You know, now that I've seen it in visual form, the Dresden Files as a whole seems incredibly corny.

It was a lot cooler in my head, tbh.

 

One thing I had visualised is his jacket, I always just pictured it as just a trench coat style thing. But an Inverness style jacket is fucking weird looking....

 

I just take the easy way and pretend that Harry looks like he does on the cover, sans-hat. I get that Butcher might have been going for a Holmesian-vibe with the Inverness coat, but I also think the mental picture he has must be different than what we get by looking at that. He describes Harry as goofy when he's thinking about himself but that's always from a self-conscious and self-depricating place, when in reality outside observers see him as this gigantic, brooding, terrifying maniac. That's a hard impression to give when you look as truly goofy as that coat would make you.

 

I don't think it does, it's just a trailer that's pretty low production quality. Throw an HBO sized budget at it and I imagine it'd seem a lot more impressive.

I hate the trailers because they seem like fan-made garbage.

 

I think there's also something to be said about the casting choices. How many of them hit 'on-target' for you? Maybe the titan since I have no reference for her really.

But Mab is not particularly beautiful, let alone inhumanely. That needed to be Charlize Theron or something, with all the professional makeup and digital airbrushing included. Same with Molly. Hell, even same with Murphy. She didn't give hard-ass but slightly aged cop, she just gave off tired mom vibes.

The actor portraying Dresden is hardly "too angular" to be good looking as Dresden describes himself. Should've been Karl Urban (The Boys anyone?) Ebenezar looks like a kindly old professor, not Hillbilly merlin with plenty of gumption. Should've been Jeff Bridges.

In general though, I think it's the 'softness' of everyone in the trailer. Dresden is supposed to bench press cars at this point and essentially be a thug. I forget which book or short story from recent years had him literally just staring down a bouncer/bodyguard who recognized that his scars were bigger, meaner, and uglier. Here he definitely just looks like a gangly Storm-front version at best.

Ramirez just looks doughy.

And yes, I realize I'm nitpicking to a stupid level about a fun trailer for a book. But honestly, I feel like this just hurts the chances we get a series or movie ever, if the scifi series didn't already strangle those hopes. Do it well or don't do it at all, and for a minute long fluff piece with 10 lines of dialogue, you didn't need to hire top level actors who could spend months getting in shape. Just some gym rats with the right looks.

 

Should do another Dresden Casting thread.

 

Any Dresden series would have to be animated to not completely suck. There's too much magic and inhuman stuff that live action would be anything except shit.

 

That's too long for some books. Especially the first two that I would be tempted to completely skip.

 

Supposedly the first 4 chapters are available in the Kindle preview.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dresdenfil...ndle_sample_of_battle_grounds_has_4_chapters/

I don't see an option for this on my kindle or the website, anyone have it pre-ordered on kindle and can confirm / deny?

 

I've pre-ordered the book, but I don't see the 'try a sample' button nor any other way to preview it either.

 

Other comments on that reddit thread seem to imply that the OP had an issue of mistaken identity. Apparently "Battle Ground(s)" is a common name.

 

“These sample chapters don’t even have Dresden in them!”

 

Guh, major fail, no comments there when I'd posted.. Sorry for the false alarm. Was hoping I was missing something when I looked.

 

New chapter finally addresses the Murphy situation and that was satisfying to read. I'm still not sold on Mac but I'm curious who he could be, Dresden said he recognizes him now.

 

A Grigori seems to be the case. The angel in Ghost Story was able to know that Dresden tried to use his sight and stop him, same thing happened here. The Outsider in Cold Days also called him a 'Watcher'. Not very familiar with the details on them, from that wiki page, they seem to be considered separately from the Fallen even though they're 'out' (which mac has said in cold days too).

 

Yeah, the pop culture references got old several books ago.

With that said though, this was a genuinely great chapter; we're getting resolutions to long-asked questions, the plot seems to be moving along, and there was little to no corniness