How different is too different?

[Pukel-man]

To the question in the original post, count me among those who have already checked out of the series. The only reason I sat through the entire first season was because I love the books and wanted to see how they carried it off. Given that it got worse in every way to conclude the season, I'll definitely not come back.

 

Some posters here are saying "if they change one of the main characters evil, that would be too much." Did you see what they did to Mat? Moiraine said straight out in the last episode that Mat is evil [cut to creepy Mat skulking into Tar Valon under cover of dark]. After swindling one of his townspeople, robbing a corpse, and abandoning his friends in need, it's pretty well established that Mat is a villain, not a hero. Not even a flawed hero, a villain. I'm not even interested in seeing how they rewrite the series for evil Mat, or concoct some outlandish and poorly executed rehabilitation of his character.

 

I'm also out because the whole thing is just poorly written. One of the things that made me love the books so much is that the internal consistency is so unbelievably solid for such a lengthy series. There is no internal consistency in the show. The books are about the story of the obvious clash between good and evil, but with extraordinary character growth and development along the way. The series hasn't offered any character growth and development at all so far, and hasn't given me a reason to hope for it in season two.

[VooDooNut]

9 minutes ago, ilovezam said:

...ok dude

I wrote about this way back when e7 came out. Same argument:

 

[WhiteVeils]

He did not he needed Moiraine's help or advice until after she had left. 

[WhiteVeils]

Mat isn't evil, he's sick.  Just like in the books. They changed it so instead of stealing "for fun", he steals for desperation...he is desperate to reach and take care of his sisters.  That's making him /more/ good than in the books (at this point in time). We don't know yet in show why he stayed behind, though obviously it's because the actor left. However, if he stayed because he realized that if he were the Dragon he would Fail to resist the Dark One, so it's be better for him not to go anywhere near, his decision to stay would be reasonably judged as potentially world-saving, not evil.  

 

I mean, you can dislike what you want, and I see you are. You don't have to watch.  But it seems a lot of people are very hasty in judging why it must be the worst case scenario.

Edited January 25, 2022 by WhiteVeils

[WhiteVeils]

33 minutes ago, Pukel-man said:

Jumping into this...

 

The answer to this question likely appears in the opening credits, I think. FOURTEEN producers, and just about all of them getting a title screen to themselves. The show has more producers than it has primary protagonists. Oh, right, and there are a few actors and crew. Maybe a director (you couldn't really tell that from the acting, action, and dialogue). But lots of producers! That's clearly the most important thing.  </sarcasm>

Producer doesn't mean what you think it does.  There are many kinds, and most are kinda honorary.

[WhiteVeils]

6 hours ago, Andra said:

Which indicates to me that it isn't just a slight against Agelmar personally, it's a slight against the military competence of the entire culture.

At this point, we only know about the competence of Shienarans.  But I suspect he's going to make every nation on the continent just as incompetent.  Which means that the way the battle went against Logain's forces wasn't just a factor of Covid restrictions, it was specifically by design.

 

Either that, or the show has no qualified military advisors, or their advice is being ignored along with every other bit of criticism.

I can try to find the tweets but a vet skilled in military tactics explained that the tactics weren't bad at all...I can find it later, but suspect you won't care.  

 

In any event, that wall is not a curtain/ barrier wall...it's an archery platform to provide cover for the heavy cavalry. Sheinarans attack by driving their cavalry out to take out the fades who are beyond bowshot, with archery cover to close.  The largest attack they've had in generations was a 1/5 of this attack...they hadn't experienced this kind of scale in memory, so weren't set up for it.  It takes time to make more fortifications that they didn't have.

 

It's not like this happens all the time.

[Pukel-man]

5 minutes ago, WhiteVeils said:

Producer doesn't mean what you think it does.  There are many kinds, and most are kinda honorary.

I get that. But it shows something about how the creators think of the show. The most important people are the 14 producers, and the creatives that directly are on screen are less important. An honorary producer is less important than a main actor, but who gets top billing on the show?

[ilovezam]

13 minutes ago, WhiteVeils said:

Mat isn't evil, he's sick. 

I hope you are right about this, but Moiraine talks about how Mat's darkness was inherent to him, before the dagger, and Rafe talks frequently about "the darker questions Mat has of whether he's a bad person at his core". He's a reluctant hero, and having misgivings about risking your own neck in doing hero stuff doesn't make you maybe a bad person at your core.  

 

[WhiteVeils]

The main actors all got higher billing than the producers in the credits of the show...what do you mean?

[Pukel-man]

15 minutes ago, WhiteVeils said:

Mat isn't evil, he's sick.  Just like in the books. They changed it so instead of stealing "for fun", he steals for desperation...he is desperate to reach and take care of his sisters.  That's making him /more/ good than in the books (at this point in time). We don't know yet in show why he stayed behind, though obviously it's because the actor left. However, if he stayed because he realized that if he were the Dragon he would Fail to resist the Dark One, so it's be better for him not to go anywhere near, his decision to stay would be reasonably judged as potentially world-saving, not evil.  

 

I mean, you can dislike what you want, and I see you are. You don't have to watch.  But it seems a lot of people are very hasty in judging why it must be the worst case scenario.

After the first episode, there was never another thought about Mat being "desperate." It gives the impression that the business of being "for the sisters" was a throwaway, or something added to make a shallow and dark character more sympathetic.

 

As for the part I underlined, you're reading things that are not there. We can't impute our own interpretations on the characters, we have to respond to what we're shown. Moiraine said he's evil. His actions are, taken together, pretty rotten. I don't think it's hasty at all to say Mat is a villain, this comes from eight episodes of his actions. I forgot to even mention shirking the chores at the Four Kings seedy tavern, just one more piece of bad character. Again, not a heroic character, not even a reluctant hero.

[WhiteVeils]

2 minutes ago, ilovezam said:

I hope you are right about this, but Moiraine talks about how Mat's darkness was inherent to him, before the dagger, and Rafe talks frequently about "the darker questions Mat has of whether he's a bad person at his core". He's a reluctant hero, and having misgivings about risking your own neck in doing hero stuff doesn't make you maybe a bad person at your core.  

 

Rafe says Mat has questions about whether or not he is a bad person.  That's his fight with the dagger...am I a prick like my dad? Did I kill that family? Is the dagger right? Will I cave and join the dark one?  That he has those questions means he has a conscience..and that conscience means he is a good person in the end.  They can't show his thoughts, so this is showing him fighting against the dagger in a visible and empathetic way.  And the answer he reaches, I think is one that ends up with him not wanting to be the person the dagger wants him to be.  So he loses his memory to become something else.

 

I think we'll get a big shift as he loses his memories and has the dagger taint removed properly.  Then he has a new question to tackle... straight from the books...who am I?

 And the rest of the story for him is finding those memories and finding himself, and I hope, at least literarily, it ends with him integrating his lost memories with his new self to become a whole Mat...a man who knows the darkness in himself, knows he's no hero, but knows he's going to do what needs to be done anyway, because that is what he is.  In short...late book Mat.  This darkness is explaining /why/ he says he is no hero.  It doesn't change what he becomes.

 

[ilovezam]

1 minute ago, WhiteVeils said:

Rafe says Mat has questions about whether or not he is a bad person.  That's his fight with the dagger...am I a prick like my dad? Did I kill that family? Is the dagger right? Will I cave and join the dark one?  That he has those questions means he has a conscience..and that conscience means he is a good person in the end.  They can't show his thoughts, so this is showing him fighting against the dagger in a visible and empathetic way.  And the answer he reaches, I think is one that ends up with him not wanting to be the person the dagger wants him to be.  So he loses his memory to become something else.

Yeah I'm totally cool with it if Rafe was referring to his interactions with the dagger specifically. 

[WhiteVeils]

16 minutes ago, Pukel-man said:

After the first episode, there was never another thought about Mat being "desperate." It gives the impression that the business of being "for the sisters" was a throwaway, or something added to make a shallow and dark character more sympathetic.

 

As for the part I underlined, you're reading things that are not there. We can't impute our own interpretations on the characters, we have to respond to what we're shown. Moiraine said he's evil. His actions are, taken together, pretty rotten. I don't think it's hasty at all to say Mat is a villain, this comes from eight episodes of his actions. I forgot to even mention shirking the chores at the Four Kings seedy tavern, just one more piece of bad character. Again, not a heroic character, not even a reluctant hero.

Desperate ... His pleading forgiveness of a dead man because he has sisters who need him isn't desperate? Thom even calls him desperate. Moiraine doesn't call him evil.  She says he has a dark ness in him.  And he does!  He's still dagger sick.  And, you may have noticed... Moiraine is wrong. A lot. 

At 4 kings, just like book Mat, he ends up working twice as hard trying to get out of work than just doing the job, serving tables all day and digging graves at night while Rand drinks with Dana. You even see the longing look he gives the inn before he agrees to bury the Aiel.  That's book Mat.

 

Oh...and Mat would say he is NOT a hero...and never was.  We will have to see what his actions say.  So far, he has been a hero for his sisters. More than he was in the books by this point. He'll get there .

 

Edited January 25, 2022 by WhiteVeils

[VooDooNut]

There's also multiple moments post-Shadar Logath in season 1 where, if Mat's internal monologue could be heard, I'm sure he would be screaming in misery at what the darkness of the dagger is doing to him.

 

Kind of poetic for Mat to have his memories of an internal battle with the darkness of SL be replaced with memories of others fighting their own battles against opposing forces.

[Andra]

4 hours ago, WhiteVeils said:

I can try to find the tweets but a vet skilled in military tactics explained that the tactics weren't bad at all...I can find it later, but suspect you won't care.  

 

In any event, that wall is not a curtain/ barrier wall...it's an archery platform to provide cover for the heavy cavalry. Sheinarans attack by driving their cavalry out to take out the fades who are beyond bowshot, with archery cover to close.  The largest attack they've had in generations was a 1/5 of this attack...they hadn't experienced this kind of scale in memory, so weren't set up for it.  It takes time to make more fortifications that they didn't have.

 

It's not like this happens all the time.

I believe one of the people commenting in this thread is a vet skilled in military tactics.  He is the one criticizing it as portrayed in the show.  

You're arguing with the wrong person.

[ilovezam]

4 hours ago, VooDooNut said:

I wrote about this way back when e7 came out. Same argument:

 

I'm reading both your old post and your current one from here, and I'm thinking:

 

Quote

He knows they can't really withstand the onslaught much longer, but doesn't know what else to do other than continue fighting.

If this were the case, why doesn't he ask Moiraine for help? He dismisses Amalisa's concerns as being overly anxious and over-exaggerated. He was the very picture of "male arrogance" that seems to keep coming up with this show and its related material.

 

Quote

He takes her warning under consideration instead of outright dismissing her.

With regards to this, he could hardly have dismissed an Aes Sedai's factual statement that there were Trollocs in the Ways. His situation just got worse and he still stubbornly refused to seek any kind of aid, and a major driver of his behaviour seems to be "my family have always defended this place without help!" until the very last scene where he finally admits Amalisa was right all along, before dying a thoroughly anticlimatic and meaningless death. (Yes I know COVID restrictions affected the battle scenes, but still)

 

[notpropaganda73]

13 hours ago, Juan Farstrider said:

Of course you don't see how his culture has anything with how he'd be portrayed, you're either ignoring it or it doesn't fit how you want to feel about the show. He would not last if he was as he was in the show, no one in his position would, no one there would. 

Was his portrayal realistic considering the realities of the Borderlands? No, absolutely not. Then, why was it changed? To make the show stupid and lame? No, no writer goes in thinking they're using a monkey wrench instead of a pen/quill/keyboard/thumbs on a phone's screen. It was a change that did disregard the simple realities of command in the Borderlands. 

 

Why is this such a common attitude amongst those critical of the show? It's exasperating.

 

I don't really want to go on and on about this as I've covered a lot of what I think with posts to ilovezam already. I just don't think trying to give Agelmar a more interesting slant is the crime against the novels that it is used as. It was poorly done, like practically everything in episode 8, but I don't think it fundamentally alters the Borderlands. There is plenty of scope for a nation on the front line having a leader make mistakes. 

[DojoToad]

6 hours ago, WhiteVeils said:

Producer doesn't mean what you think it does.  There are many kinds, and most are kinda honorary.

Everyone gets a trophy. What’s the point?

[Lethira the second]

10 hours ago, Jake Sykwalker said:

 

I too am puzzled on where the supposed money went.  It didn't get spent on writers, special effects, or editing.  There is nothing in this show that jumps out and screams "I had a huge budget."  If it wasn't reported as around 10 Million an episode I would have honestly thought they did the whole show on a shoe string budget.  

 

 

 

7 hours ago, WhiteVeils said:

True.  But if a screenwriter/script doctor says "this and this and this is a sign of really good screenwriting" and someone else (not a screenwriter) says "the writing sucks and a ten year old could do better", I'm thinking the screenwriter does have something worth listening to.  You are free to agree or disagree, but the screenwriter has a valid pertenant expertise.

Let me give you a bench mark -that doesn't involve someone else' opinion.  If the screen writers fail to communicate something; whether it be character development or world building or the nature of the magic system, then the writing is bad.  You can put as many pretty scenes in something as you like (like yeeting Egwene off a cliff) and call it symbolism or something but if the audience doesn't widely understand what you are driving at then you have ultimately failed.  The writers for WoT have overall failed to communicate a vast array of things to the non book reader audience.

 

They have introduced a lot of things in season 1 but not followed through on them.  The story as it stands is a hot mess of half done storylines which were not developed.  That is the problem with pulling too much from later books and spreading things too thin.  I keep coming back to the wolves, right now we don't know who they are, what they want; it just looks like GoT had wolves we have wolves.  A little more time to develop them and the introduction of Elyas would have cemented 'this is not a GoT copy'.  They messed up on that because tried to cram too much into season one instead of developing the heart of the series, which is the characters.

 

Now, if you are Brandon Sanderson writing another SA book, you can afford to put things in there that stick out as odd, because he has the good will of his audience, they know his work and trust him to use it later on.  The Showrunners of the WoT do not have that trust, their job first and foremost should be hooking in an audience and getting them to want to watch 8 seasons of it.  Sadly, we will not have the data to show how many abandoned the show and how many views are multiple rewatches.

 

If you like the show, that's fine -I'm not criticising that.  My opinion -borne out by some experience is they got more wrong than they did right.  The whole thing looks like an apprentice trying to emulate the masters experience.  That leans in my thoughts about the budget, I don't believe the spent it wisely.  Sony/Amazon backed the wrong horse, enthusiasm is a poor substitute for experience.

[Lethira the second]

Based solely on season one -not the bonus material can you

 

-Explain who the Dark One is and why he is a threat.

-Explain why men go mad when they channel but women don't.

-Explain what the One power is and what it's limitations are.

-Explain what a Taver'en is or why they are different to normal people.

-Explain why Moiraine needed to find the Dragon Reborn.

-Explain why the wolves are following Perrin around.

 

And there are a lot of other questions, that I could through up.  The answer to at least the first 3 should NOT be WAFO.

[Raal Gurniss]

13 minutes ago, Lethira the second said:

 

 

 

Let me give you a bench mark -that doesn't involve someone else' opinion.  If the screen writers fail to communicate something; whether it be character development or world building or the nature of the magic system, then the writing is bad.  You can put as many pretty scenes in something as you like (like yeeting Egwene off a cliff) and call it symbolism or something but if the audience doesn't widely understand what you are driving at then you have ultimately failed.  The writers for WoT have overall failed to communicate a vast array of things to the non book reader audience.

 

They have introduced a lot of things in season 1 but not followed through on them.  The story as it stands is a hot mess of half done storylines which were not developed.  That is the problem with pulling too much from later books and spreading things too thin.  I keep coming back to the wolves, right now we don't know who they are, what they want; it just looks like GoT had wolves we have wolves.  A little more time to develop them and the introduction of Elyas would have cemented 'this is not a GoT copy'.  They messed up on that because tried to cram too much into season one instead of developing the heart of the series, which is the characters.

 

Now, if you are Brandon Sanderson writing another SA book, you can afford to put things in there that stick out as odd, because he has the good will of his audience, they know his work and trust him to use it later on.  The Showrunners of the WoT do not have that trust, their job first and foremost should be hooking in an audience and getting them to want to watch 8 seasons of it.  Sadly, we will not have the data to show how many abandoned the show and how many views are multiple rewatches.

 

If you like the show, that's fine -I'm not criticising that.  My opinion -borne out by some experience is they got more wrong than they did right.  The whole thing looks like an apprentice trying to emulate the masters experience.  That leans in my thoughts about the budget, I don't believe the spent it wisely.  Sony/Amazon backed the wrong horse, enthusiasm is a poor substitute for experience.

I think Rafe just wanted to put his mark on the show and put a bit too much of his views into the show.

[Lethira the second]

1 minute ago, Raal Gurniss said:

I think Rafe just wanted to put his mark on the show and put a bit too much of his views into the show.

 

Spot on and that is a marked difference between an Apprentice and a Master.  An apprentice focuses on making something their own, whereas the master knows if the tool doesn't do the job it was supposed to then it's not fit for purpose.

[Humbugged2]

6 hours ago, Pukel-man said:

I get that. But it shows something about how the creators think of the show. The most important people are the 14 producers, and the creatives that directly are on screen are less important. An honorary producer is less important than a main actor, but who gets top billing on the show?

Well the producers don't

 

Red Eagle are named as producers as that was part of the deal to get them to hand over control to Sony . Some of the producers were location staff

 

If you are going by Wiki that is how they do it production ,then the actors

 

If you get to the end is is the actors first then production

[ilovezam]

14 hours ago, Juan Farstrider said:

He would not last if he was as he was in the show, no one in his position would, no one there would. 

Maybe in this TuRnInG oF tHe WhEeL the Shadow was of no threat whatsoever historically, until that horde from Episode 8.

 

But yeah I would think if the commander of the Shienar armies is dumb enough to refuse help and constantly underestimate the enemy and belittle allies because "we've always done it ourselves", they should have died out long ago. A brilliant general holding back an overwhelming force against poor odds is so cool, and not the best character with whom to portray "male arrogance", IMO, especially with their awesome relationship with Lan. I loved how he recounted Lan's origin story with a "sad pride in his eyes". And it's much better development for Lan than the Stepin stuff, too.

 

Quote

They anointed his head with oil, naming him Dai Shan, a Diademed Battle Lord, and consecrated him as the next King of the Malkieri, and in his name they swore the ancient oath of Malkieri kings and queens.” Agelmar’s face hardened, and he spoke the words as if he, too, had sworn that oath, or one much similar. “To stand against the Shadow so long as iron is hard and stone abides. To defend the Malkieri while one drop of blood remains. To avenge what cannot be defended.” The words rang in the chamber.

 

 

Edited January 25, 2022 by ilovezam

[WhiteVeils]

1 hour ago, Lethira the second said:

Based solely on season one -not the bonus material can you

 

-Explain who the Dark One is and why he is a threat.

-Explain why men go mad when they channel but women don't.

-Explain what the One power is and what it's limitations are.

-Explain what a Taver'en is or why they are different to normal people.

-Explain why Moiraine needed to find the Dragon Reborn.

-Explain why the wolves are following Perrin around.

 

And there are a lot of other questions, that I could through up.  The answer to at least the first 3 should NOT be WAFO.

Could you ? answer all of those by the end of EOTW?

 

In show only terms...

1 The Dark One is the one who sends Trollocs and Fades to kill and eat every person in the world, who is bound but trying to enter the world. E1+E6

 

2 Men go mad because the dark one corrupted the male part of the one Power. E1+E8

 

3 The One Power is A power inside you that makes the world listen to you and do as you want E2

 

4 Ta'veran are Focal points of the pattern E8

 

5 She needed to find him To bind the Dark One so he doesn't break out E1, E6, E8

 

6 Perrin being followed by wolves is still a mystery for his character at the end of S1 and it is supposed to be.

Edited January 25, 2022 by WhiteVeils