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

[Samt]

58 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

Probably more apt to say that S1 of WoT does not measure up to the top echelon of fantasy shows. We've had only a single season (which, though disappointing in many respects, was enjoyable and above-average as a series) thus far. To suggest that WoT is "clearly not among" the best adaptations implies that we know it will not improve. I don't think that's fair.

 

To use your "criticism of athletes" analogy, one bad loss doesn't mean the team is bad. A single bad game doesn't mean a player is bad at the game. Season 1 was a mixed bag, but there was lots of good stuff to build from and several external factors that made the bad stuff worse than it otherwise might have been.

That's fair, but I remain pretty pessimistic about the coming seasons.  They've made it clear they aren't interested in following the source material while failing to establish that they have a coherent idea of what they are planning to replace with it.  

 

51 minutes ago, SinisterDeath said:

Because we're going to be spending about 50% of season 3+ dealing with Lan, and all the shit that happens to Rand regarding Bonding.

Mother's milk in a cup.  How?  Lan dealing with Moiraine's 'death' is probably not more than a chapter collectively.  With Rand and bonding, that's mostly a romantic thing and the drawbacks of death don't really factor into it.  Unless we're talking about Alanna and Tarmon Gaidon and frankly that's a long way off and not something I would expect to account for half a season.

 

Suffice it to say you aren't making me more optimistic that they have a plan.  

[SinisterDeath]

12 minutes ago, Samt said:

That's fair, but I remain pretty pessimistic about the coming seasons.  They've made it clear they aren't interested in following the source material while failing to establish that they have a coherent idea of what they are planning to replace with it.  

Did you not watch any of the Origin content that was uploaded along with the episodes?

 

 

12 minutes ago, Samt said:

Mother's milk in a cup.  How?  Lan dealing with Moiraine's 'death' is probably not more than a chapter collectively.

Collectively? His melancholy over it is intertwined with several storylines throughout the series. From the time of Moiraine's "death", straight to the final book. It's not an unimportant plot point.

Beyond the mechanics of warders going suicidal, we have all the plot lines involving warder bond shenanigans, the parallels between Lan & Rand's warder bonds without consent. Multiple-parties bonded to the same individual. We can't just call "showing and not telling how the warder bond works" inconsequential to the story.
 

 

12 minutes ago, Samt said:

Suffice it to say you aren't making me more optimistic that they have a plan.

 Well, I dare say that nothing anyone says will ever make you optimistic about the show. 😉 

[Scarloc99]

2 hours ago, Samt said:

1.  In regards to the LoTR comparison, I was talking about runtime more than budget.  I think budget is a reasonable explanation as we talk about the fact that WoT often had sets that lacked scale and depth, that the battle scenes lacked extras and the associated props and prosthetics, or the fact that the CGI was, generously speaking, inconsistent.  However, all of those things could have been overlooked if the storytelling was on point.  You don't need tons of money to tell a good story or develop interesting characters.  

A larger budget might also have allowed for a larger selection of a-list actors.  While I think the decision to cast relative unknowns as the Emond's fielders is sound, it might have been interesting to see some better know actors as some of the supporting Aes Sedai.  They might have also found A-listers to do cameos as Balthamel and Aginor, but I think that was probably unnecessary.  In short, I don't think and I definitely didn't mean to imply that the first season failed due to poor quality acting.  
 

Unless you are suggesting that WoT didn't have the budget to hire talented writers, producers, directors, and showrunners (and perhaps this is true, although money can't buy everything), I don't think that a larger budget would have addressed the shortcoming that I am pointing out.  They simply failed to use the screentime to develop the main characters and build to the conclusion of the season and story.  And this failure is structural both in the composition of the story and probably in the structure of the organization that created the show.  It can fairly be attributed to a lack of vision and direction from the top.  No amount of money would have fixed it.  

2. Aragorn pulling a brace of hobbit sized swords out of thin air is adding something in so that the story connects.  It's getting from A to D without passing through B or C.  But if you instead pass through E, F, G, H, I, and J, I am inclined to believe you didn't avoid B and C because of time.  

Cutting Baerlon and Whitebridge in terms of set pieces is fair and unremarkable.  Cutting Caemlyn to add Tar Valon is a choice that was made explicitly.  The stuff that was added wasn't shorter or cheaper than a lot of the stuff that was cut.  I think those decisions need to be justified on their own and for the most part they just can't.

 

As an aside, the notion that things were added to tell a story that happens offscreen or off page is fairly flat.  Many of the events added in season 1 logistically and logically did not happen off page in TEOTW.  It's not an exploration of what might have happened without us knowing. It's just changing the story.  And in my opinion, it stinks of a bad combination of sloth and hubris.  Writers are too lazy to really understand and appreciate the source material while also assuming they can make it better off the tops of their heads.  

Tar Valon is justified, it is a key part of the lore of WOT and is important for the TV audience to show it in season 1. Now you might disagree with the stories used around tar Valon but I think including all of this was the right choice for the wider series. 

[SinisterDeath]

1 hour ago, Elder_Haman said:

To use your "criticism of athletes" analogy, one bad loss doesn't mean the team is bad. A single bad game doesn't mean a player is bad at the game. Season 1 was a mixed bag, but there was lots of good stuff to build from and several external factors that made the bad stuff worse than it otherwise might have been.

As a life long Vikings fan; The Viking's are consistently one of the best Teams in the NFL, and many former Vikings have gone on to Win Super bowls for other teams. (You're Welcome)

One can be disappointed and still enjoy the attempt. 

[Elder_Haman]

8 minutes ago, Samt said:

How?  Lan dealing with Moiraine's 'death' is probably not more than a chapter collectively.  With Rand and bonding, that's mostly a romantic thing and the drawbacks of death don't really factor into it.

Lan's search for Myrelle following Moiraine's "death" happens mostly off-page in the books, but I suspect we will see it play out on screen. 

 

Like it or not, the writers have decided to emphasize the Warder bond and amp up the consequences of the bond being broken. There is sense in this decision. There are several consequences to main characters: Lan (obviously), Rand (in multiple ways), Nynaeve, possibly Egwene, not to mention Siuan and Androl (if they use those story lines). 

 

So whether you enjoyed the Stepin story arc or not (I sense that you did not), there are ways for them to make it pay off down the road. 

[Samt]

23 minutes ago, Sir_Charrid said:

Tar Valon is justified, it is a key part of the lore of WOT and is important for the TV audience to show it in season 1. Now you might disagree with the stories used around tar Valon but I think including all of this was the right choice for the wider series. 

I don't disagree.  I don't think they really needed to bring the main characters there, but that's definitely a close call.  

15 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

Lan's search for Myrelle following Moiraine's "death" happens mostly off-page in the books, but I suspect we will see it play out on screen. 

 

Like it or not, the writers have decided to emphasize the Warder bond and amp up the consequences of the bond being broken. There is sense in this decision. There are several consequences to main characters: Lan (obviously), Rand (in multiple ways), Nynaeve, possibly Egwene, not to mention Siuan and Androl (if they use those story lines). 

 

So whether you enjoyed the Stepin story arc or not (I sense that you did not), there are ways for them to make it pay off down the road. 

I guess I'll give this a wait and see.  It's not that I disliked the Stepin arc for itself.  It's just that it took up a lot of time and left other parts of the season very half baked.  If it had been 20 episodes to get through TEOTW, we could have had a couple "Stepin"s and no problems.  But you can't pad your runtime with stuff you made up and then complain you didn't have enough time (which is literally what Rafe did).  

As far as the payoff, maybe it happens eventually.  But it's still like fixing a leaky faucet while your house is burning down.  Priorities.  

[Elder_Haman]

1 minute ago, Samt said:

It's not that I disliked the Stepin arc for itself.  It's just that it took up a lot of time and left other parts of the season very half baked.

Yeah. I generally agree. It's odd though - I found the Stepin stuff very well-written and engaging. It was sort of frustrating that some of the best written parts were things that were not in the books, while much of what WAS in the books was less well-written.

 

So there is reason to believe the writers can deliver good material. And also reason to question whether they are committed to bringing us the best adaptation of Jordan's story, or are more interested in telling their own.

[WhiteVeils]

2 hours ago, Samt said:

I'm not really sure why the Warder bond is the world-building element that 25% of the season runtime needed to be spent on.  

25%?  25 MInutes of the season, maybe.  The Stepin arc is about 20 minutes of air time.

[SinisterDeath]

24 minutes ago, Samt said:

I guess I'll give this a wait and see.  It's not that I disliked the Stepin arc for itself.  It's just that it took up a lot of time and left other parts of the season very half baked.  If it had been 20 episodes to get through TEOTW, we could have had a couple "Stepin"s and no problems.  But you can't pad your runtime with stuff you made up and then complain you didn't have enough time (which is literally what Rafe did).  

The episode Nynaeve/Lan/Moiraine meet up with Kerene, merges some of the content in the book where Nynaeve is traveling with Lan/Moiraine. 
That one episode we got

• Nynaeve learning about Aes Sedai, and a little about the reds.
• A little bit of Lan's backstory.
• Nynaeve and Lan's relationship growing, specially when he translates her object.
• Logain's madness and strength in the One Power
• Aes Sedai' shielding a male channeler, and the man breaking it.
• Severing a man from the one power.
• Foreshadowing Lan & Moiraine's warder bond breaking.
• Foreshadowing Nynaeve healing those severed from the power.

The following episode we got

• Politics in the White Tower
• Warder Suicide
• Lan showing his humanity before becoming a stone.
• Aes Sedai deceit using the truth
• Everyone arriving at the same location like in the books.
• Rand & Mat seeing Logain paraded around.
• Rand meeting Loial in the town they converged in.

So there are elements they kept, it just got pushed around.
It wasn't perfect, and I wish they kept closer to the source, but there's ample evidence that they care about the source material, and are trying to keep them close despite necessary changes due to executives/producers, and money.

[swollymammoth]

On 10/27/2022 at 10:40 AM, SinisterDeath said:

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.

Dude I take a yearlong break from this forum and you're still here trying to pretend like the deviations in GoT are in any way comparable to the liberties the WoT show took with its source material. Chill out broski. You're embarrassing yourself. 

[expat]

Note: I know that I am using a VERY broad brush in this post for the sake of discussion.

 

I admit I'm the minority here, but most of the EOTW is forgettable wandering about.  The heart of the book is getting the dragon from EF to the EOTW for the "final battle".  While there are a few important events, the rest is just not that important or interesting for TV purposes.  Showing our heroes walking is not very exciting in a TV series.

 

Specifically:

Part 1:  EF - meet a bunch of random people.  A little character development for Rand, minimalistic world building and lore.  Battle off-screen.

Part 2:  Chase from EF to SL - meeting Min, and SL (Mordeth) important to future story, but the rest is just random events to give our heroes something to do.  A little world building and lore introduced.

Part 3: Wandering from SL to Camelyn - Important points are Perrin's problems with the White Cloaks and the introduction of his wolf sense, meeting Lorial, tinkers and the Andorian royal family, and Ishy dreams. Some world building (e.g. dark friends) and lore introduced.

Part 4: Travel through the Ways

Part 5: EOTW

 

Part 2-4 are an extended travelogue where our heroes miraculously meet some people who will be important 5, 8, or 10 books in the future with a few important plot points (dagger, Mordeth, White Cloaks, wolf sense, Andorian royal family, Ways, tinkers, dreams).  Scattered world building and lore randomly throw-in to the mix.  The character development, other than Rand, is minimal.

 

Part 5 is a mess (although the series didn't do any better).

 

Other than not introducing the Andorian royal family (an explicit decision to delay the meeting), the series hit all the important plot points, although not always the same way the book did.  For me, a series of random scenes from the travelogue would not necessarily have made the series better, even if they were directly from the book. I liked much of the non-book character building/world building/lore scenes and didn't wish to exchange them for some unimportant book scenes.

[king of nowhere]

1 hour ago, swollymammoth said:

Dude I take a yearlong break from this forum and you're still here trying to pretend like the deviations in GoT are in any way comparable to the liberties the WoT show took with its source material. Chill out broski. You're embarrassing yourself. 

got had 1 season per book. wot has 1 season per 2 books, possibly 1 season for 3 books.

the more time is compressed, the more you have to cut.

and since important stuff happens in those storylines, you have to move it somewhere else.

so, the more the executives compress the time, the more changes willl be necessarily included, regardless of what rafe wants.

the comparison with got, or even lotr, is not fair. those had to compress a lot less.

[DigificWriter]

6 hours ago, Samt said:

They've made it clear they aren't interested in following the source material

 

This is a blatantly false statement.

 

Just because they're doing things with the source material that you don't personally like does not mean that they're not following said source material.

[SinisterDeath]

5 hours ago, swollymammoth said:

Dude I take a yearlong break from this forum and you're still here trying to pretend like the deviations in GoT are in any way comparable to the liberties the WoT show took with its source material. Chill out broski. You're embarrassing yourself. 

 

They are 100% comparable. 

Now, go along for another year and maybe you'll contribute better next time?

[DaddyFinn]

13 hours ago, WhiteVeils said:

25%?  25 MInutes of the season, maybe.  The Stepin arc is about 20 minutes of air time.

Exactly. His story takes place in 25% of the episodes but his screentime is about 25 minutes, which is way less than 25% of the season.

 

 

Edit. Now that Stepin has shown how devastating it is to lose the bond, warders/aes sedai in future can go full berserk and non-readers understand why.

Edited January 19, 2023 by DaddyFinn

[Samt]

11 hours ago, DigificWriter said:

 

This is a blatantly false statement.

 

Just because they're doing things with the source material that you don't personally like does not mean that they're not following said source material.

When you say, "doing things with the source material," what you mean is changing the source material.

Obviously, they are using the source material.  My point is that they have put faithfulness to the source material as a very low priority and made the bar for justifying a change comically low.  For instance, they've explicitly stated that they changed Moiraine's story because they want Moiraine and Lan to have something to do in season 2.  Similarly, they changed the EOTW and Tarwin's Gap so that more of the EF5 were involved.  They gave Perrin a wife so that they could kill her because... actually I still haven't gotten a straight answer on that one.  

Imagine how ridiculous it would be to have Elrond appear in Osgiliath because they wanted to give Hugo Weaving something to do.  Or if Ed Stark doesn't get beheaded because Sean Bean is a great actor and they wanted to include more of him.  It's an incredibly flippant and disrespectful way to treat your source material.  The threshold for deciding to change something needs to be much higher.  

13 hours ago, expat said:

Note: I know that I am using a VERY broad brush in this post for the sake of discussion.

 

I admit I'm the minority here, but most of the EOTW is forgettable wandering about.  The heart of the book is getting the dragon from EF to the EOTW for the "final battle".  While there are a few important events, the rest is just not that important or interesting for TV purposes.  Showing our heroes walking is not very exciting in a TV series.

 

Specifically:

Part 1:  EF - meet a bunch of random people.  A little character development for Rand, minimalistic world building and lore.  Battle off-screen.

Part 2:  Chase from EF to SL - meeting Min, and SL (Mordeth) important to future story, but the rest is just random events to give our heroes something to do.  A little world building and lore introduced.

Part 3: Wandering from SL to Camelyn - Important points are Perrin's problems with the White Cloaks and the introduction of his wolf sense, meeting Lorial, tinkers and the Andorian royal family, and Ishy dreams. Some world building (e.g. dark friends) and lore introduced.

Part 4: Travel through the Ways

Part 5: EOTW

 

Part 2-4 are an extended travelogue where our heroes miraculously meet some people who will be important 5, 8, or 10 books in the future with a few important plot points (dagger, Mordeth, White Cloaks, wolf sense, Andorian royal family, Ways, tinkers, dreams).  Scattered world building and lore randomly throw-in to the mix.  The character development, other than Rand, is minimal.

 

Part 5 is a mess (although the series didn't do any better).

 

Other than not introducing the Andorian royal family (an explicit decision to delay the meeting), the series hit all the important plot points, although not always the same way the book did.  For me, a series of random scenes from the travelogue would not necessarily have made the series better, even if they were directly from the book. I liked much of the non-book character building/world building/lore scenes and didn't wish to exchange them for some unimportant book scenes.

I think you make a good point that there isn't a ton that needed to be explicitly added to the middle of the season.  Elyas is probably something else that could have been included, but we may get to that later.  However, this doesn't excuse the fact that the ending doesn't land and feels rushed.  A lot of the things that happen in the blight and at the EOTW probably would need a larger budget to do well.  But there still needed to be more buildup and explanation.  

 

You're also right that TEOTW doesn't do that much to develop many of the characters.  But that's kind of an arbitray boundary to set.  It's not like the creators have limited themselves to the contents of TEOTW in any other way.  They've pulled things from other books and out of thin air whenever they wanted to.  The poor state of the main characters and their arcs is not so easily excused.  And it's not like the show has done a good job of developing Rand either.  He has quite a bit going on in TEOTW.  

[Scarloc99]

22 hours ago, expat said:

Note: I know that I am using a VERY broad brush in this post for the sake of discussion.

 

I admit I'm the minority here, but most of the EOTW is forgettable wandering about.  The heart of the book is getting the dragon from EF to the EOTW for the "final battle".  While there are a few important events, the rest is just not that important or interesting for TV purposes.  Showing our heroes walking is not very exciting in a TV series.

 

Specifically:

Part 1:  EF - meet a bunch of random people.  A little character development for Rand, minimalistic world building and lore.  Battle off-screen.

Part 2:  Chase from EF to SL - meeting Min, and SL (Mordeth) important to future story, but the rest is just random events to give our heroes something to do.  A little world building and lore introduced.

Part 3: Wandering from SL to Camelyn - Important points are Perrin's problems with the White Cloaks and the introduction of his wolf sense, meeting Lorial, tinkers and the Andorian royal family, and Ishy dreams. Some world building (e.g. dark friends) and lore introduced.

Part 4: Travel through the Ways

Part 5: EOTW

 

Part 2-4 are an extended travelogue where our heroes miraculously meet some people who will be important 5, 8, or 10 books in the future with a few important plot points (dagger, Mordeth, White Cloaks, wolf sense, Andorian royal family, Ways, tinkers, dreams).  Scattered world building and lore randomly throw-in to the mix.  The character development, other than Rand, is minimal.

 

Part 5 is a mess (although the series didn't do any better).

 

Other than not introducing the Andorian royal family (an explicit decision to delay the meeting), the series hit all the important plot points, although not always the same way the book did.  For me, a series of random scenes from the travelogue would not necessarily have made the series better, even if they were directly from the book. I liked much of the non-book character building/world building/lore scenes and didn't wish to exchange them for some unimportant book scenes.

I did a post in the book forum challenging that books 1-3 but especially book 1 are repetitive and not RJs best writing so I agree book 1 as is does not a good tv show make on paper. 

Edited January 19, 2023 by Sir_Charrid

[Scarloc99]

5 hours ago, DaddyFinn said:

Exactly. His story takes place in 25% of the episodes but his screentime is about 25 minutes, which is way less than 25% of the season.

 

 

Edit. Now that Stepin has shown how devastating it is to lose the bond, warders/aes sedai in future can go full berserk and non-readers understand why.

People seem to forget breaking the bond is the last play at the final battle. There is a reason RJ makes such a big deal of the bond throughout the series, it’s to add tension as Nyn tries to heal to stop Rand going berserker mad. The reader has seen enough by this point to get pulled into the drama of the moment.

[Samt]

1 hour ago, Sir_Charrid said:

People seem to forget breaking the bond is the last play at the final battle. There is a reason RJ makes such a big deal of the bond throughout the series, it’s to add tension as Nyn tries to heal to stop Rand going berserker mad. The reader has seen enough by this point to get pulled into the drama of the moment.

I actually specifically mentioned this.  It's just a matter of priorities.  Spending enough time to introduce the main characters and make the eye of the world scenes work needed to be a priority in season 1.  Setting up some ground rules to build tension at Tarmon Gaidon is something that could have happened later.

 

Again, I don't dislike these scenes.  But if there wasn't enough time to land the season ending, there were some things that could have waited.

[SinisterDeath]

5 minutes ago, Samt said:

I actually specifically mentioned this.  It's just a matter of priorities.  Spending enough time to introduce the main characters and make the eye of the world scenes work needed to be a priority in season 1.  Setting up some ground rules to build tension at Tarmon Gaidon is something that could have happened later.

 

Again, I don't dislike these scenes.  But if there wasn't enough time to land the season ending, there were some things that could have waited.

I can't be the only one that noticed the parallels and foreshadowing between TV Show Rand's fight with Ishamael at the eye, and the Final Battle in the book series?

If it's not abundantly obvious, the first season is chock full of foreshadowing future events, with a little bit of world-building mechanics that become pertinent in Season 2 or 3.

[DigificWriter]

3 hours ago, Samt said:

My point is that they have put faithfulness to the source material as a very low priority and made the bar for justifying a change comically low.  For instance, they've explicitly stated that they changed Moiraine's story because they want Moiraine and Lan to have something to do in season 2.  Similarly, they changed the EOTW and Tarwin's Gap so that more of the EF5 were involved.  They gave Perrin a wife so that they could kill her because... actually I still haven't gotten a straight answer on that one.  

 

Rafe and his team using - and deviating from - the source material in ways that you don't like does not mean that they are being unfaithful to or disrespectful of said source material.

 

Period.

Edited January 19, 2023 by DigificWriter

[DojoToad]

31 minutes ago, DigificWriter said:

 

Rafe and his team using - and deviating from - the source material in ways that you don't like does not mean that they are being unfaithful to or disrespectful of said source material.

 

Period.

And just because you like the deviations from the source material doesn't mean that Rafe and his team were being faithful or respectful of said source material.

 

Period.

[SinisterDeath]

25 minutes ago, DojoToad said:

And just because you like the deviations from the source material doesn't mean that Rafe and his team were being faithful or respectful of said source material.

 

Period.

Perhaps people need to stop attributing the worst motivations in others, when they dislike the product they put out?

[Elder_Haman]

4 hours ago, Samt said:

Imagine how ridiculous it would be to have Elrond appear in Osgiliath because they wanted to give Hugo Weaving something to do.  Or if Ed Stark doesn't get beheaded because Sean Bean is a great actor and they wanted to include more of him.  It's an incredibly flippant and disrespectful way to treat your source material.

Not really. First: Elves did show up in places they shouldn’t have (Helm’s Deep?) and scenes were added for Hugo Weaving. (Deep conversations with Aragorn that are not explicitly in the books). 
 

The Ned Stark comparison is silly. Mo isn’t dead in tGH, she just doesn’t get many pages. There’s nothing at all wrong with bringing things that happen off page onto the screen to take advantage of your A-list actress and her capabilities. 

[DigificWriter]

15 minutes ago, SinisterDeath said:

Perhaps people need to stop attributing the worst motivations in others, when they dislike the product they put out?

 

Agreed.

 

2 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

There’s nothing at all wrong with bringing things that happen off page onto the screen to take advantage of your A-list actress and her capabilities.

 

Especially when the character being played by said actress has, in this particular adaptation, been explicitly positioned as the third-party narrator of the overall story being told.