WoT Movie

[elmindreda]

welcome elmindreda. I hope to have you come back to this thread' date=' since it's becoming such a heated issue at the moment.

 

I'm also glad that you want live action! WOOT!

 

But I disagree that only the first two books could be done. Sure the story spreads out more in the other books, but then you just have to cut between each story thread like they did in LotR.

 

As long as the first two movies do well, then they would keep making them. Hollywood just wants to make a profit.[/quote']

 

Well i thought if you did more than the first 2 ( by this i mean EoTw)books then it might seem too long and as the size of the books increase i think we would become less and less satisfied because they would have to cut soo much of the plot out. I can not say if i agree with doing it the same as LotR or not because i have never seen them. :oops:

 

And kadere i do agree that the narnia film was not up to the standards i thought it would be however i am not a big fan of C.S. Lewis personaly

[Inara]

wow, kadere and i finally agree on something!

lets agree to dissagree on the anime as by the time ppl are finally ready to make these movies, digital effects will be so damn good, we will think we were actually there.

 

hmmm

 

 

i cant wait

[SinisterDeath]

Well i thought if you did more than the first 2 ( by this i mean EoTw)books then it might seem too long and as the size of the books increase i think we would become less and less satisfied because they would have to cut soo much of the plot out. I can not say if i agree with doing it the same as LotR or not because i have never seen them.

 

As size in book increases, so does the number of pages filled with descriptions. Each movie is easilly do-able in 3 hours or less, depending on how fast/slow they want ot make each scene. Ie two rivers in eotw, can be as fast as 18 minutes or as long as 45 minutes. It all depends on how much nonsense they want to put into it. "Ie, you don't need to show people doing something like carrying wood up stairs for 6 minutes, ie they could be led down stairs, then the camera pans into the sitting room where x person talks to y, probably moiraine and thom.. ect. THere are plenty of ways to cut non-escentiall scenes while still making them happen, only in the background.

[elmindreda]

id have to agree with you on that one because they definately get more descriptive i think thats because as the plot expands over more books the more room he has to describe details that he hadnt before

 

but if they wait i dont think they should wait to long because although waiting for the books popularity to increase is a good idea the film would also give the book publicity and encourage more readers

 

(you could say the door swings both ways lol)

[Jellybelly]

The LotR adaptation waited what? Fifty years? Forty-something? No problems renewing the interest for the books, there.

[Inara]

ive been thinking about this..again *oh no, here it comes*

 

it would sit much more comfortably with me if they made it into a TV series, it is epic, with thousands of very significant details, it is episodal

it doesnt feel right to 'condense' this into a series of 2and-a-half hour movies

it needs to be a long rambling affair with character development, and domestic scenes

like perrin playing dice with his 'footmen'

an intro to egwene...some more romance between her and rand at the beginning, all that stuff which 'makes' the world

 

they wont need to wait 50yrs, a great animated version could be started today, but i think, if we have to have live action, we need to wait for computers to catch up, for SFX techniques to become 'real'

[Jeppit Groccin]

Have you seen the Chronicles of Narnia inara?

 

The visual effects of that were amazingly done. If you asked me, I'd say the centaurs looked more realistic than the cheetahs did in the battle scene.

[Inara]

i have indeed

and i agree with you,

but as a mega CSLewis fan, i have to say that i was sorely disappointed that the produces decided that this was an accepatable excuse to kill the story

i dont want this to happen to wot...

[Inara]

by real i mean

an accepted part of the storytelling process, not a subtitute for one

[Kadere]

You're killing me, Inara. You're killing me.

 

Computers have caught up and surpassed the ability to "make things real." Look at Lord of the Rings, King Kong, Narnia, The Matrix, Gladiator, The Perfect Storm, Stewart Little, Ice Age, Shrek, ANYTHING with computer animation. The techonology is there. What you're really getting at is that you don't want the technology to over-lapse the story, that they'd sacrifice story for techonology. Again just look at Lord of the Rings, the story is there in full force with plunty of good visuals to back it up. Yes, they cut a couple of things out to make the movies run smoother, I don't care what medium you're doing these books in things will be cut because things HAVE TO BE CUT!

 

Animated movies would cut things to, and we don't need to go there because the technology exists already to make these things better. And if we did wait forty more years for the films, technology will have become mind-blowingly better then it is right now.

 

An episodal television series will not only cut things but add a bunch of things, like an episode were Mat and Rand spend the whole episode trying to get breakfast. So that we can "escape" from the main story line for one episode. There would be clip show episodes, it would be like Xena and Hercules.

 

And Narnia did not kill the story. They had EVERY scene from the book placed in the movie. EVERY ONE! And then they expanded on the battle scene, which takes place in the book. That's it. It was EXTREMELY faithful to the book. I don't know exactly what your problem with it was, but everything was there.

[Jeppit Groccin]

of course, Narnia is also based off a 125-page book, not a 750-page book like EotW.

 

I know that a lot of that is filler and description, but thats still a lot to condense.

[Kadere]

Thus why the film would be about 3 1/2 hours long.

[Graendals favourite]

I think I would be very happy with such a length, and then the 'director's version' of 4 hours. If it were 2 hours, I'd be initially disappointed.

 

But since a movie of EotW, the success of which would determine the fate of other movies I think, would have to be marketed as this great grand epic story, I see no reason to cut anything if it doesn't have to be cut. Not to be slow, but to try to get people really into the world, show Elsa flirting with Rand, and her mother's reactions and make it clear how this leads to their leaving when they do. It all gives people understanding of what the world is like. You need to give the slow also to give the urgency to the urgent parts.

 

If things remain unclear from the movie, then just rafo those people :).

[Eben]

sacrifices would have to be made, though

in LOTR, the entire Old Forest was omitted

but I think the movie would be OK without some scenes that really take away from the story

[elmindreda]

i think Greandal's Favourite has it about right the scenes that are insignificant towards the plot are a good idea because ithelps you relate to the characters etc because otherwise you do not care what happens in the rest of the film because you do not care for them.

[Kadere]

Absolutely, you wouldn't want to cut a character like Elza because she adds to the world and she also appears later in The Great Hunt. But a bunch of those scenes where Rand and Mat get in a village only to be found by a darkfriend, again and again and again, doesn't need to be added. I'm thinking here of the scene with Paitr in "The Dark Waits", this scene only tells us yet again that Darkfriends are after them, and since we know that, we don't need him. While of course Shiaine's attack on Rand and Mat must be kept and can show (along with all of the Four Kings) that they're in danger. Small scenes in the book that don't introduce big topics or important characters can be cut, and would be. And long conversations would be slimmed down to the bare facts.

[Inara]

And Narnia did not kill the story. They had EVERY scene from the book placed in the movie. EVERY ONE! And then they expanded on the battle scene, which takes place in the book. That's it. It was EXTREMELY faithful to the book. I don't know exactly what your problem with it was, but everything was there.

 

well, the thing about narnia is, its like shakespeare...the language is vital to the characters and the setting, they did the same thing in pride and prejudice, they 'modernised' the language and ruined the effect

 

i think there are enough interludes in the book to more than satisfy an 'escape' from the story in a series, and nothing annoys me more than clip episodes...which, incidentally, i have only ever seen in live action american series. they are pointless and a time waster,

there would be no need for them as the story is already there, no new storylines need to be thought up

[Eben]

O man!

I love this thread

you guys have such great ideas

except the anime ones...those stink

[Kadere]

WOOT!!! Thank you Eben!

[Inara]

get over not liking anime

i happen to think it is one of the best storytelling media we've got atm, seen cowboy beebop? it rocks!

 

on the whole animated issue, have you guys seen sin city? granted, it is live action, but you can almost see the borders around each frame, like you would in a graphic novel...and yet it is awesome you simply accept all the illogical things in it, like the cannibal...he makes my skin crawl.

ohhhhh

my point is, aspects of the wot that 'defy the laws of physics' will be much easier for our brains to accept than a live action version that looks 'a bit odd'

 

anyway, anyone seen the animatrix? there are a couple of sequences there that would be just the right style for wot

and what about the anime sequence in kill bill? it is one of my fav bits

[Kadere]

yeah, I don't see myself getting over not liking anime.............. ever. I have seen Cowboy Beebop, and I think there are much better animes out there then that.

 

I have seen Sin City, and as you pointed out it's live action! And also it has very many odd things that we accept as real because ITS A MOVIE!!!!! If you turned WoT in to a live action movie we'd accept the parts that "defied physics" (which never really happens since RJ is a physicist) because, yet again, IT'S A MOVIE!!!!

 

I've also seen AniMatrix, which for the most part was pretty sweet, but had some crappy stories as well.

[Inara]

but the way they do sin city is so...'animated'...

you can almost 'see' the pencil marks

 

i'll give you an example of why live action wot worries me

the new star wars movies!!!!

gerge lucas is a genius, but he somehow managed not to use any of it for his new movies...i watch these for the story, which was sketchy at best, and i get distracted by bad CG integration, like when padme eats that pair thing in the second one...hmmm,

i have no iterest in CG effects, i dont want to know

helms deep is a good example, and rivendell also, looking at it...i thought they built the lot, there was no distinction.

 

this is another reason that animation is such a good medium, there will never be a distinction, it will all be the same, it will all be 'real', part of the world

[Leafburner]

I agree with Inara. Bad CGI can really destroy a film. I know EXACTLY what you mean about Padme eating that pear thing. EXACTLY!!! What about the poor eye lines with Jar Jar Binks? Man that used to grate me. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it is easy to get wrong. Peter Jackson did an amazing job, but even he made some errors. I can tell that Frodo and Gandalf are not looking at one another on the cart and Gandalf and Bilbo are not looking at one another in Bag End.

 

There are so many ways they can fail. True, if you're a glass half full kind of person you could argue there are many ways for them to succeed. But no one has ever attempted to make a series of live action films of this scale and achieve everything they set out to. LotR is the only one that even comes close and that was so successful because of one man.

 

I don't think a Live Action film is impossible, but I do think an animated film is more plausable, will be more consistent and will provide fewer causes for disappointment.

[Leafburner]

I will make one addition. WB has attempted to do something alond the lines of a series of novels brought to the screen with harry Potter. But those movies are failures. Nowhere near as good as the books. Failures.

[Inara]

utter and complete failures

 

there is also that bit where legolas jumps on his horse befoe the warg battle, and when he kills that mamukil and slides down the trunk...

man those bits annoy me

otherwise, the movies work because you dont notice the CG