What has GOT got that WoT's not?

[ForsakenPotato]

@DojoToad yes, but kind of in the same way Brooklyn 99 and The Wire are an apples to apples comparison because they are both police/crime shows.

Edited October 14, 2022 by ForsakenPotato

[DojoToad]

4 minutes ago, ForsakenPotato said:

@DojoToad yes, but kind of in the same way Brooklyn 99 and The Wire are an apples to apples comparison because they are both police procedurals.

So Gala versus Granny Smith instead of Red Delicious versus Clementine?

 

😁

[Jacobr]

On 10/14/2022 at 1:26 PM, DojoToad said:

I think the apples and oranges comparison might be a bit overstated. Good, bad, evil, divine is often a matter of perspective especially when truth is subjective. That goes for both characters and events. 
 

In the end HotD, WoT, GoT, RoP are all dramatic fantasy TV shows. That’s about as apples to apples as you can get in any comparison. 

I gotta disagree here. HoTD is basically trying to be Succession with Dragons. It’s a completely different show that allows for different scenes and different styles of storytelling. 
 

WoT is trying to tell it’s story in a much more action/adventure style vain. It’s much closer in tone to Indian Jones than HoTD or GoT ( GoT spilt the difference a bit more by the end, for better or worse).

 

It’s Shakespeare vs Marvel. Both have witches, heros and villains with powers and fantastical elements but they are quite different.

[DojoToad]

53 minutes ago, Jacobr said:

I gotta disagree here. HoTD is basically trying to be Succession with Dragons. It’s a completely different show that allows for different scenes and different styles of storytelling. 
 

WoT is trying to tell it’s story in a much more action/adventure style vain. It’s much closer in tone to Indian Jones than HoTD or GoT ( GoT spilt the difference a bit more by the end, for better or worse).

 

It’s Shakespeare vs Marvel. Both have witches, heros and villains with powers and fantastical elements but they are quite different.

I agree that Shakespeare and Marvel are very different. I don’t agree that WoT and GoT/HotD are ‘very’ different. 
 

Your comparison/contrast is extreme. It is not a leap to put Jordan’s and Martin’s work in the same ballpark. 🤷‍♂️

[SinisterDeath]

4 hours ago, DojoToad said:

Your comparison/contrast is extreme. It is not a leap to put Jordan’s and Martin’s work in the same ballpark. 🤷‍♂️

Martin's work is a sub genre of Fantasy/Fiction called "Grimdark". It's closer to Joe Abercrombie's "First Law" series then WoT.

[DojoToad]

10 minutes ago, SinisterDeath said:

Martin's work is a sub genre of Fantasy/Fiction called "Grimdark". It's closer to Joe Abercrombie's "First Law" series then WoT.

Maybe so.  I'm not saying they're the same, just comparable.  And a lot closer together than Shakespeare and Marvel.

Edited October 16, 2022 by DojoToad

[ForsakenPotato]

It's just important to be specific about what is being compared, especially the more different the works and their themes are. I don't have any issues with comparing, for example, 1:1 combat scenes or the costume detailing of royalty.

 

But if the complaint is that there isn't an actor's performance to equal the exquisite tragedy of King Viserys...I agree. I spent half the most recent HotD episode in tears. But how does that affect WoT? There just isn't a role in WoT Season 1 that would give any veteran actor, no matter how well written, the opportunity for a performance like that. Compare it to a performance of Hamlet, sure, but not Wheel of Time.

 

[templar7]

On 10/15/2022 at 3:59 PM, Jacobr said:

I gotta disagree here. HoTD is basically trying to be Succession with Dragons. It’s a completely different show that allows for different scenes and different styles of storytelling. 
 

WoT is trying to tell it’s story in a much more action/adventure style vain. It’s much closer in tone to Indian Jones than HoTD or GoT ( GoT spilt the difference a bit more by the end, for better or worse).

 

It’s Shakespeare vs Marvel. Both have witches, heros and villains with powers and fantastical elements but they are quite different.

I agree up to Shakespeare vs Marvel. I think WoT is more than that, both from a literary stand point and in its wold building. But I totally agree in disagreeing with the previous thread. I guess I would see it more as a Stephen King vs H.P. Lovecraft...

Good post mate 

[Spider Spence]

I suspect that a lot of problems arose from thinking it should be more like Game of Thrones. GoT is Aristotelian tragedy in which various noble and not-so-noble characters engineer their own downfall through their tragic flaws. WoT is a coming-of-age story about restoring balance to a world that has been chronically imbalanced. By nature, one ends unhappily and one ends happily.

 

They have trappings of the same sort of story, but they aren't thematically similar.

 

WoT is also way more traditional fantasy, with a magic system, a Chosen One, a Dark One and his Ugly Evil Henchmen, romances that are, uh, romantic, and various MacGuffins worth pursuing.

 

Lord of the Rings basically smacked you in the face with that prologue, yelling THIS IS FANTASY GET OUT NOW IF YOU CAN'T HANDLE ELVES, DWARVES & DARK LORDS. Game of Thrones, though, bar the prologue, was a lot more recognizable to fans of period dramas. A casual could be watching the first episode and think, 'This is basically The Tudors with made-up locations.'

 

I think the WoT show tried to split the difference and that hurt it. They introduced channeling and the Dragon Reborn in a way that made the show look like GoT with a bit more magic--but then a bunch of demon monsters attacked for the entire third act. We would have been better off just starting with a FotR-style prologue about the Age of Legends, because WoT is, especially in the early books, closer to LotR than A Song of Ice & Fire.

 

It also went too hard for the GoT 'adult' tone with the gratuitous violence and some of the sillier plot twists (for me, as usual YMMV) and they made it really dour. Fun stuff, like the Duopotamians being the biggest country yokels that ever yokeled, the 'Play For Your Supper' sequence, the 'Hopper is a good boi' bits of the wolf story, Rand's little sojourn in the Caemlyn palace and 90% of Thom's character were left out.

 

We got some great stuff among the Warders instead, Siuan and Moiraine's romance was good, and we got to actually see Nynaeve & Lan fall in love, which I liked. But overall a lot of the whole-cloth stuff was pretty dark. The Battle of Winternight goes on forever, Grinwells all get slaughtered, Eamon Valda has somehow managed to dismember a bunch of Aes Sedai (does Rafe think that channeling is bending?) channelers burn themselves to a literal crisp to kill Trollocs, and Thom Merrilin became Thom Waits.

 

It's a different kind of story and I wish they had just let it be that story. GoT might have been right for the sick-of-9/11 politics world, but I want hope and love for the very imbalanced 2020s.

Edited November 14, 2022 by Spider Spence

[Scarloc99]

On 10/16/2022 at 2:28 AM, DojoToad said:

Maybe so.  I'm not saying they're the same, just comparable.  And a lot closer together than Shakespeare and Marvel.

I think the way they are presented on screen is a comparative example though. GOT is not Shakespeare but was presented as a grown up fantasy series, you have some very dark themes in the book, our heroes are killed off, usually in gory ways. (note I am only talking about seasons 1-4, I always felt it was a shame they never finished the series 😉 ). 

Season 1 WOT feels more like a lighter, action themed show. It is about the set pieces, the look and the feel. As a TV show, and I hate to say this, it is more disposable. That doesn't make it bad TV, it makes it different to GOT. 

In terms of world building and writing one criticism I have always had with WOT is that there are no shades of grey. You are either Good or Bad, even the red Ajah, a group that you can understand needs to exist within the tower are presented as a bad organisation, there is never a presentation as to why they need to exist. Even Marvel allows for shades of grey, heroes that we question, bad guys we can sympathise with. GOT lived in the Grey, there are very very few fully redeemable characters in that series. Even the Night King can be understood as being more then just "zombie king who wants everything dead", he was created to be a weapon, to destroy the living. You can understand him coming to hate his creators as much as the humans he was created to destroy.

Compare that with WOT The Forsaken have never been presented as sympathetic, they are bad, so they do bad things because they are bad. There reasons for turning to the dark lord are usually selfishness, or a need to be powerful, or a fear of death or becoming irrelevant, or just jealousy 

If I compare it to another series I have long been reading, the Horus Heresy by Black Library, that has done a great job of taking characters who, decades ago where cartoon bad guys who wanted to destroy the imperium, and turned them into understandable, sympathetic characters. I can see how Lorgar was corrupted after being rejected by his father and then being shown an alternative path. I can understand Angron's rage as being more then just because "me got spikes in head me angry". I can see how Magnus was corrupted by Knowledge. 

The TV show is going to have to do a better job then the books to present the various bad guys, including the Forsaken, in a more layered way. Very few TV shows now days keep an audience engaged with the idea of bad guy bad, good guy good and there we go. Even Rings of Power did a fantastic job of making the Orcs sympathetic, that scene between Galadriel and Adar was a really good example of how, in just a few minutes of dialogue, you can turn the table on it's head and make the combat between good and evil more nuanced. 
 

I also think that right now, we are comparing season 1 of WOT with a completed GOT series. I remember Season 1 of GOT actually was not an instant roaring success with audiences, it was very much a slow burn build. And, as has been said, it also was a far easier leap to make for viewers then a dive into high fantasy. Many people I knew got into it because it felt more like the Tudors then Lord of the Rings. 

[wotfan4472]

Indeed. On TV, the medium they exist in makes them all apples. The only difference is how each goes about telling their stories, and what they present.

Edited November 16, 2022 by wotfan4472

[Chivalry]

On 11/16/2022 at 5:31 AM, wotfan4472 said:

Indeed. On TV, the medium they exist in makes them all apples. The only difference is how each goes about telling their stories, and what they present.

 

LOL, when I first saw this, I thought you wrote nipples, not apples.  Damn it GoT, see what you've done!