Season 2 casting announcements

[jade1falcon]

Ayoola certainly looks like a typical aiel, caucasian with red hair, Scandinavian appearance, she's got that in spades.

Who the hell is casting these people? Is there an opposite bias going on?

[Pukel-man]

If this show was trying to be faithful to the books, some of the casting could be upsetting. It's not, so seeing casting choices is a bit of "Huh? Whatever." They aren't making Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, so it doesn't matter what names they slap on actors, or what actors they slap into roles. It's not even clear any real thought goes into the casting. "You're available between xx/xx/xx and xx/xx/xx, and willing to film in these locations? You're hired."

 

 

[Jake Sykwalker]

22 hours ago, DojoToad said:

Technology certainly helps, but I was referring to actual combat training - the actor playing the Aiel has obviously had martial arts training, and she was awesome.

 

I don't expect the main actors to have years of training, but some would help immensely.  And extras and minor characters could be pulled from folks that have had more extensive training.

 

I don't know if Matt Damon has extensive training, but he had enough to look convincing in the Bourne movies.  Wesley Snipes has had extensive training and it showed in the Blade movies - not the greatest movies but the fight choreography for the most part looked good.

 

Having more well trained actors/extras on set could really up the fight scenes - making the main actors look badass while keeping them safe.

A perfect example is Jason Statham.  Not the best actor, but very well trained in martial arts.  Its not like the acting has been setting the world on fire so they may as well get some decent martial artists.  A lot of the Aiel interactions are fairly terse anyway.  

[Jake Sykwalker]

8 hours ago, Raal Gurniss said:

I am sure they spent much more than that! 
 

It looked more like $20 per actor.

To be a bit serious what are martial arts lessons around $150-200 a month for a decent place and lets say $200 for good starting gear?  So they can train up 2 people for under $1,000 assuming one month training is ok.  I bet a good instructor would give them a discount to use Amazon in their marketing. 

 

 

[DojoToad]

51 minutes ago, Pukel-man said:

If this show was trying to be faithful to the books, some of the casting could be upsetting. 

 

 

It is not trying to be faithful.  I'm no longer surprised by major shifts - I comment on them, but I'm no longer surprised.

[DojoToad]

25 minutes ago, Jake Sykwalker said:

To be a bit serious what are martial arts lessons around $150-200 a month for a decent place and lets say $200 for good starting gear?  So they can train up 2 people for under $1,000 assuming one month training is ok.  I bet a good instructor would give them a discount to use Amazon in their marketing. 

 

 

Certain things, like sword handling, would need more than a month.  But a lot of hand-to-hand can be done very quickly.  A lot of blocking, reflex and sparring drills can be taught in an hour or less.  Pair a main actor up with a martial artist and some very convincing fight scenes can be shot with little risk to the actor.

 

Even kicks can be taught quickly.  They might be ugly for a bit, but after a little training the actor can pull off a decent kick with the help of a martial artist flopping for them - done.

[Jake Sykwalker]

1 hour ago, DojoToad said:

Certain things, like sword handling, would need more than a month.  But a lot of hand-to-hand can be done very quickly.  A lot of blocking, reflex and sparring drills can be taught in an hour or less.  Pair a main actor up with a martial artist and some very convincing fight scenes can be shot with little risk to the actor.

 

Even kicks can be taught quickly.  They might be ugly for a bit, but after a little training the actor can pull off a decent kick with the help of a martial artist flopping for them - done.

Kicks will take more than a couple of hours to do right.  Most people suck at them until they learn knee up first.  Sword arts would take longer, but you can learn the basics fairly quickly if actually trying.  I used to be an instructor for both unarmed and sword for several years so have seen all kinds of skill levels.  

[Andra]

16 hours ago, Rmp said:

It still blows my mind that even Thom got a better choreographed fight scene than Lan.

Well, Thom was fighting a myrddraal.

For some reason, Lan never did in the show. ?

 

12 hours ago, Jake Sykwalker said:

Kicks will take more than a couple of hours to do right.  Most people suck at them until they learn knee up first.  Sword arts would take longer, but you can learn the basics fairly quickly if actually trying.  I used to be an instructor for both unarmed and sword for several years so have seen all kinds of skill levels.  

But they don't actually have to do them "right" - we're not talking about training to actually be deadly, or even dangerous.

They just have to do them "believably on screen."  Without hurting themselves (or other actors) in the process.

 

Training actors so they look good on screen is somewhat different from teaching real life people how to actually protect themselves.

 

It's one of the things that was so notable about the Bourne movies.  The training Damon went through was supposedly intensive enough to have made him actually dangerous in the ring, or on the street.  But no one was ever expecting that level of performance here.

[VooDooNut]

14 minutes ago, Andra said:

Well, Thom was fighting a myrddraal.

For some reason, Lan never did in the show. ?

Lan fights a myrddraal in EOTW books?

[DaddyFinn]

21 minutes ago, Andra said:

It's one of the things that was so notable about the Bourne movies.  The training Damon went through was supposedly intensive enough to have made him actually dangerous in the ring, or on the street.  But no one was ever expecting that level of performance here.

Perhaps it has something to do with the differences of TV vs movies, number of main characters, budget (the Bourne movies have unsurprisingly much higher budget) and time constraints etc.

 

Just making a guess. 

[Skipp]

21 minutes ago, VooDooNut said:

Lan fights a myrddraal in EOTW books?

 

I believe he fights one outside of Shadar Logoth in the books, as well of off screen during the Battle of Winternight but was unable to kill that one.

[VooDooNut]

Thanks @Skipp. I was racking my brain trying to remember, but here's what I found:

 

Quote

Then Lan was on the Myrddraal, as the human folk fell on the Trolloc line. Warder’s blade met black steel from the forges at Thakan’dar with a clang like a great bell, the toll echoing in the hollow, a flash of blue light filling the air like sheet lightning.

Beast-muzzled almost-men swarmed around each of the humans, catchpoles and hooks flailing. Only Lan and the Myrddraal did they avoid; those two fought in a clear circle, black horses matching step for step, swords matching stroke for stroke. The air flashed and pealed.

--

The Eye of The World: Chapter 18 The Caemlyn Road

 

 

Edited April 26, 2022 by VooDooNut

[Andra]

2 hours ago, VooDooNut said:

Thanks @Skipp. I was racking my brain trying to remember, but here's what I found:

 

 

 

Yep.

Those two instances (Winternight offscreen and on the way to Shadar Logoth) are what I was talking about.

[Andra]

3 hours ago, DaddyFinn said:

Perhaps it has something to do with the differences of TV vs movies, number of main characters, budget (the Bourne movies have unsurprisingly much higher budget) and time constraints etc.

 

Just making a guess. 

In this particular example I would say Bourne is very much the exception, not the rule.

It's not so much because it's film rather than TV, it's because it's Bourne.

 

There are enough other examples from TV shows where on-screen fighting is more believable (in the fictional on-screen way) than in WOT to recognize that it's not the budget that is responsible.  Other shows with similar or even smaller budgets do a better job in general with this aspect of the storytelling.

 

Most of the objections people have with the quality of their on-screen combat (whether individual or group) isn't about the budget, it's about how it's written and choreographed.  Granted, good combat choreography costs money.  But bad combat choreography isn't really cheap, either.

 

"Blood Snow" showed that they could do it when they wanted.  Which makes the rest of it even more disappointing by comparison.

[DojoToad]

9 hours ago, Jake Sykwalker said:

Kicks will take more than a couple of hours to do right.  Most people suck at them until they learn knee up first.  Sword arts would take longer, but you can learn the basics fairly quickly if actually trying.  I used to be an instructor for both unarmed and sword for several years so have seen all kinds of skill levels.  

As @Andra said, kicks just need to be good enough to be believable. Facing them off against a martial artist can sell the effect. Just like when demonstrating self-defense techniques, your uke helps sell the technique. 
 

They may have to film it 15 times, but they can get their shot

Edited April 26, 2022 by DojoToad

[Jake Sykwalker]

10 hours ago, DojoToad said:

As @Andra said, kicks just need to be good enough to be believable. Facing them off against a martial artist can sell the effect. Just like when demonstrating self-defense techniques, your uke helps sell the technique. 
 

They may have to film it 15 times, but they can get their shot

My point was that most untrained people's kicks seem wildly unbelievable.  Star Trek I'm looking at you.?  

Spending the bare minimum of time working on things would be helpful and they had a few extra thousand to hire somebody.

 

On topic I don't like this casting as it goes against her book description and further complicates why she doesn't look like "Rand's cousin."  It is par for the course for the current people running the show though.  My immediate family all have red hair and they didn't think it was cool.  They are getting annoyed at the erasing of people with natural red hair from movies and TV. 

 

[Jaccsen]

4 minutes ago, Jake Sykwalker said:

My point was that most untrained people's kicks seem wildly unbelievable.  Star Trek I'm looking at you.?  

Spending the bare minimum of time working on things would be helpful and they had a few extra thousand to hire somebody.

 

On topic I don't like this casting as it goes against her book description and further complicates why she doesn't look like "Rand's cousin."  It is par for the course for the current people running the show though.  My immediate family all have red hair and they didn't think it was cool.  They are getting annoyed at the erasing of people with natural red hair from movies and TV. 

 

Hollywood hates red heads. They are memes about red-haired characters being switched.

[DaddyFinn]

49 minutes ago, Jake Sykwalker said:

My point was that most untrained people's kicks seem wildly unbelievable.  Star Trek I'm looking at you.?  

Spending the bare minimum of time working on things would be helpful and they had a few extra thousand to hire somebody.

 

On topic I don't like this casting as it goes against her book description and further complicates why she doesn't look like "Rand's cousin."  It is par for the course for the current people running the show though.  My immediate family all have red hair and they didn't think it was cool.  They are getting annoyed at the erasing of people with natural red hair from movies and TV. 

 

Ayoola has natural red hair though

[WhiteVeils]

Yeah.  Like, y'all are talking here like it's anything other than the /texture/ of her hair you have a problem with.  It's naturally red, it's almost the exact same hue as Rand's hair if you look at it in photographs that are properly lit, and that's her natural hair color.  Her skin is lighter than many tanned caucasians, by far, including several members of my family. Jordan says parts of her under her clothes are paler than other parts of her, but are folks really complaining about what they think she'll look like naked? No.  She has brown eyes, but so does the actress who plays Elayne and nobody complained about her casting. The only thing that is not what people thought is her hair texture, and Jordan never mentions Aviendha's hair texture at all.

 

And as for the whole complaining about fight choreography, it is clear from reading the notes here, that all these 'back seat directors' don't know anything about fight choreography for film and screen.  Your cheap martial artist doesn't know anything about camera angles, repetitive stress injuries for actors, accident mitigation, and a ton of other things.  It just sounds foolish.

 

Edited April 27, 2022 by WhiteVeils

[Jaccsen]

11 minutes ago, WhiteVeils said:

Yeah.  Like, y'all are talking here like it's anything other than the /texture/ of her hair you have a problem with.  It's naturally red, it's almost the exact same hue as Rand's hair if you look at it in photographs that are properly lit, and that's her natural hair color.  Her skin is lighter than many tanned caucasians, by far, including several members of my family. Jordan says parts of her under her clothes are paler than other parts of her, but are folks really complaining about what they think she'll look like naked? No.  She has brown eyes, but so does the actress who plays Elayne and nobody complained about her casting. The only thing that is not what people thought is her hair texture, and Jordan never mentions Aviendha's hair texture at all.

 

I am not sure you can call her hair red. It is brown. I have seen 1-2 photos that make it appear reddish brown.

 

It really does not matter. The casting does not bother me. The bother is the horribly bad writing and the fact that she should not even appear in season 2. 

Edited April 27, 2022 by Jaccsen

[DojoToad]

2 hours ago, WhiteVeils said:

And as for the whole complaining about fight choreography, it is clear from reading the notes here, that all these 'back seat directors' don't know anything about fight choreography for film and screen.  Your cheap martial artist doesn't know anything about camera angles, repetitive stress injuries for actors, accident mitigation, and a ton of other things.  It just sounds foolish.

 

Neither Rafe nor the directors know about fight choreography as proven by the product they put out.  The 'Blood Snow' must have been a happy accident.

 

What is a cheap martial artist?

Edited April 27, 2022 by DojoToad

[SinisterDeath]

2 hours ago, DojoToad said:

What is a cheap martial artist?

Steven Seagal.

 

Vs
 

 

[DojoToad]

34 minutes ago, SinisterDeath said:

Steven Seagal.

 

Vs
 

 

LOL.  That Steven Seagal clip was painful.

 

Lan definitely handled his sword better against the CGI trollocs.  There were problems with it - like when the one trolloc leaps at Moiraine from behind, Lan chopped its head off and for some inexplicable reason the rest of the body falls backward instead of inertia carrying it forward.  But why worry about physics...

 

WoT was better than whatever awful Seagal movie that was - not a very high bar, but it was better.

Edited April 27, 2022 by DojoToad

[SinisterDeath]

6 minutes ago, DojoToad said:

LOL.  That Steven Seagal clip was painful.

Wait till you see one of his 90s training montages.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNC739HZAYg&t=10s

7 minutes ago, DojoToad said:

WoT was better than whatever awful Seagal movie that was - not a very high bar, but it was better.

Lol, I wasn't expecting a concession that the WoT Show was better then something else. ? 

 

[DojoToad]

17 minutes ago, SinisterDeath said:

Wait till you see one of his 90s training montages.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNC739HZAYg&t=10s

Lol, I wasn't expecting a concession that the WoT Show was better then something else. ? 

 

WoT is better than a lot of things, just not as good as I wanted.  I set my bar too high.  Unrealistic expectations?  Maybe...