Kahlan: Warrior Princess.

[hoveringsombrero]

Despite being a huge fan of the Sword of Truth series of books and a pre-Spiderman Sam Rami fan. I had no idea that that it was even going to TV.

However, tocard had recently introduced me to a nifty little site, On-My.TV, and I noticed while I was setting up my filter, something that was about to start called Legend of the Seeker. I was quite surprised to find that my first impression from the name was correct and it is a television series based on the Sword of Truth book series.



I had very low expectations of it, even with the people involved, but I just finished watching the first (technically first two) episode and I'm really quite liked it. I already knew that it wasn't intending to strictly follow the books, so the fact that it's following them far more closely that I expected was very impressive. Kahlan's use of the Confessor power is almost exactly like I imagined it, Zedd is fabulous, the dude they picked for Richard looks and acts almost exactly like I imagined. Of course Richard passes his whiny "But I'm a cheerleader!" phase much quicker than in the book, but that's to be expected.

Pros:
Minimal use of green screen, and rarely distracting when it is used so far. Though it could use improvement.

Despite a few inconsistencies, Richard and Kahlan are very recognizable as their book counterparts, I like them a lot.

Darken Rahl is sufficiently intimidating so far, despite below issues.


Cons:
Kahlan's hair is nowhere near long enough, that bothers me.

Kahlan's white dress does not have a square neck.

Darken Rahl looks NOTHING LIKE HE'S SUPPOSED TO. Where's the blond hair and blue eyes, where's the white robe? I rather liked that he didn't LOOK evil in the books. He better at least be vegetarian and HAVE THE SCARS.

I'm not sure how I feel about the changes to Chase yet, though I do like the dude playing him.

I quite liked that they weren't big names cast, and I'm really glad this person's fantasy casting didn't come about. Christian Bale as Richard? Oh die. Although Cary Elwes might not have been a bad choice for Darken, if they kept to the book looks.

Anyway, I was very pleasantly surprised and am looking forward to more of the series.

Comments

[celestyna.livejournal.com]

i had no idea this show had a book-basis to it.
i seriously just thought it was a bad LOTR ripoff cuz the archetyping as far as casting seemed a little too deadon.
"Hey, lets get some dude that looks like Elijah Wood. Let's get the bad dude to burninate his village! And hey! lets get some chick that can be a poor man's Liv Tyler, complete with the same white gauzy dress. Can't forget a white-bearded Gandolf dude! D00000d i know, we can film it in new zealand and get the same Maori dude everyone else gets, I heard he's cheap! And while we're at it, let's reel in some HP crossover crowds with a villain that looks like Snape! It's a fight for Middle Earf!

I'm still happy i got to see the first two eps of this thing. I never see ANYthing from the beginning. I'm always so damn late.

[eris.livejournal.com]

Oh man, a thousand fantasy book nerds just cried out in annoyance and were silent.

Sword of Truth, bad LOTR ripoff? I equal parts cringed in annoyance and laughed. To be fair, most fantasy of that type are at least inspired by Tolkien.

You should give the book series a try, it's an extensive series. I'm hoping the TV series will have the Mord'Sith in. Leather clad "women who have been trained since youth to be brutal torturers for the master of the land of D'Hara, the Lord Rahl."

It's more similar to the The Belgariad than anything else. So much so that I get them mixed up a lot.

[celestyna.livejournal.com]

i'm just talking being a blatant visual ripoff of the series of the lotr movie visuals. tolkein-inspired or not, there was no excuse for a lot of the casting, set and costuming other than a direct line to that proven bankroll.

yeah, i'm not going to even TOUCH the Tolkein-spawning in that vein of fantasy.

honestly, i miss seeing fantasy on tv since the apocalyptic space ships and ghost "realities" have taken over all the weird tv slots and i'll still keep watching LOTS as it was pretty. but yeah, i stay far away from literature involving wizards, dragons, pixies and the like, when i read i tend to be more spec-fic or hard sciffy.

[tocard.livejournal.com]

pros: Kahlan is hot, and the effects are pretty good

Cons: almost everything else. I'm extremely dissappointed in raimi, but it's probably abc's retarded network execs fault.... They basically took anything intelligent - and took it out. No memorization of the book, no concepts of villains that think they are good, no lesson from zedd actually USING this first rule like in the book before they cross the boundary where zedd uses his mind, rather than magic, to scare the towns men into not attacking. So far, I think this show is really stupid... But I'll keep watching, and I thought the shape thing too, and it made my stomach churn... Seriously, fuck abc's execs...

[coldcontrol.livejournal.com]

IMO, Raimi's only good at camp. Glorious, glorious camp. Evil Dead, Darkman, Xena, Hercules, whatever.

Quick and the Dead was horrid. Spiderman 1 wasn't bad though not especially memorable, 2 was pretty much the same movie, and 3 was.. ugh. Terrifyingly bad.