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It’s happened to us all. You hear that one of your favorite books for kids or teens is being adapted to the silver screen and you are struck with a simultaneous feeling of hope and fear. You go to see it and it’s even worse than you imagined. Then you leave the theater and realize that this was based on the first book in a series. Are they honestly going to keep going, even if this is a flop?
Thankfully, the answer is usually no. But what happens is that you’re left with a lot of series just ah-blowing in the wind. Here then is a tribute to those book series that are just not going to see any more sequels. Unless, of course, they get a reboot. Which, in at least one case, may happen.
The Seeker a.k.a. The Dark Is Rising
Remember this? Or has your brain done you a favor and allowed you to forget? One of the more egregious adaptations out there. In the midst of the Harry Potter films, studios were looking to recreate that same magic for themselves. And lo and behold, here is a fantasy series starring a special boy who learns he has the power to defeat a dark and ancient evil! Perfect! So what did the studios do? First, they made it American (one can only imagine the conversations that took place to make this happen – “I bet Harry Potter would have been MUCH more successful if he’d been from Jersey!”). Then they mucked with the plot so much as to render the film unrecognizable from the book. No Under Sea, Under Stone for you, kids! Which, technically, should have been first anyway . . .
The Black Cauldron
Not that when Disney animated it they were really prepared to make any sequels. Many consider this film the moment Disney animation hit rock bottom. They also combined two of Lloyd Alexander’s books together to make it in the first place. I heard a rumor the other day that a new version of The Book of Three is in the works somewhere, but was unable to find any proof of it online.
The Seventh Son
Apparently this was years and years in the works, much good it did it in the end. A real pity since the book was so great. What could have been a really good creepy film was instead yet another big budget war against an evil blahfest. Ah well.
A Wrinkle in Time
Oh yeah. It was straight to television, so hopes couldn’t have been all that high anyway. In a 2004 interview with Newsweek Madeleine L’Engle was asked if the film met her expectations. She said it had. She was pretty cheery about it. “I expected it to be bad, and it was.” Rumor has it that another is currently in the works. I dunno, folks. Mixing religion and science and fantasy into a single book is hard enough. Short of animating it, I don’t know how a film could even come close to doing it right.
Voyage of the Dawn Treader
This one is unlike the others mentioned here for a number of reasons. First off, these movies aren’t all that bad. They seem fairly aware of the books that they’re based upon, for one thing. And admittedly they managed to get through three books in the Narnia series, and even then only by the skin of their teeth. Amazing that they got that far! It’s too late to keep ’em coming at this point, so the series is pretty officially dead (sorry, Silver Chair, fans).
The Last Airbender
I’m cheating by including this since it’s not based on a book originally but a television series (Avatar: The Last Airbender). That said, the graphic novel sequels (penned in part by our current National Ambassador of Young People’s Literature, Gene Luen Yang) are fantastic and deserve mention. The movie adaptation of the first season was problematic not the least because all the villains were people of color and all the people of color who were heroes were played by white actors. [My husband points out that if you look at the voice actors for the original TV show it’s not much different, but that’s only if you think Iroh and Zuko are villains, and anyway the true baddies were Mark Hammil and Jason Isaacs who are the whitest white guys to ever white a white].
By the way, notice how all these series star white kids, usually of a male persuasion, and are fantasies or science fiction. So while I’d love to see the One Crazy Summer books adapted, my hopes are not currently very high.
20 Comments on Never Gonna Sequel, last added: 4/19/2016
Well, there is the story of New Line’s plan to do His Dark Materials, and then ditching after its highly uneven film of The Golden Compass. Fortunately, the BBC is taking a new tack — not yet clear how far they plan to go with the trilogy though.
Elizabeth Bird said, on 4/18/2016 6:53:00 AM
Arg! Can’t believe I forgot that one! Of course the BBC is perfect but yeah, how deep do they want to go? They could Game of Thrones it pretty easily.
Elizabeth Bird said, on 4/18/2016 6:54:00 AM
Is why you love me.
Elizabeth Bird said, on 4/18/2016 6:54:00 AM
I get three points for turning “Game of Thrones” into a verb, by the way.
I’m sorry but Disney animation hit its low point with Robin Hood. All that talent and they produced one of the dullest animated movies ever.
Jen Robinson said, on 4/18/2016 10:19:00 AM
I was just going to point out the Riordan post
Cecilia said, on 4/18/2016 10:24:00 AM
The first book in Susan Cooper’s Dark is Rising series is Over Sea, Under Stone, just fyi.
Joe said, on 4/18/2016 10:32:00 AM
I’ve never been a fan of Riordan’s books, but this… this makes me like him. A lot.
Robin said, on 4/18/2016 10:57:00 AM
I can see One Crazy Summer done by Disney as one of their Black History Month movies.
But you are probably right.
Genevieve said, on 4/18/2016 12:15:00 PM
The Silver Chair was my son’s favorite of the series, and for one birthday he wanted a Silver Chair party. I persuaded him to make it a Narnia party, since most of his friends were only familiar with The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe at that point.
He was older by the time the movies came out, but he went to them and would have liked a Silver Chair movie.
Elizabeth Bird said, on 4/18/2016 7:32:00 PM
Boom. Well played.
Elizabeth Bird said, on 4/18/2016 7:34:00 PM
It has one significant advantage over The Black Cauldron, however: The music. Granted, it makes no sense. A Southern influence on what is supposedly England (watching the accents flicker on and off is fascinating).
Elizabeth Bird said, on 4/18/2016 7:36:00 PM
Yeah, I know. But that wasn’t the order. I figured if they had continued they’d have doubled back, but come to think of it they probably would have scrapped that entire second storyline entirely and just kept everything Will-centric. A pity since the Greenwitch would be fantastic on screen.
Elizabeth Bird said, on 4/18/2016 7:37:00 PM
Well, there was always that old BBC version. They had their flaws, but I remember vividly the scene of the prince wearing the mask in the chair, begging the children to believe him that this was the only time he was capable of telling the truth.
Elizabeth Bird said, on 4/18/2016 7:38:00 PM
Shoot. How did I miss this? It would have been a perfect addition to this post.
Carl in Charlotte said, on 4/19/2016 11:13:00 AM
Yeah, but even the music couldn’t keep it from being dull. Maybe I should just listen to the soundtrack. We showed it in our library once and everyone except one family left after 20 minutes. I closed my eyes for a while and found it was a lot more entertaining to listen to the great voices! (accents or not)
Elizabeth Bird said, on 4/19/2016 1:34:00 PM
Brian Bedford (the fox) died around the same time as Alan Rickman and David Bowie. I always thought there would be more tributes to both Robin Hood and The Sheriff (albeit from different films) dying at the same time.
I think this is the 2nd time we’ve honored a pair of illustrators together(the other being Los Bros Hernandez), but for all intents and purposes the Japanese dynamic duo “illustration unit” Gurihiru is “one” illustrator in the way the two works seamlessly together, focusing their particular talents in different skill sets to produce one beautiful picture. The Gurihiru team consists of Naoko Kawano(design, colors, webdesign) and Chifuyu Sasaki (design, pencils, inks).
Gurihiru is known for their comics work on titles such as Avatar: The Last Airbender, Wolverine and Power Pack, and A-babies vs. X-babies, to name a few. Team Gurihiru is also known for producing many dynamic variant covers for comics, including this week’s Silk #7 variant.
You can check out more of Gurihiru’s art, including some of their game art design and animation work, on their website here.
For more comics related art, you can follow me on my websitecomicstavern.com– Andy Yates
0 Comments on Comics Illustrators of the Week :: Gurihiru as of 9/3/2015 4:13:00 PM
The Legend of Korra’s fourth and final season, Book 4: Balance, returns this Friday! You’ll be able to watch here. Trying to catch up with all three seasons in one day is a pretty tall order, but luckily the weekend will soon be here! The first three books (as seasons are called Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra) are available streaming on Nick.com.
Avatar: the Last Airbender follows Aang, the last airbender, who survived the Air Nomad genocide from the Fire Nation. Together with his friends Sokka, Katara and Zuko, Aang fights to prevent the Fire Nation from taking over the whole world, all the while mastering all four elements.
The Legend of Korra is the direct sequel to Avatar: the Last Airbender, taking place 80 years after the end of ALTA. Korra, upon discovering she was the avatar at the age of four, was placed under the direct care of the Order of the White Lotus and learned to water-, fire-, and earthbending. Korra sneaks away from the Order of the White Lotus compound to learn airbending from Tenzin, the son of Avatar Aang, in Republic City.
Important Terms
Elements: Air, Water, Earth, and Fire.
Bending: The ability to control one of the aforementioned elements, i.e. waterbending. A person who bends an element is known as a bender.
Avatar: one person who has the ability to control all four elements. The avatar is born into one of the four nations and learns to bend the four elements. The Avatar is supposed to help maintain balance between the Four Nations and the spirits.
The Four Nations
Four Nations: Air Nomads, Fire Nation, Earth Kingdom, Water Tribe.
Team Avatar: the team of people who help and fight alongside the Avatar.
Pro-bending: a sport where benders fight each other with the elements. There are three benders per team: water, fire, and earth.
Order of the White Lotus: a formerly secret order that transcended the Four Nations to share philosophy and wisdom. Later, on the orders of Avatar Aang, they search and protect the next Avatar.
Red Lotus: a group that splintered off from the original White Lotus because they thought that the Order of the White lotus had become the bodyguards of the Avatar. They sought to free the world of its governments and have humans and spirits coexist. During Book 3, Zaheer leads them.
The Major Players
Team Avatar:
Team Avatar: Asami, Mako, Korra, Bolin and Pabu (from left to right).
Korra: Korra is from the Northern Water Tribe. She is born when Avatar Aang, the protagonist of Avatar: The Last Airbender died. Korra can bend all four elements.
Asami Sato: The only nonbender on Team Avatar. Asami is the owner of Future Industries, a company that makes cars known as the Sato-mobile and other technology.
Mako: former street rat turned cop. Former captain of the pro-bending team the Future Industry Fire Ferrets. Mako is a firebender and both Korra and Asami’s ex-boyfriend. He is Bolin’s older brother.
Bolin: formerly an actor and pro-bender, he is the funny-man of Team Avatar. He is an earthbender and has the special ability to lavabend. He is Mako’s younger brother.
Other important characters
Katara: Aang’s wife, waterbending master and Korra’s teacher.
Tenzin, Bumi, and Kya: Aang’s children. Tenzin is an airbender, and Korra’s airbending instructor. Kya is a waterbender. Bumi is a retired Fire Nation general who later gains the ability to airbend after Harmonic Convergence. You may refer to them as the “cloudbabies.”
Pema: Tenzin’s wife, a nonbender.
Jinora, Ikki, Meelo, and Rohan: Pema and Tenzin’s children. All airbenders. You may refer to them as the “airbabies.” Jinora is the first airbending master in a generation.
Lin Beifong: Chief of Republic City Police, metalbender. Toph Beifong’s daughter.
Book 1: Air
Korra has a difficult time learning how to airbend, because she’s unable to tap into the spiritual side of bending. She joins a pro-bending team known as the Fire Ferrets. An anti-bending movement known as the Equalist Movement gains in popularity. The leader, Amon, wants to get rid of bending and benders. Korra tries to balance learning to airbend, practice with the Fire Ferrets and defeating Amon. Korra finally learns to airbend, when Amon seals off all of her other bending abilities.
Book 2: Spirits
Six months after the end of Book 1, Republic City has a president who is supposed to represent the interests of benders and non-benders alike. When a spirit attacks at a festival that Korra attends, she decides to focus on learning spirit-bending instead of airbending, and her uncle Unalaq becomes her teacher. Unalaq tricks Korra into opening the spirit portals. Unalaq wants to join with a dark spirit to become the Dark Avatar and destroy the Avatar cycle. Korra learns of Won, the first Avatar. With the help of Jinora, Korra defeats Unalaq. Spirits and humans were never meant to live apart, so Korra doesn’t close the Spirit Portals. The world enters a new age where spirits and humans live together.
Book 3: Change
The spirits are disrupting life in Republic City, but Korra can’t get them to live peacefully with humans. When reports of people suddenly gaining the ability to airbend reach Korra, she travels with Tenzin, his family, and team Avatar to restore the Air Nomads. The Red Lotus, a criminal organization that tried to kidnap Korra when she was young, escapes from prison. The Red Lotus’s leader, Zaheer, is one of the new airbenders. Zaheer and his cronies go on a quest to rid the world of its leaders and the Avatar. Zaheer kills the Earth Queen and Ba Sing Se descends into chaos.
When Zaheer threatens all the new airbenders to get to Korra, Korra risks her life to save them.
Several weeks later, we see Korra in a wheelchair getting ready to attend Jinora’s airbending master ceremony. Jinora, Avatar Aang’s granddaughter becomes the first airbending master in a generation. Tenzin announces that the airbenders will regain their nomadic roots
Korra returns with her parents to the Northern Water Tribe to heal.
Legend of Korra returns THIS FRIDAY.
The trailer: with Korra kicking major butt and new hair!
Watch the opening clip.
This is a clip of Kai and Opal airbending some bad guys!
I hope you’re just as excited to return to Republic City as I am!
Release Date: January 25th, 2012 Publisher: Dark Horse Comics Age Group: Children's Overall: 4 out of 5 Stars Categories: Avatar: The Last Airbender, NetGalley, Comics Goodreads Page Read in April 2012
Summary:
The wait is over! Ever since the conclusion of Avatar: The Last Airbender, its millions of fans have been hungry for more--and it's finally here!
This series of digests rejoins Aang and friends for exciting new adventures, beginning with a faceoff against the Fire Nation that threatens to throw the world into another war, testing all of Aang's powers and ingenuity!
The continuation of Airbender and the link to its upcoming sequel, Legend of Korra!
My Opinion:
I love Avatar: The Last Airbender, so when I saw this title in NetGalley, of course I had to have it!
The Promise starts off just where the TV show ended: with the Fire Nation's Lord defeated, Aang victorious and with Katara (YAY!) and Zuko at the Fire Nation's throne.
It is now Aang's job to ensure that everything goes peacefully with the Harmony Restoration Movement, aimed at bringing the people from the Fire Nation living in their colonies back to their land. But of course, when stuff like this happens, people tend to make roots in the place they're taken to, and that's what the Fire Nation people have done. Now they don't want to leave, and this may bring problems to Aang and Zuko's plan.
Aang is a young boy, playful and loveable like always, as the rest of the characters: they're the same as they were in the TV show. The art was also very faithful, I loved some of their expressions! Especially Toph, love her!
This was a very short read, at 74 pages, and we'll have to wait until next month for the next installment. Avatar fans, this is a must read, as it works as a link between A:TLA
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Avatar: The Last Airbender was a very successful anime-inspired seies for Nickelodeon. Unfortunately the franchise took a hit last year with the M. Night Shyamalan live action feature. Undeterred, Avatar creators Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko are supervising 26 episodes of a new spin-off limited series, The Last Airbender: Legend of Korra, which is scheduled to debut next year. Last week at Comic Con Nick released this first taste:
Omg. You referenced Silverchair.
Well, there is the story of New Line’s plan to do His Dark Materials, and then ditching after its highly uneven film of The Golden Compass. Fortunately, the BBC is taking a new tack — not yet clear how far they plan to go with the trilogy though.
Arg! Can’t believe I forgot that one! Of course the BBC is perfect but yeah, how deep do they want to go? They could Game of Thrones it pretty easily.
Is why you love me.
I get three points for turning “Game of Thrones” into a verb, by the way.
Eragon never got a sequel, did it?
Philip Pullman always was largely in public (as far as I can tell) very stiff-upper-lip regarding The Golden Compass movie. Rick Riordan, on the other hand: http://rickriordan.blogspot.com/2016/03/a-letter-you-can-share-with-your-teacher.html
I’m sorry but Disney animation hit its low point with Robin Hood. All that talent and they produced one of the dullest animated movies ever.
I was just going to point out the Riordan post
The first book in Susan Cooper’s Dark is Rising series is Over Sea, Under Stone, just fyi.
I’ve never been a fan of Riordan’s books, but this… this makes me like him. A lot.
I can see One Crazy Summer done by Disney as one of their Black History Month movies.
But you are probably right.
The Silver Chair was my son’s favorite of the series, and for one birthday he wanted a Silver Chair party. I persuaded him to make it a Narnia party, since most of his friends were only familiar with The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe at that point.
He was older by the time the movies came out, but he went to them and would have liked a Silver Chair movie.
Boom. Well played.
It has one significant advantage over The Black Cauldron, however: The music. Granted, it makes no sense. A Southern influence on what is supposedly England (watching the accents flicker on and off is fascinating).
Yeah, I know. But that wasn’t the order. I figured if they had continued they’d have doubled back, but come to think of it they probably would have scrapped that entire second storyline entirely and just kept everything Will-centric. A pity since the Greenwitch would be fantastic on screen.
Well, there was always that old BBC version. They had their flaws, but I remember vividly the scene of the prince wearing the mask in the chair, begging the children to believe him that this was the only time he was capable of telling the truth.
Shoot. How did I miss this? It would have been a perfect addition to this post.
Yeah, but even the music couldn’t keep it from being dull. Maybe I should just listen to the soundtrack. We showed it in our library once and everyone except one family left after 20 minutes. I closed my eyes for a while and found it was a lot more entertaining to listen to the great voices! (accents or not)
Brian Bedford (the fox) died around the same time as Alan Rickman and David Bowie. I always thought there would be more tributes to both Robin Hood and The Sheriff (albeit from different films) dying at the same time.