Shannara (on MTV)

[shiznitz]

http://screenrant.com/shannara-series-mtv-jon-favreau-pilot

Yes, the Terry Brooks Shannara.

Stumbled on the news that Rhys-Davies will be king of the elves in the first season.  I read these books voraciously in my tween years. How do they hold up?

[Bunk]

Have you ever read Tolkein? (Never quite understood how Brooks got away with blatantly copying so much for those books)

[WayAbvPar]

I read the first 20 pages and put it down. I was probably in my late 20s or early 30s by the time i got around to them, so that may be why.

[HaemishM]

Yeah, I tried reading the first one in my late 20's/early 30's. Horribly derivative.

[shiznitz]

I certainly read Sword of Shannara before I read Tolkien on my own. My dad read The Hobbit to me when I was a wee one but I did not get to LotR until high school.

[Tale]

I was given a later Shannara novel to review for a student newspaper when I was younger,  and I have never read a worse written, more derivative, phoney pile of shit. At least, that's what I tried to get across in my review. Prime example of bad-taste pulp fantasy fiction.

[Evildrider]

Is this gonna be like Real World: Shannara?   

[Threash]

I read a few of them when i was younger, they were all basically exactly the same with different names filled in for almost all the main characters.  Except for not-Gandalf who played the not-Gandalf on all of them.

[croaker69]

As has been mentioned they do not hold up. Should've been The Black Company. 

[Morat20]

If they were gonna do a Brooks book, they could have at least done his urban fantasy. It's equally on point for modern tastes --- teen girl can see the shadow beasts of the otherwise normal land and fights them and shit.

I'd have ditched the wandering knight guy,though.

Then again, urban fantasy is pretty solidly covered already, but it's probably better than LotR's knock-off.

[Tannhauser]

I read Sword of Shannara after LOTR and remember wondering why all fantasy literature isn't like Tolkien. 

Thomas Covenant was the closest I ever got to Tolkien again.  The rape scene though really stained what could have been a legendary trilogy. I guess I like my heroes more Skywalker than Rothlesberger. 

But yeah, SoS was pretty bad.  What I liked were the maps inside and the great art from the Brothers Hildebrandt.  The first name in fantasy art when I was a lad.  Well, them and Franzetta. 

[sickrubik]

The weirdest part of this whole thing is Jon Favreau directing the pilot.

[RhyssaFireheart]

If they were gonna do a Brooks book, they could have at least done his urban fantasy. It's equally on point for modern tastes --- teen girl can see the shadow beasts of the otherwise normal land and fights them and shit.

I'd have ditched the wandering knight guy,though.

Then again, urban fantasy is pretty solidly covered already, but it's probably better than LotR's knock-off.

The Angel Fire ones?  Might not have been too bad to do if they could.  Although, I recently reread the first Shannara book and while this time around, I could see the Tolkien references more clearly, it was also different in several ways, too.  I still have issues with the map scale though, the world they were in was just... taking days to go from the starting point to the city of Leah, yet they crossed a plain that appeared to be the same distance in a few hours.   

And I heard that he's basically shoehorned the Angel Fire series into the continuity of the Shannara books so I had to check it out and... yep.  It's supposedly all one universe and everything is interconnected somehow.   

[shiznitz]

The Angel Fire storyline is a pre-prequel to Shannara by hundreds of years.  Basically the world as we know it becomes Shannara and then cycles back to the world as we know it. Technology > Magic > Nature > Technology and around and around we go.

[Rendakor]

The weirdest part of this whole thing is Jon Favreau directing the pilot.

I was just surprised that MTV is still a thing.

[Morat20]

If they were gonna do a Brooks book, they could have at least done his urban fantasy. It's equally on point for modern tastes --- teen girl can see the shadow beasts of the otherwise normal land and fights them and shit.

I'd have ditched the wandering knight guy,though.

Then again, urban fantasy is pretty solidly covered already, but it's probably better than LotR's knock-off.

The Angel Fire ones?  Might not have been too bad to do if they could.  Although, I recently reread the first Shannara book and while this time around, I could see the Tolkien references more clearly, it was also different in several ways, too.  I still have issues with the map scale though, the world they were in was just... taking days to go from the starting point to the city of Leah, yet they crossed a plain that appeared to be the same distance in a few hours.   

And I heard that he's basically shoehorned the Angel Fire series into the continuity of the Shannara books so I had to check it out and... yep.  It's supposedly all one universe and everything is interconnected somehow.   

Yeah, that's the one. I kinda did like the idea of the Knight guy -- like he's the one guy with magic, but he basically is stuck wandering and lame (so he never leaves his magic staff anywhere or something) and there's this weird thing where if he uses magic now, he can't use it one day in the post-apocalyptic hell-hole future he dreams of at night or something.

Bitter sort of wandering wizard who hates his job and has massive PTSD plus magic girl? You know what, scrap Brooks -- let's do that instead.

[Paelos]

Have you ever read Tolkein? (Never quite understood how Brooks got away with blatantly copying so much for those books)

Yeah I read 50 pages of book one and went... How is this legal?