Fantasy TV Burnout -Or- Why Am I So “Meh” about Rings of Power/House of the Dragon?
No matter how old I get, part of me will always be like Bastian, that kid who lived in a land of make believe w/their head in the clouds. Kind of a “no shit” statement considering what I do/write for a living. So when the Sci-fi & Fantasy (SFF) media revolution began in the late 90’s/early 00’s, you can imagine how I, along with the rest of the nerds of the world, rejoiced. Like the Goonies, this was OUR TIME. And over the last two decades, SFF remained the dominant entertainment media.
And I’m—I’m kind of getting tired of it.
Image from Meme generator
Don’t get me wrong, I still consume SFF as much as the next nerd. But the sheer volume of pop culture saturation has me just kinda . . . burned out? Desensitized and apathetic. Maybe it’s like a porn thing, you know? The adage that the more you consume the more you become numb to the medium, thus forcing deeper searches for either the truly excellent or the truly bizarre to pique your interest. Eh, who knows? Anyway, when the media heralded the coming of Rings of Power and House of the Dragon, I just kinda shrugged. So with that burnout filter in mind, here are my quick reviews of the latest entries of prestige fantasy drama. (If you don’t want to hear a middle-aged dude rant, then skip to the end where I try to redeem myself by listing shows I really like/recommend)
Image from IGN
House of the Dragon (HoT-D!!)
So right out of the gate, this show is obviously going to be compared to its predecessor. Impossible to separate them due to nerd zeitgeist. But considering how GoT ended, metaphorically like a stinking, loud wet fart after what had been some great sex, all the show had to be was better than that. And as such, my overall opinion was . . . it was safe. New actors doing and saying the same old thing in the old same places we’ve already seen. “Oh . . . look, it’s King’s Landing, the Red Keep, the Iron Throne, the Small Council, the Hand of the King, Maesters, family/house names we know, and . . . oh boy, white-haired Targaryen women with dragons wanting to be queen . . . again.”
And this is just me talking, but once you’ve seen Tyrion, Tywin, Littlefinger, Varys, Queen of Thorns plotting and sniping, or the sheer self-serving malevolent insanity of a Geoffrey, then the best HOT-D had to offer was little league at best by comparison.
Without a looming threat like the White Walkers or a legitimate external threat to give the internal strife context, and the fantasy elements just being “hey look, a dragon . . . neat,” then the show boiled down to elite 1%’ers fucking and fucking each other over. The Real Housewives of Westeros if you will. I know that’s reductive, but it’s my opinion.
Image from The Wrap
Then there were the time jumps, where whole sections of the cast were changed, leaving them without enough screen time to care about, let alone giving a damn when they have “a shocking death.” You want me to feel something for brown-hair generic son #2’s grisly dragon-back demise? Seriously?! Please, I was cheering for his death. When Ned Stark died it had an impact because we spent an entire season (1st book) with him (seemingly) as the main protagonist. Subsequent deaths in the OG GoT show followed the same formula: spend copious amounts of time with them, get to know their multi-faceted character, then kill them. Brown-hair generic son #2 (not gonna bother looking up the name) may have been cool in the book, dunno, didn’t read it. But on screen, he and most of the kids were as captivating as room-temperature water paired with unsalted crackers. And when the king died it was a goddamn blessing as we watched him literally fall apart for most of the season.
Now all that being said, I still gave this show 4 out of 5 dragons. For my gripes, I can’t deny the production and the acting skills of Paddy Considine, Matt Smith, Emma D’Arcy, Eve Best, Rhys Ifan, Olivia Cook, or Milly Alcock. Each of them played their respective characters with gravitas as they wove a The Crown-like level of royal storytelling strife. So, I’ll watch season 2, but man I hope they give us something new. Again for the record, no I did not read the book . . . books? Are there more than one? I don’t know and I’m not gonna bother looking that up either. Mainly because if a show is going to be a show, you shouldn’t need a companion guide. Speaking of which . . .
Image from IMDB
Rings of Power (RoP)
Oh dear lord, where do I start? Do I need to have read outside the Hobbit and Lord of The Rings proper to know what’s going on? Because I didn’t and I don’t know or care what a Silmaril is. I do care about how the show constantly cherry-picks lines and rather specific turns of phrases from the LoR. And man does it ever feel, what’s the word I’m looking for . . . cloying? A saccharine, excessively sweet play on nostalgia that filled the screen with Peter Jackson ‘member-berries instead of crafting a world of their own. Well, that’s not true is it? According to Screenrant, Amazon has the rights to adapt The Hobbit and the appendices of The Lord of the Rings, but not The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales. So the showrunners made their choices on how they want to tell their tale which came off to me as mostly piss-poor character archetypes that border on stereotypes, plot contrivances, and boredom.
So. Much. Boredom.
So let’s address the elephant in the room. Galadriel. To me, she’s an asshole. Maybe in 3000 years, she’ll be the Cate Blanchette version, but here in the 2nd age, she’s kind of a prick. They might have been going for strong and stalwart, but somewhere between the writing and the acting, they ended up with prick. I mean, if you’re gonna milk archetypes, then go for Steve Rodgers from MCU. A constant, dedicated, and capable character sure. But most importantly self-aware vice self-righteous. Humility, even a touch of self-depreciation, endears an audience. Now with all that said, Yes, Galadriel was a driven, capable warrior. And yup, she was 100% right that Sauron had survived and was out there despite everyone telling her no. And boy I’m so glad the plot let her realize who Sauron was at the very end for . . . like, no discernible reason, considering she was thirsting for him hard for most of the show.
Image from Reddit
This version of Galadriel is a villain pretending to be a protagonist. Aside from leaving troops to die (to which I don’t blame said troops for their mutiny one bit,) remember when she performed a soliloquy to a captured Adar? The one where she will keep him alive just so she can kill every orc in middle-earth, only to then tell him that all his children are dead and then kill him? Yeah, that’s called genocide.
Man, wasn’t there an internet movement a while back about Tolkien and D&D, where certain “monster” races, which were considered “evil,” being coded as basically non-white people in fantasy? And here we have Galadriel talking about exterminating them all? I’m not one to whip up an angry twitter mob or anything, but umm . . . like, you know? Moving on.
Image from Reddit
As for the rest of the characters, I honestly didn’t care about them. Not the Scottish dwarves, the Irish Hobbits (Harfoots?), the Stranger who is clearly Gandalf (too soon arriving in middle earth I hear? Maybe its actually Saruman?), the discount Aragon/Sauron, and not this version of Elrond who looked like Neil Patrick Harris’s inbred cousin. Oh, and the one healer lady/single mom who led the southland humans, you know how I knew she’d be the leader of that group? Not because she was brave, fearless, or whatever they were trying to convey, but because she was the only person in the village not covered in mud, had all her teeth, and spoke like she went to an Oxford finishing school. In fact the only characters I liked were: Ismael Cruz Cordova’s Arondir, Sophia Nomvete’s Princess Disa, and Joseph Mawle’s Adar. Their respective tales and POVs I actually found myself enjoying.
images from Den of Geek, British GQ, and Epicstream respectively
But like the above review, I have to give credit where it’s due. It’s clear Amazon sunk a buncha money into RoP. The show looked mostly great and yes, there were some actual cool moments. I don’t care if that’s how volcanoes are made, that whole ep was pretty solid. And like HoT-D, I didn’t hate RoP. I was . . . whelmed. Not over or under, just whelmed. But by the end, for me it was sadly just another generic fantasy show without an identity of it’s own. Middling writing with fancy production to hide the lack of actual multi-dimensional characters. A very weak 3 out of 5 Balrogs for me. And I’m not alone. Check out The Guardian’s review HERE.
So yeah, maybe it’s me. Maybe these are amazing shows and I’m just burned out. But I have a feeling I’m not the only one feeling the SFF burnout. No shade being tossed to Top Gun: Maverick, as it’s been dominating the box office. But I have a sneaking suspicion that if that flick had come out even 5 years prior during peak MCU, Star Wars, etc, I think it would have been a blip. But as it stands now, folks are raving about this movie. My guess is that folks are hungry for something else. Something simple with as many practical effects as possible. Wonder why?
Recommendations
NOW, so I’m not a total asshole, here are some “recent” shows (SFF and standard fiction) I’ve greatly enjoyed for their writing, character work, and having a unique identity. Arcane being the current gold standard of where storytelling and visuals meets solid AF character work.
Images from their respective parent sites.
As always, feel free to leave a comment of message me directly on Facebook or Twitter to tell if I’m right, wrong, or somewhere in the middle.
Live long and strong
~Gibby
Did Quarantine Madness Make Me Like Fate The Winx Saga? -Or- Ranking Fantasy TV Can Be Fun
A tremendous amount of incredible world-building was done in the season’s six episodes. That in itself will bring me back for a season 2. - So when thinking about this show, and the litany of fantasy TV on right now, I decided to rank/micro-review the shows I’ve binged during the quarantine.
So as COVID quarantine reaches the year mark, I’m convinced of two things: sweatpants are the missing part of my life (sorry my one and only son), and that there is so much content on streaming services that I can’t tell what’s good anymore. I’ve gone through so much of it, I’m numb and jaded.
It’s kinda like excessive masturbation and/or porn. You consume too much that the “normal” stuff doesn’t do it for you anymore. A critique I’ve ascribed to people who leave extra-crappy reviews of my books. One quick Goodreads check of how much said reviewer consumes of a certain genre later and I’m convinced they have the literary equivalent of crotch-callouses. But anyway . . .
Image from IMDB
So knowing nothing about it, I recently watched Fate The Winx Saga on Netflix. And to be honest I watched 10 minutes of the first ep, met the main character, and turned it off saying “nope.” But a buddy of mine told me to give it a second chance. Sigh. Well, I made a NY resolution to be less critical, so why not? Lord knows I don’t want to be accused of acting like the crotch-calloused angry reviewers of my books who gave up early and never got to the actual characters or story. So since I love the fantasy genre, a Winx’ing I went. And I’m glad I did.
Fate The Winx Saga is freaking ridiculous. But a fun ride nonetheless. It lifts from so many other properties you can literally separate the vertical slices and see the borrowed story architecture.
Academy for magic beings - Harry Potter, Worst Witch, X-Men, Umbrella Academy, etc.
Non-Magical warriors who protect Fairies - Warders from Wheel of Time/Aes Sedai
Elemental powers based on region - Avatar The Last Airbender/Pokemon
A chosen one who doesn’t know who/how powerful they are - literally every 3rd book, movie, or TV show
A teaching staff hiding a dark secret - See above
In spite of these criticisms, I loved the show. But it had nothing to do with the main character. Bloom, the fire fairy (God I feel dumb saying that), was my least favorite part of the show. It was her friends, Aisha, Terra, and Musa that made it for me. Even Headmistresses Dowling, who had a draconian-yet-maternal nature, enhanced the show. Maybe it’s that everyone except Bloom had an English accent, thus making her seem like a whining dimwit? (British people are better than us.) Even Stella, the rich byotch-turned-ally of the show was a better character in my opinion. No fault of the actress, Abigail Cowen of Sabrina fame, it was just that the character that was written to be an angsty, darkly-troubled, audience surrogate.
“I’m so different, but angry, but unique, but…wait, am i repeating myself? Meh. I go full phoenix!
Image from Netflix - quote made up by me :)
While I don’t consider myself to be a great writer, it doesn’t take a great one to spot bad story structure. So, when you make your MC a hard pill to swallow, but use them as the window for the audience, you run the risk of losing the audience. What really hooked me, and kept me watching, was the tremendous amount of incredible world-building that was done in the season’s six episodes. That in itself will bring me back for a season 2.
So when thinking about this show, and the litany of fantasy TV on right now, I decided to rank/micro-review the shows I’ve binged during the quarantine.
Note: this is not an all-inclusive list. I’m limiting myself to “recent” releases and/or things I’ve watched (re-watched) during the COVID quarantine. So no Game of Thrones, Supernatural, or anything like that. As well, the following list is based on my enjoyment, and not overall quality, production, or critical acclaim. So without further ado, here we go. I’ve broken them into the bottom five, middle eight, and the top ten.
