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Bakker L - Unholy Consultation and Collaboration (Now with TUC Spoilers!)


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4 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

You know, Verhoeven would actually be a good fit.

He would be SUCH a good fit. Over the top gore and action and completely arbitrary sex, dutch puns, and totally crazy-ass super serious camp. 

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4 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Just get the people who make metal videos for European black/power/death/whatever metal bands. You ever see some of that crazy shit? It's very Bakker like.

Funny you should bring this up. There is a. Long running thread at SA about music ones listen to while reading Bakker(how do you do that? Read and listen to music?). Majority of the music in that thread is of that nature. And they just did a pole and Heavy Metal/Punk seems to be the genre of choice. I never could get what people liked about screaming their lungs out and not being able to understand a word. Eh, to each his own. But, your connection seems valid.

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Let's get Kraken,

Yeah, but what is the point of taking the plot of the latest die hard movie, make it set in a fantasy dark ages instead and calling it the Prince of Nothing?

What themes from the books do folk want to preserve? Or do people want to change characters no matter how that fucks over any number of themes - in which case just make a die hard movie. He'll be catching arrows and shit, it'll be hot! I like Die Hard - just do it, don't try and just change a little here and there regardless of what that guts in the original books, have a full on sweeping vision! Or you'll have a show of nothing instead. Tweaking something that is the reason were interested in the title 'Prince of nothing', but just slowly gets tweaked to death. Like Homer trying to watch his favorite show before it gets reimagined and now robocop now has a early teen son to look after. Homer goes 'Awwww'

 

 

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I really liked the ideas I saw about making Sorweel's plot meaningful to the series by having him arrive in the Golden Room, and Kalbear's idea about making Akka and the Mandate a school of sorceresses. Besides accomplishing all he mentioned, I feel it would undercut the "women are objectively inferior" plotline just enough that people would be able to differentiate better between the content being unintentionally sexist and the idea that women have some sort of alternate significance in the world's cosmology. It would also set a nice precedent for the Swayali Sisterhood.

I don't understand why people think cutting the prologue would be a good idea. It's one of the best parts of TDTCB, despite having some outdated concepts like the minor continuity error in Mekeritrig's dialogue. It introduces the Dunyain and their philosophy, it introduces the Nonmen and hints at the greater conflict of Earwa to some extent (seriously, the "I fought for [sic: and against] the No-God in the wars that authored this wilderness..." line is fantastic), and it introduces Kellhus' ability to manipulate others. Even if it might be a little campy, it's too thematically significant to just ignore.

The problem I see is that Bakker might grognard over his themes getting screwed over in the inevitable process of leaving things on the cutting room floor during the transition. I mean, you have room to improve on a lot of things. Hinting that Maithanet is Kellhus' brother with a subtle visual resemblance, insinuating the presence of the gods (!!!) during things like: Cnauir defiantly taunting the Nansur, then smoldering with the power of Gilgaol while he cleaves through them, or Inrau interacting with Onkis in some way to uncover the Consult, even though Bakker didn't apparently mean to directly bring the gods into play with these segments.

Prince of Nothing would be the easy trilogy to bring to television. The Aspect Emperor, on the other hand... there you have material you would need to edit the fuck out of. Everything would need to be overhauled.

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3 hours ago, odium said:

The problem I see is that Bakker might grognard over his themes getting screwed over in the inevitable process of leaving things on the cutting room floor during the transition.

He probably couldn't do anything but complain about it. If he got a deal at all for a TV adaptation, it would be under "here's some money, we'll take it from here" terms. 

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Haven't read the thread in a while, apparently we got someone here adapting the books for a show now?

As I've said before, I would just adapt the First Apocalypse, even in just a short miniseries format.   It's much cleaner and it provides a good amount of set-up for the latter series, so you don't have to be bogged down in Seswatha memories or exposition dumps.

You could shorten the timeline of the First Apocalypse too, whereas in the books the First Apocalypse starts when Nau-Cayuti is a child and it's over a decade later when the No-God is summoned, you can start off with Nil'Giccas' warning, the Ordeal, and a short siege where NC is doing heroic stuff killing dragons and shit.

 

Combine Aulisi and Ieva into one character, since Western audiences wouldn't understand polygamy and concubines, have her kidnapped and RESCUED from Golgotterath, and then turn out to be brainwashed or whatever and poison NC.  Have Seswatha as the supporting character there the entire time alongside NC so people aren't thrown off when it switches to Seswatha as the lead.

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I've actually put some small amount of thought into what an adaptation of Bakker's work would look like.  Now, it's been nearly a decade since I read TDTCB, so I don't have the clearest memory of it.  And I also have plenty of issues with Bakker's writing, characterisation, and narrative structure so I'm not really at all passionate about the adaptation being super faithful to the source material - but that doesn't mean I want it to diverge completely either - to become an adaptation-in-name-only or anything.  I'd still want it to be recognisably the same story.

Anyway, here's what I think.

1. You open with a long-ish and mostly wordless scene.  A monastery, high in the mountains, completely isolated.  A seemingly tranquil, peaceful place.  An adult monk and a child monk (clearly father and son) arise in the morning and shave each other's heads.  The camera lingers on the process, showing it as almost ritualistic.  They emerge from their austere chamber onto a terraced garden, assume the lotus position, and meditate.  The tone of the whole scene is a relaxed one, lulling the viewer into assuming that these are men of enlightenment.

While the pair meditate, we see the sun move with increasing speed across the sky.  Their shadows stretch and turn like sundials.  Day turns to night, turns to day again - a whole week passes in moments.  And then...the opposite occurs.  Everything slows down to the point where the buzzing of a bee's wings can be seen in slow-motion.

They are interrupted by a third monk approaching.  Here, we see the adult monk and the newcomer communicate with looks and expressions only.  Close ups of the muscles of their faces moving ever so slightly.  Enough for the viewer to understand that the two monks are conveying meaning with their faces alone.

Cut to: the adult monk packed for a journey.  He an his son exchange a look, and then the adult sets off down the trial of the mountain.  The son watches him go for a moment, seemingly impassive about his father's departure, then turns and returns to the monastery.

We see him take up a position among the other monks standing in a courtyard.  They are practicing Tai-Chi-like movements, and he joins them.  We get another time-lapse scene, only this time, we see the child grow into a man as he works through the moments.  The other monks aging, vanishing, being replaced by younger monks all around.

Then, the first words are spoken.  An unnatural voice that echoes through the consciousness of all the monks present in the courtyard: "SEND TO ME MY SON!"

For the first time, the movements of the monks falter.  They look to one another, and then all eyes are on the boy who we've just watched become a man: Kellhus.

The final shot of the opening is Kellhus leaving Ishual, travelling down the mountains along the same path his father took.

2. That opening is the thing I've put the most thought into.  I feel like it's a tricky needle to thread.  You need to set up the plot: Kellhus is pursuing his father.  You also need to set up what the Dunyain are.  Now, I feel like the fact that they're dispassionate to the point of utter amorality should be a revelation that creeps up on the viewer, not something they're told up-front.  More important to their understanding of Kellhus is his mastery, and that is the purpose of the scene.  And it's effectively an extended teaser.  We then leave Kellhus - maybe even cut to the title card or credits - and don't see him again until the end of the pilot.

3. I think the character who works best to introduce us to the wider world is actually Inrau.  I think this for a couple of reasons.  Firstly, Akka is clearly the heart of the series, and one of the most well-drawn characters, but he has serious issues as our entry-point into Earwa: he's the most knowledgeable character in the story.  He's the one explaining things to everyone else, and there's a whole lot of stuff that we as readers really should have known earlier (for instance, how the fuck sorcery works, which we get zero insight into until TTT, when Akka teaches Kellhus).  There's also this major issue of how a great big chunk of Akka's motivation has to do with how he feels he failed both Inrau and Proyas, and yet his tutelage of both of those characters happened before the story even began.  We never see it, except in a handful of flashbacks scattered across all six books.

For this reason, we open with Inrau running away from the Mandate, going to Sumna to become a man of the Tusk.  We get to see the Tusk, learn about the religion.  And have Inrau be tested - they know he was studying to become a sorcerer, so they bring out a chorae, explain what it is, touch him with it to prove that he's not damned.

Akka, of course, appears not long after this, come to retrieve his wayward student, rather than to investigate Maithanet (I think?  That was what he was doing in the book, right?)  Here's where you introduce the conflict between sorcery and religion, and the importance of damnation to the whole plot.  Inrau is horrified that Akka is damned to burn in Hell, and doesn't want to share the same fate.  Akka claims that its worth it to save the world from the Consult.  Inrau is skeptical they even exist, etc, etc.

(Inrau dies a couple of episodes in, as he does in the books, but he's really useful as a character for the audience to follow into the world.)

4. You cut to Cnaiur's story a couple of times in the episode, and in the final scene, he runs into Kellhus.  Yeah, skip all the stuff where Kellhus is encountering sranc and Nonmen and woodsmen.  None of it serves any clear narrative purpose in a TV show.

5. The big reveal of the...evil of the Dunyain should come in a teaser in the third or fourth episode.  A flashback to Kellhus in Ishual, being shown someone whose face has been peeled off, so that the muscles can be observed directly.  It should be a horrifying reveal at the end of the scene.

But then this provides you with a way to visualise Kellhus' ability to read people going forward.  Occasionally show a shut from Kellhus' POV where you effectively see through the skin of someone's face to the muscles beneath (shouldn't be that hard with modern TV CGI - medical shows do that sort of thing all the time).  It also means that when the time comes, Kellhus can see through the skin of the skinspy and see the spider's legs beneath.

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I'm not sure if I could be less interested in this being adapted, which would a shame if I wasn't apathetic about it, as the prologue of TDTCB hooked me harder than any book in recent memory. 

Still haven't bothered with the final book.

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1 hour ago, Cithrin's Ale said:

I think that Kellhus' interactions with Leweth are far too important to cut. When Kellhus abandons Leweth, it helps the audience realize his true nature.

We also don't want to lose the fact that Leweth was placed on Kellhus' path by Moenghus :P!!! 

What?! I thought the Gods saved Kellhus with the help of the trapper

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