Changes to Mat’s character

[flinn]

^But it is not for "honorable reasons". He stole because he needed to recoup his losses from gambling. That is the exact opposite of honorable.

[JenniferL]

54 minutes ago, flinn said:

^But it is not for "honorable reasons". He stole because he needed to recoup his losses from gambling. That is the exact opposite of honorable.

He was gambling to try to get enough money to buy his sisters lanterns and other Bel Tine treats. He’s robbing the corpse to get money to get back to his family with a safer, faster route than wandering through the woods. Robbing a corpse might not be something he’d consider before picking up the dagger, but he’s still justifying it to himself as being for the benefit of his sisters. This is all consistent with being Chaotic Good. 

[flinn]

18 minutes ago, JenniferL said:

He was gambling to try to get enough money to buy his sisters lanterns and other Bel Tine treats. He’s robbing the corpse to get money to get back to his family with a safer, faster route than wandering through the woods. Robbing a corpse might not be something he’d consider before picking up the dagger, but he’s still justifying it to himself as being for the benefit of his sisters. This is all consistent with being Chaotic Good. 

 Well sure, he is grave robbing because he wants to get back to his sisters.. except we know that doesnt happen.

 

 Let's also not forget he just swiped a pretty nifty dagger with a big ruby in the hilt, I bet that would be enough to get him home to his sisters.

[JenniferL]

Okay, but just because we, the audience, know he doesn’t go home doesn’t mean Mat isn’t thinking about it. And we know he’s incapable of giving up the dagger. If the change doesn’t work for you, then it doesn’t work for you. But it’s not a plot hole. 

[flinn]

59 minutes ago, JenniferL said:

Okay, but just because we, the audience, know he doesn’t go home doesn’t mean Mat isn’t thinking about it. And we know he’s incapable of giving up the dagger. If the change doesn’t work for you, then it doesn’t work for you. But it’s not a plot hole. 

 well, I for one never said it was a "plot hole". I do not like they made Mat a thief, and to call it "honorable" is kinda dishonest.

 

 

 Perrin: "How much did he lose this time"

 Rand: "I dont know, I lost count"

 

 After losing his money he looks over at the girl with the gold bracelet, smiles and goes after her. There is not one single thing honorable about what he did.

[Ryrin]

3 hours ago, JenniferL said:

Okay, but just because we, the audience, know he doesn’t go home doesn’t mean Mat isn’t thinking about it. And we know he’s incapable of giving up the dagger. If the change doesn’t work for you, then it doesn’t work for you. But it’s not a plot hole. 

I think it’s completely revamping Mat. He was a self centered prankster. Now he’s stealing for his sisters and protecting them from toxic parents, an alcoholic mother and a cheating father who avoids being at home. 

[JenniferL]

I’ve spun off the Mat discussion into its own thread. Enjoy. 

[DojoToad]

12 hours ago, JenniferL said:

He was gambling to try to get enough money to buy his sisters lanterns and other Bel Tine treats. He’s robbing the corpse to get money to get back to his family with a safer, faster route than wandering through the woods. Robbing a corpse might not be something he’d consider before picking up the dagger, but he’s still justifying it to himself as being for the benefit of his sisters. This is all consistent with being Chaotic Good. 

Still have a problem with Mat leaving his young sisters with his ne'er-do-well parents - even if it was supposedly to lead the trollocs away.  Personally, I still think the trollocs would have gone right through EF to chase the fleeing folks - why not get some meat for the journey?

[Agitel]

13 hours ago, flinn said:

^But it is not for "honorable reasons". He stole because he needed to recoup his losses from gambling. That is the exact opposite of honorable.

 

I interpet what happened as Mat having some money, but not enough to buy anything from Fain. So he gambled to turn the some money into enough money, and ended up losing everything. So a string of poor choices and a downward spiral. He never has enough, and when he has some he takes absurd risks to try to make it bigger.

 

I could be wrong, though.

[Agitel]

6 minutes ago, DojoToad said:

Still have a problem with Mat leaving his young sisters with his ne'er-do-well parents - even if it was supposedly to lead the trollocs away.  Personally, I still think the trollocs would have gone right through EF to chase the fleeing folks - why not get some meat for the journey?

 

The Myrdraal probably whipped them to follow the party. They were so close and weren't going to let them slip away while the Trollocs feasted.

[notpropaganda73]

3 minutes ago, DojoToad said:

Still have a problem with Mat leaving his young sisters with his ne'er-do-well parents - even if it was supposedly to lead the trollocs away.  Personally, I still think the trollocs would have gone right through EF to chase the fleeing folks - why not get some meat for the journey?

 

In all honesty this is more an indicator of how poorly that scene was handled, rather than anything specific to Mat's character. It's probably my biggest criticism of the show so far, that leave-taking scene. 

[DojoToad]

3 minutes ago, Agitel said:

 

The Myrdraal probably whipped them to follow the party. They were so close and weren't going to let them slip away while the Trollocs feasted.

I just didn't like the the rush.  I understand reinforcements came through the waygate, and that this put immediacy into their departure - but I thought it was cheap and rushed (and unrealistic).  Just my opinion.

 

Cut out the long/boring scene between Moiraine and Nynaeve at the sacred pool and there would have been time to handle it more like the books - conversations with family and friends about not wanting them to go with the witch but probably for the best before more trollocs showed up.

[Elder_Haman]

Or just shorten the battle scene slightly. This is my biggest criticism too. And if you want to do Nynaeve getting kidnapped, move it until after she's had some post battle interactions healing people. They chose more action over better character here. (And strangely made the wrong choice in Shadar Logoth, where they could have stood for a little more action, but that's a different discussion).

 

But I really liked Episode 2 better than Episode 1. And I liked Episode 3 better than Episode 2. So it seems to be trending in the right direction.

 

 

Edited November 22, 2021 by Elder_Haman

[Agitel]

The conversation between Nyn and Moiraine worked to show multiple facets of the characters, so that should be kept. Shortening the battle, or even just allowing three to five more minutes of run time could have allowed a little more elaboration at the end. I heard that Rafe wanted two hours for the first episode and was denied, but I wish they'd have given him 70 or 75 minutes.

[TheTuna450]

I don't mind the Mat changes because (if we're being honest) Mat sucks in EotW and tGH and doesn't become the Mat we all know and love until tDR. He has basically no real character in the first 2 books and is completely insufferable. That works OK for the books due to the way they're set up, but the show had to give him more of a meaningful conflict early on, and I think the family drama is a fine way to do it.

[TheDreadReader]

14 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

Or just shorten the battle scene slightly. This is my biggest criticism too. And if you want to do Nynaeve getting kidnapped, move it until after she's had some post battle interactions healing people. They chose more action over better character here. (And strangely made the wrong choice in Shadar Logoth, where they could have stood for a little more action, but that's a different discussion).

 

Yesterday, I watch three or four reaction videos on youtube by non-readers.  Allowing for the tendency of the format towards over-reaction, they all had a pretty strong and positive reactions to the battle scenes of episode 1.   And, I didn't see or hear too much about the pacing from any of them.   I'm starting to wonder if the pacing complaint (I have it too) is coming more from our knowledge of the material than from the show itself.

 

One thing that I found amusing, is that for the complaints about the color-coded costumes for the Aes Sedai, each video I watched picked up on the fact that there is a difference between a red sister and a blue sister in the first minutes of the show.

 

 

14 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

But I really liked Episode 2 better than Episode 1. And I liked Episode 3 better than Episode 2. So it seems to be trending in the right direction.

 

I think it really is that episode is a grab 'em by the face with the battle to set the hook approach.   

 

 

[Elder_Haman]

I understand the motive for making the changes - you want viewers to have reasons to care about all of the characters. Since EotW is told so much from Rand's POV, we don't know much about Perrin or Mat really. We get little bits and pieces of them from Rand's POV.

 

Viewers needed some sort of emotional hook for each of the characters. 

 

I don't mind Mat's that much. I would have preferred that he didn't steal the bracelet and try to pawn it to Fain. That scene would have worked better with Mat trying to sweet talk Fain into giving him the lanterns and Fain refusing to give him goods on credit. You could have gotten similar banter, make it clear that Mat can run a little close to the edge of propriety, but not made him a thief.

 

And, if they had done it that way, Mat's corpse robbing to get coin (to pay for the trip home) would have been a subtle way to show the influence of the dagger. So I don't think they've paid it off as well as they could have. On the other hand, it's not awful. And I am hoping for a redemption of his parents.

 

My concern is that the degree of difficulty with the changes to Perrin's backstory is greater. They need to pay it off. If they don't handle it well, Faile is not going to work at all. And that relationship will become more annoying that it was in the books - albeit for different reasons.

[Elder_Haman]

13 minutes ago, TheDreadReader said:

I'm starting to wonder if the pacing complaint (I have it too) is coming more from our knowledge of the material than from the show itself.

That probably has a good deal to do with it. The people I've talked to: a group of four friends, two of whom have not read the books, one who read them once many years ago, and one who just started reading (and is just through FoH) all thought that leaving the TR happened a little too quickly. But the book readers were more bothered by it than the non book readers.

[mogi68]

My issue with Mat is not that they made changes to his backstory necessarily, but that the character of the Two Rivers as a whole was not maintained. Emond's Field is a conservative, traditional place, where all of the main characters come from nuclear families and have generally happy childhoods. The Emond's Field five all have strong moral instincts, and it's this upbringing that allows them to resist the Dark One so strongly. Rand himself says that he will prevail over the DO because "this time he was raised better".

 

It's an idyllic, secluded place, and they barely even know what war is. After arriving home in TSR, Perrin thinks about Whitecloaks being in the Two Rivers and shakes his head. He can hardly believe it. But in the show, not only do the boys laugh off the concept of war in Ghealdan, they don't blink at soldiers being in Taren Ferry.

 

I admit that on the part of the writers, some of the changes make sense, but they alter the character of the setting so much that it's almost unrecognizable. It's like they took the 90's optimism of TEOTW and replaced it with post 9/11 cynicism.

 

[WhiteVeils]

I think making Two Rivers non idyllic is intentional, indeed, part of the  point.  The EF5 are supposed to be human, and they are written to be very human, with good and bad parts of themselves.  The world is crammed full of humans.  No one is an elf or anything.

When you have a group of human beings living in a society, there are going to be people with trauma and problems.  In the books, we have the Coplins, for example, too.  But we never interact with them or see them or see anything bad...they're just 'those bad folks over there' to tell us that the Two Rivers is not perfect or ideal...that there are weak, non-ideal people in the Two Rivers just like everywhere else.

But in the show, we don't get to read through the character's thoughts about these non-ideal people over there.  And it would be a waste of tv time to linger at all on the Coplins and Congars when developing our main characters is much more important. The changes to Mat's family do a huge amount of work for us, for Mat's character especially, but it /also/ shows everyone that Emond's Field is not the Shire, that these are real people with a variety of types and problems, and just...human.  And that's OK.

Plus it shows how Mat would have learned some of his scullduggery.

[jeffreycwagner]

2 hours ago, Elder_Haman said:

My concern is that the degree of difficulty with the changes to Perrin's backstory is greater. They need to pay it off. If they don't handle it well, Faile is not going to work at all. And that relationship will become more annoying that it was in the books - albeit for different reasons.

I concur, Perrin is wrecked and it will take something incredible to salvage him in the show.  From what little has been revealed, Perrin appears as a neglectful husband or in a bad marriage, not as committed to work as his wife, the list of issues just goes on and on, I really hope they have a plan and it brings Book Perrin into the show, cause right now he is AWOL!

[Elder_Haman]

9 minutes ago, jeffreycwagner said:

I concur, Perrin is wrecked and it will take something incredible to salvage him in the show.

Whoa there, cowboy! I didn't say that "Perrin is wrecked" because I don't think he is. And I don't think it will "take something incredible to salvage him" because I don't.

 

Perrin did not seem like a neglectful husband or like he was uncommitted to work. There does seem to be some backstory of his that we don't have full knowledge of. Whether its a bad marriage, or an unplanned pregnancy, or some lingering jealousy over something.

 

What I'm saying is that they have to pay these things off. We have to learn more about his situation. And it has to explain things while at the same time making it understandable that he would fall for Faile. I think that's hard, not impossible. 

 

I don't find Perrin's character ruined. And I think these changes have the potential to really help with his on screen character.

[MasterAblar]

3 hours ago, DojoToad said:

I just didn't like the the rush.  I understand reinforcements came through the waygate, and that this put immediacy into their departure - but I thought it was cheap and rushed (and unrealistic).  Just my opinion.

 

Cut out the long/boring scene between Moiraine and Nynaeve at the sacred pool and there would have been time to handle it more like the books - conversations with family and friends about not wanting them to go with the witch but probably for the best before more trollocs showed up.

 

I think if anything needed to be shortened its probably the battle. Nyneave and Moiraine have a very confrontational relationship in the books, I wasn't bothered with them trying to bring it across early.

[flinn]

 This really isnt the line I draw in the sand. I dont like they made Mat a thief, but it isnt a deal breaker.

 

 But come on now... how anyone can see Mat doing it as honorable is beyond me.

 

 Rand said he "lost count" of how much Mat lost... he only needed 1 mark from Fain to get the lanterns...

 

 I guess we now can say Rand cant count past 1?

 

 or lets go with the simple thing... they made Mat into a thief.

 

it really only bothers me because Mat (who is one of my all time favorite characters in any genre) was always a really good person, no matter what his mouth said. He may grumble and complain and say "I would never do such a thing", but when push comes to shove, he always ALWAYS did the right thing.

 

 that is no longer Mat.

[TheDreadReader]

4 minutes ago, flinn said:

 This really isnt the line I draw in the sand. I dont like they made Mat a thief, but it isnt a deal breaker.

 

 But come on now... how anyone can see Mat doing it as honorable is beyond me.

 

 Rand said he "lost count" of how much Mat lost... he only needed 1 mark from Fain to get the lanterns...

 

 I guess we now can say Rand cant count past 1?

 

 or lets go with the simple thing... they made Mat into a thief.

 

it really only bothers me because Mat (who is one of my all time favorite characters in any genre) was always a really good person, no matter what his mouth said. He may grumble and complain and say "I would never do such a thing", but when push comes to shove, he always ALWAYS did the right thing.

 

 that is no longer Mat.

 

I find the thief part hard to square with Mat too.   But, I also suspect that the crystal/jewel that he stole might have significance later in some way.  

 

When Mat was getting ready to throw the dice were you expecting him to win?   That's the moment that stuck with me more than anything else.  But, having him lose there that can easily get payed off when his luck turns.