books to TV: Riverworld
Aug. 14th, 2010 12:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
winterbadgerI recently discovered that Phillip Jose Farmer's "Riverworld" books have been translated into not one but two TV movies. Thanks to the magic of WiFi streaming Netflix, I was able to watch the second of these (two 1.5 hour episodes intended to be the pilot of a new TV series that never lived).
First of all, I have to recognize that I'm not impartial. I read the books in high school at a point where things that I read that I enjoyed had a tremendous, perhaps disproportionate, impact on me. So it's important for me to divorce my reactions to the program in comparison to the books to my reactions to it as sci-fi TV.
First of all, on the most superficial level possible, I enjoyed much of it visually because I recently bought an HD TV. I've been resisting this for some time, but I finally broke down, and when something is filmed and broadcast in HD, it makes a HUGE difference. The images are fuller and richer, like the difference between seeing through an old, out of date pair of glasses and through a new prescription that's just been filled. Of course, that has its downside too. Especially, I suspect, in television, where budgets are not so big, CGI is somewhere from subtly to painfully out of place when viewed in HD.
So, moving on from that. Things that I liked... the landscapes are breathtaking. A Canadian production, it was filmed in the mountains and fjord-like rivers of BC. Truly amazing. Some of the casting was quite good. The actors selected to play Richard Francis Burton and Samuel Clemens looked remarkably like those men in their youth.
I liked some of the characters selected for the "updated" edition of the story. One of the conceits of the books is that many of the characters are real, historical people; some are more obscure than others, but it introduced some interesting historical people to the reader, which I enjoyed. Some of the characters added (or at least that I don't remember from the books) include Francisco Pizzarro, Tomoe Gozen, the supporting characters Ludwig Durr and Wada Yoshimori, and a Senegalese character, Yussef Mbaye, who I think is supposed to be an indirect tribute to Mbaye Diagne, a Senegalese soldier who served as a peacekeeper in Rwanda.
So, that was the easy part. Because the list of things that I didn't like was much longer.
Things that I didn't like because they contradicted the books or the rules of their millieu: No, you know, let's not even go there. It's too long. I'll just content myself with one or two. In the books, everyone wakes up on the banks of this world-spanning river, naked with a container that converts energy into food, drink, and a limited range of other goods. In the TV show, they wake up *in* the river (some of them--others show up on the riverbank, no explanation of why the difference). And they show up dressed in clothes and with accouterments of their historical time periods. People who produce personal goods (Tomoe Gozen makes herself a pair of swords) carry these with them to their next life when they die and are resurrected later. That's *so* against the ethos of the books that it really bugs me. One of the things that was interesting was how people from different times adapted to a common low-level of life and technology. It accentuated how the things that made people different had to do with society and mores and language, not with clothes and tools. *sigh* And why mess with the time-sequencing of the books? If you were killed on Riverworld, you woke up again the next morning somewhere else, usually hundreds, maybe thousands of miles from where you had been. In the TV movie, some people are reborn right away while others wait years to be reborn. Why?
Things that I didn't like because they just made no sense, were bad film-making, etc.: What made the books interesting, IMO, was the interaction of the people from different races and cultures and historical periods. Only late in the book cycle does the interaction between the human characters and the creators of the Riverworld become a major theme; in the TV movie, it's there from the beginning and shapes the whole story from the beginning. I think that's a shame.
I also thought it was a shame that they felt the need to make the central character a US TV journalist who had been killed in an Islamic suicide bombing in a nightclub in Singapore just as he was proposing to his GF. I mean, c'mon. That's so "ripped from the headlines" it's trite. Do they really think that unless viewers are tied to the fears of their day and age that they can't relate to characters? And for crying out out, when we meet the suicide bomber again on the Riverworld (because, of course, we knew *that* was coming), she's wearing a t-shirt with the name and logo of the terrorist group she was in. T-shirts? Really? Do terrorist groups also give away more of those damn coffee mugs than anyone can ever use? and tote bags?
While we're going over things that simply don't make sense, why does Sam Clemens's riverboat have armoured shutters for all the windows, but the pilothouse is a wheel mounted on a podium with a waist-high U of sandbags around it? And why, on a boat that's run by a fusion reactor and has beautiful blown-glass brandy snifters, is the main armament a 17th century cannon mounted on a fixed wooden block with no protection around it at all and no ability to do anything other than lob shells in a high trajectory (pretty amazing how it fires shells, since there's no sign it's anything but a smooothbore cannons...)
And why does Pizzarro think he's going to stop this wonderful riverboat (which can just steam tot he opposite bank of a river that's clearly a mile wide or more) with 2-3 very rickety looking catapults? Once Burton captures the riverboat, where does he get the heat-seeking missiles he uses to defend it with (fired out of wooden tubes held together with metal bands...) When some of Pizzarro's captives try to sabotage his preparations, why do they completely break objects in plain sight of their guards? Of course they don't get away with that. Given that the Senegalese soldier starts out commanding several files of marines with bolt-action rifles, where do they all go, and why does he spend most of the program using an Eastern European berdiche as his favourite weapons? When the designer of the zeppelin decided to reconstruct his beloved craft (which looks nothing like any zeppelin I've ever seen), OK, he wanted to make the design just the same. But would he really have replicated all the cocktail tables in the observation deck, with their individual lamps and linen tablecloths *and* a rack of champagne flutes and bottles of champagne complete with the traditional style of LABEL?
Then some of the just Teh Dubm. In the beginning, we see the reporter trying to make contact with a group of insurgents in the jungles of Malaysia. Then we see on TV his report, after he has been seized by the rebels and persuaded them to let him interview their leader. He and his best friend are shown being held by the threatening-looking terrorists while he delivers his report to camera. Only thing is, his buddy, standing next to him? *He's* the cameraman. So...
Then, sadly, some of the worst is still to come. The actors. I like Alan Cumming. He's Scottish. He can be a very good actor, especially if his role allows him to swish a bit. He can even do a pretty decent American. But in this he was pure B movie British baddie. Ugh. Lots of Canadian talent in it (no surprise). Sadly, much of it is not talented. They decide to include Tomoe Gozen--cool. They cast an ANGLO Canadian actress in the role because she speaks Japanese. Dude! She looks liek she walked out of Sweet Valley High! She is pretty, but she's not Japanese! You got a Japanese actor to play her husband in a flashback. Why not get a Japanese actress? So she speaks Japanese--in the flashback scene she speaks Japanese to her husband... for several sentences that are subtitles, and then she switches to ENGLISH!
And, oh, Tahmoh Penikett--he was really pretty good as Helo in BG. In this, he struggles to be tolerable.
Some of it is the writing. The script veers from pretentious philosophizing (which, I vaguely recall, may actually be fairly true to the books...) to dialogue that would embarrass scriptwriters for soap operas. Characters frequently spout opinions that completely contradict what they said just moments before, capping one pompous epigram with one that means something diametrically opposite. ("Sometimes you just gotta accept what life gives you and live in the moment." *pause* "Like I always say, never stop planning and striving to reach your goal!" Bwuh?)
And finally, I can see why this got shot down, though how it ever got greenlighted, I don't know. In the 3 hours of the pilot (Wikipedia says 4, but on Netflix there are two parts, both 1.5 hours long), they introduce half a dozen leads and as many supporting characters, both the riverboat and the dirigible (which took three of the five books to get to) and the characters travel to the end of the River (it's 10 million miles long) and reach the Tower that is the control center for the world (which didn't happen until the fourth book...) and confront the creators. The central characters come to the climax of their conflict, the attempt to destroy the entire world takes place...
And then everyone dies, goes back into the River, and ends the pilot meeting up but without any memory of the final confrontation. They all declare they're going to keep searching until they find answers as to why they're there. Bullshit!
If you made it to the end of this rant, you deserve a reward. So here is a picture of a *real* zeppelin. And yes, that's what it looks like. In 1917, a German Imperial zeppelin captured a sailing ship of the Norwegian Royal Navy. Go figure.
First of all, I have to recognize that I'm not impartial. I read the books in high school at a point where things that I read that I enjoyed had a tremendous, perhaps disproportionate, impact on me. So it's important for me to divorce my reactions to the program in comparison to the books to my reactions to it as sci-fi TV.
First of all, on the most superficial level possible, I enjoyed much of it visually because I recently bought an HD TV. I've been resisting this for some time, but I finally broke down, and when something is filmed and broadcast in HD, it makes a HUGE difference. The images are fuller and richer, like the difference between seeing through an old, out of date pair of glasses and through a new prescription that's just been filled. Of course, that has its downside too. Especially, I suspect, in television, where budgets are not so big, CGI is somewhere from subtly to painfully out of place when viewed in HD.
So, moving on from that. Things that I liked... the landscapes are breathtaking. A Canadian production, it was filmed in the mountains and fjord-like rivers of BC. Truly amazing. Some of the casting was quite good. The actors selected to play Richard Francis Burton and Samuel Clemens looked remarkably like those men in their youth.
I liked some of the characters selected for the "updated" edition of the story. One of the conceits of the books is that many of the characters are real, historical people; some are more obscure than others, but it introduced some interesting historical people to the reader, which I enjoyed. Some of the characters added (or at least that I don't remember from the books) include Francisco Pizzarro, Tomoe Gozen, the supporting characters Ludwig Durr and Wada Yoshimori, and a Senegalese character, Yussef Mbaye, who I think is supposed to be an indirect tribute to Mbaye Diagne, a Senegalese soldier who served as a peacekeeper in Rwanda.
So, that was the easy part. Because the list of things that I didn't like was much longer.
Things that I didn't like because they contradicted the books or the rules of their millieu: No, you know, let's not even go there. It's too long. I'll just content myself with one or two. In the books, everyone wakes up on the banks of this world-spanning river, naked with a container that converts energy into food, drink, and a limited range of other goods. In the TV show, they wake up *in* the river (some of them--others show up on the riverbank, no explanation of why the difference). And they show up dressed in clothes and with accouterments of their historical time periods. People who produce personal goods (Tomoe Gozen makes herself a pair of swords) carry these with them to their next life when they die and are resurrected later. That's *so* against the ethos of the books that it really bugs me. One of the things that was interesting was how people from different times adapted to a common low-level of life and technology. It accentuated how the things that made people different had to do with society and mores and language, not with clothes and tools. *sigh* And why mess with the time-sequencing of the books? If you were killed on Riverworld, you woke up again the next morning somewhere else, usually hundreds, maybe thousands of miles from where you had been. In the TV movie, some people are reborn right away while others wait years to be reborn. Why?
Things that I didn't like because they just made no sense, were bad film-making, etc.: What made the books interesting, IMO, was the interaction of the people from different races and cultures and historical periods. Only late in the book cycle does the interaction between the human characters and the creators of the Riverworld become a major theme; in the TV movie, it's there from the beginning and shapes the whole story from the beginning. I think that's a shame.
I also thought it was a shame that they felt the need to make the central character a US TV journalist who had been killed in an Islamic suicide bombing in a nightclub in Singapore just as he was proposing to his GF. I mean, c'mon. That's so "ripped from the headlines" it's trite. Do they really think that unless viewers are tied to the fears of their day and age that they can't relate to characters? And for crying out out, when we meet the suicide bomber again on the Riverworld (because, of course, we knew *that* was coming), she's wearing a t-shirt with the name and logo of the terrorist group she was in. T-shirts? Really? Do terrorist groups also give away more of those damn coffee mugs than anyone can ever use? and tote bags?
While we're going over things that simply don't make sense, why does Sam Clemens's riverboat have armoured shutters for all the windows, but the pilothouse is a wheel mounted on a podium with a waist-high U of sandbags around it? And why, on a boat that's run by a fusion reactor and has beautiful blown-glass brandy snifters, is the main armament a 17th century cannon mounted on a fixed wooden block with no protection around it at all and no ability to do anything other than lob shells in a high trajectory (pretty amazing how it fires shells, since there's no sign it's anything but a smooothbore cannons...)
And why does Pizzarro think he's going to stop this wonderful riverboat (which can just steam tot he opposite bank of a river that's clearly a mile wide or more) with 2-3 very rickety looking catapults? Once Burton captures the riverboat, where does he get the heat-seeking missiles he uses to defend it with (fired out of wooden tubes held together with metal bands...) When some of Pizzarro's captives try to sabotage his preparations, why do they completely break objects in plain sight of their guards? Of course they don't get away with that. Given that the Senegalese soldier starts out commanding several files of marines with bolt-action rifles, where do they all go, and why does he spend most of the program using an Eastern European berdiche as his favourite weapons? When the designer of the zeppelin decided to reconstruct his beloved craft (which looks nothing like any zeppelin I've ever seen), OK, he wanted to make the design just the same. But would he really have replicated all the cocktail tables in the observation deck, with their individual lamps and linen tablecloths *and* a rack of champagne flutes and bottles of champagne complete with the traditional style of LABEL?
Then some of the just Teh Dubm. In the beginning, we see the reporter trying to make contact with a group of insurgents in the jungles of Malaysia. Then we see on TV his report, after he has been seized by the rebels and persuaded them to let him interview their leader. He and his best friend are shown being held by the threatening-looking terrorists while he delivers his report to camera. Only thing is, his buddy, standing next to him? *He's* the cameraman. So...
Then, sadly, some of the worst is still to come. The actors. I like Alan Cumming. He's Scottish. He can be a very good actor, especially if his role allows him to swish a bit. He can even do a pretty decent American. But in this he was pure B movie British baddie. Ugh. Lots of Canadian talent in it (no surprise). Sadly, much of it is not talented. They decide to include Tomoe Gozen--cool. They cast an ANGLO Canadian actress in the role because she speaks Japanese. Dude! She looks liek she walked out of Sweet Valley High! She is pretty, but she's not Japanese! You got a Japanese actor to play her husband in a flashback. Why not get a Japanese actress? So she speaks Japanese--in the flashback scene she speaks Japanese to her husband... for several sentences that are subtitles, and then she switches to ENGLISH!
And, oh, Tahmoh Penikett--he was really pretty good as Helo in BG. In this, he struggles to be tolerable.
Some of it is the writing. The script veers from pretentious philosophizing (which, I vaguely recall, may actually be fairly true to the books...) to dialogue that would embarrass scriptwriters for soap operas. Characters frequently spout opinions that completely contradict what they said just moments before, capping one pompous epigram with one that means something diametrically opposite. ("Sometimes you just gotta accept what life gives you and live in the moment." *pause* "Like I always say, never stop planning and striving to reach your goal!" Bwuh?)
And finally, I can see why this got shot down, though how it ever got greenlighted, I don't know. In the 3 hours of the pilot (Wikipedia says 4, but on Netflix there are two parts, both 1.5 hours long), they introduce half a dozen leads and as many supporting characters, both the riverboat and the dirigible (which took three of the five books to get to) and the characters travel to the end of the River (it's 10 million miles long) and reach the Tower that is the control center for the world (which didn't happen until the fourth book...) and confront the creators. The central characters come to the climax of their conflict, the attempt to destroy the entire world takes place...
And then everyone dies, goes back into the River, and ends the pilot meeting up but without any memory of the final confrontation. They all declare they're going to keep searching until they find answers as to why they're there. Bullshit!
If you made it to the end of this rant, you deserve a reward. So here is a picture of a *real* zeppelin. And yes, that's what it looks like. In 1917, a German Imperial zeppelin captured a sailing ship of the Norwegian Royal Navy. Go figure.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-08-14 07:11 am (UTC)However, I'm with you on the interior fittings of the Zeppelin.
Don't ever re-read the books. You'll regret it. I did...
no subject
Date: 2010-08-14 12:23 pm (UTC)Yes, I have a feeling you're right. The things we like when we're young...
no subject
Date: 2010-08-14 09:33 am (UTC)