1 hour ago, DojoToad said:

But down the road, if the show is awful, successful marketing won't keep it afloat.  Whereas I think that a great show can be successful with little marketing at all.  Quality matters.  How many people got HBO subscriptions just to watch GoT?  Plenty.  If I didn't have Amazon already, I would subscribe just to watch WoT.  But if I hate the show after the first 3 episodes - I'm cancelling my subscription no matter how successful the marketing is.

 

+1 here. I don't have an amazon subscription, i normally don't watch tv. now i will because i have a reason for it. If I won't like it, i will cancel

yes, most likely related to logain. logain was ghealdanin, he conquered most of ghealdan. in the books we're not shown, but in the tv show his role will be expanded, and it is likely we'll see a battle with the regular army. and so having a small part for the king of ghealdan makes sense.

6 minutes ago, Maximillion said:

 

One of the reasons I am in two minds to even start watching it until later seasons.

I am not sure what they are already committed to (2 seasons), but the length of this story almost guarantees that it will unfinished unless the audience figures are huge.

 

that would be one more reason to watch it and get your friends to watch it too.

when i saw dune a few weeks ago, and learned they will not make part 2 unless they have enough public, i started recommending it to all my acquaintances. I even took a guy named Leto as an opportunity to recommend it to my students.

why not?

yes, that introduction was a bit overdone, we can all agree on that. but besides it, i don't see any single problem with it.

Here's a list of small details they got right

ANd the list is impressive, i didn't even notice most of it. All those details they got right shows they care about the details, which buys them more leeway when they make changes.

as for the rest, i can't judge the "feeling" in two minutes. and if the story is well made and well told, i may not care anyway.

3 hours ago, Anders_nilsson said:

 

I think they made it good in lord of the rings with the nazgüls staring.

was the nazgul stare supposed to be terrifying? that part wasn't conveyed in the movie.

yes, they did a good job of making them scary, but they were boss monster and undead horrors. it's much easier under those premises

30 minutes ago, Rose said:

I saw someone theorize that maybe Accepted get a different kind of stone, which they swap out when they're raised to full Aes Sedai. In any case, if the girls can make it look sufficiently similar to an Aes Sedai ring, it's possible they wouldn't be questioned about it because

1. You'd have to be out of your mind to impersonate an Aes Sedai, so why would anyone even consider it

Dear old refuge in audacity.

Nobody would believe it possible, if it hadn't happened multiple times in reality. The reason reality can be much more weird than fiction is that reality does not need to make sense to us.
 

Quote

 

It would also make it interesting when they're raised in Salidar, because maybe they don't have the stones on hand there so they can't get a proper Aes Sedai ring, which would explain why the Kin doesn't believe they're Aes Sedai later on.

 

Mindblown!

Could actually work, and be one of those little perks that you can do after changing stuff for other reasons.

Not necessary for that scene, though; the kin reasoning for rejecting the claim of aes sedai is based on age, and it is very well believable. I have no problem accepting that scene.

Unlike the scene of Moiraine walking in an inn with her ring, lan with his color changing cloak, and supposedly being incognito. that's a scene I'm glad they changed, and if they may overdone a bit the dramatic poses, it's still better than the original.

YA is just a marketing tool. Mistborn is marketed as an adult book, but they decided to make a new edition, with a new cover - focusing more heavily on vin - and a new blurb - focusing more heavily on vin and her inner struggles - and market it as YA. It's literally the same book.

Furthermore, it seems everyone has different ideas about it. For some it means "cheap high school romance", or "teenagers are heroes despite having no qualification for the job". For some it means "there's not enough sex and violence".

but we debated the stuff about YA weeks ago, at length. I fear we are starting to argue back in circles. We got new material, we said what we had to say about it, now we're running out of arguments...

2 minutes ago, DojoToad said:

The Two Rivers is very far from Shienar.

but those few seconds where they're half naked is from the teaser, it could be from a later episode.

do you guys specifically recognize the winespring inn there? i can't be sure.

i don't see why marin would need to be a novice. aes sedai are famous everywhere. Their rings are distinctive. Is it such a stretch to assume that even people living in isolation would recognize the ring from the description?

On the other hand, small tangent here, moiraine's ring has a blue stone, i assume after her ajah. If ajah rings are color coded, what about the rings given to accepted? and if accepted rings are different, it will impact the plot when egwene, elayne and nynaeve pass themselves for full aes sedai using their rings.

i like the myrdraal mouth.

yes, ok, i understand that it's not like in the book. and yes, i would have liked if they could have kept it the same.

but! myrdraal are supposed to preject fear with their stare. how the hell do you convey that through a screen? No, just ominous music won't cut it, and you can only do the creepy atmosphere when the situation allows it. I can easily see the show trying this, and the public complaing it looks cheesy to have this stupid monster with ominous music every time it shows up. It could actually become a meme. Like frau blucher in frankenstein junior.

Instead, they made its look more terrifying. I believe it was the right decision.

I don't like all of the star wars franchise. I used to like them as a child, but growing up, I'm finding the whole plot and setting kinda stupid.

I also quickly lost interest in the whole marvel/dc universe; the whole plots hinge on poorly explained macguffins and feels like it's just an excuse to see people with superpowers beating each other up. Dragonball was more coherent.

and finally, i didn't like GoT either. not that i watched more than half an episode by accident, but it's way too grimdark for my tastes. But I have no specific complaints about its quality here, just that it doesn't match my tastes.

Now you can all stop bickering and gang up on me.

But not too hard, or I'll post a link to the holiday special.

but my general unpleasability is auspicious here, because if i didn't like some of the greatest hits of our time, and yet i am liking almost everything i'm seeing of this show... then there is hope.

i would generally say that we went past the reactions to the trailer and we are in baseless speculation terrain. people reading sex from a small scene where they are half-naked, well, perhaps i'm skewed here because of my time spent in finland doing saunas naked, but that's what happens in shienar, and they are in a large place, i doubt that's somewhere they can get intimate, it could easily be a public bath.

as for people claiming they will make egwene the dragon... just because they don't like some of the changes seen so far and they expect much worse. we're past the point of meaningful conversation

2 hours ago, AusLeviathan said:

Why would she bring more attention to it if it's all false? It's a reddit post that's only getting the attention of a few die hard fans, there was nothing to gain by addressing it in either case.

there was nothing to gain by not addressing it either. when it comes to those mind games, there's literally NOTHING anyone can do that will not look suspicious to someone wanting to be suspicious.

they deny it? why bother, unless it was actually true. they don't deny it? well of course they can't, because it's true.

it was the same with brandon giving his praise to the show: oh, but he was contractually obligated to do it. oh yes, he wholeheartedly supported it, but if you twist everything he said and look at all the specific things he didn't say, it can come off as not a praise at all.

look at conspiracy theories. nothing you can do will persuade people that they are false. it's the same here.

I also hope for the manetheren, but it can be worked in the show very well.

moiraine arrives at the village, an aes sedai. it's not strange that people in remote areas would recognize an aes sedai ring, everyone tell stories about aes sedai. there's people in remote areas of the world that's never seen a car, but i'm sure they heard about them and would recognize one if shown.

anyway, aes sedai have a bad reputation, some people claim they are darkfriends, or just tyrants. you can hear the fear in marin's voice when she pronounces "sedai". then, shortly afterwards, the trollocs attack. some people will think she brought them to the village, and will form a mob. moiraine can then tell about manetheren.

as for changes, and things done better or worse; those things that work will enhance my appreciation of the books as I can picture the scenes with my mind's eye. Some people can do it just from the description, I do it much better if I have seen an actual image. The white tower is already a net improvement over my imagination, I could never figure out how the library and novice wings were supposed to fit.

Some things the show will change, and some of those changes I will like more than the original, they could become my new head canon.

as for the things that I will NOT like, when rereading the books I'll just pretend they never happened.

12 minutes ago, redgiant said:

My comments on the footage as a whole

 

What I did like:

 

[...]

 

What I didn't like:

 

[...]

oh, finally something balanced!

I agree with some of your points, less so with others, but i certainly appreciate that some critic is willing to make distinctions. this, i believe, is what separates legitimate criticism from partisan attacks.

I won't try to debate point by point your concerns, I even share some of them. What I will say is that if I took everything i didn't like about the original books, I'd be still writing by the time the tv show airs. And yet I still loved the books.

From what I've seen so far, the pros of this show far outweight the cons.

2 hours ago, Elder_Haman said:

 

(2) It will feel different when you have the full context of the episode - Rand seeing the Fade on the quarry road and Padan Fain’s troubling stories. 

right. wasn't thinking of that, it could be intended to echo it

24 minutes ago, DojoToad said:

Just noticing a lot of negative vibes from people with 1 or 5 or 10 posts.  Makes me wonder if a person or two out there is spamming with multiple accounts...

yes, i got the same impression. most of those criticism is either very generic ("the show looks bad" without any motivation, while people who are appreciative generally can list what they liked) and some even fall into some familiar speech pattern.

it's also suspicious that so many new people came in to express negativity, while few joined to express positivity. I mean, established fandom communities are overwhelmingly positive, and you'd expect those to represent the average fan. If new people are moved to join to comment on the new clips, I'd expect some positive and some negative, with a bias towards positive.

I believe we're seeing what we've seen many times in politics, that a minority view spurned by the mainstream becomes more and more radicalized, its members getting more and more extreme in their creed and actions.

It's either a few people spamming with multiaccounts, or a bunch of people from other wot communities disgruntled from the generally positive receptions and trying to get themselves heard by posting in multiple sites.

51 minutes ago, Raezold said:

 

You ask why? In my opinion it is because they have no feeling with the books. Or to put it more bluntly, they don't care about the source material. Someone who did care about the books would get those 'little' things right.

here someone made a list of all the little things they got right.

it's easy to focus on what's missing instead of everything that's there. one can always find something missing.

indeed, the happiest people are not those who have more. But those who focus on what they have, instead of what they have not.

2 hours ago, DojoToad said:

Not.  I agree that he needs to put his artistic fingerprints on the show, but why change iconic items just to change them?  The ruby dagger left lots of room for artistic expression without changing the ruby's position.  In the end, not a huge deal for me, just why...?

I can agree, I'm just saying that i can understand why they didn't stick completely to the discussions

by the way, there's this comment from rafe

Quote

And then I think from there, it's important that people, you know, put their own artistic bent into it, like we have this unbelievable production design team led by Ondřej Nekvasil. And you know, I think it's important that people really take what's there and then find a way to put something of themselves into it. And I think that when you have that happening, it creates something more beautiful that we all get to work and play in and if we were all just trying to recreate everything word for word from the book it would actually end up feel a little more stale

and it explains why they changed the various props. agree with it or not, but at least there's a reason

42 minutes ago, TheMountain said:

To be fair, I think Brandon Sanderson is wayyy more open to adaptation changes and "Rule of Cool" in general than Robert Jordan would have ever been. One just needs to look at a small excerpt from his letters.

this shows that RJ had a very clear and detailed picture in his mind, and he was giving feedback to fan art to make it as faithful as possible.

He probably wouldn't take it too well that the props are not replicated according to the detailed descriptions. though some of those may have reasons - for example, the aes sedai rings are huge in the show, but that's probably because otherwise they would not be visible in many scenes.

What would he think of the plot changes? no idea.

Makes me think, I would like to get an honest review of the show from his wife. She's surely under an NDA, and she is probably obliged to also not make comments.

but after the show has aired, and after it was successful - or not - on its own merits, and I also enjoyed or not enjoyed the show based on its merit and i wouldn't change opinion just because someone else disagrees - after that, I would like to hear that honest review.

1 hour ago, Brytac said:

A-  Think they know better than the Author and change too much...thinking its for the best.

regarding "knowing better than the author"...

brandon sanderson was working on a tv adaptation of mistborn at some point. He was brainstorming with a bunch of collaborators, when one of them suggested "what if we made hammond [a major character, a big guy] into a thin woman?".

And brandon - who wrote mistborn, wrote Ham as a man, and who's one of the best writers of this generation, thought about it for a few seconds and then replied "you know, that's a great idea. Why didn't i think of it myself? Let's do it"

which goes to show that one should not be afraid to make changes or think they know better than the author; often enough the author himself would recognize good changes.

Are you familiar with the "on the shoulders of giants" metaphor? you don't need to be better than the original author to improve on their work.

And we all agree that wot is full of problems and weaknesses. There is the slog. And most relationships feel wrong and forced. And some character interactions feel contrived. And some scenes aren't very convincing. For all that it was one of the greatest literary works of our time, wot can be improved. A lot.

Already the scene of moiraine entering the winespring inn as aes sedai feels better than the book, where she was trying to pass in incognito while wearing her great serpent ring in plain sight.

moiraine's ring has a blue stone on it, it's safe to assume that aes sedai rings now are also indicative of ajah

anyway, i agree it looks extremely well made. i have high hopes for this

i appreciated that the aes sedai ring was recognized because that part of the book never felt true to me. moiraine, in incognito, shows up with her great serpent ring. Ok, you're in the middle of nowhere, but still there are stories. somebody may recognize a great serpent ring.

and what do you lose by taking it off anyway?

moiraine not trying to hide works better.

well, those axes look ridiculous anyway. the blades have a very inefficient shape, they would be very prone to breaking. the handles are too short, you always want to have as much reach as possible, the only limitation is how much leverage you can afford before your weapon becomes too heavy to use properly.

those short handles really make no sense for a war axe.