Fantasy Eh

Already dabbling in urban fantasy with Teen Wolf, MTV takes one more step into the area of high fantasy by bringing Terry Brooks' world of Shannara to life via its new The Shannara Chronicles. The first few episodes look like a solid effort, but have some significantly annoying factors that could weigh it down as the series progresses.

Chonicles adapts Brooks' second Shannara book, The Elfstones of Shannara. This is a wise storytelling move. The first novel, The Sword of Shannara, is very visibly a gloss on Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and features several storylines. It could get confusing pretty quickly and seem familiar enough to casually interested watchers to make it a quick skip. Elfstones, on the other hand, draws its main characters together for the most part around one central conflict and keeps the other plots very simple.

Millennia ago, the magical race of Elves faced off against twisted and evil Demons. More or less evenly matched, the Elves could not decisively beat the Demons or rid the world of their evil. Eventually, they channeled all the magic of their people into creating the Forbidding, a realm in which the Demons could be imprisoned. As a guard on this portal, the magic created the Ellcrys, a beautiful magic tree whose presence anchors the Forbidding and keeps the Demons on their side. Each year, seven young Elves are named Chosen and tend the tree. This year, the royal granddaughter Amberle Elessedil is one of the Chosen, and she has had an awful vision: The Ellcrys is dying, and the Demons will begin to break through into the world.

At the same time, young Wil Ohmsford has set out to find a community of healers to teach him their ways. His dying mother passed onto him the Elfstones, a form of magic used by his father -- but everyone, including his uncle Flick, believes magic a part of the past and possibly even a dangerous delusion. Wil, a rustic sort, will find the Four Lands quite different from his home of Shady Vale and his quest potentially deadly. Wil and Amberle's paths will cross, and it will include the Druid Allanon and the royalty of the Elven Elessedils as they seek to restore the Ellcrys and defeat the Demon army.

Chronicles varies its story from Brooks' novel, compressing both the history leading up to it and the initial chapters. This is also a pretty good storytelling move, reducing the learning curve Shannara newcomers might have. Series creators make the connections between Brooks' post-apocalyptic setting and our day more overt, with recognizable artifacts and landmarks scattered throughout the background. Which, by the way, is gorgeous. MTV opened the corporate wallet for the visuals and effects of this vision of the world of Shannara. Brooks' world-building has a heavy ecologicial element and the cinematography drenches scenes in lush green. John Rhys-Davies as Elven King Eventine Elessedil and Manu Bennett as Allanon bring some very needed gravity to the cast, which is full of folks who look like they just stepped off a Disney Channel set after turning old enough to vote.

And that really signals the main annoyance of Chronicles -- the attempted marriage of a high fantasy world to Millennial-level snark and attitude. Detached hip ironism can work in a world of monsters, magic and mayhem. Just ask Buffy. But it works when the fantastic element invades the mundane -- when vampires prowl a modern high school, f'rinstance.

Invading the fantastic with the mundane is a lot harder and Chronicles doesn't really manage it well. Allanon tells Wil they're searching for the Codex of Paranor, which can help them learn how to help the Ellcrys. Wil, upon learning that the Codex is a book, snarks that Druids always have to have weird names for their stuff instead of just calling them ordinary words like "book." It's worth a chuckle and would fit perfectly if Allanon had recruited Wil from Algebra II. The cast doesn't have to sound like they just stepped out of Gondor, but it jars when people in world that's supposed to be full of magic sound like they came straight from The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.

Chronicles has so far only slightly MTVed the series with innuendo and nudity. Given that until recently, Brooks' novels wouldn't have been uncomfortable on a young-adult reader shelf, it probably can't without seriously screwing up the atmosphere.

In the end, whether or not you stick with Chronicles may have as much to do with how much you want to have Ivana Baquero, Austin Butler and Poppy Drayton hang around your TV. As the leads of the younger cast, they're carrying the weight of the major quest storyline and they may or may not wear out their welcome with an adolescent 'tude that makes you want to tell them to get off the pretty green lawn.