I'm Not Sure Why They Bothered
I caught a little bit of the miniseries calling itself Legend of Earthsea tonight. Given, I was prepared to dislike it, having read an essay by the author of the original books telling us all why she hates it so much, but I did watch a bit, and tried to be fair.
What I saw: Roke had been invaded by those evil Kargads, and the School of Magic taken over by Jasper, Ged's teenage rival (though it was actually the Archmage - sorry, Archimagus - in disguise). The Doorkeeper was a twitchy fool. Vetch, a character who, in the books, is wise, kind, serene, appeared as some sort of Alichino (fat, stupid, greedy, lazy, sleeps a lot, a sidekick). Oh, and there was a monastery full of young girls in rather tight-fitting dresses. Kossil was evil though, I can appreciate that, just with no subtlety...
What can I say? If it hadn't been named after the Earthsea books I would probably have thought it a bit insipid but enjoyed it reasonably well. It is kind of pretty. But the way they reduced wonderful characters into shallow stereotypes and mixed up the plot? It just felt icky.
Here's a speech from A Wizard of Earthsea:
I wish I could have seen all the cities of the Archipelago," Ged said as he held the sail-rope, watching the wide grey wastes before them. "Havnor at the world's heart, and Ea where the myths were born, and Shelieth of the Fountains on Way; all the cities and the great lands. And the small lands, the strange lands of the Outer Reaches, them too. To sail right down the Dragons' Run, away in the west. Or to sail north into the ice-floes, clear to Hogen Land. Some say that is a land greater than all the Archipelago, and others say it is mere reefs and rocks with ice between. No one knows. I should like to see the whales in the northern seas... But I cannot. I must go where I am bound to go, and turn my back on the bright shores. I was in too much haste, and now have no time left. I traded all the sunlight and the cities and the distant lands for a handful of power, for a shadow, for the dark." So, as the mageborn will, Ged made his fear and regret into a song, a brief lament, half-sung, that was not for himself alone; and his friend replying spoke the hero's words from the Deed of Erreth-Akbe, "O may I see the earth's bright hearth once more, the white towers of Havnor..."
This is beautiful stuff. The miniseries turned it into a handful of awkward sentences, culminating in "I'd have liked to have seen the ice-floes." Pah!
Why adapt a book into a mini-series, or movie, or play, or anything and take out all the things that made it great? Why bother using the name if all you're going to use is the name? What's the point?
What I saw: Roke had been invaded by those evil Kargads, and the School of Magic taken over by Jasper, Ged's teenage rival (though it was actually the Archmage - sorry, Archimagus - in disguise). The Doorkeeper was a twitchy fool. Vetch, a character who, in the books, is wise, kind, serene, appeared as some sort of Alichino (fat, stupid, greedy, lazy, sleeps a lot, a sidekick). Oh, and there was a monastery full of young girls in rather tight-fitting dresses. Kossil was evil though, I can appreciate that, just with no subtlety...
What can I say? If it hadn't been named after the Earthsea books I would probably have thought it a bit insipid but enjoyed it reasonably well. It is kind of pretty. But the way they reduced wonderful characters into shallow stereotypes and mixed up the plot? It just felt icky.
Here's a speech from A Wizard of Earthsea:
I wish I could have seen all the cities of the Archipelago," Ged said as he held the sail-rope, watching the wide grey wastes before them. "Havnor at the world's heart, and Ea where the myths were born, and Shelieth of the Fountains on Way; all the cities and the great lands. And the small lands, the strange lands of the Outer Reaches, them too. To sail right down the Dragons' Run, away in the west. Or to sail north into the ice-floes, clear to Hogen Land. Some say that is a land greater than all the Archipelago, and others say it is mere reefs and rocks with ice between. No one knows. I should like to see the whales in the northern seas... But I cannot. I must go where I am bound to go, and turn my back on the bright shores. I was in too much haste, and now have no time left. I traded all the sunlight and the cities and the distant lands for a handful of power, for a shadow, for the dark." So, as the mageborn will, Ged made his fear and regret into a song, a brief lament, half-sung, that was not for himself alone; and his friend replying spoke the hero's words from the Deed of Erreth-Akbe, "O may I see the earth's bright hearth once more, the white towers of Havnor..."
This is beautiful stuff. The miniseries turned it into a handful of awkward sentences, culminating in "I'd have liked to have seen the ice-floes." Pah!
Why adapt a book into a mini-series, or movie, or play, or anything and take out all the things that made it great? Why bother using the name if all you're going to use is the name? What's the point?
posted by theamazingcatherine | 10:29 pm
3 Comments:
Lord of the Rings got better on the big screen because it was adapted by someone who knew what she was doing. Thus (for example) Boromir, who was sketched in as 'the bad guy' almost from his first appearance in the books (including daft mutterings in a boat that freaked Merry and Pippin out) became, in the movie, a very human character, that I actually liked, and sorrowed for when he died. There was indeed spectacle in the movie adaptations. There was also humanity, poetry, and attention to detail (check out Aragorn's ring if you ever watch the movie again. It never gets mentioned in Lord of the Rings, but is important in the Silmarillion. Somebody read that detail, and put it in. Because they cared.)
For an example of an adaptation of Tolkien that embraced spectacle and utterly sucked, try the infamous Disney cartoon version, fluffy-slippered balrog and all...
**
While Ursula Leguin is a very thoughtful and subtle writer, she's very good at colourful too. Dragon's Run. Storms at sea. Chasing your own shadow. Beautiful lyrical speeches, that were lifted by the screenwriter and ripped to shreds...
He kills 5 dragons in one paragraph because they're not very important - their progenitor is. It's like in an epic poem, Hector or Achilles would be able to dozens of mooks with one stroke, but when they fight each other, that's when the writer slows down and takes his time.
In the alternate reality in which I'm a famous director who gets to film Earthsea, I'd for sure make it visually interesting, but I'd do it by getting the best DoP I could find and getting him/her to film the sea and the desert so that they had personalities of their own. And I'd make the scenes where Ged almost dies chilling and eery - like the bit where he almost drowns and he suddenly notices that the sand that he's lying on is dry and that he's in the Land of the Dead for a moment. There are so many cool ways you could show that visually. Certainly I would have kept to LeGuin's wishes about skin colour, and made sure that people from different islands looked distinctive. Primarily however, I think that Earthsea is a character piece and deserves more care and attention than it appears to have gotten.
Y'know, the guy who directed the latest version of The Four Feathers would have done it justice, I think.
I gave up on it when I realized Ged was Anakin Skywalker.
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