Reviews rated at 1 gloom
A Douchebag of Earthsea, and the Douchebags who Ruined the Book
Earthsea
directed by
Robert Lieberman
posted by JoVo
The major characters of Smallville return to the small screen to provide you with a movie that can only be described as trite. There is nothing to spoil (ergo, no spoiler alert); this movie's so obvious. So, there's an archipelago named Earthsea that, many years ago, was kept at peace by a magical amulet. Now, there's war and violence all over the place. But there's a prophecy that a wizard will come who will make everything better. If only the Middle East had an amulet, right?
I honestly feel bad for everybody who has to work with these guys. Everything they're in is crap, and I'm not sure if it's them, or if they just have awful luck. I tie this movie to Smallville because it's so bad, and the same people are in both. Jimmy Olsen (Shawn Ashmore) plays Ged, the powerful wizard who will SAVE THE WORLD from the darkness. Unfortunately, Ashmore is such a weak actor that it's laughable whenever he attempts to play any strong role. His name is Ged, it should be Git.
"Every living thing has a secret name in which his power resides," says Danny Glover, who plays the melodramatic great wizard Ogion. And he gives Ashmore his GREAT and SECRET name! Sparrowhawk. I'd say they ripped it off from the Fable 2 videogame series. I'm sure they took it directly from Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea, which was first published in 1968.
Ged—codename Sparrow Hawk—is a dick. He is supposed to learn humility by asking his father's blessing to go off and be a wizard. He does so by telling his father that they were never a family and that he should fuck off. Then he breaks up with his girlfriend by basically implying that he lied to her when he said he'd be back and that there's a girl of his dreams out there and she's not the one. He might as well added the fuck-off there too because it wouldn't make him any less of a dick.
When he's at Roke learning wizardry, he is looked down upon by the school bully, a clichéd character named Jasper (Mark Hildreth, who plays Joshua on V). Jasper makes a joke about Ged's brain, and Ged makes a joke about Jasper's penis. They must expect their audience to be made up of middle schoolers. Jasper is a mediocre mage, of course. Because he must be detestable. Otherwise, we'd hate him less than we do Ged.
Another example of the Ged-Jasper dynamic. Jasper raises a tree from the ground and sprouts doves from it. He challenges Ged to one-up him. So Ged does so, by shapeshifting. Well, shapeshifting is dangerous, and the Archmagus (Alan Scarfe) chastises everyone for it. Well, of course, our hero Ged goes up to Jasper and chides him ("You're even lower than I thought, Jasper.") for "sneaking to the Archmagus about my doing something you can't". Really? Really? If someone shapeshifts, which is incredibly dangerous, and then divebombs you while taunting you by claiming how awesome he is, I think he's got every right to inform the Archmagus about what's taken place. Honestly.
Well, if you're confused about who to hate more at this point, wait until Jasper joins King Tygath (Sebastian Roché) and helps him to take over Roke in return for becoming the new Archmagus. It comes out of the blue, but Lieberman wants to make sure you know who's the worse of the two—in case you, like me, were confused.
King Tygath is the powerhungry-for-no-real-reason villain of the story. He's the bad guy, and it's awful. I like Roché. He has fun with his role, playing it for laughs and salvaging himself as an actor. He seems immune to crappy writing, much like others who survived the catastrophes that are movies like this and TV shows like Smallville (e.g. Jensen Ackles, Michael Rosenbaum, and a few others). If Tygath wasn't melodramatically evil enough, he gets a nice, short monologue about how much he loves to kill people...slowly. Very subtle, Lieberman. Very subtle.
The English accent plays the same role here as it does in other fantasy storylines that pretend to take place in medieval times: it is ZOMG EVIL. You can tell who the good guys are by their American accents. Because American = good and English = bad to the bone. Oh, and let's not forget the good old Irish accent, which is a clear indicator of innkeepers, wenches, and heavy drinkers. Obviously. These are true facts, and don't you forget it.
Then there's the CGI, which is absolutely awful. The sort of CGI that we can make at home these days with Adobe After Effects. They clearly had a very small budget to work with. The producers must have watched Smallville, and they obviously had some sense.
There are a few people I like who made it onto this movie, which I was sad to see: Amanda Tapping (formerly Samantha Carter of Stargate: SG-1) plays a bad line very well. Her "what have you done" sounds like something someone would actually say. Alan Scarfe (who's been on everything from Quantum Leap to Star Trek to Andromeda) is larger-than-life, and he does as good a job as one can expect given the lines he's expected to deliver. Peter Williams (formerly Apophis from Stargate: SG-1) plays an irrelevant Kargide soldier. Not must to say about him; he was onscreen for all of a minute. He is srs business though, there and here.
Then there's all the incredibly annoying characters from Smallville that show up in this movie. Chris Gauthier (Vetch here, Toyman there) is unsufferable as always. And the fat jokes, oh, they're hilarious in all the ways that aren't. He is killed by the Gebbeth near the end, but we are kept from experiencing the full pleasure of his finally having been shut up by Geb, who brings him back to life, making death utterly meaningless in this world. Apparently, only bad guys can die for real in this worlderful, fluffy-bunny world.
Kristin Kreuk (Tenar here, Lana Lang there) is perfect, beautiful, humble, and worthy of everything, or so we're led to believe yet again, because God forbid she should play anything but a Mary Sue. And she gets to make out with Geb at the end of the movie, which is funny because I thought she was a priestess. But who can resist such a puke-enducing moment as Ashmore and Kreuk making out?
Ah, and then there's the great evil undead spirit Gebbeth (Mark Acheson), who is Nameless and powerful enough to threaten all of Earthsea, and who is nearly destroyed by Geb's horrible hug. Makes sense: I'd probably freak out if Ashmore tried to touch me. Eventually, Geb discovers that the Gebbeth was him all along. He joins with the Gebbeth, and he suddenly has superstrength because "he has become whole." Apparently, he had superstrength before and just didn't know it. Hmm...
The movie is three hours long. Longer than any man should be made to suffer. Let this be a lesson to all: when you try to transfer a story from one medium to another, it's not enough to transcribe the dialogue. What works as a book does not work as a movie ceteris paribus. It takes a little more ingenuity on the part of the screenwriter and the director to make it all come together. This movie did not come together. It was a disappointment to a classic work of fantasy. It was an offensive slap in the face to Le Guin's vision. And she agrees.
Read the book.
WoD Inspirations
The wizards are mages. Roke could easily be thought of as a Mysterium school of magic, and some of the spells they pull off may be an interesting armamentarium for PC and NPC powers. The visual effects aren't that good, so it's probably best if you take the spells and visualize them yourself.
The Gebbeth makes an interesting Underworld adversary, and may even be the intangible avatar of a geist. And the Nameless Ones, although the sound of them is Abyssal, may be better conceptualized as spirits or other denizens of the Underworld. With the new Geist supplementary Book of the Dead