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World Without Endertainment

posted 11 years ago by Stradling
5 replies | jump to latest

Haven't read the book so my POV doesn't come with any related negative/positive bias.

Ultimately, I'm angry at myself. The series opens with a car chase scene where two bad guys fire Crossbow Uzis towards the escaping good guy. Seriously, they should have just given up right there and added screeching tires purely for the *beep* of it. Should have stopped watching right there.

I got about halfway through the mini series, episode 5. Series is depressing in all the wrong ways. I generally speaking much enjoy series parading morally tainted (anti)heroes, grim life -tasting fates and all that. I'm about half way through the show now and so far the series has mostly been exploring highly frustrating ways to present these things.

Characters we love to hate is something I love to see on a tv show. Charismatic, clever, rutheless and perhaps hopelessly flawed evil basterds can make infinitely entertaining antagonists/anti heroes. Tywin Lannister and Tidus Batiatus are most recent examples of this done well. Closest equivalents in World w/o end are not cunning or charmistatic. They are not exiting or fun to watch. In this series, we just get a thoroughly evil, lazily written petty basterd after another. These evil, lazily written petty basterds do a soul crushing thing after another to equally one dimensional, seemingly perfect good guy characters who can but suffer a blow after another. Of course, all the basterds are in varyingly high positions of power while the good guys are without power, fortune or penis.

Churh is filled with terrible, exceptionally evil and exceptionally stupid immoral people. Nuns that look like mother hen cartoon characters are good, however. Evil, ice queen nuns will betray the hen nuns alas.

Every woman is wiser, more clever, more resourceful and more heroic than any man around them. Every woman is also treated in horrible fashion; the consistent superiority doesn't stop the good looking ones from getting raped or groped by an evil basterd lord/monk or another. There is a tit quota/episode to meet after all.

I fully expect boring, ridiculously evil one dimensional bastard characters to mistreat the boring, ridiculously perfect good guys for first 11 episodes. Then in last episode, half of the bad guys and most of the good guys die in varyingly satisfying ways. Bridge gets finished. Prolly burns down a few times between then and now. The end. Also betting the kind and reasonable nun gets raped in T-2 episodes.

Much worse than Pillars in every way you could possibly imagine. Doesn't taste like life, doesn't feel sufficiently real. Lacks any and all beauty or meaning. Church is evil and everybody wearing robes is a terrible person. Characters are from day time soap.You'll dislike them all.

About Godwyn
Episode five has three back-to-back scenes of Godwyn discovering and ruining three seperate plans of three seperate good guys who are trying to do typical good guy things for greater good of all the guys. This could work if we saw some displays of rutheless machiavellian cunning. We do not. " I do not like that guy. He also has a document I do not like existing. I will go and stab the man to death and also burn the document.Nobody really questions me about this until episode 11-12 when it all starts coming crashing down."

By episode 5( that's how far I survived) this guy has turned into completely incomprehensible, unthinkable Antichrist of a Hitler type of a thing. If there is a buss full of orphans and butterflies, there is Godwyn nearby setting it on fire just because. His vileness is of such scale that it certainly is not entertaining or fun to watch him succeed time and again. There are no plots or schemes; just lazy problem solution. If there were charisma, cunning or such present it'd be different. His cloak and dagger comes without the former, very much. Only reason any of his plots works is because he can't die before the series finale. Strangely enough, the character seems to be perfectly aware of existing in a TV series. It's like he knows there is certain, satisfying death scene scheduled by episode 12..so best make most ouf of the time he has eh. I can't imagine a watcher who'd enjoy this approach.

If Game of Thrones were played in this backdrop, it'd be perfectly valid to ask why Tyrion Lannister just doesn't start killing all the people, ice zombies, dragons, and suches he dislikes? Tyrion is crowd favorite and borderline main character of the show; surely he can't die and surely his plans can never be fouled. Such thick armor should provide him all he needs?

Evil people in World w/o end act like they know they are on TV series with a bad plot that is busy protecting them til the last episode.

[–] dalyns76-300-686677 11 years ago

Endertainment...really?

[–] 11 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Scribblenaut 11 years ago

I was thinking the exact same thing, but I've heard that Follet's villains are just genuinely like that. Still, Ralph, in particular, was just evil because he had to be. He goes from being a conflicted squire in service to the crown to butchering an unarmed civilian just because in, literally, two minutes. He then had a chance to redeem himself, but nope. Bad guy rules say you have to be bad and have no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

I enjoy watching bad guys be bad when there's some rhyme or reason to it (Tywin Lannister, Petyr Baelish, basically all the "bad guys" in GoT), but watching bad guys win all the time just because of some lazy plot device and not fun an clever scheme is just tiring.

I haven't even read the book but I can surely tell that so much of it got mangled in this series. Like the obvious similarities between Ralph and Gwenda's son.

Edit: Read the summary on Wiki and, my god, it's not even close. The book sounds really good. A far cry from this lifeless series.

[–] smcbee27 9 years ago

I agree. I'm at "Pawns" and have lost interest in all the characters except the King perhaps and the villain priory simply puts me in a foul mood. His evil is too overwhelming and him "doing" her dress a bit much.

What bothers me the most is characters saying "hello" and other modern vernacular. Did the f-word exist back then? "Ok" came about during the 1800's from a US President. Rape being punishable? As harming someone's property perhaps but not in seeking justice for the woman herself. I've only read one historical dramatic book, which was a "what if it happened this way" so accuracy wasn't as needed but vernacular is always, always of paramount importance to me.

My last problem with the series is why under all that is holy do they have average American actors doing English characters when England is over flowing with excellent actors!!!

[–] imvaughn 9 years ago

I feel exactly the same way. I hate shows where the villain always loses & hate em when the villain always loses. 1. Ralph. Kills a man isn't arrested. Rapes a woman is saved by the king 2. Pryor: kills a higher ranking clergy man. No one investigated and NO ONE seemed to care. 3. His mom: kills her brother but no one knows it's poison when she cooks all the meals. 4. The nun shows a document proving the convent owns the land in a room full of people but the new judge doesn't know this? 5. The sister kills the dad shouldn't the brother get his $$ and still be able to get the charter since the other brother is sentenced to death. The sister killing the mom.

None of the good characters ever win. None of the bad guys ever pay for their crimes.

I got to episodes 4. 4 miserable episodes. And it's not that the bad guys were smart. The good guys just always lost. None of the bad guys had 1 shred of decency and their only motivation was power.

Also way too much rape & hanging. We didn't need it every episode.

I normally love these types of movies. I like in the manner w of the king 2 and it had 2 out of 5 stars on Netflix. This was pure garbage