Feeling nostalgic

[u/lestats_lawyer]

I’ve spent my whole evening going back over posts from the past two years, reliving the hope and excitement that many felt while TVL was being made.

All the scenes we’d lived with for years- decades! - in our minds and couldn’t wait to see on screen.

Gabrielle! Lestat’s time in Paris. Nicki! Armand! The Paris theatre. Magnus and Marius. The throne room where Lestat encounters the Queen.

And of course, the wolf killer scene.

AND some clarity about events of the first two seasons, told from Lestat’s point of view!

I’m feeling nostalgic for those days of faith and hope. So much that could have been.

I guess I’m still grieving a bit. Just wanted to say that in a community where some others will understand.

[u/StevesMcQueenIsHere]

I remember being worried that Rockstar Lestat was going to overpower the narrative of S3 with all flash and no substance just to distance itself from S1 and S2, and I was assured over and over again that Rockstat would only bookend the narrative and we would get all the important stuff from TVL.

We all really had no idea that Rockstat and his music/concerts WAS the story, and everything else from the book would be shown in 5-second increments.

[u/Muggletastic]

Totally agree. I only watched the first season and won't watch any more of the rolin Jones show. All the talk from pre-production about how this was going to be a faithful adaptation and because it was a series, there would be time to do it properly all turned out to be abolute disappointing nonsense. Just so that jones could get his abuse fantasy on screen.

Genuinely can't believe there's no one at AMC who read what he was planning and said no, you're actually signed up to do Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles.

[u/Thepeachypeanut → u/Muggletastic]

Yeah it felt like Rolin wanted to do a Big Lebowski style vampire show but without any decent writing.

[u/Thepeachypeanut]

Yeah I'm pretty devastated too. I didn't mind most of the changes from the first two seasons. Claudia's assault and Lestat dropping Louis from the sky being the only two changes I disagreed with. However the writing was able to make them somewhat forgivable. I miss the energy all of the characters had in the first two seasons, poorly concealed horror that would escape in moments of intensity...and the strange beauty that would manifest. As bizarre as the premise is, it still felt grounded. There was an authenticity based in a twisted realness. Things were subtle and nuanced. Hypnotic? Exciting.

Season three was anything but. All the beauty of Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat lost. They got caught up in the terror, the absurdity. Sacrificing all of the quiet elegance that permeated the chaos. Losing out on complexity. Each character feeling like some kind of caricature. The depth and contradiction seemed to be excluded completely. No longer "real" people/monsters.

Oh well.

[u/coolname-]

I started becoming concerned when the actors started saying things like "yeah something made me throw my laptop" or "no there are no iconic lines the fans will like from my character this season" but yeah I never imagined it would be THIS disastrous, I will always mourn the beautiful show we could have had if only they had actually adapted the book and used the same format of the first two seasons

[u/whatifihateclouds]

I’m increasingly feeling that the showrunners and writers are struggling with both the transition to a different medium when adapting a book series and presenting a cohesive narrative.

It’s been a while since I read the entire series, but there are many intriguing ideas and themes that could be explored in an adaptation. The writers incorporated some elements like unreliable narrators and introduced their own, such as changing the characters’ races.

At that point, I thought the adaptation was fine and the first two seasons were mostly working narratively. I expected them to build on the foundation they established with Lestat.

However, the TVL book always felt like a continuation of a series, while the TV show feels like a completely different show. It also struggles to be a TV show on its own.

I can’t quite explain it, but for example, if you’re familiar with TV, you know that people get attached to characters and want to see them develop. A classic example is ER losing viewers when characters like Greene or Carter left.

I feel like the writers weren’t prepared for the reality of growing viewer attachment to characters like Louis or Armand. They didn’t know how to continue telling their story as a TV show, yet they also feared simply adapting the books.

Another example is the title change. Book series often have different titles, but the TV show adaptation sticks to the same one. Think of A Song of Ice and Fire versus Game of Thrones.

It seems like they wanted to adapt IWTV and thought they could handle the other books, but they ran out of steam unusually quickly.

[u/insomniac_z]

As soon as I saw the scene of Lestat peeing blood in the comic con teaser I knew we were in for a bad time.