GOOD CHARACTERS MAKE GOOD FICTION. PERIOD.

I THOUGHT I WOULD DO A SHORT post on three TV shows I’ve been watching, all fantasy/sci-fi dramas as it turns out, two of which are misses and one is a satisfying hit. Like a lot of people, I was looking forward to the new series: House of the Dragon—the “prequel” to Game of Thrones. Also there was another widely-anticipated   prequel show, the Rings of Power, which is Amazon Prime’s adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, which details the ages before the LOR took place, including the period when the “rings of power” were forged. I’ll do the second series  first: 

 

THERE ARE STORIES aplenty in Tolkien’s depiction of the years before Middle Earth’s beginning, and Amazon Prime spent a reported one billion (that’s with a “b”!) dollars on the first season, so I was looking forward to seeing how they would envision such a sprawling epic and bring to life Tolkien’s imagined world with all its majestic realms, and varied peoples.  WHILE IT IS DIFFICULT ENOUGH to bring a work of literary fiction to life on the big (or small) screen, it is generally a good idea to stay reasonably faithful to the source material in terms of plot and characterization. ALAS, AMAZON’S dog’s breakfast of a fantasy series does neither. Other commentators here and here provide more detailed (and humorous) reviews than I’ll bother with now. 

I’LL JUST ADD that having watched the first three episodes of “Rings”, I was unimpressed by the overall storytelling (it seemed typical TV fodder) and character development (what development?) The elf “Galadriel”, around which much of the show’s action sinks revolves, is a one-dimensional character whose portrayal is wooden at best. When compared with the hobbit and human characters brought to life on the big screen in Peter Jackson’s LOR and Hobbit trilogies a few years ago, the elves, humans and ‘proto-hobbits’ in Amazon’s “Rings” seem lifeless and stereotyped or just plain annoying, and as a viewer, I can’t invest my time with them. The show’s script writers would do well to provide interesting dialogue, back-story and character development and spend less time worrying about woke inclusivity, virtue-signalling and marketing their “product” to trending, demographic audiences. I give the show   👎👎👎.

 

HBO's HOUSE OF THE DRAGON is a prequel  to its hugely successful (except for the horrid last season!) Game of Thrones series, and it also would do well to invest more time in character development and less on CGI special effects. Yes, there are dragons, but stick to good story telling. Admittedly, the plot and characters are better shaped here than in “Rings”, but I find myself less interested in them than I was in the original GOT series.

“House” characters suffer, in part, from the story’s time frame. Characters age, actors portraying them change. Two actors portray the main character, for example, playing younger and older versions of Princess Rhaenyra, along with a confusing array of siblings and offspring. And, frankly, once you’ve seen one dragon, you’ve seen 'em all. I’ll watch the show, but you’ll probably find my eyeballs stitched to my doodling pad more  often than on the TV screen. So it goes.

 

THE THIRD IS A SCI-FI I’d like to briefly mention, starring the popular Hollywood actor, Jason Momoa.* It's called See and it depicts the world several centuries from now inhabited by remnant human populations who are congenitally blind. Everyone, except in very rare circumstances, is born blind!  We never learn why or what happened. Was it a virus? A  bio-weapon? Radiation? Triffids? Whatever the cause, people in the future live with this affliction in small urban centres (in the ruins of today's towns and cities), or else in villages, nomadic tribal groups and even quasi-feudal kingdoms. The populations are small, the lives of the people are hard scrabble but realistic, and the strategies they use to find food and defend themselves, as well as how they negotiate their way across the land, are ingenious, but also believable. The story centres around Momoa and his family over a period of about twenty years. And the important thing that makes this show work is that the writers take the time to portray characters’ individuality. We see them grow and mature as they deal with life’s hardship and with each other. We sympathize with them and, as a viewer, you invest emotionally in such characters. 

 

THE SHOW has a good deal of violence and bloodshed, with Momoa having to fight someone in most episodes. His Zen-like battle style and swordsmanship are impressive, and the only thing more intimidating than "Baba Voss" (Momoa) wielding a machete in a dance of death with his opponent is his "little" brother "Edo" (Dave Bautista). The plot is fairly complex, the characters work and, importantly, they make you want to see what happens to them.

I enjoyed #3 but the first two are ho-hum and reserved for those times when you have to stay indoors  to avoid fallout from Russian nukes. 

 

Cheers, Jake.

_______________________________________

 

*He has been in recent Marvel superhero movies playing the character “Aquaman”. He also was the first season of Game of Thrones and in 2021’s Dune.  

  

 

You can watch See on the Putlocker video streaming service. Free, I might add. (You'll probably have to refresh the page a number of times before the video plays.)

 

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE JULIAN ASSANGE!