I remember enjoying Philip Jose Farmer’s “World of Tiers” series back in the day.
I wonder if that would go over on film.
Oh, a TRUE success, not like those half-arsed Rings movies that no-one saw or liked.
As much as I love the Covenant books (they’re my absolute favourites, I’ve read the entire series about 5 times), I just don’t see how they would make great movies. The protagonist’s journey is not the kind that would necessarily translate into a great film. I don’t think I’d have any sympathy for a character that moped for that long. And eventually, for the story to work, you need to. It’s the kind of character that works on the page, but probably not on the screen. The only way to do it would be to change it so much that it wouldn’t be the same story, in which case, why bother?
Sorry for being dull-brained.
All that being said, I recently saw someone I thought would make a perfect Covenant… John Benjamin Hickey from “The Big C”. And actually, Laura Linney would make a great Linden Avery too. Every time I see them on screen together (as brother and sister!), I think “Look, it’s Covenant and Linden!”
Agreed. So why did I read them? ~•~ kicks self ~•~
I’ve wondered the same thing-the 1st and 3rd books are the most filmable, by far; in the 1st you have all the fights with the growrl, Podarge, the Amerindian level-tons of opportunities for action IOW. The ending is a bit weak tho.
And yet, unlike Covenant, *he *could be played by Jason Statham. So there’s that.
I actually think that unlike TC, the Gap Cycle could make a decent film series. The characters may be damaged at best and fucked-up monsters at worse, but they don’t whine, and there’s plenty of action, sex, derring-do and borderline realistic physics. Although considering the non-consensual nature of much of the sex, it would probably work better as an anime.
The Giants and Bloodguard would be neat to watch in a movie. The Land has to be its own character à la Cameron’s Avatar.
This was the first epic fantasy series I read and loved as a kid so I feel obligated, but I’m having trouble getting going on Against All Things Ending. Linden is really goddamn irritating right off the bat with all the “anguish” and “chagrin.” Also I don’t have the patience that I used to for SRD’s bizarre menagerie of $64 nouns and adjectives.
Sure, Covenant is a shithead, but he’d be perfect, as someone upthread said, in an HBO miniseries. Not too sure about the mass market Big Screen, though. As for him being completely passive, relying on those around him to do the heavy lifting and dying, it’s not like it’s a foreign concept in fantasy film coughfrodocough. The heroism comes through in the fact that, despite his cowardly nature and general poor attitude, he does go on the Final Quest. And he DOES put it together well enough by the end of LFB (and each of the other episodes) to actually use Wild Magic to kick Lord Foul’s (who is like a low-rent Sauron-as-whipping-dog) ass.
In fact, the main problem for me isn’t that Thomas Covenant is a prick. It’s that Lord Foul is such a damn chump. He gets his ass handed to him so often that he becomes a cheap parody of a truly terrifying Dark Lord. He’s more Cobra Commander (“Curses! Foiled again!”) than Morgoth. Christ. He’s even got a second-class supervillain name. He might as well be named “Dr. Evil”.
I never got over my loathing of TC and, although it’s been a while since I read the books, I don’t think the author ever really wants you to–or maybe he doesn’t care. I always imagined LOTR as a movie and was not disappointed by Jackson’s rendering. I’m pretty pleased with the big Chronicles of Narnia movies. I never thought of Chronicles of Thomas Covenant as movie material though. I seem to recall too much of the important stuff happened inside his head. Well, I guess it ALL happens there, but any personal growth or whatnot would be tricky to adapt to film.
I think it would be awesome to see the Unbelievers story in movie form. But I doubt it will happen and even if it did, they would probably water it down so far as to be virtually unrecognizable.
I think the problem is that lots of people think nothing important happened in that head.
Wow. That’s pretty much completely inaccurate in every detail.
Lord Foul didn’t actually have any of his plans go wrong until Covenant did him in at his Creche. However, his plans were not the military conquest of the Land. That’s the sort of dark lord plan a chump like Morgoth would have.
Lord Foul’s plan was to have everyone in the Land destroy themselves by having them become what they hate/fear and thereby destroying what they love. And he does it, again and again – Lena, Trell, Atiaran, Elena, the Bloodguard, the Giants, heck even Drool and Pietten. Mhoram, Foamfollower, and Covenant all tip over into despair, but manage to not give in.
The military conquest is of no value to him; it’s just a tool to push the people he hates (= everyone) into Desecration. He didn’t create the Raver-giants so he’d have powerful minions to attack the Land with – he did it to cause the giants of Seareach to kill themselves in despair. Which they did. When he sent his armies against the Land, Foul’s goal was the moment that Hile Troy realized his plan had doomed the Land. And when the other army went against Revelstone, Foul wanted something like Trell started – Desecration.
Lord Foul is about the nastiest dark lord in fantasy that I can think of. He, personally, hates everyone and seeks to have them destroy everything they love so the realization that they have done so will destroy them. And then, he’ll have a good laugh about it. (“Foul laughs at lepers.”)
On the other hand, Morgoth? Is a chump. His goals are a modest world domination – not the utter ruin and despair of every person in the world. Furthermore, he was actually afraid to face one elf. Chump.
I don’t know where to begin. This sight is supposed to be “Fighting ignorance since 1973”, but I’ve discovered nothing but ignorance since I came here. At least as far as this topic is concerned. The Covenant series is rich with locale, characterization, meaty dialogue, action, you name it. The reason Thomas is so weak and spineless is he is, at the most basic level, unfamiliar with the scope of the power of his ring, frankly is ignorant as to how to invoke it, and really doesn’t know what the repercussions might be if he does. It’s funny, but similar criticism could be leveled at Gandalf or Dr. Manhattan or even God, but oh no, we don’t want to go there. Gandalf, even in the books, is always restrained. And it’s even worse with the movies. But if he suddenly cast some spell that leveled the playing field, there would be no drama, would there? Grow up, peeps. And if you haven’t seen rape or incest scenes in countless movies by now, you need to spend more time in the world and not on your cell phones and PS3’s.
Gotta love brand new posters coming in guns ablazin’ with “grow up peeps” and “nothing but ignorance here” while raising an almost 4 year old thread from the grave and practically bragging about watching a lot of rape and incest movies on anything but a cell phone or PS3.
This will end very well.
So getting desensitized to rape and incest is an improvement?
No, thanks, but good luck with that if it works for you.
Adorable. I didn’t know that there were Covenant fanboys riding out to smite the unbelievers they find through Google.
I think the Covenant books are fantastic, actually. Although I can see why they don’t appeal to everyone. I had to put the books down and restart myself. But it’s definitely a series that rewards the patient.
As for the rapist angle, Stephen Donaldson said once that knights in shining armor don’t need redemption. Plus the rape is the central event of the first trilogy, so many consequences stem from that act that there’s no story without it. But yeah, you can’t make a decent fantasy movie like that. You can do an indie film like that, but for Covenant you’d need a mega budget as well.
I suppose one way around it is to structure the movie(or HBO series) so that Covenant is not clearly the main protagonist, but just one character. Modern shows tend to be pretty good about avoiding making one person the center of the story.
Here’s my biggest problem. It didn’t have to be rape. Donaldson chose to make Covenant a rapist. There are hundreds of other things that Covenant could have done that would have required some kind of redemption for Covenant. But Donaldson chose to make his protagonist a rapist, a horrible decision.
And Covenant doesn’t get much better. He’s a whiny, self-absorbed, horrible person who takes no responsibility for his actions and wallows in self-pity rather than do anything productive.
I loved the books when I first read them as a teen. But after re-reading them as an adult, I was struck by just how stupid and pathetic he was as a protagonist (and the writing wasn’t that good either) and I couldn’t even finish re-reading the first series.
This was my progression with these books as well. I miss the fantasy world that Donaldson created, as it had a lot of really cool aspects to it, but the books are just awful to me now.
It did have to be rape, because the rape was responsible for 80% of what comes next. most importantly, Elena.