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The Harry Potter movies and the Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell miniseries were adapted much more faithfully--like 80%-90% word-for-word with very few changes. Lev Grossman is so flattered that somebody adapted his books that he's become too much of an apologist for them. I agree wholeheartedly that this series is suffering from time compression. Julia's ordeal seems greatly minimized in this adaptation; she's basically introduced into the safehouse scene without ever having to discover it for herself. Her life is supposed to be a massive downward spiral for months, getting worse and worse, until she is on a bunch of psych meds and at the brink of giving up the idea of magic entirely before she discovers the hedge magicians. It's strange how her mental health issues were transplanted onto Quentin in the tv series, and Quentin's white-sparks-from-fingertips were transplanted onto Julia. It's also super weird that hedge magicians initiate each other by attempting to rape newbies in bathrooms until their powers manifest--that ain't in the books. Badass telepath Penny is a screenwriter's crutch. The psychic voices he hears are the screenwriter's stage directions telling him what to do next to advance the plot. In the books, Penny has no psychic powers, and is basically a goon, which is way funnier. Also this version of Alice is a high-strung bitch version of Hermoine, rather than the painfully shy traumatized girl in the books. The actor who plays Quentin does a good job, and so does the actor who plays Eliot. It's too bad Quentin is portrayed as kind of dumb in this adaptation; he's supposed to be a masochistic overachiever who needs to prove he's smarter than everybody else. That's why he, Alice, and Penny get bumped up a year. I loved the Beast scene; just wished it could have gone on for longer. In the books, it's supposed to have lasted for an agonizing amount of time, and The Beast is supposed to have done more weird poo poo (which will make sense later) like smashing the clocks in the room. I'm curious to watch the entire series and see how it all turns out.
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Dec 18, 2015 18:19
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I liked the Emily Greenstreet scene and the flashback to Charlie. I wish they had made her more deformed looking, like a Picasso rendered in real life, a real Cronenberg horrorshow. It was cool to see Charlie go up in blue flames, but a pity the special effects budget is so low that they couldn't make him look like that all the time. Niffins are supposed to be made of blue fire, constantly floating, and they're smaller than their original bodies, like a person at 3/4ths scale. Also, naked, which I suppose they wouldn't be able to show on TV. It bothers me that the TV writers made up a "Niffin Box" that can so easily bind them. They're supposed to be as powerful as minor gods--the best you can do is try to run. I agree with the other criticisms posters in this thread have made. I really love the books. They're a lot like a fantasy version of The Venture Brothers in the sense that they focus on how people fail to achieve happiness even with superpowers and how fairy tales are horrifying if you actually had to live in one. This TV show seems to be ignoring what made the books so clever and insightful, in favor of giving us some generic fantasy show with attractive young people acting edgy. I 75% hate this show. But since it's supposed to be adapting my favorite fantasy novels, I'll keep watching it to see the other glimpses of book-accurate cool moments interspersed between the poo poo they keep making up out of whole cloth.
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Feb 3, 2016 21:51
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Rhyno, I think you may be missing the point. If second-hand descriptions of the books sound lackluster or dumb, that's partially because you're missing out on the context, but also because the books are supposed to be a deconstruction of fantasy literature. It's not supposed to sound awesome; that's not the effect Lev Grossman was going for. I've made this comparison before, but it really fits: the closest match to the tone of the Magicians Trilogy is Venture Brothers, in my opinion. Venture Brothers clearly loves the genres it's parodying, but it injects depressing realism into the fantasy to make things funnier. The show fucks this up big time by playing a Chosen One Quest straight, and trying to make the protagonists sexy and cool. The books weren't supposed to be glamorous. They were more poignant and funny because of the characters' perpetual disappointment that magical life wasn't all it was cracked up to be. The timescale is another huge issue. It's a coming of age tale, as if all seven Harry Potter books had several books added on that dealt with Harry's marriage falling apart and Ron becoming an alcoholic. Quentin ages from 18 to early thirties in the books. I think this show is such a loving disappointment, it's almost meta-commentary. I loved the Magicians Trilogy as much as Quentin loved the Fillory books, but real life i.e. this lovely tv adaptation has provided a rude and unpleasant awakening, leading to nihilism.
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Dec 23, 2016 01:06
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People ragging on novels they haven't read reminds me of people making GBS threads on Daredevil comics after seeing the Ben Affleck movie and assuming they're exactly the same. It's also odd to describe the novels as "tween" since they're written by a Gen-X'er and the characters behave more according to the sensibilities of that generation rather than millennials. It's all about the ennui, not plucky Young Adult protagonists trying to fight for a better future.
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Dec 23, 2016 07:04
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