doesn’t have cable, so she came over to our place to watch it.
She didn’t come back for the second night.
That about sums it up.
Oh right, the fembot. I forgot about her. She stopped glowing but remains annoying throughout the series in a trying-to-be-sexy-but-just-isn’t kind of way, and she’s fairly integral to the plotlines so you can’t just close your eyes and pretend it’s a commercial break every time she’s on screen. But apart from her, it’s a good show. It definitely deserves a chance.
Thankfully, I had the power of TiVo and was able to endure the four hour slog through the cesspool of fantasy cliche in under an hour.
Don’t forget hollywood’s addition to the list of fantasy cliche as presented by Earthsea:
One black actor who plays the supporting wisdom character who helps out in a pinch now and then.