The Cancellation of Wheel Of Time need your support.

[Jack sjacki]

Hi all fans of the books,my only complaint is that waiting two years between seasons means everyone gets tired of the repeats of discussion points, hard to find a podcast or comment with any thing new to say, after reading the books at least 14 times, always starte

[Samt]

On 8/24/2024 at 3:46 PM, Frykka said:

Not even Moghedien?  Don't want to see the Aeil in their full numbers?  C'mon man!  We need to get at least through to Callendor and the Car-a carn.

If they wanted to sell the show on the idea of seeing the books brought to life, they should have focused on bringing the books to life.  
 

Also, they already leapfrogged past Callandor and will need some serious gymnastics to get it back in there.  I’m not convinced that Callandor is on Rafe’s bingo card.  

[Lucavie]

Absolutely loved the books, read them all cover to cover at least 3 times.  Was really hoping the series would be great....but they took too many liberties with it, changed too much about the characters so much so that about the only thing that the series has in common with the books are names of characters and locations and basically minor details.  Should have stayed true to the books instead of trying to make it fit in with the whole cancel culture/woke/politically correct crap and did basically 1 season=1 book instead of trying to squeeze 2-3 books into 8 episodes the show would have lasted alot longer.  That said I watched season 1 and 2 and it was enjoyably....so long as I didn't think of it as wot and didn't think of any of the characters in the show being the characters from the books.  

[Frykka]

9 hours ago, Samt said:

If they wanted to sell the show on the idea of seeing the books brought to life, they should have focused on bringing the books to life.  
 

Also, they already leapfrogged past Callandor and will need some serious gymnastics to get it back in there.  I’m not convinced that Callandor is on Rafe’s bingo card.  

In the show I am watching season 2 ended at Falme...  yea Matt had the Ashandarei spear but made from the Ruby Dagger Padan Fain should have still been holding to slash Rand at the meeting with Carheinen rebels...  that does not supercede Callandor but does mess with the twisted doorway tripping for Matt and his memories.

Edited August 26 by Frykka

[king of nowhere]

19 hours ago, Samt said:

If they wanted to sell the show on the idea of seeing the books brought to life, they should have focused on bringing the books to life.  
 

Also, they already leapfrogged past Callandor and will need some serious gymnastics to get it back in there.  I’m not convinced that Callandor is on Rafe’s bingo card.  

callandor may be postponed. in the books, it was used once, then stored aside and not used for several books. then used once, then hidden away for six more books. it makes sense to introduce it later, when it's actually used.

of course, i don't think they will go past the third season at this point, so we'll probably never see

[Samt]

6 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

callandor may be postponed. in the books, it was used once, then stored aside and not used for several books. then used once, then hidden away for six more books. it makes sense to introduce it later, when it's actually used.

of course, i don't think they will go past the third season at this point, so we'll probably never see

Callandor as a magical item is not needed for a while. Callandor as a turning point in Rand's character development is overdue and difficult to replace.  

[bringbackthomsmoustache]

13 hours ago, Samt said:

Callandor as a magical item is not needed for a while. Callandor as a turning point in Rand's character development is overdue and difficult to replace.  

Indeed the choice to leave Callandor behind and go with the Aiel rather than use it to attack Illian was the first reasoned decision by Rand (as opposed to his unreasoned decision to run to Tear and see if he could take it) to try to carry out his destiny as the Dragon Reborn.

[Pukel-man]

This was clear when season one was released. The problem has nothing to do with fidelity to the books, and everything to do with poor writing. The show as it was written is not compelling or engaging enough to attract, build, and hold an audience. If this is the best we're going to get, it does deserve to die, and sooner is better.  The show was not written in a way that leads most people (everybody is different) to care about the characters, want to know what happens to them, and where the story goes. The story is poorly developed, does not flow well.

 

 

[Samt]

On 8/27/2024 at 10:37 PM, bringbackthomsmoustache said:

Indeed the choice to leave Callandor behind and go with the Aiel rather than use it to attack Illian was the first reasoned decision by Rand (as opposed to his unreasoned decision to run to Tear and see if he could take it) to try to carry out his destiny as the Dragon Reborn.

Callandor is a turning point in Rand's arc. The arches are a turning point in Mat's arc.  As it looks, we will get neither.  

[Sabio]

On 8/26/2024 at 6:13 PM, Lucavie said:

Absolutely loved the books, read them all cover to cover at least 3 times.  Was really hoping the series would be great....but they took too many liberties with it, changed too much about the characters so much so that about the only thing that the series has in common with the books are names of characters and locations and basically minor details.  Should have stayed true to the books instead of trying to make it fit in with the whole cancel culture/woke/politically correct crap and did basically 1 season=1 book instead of trying to squeeze 2-3 books into 8 episodes the show would have lasted alot longer.  That said I watched season 1 and 2 and it was enjoyably....so long as I didn't think of it as wot and didn't think of any of the characters in the show being the characters from the books.  

Amazon made the 8 show season, not the writers, You also understand 1 book = 1 season is impossible right?  There are 14 books, are they really going to have a 14 season show?  Ignoring the fact the cast probably doesn't want to spend at least 14 years of their life making this or you can't make the actors stop aging.  It would need to be hugely popular for Amazon to fork out the money for 14 seasons.

 

There is a lot that can be dumped or changed.  In the first book it would make no sense to have the series go to every place they went to,  Berelon, Whitebridge, Caemlyn, borderlands, etc.  Berelon, Whitebridge, and Caemlyn could be cut without much loss.  The issue is the series did a bad job of using that saved time wisely and filled it was stuff that added little or nothing to the story.  They focused too much on the wonder girls trying to keep up the who the dragon might be disguise,

 

WOT suffers becuase unlike Game of Thrones where the writer had a series in mind so he tailored the books for it, RJ never envisioned a TV series when he made WOT.  It's a lot harder to adapt.

Edited August 31 by Sabio

[DreadLord31]

You know… as a major fan of WoT I got to say that even this appeal bums me out. Why? Because… 
 

I think it’s pretty much inevitable that the show gets cancelled, no matter what the hard-core fans do. 
 

S2 WAS better than S1 - but it still wasn’t great. My non-WOT friends aren’t watching it/sticking with it. S3 has to be AMAZING for there to be any chance of making it to a S5… 
 

S1 was sooo bad that I kind of knew they couldn’t recover from that. And let me give you 5 reasons S1 killed WoTTv (and I don’t think we’re gonna get another shot at it for a long time): 

 

1) Lacking engaging characters/arcs - I think that because their hook was “who is the Dragon?” We didn’t get deep into anybody. 

2) Lacking engaging writing - “Who is the Dragon” isn’t a compelling hook question (and you have to screw up lore right off the bat so that the female characters CAN be the dragon). Jordan himself said that his hook question was “how would regular small-town people react to being told, ‘you’re the savior of the world’”. Should have gone with that. 

 

3) Bad CGI - the season finale had 90’s video game level trollocs, but pretty much the whole season was unimpressive, they need to hire new people

 

4) Matt’s character quitting the show - I think their original script might have been decent? But when one of your main 5? characters quits mid-season 1 … screwed! 
 

5) None of the male characters did anything in S1. (This is why my brother, who is non-reader I convinced to watch the show quit after S1.) 

 

What was positive about S1 was - the costuming. 
 

S2 improved quite a bit. Hopeful S3 gives a reason to be hyped and get others to watch it. 

[Sabio]

To me season 2 was worse becuase it shows they didn't learn anything from season 1.  Season 2 had some better stuff, but it still suffered from the same season 1 issues.   Little character development, a lot of wasted time, bad CGI, characters channeling power way out of whack, and poor explanation.  There was very little build up or explanation as to why the horn and the heroes were a big deal or why the audience should care.

 

I do think they've done a great job with the actor choices.  I think they really hit it out of the park with Avi, Ishy, Liadrian, and Lan.  Rand's battle with Turak was classic.

Edited September 6 by Sabio

[books of Robert Jordan]

On 8/29/2024 at 7:09 PM, Pukel-man said:

The problem has nothing to do with fidelity to the books, and everything to do with poor writing.

 

Zero fidelity is the origin of all, see WOT, ROP etc. No wonder that the ratings of the "modernized" ROP is in the basement too.

 

On 8/31/2024 at 8:58 AM, Sabio said:

Amazon made the 8 show season, not the writers, You also understand 1 book = 1 season is impossible right?  There are 14 books

 

There's 11 books (and NS), but an adaptation should end with LOC, and with proper writers 1 book = 1 season is very much possible. With proper writers.

[Kaleb]

4 hours ago, books of Robert Jordan said:

There's 11 books (and NS), but an adaptation should end with LOC

That's a new take to me, I haven't seen anybody arguing that they should have planned to end the series less than halfway through the story in the 14 books. (Where is 11 coming from? Are you not counting the 3 Brandon Sanderson books? I guess given your username that's a possibility.)

 

As far as fidelity in adaptation goes, I encourage people to consider that for TV writing, 1 page = 1 minute, roughly. A 6 season show of 8 hour-long episodes per season would be 2,880 pages. That's about three of the WoT books. Ignoring all the production constraints of making an actual TV show, just go ahead and condense the 14-book story into three books and see what you'll emphasize and leave out, and how you'll have to change the narrative to reach the key parts of the ending. That thought exercise illustrates why this series was considered unadaptable for so long.

[king of nowhere]

7 minutes ago, Kaleb said:

That thought exercise illustrates why this series was considered unadaptable for so long.

and will probably be considered even less adaptable going forward

[Samt]

2 hours ago, Kaleb said:

 

 

As far as fidelity in adaptation goes, I encourage people to consider that for TV writing, 1 page = 1 minute, roughly. 

Where does this estimate come from?  Why would you even expect this to be a constant rate?  1 page of scenery description takes no time at all to adapt since you just show the scenery that was described.  1 page of dialogue might take about a minute.  1 page of a high-level battle description may take 10 minutes or more to adapt if I want to really dig into the battle.  The assumption that there should be a constant adaptation rate from literature to TV show seems presumptive.  Perhaps there is a rate from screenplay to TV show since the correlation is intended.

[Kaleb]

52 minutes ago, Samt said:

Where does this estimate come from?  Why would you even expect this to be a constant rate?  1 page of scenery description takes no time at all to adapt since you just show the scenery that was described.  1 page of dialogue might take about a minute.  1 page of a high-level battle description may take 10 minutes or more to adapt if I want to really dig into the battle.  The assumption that there should be a constant adaptation rate from literature to TV show seems presumptive.  Perhaps there is a rate from screenplay to TV show since the correlation is intended.

First, a clarification. 1 page of TV script = 1 minute of screentime. I'm not talking about converting source material to TV script, that would be highly variable as you stated.

 

I first heard that estimate from the Wheel Takes podcast with Ali and Gus, but looked it up separately and it does seem to be a widely-referenced metric for screenwriters.

 

My post above added the further point that even if you simply tried to write a book of the whole WoT story in the same amount of pages that the Prime TV script is constrained to, it would be a massive edit that would necessarily cut many important parts of the story. Others have made a similar point many times, that condensing the story so much necessitates compression and new material to bridge the missing narrative elements in a way that makes sense as you proceed to the end of the story. My comment is to point out that even in a 1:1 comparison of the original 11,000-page story vs. a 2,800-page version of that story - without concerning yourself at all about TV production concerns - it's an incredible challenge to distill the essence of any story into something 25% of the original size.

Edited September 6 by Kaleb

[Frykka]

On 7/30/2024 at 11:33 PM, Mailman said:

I feel the opposite the sooner that they get this terrible show cancelled the greater the chance that someone with true skill and a desire to bring the books to life on the screen could emerge. The longer this lame duck drags on the smaller the chance.

 

This show is not better than nothing at all, nothing would have been far preferable.

 

I think we will get a season 4 but it will be a wrap up season. Possibly even only 5 or 6 episodes.

To do the story in full and true to the events of the book, it would be animated and not live action.  Then it could be 14 full length animated movies.  An epic.

 

[Mosalagae]

I'm with denise_42 on this. So much TV these days is about dreaming up a plot for the next season, which is usually paper thin. The allure of a multiseason epic that will have minimal plot inconsistency allows time for the producers to raise their game and for the characters to grow on you. I enjoyed wheel of time so much when I first read it, but was so put off by the unnecessary sniping betweens all the dedicated fans in that community.

[CallMeShmae]

On 8/14/2024 at 10:41 AM, Samt said:

 

I think LOTR is a great example.  The LOTR trilogy has roughly the same screen time as the first season of WOT (and significantly less screen time than the first two seasons put together).  Yet by the end of LOTR, you feel like you know, like, and empathize with the main characters.  WOT characters remain poorly developed after two seasons.  

On 8/14/2024 at 10:41 AM, Samt said:

 

I think LOTR is a great example.  The LOTR trilogy has roughly the same screen time as the first season of WOT (and significantly less screen time than the first two seasons put together).  Yet by the end of LOTR, you feel like you know, like, and empathize with the main characters.  WOT characters remain poorly developed after two seasons.  

Here's the thing: I have a serious love-hate relationship with the show. There is a LOT that makes me scream at the tv while watching it (one big thing as I'm doing a rewatch of season 2 is how badly they botch Egwene's arc with the Seanchan — literally insane to subvert the entire point of that in the book, which is that she was broken, just so Rafe could indulge his favorite character being a boss-ass beach for the 1000th time. And that after the episode where Renna was breaking her down was really, really excellent), so what I mean to say is I don't think the writers are doing incredible work or anything. 

HOWEVER, there is a LOT more going on in the Wheel of Time than in LotR. Like, a LOT more. You just aren't getting the chance in these cramped-ass 8 episode seasons to properly develop these characters, sadly. 

That being said, there's also the reality on the ground that they basically must develop stories for Moiraine and Lan, since Ms. Pike has top billing and is nowhere in most of The Great Hunt. That being said, I thought her stuff was all pretty good as far as new stories go. Lan's with Alanna and the warders, less so. But I digress. The point is they really are stretched very thin, indeed. 

And it sucks because there have been some really excellent moments, I think. In Se1, the stuff where they're all in Tar Valon and Nynaeve is like "Screw Moiraine and the tower, we're Two Rivers Folk, we've got this" was really, really excellent. Little things like that. 

[Morrip00]

On 8/8/2024 at 6:48 AM, Sabio said:

Way too long between seasons, really kills any momentum and people start to forget about it.   2 years between season, you're looking at 12 years if the show would run 6 seasons.  I will watch season 3 but I won't do anything to keep numbers up simply to keep it on.  I really can't see it going past season 4.

I'm with you on 2 years between seasons being too long.  It's a TV trend that I think needs to stop, even if it means a drop in quality.  The gap kills all momentum a series gains with it's viewers but also I believe in the writing, acting and production.  I believe a near continuous production schedule means everyone is more emersed in the show keeping continuity.  However the reliance on CGI heavy sets and enhancement instead of doing things "In Camera" probably mean we won't see this happen for a long time.  

 

I'd also like to see a return to longer TV seasons, but I can live with the shorter episode count if they can maintain a higher quality and story narrative with the reduced episode count.  Unfortunately the lower episode count does remove the scope for focus on character moments.  I look to the Lord of the Rings  films as an example.  I hated the cinema cuts of these, but the extended cuts aded in character moments which lifted the films to a new level.

 

Moving back to a WoT focus I came to the fandom thanks to the TV show.  I found the first season good, but I was left when watching each episode feeling that I was missing something.  That is why I started to read the books and that has brought me here.  So even though the show has it's faults (and there are many) it has still done enough to expand the fandom, bringing people in that may not have had the book series on their radar either due to the reputation (Discussion of "the Slog" doesn't help) or the intimidating series length.  

 

You also have to remember that any adaption of a book to Film, TV even Comic or Audio generally has to leave out or change a lot.  I'm a Huge Dune fan, and as much as I like some of the adaptions, none has ever done justice to the original books.  

 

I'll definitely be watching Season 3+ or WoT when it/they come out as I do find it enjoyable.  However (as long as I can stay ahead of the show) I'll have the scaffolding of understanding provided from the books.  I hope the show is given the Time and backing to tell the full story.  I'll be sad but understanding if it can't for whatever reason.     

Edited September 8 by Morrip00

[Morrip00]

On 9/6/2024 at 8:15 PM, Frykka said:

To do the story in full and true to the events of the book, it would be animated and not live action.  Then it could be 14 full length animated movies.  An epic.

 

I do like the idea of doing this in animation.  It could really open up possibilities and continuity as you don't have to worry about aging cast members, keeping extras costs down or having to keep sets up to re-visit years later.  Unfortunately doing so would likely reduce the potential viewership due to people seeing animation as "for children" so switching off.  

[cman]

I loved the books and I love seeing it on the screen. Season 1 had some issues. Season 2 was better. I think the change to new Mat was an excellent choice, he feels much more like the books. I LOVE how they portrayed the white cloaks (which plenty of people here don’t like).  
The TV show had some teething issues, I’m really looking forward to S3, and hope it continues. 
I think this community can be a bit negative if the show doesn’t follow the books exactly. But you could NEVER make a book facsimile on the screen. 

[king of nowhere]

I realize I was under the pessimistic assumption that wot would be canceled because a lot of time passed without news. I thought 2 years passed since last season, but I looked, it was only 1 year after all. if they can release the new season before the end of the year, maybe there's some hope they'll get some sort of conclusion. if they take 2 years for every season, it's hopeless.

 

while there's a lot of valid criticism to throw at the tv show, there's also lots of good moments, and i'm one of those who sees the cup half full

[Maximillion]

14 hours ago, Morrip00 said:

I do like the idea of doing this in animation.  It could really open up possibilities and continuity as you don't have to worry about aging cast members, keeping extras costs down or having to keep sets up to re-visit years later.  Unfortunately doing so would likely reduce the potential viewership due to people seeing animation as "for children" so switching off.  

100% agree and it should follow the books exactly.

 Judkins decimated the story and more than bad writing he ruined characters.

They neither look like or act like the characters in the books.