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Guys, what if... what if:
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Oct 22, 2016 22:16
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| # ? Jun 1, 2024 06:30 |
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To be fair Dorfl in Feet of Clay and the golems in Going Postal are two different metaphors.
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Oct 23, 2016 10:04
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SeanBeansShako posted:It's pretty decent yeah, kind of a follow up to Jingo too in some ways. A monstrous regiment, you might say. Although that's too cool a name for that lot. Mind you 'basket of deplorables' seems almost Prachettian, like what you might buy in the Shades. Man, that choice of title was a work of genius (although maybe a bit of a spoiler). Really wish there was some awesome Discworld stage play where I lived.
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Oct 25, 2016 13:43
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Yvonmukluk posted:A monstrous regiment, you might say. Although that's too cool a name for that lot. Mind you 'basket of deplorables' seems almost Prachettian, like what you might buy in the Shades. GuardsGuards is still on in Brisbane for a couple of weeks... It's worth the trip...
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Oct 25, 2016 13:53
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toasterwarrior posted:I dunno man, a piece of paper affirming your existence as one controlled and defined by yourself through the power of metaphor sounds pretty drat holy to me. Sounds more like a birth certificate.
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Oct 30, 2016 17:39
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I'm listening to the Feet of Clay audiobook after finally getting all my CDs, and I'm thinking, wow, Angua would sound a lot better if Planer gave her a Russian accent instead of pitching her at about the same place Magrat comes from.
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Nov 8, 2016 21:20
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Rand Brittain posted:I'm listening to the Feet of Clay audiobook after finally getting all my CDs, and I'm thinking, wow, Angua would sound a lot better if Planer gave her a Russian accent instead of pitching her at about the same place Magrat comes from. I don't know about a Russian accent, but Stephen Briggs certainly does much better with her.
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Nov 8, 2016 23:07
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Is it just me, or is the TV adaptation of Going Postal awful? I watched it yesterday and the only good part was Terry's cameo at the end.
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Nov 10, 2016 07:10
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I thought it was pretty decent, if only for using the book as a source to build off of, and not directly as a screenplay.
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Nov 10, 2016 09:47
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It's more "inspired by" than "based on", but if you go in knowing that then it's pretty good.
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Nov 10, 2016 13:49
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It was decent, considering what a poo poo show The Colour Of Magic was before it.
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Nov 10, 2016 15:35
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I generally get the feeling that most tv adaptions of Pratchett's works are only really for people who are already fans, as they are way to disjointed otherwise. Going Postal is not as bad about it, but the Hogfather adaption seems very confusing to someone who isn't familiar with the Discworld already. The books have a lot of very weird characters and concepts that aren't really explained in the their second or third experience and are only really funny to fans. Like Bloody Stupid Johnson. His recurring insane and reality braking machines are funny as hell as a running gag, but being confronted with them for the first time in a story like Hogfather, were the University isn't even the main story, just comes across as weirdness for weirdness sake. Instead of following the plot about the people who try to assassinate Santa Claus and about the Death impersonating him, you spent time with a bunch of weird old men and the troubles they have with their shower. I can easily understand why people would be put of by that. The same goes for Hex, whose entire story arc in the book only really works together with the rest of the novels. Bottom line, the movies often come across as just a collection of weird side stories strung together.
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Nov 10, 2016 19:22
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I've always thought that The Truth would adapt well to a tv production.
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Nov 26, 2016 19:43
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I'm happy with the books being fundamentally unadaptable. There's no way you could get an actor to portray e.g. the narratorial interjections into the parade-ground scene in Men at Arms. How can you possibly shoot Nobby collapsing into hopeless childish laughter, or Cuddy trying to hit Harthur upon the bonce, and make it as good to watch as it is to read the description of them doing it?
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Nov 26, 2016 21:50
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Screaming Idiot posted:Is it just me, or is the TV adaptation of Going Postal awful? I watched it yesterday and the only good part was Terry's cameo at the end. I found it disappointing but my wife, who has never read any of the books, loved it.
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Nov 27, 2016 19:12
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Screaming Idiot posted:Is it just me, or is the TV adaptation of Going Postal awful? I watched it yesterday and the only good part was Terry's cameo at the end. It's better than Hogfather.
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Nov 27, 2016 20:42
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My main gripe with with every adaptation I've seen, whether it's animated or live action, is that they tend to ham it up for cheap laughs. I'd love to see one played completely straight, with no silly voices or caricatures of characters bumbling through a plot weighed down by this fruitless need to include every little tangent and footnote from the books. Play it straight, stick to the main plot and base the humor on the strength of an absurd, but still consistent, world. The Unseen University is a place where wizards kill each other to rise through the ranks. The faculty should be competent and arrogant, maybe even scary, powerful wizards reacting to a weird setting. Not silly and incompetent men with voices more suited for a cartoon aimed at eight year olds. I want the Watch to be a hardened police force fighting real crime and realistic horrible crimes. There should be danger, and while Colon an Nobby are inherently comedic characters, there should be a reason for them to stay on the force. They would never work if Vimes, Carrot and Angua were not highly competent coppers who sometimes need them to get to the bottom of things. Cheery Littlebottoms story is not one of a small woman with a beard. It's one of a young woman breaking out of the constraints her family and society force upon her. And, also, she has a beard. gently caress, cast Jason Statham as Vimes. Die Hard is a funny movie. But John McLane is still hard as gently caress. And Hans Gruber is a villain that poses a real threat until the very end. The league of temperance is only funny if the alternative would be horrible. Rincewind is a coward, yes. But who can blame him when he lives in a world that could kill him in an instant. When the golems put their receipt in their heads and start saving money to free the rest of them, that's a powerful and poignant development in Ankh-Morporks history. It's funny, but not in a guffaw aw shucks kinda way. Just play it straight. Trust the plot and the viewers ability to find the humor. While Pratchett was never afraid to paint some characters as jokes, they are never just jokes. Discworld is funny as hell. But only because I believe in it and it's characters.
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Nov 28, 2016 02:10
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HatJudge posted:The Unseen University is a place where wizards kill each other to rise through the ranks. The faculty should be competent and arrogant, maybe even scary, powerful wizards reacting to a weird setting. Not silly and incompetent men with voices more suited for a cartoon aimed at eight year olds. By the time UU becomes properly relevant it's not a place where wizards kill each other to rise through the ranks anymore, though. Ridcully and his faculty are continuously silly, though that's not all there is to them, and before they came along the only wizard who mattered was Rincewind (and maybe that one who dropped out to become a Moving Pictures star, but the key there is that he dropped out).
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Nov 28, 2016 03:15
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dordreff posted:By the time UU becomes properly relevant it's not a place where wizards kill each other to rise through the ranks anymore, though. Ridcully and his faculty are continuously silly, though that's not all there is to them That's a fair point, and I agree. I still believe that there's a rather large gap between this and the portrayal they're given in the adaptations. Pratchett gave them more than silliness. While the Bursars insanity is mostly played for laughs it seems to be some serious base to him. He has lucid moments. And the other members of faculty clearly cares for him. I think what I wish for is for the silliness to play a part in their lives, but the characters should still be real (at least within the rules of their world)
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Nov 28, 2016 04:21
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Ridcully is silly now, but that's because he can be. He personally built the university into what it is, and probably killed dozens of would be Archchancellors before his reforms took hold. He's a lot like Vetinari, in that he certainly could kill, but he spends his efforts building an environment where he doesn't need to.
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Nov 28, 2016 05:10
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Eh, I thought the adaptations for TV (live-action or animated) were at minimum serviceable (Witches, Colour of Magic), to a solid decent (Going Postal) to bloody excellent (Hogfather, Soul Music). But then again, I don't expect my adaptations to be anything except adaptations, and have a high tolerance for weird poo poo™ in my visual media.
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Nov 28, 2016 05:36
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Konstantin posted:Ridcully is silly now, but that's because he can be. He personally built the university into what it is, and probably killed dozens of would be Archchancellors before his reforms took hold. He's a lot like Vetinari, in that he certainly could kill, but he spends his efforts building an environment where he doesn't need to. And because Ridcully can suplex any wizard unfortunate enough to try to invoke dead man's pointy shoes. That's one reason why I hate the Going Postal adaptation so much -- it erases all the characters save for the barest stereotype. In the adaptation Lipwig was as likeable and charismatic as a half-brick, Vetinari was robbed of all the nuance that places him on the knife-edge between a benevolent ruler and a vicious despot, and Ridcully was the most generic wizard since Gandalf. Soul Music was a better adaptation, even with the crappy animation and questionable editing -- at least it had a drat decent soundtrack. It even gave us lyrics for "A Wizard's Staff Has A Knob On It!"
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Nov 28, 2016 05:46
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I found the adaptations to be serviceable, at best. They work...more or less, but there's always something that feels slightly off about them. They never seem to find that comfortable ground of general accessability for unfamiliar audiences, or people who have read Discworld, and lurch back and forth between them. From relatives who weren't familiar, Going Postal clicked the most with them, CoM/TLF left them cold, and Hogfather mostly worked for them. As things viewed by themselves, they suffer from pacing issues, and some questionable acting and directing choices, but they loosely hold together. As adaptations of the material, they try their best, but they can't seem to capture that spark that works so well in text, nor streamline it very well. I'd argue that the animated adapations work better, as they feel more tonally consistant (probably aided by the fact they're animated - so it's less jarring when they stretch reality compared to when it happens in live action).
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Dec 5, 2016 03:42
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Screaming Idiot posted:And because Ridcully can suplex any wizard unfortunate enough to try to invoke dead man's pointy shoes. This sentence cuts surprisingly deep into Discworld's humor; well done.
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Dec 5, 2016 08:25
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I always got the impression that Ridcully was far more shrewd than he lets on and his behaviour towards the other Wizards is largely because a Wizard left to his own devices is a very dangerous thing. Basically using reverse psychology etc to get the Wizards to pursue the ridiculous tangents they do because otherwise they'd have a lot of free time on their hands.
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Dec 5, 2016 11:37
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Rush Limbo posted:I always got the impression that Ridcully was far more shrewd than he lets on and his behaviour towards the other Wizards is largely because a Wizard left to his own devices is a very dangerous thing. Basically using reverse psychology etc to get the Wizards to pursue the ridiculous tangents they do because otherwise they'd have a lot of free time on their hands. This is basically it, and I'm fairly certain that it's explicitly stated at one point in a book that heavily involves the Faculty.
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Dec 5, 2016 16:23
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Mad Hamish posted:This is basically it, and I'm fairly certain that it's explicitly stated at one point in a book that heavily involves the Faculty.
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Dec 5, 2016 16:53
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Rush Limbo posted:I always got the impression that Ridcully was far more shrewd than he lets on and his behaviour towards the other Wizards is largely because a Wizard left to his own devices is a very dangerous thing. Basically using reverse psychology etc to get the Wizards to pursue the ridiculous tangents they do because otherwise they'd have a lot of free time on their hands. Headology. And you know where he got it from.
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Dec 5, 2016 20:09
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Kesper North posted:Headology. And you know where he got it from. Terry Pratchett, since he's a fictional character.
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Dec 5, 2016 20:12
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Jerry Cotton posted:Terry Pratchett, since he's a fictional character. There's always one.
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Dec 5, 2016 23:12
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Kesper North posted:There's always one. Boring guy who posts too much Bad post man.
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Dec 5, 2016 23:21
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Real life Auditor confirmed right here.
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Dec 6, 2016 19:51
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Well excuse me for not engaging in microfanfiction.
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Dec 6, 2016 19:54
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I'm pretty sure him and Granny talk explicitly about Headology in Lord and Ladies so it's totally canon and not fanfic at all, neener neener neener.
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Dec 6, 2016 22:18
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Also worth noting that Ridcully's a wizard from the countryside who was basically introduced as a subversion of the Radagast "hedge wizard" archetype (they're even both "the Brown"). Dude probably could've been a witch if it wasn't for magical gender conventions.
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Dec 10, 2016 11:40
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Konstantin posted:Ridcully is silly now, but that's because he can be. He personally built the university into what it is, and probably killed dozens of would be Archchancellors before his reforms took hold. He's a lot like Vetinari, in that he certainly could kill, but he spends his efforts building an environment where he doesn't need to. I thought he was selected after the events in Sourcery as an outsider to calm and build things up. And then he just proved to hard to kill, mainly by him shouting down his assailants. Shooting a crossbow for fun at the bursar probably helped things.
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Dec 10, 2016 13:30
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Cardiac posted:I thought he was selected after the events in Sourcery as an outsider to calm and build things up. The compact crossbow he keeps in his hat. God I love that character.
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Dec 10, 2016 18:41
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He's got a lot in that hat. I'd dare say it would give Nanny's reinforced hat a run for its money in terms of stopping falling houses. Anyway, speaking of adaptions as we were a while ago, I'd like to bring to people's attention that there were actually three Discworld video games made. Discworld 1 and Discworld 2: Missing Presumed...?! are both pretty much abandonware now, and there are a few sites you can download them from. Load them into ScummVM and have an old school adventuring blast with both of them. The art style for both of them are great, and the voice acting is also pretty charming. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfMm4mkyTn4 The third one was a more 'modern' game that was an entirely original story, I believe. It was called "Discworld Noir" and followed the investigation of the Disc's first Private Eye. I guess this may be abandonware now, too, but it seems more legally dubious.
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Dec 11, 2016 01:24
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Rush Limbo posted:He's got a lot in that hat. I'd dare say it would give Nanny's reinforced hat a run for its money in terms of stopping falling houses. The thing about Missing Presumed point point point question mark is that timing is everything in comedy and everything is timed just a tad off so nothing is funny. (There's a lot of dialogue.)
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Dec 11, 2016 01:33
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Missing Presumed had much less frustrating and more entertaining puzzles, some of which actually made some sort of twisted sense. Discworld 1's puzzles were so random Pratchett said sorry in the intro blurb for the second game. Discworld Noir is also worth either watching a LP or playing yourself. Yeah the graphics are kind of crude but it is still so good.
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Dec 11, 2016 06:47
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