This video is sponsored by Audible and I’ve got a really exciting audiobook to recommend
to you at the end of the video so stay tuned.
Hello my Beautiful Watchers. Sigh… Earthsea. This episode was originally just going to
be a standard episode of Lost in Adaptation, the show where I discuss the differences between
film adaptations of books to said books with the aim of seeing if they did them any semblance
of justice.
However the build up to doing it was such a rollercoaster of emotion for me I felt I
had to go into a little more depth regarding the books and the story behind this adaptation’s
creation before doing a direct comparison so that… Well to be completely honest with
you to make sure you suffer like I have suffered. Ok Let’s start at the beginning.
Ursula K Le Guin was a 20th century American author and to be frank, a total badass.
Before we go any further, if you like me are one of the people who didn’t read her books
until now then I’m going to need you to take part in a little group activity with
me. Just go ahead and raise your hand, either hand is fine then slap yourself in the face.
If you don’t have the guts to do it really hard you can do it like 4 or 5 times in rapid
succession. This is our deserved punishment for not appreciating Le Guin years ago.
In her lifetime she received six Nebulas, eight Hugos and twenty-two Locus Awards. In
2003 she became the second woman honored as a Grand Master of the Science Fiction and
Fantasy Writers of America.
Notable works include The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed which were well-received
for discussing feminism and gender politics; she created a race of people who could change
their gender at will which dismantled anyone being put down due to their sexuality or gender.
And she did this in the bloody 70s.
Le Guin’s contributions to science fiction are also not to be overlooked. In her 1966
novel Rocannon's World she came up with a fictional mathematical theory for achieving
faster than light communication that was so revered it was copied and referenced by name
by countless succeeding writers.
And if that wasn’t enough she was one of the very few populer fantasy and science fiction
writers of her time to consistently write people of colour as her books main protagonists.
And that wasn't easy. She had to fight for it.
"Gradually I got a little more clout, a little more say-so about covers. And very, very,
very gradually publishers may be beginning to lose their blind fear of putting a nonwhite
face on the cover of a book.
“Hurts sales, hurts sales” is the mantra. Yeah, so? On my books, Ged with a white face
is a lie, a betrayal—a betrayal of the book, and of the potential reader.”
So this is what stanning feels like. I did wonder.
I swear now that I’ve experienced some of her novels I can see the massive influence
she had on the fantasy genre.
I’m kind of surprised and sad that Le Guin isn’t as commonly mentioned with the other
famous authors of the 20th century as she deserves to be. I know a lot of my lack of
knowledge of her was a personal failing hence my self inflicted punishment but I do feel
she’s not talked about enough.
One of her most popular fantasy series of books was Earthsea, also sometimes known as
the Earthsea cycle and the Tales of Earthsea.
It all began with A Wizard of Earthsea in 1968 and was followed by The Tombs of Atuan
in 1971, and The Farthest Shore in 1972.
They chronicle, amongst other things, the life and adventures of an uber talented wizard
by the name of Ged as he travels a fantasy world dealing with problems on both a cosmic
and deeply personal scale.
Despite what the speed of their release might imply, none of the books are direct sequels.
All three are stand alone stories either starring or heavily involving Ged but with almost completely
disconnected plots set decades apart from each other.
Just in case it wasn’t clear, Earthsea is the name of the world the story takes place
on as well the name of the series and the wonderful uniqueness of said Earthsea world
is a major draw of the books.
For starters it's a word that lacks any major land masses, just a crap ton of small to medium
sized islands and as such provides an interesting look at how iron age societies might develop
around such a universal dependence on sea travel.
None of the major nations seem to be direct allegories of any real world countries, not
that there’s anything wrong with allegorical books. It's just nice to have some variety
sometimes.
Probably its single greatest feature though is the magic system Le Guin devised.
When it comes to Wizardry, the majority of pseudo medieval fantasy stories tend to draw
pretty heavily from English folklore and Arthurian legends.
Le Guin chose to incorporate a lot more inspiration from Native American and Norse culture, along
with a ton of Taoist philosophy.
Magic in Earthsea also works on the True Name/Power of Names idea and while Le Guin didn’t invent
this out of thin air, it's a mythology that dates as far back as ancient Greece and Egypt,
it cannot be overstated how creatively and intelligently she applied its use to her world.
The idea is that everything that exists has a true name, that sometimes even they don’t
know and if you can learn a thing’s true name it gives you a great deal of power over
that thing.
As a result like 99% of wizard-training is spent memorizing the true names of objects
so you can channel your magic into affecting them.
I think I’m actually retroactively even angrier at Ergon now that I know this was
another thing Paolini copy-pasted from a better story.
The importance of maintaining balance is a constant theme of the Earthsea magic system.
It's never said in so explicitly scientific words but Wizards have to always keep in mind
that the ecosystem of the world is the way it is for a reason and messing with it can
have dire consequences.
Yes you could use a spell to drive away the rain cloud and have a nice sunny day to enjoy…
But do it enough times and your homeland might find itself in pretty dire straits when all
their crops die off from drought.
Twenty years after finishing the trilogy Le Guin wrote a follow up book to the series,
Tehanu the last book of Earthsea. I believe it was intended to be like the Legend of Korra
of the series.
Set twenty years after the end of the last story this book told of the life of Tenar,
the POV character from The Tombs Atuan.
Amusingly Le Guin decided to revisit Earthsea yet again in 2001 and rendered the last book’s
subtitle ironic by writing The Other Wind, with a completely new protagonist called Alder.
In addition these the main 5 books Le Guin wrote 9 short stories set in the same world.
Beautiful Watchers, these books are so good. They’re just awesome. They gave me the same
sense of fantastical wonder as The Lord of the Rings but I think with a slightly more,
personal journey focus and dare I say it possibly a little easier to get through.
They’re exciting, they’re scary. they’re interesting, they’re emotional, they’re
thoughtful and they’re just a whole lot of fun to read.
Le Guin wasn’t afraid to write a flawed character and she has a real talent for character
growth as well. You can tell it's the same Ged in every story but you also feel how the
decades between the books have changed him, made him stronger, wiser, less impulsive.
In 2006 the world famous Japanese animation studio, Studio Ghibli produced a feature length
adaptation of Earthsea, drawing from an approximation of the plots of all the books except for the
5th and final one.
This is not the adaptation I’m reviewing today and I’m sorry if that’s disappointing
but Studio Ghibli is fanatically protective of its copyrighted footage. To this day they
remain the only company that’s ever given me a copyright strike and forced me to take
a video off Youtube completely.
Or so they think. Ahem Howl’s Moving Castle Patreon exclusive, link in the video description.
What? I didn’t say anything. What?
This film is generally considered to be one of Studio Ghibli's weaker movies. It didn’t
underperform or anything but it seems to be somewhat a victim of poorly holding up when
compared to the studios other productions.
Le Guin charibitly said that it was a very visually pleasing movie, but definitely not
a faithful adaptation of her work.
That said… It was undoubtedly still a massive, massive improvement on the first attempt which
took place in 2004. The Legends of Earthsea TV mini series on the sci fi channel.
I hope you can take my word for it that I am not being overly dramatic when I say that
Legend of Earthsea is..the worst adaptation of a really good book that I’ve ever seen.
It edges out I, Robot and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Even Artemis Fowl comes
out ahead of this mess.
Sigh, let's start at the beginning again.
Le Guin was promised A LOT to sign over the rights to Earthsea by the purchasing production
company hallmark entertainment.
The most relevant to her decision being that they told her they had signed Philippa Boyens,
the co-writer of the Lord of the Rings movies to write the adapted screenplay.
They also offered her a position as a consultant, with assurances she would be given a lot of
input into the writing process.
Unfortunately this and all their other promises were not officially written into the contract.
Le Guin’s agency couldn’t get them to budge on this but they managed to convince
her that they genuinely did care about her story and wanted to do right by it… Sigh….
There was apparently a very brief stall while Hallmark got backing for the mini series from
the Sci Fi channel and within that few months, a new producer had taken over the project
and they had lost Philippa Boyens.
Le Guin was then completely cut out of the process. They sent her a few copies of the
script but completely ignored any and all concerns she had about it. They had pretty
much started shooting before they mailed it to her.
Worst of all, Philippa Boyens was replaced with Gavin Scott, the guy who wrote Small
Soldiers. That has got to be the most horrifying and crushing bait and switch in human history.
Le Guin was basically forced to wait until the movie aired on television to see what
they had done to her story just like everyone else. I’ll give you the full scope of just
how colossally they failed on every level to understand her books in the next episode
but for now suffice to say it was very upsetting for her.
Shortly after it came out, Le Guin absolutely SLAYED it in an online essay that I’ll link
in the video description.
"When I looked over the script, I realized the producers had no understanding of what
the books are about and no interest in finding out.
All they intended was to use the name Earthsea, and some of the scenes from the books, in
a generic McMagic movie with a meaningless plot based on sex and violence."
The most egregious sin to her was their insistence on whitewashing the cast. As I tried to make
clear she put a lot of effort into creating heroes that represent more than just the people
who shared her skin colour and she fought so hard to be allowed not to hide that behind
misleading book covers and seeing them revert her story back to an almost exclusively white
american ensemble must have been just… Awful.
Le Guin is certainly not the first and will not be the last author to receive this kind
of treatment from a film studio but in this case it really struck a nerve with me. The
outright lies they used to get her to sign away her stories then the obvious lack of
interest they showed in it when they had it. Sigh.
If it had ANY redeeming features maybe the pill would be less hard to swallow but if
you were wondering if it was at least a good stand alone work even if it failed as an adaptation
noooo no no it's obnoxious to sit through in every conceivable way.
It's actually hard to decide if it fails more as an adaptation or a TV show but I am definitely
getting ahead of myself now we will discuss this in great detail in the next episode.
In lighter news: I am genuinely so excited to talk to you about the details of this episode's
Audible sponsorship.
Audible is an unmatched online repository of audiobooks. With membership you get a free
credit at the start of every month that can be exchanged for any audiobook on the app
regardless of price.
Now Le Guin may be a new favorite of mine but Neil Gaiman is very established in my
good books and random fun fact, unlike me HE has always been a fan of Le Guin so he
would have been excused from the synchronised slap at the start.
The Sandman is an exceptionally popular fantasy horror comic book series written by the good
Mr Gaiman. It started in 1989 and is still putting out issues monthly to this day, referred
to by The Los Angeles Times Magazine as “the greatest epic in the history of comic books”.
The reason I’m so excited is Audible has adapted the first three volumes into an exclusive
audiobook available right now for download by following the link in the video description
or by going to www.audible.com/sandman.
Just to be clear this is a full cast audio performance. Gaiman does some of the narrating
himself but he’s joined by James McAvoy, Riz Ahmed, Kat Dennings, Taron Egerton, Samantha
Morton, Bebe Neuwirth, Andy Serkis and Michael Sheen.
It's got sound effects, it's got a soundtrack, it's pretty damn epic in general.
Visit audible.com/sandman to start listening to the new Audible Original The Sandman for
free with a 30-day trial.
Thank you for joining me, my beautiful watchers. I hope you tune in next time so we can continue
down this rabbit hole of desecration of Le Guin's work together. In the meantime, if
you’d be so good as to help a fellow out with the good likes, shares, and subscribings
I’d be most appreciative. Please take care of yourselves out there. Much love.
Turn back the page to a far-gone age, before time began
From house Le Guin there came a queen, we’ve no choice but to stan
Her pen was mightier than the sword By every account one could record
She totally wrecked at the Hugo Awards Urula K Le Guin
A master grand with a dext’rous hand and words hotter than fire
The tales she told, so deft and bold they could not help but inspire
From the tongue of every poet and bard Her name was sung in the highest regard
Even earned the praise of Orson Scott Card And that guy’s a dick!
Much love and appreciation to my Patrons of honour Shelby Hotz, Sam Cucinotta and Etel
Sverdlov and special thanks to this video’s co producer Kate Robinson. Be sure to check
out her channel for more of that sweet sweet youtube content.
This episode was going to be a stand alo-ooh. Voice cracked there like I was a child. Ahem.
Welp, gonna pretend like that didn’t happen.
Go ahead and raise your hand, either hand is fine then slap yourself in the face. If
you don’t have the guts to do it really hard you can do it like 4 or 5 times in rapid
succession. Nope come on. Ow. Doing it too hard.
And there just a whole lot of fun to read-Sir Terry, do you..wh-why would you need to eviscerate
the curtains right now?
Le Guin’s-Le Guin’s constra-constrapation. Hmm.
It's a mythology that dates back as far as Ancient Gr-*gibberish*
And intelligently she applied its use to her world. *bone crack* Oh, my bones. Why..
The cats are being too noisy but they’re being too cute to throw out.
If you can learn a thing’s true name it gives you a *gibberish*
Set twenty years after *loud car drives by* … You are not what I needed right now, noisy
car-man.
And rendered the last book’s subtitle ironic by *notification ping* writing..the...other
wind. That was POORLY timed.
Wispy-woo, I love you buddy but you-you’re right..sitting right slap bang in the middle
of where I need to stand to film. You wanna be part of the show? Hmm? Figured the bloopers
wouldn’t be the same without ya, didn’t you?