ArithonUK

Rings of Power & Wheel of Time are not a high bar. Both series were objectively awful. Mainly trailer-bait for PRIME subscriptions. WoT took an epic book series and cannibalised the source material to make a race-swapped lesbian melodrama that destroyed all the original character arcs & core story. RoP is just as unwatchable. It's a study in "where the hell did all that money go?".

So of Vox Machina is anything less than total crap, then it's flying compared to those two.

The second and third series share more of the spirit of the books, but the race-swapping, plot & character alterations massively undermine the story. Are "modern audiences" all sex-obsessed with ADHD?

Armand (Amadeo) was a 17 year old red head from Eastern Europe. The irony in Interview with the Vampire is when Louis seeks an elder vampire, he finds the eldest at 500 years old is a cherub-faced boy!

Louis' race-swap & character changes from a lonely wounded, guilt-ridden individual seeking to recover his lost humanity, into a sex-crazed gay black man driven mostly by revenger & bitterness doesn't work.

Which raises the topic of the sex. Spoiler (because the writers didn't read the books) Vampires can't have sex. They're dead & sexless. All vampire relationships are platonic. The ENTIRE plot of the fourth Anne Rice book is that Lestat is tempted by the body-thief and tricked into a human body so he can experience food, drink & SEX once again. And bowel movements. Yes. Vampires do not pee either. They've destroyed the lore of the franchise & rendered the fourth book pointless. All so Louis could be gay.

Then there's Daniel. Described as "the boy" in book 1, turned by Armand who is lonely & lost, looking for an anchor in the current century. Their relationship was more sado-masochistic than romantic.

Sam's portrayal of Lestat is the best so far committed to film, although he's almost 20 years older than the character, who is a 20 year old, six foot tall, blonde French nobleman. Infinitely better than 5'7 brunette New Yorker though...

Marius, Armand's maker is depicted in his debut as a bored baby sitter, dumping his charge on Lestat. Gone is Lestat's quest for Marius ending in his going into the earth, then Marius' taking him to the island with his servants & stylised crypt. Marius the wise, patient mentor, crushed by centuries of burden is now an idiot who left Enkel in the sun by mistake!

It was entertaining enough as a film, but a by-the-numbers fetch quests with very little in the way of character or world building outside of Supergirl. You could have removed Ruthye from the film and nothing would change. She kept squeaking out her "You killed my parents prepare to die!" speech, but Inigo Montoya she was not.

Action was good. Lobo was fun. But the whole "only one person on Krypton can make a spaceship" logic hurt my brain, since for the rest of the film, every girl and their dog were planet-hopping to worlds where EVERYONE had heard of Krypton and had Kryptonite weapons just laying around...

Definitely a "so the plot could happen" argument for Pitch Meeting.

Good, but not $300M good.

Would have been great if they'd run for five series, but they canned it after one, incomplete story arc.

So don't bother as just when it starts to become engaging, it just stops. And you'll never get any resolution.

Typical Netflix.

This is essentially then a remake of Robin and Marian (1976) without the romance, just the original title "The Death of Robin Hood" which was renamed by Columbia to make it more marketable. Presumably following more closely the tale from "A Gest of Robyn Hode" where Robin met his end by his kinswoman, the Prioress of Kirkley, who let him bleed to death. The 1976 film swapped his kinswoman for Marian & poison for blood-letting.

They'll spend $58M per episode on a crap series that pisses all over the Lord of the Rings lore/fans, but won't spend $10M per episode on a series with an existing fanbase, made by the original writers/producers? Because it's too much risk/cost? Amazon Prime subscription is one step closer to cancellation. I don't buy THAT many parcels per month...