Adaptions Part 2: Discworld Addition

This is what pure awesome looks like.

Now, everyone knows how much I absolutely adore Discworld.  You saw that in my Guards! Guards! review.  There are several kinds of people when it comes to Discworld.  First, there are the people who have never, ever heard of Discworld.  Second, there are people who have heard of it and read the books and loved them as they should, but don't know about the movies or haven't seen them.  Finally, there are those people who have heard me ramble on and one about Discworld, but have neither seen the movies or read the books.  Sixthly, there are those who have seen the movies, but don't know a thing about the books. I've seen both the books and the movies and I have something to say about these movie adaptions.

If I didn't have anything to say, this post wouldn't exist.  So, without further ado, this is what I think of the Discworld SkyOne adaptions...

Note: These are the good guys.

Yes.  Death is playing a guitar.  It is awesome.

Yes, you get to hear Samwise Gamgee say
"Potatoes" in his special way again.
Why do you ask?

Wait for it....

This is the Christmas one I mention... a lot.

Oh Jeffrey!

They.

Aren't.

That.

Bad.

I'm serious here.  Yes, the movies have their flaws.  Mainly, the special effects can be hokey at times with the live action adaptions while the cartoon adaptions are very poorly animated.  However, they usually attempt to stay close to the story of the book (except for Going Postal) and they do have some really good actors and actresses to fill the roles with little in-jokes here and there just to add more flavor to it.

And yes, Tim Curry is in one of them.

Stop drooling!

Next, you'll probably hyperventilate when I mention to you that in the movies that feature death, his voice is either played by Christopher Lee or Ian Richardson.  That or you'll wet your pants like a puppy whose owners just came home.

Yeah... these movies are well done for being made on a TV movie budget.

Wait... did you just read that right? TV movie budget? What's that mean?

Well, SkyOne is a British satellite channel as I understand it and they're the ones that adapt the books into these movies which are actually multi-part miniseries.  Yup!  This is also part of my miniseries mania as well.  In fact, most of them (not Going Postal) validate my love of mini-series book adaptions every time I watch them because they always get it right... except Going Postal, which I'll go into further in a bit.

See, Pratchett has been writing Discworld since the seventies and people have always wanted adaptions of the books almost as much as they wanted a good version of Lord of the Rings.  The books are usually somewhat episodic in nature which lends itself to the medium quite well.  In addition to that little fact, a lot of people read Discworld.  Every new book made the top of the British bestseller list until Harry Potter came on the scene and took the limelight away for a bit.  Now, the Harry Potter movies are done and Discworld has five of its own adaptions. A movie, also based on a book by Terry Pratchett called Truckers is set to come out in 2013, but it has nothing to do with Discworld so it'll just get a sentence here about its existence.

The first one of these that I saw was The Color of Magic which is based on two Pterry (his nickname from now on) novels: The Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic.  The books and movie are centered around two characters.  One is Rincewind, the Disc's worst wizard who calls himself a "wizzard" who is talented with languages, but spells run away, screaming from his brain because he has somehow managed to absorb the most powerful spell in all the Disc... which he has to stop himself from using because he knows it's horrible.  Oh, and Rincewind has a whole philosophy of life centered around running away.  That's right, kids! Rincewind isn't a hero at all, he is an old, smelly coward.  Luckily, we have his counterpart, the other main character.  His name is Two-Flower and he comes from the Counterweight Continent which is rumored to be mostly composed of gold.  He's the Disc's first tourist and he travels to the big, bad city of Ankh-Morpork to have a genuine adventure.  He's also a complete idiot.  The movie is great because it does cover most of the major events of the book, glossing over the ones that would be more difficult to capture on film, but getting the heart of the story which is your typical save-the-world-from-greedy-bastard-played-by-Tim-Curry-buddy-movie.  It's fun.  It's mostly family friendly and Jeremy Irons talks cute to his puppy while hamming it up menacingly.  I liked it so much, I had to see the other movies.  I had no choice in the matter, really. My God, Pterry, demanded it.

So, then I watched Hogfather.  I'm going to do a Christmas episode centered around this in December, so I won't delve to deep into this, but I'll give you a quick summary.  The Auditors of Reality hire an assassin who is doing his best Michael Jackson/Johnny Depp from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory impression to kill the Discworld's version of Santa Claus.  The only people who can save him (Santa Claus) is Death and his granddaughter who would rather pretend to be a nanny that kicks monster ass with a "magical" poker. Anyone who is familiar with my tattoos will also find one of them appearing in this film.  Besides The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, this is my favorite Christmas Movie.  Ever since I saw it, I see it every year.  I watch the first half Christmas Eve and the second half Christmas Day.  My favorite part about it is the conversation Death and Susan have at the end of the movie:

Death: Humans need fantasy to *be* human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.  

Susan: With tooth fairies? Hogfathers?  

Death: Yes. As practice, you have to start out learning to believe the little lies.  

Susan: So we can believe the big ones?  

Death: Yes. Justice, mercy, duty. That sort of thing. 

Susan: They're not the same at all.  

Death: You think so? Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder, and sieve it through the finest sieve, and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet, you try to act as if there is some ideal order in the world. As if there is some, some rightness in the universe, by which it may be judged.  

Susan: But people have got to believe that, or what's the point?  

Death: You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become? 

 The movie encompasses something that I had thought about for a long time.  The things we accept as true and take for granted aren't really real.  They don't exist in any real sense.  They aren't atoms or subatomic particles or quarks or even energy.  They're just ideas.  However, these ideas shape our whole society.  In the animal kingdom, if you see another animal hurt that isn't part of your personal group and it's hurt, you don't stop to help it.  You let it die because that's one less thing competing for food with you!  Heck, most male animals eat their young if food is scarce.  In America, at least, we try to help everyone.  We have programs to help the poor, disabled, disenfranchised, old, young, hungry, sad, EVERYONE.  And we all take it for granted because that's how it "ought" to be. But that's just an idea! There is nothing truly physical that makes us do any of that! We just do!  And it's wonderful!  What better thing to leave you with for Christmas?


Then I saw Wyrd Sisters and Going Postal. I can't remember what order I saw them in, but Wyrd Sisters was written first as a book and made first as a movie so I'll talk about it first.  It's basically Macbeth from the witches' point of view with many hilarious twists.  The main characters are, obviously the witches.  You have Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and Magrat Garlick.  Granny Weatherwax is the most badass person on the Disc, hands down.  She even comes from a town called Badass, or at least that's where you first meet her in Equal Rites, the third book of the series.  She saves a child from Death Himself, she could probably make the Patrician quake in his boots just by glaring at him.  Oh, and a vampire bit her once and she converted him and his kinsmen to act and talk like her.  In this book and movie, she's pretty much the same.  Nanny Ogg... oooh boy... Nanny Ogg... Well, she's the "mother" of the group having a huge brood of children.  Magically, she's supposed to be more powerful than Granny Weatherwax, but she hides it under the demeanor of being a drunken, gossipy, old woman.  And. It. Works.  Magrat Garlick is the maiden with her own romantic subplot and everything and she brought the witches together under the assumption that "that's how it should be done".  While Nanny and Granny won't hold with the newer magical ideas of candles, and cauldrons, and crystals, and pentacles, Magrat loves those things and embraces them fully.  Watching them interact is most of the fun of the book and movie, watching what happens when they get along and work together is even more awesome and amazing.  The animation of the movie sucks, but it does manage to capture the spirit of the book, if not the visuals.  Oh, and there's the William Shakespeare cameo with jokes about the original play.


Going Postel... ehh... Okay, I'll say this.  I loved the book and it's sequel Making Money.  I loved the idea of a conman being forced to go the straight-and-narrow by the "evil" Patrician because said Patrician wanted to be able to play chess.  I loved the idea that words have power and getting a ton of them in one place makes... changes.  I loved Adora Belle Dearheart and everything about her, book and movie.  I loved Richard Coyle as Moist von Lipwig.  I did not love this movie.  They changed the villain.  They changed the way the words worked.  They changed... a lot of things and I was not impressed. Hell, they gave the corniest answer ever to the reason why Adora Belle Dearheart smoked! They dumbed it down and I really hated the movie for that.  


I haven't seen Soul Music or had a chance to read the book yet, but I'm sure it'll be a good adaption and when I finally read it and watch the movie, I'll post on here.


All-in-all, you should really read the Discworld novels, but the movies are good.  Even Going Postal is entertaining at least even if it destroys a book I love dearly.  Read the books.  Watch the movies.  Enjoy Pterry while he's still healthy and writing.


Sweet Dreams.