Accepting the Adaptation

[AdamA]

Each episode improves for me on rewatching, which is nice. The first time through, I'm often finding myself frustrated that they're going to X when they need to get to Y, and getting nervous about how they're possibly gonna wrap up everything still to wrap up with so little time that they have. It was the same effect of the shortened seasons for 7 and 8 in Game of Thrones and nervousness as the final season of The Expanse is coming out with only 6 episodes. Knowing how massive the story is, every wasted minute feels so magnified in importance. Usually watching a second time and just enjoying it like it's any other television show and I'm just taking in the story they're telling, it's working more than not even if it isn't engrossing anywhere near how the Wheel of Time books did.

 

I definitely found Tar Valon underwhelming, too. The sets haven't been terrible, but LOTR and Game of Thrones set such a high standard. After Minas Tirith and King's Landing, Tar Valon just looks small and recently built. It doesn't look like an ancient city built by giants. On that note, of course, Loial wasn't all that giant, which I actually don't mind. I think casting a tall guy and putting him in platforms is probably a good idea instead of going for a pure CGI character via motion capture. Same thing with using wolf dogs instead of going for CGI wolves. But the money saved on that needs to be well-spent elsewhere, and I'm not seeing where that is right now. The sets are small. The CGI they have isn't great. The music is generic. The costumes look pretty good to me, and I'm happy with the actors, but don't think they're big enough names yet to cost much. The only money that seems clearly very well spent is on location scouting.

[Kudzu]

2 hours ago, Spiritweaver1 said:

What I realized from the binge is how far from the actual storyline they have wandered.  E4 and E5 are nearly entire fabrications   There was a small thing that really made me realize they were losing their way.  That was when Moraine says " May the last embrace of the mother welcome you home" at the funeral  She is not a borderlander.   Of course the whole thing is not in the book.   However, what makes WOT great and  the  leading competition to LOTR is RJ's world building which includes the cultures and dialects of the many nations. He builds strong characters with real personalities. He describes clothing and customs in fine detail.   When you make stuff up you lose the old dialog and have to make up new.  So far that is not particularly strong although there are enough strong moments that make me think that there is hope.

 

I took that as Moiraine honouring Kerene's traditions, similar to how we saw Thom honouring the Aiel with their own words. Karene's character description says she's Kandori and Moiraine, having spent a lot of time in borderlands with Lan would know the words.

[king of nowhere]

3 hours ago, Spiritweaver1 said:

What I realized from the binge is how far from the actual storyline they have wandered.  E4 and E5 are nearly entire fabrications

 

 

and yet, at the same time it wasn't.

rand and mat reaching their destination after many weeks of travel by foot, hiding among the crowd, padan fain tailing them, mat slowly succumbing to the dagger. taking shelter at an inn from an old friend of thom, and meeting loial at the library. the logain procession in the street. perrin and egwene captured by whitecloacks, the wolves fighting for perrin. all stuff that happens in the book.

nynaeve at the white tower, already being the target of white tower politics. liandrin with her own faction (possibly to depose siuan) gaining strenght. assuming they merged liandrin with elaida, or maybe alviarin, it happens in later books.

they changed some of the context around it, but the only actual fabrication in E5 is stepin.

 

Quote

 The ultimate goal is to tell the story of the Dragon Reborn's battle to save the multiverse (did you forget that part??)  from the Dark One in Randland

disagree. wot would be lame if it was just the story of the dragon reborn.

it was about all of them

[DaddyFinn]

4 hours ago, Kudzu said:

 

I took that as Moiraine honouring Kerene's traditions, similar to how we saw Thom honouring the Aiel with their own words. Karene's character description says she's Kandori and Moiraine, having spent a lot of time in borderlands with Lan would know the words.

Even Rand said those words to Ingtar in tGH

[Weird_Old_Lady]

On 12/2/2021 at 2:11 PM, ex WOT fan said:

Please Everyone stop watching this travesty now.  It is impossible for me to express the amount of disappointment I have in this piece of ****.  The longer it goes the less chance there is that it will ever be done again, by someone who has actually read the books.  I am sure RJ is rolling over in his grave as this "adaption" is airing.   Matt a thief, his mom a drunk, his dad a philander, Perrin married, no Luhans, Rand and Egwene have been having sex, No fever dream revelation, Thom playing a guitar, Moraine wounded and the list goes on and on.  There is no Elayas and no Doman apparently.  This abomination needs to end now.   I watched the first three and I am done.  I am most of the way through the audiobook of the Eye of the World again.   I am hoping this show will die a quick death.   Anybody who actually appreciated the books, and didn't secretly want to change them to some updated junk, should hate this thing as well.  I didn't expect much, but I was surprised that it was so much worse than I had anticipated.  Again, I am done.  STOP WATCHING IT OR WE ARE DOOMED!

Alright sweetie. Whatever you say.

[Deviations]

11 hours ago, Weird_Old_Lady said:

Alright sweetie. Whatever you say.

Bless your heart too dearie.

[ArrylT]

I could be mistaken but I think there are currently 3 main interpretations about how to approach the adaptation

 

1 - This is a new telling 

 

IE the wheel has spun completely around and we're looking at the 3rd age again

 

2 - This is the same story simply told differently

 

IE no 2 people see the exact same story the exact same way.

 

3 - This is a portal stone telling

 

IE this is an alternate world/universe telling

 

I have what might be considered as falling under #2 but maybe qualifies as a 4th theory

 

------

 

My Thom Merrilin interpretation

 

As book readers know Thom Merrilin and other gleemen/bards tell many stories.   One of those stories is that of the Great Hunt of the Horn.

 

"A cycle of stories concerning the legendary search for the Horn of Valere, composed in the years between the end of the Trolloc Wars and the beginning of the War of the Hundred Years.  If Told in its entirety the cycle would take many days."

 

One thing about bards & gleemen is that they never tell the same story the exact same way twice.

 

Thom is skilled in the use of High Chant, Plain Chant and Common.   So depending on the location, the audience, and other factors, what portions of the Great Hunt of the Horn are told will differ.

 

Ergo depending on the medium & the time available, how Thom would tell the story of The Wheel of Time, what parts he would share, the speed & way he'd share the story, will always differ from telling to telling.  He adapts based on his situation.

 

We see this adaptation further in the differences between book, audiobook, graphic novel,  video game & now tv series.  Based on the medium, and length of time of the performance available, how the story is told is affected, and sometimes new information is implemented.

 

This is also the same imo with songs in WOT.   They may carry the same melody, but the lyrics, the instruments used & the cadence all could depend on where the song is being played.  

 

A band on Earth doesnt play the same song the exact same way ever time they perform the song, or even the same concert (though many bands will try to make concert performances similar from venue to venue).  A band like Pearl Jam is a great example of Thom Merrilin personified today.  

 

But obviously no matter how a story is told, hopefully you enjoy its telling.   

Edited December 6, 2021 by ArrylT

[nicki_minajah]

On 12/2/2021 at 4:06 PM, Sir_Charrid said:

I am intrested as a teacher what you think of the statement the author is dead, the idea that the moment a writer puts something out to the world what they intended it to mean doesn’t matter. I used to write songs and, the moment a song of mine was out there I refused to ever tell anyone what I meant from the lyrics because my opinion no longer mattered, I was dead, it was up to the listener and reader to see what they got out of it, if it was the same as I had when I wrote it, great, but if it was different I wasn’t going to correct someone. 
 

To my mind we all interpret aspects of the WOT differently, it just so happens one of us was given permission to make a TV show out of our interpretation and so has interpreted it they way they feel best works to get it onto the screen and tell that story. We as other readers should consider that any one of us may well be finding ourselves lambasted in the same way for decisions we made. 

 

@Sir_Charrid sorry for the slow response! So, I got my MA in Literature, so I took a few courses on literary theory. Meaning: I'm familiar with post-structuralism (Barthes, Foucault, etc.), but I'm by no means an expert. I have no issue with Barthes' idea that the author is dead--because I believe he poses his theory as an extreme. A radical statement intended to challenge our assumptions, but not to be taken as always-already true. I think I'm dancing around my answer: I don't think the author is dead--but I don't think the author is alive either. Of course we've all read WOT as individuals--taken some ownership of the story, in our own ways. On the other hand, though, the author still matters. Our interpretations and reactions are still to a text that Jordan created. To sum it up, the author and reader co-create the story. If we all have infinitely individual interpretations of the books, what binds us is still the books. So, I think readers/viewers are justified in wanting that source material to continue binding us, as much as it can through adaptation.

 

For what it's worth, my PhD (in progress) is not in Literature, but in Writing Studies/Composition/Rhetoric (something of a combo of fields). In my field, we consider the author to be one a complex network of agents in any communicative act. In other words: my field (and I can think of no exceptions) fundamentally disagrees with any dismissal of authorial agency. So I'm a little biased.

 

------

 

ADDITION: I just realized that you asked my perspective "as a teacher." As a teacher, I find the idea that the author is dead to be entirely contrary to the project of writing education. If the author has no control over the text, instruction would be a pointless project. Actually, scholars in Circulation Studies and in Computers & Composition have done some great work to understand how texts get taken up by readers. The latter group even guides us in teaching students to write for "recomposition" and circulation.

Edited December 6, 2021 by nicki_minajah

[Spiritweaver1]

53 minutes ago, nicki_minajah said:

On the other hand, though, the author still matters. Our interpretations and reactions are still to a text that Jordan created. To sum it up, the author and reader co-create the story. If we all have infinitely individual interpretations of the books, what binds us is still the books. So, I think readers/viewers are justified in wanting that source material to continue binding us, as much as it can through adaptation.

 

I agree with the bolded statement above for fiction.   The art of story telling is to get enough hooks into our imaginations so that we can immerse ourselves and get lost in the story.   Written is the hardest sell, oral easier and visual the easiest.   Frankly our WOT show team is trying to figure out how to do this.  I personally think they have made a large strategic error which will come back to bite them if they don't correct course.   The more of the community's comments I read and the more I ponder, they need to do the following. Get way closer to the actual  plot and focus on making the visual story telling powerful within their budgetary constraints.  Don't spend so much effort rewriting a great story.  Cut out the book bloat and focus on the essential plot markers and turning them into great scenes. Use as much dialog from the book as possible.   LOTR did this to near perfection.  

 

I have to quit posting on this thread but it is sort of my support group.  i so want to love this show and it is a B- at best so far.

[nicki_minajah]

14 minutes ago, Spiritweaver1 said:

The art of story telling is to get enough hooks into our imaginations so that we can immerse ourselves and get lost in the story.

 

Yes! I appreciate your detailed response. And it's easy to forget that this (what I quoted) is the goal. Enjoy your time off of the thread!