ElfQuest: The Audio Movie

November 5, 2022 10:40 AM

From Realm. When a fierce tribe of woodland elves—the Wolfriders—are burned from their homes by hostile humans, their chief, Cutter, must tap every reserve of strength and will to lead his people to safety. Barely surviving brutal setbacks, the Wolfriders discover to their astonishment other elves—the Sun Folk—who exist in the world they thought was theirs alone.

"Audio movie," which is to say, "podcast." Adapts the first volume of the original quest, "Journey to Sorrow's End," with some additional backstory/characterization from the novelization.

posted by one for the books (3 comments total)

As a longtime fan, I've been listening to this. I stopped a couple weeks ago, and now I have some episodes backed up. The main thing that stopped me was that the dialogue is an absolute mouthful. This was always true about Elfquest, but in the comic you could wave it away, partly because the art is amazing and partly because you could pretend that it was all snappier in elvish. It's awfully awkward in the podcast format, though, and the actors try to get the difficult lines over with by rushing through it, a technique I recognize from theater kid days.

The actors are mostly really good, though. Cree Summer and Osric Chau stand out. The guy who voices Rayek does too, although it's because he's completely flat. He's not bad, he just sounds like a guy from an insurance commercial. You would expect some dark compelling brooding in his voice or something.

All in all, I'm not sure what somebody would make of it if they didn't already read Elfquest.
posted by Countess Elena at 11:06 AM on November 5, 2022 [1 favorite]

I really loved Elfquest as a mid-late teen, then lost track and interest as their publishing schedule got increasingly erratic. I'm not sure I can bring myself to listen to this, for the same reason I don't think I would ever read the comics again -- it's a vague, happy memory fro my childhood, and I would hate to subject it to my adult eyes and attitudes. If you'd told me it was the best thing, I might be tempted, but, like I said, those uncomplicated happy memories are fragile things. I also have a weird/horror podcast post to put together, so maybe my tastes have changed too much.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:07 PM on November 5, 2022

Wendy Pini has an anecdote from some convention she was at where a girl came up to her who had never heard of ElfQuest, and asked, "does your comic have any bad boys?" So Wendy drew her a picture of Rayek, and the girl said something like, "mmm, yes, that's the stuff, so fine!" Rayek's voice actor needs to have that effect on the listener, and I agree this guy doesn't pull it off.

Nor Skywise, really, but this early in the series they hadn't really realized he was a main character, it was more about beta couple Nightfall and Redlance.

I don't listen to podcasts much. This was a strange experience. It hewed very closely to the comics, so I could follow along panel by panel in my head, but maybe then I should have just been rereading the comics again?
posted by one for the books at 10:01 PM on November 5, 2022 [2 favorites]