The Shannara Chronicles

[Silvercrest]

It's supposed to be our future all right. Most of the humanoids are either chalked up to "stable mutation" or "specialized breeding". (The Elves are a special case.) Magic is supposed to have receded during our time period and re-emerged after the destruction.

Edit: Wow, double ninja'd!

 

[wulfio]

Alrighty. So basically just accept it as it is so. I can do that.

 

[Silvercrest]

Why is it an annoyance that Davies is the only one with an accent? Why should people living in the Pacific Northwest two thousand years from now have to speak with a non-North American accent? (Yes, I know accents in two thousand years will not likely sound anything like our modern accents do. That's not the point.)

I think the point is: It's implausible for characters from the same culture, same geographic region, same time period, and same family to have different accents from each other. It's possible but not very likely. (Regardless of which accents we're talking about.)

 

[Christopher]

If I remember my lore correctly, magic existed in ancient times before mankind became the dominant species on the planet, and then it came back after the cataclysm that destroyed human civilization.

I can't say I've ever been that fond of the "There used to be magic but it conveniently vanished before modern times" trope. The best handling I've seen of it was in Larry Niven's The Magic Goes Away, which took a "logical fantasy" approach and treated the source of magic -- mana -- as a natural resource, a finite physical property of the world that could be depleted and that got used up. I think it was as much an allegory for the '70s oil shortages and environmentalist concerns over non-renewable resources as a logical approach to codifying magic. But what was cool about it was that the stories didn't just use the impermanence of magic as a throwaway excuse for why the past was different from the present -- rather, the consequences of the depletable nature of magic were themselves a driving force in the stories. For instance, I remember that one wizard character had a spell that would just sort of run exponentially until it used up all the mana in the local area, thereby cancelling out any opponent's magic. And the larger "energy crisis" of magic being on the verge of extinction drove a lot of the plotting.

Why is it an annoyance that Davies is the only one with an accent? Why should people living in the Pacific Northwest two thousand years from now have to speak with a non-North American accent? (Yes, I know accents in two thousand years will not likely sound anything like our modern accents do. That's not the point.)

Also, it's not like this is anywhere near the first high-fantasy TV series to use contemporary language and American accents. See also Hercules, Xena, and Legends of the Seeker (all of which were also filmed in New Zealand, by the way).

Speaking of which, Rhys-Davies isn't the only one using a non-American accent. Manu Bennett seems to be using his normal New Zealand accent, IIRC. Hmm, given that they were contemporaries back in the time of the war, could it be a generational thing?

I think the point is: It's implausible for characters from the same culture, same geographic region, same time period, and same family to have different accents from each other. It's possible but not very likely. (Regardless of which accents we're talking about.)

But it does happen rather a lot in SF and fantasy. Like Roy Dotrice playing Hercules's father in the later seasons of the TV series. Or David Warner's Gul Madred having an English accent while most of his fellow Cardassians did not. Or Sean Connery as Harrison Ford's dad.

 

[Silvercrest]

I'm not sure those are good examples. Henry Jones Senior could easily have come from a different continent than Junior. And which continent on Cardassia did Madred originate from, compared to the others we saw? (And where was Zeus from?) Like I said, it's only an objection when the characters are known to originate from the same culture, region, time period, and family.

That said, I agree it's deplorably common in quasi-medieval fantasy settings where the family members pretty much have to originate from the same place.

 

[sojourner]

It would be like Queen Elizabeth having a different accent than Prince Harry.

 

[DigificWriter]

Magic existed before the Great Wars and the nuclear apocalypse that was their 'crowning glory', but only select individuals - some of them aligned with the Word (Good) and some of them aligned with the Void (Evil) were aware of and able to harness it.

As far as the Elves go, they are the most ancient of the inhabitant races of the Four Lands and, much like the Fairies of Celtic and Irish folklore, went into isolation and hiding as human society began to flourish before being dragged out of their isolation by agents of the Word (and one very special boy, himself a creature of ancient magic 'born' to a young woman gifted with her own brand of magic).

The other 3 inhabitant races of the Four Lands - Trolls, Dwarves, and Gnomes - evolved or are descended from mutated humans who were transformed by the cataclysmic byproducts of the Great Wars.

There are also two types of Demons that exist within the Shannara lore: The ancient enemies of the Elves that were imprisoned within the Forbidding and guarded by the Ellcrys, and evolved human servants of the Void whose machinations actually led to the destruction of the Old World and the cataclysmic events of the Great Wars and the nuclear apocalypse that marked their end.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Television and movies stopped lingual drift, just like books cemented spelling.

Twitter is changing communication and uncementing spelling.



I was wondering if the supernatural nonhuman species in this story are literally nonhuman species and not the result of mutation or eugenics? Maybe all this lord of the rings bullshit had just been hiding very well while human population really got out of hand in the 20th and 21st centuries.

 

[DigificWriter]

^ Did you see what I posted above? The Elves are the only truly non-human inhabitant race of the Four Lands, and their society has endured pretty much as we see it in the show since long before the Great Wars and their crowning nuclear apocalypse wiped out human society as we know and would recognise it.

 

[Silvercrest]

The irony is that (in the original novels at least), the Elves were effectively portrayed as no different than humans, to the extent that a lot of them didn't even believe in magic. (Which I believe is being echoed onscreen now.) Culturally and racially there was nothing unique about them at all. They just happened to have pointed ears.

Between that, some other dodgy aspects of Brooks' universe-building, and the derivative nature of the original novel, I was never interested in reading beyond the first three books.

 

[DigificWriter]

Your mileage may vary, but I love the idea that the Elves of the Four Lands lost the innate magic that set their society and culture apart from humanity, reclaimed it thanks to human agents of the Word, and then slowly started to lose it again.

 

[wulfio]

in 2000 years we will communicate only with acronyms and emoji's.

 

[Silvercrest]

OK.

 

[JoeZhang]

Why is it an annoyance that Davies is the only one with an accent? Why should people living in the Pacific Northwest two thousand years from now have to speak with a non-North American accent? (Yes, I know accents in two thousand years will not likely sound anything like our modern accents do. That's not the point.)

I think the point is: It's implausible for characters from the same culture, same geographic region, same time period, and same family to have different accents from each other. It's possible but not very likely. (Regardless of which accents we're talking about.)

It's not as odd as you would think - I am from the Welsh/English boarder and it's not uncommon for people to speak with slightly different accents in the same family. My sister has always worked as a nurse over the border and she now has a slightly welsh accent which would make you think she is from Wales.

 

[Mach5]

Checked out the pilot.

In the hands of someone other than the Smallville people and MTV this could have been a kick-ass fantasy series. The story seems intriguing enough, but the execution is terrible. Bad production design, bad art direction, bad makeup, dismal cinematography... Legend of the Seeker looked like LOTR compared to this.

 

[Arrrrgggh]

I think the point is: It's implausible for characters from the same culture, same geographic region, same time period, and same family to have different accents from each other.

With the exception of family (and even that's debatable), you pretty much just described the island -- the one smaller than several U.S. states -- containing England, Wales, and Scotland.

That said, I really was hoping to like this series. But it looks like it's just going to be like Teen Wolf; a lot of emo teenaged angst with equally emo teenaged angst music, and with teenagers saving the day while the adults just stay out of their way and do very little other than advise.

Why can't HBO or even AMC get all these properties with so much potential? :'(

 

[Christopher]

I'm not sure those are good examples.

I'm certain there are plenty of better ones. Those are just the only ones I could remember offhand, and I was less than happy with them, but they were all I had.

Like I said, it's only an objection when the characters are known to originate from the same culture, region, time period, and family.

But these characters aren't from the same time period. The king and Allanon are from at least two generations before Amberle. Henry Jones, Sr. is just one generation removed from Henry Jones, Jr. And do we know what region the king came from? Maybe he came from outside and took control of the kingdom from someone else.

Magic existed before the Great Wars and the nuclear apocalypse that was their 'crowning glory', but only select individuals - some of them aligned with the Word (Good) and some of them aligned with the Void (Evil) were aware of and able to harness it.

That's another fantasy trope I've never been that fond of -- the idea that magic is real but mostly hidden. If it were so powerful, then by all rights, its practitioners would be easily able to control the world. I just don't buy fantasy stories that posit that magic exists but the geopolitical nature of the world is otherwise unchanged. That doesn't make sense. If there were wizards in the world, they wouldn't just be advisors to the monarchs, they would be the monarchs. Who could stop them? The magic-users would be the ruling elite controlling all others. Having magic be rare wouldn't change that -- look at how few individuals in the United States control the overwhelming majority of its wealth and power right now.

 

[Silvercrest]

And do we know what region the king came from? Maybe he came from outside and took control of the kingdom from someone else.

I can accept that.

 

[Kelthaz]

Ash vs. Evil Dead. But it's a comedy.

There's where we draw the line differently, I guess. I'm curious about that show, because I liked Army of Darkness, but what I hear about the extreme levels of gore has kept me away.

The show is over-the-top with the blood and the gore, but most of the time the intention is to amuse the audience rather than gross them out. Evil Dead is to gore what Bugs Bunny is to violence. Although, like I said, most of the time. Very occasionally Evil Dead will play the horror and gore completely straight.

 

[JD]

I don't understand the objection to the King having an accent but not his granddaughter. My grandmother is from Czechoslovakia/The Czech Republic, and has an accent, but my father didn't have an accent, and I don't have an accent. I'm pretty sure I've run into people whose parents have an accent, but not them.