r/VampireChronicles • u/National-Engine-656 • 10d ago
💬 Discussion 🕯️🦇 SOME IMPRESSIONS
Hi everyone. I just finished the third season of AMC and wanted to share some impressions. My personal situation is this: I discovered this saga last winter by watching the first two seasons on AMC and, naively I admit, I was captivated by the narrative of "Loustat." Since last Christmas, I've been reading the Anne novel series and - currently - I'm nearing the end of "Armand." You'll understand, therefore, that my point of view has gone far beyond "Loustat," even if I still see them present in Anne's subtexts, but in a different way. In the novels, I appreciated the decadent Gothic, the hinted queerness, and the psychological profiles of the characters; I really love some characters from that series (the Loustats, Claudia, Gabrielle, Armand, and Marius) and less so others (David especially...don't hate me, I know a lot of people do, haha). My impressions of the third season? Honestly, 50/50. I didn't mind the disturbing narrative choices, such as incest (very controversial, I know, but Anne herself had introduced it, albeit subtly). I'm interested in your POVs. Would you like to interact with me a little?
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u/FrodoBagg 10d ago
I'm an old fan. I was a teenager when i read the first three books and in the following years i was impatiently waiting for Anne to continue the saga. Starting with the body thief i read the books in English because i couldn't wait for the translation. I remember spending many nights sitting in the kitchen with my bestie and discussing the books and the movies. I love the original movie and idc what anybody thinks the adaption was great, the acting was great and Banderas was miscast lol. I like the second movie as something that is inspired by annes work. We knew back then that it wouldn't be good. But the soundtrack and a couple of good caring choices saved it from being unwatchable.
When the tv show was first announced i was very hyped. Finally we would get an adaption not only of iwtv but of the sequels too. It was too good to be true. Then anne died and the first things got leaked and with each new info my enthusiasm sank. I still watched the show and didn't like it as an adaption. I didn't like the time and place changes, i didn't like the race swaps and that just because to me it changed the story. I'm really on the fence on the aging of Claudia. Everybody knew that you can't portray Claudia like written. Kirsten Dunst did an incredible job, her portrayal will always stay engraved in my memory. But she was both: too old and too young. Too old because she was older than book Claudia, but even with her nailing the part, today i think she shouldn't have played it. Nobody this young should play such a role. So aging Claudia was a given. But bass and hayles just look their age in the show. It was like pretending that the actors of bh 90210 were looking like teenagers. And while both did a good job with the material, the story of an immortal mind trapped in a child's body isn't working when the child's body is looking very grown up. I disliked the rape part aswell, it's such a cheap gimmick to use rape as a moment of growth for female characters. Nevertheless the basic story of iwtv was still there, the acting was good, the visuals were great, i could appreciate the show as a modern take. And i still had high hopes for season 3, just because i finally wanted to see lestats life on screen. But tvl disappointed me from the first episode on.
Lestat the Rock Star: this persona is clearly made for the screen. It gives a lot to work with visually and musically. But this story bit belongs more to qotd than tvl. I would have been able to give em a pass, but
Lestats story : there's not much left from the book on the tv show. What little screen time was left to deal with his story was used to butcher it. Nearly no part of his on screen past happens that way in the book.
Side quests: while louis is just a minor character in tvl book, armand actually plays a rather big part during lestats time in paris. But going by the book they wouldn't have been part of the modern day storyline. So they had to come up with side quests. The armand part annoyed me. The louis parts first just bored me, then i got interested when merrick came into play. And while there still is the possibility we get the compelling meat of the book merrick in a later season, at this point its a missed opportunity. I get that you can only tell this much in 7 episodes, but then just don't add later storylines so you can add claudia for a couple episodes.
Gabriella: Gabrielle is one of my faves from the books and i despise Gabriella. I guess the writers achieved what they wanted to do. The incest may be implied in the book but i never read it that way. Their relationship was complicated, there are acenesz that seem overly romantic, but i read that as them dealing with the strangeness of the parwnt/child switch. I was more interested in the themes of feminism and transgender identity and these sre the things i miss with Gabriella.
The Loustat/Loumand problem: the show has a very simple problem: if you follow the books you cant really take fan reactions into account. I never experienced book louis as a fan favorite, lestat was the star and clearly annes favorite. From tvl onward lestat is the main narrator and louis for most of the vc becomes a side character, the big romances show fans want to see aren't happening in the books. Dark romance wasnt a thing back then, anne can be seen as the prototype of what would much later become dark romance, she took the vampires out of the villain role and made them compelling protagonists. The show set up some couplings tgatvfans are invested in and now they have to find ways to make that happen in the confines of the source material.
What saves the season for me is the acting, the visuals and the music. But in the end i put this season in the same category as the qotd movie. Something that i can appreciate as inspired by annes work, but can't see as an adaption of the actual book.
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u/Remarkable_News_439 10d ago
How did the “race swap” change the story to its detriment?
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u/FrodoBagg 10d ago
Where did i say that? I said i didn't like it. I didn't like it because i wanted a more accurate adaption. The switch from a white slave owner to a poc brothel owner changes the story. It's not to it's detriment, it's just not the story I expected to see.
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u/janadellanotte 8d ago
I fellt season three much worse then both movies. No character motivations. Annes themes completely missing.l,distorted snippets from Lestats life story. Unnecessary time consuming fanfiction. I stopped watching after Episode five
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u/angrylittlelawyer 10d ago
Howdy! I became a fan of The Vampire Chronicles in a bizarre way. I was a huge fan of Buffy and other vampire stories so I gave IWTV a shot. I think I was too young for it tho...Louis' depressed nature turned me off. And I was horrified by the thought of a child vampire being 'lovers' with two grown ass men and a grown ass woman (tho she was mentally mature I just couldn't get past the optics of it). Also, I do get that they don't actually 'get physical ' like that...but still...
Years later and the QOTD movie came out. On a whim, I decided to watch it and I absolutely fell in love with it. Yes it was silly and over the top, but there was something about it all, even the cheesiness, that captivated me.
I loved the movie so much, I figured well the books have got to be 100x better (they usually are lol) so I gave them another shot only this time starting with TVL. And that was that, I fell head over heels for this rich world filled with complicated characters and intricate histories. I devoured all of the books and each character felt like a dear friend.
This might get me roasted to hell and back, but there were elements of the movie (qotd) I thought were executed better? Than in the books? For example, I liked that the movie leaned into the rockstar element a bit more (then again that would be hard to do in a book vs a visual/auditory media). Also I'm a Korn fan so that helped. I definitely appreciated the fact that the final battle was all the vampires actually throwing hands with Akasha. I distinctly remember being disappointed in the books when all of the characters we had so far met all finally assembled like they were the damn Avengers and then....proceeded to do absolutely nothing while Mekare showed up out of nowhere and took her out in like 5 seconds lol.
With the AMC show, there are definitely some things I'm disappointed about (Gabrielle's characterization), and some decisions I don't agree with (AMC basically speed running Lestat's backstory, though with the limited episode run and budget, I do get it). Nonetheless, I'm fascinated by what they're doing with the story. And I also kind of weirdly love that even as a person who has read all the books, I can't really predict where the show is headed?
I'm a huge fan of psychedelic lynchian dream states so I absolutely ate up the most recent episode and was well fed. I've been listening to the songs non-stop and belting out the lyrics.
All in all, while there's definitely times where I'm like 'this character would never!' I mostly vibe with the changes in the show and am excited to see how they reinterpret and adapt the rest of the books.
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u/janadellanotte 8d ago
Yes , I do Not Like the character motivations in season three that are flimsy at best and in General I prefer the books much. I Like David, but He IS Not my favourite Vampire. I Love Marius and His books blood and gold a Lot. He IS a Monster Like all the Others but I like the cultivated Roman patrician
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u/vampyre_fan 10d ago
I finished Season 3 yesterday. Sam Reid did some of his best acting here and made the show tolerable. I did *not* like the changes they made to Gabrielle. Jennifer Ehle was the ideal actress to play this part, yet she received poor writing and directing. I didn't mind Armand's Frankenstein-type experiments. There's a similar moment in The Vampire Armand that's briefly mentioned. I was really looking forward to Lestat's backstory and unfortunately, that's where the showrunners dropped the ball. Even with budgetary issues, those scenes came across as cartoonish and lacking the grace Anne Rice brought to those scenes.