The thing for me with the ending is that the body switch is a freeing thing for Rand; if they show follows any of the plot points for Rand's journey - not saying they will - then the body switch is what allows him to regain his anonymity.  the pictures from Falme ,the twice and twice marks, the loss of the hand, the seen by every noble in the land from Malkier to Arad Doman. Any one of those enough is a reason to switch him

Then have the line of dialogue between the actor who plays Ishamael and Moiraine saying tell them I died. There's going to have to be a verbal confirmation scene anyway, since the only other proof is in people's heads, and it does make a good book end.

Other than that, film it almost as it is in the books. the only thing I'd add is a brief scene with Tam and nu-Rand.  for all the debates around "Rand would  never abandon his babies" talk, I can see why he would, for a little while. But I can't see him letting Tam think he's dead for anytime at all. 

25 minutes ago, KakitaOCU said:

If we were trying to run the entire plot in order, yeah.  I don't think they will.  Reposting my earlier so people don't have to dig.

Elayne Nynaeve and Egwene end up in the Tower for training, get some guidance from Alannna.  Liandrin takes on Elaida's role, overthrows Siuan, then sends some BA to do murders and "Flee".  Liandrin then sends the super girls after them straight into a trap where they are captured by the Seanchan.  Min meanwhile helps Logain, Siuan and Leanne escape.   

Moraine and Lan go to find a way to unravel her shield, seeking out Verrin who is a renowned brown scholar in retirement.   Not sure how her full plot goes.  But ends with her removing the shield and setting out for Tear.

Perrin leads the Hunt for the Horn which Fain doesn't take to Falme but to Tear instead.  His group adds a new member, Elyas, who is known to the Borderlanders as a "Sniffer".

Rand does his book 3 plotline, going to Tear to claim Callandor.    

Matt is messed with by the Reds which adds to the holes in his memory and his distrust of Aes Sedai, he meets up with Thom and has mostly his book 3 adventure, except the girls aren't in Tear, they're in Falme.  He rescues them from the Seanchan...

Who are marching on Tear, having spent less time consolidating and more time pushing they have swept through Illian (I don't think Sammael matters in this telling).  Tear, hating channeling, allies with the Seanchan and invite them into the Stone right before Rand, Perrin's Group, Mat and Moraine arrive.

The end of TDR happens except instead of Aiel vs Stone Defenders it's Aiel vs Seanchan.  Mat blows the horn.

At the end the Seanchan are pushed back out of Tear entirely and forced to retreat into Illian.  Rand has the Sword that is not a Sword.

Cliffhanger has Fain arriving at the Two Rivers again and maybe the Seanchan deciding to pull all the way back to Falme on orders of the Nine Moons.

I don't think Liandrin takes over for Elaida; Siuan needs an enemy inside the tower and the WG's need one outside; Liandrin can't be in two places at once.

I really don't think the Seanchan reach Tear and Falme at the same time, Tear is a lot farther than they ever reached in the book, and Tear was known to them as the first fortress after the breaking. And with the Mountains of Mist in the way, no one is marching from Tear to Falme, so they arrive by ship. Plotwise, our heroes are in no way ready to deal with the Seanchan, and if they hold from Falme to Tear, it's already over - the Seanchan will fight the DO.  It also would make bad tactical sense to attack one of the big 4 cities directly. Until they take Amador and sail into Ebou Dar, no one really knows what's going on west of the mountains.  If they hit Tear, how they fight, how many there are, their military approach and capabilities - all fly as fast as wings allow

You can't have the Aiel vs the Seanchan for Rand, because Rand hasn't gone to Rhuidean yet.  Tear allying with the Seanchan - or surrendering to them - is a non-starter.

I just can't see it happening this way. I can see Illian and Tear getting dropped as major locations (Sammael has a statue, so he's here), but can't see the Seanchan being major players until Season 5 or so.

4 minutes ago, KakitaOCU said:

My full prediction is earlier in the thread, but in general, I think at the end of Season 2 we're headed into book 4.

Book 2 shows a cross country journey leading to a fight between Rand and Ishamael.  Book 3 shows a cross country journey leading to a fight between Rand an Ishamael from someone else's PoV.

Rafe has already said there's a major death at the end of Season 3. So that will either correspond to the mid-book 4 death; or less likely, the one from the end of book 5 or a B plot drop death that doesn't happen in the books.  My bet is that it's strange fruit, and not out through the in door. Which makes most of Season 3 parts of book 3, and most of book 4. 

There's also just too damn much that needs to happen in season 2 to get all the way to the Aiel in Tear in 8 episodes - Perrin's wolf journey, the Wonder Girls training, Mat in TV, with the AS, and going after the girls, Falme, whatever they add to Moiraine, Rand / Selene, Cairhien.  And the Wonder Girls plot needs a lot of time duration, especially if they intend dropping them returning to the Tower after Falme. You need to feel them in training, the same way you did Arya as a Faceless Man.

1 hour ago, EmreY said:

 

Hmmm.  So they are not giving us Falme and Tear in the same season.

I can see them taking ship from Falme at the end of Season 2, arriving in Tear at the start of season 3, and heading straight for Callandor. The important plot points from the tDR pre-Tear get spread across season 2 on the various journeys to Falme.

7 hours ago, Asthereal said:

Probably Jordan just didn't leave many notes on what he was planning with Fain. Sanderson didn't pick up on the importance of the character and regretted not giving him more bits to make his ending feel more important after he got feedback from readers. But the only reason why Sanderson would think Fain wasn't very important is if he didn't have anything about him. And Jordan not leaving notes on Fain gives me the idea that Jordan also wasn't planning anything as impactful is you're suggesting, I fear.

 

I don't see a reason in the books to assume Jordan was contemplating anything or anyone else in place of the Dark One. Also it doesn't fit my theory, but that's just a theory. ? Padan Fain replacing the Dark One is probably the wildest theory I've seen so far (though I signed up here last week, so I have a ways to go).

Just had a further thought here - it's possible that Fain's death at Mat's hands was supposed to occur at Merrilor, not Shayol Ghul. Same death, same Ruby fades into the ground, but under the soft spot in the pattern patched by Egwene with the flame of tar valon. Then, if Rand kills the DO at Shayol Ghul, the ruby is the seed for the Next Dark One, and the new soft spot through which the bore gets drilled is at Merrilor.  The same way Logain was the insurance policy if Rand turned.

Just for the record, let me say that I know what the show was going for with the different make ups for degrees of burn out, and at no time did I think they intended to show Nynaeve as dead. But somewhere between the filming, the post-production, the FX, and the editing, the production team screwed the pooch, and the result was she looked dead. Admit it, accept it, and move on. 

And for those of you on the other side of this debate, yes, it makes the show look bad, but under no circumstances does this mean that Egwene (or others) can raise the dead with the power. They screwed the pooch, they have to know they screwed the pooch. With luck, they have learned their lesson not to screw this particular pooch again. Do not assume malice when incompetence will serve...

and for Dog's sake, please just let this one go. On both sides. Care all you like, and debate all you like, but getting buried in nits like this, when there are so many broader issues with the show to be highlighted for future feedback and constructive criticism helps absolutely no one.

41 minutes ago, AdamA said:

Not that I expect LOTR prequel to rise to the same level, but Godfather and Godfather II were 1972 and 1974, barely making the "last 50 years" cut. Raging Bull was 1980. Saving Private Ryan 1997. Sopranos, The Wire, and Breaking Bad all pretty decent tragedies from television.

 

Even the very specific example of hubris and lust to conquer death accidentally destroying civilization was done quite well by Dark as recently as two years ago, though it was German, not a Hollywood production.

I'll give you Raging Bull, and The Godfathers - it's been a long time - but Saving Private Ryan wasn't a tragedy (they achieved their mission, even at the cost of their lives; win!). I never saw The Wire, and in your other examples, the bad guys got what was coming to them - they weren't about the downfall of good men; they were already mobsters (true of SoA and The Shield, too).  But hey, I think that MacBeth isn't a tragedy, either, since the bad guy got what was coming to him, and I had no emotional resonance with him as a "hero".  IF you don't do enough to establish that your bad guy protagonist used to be a good guy, I don't consider it a tragedy when he dies.

I'm not saying they don't have tragic elements - there is always tragedy in the "What Might Have Been" aspect of story telling - but to actually show the shift from Hero to Villain in an effective way, and still get people to mourn when the former hero succumbs to the consequences of their actions? That's hard.

58 minutes ago, Gothic Flame said:

Just think of the Nine. Who is the Witch King? Who was Khamûl, and each of the other Nazgûl? One could be from Númenor, another could be an Easterling (Khamül), another one could be from Far Harad, or Umbar, etc. Which means that we could see all these different places. And they can get somewhat creative about it, since Tolkien wrote so little about them. 
There are some details about the nine, but only Khamul was the only other named. The game from Ice Crown Enterprises detail the others being consistent with the source material and so often presented it wouldn't surprise me if they did get ICE on board. (I found the material impressively immersive!) 

I retort with two words...

Anakin...

Skywalker....

9 hours ago, Gothic Flame said:

We have a lot of characters but not a lot of characterization. That's why I'm leery about the writers. After WoT and either hearing the excuses for the lack of, or worse, hearing "good enuff" a company paying that much money had damn well do better than mediocre. The writing needs to be superlative, and the characters need to live. 

They have plenty of leeway in this regard. 

I think the LOTR writers have it both easier and harder than any of the adaptations we usually discuss. On one hand, it's easier, because the the entire second age is represented by 32 pages of the Silmarillion - 20 minutes of TV time, give or take, according to usual conversions. And aside from the forging, and the Downfall itself, not a single viewer will be able to complain about "it wasn't that way in the books". As long as, you know, there aren't 42 Rings of Power, 6 of which go to Hobbits to wear at different meals.

On the other hand, the writers will have to create out of whole cloth the fabric and story of the second age, and it will have to feel like Lord of the Rings; magic, sets, language, costuming. And there are only a few possible characters for the Dr. McCoy / Scotty on TNG type special episodes (Galadriel / Celeborn / Haldir, Elrond, Arwen, Thranduil, Legolas, that female elf that doesn't exist)

On the gripping hand (for Niven fans), the Akallabeth is a tragedy, about how hubris and the lust for power and immortal life results in the downfall of an entire advanced civilization. And absolutely nothing I've seen from Hollywood in the last 50 years has shown me they have anyone who knows what a true tragedy feels like, let alone shown the ability to successfully write one.

I wish them well, and I will check it out, but I am not hopeful. 

52 minutes ago, Gothic Flame said:

As I posted elsewhere, Amazon wants this to be a success. They want their series to be sitting next to Jackson's LOTR. And at half a billion...it sounds like they're willing to make a big gamble.

But the whole issue with LOTR is that for all of it's epic scope, it's an incredibly small story. If I look at the cast of IMDB as a proxy for character importance, the actress who played Rosie Cotton is listed 26th. I would bet that in the books (as opposed to the movies), scenes with only the members of the Fellowship, Gollum, and no other characters account for much more than half the books.

But to turn around and to try and do multiple settings, multiple main characters (and their individual supporting cast), and then do the whole thing cutting across either multiple generations (the Numenoreans are human, after all)  or multiple settings (Lindon, Morder, Numenor, Osgiliath? Moria, Blue Mountains, Angmar, etc, etc, etc) means this is going to be almost like multiple mini-series with a Doctor Who type villain, and not a single story. 

Oh, and by comparison and to tie it back to WoT, the same character importance chart for WoT from IMDB for Season 1 has Tam Al'Thor at 25th, and GoT has Tywin Lannister. Those numbers will greatly change over the series, since alot of the AS and warders are in multiple S1 episodes, but it just highlights how many more people are around in what we think of as Epic Fantasy, even though LOTR defined the genre.

34 minutes ago, Gothic Flame said:

The Rings of Power

 

The eagerly anticipated, multi-season drama is called The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

As the name suggests, the story follows the forging of the original rings of power that allowed Sauron to spread darkness across Middle-earth.

The Rings of Power unites all the major stories of Middle-earth’s Second Age: the forging of the rings, the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, the epic tale of Númenor, and the Last Alliance of Elves and Men,” said showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay. “Until now, audiences have only seen onscreen the story of the One Ring — but before there was one, there were many … and we’re excited to share the epic story of them all.”

This epic drama is set thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and will take viewers back to an era in which great powers were forged, kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin, unlikely heroes were tested, hope hung by the finest of threads, and the greatest villain that ever flowed from Tolkien’s pen threatened to cover all the world in darkness. Beginning in a time of relative peace, the series follows an ensemble cast of characters, both familiar and new, as they confront the long-feared reemergence of evil to Middle-earth. From the darkest depths of the Misty Mountains, to the majestic forests of the elf-capital of Lindon, to the breathtaking island kingdom of Númenor, to the furthest reaches of the map, these kingdoms and characters will carve out legacies that live on long after they are gone.”

The Lord of the Rings is already considered the most expensive show of all time, with the first season costing an estimated $465 million. The production was mainly filmed in New Zealand. Then last fall, announced it was moving to the U.K.

The ensemble cast includes Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Robert Aramayo, Owain Arthur, Maxim Baldry, Nazanin Boniadi, Morfydd Clark, Ismael Cruz Córdova, Charles Edwards, Trystan Gravelle, Sir Lenny Henry, Ema Horvath, Markella Kavenagh, Joseph Mawle, Tyroe Muhafidin, Sophia Nomvete, Lloyd Owen, Megan Richards, Dylan Smith, Charlie Vickers, Leon Wadham, Benjamin Walker, Daniel Weyman and Sara Zwangobani.

The debut season of LOTR will premiere Friday, Sept. 2, on Prime Video and will air in 240 territories around the world. New episodes will be rolled out on a weekly basis.

I don't know how the heck this is going to work; if they want to include the forging, the capture, the Akallabeth and the last Alliance over the course of the series, that's a period of more than 1,800 years, 1500 of which Sauron doesn't do much.  And if they follow the decline and role of each of the other 19 Rings of Power, then this is going to be a massive, massive undertaking.

On 1/17/2022 at 12:35 PM, EmreY said:

 

Making the Forsaken just a smidgen more competent would be fun, I think.

 

Or, perhaps I'm mistaken.  What if RJ wanted the Dark One and his Minions to be incompetent, not just to avoid having someone with half a brain as a protagonist (and instead concentrate on the problems of the sewage system in Tear or whatever) but to suggest that they're not evil, just stupid?

They've already done that; if they do go with the 8 instead of the 13, the average success rate per Forsaken goes up significantly, because it's the ineffective / unimportant ones who get dropped. Aside from Asmodean - who has one specific function in the story that depends on his incompetence - would give the remaining ones marks ranging from B- to A+ in terms of villainy

I think what RJ was going for in this is that the Forsaken are only human, and not even the best / worst of humanity.  In a lot of ways, they're about the banality of evil, and not the threat of EVIL!

On 1/2/2022 at 9:39 PM, ForsakenPotato said:

Ok but back to predictions...it seems like with Moiraine's Season 1 ending they want to speed up the plot and raise the stakes of encounters with baddies. In the books it takes a long time before there are major losses for any main characters. Based on that I believe Moiraine is currently stilled and not just shielded, and Siuan's deposition will arrive sooner and I think may end in death rather than stilling.

 

Jeffy B wants the next Game of Thrones...and that show got a lot more popular after Ned's execution and the Red Wedding, primarily because viewers realized that good characters who did all the right things were not protected from bad endings. I don't think WoT will be nearly as violent as GoT but I predict at least one non-book death in Season 2, and I think Siuan is the most likely.

I think we'll be okay for season 2, since someone's noble sacrifice at the end will carry the weight.  I don't think Siuan will be killed in season 2, since that would lose them the ability to show her reaction to FoH. I also think she has a major role to fulfill in season 8

If they do kill someone to snip out an entire B plot, then I expect it will be Morgase, as a means of dropping her entire arc.

On 12/2/2021 at 9:37 AM, DojoToad said:

Did anyone mention the battle of Camelyn?  Major numbers and carnage but in tight confines.  Should be able pull this one off without a cast of thousands.

This would be one of the Battle of the Four Fronts I mentioned (Camelyn, the Gap, Saldaea, and Iforget)  that forces the consolidation at Merrilor.

14 minutes ago, fra85uk said:

 

Honestly, I am not so interested in the reason of the changes (I have my idea that a lot are just ideology-driven but it has been discussed to nausea). But for example, some changes are just plain stupid and show that this people is not very smart.

Example: 

 

book: the Gates are opened with the leaf and then, when the party is fleeing from the black wind, Moiraine reaches for the gate and....no leaf! So, desperately she channels and opens them.

Message received: The Gates can be opened by everyone who knows the leaf-trick BUT the OP can also be used (with all the risks connected to using the OP in the Ways)

 

Show: OP is used to open the gates both times, no mention of the leaf but then Padan Fain also opens them.

Message received: the gates open only with the OP---> Padan Fain probably OP user---> oh no wait, we have to put an extra to show what happened

 

It doesn't seem to me the definition of streamlining and clarity.

See, this is the kind of change I don't like - those where a 5 second shot would both improve clarity, move the lore closer to the book, and add some value to characters.  Just have Loial tell Moirane that the trefoil key is missing, before she starts to channel it open, and it adds a use to Loial, sets up that there is a way to open it besides the power, reduces the speculation that Fain can channel, and still lets Moiraine show off.

Yeah, I think the back catalogue of quality content is a huge driver.  So that they don't run into what Disney + is getting, with people storing up shows, subbing, binging them all in a month, and then unsubbing again. Amazon has the shipping advantage to tie people to Prime, but even that has a big season subscription swing (for Xmas season)

Ultimate, I think the streaming services want to be like gym memberships - used frequently enough that it's not worth the hassle of the sub / unsub cycle, even if people aren't using it every day. 

It's another reason (combined with word of mouth opportunities) why I think the weekly release model will win out, because that will at least guarantee a couple of billing cycles.

4 minutes ago, fra85uk said:

Don't worry. He will fridge her to speed up his development

Maybe she'll be found in the snow above Minas Tirith with the sapling growing out of her chest?

And seriously? Isildur's in this? I didn't think it was that close to the end of the age.

19 minutes ago, Chadouken said:

I had no idea people were sending the show runners hate mail and telling them to kill themselves, etc.  That's some bullshit.

To this point, and one that has been raised previously, I agree that it was naive for Sarah to think she wasn't going to get this kind of blowback. Because the reality is this kind of entitled feedback - personal, visceral, violent and way past criticism - from fans is now common in every artform, genre and property. WoT has been moderately bad, LOTR was worse, but Star Wars was way, way, way worse - like hire bodyguards and shrinks worse.  It happens to musicians all the time, as well.

Fans think because they love a particular form of art, they are entitled to own that art (that's not MY WoT!), the artist who created it, (finish the damn books, GRRM, you fat ph*ck!!) and other people's interpretations of it. (others shouldn't feel differently about something I love / hate. They should feel exactly the way I do for the reasons I do!!! Losers!!!)

Edit; These fans also feel entitled to try and destroy art if is not exactly what they wanted. Either in the hopes that someone else will then do what they would have done, or simply to prove that everyone else shares their opinion, whether they do or not.

It's one of the main reasons have no social media presence whatsoever - the combination of group think, anonymity, and "good natured" trolling has lead to a poisonous atmosphere, and an escalation of hostility where people agree on probably 70% of every topic.

18 hours ago, Rogue One said:

Thank you for your answers! I think I am in agreement with you on 1) 

 

Yes the point about the taint being important is a very good one. My thinking overall given everything’s that’s been said in this thread is however that the “Reborn” part of the Dragon is - not that relevant? What makes Rand special is the “reality warping” (whatever the mechanism is exactly), which he doesn’t get from being LTT reborn but just as himself / the champion of the light. LTT’s memories are useful insight what could and couldn’t work in rand’s planning of his endgame, but it seems secondary to the other abilities he has. Even being a super strong channeler seems useful along the way, but not crucial to the endgame? 

I like this, but there's a small issue - we don't see Rand actively warp reality until after the DO is sealed; the episode with the crops is specifically noted as a Ta'veren rebellion by the pattern in attempt to offset the darkness being introduced from the DO breaking free. It is the opposite of the Scene in Tear (?), where grain rots in the holds of ships immediately.  After Veins of Gold, he is aware of what is happening, so he warns the farmers to harvest, but I never read it as him causing it, per se.

And this distinction is important, because otherwise, it robs Rand of his humanity before the conflict with the DO. Him elevating afterwards is a reward for a job well done (like Nakomi), but he met the challenge while fully human - a channelling Ta'veren, sure, but a very human one.

In most of these type of stories, where the Immortal Gods choose a mortal champion, the champion's maintenance of their mortality, humanity and morality is generally the key to their victory. Hence, "maybe we come back so we can do better, and love again" from Tam to Rand, and then from Rand to LTT. None of what he could do mattered, who he was did.

57 minutes ago, EmreY said:

 

Personally, I'm looking forward to the downfall of Numenor.  But before that:

 

 

 

I thought this was strictly limited to second age stuff - post trees, post Beleriand, post Morgoth, post Feanor. Basically, only the stuff covered in the Akallabeth chapter, and not the earlier stuff. It's a nice image, though

2 minutes ago, Ararana24 said:

It's disappointing as hell that we live in a world where someone can receive physical threats, or threats of any kind really, for work on a fictional show about fictional people set in a fictional place. The internet is simultaneously the best and worst thing to ever happen to the world. 

 

That said, she deserves every ounce of non-threating criticism for her work. I understand she doesn't have final say, but I'd have gotten myself fired after reading the script for ep 8. The show was bad but somewhat redeemable up until ep 8. Ep 8 just threw it off a cliff. 

I repeat:

if she were willing to make the changes to the show you want as a result of the treatment she is receiving, do you then think the treatment would be acceptable? 

7 minutes ago, Cauthonfan4 said:

where did you go to school?

90% and above is an A

80% to 89% is a B

70-79% is a C

60-69% is a D

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_grading_in_the_United_States

 

Wow. I did not know that.  That's not even close to the system in use in Canada, which is also on the page

Numerical values in America are applied to grades as shown below:

• A = 4
• B = 3
• C = 2
• D = 1

This allows grades to be easily averaged. Additionally, many schools add .33 for a plus (+) grade and subtract .33 for a minus (−) grade. Thus, a B+ yields a 3.33 whereas an A− yields a 3.67.^[14] A-plusses, if given, are usually assigned a value of 4.0 (equivalent to an A) due to the common assumption that a 4.00 is the best possible grade-point average, although 4.33 is awarded at some institutions. In some places, .25 or .3 instead of .33 is added for a plus grade and subtracted for a minus grade. Other institutions maintain a mid-grade and award .5 for the grade. For example, an AB would receive a 3.5-grade point and a BC would receive a 2.5-grade point. The industry standard for graduation from undergraduate institutions is a minimum 2.0 average. 

Just now, ilovezam said:

Wait, in which universe is this the case? The Internet hate that you see for Rafe Judkins is entire orders of magnitude greater than the number of times Sarah is even brought up, there's no way that's true lmao.

 

I think Sarah was comparing herself to Brandon Sanderson, the other consultant (who is male), and complaining about how he seems to be let off much more lightly.

I'm not talking about public hate - I'm talking about comments in her DM's - we haven't seen them, but I can almost guarantee she is receiving different kinds of hate in that that Rafe is. 

1 hour ago, Cauthonfan4 said:

simple math

10944*9 = 98496

14882*8 = 119056

10154*7 = 71078

5104*6 = 30624

3104*5 = 15520

1891*4 = 7564

1912*3 = 3824

1804*2 = 3608

49795 total voters. 349770 total score.

349770/49795 = an average of 7.02.

that means the average is around 70%, which would be around a C minus in school or a 1.7 GPA. hardly something to celebrate.

 

 

What freaking school did you go to? a 1.7 GPA is a C-. 70% is a B where I went to school

8 minutes ago, Cranglevoid said:

Utterly unacceptable that anyone should receive hateful messages based on something as trivial as a TV series, but it's really disappointing to have her completely disregard any criticism of the show.

 

But I guess she wouldn't want to risk saying anything negative and lose her position.

Tell me then, if she were willing to make the changes to the show you want as a result of the treatment she is receiving, do you then think the treatment would be acceptable?  What makes you think she has any authority on the set whatsoever? Send your complaints to Rafe, if you're trying to effect change.

Oh, and 

Nothing someone says before the word 'but' really counts" - Ned Stark