I just watched The Colour of Magic, a live action movie based on the book of the same name by Terry Pratchett.
It was better than Hogfather, but still pretty bad.
Bad things:
(1) It’s The fucking Colour of Magic. It’s early work, and not really very good compared to Pratchetts later work.
(2) Rincewind is supposed to be a recent “graduate” of university. I always saw him as late 20’s, early 30’s. In the movie, he’s _old_.
(3a) Twoflower is a honky. He’s from the Agatean Empire. He’s meant to be asian.
(3b) Twoflower is played by Sean Astin. Badly. Not sure what Astin is trying to do with the character, but it’s not working. Hard to believe he knocked Sam Gamgee out of the park, and also played this shitty role.
Good things:
(1) Excellent Lord Vetinari
(2) Much better special effects than Hogfather
(3) Smokin’ hot dragonrider lady.
Once again, though, they pick the weirdest books to make into movies. First Hogfather, and now The Colour of Magic? What the hell? The ones that would pretty much make immediately good movies (Mort, for example. Or Guards Guards) get passed over in favour of ones that don’t really have a plot or that require intimate knowledge of discworld backstory. Bizarre!