Riverworld
Dir. Kari Skogland; writ. Stuart Hazeldine; featuring Brad Johnson, Emily Lloyd, Jonathan Cake
Riverworld
Dir. Stuart Guillard; writ. Robert Hewitt Wolfe, Randall M. Badat, Hans Beimler; featuring Tahmot Penikett, Mark Deklin, Peter Wingfield, Jeananne Goossen
Someone really should do an all-out film adaptation of the Riverworld books—a well-scripted, well-financed series, like the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Could be a blockbuster. Because all we've got so far is a couple of weak, condensed television videos that could barely keep the interest of the novels' countless fans.
The river of forgetting
First up is a Riverworld TV pilot in 2003, Canadian made but shot in New Zealand (where Lord of the Rings was filmed). Needless to say, it failed to launch the anticipated series. Despite having seen it though, I really cannot remember much of it, as it's competing in my mind with the indelible original stories and the more recent TV remake. Damn, I might have to watch it all over again, a fate as bad as having to live your life all over again in a primitive state next to a long boring river.
But let's try. First off, the 2003 show drops explorer Richard Burton as protagonist in favour of an American astronaut. Probably figured North American viewers would mix him up with actor Richard Burton and think he was searching the Riverworld for Liz. And instead of Nazi villain Herman Goering, we get the reincarnation of roman emperor Nero, minus his fiddle. That one, I don't understand.
Samuel Clemens (better known as Mark Twain) makes his appearance in this first instalment of the projected series, although he doesn't enter the book series until the second novel. No King John or Eric Bloodaxe. The female warrior princess Loghu is now an African called Mali.... Okay, I'll stop now. So the characters are different, the story line is so abbreviated as to not make sense—when do all the world's people learn to speak English?—and pointless action scenes replace all the thought-provoking parts of the novels....
Oh, heck, there isn't really any comparison to the books here at all. So let's just accept it as a movie on its own merits—oh, I forgot, it doesn't have any of those either. Just an hour and a half, run-of-the-mill, television sci-fi show. Let's move on.
Up river with the Blue Man Group
Much different, the U.S.-Canadian production of Riverworld for TV in 2010. Instead of the wilds of New Zealand, the wilds of British Columbia are the location. Instead of the hero being explorer Burton or an American astronaut, he's an American journalist, who yearns to find his all-American bubble-headed girlfriend. In place of warrior princess Loghu or Mali, we have warrior princess Tomoe. Instead of Goering or King John or Nero, the bad guy is conquistador Pizarro....
But, wait, Burton is back in play. But now he's kind of a bad guy too.
The one constant is Samuel Clemens. But his story is so truncated that we never see him get his team together, build his boat, or engage in all those intrigues that were so absorbing in the novels. He just appears on the scene to join up with the American journalist and promptly lose his boat to Pizarro.
But at least in this film, the good guys win through to reach the tower, something that doesn't happen until the fourth novel in the series, where they solve the mystery of Riverworld. I think. Hard to tell. Nothing is worked out very clearly in this jerky three-hour film. Time is always just kind of jumping ahead—I suspect whenever the producers run out of money to actually film what's supposed to happen in-between.
But it is a passable time-waster. Actor Tehmot Penikett (from Battlestar Galactica) is okay as the rugged American hero. Mark Deklin is a good-looking Clemens, maybe too good looking. And Peter Wingfield is overly-villainous as Burton, all glaring eyes and curling lips, but that's the role they've given him. The standout is Jeananne Goossen, whom I've never heard of before, as a Japanese female samurai fighter. Smart, sexy and strong, now there's a woman our hero should hook up with.
The aliens who create Riverworld are the biggest disappointments, looking and acting like rejects from the Blue Man Group, I was thinking, and then our hero made the same reference to them. Just not mysterious enough, more like bickering kids playing with their human toys.
Through five books and two movies, I'm still not sure what they're on about.
— Eric
