So between house work, writing, and goofing off on the computer (rainy vacation day, ugh) I pulled up MTV's The Shannara Chronicles on Netflix. I was surprised to see it on there, and decided to watch it in the background. I have to say it surprised me quite a lot.
The costumes were quite good, and the ladies of the show looked nice, and pro/con it stayed PG.
The set building, and use of sets was also excellent, and looked strangely on par with feature films. There was CG backgrounds in places, but the graphic guys did a decent job of it, and I didn't hate it, and I hate CGI.
The monster design wasn't great, but it did a passable job.
The screenery was fantastic, most people tend to overlook that the series of books were post-apoc fantasy, and there are plenty of scenes where the characters are passing through the ruins of our world.
Casting was good, I found myself interested in the characters, and concerned about them. I read the books a loooong time ago and couldn't remember who lived, died, etc.
The make-up department hit it out of the park with their work. The elves were their own, not trying to ape Tolkien's shining elves. They were grundgy and unshaven, and not up for taking s**t off of anyone, certainly not humans.
The bad guys were bad, make-up was on point, and the use of sound and camera effects really conveyed that the Dag Modra wasn't just a baddie, but was a MAJOR baddie. Also, the bad guys used their own language, and it was subtitled. Bonus points for that.
I was quite floored by what a @!#$ing fantastic job MTV did producing an epic fantasy. It probably didn't hurt that Jon Favreau was helming itc. Manu Bennett simply kills the role of Allanon, but he has some legit film credits, including playing Azog in two of the Hobbit movies, Slade Wilson in Arrow, the Spartacus series, and even a one shot role on Xena, Warrior Princess. I'm impressed.
It has somewhat rekindled my interest in fantasy, and faith in the genre