Comparing Wheel of Time to other fantasy adaptations

[Scarloc99]

One series I have not seen mentioned is Carnival Row, no idea what the budget was for that but compare the direction, editing and VFX to WOT and it feels like Amazon have taken a step backwards 

[Kalessin]

13 hours ago, Morani said:

 

Omg I am not alone! 

I would have to say I regard The Horse and His Boy as the best of the Chronicles of Narnia. I'm disappointed that it's never been made into a movie.

Edited November 29, 2021 by Kalessin
clarification

[Maximillion]

Ultimately no matter what series or genre the most important thing is the character development. Everything else - even the storyline pales into comparison. That is what made GoT so good in the early seasons and when compared to WoT it's night and day.

Ned Stark being killed at the end was a shocker and had a real impact on the audience.  Same with the Red Wedding.  If a WoT character got killed, I doubt anyone would blink an eye.  Same with developing relationships - I can't see anything that has been set up that makes it really that important who has a relationship with who in WoT - good or bad.  It's all so superficial.  Same with the character traits - they just haven't been developed very well. 

Maybe there just hasn't been enough time yet - but they need to do a lot more in the last 4 episodes to make the characters important to the audience. 

[DojoToad]

45 minutes ago, Maximillion said:

Ultimately no matter what series or genre the most important thing is the character development. Everything else - even the storyline pales into comparison. That is what made GoT so good in the early seasons and when compared to WoT it's night and day.

Ned Stark being killed at the end was a shocker and had a real impact on the audience.  Same with the Red Wedding.  If a WoT character got killed, I doubt anyone would blink an eye.  

Books fans might blink...

[Maximillion]

1 minute ago, DojoToad said:

Books fans might blink...

 

Book fans have been blinking furiously since E1 started. ?

[ArrylT]

5 hours ago, Kalessin said:

I would have to say I regard The Horse and His Boy as the best of the Chronicles of Narnia. I'm disappointed that it's never been made into a movie.

 

So we have not 1 not 2 but 3 fans - thats enough to get it greenlit right? ??

[themann1086]

It might not have been my favorite but I always found The Horse and His Boy criminally underrated. Would have loved to see how they would have adapted it for the screen.

 

BTW one of my favorite Youtube channels is Dominic Noble who has a "Lost in Adaptation" series of videos that do a good job discussing both what changes are made and why they made those changes (and also his opinions on whether or not those changes worked). He has done all the Narnia films, I'd definitely recommend checking it out.

[WheelofJuke]

The Horse and His Boy is definitely underrated and undermentioned in the CoN series. 

Def a shame the BBC stopped at Silver Chair. 

[DaddyFinn]

2 hours ago, Maximillion said:

Ned Stark being killed at the end was a shocker

How can anyone be surprised of Sean Bean's character's death? ?

[Harad the White]

Some people complain about the "low-budget" look of the battle between the followers of Logain and the AS camp. In particular it is compared unfavorably to GoT (which as predicted will suddenly become the gold standard, after some time of ill-repuke). The first "wow" battle in GoT, the Battle of Blackwater, occurred in Season 2, overall episode 19. We are now in WoT episode 4. WoT has time.

 

Furthermore, the battle of the AS Camp was actually well-done. The stage was set when Liandrin said "One flash of lighting and they ran home to their mothers," for the fact that the attackers were not a massive CGI ground army. The defenders were about 20 in a rude camp, so the Battle of Minas Tirith was not appropriate.

[flinn]

10 minutes ago, Harad the White said:

Some people complain about the "low-budget" look of the battle between the followers of Logain and the AS camp. In particular it is compared unfavorably to GoT (which as predicted will suddenly become the gold standard, after some time of ill-repuke). The first "wow" battle in GoT, the Battle of Blackwater, occurred in Season 2, overall episode 19. We are now in WoT episode 4. WoT has time.

 

Furthermore, the battle of the AS Camp was actually well-done. The stage was set when Liandrin said "One flash of lighting and they ran home to their mothers," for the fact that the attackers were not a massive CGI ground army. The defenders were about 20 in a rude camp, so the Battle of Minas Tirith was not appropriate.

 To start, I had no issue with the battle.. but to say because GoT didnt have a battle until season 2 makes it acceptable for WoT to half-assed their battle in season 1 doesnt make much sense to me.

[Harad the White]

4 minutes ago, flinn said:

half-assed their battle in season 1 doesnt make much sense to me

And what should the size of the attacking army be in a camp with 20 defenders?

[AdamA]

I don't think this was meant to be a big set piece battle. It's the few stragglers who didn't run home to their mothers attempting a rescue against what? 20 defenders? With no fortifications. If you want to compare it to something from Game of Thrones, it's comparable to Jon leading 20 or so brothers to kill the mutineers at Craster's Keep. There won't be a true battle until Falme.

[Ralph]

They did say no army could defeat seven full sisters, so it could really have been any size

[Ralph]

The point was more that Logain breaking free made the whole thing a different issue

[ArrylT]

15 hours ago, Sir_Charrid said:

One series I have not seen mentioned is Carnival Row, no idea what the budget was for that but compare the direction, editing and VFX to WOT and it feels like Amazon have taken a step backwards 

 

My co-worker (one who I got hooked on WOT) likes that show so I will watch it (along with The Boys, Umbrella Academy & The Witcher) eventually.  

[JenniferL]

9 hours ago, Harad the White said:

Some people complain about the "low-budget" look of the battle between the followers of Logain and the AS camp. In particular it is compared unfavorably to GoT (which as predicted will suddenly become the gold standard, after some time of ill-repuke). The first "wow" battle in GoT, the Battle of Blackwater, occurred in Season 2, overall episode 19. We are now in WoT episode 4. WoT has time.

 

Furthermore, the battle of the AS Camp was actually well-done. The stage was set when Liandrin said "One flash of lighting and they ran home to their mothers," for the fact that the attackers were not a massive CGI ground army. The defenders were about 20 in a rude camp, so the Battle of Minas Tirith was not appropriate.

 

Its like everyone forgets about Tyrion getting bonked on the head and missing the major battle in the first season of GoT. That was purely a budget decision. In the novel, Tyrion fights in the battle and gets injured. The Battle of Blackwater was mostly people standing on a wall in front of the beach and talking, cut with scenes of Cersei being villainous. Most of the budget was blowing up the ships in the harbor. 
 

GoT didn’t really start staging full, movie level battles until the last few seasons. Battle of the Bastards took 25 days to film and 500 extras. I’ve seen folks claiming that single episode cost $30 million to produce. It’s probably much less, but it’s a staggering amount of money for a tv show. 
 

I can definitely see where budget might have impacted story choices, but let’s not pretend that fantasy isn’t an expensive genre. 

[Tim]

One series I would compare aspects of WOT to, and which I could imagine being a successful TV adaptation, is the Empire series by Janny Wurts and Raymond Feist - kind of an offshoot of his Riftwar novels but (I think) better written and more appropriate for adaptation. Basically if WOT was only the game of houses and with magic playing a much lesser role.

[AdamA]

I'm not sure I would even say Battle of the Bastards was movie level. There are supposed to be roughly 8,000 Knights of the Vale that leave with Littlefinger, and sure, not all of them are mounted, but there don't appear to be much more than a hundred or so riders when they overwhelm what's left of the Bolton forces. Contrast that to the Ride of the Rohirrim during the Battle of Pelennor Fields. When Theoden says 6,000 riders showed up, they legitimately made that look like 6,000 riders, but if you watch the DVD extras, they spent weeks just finding and patching holes in the field to make sure none of the horses broke their legs.

 

People seem to not appreciate the level of effort it takes to stage something like that. It isn't just budget. Game of Thrones spent something like 56 consecutive nights shooting The Long Night. They kept the main cast for LOTR on location in rural New Zealand for over two years. How many times can you really put your cast and crew through something like that? It isn't just money, but time and exhaustion.

[Frenata]

I think people overestimate how much an author would have demanded source-fidelity to the details of their work. Or hone in on weird details that "must be adapted" rather than the heart of the story. IMO "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is a useful counter-lesson since Adams was directly involved in many many adaptations of it in various mediums. Lots of details and events get re-ordered, and whole new elements get added or removed as appropriate for the particular medium. But through it all the heart of the story, of the accidental destruction of Earth and the crazy wanderings of Arthur Dent who tries to make sense of it, remain.

 

Another example of a story with seriously altered details/sequencing is "The Princess Bride", again with heavy authorial involvement. The point of the story doesn't change even if the path along the way does.

 

We can only imagine what Tolkien would have thought of Jackson's work, but I'm extremely skeptical he would have cared about some of the details altered along the way, even things precious to fans: the barrowwights, who rescues Frodo at the ford, Faramir's story. Where I personally part ways with Jackson was the removal of the scouring of the shire: because the story is primarily about the hobbits, removing the point of the story where they show how much they've changed cuts at the heart of the story. But this gets at disagreements about what the true core of the LOTR even *is*.

 

Yet another example in SF: "Ender's Game". The film adaptation focuses on Ender's tactical brilliance and the "trick" of it all, but misses entirely on the biggest takeaway of the novel to me: Ender's internal conflict between his sensitivity and his violence, as illustrated in the books via the computer simulation and in the Peter/Valentine story.

 

While I might get annoyed along the way (as I was with the removal of Tom Bombadil), alterations of details from the books (such as the removal of Caemlyn from S1 or tinkering with the details of the OP) won't shift my fundamental understanding of WoTPrime so long as the heart of the story (as I understand it!) continues.

[Harad the White]

26 minutes ago, danweasel said:

We can only imagine what Tolkien would have thought of Jackson's work, but I'm extremely skeptical he would have cared about some of the details altered along the way,

You could be right. However, the Tolkien estate seems more purist. But that's the way human beings are. The original artist is completely secure in his place and allows others to tinker with his creation, whereas the ones that follow become holier than holy, rigid to a fault. That's the way religion often works irl.

[DojoToad]

22 hours ago, Harad the White said:

Some people complain about the "low-budget" look of the battle between the followers of Logain and the AS camp. In particular it is compared unfavorably to GoT (which as predicted will suddenly become the gold standard, after some time of ill-repuke). The first "wow" battle in GoT, the Battle of Blackwater, occurred in Season 2, overall episode 19. We are now in WoT episode 4. WoT has time.

 

Furthermore, the battle of the AS Camp was actually well-done. The stage was set when Liandrin said "One flash of lighting and they ran home to their mothers," for the fact that the attackers were not a massive CGI ground army. The defenders were about 20 in a rude camp, so the Battle of Minas Tirith was not appropriate.

I only watched the first season and a half of GoT.  I have to agree that they did not do any better with combat than WoT.  What sticks out to me was the 'scuffle' when Jaime was arresting Ned.  Both Jaime and Ned were supposed to be great swordsmen.  Terrible.  Can't comment on what happened later.

 

Granted, Jaime was pissed that he didn't have the opportunity to take Ned on his own, but from what I remember the armsmen from both sides were nothing special.

[DojoToad]

12 hours ago, JenniferL said:

 

Its like everyone forgets about Tyrion getting bonked on the head and missing the major battle in the first season of GoT. That was purely a budget decision. In the novel, Tyrion fights in the battle and gets injured. The Battle of Blackwater was mostly people standing on a wall in front of the beach and talking, cut with scenes of Cersei being villainous. Most of the budget was blowing up the ships in the harbor. 
 

GoT didn’t really start staging full, movie level battles until the last few seasons. Battle of the Bastards took 25 days to film and 500 extras. I’ve seen folks claiming that single episode cost $30 million to produce. It’s probably much less, but it’s a staggering amount of money for a tv show. 
 

I can definitely see where budget might have impacted story choices, but let’s not pretend that fantasy isn’t an expensive genre. 

Even in the books for GoT many of the battles were 'off-screen' if I recall.  Maybe Martin didn't like writing them as much as Jordan.

[TheDreadReader]

8 minutes ago, DojoToad said:

I only watched the first season and a half of GoT.  I have to agree that they did not do any better with combat than WoT.  What sticks out to me was the 'scuffle' when Jaime was arresting Ned.  Both Jaime and Ned were supposed to be great swordsmen.  Terrible.  Can't comment on what happened later.

 

Granted, Jaime was pissed that he didn't have the opportunity to take Ned on his own, but from what I remember the armsmen from both sides were nothing special.

 

I hated that scene too.  I know it comes from the books but that one particular scene remains one of the reasons (amongst a lot of others) that I still dislike the GOT show.  

 

[AdamA]

Best-ever book/film combo to me is 2001: A Space Odyssey. They did it totally differently. Arthur Clarke and Stanley Kubrick worked at the same time, deciding what made sense for a visual medium and what made sense for a book, without either one "adapting" the other. Each made the most of what is possible and not possible given the constraints. The film is the earliest example I can think of where the miniatures, sets, and effects still hold up today, and the book does things like narrate the inner lives of sentient clouds in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter, which can never be translated to film.