The quest to save the Ellcrys begins.
Debuting January 5th, The Shannara Chronicles’ two-part premiere is fantasy for a tween generation, for all the good and bad that comes along with that. It’s a reinvention of the Terry Brooks novel and that isn’t going to please purists, but some of the more interesting elements of the two-hour episode involve deviating from the source material.
It’s a good thing “Chosen” is two hours long, because it needs both of them to find its groove. The series introduces Amberle immediately, showing us a strong elf princess who isn’t afraid to subvert gender norms. In the opening sequence of the series, Amberle decides to run a gauntlet to prove she is worthy of being one of seven elven Chosen who have the honor of serving the magical tree the Ellcrys. No woman has been a Chosen as long as memory serves, so simply participating — and, of course, eventually earning the honor — is a major shock to the Elven world.
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It doesn’t take long for Amberle to be swayed from her path. The Ellcrys — a tree which has protected the Elven people from the demons held captive inside another realm called The Forbidding for so long that the story has become fairy tale — has a pivotal role for the princess to play. It grants her visions of the end of days, and — more importantly — of her killing her boyfriend Lorin, and so she quickly shirks her once-in-a-generation duties and runs for the hills.
Meanwhile a Druid named Allanon (Manu Bennet) reawakens from a 30-year slumber at the summoning of the Ellcrys. It so happens that his reemergence coincides with the death of Will Ohmsford’s mother, who tells him to seek out “the Druid.” (For you Shannara die-hards out there, this series shortens the timeline so that Wil is Shea’s son instead of his grandson. The repercussions of tweaking Shea’s story remain to be seen — but yes, Flick is still in the series.) Wil’s mother gifts her son with the magical Elfstones of Shannara before her death, but he quickly loses them to a seductive Rover named Eretria. His path crosses with Allanon’s, and they get swept away on an adventure that involves finding Amberle, reseeding the Ellcrys and rescuing the world as we know it.
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This, from its start, shows some big changes from Brooks’ “The Elfstones of Shannara,” which serves as the basis for MTV’s The Shannara Chronicles. So is the series itself a deviation from the network’s typical fare, which has only ventured as far fantasy as its reimagining of Teen Wolf. In the world of The Shannara Chronicles, there are elves and druids and gnomes and trolls and demons. If that’s immediately an off-putting sentiment, The Shannara Chronicles doesn’t do much to win you to the side of fantasy.
What it does do is try to win over its target audience with sexy young stars wearing slinky, modern outfits in a world that has been updated to the post-apocalyptic phase of pop culture. Brooks’ Shannara series takes place millennia after a holocaust destroyed the world as we know it, and The Shannara Chronicles takes nods from other similar genre fare like The Hunger Games, The 100 and The Mortal Instruments in its costuming choices and setting. The heavy incorporation of the ruins of old humans is one of the more interesting and promising elements of the premiere; there are ruins of helicopters and ships and other man-made creations scattered throughout the land, and some major characters question what the lives of old humans would have been.
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It’s in the fantasy elements of the story that The Shannara Chronicles is most lacking; not because it doesn’t revel in its fantastic roots, but because it flourishes in the spectacle of them. Game of Thrones is inarguably the most successful fantasy adaptation on television, and it is so because it is rooted in the reality of its world. The Shannara Chronicles can’t help but show off how cool its various magical storylines are, and in doing so it shows off its shortcomings. Its characters are fairly weak, with the exception of Manu Bennet’s Allanon, though its setting is gorgeous.
And goodness is this show gorgeous. Credit the beautiful backdrop of New Zealand for making this one of the most beautiful shows to watch on TV. From the Elven kingdom of Arborlon to the Dagda Mor’s demon outpost to everywhere Allanon and Wil travel in between, the vistas on this show are breathtaking. This is why it’s easy to say The Shannara Chronicles is the best-looking fantasy series on TV.
But with all the money invested in the show’s look, it felt like the biggest shortcoming is delivering a solid story. This is something that could change in only one episode; The 100, for all that it’s developed into one of the best sci-fi shows on the air, had a fairly by-the-numbers CW start.
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Of everything, Bennet is the high point of the two hour premiere. I’m pretty sure he could have chemistry with a rock, and every scene that he’s in pops. The chemistry is sadly lacking in the love triangle that is established in the two-part premiere. Wil is a bit of an idiot in the way he never was in the books, and while Amberle and Eretria are both strong, willful characters, you never get the sense that they’re more than that. The Shannara Chronicles wins points for adding in some new females to the mix like Commander Tilton (Emilia Burns), but it also takes several steps back for aging down (at least looks-wise) Elf princes Arion and Ander and adding the fantasy equivalent of high school parties to pander to its tween audience. While the bitchiness in Amberle and Eretria’s first meeting is a fun seed to set, the sense of talking down to a younger audience is going to lose a lot of the people who spent decades waiting for this adaptation to be made.
If The Shannara Chronicles allows its characters to shed their stereotypical casings and evolve quickly, if it allows is storytelling to stop reveling in its fantasy spectacle and ground itself in something real, and if it allows itself to become something greater than just a new genre for a blossoming network to explore, then it could become something a lot better than what it delivered in its two-hour series premiere. Until then, we’ll be waiting.
The Shannara Chronicles premieres January 5th on MTV.
