Once Upon a Time
Oct. 22nd, 2011 08:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icepixieYou can watch the pilot of Once Upon a Time commercial-free at IMDB.
I kinda wish I had waited to watch the premiere on the big TV because, as I expected, it is gorgeous. I'm also never going to watch another episode, so it would've been nice to see one in HD.
The weird thing about this show is that it feels like it would make an amazing kids movie. Characters from fairy tales are real, and they live here, just with their memories wiped! The good guys are really, really good, and the bad guys are really, really bad! There is no explanation for why this is so! (Though to its credit, it does feel like the kind of show that knows it needs to explain the bug up the evil queen/mayor's butt pretty quick.) The dialogue is extremely! dramatic! in the fairy tale scenes! There is a savior who must discover her own fairy tale self, reunite with her parents, and bring everyone's memories back! This would be perfect with a kid protagonist, a la Harry Potter.
So why they have skipped over the convenient ten-year-old character and made his 28-year-old birth mother the protagonist is...a bit of a mystery. The whole setup with Emma as the prophesied curse-breaker works pretty well, but the son she gave up as a major player throws a big wrench into things. Plus, he has to be the most annoying kid in the ENTIRE history of annoying kids. Every time he appeared on the screen, I came very close to turning the whole thing off because I just. couldn't. deal. with. him.
The show gets Feminist Points for having women as basically every character of importance, but it would've been helpful had they cast actresses who don't look exactly alike. I didn't realize the same person wasn't playing Snow White and Emma until they introduced the teacher, and even then it took me several minutes to realize that she was Snow White's alter ego. I was at least able to figure out from the get-go that the mayor was also the evil queen, though this was only because she was so unnecessarily bitchy to Emma from practically the first moment she was onscreen.
So: Treacly dialogue, no characters I actually liked and two I instantly hated, and a premise that doesn't grab me as much as I thought it would. Yeah, no. From reading about the next couple episodes, there is one thing that sounds promising--they're going to introduce Maleficent as...I guess a rival Big Bad to the evil queen?--but in the fairy tale world timeline, they're also backing up to prologue about how Snow White and Prince Charming met and fell in love, and I hate prequels even more than I hate...something I hate a lot, like raw tomatoes. I can see how this show would be appealing to other people, and I bear it no ill will, but wow, it is so not for me.
It sure is pretty, though. So pretty.
I kinda wish I had waited to watch the premiere on the big TV because, as I expected, it is gorgeous. I'm also never going to watch another episode, so it would've been nice to see one in HD.
The weird thing about this show is that it feels like it would make an amazing kids movie. Characters from fairy tales are real, and they live here, just with their memories wiped! The good guys are really, really good, and the bad guys are really, really bad! There is no explanation for why this is so! (Though to its credit, it does feel like the kind of show that knows it needs to explain the bug up the evil queen/mayor's butt pretty quick.) The dialogue is extremely! dramatic! in the fairy tale scenes! There is a savior who must discover her own fairy tale self, reunite with her parents, and bring everyone's memories back! This would be perfect with a kid protagonist, a la Harry Potter.
So why they have skipped over the convenient ten-year-old character and made his 28-year-old birth mother the protagonist is...a bit of a mystery. The whole setup with Emma as the prophesied curse-breaker works pretty well, but the son she gave up as a major player throws a big wrench into things. Plus, he has to be the most annoying kid in the ENTIRE history of annoying kids. Every time he appeared on the screen, I came very close to turning the whole thing off because I just. couldn't. deal. with. him.
The show gets Feminist Points for having women as basically every character of importance, but it would've been helpful had they cast actresses who don't look exactly alike. I didn't realize the same person wasn't playing Snow White and Emma until they introduced the teacher, and even then it took me several minutes to realize that she was Snow White's alter ego. I was at least able to figure out from the get-go that the mayor was also the evil queen, though this was only because she was so unnecessarily bitchy to Emma from practically the first moment she was onscreen.
So: Treacly dialogue, no characters I actually liked and two I instantly hated, and a premise that doesn't grab me as much as I thought it would. Yeah, no. From reading about the next couple episodes, there is one thing that sounds promising--they're going to introduce Maleficent as...I guess a rival Big Bad to the evil queen?--but in the fairy tale world timeline, they're also backing up to prologue about how Snow White and Prince Charming met and fell in love, and I hate prequels even more than I hate...something I hate a lot, like raw tomatoes. I can see how this show would be appealing to other people, and I bear it no ill will, but wow, it is so not for me.
It sure is pretty, though. So pretty.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-10-23 07:22 am (UTC)But if you think this dialogue was dramatic, you shoulda read the script! Where it came off as even more annoying. So the filmed version was an improvement on that, at least.
(no subject)
From: