I mentioned a while ago that one of my favorite series was The Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind. The guy is just amazingly fantastic with exceptional detail, excellent character development and overall storytelling. He’s not one to hold back on getting real either so his books make for a very intense read.
So when I heard a while ago that they were going to be making a TV series based off of it, I was of course looking forward to it. That aired earlier this evening, part one as it were, under the name: Legend of the Seeker. And within the first ten minutes, my heart just sunk when it became apparent that they were going to toss any semblance of truly following the original story in favor or being ‘dramatic’ or to put it bluntly… turning it into a God Damn Soap Opera more geared towards gaining viewers.
I lost count of the times I outright groaned and sighed in disgust. There were so many cheesy declarations of you are the one true seeker and other crap that just didn’t exist in the book at all. In addition to fights, sacrifices & hostage situations that did not happen in the book either.
The sins as I would put it were many, I’ll list a few here, and people who have read the book will understand why I’m shaking my head of what they did.
- They gave away what one of the key characters is from the get go. I am referring to Kahlan. WTF? Part of what made her character development well played was the fact that you didn’t really know what she was at all.
- They had the main character Richard and Zed at odds as if they didn’t even know one another, which in turn had Richard doing all sorts of stupid crap he never did in the book.
- The back story for Richard was literally made up, just as other details surrounding how his family passed on was completely altered. Including the fact that certain family members weren’t even alive in the book to begin with!
- Super big mistake, they took some book and did the “Must keep it from falling into enemy hands at all costs” spiel. *bangs her head on her desk* The book did exist, but not like they portrayed it in the show.
- There was showy magic to ‘save’ the day that didn’t exist in the story…
- A side character had his daughter taken hostage… WTF? That didn’t even happen in the story at all.
And the list just goes on and on. It was just pathetic. I was so disappointed. What I loved about the book was how it didn’t lead you by the hand and took you places you didn’t expect. That is all gone. In its place is a cheap thriller that fits a lot of cookie cutter TV series designed to woo an audience that doesn’t give a crap so long as it’s ever so dramatic.
I can’t even begin to describe how much this attempt to make a series out of the book fails. I doubt I'll bother to watch any more of it. It was that bad.
