Recent Big Fantasy Dramas - From The Witcher To The New Amazon Tolkien Series

Welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is a podcast for fantasy fans and creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding, I'm a writer and director of the Centre and today I'm joined by Ed Saunders, a fantasy fan. And in today's episode we'll be looking at what decisions writers have made when adapting fantasy books for TV series. So first of all hello Ed, thank you for joining me. Now we've had many conversations about fantasy books and how they're adapted. And coming up in the autumn we've got the second series of The Witcher. What do you think about The Witcher as a TV programme? Well I really enjoyed the first series. There are lots of very good episodes in it but I think the ones that stood out most for me were the ones which were more, let's say, monster of the week. For a show which is about a monster hunter, there were sort of a few of those that you might think because they seem to be going for a more serialised story approach. That's a lot of what we're going through talking today, it's when inspired this. Yes and The Witcher books are written by Anjay Sapskowski, a Polish writer which is actually quite unusual to have a fantasy book coming out of Poland, you know, you're using them coming out of America and out of the UK. So it's really lovely to see something breakthrough that's not from those places. And it's a long series but I understand that the TV programmes are actually doing material from the books. Yeah so I know they're quite popular, it's definitely one of the examples of a really popular book that's been translated and been translated successfully. But I think where most of the wider audience would have heard of it is from the video games. There's a very successful series with which there are at least three main entries, each sort of more famous and successful than the last. And whilst there are definitely elements that are taken from those games that have been put into the show in terms of the character aesthetics and things, then it's definitely the case that they're going primarily for book material at least for now. Yes, you're right, I've read Blood of Elves which is the first of The Witcher saga. And this is the foundational material for a lot of what we see in that first series. And yeah that you're right, they've drawn on that book material and there's obviously lots more places they can go with that. So The Witcher as we see it, it clearly is drawing on, you know, the characters like the Bard, The Witcher himself, the sorceress character Yennefer, who's obviously a really big important character in that first series, and also the young girl, the sort of lost princess figure of Siri, all those sort of archetypal characters and following their story arcs. But within that, what was really strong, as you were saying, is that you could often just watch one episode, there's an episode wasn't there about a dragon, which was like a little standalone sweet story actually in the end, I wouldn't spoil it by saying who the dragon actually was, that could have been watched on its own, almost like a little mini film. Yeah, and I mean that one only required just a tiny bit of continuity to know, you just had to know who had met before, but they could even cover that a little bit. I think Netflix has got a bit of a different kind of challenge compared to a lot of places though because they can, I think, assume that people have watched the previous episodes because the way, you know, they drop all the series at once and then you sort of, I sort of meant to binge them, whereas if it had been made 10, 20 years ago, or even five, I suppose, then they would have to perhaps have more episodes for the first season where you don't have to have seen the last one because you might have missed it. So those monster episodes, as you talked about, do you think that's more of a video game aesthetic that's come into the series, that today's problem is this particular monster, let's go and kill it? I think it's hard to say, because I haven't read the book, so I don't know how many of those little adventures are there. I think a lot of those little adventures are actually not from the main series books, but like little side books have been written later. So I think that Dragon One may actually have been not in the first book, but a sort of side story that they also released later on. I think the style is quite video game, though, where in a video game, if it's a game like the Witcher, there are days and days of content in there. And if you played through the main story, it would still take probably, I don't know, tens of hours at least. If you're coming back to that over long periods of time, you can't really make the story too complicated, because most audiences just won't remember what's going on. Whereas having the little episodic chunks where it's a quest, essentially, go fight this dragon, or there's a king and there's a mystery of who's murdering all of his guards. That kind of thing, you could fit that within an hour, have a great time, there's a full story there. And I think those are the chunks that actually are most effectively used by a show like the Witcher. Like they have one of the earlier episodes is Geralt goes to a distant kingdom where there is a mystery of who's murdering people, and they think it's one monster, and he looks into it. And there's all sorts of twists and turns and little characters who are just for that episode. Well, these two have been introduced in that episode, and they'll get their own little complete stories. And I've found that to be some of the stronger elements, and I do think that that has been influenced by the game, where they have these smaller stories that have been developed for that purpose. I guess, and I think it also works very well with the streaming service, which just wants so much content. So if you have a limited series, which means in television terms something like The Queen's Gambit, which is a distinct story, which lasts four or five episodes, and then it's done. You spend all that money on making the sets, and getting a top notch actors signed up, and a fantasy world. There's all sorts of set design and special things that had to be made for that world. It's very expensive. So to be able to come back and make a second series and keep it fresh, keep people watching, obviously it makes sound financial sense for the streaming services. Have you got a favourite character in The Witcher? I've got a definite one, which is my favourite. I suspect mine might be the same as yours. Is it The Bard? I do like The Bard, yeah. So in the show he's called Yasuke, but in the video games, and at least in the translations of the books, he's actually called Dandelion. Yeah, now I liked him. He reminded me very much of the role of Jeffrey Chaucer played by Paul Bettany in The Night's Tale. It's almost like our perspective on the world, and I think this is one of the ways of persuading us to believe a fantasy, is if there's a character who's a little bit... A bit modern. Yeah, he's got a modern sensibility, and he can sort of... He's definitely got a vibe of somebody who's tried to have a band or something and has never had a big hit. Yeah, and he sort of latches onto this guy, and he won't let go, he won't be shaking off. Well, it's quite a parallel, actually, but I suppose that's like The Bard archetype quite often. Yeah, you had another version of this, another animated version of this as the Shrek and Donkey combo. Yeah, well, Donkey sings. I don't know if he's... The dynamic is similar in sort of the flamboyant one. And the broody one with all the muscles. Yeah, okay. So moving away from The Witcher, and we're looking forward to seeing what they do with the second series, and looking at another really big hit, which is Disney's The Mandalorian. Now this is another long sort of many episode story with coming back again for another series, which follows the episodic story arc. So how did you find that, to announce in the world of sci-fi, but sci-fi fantasy? Hmm. Well, I also really enjoyed The Mandalorian. I do think thinking about it has maybe sort of realized quite how similar the shows are in that there is a stoic protagonist who doesn't speak much and is some sort of bounty hunter who has given the task of adopting a child who's got special powers. Oh, my goodness. And realized. Yeah, I mean, I don't quite think of a yaskier type character that they've added yet, but I'm sure that would be on its way, but no, they're kind of similar and quite comparable in many ways. But I do think The Mandalorian is more episodic. I think that it has been designed more so that you could watch an individual one, and there's basically only at most one piece of information you need to know. You might go into an episode and The Mandalorian has to infiltrate some facility and get some information, but you don't really need to know why he needs that, to be honest. And I don't know if that's partly because it's not all released at once, and things on Disney Blaster released per week if the series is ongoing. They'd be interesting to see if that's why, or it could be that there isn't a book that it is following. They'll have writers who will have plotted it out a bit, I'm sure, but there isn't a overarching story that's already been written. So it's not the full-back material, which I kind of think it is in The Witcher a bit where they go. We have to make sure we're pushing this main plot forward. Even though, to be honest, in that kind of show, I actually think I prefer the episodes where they're a bit more standalone because you get the chance to introduce some new characters and some new monster or threat. That's just for that episode, and it all wraps itself up quite nicely. I think it also means there's fewer opportunities to perhaps misplay characters or arcs out because you have to draw them out and have to make sure they're there for the whole thing. I have never really warmed to the world of Star Wars. I don't know, hasn't struck me quite in the heart in the way that, say, Tolkien does. I'd prefer to go to Middle-earth and to a galaxy far, far away, but I did appreciate in Mandalorian the humour of this rough guy having to look after this 50-year-old baby. He's at least 50. I think he's as old as Darth Vader is. He's got a great sense of humour right now. I maintain that guy is just pulling a really long con, that little baby. He's got all these people to protect him, and he's 50 years old, and he clearly understands what's going on. He's always good to see. I don't know if it's a puppet or CGI, CGI, I expect. We should probably put a spoiler warning in at some point at the beginning of this episode for that. It's the same spoilers for elements of the Mandalorian and the Witcher. Yeah, but I think it's already been out enough time now, it's like saying, let's not tell the end of Harry Potter. I'm not sure what the rule is these days. I think once it's all out, it's fair game. There are a couple of long-running series we've just looked at, The Witcher and The Mandalorian, but of course the big one coming over the hill towards us is of course the Tolkien series for Amazon, which, well, it's going to be really interesting to see what they do with that, because they haven't got, they've got book material in that they're drawing on the second-agents or appendices material, and it's all fiercely guarded by the Tolkien estate to make sure that... Yeah, that writes issues a weird one, because the only thing at the time of recording at least that I think has been really released is one image where they appear to show elements which are actually, I think, from the first stage stuff, which is interesting because they don't have the right to that, they only have the right to the second age. Well, maybe someone will look at a picture and say, I remember when, back in my forefather's day, or something like that, which would be plausible. But I think the writers on this series have such a massively difficult job. Yeah. I mean, they must be... well, I hope that they're getting good therapy, because it must be so anxious to know whether or not they've taken a line through this material that a, both please is the right holders, and be the kind of Tolkien fans and see the mass audience. Yeah. And I just don't know if that is... Walking that line is a really tough one, because either it's... well, it could be many things, but you could make it a show where it's just really loyal to all of its law, and it's really made for hardcore Tolkien fans. But it won't be, because there aren't really enough of them to support an entire show that's meant to be supposedly the most expensive TV show ever, so it has to have the mainstream appeal, and all that they've really got for that is the legacy of the films, but none of that has happened. So you sort of have to harken to these films that they don't own or have... I don't know how many of the creatives have come over. I'm not sure if... I haven't heard of any of them. It's a new team, isn't it? Yeah. And it's definitely going to be a challenge to make it relatable enough to mainstream audiences, especially when the characters you're dealing with aren't... I mean, we never really see those characters in quite the same way where we get to know them on that kind of personal level, because isn't it chronicles of history rather than... Yeah, so... ...sort of have to invent personalities to an extent, or from the actions at least. Well, certainly if it's material from the appendices in Lord of the Rings, it's very summary form that it's written down, and in the sort of high chronicle level language, you know, it's not the intimate conversation dialogue-driven stuff from the actual novel Lord of the Rings. If they're allowed to flesh that out with some of the Silmarillion and the other writings of Tolkien, which were edited by Christopher Tolkien and sort of published posthumously, you could begin to round out characters, but they're still on a... they feel like Icelandic saga-style people. Hmm. Then the thing that really, for me, makes Lord of the Rings work is the Hobbits, because they are our perspective in that world. We aren't the hero, we aren't raised to that level of an arrogant, but we can think about being a pipping or a merry or a Frodo, and of course they do become the heroes, which is the wonderful sort of turnaround in the book. Now, if you don't have that level, because the Hobbits weren't, you know, they're not known in Middle-earth, really, they're sort of been forgotten people, they lived by the rivers, and no one knows much about them. So you can't plausibly plant them in an earlier story. So who are you left with? Well, did you go for a dwarf? Just because that's kind of small, but that's a bit tricky, because the politics between the dwarfs and the elves is very complicated. Did you go for a man? Well, then you get to the problem of, well, let's move on to Game of Thrones. You get the Game of Thrones problem, but how do you portray adult men and women in a way that fits a Tolkien universe, which isn't quite the same as the full-on, sex and violence, Game of Thrones world, which people might be expecting? I'd say there's a spectrum to this. I think the sort of, the most realistic and confronting of human flaws one is like on the Game of Thrones end, of at least, you know, these three popular franchises we're talking about. Then the Witcher has more fantasy elements than Game of Thrones does, and that is still very, you know, there are people swear, you know, there are lots of them horrible. There are elves in it, but those elves seem to be mostly similar to the humans and sort of how realistically they are displayed as personalities. And then in Lord Lurings, it is more, I mean, you have realistic characters in a way, but the way you see them, you would not expect Legolas to like, stub his toe and swear. That doesn't happen in Lord Lurings. I mean, a dwarf can maybe, as long as he swears like in Old Warvish or something, but having a character when you're restricted to the sort of more mythic ideals of character, I suppose what they could say is all of those mythic legends, those are the idealized versions from later on. But then we've seen that the elves are like this sort of ethereal, I mean, it sounds really boring if you live with the elves. You wouldn't really want to live with, at least how they've been shown in a lot of the, they seem like they just sort of go around singing inquires and... Well, Bill, where things, it's a nice place to retire. Yeah, well, exactly. It's like a nice place to retire, a good place to go on holiday, but you really, you know, you probably don't want to be around them the whole time. They're not the dynamic culture because they're the ones in their gold, their sort of autumnal years or even winter by the time... Well, yeah, I suppose they're all thousands of years old, so maybe they were all, you know, more active in their youth and they're just sort of a bit tired now, I don't know. Well, they don't perceive time, I mean, this is one of the interesting things of the elves, their perception of time is different from the other characters. So they're living on a different pace from everybody else. That's one of the things Legolas says when he looks at people, he feels separated and set apart. That's what the elves are. They're set apart from everybody else. I mean, this could make an interesting character. If you have somebody, if you have an elf who's struggling with that, that could maybe be your way in. Like an elf who's got these human friends and companions and it's sort of the iron thing if you're going, well, I'm going to look exactly like this in a thousand years and you'll all be dust. Yeah. Then you could have somebody struggling with that perhaps. So what about Game of Thrones? I mean, that was of recent times probably the most famous long running fantasy TV series set, you know, actually based on a set of fantasy books. It's definitely why all these shows are being made and they've seen the success. Yeah, but of course it ended in somewhat. I think it's fair to say, I think it's sort of generally acknowledged now even seemingly by the stars of the show itself that it did not end well. And I do, I do think the warning signs were there. I mean, there's all sorts of analysis of this all over the internet. But the author of the book series, George R.R. Martin, he was quite heavily involved and did a lot of the scripts for the first four series. And he comes from quite a heavy TV background himself. That seems to be what he's done for a great part of his career. But he left after the fourth one or stepped back mostly. I think it was meant to be to focus on his books. And although he's put out a lot of material, he hasn't actually continued another entry into the story. So they were flying a lot on their own, the showrunners in the direction of, I think that they'd sort of been told a couple of things or had guests and had that confirmed of where the story was going. But in terms of the character arcs and how those developed and in terms of what to end everybody's stories, it was up to them. And yeah, no, it didn't seem to go well. The main problem, if you haven't seen it, is everything's quite rushed. And the sort of careful crafting of characters and stories kind of chucked out the window. I think it's most sort of embodied in there's a character called Jamie. It's called Jamie Lannister. And this is a guy... Again, we should say there are some plot spoilers here. Yeah, so this is plot spoilers. But he starts out in the books and in the show as definitely a bad guy. He is sort of a prince charming, but he's evil, if you like. He's sleeping with his sister and the kids who are the worst and become king of the realm. They're his... And he sort of sets off a lot of the actions in the plot. He does, you know, he kills people who don't really deserve it, et cetera, et cetera. And he has a very good redemption arc where he sort of strip away that and show that actually one of the reasons he did the thing that set him on this path was for good reasons. He is famously this king's layer. He kills a king who you don't see in the show, he's from the age before. And this act is what sort of has shamed him and everybody judges him for. And everybody thinks he did it for personal gain, basically, as it's revealed in some very good performance and very good scripts in a scene that actually he did that vulnerable reasons. And he talks about how hard it is to be a true knight because you made to protect the people that you also swear to listen to your father and listen to your king and what of those all conflict. And he chose when his king told him basically kill a bunch of civilians, he chose to kill the king instead. Fast forward, he's gone through a redemption arc. He's on the side of the people who are pretty clearly the goodies at this point. And in the final few episodes, he decides to leave his new girlfriend who helped him do this redemption arc. And he decides to go back to his sister who is definitely a bad guy. And he tries to go to her and get into the city where everything's happening. And he gets captured. And his brother comes to him and says, you know, can you help us think of the people? And he says, to be honest, I never cared about the people. So he's forgotten his earlier character arc. Yeah. You could be generous and say, maybe he's lying to himself, maybe, but it doesn't really come across that way. He kind of just does it. You turn. And of course, I've heard about the Daenerys. Oh, that's famous. Yeah. Yeah. And the Jon Snow. There's a lot of, there's a lot of mothers out there who probably regret calling their children Daenerys now. Well, maybe they just sort of remember the Daenerys before she went off the rails. Well, they call them Danny. Yeah. That's why in the books. Yeah. So why do you think that they went in this direction that showrunners? I think that might have been the way it was meant to go in the books. I think that you can kind of see how that might happen and it might actually be pulled off well. I just think that the execution of it is where the problem is. I don't think it's a problem to have that character who is the pretty much the main character of that series be overwhelmed, makes them bad decisions, and have us all dissenting to madness. But the problem is in the show that dissenting to the madness happens in about two episodes and it makes they make her look quite petty because the reasons it happens is basically she's jealous of her nephew slash boyfriend, that's all I think, and some people around her get killed. But this is a character who's been shown to be incredibly compassionate and everything and the way they framed it in the final series, it kind of looks as if she just gets fed up and instead of any kind of proportional response, she decides to burn millions of citizens alive and that is definitely slightly overreacting, you know, and then she goes full crazy because she starts talking about like they give her lots of fascist imagery where she's standing, addressing all of her army, saying how they're gonna bring freedom to everybody like she just did to that city, you know, the one that she just burnt down. And then she's kind of put down in a fairly problematic way by her lover, which is kind of, yeah, the execution is not fantastic and I think that the people involved weren't very happy with it either. But I do think that the story itself isn't necessarily a problem but the execution and the character work is. I wonder in a world where these scripts had to be so carefully guarded because of the spoiler thing and people wanting to find out what happened and so the scripts all had to be locked down that actually in a sense, they weren't tested enough before they went ahead and filmed them because it sounds as though there were some really red lights in terms of storytelling that you might be able to pick up but because you're in a lockdown situation locked down as in your scripts or locked down, this is where it starts to go astray and in fact it's much better to share stories and sound them out with people so you can be corrected and say, hang on a minute, didn't you make Daenerys do this? That's happening too quickly and all those sort of instincts aren't given the chance to be discussed because you're trying to keep the story so secret. Stories that only really work once they've been tested and tried on your audience. It's definitely an aspect of it. There's another somewhat important thing as well which is kind of a unique bit of storytelling problems to this show which is the plot of this show was speculated about for years and in between each season there would be legions of online people guessing. One of them is going to get it right and it seems as if the people in charge decided that the best thing to do was to try to go with something that nobody would guess. They wanted to be surprising, they wanted to be subversive and you know that has its cases of validity but I think in this case I think you kind of have to stick with the story you've been designing up to until that point. They've built up certain characters to be particularly important to never really did anything or the character who sort of kills the dark Lord equivalent. Not heard of the dark Lord until about two episodes prior and literally comes out of nowhere to do it. There's no set up particularly and I think if you make that I mean it's not a bad thing that the character did that necessarily but if the motivation for a twist that you're introducing is because you're concerned about what others think of like the story and that somebody else may have guessed it and then I think you might need to reassess if that's a good idea. I thought the series that handled this best in a different genre was the Sherlock. That's a very controversial one. Where they did a lot of spoof reasons for him to survive the fall from the roof that one where they actually had a group of people all discussing what had happened and they played these fantasy versions of it a couple of times. It was the beginning of the third series I think. Yeah well I don't know if I entirely agree I think at the time I thought this is kind of fun but then I looked at it and I realised the people who were coming up with these theories were like the biggest fans and they kind of did it in a way we kind of insulted those people but not really in like a kind way. Well except one of them was right of course this was the joke was that the guy who was the pathologist man. Oh yeah. He was right he looked loony. So there was this sort of joke within a joke going on. But I think that part of the problem there is they didn't know what the twist was. I think you should know what the twist is before you write it. What they didn't know and they just... No definitely clearly not. They clearly hadn't... Keep trying. They didn't know how he was going to get out of that or if they did then... I think they might have done. I think that a place where maybe this mystery box story telling is definitely a thing where they set up a mystery as the cliffhanger and then say where's you know what's the answer. Wait to see you next time. And they don't know. Star Wars did this big time in the what is currently the sequel trilogy maybe in future years it'll be known as something else. They set up this big set of mysteries in episode seven force awakens. Things like who is you know who is who is Ray who who are her parents. Is it Obi-Wan Kenobi or something and I quite liked actually. I know that lots of people didn't but I quite like that in the second film they went... No. Well yeah they went it's maybe this was a mistake to try weigh so much on these mysteries. Perhaps it's better just to use this and they used it to say something. They gave an answer which was in that film they were nobody. You know you're not special because of who your parents are. And I quite like that because that uses that to make a point rather than just be it's this character surprise. Well I think it had some problems that set of three in that they had characters who they didn't properly employ because they were sort of looking at I know popularity and polls or something and so some characters have strange malfunctioning character arcs I think John Boyega's character. Oh yeah it doesn't really go anywhere and he was great. You know there was so much they could have done with that character but he kind of became and also ran at the end. I mean it had the they were definitely responding a lot with that second film which was not received well by Star Wars fans but I don't think I don't think there was a lot of hate towards the decision with the parentage of Ray. No I think it's more the thing. I think it was what they did with Luke Skywalker which I actually liked again but I can understand why people didn't. Yeah so and then of course Carrie Fisher died during the filming so they may have had other plans for that character so there were some odd or decisions taken I think. You know nobody hates Star Wars like Star Wars fans so. No no no no I'm still a believer in the first ones that were made myself. Well you know we've covered quite a few I think we've covered all the fan bases who are most passionate about their things. No no we haven't done Star Trek. Oh that's true. No but we weren't going to go there today. Anyway so as a regular feature in this podcast I always like to think of one place in a fantasy world where it's the best place to go so you can choose any fantasy universe but you now have to choose a bar or a tavern in this episode and say where is the best one in the fantasy universe as you know where would you like to walk in and have a drink. Well I don't want to be in any of the ones where it's quite likely I'll die. Good choice. So that rules out like your game of thrones probably Star Wars 2 because someone will just shoot me probably for. I'll pick a fight. Yeah. If it's do I get to pick when it is in the story? I can't see why not. Okay because if it's Lord Lurings in peacetime it's probably one of the safer ones which also gives you a nice setting. But would you want to be in the shire in like the green dragon? Well the shire is kind of just Oxfordshire countryside. I know it's not different enough really. I think I probably if I was going somewhere it would have to be like a like an arable or something they sound fun you know I bet they've got some good bars in those huge vaults and things. Yeah. Which would be really cool. I think an arable perhaps with a day out at Lake Town oh well I guess it's probably burnt down by the stage. They make a new town don't they? They do and Bard and all his folk move into Dale don't they? Well I'll use their tourist agency and they'll punt me over the lake to arable and then I'll go round and do the tour of arable. Yeah I think if I was choosing a bar I would I have reservations like you about the Star Wars bar but maybe something I wouldn't mind one that's in space so something like on the starship enterprise they have bars there. The restaurant at the end of the universe that's probably the... Oh well yes of course that's cool. It's got no sadness that is a good place to go. Yeah what's the universe end and then I'm not so sure about ordering the meat that is very funny but also very uncanny the meat who asked you to eat it. Yeah so I think I'd go for a bar in space and I will stick with the bar on the Starship Enterprise. Who are you having a drink with though? Well which generation? I think a probably Jean-Luc Picard's generation. It's probably for the best. Yeah I think yeah there's some overlap there. They do have episodes where they're all around so you could perhaps pick your favourite from the two crews. You might bump into Wippy Goldberg as well which is always a plus so Anyway so thank you very much Ed it's great fun. It's been a pleasure talking about this and Ed will return and we'll have another chat about the Marvel Universe and all of its iterations but that's it for today's program. Thank you for listening.