First Impressions: The Pendragon Cycle
I am not a notable fan of the Daily Wire. I personally tend to view it as Instapundit with money. I ignore it for the same reason that I ignore Fox News.
While I am uninterested in its media content I’m not unaware of it It was nice that they gave Gina Carrano a movie to star in after Kathleen Kennedy and LucasFilm torched her career for political reasons.
The Ladyballers movie looked a hell of a lot like An American Carol (2008). If you don’t remember it, American Carol was that pro-Iraq War “comedy.” I saw it and I can tell that Ladyballers is cut from the same cloth. The Critical Drinker confirmed my suspicions of it being a not-terribly-funny movie that was too heavy-handed with its own THE MESSAGE to be another Dodgeball. Which is a pity because there is a huge untapped market for truly irreverent comedy. Sadly, that requires a first amendment that isn’t in pieces on the floor. I’m not going to pretend I liked something because it more or less agrees with me.
But like I said, I’m just not that interested in Daily Wire’s content.
Until now.
Daily Wire is producing a mini-series version of Stephen Lawhead’s The Pendragon Cycle.
I don’t have the option of ignoring this one.
Lawhead’s Arthurian trilogy didn’t do that well when it first came out in the 1980s. In fact, it was supposed to be a series, not a trilogy but his publisher said, ‘End it with the third book.’ However, its popularity grew with time. Enough so that Lawhead started writing more books in that world again. The books were influential in their day.
Now that I’m looking it, I can see some resemblance between Martin’s Valyria and Lawhead’s Atlantis and the survivors there of.
Truthfully I’m going off my memory and I haven’t read the books since they first came out. I may have to go through them again.
It’s possible that Daily Wire started this project as an editorial reply to Game of Thrones.
Anyway here is the first of their production diaries.
If you watch Pure Flix there are a lot of familiar faces.
I note a horrifying lack of diversity and inclusivity which is honestly kind of surprising for the Daily Wire.
Consequently, this fantasy is on the face of it succeeding at the fundamental task of creating a believable world. This world has a good chance of developing it’s own unique look, unlike the emulsion of costuming and diversity quota casting that has turned the entire genre of high fantasy into an indistinguishable, uniform glob of cliches. Rings of Power, Wheel of Time, The Witcher, Britannia, those characters can walk from one show to another and not look remotely out of place.
But I think they would in this world.
The budget isn’t as high as House of the Dragon but we aren’t talking Deathstalker either. Besides, you don’t need a huge budget these days if you spend your money wisely. Look at Godzilla Minus One.
There are a ton of ways this show can go wrong but for the moment it’s got my attention.
Developing.
