Comparing Wheel of Time to other fantasy adaptations

[Gothic Flame]

I think it's more about making it believable to an audience that might not believe stuff about armor. 

[Raal Gurniss]

2 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

Curious, because it took me half a minute to find it, and i didn't think it was necessary to provide a link

 

(from 2:00 to 2:20 if you want actual climbing)

though i was specifically mentioning swimming, and general mobility

 

it didn't take some special search. those are literally the first four videos that popped in my youtube when typing "swimming in armor".

 

now, if you are asking for the very exact specific conditions of the trailer, the same exact kind of armor, the same exact kind of surface, then no, of course you won't find the very exact thing. but, call me gullible, I see plenty of evidence of people doing something similar enough - or similarly taxing - that I won't question the feasibility of the act just because one is wearing gauntlets instead of being free-handed.

 

I find it weird that people watch movies with wizards, magical beasts, artifacts of power, dragons, destiny, immortal warriors living for millennia, but they choose to suspend their disbelief over some mildly hard physical feat, just because they find it a lot harder than it actually is.

Zoom in and you see they are not wearing articulated gauntlets….

 

I really don’t understand the defensive position of maintaining that icy mountain climbing by fully armoured individuals wearing plate gauntlets isn’t absurd and utterly unbelievable even in a fantasy setting, moreover you seem to think it common occurrence throughout the real historical periods where people wore such armour.

Edited February 15, 2022 by Raal Gurniss

[Gothic Flame]

For a billion dollar show, why does the new Lord of the Rings trailer look so cheap?

Pity they didn't get Cate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving to reprise their respective roles. After all ...immortal elves, right?

[Jake Sykwalker]

On 2/14/2022 at 3:07 PM, Raal Gurniss said:

Watched someone rock climbing in full armour all gauntleted up…..Thats where I stopped watching…

 

I mean its a fantasy genre full of magic and somehow they made things look even more far fetched than the genre can bare…

 

 

From other spots it looks like it is supposed to be Galadriel.  Who is known for wearing full plate armor and climbing mountains.  Not having high hopes for this one either.  

[Jake Sykwalker]

On 2/14/2022 at 3:48 PM, king of nowhere said:

 

actually, that's not irrealistic. it's a lot easier to move in armor than some people think. armor weight less than some climber's backpack, and it's more evenly distributed. there's videos of people swimming in armor. the idea of armor as this bulky, cumbersome stuff that left people unable to move properly is a myth.

 

Have to disagree with you there.  Just wearing Kendo armor makes bending over a pain and that is just a small chest piece.  Wearing full plate with gauntlets will make climbing almost impossible due to the shifting and bending you will need to do.  It may look cool, but totally unrealistic even in a fantasy setting.

 

Unless you are Link and then it is ok.  ?

[Raal Gurniss]

8 hours ago, Jake Sykwalker said:

 

Have to disagree with you there.  Just wearing Kendo armor makes bending over a pain and that is just a small chest piece.  Wearing full plate with gauntlets will make climbing almost impossible due to the shifting and bending you will need to do.  It may look cool, but totally unrealistic even in a fantasy setting.

 

Unless you are Link and then it is ok.  ?

In fairness, I did know what they were trying to say…That armour isn’t as restraining or burdensome as many believe…
 

However its not as flexible or as lightweight as they were making out either! 
 

Even if its made of mithril and weighs a fraction of the weight and they were falling rather than climbing, those articulated gauntlet’s aren’t going to allow you to make a split second grab in the manner that was shown.

 

The showmakers are going to clearly stretch credibility within a fantasy genre…Which given next to anything is possible is no mean feat! 
 

There is ONLY one reason they did this and its the same as what they did in WoT, that certain characters have been made grossly over capable for real world agenda reasons! 
 

It might as well be propaganda.

[king of nowhere]

I haven't seen the trailer well, but grabbing a ledge while falling is extremely hard anyway. The presence of armor should not be the discriminating factor. If i accept someone grabbing an icy ledge, i also accept doing it in armor

But if we go by realism, rand or lan dueling 5 opponents - competent opponents - is by far more impossible. Yet i don't see people complain of that.

 

In rythm of war, adolin faces 20 opponents, but they were untrained, disorganized, low in morale, and poorly equipped. Even then, adolin would have lost. And that, i can believe.

Rand standing in the middle of 5 opponents? You can't parry five simultaneously.

[Raal Gurniss]

54 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

I haven't seen the trailer well, but grabbing a ledge while falling is extremely hard anyway. The presence of armor should not be the discriminating factor. If i accept someone grabbing an icy ledge, i also accept doing it in armor

But if we go by realism, rand or lan dueling 5 opponents - competent opponents - is by far more impossible. Yet i don't see people complain of that.

 

In rythm of war, adolin faces 20 opponents, but they were untrained, disorganized, low in morale, and poorly equipped. Even then, adolin would have lost. And that, i can believe.

Rand standing in the middle of 5 opponents? You can't parry five simultaneously.

Actually even Lan admits the near impossibility of it in the prequel…..
 

And what about articulated gauntlets? Have you worn a pair? They aren’t exactly something that increase your reaction speed or grip….

 

It is what it is, utterly unbelievable even in a fantasy setting where magic rings turn you invisible and where hobbits last more than 30 seconds in combat.

 

 

It’s only a little bugbear but it’s likely to be an indicator of things to come.

 

 

 

 

[DaddyFinn]

https://theplaylist.net/lord-of-the-rings-tv-series-inspired-by-led-zeppelin-peter-jackson-20220215/

 

This is interesting.

 

“We have the rights solely to ‘The Fellowship of the Ring,’ ‘The Two Towers,’ ‘The Return of the King,’ the appendices, and ‘The Hobbit,’” Payne revealed. “And that is it. We do not have the rights to ‘The Silmarillion,’ ‘Unfinished Tales,’ ‘The History of Middle-Earth,’ or any of those other books.”

 

“There’s a version of everything we need for the Second Age in the books we have the rights to,” McKay added. “As long as we’re painting within those lines and not egregiously contradicting something we don’t have the rights to, there’s a lot of leeway and room to dramatize and tell some of the best stories that [Tolkien] ever came up with.”

 

So, for those wondering why the duo isn’t just pulling from “The Silmarillion,” that’s your answer. So, instead of looking at “Rings of Power” as a companion piece to “The Lord of the Rings” films from Peter Jackson, it’s more like the relationship between the “Hannibal” TV series and “The Silence of the Lambs” films. Same-same…but also different.

 

 

[AdamA]

While I get this stuff is unbelievable, I don't get why it's a problem now. When did the expectation come about that only plausible things happen? Is this because of the early Game of Thrones seasons? The Expanse? They were too realistic and now all fantasy needs to be? The Peter Jackson films included the fellowship getting avalanched on in Caradhras while walking a 2 foot wide goat trail, and they just walked away. The Hobbits didn't even wear shoes and never got frostbite. Frodo fell into Mt Doom and held onto a finger-width hold with one arm and pulled himself up enough to be pulled out by Sam after getting one of his fingers bitten off and it was probably hot as an oven in there. When did Frodo become an Alex Honnold/Bear Grylls crossover?

 

Straining credulity or even just flat-out mocking it has been part and parcel of hero's tales and fantasy for as long as the genres have existed. I think Indiana Jones hung one-handed off a cliff at least once per movie, and he was just a college professor, not an immortal species with superhuman climbing strength and reflexes. When did it start bothering people so much? Did you just not scrutinize stuff you saw or read as a child and now you do?

[DaddyFinn]

The only thing that bothered me in the ice scene was the way too obvious CGI. Hopefully that's polished in the final product.

[Raal Gurniss]

41 minutes ago, AdamA said:

While I get this stuff is unbelievable, I don't get why it's a problem now. When did the expectation come about that only plausible things happen? Is this because of the early Game of Thrones seasons? The Expanse? They were too realistic and now all fantasy needs to be? The Peter Jackson films included the fellowship getting avalanched on in Caradhras while walking a 2 foot wide goat trail, and they just walked away. The Hobbits didn't even wear shoes and never got frostbite. Frodo fell into Mt Doom and held onto a finger-width hold with one arm and pulled himself up enough to be pulled out by Sam after getting one of his fingers bitten off and it was probably hot as an oven in there. When did Frodo become an Alex Honnold/Bear Grylls crossover?

 

Straining credulity or even just flat-out mocking it has been part and parcel of hero's tales and fantasy for as long as the genres have existed. I think Indiana Jones hung one-handed off a cliff at least once per movie, and he was just a college professor, not an immortal species with superhuman climbing strength and reflexes. When did it start bothering people so much? Did you just not scrutinize stuff you saw or read as a child and now you do?

If Frodo was in full armour wearing gauntlets and fell and held on by his fingertips….Then YES I would also have a problem with that!

 

This is the point! One is far fetched! The other is considered far fetched even within a setting that is already far fetched! 
 

I really don’t understand how some people don’t see that as a flaw.

 

Perhaps she had a specific pair of magical gauntlets specifically designed for that exact situation….But again that seems equally as unlikely as the situation itself.

 

A scene where her armourer suggests

 

-A pair of “witches mittens” that offer a “grasping straw” saving throw against falling off icy cliffs, for m’lady’s ensemble today?-

 

Might explain what happens, but I think that even more unlikely….

 

As I said, its just a tiny bugbear, but its just something done for ulterior reasons….

 

 

Bit like a certain other cold weather scene in WoT.
 

 

Edited February 16, 2022 by Raal Gurniss

[Jaysen Gore]

1 hour ago, AdamA said:

While I get this stuff is unbelievable, I don't get why it's a problem now. When did the expectation come about that only plausible things happen? Is this because of the early Game of Thrones seasons? The Expanse? They were too realistic and now all fantasy needs to be? The Peter Jackson films included the fellowship getting avalanched on in Caradhras while walking a 2 foot wide goat trail, and they just walked away. The Hobbits didn't even wear shoes and never got frostbite. Frodo fell into Mt Doom and held onto a finger-width hold with one arm and pulled himself up enough to be pulled out by Sam after getting one of his fingers bitten off and it was probably hot as an oven in there. When did Frodo become an Alex Honnold/Bear Grylls crossover?

 

Straining credulity or even just flat-out mocking it has been part and parcel of hero's tales and fantasy for as long as the genres have existed. I think Indiana Jones hung one-handed off a cliff at least once per movie, and he was just a college professor, not an immortal species with superhuman climbing strength and reflexes. When did it start bothering people so much? Did you just not scrutinize stuff you saw or read as a child and now you do?

The reason why it matters is because in a world with magic, you have to protect the natural laws a lot more, or else your audience just thinks it's all ridiculous, because there's never any dramatic risk. Jones hanging off things (literally, a cliffhanger) is a conceit of the action adventure genre.  And while there were terrifying arcane macguffins, the world wasn't awash in magic.  Consider the Fast and Furious franchise; even less believable physics than GoT or Indy, but people accept the conceits of the car genre (and have since Bulitt, the original Gone in 60 seconds, and the Dukes of Hazzard) and laugh instead of mocking.

 

For non-traditional fantasy fans (indeed, those who came with LoTR / GoT), they don't accept all of the conceits of the genre. So they are willing to accept the obvious supernatural elements of a story, but not those related to the more than human physical feats of heroes and monsters. The Expanse exists in a lot of ways as a response to the silly Abrahms ST movies - as a genre gets too unrealistic, there is a counter-punch back towards a more grounded setting. It applies to fantasy just as it does anywhere else. (Bourne versus Bond, for example)

 

It's a fine line to walk.  Too much reality makes it not fantasy, not enough makes it silly.

[king of nowhere]

so, i went back and watched the trailer to see the incriminated scene.

 

there is this girl on an ice cliff, she jumps and stabs the ice with a knife, holding on it.

actually, it's the same climbing style of lara croft

and yes, it is completely irrealistic. I can believe one pulling it of once in an emergency and getting lucky. one systematically climbing this way? no chance.

 

this has absolutely nothing to do with armor. in fact, she's gripping the knife, so having gauntlets would not hamper grip on that.

[Raal Gurniss]

29 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

so, i went back and watched the trailer to see the incriminated scene.

 

there is this girl on an ice cliff, she jumps and stabs the ice with a knife, holding on it.

actually, it's the same climbing style of lara croft

and yes, it is completely irrealistic. I can believe one pulling it of once in an emergency and getting lucky. one systematically climbing this way? no chance.

 

this has absolutely nothing to do with armor. in fact, she's gripping the knife, so having gauntlets would not hamper grip on that.

So…Fully armoured, wearing articulated gauntlet's she unsheathes a dagger(midfall)  and somehow stabs the sheer ice/rock wall in free fall and stops her plummeting instantly…..And you think thats more plausible?

 

I’m sorry, but it’s just even more unbelievable than anything else that happens in Middle Earth….

Edited February 16, 2022 by Raal Gurniss

[king of nowhere]

23 minutes ago, Raal Gurniss said:

So…Fully armoured, wearing articulated gauntlet's she unsheathes a dagger(midfall)  and somehow stabs the sheer ice/rock wall in free fall and stops her plummeting instantly…..And you think thats more plausible?

 

 

look back the scene. she did not unsheate the dagger, she already had it in hand. and she was stationary on the ice wall. she took a jump, and stabbed the ice, stopping there.

 

unless you are referring to the "pulling it once in an emergency". which yes, i think it's playsible, in the sense that it's not completely impossible. more weird things happened. people have been falling off of a plane and survived. i can accept a freak occurrence happening once, a lot more than i can accept milder stuff happening regularly.

[AdamA]

I still don't remotely get this. Legolas climbs up an elephant's leg in ROTK using arrows. They're like inch-thick pieces of wood, which definitely cannot support his weight without snapping. That isn't even about his personal physical abilities. It defies the physical limitations of the wood. Why is that okay but this is not? Is it the gloves that push it over the edge? The fact that this particular elf is a girl?

 

To be clear, I still don't like this trailer much either way and it doesn't so far look like an interesting show to me. It's this specific complaint that doesn't register.

 

I get the thing about genre conventions. We accept the Rock yanking a chain and pulling a helicopter out of the sky because action-adventure movies are meant to be ridiculous. My contention is fantasy movies are also meant to be ridiculous. The original LOTR movies had a whole lot of physically impossible things happen that had nothing to do with magic. It isn't even just fantasy movies. It's all movies. How often does a character just get knocked over the head unconscious and stay out for 10+ minutes? Do you have any idea the real world effect of that happening? Being knocked unconscious for more than a minute is extremely dangerous. You get permanent brain damage pretty quickly from that level of concussion. When you wake up, you're not just back to full capacity. You won't have any idea where you are and won't even be able to stand up straight at first, maybe not for weeks. In the season three episode from Game of Thrones where they climb the Wall, Jon catches Ygritte falling after about 30 feet or so with one hand. After that much acceleration, the force of that would be a good 3-4 times her actual body weight. Jon's shoulder having 500 pounds of force applied to it all at once would tear it out of its socket. Arya got stabbed in the gut in season 6, a good 5 inch knife thrust all the way in and twisted, then fell into a canal in a downtown major city before sewage treatment or antibiotics existed, and she was able to do parkour within a few hours. Daenerys is holding onto the back of a dragon for years without a saddle or harness or even goggles and somehow never falls off or even seems to get a fly in her mouth or dust in her eyes. Gollum in ROTK falls off a mountain, get slashed in the gut with a magic elf sword, then knocked over the head with a rock, and it doesn't even slow him down. What is the distance from Osgiliath to Minas Tirith? One mile? Five? Faramir gets dragged one-legged by a horse all the way from one to the other and he not only never bumps his head on a rock, but he doesn't even seem to suffer a torn ACL?

 

I don't understand how somehow we get explanations of why these things are all perfectly fine and acceptable, but an elf stabbing an ice wall and holding on is what crosses the line. Where is this line? What is the most implausible thing you'll accept anyway and the least implausible thing you won't accept? I just watched it again to see what's so bad and she isn't even wearing visible armor that I can see aside from the gauntlets, certainly not "full armor." And she doesn't even do it one-handed. She's holding on with both hands. This also appears from the actress to be Galadriel. She's not some average chick. She's the second all-time most powerful of the Noldor after Feanor, and since he's dead by the second age, she's the most powerful elf in the world at this point. By most accounts, she's probably the second most powerful being of any kind in Middle Earth behind Tom Bombadil. But it strains your mind that she can climb at least as well as Legolas? If this is somehow triggering you because of Nynaeve and Egwene's super healing events with no training, Galadriel is also over a thousand years old already by this point.

[Andra]

Also, I think mithril has been dismissed a little too glibly.

 

Given the way it's described, mithril armor would weigh about what the same thing would in titanium - or even aluminum.  Not much more that a thick wool coat, if that much.

 

Bilbo/Frodo's mithril mail shirt was light enough that no one ever noticed either of them wearing it under their clothes.  Its weight didn't impede their movement at all.

[Chivalry]

I predict the new LOTR series will be watched by many and criticized by many. People will rave about the special effects and people will also decry how cheap the series appears.

 

I'm still looking forward to watching. If you had told me 20 years ago that one day, we would have both a LOTR and WOT series available on the small screen, months apart, I'd have said "LET'S GO!!!!"

 

 

[Chivalry]

9 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

so, i went back and watched the trailer to see the incriminated scene.

 

there is this girl on an ice cliff, she jumps and stabs the ice with a knife, holding on it.

actually, it's the same climbing style of lara croft

and yes, it is completely irrealistic. I can believe one pulling it of once in an emergency and getting lucky. one systematically climbing this way? no chance.

 

this has absolutely nothing to do with armor. in fact, she's gripping the knife, so having gauntlets would not hamper grip on that.

I agree, but she's an elf, and they let Legolas do an awful lot of ridiculous stuff in the films...especially the Hobbit films.

[Andra]

1 hour ago, Chivalry said:

I predict the new LOTR series will be watched by many and criticized by many. People will rave about the special effects and people will also decry how cheap the series appears.

 

I'm still looking forward to watching. If you had told me 20 years ago that one day, we would have both a LOTR and WOT series available on the small screen, months apart, I'd have said "LET'S GO!!!!"

 

 

And for me, add in Dune, Foundation, and two (or is it three?) upcoming Anne Rice series ...

Not to mention the Star Wars stuff.  And House of the Dragon.  And, and, and.

 

Yeah.

Edited February 17, 2022 by Andra

[Raal Gurniss]

6 hours ago, AdamA said:

I still don't remotely get this. Legolas climbs up an elephant's leg in ROTK using arrows. They're like inch-thick pieces of wood, which definitely cannot support his weight without snapping. That isn't even about his personal physical abilities. It defies the physical limitations of the wood. Why is that okay but this is not? Is it the gloves that push it over the edge? The fact that this particular elf is a girl?

 

To be clear, I still don't like this trailer much either way and it doesn't so far look like an interesting show to me. It's this specific complaint that doesn't register.

 

I get the thing about genre conventions. We accept the Rock yanking a chain and pulling a helicopter out of the sky because action-adventure movies are meant to be ridiculous. My contention is fantasy movies are also meant to be ridiculous. The original LOTR movies had a whole lot of physically impossible things happen that had nothing to do with magic. It isn't even just fantasy movies. It's all movies. How often does a character just get knocked over the head unconscious and stay out for 10+ minutes? Do you have any idea the real world effect of that happening? Being knocked unconscious for more than a minute is extremely dangerous. You get permanent brain damage pretty quickly from that level of concussion. When you wake up, you're not just back to full capacity. You won't have any idea where you are and won't even be able to stand up straight at first, maybe not for weeks. In the season three episode from Game of Thrones where they climb the Wall, Jon catches Ygritte falling after about 30 feet or so with one hand. After that much acceleration, the force of that would be a good 3-4 times her actual body weight. Jon's shoulder having 500 pounds of force applied to it all at once would tear it out of its socket. Arya got stabbed in the gut in season 6, a good 5 inch knife thrust all the way in and twisted, then fell into a canal in a downtown major city before sewage treatment or antibiotics existed, and she was able to do parkour within a few hours. Daenerys is holding onto the back of a dragon for years without a saddle or harness or even goggles and somehow never falls off or even seems to get a fly in her mouth or dust in her eyes. Gollum in ROTK falls off a mountain, get slashed in the gut with a magic elf sword, then knocked over the head with a rock, and it doesn't even slow him down. What is the distance from Osgiliath to Minas Tirith? One mile? Five? Faramir gets dragged one-legged by a horse all the way from one to the other and he not only never bumps his head on a rock, but he doesn't even seem to suffer a torn ACL?

 

I don't understand how somehow we get explanations of why these things are all perfectly fine and acceptable, but an elf stabbing an ice wall and holding on is what crosses the line. Where is this line? What is the most implausible thing you'll accept anyway and the least implausible thing you won't accept? I just watched it again to see what's so bad and she isn't even wearing visible armor that I can see aside from the gauntlets, certainly not "full armor." And she doesn't even do it one-handed. She's holding on with both hands. This also appears from the actress to be Galadriel. She's not some average chick. She's the second all-time most powerful of the Noldor after Feanor, and since he's dead by the second age, she's the most powerful elf in the world at this point. By most accounts, she's probably the second most powerful being of any kind in Middle Earth behind Tom Bombadil. But it strains your mind that she can climb at least as well as Legolas? If this is somehow triggering you because of Nynaeve and Egwene's super healing events with no training, Galadriel is also over a thousand years old already by this point.

…..Erm….Didn’t see Legolas fire his bow with plate gauntlets on for some reason…And firing the bow with those on would be infinitely more easy than launching himself off a cliff face dagger in hand and instantly stopping your descent by plunging in into the rockface all whilst wearing articulated plate gauntlets…

 

Legolas leaping about all over mammoths was equally disruptive so I don’t see the point you are making….

 

Even the Hulk is going to struggle with with was done in that scene so male/female/human/elf doesn’t really matter…It wasn’t even magic…The only type of character that could do such a thing would be one that could fly….And they would be using said power too it, which kind of makes it redundant….

 

 

Again I really don’t understand why people find it so believable to the point they consider it something people do on a regular daily basis…

 

It’s beyond far fetched.

 

Still if she is this all powerful person you make her out to be, it should interesting to see the opponent that she was fighting that caused her to go over the edge…
 

Must be an army of super powered people of Endgame proportions, perhaps it’s Tom Bombadil! 
 

Although I suspect it will just be a ragtag band of minor villains that she suddenly ends up killing singlehandedly seconds later…..

 

Question is then is….If as invincibly powerful as you claim, how did she fall? 
 

Truth is this….It was an overly exaggerated minor scene where something was done that breaks credulity even within a magical fantasy setting….

 

The only show that would normally do such a thing would be Rick and Morty.

 

 

[EmreY]

23 hours ago, Jaysen Gore said:

The reason why it matters is because in a world with magic

 

There is no magic in Middle Earth.

 

 

[EmreY]

3 hours ago, Raal Gurniss said:

Even the Hulk is going to struggle with with was done in that scene so male/female/human/elf doesn’t really matter

 

Actually, the hanging from the cliff can work.  It's really all in the hands and wrists.  It's also possibly a tangential callback to an event involving a cousin of hers, though this time more or less willingly.

[bringbackthomsmoustache]

1 hour ago, EmreY said:

There is no magic in Middle Earth.

?????  Middle earth is rife with magic - virtually all of the craft works of the high elves, the numenorians and the dwarves have at least a minor enchantment and the rings of power (particularly the one ring) are items of stupendous power (the one ring for example enhances spellcasting abilities on about the same scale as one of the Choedan Kal in WOT among multiple other properties).  See the ICE sourcebook "the treasures of middle earth" for numerous other overpowered items, such as the sword of the original high king of the high elves which enabled him to take on Morgoth in one on one combat and the war gear of Feanor which meant that it required multiple Balrogs to overpower and defeat him.  

 

Yes magic in the sense of open displays of combat magic is relatively rare in middle earth but it is not the case that there is no magic at all.