Triskaidekafiles

Triskaidekafiles is a love letter to cheesy cinema from the 80s and 90s, with the occasional dip into other eras.  if you're a fan of MST3K, Elvira, Joe Bob Briggs, or just bad horror movies in general, Trisk is the place for you.

Filtering by Tag: fantasy

What I'm Watching: The Quest

Gasp!  ANOTHER post about something recent!  ANOTHER tv post!

ANYways, I wanted to talk a little about ABC's new show, "The Quest".

If you don't know, "The Quest" is a reality show with the usual format of completing tasks and voting someone off the Middle-Earth. The 12 competitors are normal people from the 'real' world, playing along, and the world is populated by actors to add flavour.

I can sum this show up in two words, "dopily entertaining".

Having something that's a twist on the usual reality show style is a nice change of pace. And making the very obvious dichotomy of a reality show in a fantasy realm is a great way to go with.

Can you sense the 'But' coming?

But...man, it just doesn't work. The mythology is bland and generic, the actors filling up the world are mostly lackluster, and the logic of the show is pretty meh. I guess some of that is to be expected, however, things are just kinda there.

The show is HIGHLY MST3Kable, which fills in a lot of the entertainment, so there's that.

My biggest problem is that for a quest, it's pretty boring. So far, in the two episodes, these great heroes that we're supposed to be see trying to save the realm have basically been doing training, or so they want us to believe. In reality (Hah), it amounts to little more than busywork, IMO. Sure, you can't just drop untested rubes from Jersey (And beyond!) into an adventure, and training is probably good, but it comes off as SO tedious and boring.

And having the losers of the busywork having to do MORE busywork to try and not be the person sent home this week is no less tedious.

A better way to do things, and I'll even keep some stuff!, is okay, let's still have them do a training mission to kick things off. That's fine, and makes some sense. But instead of then trying to show the Fates that they're still worthy by nailing horseshoes to a wheel (WHY), you could at LEAST try and dress things up and make things, oh I dunno, more QUEST LIKE and make their later test some sort of adventure type thing.

Instead of having someone voted off the castle, have then grabbed by an orc in battle, or SOMEthing instead of just walking out an arch.

NOW, all that said? The ending of the second episode, and the promo for the third, actually start to make things look like they're going in that direction in a big way, and actually going on a quest for stuff. That could be a HUGE step up, and I really hope it is. The shoe desperately needs something beyond making fun of it for laughs.

There is legitimately a decent idea back there, but they just seem to be going about things the wrong way.  It's not terrible, it has some moments, and there's hints that it MIGHT veer in a better direction very soon, but so far it's just kinda goofy.

What I'm Watching: Age of the Dragons

This was a surprising little gem.

Basically, what AotD is, is a modern day retelling of one of the greatest stories ever written, Moby Dick.  Except whales have been replaced with dragons.

Freakin' dragons.

And the replacement TOTALLY works.

Okay, the Pequod now being a land-based vessel with no obvious means of moving is a bit strange, but it's a fantasy movie with dragons!  They're harvesting their burny juice!  Who cares how the tank moves?

This movie has been largely panned, and has a mere 3.3 on IMDB, and it is SO not deserving of it.  It isn't great, but it is NOT THAT BAD.  I'd give it at LEAST a five, and easily a six.

Danny Glover as Captain Ahab is amazing.  As he usually is.  He chews the scenery a bit, but such an obsessive character as Ahab can get away with it.

The movie has been slammed for just being a 'find and replace' of Moby Dick with dragons, and that's maybe a bit true, but the story still works.  And the fantastical nature of it translates well to this new world.  Something about it just moves well from whales to dragons.  And really, they make no secret the movie is Moby Dick with dragons.  All the character names are there, there are lines of dialogue.  It's silly to slam it for that.  It's like blasting West Side Story for being too similar to Romeo & Juliet. ;)  Although, this is no West Side Story, not by a long shot.  Still.

I wonder if someone saw that bit on old maps, "Here there be dragons" and thought of whales, and Moby Dick, and it somehow morphed into this.

AotD is far from a great movie, but it has solid roots, is a good adaptation of a classic work, and is actually pretty interesting.

I might be more critical of the film if I was more familiar with Moby Dick.  I've read Melville's book, but it was a LONG time ago, so all that's really in my brain are those parts that are inside our collective cultural subconscious.  There's a lot of narration by Ishmael, and I wonder just how much of that was lifted directly from the source material and left untouched, aside from the obvious use of 'dragon'.  If a lot of it is, it really shows just how well it works, and just how well the original holds up.

It really is a lesson in just why the original is a classic, and why the themes are timeless and always useful.

Oh yeah, and the effects are actually pretty good, for a direct to video release.

Age of the Dragons isn't a high recommendation, but you can do worse, and if it comes on tv, I'd watch it again.

And hey, the movie opens up with a young Ahab trying to PUNCH A DRAGON IN THE FACE.  Punch.  A dragon.  In the face.  That's just bad-ass, even if he missed.

J