I was going to fork out for AMC access on Amazon, however now I'm not for two reasons, one small and unrelated and one big and very related.
I forked out for the Veronica Mars movie without an alternative option. I've never done a streaming rental, I just foolishly lost money on some Buffy seasons and a couple of Hal movies. Watching streaming via iTunes was the worst as the application itself forced you to click on an alert for every episode to acknowledge you were aware it was adult content, and there was no way to turn it off. I cancelled my free Apple TV subscription from my iPhone because I watched two movies and nothing else, there was also no search function, I assumed because they could cram all their content on one page and do that stupid trick where they split one show's banner across multiple buttons to give the illusion of having more content.
Amazon also lamely uses this trick for each season of a series. It's also annoying. Not only that, as we decided to watch the Veronica Mars movie in two parts, when I went to reload the movie at the halfway point, the main computer we use wouldn't load it, not even on a different application. I wound up using my laptop's HDMI and plugged the speakers into the laptop. It was ridiculous, the quality was bad because of it and I was so annoyed. I doubt they'd refund me.
I also really did want to re-read the Witching Hour. Without any ebook or even a shitty pdf, I decided to fix my paperback with tape and was even going to revert into 15 year old me and walk around with it in my bag. It's battered to shit because I took it to school. And I've not read it since school. But I did read it.
AMC's trailers looked relatively promising, however I saw differences. I assumed a black character was Aaron Lightner, and I was fine with this, but as it happens, he's a completely new character construct of Michael Curry and Aaron. (Also, making Michael black would also be okay despite him being Irish Catholic, I think). So, he's a Talamascan agent who has Michael's psychic powers and rather than have him rescued by Rowan, he's instead assigned to keep an eye on her. He wears the gloves and supposedly they're supposed to have a romance. Why? Because the creators weren't given enough space to adapt the whole book. Yes, it's a big book and you likely don't know if you can adapt the other two yet, but they've decided to just do what they want with the whole story and make it its own thing. And it didn't get rave reviews. One of the actors also admitted he couldn't get through the 50+ hour audio book, and I get it, but again, I read the book and I am honestly starting to think nobody involved in any of this read the book. Or the other books. Given Interview the series seemed to be more obsessed with the movie and whatever the movie did not do, having a complete lack of visual representation for the Witching Hour makes this seem to me like, oh we have the rights, just do something with it. And if Anne's not around to gripe, there's no memory to honour. I think Chris and the estate are just happy to have the royalty checks, but I personally thought Chris would fight for more integrity of the material. For all the celebration there seemed to be about the two Chronicles falling into "safe" hands, this is a depressing result. They boasted they had access to this huge catalogue of characters only to go, "Crap, too many. Let's Frankenstein a couple instead."
Fine, we don't have the fucking fan numbers and online presence of younger vampire series, I get it. But even Vampire Diaries is late millennial shit, not recent. I know the books are set in the deep south but again the fear of appearing too racist seems to motivate AMC more to avoid rebuke from audiences. If it's not dedicated at all to the books, why are we bothering? I think they've always known they could do whatever. All I can imagine is them picking up Witching Hour, flicking through it, tossing it to find the Wikipedia entry then still going, fuck it there's too much going on, too many characters, too much history (yes, yes and yes), we have to do our own thing. We'll make one new character out of two, we'll make a necklace with an emerald a key (whatever, Lasher didn't need a key it was one of those metaphysical things, I think the idea was they thought 13 witches had to be physically present, not it's the 13th witch), we'll make Lasher a rockstar and not a literal man baby. We'll shorten the age gaps between major characters. What else can we do? The book's mid section is a slog because it's a history lesson. I did struggle with it. But there are a decent amount of main points. Julian being a major player is worth exploring, he's a captivating, conniving character and the only male witch in the family. I think it was more, "We can't dwell in the past, we don't have the money for the historical set pieces, (maybe they overspent on Interview or maybe in both cases they were forcing modernity into every space again for budget reasons, the creator of Interview said AMC invested a lot.). I think they just absolutely bought the whole package without looking into the scope of these two series. There's no way in hell now they would adapt anything from the Vampire Lestat, another missing ebook, because there's too fucking much.
I did realise waiting to read Imajica now wasn't as great a feat because I'd gotten through Witching Hour and the two other books, and Great and Secret Show during high school (when I also wrote a lot more. I also earnestly tried to read all the Narnia books but Dawn Treader is boring and I skipped Silver Chair to go read the Rapture allegory). I'd rather see no adaptation than one that simply exists because you greenlit a project that was too big. It's infuriating there are more Lord of the Rings movies being put out after all this time, people are flocking to Amazon for it. Doesn't make it right.
I'll skip the shit out of the Mayfair series. I read the Wikipedia plot synopses and just could see maybe five percent of what I knew from the books. Otherwise, it's entirely different. I was fine them not casting a blonde for Rowan but from the trailer she's also just a dumb ingenue, even if the character wiki saying she's smart and intuitive. Rowan is very cold and unable to trust others, she's Lasher's main victim and she's ultimately brainwashed. But maybe they got to that bit where she effectively births Lasher and makes him her lover. I don't remember a Jojo (maybe there's a Josephine, for a second I thought it was Mona's stand in. Do you want to meet Mona? Is she going to fuck the Michael/Aaron character? It won't make for any wincest.) I think there was a family who were a threat to the Mayfairs and in this they're witch hunters, but from memory I thought they were an earlier version of the Talamasca. I'm sure they were perfectly aware the book is heavily dependent on incest (to the point I think it's inferred Rowan and Michael are blood relatives) but if they considered it too much, again, why do it? Also, Lasher's supposed to be a big walking baby, I think they just wanted a generic demon-looking guy who could do a Scottish accent. I also doubt we'll get that giant/dwarf rape orgy that brought about the Taltos. I had in my head the dwarf and the massive woman from Game of Thrones type scenario but honestly I don't think she's tall enough. Maybe there is more in this but Lasher is more than a shapeshifter, I think they didn't know how to really visually represent him as a specter.
After watching Jacob Anderson give himself a milk bath, I really lost faith these adaptations were made of love and only obligation. If they fail overall, which they may, I won't be disappointed. The books ended so badly, Rowan vanishes from existence, vampires are supposed to be from Atlantis. Aliens. Everything ends in a big old mess. But it would've been cool to see a good version of Marius and Armand. Or a decent version of Queen of the Damned.
Reading the Wiki for AMC's version of Claudia, she's 14 and saved from a fire, she's put with an abusive aunt by her father after her mother dies in childbirth, and both Louis and Lestat turn her to save her life. Interestingly, they let her have the diary Jesse later finds. They (the writers) give her a boyfriend she accidentally kills while making out with him and daddy Lestat refuses to turn him and forces her to watch the boy burn as punishment. (Okay, that's a cruel and interesting way to pit her against Lestat, but I think she's totally cool with them turning her and being her gay dads.) Meanwhile this is a real line of dialogue referring to her realisation she's trapped in a child's body: she has to remain as a "flat chested, hairless-crotched 14-year-old baby doll body as her mind and spirit turned 19, 20, 25, 63, 358." (Child labor laws meant they couldn't cast younger, but at least they understood who she was to Anne.) Claudia coming to terms with this in the books is supposed to be a tragic story as she gets older. The way Kirsten Dunst pulled this off in the original film was astounding. This version's coming off as her being a recalcitrant teen who's forced to run away to grow up and there's little fight to keep her in her place or stop her from going on a killing spree.
Her misadventures killing people end more catastrophically for the family and she runs away to find her own companion. She disappears much like how Gabrielle does on Lestat, has her own problems in the real world with other vampires in modern times then comes back to New Orleans. I'm skim reading but apparently she and Louis have to telepathically plot Lestat's murder because Lestat demands they all remain together. Her plot is the same, she kills brothers who have character names with laudanum to stun Lestat, who has a companion made up from nowhere (again, more characters they had to invent because they bevy of choices they had were worthless) who was supposed to spy on Claudia and Louis, only Claudia was on to her anyway. Whether this singer character is a replacement for the musician boy Lestat turns to take care of him later on, I guess she plays a bigger part, doesn't really matter. I thought maybe she was also Madelaine, Claudia's replacement mother, but she's just a woman Lestat hooks up with. Again, who cares? NONE OF THIS IS ANYWHERE IN THE FUCKING BOOK. SO WHAT IS THE GODDAMN POINT? Oh, but we used a lot of dialogue you'll remember. So? We put the essence of the characters in. So???
I'm sorry, these elements could've just been in another show. You had a treasure trove of characters to use. You were so happy with your acquisition. I am so fucking confused you boasted this as being such a great opportunity until you went to actually do it and decided, fuck it. It just has fuck it written all over it.
Every network wanted their big adaptation, AMC blew up from Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul is a fucking masterpiece. Okay, give the good writers an existing IP with good material to chew on. Watch them take a bite and instead spit it out and make their own show. Why? Okay here's an interesting quote from one of the writers who promised the fans they could kick his shins at comic-con if they don't like
"To be perfectly frank, I didn’t know how to tell the plantation owner story. I wasn’t going to be the writer to do it"
It's not that hard a story to tell. It's not even a convoluted book. It's more a series of major events like a life story usually is. He didn't want to touch anything remotely racist. And Daniel is older in this show because the original interview was somehow interrupted and Louis purposefully reconnects with Daniel later because he was too dumb as a boy not to ask "cutting questions". Jesus, it wasn't the point. Louis offers Daniel his life story, there's very little "interviewing" involved. I think they made mistakes and I'm not sure where this is going, I only know I don't want to know and I'll save my money.
I only realised now my fixations went from My Little Pony to The Vampire Chronicles only to go back into My Little Ponies.
I went to check out the Google reviews and they pretty much back up my points above. Nobody agreed with amalgamating key characters, Rowan is just an ingenue, her being a neurosurgeon was a huge part of the story and her examinations of Lasher, her demeanor is a major part of her being the heroine, she's still so headstrong which makes Lasher's seduction all the more intense. Lasher's influence is much more nuanced and sinister, apparently this is just making him out to be a trickster demon. It really isn't related to the book at all beyond names and location. I forgot Carlotta isn't a crazy religious person, she's the astute lawyer of the family, the women are supposed to be more sophisticated, I think they just watched American Horror Story Coven and ripped it off, even in terms of filming it does look derivative, and perhaps too colourful. The house is supposed to be much more dilapidated and the pool is a mess, they clearly just found a house that was in the Garden District and went from there. The locations for Anne's stories were always characters in of themselves, I always felt so immersed in that world when I read her books, I would like to see it if I ever can, it's just that macabre atmosphere mixed with old world romance, completely anachronistic. Other people noticed it looked like an interpretation of the blurb or a Wikipedia entry, or worse, a book report. Even then, it's ignored the character portion of that report, and the story part. It just isn't what the book is at all and I think they felt safer releasing this without Anne's presence. But someone also shook their fist at the son for allowing it all. I don't think you can sue once someone owns the rights, I don't think Stephen King could do much with Lawnmower Man after the fact. Hellraiser is still closer to the original source material but I'd prefer to see a version closer to the book. Studios always come in and force changes on the material, but I think this is about as egregious as the story changes they made to the Hobbit just to make it three films. Even I was mad about that. This series will not prompt people to read the book, so it likely won't be re-released based on the show because it's nothing like the fucking show.
I went looking for reactions to Mayfair Witches, so far I've only found one person had read the books, nobody who was reacting was familiar with the texts, people who liked Interview seemed to think they'd love MW and that's so unlikely. So I've found a reader who's going on a rant I'm here for, once more I'm so glad I've not dropped money on this shit. Thankfully one other person pointed out how vampires don't fuck, finding out casual readers just assumed Lestat and Louis fucked was infuriating. Lestat doesn't have sex until Tale of The Body Thief when he's in a human body, it's a whole thing about the book. Vampires are intimate creatures who are sensual, not sexual, the drink is their sex that's the whole fucking point. You want hardcore incest fucking, you go to the Mayfair series, but according to AMC, they don't fuck as much by what I can gather. The YouTuber also pointed out Lasher's scheme is so much more involved it terms of manipulating the family in an epic long-con, it's far too complex a story to smash down into what seems to amount to a long mini-series. I don't think this will be successful long term, there's still arguing over how much input Anne had beyond signing off on the rights. I wish I knew but I feel she wasn't around when this was greenlit and that's why it's so vastly different. I've not seen a fan of the book say glowing things about it. You could've shaved off a couple of lesser characters but to annihilate two major players to merge them into a lesser character is absolutely stupid. As I said, I just got American Horror Story vibes, having seen one series that was a lot of show over substance and I hate that Asylum comes up in my brain so often despite me not watching it for ages.
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