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List Price: $14.98 | | Label: Lions Gate
Salesrank: 14069
Released: March 8, 2005 |
| Our Price: $7.48 |
| Used Price: $2.34 |
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MPAA Rating: Unrated
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Based on Ursula K. Le Guin's multiple award-winning classic tale comes this richly imagined epic mini-series. In the magical world of EarthSea, the Amulet of Peace has ensured harmony between humans and dragons for centuries. But when the Amulet is broken and a piece of it disappears, it's up to a neophyte wizard to restore balance and stop a nefarious king from conquering EarthSea's islands.
Description of Earthsea:
Originally broadcast as Legend of Earthsea in December 2004, the Sci-Fi Channel's four-hour miniseries of Earthsea rides the coattails of the Lord of the Rings trilogy with its quest-driven story of humble blacksmith Ged (Shawn Ashmore), a wizard-to-be who is mentored by the magical Ogion (Danny Glover) as he seeks to preserve the realm of Earthsea from the evil King Tygath (Sebastian Roché). Ged's adventures lead him to the priestess Tenar (Kristen Kreuk, from Smallville) and with secrets shared by High Priestess Thar (Isabella Rossellini), they gain the power to prevail over Tygath. As presented by Robert Halmi Sr. (producer of Merlin, Gulliver's Travels and several other fantasy miniseries), this skeletal rendering of Earthsea boasts a wealth of digital effects and semi-lavish set design, but Ashmore's lack of charisma hampers a production already fraught with problems. It provoked the wrath of fantasy fans and a firm rejection by author Ursula K. Le Guin, who had watched helplessly (she wasn't involved or consulted) as her classic novels A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan were racially "whitewashed" (in Le Guin's words) nearly beyond recognition. As TV fantasy goes, Earthsea is admirably ambitious, but best enjoyed by those with no awareness of the classic books it is very loosely based on. --Jeff Shannon
Earthsea Reviews:
A coming-of-age story based on a great novel, but got the Hallmark treatment. 
2009-09-27 - Based on a novel by Ursula K/ La Guin, this is one of those fantasy stories with wizards, High Priestess', evil doers and magic. A young up-and-coming wizard, Ged (Shawn Ashmore) and an occasional buddy is tasked with saving their world "Earthsea" from recent bad buys and old evil ones. Meanwhile back at the temple a sister Kossil (Jennifer Calvert) with a nasty attitude and a vile of poison is trying to usurp the High priestess position from Thar (Isabella Rossellini). Will the wizard succeed in his mission? Will the slinky sister fulfill her mission?
Well costumed, fair graphics, contemporary dialog.
Before watching this story you may want to read some of Joseph Campbell's "The Hero with a Thousand Faces"
And if you are a fan of Isabella Rossellini, she has a great series of shorts called "Green Porn" It's all about bugs, fish, and other such creatures.
The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Bollingen Series)
A complete failure even on its own limited terms 
2009-07-13 - Earthsea, Hallmark and the SciFi Channel's very loose adaptation Ursula LeGuin's Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan was preceded by an incredibly bad reputation, and sadly one it richly deserves. Bearing only a passing resemblance to the source material - a young wizard unleashes an evil shadow on the world while showing off his magic - the opening narration about prophecies and amulets serves fair warning that plot has become an identikit Dungeons and Dragons effort so formulaic that most small children could probably dictate the script before they can write or even walk. So little of the novels' philosophy survives, and even less of the characters or the nature of the world LeGuin created (nearly all the characters have suddenly become white-skinned Canucks) that the title seems merely there for branding reasons. Instead we get a low-budget variation on Lord of the Rings (evil warlord seeks forbidden knowledge to rule the world) while the wizards' isle of Roke has magically turned into Hogwarts without the blazers but with the obligatory obnoxious Malfoyesque villain. Worse, the changes are executed with such a visible lack of inspiration or enthusiasm that a good two-and-a-half hours of the three-hour running time feels like treading stagnant water.
As if this weren't bad enough, the film is disastrously cast with some of the most uncharismatic performers available, half of whom ham it up while the other half read their lines as if off a cue card with particularly bad handwriting. Sebastian Roche's pantomime villain deserves special note for his ability to place curious emphasis on the wrong word in every line as if he's lost all interest in every sentence long before reaching the end. Danny Glover and Alan Scarfe fair somewhat better while the prominently billed Amanda Tapping (total screen time: 10 seconds, 5 of them out of focus) doesn't screw up her single line, though "What have you done?" isn't exactly challenging. Throw in terrible direction (mostly tight two shots), uninteresting locations shot in bad weather and derivative scoring and chances are you'll hate it almost as much as LeGuin does.
Poor Fantasy Fare 
2009-03-13 - Earthsea / B00077BPA0
*Spoilers*
I haven't read the Earthsea book that this is based on, although I do own it and intend to read it, even after suffering through this horrible adaptation, because the comments here lead me to believe that the book is far, far better. Fair enough.
Having said that, this was a pretty awful movie. Weighing in at three hours long (apparently this was originally aired in pieces on the Sci-Fi channel), this plodding cliche-ridden movie is a genuinely terrible attempt at fantasy, with only a few bright points of redemption.
To start, the audio in this movie is absolutely terrible and makes the movie unwatchable almost from the beginning. I usually note in my reviews whether a movie is packaged with captions for the hearing impaired, as I generally require captions in order to follow along with the dialogue. Earthsea is not provided with captions, which disappointed me but isn't as unusual as one might think, so I expected to simply rely on my viewing companions for the words I miss. The audio quality is so terrible, however, that even my perfect-hearing boyfriend could not discern what was being said on screen half the time. The opening narration by Glover is so garbled that, even after watching it EIGHT times in a row, all we could make out was " Earthsea Nameless Ones ". The visual effects allowed us to piece together the back story of a nunnery, an amulet, and a sealed door with evil behind it, but that was more to do with clichéd fantasy tropes than decent sound editing. The audio got worse from there - the actors frequently mumble their lines and we were deeply annoyed every time "Sparrowhawk" came out as "Spare-A-Hawk". Enunciation should not be limited to A-list actors.
Too much of the plot is compelled by convenient actions and assumptions that are never explained. The hero and heroine have lifelong visions of one another for no reason other than it facilitates the plot and allows them to "trust one another" immediately in circumstances where they otherwise would not. The timeline is disjointed - with the breaking of the amulet being presented as ancient history (the nuns study pictures of it in their history classes, the people speak distantly of it as 'lost forever', the head magus never expected to look upon it in his lifetime, etc.) and yet the breaking of the amulet turns out to be a relatively recent phenomena because that way the Old Woman At The Beginning can have turned out to be the nun who started it all. Why, then, are people so resigned that the amulet is 'lost forever' when the losing was so recent? Human nature isn't like that - there should be hundred of ne'er-do-wells looking for the darn thing, and why, please, have the sisters never noticed that a large chunk of the thing is embedded in a key they see daily?
I am also baffled by the idea that one would send a powerful young wizard to learn discipline in an academy that clearly exercises no discipline whatsoever over its most unruly members. The murder scene with the serving nun is simply ludicrous - a person does not simply stand there and let themselves be quietly strangled to death without kicking, struggling, or otherwise fighting. And I make a motion that the blatant Bring The Cheery Dead Side-Kick Back To Life cliché be banned from all future fantasy movies. Seriously.
The only thing I really liked about this movie was the idea that the "evil" emotions one carries must be acknowledged as real in order to be a whole person. It's a little too easy these days to go the "anger must never be felt" route these days. I much prefer a philosophy that acknowledges that our anger is simply a part of us and while we shouldn't be controlled by it, neither should we expect to be able expel it entirely. However, I may be giving this movie too much credit in order to say SOMETHING nice about it. Well, here's one other good thing - I liked seeing Isabella Rossellini from "Death Becomes Her" in this movie. Her voice is always lovely and her acting is solid.
I do not own this movie, I rented it from my Blockbuster Online account.
Wizard of Earthsea
2009-03-07 - I teach a ninth grade English class and assigned the novel THE WIZARD OF EARTHSEA. The film actually takes up two of the authors novels so was a little confusing to students but we managed to muddle through and hopefully encouraged several to read the next novel due to the film. The special effects are interesting, the acting a little slow. Not bad to give a visual for kids.
Definitely entertaining 
2008-11-19 - Neither my wife nor I have ever read the book mentioned in so many of these negative reviews, and we both found this miniseries to be exceedingly entertaining. Apparently it has very little in common with the book. But if you haven't read the book, you'll find this movie to be as entertaining as we did. Highly recommended...;) -kd5-
