Comparing Wheel of Time to other fantasy adaptations

[Ralph]

2 hours ago, Truthteller said:

Rafe said straight out that he wanted to spread the big moments out more equally.  But the consequence of this is that Rand doesn’t get his big moment of power.  But this ruins the whole theme of the seduction of power.  He hasn’t tasted what you can do with the power yet, and without having actually done it, the power isn’t as seductive.  The temptation is all theoretical and abstract. 

Yes this temptation was abstract. As it is in the books when the DO tempts him with this type of life. Nothing to do with power. And in the books also he never had that temptation, or in fact any temptation, at this stage. 

 

The division of moments is not for gender equality, if that is your intention, it is because they are all meant to be major characters in the battle, as they are in the last book. This is what Rafe has said. 

2 hours ago, Truthteller said:

 

 

And this captures so much of what is wrong  about the series.  Because Rafe is motivated by his own version of equality, and because he thinks the character development of the series needs to be accelerated, he makes changes to the story.

Not sure which character development has accelerated? 

2 hours ago, Truthteller said:

 

But these changes haven’t been thought through, and as a result you get neither equality nor character development.  

I don't disagree with this, but I have no reason to think this was the reason

[Guest Testeria]

19 minutes ago, CanisNoir said:

To be honest, I think our reaction to that says more about us as viewers than it does the show. Why do we assume that flashy displays of raw power equate to competence or "badassery" instead of someone who quietly struggles with a difficult and gigantic moral quandary and in the end chooses the hard but right path? 

 

Because this is not in the convention. If one wants a moral straggle only - one reads Joseph Conrad or Dostojewski, not high fantasy. Sure moral questions are fine - but only followed but deadly magic and heroic battles. It is escapist genre.

 

 

19 minutes ago, CanisNoir said:

I think there might be two roadblocks in Season 1 for you with regards to this show and High Fantasy.

 

I now read the book (when I'm not rumbling on the forum) and it seems high fantasy enough for me. Lan and Tam are high fantasy fighter, Moiraine is high fantasy mage, Thom is high fantasy bard, and tworiverers are still only heroes in training which is all right. I hate this "I want to stay at home" hero trope (I believe it came from Hobbit and Thomas Covenant but it is awful) but it is not really in Jordan's book. His heroes are doers, not thinkers.

 

 

19 minutes ago, CanisNoir said:

The second road block being, it's only Season 1.  You can't really have your Dragon going all Dragon in the first season.

 

Look what Villeneuve did with Dune - it is a masterpiece. He moved Paul from scene to scene without much power show from him - just some dream sequences and hints and ruthless competence he would use later. And Dune is arguably much harder to move to screen than Jordan's work.

 

Valda is actually built much better (up to the scene with yellow Perrin) then Rand. You can feel he is pure danger even when he is eating. There are many ways to show us that Rand is danger: it is wheel of time so even the land can respond to him somehow, the animals, trees... They apparently just don't have the skills to develop the character properly.

 

 

19 minutes ago, CanisNoir said:

If you look at Game of Thrones first season, none of the "Hero's" had any flashy heroic actions.

 

Agree, I stopped watching within the first season. ? I really hate when author presents as a character, hints he is a main hero and then kills him - it is so cheap!. I did watched series partly later with the dragons but skipped the last season again because it made no sense ?

 

 

19 minutes ago, CanisNoir said:

I am glad you're enjoying the show, and hope you get some more of what you want as the Seasons go on. 

 

Thanks!

 

26 minutes ago, EmreY said:

Season 1 Rand is not all that different to Book 1 Rand (up to almost the end).  But his heart seems to be in the right place.  And as half the fun (IMO) is reading about Rand growing progressively more paranoid*, arrogant and insane, I believe they sort of have to build him up before they tear him apart in the TV show.

 

He is very different. In the book he starts as simple boy full of wander for the world and is gradually stripped from his innocence, curiosity and even his identity (who is my parents question). I see nothing of this in the show.

 

43 minutes ago, DaddyFinn said:

We learned that in.. episode 1? When he and Egwene were talking on top of the boulder? He talked of a wife, children, building a house for his family. Sure, he doesn't say "I want" but it's heavily implied.

 

I don't see it that way. It is rather a constatation of how their life in two rivers was meant to be. It is similar in the books but there it hints that Rand do not really love Egwene, but in little villages you just do not have many choices how to live.

 

Now rewaching it I believe it is a hint for his choice in the ep.8 and still not a way to show us who Rand really is. We know he loves Egwene (in the books he really don't) and that is all. His inspiration is Egwene, his choices are Egwene choices. He has no agenda of his own.

 

That is a shame really because this separation of Egwene and Rand in the book goes really nicely. I'm curious how it will end up ?

 

 

[ashi]

42 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

47 minutes ago, ashi said:

Maybe technically true

That's the best kind of true.

Indeed, though many kinds of truth can be great.

 

42 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

But the whole point of the Wheel of Time is the deconstruction of heroic fantasy tropes.

One of the points, maybe. Personally, I find that statements like "the whole point of X" often can be a bit reductionistic. There are a lot of other points, too. (Edit: rather, any discrete set of points will be reductionistic, though some sets more than others, perhaps.)

 

Quote

Jordan:

 

"There are a number of themes that run through the series. There's the good old basic struggle between good and evil, with an emphasis on the difficulty in recognizing what is god[sic] and what is evil. There's also the difficulty in deciding how far you can go in fighting evil. I like to think of it as a scale. At one end you hold purely to your own ideals no matter what the cost, with the result that possibly evil wins. At the other end, you do anything and everything to win, with the result that maybe it doesn't make much difference whether you've won or evil has won. There has to be some sort of balance found in the middle, and it's very difficult to find.

 

Another recurring theme is lack of information, and the mutability of information. No one knows everything. [...] Characters learn more about the truth as time goes on, and sometimes found out that what they knew before was only the first layer of the onion. That's a major theme, really, in the whole series, that changeability—the way something starts out seeming to be one simple thing, and slowly it is revealed to have a number of very complex layers.

 

But for all the grand events and great hoop-la and whoop-de-do going on, the things that really interest me more than anything else are the characters themselves. How they change. How they don't change. How they relate to each other. The people fascinate me."

 

But maybe it [the deconstruction of heroic fantasy tropes] is a starting-point. Or maybe: 

 

"The deconstruction was not the point. There are no points to the Wheel of Time. But it was a point."

Edited January 6, 2022 by ashi

[EmreY]

8 minutes ago, Testeria said:

Thomas Covenant

 

That is now a Disney+ property, apparently!!

 

8 minutes ago, Testeria said:

He is very different. In the book he starts as simple boy full of wander for the world and is gradually stripped from his innocence, curiosity and even his identity (who is my parents question). I see nothing of this in the show.

 

I can't see the show showing things to be that different, but OK.

 

8 minutes ago, Testeria said:

We know he loves Egwene (in the books he really don't)

 

I think what is important here is that it is established that a) he loves and b) he respects.

 

8 minutes ago, Testeria said:

He has no agenda of his own

 

He's shown to be opinionated enough, IMO.

Edited January 6, 2022 by EmreY

[Deviations]

11 minutes ago, Ralph said:

Not sure which character development has accelerated? 

He had Perrin fridge a non-existent wife for one.  He spent an episode on the warder bond for another.

[Ralph]

1 minute ago, Deviations said:

He had Perrin fridge a non-existent wife for one.  He spent an episode on the warder bond for another.

The fridging, horrible as it is, was not to accelerate development, but to give us visual understanding if Perrin's violence dilemma, as exemplified by him being drawn to the Way of the Leaf. They felt killing Whitecloaks would not give us the same clarity. BS seems to have accepted this. 

 

That is not accelerated character development, as I see it, merely a change in how it comes about. 

 

Not sure what about the warder bond is an acceleration of character development. 

 

Sorry if I haven't understood? 

[ashi]

25 minutes ago, Ralph said:

That is not accelerated character development, as I see it, merely a change in how it comes about. 

Accelerated his development completely off the road and over a cliff, maybe. (Sorry, am not fond of this at all - and it does not inspire me with confidence that they have a very deep understanding of his character.)

 

To quote myself quoting Jordan above:

 

Quote

"There's also the difficulty in deciding how far you can go in fighting evil. I like to think of it as a scale. At one end you hold purely to your own ideals no matter what the cost, with the result that possibly evil wins. At the other end, you do anything and everything to win, with the result that maybe it doesn't make much difference whether you've won or evil has won."

 

Yes, Perrin struggles with violence and with his own strength. But making his struggle stem from a deep trauma from killing his own wife drastically reduces the moral significance of that struggle:

 

Refraining from violence because of fear (edit: and guilt) rooted in trauma is not the same as refraining from violence because of the ethical question of whether the violence is right or not, whether the violence makes you more evil or not.

 

Relating to the Way of the Leaf as a means of protecting your ego from having to kill your wife again, is not the same as relating to it as a beautiful but, in Perrin's view, too idealistic philosophy that he has to let go of [though he wishes the world was different enough to support it] - not because he has overcome his wife-killing trauma, but because he finds an answer to Jordan's question above.

Edited January 6, 2022 by ashi

[CanisNoir]

21 minutes ago, ashi said:

Accelerated his development completely off the road and over a cliff, maybe. (Sorry, am not fond of this at all - and it does not inspire me with confidence that they have a very deep understanding of his character.)

 

To quote myself quoting Jordan above:

 

 

Yes, Perrin has a struggle with violence and his own strength. But making it stem from a deep trauma from killing his own wife drastically reduces the moral significance of that struggle:

 

Refraining from violence because of fear rooted in trauma is not the same as refraining from violence because of the ethical question of whether the violence is right or not, whether the violence makes you more evil or not.

 

Relating to the way of the leaf as a means of protecting your ego from killing your wife again, is not the same as relating to it as a beautiful but, in Perrin's view, too idealistic philosophy that he has to let go of [though he wishes the world was different enough to support it] - not because he has overcome his wife-killing trauma, but because he finds an answer to Jordan's question above.

 

While I don't see the Fridging as being the Perrin Character Killer you do, I do think it was a bad choice to make it his wife, and this is the best argument I've heard expressing why I felt it was a bad choice.

 

Well said.

[Jaysen Gore]

2 hours ago, Deviations said:

I personally enjoy the visceral...

Dumai's Wells is one of my favorite scenes in the series.  Mat's battles outside Carhein are another.

 

Maybe it's the latent cave man in me.

It was in considering the Wells that I started formulating my long post about Rand in the Going Forward thread - as powerful and impressive as it is, it's not a Super Saiyan moment for Rand the way even Nynaeve's cave heal was, and can easily be painted in a horrifying light. Rand only gets a few clear wins of AOE use of the power in the entire series (The Gap, Tear, Graendal, the Cleansing, The Sealing), and Tarwin's Gap was one of them.

 

Also, given the way the Asha'man are treated up to and including the Wells, depending on how its handled, it can be another opportunity to paint men in general in a very bad light ("Make them tools, Taim. Give me Weapons", which is why Androl and Flinn (I think it was) are so very important for balance.

[Katherine]

2 hours ago, CanisNoir said:

And that is a fair assessment, however, it is an unfair expectation. This particular critism is based on a fear of events that have not taken place yet. So while the fears may be understandable, I'd say they should not be used to criticize what has taken place

 

This arguement is a fair one in general. However in context of WoTtv..... it falls flat. WE were told after EPisode 3 to not freak out because the rest of the episodes would explain, introduce themes, bring characters to life etc. Annnnnnnnnd we got episode 8. 

 

Truth is... a lot of people's concerns were fully realized. 

 

No reason to think that trend won't continue. 

[ashi]

19 minutes ago, CanisNoir said:

 

While I don't see the Fridging as being the Perrin Character Killer you do, I do think it was a bad choice to make it his wife, and this is the best argument I've heard expressing why I felt it was a bad choice.

 

Well said.

Thank you!

[Guest Testeria]

49 minutes ago, ashi said:

Refraining from violence because of fear (edit: and guilt) rooted in trauma is not the same as refraining from violence because of the ethical question of whether the violence is right or not, whether the violence makes you more evil or not.

 

Yes.

 

EDIT:

I believe it is wider trend of making heroes just vessels of their emotions and trauma. Not only in that show because some people just do not believe someone sane can be a hero by his own merit and rational decision.

Edited January 6, 2022 by Testeria

[Jaysen Gore]

8 minutes ago, Testeria said:

 

Yes.

 

EDIT:

I believe it is wider trend of making heroes just vessels of their emotions and trauma. Not only in that show because HOLLYWOOD does not believe someone sane can be a hero by his own merit and rational decision.

FTFY

[Spiritweaver1]

20 hours ago, Skipp said:

 

 

As for the dagger stab you are most certainly correct.  This is where we see the harm of Barney's departure.  If true that the plan was to have Mat stabbed it wouldn't have been much of an issue.  While Mat was never stabbed with the dagger we know the Dagger's affect didn't bother Fain as he seemly cut his fingers on it often in tGH.  We could have easily said anyone who had actually "wielded" the dagger had some form of resistance.

So here is where they probably lose the path.  In the books Fain is turned into the DO's hound.  Then he follows our hero's into SL where Mordeth, one of the embodiments of SL evil tries to take him over.  He isn't fully successful because Fain is owned by the other great evil the DO.  This blending breaks Fain free from the DO's control and he becomes a free agent bad after SL.  He is known to the Forgotten as the renegade and they are trying to kill him.  He is immune to the Dagger's evil/poison.  Everybody else wounded by the dagger dies a very swift death.  The sole exceptions to this are Rand who is nearly killed but semi-healed in the nick of time and Matt who has acquired an immunity from his previous exposure.

 

It will be interesting to see how the writing team deals with this.  This is one of the things I really enjoyed about this aspect of the story.  The idea that evil can arise from a desire to fight evil is a well known aspect of the human condition that RJ illustrated beautifully.  Also that the two evils can then be used as counterbalances to each other.  This is illustrated in Fain becoming a free agent, the semi-healing of Rand, and the great cleansing.    

Edited January 6, 2022 by Spiritweaver1
Focus the quote

[Jaysen Gore]

2 hours ago, EmreY said:

 

TBH, creepy though that element was, I find Alanna and Cadsuane far more terrifying.

What was it Caddy did that was so bad?

[Spiritweaver1]

5 hours ago, CanisNoir said:

 

Nynaeve wasn't dead when she was healed and we never actually saw Fain use the Shadar Logoth dagger to Stab Loial. For all we know, his wounds could be a result of a Fade. 

 

It wouldn't be the first time they tried to use our expectations against us. Though I agree, both scenes were done poorly in my opinion.

Did you actually watch the episode?  It was clearly Fain who stabbed Loial with the dagger at least twice.  You can't see the ruby but it was visible in a previous shot and it is the same dagger design.   Nyn was dead as a doornail just like the others with her eyes burned out.  That means her brain was cooked since the power  works from the inside out.   

[Ralph]

3 minutes ago, Jaysen Gore said:

What was it Caddy did that was so bad?

I can't answer for someone else, but isn't it clearly implied in the books that Cad would have bonded him against his will if Alanna hadn't 

[DaddyFinn]

6 minutes ago, Spiritweaver1 said:

Nyn was dead as a doornail just like the others with her eyes burned out.

She wasn't nearly as burnt as the others

[Jaysen Gore]

19 minutes ago, Ralph said:

I can't answer for someone else, but isn't it clearly implied in the books that Cad would have bonded him against his will if Alanna hadn't 

I'm fairly sure the words "might" or "considered" were involved in that, and at the end of the day, she didn't. So if that's what is was, that's way less than Alannah or certainly Tylin did.

[Deviations]

30 minutes ago, DaddyFinn said:

She wasn't nearly as burnt as the others

Exactly.  She was just Mostly Dead!

 

 

Credit to the other poster who wrote mostly dead well before me.

[Deviations]

18 minutes ago, Jaysen Gore said:

I'm fairly sure the words "might" or "considered" were involved in that, and at the end of the day, she didn't. So if that's what is was, that's way less than Alannah or certainly Tylin did.

I'd spend less time drinking beer with Cadsuane in a bar than maybe any other character in the series.

[Jaysen Gore]

1 minute ago, Deviations said:

I'd spend less time drinking beer with Cadsuane in a bar than maybe any other character in the series.

While I wouldn't want to spend much time with her, either, I actually really like her as a character - she fulfills the crotchety old woman matriarch role for the AS that Sorilea does for the Aiel. The ones who are so experienced, powerful and respected that they no longer have to suffer the children's dominance games that the others play. They're not nice people, but they're foundational people to cultures.

[Skipp]

1 hour ago, DaddyFinn said:

She wasn't nearly as burnt as the others

As I have pointed out before but this wasn't shown well in execution but in the BTS stuff they actually had a scale for the makeup department for how excessive the burnout was suppose to be.  I think Nynaeve's was suppose to be a 4 out of 10 and Amalisa was suppose to be a 6/7 out of 10.  And apparently anything below a 5 was suppose to be nonfatal and not make you lose the power.

 

Neat idea but poor execution.

 

 

[DaddyFinn]

1 minute ago, Skipp said:

As I have pointed out before but this wasn't shown well in execution but in the BTS stuff they actually had a scale for the makeup department for how excessive the burnout was suppose to be.  I think Nynaeve's was suppose to be a 4 out of 10 and Amalisa was suppose to be a 6/7 out of 10.  And apparently anything below a 5 was suppose to be nonfatal and not make you lose the power.

 

Neat idea but poor execution.

 

 

10/10 being LTT level?

[Guest Testeria]

6 minutes ago, Skipp said:

As I have pointed out before but this wasn't shown well in execution but in the BTS stuff they actually had a scale for the makeup department for how excessive the burnout was suppose to be.  I think Nynaeve's was suppose to be a 4 out of 10 and Amalisa was suppose to be a 6/7 out of 10.  And apparently anything below a 5 was suppose to be nonfatal and not make you lose the power.

 

Neat idea but poor execution.

 

The problem is we never see her eyes so we cant say what "level" they are. We only see her face from the angle. So for the spectator it is same.

 

In grand scheme of things it do not really matter, because we've seen so many fake deaths that there is really no difference for the viewer if she died or not. We already know that what seems dead could next dey be alive. It is just poor storytelling.