This was not terrible, i will keep watching.
The third and fourth episodes are up on the website, if you care. I’m watching the third right now.
Yeah, it’s pretty good. My wife and I wish the “adults” were the leads. The teenagers(to us, anyway) are not as good. I do like Will and the lead girl, though. I don’t think the girl who stole the elfstones is a good enough actress.
The guy who played Azog the Defiler is very good and John Rhys-Davies is also excellent.
Still, the actors over 30 are far better than the kids, but no one is bad enough to ruin the show.
I’ll keep going.
I must pop in for my obligatory “I hate Brooks for making a fortune ripping off Tolkien” rant. And he did it so badly (judging by the one book this LOTR fanatic made it through. I don’t care if they got better.) and any writer who names his wizard (he had to have one, right?) “Alanon” deserves scorn and derision. I hate this writer.
We lasted five minutes of the first episode. I couldn’t shut up my snark. “Watch close, honey. When the sun comes out, the elves sparkle! Don’t you think it would be so much cooler to be an elf teenager than a human teenager? Yay rah teenage girl heroine shows up the elvish patriarchy! Good jump, Katniss!”
Yeah. Gave up.
I couldn’t get past the creaky writing that forced-fed exposition in clunky ways. Maybe two minutes in we get something like:
Heroine: “I have to keep training for this upcoming competition because the top seven elves get to be the chosen!”
Guy training her (should have said): “Uh…yeah, I know. I know that’s why we’re out here training. This competition is probably the most well-known thing in our entire society. You asked me to help you train for it specifically so you could be one of the chosen. Why would you think I didn’t know that?”
hey… that’s why I stopped reading the book in the first place. Thanks for reminding me, that’ll save me the trouble.
That said, at least they’re being true to the source material.
So I’ve never read the books, though I have heard of them. I was kinda intrigued by the post apocalypse setting and for a moment, when the elf king talked about the lore around the tree, I figured that the demons would turn up to be humans. Magic elves vs modern-tech humans out for revenge would be hella cool. Alas, it was not to be.
I’ve seen the first four episodes now.
It’s OK with moments of excellence. It also has some moments of cringe-worthiness.
The actors are too young, even if their ages match the book. Or I guess I should say that they look too young to be leads. This is obviously an MTV show.
I loved Legend of the Seeker and the guy who played Richard Cypher(Rahl) and the lady who played Kahlen were not distracting for being too young. In this show, it is obvious that the older actors should be the ones in charge and should be the leads.
It’s just not well directed enough for these youngin’s to be believable.
+1 (at least)
What’s wrong with Alanon?
Ever since someone pointed out to me that it is spelled the same as Al-Anon, I can’t see it or pronounce it any other way ;).
No it isn’t. Allanon is spelled with two l’s.
Is it? I haven’t read the books in decades, but I keep seeing it spelled Alanon. Heh. Funny that my buddy would have picked that up on an internet ( presumably ) misspelling and transmitted it to me.
Now I see it as all-anon :D.
“I am the mighty wizard Alan!”
“The wizard Alan?”
“…non. The mighty wizard Alanon! Look, just shut up and get in the castle.”
“There are some who call me…Tim?”
Don’t see that they stand out as being bad, myself - I mean objectively speaking they’re not good (probably, thought they were ace when I was 13), but fantasy was shite in those days. It was nearly all bad, they weren’t published against a backdrop of quality work in the genre.
Stuff like the Amber books or the Chronicles of the Black Company are celebrated to this day as landmark works just because they were written with an original voice, something that was vanishingly rare in 70 / 80s fantasy.
I have never read the books (although almost all of my friends in High School who were into fantasy did) but I liked this. To be honest I thought the idea that Shannara was “Earth all along” was a twist like five books in, not put upfront right away.
I just watched the pilot episode and I thought it could be quite interesting. The biggest problem is that the actor playing Will is so vomit-inducingly ugly that it is hard to keep watching.
The Black Guard are evidently the last line of military service before elves get kicked out for actively being harmful to the cause instead of mere total incompetence. Everyone and their mother has “snuck past” them.
Allanon “All use of magic come with a cost, every time” casually tosses one aside with magic rather than say, "Hi I am here to see my old bud the king, tell him his wizard mate is here to see him.
other than those failures we have yet to see them do anything even resembling badassery. It’s like a version of the Warf effect but we have no idea at all that Warf is supposed to be a badass at all.
with most of the acting I have to give a pass, many of the actors are young, they didnt write the lines, nor are they the ones giving orders. (the Rover girl is super cute but spends about 90% of her screen time getting on my nerves is one example)
I give it a pass for now, if they can get over everyone pulling knives on each other endlessly for the sake of crappy drama every 12 seconds I might stick around.