Ch..ch..ch..changes!

[Deviations]

Actually the first time I've watched the Sanderson interview or read the Judkins interview.  While I still really dislike what I've seen, I at least have a better grasp on the perspective.  I wish we could have gotten a 1:1 adaptation.

[KakitaOCU]

16 hours ago, Wolfbrother31 said:

 

Disingenuous takes? Here it is again ... anyone here can flip forward to the 27:00 minute mark and listen to it. I do not think it's disingenuous at all to say - "Sanderson said not have Perrin kill his wife." And they did anyways. And he says that they should just injure Luhhan because "will he cross the line" of killing is core to his story arc. 

 

You're right that, that whole scene of the EF4 fight was ... subtle, in suggesting that Perrin is interested in Egwene. But the question is still - why have that be a scene at all? Whether it's EDN pausing to discuss it... or Nae'blis commenting on it ... the show wanted us to ask the question "does Perrin romantically love Egwene?"

 

Yes, disingenuous, because I'm positive I've seen you quote or acknowledge Sanderson's writing on this subject before where he said:

"

“The biggest thing he and I disagreed about was Perrin’s wife. I realize that there is a good opportunity here for Perrin to be shown with rabies issues and to be afraid of the potential beast inside of him. I liked the idea, but I didn’t like being a woman for several reasons. First of all, it sounds a lot like the disposable woman trope (AKA Woman in the Fridge.) Beyond that, I think the trauma of killing your wife is so huge, the story it tells doesn’t cannot realistically deal with it in a manner that is responsible. Perrin killing his wife and then going on an adventure really bothers me, even still. I trust the writers won’t treat it lightly, but still. This kind of trauma, handled realistically and responsibly, is really hard to deal with for a series of adventures.

“I suggested instead that he kill Master Luhhhan. As much as I hate making Luhhan dirty like that, I think the idea Rafe and the team had here is good for speeding up Perrin’s plot. Accidentally killing your master takes the trauma back a bit, but gives the same motivations and hesitations. One thing I don’t want this WoT adaptation trying to do is become a tonal replacement for Game of Thrones – IE, I don’t want to lean into the ideas of “Grimdark”. Killing Perrin’s wife was pissed off just to be pissed off."

Yes, the interview says wound, but that's not what he originally said, maybe he's had time to think and has changed his overall opinion, which is fine.  But he clearly says he told Rafe to kill Master Luhhan.

As for the Egwene/Perrin/Rand thing.  Why have that scene?  So that clever viewers will ask why Rand so quickly believes this and then equally quickly lets it go.  So viewers now have two examples of Nynaeve reading a situation completely wrong.

[DaddyFinn]

43 minutes ago, Deviations said:

I wish we could have gotten a 1:1 adaptation.

That would not be very entertaining for the large audience if it's even possible to make.

[notpropaganda73]

1 hour ago, Mrs. Yojimbo said:

YES!  This non-reader complained to her reader husband that the show hasn't effectively presented what The Big Bad is or who/what the Dragon Reborn is/might be. (And before anyone starts listing the times it's been mentioned: I get that it IS mentioned; I'm saying it just hasn't been described or shown in a way that inspires fear or dread to the viewer.)

 

But then I started to read the first book, and right there in the prologue was everything I was missing: the primary conflict in a nutshell, the horrify possible consequences of the Dragon Reborn. Context.

 

I completely understand why they've delayed the prologue in the show, if LTT showed up at the very beginning and not again for a whole season I can see why, for TV, that might be difficult. Having the prologue from the books appear either now in the next episode or early in S2, when we're getting to grips with Rand being the Dragon (as a TV audience) and LTT becomes a core part of his story, I think is an understandable move. 

 

However, the problem is that in doing this, they've not replaced it with any good scenes showing us who the big bad actually is. This is where I think they've missed a trick with dream sequences personally. Even if they felt the CGI for BZ wasn't good enough or whatever, I think they could've built more suspense/fear even with him even silently stalking their disturbing dreams tbh. For example I think in Perrin's dream where the wolf is eating Laila, BZ just appears in the window in the background initially and I think it's super creepy and effective. 

And as you say, there's not really been much exploration of the danger of being the Dragon. No prophecies, no real reaction to the news that one of the 5 of them might be the Dragon, casually talking about being the Dragon in the streets of Tar Valon etc. 

 

Plenty to improve upon 

[DaddyFinn]

1 minute ago, notpropaganda73 said:

And as you say, there's not really been much exploration of the danger of being the Dragon.

Logain has given some context to being a male channeler, but yeah basically nothing about the real Dragon Reborn.

[notpropaganda73]

5 minutes ago, DaddyFinn said:

Logain has given some context to being a male channeler, but yeah basically nothing about the real Dragon Reborn.

 

For sure, and I think that is part of the reason that episode 4 has generally been seen as the strongest in S1. It did a lot of good world building and gave context to a lot of the things our characters were going through story wise. But while Logain was a good illustration of what will happen when the Dragon declares himself and the dangers of male channeling specifically, he's not really a good indicator of the fear surrounding the Dragon in the wider world (at least in the show). 

 

Edited December 22, 2021 by notpropaganda73

[Deviations]

3 hours ago, DaddyFinn said:

That would not be very entertaining for the large audience if it's even possible to make.

Funny how entertaining the actual source material is...

[DaddyFinn]

12 minutes ago, Deviations said:

Funny how entertaining the actual source material is...

Even funnier how different books and TV shows are

[KakitaOCU]

1 hour ago, Deviations said:

Funny how entertaining the actual source material is...

A Casual glance at numbers shows Knife of dreams sold around 500,000 copies at release.  I've seen 500,000 copies as the first print run for aMoL as well.

Season 8 of Game of Thrones drew 19.3 million viewers.

So, the goal for viewership is going to be sitting around 38 times what the books did.  

A 1:1 translation MIGHT have equaled the books.  

Edited December 22, 2021 by KakitaOCU

[TheMountain]

I think the "translation to a visual medium" argument is becoming an all-purpose deflection to criticism in general. As Brandon Sanderson said, there are different ways to approach adaptation, and Rafe was more towards the "reimagination" side. I think that when you reimagine something, you better be a darned good writer, because your additions, substitutions and changes are going to inevitably be compared to the strength of the original work. @Elder_Haman has mentioned The Last Kingdom many times as a good example of a great adaptation that looks very little like the original work, and I watched Season 1 on his recommendation. It is excellent television. If we had writing of that caliber, I suspect a lot of people would have been more happy with the Wheel of Time show. The writing in the Wheel of Time show, in my opinion, is nothing special. C, maybe B-grade in it's best moments. It just doesn't approach the brilliance of the original work, and I think a lot of people are having trouble letting that dream go.

Edited December 22, 2021 by TheMountain

[Gothic Flame]

3 minutes ago, TheMountain said:

I think that when you reimagine something, you better be a darned good writer, because your additions, substitutions and changes are going to inevitably be compared to the strength of the original work.

Considering how often I hear that Rafe is pushing for particular scenes for later...and later, he's eventually going to run out of episodes for anything but shades of GoT.

[KakitaOCU]

18 minutes ago, TheMountain said:

I think the "translation to a visual medium" argument is becoming an all-purpose deflection to criticism in general. As Brandon Sanderson said, there are different ways to approach adaptation, and Rafe was more towards the "reimagination" side. I think that when you reimagine something, you better be a darned good writer, because your additions, substitutions and changes are going to inevitably be compared to the strength of the original work.

No matter how good you are there will be comparisons to the original work and some will find it lacking.

Translation isn't a all purpose deflection.  It's the beginning of the discussion.  Now there are various changes I think could have been handled better.

For instance, I HATE that Abell and Natti Cauthon are rewritten as they are.  If we wanted to see Mat be poorer and having a hero streak with his sisters we could have taken Abell as a horse trader and made him a man who was constantly away.  Maybe he's been gone a while at the start and so their savings are running low.  Winternight comes and Natti is freaking out so Mat has to go back out for Bode and El.

But, in that exact same breath I can very accurately and fairly state that Abell has no over-all impact on the story being told and doing what they did absolutely sets up Mat to be the character Mat is in later books.  I can also say that that change doesn't ruin the show or the overall plot for me.

We've also seen examples of what happens when you do a straight translation of a scene and then people, even book fans, fail to notice.  Like the idea that Lan was not established as being the level of competent he was in the books.  Except episode 2 shows him leaving the group constantly and coming back with slight cuts and wounds.  In the books this is spells out as him riding out to fight trollocs and come back to the group.  But it's only spelled out because words have to describe.  In the show they just show it, and people missed it.

[dwn]

12 minutes ago, KakitaOCU said:

For instance, I HATE that Abell and Natti Cauthon are rewritten as they are.  If we wanted to see Mat be poorer and having a hero streak with his sisters we could have taken Abell as a horse trader and made him a man who was constantly away.  Maybe he's been gone a while at the start and so their savings are running low.  Winternight comes and Natti is freaking out so Mat has to go back out for Bode and El.

Unfortunately that kind of backstory takes a lot more exposition and screen time to set up than the few seconds we get with the Cauthons. Seeing what a mess Natti is, and that Abell (womanising or not) is clearly not minding her, is an extremely fast way to telegraph Mat's home life and how it affects him. Also, like it or not, Abell behaving that way does tie in to Mat's character traits.

 

It's much the same with Perrin and Leila. Having him accidentally kill her during the trolloc attack was how they chose to give viewers a shortcut into his later hang-ups over violence and women.

 

This sort of thing is what a lot of us mean when talking about book to screen translation. If something can be abbreviated or changed, yet give the viewers more information in a visceral and lasting fashion, then it likely will be to save screen time and budget.

[TheDreadReader]

1 hour ago, TheMountain said:

I think the "translation to a visual medium" argument is becoming an all-purpose deflection to criticism in general.

 

Yes and no.   Translating to a visual medium comes with certain tradeoffs.  One of the big ones is how the story is structured.  A basic movie structure is three acts with two major plot points.  For TEOTW, plot point one is easy.  It is when they leave the two rivers.  Plot point two is also easy.  It is when they leave Fal Dara for the Eye.  

 

What happens before, between, and after those plot points are up to the writers.   And, those choices can certainly be criticized on what is included or what is excluded.  However, those criticisms should have some basic stuff behind them.

 

For example, in the book we do not see the Winternight battle on screen.  They made a choice to show the battle.   What possible criteria did they use to decide that?  Most likely, we have a cool magic system.  We have an idea on how to show that magic system through visual fx.  Therefore, we are going to include those scenes rather than the book scenes of along the Quarry Road or at the al'Thor farmhouse because those book scenes don't have 'magic'.

 

Could you have made the battle at the al'Thor farmhouse and the trek down the Quarry Road visually interesting?  Absolutely.  Struggles for survival are visually interesting.   But, is it as visually interesting as showing the battle of Winternight?

 

Adaptations are fundamentally about the choices the writers have to make.   In most cases, where the writers have added stuff to TEOTW content the core of additions are stuff that already appear in the books.   They just have wrapped that core in a different outer visual layer - like they did with the battle on Winternight.

 

  

 

 

[Guest Testeria]

8 hours ago, KakitaOCU said:

As for the Egwene/Perrin/Rand thing.  Why have that scene?  So that clever viewers will ask why Rand so quickly believes this and then equally quickly lets it go.  So viewers now have two examples of Nynaeve reading a situation completely wrong.

 

didn't Perrin had an affair with Egwene before the timeline of the show? His wife apparently strongly disliked Egwene for some reason, no?

[king of nowhere]

another change i appreciated; in the books, as soon as they're out of emond field the three great friends, loial companions, they start bickering for no reason, mistrusting each other. every conversation they have, it takes the worst possible turn.

in the show, they don't start to drift apart until machin shin.

 

and i think it's much better. the way the emond fielders fell apart felt forced in the books. Still believable, well executed, but you could sort of see the fingers of the writer in there "i want those guys to mistrust each other and I will find excuses to make it so".

machin shin planting doubt in their mind is a lot more believable, more organic.

it also changes my emotional reaction from "what the #@ç/% are you doing, you damn fools!" to "poor guys, feeling the scars of what they've been through". it makes the cast more symphatetic.

We can argue whether "i want to hit those protagonists with a baseball bat" is a desirable reaction in the public, or if rj wanted it that way. 

[Guest Wolfbrother31]

10 hours ago, KakitaOCU said:

I'm positive I've seen you quote or acknowledge Sanderson's writing on this subject before

 

No. I was quoting the video I posted, but that's interesting ?.

Even in that video that I posted Sanderson does say that he thinks they're getting the "spirit of the characters" right. Or something like that... So I think I understand your reaction.

 

But I was simply saying that Sanderson told them not have Perrin kill his wife. And they did anyway.  

 

I obviously think they're getting Perrin wrong (but concede that I think Perrin is a difficult character to translate to Tv because he's so internal).

[Guest Wolfbrother31]

12 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

so, it's all right to make big, radical changes, as long as they are for stuff that you, personally, disliked in the books?

 

 

Yes ?

Plus, cutting Faile/Shaido kidnaping plot will save us a whole season worth of material. 

[JaimAybara]

3 hours ago, dwn said:

Unfortunately that kind of backstory takes a lot more exposition and screen time to set up than the few seconds we get with the Cauthons. Seeing what a mess Natti is, and that Abell (womanising or not) is clearly not minding her, is an extremely fast way to telegraph Mat's home life and how it affects him.

Abel and Mat using quarterstaffs fighting back to back to give exposition to his talents, where he learned it, and him being told to save his sisters. 

[Vambram]

22 minutes ago, Wolfbrother31 said:

Plus, cutting Faile/Shaido kidnaping plot will save us a whole season worth of material.

 

That was probably my most disliked plot of the books. I really DON'T want to see that plot on screen.

[dwn]

2 hours ago, JaimAybara said:

Abel and Mat using quarterstaffs fighting back to back to give exposition to his talents, where he learned it, and him being told to save his sisters. 

What scenes do you cut or shorten to give Abel Cauthon his moment to shine? What is more important for Mat--that he's torn between being a rogue and a hero, or that he can fight with a quarterstaff?

[JaimAybara]

12 minutes ago, dwn said:

What scenes do you cut or shorten to give Abel Cauthon his moment to shine? What is more important for Mat--that he's torn between being a rogue and a hero, or that he can fight with a quarterstaff?

This does not follow for me, Abel telling him to go save his sisters while fighting off a trolloc could have easily replaced the scene with Abel being a coward while simultaneously conveying Mat’s reluctance to fight shadowspawn but unwilling to betray his sisters. It would also be a great callback later for when we see you know what happen with Mat in Tar Valon. Cut all the weird add ins for Mat’s family and condense it to this and we still get emotional pull but also a better set up for a later pay off. 
 

*This could have had Mat fighting with him or watching, regardless we would then know later why he knows how to expertly handle a quarterstaff which then transforms into another item which is integral to his character. If they make his father a worthless worm they have to then rewrite this explanation.*

Edited December 23, 2021 by JaimAybara

[Chivalry]

16 hours ago, DaddyFinn said:

I cry everytime when Rand has been born and Tam cuts his umbilical cord and Tam's little smile fades away when Tigraine dies. That's just so sad. ?

This was such an amazing scene, absolutely loved it.

[dwn]

3 minutes ago, JaimAybara said:

This does not follow for me, Abel telling him to go save his sisters while fighting off a trolloc could have easily replaced the scene with Abel being a coward while simultaneously conveying Mat’s reluctance to fight shadowspawn but unwilling to betray his sisters. It would also be a great callback later for when we see you know what happen with Mat in Tar Valon. Cut all the weird add ins for Mat’s family and condense it to this and we still get emotional pull but also a better set up for a later pay off. 

The scene uses the contrast of Abel and Natti with Mat to paint a clearer picture of who Mat is. Sure, he's a (poor) gambler, (noble) thief, and (eventual) grave-robber, but when the cards are down, Mat will act selflessly and heroically without hesitation, and when others can't.

 

Although book readers might dislike this sort of change, it does serve a purpose in TV where you may only have a few seconds to convey something to a viewing audience. The critical thing In these scenes is to clearly define and build Mat's character, not to adhere to book details, or make him (or his father) look cool.

[JaimAybara]

28 minutes ago, dwn said:

The scene uses the contrast of Abel and Natti with Mat to paint a clearer picture of who Mat is. Sure, he's a (poor) gambler, (noble) thief, and (eventual) grave-robber, but when the cards are down, Mat will act selflessly and heroically without hesitation, and when others can't.

 

Although book readers might dislike this sort of change, it does serve a purpose in TV where you may only have a few seconds to convey something to a viewing audience. The critical thing In these scenes is to clearly define and build Mat's character, not to adhere to book details, or make him (or his father) look cool.

I don’t think it makes them look cool as the only goal, it also makes them much better people. And as I said Mat initially could have been fearful and just seeing what his dad is doing. The cool factor would be given to Abel yeah, becuase he was cool, (we didn’t learn this until book three though really and I saw this as a chance to rectify that). but its  main function would be a character development piece later for Mat in season two or three as well as an added bonus. Heck even if he died fighting a bunch of them and Mat had to leave to save his sisters it still would have been a potent heartfelt call back later that wouldn’t have ruined his father in the way that they did. The abusive father trope is woefully overused which is one of the many reasons I liked the books.  
 

Anyway, I still think this could have been done in the same screen-time as all the rest. But many in Hollywood and fandoms alike have this uncanny desire for moody,broody, anti-hero grimdark in everything right now, “everything has to be edgy”and it’s been pushed ever since the Dark Knight trilogy. I get it if some people like it, I do too at times, but it feels erroneous here because that wasn’t the true character of Mat outside of the dagger even in the beginning of the first book, and if contrast is what you were looking for wouldn’t having him be more like his playful self before getting the dagger be ideal? WoT did a great job of balancing these things. If GoT was the DCU then WoT was the MCU. Some like one more than the other stylistically and that could be where I am with their artistic choices. 
 

Lastly, I’m just not convinced “time” is truly a fair argument in of itself nor do I think this was even the only way to make it work within the same time constraints that Mat was given. They might say it, but the “we did it for time” and “it’s a new turning” feel like crutches and catchphrase excuses easy to swallow or to just wave away criticism. You may disagree and likely still do, I by no means begrudge you this, but again these are just my musings.