Has Rings of Power proven that Fantasy Adaptations are really hard?

[Scarloc99]

Having now watched season 1 of both I wonder is the biggest lesson here that Fantasy adaptations are just really tricky. Both Rings of Power and Wheel of Time have had the same criticism leveled at them by many. 
 

Breaking from source material. 
Character development is too different. 
A poor script. 
 

Personally I think some of this criticism is fair, while other is reaching but focusing on the issues raised by many (but ignoring anything about diversity of casting, those arguments are just beyond). Both series have their good points but, my main issues with both series does come from the condensing. WOT feels rushed. As if it needed an extra 2 episodes a season and possibly more seasons. 
 

Rings of power tries to condense 3000 years of story into 1 generation (all be it the long lived Numenorian generation) and again makes some very questionable changes to the original source material. 

But is the issue actually that Fantasy stories do not translate as well or as easily? Game if Thrones started strong, but, as the tv show writers needed to make up more and more story it dropped off. Witcher also suffers, especially in season 2 where the writers feel the need to break away from the written word (although it does not suffer as badly). 

 

It isn’t like Adaptations can’t ever be good, the Expanse, the Boys, Papergirls and even jack reacher are just 4 that Amazon pulls off well, the changes made to the source material makes sense and keeps to the tone of the original work. 
 

So is there an issue that fantasy just can’t translate as well to TV? 

[DojoToad]

4 hours ago, Sir_Charrid said:

Having now watched season 1 of both I wonder is the biggest lesson here that Fantasy adaptations are just really tricky. Both Rings of Power and Wheel of Time have had the same criticism leveled at them by many. 
 

Breaking from source material. 
Character development is too different. 
A poor script. 
 

Personally I think some of this criticism is fair, while other is reaching but focusing on the issues raised by many (but ignoring anything about diversity of casting, those arguments are just beyond). Both series have their good points but, my main issues with both series does come from the condensing. WOT feels rushed. As if it needed an extra 2 episodes a season and possibly more seasons. 
 

Rings of power tries to condense 3000 years of story into 1 generation (all be it the long lived Numenorian generation) and again makes some very questionable changes to the original source material. 

But is the issue actually that Fantasy stories do not translate as well or as easily? Game if Thrones started strong, but, as the tv show writers needed to make up more and more story it dropped off. Witcher also suffers, especially in season 2 where the writers feel the need to break away from the written word (although it does not suffer as badly). 

 

It isn’t like Adaptations can’t ever be good, the Expanse, the Boys, Papergirls and even jack reacher are just 4 that Amazon pulls off well, the changes made to the source material makes sense and keeps to the tone of the original work. 
 

So is there an issue that fantasy just can’t translate as well to TV? 

I think you answered your own question - with GoT.  It was strong for many seasons before they started making changes and/or ran out of source material.  So fantasy can translate to TV.

[SinisterDeath]

57 minutes ago, DojoToad said:

I think you answered your own question - with GoT.  It was strong for many seasons before they started making changes and/or ran out of source material.  So fantasy can translate to TV.

GoT is the outlier of Fantasy Television

Lest us not forget, that George R.R. Martin spent time as a screen writer (Beauty and the Beast, The Outer Limits) 

For screenwriters, his work has the advantage of generally being easier to translate directly to the screen then other works of fantasy.

It's also easy to forget that many purists hated on the show (before season 8 ) for the changes they made to the source material throughout the show.

[DojoToad]

48 minutes ago, SinisterDeath said:

GoT is the outlier of Fantasy Television

 

 

It may be an outlier, but Fantasy can translate to TV.  Difficult that it may be...

 

48 minutes ago, SinisterDeath said:

 

Lest us not forget, that George R.R. Martin spent time as a screen writer (Beauty and the Beast, The Outer Limits) 

For screenwriters, his work has the advantage of generally being easier to translate directly to the screen then other works of fantasy.

 

 

I remember that.  So do we need writers looking at the source material differently to make the translation to the small screen better?

 

48 minutes ago, SinisterDeath said:

It's also easy to forget that many purists hated on the show (before season 8 ) for the changes they made to the source material throughout the show.

I only watched S1 - it was very true to the book.  I heard that the next several seasons were also very true to the source material.  Whether that translated to a good show is a different discussion.

[SinisterDeath]

1 hour ago, DojoToad said:

I only watched S1 - it was very true to the book.  I heard that the next several seasons were also very true to the source material.  Whether that translated to a good show is a different discussion.

Did ya forget the purists hating on the Wolves? 😉 
There's a ton of alterations to the source through out the series. Entire arcs and characters vanished, merged, or moved around.
 

1 hour ago, DojoToad said:

I remember that.  So do we need writers looking at the source material differently to make the translation to the small screen better?

We found out after the last season, that D&D, literally didn't know what they were doing. The Pilot episode? Yeah, they had to completely reshoot that. 

That despite all of D&D's shortcomings, failures, and ineptitude, they created a successful tv series out of stupid blind luck, a huge freaking HBO budget, while leaning leaning on the works of G.R.R Martin.

It's one of the few times where Producers/Executives dug their claws into a show, and actually made it better, instead of a dumpster fire.

We can just hand wave and say that trying to make a 1:1 adaptation of a book will always turn out better, but as I said above, I believe G.R.R Martin's work is the exception to the rule. He writes in a way that is easier to put to script... because he is a script writer.

I reckon you could take almost anything he writes, and attempt a 1:1 remake and it'll translate better on screen then just about any other authors works. (Note: The Expanse had heavy involvement from the writers of the books)
 

As for how this relates to WoT and RoP?
RoP, has the issue of only having legal access to some established lore. They legally can only do so much. If they just "read the wiki", they risk legal action. Also, Tolkien is boring as hell. Boring doesn't work on screen. (See: Hobbit Films)

WoT, The only thing (i think) the show suffers from, is a combination of being written by committee, and producers/executives demanding changes, plus the general power struggles between the show runner and everyone else involved.

I honestly believe Rafe is a fan of the books.
Josha has become the series Henry Cavill as he's powered his way through the series, and apparently several other members of the cast are actively reading the books.

I think Rafe wants to bring the show back on track, but he has to contend with executives, producers, and other writers over the show's direction. (Remember when some of the other writers tried to make Perrin a Bear Brother?)

If by season 3, the show has completely diverged from the source material and become it's own thing entirely, the only thing that'll prevent it from being canceled, is bad writing/acting.

If by season 3, the show has gotten back on the rails and become the adaptation fans will love, the only thing that'll prevent it from being canceled, is bad writing/acting.

Btw, remember the hit that was the tv series Dexter?
Completely, 100% unfaithful to the source. From my understanding, the books are trash.

[Skipp]

1 hour ago, SinisterDeath said:

I reckon you could take almost anything he writes, and attempt a 1:1 remake and it'll translate better on screen then just about any other authors works. (Note: The Expanse had heavy involvement from the writers of the books)

 

And The Expanse has made many alterations from book to show when it made things easier for TV.  Some of these events are pretty massive as well.  But those are the changes you make while doing an adaptation and what some WoT fans cannot accept in their show.

 

Another show that was mentioned was The Boys which is so very very different from the source material and it could be considered a different Turning of the Wheel.

 

And I love all 3 shows and my 2 favourite book series are WoT and The Expanse(haven't actually read The Boys).

Edited October 27, 2022 by Skipp
spelling

[ForsakenPotato]

Imho it's not just fantasy adaptions that are hard, all adaptions are. I finally read Pride and Prejudice last week and was surprised how much I liked it and how subtle the story and writing was. I understand now why it's a classic. I've seen at least one or two movie & miniseries adaptions in the past without really enjoying them, despite generally having good acting and sticking pretty close to the same story.

 

But I do think fantasy adaptions (especially sprawling, epic fantasy) have a few extra hurdles:

- very complex worlds that can be a lot for a viewer not already familiar with the source material

- $$$ for all the special effects and custom costumes and sets...making a whole world that doesn't feel like our own and doesn't feel too much like the other fantasy worlds that exist already onscreen is really hard, and convincing viewers that it's real and lived in is even harder

- very intense fans who tend to be pretty focused on the details of the lore and are unlikely to be satisfied by a loose adaption

- very long books and long series need to have a lot of material cut for an adaption to not feel rushed, which has ripple effects

- TV shows need an arc for every episode and an arc for the entire season, while books can be a lot less evenly paced without it being a bad thing. Fantasy books especially tend to all work towards one big face-off at the end, but viewers who want to be dazzled every episode by cool magic and sword fights are not going to enjoy a lot of character building episodes (even if the end of season payoff would be better because of it).

[DaddyFinn]

1 hour ago, SinisterDeath said:

Remember when some of the other writers tried to make Perrin a Bear Brother?)

Wasn't that a joke to mess with other writers?

[SinisterDeath]

3 minutes ago, DaddyFinn said:

Wasn't that a joke to mess with other writers?

[DaddyFinn]

14 minutes ago, SinisterDeath said:

Exactly. I never thought they seriously considered it. Just something to give Sarah a few extra grey hairs.

[WhiteVeils]

I think things are a little harder to do an adaptation for right at the current moment in history than they were previously for a couple of reasons.

 

1) Special effects in television in a few, very specific shows, have gotten to 'movie level' special effects, and movie level special effects have gotten so good that people cannot imagine that there is any kind of size or scale or subtlety of visual expression that cannot be done with CGI and special effects.   So they can critique minutia (the behavior and color of weaves of magic) like it was something that was not virtually a miracle to uniquely animate and just 'expect  to be perfect'.  They have no idea what kind of time and power it creates to make an army of trollocs or threads of saidin or a ferry sinking into a whirlpool. It is not enough for it to match current television special effects standards, it has to match a reality they can only imagine, and if it doesn't, it's a failure.  

2) There's a very well funded movement that focuses on attacking many, many aspects of pop culture, trying to divide Americans into camps to create infighting and division.  We can't just be grateful for a cool show or ignore a not cool one...we have to have an opinion on it, we have to figure out who supports that show, determine whether or not we agree with that show's supporters, and then take that into consideration when we decide.   You can blame internal political forces or external ones (or a bit of both) but it's been true since the STar Wars prequels.  It didn't used to be that way.  We didn't worry about it for Willow or Krull or anything.  

There're other reasons, but that's part of it.

[Skipp]

1 hour ago, DaddyFinn said:

Exactly. I never thought they seriously considered it. Just something to give Sarah a few extra grey hairs.

 

I believe some of the producers or writers were worried about "copying" GoT with the entire wolves thing.  Pretty silly thing to be worried over.

[A Memory Of Why]

But.. WoT came out first and GoT did take inspiration on some ideas.

 

The importance of wolves and the obvious Game of Houses comes to mind.

 

GRRM also paid homage to RJ and had a small character named after him, Trebor of somewhere.

[SinisterDeath]

39 minutes ago, A Memory Of Why said:

But.. WoT came out first and GoT did take inspiration on some ideas.

 

The importance of wolves and the obvious Game of Houses comes to mind.

 

GRRM also paid homage to RJ and had a small character named after him, Trebor of somewhere.

GoT TV show came out before the WoT TV show, which is what was being referenced here.

Producers are weary of all sorts of dumb things.

They might be so focused on GoT having "wolves" and "Warging" that they very well could have attempted to change it in the WoT TV series because they're worried it'll come off as "copying" GoT, regardless of the books doing it first.

[A Memory Of Why]

Yeah I see, stupid perception and public opinion. Messes with everything I tells ya.

 

Next thing you know it'll be contentious to use the True Power to "warg" into a bird..

[AdamA]

I think there are elements of fantasy that are hard to translate. One thing is truly fantastical elements. Game of Thrones and The Expanse are at their best when they're most grounded and you're watching stuff happen that wouldn't be all that out of place seeing happen in the real world. Even when the dragon is lighting everyone up in that loot train battle, as they said, they based it on what they imagined it would be like to have an F16 go up against a medieval army, and something like that is at least surface plausible what it might look like (the cavalry tactics more iffy, but not enough people are familiar with them for it to register much). They just didn't keep it up. Contrast the battle of Hardhome with the Long Night. The former felt exactly like what an army of neverending zombies led by near unkillable ice demons attacking a city would be like. Everyone get plowed over and all they can do is run. In the Long Night, on the other hand, favorite characters keep getting overrun and dogpiled and then they're just magically fine after a five minute cut to something else and the zombies are all gone. Almost nobody should have survived that battle if Game of Thrones stayed true to the early season realism.

 

Wheel of Time I think almost has to suffer a bit in some ways. Take the Aes Sedai agelessness, the more or less instant healing of any injury, the fact they can keep themselves perpetually clean with magic. It literally makes them unreal, but it also makes it unreal to see that depicted. There are a lot of elements like that where they work fine if it's entirely in your imagination, but come time to actually show it with real people, and I'm not sure how you do it convincingly. What is it going to look like if they try to actually show giant wolves that leave paw prints on stone but not on grass? It's eery to imagine, but if I honestly try to picture it really happening, I don't see how it doesn't look silly and just confuse most of the audience. I can't imagine what they could seriously do with the weaves to make them look any better, but I don't think they look good.

 

This is, of course, entirely separate from the writing and character development issues. The other thing that Wheel of Time, the LOTR appendices, and the later books in ASOIAF suffer from is extreme sprawl. As you said, one takes place across thousands of years. The other two involve so many named characters that you can't possibly keep track of and remember them all without having notes on hand. That works fine in a book. The medium is naturally meant to be paused, to go back and re-read on the fly, to consult appendices and wikis as you're reading. Television doesn't really work that way. It's meant to be more linear. You watch it in the hour it airs. You might go back and rewatch, but viewers don't generally want to interrupt the experience the first time. With reading, there is no expectation that it will be uninterrupted. Books are usually too long to consume in one sitting anyway and often take weeks or even months to get through, not hours.

 

Part of the reason I think The Expanse works so well is the books are fairly small in comparison. The events happening are just as big a deal, if not even more, and it takes place across an even larger setting, thousands of star systems in this case, but it only follows a few characters at a time. The crew of the Rocinante are the only characters that appear in every book. When a character no longer matters to the story, they just drop into the background. It doesn't try to follow everyone everywhere like Wheel of Time and ASOIAF do, creating endless meandering subplots that would take 40 seasons to depict faithfully on television. When it comes times to edit and cut The Expanse to make it fit into a season, there isn't nearly as much to cut. Less writer discretion is involved. You can lean more heavily on the books themselves, where the writers had more time and it was far more of a passion project and they're probably better writers anyway. There are fewer opportunities to piss off fans by cutting the thing that happened to be their favorite.

 

That said, even though I think there are inherent challenges to adapting truly fantastical stories and to adapting very sprawling stories, I don't think you can just let the writers off the hook here. Both the Wheel of Time and Rings of Power teams did some things that don't add up no matter what. I think they're bound to be limited compared to what you can do with a book, but they didn't need to be as disappointing as they were as television. It seemed like they both felt the need to pigeonhole themselves into a mystery box format because they felt like 1) they had to hook viewers and culture critics and get people speculating around the water cooler every week, like they wanted the show to be Reddit fuel, and 2) they were clearly searching for those oh shit moments to try and recreate what happened with the Red Wedding, but you can't just reach for and manufacture that. It has to work with and be logical in the flow of the story you already have. Contrast with something like Andor that is on right now, which isn't necessarily universally revered. I know some people have complained it's too much of a slow burn and nothing is happening, but to me, it's exactly what something like this should be. It's following a fairly small number of characters that are all being developed well. It's not trying to deceive or string along the audience. Nothing particularly implausible or convenient is happening just because the plot needs to hit bullet points. It feels like you're watching real people do things that could really happen, not watching a campfire storyteller trying to get you to jump while he films you for a reaction video.

[king of nowhere]

In addition to all the good comments above, television has a lot of other practiczl problems a book doesn't have. 

In book, you can put a main character on a bus, and bring her back five books later. With an actor, you have no guarantees to hire him back. You have all manners of schedule and budget constraints. 

And finally, a book writer has an editor and a bunch of alpha readers to get feedback, then change the lbooks accordingly. Books are better for the revision process. In a movie, if the premiere shows problems, they can't remake parts of it. 

So a book can enjoy a much more cohesive plotting. Books have an ingerent advantage there. Being able to enter in the minds of characters also gives deeper characterization.

Movies do better the visual part. Uses of the power were of mixed quality, but they certainly beat "she wove air just so". Swordfights are way cooler. The scenery looks better, or it would if i could quiet that voice in the back of my head screaming "a big city can't exhist in the middle of wilderness! There isn't a single farm anywhere in the show! Where does food come from???"

So, different medium have different pros and cons. And yes, i agree with the op that some of the main selling points of fantasy sagas just happen to hit television's weaker spots

[DojoToad]

15 hours ago, WhiteVeils said:

I think things are a little harder to do an adaptation for right at the current moment in history than they were previously for a couple of reasons.

 

1) Special effects in television in a few, very specific shows, have gotten to 'movie level' special effects, and movie level special effects have gotten so good that people cannot imagine that there is any kind of size or scale or subtlety of visual expression that cannot be done with CGI and special effects.   So they can critique minutia (the behavior and color of weaves of magic) like it was something that was not virtually a miracle to uniquely animate and just 'expect  to be perfect'.  They have no idea what kind of time and power it creates to make an army of trollocs or threads of saidin or a ferry sinking into a whirlpool. It is not enough for it to match current television special effects standards, it has to match a reality they can only imagine, and if it doesn't, it's a failure.  

 

Good point.  We do tend to get spoiled when we see something amazing and then expect everything to be that good without regard to cost and other factors.

 

15 hours ago, WhiteVeils said:

2) There's a very well funded movement that focuses on attacking many, many aspects of pop culture, trying to divide Americans into camps to create infighting and division. 

 

 

What is the well-funded movement?  It's probably something obvious, but I'm not aware of its existence...

 

15 hours ago, WhiteVeils said:

We can't just be grateful for a cool show or ignore a not cool one...we have to have an opinion on it, we have to figure out who supports that show, determine whether or not we agree with that show's supporters, and then take that into consideration when we decide.   You can blame internal political forces or external ones (or a bit of both) but it's been true since the STar Wars prequels.  It didn't used to be that way.  We didn't worry about it for Willow or Krull or anything.  

There're other reasons, but that's part of it.

An opinion?  Sure we all have opinions  and some of us come to DM to express them.  We also come here to interact, share thoughts and emotions, ask questions, and speculate about the future.

 

If it was good enough just to be grateful for a cool show - then there would be no one on DM praising it.  They want to interact with people that enjoyed it as much as they did.  "That scene was way better than the book."  "Did everyone love what they did with that character as much as I did?"

 

Same for the other way around.  "What were they thinking in that scene?  Ugh!"  "Why is a minor character getting so much screen time?"

 

The world is a lot different than when Willow and Krull came out - including places like DM.  People come here because it enhances their experience with the books, the show, or likely both.  Your statement seems to say be grateful or ignore it and let that be the end.  Don't bring your opinions or thoughts.  Am I misunderstanding?

[WhiteVeils]

6 hours ago, DojoToad said:

 

Good point.  We do tend to get spoiled when we see something amazing and then expect everything to be that good without regard to cost and other factors.

👍

6 hours ago, DojoToad said:

What is the well-funded movement?  It's probably something obvious, but I'm not aware of its existence...

US Party Politics, just for starters.  If a political party (and I'm not picking either one) can stoke and turn something into a wedge issue to stir up its voters, it does so. That's why you hear so much complaining about 'Woke' shows...politicians profit from that stuff.   In addition, other countries benefit from a divided and fractured US culture. Russian and Chinese government funded trolls and bots do insert themselves into our pop-culture discourse, increasing polarization for their own political gain. It isn't the majority of social media negative interactions, but the effect is still strong, and likely getting stronger because it's working pretty well. 

Half of the Star Wars: The Last Jedi backlash was Russian bots and trolls - The Verge 
No, half of The Last Jedi haters were not Russian trolls - CNET
'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' reactions show how right-wing Twitter agitators adopted Russian tactics (nbcnews.com)

There's lots of articles arguing whether it was half, or only 10% or so, but in this case I'm not arguing how much of an effect it has, but that this influence exists in a statistically measurable fashion at all)

6 hours ago, DojoToad said:

The world is a lot different than when Willow and Krull came out - including places like DM.  People come here because it enhances their experience with the books, the show, or likely both.  Your statement seems to say be grateful or ignore it and let that be the end.  Don't bring your opinions or thoughts.  Am I misunderstanding?

 

Does sharing how strongly one dislikes the show enhance one's experience of the show, or does it reinforce itself by finding other like-minded individuals? I honestly don't see how complaining about something enhances one's own experience of that something, or enhances the experience others have of that thing? How does bringing your opinions and thoughts dragging a show, movie, book, etc, down, make the world a better place?  I guess I just feel like that would be terribly exhausting and depressing for everyone.

Thumper says: If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all.  

 

Sometimes you can't do that. If faced with evil, injustice, racism, sexism, bullying, etc, you have a responsibility to call that what it is and make it stop.  But, otherwise? Life's short.  People should get to like things if those things aren't actively doing harm.   Even if you hated Wheel of Time the show, letting people like it means that industry might be willing to put more time, money, and effort into things sort of like that in the future, which is all good for you.

[DojoToad]

4 minutes ago, WhiteVeils said:

👍

US Party Politics, just for starters.  If a political party (and I'm not picking either one) can stoke and turn something into a wedge issue to stir up its voters, it does so. That's why you hear so much complaining about 'Woke' shows...politicians profit from that stuff.   In addition, other countries benefit from a divided and fractured US culture. Russian and Chinese government funded trolls and bots do insert themselves into our pop-culture discourse, increasing polarization for their own political gain. It isn't the majority of social media negative interactions, but the effect is still strong, and likely getting stronger because it's working pretty well. 

Half of the Star Wars: The Last Jedi backlash was Russian bots and trolls - The Verge 
No, half of The Last Jedi haters were not Russian trolls - CNET
'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' reactions show how right-wing Twitter agitators adopted Russian tactics (nbcnews.com)

There's lots of articles arguing whether it was half, or only 10% or so, but in this case I'm not arguing how much of an effect it has, but that this influence exists in a statistically measurable fashion at all)

 

Not sure I see what you mean here.  Maybe the politics aspect is screwing me up.  Why would Russians or whomever want to spam ratings for Last Jedi, WoT or whatever?  What is the payoff?  No one does the work without some benefit, right?

 

4 minutes ago, WhiteVeils said:

 

Does sharing how strongly one dislikes the show enhance one's experience of the show, or does it reinforce itself by finding other like-minded individuals? I honestly don't see how complaining about something enhances one's own experience of that something, or enhances the experience others have of that thing? How does bringing your opinions and thoughts dragging a show, movie, book, etc, down, make the world a better place?  I guess I just feel like that would be terribly exhausting and depressing for everyone.

Thumper says: If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all.  

 

Sometimes you can't do that. If faced with evil, injustice, racism, sexism, bullying, etc, you have a responsibility to call that what it is and make it stop.  But, otherwise? Life's short.  People should get to like things if those things aren't actively doing harm.   Even if you hated Wheel of Time the show, letting people like it means that industry might be willing to put more time, money, and effort into things sort of like that in the future, which is all good for you.

 

No, I don't think sharing how strongly one dislikes the show enhances the experience, anymore than sharing how much I love it would enhance the experience.

 

In my case, WoT books are my all-time favorite (as I'm sure they are for many here).  So when the show disappointed on such a grand scale, I came here looking to commiserate with folks that were also disappointed.  So complaining doesn't enhance, but maybe I feel a little better knowing I'm not alone in my disenchantment.

 

Through the process I read heavily on both sides of the like scale.  I don't hate people that disagree with me, nor do I like people that agree with me.  We're all just a bunch of people that like/love WoT that get together to discuss it.

 

Obviously having people agree with me is gratifying to a certain extent.  But I'm looking for insights/views different than mine as well.  Maybe my 'hate' for the show is unwarranted or just over-stated due to my closeness to the source material.  Anything I respond to I have read and maybe that helps me moderate my views.  The show might be a 4 out of 10 instead of a 3.  Everything I've read here may help me look at S2 more charitably.

 

But in the end each of us likes/dislikes based on what's inside - whether it be a favorite color, ice cream flavor, sports team...

 

Sharing dislikes isn't evil even as sharing likes isn't inherently good.  They are all part of the same discussion.

 

 

[expat]

Quote

While I do tend to love the books and hate the show, I think I'm fair in appreciating the shows strong points while acknowledging the weak points of the books.

Actually, speaking as a newbie, you are one of the better posters.  You have clearly stated things you like and dislike while taking a position that the bad things outweigh the good parts.  Valid

 

You stick around and rationally discuss the issues raised in your post and by other posters. Too many others give a one post statement that the show is terrible because it isn't exactly like RJ wrote the books and then disappear. Valid

 

You don't degenerate into agenda driven criticisms like "too woke" or the writers are narcissistic idiots trying to write their own show to spite RJ. Specific decisions can be fairly criticized (e.g., the women as potential dragons, Nyn killing the trolloc), but much of the early criticism was very OTT.  Valid

 

You don't resort to ad hominem attacks when people disagree with you.  Valid

 

Just because you are wrong about the overall strength of the show is not a disqualification for an entertaining and useful poster 😇

[SinisterDeath]

On 10/29/2022 at 6:26 AM, DojoToad said:

I don't think fantasy in general is hard to adapt to TV.  I think long-ass books and book series are hard to adapt to TV.  Not saying it can't be done, but that it takes a special person with a special vision to pull it off.  I don't think Rafe is that person.  I'd rather have nothing than a crappy show, but I also can see how other people are happy with whatever is out there.

History of "adaptations" is... interesting.

At the end of the day, almost everything is an adaptation of something, even original IP's are often retelling another story.

 

If you've seen the number of movies (And direct adaptations) as I have, you'd know better then to expect every adaptation to try and be a 1:1 Analogue.

 

Some of the absolute worst offenders are video game to movie adaptations. 

 

As an example, the surprisingly profitable Resident Evil Movie series.
About the only thing it shares in common with the Video Games, is the name of the Evil Corporation (Umbrella), the Virus (T Virus), and a few name drops and zombies.

(https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2592614/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_3, cost $40M to make, grossed $312M.)

Video Game fans, almost all hate the series. Some just accept that it, is it's own thing, and by the time the 2nd or 3rd movie about the only thing it has left in common with the game series, is that it has also gone completely off the rails.

Lets look at Dune - Part 1. (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1160419/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0)
A rather accurate book to screen adaptation, it still cut a lot of characters, and scenes to fit in 2 hours and 35 minutes.

Here's the sad part. It only grossed $89M more than the above film, and cost nearly 165M to make. 

Arguably, "Resident Evil: The Final Chapter" was the more profitable "adaptation".

 

We also get adaptations where people take old tales "Scrooge" as a vehicle to tell a new but familiar story.

As a consumer, we have little say in how movies/shows of adaptations are made. I can be mad that a show doesn't' include a scene, and still enjoy it.

Ultimately, I can hope that we get a faithful adaptation, but I'll be happy if we either get a good story or something that keeps me entertained.

I've seen some truly awful movies, so my bar for being entertained is pretty damn low.

 

[Scarloc99]

So reading through this thread I think the main post for me is that the bigger the source the harder to adapt for the TV. As has been pointed out The Boys, Reacher, and even the expanse are far smaller adaptations, Reacher was a single book, The boys a Graphic Novel so again a far smaller source in terms of number of pages, in the case of both of these and the Expanse, which again is small in that while it is a series of books they are in many ways a series of connected shortish stories with characters that duck in and out of the story without the reader expecting to see them again necessarily. 
 

Game of Thrones, while a more faithful adaptation for series 1-3 still did move away from the source a lot in many ways. In some ways I do feel for D&D, they had the same challenge Brandon Sanderson had, bring a beloved series to an end. But, they didn’t have 1000 pages of notes and a partially written script to work off. At best they had whatever meandering ideas George RR Martin gave them but I have a feeling he doesn’t know how the series will end, if you look at what they where given the loose ends to tie up then yes they dropped the ball but I can kind of forgive them for the story choices they made, where they made a huge mistake was in trying to rush to the conclusion. 
 

I think high fantasy has a bigger issue though then story or adaptation or even scale. The further a story gets away from

out lives our experience the more work has to go into explaining the rules of that world. Even a Sci Fi series like the expanse has a core idea that people can understand easily,  the sense of that grim dark world, people wanting freedom from oppression, the tech is believable and solid and doesn’t require a vast leap of understanding to get and, we have been living in Sci Fi worlds on our tv and movie screens far more regularly then fantasy. 
 

Game of Thrones as has been mentioned was something we could kind of understand, kings and queens are shitty people. The magic was not embedded in the show and we didn’t need to understand the rules of it because those using it didn’t. We could understand a Dragon is dangerous and if the lead characters still have no understanding as to how they where born then it does not need to be explained to us as viewers. 
 

But shows like the WOT, or lord of the rings where there is a whole mythos behind the story they drives it forward you have to lay those foundations and explain all of that. The characters understand the rules of magic and the world so we need to and that is hard to do, it takes away from story telling and it is hard to do it without a mass exposition dump. Every scene spent explaining something about the past, or the gods, or magic, or something else is a scene that does not allow the story to drive forward. So you either have a show that has big gaping holes in the lore, or that has big gaping holes in the story. 

[Blackbyrd]

On 10/27/2022 at 6:28 AM, SinisterDeath said:

GoT is the outlier of Fantasy Television

Lest us not forget, that George R.R. Martin spent time as a screen writer (Beauty and the Beast, The Outer Limits) 

For screenwriters, his work has the advantage of generally being easier to translate directly to the screen then other works of fantasy.

It's also easy to forget that many purists hated on the show (before season 8 ) for the changes they made to the source material throughout the show.

There's truth here, but not totally. Martin's prose recalls a tv series. While Wheel -like Tolkien, who may inform such- is written in the form of cinematic experience. The end of Lord of Chaos is a great example of such differences in writing. And honestly I don't think we should expect such major extravaganza from a 64 hour tv series. The big screen is still the big screen and 3 hours in it is a different experience even than Rings of Power, for all its cinematic quality

 

Some good points in the thread- the thing is of course that a well crafted book is almost always better and that's regardless the setting

 

PS Have also noticed that more books in the category -I've read- nowadays fall more in line with the Martin formula of a more serialized form of writing

Edited November 2, 2022 by Blackbyrd

[Guest Cranglevoid]

Nah, writers and showrunners just need to get over themselves and realize it's not their job to modernize, interpret, and "improve" on established and already popular stories. Of course they have do adapt it to actually fit the medium, including cutting out and sometimes adding a thing or two, but it needs to be kept to a minimum.

 

Rewriting characters, changing motives, and generally playing fast and loose with the source material will always be a recipe for disaster.