Why not follow the books more closely?

[king of nowhere]

3 hours ago, Samt said:

 And even on the second point, someone greenlit it for release. 

 

2 hours ago, BookMattBetterThanShow said:

(Will say if it had been left to me, I would have just stop at episode 6)

"we spent 100 millions on a project, involving some pretty famous actor too. the result is not great, not terrible. let's just not air the series then. [or, let's only air the first half and stop it there]. we'll tell the fans we canceled it because we didn't like it enough"

best. management. ever! (sarcasm mode)

 

reality check, please. I can understand shelving something if it is terrible, like asylum-level terrible. like, star wars christmas special terrible. the kind of stuff that the fans will try to forget and the actors will try to hide their involvment in.

this is not the case. wot S1 is far from perfect, but I enjoyed it and a lot of book fans enjoied it, and every single non-book-fan I know who watched it liked it.

is that bad enough to cancel a project in which you already invested lots of money? to tell the fans "sorry, we didn't like the product" after hyping them for two years? to tell the young actors for whom this was their first important role than they spent a lot of working time and now won't get any recognition or anything to put in their resumee? what actor would still want to work with you afterwards?

[Samt]

16 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

 

"we spent 100 millions on a project, involving some pretty famous actor too. the result is not great, not terrible. let's just not air the series then. [or, let's only air the first half and stop it there]. we'll tell the fans we canceled it because we didn't like it enough"

best. management. ever! (sarcasm mode)

 

reality check, please. I can understand shelving something if it is terrible, like asylum-level terrible. like, star wars christmas special terrible. the kind of stuff that the fans will try to forget and the actors will try to hide their involvment in.

this is not the case. wot S1 is far from perfect, but I enjoyed it and a lot of book fans enjoied it, and every single non-book-fan I know who watched it liked it.

is that bad enough to cancel a project in which you already invested lots of money? to tell the fans "sorry, we didn't like the product" after hyping them for two years? to tell the young actors for whom this was their first important role than they spent a lot of working time and now won't get any recognition or anything to put in their resumee? what actor would still want to work with you afterwards?

That's not the point.  The point is that it sucks and someone is responsible for that.  Not airing it wasn't the only option.  You could also fix it.  They chose not to and that illustrates the level of commitment they have to making a good product.

[king of nowhere]

53 minutes ago, Samt said:

That's not the point.  The point is that it sucks

 

I preemptively covered that point

1 hour ago, king of nowhere said:

I enjoyed it, a lot of book fans enjoied it, and every single non-book-fan I know who watched it liked it.

I may also add that I heard positive comments on stepin specifically.

 

you are confusing your personal taste with objective truth.

there is no objective way to rate art, but there is an objective parameter used by those in charge, which is basically "will people like this enough to keep paying subscriptions and cover the cost of this production?". This also illustrates exactly the level of commitment they have in making a good product. A good product sells more, but it also costs more, and they have to strike the right balance.

 

Well, I don't have hard numbers there, but I am pretty sure wot was not an economic fiasco. otherwise, they would not have greenlit season 3 already. wot was successful on the one objective parameter that matters to the people who get to decide whether to greenlight it.

as for improving, I'm sure Rafe would have loved to have the chance to, but it would have required reshooting scenes, redoing special effects, basically paying money. So, once more, the question was "will improving this get us enough extra customers to justify the cost?" and the answer was likely no. if your idea of "improving" was adding extra time to better flesh out the plot and characters, I'd be all for it, but it would have cost extra money, that the executives were probably unwilling to pay. if your idea of improving was changing the plot to bring it closer to the books with the screentime they had, well, you would have liked the show better, and I would have liked the show better, but a majority of people who did not read the book and who make up a majority of viewers may have liked it less.

 

annyway, after the first season was successful enough, the executives decided it may be worth gambling more money into this, so we are - apparently - getting improvements here. at least, special effects on channeling are much improved. I heard voices that episodes will be a few minutes longer, but can't confirm. anyway, it shows that the people in charge at amazon are willing to bet some more money that improving quality may turn in more profit. that's all we can ask for; they are running a business, not a charity.

 

long story short: you can absolutely say that you didn't like the show. You can go as far as claiming that the show insults book fans personally.

but the moment you say that the show sucks, or that the execs should have done something drastic about it, that's objectively, factually false. we don't know all the facts, but every piece of hard data we have agrees that the show was generally liked and reasonably successful.

[SinisterDeath]

14 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

but every piece of hard data we have agrees that the show was generally liked and reasonably successful.

It definitely turned a better profit then Rings of Power. 

But that's easy when you don't blow $250M on just the rights to use the IP.

[Samt]

58 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

 

I preemptively covered that point

I may also add that I heard positive comments on stepin specifically.

 

you are confusing your personal taste with objective truth.

there is no objective way to rate art, but there is an objective parameter used by those in charge, which is basically "will people like this enough to keep paying subscriptions and cover the cost of this production?". This also illustrates exactly the level of commitment they have in making a good product. A good product sells more, but it also costs more, and they have to strike the right balance.

 

Well, I don't have hard numbers there, but I am pretty sure wot was not an economic fiasco. otherwise, they would not have greenlit season 3 already. wot was successful on the one objective parameter that matters to the people who get to decide whether to greenlight it.

as for improving, I'm sure Rafe would have loved to have the chance to, but it would have required reshooting scenes, redoing special effects, basically paying money. So, once more, the question was "will improving this get us enough extra customers to justify the cost?" and the answer was likely no. if your idea of "improving" was adding extra time to better flesh out the plot and characters, I'd be all for it, but it would have cost extra money, that the executives were probably unwilling to pay. if your idea of improving was changing the plot to bring it closer to the books with the screentime they had, well, you would have liked the show better, and I would have liked the show better, but a majority of people who did not read the book and who make up a majority of viewers may have liked it less.

 

annyway, after the first season was successful enough, the executives decided it may be worth gambling more money into this, so we are - apparently - getting improvements here. at least, special effects on channeling are much improved. I heard voices that episodes will be a few minutes longer, but can't confirm. anyway, it shows that the people in charge at amazon are willing to bet some more money that improving quality may turn in more profit. that's all we can ask for; they are running a business, not a charity.

 

long story short: you can absolutely say that you didn't like the show. You can go as far as claiming that the show insults book fans personally.

but the moment you say that the show sucks, or that the execs should have done something drastic about it, that's objectively, factually false. we don't know all the facts, but every piece of hard data we have agrees that the show was generally liked and reasonably successful.

I'm not sure why there was any confusion as to the fact that my opinion is my opinion.

 

And what hard data is there on the success of the show? Amazon doesn't publish viewership numbers, and no one bought the show because it wasn't for sale.  It comes for free with a prime membership.  Obviously, this is a challenge with streaming in general, but how do you quantify the revenue that a particular show brought in, when all of the revenue is general?

Edited August 8, 2023 by Samt

[Scarloc99]

20 hours ago, Elglin said:

Well, the LOTR can of worms has been opened. I remember, 20 years back, I, a Tolkien hard-line purist, was sitting in my kitchen with my best friend, another Tolkien hard-line purist, and a sheet of paper. After an hour-long or so discussion we'd agreed that out of the first film, 30 minutes could remain, everything else should be re-shot in a more purist way. We'd also agreed that the film was great as it is and if Peter Jackson managed to shoot the rest in a similar way (he kind of did), then the entire trilogy would be a classic.

Since then I've mellowed considerably, and yet in no shape or form was S1 a good season as it was, and I've never been a Jordan book purist. The problem isn't that the scriptwriters had to make significant changes, the problem is that despite those they haven't managed to tell a good story.

The "key things that need to take place" argument, I think, has a drawback best illustrated by the last season of (I open another can of worms here) Game of Thrones. That team did a pretty convincing job of connecting the dots and ticking the checkboxes. What they didn't do is make a convincing story out of those key things. I mean, the result of a story matters, and I have all too often read through the last 10 or so pages of the book to know the ending before reading the actual book. But how it got achieved and how it is told matters as well, and it is in this department that the show sorely lacks.

 

Let me give you an example. The Mat-Rand-Moiraine-Lan scene in Tar Valon (Caemlyn in the books) and the dagger. In the books, and I quote, "One minute Lan was in the doorway, the next he was at the bedside, as if he had not bothered with the intervening space. His hand caught Mat's wrist, stopping the slash as if it had struck stone". In the show, Moiraine herself intercepts the dagger with a flow of Air.

This doesn't change the "key things" not one bit, and the change has zero consequences in the events of the story. However, the book version of the scene establishes Lan as an almost superhuman warrior (which he is), shows the meaning and sense of the Warder-Aes Sedai relationship and shows Moiraine's complete trust and confidence in Lan. The show version just shows us a master magic user and a tagalong swordsman.

Summing it up, the problem with the adaptation is not that the story is condensed, cut or reshaped. The problem is that it's just very badly told.

This I can agree with, season 1 for me had a lot of issues, but very few of them where to do with the material and lore changes made in order to make an adaptation. There will always be points of view of what can or cant be changed. My issue with season 1 was the production values, the CGI and effects, quite a bit of the acting and the dialogue in places. It doesn't help that rings of power came out the same time, a series that in terms of the lore changes made, as a tolkien purist myself, I hated, But the script, Dialogue and acting while not consistently great, had some really great moments and the production was just that much better. 

But there where issues outside of the productions control. Covid, losing a cast member etc that just give me enough to hope that issues will be rectified in season 2. 

[Scarloc99]

18 hours ago, BookMattBetterThanShow said:

I agree strongly with Samt. Making changes is fine, but many of the changes didn't seem necessary. I have just ignored episodes 7 & 8 since I believe that was caused by COVID and actor changes (Will say if it had been left to me, I would have just stop at episode 6). My biggest complain is the fact that we spent entire episode on a character that wasn't in the book, yet skimped on going into more details with the main characters. Also I think they just ignored all the magic rules completely.

I have made this point before, but going back to that "what is important for the last battle" point, the Bond is a key point in the fight between Rand and Moridin. It is a key plot point for Lan's story as well, in the books Robert Jordan has the benefit of being able to go off on tangents and give stories and exposition explaining the bond to the reader throughout. In the TV series the writers need to take one opportunity. They needed to show the impact to a warder of an aes sedai dying, they needed to show Tar Valon far earlier then in the books, and expose the viewer to the politics of the white tower far earlier. But also for me that episode was one of my favourite ones because it showed me something entirely new about the world I love. But I also respect this is an individual thing and while I am not wrong, neither are you because it is about opinion. What I think we can agree on is, like you say, the impacts of covid, and the other production issues/clunky script and dialogue, which I hope are more polished in season 2 onwards. 

[DojoToad]

16 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

 

"we spent 100 millions on a project, involving some pretty famous actor too. the result is not great, not terrible. let's just not air the series then. [or, let's only air the first half and stop it there]. we'll tell the fans we canceled it because we didn't like it enough"

best. management. ever! (sarcasm mode)

 

reality check, please. I can understand shelving something if it is terrible, like asylum-level terrible. like, star wars christmas special terrible. the kind of stuff that the fans will try to forget and the actors will try to hide their involvment in.

this is not the case. wot S1 is far from perfect, but I enjoyed it and a lot of book fans enjoied it, and every single non-book-fan I know who watched it liked it.

is that bad enough to cancel a project in which you already invested lots of money? to tell the fans "sorry, we didn't like the product" after hyping them for two years? to tell the young actors for whom this was their first important role than they spent a lot of working time and now won't get any recognition or anything to put in their resumee? what actor would still want to work with you afterwards?

Batgirl movie was cancelled after spending $90 million.  Tax reasons or whatever, but it does happen.

[DojoToad]

14 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

 

annyway, after the first season was successful enough, the executives decided it may be worth gambling more money into this, so we are - apparently - getting improvements here. at least, special effects on channeling are much improved. I heard voices that episodes will be a few minutes longer, but can't confirm. anyway, it shows that the people in charge at amazon are willing to bet some more money that improving quality may turn in more profit. that's all we can ask for; they are running a business, not a charity.

 

S2 was greenlit before S1 dropped - so the decision to carry on had nothing to do with the show's success

Edited August 9, 2023 by DojoToad

[expat]

On 8/8/2023 at 6:28 AM, Sir_Charrid said:

Taking the points above I think we can all agree the Abel Cauthon change is not needed in any way, it changes something that never needed changing 

I appear to be in a minority of one, but I thought that the Abel Cauthon change was one of the best things they did the entire season.

 

Truth be told, the entire EF story was badly written because it had the narrative that a hard scrabble village on the edge of civilization with ~1700 technology was filled with a bunch of goody two shoes with late teens as innocent as the day they were born.  The reality was that these types of locations were (and are) filled with desperate people that often act like the dregs of society.  Children would be married and put to work at a young age so it's totally unrealistic that Mat would be the town prankster at 19.

 

Introducing a troubled backstory for one of the main characters make the series better since drunks in EF is realistic and takes the edge off of the annoying innocence of our three heroes.

 

Another bonus is it introduces the possibility of a redemption arc for Abel.  In the books, since they all started as good people, there was no emotional growth in any of the EF characters because protecting the town is what you expect from their characters.  The books were emotional flat for me in this area.

[expat]

17 hours ago, Sir_Charrid said:

I have made this point before, but going back to that "what is important for the last battle" point, the Bond is a key point in the fight between Rand and Moridin. It is a key plot point for Lan's story as well, in the books Robert Jordan has the benefit of being able to go off on tangents and give stories and exposition explaining the bond to the reader throughout. In the TV series the writers need to take one opportunity. 

I've asked this adaptation question before, but never got an answer.  I'll try once more.  WoT has an insane amount of POV driving almost all character development and many plot points, but POV is not filmable.  For those who want the series to be more faithful, how do you handle the POV (e.g., character development) while remaining faithful to the book? The only way that makes sense to me is to determine what important ideas you want to highlight from the POVs and invent alternative scenes to achieve the same emotional, character, and plot points.  These scenes are by definition not faithful.  Seems to be a catch-22 situation.

 

These new scenes can be badly done and criticized on their own (lack of) merit, but they still might be necessary to stay faithful to the larger emotional and character developments of the books.

 

For all the praise of LOTR adaptation, they didn't have this problem since there is little POV in those books. 

[king of nowhere]

On 8/8/2023 at 11:13 PM, Samt said:

I'm not sure why there was any confusion as to the fact that my opinion is my opinion.

 

the way I interpret it, "i didn't like it" means it's my opinion; "it sucks" has a harder edge, it implies a level of objective badness that at least a majority of viewers would agree with. "the execs should have canceled it" implies it to be objectively bad by agreement of almost everyone, and economically losing too.

 

Quote

And what hard data is there on the success of the show? Amazon doesn't publish viewership numbers, and no one bought the show because it wasn't for sale.  It comes for free with a prime membership.  Obviously, this is a challenge with streaming in general, but how do you quantify the revenue that a particular show brought in, when all of the revenue is general?

 

On 8/9/2023 at 12:52 PM, DojoToad said:

S2 was greenlit before S1 dropped - so the decision to carry on had nothing to do with the show's success

we have no hard data on viewership, but season 3 was greenlit after season 1 was aired, so the execs judge the data to be at least good enough to keep spending money on making new episodes. as for how to quantify revenue, I have no idea how they do it, but I am pretty sure they do have ways to at least make estimates. people do not throw around hundreds of millions without some cost/benefit analysis.

8 hours ago, expat said:

I appear to be in a minority of one, but I thought that the Abel Cauthon change was one of the best things they did the entire season.

 

Truth be told, the entire EF story was badly written because it had the narrative that a hard scrabble village on the edge of civilization with ~1700 technology was filled with a bunch of goody two shoes with late teens as innocent as the day they were born.  The reality was that these types of locations were (and are) filled with desperate people that often act like the dregs of society.  Children would be married and put to work at a young age so it's totally unrealistic that Mat would be the town prankster at 19.

I wasn't happy with the cauthons, but it makes a lot of sense.

certainly the characterization of the two river people (with every bad one as coplin or congar) made me raise a few eyebrows.

[DojoToad]

1 minute ago, king of nowhere said:

we have no hard data on viewership, but season 3 was greenlit after season 1 was aired, so the execs judge the data to be at least good enough to keep spending money on making new episodes. as for how to quantify revenue, I have no idea how they do it, but I am pretty sure they do have ways to at least make estimates. people do not throw around hundreds of millions without some cost/benefit analysis.

Right.  But how did they approve S2 before S1 even aired?  Couldn't be a cost/benefit analysis.  There is something else they are looking at.  Maybe they just had space to fill and nothing else to plug in?

[king of nowhere]

27 minutes ago, DojoToad said:

Right.  But how did they approve S2 before S1 even aired?  Couldn't be a cost/benefit analysis.  There is something else they are looking at.  Maybe they just had space to fill and nothing else to plug in?

could be as simple as needing to keep the contracts with the actors; maybe they started saying "either you give me the certainty that I will have a salary, or I will look for a new job elsewhere". S1 was delayed a long time for covid, and this probably also disrupted the schedules of some actors.

else, I could not guess

[Samt]

10 hours ago, expat said:

I've asked this adaptation question before, but never got an answer.  I'll try once more.  WoT has an insane amount of POV driving almost all character development and many plot points, but POV is not filmable.  For those who want the series to be more faithful, how do you handle the POV (e.g., character development) while remaining faithful to the book? The only way that makes sense to me is to determine what important ideas you want to highlight from the POVs and invent alternative scenes to achieve the same emotional, character, and plot points.  These scenes are by definition not faithful.  Seems to be a catch-22 situation.

 

These new scenes can be badly done and criticized on their own (lack of) merit, but they still might be necessary to stay faithful to the larger emotional and character developments of the books.

 

For all the praise of LOTR adaptation, they didn't have this problem since there is little POV in those books. 

I don’t think this is as hard as you seem to think it is. Yes, the story is written always from a certain character’s POV and you can’t do internal monologues on screen. But the story is still built around action and dialogues and interactions. It will take good acting and writing to allow us to understand the motivations of the characters as we watch them say and do things. But this doesn’t necessitate a wholesale rewrite of the story. The mediums are different, but this question is like asking how they will deal with the fact that they can’t describe the characters on screen. They will have to show us.  It’s not an insurmountable or even particularly significant obstacle. Using it to justify significant narrative and character changes is like saying you should burn your house down when the toilet is dirty.

[Samt]

10 hours ago, expat said:

I appear to be in a minority of one, but I thought that the Abel Cauthon change was one of the best things they did the entire season.

 

Truth be told, the entire EF story was badly written because it had the narrative that a hard scrabble village on the edge of civilization with ~1700 technology was filled with a bunch of goody two shoes with late teens as innocent as the day they were born.  The reality was that these types of locations were (and are) filled with desperate people that often act like the dregs of society.  Children would be married and put to work at a young age so it's totally unrealistic that Mat would be the town prankster at 19.

 

Introducing a troubled backstory for one of the main characters make the series better since drunks in EF is realistic and takes the edge off of the annoying innocence of our three heroes.

 

Another bonus is it introduces the possibility of a redemption arc for Abel.  In the books, since they all started as good people, there was no emotional growth in any of the EF characters because protecting the town is what you expect from their characters.  The books were emotional flat for me in this area.

Historically, isolated backwaters are not hellholes.  They generally have a strong sense of community values and solidarity.  And in the book, the people of the two rivers are mostly prosperous enough to not worry about feeding their children, etc.  

 

Primitive lifestyles do not lead to unhappy people as long as those people don’t know any different.  But the key word here is isolated. The main reason that small communities have problems in the modern world is the comparison.  Prospective young people leave the communities for better opportunities elsewhere and the growth and productivity stagnates.  Those that are stuck behind become more desperate and despondent. And the situation deteriorates.  
 

This is actually very much the point that is frequently made in literature and is likely why RJ made the TR the way it is.  The hero comes from a simple way of life because it gives him

the clarity to understand what really matters.  And as much as every DND player thinks he is edgy by making a character with a tragic backstory, rising above a tragic backstory is not the most realistic way to success. As unfair as it may seem, most successful people have successful and stable parents, and clear examples of good values to follow.

 

It also just makes sense that the pattern would place the Taveren to save the world in the most favorable upbringing situation. Even if you think that the TR is unrealistic, that is kind of the point of the blood of Manetheren. The traditions and heritage of a noble people from the past continue to live on.  

[expat]

57 minutes ago, Samt said:

Historically, isolated backwaters are not hellholes.  They generally have a strong sense of community values and solidarity.  And in the book, the people of the two rivers are mostly prosperous enough to not worry about feeding their children, etc.  

 

Primitive lifestyles do not lead to unhappy people as long as those people don’t know any different.  But the key word here is isolated. The main reason that small communities have problems in the modern world is the comparison.  Prospective young people leave the communities for better opportunities elsewhere and the growth and productivity stagnates.  Those that are stuck behind become more desperate and despondent. And the situation deteriorates.  

I agree that isolated and primitive communities aren't automatically hellholes, but in every community, rich or poor, there are a subset of troubled people.  Pretending that everyone, but the throwaway group on the wrong side of the tracks (e.g., Conger and Caplins), are good people is not realistic. There will be drunks, wife beaters, violence prone people, invertible liars, and other troubled souls within the community.  This type of writing just diminishes the emotional impact when the community does heroic things later in the books.

 

1 hour ago, Samt said:

It also just makes sense that the pattern would place the Taveren to save the world in the most favorable upbringing situation. Even if you think that the TR is unrealistic, that is kind of the point of the blood of Manetheren. The traditions and heritage of a noble people from the past continue to live on.  

The pattern doesn't care about putting Rand in a favorable upbringing situation.  It cares that Rand is ready to assume his responsibility as the Dragon Reborn.  Making EF a little less cartoonish wouldn't have changed anything in respect to him becoming the Dragon.

[expat]

1 hour ago, Samt said:

I don’t think this is as hard as you seem to think it is. Yes, the story is written always from a certain character’s POV and you can’t do internal monologues on screen. But the story is still built around action and dialogues and interactions. It will take good acting and writing to allow us to understand the motivations of the characters as we watch them say and do things. But this doesn’t necessitate a wholesale rewrite of the story. The mediums are different, but this question is like asking how they will deal with the fact that they can’t describe the characters on screen. They will have to show us.  It’s not an insurmountable or even particularly significant obstacle. Using it to justify significant narrative and character changes is like saying you should burn your house down when the toilet is dirty.

Respectfully disagree.  You are vastly underestimating the amount and criticality of the POVs.  First, they involve every major character, not just Rand. Second, almost all character development is done through the POVs:

Rand - relationship with his hareem, understanding what it means to be the Dragon, wrestling with duty versus desire etc.

Mat - becoming the reluctant hero by balancing his fears with his need to act, relationship with Tuon

Perrin - becoming a wolf brother, hammer v ax, becoming a leader, relationship with Faile

Forsaken - their motivations through the various alliance (betrayal) planning sessions, dark friends scheming (although this is more color than major plot points).

Aes Sedai - Eladia's motivations, political scheming, Verin plotting

Ny, Eg, Elayne, Moiraine, Avi - most of their character development

 

Now you can bring the series to a halt by each of these people talking about their internal thoughts, forgo the character development, or you can find a way to derive the important points via some new scenes.  From my viewpoint, the third option is the only possible one and yes, that requires a lot of changes in the story since there is sooooooooo much POV and it is so integral to progressing character development.

 

There is a reason that POV stories are very hard to adapt.

[SinisterDeath]

4 hours ago, DojoToad said:

Right.  But how did they approve S2 before S1 even aired?  Couldn't be a cost/benefit analysis.  There is something else they are looking at.  Maybe they just had space to fill and nothing else to plug in?

Internally, some show are greenlit for a second season if it tests well with their screeners & their execs particularly like it. (Bezos being a fan of WoT might have helped)

As King of Nowhere mentioned, Contracts can also come into play.
Before streaming on broadcast TV when "showrunners" and "Writers" put "real money" behind their show, they'd often get greenlit to start shooting a second season before the first  has finished... but even that could have the pug pulled if the first season performed extremely bad, or the execs could gamble and hope Season 2 performs better before green lighting a third season.

 

1 hour ago, Samt said:

This is actually very much the point that is frequently made in literature and is likely why RJ made the TR the way it is.  The hero comes from a simple way of life because it gives him

the clarity to understand what really matters.  And as much as every DND player thinks he is edgy by making a character with a tragic backstory, rising above a tragic backstory is not the most realistic way to success. As unfair as it may seem, most successful people have successful and stable parents, and clear examples of good values to follow.

 

35 minutes ago, expat said:

The pattern doesn't care about putting Rand in a favorable upbringing situation.  It cares that Rand is ready to assume his responsibility as the Dragon Reborn.  Making EF a little less cartoonish wouldn't have changed anything in respect to him becoming the Dragon.

To balance these two points...
As a TV show, the Two Rivers didn'tt need to replicate the cartoonishy goody two shoes nature of "The Shire", but it also doesn't need to go full "Game of Thrones" dark and gritty" either.

 

We'll just have to WAFO, to see what they do with the "Cauthon's" in later seasons, right?

Matrim isn't well educated, he is a charming rogue.
e gambles and does some morally questionable deeds along his journey's.

He also Marries the Seanchan Empress, and it remains to be seen what if anything Mat would do about the Damane situation...

(So to put it another way. He comes from this great moral upbringing. But he's totally fine with Slavery. Right?)

[Samt]

17 minutes ago, SinisterDeath said:

Internally, some show are greenlit for a second season if it tests well with their screeners & their execs particularly like it. (Bezos being a fan of WoT might have helped)

As King of Nowhere mentioned, Contracts can also come into play.
Before streaming on broadcast TV when "showrunners" and "Writers" put "real money" behind their show, they'd often get greenlit to start shooting a second season before the first  has finished... but even that could have the pug pulled if the first season performed extremely bad, or the execs could gamble and hope Season 2 performs better before green lighting a third season.

 

 

To balance these two points...
As a TV show, the Two Rivers didn'tt need to replicate the cartoonishy goody two shoes nature of "The Shire", but it also doesn't need to go full "Game of Thrones" dark and gritty" either.

 

We'll just have to WAFO, to see what they do with the "Cauthon's" in later seasons, right?

Matrim isn't well educated, he is a charming rogue.
e gambles and does some morally questionable deeds along his journey's.

He also Marries the Seanchan Empress, and it remains to be seen what if anything Mat would do about the Damane situation...

Everyone has little things in the story that they think should be changed.  But once you open the door that you can just change things because you think this or that would be a little bit better, you end up on a very slippery slope to losing the thread.

[SinisterDeath]

12 minutes ago, Samt said:

Everyone has little things in the story that they think should be changed.  But once you open the door that you can just change things because you think this or that would be a little bit better, you end up on a very slippery slope to losing the thread.

Sure, but who determines which thread is important?

Why is the "Theme" that the EF5 come from an isolated village with a "strong moral upbringing" where the entire village is effectively the Shire, and the main characters approach everything with a sense of "purity" the one "thread" that's important for you?

For me, the "Theme(s)" that are most important in a WoT TV Show are that people in power are corruptible. That even when people are telling the truth, the truth they know is likely to be a Lie, or false. That people's ego's need to be shattered as paradigms shift to a new truth. That the Dragon needs to break the world in order to rebuild it.

[Samt]

3 minutes ago, SinisterDeath said:

Sure, but who determines which thread is important?

Why is the "Theme" that the EF5 come from an isolated village with a "strong moral upbringing" where the entire village is effectively the Shire, and the main characters approach everything with a sense of "purity" the one "thread" that's important for you?

For me, the "Theme(s)" that are most important in a WoT TV Show are that people in power are corruptible. That even when people are telling the truth, the truth they know is likely to be a Lie, or false. That people's ego's need to be shattered as paradigms shift to a new truth. That the Dragon needs to break the world in order to rebuild it.

I didn't say that it was the one thread that was important.  Precisely the opposite.  I'm saying who are we to pick and choose?

[SinisterDeath]

1 minute ago, Samt said:

I didn't say that it was the one thread that was important.  Precisely the opposite.  I'm saying who are we to pick and choose?

You can't have every thread. There are only going to be 64 episodes to cover 4.4 Million words.
So you have to choose.

[Samt]

Just now, SinisterDeath said:

You can't have every thread. There are only going to be 64 episodes to cover 4.4 Million words.
So you have to choose.

And yet, they added the Abel is drunk thread.  

[SinisterDeath]

13 minutes ago, Samt said:

And yet, they added the Abel is drunk thread.  

Correct. But that doesn't eliminate his thread, does it?