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Subject: "I'd love a better try at the utterly junkfood-y "Dresden Files"" Previous topic | Next topic
Walleye
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Wed Sep-14-16 08:57 AM

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9. "I'd love a better try at the utterly junkfood-y "Dresden Files""
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SyFy tried it once, for about a season, and it wasn't very good. Though the lead actor kind of nailed his part, so it wasn't a total disaster. If you're unfamiliar (and there's no reason you should be except that he's been writing this series for a long time and I imagine it's done pretty well) the Dresden Files are about a private investigator named Harry Dresden who is also a wizard. They're hardboiled detective stories with magic. Yeah, 2016 is the first year in a while I've had to mostly have fun with reading books and I decided not to really engage my brain if I had to. So I mowed through 15 of The Dresden Files books in the last month.

The smarter side of me can list so many things wrong with these books. Their noir conceits tend to lean toward the cliche. Anything remotely sexual seems to have been written by a fourteen-year-old boy raised on romance novels. The Chicago he describes has almost nothing in common with the real city, culturally or geographically. The former is harder, obviously. But the frequent latter mistakes makes me shake my head and wish Jim Butcher would just... ask somebody who's lived there.

But the stuff the books do well would translate really well to a TV series, in my view. Butcher did a good job of crating a central character with a stable, intelligible personality and then putting him in situations that create tension with his worldview - tensions that are resolved in a perfect mix of unpredictable-but-somehow-consistent-with-the-character. He is also really good at escalating the stakes in each successive novel in a way which is somewhat believable within the bounds of the universe he has staked out.

It's weird, because it's like he does the hard stuff (compelling main character, expanding the universe and the magnitude of its peril skillfully) extremely well, but does the easy stuff (avoiding cliche'd writing and doing your research on factual information) pretty poorly. It's like watching a baseball team with good up-the-middle-defenders who can hit for power and have speed, but which somehow fails to find a firstbaseman or DH who can hit for shit. Like... how is THAT the thing you screwed up?

Anyhow, the stuff that Butcher sucks at would be easy to gloss over in a TV series. The stuff that he's good at can actually be augmented with good casting (the surrounding characters are pretty compelling as well - the guy is hit/miss with villains but the hits are really fun) and skillful pacing of TV episodes/seasons.

Anyhow, I don't really know how licensing and TV rights works, but I'm guessing this is impossible because the first TV effort failed. But I'd have rather enjoyed turning off my brain and watching an honest effort at doing it well. It'd be a fun, if not particularly thoughtful, watch.

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"Walleye, a lot of things are going to go wrong in your life that technically aren't your fault. Always remember that this doesn't make you any less of an idiot"

--Walleye's Dad

  

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Pitch a book series or author you'd like to see adapted to TV [View all] , Cold Truth, Tue Aug-23-16 03:06 PM
 
Subject Author Message Date ID
Also, a Stephen King Anthology series would be dope.
Aug 23rd 2016
1
Martian Time Slip by Philip K Dick for HBO
Aug 23rd 2016
2
Callahan's Crosstime Saloon
Aug 23rd 2016
3
I've always been disappointed His Dark Materials was mismanaged
Aug 23rd 2016
4
Seems like even HBO can’t get it right as a series
Feb 06th 2020
42
Helen Oyeyemi - The Icarus Girl
Sep 10th 2016
5
The Gaiman's Sandman Series, Asimov's Foundation
Sep 13th 2016
6
The Inheritance Trilogy would be a great anime
Sep 13th 2016
7
Malazan: Book of the Fallen
Sep 14th 2016
8
Interesting pick. I'd prefer "Hard Magic" over that one personally
Sep 14th 2016
10
      I don't know that one
Sep 14th 2016
11
           It's fantastic, but I actually have better reccomendations.
Sep 14th 2016
14
                Thanks!
Sep 16th 2016
15
                     Dope! I hope you enjoy them. CG is standalone
Sep 16th 2016
16
Easy Rawlings Series
Sep 14th 2016
12
Still mad the film series didn't kick off
Sep 22nd 2016
19
my only trepidation with this is...who plays Mouse????
Sep 22nd 2016
21
Fearless Jones or Socrates Fortlow
Feb 05th 2019
37
Scalped
Sep 14th 2016
13
Still my answer. Seems to be stuck in developmental hell. n/m
Jul 16th 2018
32
RE: Pitch a book series or author you'd like to see adapted to TV
Sep 18th 2016
17
Y: The Last Man
Sep 22nd 2016
18
Came in here to post that. I thought Keanu Reeves
Sep 22nd 2016
20
FUCK YEAH!
Jul 13th 2018
28
FX Orders ‘Y: The Last Man’ Pilot
Apr 05th 2018
25
‘Y: The Last Man’ Pilot Casts Diane Lane With Barry Keoghan Set as Y...
Jul 11th 2018
26
YES!!!
Jul 13th 2018
29
'Y: The Last Man' Ordered to Series at FX
Feb 05th 2019
35
PLEASE DONT SCREW THIS UP....
Feb 05th 2019
39
Y: The Last Man Showrunners Exit FX Adaptation Due to Creative Differenc...
Apr 15th 2019
40
‘Y: The Last Man’ Recasting Lead Role of Yorick as Barry Keoghan Exi...
Feb 06th 2020
41
would LOVE to see kavalier+clay and YPU HBO mini series style
Sep 22nd 2016
22
Alan Moore's wildCATS
Sep 23rd 2016
23
The Quaker City
Sep 23rd 2016
24
David Baldacci's Camel Club Series
Jul 11th 2018
27
100 bullets.
Jul 13th 2018
30
I want HBO to do this one so badly....
Feb 05th 2019
36
this
Feb 05th 2019
38
Chester Himes - Coffin Ed/Gravedigger Jones Series
Jul 14th 2018
31
Raymond Feist's "Magician" series
Jul 17th 2018
33
Colson Whitehead - Zone One
Jul 17th 2018
34

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