22 hours ago, Scarloc99 said:

I mean I agree the fight scenes in Witcher are better done, the battle scenes in GOT where also better, but, if people think WOT is not the story of the books, Witcher is so so so far removed from anything that was written that it absolutely is a new and different story. And the rubbish Prequel they made as well is some of the worst fantasy TV that anyone has ever made. 

My opinion:

Witcher S1 is not bad (better than WoT)

Witcher S2 and S3 very bad (below WoT)...and guess why? they derailed heeavily from source material, so much that even their star decided to quit.

Witcher Blood Origin is trash.

17 minutes ago, HeavyHalfMoonBlade said:

Who said I was positive? There is a boatload I don't like about the series. However, I try to remain objective and limit my stupidity to minimum. I would recommend the same to everyone else. 

 

And I would agree with you that for all I Iike Ms Pikes, this is not her best work and relies far too heavily on her looking wordlessly at people over and over again. However it is what it is, and complaining about such basic things seems pointless. Overall, I would say the casting is good, imo, though I wish they would direct Perrin better. Too often it seems that he is told to look as gormless as possible, which seems a shame.

 

I am grateful for this adaptation, and I will enjoy what I can, and I am glad they are not inventing something new. 

In this sense, you are more positive (than me I was intending not in absolute value). In my opinion they have already invented something new (and quite bad in some cases), call it another turning of the wheel if you want.

8 minutes ago, HeavyHalfMoonBlade said:

Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy. I would suggest you come better armed to a discussion with me. 

Ok, lack of fluidity in the movements, lack of a nice flow in swordfights, the strength of hits is not sold, editing obliged to cut fast to sell you that something good is happening while it's not, fights almost always in the dark. so you cannot understand again what's going on (because what's going on is not good).

Just for comparison, look at how Henry Cavill plays the Witcher and how believable he is in his fights.

7 hours ago, HeavyHalfMoonBlade said:

I do not think that anyone is arguing that these specific changes had to be made. But changes had to be made. I don't pretend to understand how you write a TV series, but I am pretty sure it more complicated than simply abbreviating the existing story. 

 

Of course, It is not only abbreviating the story but also not changing the tone, the genre, the core of the story. Novel scenes can happen and they are welcome (flashbacks on the Forsaken, stuff we did not see about beloved characters etc etc) but they still should convey key points within the source material, just differently from it (instead we get "oh my bond").  Otherwise, why not just invent something  completely new? (answer: they are not talented to do that)

For the rest, I am sorry to say but Rosamund Pike larger role is one of the worst thing of the show at this point (as her storylines).

I would like to be as positive as you but with 2/8(?) seasons already out I find difficult to imagine course-corrections. 

7 hours ago, HeavyHalfMoonBlade said:

I think many people would agree the editing of the fight scenes is frustrating as it switches camera angles so quickly it is difficult to appreciate what is happening. And I have seen many comment they would like larger scale set pieces. But to call it amateur level, is objectively incorrect and insulting. 

Honestly, in this particular case I can say to be an expert because I have been practiced martial arts for 20 years, been a pro, a champ and I have coreographated fights that went on TV.

Fight scenes are terrible in this show but at least this is not a big problem because they just decided to go all in on drama and there are very few of them.

23 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

i liked one piece a lot, but the action sequences had a fake/staged feeling to them. it works for the anime, because it's the kind of story you don't take 100% seriously. not so much for wheel of time. the aviendha sequence was a lot better than anything in one piece. the lan vs myrdraal would have been, except that the fades conveniently stopped attacking and took their time looming ominously whenever lan was down.

Fight scenes in OP are exaggerated but stylish and well filmed

In WOT we are almost at amateur level of fighting and directing.

23 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

one piece follows exactly 2 story lines: the main protagonists, and coby+garp. you can't really draw comparisons on that

Technically, the first books of WoT also follow a small number of storylines and should have been the easier to adapt with some tweaks here and there.

I really feel we should stop pretending that some changes were made because they had to,  while it is clear that they actually wanted to.

By the way, this is perfect legitimate. I can argue that taking an adventuresque fantasy and transform it in an almost actionless drama in expansive costumes is not what many fans would like to see but they are perfectly entitled to follow that route, just I am not obliged to buy that it was the only possible route.

On 10/27/2023 at 2:07 PM, king of nowhere said:

I think the main reason one piece worked so well is that it's not too serious. It has serious parts, it has legitimate drama, but it also has a lot of sillyness. And that kind of tone does not need to be super consistent: it can get away with rule of cool and rule of funny in a way that a more serious work like wheel of time cannot. 

Still all the humorous and funny parts of WOT books are lost in the adaptation

Of course, the two series have a very different tone but, from Ep. 1 S1, just from the depiction of Em..ehm Two Rivers,  it is clear that they were trying to paint it with a darker tone...and then they filled it with too much non-sense drama/mistery (who is the Dragon, Moraine walk of shame/exile, is she stilled/shielded, the pointless bond storyline) at the cost of incredibly subtracting from adventure, worldbuilding, cool moments and also some funny ones.

24 minutes ago, nsmallw said:

In episode eight of season one, she gives it to Rand, and he uses it in the  "battle" with Ishamael. 

 

He should still have it so his lack of ability to prevent being shielded is even more odd if he had a sa'angreal that "thousands of male channelers had poured their power in" .

 

Rand forgot the PIN code or it ran out of battery.

On 10/20/2023 at 11:10 PM, SinisterDeath said:

They definitely did more then just cut content. They introduced characters earlier, which means that characters met and interacted earlier then they did.
Which means that some characters were never in the same room during certain fight scenes as they were in the Manga/Anime as they were in the Live Action adaptation.

One early change is Luffy eating the Fruit. He did it accidently in front of others, not by himself and hidden.
(Change of Motivation)

The clown episode was totally different. So much so that they completely rewrote everything about that town. This is literally on the same vein as "luffy having sex with Nami or Sanji fridging his wife". Why? Because the towns people weren't kidnapped, and Mayor Boodle and Chouchou were willing to die to defend their town.

Usop's two episode adventure. "Merry" the Butler was never killed in the Manga or Anime. He actually gifted them the ship.

In the Manga/Anime, Nami's sister & village knew about her sacrifice the entire time. They knew she wasn't a traitor.

Obviously Garp never visited the Island in the Manga/Anime.

You can thank this list for all of the above points I highlighted.
https://beebom.com/one-piece-live-action-vs-anime-major-changes/#:~:text=The most substantial change in,stop from chasing his dream.

 

Those were "significant" changes to characters arcs, motivations, and story arcs.

The difference here is.

You aren't as attached to One Piece as you are as you are to Wheel of Time, so those "changes" don't cut as deep.

...and still it is a much more faithful adaptation than WOT will ever be because it captures the heart of  One Piece

As a stand-alone TV show, WOT is quite decent/watchable but it is not a faithful adaptation. They wanted too much to put a GOT object in a WOT shaped thing.

By the way, overall I think that the success of GOT hurted other fantasy franchises sooooooo bad.

Imagine WOT show done after the LOTR trilogy.

Yes. 

You can have cuts and still be faithful to source material as it is sanely possible.

Or you can make Luffy having sex with Nami, Zoro coming from a drunken and abusive father, Sanji freezing his made-up wife...

8 hours ago, Scarloc99 said:

I think the kind of show that some on here would want to see whould end up being an atrocious mess of long exposition followed by cuts from scene to scene with no real character development or growth, a confused mess of a story that even book fans would watch and hate. 

making a TV show is not easy, you might want all sorts of things on screen but you have a budget, you have time restrictions and you have limitations. Lord of the Rings took 438 days pretty much filming every day, it took 7 film units, 150 locations and peter jackson monitoring each unit remotely via satellite feed. He was constantly re writing the script and ony got about 4 hours of sleep a night. 

 

WOT does not have that budget, it does not have that amount of time, 438 days to make 9 hours of movie. So decisions have to be made as to what can be shot, what locations can be used, where to spend the money on effects. That then feeds into the creative choices. 

I would love to see "almost anyone" on this board have a go at making that al come together in something passably looking like WOT lol. You might not like the WOT tv show, that is your personal opinion, there are many many who do, who think it is a really good show, that might confuse you but, guess what, its opinion there is no right or wrong here. What is a fact is that a human being does not pick up a project like WOT intending to use it as a vanity project, trying to prove they are a "better writer" or  "wanting to tank the show". Have mistakes been made, yes, in my opinion minor ones that in the grand scheme of things don't stop it from being one of the best fantasy shows on TV at the moment.

 

Is season 2 an improvement, yes, where changes always going to need to be made, yes, and is there a version of this show that makes everyone, book reader and non book reader happy all at the same time. Absolutely not, there is no way this show could be adapted and make everyone happy with everything. A version that stuck "closer to the books" whatever that means would probably have tanked with non book reading audiences and that would have killed the show 100%. 

 

 

short reply:

One Piece showed that you can be successful and be true to source material

Now, imagine the One Piece Ip in the hands of someone like Rafe and his Fors...ehm Chosen.

Actually no need to imagine because this was the Cowboy Bebop disaster.

Then the same people learnt from their mistakes and understood that maybe maybe the existing fanbase of a beloved IP wants something respectful to the source material.

Results: they got a big success...while we can say that WOTshow  at best is not a super-flop.

21 hours ago, HeavyHalfMoonBlade said:

Carridin's fleeting regret that his actions had caused the horrible murders of his family members only highlights the two-dimensionality of the mean and selfish bad guys in my opinion, but I agree it is interesting to see his inner thoughts. Though it also emphasizes what a rough time Darkfriends get, difficult to see how you would ever have a content DF, doesn't seem like a winning recruitment policy.

 

There is quite a lot of hardships handed out females. Isendre, for example. That is pretty brutal, and involves the humiliation of a beautiful woman with a great emphasis placed on her beauty and her nudity, who is being punished and tortured by the Maidens but also forced to whore herself by the Shadow, and then is murdered once her attractiveness is gone and her spirit is broken. Every female Forsaken apart from Mesaana (who is turned into vegetable, which raises... well, nevermind), is tortured in really brutal fashion. None of the men are. Not that I can bring to mind, at least. 

 

I also don't get this attitude that you often see here, that someone posts that for example, for them there was too much emphasis on sexual abuse and torture of women. And then someone posts "no your wrong, you should not think that". Perhaps we should all be a bit more open to listen to other fans of book, and allow the different perspectives on the forum to enrich us, instead of seeing this as some kind of platform to impose our wills on?

No but I don't think you were wrong or arguing on the fact that 

"there was too much emphasis on sexual abuse and torture of women"

Just i don't think it was RJ purpose to have us feel happy about the Darkfriends getting retribution.

2 minutes ago, Yamezt said:

 

 

 

Also,  I would be quite happy for the removal of all torture and sexual assault in the TV series too on female darkfriends and forsaken when they fail/capture. I don't know if RJ was trying to evoke a sense of schadenfreude from the readers or something, but I found it uncomfortable. Sure, I realise the world is a horrible place - and he probably knows more than I do how awful the world is with his experience of war - but it is like female darkfriends and forsaken have things dialled up to 20 when karma strikes them while the men just die quickly after battle and sometimes rather unceremoniously 

Again, I disagree with this interpretation. I don't think RJ wanted us to feel schadenfreude. I often felt bad for the bad guys. For example, it was quite delicate the way he handled Jaichim Carridin POVs during his fall and how he tought about his family. Furthermore, the same darkfriend was horribly tortured and his death was disgusting.

3 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

It's calling him a "disgrace" and the call for black listing that will get me riled up as a mod.

Technically he said that "Overall their choices have been a disgrace to the original text. ", not that he is a disgrace himself (at most a disgrace bringer 🙃)

 As for the blacklist, Well, I would black list the coach of my team from professional football (the real football, not the US one played with hands). 🙄
I don't think it is ad hominem attack to hope that someone whose work you don't like will never touch an IP that you love.

When Netflix announced One Piece, I would have been still in hospital for heart attack if at the voice "Showrunner" I would have read "Rafe Judkins" 🤣 but that does not mean I hate him. I wish for him a successful career of original and adapted TV-show, preferably not from books/Ips I like 🙂

I always thought (but probably translation could change meaning of some words) that having seen Tylin-Mat relationship from Mat (usually comically unreasonable), it was him being the reluctant lover (instead of the typical reluctant hero). Reread recently and never saw it this way.

Maybe it was salty language but i don't see it as ad hominem attack.

Probably Rafe is a marvellous human being, salt of the earth etc. etc. but I think it is still fine to express that opinion that I would instantly swap him with a random user of this forum as a showrunner of WoT (with a few exceptions @Elder_Haman 😝)

33 minutes ago, Guire said:

I think Emonds Field was changed because current US politics defines rural small town as regressive and urban cosmopolitan as progressive.  Another reason is that in US many lgbtq people leave small towns to urban enclaves to a found family situation that is more supportive.  Problem with this in WoT is that Two Rivers is not just another small town like many show supporters want it to be.  It is also not the Shire.  Two Rivers is like the Waste for Aiel.  It creates a particular culture and set of circumstances that our main characters use as source of strength and develop past.  RJ og shows lots of shit little towns with seedy characters.  

 

Two Rivers was born from a major defeat of the dark one's forces.  Manatheran sacrificed itself to save the world. It left just a fragment of its people and none of its wealth and culture.  But it left this stubborness and pride baked into its children.  The old blood sings.  This sort of nationalism and pride of culture may not be popular to progressives and can be horribly manipulated for all kinds of evil.  It is a thing though and has giving many people resolve and comfort in the face of horror.

I add to this very good post that making EF as cosmopolitan as the London subway deprives ) that story of a very nice (and progressive) arc (or at least imho weakens it):

when refugees come to EF, they do not only find shelter but EF goes from being a small rural town to a city with new activities, new customs, more florid commerce. In other words, a clear example of the wonders of a multicultural society in which the strengths of all individuals complement each other.

2 hours ago, Ralph said:

https://winteriscoming.net/2023/10/16/a-key-scene-was-cut-from-the-wheel-of-time-season-2-finale/

Wow always making the right choice (sarcasm).

On 10/14/2023 at 11:08 PM, Elder_Haman said:

I think we get a version of it in the season finale.

My outline is something like this:

 

Group One:

Rand, Moiraine, Lan, Egwene --> to the Waste. Rand meets Asmo and trains with the power. Trains on the sword with Lan. Tension generated by Lanfear being there, unknown to Rand. (Two actresses so audience knows a bunch that Rand & Co. do not.) Rand hooks up with Avi. Season ends with Rand returning from Rhuidean.

 

Egwene trains with the Wise Ones --> the vehicle to learn about Aiel culture, prophecies, and history.

 

Moiraine --> focused on prophecy. Figures out who Lanfear is and saves him from Lanfear's jealousy in the final episode by tackling her into the door. (This may require some major changes to how Rhuidean works).

 

Group Two:

Elayne, Nynaeve, Mat, Perrin --> to Camelyn on their way to the Two Rivers. Perrin splits away (wolf stuff) and heads directly home. Mat gets lost in Camelyn and manages to find his way to the Finn. 

 

First half of the season --> vehicle for learning about Andoran politics, Elaida, Morgase and the rest of the family. Introduction of a male Forsaken. Elayne and Nyn leave for Tanchico mid-season. Find Callandor (replacing BotW) at the end of the season. 

 

Perrin gets to the Two Rivers, finds it much changed. Trolloc assaults. Dain and Perrin become uneasy allies. Battle of the Two Rivers is the big finale.

Maybe they should find time to add Siuan plot (rumors say Elaida has been cast)?

The way you outline this is as close to books as it is possible at this point, I like it.

11 hours ago, Rhaze said:

 That is how you have to watch WoT. Turn off your brain, dont think too deeply, and enjoy the explosions.

Well, in order to do so, they should do actions scenes better.

The best one stil remains the cold open of Rand's mom in S1.

This is still a high-fantasy show: can we have some really cool, nicely coreographated and well directed action scenes at least? The way action scenes are filmed and cut is really disturbing and it is always difficult to understand what is going on.

32 minutes ago, trw1972 said:

 

I have been team Lanfear in the show for a while, but i like that ishys argument 'sort of ' makes sense and makes it all bit more grey.

 

As for the main characters not being treated right, i think we can all agree the Mat changes were forced on them? but i do hope we get quality mat, perrin and rand development in S3.

 But they need to give them real time and real quality storyline (a suggestion: there is a series of books called The Wheel of Time, crazy idea: get some inspiration from it?)

It is true that one of the good things about modern-day entertainment is that evil characters are given more space and more info about their motivations. 

This is valid also for WoT Show and Ishamael, Lanfear and Liandrin are very well presented in the show.

The only problem I have in this regard is that main characters for me have not received an equally good treatment and many times I found myself rooting for villains.

Small OT: Reading the books, I have always wondered about the details of Forsakens background which are only hinted at in the books. I would have loved to see a telling of that story.

38 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

I get that people don't care for my explanation of Egwene and the collar. (Which I have repeatedly conceded could have been handled better). Is there another example of one of my far-fetched justifications? 

They have been argued so many times: I respect you and don't want to start other arguments.

Let us just state what we agree on at this point: S2 better than S1 as a TVshow: no doubt about it

1 hour ago, Elder_Haman said:

Fortunately, unlike D&D, Rafe has a finished product to adapt so he doesn't have to try to come up with an ending to a massive saga all by himself. 

 

I think the thing that really gets my dander up about the book purists is they act like I need their permission to enjoy the show. 

If you like something, of course you don't need approval from anyone else.

By the way, Mirefox is not wrong either...let us say that sometimes  your justifications of some of the weaker points of the show are quite far-fetched...if next season, Rafe comes up with (i am just kidding Rafe, do not take notes) Callandor being a LightSaber, I can come to this forum or WoTShow and find thousands of justifications for that 🤣