How did Ged drown so quickly? Was he stabbed or something? I mean he falls into the water and everybody assumes that he is dead. And weirdly enough he is. But why ? I watched the mini-series out of boredom and I don't remember him being stabbed.
the whole "witch isn't as powerful as a wizard" thing is indeed a part of the world, but is treated as the result of sexism, not actual power disparities, and pushing against this social reality is a plot point in the book Tehanu
Yeah, I think it's really fascinating! A little blurb (by which I mean essay going into each book's vibes) for anyone interested in the series but concerned about sexism: so, basically when you boil the series down a bit, one of the prevalent themes is power: who has it, who doesn't have it, how it's used, what it does (some other themes that are really important are balance, especially between life and death, and helping each other. Lots of really important moments hinge on simple human kindness and empathy, and a willingness to help someone who is unwilling to admit they need it). In the Archipelago (that's basically everywhere but the Kargad lands, so. For simplicity you can just assume all characters but the warriors who raid Ged's village, Tenar, and those she lives with are Archipelagans, unless said otherwise. There are a few other Kargad characters, but they appear in books beyond Tombs Of Atuan), power usually comes from magic and/or wealth. Women are excluded from the former (they aren't allowed to go to Roke or learn much magic, just enough to do witch things), and the latter is a lot like in our world, only afforded to a few (though poverty isn't really too bad; most people in Earthsea are kinda getting by, nothing fancy but not too painful). The first three books (A Wizard Of Earthsea, Tombs Of Atuan, and The Farthest Shore) are basically from the perspectives of those with power. For the first, Ged has grown up displaying a remarkable ability to do and resist magic; he can work very potent spells and resist those worked on him. Because of this and because he is a boy, not a girl, with those abilities, he is sent away to learn how to use magic. He kinda cocks it up a little, but that's part of him growing up, and overall the story is about him learning who he is and what he does and how to do it. For the second, Tenar is powerful in one way (basically owns the domain of some spooky earth powers and the people who worship them, and has a whole temple of people to serve her) but lacks power in other ways (she's kind of a figurehead, she has no freedom in what she does, the people who work for her don't always obey her, and if she pushes the boundaries she could VERY EASILY get killed). Her story is essentially about taking the first scary steps towards healing, and about losing all the powers she had in order to gain freedom, prestige (due to her bearing the ring of Erreth-Akbe), and do what she wants (live as a normal, non-magical woman). For the third, it's from the perspective of Ged and Arren, a prince (he does not have magic, but he is powerful due to his family title and the fact that he is male). It's about Arren learning what power is and does (mostly through the juxtaposition of Ged, who he sees for a while as powerful but weak for not like. Strongarming everything into the ways he thinks they should go, and Cob, a very scary necromancer who likes doing that strongarming). So throughout all those first three books, everything is told from the perspectives of people who are currently powerful. Society and the patriarchy are generally working to their benefit. Also, note that the tone of The Farthest Shore is a bit grimmer than the previous books; same with Tehanu, and after The Farthest Shore there is certainly more sex in the books (not a whole lot; mostly some *fade to black* kind of moments and a few almost-sex scenes, but it is something to be aware of). Then you get to Tehanu, the fourth book. It is from (an older) Tenar's perspective, as a now very normal woman with very little power caring for her adopted daughter Therru and trying to figure out how to navigate her life (made difficult through the death of a person important to her, Therru's very abusive birth family basically stalking them, a very mean wizard also kinda stalking them, a very upset and ashamed Ged returning home, and people showing up and asking where Ged is). Therru and Ged are also very powerless; Therru was abused really horrifically, which resulted in a physical disability that ostracizes her a bit, and (BIG FUCKIN SPOILER ALERT REAL FAST BC IT'S KIND OF A HUGE DEAL IN BOTH THE FARTHEST SHORE AND TEHANU BUT ALSO IT WON'T RUIN THE SURPRISES OF THE STORIES SO Y'KNOW PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK) Ged now has to very rapidly figure out how to be a powerless person, because he literally has no magic left at all, and can no longer be a wizard (which. He's like in his 60s or 70s or so, and he'd been doing wizard things since he was like 13, kinda younger depending how you slice it). So all three of them together have an incredibly tiny amount of power, and they're basically at the whims of those who have more. It's probably my favourite book in the series for how fascinating its look at patriarchal society is, and the way Ged literally has to learn how to fear people. Also, of all the books that might be triggering, I think Tehanu is one that might sneak up on you. Note going in that there is child abuse (certainly some violence, and implied rape as well), general sexist drudgery (lots of tired women putting up with shitty stuff men do or say), a dude gets stabbed with a pitchfork and it's kinda gruesome, and there was a scene that made me cry near the end involving some really awful verbal abuse towards Tenar and Ged, and just generally some horror coming from a curse. So. Be ready, I suppose. It truly is a great book, but it's also a hard one. Tales From Earthsea, the fifth book, jumps around quite a bit. The first story (The Finder) is about a pretty powerless boy (a wizard, but an enslaved one) growing up and joining a matriarchal society of magic called The Women Of The Hand. Also, just another sort of trigger warning, in Otter there's some more scary curse stuff (a bit less scary though), some really sad stuff involving other enslaved people extracting quicksilver, and a really creepy gross wizard who won't shut up about how he keeps chugging the stuff. But it's really great. The next little story is Darkrose And Diamond, which honestly is mostly just a cute love story? But there's some interesting stuff in there about power from wealth, power from magic, and how the gaining of power can itself be a painful, unwanted thing; it's from the perspective of a boy who's being forced to become a wizard, even though he doesn't want to (he's in love with a childhood friend and they want to be together, but wizards have to be celibate). The third story (The Bones Of The Earth) also kinda had less to say about power, as it's much more about keeping balance in the world and accepting mortality. It's really good, though. It's from the perspective of Ogion's teacher and Ogion himself, as they figure out how to keep an earthquake from killing a bunch of people. The fourth story (On The High Marsh) has some VERY interesting things to say about power; it's about a wizard who mysteriously appears on a pretty remote island to heal some cattle, and the woman who lets him live in her house. The other men of the island are pretty sexist and don't help at all with running the house, and this woman really appreciates when this wizard (and another wizard, who shows up to help the first wizard with some trauma) actually treat her respectfully, don't talk about prostitutes all the time, and actually help with the household chores. It's my favourite tale in the book for how gentle and yet revolutionary it is. And the final tale (Dragonfly), is about a woman who goes to Roke to become a wizard; it's also about the systemic belittling of women (the wizard who helped her get there only did so because he wanted to fuck her, and the wizards who live on Roke have mixed opinions on her being there, but generally the students and the "Old boys" are REALLY uncomfortable by her presence, to the point that one of them starts really creeping her out by doing things like watching her bathe, until she gets sick of it all and leaves). Then the final book, The Other Wind, brings everything together. Everyone (wizards, women, dragons, etc) bands together to try to fix death (people have been dying wrong and it's really bugging the dragons), heal relations between the Archipelago and the Kargad lands, as much as can be done, and also ACTUALLY INCLUDE WOMEN in the councils of wizards and nobles who are trying to figure out what to do, and generally the book is about looking at what wasn't working in the old culture, and figuring out how to move forward well (I think it mirrors both Tombs Of Atuan and The Farthest Shore really nicely; it kinda feels like a societal version of Tenar's story in Tombs, if that makes sense). Generally, when reading the series, keep the balances of power and patriarchy on your head, and you'll be in for a really interesting time.
@@horseenthusiast9903 Thanks so much for this! I was really worried that the themes would hit too close to home for this book, even thoughy I've been wating to read it for ages. Now I know what to expect. Seriously, your synopsis is a godsend!
@@horseenthusiast9903 for how much I love The Earthsea... the fourth and fifth books have never been translated to my native language, and I wasn't aware that they existed until literally your comment. I feel kinda dumb for not finding out sooner, but on the other hand ridiculously grateful and PUMPED because THERE ARE TWO MORE BOOKS? That I can read now?? What a pleasant surprise. Thank you, your comment just opened my eyes and made me very happy))
I loved how Le Guin revisited Earth sea throughout her life reworked things to address choices she made when she was younger that she no longer agreed with but it never felt like revision, it felt like layers being stripped away so that you now had more information and a fuller understanding of the world. You touched on it but Roke being for men only turned out to be the result of sexism and oppression, not that women couldn't do magic. So now reading the earlier books and seeing how witches are treated becomes extra tragic. Also how wizards can't have sex and keep their magic turns out to be a lie as well.
Yes!! I just finished Tehanu and I think it’s my favorite so far, partly because I live for slow-burning relationships, but also because I love the philosophy presented and how it fundamentally changes the lens through which we see the magic system of Earthsea. Tenar’s become one of my favorite characters, ever. She deserved soOOoooOO much better than the treatment given in the miniseries :/
@@swimmyswim417 dude, YES! I love the whole series, but if I have to pick a favourite book, it's Tehanu. It's got a perfect balance of quiet, slice of life bits, philosophical bits, and bits that just really make you go "hhhhhhHhHHHHHHH" in a good way (all of which I love). The way it centers on women and children in a man's world...the way you get your first good look at wizards from the other side of the coin...the way witches FINALLY get acknowledged as holding a valid, somewhat tragic place in the world...the way Ged literally has to learn how to live a life without power, and how to be afraid of other people...it's genius, it really is. It's a beautiful book, and it made me cry like a baby, laugh out loud, and sit pondering philosophy until my tea went cold. That's a rare treasure.
I have to disagree. It felt like more than revision, it actually felt like deconstruction and sabotage. I didn't actually mind Tehanu too much, although the writing was inferior to the original trilogy and it didn't really add anything beyond an indigestible dose of heavy handed gender politics. But The Other Wind was a disaster. LeGuin completely retconned the nature of death in Earthsea, making that final confrontation with Cob in the Farthest Shore completely meaningless. As I regard that as one of the greatest scenes in the whole of fantasy fiction she actually ruined Earthsea for me. LeGuin should have left well alone. It's always a mistake for a writer to go back to a series after such a long hiatus. Their personal philosophy will have changed after so long, which will be reflected in the writing, and many fans of the original will hate the changes as I did. We saw the same with Boneland, Alan Garner's later addition to his Cheshire Edge series
Seriously. The number of books where a major character becomes severely disfigured in book and barely scratched in movie are crazy. Katniss is a pretty disfigured in addition to her mental damage in the books and has not even a scar in the movies.
@@carlrood4457 yeah but Tyrońs nose is one of the only disfigurements i can see why she wasn’t put on screen since it would take hours in the makeup chair or a lot of CGI to create.
To be fair, it's mentioned in book one that Ged runs across a boy his own age who thinks he thinks Ged's scars looks wicked cool and imagines he got it from fighting a dragon, and wishes he were the hero that he obviously thinks Ged is. Ged is mostly depressed and wishes he was that innocent boy who didn't royally eff up his life. It's one of those grass-is-greener moments where both boys envies the other.
I know the Ghibli version exists and was considered meh as a film and as an adaptation, but I still swear that Earthsea just feels like something that has to be animated. The visual descriptions of the ever morphing shadow figure and the edge of the world where Ged confronts it were just awe inspiring, and I feel that live action will never be able to do them justice!
On paper, Earthsea and Studio Ghibli are a match made in heaven, Miyazaki's style is almost perfect to bring Le Guin's magic and world to life, indeed it did the few times either was used. Shame Miyazaki (junior or elder, not really sure which to blame here) couldn't keep it in his pants and make a faithful adaptation of any one of the books, instead opting to mash three of them together. If it was just Wizard of Earthsea and the Farthest Shore, it could probably have been salvaged, but adding Tehanu was a bad move. What originally was Ged playing cat and mouse with his shadow across half the known world, or him and Arren sailing around seeking the cause of all magic going kaput now became a story about stopping a dark lord from terrorizing a local farmstead, world-saving and the eldritch horror on the protagonist's heels being little more than an afterthought.
I think it depends on the team, with enough imagination and love you can create wonders with practical effects and good use of CGI. Someone like Guillermo Del Toro for example might be a good match. I'm going to link a video about an old director teaching a class at Dartmouth, because he's Michael Powell who charmed Ursula K. Le Guin into collaborating on an Earthsea script with him that failed to get proper funding. So he and the students used it to do a short film as part of the class and there's little clips here and there showing what they achieved with a limited budget and good technique. collections.dartmouth.edu/archive/object/DA223/da223-mp692
@@waylander-su7og I got a chance to check this out. What they had and what they were going for was pretty dang impressive and probably would have made for a neat adaptation of the Tombs of Atuan. The scene in which Tanar does her initiation by "having her head cut off" was done almost exactly as described in the book. I'm not a hundred percent sure if this would have been a great movie if done in full, but I would have seen it. A shame Powell never got the funding to create a full version.
@@jaojao1768 never works for movies because of the golden rule. Show don't tell. Personally i like to restrict my books to authors who follow the same philosophy. Its basically exposition and its lazy.
Honestly I always found the revelation of the Nameless Ones true nature hilarious Tenar: "Man it sucks that I have been worshipping made up gods my whole life." Ged: "Oh no they're real, they're just evil primordial monsters who will kill us both if we don't leave right now." Tenar: "Oh."
Kind of both really. I think it's sort of ambiguous. Calling them demons or monsters is a bit too literal. The Earthsea books had a heavy Taoism theme and the Old Powers are really more like the shadows cast by the light. Horribly corrosive in their way and omnipresent in the universe without necessarily being sentient. It's hard to tell whether the powers behind the Tomb had a will or were just horrible shit going down because the place is basically cursed. The fanaticism of Tenar's cult _is_ in its way, as much a tangible manifestation of the Old Powers as it is a consequence of it. Book One makes it a point that Ged's shadow is really just a mirror of himself given birth by his hubris.
@@merrittanimation7721 I think I took it with the exactly appropriate amount of seriousness. But no really? Why do people feel the need to do that? You know, shut down my comment with an accusation that I'm a sweaty tryhard?
As you soon as Dom said Vetch, I looked at the actor on screen and was like..."THAT'S VETCH? THIS DOUGHBOY IS MEANT TO BE THE WARM, FRIENDLY, AND BADASS BLACK WIZARD OF THE BOOK?"
Yes, yes, yes, and sadly yes. The shows producers and marketing "thought" that a black man could not be accepted by white audiences COUGH Black Panther COUGH.
"A dark hand had let go its lifelong hold upon her heart. But she did not feel joy, as she had in the mountains. She put her head down in her arms and cried, and her cheeks were salt and wet. She cried for the waste of her years in bondage to a useless evil. She wept in pain, because she was free. What she had begun to learn was the weight of liberty. Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it." - from the REAL "Tombs of Atuan", when Ged and Tenar were leaving Atuan to go to Havnor
Thank you so much for posting this quote because while I do now intend to read the series, this quote really speaks to me and I needed it. This woman was an absolute master of words and it is a CRIME she isn't being remembered on the same level of Tolkein and Pratchett!
thank you for the quote! Im so glad I've found other people who have read the Earthsea books, they're simply amazing, the kind of books that will change who you are when you've reached the end of them
I’m sorry but what’s the joke here? Are you gonks just upvoting memes because they’re memes? How do you still find the same gag funny after seeing it 100s of times? Please knock this kiddy talk shit off and go back to using actual full sentences
Oh my yess! I have a unique place on my heart for those books since that is the first series I read im English (I did to trough Croatian version first)
I hope that we get a Spiderwick LIA at some point too. He only takes requests from Patreon sponsors though, so there’s no chance of it coming any time soon.
Percy Jackson adaptation- *“I am drew,”* Earthsea adaptation- *“and I am Danny,”* Both- *“and we are not the same person we may have similar lives we may have similar wives but we are different none the less,”*
Holy shit, how did they get *everything* about Tenar so damn wrong? It's almost criminal to so thoroughly ruin such a compelling character and setting. Probably the pettiest change that annoys me is the fact that apparently now Tenar and the priestesses of the Nameless Ones are quite literate, despite the fact that Tenar literally tells Ged writing is 'black magic' and a *lot* of the book is dedicated to showing how a primarily oral culture hands down rituals and knowledge(no doubt influenced by Le Guin's background and family).
You get it!!! That was one of the things that really interested me about The Tombs Of Atuan, was the misinterpretation of magic by the Kargs, and the strong oral traditions. I was also really interested in how strong the gender segregation was, like? The scene where Tenar first listens to Ged speak (like, normally, not when he was super hoarse after slowly dying of thirst) and is really freaked out by how deep his voice is was so interesting to me. I suppose from her perspective, it would be like reading a forbidden book to us, since all her information comes from oral tradition (from Kargish women and eunuchs), and then here's this wizard dude...it's a really small scene in the scheme of things, but it really stuck with me. Also on the list of scenes that stuck with me, that really funny little bit where Tenar's grossed out by eating raw shellfish and Ged is sheepishly just going ham on a handful of them
Ged finding his Otak in the snow, and beneath the Otak's body the blade of grass that Ged used, transformed into a staff to fight the shadow creatures of the Stone, that moment that the Otak, even in death, saves his beloved human moved me so deeply that even now, 30 years after I first read that book, I can feel tears forming in my eyes.
The saddest part is that she was also kind of backstabbed by Studio Ghibli in their adaptation. She only agreed to it after she saw Howl's Moving Castle (another adaptation based on a book where they made A LOT of changes but the end result is still amazing if in different ways from the book - please read the book lol) and had faith that Hayao Miyazaki would handle her source material respectfully. Instead, for reasons I don't entirely remember, they handed it off to his less experienced son, Goro. Ursula wasn't happy about that and she had extremely mixed feelings about the end result (I think she said "it was ok but it wasn't MY Earthsea"). I have a soft spot for the Ghibli adaptation but yeah, it pales in comparison to the amazing books. But watching that movie and all the questions it gave me was what inspired me to read the books which became some of my favorites ever! Also, when she asked Studio Ghibli to make the skin tones darker on their character, they said, "they are already dark enough to a Japanese audience." Ouch. :/
This is what's gonna terrify me if they every adapt Brandon Sandersons Stormlight series, the bulk of the cast is non-white who Brandon describes as looking like a cross between south east Asians and Arabs. Definitely feel there will be so much bureaucracy surrounding accurate portrayal of the characters
I didn't know Howl's Moving Castle was a book, but it has always been one of my favorite Studio Ghibli moves. I'm glad that I will be able to read it after. Studio Ghibli's Earth Sea on its own is really bland, but as a long time fan of Ursula K. Le Guin, I found it to be truly atrocious.
@@Monkeyninjaghost If you read it I hope you will enjoy it! As a fan of the film you will find some huge surprises but in the end I think you'll end up loving both versions for what they are!
@@loturzelrestaurant I absolutely adore the Hunter X Hunter anime but I've never heard about Wakfu, so I will definitely check it out. Thanks for the recommendation ;)
Oh yes, that's why his most successful videos are the Fifty Shades ones. I applaud that he did his best not to profit from them for ethical concerns, but seeing him just foaming at the mouth from all the terribleness is what made a lot of people fall in love with this channel.
@@Cesaryeyo I must say the fifty shades videos are what made me invested in the channel. Partially cause they're well put together and interesting. Partially because Dom does angry quite well
I always love episodes where the Dom is angry. Because of his passion and genuine upset at injustice. It's cathartic to hear him tear shit like this to pieces.
Yeah! The Hopi are very different from the Maya, who are very different from the Shoshoni, who are very different from the Cree, who are very different from the Mapuche- and so on haha
@@misteryA555 Question! Those Books sound epic but kinda dark, so i wonder if i can buy it for some 8-10 Years old i know! In exchange for that helpful info, i shall also give you something in return: A Recommendation of High Quality!
People say "European Culture" and "African Culture" all the time even though those places have multiple cultures as well. Culture is just used as a plural or collective sometimes.
@@loturzelrestaurant I'm on the third book at the moment, and there's no sex, and I can barely remember any violence either... so pretty appropriate for all ages! The only part I'd be wary of, is that in the first book Ged sails to some of the most isolated islands in the ocean, and finds two mute people there. They are royal siblings who were abandoned there as children, sustaining themselves for decades on this tiny island totally alone. I'm the second book Tenar is pressured into executing some criminals, so she chooses to let them starve to death in the dungeons. So there are some sad and slightly disturbing concepts, but nothing explicit or gory.
When Ged's dad was yelling watching his son fall I legit thought ' it's more like he dropped his sandwich off the cliff' then you said practically the same thing X'D That moment when a scene is so bad more than one person thinks the guy is grieving a sandwich.
Then there's Hobitit, the 90s Finnish version of LOTR, which is TECHNICALLY quite book-accurate, but also the single worst thing I've ever watched, and I'm including the star wars christmas special.
@@VereskVeil Still tried harder than this one. Le Guin even said that while it wasn't a good adaptation, it was still a good movie. Plus, you can count on Ghibli to maintain the thematic elements of the story which to me was the best part of the adaptation (balance in nature, the inevitability of death etc). If nothing else,Goro Miyazaki made a film with heart while this... thing has all the heart of a hollow corpse.
@@GallowglassVT Yeah, as I recall, Tales From Earthsea was more a story inspired by the books than a faithful adaptation - most of the pieces come from the books, but the way they're put together is completely different from anything the books did. Meanwhile, this adaptation appears to have at least attempted to pretend to be faithful at some point, before falling into the hands of committees and focus groups, ending up neither as its own story, nor as a good adaptation...
Yeah but they're T.V. Producers who know how the system really works, and she was only one of the best writers to be published in the last fifty years why would they want to respect her opinion, oh yeah SHE'S ONE OF THE BEST WRITERS OF THE PAST FIFTY YEARS!!!!!! Really these people were absolute morons, and she deserved far better than this flaming dumpster fire.
So, they made an Middle-Aged man-Child relationship to a romantic relationship? And they tried to replace a nuanced story with 'they wanted to destroy the world' plot hooks? Wow, please don’t touch any books in next 1000 centuries!
Some people have a serious boner for making adaptations so much worse than the source material Changing races, names, relationships, themes, personalities and motivations, orders of events, other appearances, and using awful CG Why make an adaptation at all? Because forget money; you're not making shit from something like this
The books are absolute magic. I have read both, yet I still wanted to hear his summary. I feel like the *TRUE* story is enthralling in any way it's told.
If I remember correctly the disfiguring scar on Ged was so noticeable because of the fact that the color of the scar was very pale and the contrast with his darker skin was so striking.... at least that is what I pictured as a kid reading the book. Pretty hard to do with white Ged. So they went for the claw swiped cheek.... Feel free to ignore me if I am remembering wrongly....
@@coffeewolf5789 I'm pretty sure it's both, especially since in Tombs of Atuan the scars are pretty healed, but still big and contrasting really sharply (and looking scary enough to make Tenar think long and hard about what she's doing with her life).
The saddest thing is how the show managed to completely dodge any and all themes that were important to the books - religion, gender, identity, personal growth, nature, etc. Can you imagine what they might have done with the book "Tehanu"? Can. You. Even?
:( They probably would've gotten off to an awful start by having Ged keep his magic, then just made the whole thing from his perspective. Or gone and hung out in Aspen's perspective, or something atrocious like that.
@@davidcottrell1308 News Flash, Jimmy Kimmell; everyone has already said what you said, being the bandwagonning assholes they were. However, they at least had the literacy to know that yes, the books are indeed books and the films are indeed films. They also knew that putting quotes around those two words doesn't show how cool they are for hating something, it makes them look clueless as to what a book is and what a film is.
I wasn't sure about the Earthsea books when you talked about them last time but after hearing that the sequel is a coming of age story about a teenage girl that doesn't involve a love interest I'm convinced
Especially with the cult storyline and the part where she orders three guys to be starved to death. I mean that's some high quality inner turmoil to over come right there.
And book four, if you care to read it, is the same girl in her 30s-40s coming to terms with the misogyny surrounding her and fighting to protect a young girl from it.
I found the books a bit heavy to read, but soooo so worth it! But be aware that they are a bit on the slow side, and every subject matter they handle is dark and heavy.
I've read the books as a kid and I was so terrified of shadow that I slept with lights on. My book didn't have many pictures but there was one depicting shadow as a lovecraftian mess of claws and eyes. What they did in the tv series is laughable.
@@johnvinals7423 uhh. Sorry, it was an old Russian edition from 1993. I tried to look up the artist, but I can't find the exact illustration. From what I could find it was either Nikita Andreev/Никита Андреев(who definitely did the cover art) or Denis Gordeev/Денис Гордеев (who might've have done the illustrations inside the book). To look up Russian edition you can type the name of either artist in Russian and "Волшебник Земноморья". The one I had as kid has two dragons fighting on the cover. (posting this comment twice because UA-cam ate the previous one)
I HATE MYSELF FOR NOT READING THIS BEFORE. The worse part, my mom constantly insisted on me through my childhood to read this series, and I did want, but I didn't have access to the books, and I didn't make enough effort to find them.
I literally picked up my audible subscription back up before the five minute mark of Doms synopsis. I haven't heard of the series yet, aside from the remark Dom made in another video but I'm looking forward to a great journey now to see what I missed out on
I read the first one, but I was too little (12 maybe?). I remember not liking it much, because the protagonist not being unambiguously good and righteous was too jarring to baby me*. I also read it home from school while nursing a fever, so maybe not ideal conditions :D It was just the wrong moment in my life to appreciate it "^^ I have been meaning to come back to it for ages tho, first when the Ghibli movie came out and made me go "what tf is this", followed by a wiki binge on LeGuin that made me realize how much I had been missing out on. And now with Dom's videos. Even if I did not appreciate the book it left a big impression on me. I think that might also have been a reason? It scared me, it made me feel Ged's desolation and hopeless at the end... I can recall those feelings to this day :) so yeah, I was definitely still too impressionable for such a powerful book xD * For another example, I also disliked Bilbo giving away the Arkenstone, because that was not the heroic chivalrous thing to do... I mean I was like 8 then, but you know.
@@essneyallen6777 Ha, welcome to the world of ambiguously motivated characters, enjoy your stay. May I recommend Good Omens by Terry Pratchett while you're at it? Hilarious read :D
@@SinWeissfell Uuu I have read that one yes! And I enjoyed it immensely x°D got several good laughs out of me xD It was a birthday present not too many years ago. Now that I think of it, I also read Equal rites disliking it as a child. The translation was horribly butchered and that one too had some eldritch horror undertones in the ending that did not sit well with me. I think I had nightmares. Again, way too young (I was a very avid reader as a child) and also very squeamish to this day. I *don't* horror. It breaks my brain xP
"White Ged!" You sir have become my favorite book and film critic. I love your analyzations of both fields and I have finally found someone who gets just as pissed as I do about these horrible adaptations. Please never stop!
All I remember about Small Soldiers is, as a child, being absolutely furious at the main character when the toy asks what's outside the house and he utterly fails to explain literally anything useful about the world.
Christmas of 2004 I received The Other Wind, the sixth and final book in the Earthsea Cycle, from my Aunt. I was 10 years old. The rest of that school year my parents forced me to read it. I hadn't read anything by Le Guin before. I hated it. I didn't have the attention span, the reading speed, the maturity, or the willingness for it. I was caught up by how miserable I was reading it that I absorbed very little of it. In 2006 (as it took me all of 2005 to get through one 250 page book) I then tried to read The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore to the same results. Ever after I had looked back on the series with frustration. When I watched this video when it first came out, you convinced me to give it another shot. Today I have finished all six books and the four short stories not published in a dedicated volume for the series. It has become my most beloved series I have ever read. Thank you, Dom. This video may well have changed my life for the better.
Yay!! 😁 That I guess is perhaps only good thing about this tv-adaptation travesty: at least pointing out how cool the actual books are in comparison can bring them to the attention (or rediscovery) of many new readers? They're not light reading once the plot really starts to hum, because they do address important questions of character, ethics etc, but they're sure memorable and I think only improve with re-reading and age....?
@@Jayfive276 oh cool dom uploaded a video. Wow its quite a bit longer than expected. What a pleasant surprise. Feel like that sounds pretty boring. Not as spicy.
well can't blame ghibli really, It was Hiyos son who directed it, and he had lil interest in animation due to the strain it put him and his dads relationship. that is his only credited work. It mainly does landscaping.
@@azadalamiq That's not true - he also directed Up From Poppy Hill, which was quite good, and the upcoming ghibli film. Earthsea was his first film and he was pretty inexperienced, so I can't blame him too much.
The Ghibli film at least has effort involved, and they usually "Do It Like Disney" by taking the parts the work for a film and leaving out extraneous bits that wouldn't fit/be necessary for their target audience and/or runtime. The only difference is Earthsea was done by a first time director rather than the master of animated storytelling, so it's not quite up to snuff. Even Le Guin thought it was a perfectly fine movie, even if it didn't encapsulate her vision. Which is kind of a running theme of the Ghibli adaptations in general.
Growing up in the Fire Nation we were taught that there was no ATLA live action movie, and that war was our way of sharing that greatness with the world. But... well, we were totally right about that.
I'm all unpopular opinions today. Might as well go for another one: I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that it would not _surprise_ me if the "exit" of Avatar's co-creators from the forthcoming Netflix adaptation improves the quality of the final product. I was not a fan of Korra, when they suddenly had all but total creative freedom over their universe. It wouldn't surprise me if they were on track to ruin their own adaptation, regardless of whether Netflix ruins it anyway. Didn't they pick Shyamalan?
I found out a couple of years ago that Le Guin wrote Catwings, which was my absolute favorite book as a kid, so it's fair to say I've been a fan of hers my entire literate life. RIP Ursula K. Le Guin. The world is a slightly less thoughtful and creative place without her.
So wait. His true name, in the series, is Sparrowhawk. The true name that you're supposed to keep as your greatest secret on pain of dire consequences. ... And White!Ged just sticks a representation of said true name on top of his magic staff.
Me, at the start of the video: He really likes this book, I'm excited to see what the fuss is about. Me, after the synopsis: ... I HAVE TO READ THIS Me, hearing about this adaptation: I haven't even read this book and I'm pissed. As a reader I'm insulted and as a writer I'm infuriated.
@@BM-jy2gh it gives some spoilers because he needs to explain how the miniseries failed to adapt the plot points, so I'd probably wait if spoilers are a concern for you.
Giving the dragon a different name is a small change that really pisses me off considering how unique all the dragons were and Orm's story was incredibly enthralling and tragic.
"The danger of transforming oneself into an animal for too long..." Well, that explains why Shawn Ashmore was drawn to this project. That theme seems to be his thing.
I know he was in animorphs, but that's all I can think of. And, to quote a statistics professor of mine, "Once is an anomaly, twice is a coincidence, three time suggests a pattern." You need one more example for it to be a thing.
Thing that blows my mind: this aired the same year AND ON THE SAME CHANNEL as the first season of the Ronald D Moore Battlestar Galactica, a show that is both pretty close to perfect and looks better than most movies.
It looks good but I wouldn't call the BSG reboot perfect. The finale was one of the most half-assed "We don't know how to end it so let's just throw some shit together" endings I've ever seen.
@@JcBravo8 I was into a lot of the post-New Caprica stuff (e.g., Pegasus), but it definitely started going off the rails after that, especially everything to do with the Cylons and the search for Earth. Oh, and Angel Starbuck. So, basically, everything _not_ to do with the main plot. This is why _Babylon 5_ was so much better - JMS actually wrote the whole thing out (more or less) _before_ making the show, rather than outright lying about "they have a plan" and then slowly revealing the truth that they were always just making it up as they went along.
@@dwc1964 its hilarious when you learn that the whole Cylon arcs of Season 2 and early 3 were on the fly. RDM had the material for 2 seasons. That was it. He created a great show but was limited by its main premise - a fleet on the run. There's only so much you can do with it without rehashing. I give him credit for stretching its run with the mystery of the Five 5 and Cylon Civil War and actually sticking to the mythical arc of the 13th Tribe. B5 is less of a marvel for the PLAN and more of a success of how ADAPTABLE it was. JMS reworked his arcs each season and the story was still coherent despite people living, uncertaintly of continuation, and budget problems. The final season was a "screw you lol" by the network though since they gave him an extra season AFTER he already rushed to end the shadow war. Ugh.
@@JcBravo8 I would love RDM and JMS to collab on a 10-season (guaranteed) adaptation of _Dune_ - _all_ of it. Okay, maybe 20-season... they'll work it out. But they have to know in advance how many seasons, episodes and hours they'll have to work with, and no nickel-and-dime budget issues either.
We already had a good version of that, the original. Book to film makes sense, I've never understood cartoon to live action. It's already a visual medium, what can live action add?
@@GriffinPilgrim i know right? Especially since they added the cartoon to netflix not long after announcing the live action (and the movie that doesn't actually exist haha), makes me wonder what even the point of the upcoming adaptation was. Netflix already has last airbender and its the version they know everyone already likes plus gets mad nostalgia views from early 20 somethings like myself who are more likely to watch now due to quaruntine on top of new fans... I dont get why the creators just dont animate stories of past Avatars if they wanna keep revisiting this world
@@MagillanicaLouM Plus they don't have to shell out a penny after getting the rights. This way they're going to pay a lot to make a live action series old fans will hate and potential new fans won't get. Tremendous waste.
Just thinking of something: when you said they wanted to make a Lord of the Rings show, not only does this explain the short presence of LOTR producer (I forgot her name), but also a lot of the costumes design. It is mostly bad cheap medieval costumes but the nuns' dresses look a lot like Eowyn/Arwen's dresses. The sleeves are a cheaper version of the white and brown dress Eowyn wears as simple clothing, the second colored dress looks like Arwen's red and purple dress, and the neck part looks like Eowyn's black dress... It is shocking when you notice it !
Lol, yeah...as a HUUUGGGGGEEE history (particularly dress history) nerd, that really bugs me, because the vibes aesthetically, as far as I could tell from rerereading the books, is more like. General late bronze age/early iron age, with some particular influence from Babylon? But I think honestly you could pull aesthetics from any number of cultures around the ocean in that era and it would really work. But certainly not a really shitty knock-off of medieval fucking Europe.
RE: Co-Ed School. LeGuin makes a point in book 1, but elaborates more in some of the Tales from Earthsea (decades later) that female mages (witches) are looked down on, despite being just as capable (or more). While LeGuin the feminist would have approved of a co-ed society, she quite intentionally built a world that was not, and used that fact in story plots.
I mean she didn’t deliberately choose a sexist trope to subvert later though? She just wrote a sexist trope and then grew as a person. I think that’s amazing! She is a badass example that we don’t have to stop thinking. We can grow and learn for as long as we live! ^_^
I would say, considering the wizarding "school" setting, it was equally trying to capitalize on the success of the Harry Potter movies... 6 of one, half a dozen of the other.
It was certainly turning Jasper into Draco Malfoy, and the other teachers... Well, I'll even now give Rowling as much credit that her teachers are a whole lot more dignified than these caricatures.
There have actually been lots of fantasy books featuring schools of magic which predate the Potterverse. Rowling's genius came in integrating the tropes and conventions of British Boarding School fic into an Urban Fantasy Wainscot Society featuring a classic Hero's Journey tale. That and the fact that Rowling has a breezy easy-to-read writing style. Mind you, another reason it became such a cultural phenomenon was that the first book was released just as internet fandom communities were developing. It was kind of a perfect storm.
Well after torturing us with over 4 hours of commentry on 50 Shades of Domestic and Sexual Abuse, it was inevitable we were going to get the series that was it's inspiration.....
Even just seeing clips of the visuals without any sound reveals problems. Besides the obvious whitewashing...Why are the priestesses to a set of nameless elder gods wearing light-colored Ren-Faire outfits instead of creepy, ragged black robes? Why is there a rat in a cape? Why are Ogion and Ged dressed (and cast) as if they come from completely different cultures when they are supposed to be from the same island? WTF is going on?!
I actually kind of like how the priestess isn’t dressed up as a stereotypical cult member. I get why they would use the darker colors in the novels but I’m honestly kind of sick of the tropes where the secret evil cults wear the skulls of the enemies they’ve killed and begin their morning by suplexing babies into a cauldron of orphan tears. It’s nice to see a cult painted in a positive light by the followers so they aren’t *immediately* obviously evil
@@lemonnomel9416 Except apparently in the TV series, the priestesses don't worship the Nameless Ones, instead they're dedicated to making sure they remain trapped behind that giant door, so no stereotype subverting here.
@@lemonnomel9416 well, in the books, they aren't exactly super creepy looking, either. They weave their own wool fabric, and happen to dye it black. Their clothes are simple but practical; honestly, I picture something a little closer to like, well-kept medieval European monks.
The only good thing I could say about this miniseries is that it got me interested enough to check out and fall in love with the highly superior books when I was 12... Also, it continues to baffle me how this adaptation chose to change book Ged, who for most of his life belonged to an all-male group of wizards who used magic on themselves to suppress their sex drive and who was a virgin until his late 50s or 60s, to some sort of heart throb who seems to have sexual chemistry with every single woman he meets...
It goes together with the same old tired tropes like evil kings, end-of-the-world threats, prophecies and magic artefacts of saving the day. And whiteness.
When I was 12, I found the Earthsea Trilogy in my dead grandad's packed up books, along with the Dune trilogy, the Lord of the Rings, and the Silmarillion (a geek treasure trove!). It was Ged and Earthsea that really gripped me, though. Those are the books I've gone back to a dozen times. I mean, Ged is STILL my favorite fictional character, to this day... And, yeah man, I was angry when the Scifi adaptation happened...
Also, a couple of gripes: Ogion is pronounced like it rhymes with "bogey on" (according to LeGuin). More important, to me: Ged didn't meet his dark half. The shadoww wasn't a manifestation of his ego or of his evil. It was his mortality - the literal fact of his inevitable death, made manifest. It could not be run from, it could not be defeated. It could only be accepted. It WAS him. All along. Others, in that book in particular, who put the label of evil on it never understand it as well as Ged does. He's the only one we know of who ever comes to understand and 'defeat' such a shadow. Likewise, the dark powers of the earth, including the nameless ones, are NOT evil. They're not soul eating demons. They're not monsters. They were here first, and they never thought like we do, or felt like we do. They're the older forces that keep the world anchored and sturdy. So much so that they seem to be bound to specific places. They are every bit as important to the balance of Earthsea as are the dragons, the humans, the sun, and the sea. Ged even plainly states to Tenar that they're not evil. But he also says that people shouldn't have anything to do with them. They're alien. Unlike us. But not evil.
Twilight seems not that bad in comparison. At least it's a generic romance flick adapted from generic romance book. But this... The bar was so low, it was on the floor. Of the dungeon. On the lowest level of the Tombs of Atuan.
Oh buggers, this series... Some of my "favourite" moments in hindsight: 1) Ged's disposable love interest in the beginning 2) The arch mage screaming about the Shadow's "soul-devouring hunger" 3) Jasper being turned into a discount-Draco Malfoy 4) Ged being harshly reprehended for changing into a falcon, while Jasper used his illusions to stab another student in the hand during supper 5) The Nameless ones being little screaching demons 6) All the Sexposition between Tygarth and Kossil, looking like a scene from Xena 7) Mother Rosselini giving a whole lecture about wisdom and thoughtful decision-making, just so she could later spitefully dismiss Tenar on the drop of a dime 8) The confrontation in the tomb, where it's implied that Ged's true dark desire was to kill his dad 9) Ged turning into Superman right after that and the whole cliché storm that is the finale 10) The whole romance between Ged and Tenar being presented as an allegory on how religious beliefs and progressive ambitions should be used together, dragging this adaptation as FAR AWAY FROM THE ORIGINAL MESSAGE AS YOU CAN GET And finally... 11) The Whitewashing I might not be on board with every colour-blind casting decision, but I'll take 10 Black-Domovoi-Butlers and 20 Black-Hermiones if something like THIS is never going to happen again. Ursula K. LeGuin actually recommended them to use Native American actors that had previously worked on another Hallmark-film, but they turned that down because those were "hard to work with" and promised an otherwise "colour-blind" casting... which consisted on casting some POC-extras and an elderly black man for a role that wasn't even supposed to be black -.-
Honestly, I'm okay with black Hermione, but black Butler makes me highly uncomfortable, cos the backstory for him is that his family has served the Fowls for ages, and if you add in that they're black in the movie with that, the implications are slavery..
@@guggelguggel7491 That's true, but only if you consider book and adaptation share the same canon. For all we know, Black Butler could have taken the job some years ago, and the payment just isn't mentioned. (Also, let's just agree that the whole western world has abolished slavery decades ago...) EDIT: And even if the family Butler has served the movie-Fowls for ages, it isn't said that they were black for all of that time - Dom could be the product of the first interracial marriage (as far as we know). It's not as if I wanted to diminish your concerns, I just wanna give Kenneth Branagh some due credit.
@@fermintenava5911 yah, the movie is a different canon 100%, but if you make a character that, in the source material, is of a family who has long served another and make him black, the implications do get skeevy, even if he, in the film canon, is revealed to *not* be of a long line of servants/bodyguards. Like, some people in the public are bound to make that leap of assumption, even if the backstory turns out to have been changed for the movie. Plus, if I don't misremember, butler was a poc, just not black. I think he was half Asian? They didn't say exactly wherefrom, so I could be mistaken. Also, speaking of the Artemis fowl adaptation. Wasn't Holly originally black instead? She's described as having brown skin, eyes and hair, but in the movie, she's, uh. Not.
@@guggelguggel7491 Butler was described as "Eurasian", which in geographical terms is accredited to the whole land mass of Central Europe and Asia and in ethnic terms has very little meaning. It includes a lot of historically nomadic cultures - Huns and Mongols, but also Turks and Visigoths - which in their long history have crossed the line between Caucasian and Asian pretty often. A lot of them live within or on the periphery of the former sovjet union. So calling Butler POC in modern terms... really is a stretch. If he doesn't have an accent, he'd probably not stick out that much.
I would have loved to see them try to “Not Gay!” Arren aka Ged Fan Number One. He sees the man once and is like “Please! Please let me serve you! I’ll even give up being a prince and stay at Roke working as a janitor if it means I can be near you!”. Reading The Farthest Shore I was constantly like Geez, kid, he’s like fifty and you’re not even twenty calm down XD
I think it's the other way around actually, I think they switched the names because they thought "Sparrowhawk" sounded ridiculous and wanted the protagonist to mostly be called Ged.
Gods, I adored these as a tiny child. My da read them to me and I had such a serious vivid, visual imagination so I had proper memories of the school on roke, the doorkeeper, the courtyard with the trees, the kids messing around and showing off, etc. It took me over 20 years to remember them and come back round to them.
Roke school having both men and women attending it only works as an adaptational change if you're only adapting the first few stories. Roke being entirely controlled by men is very intentional on Le Guin's part and is essential to earthsea's story as a whole. Entire characters in later stories are defined by this gender segregation and their want to abolish it. A lot of the character development comes from a lot of the wizards in charge coming to realize that the shunning of women from roke and wizardry is just as much an abomination of magic as is the creation of the dry land. Only the patterner, the master who spends his whole life surrounded by the old powers, is able to recognize that shunning them is ridiculous and thus he is Irian's, the witch who entered roke, biggest defender.
Making Roke co-ed but still centering men is kind of like how The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel depicts an ahistorically integrated 60's while still centering white women. One of the few stories I've read set in Earthsea had a very early Roke entirely run by and for women, who decided to let a man in because they trusted him specifically. I don't think he betrays them, but the practice of saying, "OK, let's let guys in," obviously leads to them taking over entirely at some point in history. This seems like a pretty significant shift, and erasing how men literally stole magical knowledge from women in Earthsea seems worse than depicting it without changing the supremacy of "wizards" over "witches."
The entire back half of the series is pretty much all about how men both underestimate and purposely exclude women because they're afraid sharing power will diminish it. It is, frankly, absolutely fucking incredible. It all manages to fit incredibly well with all the previously world building while at the same time making you question why you doubt question the status quo in the early books. Ursula K. Le Guin was just the absolute best
The entire back half of the series is pretty much all about how men both underestimate and purposely exclude women because they're afraid sharing power will diminish it. It is, frankly, absolutely fucking incredible. It all manages to fit incredibly well with all the previously world building while at the same time making you question why you doubt question the status quo in the early books. Ursula K. Le Guin was just the absolute best
The more I think about it, the more I realize that the Earthsea gendered magic is almost exactly the same as in Discworld's. Female gendered magic is more in tune with nature, emotions and easing/hampering with the lives of people, shared via word of mouth and experimentation, whereas male gendered magic is more in the command, control and alteration of nature via research and pure knowledge. Male casters sit in their walled-off school, go on adventures and/or work for people in positions of power, while female casters are mostly 'that weird older lady in a cottage near a rural village you don't ever wanna mess with that helps out with things like births and illnesses'. I wonder just how much sir Terry Pratchett was inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin's works in that regard. Also shows just how wrong they got things in the tv series of Earthsea. It's basically Harry Potter there, isn't it?
@@Eppon6 Probably not very. From what little I read in her stories, the women of Earthsea's magic is just as into the "command, control, and alteration of nature," and they used to pursue research and pure knowledge. They didn't practice a different kind or "more in tune with nature, emotions, and easing of people's lives" magic. They're just relegated to work men consider unimportant because the wizards actively keep them from gaining powerful knowledge or wide scale sharing the knowledge they have. They can have apprentices, but they _can't _ have schools. They want them and that knowledge, hence the whole reason a witch tries to trick Ged. The stories I read also showed at least one witch who knew how to achieve epic level control of the earth. Women only do magic on a local level in Earthsea because wizards act in concert to keep them from gaining wider power, not because they don't want to or aren't capable. The gender divide in Earthsea's magic is imposed by society, and often blurred or broken by those who don't fit neatly into society's expectations of those gender roles or divides. Which is common in Le Guin's works. Her works explore the various ways in which society comes up with rules for how to live, and how people in them are both shaped by and shape those rules. And those who break them.
@@kobaltkween To be fair, Pratchett's witches are also absolutely capable of reality-altering magic of epic proportions, but I get what you're saying. He was probably inspired by a woman=nature/man=civilization dichotomy that's waaaaaay older than either him or Le Guin.
Love these videos Dom. Can you do a Lost in Adaptation of BBC's His Dark Materials? I'd love to hear your thoughts of it (maybe even the awfal earlier movie as well).
I'm not sure if the inspiration was intentionally direct, but the "being born with one name and given another later in life and being trained/raised by a witch" draws an interesting parallel between Ged and the Irish mythological figure Setanta/Cú Chulainn. If that's all you want to know, happy days, if you want to know more, read on! Setanta, born the son of the God of light Lugh (pronounced "loo") and arguably Lugh incarnate (Irish mythology has a sad history of Christianisation) is a kid who's really good at everything he does. His uncle is a king that lives a while away, and Setanta decides that he wants to join the King's elite group of knights known as the Red Branch Army. Without going into too much detail, he travels (alone, at the age of 7) across the country to where the young members of the Red Branch Army train and play sports. On the particular day that Setanta reaches the castle grounds, the boys are playing Hurling (all you need to know is it's fast, it's violent, and it involves sticks known as Hurls or Hurleys). He rushes onto the pitch with his own hurl, breaking etiquette, steals the ball off one of the players, passes 100 boys and scores a goal. Having angered the boys, they attack him, but he's able to defend himself against all of them. Eventually the king rushes out and puts a stop to it, and something something protocol, Setanta is now a member of the Red Branch Knights One night, many years later, Setanta is invited to a party by his uncle. The party is held at the house of Culann ("Cullen"), the smith. Setanta is delighted to go, but asks his uncle that he be allowed finish this last game of hurling before he leaves. After the game, Setanta sets off to Culann's house, where he encounters a hound. An Irish Wolfhound, to be exact (if you don't know, these guys are huge). The hound lunges at Setanta, who whacks a sliotar (a baseball but harder) down the dogs throat with his hurl, killing it instantly. The party rushes out, and Culann mourns for his dog, and Setanta apologises profusely, and offers to guard Culann's house until the dog's pups are strong enough to take their mother's place. Setanta is then given the name Cú Chulainn. The Hound of Culann.
I would've gladly listened to you rage for 2 hours over this miniseries, but like you said, battles must be picked. I read these books when I came across the Ghibli film as a pre-teen, but was probably too young to really click with them back then. I did re-read Tombs of Atuan and The Other Wind a couple years ago and adored both, and now thanks to these videos I might give Wizard of Earthsea another chance.
"This clearly 25 year old character" Oh Dom, just like Stormbreaker are you wrongly aging the actor....wait...Shawn Ashmore WAS 25 when he made this....damn he is older than I thought
Ah, yes. The series that got polymorphed in to a single move dvd. How do I know this? Cause a year ago I just finished binge reading the whole series, saw earthsea on a dvd case and jumped the gun and bought it. . . my day was ruined, and my disappointment was un-measurable.
I first read Wizard of Earthsea in primary school and then dove into the other books. This travesty is heartbreaking. Never have, never will see it. Thank you for going through the pain for us.
Today, I wanted to thank you. Cause I received my copy of the integral of Earthsea and can't wait to read it. And you're the one that make me discover it and made me want to read it with the passion you showed for the book on your two videos about it.
I had no idea about the other books when this came out so I was just horrified at what they did to Wizard. With the added context, I'm no less horrified. Also, Le Guin would absolutely refuse the title of Queen.
i thought maybe the title "Anarch" like out of philip k dick's counter-clock world (there's a character 'Anarch Peak') so like 'Anarch Le Guin' but i don't know if that works really
I had a copy of the first 4 Earthsea novels (in one book) gathering dust on my bookshelf for ages, but scrambled to read the first two once I heard you were covering them so I could watch this without getting spoilers. And I'm so glad I did because you were totally right about how good they are! And I'm totally going to try some more of Le Guin's stuff. So... yeah, thanks : )
'The Left Hand of Darkness' is damn good - bit of a sci-fi flavour mixed in with the fantasy, but has similar levels of top-class introspection and character arcs.
Honestly I want to thank you tons for summarising the books so thoroughly (and yet concisely) because I never quite knew what to expect from Earthsea so I never picked it up. I've got a hard time starting on big reading projects when I don't know what I'm headed for. All of this sounds absolutely incredible, a mythical but still realistic kind of world instead of a war game in the coat of fantasy. And without ever having read the books the adaptation makes me so so mad omg
@@wisemankugelmemicus1701 @Wisemankugel Memicus first of all it was a joke. second of all: it is absolutely a stereotype in fiction. there's entire essays and web pages dedicated to the idea. thirdly: If I'm being a "cringy Liberal" you're being an ignorant Conservative. and fourthly: this comment is 4 months old. and I highly doubt with any 57 likes that it would be anywhere near the top of the comments. Why are you wasting both our times?
@@nonspiderweb And this response is even LONGER-- BAHAHHA! 1. "it was a joke" 2. "except it isn't" 3. Wouldn't you want black representation in media in general? 4. NEVER heard about the magical black man stereotype. But if it did exist, wouldn't that be the coolest part in fiction? Who doesn't want to be the person wielding magic? 5. This is the top comment when I scrolled down, soooooo. 6. But that other guy did throw names around first, so I can see why you responded in kind (though it would be cooler if you roasted without the name calling, but I'm a stranger who's wasting my time and yours so ignore me.)
@@questionsfromthebeyond I didn't know about this trope either. But you know what I did? I look it up before calling someone names. And yeah. This trope is a thing: tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagicalNegro
@@Hadeshy I didn't call anyone names, I just merely enjoyed the drama. And I made the specific point to say if the trope did exist, it would be cool. And since you want to go there, there's literally a trope for anything ever. Chillax, my dude.
Dom: I don't usually do this to keep my videos to a reasonable length Me: would literally watch the entire Earthsea mini series (or film, or any other TV show) so Dom could do a MST3000 style reaction video to it
I think I know why they switched Ged’s names in the series. It’s part of their attempt to whitewash him. Based on his book description, it’s safe to assume that he resembles an Earthsea equivalent of a Native American. As such, his most commonly used name, Sparrowhawk, works well with his appearance since it sounds like a name a native would have. Doesn’t sound nearly as natural when applied to a white man while Ged does. So they switched the names so that everyone calls him Ged instead of Sparrowhawk. I’m not saying that justifies any of their choices, because it doesn’t at all, but it at least explains why the names are switched.
I believe there to be an actual logic behind it: Ged is the name we know him by, because the all-knowing narrator calls him that. Movies/TV don't have a narrator (or at least not as prominently), so names are far more commonly used in conversation. However, in conversation no one would use his true name except for very rare instances. In other words: The books use "Ged" 90% of the time, "Sparrowhawk" 8% and "Duny" 2%. A show that would use his names the right way around would use "Sparrowhawk" 80% of the time, "Ged" 18% of the time and "Duny" 2%. So the switch makes kinda sorta sense.
@@Overlord99762The irony being Nordic naming conventions are almost indistinguishable from many Native American ones once translated. Languages in general tend to call things what they are
Dom all of your work shines with attention to details, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for opening my eyes (and ears) to LeGuin. Her spirit is restored and I’m excited to hear that Earthsea is getting a new chance!
Actually, symbolically, the name works as well, especially since Ged was inspired by Native cultures, whose names tend to be descriptive and based on attributes.
Zuko’s eye, Tyrion’s nose, Artemis’ face...I think you could start a new trope of failing to adapt disfiguring marks.
Hollywood has a cripling fear of uglyness. It's par for the course at this point.
To be fair to Tyrion's nose, it's a lot easier to write about his nose getting cut off than to cgi it into every single scene Tyrion's in.
@@sabrinamcclain162 yeah, that one was rather understandable. One of those changes that are nescessary.
Phantom’s face in the movie musical
Hester from The Mortal Engines is also horribly disfigured in the book but the movie stars a gorgeous young woman with a few scars
I love White Ged's dad's reaction to him falling off a cliff. It's like he placed a bet on a horse that almost won a race.
It's like his hotdog slipped out of the bun and fell directly into a storm drain
His dad wasn’t very loving so... maybe that’s why? lol
It was like his teacher asked for his homework and he had to pretend he left it at home.
@@elsie8757 ........and then was startled when a leering clown peeked out and asked him if he wanted the hotdog back?
How did Ged drown so quickly? Was he stabbed or something? I mean he falls into the water and everybody assumes that he is dead. And weirdly enough he is. But why ? I watched the mini-series out of boredom and I don't remember him being stabbed.
the whole "witch isn't as powerful as a wizard" thing is indeed a part of the world, but is treated as the result of sexism, not actual power disparities, and pushing against this social reality is a plot point in the book Tehanu
Yeah, I think it's really fascinating!
A little blurb (by which I mean essay going into each book's vibes) for anyone interested in the series but concerned about sexism: so, basically when you boil the series down a bit, one of the prevalent themes is power: who has it, who doesn't have it, how it's used, what it does (some other themes that are really important are balance, especially between life and death, and helping each other. Lots of really important moments hinge on simple human kindness and empathy, and a willingness to help someone who is unwilling to admit they need it). In the Archipelago (that's basically everywhere but the Kargad lands, so. For simplicity you can just assume all characters but the warriors who raid Ged's village, Tenar, and those she lives with are Archipelagans, unless said otherwise. There are a few other Kargad characters, but they appear in books beyond Tombs Of Atuan), power usually comes from magic and/or wealth. Women are excluded from the former (they aren't allowed to go to Roke or learn much magic, just enough to do witch things), and the latter is a lot like in our world, only afforded to a few (though poverty isn't really too bad; most people in Earthsea are kinda getting by, nothing fancy but not too painful).
The first three books (A Wizard Of Earthsea, Tombs Of Atuan, and The Farthest Shore) are basically from the perspectives of those with power.
For the first, Ged has grown up displaying a remarkable ability to do and resist magic; he can work very potent spells and resist those worked on him. Because of this and because he is a boy, not a girl, with those abilities, he is sent away to learn how to use magic. He kinda cocks it up a little, but that's part of him growing up, and overall the story is about him learning who he is and what he does and how to do it.
For the second, Tenar is powerful in one way (basically owns the domain of some spooky earth powers and the people who worship them, and has a whole temple of people to serve her) but lacks power in other ways (she's kind of a figurehead, she has no freedom in what she does, the people who work for her don't always obey her, and if she pushes the boundaries she could VERY EASILY get killed). Her story is essentially about taking the first scary steps towards healing, and about losing all the powers she had in order to gain freedom, prestige (due to her bearing the ring of Erreth-Akbe), and do what she wants (live as a normal, non-magical woman).
For the third, it's from the perspective of Ged and Arren, a prince (he does not have magic, but he is powerful due to his family title and the fact that he is male). It's about Arren learning what power is and does (mostly through the juxtaposition of Ged, who he sees for a while as powerful but weak for not like. Strongarming everything into the ways he thinks they should go, and Cob, a very scary necromancer who likes doing that strongarming). So throughout all those first three books, everything is told from the perspectives of people who are currently powerful. Society and the patriarchy are generally working to their benefit. Also, note that the tone of The Farthest Shore is a bit grimmer than the previous books; same with Tehanu, and after The Farthest Shore there is certainly more sex in the books (not a whole lot; mostly some *fade to black* kind of moments and a few almost-sex scenes, but it is something to be aware of).
Then you get to Tehanu, the fourth book. It is from (an older) Tenar's perspective, as a now very normal woman with very little power caring for her adopted daughter Therru and trying to figure out how to navigate her life (made difficult through the death of a person important to her, Therru's very abusive birth family basically stalking them, a very mean wizard also kinda stalking them, a very upset and ashamed Ged returning home, and people showing up and asking where Ged is). Therru and Ged are also very powerless; Therru was abused really horrifically, which resulted in a physical disability that ostracizes her a bit, and (BIG FUCKIN SPOILER ALERT REAL FAST BC IT'S KIND OF A HUGE DEAL IN BOTH THE FARTHEST SHORE AND TEHANU BUT ALSO IT WON'T RUIN THE SURPRISES OF THE STORIES SO Y'KNOW PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK) Ged now has to very rapidly figure out how to be a powerless person, because he literally has no magic left at all, and can no longer be a wizard (which. He's like in his 60s or 70s or so, and he'd been doing wizard things since he was like 13, kinda younger depending how you slice it). So all three of them together have an incredibly tiny amount of power, and they're basically at the whims of those who have more. It's probably my favourite book in the series for how fascinating its look at patriarchal society is, and the way Ged literally has to learn how to fear people. Also, of all the books that might be triggering, I think Tehanu is one that might sneak up on you. Note going in that there is child abuse (certainly some violence, and implied rape as well), general sexist drudgery (lots of tired women putting up with shitty stuff men do or say), a dude gets stabbed with a pitchfork and it's kinda gruesome, and there was a scene that made me cry near the end involving some really awful verbal abuse towards Tenar and Ged, and just generally some horror coming from a curse. So. Be ready, I suppose. It truly is a great book, but it's also a hard one.
Tales From Earthsea, the fifth book, jumps around quite a bit. The first story (The Finder) is about a pretty powerless boy (a wizard, but an enslaved one) growing up and joining a matriarchal society of magic called The Women Of The Hand. Also, just another sort of trigger warning, in Otter there's some more scary curse stuff (a bit less scary though), some really sad stuff involving other enslaved people extracting quicksilver, and a really creepy gross wizard who won't shut up about how he keeps chugging the stuff. But it's really great. The next little story is Darkrose And Diamond, which honestly is mostly just a cute love story? But there's some interesting stuff in there about power from wealth, power from magic, and how the gaining of power can itself be a painful, unwanted thing; it's from the perspective of a boy who's being forced to become a wizard, even though he doesn't want to (he's in love with a childhood friend and they want to be together, but wizards have to be celibate). The third story (The Bones Of The Earth) also kinda had less to say about power, as it's much more about keeping balance in the world and accepting mortality. It's really good, though. It's from the perspective of Ogion's teacher and Ogion himself, as they figure out how to keep an earthquake from killing a bunch of people. The fourth story (On The High Marsh) has some VERY interesting things to say about power; it's about a wizard who mysteriously appears on a pretty remote island to heal some cattle, and the woman who lets him live in her house. The other men of the island are pretty sexist and don't help at all with running the house, and this woman really appreciates when this wizard (and another wizard, who shows up to help the first wizard with some trauma) actually treat her respectfully, don't talk about prostitutes all the time, and actually help with the household chores. It's my favourite tale in the book for how gentle and yet revolutionary it is. And the final tale (Dragonfly), is about a woman who goes to Roke to become a wizard; it's also about the systemic belittling of women (the wizard who helped her get there only did so because he wanted to fuck her, and the wizards who live on Roke have mixed opinions on her being there, but generally the students and the "Old boys" are REALLY uncomfortable by her presence, to the point that one of them starts really creeping her out by doing things like watching her bathe, until she gets sick of it all and leaves).
Then the final book, The Other Wind, brings everything together. Everyone (wizards, women, dragons, etc) bands together to try to fix death (people have been dying wrong and it's really bugging the dragons), heal relations between the Archipelago and the Kargad lands, as much as can be done, and also ACTUALLY INCLUDE WOMEN in the councils of wizards and nobles who are trying to figure out what to do, and generally the book is about looking at what wasn't working in the old culture, and figuring out how to move forward well (I think it mirrors both Tombs Of Atuan and The Farthest Shore really nicely; it kinda feels like a societal version of Tenar's story in Tombs, if that makes sense).
Generally, when reading the series, keep the balances of power and patriarchy on your head, and you'll be in for a really interesting time.
@@horseenthusiast9903 Thanks so much for this! I was really worried that the themes would hit too close to home for this book, even thoughy I've been wating to read it for ages. Now I know what to expect. Seriously, your synopsis is a godsend!
@@polyhedroncranium4378 Yeah, the commend of J Graves is good... but improveworthy.
Hope he/she one day makes 5 Seconds of 'Edit' to add grammar...
@@horseenthusiast9903 for how much I love The Earthsea... the fourth and fifth books have never been translated to my native language, and I wasn't aware that they existed until literally your comment. I feel kinda dumb for not finding out sooner, but on the other hand ridiculously grateful and PUMPED because THERE ARE TWO MORE BOOKS? That I can read now?? What a pleasant surprise. Thank you, your comment just opened my eyes and made me very happy))
GOOD!
I loved how Le Guin revisited Earth sea throughout her life reworked things to address choices she made when she was younger that she no longer agreed with but it never felt like revision, it felt like layers being stripped away so that you now had more information and a fuller understanding of the world. You touched on it but Roke being for men only turned out to be the result of sexism and oppression, not that women couldn't do magic. So now reading the earlier books and seeing how witches are treated becomes extra tragic. Also how wizards can't have sex and keep their magic turns out to be a lie as well.
Yes!! I just finished Tehanu and I think it’s my favorite so far, partly because I live for slow-burning relationships, but also because I love the philosophy presented and how it fundamentally changes the lens through which we see the magic system of Earthsea. Tenar’s become one of my favorite characters, ever. She deserved soOOoooOO much better than the treatment given in the miniseries :/
Funnily enough, most surviving medieval and ancient magic instructions require sexual abstinence before magic can be effectively performed.
@@thaumatomane
That's probably what Le Guin picked up on.
I would imagine she read a grimoire or two.
@@swimmyswim417 dude, YES! I love the whole series, but if I have to pick a favourite book, it's Tehanu. It's got a perfect balance of quiet, slice of life bits, philosophical bits, and bits that just really make you go "hhhhhhHhHHHHHHH" in a good way (all of which I love). The way it centers on women and children in a man's world...the way you get your first good look at wizards from the other side of the coin...the way witches FINALLY get acknowledged as holding a valid, somewhat tragic place in the world...the way Ged literally has to learn how to live a life without power, and how to be afraid of other people...it's genius, it really is. It's a beautiful book, and it made me cry like a baby, laugh out loud, and sit pondering philosophy until my tea went cold. That's a rare treasure.
I have to disagree. It felt like more than revision, it actually felt like deconstruction and sabotage. I didn't actually mind Tehanu too much, although the writing was inferior to the original trilogy and it didn't really add anything beyond an indigestible dose of heavy handed gender politics. But The Other Wind was a disaster. LeGuin completely retconned the nature of death in Earthsea, making that final confrontation with Cob in the Farthest Shore completely meaningless. As I regard that as one of the greatest scenes in the whole of fantasy fiction she actually ruined Earthsea for me. LeGuin should have left well alone. It's always a mistake for a writer to go back to a series after such a long hiatus. Their personal philosophy will have changed after so long, which will be reflected in the writing, and many fans of the original will hate the changes as I did. We saw the same with Boneland, Alan Garner's later addition to his Cheshire Edge series
You have to understand, those scratches ARE what Hollywood consider disfigurement.
Seriously. The number of books where a major character becomes severely disfigured in book and barely scratched in movie are crazy. Katniss is a pretty disfigured in addition to her mental damage in the books and has not even a scar in the movies.
#NormalizeDisfigurementInHollywood
@@tiryaclearsong421 Look at Game of Thrones. Tyrion had is nose cut off in the books, but Dinklage just got a few scratches, himselve.
@@carlrood4457 yeah but Tyrońs nose is one of the only disfigurements i can see why she wasn’t put on screen since it would take hours in the makeup chair or a lot of CGI to create.
To be fair, it's mentioned in book one that Ged runs across a boy his own age who thinks he thinks Ged's scars looks wicked cool and imagines he got it from fighting a dragon, and wishes he were the hero that he obviously thinks Ged is. Ged is mostly depressed and wishes he was that innocent boy who didn't royally eff up his life. It's one of those grass-is-greener moments where both boys envies the other.
I know the Ghibli version exists and was considered meh as a film and as an adaptation, but I still swear that Earthsea just feels like something that has to be animated. The visual descriptions of the ever morphing shadow figure and the edge of the world where Ged confronts it were just awe inspiring, and I feel that live action will never be able to do them justice!
I think it could, but you'd have to have one hell of a budget.
On paper, Earthsea and Studio Ghibli are a match made in heaven, Miyazaki's style is almost perfect to bring Le Guin's magic and world to life, indeed it did the few times either was used.
Shame Miyazaki (junior or elder, not really sure which to blame here) couldn't keep it in his pants and make a faithful adaptation of any one of the books, instead opting to mash three of them together. If it was just Wizard of Earthsea and the Farthest Shore, it could probably have been salvaged, but adding Tehanu was a bad move. What originally was Ged playing cat and mouse with his shadow across half the known world, or him and Arren sailing around seeking the cause of all magic going kaput now became a story about stopping a dark lord from terrorizing a local farmstead, world-saving and the eldritch horror on the protagonist's heels being little more than an afterthought.
The shadow especially would look awesome in a cartoon style, and Studio Ghibli has done similar things with movies like Princess Momonoke.
I think it depends on the team, with enough imagination and love you can create wonders with practical effects and good use of CGI. Someone like Guillermo Del Toro for example might be a good match. I'm going to link a video about an old director teaching a class at Dartmouth, because he's Michael Powell who charmed Ursula K. Le Guin into collaborating on an Earthsea script with him that failed to get proper funding. So he and the students used it to do a short film as part of the class and there's little clips here and there showing what they achieved with a limited budget and good technique. collections.dartmouth.edu/archive/object/DA223/da223-mp692
@@waylander-su7og I got a chance to check this out. What they had and what they were going for was pretty dang impressive and probably would have made for a neat adaptation of the Tombs of Atuan. The scene in which Tanar does her initiation by "having her head cut off" was done almost exactly as described in the book. I'm not a hundred percent sure if this would have been a great movie if done in full, but I would have seen it. A shame Powell never got the funding to create a full version.
I'm almost sad we didnt get a "because LotR did it" sequence
He was too emotionally exhausted to care
Or a Harry Potter one. Roke in the book was almost monastic, in the miniseries the teachers were goofy and 'quirky" and oh so hilarious.
@@torinju Didn't you get the memo? Harry Potter has become taboo.
@@JaviusSama Yeah, not exactly complimenting Harry Potter by comparing it to the miniseries.
@Kyle Riel thats a joke right? he says that as they whitewashed a poc protagonist....
Next time on Lost in Adaptation; "Game of Thrones porn parodies, are they more loyal to the books then the last season?"
Seeing as how the last few books haven't been written yet, I don't see how you can make that comparison.
@diekssus I’d watch that
@@stefanfilipovits21 But it makes no sense. The last season of GoT wasn't adapting anything. You just want another excuse to hate it.
@@morinomajou Tbf, it would make more sense if it was actually funny 🤷
Well, a porn actor would probably be more down to dye his beard blue, so I'd say that's a point in favor.
Cool Fantasy Book: *Exist*
2000s Hollywood: "let's make it Lord of the Rings but not"
Fans: Cool Fantasy book
Reality : This book is shit because it relies too heavily on narration and inner thoughts. -as exposed by movie adaptation.
@@TheBelrick a book is not bad for having a character's inner thoughts
@@jaojao1768 never works for movies because of the golden rule. Show don't tell. Personally i like to restrict my books to authors who follow the same philosophy. Its basically exposition and its lazy.
"Also, turn the evil cult into Good Christians, with a positive message about Faith"
@@TheBelrick I would say it is a stylistic choice that fits for some types of stories. Otherwise we would also throw out all of classic literature
It’s WHITE GED! And his shadow! WHITER GED!
LMAO!
😂
He’s so white even his shadow is pale!
Never knew his shadow was a trick or treater with mediocre grim reaper make up.
they just did not care
Honestly I always found the revelation of the Nameless Ones true nature hilarious
Tenar: "Man it sucks that I have been worshipping made up gods my whole life."
Ged: "Oh no they're real, they're just evil primordial monsters who will kill us both if we don't leave right now."
Tenar: "Oh."
Kind of both really. I think it's sort of ambiguous. Calling them demons or monsters is a bit too literal. The Earthsea books had a heavy Taoism theme and the Old Powers are really more like the shadows cast by the light. Horribly corrosive in their way and omnipresent in the universe without necessarily being sentient. It's hard to tell whether the powers behind the Tomb had a will or were just horrible shit going down because the place is basically cursed. The fanaticism of Tenar's cult _is_ in its way, as much a tangible manifestation of the Old Powers as it is a consequence of it. Book One makes it a point that Ged's shadow is really just a mirror of himself given birth by his hubris.
@@afqwa423 I think you took my offhand statement too seriously
@@merrittanimation7721 I think I took it with the exactly appropriate amount of seriousness.
But no really? Why do people feel the need to do that? You know, shut down my comment with an accusation that I'm a sweaty tryhard?
@@afqwa423 I never accused you of that. I just feel like you over analyzed my word choice
@@afqwa423 From one over analytically sweaty handed try-hard to another; I salute you!
When they go over the cliff did anyone else except a Wilhelm scream?
Me
Nah it was way to goofy to deserve that honor
I expected one, might have made it better.
@@christopherjones8448 Being that goofy how about the Goofy scream then?
I think you meant Expect but you were close and yes. I expect that in almost everything I watch🤣
As you soon as Dom said Vetch, I looked at the actor on screen and was like..."THAT'S VETCH? THIS DOUGHBOY IS MEANT TO BE THE WARM, FRIENDLY, AND BADASS BLACK WIZARD OF THE BOOK?"
My sympathies...
This is supposed to be the guy who travels to the edge of the world just to help his friend via badassery alone?
Yes, yes, yes, and sadly yes. The shows producers and marketing "thought" that a black man could not be accepted by white audiences COUGH Black Panther COUGH.
Dom should have just called him Samwise the whole time.
"A dark hand had let go its lifelong hold upon her heart. But she did not feel joy, as she had in the mountains. She put her head down in her arms and cried, and her cheeks were salt and wet. She cried for the waste of her years in bondage to a useless evil. She wept in pain, because she was free. What she had begun to learn was the weight of liberty. Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it." - from the REAL "Tombs of Atuan", when Ged and Tenar were leaving Atuan to go to Havnor
God I adore her prose. I absolutely need to read "the Lathe of Heaven" again
Thank you so much for posting this quote because while I do now intend to read the series, this quote really speaks to me and I needed it. This woman was an absolute master of words and it is a CRIME she isn't being remembered on the same level of Tolkein and Pratchett!
I should reread the series. it's so long ago I did it first
thank you for the quote! Im so glad I've found other people who have read the Earthsea books, they're simply amazing, the kind of books that will change who you are when you've reached the end of them
"Congratulations, Tenar! You scored highest on the Priestess exam!" See? Basically as good.
I love the fact that he calls everyone “white (insert character name here)” the entire time
Not like they have anything else to be called by given how bad the characters are.
@@dragonbornexpress5650 Still, it feels yucky.
And i can't call it black washing
Joshua Fogg how
Grant Flippin 🤔
Ursula Guin: *exists*
Dom: You could make a religion out of this.
Dom is not wrong, at that. Hail le Guin.... 😉
Is that a history of the world (well almost) reference?
@@doppelrutsch9540 Olivia Butler?
I’m sorry but what’s the joke here? Are you gonks just upvoting memes because they’re memes? How do you still find the same gag funny after seeing it 100s of times? Please knock this kiddy talk shit off and go back to using actual full sentences
Jayfive276 Wait, I got this. *ahem* u mad bro?
Can you do a Lost in Adaptation of The Spiderwick Chronicles? There was so much the movie left out, but it's still an underrated adaptation.
Oh my yess! I have a unique place on my heart for those books since that is the first series I read im English (I did to trough Croatian version first)
I hope that we get a Spiderwick LIA at some point too. He only takes requests from Patreon sponsors though, so there’s no chance of it coming any time soon.
Ohhh yes.
That would be a good one for him to review. I still have the books and still re-read them each year
@@jackaylward-williams9064 Honestly, I'm kind of hoping that this comment gains enough traction that people on Patreon can request it.
Percy Jackson adaptation- *“I am drew,”*
Earthsea adaptation- *“and I am Danny,”*
Both- *“and we are not the same person we may have similar lives we may have similar wives but we are different none the less,”*
hahaha. i love that song/vid
@@Tymbus Ok... but grammar?
@@loturzelrestaurant what's wrong with their grammar lmao
😂😂
YESSSS
Holy shit, how did they get *everything* about Tenar so damn wrong? It's almost criminal to so thoroughly ruin such a compelling character and setting. Probably the pettiest change that annoys me is the fact that apparently now Tenar and the priestesses of the Nameless Ones are quite literate, despite the fact that Tenar literally tells Ged writing is 'black magic' and a *lot* of the book is dedicated to showing how a primarily oral culture hands down rituals and knowledge(no doubt influenced by Le Guin's background and family).
You get it!!! That was one of the things that really interested me about The Tombs Of Atuan, was the misinterpretation of magic by the Kargs, and the strong oral traditions. I was also really interested in how strong the gender segregation was, like? The scene where Tenar first listens to Ged speak (like, normally, not when he was super hoarse after slowly dying of thirst) and is really freaked out by how deep his voice is was so interesting to me. I suppose from her perspective, it would be like reading a forbidden book to us, since all her information comes from oral tradition (from Kargish women and eunuchs), and then here's this wizard dude...it's a really small scene in the scheme of things, but it really stuck with me.
Also on the list of scenes that stuck with me, that really funny little bit where Tenar's grossed out by eating raw shellfish and Ged is sheepishly just going ham on a handful of them
@@horseenthusiast9903 This Franchise is cool and deep;
so i recommend its Fans some stuff:
Wakfu, the Franchise.
HunterxHunter, the Franchise.
Yeah! Its like the Last Airbender of Book-to-Movie Adaptations! WTF, sci-fi?!
Ged finding his Otak in the snow, and beneath the Otak's body the blade of grass that Ged used, transformed into a staff to fight the shadow creatures of the Stone, that moment that the Otak, even in death, saves his beloved human moved me so deeply that even now, 30 years after I first read that book, I can feel tears forming in my eyes.
The saddest part is that she was also kind of backstabbed by Studio Ghibli in their adaptation. She only agreed to it after she saw Howl's Moving Castle (another adaptation based on a book where they made A LOT of changes but the end result is still amazing if in different ways from the book - please read the book lol) and had faith that Hayao Miyazaki would handle her source material respectfully.
Instead, for reasons I don't entirely remember, they handed it off to his less experienced son, Goro. Ursula wasn't happy about that and she had extremely mixed feelings about the end result (I think she said "it was ok but it wasn't MY Earthsea"). I have a soft spot for the Ghibli adaptation but yeah, it pales in comparison to the amazing books. But watching that movie and all the questions it gave me was what inspired me to read the books which became some of my favorites ever!
Also, when she asked Studio Ghibli to make the skin tones darker on their character, they said, "they are already dark enough to a Japanese audience." Ouch. :/
This is what's gonna terrify me if they every adapt Brandon Sandersons Stormlight series, the bulk of the cast is non-white who Brandon describes as looking like a cross between south east Asians and Arabs. Definitely feel there will be so much bureaucracy surrounding accurate portrayal of the characters
I didn't know Howl's Moving Castle was a book, but it has always been one of my favorite Studio Ghibli moves. I'm glad that I will be able to read it after. Studio Ghibli's Earth Sea on its own is really bland, but as a long time fan of Ursula K. Le Guin, I found it to be truly atrocious.
@@Monkeyninjaghost If you read it I hope you will enjoy it! As a fan of the film you will find some huge surprises but in the end I think you'll end up loving both versions for what they are!
@@Monkeyninjaghost This Franchise is cool and deep;
so i recommend its Fans some stuff:
Wakfu, the Franchise.
HunterxHunter, the Franchise.
@@loturzelrestaurant I absolutely adore the Hunter X Hunter anime but I've never heard about Wakfu, so I will definitely check it out. Thanks for the recommendation ;)
Say what you like about the books or movies or anything...
Dom's anger makes great content.
I'd say it makes for the best content.
Oh yes, that's why his most successful videos are the Fifty Shades ones. I applaud that he did his best not to profit from them for ethical concerns, but seeing him just foaming at the mouth from all the terribleness is what made a lot of people fall in love with this channel.
@@Cesaryeyo I must say the fifty shades videos are what made me invested in the channel. Partially cause they're well put together and interesting. Partially because Dom does angry quite well
Well better start preparing for his reaction to the new adaptation of Terry Pratchett's Nightwatch series.... It's going to be a rage fest.
I always love episodes where the Dom is angry. Because of his passion and genuine upset at injustice. It's cathartic to hear him tear shit like this to pieces.
Folks, this is why you don’t trust your life’s work to the people who now do reality TV and professional wrestling.
Do not disrespect professional wrestling. Reality tv on the other hand...
Unless you want it to 🌠dramatic and unfaithful🌠
@@thomastakesatollforthedark2231 well both is Reality TV and that's coming from a wrestling fan.
@@pwlpc yeah but would you compare pro-wrestling to keeping up with the cardassians?
dark kinda
Native American culture(s)... 65 languages and many variations of culture within a single language.
Yeah! The Hopi are very different from the Maya, who are very different from the Shoshoni, who are very different from the Cree, who are very different from the Mapuche- and so on haha
@@misteryA555 Question!
Those Books sound epic but kinda dark,
so i wonder if i can buy it
for some 8-10 Years old i know!
In exchange for that helpful info,
i shall also give you something in return: A Recommendation
of High Quality!
This Franchise is cool and deep;
so i recommend its Fans some stuff:
Wakfu, the Franchise.
HunterxHunter, the Franchise.
People say "European Culture" and "African Culture" all the time even though those places have multiple cultures as well. Culture is just used as a plural or collective sometimes.
@@loturzelrestaurant I'm on the third book at the moment, and there's no sex, and I can barely remember any violence either... so pretty appropriate for all ages!
The only part I'd be wary of, is that in the first book Ged sails to some of the most isolated islands in the ocean, and finds two mute people there. They are royal siblings who were abandoned there as children, sustaining themselves for decades on this tiny island totally alone. I'm the second book Tenar is pressured into executing some criminals, so she chooses to let them starve to death in the dungeons.
So there are some sad and slightly disturbing concepts, but nothing explicit or gory.
When Ged's dad was yelling watching his son fall I legit thought ' it's more like he dropped his sandwich off the cliff' then you said practically the same thing X'D That moment when a scene is so bad more than one person thinks the guy is grieving a sandwich.
I’d be more upset then he was over the sandwich tbh
Sad: "My sandwich... It was innocent!"
Ged: "Dad, are you gonna-"
Dad: " SHHHH!
I must grieve."
@@NachoCheeseDorito-Kun I see another person got their taste buds Flowers for Algernon'd ;D
You've done it! You've found an adaptation that is worse than Percy Jackson and Avatar combined!
*laughing Uncle Rick intensifies*
Yay!
Well, I have a worse one. Look up the movie seventh son. When I saw it I had to wash my eyes with bleach :(
Then there's Hobitit, the 90s Finnish version of LOTR, which is TECHNICALLY quite book-accurate, but also the single worst thing I've ever watched, and I'm including the star wars christmas special.
I didn't think that is possible
the dom: switches to porn
me: doesn't notice until he says so
also me: "point made"
Wait when did he do this?
Asking for a friend
Juniper Rockhopper I thiiiiink 16:19
@@juniperrodley9843 Yep, it's Game of Bones... Or that's what a friend told me.
Honestly, the porn looked higher quality.
Once again loving the fact that UA-cam: can't use swear words in sponsored vids.
Dom: okay. * inserts actual porn *
Le Guin deserves better than what this adaptation gave her.
The other on wasn't great too. Sadly
@@VereskVeil Still tried harder than this one. Le Guin even said that while it wasn't a good adaptation, it was still a good movie. Plus, you can count on Ghibli to maintain the thematic elements of the story which to me was the best part of the adaptation (balance in nature, the inevitability of death etc). If nothing else,Goro Miyazaki made a film with heart while this... thing has all the heart of a hollow corpse.
@@GallowglassVT Yeah, as I recall, Tales From Earthsea was more a story inspired by the books than a faithful adaptation - most of the pieces come from the books, but the way they're put together is completely different from anything the books did.
Meanwhile, this adaptation appears to have at least attempted to pretend to be faithful at some point, before falling into the hands of committees and focus groups, ending up neither as its own story, nor as a good adaptation...
Yeah but they're T.V. Producers who know how the system really works, and she was only one of the best writers to be published in the last fifty years why would they want to respect her opinion, oh yeah SHE'S ONE OF THE BEST WRITERS OF THE PAST FIFTY YEARS!!!!!! Really these people were absolute morons, and she deserved far better than this flaming dumpster fire.
So, they made an Middle-Aged man-Child relationship to a romantic relationship?
And they tried to replace a nuanced story with 'they wanted to destroy the world' plot hooks?
Wow, please don’t touch any books in next 1000 centuries!
Some people have a serious boner for making adaptations so much worse than the source material
Changing races, names, relationships, themes, personalities and motivations, orders of events, other appearances, and using awful CG
Why make an adaptation at all? Because forget money; you're not making shit from something like this
"White Ged and Cersi light" lovely. I was dying 😂😂
No!!! Live, Live Dammit! Phoenix Down, Hi-Potion, Cure Serious Wound, MEDIC!!!
We got someone dying here!
*looks at the length of the "didn't change" section*
*looks at the length of the "changed" section*
Oh, boy...
:(
@@horseenthusiast9903 Question!
Those Books sound epic but kinda dark,
so i wonder if i can buy it
for some 8-10 Years old i know!
I was actually so enthralled with hearing the two stories of earthsea that I totally forgot this was an adaptation video 😐
The books are absolute magic. I have read both, yet I still wanted to hear his summary. I feel like the *TRUE* story is enthralling in any way it's told.
Dude same lol!
If I remember correctly the disfiguring scar on Ged was so noticeable because of the fact that the color of the scar was very pale and the contrast with his darker skin was so striking.... at least that is what I pictured as a kid reading the book. Pretty hard to do with white Ged. So they went for the claw swiped cheek....
Feel free to ignore me if I am remembering wrongly....
isn't it because of the severity of the scars
@@wireboar7321 It could be both
@@coffeewolf5789 I'm pretty sure it's both, especially since in Tombs of Atuan the scars are pretty healed, but still big and contrasting really sharply (and looking scary enough to make Tenar think long and hard about what she's doing with her life).
@@horseenthusiast9903
Those Books sound epic but kinda dark,
so i wonder if i can buy it
for some 8-10 Years old i know!
??
Yep, the scars were very striking against his black/red skin.
The saddest thing is how the show managed to completely dodge any and all themes that were important to the books - religion, gender, identity, personal growth, nature, etc.
Can you imagine what they might have done with the book "Tehanu"?
Can. You. Even?
:(
They probably would've gotten off to an awful start by having Ged keep his magic, then just made the whole thing from his perspective. Or gone and hung out in Aspen's perspective, or something atrocious like that.
@@horseenthusiast9903 maybe a story about Ged regaining his magic. (Shudder)
Outside the literary community, Ursula K Le Guin is a criminally underrated author.
Truly. Her books are literally life-changing, and yet so unheard of.
**sees thumbnail**
Oh bugger... this is not going to end well.
Simone Salvatore *sees length* Oh, this will end incredibly poorly.
Oh this won't be good
*opens description*
*sees 20 minutes of What They Changed*
Oh, this is going to be horrific.
Also the 3 minutes what they didn’t change.... oh this is bad
The ratio of what they changed to what they didn't is shocking.
Le Guin would be proud that someone publicly adored her works.
Now then, on to the more pressing issue- Dom, buddy, good luck with Twilight.
Oh, dear...
He is doing twilight? Oh boy
Is there really anything he could say about Twilight that hasn't already been said? If so, I will be very surprised.
@@ichabodlorax7585 yeah...terrible "books" and even worse "films"
@@davidcottrell1308
News Flash, Jimmy Kimmell; everyone has already said what you said, being the bandwagonning assholes they were. However, they at least had the literacy to know that yes, the books are indeed books and the films are indeed films. They also knew that putting quotes around those two words doesn't show how cool they are for hating something, it makes them look clueless as to what a book is and what a film is.
I wasn't sure about the Earthsea books when you talked about them last time but after hearing that the sequel is a coming of age story about a teenage girl that doesn't involve a love interest I'm convinced
Especially with the cult storyline and the part where she orders three guys to be starved to death. I mean that's some high quality inner turmoil to over come right there.
And book four, if you care to read it, is the same girl in her 30s-40s coming to terms with the misogyny surrounding her and fighting to protect a young girl from it.
I found the books a bit heavy to read, but soooo so worth it! But be aware that they are a bit on the slow side, and every subject matter they handle is dark and heavy.
just here to second the message that the books are beautiful enough to be worth the effort they take to appreciate
I've read the books as a kid and I was so terrified of shadow that I slept with lights on. My book didn't have many pictures but there was one depicting shadow as a lovecraftian mess of claws and eyes. What they did in the tv series is laughable.
Who did this illustration?
@@johnvinals7423 uhh. Sorry, it was an old Russian edition from 1993. I tried to look up the artist, but I can't find the exact illustration. From what I could find it was either Nikita Andreev/Никита Андреев(who definitely did the cover art) or Denis Gordeev/Денис Гордеев (who might've have done the illustrations inside the book). To look up Russian edition you can type the name of either artist in Russian and "Волшебник Земноморья". The one I had as kid has two dragons fighting on the cover.
(posting this comment twice because UA-cam ate the previous one)
Wizard of Earthsea, Star Wars: Darth Plagues, Maze Runner: The Fever Code, and The Mortality Doctrine Trilogy are some of my favorite books ever MADE
A mighty great shame that Ursula was backstabbed by a horrible company
I HATE MYSELF FOR NOT READING THIS BEFORE.
The worse part, my mom constantly insisted on me through my childhood to read this series, and I did want, but I didn't have access to the books, and I didn't make enough effort to find them.
I literally picked up my audible subscription back up before the five minute mark of Doms synopsis. I haven't heard of the series yet, aside from the remark Dom made in another video but I'm looking forward to a great journey now to see what I missed out on
You won't regret any minute of it, I promise.
I read the first one, but I was too little (12 maybe?). I remember not liking it much, because the protagonist not being unambiguously good and righteous was too jarring to baby me*. I also read it home from school while nursing a fever, so maybe not ideal conditions :D It was just the wrong moment in my life to appreciate it "^^ I have been meaning to come back to it for ages tho, first when the Ghibli movie came out and made me go "what tf is this", followed by a wiki binge on LeGuin that made me realize how much I had been missing out on. And now with Dom's videos.
Even if I did not appreciate the book it left a big impression on me. I think that might also have been a reason? It scared me, it made me feel Ged's desolation and hopeless at the end... I can recall those feelings to this day :) so yeah, I was definitely still too impressionable for such a powerful book xD
* For another example, I also disliked Bilbo giving away the Arkenstone, because that was not the heroic chivalrous thing to do... I mean I was like 8 then, but you know.
@@essneyallen6777 Ha, welcome to the world of ambiguously motivated characters, enjoy your stay. May I recommend Good Omens by Terry Pratchett while you're at it? Hilarious read :D
@@SinWeissfell Uuu I have read that one yes! And I enjoyed it immensely x°D got several good laughs out of me xD It was a birthday present not too many years ago.
Now that I think of it, I also read Equal rites disliking it as a child. The translation was horribly butchered and that one too had some eldritch horror undertones in the ending that did not sit well with me. I think I had nightmares. Again, way too young (I was a very avid reader as a child) and also very squeamish to this day. I *don't* horror. It breaks my brain xP
"White Ged!" You sir have become my favorite book and film critic. I love your analyzations of both fields and I have finally found someone who gets just as pissed as I do about these horrible adaptations. Please never stop!
All I remember about Small Soldiers is, as a child, being absolutely furious at the main character when the toy asks what's outside the house and he utterly fails to explain literally anything useful about the world.
Christmas of 2004 I received The Other Wind, the sixth and final book in the Earthsea Cycle, from my Aunt. I was 10 years old. The rest of that school year my parents forced me to read it. I hadn't read anything by Le Guin before. I hated it. I didn't have the attention span, the reading speed, the maturity, or the willingness for it. I was caught up by how miserable I was reading it that I absorbed very little of it. In 2006 (as it took me all of 2005 to get through one 250 page book) I then tried to read The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore to the same results. Ever after I had looked back on the series with frustration. When I watched this video when it first came out, you convinced me to give it another shot. Today I have finished all six books and the four short stories not published in a dedicated volume for the series. It has become my most beloved series I have ever read. Thank you, Dom. This video may well have changed my life for the better.
Yay!! 😁 That I guess is perhaps only good thing about this tv-adaptation travesty: at least pointing out how cool the actual books are in comparison can bring them to the attention (or rediscovery) of many new readers? They're not light reading once the plot really starts to hum, because they do address important questions of character, ethics etc, but they're sure memorable and I think only improve with re-reading and age....?
Ah nothing like a good bite sized dom vid to enjoy my evening
"Looks at the duration"
Oh wow seens like I got a buffet instead
Just say what you want to say, getting real sick of these self-narrations.
@@Jayfive276 oh cool dom uploaded a video.
Wow its quite a bit longer than expected. What a pleasant surprise.
Feel like that sounds pretty boring. Not as spicy.
All of a sudden, the Studio Ghibli interpretation doesn’t look so bad.
At least they tried.
well can't blame ghibli really, It was Hiyos son who directed it, and he had lil interest in animation due to the strain it put him and his dads relationship. that is his only credited work. It mainly does landscaping.
@@azadalamiq That's not true - he also directed Up From Poppy Hill, which was quite good, and the upcoming ghibli film. Earthsea was his first film and he was pretty inexperienced, so I can't blame him too much.
The Ghibli film at least has effort involved, and they usually "Do It Like Disney" by taking the parts the work for a film and leaving out extraneous bits that wouldn't fit/be necessary for their target audience and/or runtime.
The only difference is Earthsea was done by a first time director rather than the master of animated storytelling, so it's not quite up to snuff.
Even Le Guin thought it was a perfectly fine movie, even if it didn't encapsulate her vision. Which is kind of a running theme of the Ghibli adaptations in general.
While not following the story all that well it at least understood the SPIRIT and message of it.
There is no ATLA live action Movie in Ba Sing Se Dom
But we’re not in Ba Sing Se now, are we?
Growing up in the Fire Nation we were taught that there was no ATLA live action movie, and that war was our way of sharing that greatness with the world. But... well, we were totally right about that.
The emperor wants you to visit the lake Lao Gai
Reading all these comments..... god I love the Avatar fanbase. You guys are consistently the best.
I'm all unpopular opinions today. Might as well go for another one: I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that it would not _surprise_ me if the "exit" of Avatar's co-creators from the forthcoming Netflix adaptation improves the quality of the final product. I was not a fan of Korra, when they suddenly had all but total creative freedom over their universe. It wouldn't surprise me if they were on track to ruin their own adaptation, regardless of whether Netflix ruins it anyway. Didn't they pick Shyamalan?
I lost it every time he called Ged "white Ged"
amazing
Yeah its legit funny if you are paying attention
I found out a couple of years ago that Le Guin wrote Catwings, which was my absolute favorite book as a kid, so it's fair to say I've been a fan of hers my entire literate life. RIP Ursula K. Le Guin. The world is a slightly less thoughtful and creative place without her.
So wait. His true name, in the series, is Sparrowhawk. The true name that you're supposed to keep as your greatest secret on pain of dire consequences.
... And White!Ged just sticks a representation of said true name on top of his magic staff.
Me, at the start of the video: He really likes this book, I'm excited to see what the fuss is about.
Me, after the synopsis: ... I HAVE TO READ THIS
Me, hearing about this adaptation: I haven't even read this book and I'm pissed. As a reader I'm insulted and as a writer I'm infuriated.
How much does he say about the books in the synopsises? I just want to know if I can watch the video without getting the books spoiled for me.
@@BM-jy2gh it gives some spoilers because he needs to explain how the miniseries failed to adapt the plot points, so I'd probably wait if spoilers are a concern for you.
@@justvibin1447 Ok thanks. I'll come back when I read the books.
You put my thoughts into words.
Literally same, but I’m going to listen to the audiobook instead of reading it I think
Giving the dragon a different name is a small change that really pisses me off considering how unique all the dragons were and Orm's story was incredibly enthralling and tragic.
Ursula Le Guin didn't deserve this.
"The danger of transforming oneself into an animal for too long..."
Well, that explains why Shawn Ashmore was drawn to this project. That theme seems to be his thing.
Jake, right?
I know he was in animorphs, but that's all I can think of. And, to quote a statistics professor of mine, "Once is an anomaly, twice is a coincidence, three time suggests a pattern." You need one more example for it to be a thing.
cheezemonkeyeater There’s Wolf girl and if we’re going by just Transformation there’s X-men too
Thing that blows my mind: this aired the same year AND ON THE SAME CHANNEL as the first season of the Ronald D Moore Battlestar Galactica, a show that is both pretty close to perfect and looks better than most movies.
Its a shame the show ended after New Caprica. Could've done with a few more seasons :p LOLOLLOLOLOLOL.
It looks good but I wouldn't call the BSG reboot perfect. The finale was one of the most half-assed "We don't know how to end it so let's just throw some shit together" endings I've ever seen.
@@JcBravo8 I was into a lot of the post-New Caprica stuff (e.g., Pegasus), but it definitely started going off the rails after that, especially everything to do with the Cylons and the search for Earth. Oh, and Angel Starbuck. So, basically, everything _not_ to do with the main plot.
This is why _Babylon 5_ was so much better - JMS actually wrote the whole thing out (more or less) _before_ making the show, rather than outright lying about "they have a plan" and then slowly revealing the truth that they were always just making it up as they went along.
@@dwc1964 its hilarious when you learn that the whole Cylon arcs of Season 2 and early 3 were on the fly. RDM had the material for 2 seasons. That was it. He created a great show but was limited by its main premise - a fleet on the run. There's only so much you can do with it without rehashing. I give him credit for stretching its run with the mystery of the Five 5 and Cylon Civil War and actually sticking to the mythical arc of the 13th Tribe.
B5 is less of a marvel for the PLAN and more of a success of how ADAPTABLE it was. JMS reworked his arcs each season and the story was still coherent despite people living, uncertaintly of continuation, and budget problems. The final season was a "screw you lol" by the network though since they gave him an extra season AFTER he already rushed to end the shadow war. Ugh.
@@JcBravo8 I would love RDM and JMS to collab on a 10-season (guaranteed) adaptation of _Dune_ - _all_ of it. Okay, maybe 20-season... they'll work it out. But they have to know in advance how many seasons, episodes and hours they'll have to work with, and no nickel-and-dime budget issues either.
somehow the end hits deeps after the "FINALLY GONNA GET A GOOD ATLA"
"atla head writers are leaving the netflix team" that just happened
We already had a good version of that, the original. Book to film makes sense, I've never understood cartoon to live action. It's already a visual medium, what can live action add?
There's worse-- there's the possibility that Netflix will give the live action ATLA to Benioff and Weiss. Be afraid; be very afraid.
@@GriffinPilgrim i know right? Especially since they added the cartoon to netflix not long after announcing the live action (and the movie that doesn't actually exist haha), makes me wonder what even the point of the upcoming adaptation was. Netflix already has last airbender and its the version they know everyone already likes plus gets mad nostalgia views from early 20 somethings like myself who are more likely to watch now due to quaruntine on top of new fans... I dont get why the creators just dont animate stories of past Avatars if they wanna keep revisiting this world
@@astrinymris9953 oh. oh my god. oh no. I am physically recoiling from this very concept.
@@MagillanicaLouM Plus they don't have to shell out a penny after getting the rights. This way they're going to pay a lot to make a live action series old fans will hate and potential new fans won't get. Tremendous waste.
Just thinking of something: when you said they wanted to make a Lord of the Rings show, not only does this explain the short presence of LOTR producer (I forgot her name), but also a lot of the costumes design. It is mostly bad cheap medieval costumes but the nuns' dresses look a lot like Eowyn/Arwen's dresses. The sleeves are a cheaper version of the white and brown dress Eowyn wears as simple clothing, the second colored dress looks like Arwen's red and purple dress, and the neck part looks like Eowyn's black dress...
It is shocking when you notice it !
Lol, yeah...as a HUUUGGGGGEEE history (particularly dress history) nerd, that really bugs me, because the vibes aesthetically, as far as I could tell from rerereading the books, is more like. General late bronze age/early iron age, with some particular influence from Babylon? But I think honestly you could pull aesthetics from any number of cultures around the ocean in that era and it would really work. But certainly not a really shitty knock-off of medieval fucking Europe.
RE: Co-Ed School. LeGuin makes a point in book 1, but elaborates more in some of the Tales from Earthsea (decades later) that female mages (witches) are looked down on, despite being just as capable (or more). While LeGuin the feminist would have approved of a co-ed society, she quite intentionally built a world that was not, and used that fact in story plots.
Right? If you make the school already coed, what can you even do with Tehanu and Tales from Earthsea?
I mean I can see how this could actually be a very effective plot point in a TV series actually. You could have time to work it in slowly.
I mean she didn’t deliberately choose a sexist trope to subvert later though? She just wrote a sexist trope and then grew as a person. I think that’s amazing! She is a badass example that we don’t have to stop thinking. We can grow and learn for as long as we live! ^_^
Earthsea genuinely trying to be scary....
Shows man with a cloak going all out on a segway in a forest😂
lol; right? QUICK! RUN CLOSE TO A CLIFF AND HE'LL FALL RIGHT OFF!!!
A SEGWAY?! XD
I would say, considering the wizarding "school" setting, it was equally trying to capitalize on the success of the Harry Potter movies... 6 of one, half a dozen of the other.
If the wizarding school was in the books, then it technically predates Harry Potter.
He means the series was trying to capitalize on it, probably the reason they made the school coed
@@dunes8817 The miniseries archmage is an obvious Dumbledore ripoff. As I recall in the books he was more like Taoist Odin
It was certainly turning Jasper into Draco Malfoy, and the other teachers...
Well, I'll even now give Rowling as much credit that her teachers are a whole lot more dignified than these caricatures.
There have actually been lots of fantasy books featuring schools of magic which predate the Potterverse. Rowling's genius came in integrating the tropes and conventions of British Boarding School fic into an Urban Fantasy Wainscot Society featuring a classic Hero's Journey tale. That and the fact that Rowling has a breezy easy-to-read writing style. Mind you, another reason it became such a cultural phenomenon was that the first book was released just as internet fandom communities were developing. It was kind of a perfect storm.
When Dom said "it's Twilight" I actually screamed "you bastard!" Out loud. We love you, man, but why you gotta hurt us like that?
Well after torturing us with over 4 hours of commentry on 50 Shades of Domestic and Sexual Abuse, it was inevitable we were going to get the series that was it's inspiration.....
What le Guin seems to do better than anyone I've read is quiet introspective conversations between two people.
Even just seeing clips of the visuals without any sound reveals problems. Besides the obvious whitewashing...Why are the priestesses to a set of nameless elder gods wearing light-colored Ren-Faire outfits instead of creepy, ragged black robes? Why is there a rat in a cape? Why are Ogion and Ged dressed (and cast) as if they come from completely different cultures when they are supposed to be from the same island? WTF is going on?!
I actually kind of like how the priestess isn’t dressed up as a stereotypical cult member. I get why they would use the darker colors in the novels but I’m honestly kind of sick of the tropes where the secret evil cults wear the skulls of the enemies they’ve killed and begin their morning by suplexing babies into a cauldron of orphan tears. It’s nice to see a cult painted in a positive light by the followers so they aren’t *immediately* obviously evil
@@lemonnomel9416 Except apparently in the TV series, the priestesses don't worship the Nameless Ones, instead they're dedicated to making sure they remain trapped behind that giant door, so no stereotype subverting here.
@@lemonnomel9416 You have a good point, but also 'suplexing babies into a cauldron of orphan tears' is hilarious
@@lemonnomel9416 well, in the books, they aren't exactly super creepy looking, either. They weave their own wool fabric, and happen to dye it black. Their clothes are simple but practical; honestly, I picture something a little closer to like, well-kept medieval European monks.
The only good thing I could say about this miniseries is that it got me interested enough to check out and fall in love with the highly superior books when I was 12...
Also, it continues to baffle me how this adaptation chose to change book Ged, who for most of his life belonged to an all-male group of wizards who used magic on themselves to suppress their sex drive and who was a virgin until his late 50s or 60s, to some sort of heart throb who seems to have sexual chemistry with every single woman he meets...
Because being a playah equals being heroic to many in the entertainment industry. There's a reason for the "me, too" movement.
It goes together with the same old tired tropes like evil kings, end-of-the-world threats, prophecies and magic artefacts of saving the day. And whiteness.
The way Dominic narrates is so so well done. Makes me interested in the topics and novels/films discussed.
Me too 😊.
So, maybe Dominic will record an audiobook ?
When I was 12, I found the Earthsea Trilogy in my dead grandad's packed up books, along with the Dune trilogy, the Lord of the Rings, and the Silmarillion (a geek treasure trove!).
It was Ged and Earthsea that really gripped me, though. Those are the books I've gone back to a dozen times.
I mean, Ged is STILL my favorite fictional character, to this day... And, yeah man, I was angry when the Scifi adaptation happened...
Also, a couple of gripes: Ogion is pronounced like it rhymes with "bogey on" (according to LeGuin). More important, to me: Ged didn't meet his dark half. The shadoww wasn't a manifestation of his ego or of his evil. It was his mortality - the literal fact of his inevitable death, made manifest. It could not be run from, it could not be defeated. It could only be accepted. It WAS him. All along. Others, in that book in particular, who put the label of evil on it never understand it as well as Ged does. He's the only one we know of who ever comes to understand and 'defeat' such a shadow.
Likewise, the dark powers of the earth, including the nameless ones, are NOT evil. They're not soul eating demons. They're not monsters. They were here first, and they never thought like we do, or felt like we do. They're the older forces that keep the world anchored and sturdy. So much so that they seem to be bound to specific places.
They are every bit as important to the balance of Earthsea as are the dragons, the humans, the sun, and the sea.
Ged even plainly states to Tenar that they're not evil. But he also says that people shouldn't have anything to do with them. They're alien. Unlike us. But not evil.
@@paladinrose Every word you wrote. Yes!
@@paladinrose man, you really nailed it on the Nameless Ones, but the shadow i think is open for interpretation
Le Guin really was an absolute queen. The Dispossessed is a potentially life-changing read.
The most heartbreaking thing about this is that a faithful adaption would've been brilliant.
Twilight seems not that bad in comparison. At least it's a generic romance flick adapted from generic romance book. But this... The bar was so low, it was on the floor. Of the dungeon. On the lowest level of the Tombs of Atuan.
Even the Nameless Ones want nothing to do with this. Even that underdeveloped wizard villain from Tehanu thinks this low.
@@merrittanimation7721 he'll beg for death before the half point
Me: *Looks at thumbnail* So that's why the pink slime from Ghostbusters 2 started to leak out of my speakers.
Vigo demands a sacrifice
Oh buggers, this series...
Some of my "favourite" moments in hindsight:
1) Ged's disposable love interest in the beginning
2) The arch mage screaming about the Shadow's "soul-devouring hunger"
3) Jasper being turned into a discount-Draco Malfoy
4) Ged being harshly reprehended for changing into a falcon, while Jasper used his illusions to stab another student in the hand during supper
5) The Nameless ones being little screaching demons
6) All the Sexposition between Tygarth and Kossil, looking like a scene from Xena
7) Mother Rosselini giving a whole lecture about wisdom and thoughtful decision-making, just so she could later spitefully dismiss Tenar on the drop of a dime
8) The confrontation in the tomb, where it's implied that Ged's true dark desire was to kill his dad
9) Ged turning into Superman right after that and the whole cliché storm that is the finale
10) The whole romance between Ged and Tenar being presented as an allegory on how religious beliefs and progressive ambitions should be used together, dragging this adaptation as FAR AWAY FROM THE ORIGINAL MESSAGE AS YOU CAN GET
And finally... 11) The Whitewashing
I might not be on board with every colour-blind casting decision, but I'll take 10 Black-Domovoi-Butlers and 20 Black-Hermiones if something like THIS is never going to happen again.
Ursula K. LeGuin actually recommended them to use Native American actors that had previously worked on another Hallmark-film, but they turned that down because those were "hard to work with" and promised an otherwise "colour-blind" casting... which consisted on casting some POC-extras and an elderly black man for a role that wasn't even supposed to be black -.-
Honestly, I'm okay with black Hermione, but black Butler makes me highly uncomfortable, cos the backstory for him is that his family has served the Fowls for ages, and if you add in that they're black in the movie with that, the implications are slavery..
@@guggelguggel7491 That's true, but only if you consider book and adaptation share the same canon.
For all we know, Black Butler could have taken the job some years ago, and the payment just isn't mentioned.
(Also, let's just agree that the whole western world has abolished slavery decades ago...)
EDIT: And even if the family Butler has served the movie-Fowls for ages, it isn't said that they were black for all of that time - Dom could be the product of the first interracial marriage (as far as we know).
It's not as if I wanted to diminish your concerns, I just wanna give Kenneth Branagh some due credit.
@@fermintenava5911 yah, the movie is a different canon 100%, but if you make a character that, in the source material, is of a family who has long served another and make him black, the implications do get skeevy, even if he, in the film canon, is revealed to *not* be of a long line of servants/bodyguards. Like, some people in the public are bound to make that leap of assumption, even if the backstory turns out to have been changed for the movie. Plus, if I don't misremember, butler was a poc, just not black. I think he was half Asian? They didn't say exactly wherefrom, so I could be mistaken.
Also, speaking of the Artemis fowl adaptation. Wasn't Holly originally black instead? She's described as having brown skin, eyes and hair, but in the movie, she's, uh. Not.
@@guggelguggel7491 Butler was described as "Eurasian", which in geographical terms is accredited to the whole land mass of Central Europe and Asia and in ethnic terms has very little meaning. It includes a lot of historically nomadic cultures - Huns and Mongols, but also Turks and Visigoths - which in their long history have crossed the line between Caucasian and Asian pretty often. A lot of them live within or on the periphery of the former sovjet union. So calling Butler POC in modern terms... really is a stretch. If he doesn't have an accent, he'd probably not stick out that much.
@@fermintenava5911 thanks! Like I said, I didn't remember exactly, I thought he was called outright Asian, still could be thought.
I would have loved to see them try to “Not Gay!” Arren aka Ged Fan Number One. He sees the man once and is like “Please! Please let me serve you! I’ll even give up being a prince and stay at Roke working as a janitor if it means I can be near you!”. Reading The Farthest Shore I was constantly like Geez, kid, he’s like fifty and you’re not even twenty calm down XD
There was a reason his private abode was "the queen's castle" and why he fought the marriage to that Kargish princess so hard...
@@OzuMiyuki but they talk about him taking lovers often, and they are stated to be women. Lebanen, out bisexual king 🙌🏻👑
Some modern “Earthsea” fans do ship Ged and Vetch together as a couple.
Just read the meeting scene at the fountain last night, and yeah LeGuin fully calls him out as fallen in love with Ged, the adorable goober ^_^
As someone who read A Wizard of Earthsea in middle school, these episodes brought back some good memories. Thanks, Dom!
I didnt realize how much I missed "MotherF-ing DRAGONS" 🤣
Wasn't aware it was a local meme XD
Shadiversity reference
They switched Ged's true name with his nickname because Sparrowhawk "sounds" better than Ged in terms of a name for a protagonist.
but people aren't called by their truenames- they are called by their nicknames except for VERY close friends and family in very secure settings!
@@orelalaith So they were dumb ~and~ racist! ^-^ This show just gets better and better!
I think it's the other way around actually, I think they switched the names because they thought "Sparrowhawk" sounded ridiculous and wanted the protagonist to mostly be called Ged.
At first I was really exited Dom was doing a ghibli film then I realised what the video was actually about.
Ghibli would've copyright strike him into oblivion.
Ghibli don't like potential new fans or free advertising.
The Ghibli movie wasn't much better honestly.
No one can really talk about Ghibli movies. They always get taken down.
@BeyondGhibli has some amazing vids.
Gods, I adored these as a tiny child. My da read them to me and I had such a serious vivid, visual imagination so I had proper memories of the school on roke, the doorkeeper, the courtyard with the trees, the kids messing around and showing off, etc. It took me over 20 years to remember them and come back round to them.
Roke school having both men and women attending it only works as an adaptational change if you're only adapting the first few stories. Roke being entirely controlled by men is very intentional on Le Guin's part and is essential to earthsea's story as a whole. Entire characters in later stories are defined by this gender segregation and their want to abolish it. A lot of the character development comes from a lot of the wizards in charge coming to realize that the shunning of women from roke and wizardry is just as much an abomination of magic as is the creation of the dry land. Only the patterner, the master who spends his whole life surrounded by the old powers, is able to recognize that shunning them is ridiculous and thus he is Irian's, the witch who entered roke, biggest defender.
Making Roke co-ed but still centering men is kind of like how The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel depicts an ahistorically integrated 60's while still centering white women. One of the few stories I've read set in Earthsea had a very early Roke entirely run by and for women, who decided to let a man in because they trusted him specifically. I don't think he betrays them, but the practice of saying, "OK, let's let guys in," obviously leads to them taking over entirely at some point in history. This seems like a pretty significant shift, and erasing how men literally stole magical knowledge from women in Earthsea seems worse than depicting it without changing the supremacy of "wizards" over "witches."
The entire back half of the series is pretty much all about how men both underestimate and purposely exclude women because they're afraid sharing power will diminish it. It is, frankly, absolutely fucking incredible. It all manages to fit incredibly well with all the previously world building while at the same time making you question why you doubt question the status quo in the early books. Ursula K. Le Guin was just the absolute best
The entire back half of the series is pretty much all about how men both underestimate and purposely exclude women because they're afraid sharing power will diminish it. It is, frankly, absolutely fucking incredible. It all manages to fit incredibly well with all the previously world building while at the same time making you question why you doubt question the status quo in the early books. Ursula K. Le Guin was just the absolute best
The more I think about it, the more I realize that the Earthsea gendered magic is almost exactly the same as in Discworld's. Female gendered magic is more in tune with nature, emotions and easing/hampering with the lives of people, shared via word of mouth and experimentation, whereas male gendered magic is more in the command, control and alteration of nature via research and pure knowledge. Male casters sit in their walled-off school, go on adventures and/or work for people in positions of power, while female casters are mostly 'that weird older lady in a cottage near a rural village you don't ever wanna mess with that helps out with things like births and illnesses'. I wonder just how much sir Terry Pratchett was inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin's works in that regard. Also shows just how wrong they got things in the tv series of Earthsea. It's basically Harry Potter there, isn't it?
@@Eppon6 Probably not very. From what little I read in her stories, the women of Earthsea's magic is just as into the "command, control, and alteration of nature," and they used to pursue research and pure knowledge. They didn't practice a different kind or "more in tune with nature, emotions, and easing of people's lives" magic. They're just relegated to work men consider unimportant because the wizards actively keep them from gaining powerful knowledge or wide scale sharing the knowledge they have. They can have apprentices, but they _can't _ have schools. They want them and that knowledge, hence the whole reason a witch tries to trick Ged. The stories I read also showed at least one witch who knew how to achieve epic level control of the earth. Women only do magic on a local level in Earthsea because wizards act in concert to keep them from gaining wider power, not because they don't want to or aren't capable. The gender divide in Earthsea's magic is imposed by society, and often blurred or broken by those who don't fit neatly into society's expectations of those gender roles or divides.
Which is common in Le Guin's works. Her works explore the various ways in which society comes up with rules for how to live, and how people in them are both shaped by and shape those rules. And those who break them.
@@kobaltkween To be fair, Pratchett's witches are also absolutely capable of reality-altering magic of epic proportions, but I get what you're saying.
He was probably inspired by a woman=nature/man=civilization dichotomy that's waaaaaay older than either him or Le Guin.
Love these videos Dom. Can you do a Lost in Adaptation of BBC's His Dark Materials?
I'd love to hear your thoughts of it (maybe even the awfal earlier movie as well).
Or the bbc watch adaptation when it spawms from whichever pit the bbc summoned it from?
@@gimzod76 I had successfully forgotten that until now.
I'm going to have a sad.
@@greenhowie
Don't be sad be fucking angry
What 's BBC Watch?
I thought the BBC (or HBO since I’m in America) version was pretty faithful. Would also like a Lost in Adaptation
I'm not sure if the inspiration was intentionally direct, but the "being born with one name and given another later in life and being trained/raised by a witch" draws an interesting parallel between Ged and the Irish mythological figure Setanta/Cú Chulainn. If that's all you want to know, happy days, if you want to know more, read on!
Setanta, born the son of the God of light Lugh (pronounced "loo") and arguably Lugh incarnate (Irish mythology has a sad history of Christianisation) is a kid who's really good at everything he does. His uncle is a king that lives a while away, and Setanta decides that he wants to join the King's elite group of knights known as the Red Branch Army.
Without going into too much detail, he travels (alone, at the age of 7) across the country to where the young members of the Red Branch Army train and play sports. On the particular day that Setanta reaches the castle grounds, the boys are playing Hurling (all you need to know is it's fast, it's violent, and it involves sticks known as Hurls or Hurleys). He rushes onto the pitch with his own hurl, breaking etiquette, steals the ball off one of the players, passes 100 boys and scores a goal.
Having angered the boys, they attack him, but he's able to defend himself against all of them. Eventually the king rushes out and puts a stop to it, and something something protocol, Setanta is now a member of the Red Branch Knights
One night, many years later, Setanta is invited to a party by his uncle. The party is held at the house of Culann ("Cullen"), the smith. Setanta is delighted to go, but asks his uncle that he be allowed finish this last game of hurling before he leaves.
After the game, Setanta sets off to Culann's house, where he encounters a hound. An Irish Wolfhound, to be exact (if you don't know, these guys are huge).
The hound lunges at Setanta, who whacks a sliotar (a baseball but harder) down the dogs throat with his hurl, killing it instantly.
The party rushes out, and Culann mourns for his dog, and Setanta apologises profusely, and offers to guard Culann's house until the dog's pups are strong enough to take their mother's place. Setanta is then given the name Cú Chulainn. The Hound of Culann.
I would've gladly listened to you rage for 2 hours over this miniseries, but like you said, battles must be picked. I read these books when I came across the Ghibli film as a pre-teen, but was probably too young to really click with them back then. I did re-read Tombs of Atuan and The Other Wind a couple years ago and adored both, and now thanks to these videos I might give Wizard of Earthsea another chance.
"This clearly 25 year old character"
Oh Dom, just like Stormbreaker are you wrongly aging the actor....wait...Shawn Ashmore WAS 25 when he made this....damn he is older than I thought
You know it's bad when "what they changed" lasts 20 minutes
"... JUST kidding it's Twilight"
OMG, I'm ded 😂
Ah, yes. The series that got polymorphed in to a single move dvd. How do I know this? Cause a year ago I just finished binge reading the whole series, saw earthsea on a dvd case and jumped the gun and bought it. . . my day was ruined, and my disappointment was un-measurable.
man, feel bad for you
Oh God. At least the tongue and cheek adaptation of The Color of Magic was funny if you read the books. This is just an adaptation nightmare.
I first read Wizard of Earthsea in primary school and then dove into the other books. This travesty is heartbreaking. Never have, never will see it. Thank you for going through the pain for us.
Today, I wanted to thank you. Cause I received my copy of the integral of Earthsea and can't wait to read it. And you're the one that make me discover it and made me want to read it with the passion you showed for the book on your two videos about it.
I had no idea about the other books when this came out so I was just horrified at what they did to Wizard. With the added context, I'm no less horrified.
Also, Le Guin would absolutely refuse the title of Queen.
i thought maybe the title "Anarch" like out of philip k dick's counter-clock world (there's a character 'Anarch Peak') so like 'Anarch Le Guin' but i don't know if that works really
And that’s why she is a Queen!!! 👑
"letting your pursuers charge over the cliff like lemmings" was the exact tactic utilized in the LEGO movie, fun fact
I had a copy of the first 4 Earthsea novels (in one book) gathering dust on my bookshelf for ages, but scrambled to read the first two once I heard you were covering them so I could watch this without getting spoilers. And I'm so glad I did because you were totally right about how good they are! And I'm totally going to try some more of Le Guin's stuff. So... yeah, thanks : )
'The Left Hand of Darkness' is damn good - bit of a sci-fi flavour mixed in with the fantasy, but has similar levels of top-class introspection and character arcs.
Honestly I want to thank you tons for summarising the books so thoroughly (and yet concisely) because I never quite knew what to expect from Earthsea so I never picked it up. I've got a hard time starting on big reading projects when I don't know what I'm headed for. All of this sounds absolutely incredible, a mythical but still realistic kind of world instead of a war game in the coat of fantasy. And without ever having read the books the adaptation makes me so so mad omg
meanwhile the only Black person I see is the wise mentor, thus continuing the magical blackman stereotype
That is literally not a stereotype anywhere, stop being a cringy liberal
@@wisemankugelmemicus1701 @Wisemankugel Memicus
first of all it was a joke.
second of all: it is absolutely a stereotype in fiction. there's entire essays and web pages dedicated to the idea.
thirdly: If I'm being a "cringy Liberal" you're being an ignorant Conservative.
and fourthly: this comment is 4 months old. and I highly doubt with any 57 likes that it would be anywhere near the top of the comments.
Why are you wasting both our times?
@@nonspiderweb And this response is even LONGER-- BAHAHHA!
1. "it was a joke"
2. "except it isn't"
3. Wouldn't you want black representation in media in general?
4. NEVER heard about the magical black man stereotype. But if it did exist, wouldn't that be the coolest part in fiction? Who doesn't want to be the person wielding magic?
5. This is the top comment when I scrolled down, soooooo.
6. But that other guy did throw names around first, so I can see why you responded in kind (though it would be cooler if you roasted without the name calling, but I'm a stranger who's wasting my time and yours so ignore me.)
@@questionsfromthebeyond I didn't know about this trope either. But you know what I did? I look it up before calling someone names. And yeah. This trope is a thing:
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagicalNegro
@@Hadeshy I didn't call anyone names, I just merely enjoyed the drama. And I made the specific point to say if the trope did exist, it would be cool. And since you want to go there, there's literally a trope for anything ever. Chillax, my dude.
"This could have been twice as long(...)" And you know what Dominic? I would have watched and loved every minute of it😍
Their treatment of Tenar alone is reason enough to hate this series.
Tenar is such a good character! I didnt know this series existed but now that I know it does I wanna smash it.
Dom: I don't usually do this to keep my videos to a reasonable length
Me: would literally watch the entire Earthsea mini series (or film, or any other TV show) so Dom could do a MST3000 style reaction video to it
I think I know why they switched Ged’s names in the series. It’s part of their attempt to whitewash him. Based on his book description, it’s safe to assume that he resembles an Earthsea equivalent of a Native American. As such, his most commonly used name, Sparrowhawk, works well with his appearance since it sounds like a name a native would have. Doesn’t sound nearly as natural when applied to a white man while Ged does. So they switched the names so that everyone calls him Ged instead of Sparrowhawk. I’m not saying that justifies any of their choices, because it doesn’t at all, but it at least explains why the names are switched.
I believe there to be an actual logic behind it: Ged is the name we know him by, because the all-knowing narrator calls him that. Movies/TV don't have a narrator (or at least not as prominently), so names are far more commonly used in conversation. However, in conversation no one would use his true name except for very rare instances. In other words: The books use "Ged" 90% of the time, "Sparrowhawk" 8% and "Duny" 2%. A show that would use his names the right way around would use "Sparrowhawk" 80% of the time, "Ged" 18% of the time and "Duny" 2%. So the switch makes kinda sorta sense.
What given name would fit a white man? A viking sounding one?
@@Overlord99762The irony being Nordic naming conventions are almost indistinguishable from many Native American ones once translated. Languages in general tend to call things what they are
Dom all of your work shines with attention to details, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for opening my eyes (and ears) to LeGuin. Her spirit is restored and I’m excited to hear that Earthsea is getting a new chance!
"Sparrowhawk isn't a name!"
Cries in Elenium
Actually, symbolically, the name works as well, especially since Ged was inspired by Native cultures, whose names tend to be descriptive and based on attributes.
Close but you're thinking of Sparhawk 🙃
He's a great character 👌👌👌