Why not follow the books more closely?

[A Memory Of Why]

I came out thinking the show was good, it could have been awesome, it could have been worse..

 

Probably an unpopular opinion but one of the things I was excited for was seeing things we didn't get in the books. That's what we've got the books for guys!

 

Two rivers battle, more of Logain was cool. Let's get more of Mat with the band and his dual with Couladin, show us more of the Forsaken and make them more than just an obstacle for Rand, let's see Caddy single handedly capture Taim, etc.

 

There's also a lot of Easter eggs that were fun too.

 

I do have some issues with season one too..

 

Episode 8 was not fun, enjoyed the cold opening and Fares squared was amazing but that's about it.

 

Kinda over deus ex Nyn saving the day, like it was cool but still.. there's other cool characters they could use. But hey, I'm happy she got to scratch Lans back I guess.

 

Amongst others but I'm willing to see if it pays off and I'm hopeful for season 2.. it's nice up here on the fence guys, we'll see 😉

 

P.s. let's not bring reddit into this ay?

[SinisterDeath]

1 hour ago, Cipher said:

I really like Logain from the books, but he is never a raving basket case and we have him like that in S1.  They could make Logain into Taim and Rand be the man to confront him in S7-S8. (If we make it that far).

No, he's just an extremely depressed guy that's barely hanging onto life, and can barely get on a horse without assistance, and would likely starve to death if someone didn't put food in front of him.

 

(Re: That time he traveled with Siuane and Min to find Salidar)

[expat]

4 hours ago, Scarloc99 said:

Steppin, while I understand those who disliked it I loved it, and many non books readers really liked it, it was the one story line that actually gave you a peek inside the culture of one of the key organisations, and, as a friend of mine pointed out, just because it isn’t taken from the books does not mean that is not how the Aes Sedai conduct funeral rights, or it is how some warders might go if there aes sedai does not die in the heart of battle. It is also a really key mechanic of the world given that when Morraine “dies” the audience will now understand something bad might happen to Lan, and, at the last battle it is a really key high tension moment that is Moridins last gasp attempt.  

It should also have made the viewers reinterpret Moiraine's Trolloc poison scenes from episodes 2-4.  Lan was in as much danger as Moiraine and his actions and reactions [should] take on a different feeling once the disadvantages of the bond became known to non-book readers.  Having earlier scenes change meanings as more information becomes available is generally a good thing for series TV.

[DigificWriter]

Some people missed the point and didn't realize that Blood Calls Blood was not actually about Stepin, just like they missed the point of the argument scene in The Dark Along the Ways  and didn't realize that there was no actual 'love triangle' storyline.

[Guire]

4 hours ago, DigificWriter said:

Some people missed the point and didn't realize that Blood Calls Blood was not actually about Stepin, just like they missed the point of the argument scene in The Dark Along the Ways  and didn't realize that there was no actual 'love triangle' storyline.

At the end of the day this show will live or die on the fan's investment in the EF5 unless the show really changes the plot. So some of us realized what the show was doing but know that if we don't have an emotional attachment to the eventual main characters then we wont stick with show.

[Elglin]

On 8/26/2023 at 1:27 AM, Scarloc99 said:

It is also a really key mechanic of the world given that when Morraine “dies” the audience will now understand something bad might happen to Lan, and, at the last battle it is a really key high tension moment that is Moridins last gasp attempt.

And here's one issue. The mechanic of how the Warder bond works when either of the pair dies isn't relevant in earnest until FOH, and the next time it's plot-relevant big time is MOL. The docks of Cairhien likely won't be there until end of S3. There's plenty of time to explore the essence and implications of the Warder bond and there is zero need to devote a complete subplot to it in S1 - besides, the audience will forget about it by the time S3 rolls out.

I'm not saying the Steppin plot arc is bad, because it isn't - it's pretty good. However, in a very time-limited adaptation of a doorstopper novel where we have to cut chunks of content at every corner - do we really have the time for such a distraction?

Much like in chess - many bad moves are, in and of themselves, decent. They are bad because they are not addressing the requirements of the position - much as devoting as much screen time to Steppin's arc as was done does not address the requirements of the adaptation.

 

On 8/26/2023 at 1:02 AM, expat said:

It comes down to the goal of the adaptation - put a faithful representation of the books on screen or make an interesting series, even if it deviates in details from the books.

Could not agree more. I mean, there's a ton of change that I give a pass. There's another ton of change I give a pass because I see a possible production reason that could necessitate it.

The changes I oppose are ones that (all IMHO, of course) a) don't save production money and/or screen time, at least appreciably - or even spend it inordinately b) act detrimentally to the character dynamics/development or c) produce ripple effects necessitating other changes falling into criterion b.

In short - changes which don't make this a better show; some of them making the show worse.

[Scarloc99]

Just on the adaptation piece and the size of the story and how many pages/words per episode. 
 

Lord of the rings has a lot of words describing the scenery. Tolkien paints a picture and that can be transcribed to the screen in a single sweeping wide angle shot. 
 

Robert Jordan tends to have a lot more dialogue and actual story being described as opposed to pages dedicated to telling you how then Aiel wastes look. In fact RJ was very good at painting a scene with minimal words when it came to describing a landscape or city, he lets the people in that environment speak for the surroundings. 
 

So you can’t just look at one adaptation and compare apples to apples, even if they are both fantasy the content of what is on the page makes it a very very different task to adapt one compared to the other. 
 

As an aside I have always wondered just how much longer WOT would be if it had the Tolkien levels of descriptors, how many pages would be given to describing a death gate killing trollocs  for instance lol. 

Edited August 31, 2023 by Scarloc99

[GrYeYeS]

Why don't they attempt to follow the core aspects of the novels at all? Because this isn't an adaptation, this is rewriting the entire setting and often these changes cause more bloat. Every moment if screen time should be meticulously planned. You are condensing a mountain of material yet most of the changes create pointless wasted nonsense. The writing and script should be as lean and concise as is possible. Instead we filler episodes in the first season. Filler episodes...entire subplots and episodes that forward the plot not once inch, characters behaviors appear to be entirely random depending on the episode. An entire sequence showing Nyn to be a materially component warrior versus demons of legend? Why, that's not who she is, than doesn't occur in the novels.

 

The concept of what a Blademaster is and the skill required is complete disregarded. Without reading the novels how would you rate Tam as a warrior vs Nyn? The reverence of the heron marked blade is a huge deal in the novels. Yet we see a Bladesmaster barely able to kill a singer trolloc. While a farm girl literally rambos a trolloc. Right off the bat a crucial element of the setting is just disregard. Why wouldn't Tam get that screentime clearly displaying his skill with a blade defines him as something elite?

 

Even Lan is downplayed in exactly what he is, his characyetizarikn and core personality have no relationship to his character in the books. His slow reveal (emotionally and history) is crucial to his entire arc. Yet we see him weep and lose control his emotions in an episode comprised of filler in which the plot progresses not at all....why? Streamling and condensing the source material in the time they have is a monumental task and instead irrelevant filler material is added. It makes no sense...unless adaptation isn't a priority.

[Samt]

The sheer length of the books and the expected runtime of the show gets brought up a lot in the context of why the show must make major changes to the source material in order to meet the runtime.  I thought I would add some numbers for context comparing to some other popular adaptations of fantasy or fantasy adjacent novels to screen.  

 

IP Name	Novel Length (pages)	Screen adaptation length (minutes)	adaptation rate (pages/minute)
LOTR (theatrical release)	1191	557	2.14
Dune (assuming movie 2 is the same length as movie 1)	896	310	2.89
Harry Potter	3407	1180	2.89
WoT S1/TEotW	782	480	1.63
WoT S2/TGH	706	480	1.47
GoT (5 seasons vs released books)	4224	2885	1.46
WoT all books vs 64 hour long episodes	11898	3840	3.09

 

Going by raw numbers,  adapting the WoT in 64 episodes wouldn't be a much greater rate of adaptation that Dune or Harry Potter.  Considering the first two seasons are mostly just covering the first two books, the rate of adaptation has been practically glacial comparatively speaking.  

 

Of course, this is a very rough metric.  Not all pages are the same size and some of the page counts contain various appendices, elvish poetry, etc.  But WoT also has tons of recaps and descriptions of cities, hairstyles, horses, cleavage, and everything else you could possibly wonder about.  It's not like the content is super dense per page.  Moreover, the later books slow down and start to have lots of self contained subplots that are quite cuttable if need be.  

 

The notion that the WoT is just too much content to fit into 64 episodes doesn't really bare numerical scrutiny.  

[SinisterDeath]

8 hours ago, Samt said:

The notion that the WoT is just too much content to fit into 64 episodes doesn't really bare numerical scrutiny.  

Let's scrutinize this with some other numerical values, shall we?
 

IP Name	Words	Minutes	Words/Minutes
LOTR Trilogy (theatrical release)	481k	557	863 w/m
GoT 5 Seasons - Released Books	1.7M	2885	589 w/m
WoT - All Books /w 64x1 hour episodes	4.4M	3840	1145 w/m

 

8 hours ago, Samt said:

Of course, this is a very rough metric.  Not all pages are the same size and some of the page counts contain various appendices, elvish poetry, etc.  But WoT also has tons of recaps and descriptions of cities, hairstyles, horses, cleavage, and everything else you could possibly wonder about.  It's not like the content is super dense per page.  Moreover, the later books slow down and start to have lots of self contained subplots that are quite cuttable if need be

Yes, there is a lot of fluff descriptions that can be scrapped as a camera can achieve it in 5 seconds.
This was especially true with Tolkien. How many times did he spend entire pages describing a tree's bark while I tore my eyes out?

Other things that may not take any time at all to describe on paper, are areas you expand on in film. 
Something as simple as an emotion a character feels a film maker can extrapolate and expand and find ways to make the audience feel that emotion. E.g. if a character's feeling anxious in a horror scene, they may very spend more time on making the audience feel anxious...

 

I'd maintain that the only way to have a "1:1" live-action adaptation of the Wheel of Time, is to make this extremely low budget, as that's the only way you're going to be able to afford 1:10th of the actors you'd need for named characters in the books. Maybe we could have handed this over to Bollywood and they could have done a fairly decent job at it...

[Scarloc99]

9 hours ago, Samt said:

The sheer length of the books and the expected runtime of the show gets brought up a lot in the context of why the show must make major changes to the source material in order to meet the runtime.  I thought I would add some numbers for context comparing to some other popular adaptations of fantasy or fantasy adjacent novels to screen.  

 

IP Name	Novel Length (pages)	Screen adaptation length (minutes)	adaptation rate (pages/minute)
LOTR (theatrical release)	1191	557	2.14
Dune (assuming movie 2 is the same length as movie 1)	896	310	2.89
Harry Potter	3407	1180	2.89
WoT S1/TEotW	782	480	1.63
WoT S2/TGH	706	480	1.47
GoT (5 seasons vs released books)	4224	2885	1.46
WoT all books vs 64 hour long episodes	11898	3840	3.09

 

Going by raw numbers,  adapting the WoT in 64 episodes wouldn't be a much greater rate of adaptation that Dune or Harry Potter.  Considering the first two seasons are mostly just covering the first two books, the rate of adaptation has been practically glacial comparatively speaking.  

 

Of course, this is a very rough metric.  Not all pages are the same size and some of the page counts contain various appendices, elvish poetry, etc.  But WoT also has tons of recaps and descriptions of cities, hairstyles, horses, cleavage, and everything else you could possibly wonder about.  It's not like the content is super dense per page.  Moreover, the later books slow down and start to have lots of self contained subplots that are quite cuttable if need be.  

 

The notion that the WoT is just too much content to fit into 64 episodes doesn't really bare numerical scrutiny.  

That ooks strngely familiar, would have to go back but I did a post with much of the same information on it, don't think I included Dune I did include the Hobbit, I also dd something with the length of the audio books. The overall outcome of it was that WOT requires far more cutting, but, the other thing these stats does not take into account is how many of those "words" are doing stuff and how many are describing the scenary, or exposition. WOT has a unique situation in that the set piece battles are actually given very few words on the page, and yet on the screen will need to take up, in some cases, entire episodes. The battle of Emonds Field is one that stands out. 

WOT also has a lot more POV internal dialogue, presenting that information on the screen will be much harder. But the main point that comes across is that the story needs to be re written in some way in order to be logical and make sense while all fitting into the limited number of episodes. 

[Samt]

1 hour ago, Scarloc99 said:

WOT has a unique situation in that the set piece battles are actually given very few words on the page, and yet on the screen will need to take up, in some cases, entire episodes. The battle of Emonds Field is one that stands out. 
 

That's actually not unique to WoT at all.  LOTR, the Hobbit, and Dune all have very sparse descriptions of set piece battles that take up much bigger pieces of the adaptation.  In fact, I'd say the WoT is more committed to long battle descriptions of battles and their setups than the others I mentioned above.  The Last Battle is over 500 pages long.  Dumai's Wells and the defense of the White Tower against the Seanchan also get pretty significant page time.  The battle of the two rivers is kind of the exception.  Even then, there is quite a bit of description of the build up and setup that will get easily compressed in the adaptation and make up for the extended screen time spent on battle sequences.

 

Internal dialogues and points of view that need to get translated to the screen is also not somehow a unique WoT challenge.  It's just a feature of the difference in the mediums.  You have to write the dialogue and get good actors to tell the story without telling us what the characters are thinking and feeling.  That doesn't require lore and plot changes.  

 

2 hours ago, SinisterDeath said:

Let's scrutinize this with some other numerical values, shall we?
 

IP Name	Words	Minutes	Words/Minutes
LOTR Trilogy (theatrical release)	481k	557	863 w/m
GoT 5 Seasons - Released Books	1.7M	2885	589 w/m
WoT - All Books /w 64x1 hour episodes	4.4M	3840	1145 w/m

 

 

 

I'd maintain that the only way to have a "1:1" live-action adaptation of the Wheel of Time, is to make this extremely low budget, as that's the only way you're going to be able to afford 1:10th of the actors you'd need for named characters in the books. Maybe we could have handed this over to Bollywood and they could have done a fairly decent job at it...

No doubt there would have to be cuts.  Lots of minor characters have to go and there are significant side plots that will probably have to be cut.  But most of these cuts don't leave holes that need significant new content to patch them.  So far we have them adding side plots and minor characters.  Errol seems to have be added to do things that Lan and Tam do in the books.  

 

It's true that if you look at the whole series and assume 8 seasons, there is a lot of words and pages to fit in.  But the books they have adapted so far should have fit easily into the available two seasons of runtime.  And as the books go on the density of action definitely goes down and the descriptions become more verbose and detailed.  

 

I'm not suggesting you can do a scene for scene adaptation.  But you could easily do an adaptation where you just cut things for runtime and adapt what's left with very little need for modification.  

[Elder_Haman]

22 minutes ago, Samt said:

But you could easily do an adaptation where you just cut things for runtime and adapt what's left with very little need for modification.  

I think "easily" might be a stretch. I think one could certainly do a version that hewed much more closely to the source material than this version. I'm not sure that it would make for particularly captivating television though. And definitely some scenes that would be particularly challenging to film in a way that made sense to the audience. The portal worlds and flicker, flicker, flicker come to mind. Without any context for those scenes, they aren't going to make much sense to the viewer without a ton of exposition.

[HeavyHalfMoonBlade]

52 minutes ago, Samt said:

I'm not suggesting you can do a scene for scene adaptation.  But you could easily do an adaptation where you just cut things for runtime and adapt what's left with very little need for modification.  

I think you are also downplaying the importance of the visual impact of any scene. This is completely different that the written media. While you are obviously prioritizing faithfulness to the book above all else, I'd say if you were making a TV show you would have to give far more weight to how something looks. 

 

I mean it is a dumb example, but take Harry Potter and the way wizards dress. No problem with anything, runtime, etc, having their awful dress sense faithfully shown. But how does it look? What atmosphere does it create? The impact in the book is totally different, even though it is still characters dressed stupidly. 

 

And if every thing about a book is looked at this way, you have to look at how you can create visually emotive scenes. And possibly the best way to do this is to add things to be able to guide the story to these set pieces. I did not like the Stepin addition, particularly what it did to Lan, it made him too emotional, and too emotionally attached to things other than Moiraine, but Stepin's funeral was a visual feast, and while I thought it was a bit weird, I was there with Daniel Henney, he sold me on his grief, and it was an experience. A bit scary actually. 

 

And yes, in a worse case scenario, the makers pursue these visual set-ups over the story. and over the tone of the books (elves using shields as skateboards perhaps). But to not recognize that this is how you make TV and films is just being naive, in my most humble opinion. 

 

Why don't they follow the books more, is because that is not what they are trying to do, they are trying to make a TV show, and who would fund a TV show that set out to be faithful even if it made bad TV?

 

Season 1 had to be very different from the books as they had to be upfront about it being about the Dragon, and I think they have brought it pretty well back to the core plot lines.

Edited September 21, 2023 by HeavyHalfMoonBlade

[Samt]

57 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

I think "easily" might be a stretch. I think one could certainly do a version that hewed much more closely to the source material than this version. I'm not sure that it would make for particularly captivating television though. And definitely some scenes that would be particularly challenging to film in a way that made sense to the audience. The portal worlds and flicker, flicker, flicker come to mind. Without any context for those scenes, they aren't going to make much sense to the viewer without a ton of exposition.

Obviously making a good television show isn't easy in its entirety.  I meant specifically that taking a classic, well-liked story and removing minor characters and side plots until it fits the runtime is not difficult.  

 

35 minutes ago, HeavyHalfMoonBlade said:

I think you are also downplaying the importance of the visual impact of any scene. This is completely different that the written media. While you are obviously prioritizing faithfulness to the book above all else, I'd say if you were making a TV show you would have to give far more weight to how something looks. 

 

I mean it is a dumb example, but take Harry Potter and the way wizards dress. No problem with anything, runtime, etc, having their awful dress sense faithfully shown. But how does it look? What atmosphere does it create? The impact in the book is totally different, even though it is still characters dressed stupidly. 

 

And if every thing about a book is looked at this way, you have to look at how you can create visually emotive scenes. And possibly the best way to do this is to add things to be able to guide the story to these set pieces. I did not like the Stepin addition, particularly what it did to Lan, it made him too emotional, and too emotionally attached to things other than Moiraine, but Stepin's funeral was a visual feast, and while I thought it was a bit weird, I was there with Daniel Henney, he sold me on his grief, and it was an experience. A bit scary actually. 

 

And yes, in a worse case scenario, the makers pursue these visual set-ups over the story. and over the tone of the books (elves using shields as skateboards perhaps). But to not recognize that this is how you make TV and films is just being naive, in my most humble opinion. 

 

Why don't they follow the books more, is because that is not what they are trying to do, they are trying to make a TV show, and who would fund a TV show that set out to be faithful even if it made bad TV?

 

Season 1 had to be very different from the books as they had to be upfront about it being about the Dragon, and I think they have brought it pretty well back to the core plot lines.

I'm not sure what you're really trying to say here.  Yes, it's possible to make good TV that isn't faithful to the source material.  The truth of a statement doesn't prove its converse.    

[HeavyHalfMoonBlade]

2 minutes ago, Samt said:

I'm not sure what you're really trying to say here.  Yes, it's possible to make good TV that isn't faithful to the source material.  The truth of a statement doesn't prove its converse.    

Should I have used more words? What I mean is, take a scene like on top of Dragonmount. You could faithfully recreate that as well possible. But would it be good TV? Would the whole section not be better reworked to give a  better visual spectacle? The source material is not be all and end all. So your assertion that you could make it more faithful, without adding anything, ignores how TV is made. Yes, if your only goal is to be faithful, but that is not how TV adaptations are made. 

 

And of course it is not to say that the two ideas are mutually exclusive. But they have to be taken together, definitely, and push come to shove, the practicalities will probably be more important. Your whole argument is based on false premises, in my opinion. 

[fra85uk]

I feel that One Piece adaptation proves that you can take a gigantic series set in a super-wierd world, be faithful to the source material as much as it is reasonably possible and...surprise surprise...be extremely successful (I would say much more than WOT series). And  this comes from the same people that botched Cowboy Bebop...so you can also learn from your own mistakes.

 

WOT showrunners have legitimately chosen another route, but I am not convinced that a closer-to-the-books series would have been impractical. I feel that more than practicality the distance from the books is stemming from the artistic choice (again legitimate) from the showrunner, i.e. it is less "This doesn't work on screen" and more " I don't like this part. Let's change it". At least, this is the way I feel but I am waiting to see how things unfold in these last episodes to have a stronger opinion (even if S1 finale already had "a tell").

 

[fra85uk]

7 hours ago, SinisterDeath said:

Let's scrutinize this with some other numerical values, shall we?
 

IP Name	Words	Minutes	Words/Minutes
LOTR Trilogy (theatrical release)	481k	557	863 w/m
GoT 5 Seasons - Released Books	1.7M	2885	589 w/m
WoT - All Books /w 64x1 hour episodes	4.4M	3840	1145 w/m

 

Yes, there is a lot of fluff descriptions that can be scrapped as a camera can achieve it in 5 seconds.
This was especially true with Tolkien. How many times did he spend entire pages describing a tree's bark while I tore my eyes out?

Other things that may not take any time at all to describe on paper, are areas you expand on in film. 
Something as simple as an emotion a character feels a film maker can extrapolate and expand and find ways to make the audience feel that emotion. E.g. if a character's feeling anxious in a horror scene, they may very spend more time on making the audience feel anxious...

 

I'd maintain that the only way to have a "1:1" live-action adaptation of the Wheel of Time, is to make this extremely low budget, as that's the only way you're going to be able to afford 1:10th of the actors you'd need for named characters in the books. Maybe we could have handed this over to Bollywood and they could have done a fairly decent job at it...

 

 

1:1 adaptation could be only possible with anime/cartoon.

Reasonably Closer-to-the-books is not easy ("nobody said it was easy" as the Coldplay sing) but neither impossible.

For instance, I am re-reading book 6 (one of my favourites)...lthe first 200 pages can go in less than half episode, but only if one really wants to be pedantic in the adaptation🤣

[Scarloc99]

3 hours ago, HeavyHalfMoonBlade said:

I think you are also downplaying the importance of the visual impact of any scene. This is completely different that the written media. While you are obviously prioritizing faithfulness to the book above all else, I'd say if you were making a TV show you would have to give far more weight to how something looks. 

 

I mean it is a dumb example, but take Harry Potter and the way wizards dress. No problem with anything, runtime, etc, having their awful dress sense faithfully shown. But how does it look? What atmosphere does it create? The impact in the book is totally different, even though it is still characters dressed stupidly. 

 

And if every thing about a book is looked at this way, you have to look at how you can create visually emotive scenes. And possibly the best way to do this is to add things to be able to guide the story to these set pieces. I did not like the Stepin addition, particularly what it did to Lan, it made him too emotional, and too emotionally attached to things other than Moiraine, but Stepin's funeral was a visual feast, and while I thought it was a bit weird, I was there with Daniel Henney, he sold me on his grief, and it was an experience. A bit scary actually. 

 

And yes, in a worse case scenario, the makers pursue these visual set-ups over the story. and over the tone of the books (elves using shields as skateboards perhaps). But to not recognize that this is how you make TV and films is just being naive, in my most humble opinion. 

 

Why don't they follow the books more, is because that is not what they are trying to do, they are trying to make a TV show, and who would fund a TV show that set out to be faithful even if it made bad TV?

 

Season 1 had to be very different from the books as they had to be upfront about it being about the Dragon, and I think they have brought it pretty well back to the core plot lines.

Book 1 is also very different in style and theme to the rest of the series. RJ himself has talked about how he had to write a traditional fantasy story that was like lord of the rings because that is what his publishers wanted. Book 2 very much feels like him trying to change direction and then the end of book 3 we finally start to see the story that he wanted to tell. 
 

For the TV show the writers have to stay true to what RJ turned the series into and really change the sense of the story. In the books Moiraine started out as Gandalf and Lan as Aragorn but by the end of the books. There was no real journey for the characters to take, he spends books 2 and 3 trying to change both characters making Moiraine less of a driving powerful force, and giving Lan a softer more emotional side, which granted we only see through other characters eyes and Nynaeves little comments. 
 

 

[FanofKnotai]

On 5/31/2023 at 9:33 AM, WhiteVeils said:

If you liked the Marvel movies, or, say, the many, many versions of the Batman stories, then you like adaptations that are not faithful to their origin stories.   They can still be very good. One person's interpretation and memory of the books is not a sacred temple that is defiled when someone else reinterprets it.  The books are there. If you want a version that matches your own interpretation and memory, and values the things in the original you value most, make your own show.

This is an excuse for the producers of this so called adaptation. It can’t really be considered an adaptation because the ENTIRE story is changed and even the characters involved in certain situations have changed. If you want to talk about cash grabs, think about how rosamund pike and Rafe Judkins have inserted moiraine into events she was not present for and how the male characters have been extremely down played in order to appeal to more of a liberal audience (to put it pc). I’m still hoping this show gets cancelled and someone else can make an effort to actually adapt the WOT for the screen. Because this show isn’t the WOT

[Elder_Haman]

1 minute ago, FanofKnotai said:

I’m still hoping this show gets cancelled

You have at least one more season to suffer through hate watching. 

[FanofKnotai]

1 minute ago, Elder_Haman said:

You have at least one more season to suffer through hate watching. 

😩😂

[FanofKnotai]

6 hours ago, fra85uk said:

I feel that One Piece adaptation proves that you can take a gigantic series set in a super-wierd world, be faithful to the source material as much as it is reasonably possible and...surprise surprise...be extremely successful (I would say much more than WOT series). And  this comes from the same people that botched Cowboy Bebop...so you can also learn from your own mistakes.

 

WOT showrunners have legitimately chosen another route, but I am not convinced that a closer-to-the-books series would have been impractical. I feel that more than practicality the distance from the books is stemming from the artistic choice (again legitimate) from the showrunner, i.e. it is less "This doesn't work on screen" and more " I don't like this part. Let's change it". At least, this is the way I feel but I am waiting to see how things unfold in these last episodes to have a stronger opinion (even if S1 finale already had "a tell").

Quote

I feel that more than practicality the distance from the books is stemming from the artistic choice (again legitimate) from the showrunner, i.e. it is less "This doesn't work on screen" and more " I don't like this part. Let's change it". At least, this is the way I feel but I am waiting to see how things unfold in these last episodes to have a stronger opinion (even if S1 finale already had "a tell").

I completely agree. The makers are changing things they WANT to change, to create their own story that they believe will be better than Jordan’s, not things that NEED to be changed to make a successful adaptation to screen  

 

[HeavyHalfMoonBlade]

Maybe one day I will understand why so many people are willing to assign any shortcomings in the show to malice, as opposed to a difference of opinion or things not working as well as hoped. 

 

But seeing as this willingness seems to be tied to some sort of masculinity-worshiping, I guess I probably won't. 

[fra85uk]

20 minutes ago, HeavyHalfMoonBlade said:

Maybe one day I will understand why so many people are willing to assign any shortcomings in the show to malice, as opposed to a difference of opinion or things not working as well as hoped. 

 

But seeing as this willingness seems to be tied to some sort of masculinity-worshiping, I guess I probably won't. 

On my behalf, I do not see malice, just diverging artistic view between source material and show and it's perfectly legitimate from the showrunner to try to do it his way.