1 hour ago, ArrylT said:

 

Better tell that to Brian Cox then. ? His latest memoir calls Johnny Depp "overrated", Steven Seagal "ludicrous in real life" and Edward Norton ""a nice lad but a bit of a pain in the arse because he fancies himself a writer-director."

 

Here is Jeff Garlin trashing his own show.

 

https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/jeff-garlin-leaves-the-goldbergs-comedy-show-1235137210/

 

Directors trashing their own movies (and remember movie sets involve dozens of people so when you trash your own movie you're not just trashing your own work)

 

https://www.worldofreel.com/blog//2017/10/14-directors-that-trashed-their-own.html

 

And here is famous directors dissing other directors

 

https://www.goldderby.com/forum/movies/directors-on-other-directors/

 

People are going to be people.  They cannot help it, even if staying silent would be better. So no I personally doubt that the people involved in any podcast would avoid saying critical or negative things about a show out of fear of loss of work.   

Jeff Garlin trashing his own show is a different thing altogether. Brian Cox, whose stage resume and career makes him very secure in his career, calling Johnny Depp over rated should not be surprising for many reasons. But you make fair points.

Saying people are going to be people cuts equally the other way too though. If you think they are genuinely calling it as they see 'em and not hyping the show (which could be for any number of reasons), then there you go. I can't imagine anyone, let alone a writer, hearing "she has a tell" in the last episode and not cringe. 

7 hours ago, EmreY said:

TBH, I wonder how saidin/saidar/the True Power/ta'verenness can all be represented without the screen exploding in rainbows and ribbons.  (And whose point of view will be used to show the weaves?) 

 

 

For the weird workings of ta'verenness, I could imagine a moment of visual changes like change in focal depth, perspective, a subtle shift in color or saturation, perhaps the audio undergoing a telephone-equalization moment (but losing audibility can't happen) that goes in a sequence and the reverses back to what ever was normal before it happened, along with a brief visible change in some character's demeanor. 

8 hours ago, WhiteVeils said:

It's not a commercial at all...these are professional script writers and playwrights who were podcasting a WOT readthrough long before the series began. You just are dismissing them because of opinion they offer.

People in the industry are not going to rip apart the work of other people in their same industry. They have to always be looking out for the potential to work together. They can't burn a bridge they haven't even crossed yet. 

To be fair, they also know the real-world problems of writing for the actual screen as part of a big actual production and not what might get on the screen alone. I would take them the same way I take any Kevin Smith review of pop culture creations, or the way a local sports casting team covers the local team. 

A couple of comments have me thinking. I think Jordan's portray of the younger women reflects not that he's presenting caricatures of them but presenting young women/late adolescents. Much like the boys, they grow up over the books. I was going to say Egwene espeically, but they all do. 

I think Jordan's portrayal men and of the dynamic between men and women both reflect a bit of reality (as he sees it or just as it is-- not something I'd want to debate) and the world he is portraying. Can Rafe improve on that or honor it while changing it? Let's compare: Jordan was a Vietnam vet who had a harrowing experience shooting a woman in war and it weighs heavily on his writing. Rafe, well ... he's male. and young. Jordan was not young when he wrote these. I referred to Rafe's age previously. I think it matters. It's not a matter of how many times he read the books, it's a matter of how much life he has lived to see life in our world in Jordan's books.

Rafe took on a massively hard task. Even if RJ himself were at the helm, the people in the arts today reflect what Rafe (or them, or both) gave us much more so than RJ did as he was writing them. I made the analogy previously about the interpretation of classical music, and how the training there is aimed at creating mature performers who can reflect the composer's intentions and not the fashion of the day (though, that ends up happening anyway to some extent). Rafe would have to get a full team of people who are on board with that very disciplined approach, to keep the Bookcloaks (may the Light ever illume our pages) happy.  

8 hours ago, Katherine said:

 

 

My thoughts this morning: 

 

So I am with you. I think that is show is poorly done in almost every way, and not just IMO but objectively. 

 

Then I started watching Cobra Kai again (we cancelled Netflix a couple of years ago so am picking it back up). 

 

Oh man I love this show! But it is full of tropes, older actors who have seen better days, 1 dimensional bad guys, and (what should be cringy) high school karate brawls. 

 

And somehow.... its awesome. 

 

So maybe it is all subjective. 

I think the cringy aspects of it and the 1 dimensional bad guys are what Karate Kid is at the core. I recently watched KK3 and the Next KK and wow, so over the top they were. If anything the villains are much more deep in the series. Silver admits as much. I think Cobra Kai would benefit from just admitting Sam is a villain, but I know many would not agree. 

I think our WoT lost more than one would suspect when they aged-up the Two Rivers 5. The director of Wonder Woman said something in an interview about the need to defend (I'm going to get it wrong) I think she said earnestness, not everyone is hip or ironic. Our plucky late-teens embarking out into the world brought an innocence that would play well when they see more jaded cities. I feel like that quality is shared by Cobra Kai at least a little. 

Chiming in late. I read the books knowing the show was going to be on Amazon, because I loved watching youtube videos about GOT made by people who had really read and reread those books. I fell in love with the books more and more as I read on, as I guess many did. 

I know enough about acting to know what it means to tell a story visually. The people involved have to welcome the challenge when parts of an existing story are difficult to put on a screen/stage. It requires creative problem solving (among other things) to create something for the screen/stage that does the job an author gets done with internal dialogue. (the director of the Shazam! movie wrote something a while ago about the need to love problem solving) 

One problem some people expected was condensing the material down to a reasonable run time, but I did not think that would be a problem because RJ put so much into describing visual details which are conveyed in an instant on the screen. I expected the world to be pruned back a lot. I would not have been surprised if major conflicts or nations were left out or combined. The Ogier I expected to be left out. (I kinda wish they had been now. Respect to the actor who I think had fun being Loial, which reflected to me a young Ogier out on his adventure)

Everyone expected Perrin to be changed, or to be difficult to capture because of all the internal drama and his complexity. Sorry, but Rafe took the lazy way out. Maybe they'll cut his actual wife, because How crazy jealous will Faile be as a second wife? Perrin is one of my favorite characters; and though I think his story stalls out later in the books, we are no where near that in the show. For where we are in the books, there is little need to change Perrin's story. I have to say that I did like the pack of tiniest wolves in Rand-land (can we call it that now? Rafe-land, that's it) in Rafe-land. Elyas is a character that could have served as a cautionary tale for Perrin and the changes he's undergoing, and all his hesitancy about violence or rage-violence could find a firm ground there. 

I loved Someshta and loved that the Eye of the World is always in a different place, and we didn't get any of that. Why? Did they have something better to tell the audience? Clearly not. 

I can't list all the disappointments, all the "why?s" to changes and just complete fabrications. I can say "I'm glad that's over" and I will not be back for season 2. Look at what Amazon did with the Expanse, for not just what we could have had but what THEY could have had. Rafe is so far in over his head it is sad. That's not his fault, he's too young to know how in over his head he is. This buck stops higher than him. He's too young to know the difference between creating something and adapting something. By analogy he is clearly like a mediocre amateur musician who heard an ancient piece of music and knows how great it would be to play it for a modern audience. That takes a well trained classical musician to understand interpretation and just where the freedom lies in that art, and more importantly where it doesn't lie. 

The idea that it is OK to have writers who have not read the material is silly to me because this is supposed to be an adaptation of RJ's books. You can say you could have script editors or people who punch-up scripts who did not read the books, and God knows enough of those get attached to projects (and bloat the budgets) just so they can get paid/credits. But, this is not an original work. It should not be treated as such. New material needs a real good reason, and changing it to bring WoT to a new audience is not that reason because it is a lie. Tell the story you want to tell. If it is WoT, then tell it. If it is not, then tell that. Don't take your ideas and wrap it RJ's world and pretend you're telling RJ's story.

What happens too often is production studios know a new "IP" is risky, so they float their bad or good new ideas in the guise of an established IP to remove risk from the venture. But, both are ruined for it. What ever original and new world that the writers could have created suffers from being shoe-horned into someone else's established and successful creation, and the established coherent world already created by someone who put so many hours and years into the project is cheapened by the new ideas.

People expected Amazon to use WoT to be their GoT, and maybe we got it. But I think everyone was hoping for the first few seasons, not the last. Amazon cuts to the chase I guess. 

I have to thank Rafe for giving me a reason to reread the books though, to get the taste of what ever it is he was cooking out of my mouth. 

Also, Moraine has a tell? Just stop. Rafe thinks this is poker, but I know he's bluffing. 

Yes!  After looking at the various clubs I see they are not dependent on having finished the books.  I ended up joining two.  I may even consider starting one, if I feel like what I'm thinking about serves a need and if I can like commit the time to it.  

I have to admit, I clicked on this video for salacious reasons, but what this writer went through and his own insecurities and his journey is worth hearing about.  It is very much about standing up for yourself in what you write and what you won't write.  He mentions writer's processes but only towards the end and not really in any specific way.  I guess you have to pay him for that ;^)    I hope this kind of content is welcome. 
 

Thanks, yes I started checking them out, but I feel like I will be most useful only after I actually finish the books.  

very cool that you were just randomly searching and found this place and found out about the up coming show.  The show is part of why I started reading.  I saw how people who loved the AOIAF books got into the GoT show (till the last season or two when ... opinions differed)  and I figured let me try to read all these large books before they air the show.  I better get back to it. 

Ich komme aus dne USA. Nein ich spreche kein deutsch, weniger als ein bisschen.  Ich versuche aber zu lernen.

I come from the US, no I don't speak German, less than a little bit.  I am trying to learn though.  (I hope the above is right.  I would have typed Ich spreche nicht die deutsch, I'm not sure which is right)

For where I am in the books (tonight I might finish CoT) I think Egwene has a a tough set of choices to make but up till now she's managed masterfully.  The only thing I can fault her for is not letting Bryne go in and take the fight to the tower right away when the surprise would have been overwhelming.  But I'm reading.  No lives are in my hands.  She leaped into the deepest end of the commander in chief role with no lessons or swimmies on her arms.    Nynaeve, how is she not bald from all that braid tugging?  

Very cool topic! I too am on my first read through and I understand why we say it that way because there are so many characters and things that it really is much blurrier in my mind than it is in the books. I have to reread it to see it more clearly the same way I would look at an impressionist's painting from different angles to take it all in. 

WoT has changed me in, so far, in small ways. I started thinking about writers in a new way in that I see Jordan as a writer of chapters. Like his complete thoughts are chapters, his paintings are the chapters. Some writers I see as writers of great sentences, like Tanith Lee is someone who either gives you a great sentence or doesn't. Some writers give you ideas and their wrestling with those ideas is either engaging or boring. Some writers have what is essential a great outline of a story, and the writing might actually be lame but the overall story is enough to keep you going, for me that's Asimov. 

Another, bigger, thing is because there are so many characters and so many sets of traits divide up amongst them all (the Browns, the Reds, the Two Rivers folk, the Mayeners, etc) that you can see in one place all the traits we all have and how they work together or how they inhibit our ability to function. Any book might do that, but the vast scope of these books lend themselves to it, especially when we see events play out across different points of view. 

I think I'm starting to become more OK with being who I really am in life and I'm kinda old. I've bounced around through many different groups of people and professions and socio-economic classes and have recently walked away from like all of them to reflect on the world (weird, yes; pointless, yes; but the world is in a kind of Flux right now and it has been in such a state in the past too, so worth stepping back and taking a longer view I think). Not that this comes from the books, but in real life I find myself asking in my own head "is this person lying to me and/or to themselves? How much of their BS should I tolerate andwhere do I draw the line?". Better, I've returned to holding myself to that standard. Somehow after my 20s I slipped in that department. 

Guten Tag! Ich bin Juan Farstrider! Hi! I'm Juan Farstrider! Really (/s) 

I'm just finishing Crossroads of Twilight on my first read-through. Yes, I know that I risk stepping on a spoiler in this landmine field of spoilers, but I dig that they are only spoilers for people like me and not the vast majority here. 

My favorite main characters so far are Matt and Perrin and Egwene. I don't get the hate she seems to have, but she has put herself into a position where that can change with each choice she has to make. I don't want to leave out minor characters though, and though I only met him in one chapter so far, Furyke Karede has my interest. Oh and Faile better not ...   . Seriously, I'll freak if she does. 

Anyway, I look forward to digging into this hip place where all the cool cats hang as I finish the books and show premieres and we can wrestle over what's good and what rots. The show will tell us more about the showrunners and the executives above than it will about the books, so watch it like you were Freud or Jung watching the showrunner on the couch. That's good advice foe GoT too.  

Editing to add I really like Aviendha. The few chapters from her perspective I love.