Change is value neutral. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. The process of adaptation from source material to new material, from one medium to another, is tricky and complex and prone to being misunderstood by just about everyone. Books are not film, books are not television, and hell, film is not television; these are distinct media with distinct strengths and weaknesses and demands. In adapting one to another, change to the origin is necessary to suit the strengths and weaknesses and demands of the destination. The passage of time and the emergence of new social norms is another factor that deserves consideration. And of course there are the tastes and talents of the artists involved to consider. 

Any one of these points, much less all of them in tandem, serves to explain why alterations are, in the end, simply alterations, neither good nor bad in and of themselves. The question is not “Did this adaptation change anything?”, but rather “Were the changes the adaptation made to the source material beneficial, given the new medium involved? Did they enhance the source material’s strengths? Did they improve upon the source material generally? Were they true to the source material’s tone and themes? Did they make the adaptation stronger than a more direct and literal transposition from one medium to the other would have been?”

We have finally reached the end of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’s first season, helmed by J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, And we have our answers. Were the changes The Rings of Power made to J.R.R. Tolkien’s source material beneficial, given the new medium involved? No, they were not. Did they enhance the source material’s strengths? No, they did not. Did they improve upon the source material generally? No, they did not. Were they true to the source material’s tone and themes? No, they were not. Did they make the adaptation stronger than a more direct and literal transposition from one medium to the other would have been? No, they did not.

I reviewed the season finale of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power for Decider. As I say in the review, this show was a crushing disappointment.

Human, humane, and absolutely thrilling on a genre level, Andor, like Interview with the Vampire and House of the Dragon, proves that nerd-franchise filmmaking on television can be real television, with real stakes and real characters and real motivations and real complexities that can’t be resolved with a visit to the wiki. I’m so glad it exists.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Andor for Decider.

I spoke with Jeet Heer about Andor for his podcast The Time of Monsters at The Nation! Listen here!

Stefan Sasse and I review House of the Dragon episode eight in the new Boiled Leather Audio Hour, available here or wherever you get your podcasts!

I’ve once again updated my weekly House of the Dragon character guide for Vulture to reflect the events of the most recent episode. Check it out!

Olivia, I’ve seen a lot of debate over the end of this episode, when Viserys mistakes Alicent for Rhaenyra and tells her about his ancestor Aegon the Conqueror’s prophecy of a messianic “Prince That Was Promised.” She mistakenly believes Viserys is referring to their son, Aegon. Does she fully believe it, or is she hearing what she wants to hear?

COOKE We spoke a lot about this. There was a massive amount of relief when Alicent told Rhaenyra, “You will make a great queen.” She’s so over the fighting and having this ball of bitterness and anxiety in her stomach: Just let it go, Rhaenyra is the heir, this is fine.

When Viserys says that, I genuinely think she thinks he’s talking about Aegon, her son. And I think she’s furious. She’s like, “After all that?” But Viserys is on his deathbed; that’s what he requested, and so she must follow it through. Whether that’s unconscious wishful thinking, I don’t know, but that’s how I played it.

Emma, this is shifting gears pretty dramatically, but there’s a video clip of you telling Olivia that your favorite drink is “a Negroni Sbagliato with prosecco in it” that went viral on TikTok and Twitter and inspired a numberofarticles. Is this something you’re aware of?

D’ARCY I thought it’d be quite funny to be drinking one right now, but I’m not. [Laughs.] I keep thinking I should tell my mum that I’ve become a meme in the hope that she’ll be happy for me, but I’d have to explain what a meme is, and I’ve decided it’s too much effort.

I feel so embarrassed. Because in those interviews, when we’ve been at it for six hours, I’m honestly only trying to make Olivia laugh.

COOKE [Laughs.] Is that right?

D’ARCY No, I’m obviously doing Campari’s next campaign.

COOKE I’d be like, “Ten million pounds, please!”

I interviewed House of the Dragon stars Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke for the New York Times.

The sense of humor brought to this fine adaptation of Anne Rice’s goth classic by showrunner Rolin Jones, writers Jonathan Ceniceroz and Dave Harris, and ace TV director Alan Taylor is undoubtedly a pleasant surprise, but it’s one of many. Simply put, this show is a cavalcade of delights, some dark and some less so. Blood and horror exist on the same plane as sex and sensuality; flashes of piercing insight into the human condition rival those into the inhuman condition; sharp commentary on race, sexuality, and even the grim toll of the pandemic is there to be found alongside jokes about eating babies. In other words, this is good, good shit.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Interview with the Vampire for Decider.

The bad news first: American Gigolo Episode 5 (“The Escape Wheel”) is easily the least good of the lot thus far. The tone is sappy, the plot is creaky, the characters turn at the drop of a dime, and there’s no sex to speak of. If you thought the American Gigolo concept would suffer when removed from the antiseptic gaze of original writer-director Paul Schrader, this installment makes your case.

I reviewed this week’s episode of American Gigolo for Decider.

Yet the show’s decision to utilize the Ice and Fire prophecy to once again weaponize Alicent against Rhaenyra, mere hours after they reconcile, is a much tougher sell. It’s possible Alicent is just hearing what she wants to, deliberately ignoring her dying husband’s obvious confusion and dementia because his garbled words match what she still desires. But if it turns out that she sincerely believes she and her son are the chosen ones, it replaces so much of the show’s careful character work with the blunt force of fantasy, a shaky foundation for the divided House. We’ll steer clear of issuing our own prophecies on the matter, though, preferring instead to just stay tuned.

I reviewed tonight’s episode of House of the Dragon for Rolling Stone.

Stefan Sasse and I return with our regularly scheduled weekly series, focusing on this week’s episodes Andor and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, both Patreon exclusives! Subscribe and listen!

I’m fond of saying that when it comes to adapting a work of art from one medium to another, “change” is value neutral. The mere fact that something is different in the TV or movie version than it was in the book is not an artistically or aesthetically meaningful thing in and of itself; what matters is whether the change improves the adaptation or weakens it. In all the cases outlined above, I cannot for the life of me figure out how altering these basic facts of the agreed-upon timeline of Tolkien’s Middle-earth improves anything. They make the story less coherent, they substitute bait-and-switch character disappearances and deaths for actual meaningful developments, they flummox hardcore Tolkien nerds like me while, I suspect, adding nothing of particular interest to newbies and casuals. 

Disa’s fire, Durin and Elrond’s friendship, the Stranger’s isolation, Elendil’s quiet dignity: This is where The Rings of Power’s power lies, not in turning Galadriel into a badass or pretending Isildur is dead or acting like we in the audience have no idea what and where Mordor is. (And btw, if you must treat the Mordor reveal as a reveal, why not have Adar proclaim the new name and then end the episode, instead of using that goofy “THE SOUTHLANDS/MORDOR” text to do it?) None of this is a dealbreaker of course; plenty of shows have rebounded from weak first seasons to achieve goodness, even greatness. It’s just hard to imagine a show with this kind of money behind it, these resources, the attention of the Eye of Bezos Himself, being granted the room to grow and breathe and change. I fear that what you see is what you get, no matter which eye you’re looking through.

I reviewed this week’s episode of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power for Decider.

I love Laenor. He’s a wonderful guy in a terrible situation. I was thrilled watching him get away. I’ve had so many lovely messages from people; someone told me they whooped when he escaped. Like, they cheered.

I did, too!
I’m so pleased! I remember Miguel saying, “No one gets to be happy in Westeros for very long.” It’s amazing that there’s this moment of relief.The escape was one of the first things I did. It was a really stormy day, and we were out in the ocean in this massive hundred-year-old boat, which was both exciting and terrifying. To see it in the context of the episode was really gratifying.

But, of course, this is Westeros, and there’s no such thing as a completely happy ending. In order for Laenor to get away, that poor Velaryon servant had to get murdered by Daemon so they’d have a decoy.
[Laughs] Oh, God. You’re a very moral, empathetic person. And now I feel deeply ashamed that I did not grieve for that poor member of the working classes who was collateral damage so that Laenor might have a shot at a decent life.

I interviewed House of the Dragon‘s John Macmillan for Vulture.

I don’t know how else to say it about Andor: It is just flabbergasting to hear genuinely adult ideas and witness genuinely adult character dynamics in a Star Wars project. Rogue One is an antecedent of course, and I think some of the very early scenes in the original Star Wars — Luke arguing with his aunt and uncle, concerns about work and the harvest, politics as a threatening but distant cloud — have a similar vibe. But to see it on this scale, consistently, is just amazing.

Now, I totally get if it’s not for you. It might not be the kind of Star Wars you want. You might simply be sick of Star Wars in general or post-Lucas Disney Star Wars in particular. But man, get a load of this dialogue from this week’s episode:

“It’s so confusing, isn’t it? So much going on, so much to say, and all of it happening so quickly. The pace of oppression outstrips our ability to understand it, and that is the real trick of the Imperial thought machine. It’s easier to hide behind 40 atrocities than a single incident.”

My dudes, come on. Come on. Does this sound like a reality we’re familiar with or what?

(And yes, I understand the irony of an oppressive corporate entity like Disney presenting us with a ferociously anti-oppression message like that. But Too Old to Die Young and The Underground Railroad, respectively perhaps the most ferociously, brutally anti-cop and anti-racist works of art I’ve ever seen, were both funded by Jeff Bezos. Ooh, baby baby, it’s a wild world.)

I reviewed this week’s quietly remarkable episode of Andor for Decider.

My HotD Character Guide for Vulture has received its biggest update yet! Come check out who the hell all these people are and what the hell all these people are doing!

All in all it’s a marvelously melodramatic production. The prose of creator Rolin Jones’s script is defiantly purple. The costumes and sets are lavish and decadent. Anderson and Reid are mesmerizingly attractive, a key component of Rice’s legendarium. Director and Game of Thrones vet Alan Taylor knows his way around torchlit period pieces, that’s for sure. Daniel Hart’s score is like something out of Old Hollywood. Hell, they even put ominous thunderclaps in the background during Lestat’s assault on the church and conversion of Louis into the undead. 

Of course, you have to be willing to go with all that kind of stuff to get anything out of the show. Which, I think, is a price of admission worth asking for, if not paying. Any show that’s really intent on adapting the vibe of Anne Rice’s sublimely arch, hypersensual books — even if it’s changing the time frame and, rather crucially to the story, the race of one of the protagonists — has to be willing to go there, to leave taste behind and go over the top with, well, pretty much everything. You can either stomach that sort of thing or not.

I certainly can. I’m excited to see a vampire show made with such evident craft and care, instead of the umpteenth show about teenage vampires trying to make it through Vampire High or whatever. I’m excited to see a vampire show that presents vampires as both thoroughly awful — whatever else he is, Lestat is an egomaniacal dickhead murderer — and completely irresistible once they have you in their clutches. I’m even excited to have a horror show on TV that is more about vibes than raw terror or pitch-black bleakness, one more indebted to Bram Stoker’s Dracula than 28 Days Later or Under the Skin. And I’m excited to see any show this relentlessly, bombastically horny. These are notes worth playing, and based on this performance, I’m willing to listen.

I reviewed the delightful series premiere of Interview with the Vampire for Decider.

Looking over my notes on the episode, I’m struck by, well, how struck I was by Julian and Sunday’s kindness toward strangers. Even while fucked up on booze and coke, Julian personally carried that dog to the vet, made sure his owner knew where he was, and footed the bill for the pup’s treatment. He’s just as careful with Anne’s feelings as he is with the dog’s physical well-being. And even though his mother initially fled Sunday, the detective waits until she returns, carefully nurses her back to health, and apologizes for wrongfully accusing Julian of the murder he went to prison for. Underneath their diametrically opposed (and morally dubious, depending on your point of view) jobs, they’re both decent people.

And again, the show plays to O’Donnell’s strengths as a comedian in particular. She’s hilarious when Isabelle gives her a drink that’s more fruit than water. She’s hilarious when she tries and instantly, I mean within five seconds, fails to chase his mother into the desert. (“Stop running! Slow down!” she hollers at the fleeing woman as she herself, you guessed it, slows down and stops running.) She’s hilarious with Paloma, as she repeats the reasons she doesn’t have a partner either at work or in life verbatim: “I’m cranky, I’m set in my ways, and I like to work alone.”

As for Bernthal, the dude gets seriously sexy in this episode too — a less surprising element of the show than the kindness or the comedy, perhaps, but a vital one. I loved the way he instinctively smiled when he said “Hi” to Anne during their first phone conversation, as if his ladykiller charm cannot be switched off even when he’s alone. The sex scene in the bathroom is both hot and, well, kind of disgusting, as hot things can sometimes be; Anne winds up in bare feet, one of them resting on the toilet seat, as they bang against the wall. 

I reviewed tonight’s episode of American Gigolo for Decider.

A CHILD RUNS across the moonlit sands. As the stars shine down into the ocean nearby, the boy approaches a dragon asleep on the beach — Vhagar, massive and ancient, the largest and oldest animal in Westeros. Determined to seize what he feels is his birthright, he braves the beast’s searching eyes and fiery gullet, climbing up the rope ladder to its back dozens of feet off the ground. Commanding the creature in an ancient tongue, he drives it into the sky, taking flight at long last. The boy shakes, tumbles, hangs on for dear life…but in the end, he stays in control. A child, commanding the most dangerous thing in the world.

That’s the mythic imagery and power around which this episode of House of the Dragon (“Driftmark”) centers: young Aemond Targaryen, the second male offspring of King Viserys — the son and heir of nothing in particular, as the old song goes — seizing control of his late aunt Laena Velaryon’s legendary reptilian steed. If only it were all this poetic and magical. Unfortunately for Houses Targaryen and Velaryon, Laena’s funeral and the events that follow mostly play out like a slow-rolling disaster. Alliances are formed, old friendships are severed forever, and the realm will likely never be the same.

In other words, it’s a royal family gathering in Westeros. What else did you expect?

I reviewed tonight’s episode of House of the Dragon for Rolling Stone.

…is now available for your perusal on my Patreon! Go subscribe and see what the hell I’m on about!

My Illustrious Co-Host Stefan Sasse and I continue our breakneck podcasting pace with new Patreon-exclusive episodes on The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Episode 6 (disappointing!) and Andor Episode 4 (invigorating!). Go subscribe and check ’em out!

Offered the job on House of the Dragon before she knew how many life stages and child actors the casting would require, James began with the older performers. “We cast the elder generation, Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke, first,” Condal notes. “The challenge was in finding two young actors who not only had an ability that measured up to Olivia and Emma’s considerable talents, but who also looked like them.”

“You cast Emma, who is in my mind one of the most extraordinary actors of their generation; that was a slow process, as you can imagine,” James elaborates. “Once you get them cast, you say, ‘Can you send me pictures of Emma when they were younger?’ That informs and steers you.” Fortunately, James had a young actor in mind.“I’d already seen Milly in Upright, and I met her when she was in London when she was about 18,” James continues. “The luck is that when you cast Emma, I suddenly went, ‘Oh my God, Milly is a doppelgänger.’”

Similar synchronicity took place with the casting of Alicent, though other factors were at play. “We were blessed that Emily has an almost identical profile and demeanor” to Cooke, James says. “There was a bit of worry at one point because Emily had to have a scene where she’s in bed with Paddy, who’s 47, and she’s 18. She had just turned 16, I think, when we cast her; I thought, Oh God, should we be casting so young? And we said, ‘Yes, because that’s the point. That is the cruelty of the story: These two really charming best friends are royally fucked over by their fathers and everyone around them.’”

I spoke to House of the Dragon co-creator/co-showrunner Ryan Condal and casting director Kate Rhodes James about the challenge of double (and triple) casting the show’s characters for Vulture. This was a really fun and informative piece to put together, and I hope you enjoy it!