I think the actual opening scene was a good choice. It introduced the fundamental tension of the series, male channelers go mad and the world is deathly afraid of them. Will Rand go mad before he saves the world?

Extreme disagreement with this take. A long time between series is a major negative and impacts the show writing. VERY few people will rewatch several years of shows to refresh themselves on nuances and subtle plot points before watching a new season. I like the series and am rereading the books for the second time, which makes me a fairly hardcore fan, and I have no desire to rewatch the series prior to season 3 to refresh myself on the series nuances. Since you don't like the series and only watched a few episodes in season 1, I'm not sure you have your finger on the pulse of series viewers. The implication is that the writers have to introduce broad strokes that people can remember and stay away from too many subtle points, outside of easter eggs and some surprises for the hardcore fans. A good example might be the Steppin storyline which many people disliked. Instead of a short bit of dialogue to establish important issues with the bond, they introduced a set of scenes to dramatize the issue. Would they have made the same choice if the seasons were closer together and the writers thought that the viewers would remember and understand it presented as dialogue? Don't know, but possible.

You don't have to show anything and can criticize the series anyway you want. The rest of us will just think that your criticisms are shallow and uninteresting.

Lazy, maybe. Disingenuous, yes. The whole thrust of my argument was to look at the series holistically instead of looking at pieces in isolation. Your counterexample to prove me wrong is to take an isolated scene and determine that it could be rewritten to be closer to the book without breaking anything else (ignoring any knock-on effects the rewrite may cause). Congratulations, you win. I'm willing to concede that you can take isolated scenes and rewrite them to be closer to the book, but this doesn't come close to showing that the adaptation as a whole, not isolated scenes, is better if written to more closely follow the source material.

If it sounds like I'm going on a rant here, I apologize in advance. I am getting very tired of this lazy argument that the show is against RJ because some individuals don't like it. Fine, everyone is entitled to their opinion and there are certainly things about the show to dislike. I call it lazy because these individuals never present arguments, but simply state they don't like it and that shows the bad intent/incompetence of the writers and proves the conspiracy against Robert Jordon. There are 3 factors that come into play that have to be accounted for in deciding how well the show is adapted. These are production constraints (e.g., budget; transforming a series as sprawling as WoT into maybe 64 episodes; routine filming issues like sets, costumes, actors, locations, and stretched out real world running time etc.; and WoT specific issues like the number of characters and the use of internal monologue for much of the character and plot development), the need to produce an interesting TV series, and inspiration from the source material. I and others have repeatedly invited the commentors who think that the series is an affront to Jordon to address how to better adapt the series while taking all three factors identified above into consideration. Yet, time after time, they only address the third point that the series is not faithful enough to the original and that shows that the series is insulting Robert Jordon. I, at least, would be far more open to their arguments if they addressed the show holistically instead of from the comparatively narrow perspective of book fidelity.

Not being "interested in the explanation" is on par for this discussion. It adds nothing substantive, just another assertion that I'm right and the writers are incompetent or evil. I'm one of those who thinks that WoT is basically unfilmable as written, especially when you include all the production issues involved, so I'm not as hung-up on book fidelity as others. The one thing that I would like in this discussion is a good faith effort from those who think that the book can be filmed as written to address all the real writing and production issues. I am not a writer or producer, but here is a short list of random things I think impact the writing and cause changes from the written source (DigificWriter can probably add more). Mundane issues: Standard issues in every multiyear project Money: 1. How many sets can we afford to build - Is our money better spent on a set used once (e.g., Camelyn in season 1) or other things. 2. How many costumes can we afford to create - is our money better spent on a set of costumes used once or other things 3. How much CGI can we afford 4. How to structure the story for efficient filming (cost, time, crew implications). For example, show most of Rand's/Mat's adventures in one place in season 1 instead of multiple locations. Actors: 1. What actors do we hire - WoT has lots of people who disappear for books and then reappear. Options include hire a known actor and hope they are available 5 years in the future when they are needed again, ignore the character, hire a complete unknown and hope they are available in 5 years when they are needed again, change the story to give them something to do during the 5 years to ensure their availability (e.g., Moiraine/Lan in season 2), recast the character in 5 years etc. 2. Training the actor - If an actor needs specialized skills (e.g., Rand and sword fighting), is it worth the time and money to train the actor, will the skill look good on screen, and how often will they use the skills. Good TV: 1. Show, not tell. Dialogue must supplement the visuals, not be the main mechanism to accomplish major plot and character points. 2. Identify the things in the books that work on TV and those that don't work on TV - All things that the writers determine don't work on TV have to be modified, eliminated, or accomplished through other means if critical to the story. 3. This is a long series that will take place over 10-12 real world years if all 8 years are produced - Subtle details will be lost over the years, so everything important has to be memorable or repeated ad nauseum. People remember long, in your face story arcs much better than dialogue or short, subtle scenes. 4. Heros must be likable (in the long-run) and relatable to the modern audience. You may call this an agenda, but nobody is going to watch 8 seasons over 12 years for characters they don't like and they don't relate to. Things that the audience won't relate to must be eliminated, modified, or achieved through other mechanisms if critical to the plot. WoT specific: 1. Most of the character development was driven through inner monologues. This character development had to be shown on screen in some fashion. 2. Lots of world and magic system building required. Several points above address why it might be better to do this through new material than try to force book material on screen. 3. Parts of the books were not very good (e.g., ending of EotW, depiction of EF, vast repetition of material to ensure readers remember the details from previous books, how many fights with Ishy were needed to climax books etc.) 4. Multiple simultaneous plot and character threads (after book 3 there are almost always 4 or 5 main threads and a couple of minor ones on-going at all times) with limited screen time is hard for an audience to follow. Agree that the writers missed on some decisions and it's too soon to know on others, but I don't see how "follow the books more closely" doesn't result in an unfilmable train wreck. I wish you would prove me wrong, but that would require addressing the writing and the decisions holistically within the context of the problems and constraints of adapting a long book series to a multi-year TV series. Just saying, follow the books is not convincing. I loved that change. I thought the book's description of EF was badly flawed because everyone was too gentile which is not realistic for a place like EF on the far edge of civilization. One of my main issues with Mat in the books was why was he, of all the EF folks, a jackass. He was a trickster, cad, gambler, and money grubber. Coming from a broken home answered the questions. He was a trickster to relieve the pressure from a bad home. He got his other bad habits as a result of his home life. Finally, his reluctant hero motif was a powerful redemption story on how his heroic nature transcended his broken home. So for me, the change greatly improved his character arc.

Hi, are you referring to me? You understand that my requests for how to film inner monologues are rhetorical statements and not a desire to see proposed screenplays. It is intended to get beyond content free statements like "writers and showrunners believe they can tell the story better" into actual discussions about how to film them in an interesting way that makes good TV, generates the necessary character development and stays as faithful to the books as possible. I think this is very hard to do all of them well simultaneously and accept the need to introduce new material, but lots of posters think otherwise. Fine, lets discuss. But just saying "be closer to the books" is not discussion, it's a way to shut down discussion because it's an appeal to emotion without any accompanying arguments which can be debated. What is statement even trying to say? How is Amazon purposely dividing the fans? That some fans like it and others don't? Doesn't that go with the territory? How about LOTR, is Amazon purposely dividing the fans on that show also? How do know it's true, do you have an actual argument backing up this statement?

1. I think the books are unfilmable, where I've explained my reasoning in gory detail in other threads. Saying the equivalent of "just film the books" with no rationale is a cop out to avoid serious thinking about the problems with trying to film it. 2. Congratulations on not having a life. Most people are not going to rewatch 56 hours of TV to understand the nuances for the final season. If you were the showrunner, would you assume most of your audience was going to rewatch previous years before each new season or design your show to accommodate normal people who don't have either the time or desire to rewatch previous seasons. The WoT books have massive repetition in them because of the amount of time between books. Jordon didn't believe most of his readers would reread the previous books to prepare for the next one. He solved the problem of his audience forgetting concepts by repeating them, sometimes ad nauseum (see the Perrin/Faile/Shaido arc which stretched over several books where much of the time in each book was used to remind readers how Perrin felt about Faile's situation without moving the plot forward). 3. The production constraints don't stop you from filming a series, but they do limit/change some of the things that you can do. The tEotW meeting of Elayne in Camelyn would have required a large cost for the set and actors for just a couple of scenes. Nothing in it was important to the rest of the season. Skipping it and setting up a different introduction of Elayne made perfect sense from a production viewpoint. Agelmar Jagad appears in the first and last books. From an actor viewpoint, it made perfect sense to kill him off in the first season because the character would need to be recast by the time he is needed again. Easier to just invent another respected military leader for his second appearance. I can come up with numerous other examples where deviating from the books makes sense from a production standpoint. Is it better to use the money and resources on other more important elements or use them to maintain consistency on minor points? 4. Dune (1984) was terrible, so this isn't the best example to show how to film an unfilmable book. Just saying that you don't understand why it's hard to film extensive internal monologues doesn't illustrate that you can film them while still being close to the books. Have you ever considered that not understanding is a "you problem" and not a problem with the showrunners understanding on how to make a TV series? 5. Just saying "be closer to the books" is not really an answer. Cutting significant portions of the inner monologues is not realistic since they contain much of the character development of the major characters and a significant amount of the world lore. The series is already combining multiple characters (with almost of the combining leading to complaints by the closer to the books crowd), so it's following your advice. So again, how would you "edit and script the books" in such a way that they are filmable? Playing out the series over 12 years is far from ideal, but that seems to be the schedule they are currently on. I would love to have a season per calendar year and that would allow the showrunners more latitude and might mitigate some of the concerns about the casual viewer (maybe 95% of the audience) forgetting the nuances. But as it stands today, the showrunner has to script for a series that will last years in real-time, which requires, in my opinion, compromises such as new arcs allowing casual viewers to remember and understand the series in broad strokes. Off topic - I've never understood why anyone suggests that Henry Cavill is a good actor. He is the most wooden major actor I've ever seen and wouldn't cast him in anything above a local theater production. After saying that, he works in Witcher since Geralt is supposed to be a non-emotive, wooden character, the perfect role for him.

I think that there are several issues that the people who believe that this series is filmable (or nearly filmable as written) don't wrestle with enough. Note that all these issues are interwoven and must be addressed together: 1. This is foremost a TV series and TV series and books are fundamentally different with their own rules for what works and doesn't work. The paramount goal is to make an interesting TV show 2. If everything comes together, the TV show will encompass 8 seasons over 12+ years (2021-2034?). This is a very very very long time to remember details. 3. Most viewers are not fanatics and will only watch the show once. This means they will have only sketchy memories of the details after a couple of years, but might maintain some understanding of the larger arcs. 4. Viewers have to have enough understanding of the background and motivations to appreciate the pay-off for a character that might have started 10+ years (in real time) before. 5. Much of the character development and their motivations are done in internal monologues* which are not filmable as written. Taken together, these facts suggest to me that small changes in dialogue or scenes will not suffice to show the necessary character development because they have no lasting impact to most viewers. Casual viewers need to be hit with the equivalent of a two-by-four of information to remember it years later. Dialogue isn't sufficient; large show arcs, possibly lasting years seem a much better method. By definition, these arcs will be new material, not in the books, because they are manifesting the details of each character's inner monologues. Since I'm trying to watch an interesting TV show, I'm willing to accept these types of changes because I think they are necessary for such sprawling (both in book info and real-world implications) material. This does not mean that I like every change or think that the show runners always got it right, but as long as the hit/miss rate is decent and the rest of the show is done well, I'm not going to lose sleep over the inconsistencies with the books. I've repeatedly asked the poster who think that it needs to be closer to the books for examples of how to film the books in such a way that the following things all hold: 1. INTERESTING TV show 2. Viewers in 2032 will remember enough from the early seasons to appreciate the character/event pay-offs 3. Accounts for filming constraints (time, money, actor availability, CGI capabilities, sets etc.) 4. Appropriate character development from the internal monologues is filmed 5. close enough to the books to satisfy your desire for consistency So far, crickets. Just more posts saying that the show needs to be more like the books. Maybe I'll be lucky and get a response in this thread. *In previous posts, I've called this "POV", but I think that Elder_Haman's description of them as "internal monologues" in more accurate, thus the change in terminology

How does the first sentence even begin to make sense? By definition, all the POVs, which makes up something like 50% of the books, is cut unless the writers find another way of conveying the information (which you constantly rail against because they aren't book cannon). yet you claim that most of the important character development and world building cut came from dialogue. If we get all 8 seasons, it will take 12+ years at the current rate. A single conversation happening in an early season laying out the problem won't be remembered in later seasons that might be 5 or more years later in the real world when the resolution comes in the series. So no, a conversation between Perrin and Elyas is not a good way to convey a major character issue like Perrin's inner conflict which is expressed symbolically in the books as having to choose either the axe or the hammer. In the books, this conflict came up repeatedly in Perrin POVs which gave meaning to the scenes when he finally choose the hammer. Are you suggesting that Perrin should have this same dialogue a bunch of times in the series so the viewers will remember it? That's boring TV. Some kind or arc, although outside the books, is more interesting TV and will allow viewers better understanding of his inner conflict. As an aside, the whole focus on Lan training Rand is similar to the problem with Perrin and the axe/hammer. Rand training with a sword is the symbolic representation on his inner conflict of Tam's son or the Dragon. As the Dragon, using a sword is silly, but as the son of a blademaster, the sword is his link to his adopted father. Lan providing advice on how to be a better man can and did happen outside his sword training. You choose to ignore my question about the difficulty (or ease) of filming POVs when responding to Elder_Haman earlier, perhaps you will reconsider.

These types of threads always make me bounce my head off the wall a few times. WOT was long considered an unfilmable series due to factors like the following: 1. 12000 pages 2. 2000 named characters 3. 5-7 major arcs and 2-3 minor arcs competing for attention at any given time for most of the series 4. taking place on 8 planes of existence (Randland, dreamworld, ways, portal stones, Aelfinn and Eelfinn worlds, and the arches in the Tower and Rhuidean) 5. complex magic system 6. complex lore 7. takes place in ~10 countries across the continent 8. 7+ major (and unique) cultures that need to be explained since they play important roles (Aeil, multiple Randland countries, Seanchan, Forsaken, Aei Sedai, Sea People, Ogier) 9. significant amount of CGI needed 10. massive amount of POV which encompass most of the character development 11. massive amount of POV We seem to have two viewpoints about how best to film an unfilmable book series (and make it visually interesting as a TV show): adapting it requires changes and additions to overcome the problems making it unfilmable; or film it like it was written. I know which viewpoint I subscribe to. I think that the hardest of the issues to overcome is the amount of POV and all the character development advanced by the POVs. I've asked this question several times to posters calling for a closer book interpretation, how do you incorporate the POV information into your idea of how to film the series? You could: 1. ignore the POVs entirely 2. put the character development and other important information contained in the POVs into dialogue (lots and lots and lots of dialogue) 3. introduce new scenes/arcs which show the character development and other important information in another way 4. other In reality, the first three should all be used and someone more knowledgeable than me might know other methods. Some things should be ignored, some limited amount of dialogue can be used to highlight some things, and some visual way should be found that create the same character development. So far, I get crickets to my question, just "it should be closer to the books" It's a valid opinion to think that the choices the showrunners made to try to overcome the issues identified above were bad and unsuccessful, but I don't believe that the correct answer to "the choices made in trying to film this unfilmable series were bad" is "make it more like the book". Maybe I'm wrong and you think that the book is easily filmable as written and makes a visually interesting TV series. If so, please tell me how you would film the POVs.

Speaking only for myself since I'm not omnipotent, I want an entertaining TV series that allows me to get closer to the world of the books. Faithfulness for the sake of faithfulness at the cost of entertainment is a bad trade-off. You are coming across as holier than the pope here. I expect that Robert Jordon himself, looking at the series as a whole for adaptation purposes would find issues with individual books and parts of books. The early books were interesting enough to continue reading the series, but they weren't perfect by any means. Honest question, why do you think a "very faithful adaptation" (however you define it) would make entertaining TV? In my view, things from the first 3 books that make bad TV include a lot of uninteresting walking from place to place, introduction of too many characters who are only important later in the series, cardboard thin characters for anyone not named Rand, few standout moments for anyone not named Rand except at the ends of books 2 and 3, and lots and lots of unfilmable POV. The first two seasons of the TV series addressed each of these issues one way or another. Maybe badly in some cases, but they attempted to replace things that made bad TV. Yes, they also update some of the sensibilities to better fit a modern audience. Why is this bad? An archaic feel to the show is not good TV and would tend to drive audiences away. Can you really watch archaic shows like Ozzie and Harriet today without feeling a little off-put? Just to take one example that posters are complaining about - the lack of sword training for Rand. I always saw the sword training as a symbolic extension of the "am I the Dragon or Tam's son" debate. Since the debate was strictly in Rand's POV, sword training doesn't add any character depth without a deep exploration of the Dragon v Tam question. Because the question played out in Rand's head, there is no good way to film it. The only way would be lots of Rand spilling his guts to someone through repetitive dialogue which is not good TV.

Now that we have seen Season 2, it would be interesting to revisit some of the important Season 1 creative decisions to see how they look after an additional year. Would we have argued over them for months (and months and months) if we knew what was coming? 1. Who is the dragon - this was always a Season 1 issue with no effect on Season 2 2. Lack of Tam and Rand's backstory - Poor to incomplete It had no effect on Season 2 and we don't know what effect it will have in future seasons (if any). TBF, Rand's anguish about not being Tam's son was pure POV that couldn't be filmed. In neither the book nor the series did he have someone to pour his heart out to about his ancestry. 3. Perrin killing his wife - Poor to incomplete This had little effect on Season 2 and we don't know what effect it will have in future seasons (if any) 4. Mat's broken family - Good I liked the story in Season 1 because I thought that EF was too Ozzie and Harriet for the time and place depicted, so I am biased. This allowed Mat to decide to be a hero in spite of his background instead of just drifting into a reluctant hero meme. Better TV. 5. Steppin - Fair to good They moved Lan's missing bond arc up a couple of seasons, so there needed to be something prior to that to give it meaning. 6. Move screen time to Liandrin and Logain - Good They were both great in Season 1 and 2. 7. Thom - incomplete With everything that happened in Season 2, he might have got lost in the shuffle. We need to see his role in later seasons to understand. 8. Not introducing Elayne - Good Introducing her in Season 1 would have been a very static scene with a lot of other actors who won't show up again for years, so I didn't miss it. Her introduction in Season 2 was very good and she had time and story to establish her character. We didn't miss her meeting Rand moment becase it was handled very well in Season 2. 9. Whitclocks - Fair to good Season 1 established that Whiteclocks could be both good and evil. Perrin with Dain moved that forward while still giving us a WTF moment when Perrin killed Geoffery Bornhold. 10. Suian - Poor to fair The oath scene played into Suian's actions with respect to Rand, which I didn't like much. 11. Ending - Episode 8 is still bad

Two points that are unspoken underlying assumptions on most of these types of posts. 1. The show runners are first and foremost trying to make an entertaining TV series. Fidelity to Robert Jordon's work is important, but they are willing to make changes if they think that it will make better TV. You can certainly argue that the writers might not understand what makes good TV and they might not have the skills to execute their vision. If we took a poll asking if we wanted better TV at the cost of fidelity or higher fidelity at the cost of worst TV, we all know which side would win. What the critics refuse to acknowledge and credit however is that one thing the writers are very good at is identifying what doesn't make good TV. Things that work in books may or may not work on screen and one of the first acts of an adaption should be to remove the elements that make bad TV. There are many elements of WOT that don't make good TV as written. The extensive character arcs that are almost all POV, the repetition of the first 3 books (travelogue with duplicative fights as Scarloc99 points out), unfilmable scenes (the fight in the sky at Falme), exposition heavy lore and world building etc. So in addition to changes required for cost/logistic reasons, cutting material to fit the series length and having to write additional material to compensate for the missing material, they changed things because filming it as in the books would have been lousy TV. So all the posters venting that they want more fidelity, seriously think about whether (some) of the things that got removed and rewritten would be good TV if left as written in the books. Bad TV for the sake of book fidelity is never the right answer. 2. Another fundamental assumption that colors how we view the series is the degree of difficulty we assign to the task of adapting WOT. I would wager a good portion of my hypothetical fortune that the people who like the show would rate the adaption difficulty as harder than the people who want to be closer to the books. I think that this is a very hard series to adapt and expected a lot of changes and willing to tolerate them if the TV is good and I can understand why they made the changes. If you think that this isn't too hard to adapt without a lot of changes, then it makes sense to be upset with the number of changes.