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Wheel of Time on television
Feb. 9th, 2015 06:58 pmSo, last night I was scrolling through Facebook before heading to bed and saw a post from Brandon Sanderson saying he'd just found out about a WoT short that was going to be airing on FXX overnight. It took a bit of searching (because I had no clue where FXX even was on our lineup... it's a fairly obscure channel) but I found it in the listing and set the DVR to record it, since it was airing at 1:30 in the morning.
Brandon Sanderson's guess was that it was something thrown together by the network in order to retain rights to the material in case they decide to do something real with it later... and I pretty much have to agree. The whole thing was a bit less than 20 minutes of the prologue for the first book in the series and was essentially just a dialogue between Lews Therin Telamon and Ishamael, who was played by Billy Zane (yes, really). Lews Therin's family is shown now and then, but it's mostly just the two of them, walking around an empty set made to look like a grand palace without any furniture. The small bit of special effects used were awful (as in, they looked like they belonged in something from the 80s) and the costumes looked like they just grabbed whatever fit the actors and didn't pay a lot of attention to continuity of style (Lews Therin had a sort of Edwardian look about him, Ishamael looked more medieval and some of the kids looked like they were wearing clothes from the early 1990s).
All in all, it wasn't horrible... and certainly nowhere near as bad as the "Fantastic Four" movie from 1994 that was made for the same reason (to retain rights). I'm kinda glad I managed to record it when it aired... but I'm rather amused that it isn't listed anywhere on IMDb.
ETA: I should point out that the title didn't even contain the WoT name... it was simply Winter Dragon, and apparently the rights were set to expire this Wednesday. It sort of makes me wonder if this thing was thrown together in the last few weeks.
Crossposted from my Livejournal.
Brandon Sanderson's guess was that it was something thrown together by the network in order to retain rights to the material in case they decide to do something real with it later... and I pretty much have to agree. The whole thing was a bit less than 20 minutes of the prologue for the first book in the series and was essentially just a dialogue between Lews Therin Telamon and Ishamael, who was played by Billy Zane (yes, really). Lews Therin's family is shown now and then, but it's mostly just the two of them, walking around an empty set made to look like a grand palace without any furniture. The small bit of special effects used were awful (as in, they looked like they belonged in something from the 80s) and the costumes looked like they just grabbed whatever fit the actors and didn't pay a lot of attention to continuity of style (Lews Therin had a sort of Edwardian look about him, Ishamael looked more medieval and some of the kids looked like they were wearing clothes from the early 1990s).
All in all, it wasn't horrible... and certainly nowhere near as bad as the "Fantastic Four" movie from 1994 that was made for the same reason (to retain rights). I'm kinda glad I managed to record it when it aired... but I'm rather amused that it isn't listed anywhere on IMDb.
ETA: I should point out that the title didn't even contain the WoT name... it was simply Winter Dragon, and apparently the rights were set to expire this Wednesday. It sort of makes me wonder if this thing was thrown together in the last few weeks.
Crossposted from my Livejournal.
