I feel like this is a no-win scenario. The CG either won’t be good, and it’ll look bad, or it will be great, and the show will be straight body horror. Especially in the later books. Reading/listening to descriptions is one thing, but seeing realistic depictions of it doesn’t sound great to me.
I’m prepared for another WoT style crash and burn considering the choice for live action.
I just struggle to see how it won’t end up being a campy neutered version of the idea. First off, one of the two main characters will end up being a CGI cat. Next a lot of the action happens because of the RPG side of the novel and that’s gonna be a major pain in the ass to translate. Then there’s the sheer volume of communication that goes on in the messaging system. Then there’s the incredible amount of violence which will have to be reeled back in. Don’t think they’re gonna want Carl blowing up a nursery in episode 4.
I just don’t feel like it’ll have the off the wall crazy shit that makes the books good.
See drugs and… yeah that’ll be censored.
Im a bit nervous for this. Im on book six and I love this world but I can’t see how they’re going to make it a live action show. I feel like an animated show would be so much easier to fix the style and visuals of the books.
Matt Dinniman had this to say about that concern: “We talked about it. I think if you poll a lot of the hardcore, original fans of Dungeon Crawler Carl and said, ‘Would you rather have live action or animated?’, most people would say ‘animated.’ But if you poll the normies on the street [I’m booing too, reader], you’ll get 80%+ saying they want live action.”
So they’re trying to reach a bigger audience. I will say I am hopeful, Seth MacFarlane had some excessive CGI the Orville, and it actually looked decent. So hopefully we get good CGI in a live action Dungeon Crawler Carl.
I read the manga so far and it works pretty good. But it’s more on the low effort side when it comes to manga.
The only possible way to do it justice was animated. Hope they prove me wrong, but they’re going to have to compromise massively somewhere to do it in live action w/ CGI.
Just finished book 8 and agreed. Can only hope that Matt has a heavy hand on production to at least make it as close as he envisions.
There’s no way that the incredible multitude of races, abilities and fucked up things can be portrayed in live action without a gigantic budget.
I just started
readinglistening to the books, still on book 1. Not sure how they are going to pull this off. It seems like it would require a lot of CGI.A lot of it seems to be im hallways and rooms and weird diners. So if they build some cool sets, and some good creature costumes, they could minimize the cgi. I would love some old school puppets, even if it looks weird than a cgi fest, because it is weird and can look weird.
Only the first 2 floors and the 5th sort of.
I’m not proud of this answer, but I imagine ai
I’ve just finished Book One - it was decent.
Standout moment was the in-dungeon description of Mana Toast. Top lols.
I don’t understand why people live this book so much, we couldn’t stomach the misogyny and the ableism in the first book. It was so bad that the DNF (do not finish) vote was unanimous in book club.
You and your book club sound very conscientious and fun.
Thank you for adding such insightful commentary.
You are welcome.
Misogyny and ableism? I’m curious what you’re referring to.
Edit: (Not questioning your opinion of the series; not everything is for everyone. But I’ve gotten a lot of people to read this series and haven’t heard that take, so I’m curious.)
I also couldnt finish the book cause the 30% I read was 100% misogyny. Carls exgirlfriend is everything icels see in confident gurls (ok she cheated thats not so nice ). We met the woman who lives next to carl for like a page and she is a portrait of the old mean woman. The next woman is dead and naked, a goblin woman has like 4 lines and one is she wants to fuck carl. The first boss fight is between a overweight latina woman who is a hoarder and Carl. The way the author describes her is just horrible and i dont understand how so many people get past that chapter. Each of these characters could appear in a dungeon scenario, and there are also women who want to have sex directly and are looted until they’re naked, which makes sense in the book. There are women who cheat on their partners and nagging neighbors, as well as overweight women. But I find it disturbingly obvious that all the women who appear so far are dead and naked, disgusting, and unbearable. The way Carl views the boss fight, without any critical thinking or empathy, is also terrible. The book’s concept is good, but unfortunately, it’s full of misogyny. Good idea, poorly executed, and the writing style is anything but good.
In the later books (bk 3-7), some of the strongest friends/fighters alongside Carl and Donut are female characters.
It sounds like someone called him out on his problematic writing.
Because it’s impossible for women to be flawed and abusive, and if there’s an ugly person deliberately made uglier by colonizing aliens to dehumanize them that’s obviously sexism?
There are plenty of great women characters in the book, you just decided women can never be the problem in a relationship without it being “problematic” and went downhill from there.
Hell, the most predatory voice in the first book is the male-voiced AI.
That all said, it is hard to tell where Dinniman stands exactly on the spectrum of “the overt sexualization of some of the women and men is specifically a commentary on the commercialization of the indigenous body by colonizing forces” and “that’s a good excuse but he’s also horny and trying to sell books.”
I’m going to generally agree, but I will say that Dinniman really doesn’t hold back when he describes fat people. He uses evocative language generally but some lines felt more like attacks.
When he describes
fat peopleeveryone. That’s part of the fun. See also The Juicer in the very same book.
I didn’t get far enough to critique the entire book. However these were the moments in my limited read that really irked me.
Ableism - There are two ableist jokes in the first 80 pages and they are not even remotely funny. ”Nor am I wearing a cloak that makes me look like I won a participation trophy at the special needs comic con, Carl.” - this quote came out of nowhere and is entirely unnecessary and I’m sure I would find more like this were I to continue. I understand the cat is supposed to be sassy but really?
Misogyny - The plot frequently involves women’s naked corpses and rarely features clothed living women. The first three women who appear in the book are 1) his cheating ex-girlfriend whom he narrowly avoided calling a bitch, 2) a fat Latina monster whom he literally puts on a leash as she begs for death, and 3) a dead woman.
I know I would have a better argument if I had read the entire book but I just couldn’t stomach it anymore and the reason I couldn’t is because of this quote from a review of the book:
“I think what we get is the result of privileged people who don’t have to care. So those books are simply careless. They are tactless, tasteless, callous, have zero empathy and why? Because they don’t need to be anything else. Again, they don’t need to care. Isn’t it lucky to be on that side, to be the bro-y person who has the luxury to be amused here? Anyone else might end up the butt of those jokes. But it’s just jokes right? It is tiring that some people on this planet can afford to be careless, and to write careless shit, and to publish careless shit, and to laugh at careless shit. And they can do that because everyone else is supposed to stomach the resulting slack for them, to take it all in strides.”
The full review lives here and if you care it goes more in-depth into the problems of the book: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7548962785
This reads like someone cherry picking moments to prove their point. Having actually read most of the series I didn’t feel like the author was singling out disabled or women, so much as equally shitting on everybody. Carl’s father for instance is a far bigger stereotypical piece of shit deadbeat Dad than his GF was a stereotypical manipulative cheater. Carl was also greatly disturbed by the killing of the hoarder woman and is still referencing how fucked up it is into the seventh book.
Overall the writing isn’t amazing, and it’s trying to be entertaining more than send any messages or change any minds or opinions. You’re reading way too deep into what’s supposed to be easily consumed entertainment.
Heaven forbid a cat who had a narcissist (also a cheater) as a partner, and who lived with a guy who was in the coast guard don’t speak in Tumblr for you.
I don’t know what any of this jeans, I’ve never been on Tumblr.
I don’t know what any of this jeans
Please don’t fix this typo lol
Yeah the first time reading I stopped at the mass baby murdering. Second try I forced myself through it and loved the later books. I think the first book is by far the worst of the series.
You objected to ableism and misogyny but not the genocide??
Guess we didn’t get that far.
EDIT to be clear this is a whataboutism and is just being made to detract from the issues of misogyny and ableism.
Uhh the genocide happens in the first 5 pages? Like a neighbour gets her head cut off by aliens in the opening scene.
Bringing up the genocide is a whataboutism, bringing it up is just a way to detract from the issues of ableism and misogyny. If you have a problem with the genocide that you should voice that separately instead of trying to shit on my very real argument of the book’s misogyny and ableism.
Could you give some examples? The slavery and genocide seem to be bigger problems for the characters so maybe I didn’t see what you’re seeing
It’s a fun light read heavy with D&D themes. What I found most interesting (and this is fleshed out more in later volumes) was how the book explored NPC lives and memories.
Honestly, if this first book was too much for you, the rest of the series probably isn’t for you. It’s ok not to like things that are popular.
It’s just so dumb to call a book out for stuff like that without actually finishing the book. The books are offensive to fucking everybody on purpose. Like if they think Bea is an offensive representation of a woman, what are they feeling about her boyfriend who’s basically the even more stereotyped male equivalent?
k bye
I really was hoping for animated - this feels like a much bigger swing and I have feelings about it. The same feeling Frank’s ring gave me
Are these books any good?
They are a lot deeper and more complex than the premise and first impression might suggest
Also, it’s one of the very few cases where the audio books are even better
Yes, but do yourself a favor and get the audiobook. I’ve listened to hundreds of fantasy audio books. Jeff Hays is on a completely different level.
Seconded.
The audio book is amazing and is the reason we’re even talking about the series at all (Amazon promoted it on Audible and it caught fire).
Tbh I can’t stand the audiobook. I know a lot of people love it, but can turn some people off entirely.
I’m a slow reader but I plowed through book one in a week because I just couldn’t put it down. Very fun and goofy
Thanks. I’ll buy the first and see.
I would say that the first half of the first book was a bit too much LitRPG for my taste. Just felt like reading a videogame.
Just read the entire first book. It’s an easy read. If the first half is annoying, know that it gets better. I almost quit on it halfway through but stuck it out and quickly read all of the other books as well.
I highly recommend the audiobooks. They put a tremendous amount of effort into them and it really elevates the experience.
Jeff Hayes is great. He also did Chrysalis. So many good litrpgs. Him and andria parsnow are my favorites.
They’re a good time for sure.
im ashamed to admit i haven’t completed any books in a long time
this was an exception
Live action sounds like a cool idea but all I can imagine is the talking cat from Sabrina The Teenage witch. Like I’m sure they could do a better job with today’s tech, and maybe they’ll surprise us, but a talking live-action/realistic cgi cat seems hard to do well and not feel strange.
It’s also going to be hard having to hear a Carl (and everyone) that’s not Jeff Hays’ version (audiobook narrator) 😂
I understand this is not a popular opinion. But I have to say, I really don’t like hearing the voices from the audio book version of this series.
I completely agree that the voice actor deserves tons of credit. He’s one person voicing like 20 different characters. It’s impressive.
But when I read the books, I heard each character’s voice in my head. And they all sound different because the author did a great job of writing them with different voices. They didn’t all sound like one guy voicing 20 different characters.
For me, the audio book voices are all too much the same.
Get Jim Henson’s creature shop to take care of donut and she’ll come to life
I hope they get out there and kill, kill, kill it.
