LeMarchand Posted January 20, 2020 Posted January 20, 2020 I'm not a Pratchett fan, so I've got no particular skin in htis game, but I find it hard to understand why people decide to adapt something from anoher medium and change so much as to make it unrecognisable. It also makes it difficult to get a "faithful" adaptation for a good few years.
mavhc Posted January 20, 2020 Posted January 20, 2020 It’s trendy * sigh * We go to see Shakespeare plays and for the first time in ages we recently saw a production where a King was actually played by a man. These are the historical plays, Henry V, etc... The production was Henry VI and the King was played by a male actor. The lead female part is Queen Margaret, Henry’s wife, who is a very strong character... which was also played by a man British casting has a reputation for being colourblind.. it would appear to be becoming gender blind too. Well, it is historically accurate. It's a bit unrealistic to have a woman playing a woman on stage, where would you put the coconuts? 1
GrumbleDook Posted January 20, 2020 Posted January 20, 2020 I'd be fine accepting that if we'd had a decent straight adaptation first for this to be the alternative to, but they've never done the Watch stuff before, and Vimes is my favourite There have been Watch adaptations before, on radio and plays. Due to time for production liberties get taken and the director/producer does the best they can with the people they have but they do play fast and lose some times. There are few things that I feel need to have the exact reproduction ... it will be hard for anyone to picture what my head cooked up when I read each book. There are times when my vision or idea has changed over time due to conversations with other fans. Whether you are a Pete Postlethwaite / Clint Eastwood fan for Vimes, I can’t get Philip Jackson’s voice out my head for him now ... Adaptations I didn’t like? I did get upset about all those elves at Helm’s Deep though. Very upset! 1
witch Posted January 21, 2020 Posted January 21, 2020 I'd be fine accepting that if we'd had a decent straight adaptation first for this to be the alternative to, but they've never done the Watch stuff before, and Vimes is my favourite What he said - a bit like variations on a theme - but you have to have the theme first! 3
ICTDirect_Dave Posted January 27, 2020 Posted January 27, 2020 Adaptations I didn’t like? I did get upset about all those elves at Helm’s Deep though. Very upset! This left me both sad AND furious! Some of those elves may have died elsewhere in the war, but not at Helms Deep and not Haldir! He got on a boat to valinor. 2
sparkeh Posted January 27, 2020 Posted January 27, 2020 Err, I'm pretty sure it's a fictional story you seem to have wandered into the wrong thread
DJ-1701 Posted January 27, 2020 Posted January 27, 2020 Is Lord Of The Rings not fictional? Given that there an infinite number of possibilities and therefore an infinite number of worlds... What does this have to do with Pratchett's Watch? 1
ICTDirect_Dave Posted January 27, 2020 Posted January 27, 2020 Is Lord Of The Rings not fictional? Absolutely not. It's presented as a historical tale in The hobbit However, when you love a book, and understand what elves are and the weight of years they carry. Casually killing a significant one unnecessarily is likely to cause some degree of upset. Agreed? Excellent, that's that one closed. Back to the Watch eh? 3
mikeprice Posted January 27, 2020 Posted January 27, 2020 I really think the changes are ridiculous not even "political correctness gone mad" as it would be PC to leave Lady Sybil as a large woman rather than edit larger women out of the series just changing things for teh sake of it a female Patrician may work out well though - but I will reserve judgement and in the meantime I'll just worry about it
mavhc Posted January 27, 2020 Posted January 27, 2020 Easier to just wait until it's aired, then complain
Arthur Posted October 12, 2020 Posted October 12, 2020 First trailer for The Watch. https://youtu.be/ymQMJDmhu70
TechMonkey Posted October 12, 2020 Posted October 12, 2020 I'm following Rhianna Pratchett's example 1
Norphy Posted October 12, 2020 Posted October 12, 2020 (edited) Dear BBC. I said don't mess this up. Don't. That looks awful. If you and Amazon can do Good Omens so well, how and why have you ballsed this one up so badly? FFS. Yours disappointedly, Most Discworld fans (probably) Edited October 12, 2020 by Norphy
sonofsanta Posted October 12, 2020 Posted October 12, 2020 Yeah, that ain't Sam Vimes. If this was in a vacuum I might be intrigued by The Strange Dieselpunk Adventures of Jack Sparrow, but the cognitive dissonance that this is meant to be Discworld will prove too much for my simple brain, I fear. Richard Dormer could have been a really good Vimes played straight, too. Sigh.
mavhc Posted October 12, 2020 Posted October 12, 2020 Seems easier to wait until you've seen it before disliking it.
sonofsanta Posted October 12, 2020 Posted October 12, 2020 Seems easier to wait until you've seen it before disliking it. I mean, the sole and entire purpose of trailers is to make you think you'll like a show and entice you to watch it, so it doesn't seem unreasonable at this stage to judge based on the trailers? Particularly when what we're judging is "those aren't the characters they're meant to be given the licence" 1
paulkerton Posted October 12, 2020 Posted October 12, 2020 Well, as someone who never read Discworld novels as a teen, and thought the Sky adaptions of The Hogfather, The Colour of Magic and Going Postal were all completely dreadful I guess this is being made for someone like me. I don't think it looks bad stand alone. But I can understand why fans of the source material may not like it, if it strays so far from expectation.
mikeprice Posted October 12, 2020 Posted October 12, 2020 Hmmmm Not The Watch but still could be good - but in a standalone sort of manner I would have though that doing it properly would have been better - and get more viewers
sonofsanta Posted October 12, 2020 Posted October 12, 2020 Well, as someone who never read Discworld novels as a teen, and thought the Sky adaptions of The Hogfather, The Colour of Magic and Going Postal were all completely dreadful I guess this is being made for someone like me. I don't think it looks bad stand alone. But I can understand why fans of the source material may not like it, if it strays so far from expectation. Yeah, I've been trying to work out what it is about those Sky versions that felt so... empty. They were faithful, certainly on the surface, but they just didn't capture the magic. Colour of Magic's problem is that the book is nobody's favourite*--Sir Pterry was definitely warming up at that point, and the book is parody not satire--but Going Postal and The Hogfather should have worked. But somehow they just didn't get the characters right, I guess? I don't know. It's like the BBC's His Dark Materials last year--the casting was brilliant, the production was gorgeous, but it was somehow... soulless, and nearly everyone I know who was a fan of the books ended up drifting away and not finishing the series. *Another reason we're all so upset about The Watch specifically is that the Vimes series of books is most people's favourite run in the novels, so to have this specifically messed up really hurts, because we had such particularly high hopes
Norphy Posted October 12, 2020 Posted October 12, 2020 (edited) Hmmmm Not The Watch but still could be good - but in a standalone sort of manner I would have though that doing it properly would have been better - and get more viewers Playing devils advocate: Better: Definitely. More viewers: Possibly not Despite the success of Game of Thrones, LOTR and hell, Harry Potter, Fantasy is still a genre which has connotations which aren't necessarily positive and may be off-putting to a more mainstream primetime audience. That's probably why they've used this quasi-modern setting. I still don't like the trailer. I take mavhc's point about not pre-judging a series on a flashy 2 minute teaser but as someone else said, a teaser is supposed to draw you in. This has just made me sad about what could have been. This could have been so good if they'd done what they did with Good Omens and stuck with the source material a bit more. That said, Sky did stick with the source material pretty well with their adaptations but they were still pretty dire. I still think that the Cosgrove Hall animations of Wyrd Sisters and Soul Music are the best adaptations of the Discworld that I've seen and I don't think that this new series is going to change my opinion on that. Yeah, I've been trying to work out what it is about those Sky versions that felt so... empty. They were faithful, certainly on the surface, but they just didn't capture the magic. Colour of Magic's problem is that the book is nobody's favourite*--Sir Pterry was definitely warming up at that point, and the book is parody not satire--but Going Postal and The Hogfather should have worked. But somehow they just didn't get the characters right, I guess? I don't know. It's like the BBC's His Dark Materials last year--the casting was brilliant, the production was gorgeous, but it was somehow... soulless, and nearly everyone I know who was a fan of the books ended up drifting away and not finishing the series. *Another reason we're all so upset about The Watch specifically is that the Vimes series of books is most people's favourite run in the novels, so to have this specifically messed up really hurts, because we had such particularly high hopes I think another huge problem with Colour of Magic's adaptation was David Jason. He was not the right person to be playing Rincewind and it felt to me that it was four hours of him going "wurrrrgh". Plus they crammed both Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic into the thing, which didn't help either. Edited October 12, 2020 by Norphy
ICTDirect_Dave Posted October 12, 2020 Posted October 12, 2020 The problem with the Sky adaptations was definitely one of casting and also one of Tone, certainly in Going Postal. David Jason for all his talent, did not steal the show as Rincewind, and Richard Coyle of Coupling fame didn't hit the spot as Moist Von Lipwig. Sir Pterry ended up writing very serious books with some incredibly funny moments, the Sky adaptations got this the wrong way around. 1
Norphy Posted February 26, 2021 Posted February 26, 2021 It's been transmitted on BBC America, it hasn't found its way here yet. Not by legal means anyway.
Andrew_C Posted July 8, 2021 Posted July 8, 2021 We're watching IT - now available on Iplayer . If you can get your head around it not being "THE WATCH" Pterry, it is actually OK. Some bits a bit iffy, but OK.
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