tv show spoilers S1E6: The Flame of Tar Valon

[Sabio]

Problem with that is if Mat was the Dragon and didn't go then he could be dooming the world.  You would think if he cared about his sisters that he wouldn't run the risk of being the Dragon and running off.

[WhiteVeils]

If he figured he'd doom the world if he /were/ the Dragon too, then it's a matter of 'what is less likely to doom the world. 

[Agitel]

44 minutes ago, Sabio said:

Problem with that is if Mat was the Dragon and didn't go then he could be dooming the world.  You would think if he cared about his sisters that he wouldn't run the risk of being the Dragon and running off.

The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills.

[SinisterDeath]

3 hours ago, dwn said:

Regardless of budget, making a black void (and nonsensical geometry) compelling in a visual medium is extremely difficult. I'll reserve judgement for what we end up with in the next episode, but if they manage to convey the oppressive/unnerving loneliness of the Ways in some other fashion I'll be fine with it.

Digitally representing blackness within a black void renders the exact same as a black void.

I honestly believe they swapped Mashadar and Machin Shin because a white mist will be something you can visually see in a black void...

[Spiritweaver1]

10 minutes ago, SinisterDeath said:

Digitally representing blackness within a black void renders the exact same as a black void.

I honestly believe they swapped Mashadar and Machin Shin because a white mist will be something you can visually see in a black void...

Good foretelling I like it.  The only problem is that White Wind just doesn't sound as menacing as the Black Wind.    I think they should have some light in the ways, a very dim light that flickered like a failing fluorescent bulb.  Then the black wind could eat that light.  It might make the ways more scary because of the varying light.  We would never be sure that they weren't going out for ever.  Loial could make his speech about the Way's being lit once and shining.  Of course I am only writing the show in my head.  Not IRL.

[bringbackthomsmoustache]

5 hours ago, SinisterDeath said:

Digitally representing blackness within a black void renders the exact same as a black void.

"Every time you press one of these little black buttons that are labelled in black on a black background a little black light lights up black to let you know you have done it - what is this some kind of galactic hyperherse?"

Edited December 15, 2021 by bringbackthomsmoustache
for accuracy

[Padmehlc]

10 hours ago, ArrylT said:

 

Tam Al'Thor needs to pressure Amazon to get his Apple Brandy as the exclusive drink of the WOT

 

That is a licensed product I would happily buy!

[Agitel]

I finally got to my E6 rewatch. It holds up better when my mind isn't spending every second comparing to the books. It still leaves me with a few head scratchers, though.

[NetNightmare]

15 hours ago, notpropaganda73 said:

Citation needed.

Well just out of my ... head ?

 

The Green Knight had a budged of $15 and looks way better obviously doesn't have CGI or at least not much then if we wanna go back into the past :

 

Mad Max had a $300.000 budget Star Wars from the 77 had a $11 million budget of course we have to take into account the devaluation in mind but you should also agree that CGI has slightly improved since then ...

 

First Season of GoT (yeah I know it is a forbidden word) its way better visually and had a slightly lesser budget, I agree that  WoT has a lot more need of CGI, but I would gladly drop CGI for a more "realistic" visual (of course this is my opinion).

 

 

[notpropaganda73]

I think you're really underestimating the cost of CGI to be honest. Of course CGI will have improved from the first Star Wars but it has also gotten more expensive. I just googled it and found this article about the MCU: https://academyofanimatedart.com/breakthrough-and-expensive-cgi-scenes-in-mcu-movies/

 

MCU will be the best of the best and even then the CGI isn't 10/10 perfect in all of their movies (hello final battle in the Black Panther movie). That article says a standalone MCU movie might have a CGI budget between $100m-$200m. That's for what, 90-120 minutes of movie? And you are saying that $10m an episode should be enough for *everything* to look fantastic? 

 

The set, costumes etc., that's a matter of taste. I love a lot of the design for the show, and I think the last episode in particular the costumes looked absolutely fantastic. But CGI will take up a huge chunk of the budget. 

 

I don't think things look perfect at all and there are things which definitely should be criticised (the editing has been off, the wolf attack of the Whitecloak camp was poor, the Hall of the Tower looks terrible when they zoomed out, Mashadar in Shadar Logoth looked bad - but better when Mat was healed in fairness). But there are a lot of things that look fantastic (imo), so just throwing out statements that there are lots of films with similar budgets that don't have CGI but look better is grossly unfair. 

 

Edit: And I know for a fact if they greatly reduced CGI there would be huge complaints. The whole reason WoT was thought of as unfilmable for so long was because of the CGI challenges. I don't think you can make WoT without a big chunk going to CGI, and even then there will be issues (as evidenced in this season). 

Edited December 15, 2021 by notpropaganda73

[fra85uk]

But in truth CGI quality is the minor visual problem of the show.

The Real problem (for me) on the visual part are the sets, costumes, camera angles and lighting, all of them reflecting a low-budget production.

The only non-fake looking parts are shots in the wild and the beginning of ep4 which was shot in an actual castle in Spain.

 

 

[NetNightmare]

1 hour ago, notpropaganda73 said:

And I know for a fact if they greatly reduced CGI there would be huge complaints. The whole reason WoT was thought of as unfilmable for so long was because of the CGI challenges. I don't think you can make WoT without a big chunk going to CGI, and even then there will be issues (as evidenced in this season). 

You are obviously right CGI does cost, I do not care much for it but it is true, BUT you are right also for the highlighted text ... nobody forced them to do it ... they had a plan and a budget so either was bad the plan or the budget was not enough... Also I personally think CGI is the latest of  their problem camera angles and lighting and editing is really really bad.

Edited December 15, 2021 by NetNightmare

[notpropaganda73]

1 hour ago, fra85uk said:

But in truth CGI quality is the minor visual problem of the show.

The Real problem (for me) on the visual part are the sets, costumes, camera angles and lighting, all of them reflecting a low-budget production.

The only non-fake looking parts are shots in the wild and the beginning of ep4 which was shot in an actual castle in Spain.

Like I said, a matter of taste. The costumes are one of my favourite parts of the show (consistently). However, I do think there are problems with the visuals in the show. It has been very up and down. Sometimes it looks fantastic, other times as you say, it looks low-budget. 

 

I would put this down to misuse of the budget really, where they focus on certain things at the expense of others. But we can't know for sure as we're not on the inside of decisions. 

[fra85uk]

But i Have seen TV series here in Italy with a minimal fraction of the budget with consistent and high-quality visuals.

Budget mismanagement can be an issue but who looked at some scenes and said "oh perfectly fine" was frankly out of his (or her to quote Moraine) mind.

[SinisterDeath]

5 hours ago, NetNightmare said:

Mad Max had a $300.000 budget Star Wars from the 77 had a $11 million budget of course we have to take into account the devaluation in mind but you should also agree that CGI has slightly improved since then ...

$11M in 77 is worth $50M today.

$300K in 79, is $1.1M today.

 

The $55M budget for the first Season of GoT in 2011 dollars = ~$68M in todays dollars. Which changes it from an average of $5.5M/ep to $6.8M/ep. (If I remember Season 1 of GoT, they had less locations to visit, and less big city sets to construct. They also had a bunch of smaller interchangeable sets.)

AFAIK, HBO/GOT didn't have to buy and create their own movie studio in Prague due to every movie studio being full... or have to compete with the monster that is Disney/Marvel hogging up all the good CGI companies. ? 

 

TDLR: Unless Amazon chipped in to pay for things outside of the shows budget, I don't think the ~$10M/ep WoT was budgeted, actually means it got $10M in every episode. It's per episode budget after other expenses might be equal to GoTs.

 

[nsmallw]

On 12/10/2021 at 10:08 AM, Texas Grognard said:

IMO--

 

Cutting Caemlyn is fine.  It doesn't advance the story in book 1 really.  It doesn't get you to the Eye any faster.

 

The show needed us to know more about the Aes Sedai in season 1 than we did in book 1.  They're part of the main attraction for viewers.

 

"Pillow Friends" appeared much earlier than in the books, and that's great.  RJ couldn't have written it that way in the early 90s, but you can't not have that content now especially since its cannon.

 

I have no idea why the Ways were taken away from Loial.  Why did Moiraine need to consult him at all?

 

Matt stayed because of the recasting, I'm almost certain.

 

"5 headed dragon" and the Eye being the prison of the Dark One just seems like dialing up the unreliable narrator to 11.  I think it'll be interesting to see whether non-book fans find it intriguing or frustrating.

 

IMO--the episode was perfectly fine.  Its not the book.  This is what historians feel like every time we watch a historical film.  Its what Freddie Mercury felt like watching his own biopic. This is the reductive and abstractive nature of the medium.

 

For people decrying the fans as Book Cloaks, I'd like to explain it like this.  For a long time there has been no new content for WoT.  The Fandom has been characterized by nostalgia and needing to convert people to their cause in order to share nostalgia.  However, during the period of RJ's active writing, WoT's Fandom was just as active and divisive as any other.  There were feuds, argument, battling theories and the like. While I worry about how the newly rejuvinated Fandom will impact the acquisition of new viewers, I must simultaneously recognize that this is very much a return to the glory days.

 

Folks, we have new content to argue about, and life is good.

There was a cut scene where Loial was showing something on a map to Moriaine and Lan.

IF they had put that scene into the show, i think it would have been less confusing. Maybe only Loial knew the locations of the ways and was needed for that purpose in the show. But I do feel that they shouldn't have had Moraine be the one to open the portal. Loial should have done it as in the books. 

[MasterAblar]

1 minute ago, nsmallw said:

There was a cut scene where Loial was showing something on a map to Moriaine and Lan.

IF they had put that scene into the show, i think it would have been less confusing. Maybe only Loial knew the locations of the ways and was needed for that purpose in the show. But I do feel that they shouldn't have had Moraine be the one to open the portal. Loial should have done it as in the books. 

 

Moiraine opens the gate in the books, Loial just leads them to it. And of course he's needed to guide them through the Ways.

[nsmallw]

3 hours ago, notpropaganda73 said:

Like I said, a matter of taste. The costumes are one of my favourite parts of the show (consistently). However, I do think there are problems with the visuals in the show. It has been very up and down. Sometimes it looks fantastic, other times as you say, it looks low-budget. 

 

I would put this down to misuse of the budget really, where they focus on certain things at the expense of others. But we can't know for sure as we're not on the inside of decisions. 

For me it's the editing and choices of what scenes to cut or to add. That's been the most inconsistent thing to be about the production. 

[fra85uk]

12 minutes ago, MasterAblar said:

 

Moiraine opens the gate in the books, Loial just leads them to it. And of course he's needed to guide them through the Ways.

 

I think the only difference is that Moraine does not use the OP in the book to open the gate.

[MasterAblar]

2 minutes ago, fra85uk said:

 

I think the only difference is that Moraine does not use the OP in the book to open the gate.

Yep, which seems like an unforced error to me so hopefully there’s a reason for that change.

[nsmallw]

On 12/13/2021 at 8:52 PM, Agitel said:

I do wonder if the DR mystery will backfire more because they teased other alternatives rather than just playing it straight.

 

I'm not predicting it will. But I wonder occasionally.

Oh believe me, there will be hordes of people complaining that the show is just another "white saviour" story. They did it with the Dune movie and they'll do it in WOT as well.  What those folks ignore is that RJ made the books far more than just a Rand story and Rafe has done the same. 

[Sabio]

Moiraine earlier mentioned the Ways were closed when trying to figure out how the trollocs came out of the blight.  Later she goes aboutopening one, so clearly they Ways aren't closed. Maybe the Ogier took the keys to make sure no one uses the ways so being able to open them with the power is the backup method. Or using the power just seems more dramatic. 

[Sabio]

6 minutes ago, nsmallw said:

Oh believe me, there will be hordes of people complaining that the show is just another "white saviour" story. They did it with the Dune movie and they'll do it in WOT as well.  What those folks ignore is that RJ made the books far more than just a Rand story and Rafe has done the same. 

I think it will be more of many (such as myself) will feel all the deception for the Dragon was rather unnecessary.  It didn't add alot of suspense (though I did read the books so already knew) and might leave fans feeling tricked.  Plus the one that will be the Dragon is the one they spent the least amount of time on trying to make a case for why he might be the dragon (except a few hints).  I think they could have been like the books where you aren't totally sure since Ishy isn't sure yet, but you have a good guess who it is.  It would have come out better than making Rand channel but not using the black channeling wisps.

[Skipp]

55 minutes ago, nsmallw said:

Oh believe me, there will be hordes of people complaining that the show is just another "white saviour" story. They did it with the Dune movie and they'll do it in WOT as well.  What those folks ignore is that RJ made the books far more than just a Rand story and Rafe has done the same. 

I think it will help that they have increased focus on the rest of the cast early.

[Deviations]

Sincere request.  I haven't had the time to re-watch ep 6 and I just cant remember the specifics of what happened...  What was the justification for going through the ways?

 

Where did the thought come from that the dark one is at the eye?

Where did the plan to use the ways come from?

Was there any real discussion on the danger of the ways and why speed was so needed?

Did they shift from 'shaitan is trying to blind the eye", to "let's deal with shaitan at the eye"?