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 SPECIAL COMMERCIAL FREE PREVIEW TONIGHT 12/16 at 10/9c regular series start January 25th with the first two episodes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8BQrvNI1t0 Based on the book trilogy by Lev Grossman (The Magicians, The Magician King, The Magicians Land) The Magicians is a mix of Harry Potter, Narnia and Less Than Zero the series follows a young man named Quentin Coldwater who learns magic is real when he is accepted into Brakebills College of Magical Pedagogy. Unlike Harry Potter where magic is cast by waving a wand and saying some Latin in The Magicians magic is only learned through brutal hard work and memorization. The Narnia comparison comes from a book series that Quentin is obsessed with, Fillory and Further, which has a surprising connection to the world of magic. The first season is 12 episodes. Cast: Jason Ralph as Quentin Coldwater: a brilliant but antisocial grad student and protagonist. Olivia Taylor Dudley as Alice Quinn: a brilliant magician and friend of Quentin's whose parents are magicians and who comes from a neglected home life. Stella Maeve as Julia: Quentin's childhood friend, a beautiful and brilliant Ivy Leaguer Hale Appleman as Elliot: a preppy, self-possessed student at Brakebills and senior to Quentin. He is a heavy drinker and frustrating ally to Quentin. Summer Bishil as Margo Hanson: equivalent to Janet from the novels, her name was changed to avoid confusion with other names beginning with "J". Arjun Gupta as Penny: Quentin's roommate and peer, deliberately intimidating and edgy. Rick Worthy as Dean Fogg: the Dean of Brakebills. Anne Dudek as Professor Sunderland: a teacher at Brakebills and Penny's mentor Based on character/plot descriptions it sounds like there will some slight reworking of the plot to tell Julia's story in chronological order instead of just coming back to it later. Speaking of the books, please try and limit (and mark) spoilers for those coming in fresh.
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Dec 17, 2015 01:38
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The Magicians trilogy is my favorite book series. It was incredibly important to me in helping deal with my bipolar depression. While I feel like the third book kind of runs out of steam and doesn't quite fit with the other books thematically, I have never related more to a character than Quentin, for better or for worse. I'm expecting a bad show from Syfy so we'll see how it goes.
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Dec 17, 2015 02:12
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I'm pretty excited. I like magic shows.
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Dec 17, 2015 02:20
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So far they've definitely aged everyone up since in the book he was in high school.
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Dec 17, 2015 04:07
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There's something distractingly off about the backgrounds/establishing shots in this show and I can't quite put my finger on it or express it.
Dallan Invictus fucked around with this message at 04:23 on Dec 17, 2015 |
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Dec 17, 2015 04:21
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Well, I don't know about anyone else but I definitely enjoyed it. It seemed kind of rushed but that might just be pilot-itis and hopefully it calms down a little.
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Dec 17, 2015 05:04
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Yeah I agree it felt rushed, they could have maybe let the school (schools? Both Quentin's and Julia's new situations) breathe a little before bringing in a Big Bad for a pilot cliffhanger, but I liked it enough to check back in January. If both EP1 and EP2 are airing on the 25th, maybe it'll come across better with the two of them together. Dallan Invictus fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Dec 17, 2015 |
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Dec 17, 2015 05:10
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Cast Iron Brick posted:The Magicians trilogy is my favorite book series. It's in my top 5.  I'm going to watch the pilot once I get back from Star Wars tonight, but I'm dying to know: any sign of Josh being in the show? Any at all? 
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Dec 17, 2015 05:19
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OKay, this is interesting. The Magicians books are very very freaking flawed, but pretty much all the issues with the books aren't things that you can do in a network TV show, so this hopefully will get the good stuff but drop the bad.
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Dec 17, 2015 05:20
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Wapole Languray posted:OKay, this is interesting. The Magicians books are very very freaking flawed, but pretty much all the issues with the books aren't things that you can do in a network TV show, so this hopefully will get the good stuff but drop the bad. Like what? I read the first book a long time ago but don't remember much other than that it was very very very nihilistic and angsty in tone. Also I think there was a furry sex scene where him and his girlfriend gently caress in fox form. Unfortunately both of those could make it into a network TV show just fine icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 10:14 on Dec 17, 2015 |
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Dec 17, 2015 10:02
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That was good. I'm pretty excited for the rest
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Dec 17, 2015 10:23
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I've read the first book, liked some parts, loved some parts, hated some parts. I haven't caught the pilot yet (I'll probably wait to see the whole season at once later) but if it left off where it sounds like it did I'm very surprised it got that far in the pilot. Can anyone fill me in on what happened at the end of the pilot? I haven't been able to find out googling around, all the info I have is that it seems to have diverged from the books at least somewhat.
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Dec 17, 2015 10:32
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The end of the pilot is the scene with the Beast's first appearance and a big difference is that it looks like he's killed Dean Fogg.
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Dec 17, 2015 11:08
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I really disliked it, they rushed through what is arguably the best part of the three books and left a terrible mess of the story. If it was a two episode mini series then i could sort of understand it, why rush through everything when you have 12 episodes to fill? Making Quentin some sort of special saviour goes against everything the story is about, and the scene at the start of the episode was really dumb. The one thing i did like was the "monster" at the end, i am not sure why they chose moths instead of a leaf, and the eyes were silly. But they perfectly nailed the feeling of an entity that is so much more powerful than anything else in the room, and the magic gestures were amazing. I will check out the second episode, but i can't imagine it will be any better.
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Dec 17, 2015 12:10
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I liked it; The Beast in particular was a well-done scene, and more generally, I'm glad they kept that magic requires both dexterity and math/science smarts. On the other hand, I also agree that some stuff seemed rushed--in particular, the Julia stuff--but this is probably understandable as they need to get her in place so that she'll have something to do on the show other than surf the internet. I'm hoping future eps will slow it down a bit and maybe go back to the stuff they skipped over from the first half of the book, since they probably just frontloaded the key mysteries to sell execs on the show.
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Dec 17, 2015 13:10
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I just watched the first episode and I have no idea what's going on in this show. The timeframe seems very confused. Like, Sam Winchester shows up for his first day at wizard school and you'd think he should be in a class of people who are also new (like whichever of those other people who took the exam got in), but it seems like everyone else has been there for ages? Also, half the time he obviously has no idea what's going on, but then other times people will be like "magic is always dangerous, you should know that" like as though he's been at it for years. Or the scene where he's talking to mopey girl and acting like he knows what's going on and won't help her get into the school because he knows she's not qualified or whatever, when he should actually be saying "How the hell could I get them to change their minds about you? I don't know what the gently caress is going on." And characters just do stuff for no discernible reason, like when the symbol appears on his hand, so he goes to talk to Reece Witherspoon and she won't help him unless he does a seance with her, and he raises some fairly compelling objections to this plan, but then goes through with it anyway and she still doesn't tell him what the symbol is? Or did I miss that? But through most of the episode (or at least the second half) I was just constantly asking "Why is this happening?" On top of that, all the characters seem to be really shallow stereotypes, like they're characters in an American high school movie. And there's the whole Narnia thing, which I assume is meant to be obviously Narnia by a different name, except that in this world it's some obscure series no one cares about. Does that mean something? It just seems weird and dumb.
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Dec 17, 2015 15:13
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Tiggum posted:I just watched the first episode and I have no idea what's going on in this show. The timeframe seems very confused. Like, Sam Winchester shows up for his first day at wizard school and you'd think he should be in a class of people who are also new (like whichever of those other people who took the exam got in), but it seems like everyone else has been there for ages? Also, half the time he obviously has no idea what's going on, but then other times people will be like "magic is always dangerous, you should know that" like as though he's been at it for years. Or the scene where he's talking to mopey girl and acting like he knows what's going on and won't help her get into the school because he knows she's not qualified or whatever, when he should actually be saying "How the hell could I get them to change their minds about you? I don't know what the gently caress is going on." Yeah all those problems are basically because of that bolded part. I know this doesn't make it okay, and the show should definitely have made it clearer, but going by the timeline of the book, he's spent a good few months in school by this point and already has an idea of how the school works, which is why he knows what they'd do to her if she tried to force her way back in. When we were talking about them rushing and skipping the first half of the book in the posts above that's what we meant; the first half of the book was a lot of classes and discussion about the nature of magic, which is ok in the book, but they probably too slow for a TV pilot, so they either sped up or scrambled the timeline to frontload the arcs and create a hook. quote:And there's the whole Narnia thing, which I assume is meant to be obviously Narnia by a different name, except that in this world it's some obscure series no one cares about. Does that mean something? It just seems weird and dumb. It's about as popular as Narnia is, and is important.
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Dec 17, 2015 15:33
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They are really rushing the plot so parts of the story don't quite make sense.Tiggum posted:And there's the whole Narnia thing, which I assume is meant to be obviously Narnia by a different name, except that in this world it's some obscure series no one cares about. Does that mean something? It just seems weird and dumb. It is this worlds version of Narnia, it is a bit more popular and has some more debt to it. It is an important part of the series that will be revealed as time goes on.
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Dec 17, 2015 15:44
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I'm half way through the pilot episode right now. The way the interview scene happened is upsetting. The entire point of the scene in the books is to establish the subtle, glitchy way that magic works. Quentin making a magical Harry Potter card tornado kind of goes against that in a n intentional way. That said, they seem to be handling the depression angle reasonably well so I'll probably keep watching. But it definitely feels like my favorite book s being filtered through a SyFy show. E: also everyone is a sexy badass. It's an obvious choice for TV, but it feels kind of hollow when the series was established to be about broken, ugly people being given the opportunity to do miracles. E2: Oh cool, they've added in some additional sexual violence. That always makes your show more serious and edgy. Cast Iron Brick fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Dec 17, 2015 |
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Dec 17, 2015 16:32
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Cast Iron Brick posted:I'm half way through the pilot episode right now. In the book, it starts subtle and glitchy but doesn't it end with him getting frustrated and pulling a flaming sword out of thin air?
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Dec 17, 2015 16:40
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Max posted:In the book, it starts subtle and glitchy but doesn't it end with him getting frustrated and pulling a flaming sword out of thin air? It does. However, we spend a lot of time watching them at school to establish just how intricate magic is. That way, it's an immense payoff once they pull off huge acts of magic.
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Dec 17, 2015 16:47
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Ah, yeah from the sound of it I thought it ended with the Beast popping up, but at the same time that blew my mind because that's like 1/3 to 1/4 of the way into the book, and that's a TON of ground to cover in one episode. I also expected his later meeting with Julia to come a few episodes in, once we've had some more time to see her trying to learn stuff on her own and been shown why getting her into the school isn't practical. I mean, it's a really good hook to end the pilot on, but you could have gone really slow and ended on his admittance to the school, or medium and end on him getting into the physical room or on him meeting Julia again. I mean, this is just absolute hyper speed and not at all what I expected. Popping the Dean is pretty major, I think I actually preferred how it goes down in the books. How that's dealt with goes a long way toward showing that a student dies through some kind of magic shenanigans every couple of years and the college just kind of covers it up or smooths things over as best it can. But yeah, holey moley are they rushing things. There's still a more than fair amount to get to, but this sounds basically like Harry Potter going from entering to school to winning his first Quidditch match in the first 20 minutes of the movie without explaining what Quidditch is or showing him learning how to fly the drat thing.
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Dec 17, 2015 17:38
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The ending of that episode was super hosed up! I like the moth motif for the Beast. Here's some stuff the author said about the adaptation: Lev Grossman posted:They’re showing the first episode of The Magicians tonight — it’s at 10pm on Syfy — and I thought I should post something ahead of time to kind of ease you through the transition. Because some things in the show are Not The Same. I'm in for the ride, even though I know they'll have to leave out a whole ton of cool stuff from the books.
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Dec 18, 2015 01:00
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I don't doubt it'll be a good show for SyFy standards, I'm just salty about a source material so important to me being used to make an appealing TV show.
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Dec 18, 2015 02:37
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I don't know how I feel about the pace of the first episode since they crammed like 1/4 of the first book into it but I can appreciate that they wanted to get quickly to the reveal of the beast. If it continues at this pace they very well might complete all 3 books in 12 episodes which I think would be shame you would miss out on a ton of backstory and really any sort of understanding. Even though I read through the first book recently, I still felt like I missed something and that they were not really trying to explain anything. I am still super excited and think it was a good first episode instead of what I was anticipating so that is a really good sign for the rest of the season.
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Dec 18, 2015 04:59
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This show is Harry Potter College + Sex/Drugs/Ennui + Narnia and the audiobooks are very well read in my opinion. That said the pace was soooo fast for that preview.
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Dec 18, 2015 05:17
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Yeah the audiobooks are seriously the best I've ever listened to, the narrator Mark Bramhall does such an incredible job. The only drawback is he totally murders an Australian accent in the second book. It's pretty cringe inducing. But everything else is perfect.
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Dec 18, 2015 06:04
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Hedrigall posted:Yeah the audiobooks are seriously the best I've ever listened to, the narrator Mark Bramhall does such an incredible job. The only drawback is he totally murders an Australian accent in the second book. It's pretty cringe inducing. But everything else is perfect. If you like SciFi Jefferson Mays doing The Expanse series is equally as good, and he's even better at accents. Seriously nothing beats being able to multitask and hear great narrators work.
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Dec 18, 2015 06:08
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Hey, I loved the books. Hard to get over that protectionist instinct on seeing your beloved story adapted on a different medium, but please get over it. The author did! Stories change, evolve all the time. About casting, the standout was Elliot for me. When I saw him just lazily sunning himself on the brakebills entrance while waiting for Q, that sold the actor for me.
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Dec 18, 2015 08:03
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Grimwall posted:Hey, I loved the books. Hard to get over that protectionist instinct on seeing your beloved story adapted on a different medium, but please get over it. The author did! Stories change, evolve all the time. That is not true at all, there is nothing about the medium of tv that says you need to rush stories, you can adapt a book while stile respecting the story. The problem is that the producers wanted to rush through the book and that meant cutting a lot of corners. None of the characters have much of a personality, we know almost nothing about Brakebills and they feel a need to shove Fillory down our throats because they can't take the time to let the story flow naturally. They could have covered the first book fully in season one, while still keeping the story intact.
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Dec 18, 2015 08:57
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Maybe it's a good thing that I haven't read the books because I actually quite enjoyed the first episode. Maybe I'll pick them up after the season is over, would it be worth it? Also, Olivia Taylor Dudley 
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Dec 18, 2015 09:01
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buddhanc posted:Maybe it's a good thing that I haven't read the books because I actually quite enjoyed the first episode. I was thinking pretty much the opposite: Maybe if I'd read the book this would make sense.
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Dec 18, 2015 09:19
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buddhanc posted:Maybe it's a good thing that I haven't read the books because I actually quite enjoyed the first episode. Maybe I'll pick them up after the season is over, would it be worth it? A big difference so far is that the book focuses more on the schoolwork and Quentin learning how to do magic. Also he's much more of a jerk.
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Dec 18, 2015 13:20
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This was really dumb. They do all this buildup to the main guy getting into magic school and eventually he does a spell eventually despite not being told whats going on at all but hey wizards are jerks so I guess thats all fine. Then he's in his first class and the next scene he's having a panic attack because he thinks he's going to get kicked out of school for not being a good enough student. Five minutes later he's smugly lecturing his friend about the dangers of magic and how being able to do magic doesn't mean you can do magic.
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Dec 18, 2015 13:28
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What i like best about the book is that only the best of the best get to go to Brakebills, and even then magic is super hard to learn and some people just can't handle the pressure.
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Dec 18, 2015 16:46
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The Harry Potter movies and the Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell miniseries were adapted much more faithfully--like 80%-90% word-for-word with very few changes. Lev Grossman is so flattered that somebody adapted his books that he's become too much of an apologist for them. I agree wholeheartedly that this series is suffering from time compression. Julia's ordeal seems greatly minimized in this adaptation; she's basically introduced into the safehouse scene without ever having to discover it for herself. Her life is supposed to be a massive downward spiral for months, getting worse and worse, until she is on a bunch of psych meds and at the brink of giving up the idea of magic entirely before she discovers the hedge magicians. It's strange how her mental health issues were transplanted onto Quentin in the tv series, and Quentin's white-sparks-from-fingertips were transplanted onto Julia. It's also super weird that hedge magicians initiate each other by attempting to rape newbies in bathrooms until their powers manifest--that ain't in the books. Badass telepath Penny is a screenwriter's crutch. The psychic voices he hears are the screenwriter's stage directions telling him what to do next to advance the plot. In the books, Penny has no psychic powers, and is basically a goon, which is way funnier. Also this version of Alice is a high-strung bitch version of Hermoine, rather than the painfully shy traumatized girl in the books. The actor who plays Quentin does a good job, and so does the actor who plays Eliot. It's too bad Quentin is portrayed as kind of dumb in this adaptation; he's supposed to be a masochistic overachiever who needs to prove he's smarter than everybody else. That's why he, Alice, and Penny get bumped up a year. I loved the Beast scene; just wished it could have gone on for longer. In the books, it's supposed to have lasted for an agonizing amount of time, and The Beast is supposed to have done more weird poo poo (which will make sense later) like smashing the clocks in the room. I'm curious to watch the entire series and see how it all turns out.
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Dec 18, 2015 18:19
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I suspect the second episode will start with the second half of the Beast scene.
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Dec 18, 2015 18:55
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Escape Addict posted:The Harry Potter movies and the Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell miniseries were adapted much more faithfully--like 80%-90% word-for-word with very few changes. Lev Grossman is so flattered that somebody adapted his books that he's become too much of an apologist for them. You are 100% correct and said all of it better than I could. What else are you reading right now?
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Dec 18, 2015 21:51
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Cast Iron Brick posted:The way the interview scene happened is upsetting. The entire point of the scene in the books is to establish the subtle, glitchy way that magic works. Quentin making a magical Harry Potter card tornado kind of goes against that in a n intentional way. The Magicians posted:With two hands together, as if he were releasing a dove, he tossed the deck of cards lightly up to the ceiling. The deck broke apart and scattered in flight, like a meteorite losing cohesion in the atmosphere, and as the cards fluttered back down to earth they stacked themselves on the tabletop. They formed a house of cards. It was a recognizable, if impressionistic, model of the building they were sitting in. The cards fell as if by chance, but each one perfectly, snapping into place magnetically, edge to edge, one after other. The last two, the aces of spades and hearts, leaned up against each other to make the roof over the clock tower. There's a lot changed from the books but that wasn't one of the changes! They did eliminate most of the rest of the interview leading up to Quentin being frustrated enough that he was able to unleash the magical Harry Potter tornado. That's okay enough really, they're going for a faster pace than the novels. It feels much too fast and I hope they slow it down, but a subtle coin trick and a bunch of random tasks he's asked to perform aren't bad cuts to make.
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Dec 18, 2015 23:02
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parasyte posted:There's a lot changed from the books but that wasn't one of the changes! They did eliminate most of the rest of the interview leading up to Quentin being frustrated enough that he was able to unleash the magical Harry Potter tornado. That's okay enough really, they're going for a faster pace than the novels. It feels much too fast and I hope they slow it down, but a subtle coin trick and a bunch of random tasks he's asked to perform aren't bad cuts to make. I know the scene ends in the card house being stacked together. My issue was with the overblown marvel of watching this card tornado occur and Fogg looks on like he's seen the second coming. They also ommited the beginning where Quentin is doing card magic and accidentally doing actual magic in tiny, incremental bits. The Magicians plays very heavily on the tone with which it describes how magic works. I don't think the TV show is much interested in preserving this, which is probably what bugs me the most.
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Dec 19, 2015 01:39
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