The Trollocs would have taken Fal Dara if they had had incense.

It is interesting in this article that he talks about giving Egewene her big moment and how in the books Nyn was there but Rafe wanted it to be a moment for Eg. Yet then in the show he took Rand’s big moment where he was alone fighting Ishamael in the books and made that a moment for…Egwene…

I wonder if it’s going to look just like the wastelands around Fal Dara…or in Lanfear’s T’A’R…or around Falme…

It’s like explaining color to a blind person; if you can’t see that there is a drastic tonal shift in the characterization of many of these characters then I suppose it makes sense that you’re so happy with how they are presented. The defining personalities of many of these characters have been changed for TV; that’s character assassination and Matbwas one of the more egregious, along with Rand.

Oh, if only the discussion was what was cur and what was included. Instead the discussion is what was changed and what was pulled out or Rafe’s butt.

Whoops.😁

Mat is Pippin in the FotR movie. He is a fun-loving rogue who might steal a pie. The book introduced him as a dark and brooding character who hooks up with girls to steal their jewelry to fleece to the peddler.

True, I guess you can skip. Im usually just getting a snack.

Almost nobody I know has watched it. Between my parents, siblings, and cousins, there are about a dozen people who watch nearly everything and talk about it. We’ve had lengthy gripe sessions about RoP. None of those dozen outside myself has watched WoT. I have three friends who read the books and they all loathe the show with the fury of a thousand suns. My kids are too young to watch and my wife doesn’t care for fantasy.

Amazon already does that.

We also get the Mat we love prior to Shadar Logoth. The snow just character assassinated him from the start.

We got the version of Fellowship where Sam is sleeping around with Rosie, Pippin is a sulky petty thief, Merry kills his wife, and Frodo never smiles. Gandalf has no empathy and Aragon tears his shirt and rubs his nipples when Boromir dies. All the hobbits have a magic ring, but we don’t know who has the One Ring yet. We know that the Nazgûl are hot on their heels but they didn’t bother to film them after the first 20 minutes so we can cut Bree and Weathertop entirely. The Council of Elrond is that pesky exposition stuff that we can’t have on screen, so instead they film 30 minutes of some side-story elf hunting Nazgûl and getting killed because it is important for us to understand that elves are immortal and their deaths are bad. Gandalf is the highest-paid actor so he doesn’t fall of the bridge in Moria, but the Balrog steals his powers. A forlorn Gandalf wanders off and leaves the Fellowship behind to have his own journey of self-discovery (which will take up a good 25% of the next movie, but we aren’t there, yet). In Lothlorian, Sam gets mad at Merry because he thinks Merry likes Rosie, but Merry tells him she likes her, but doesn’t like like her, so all is forgiven. Frodo realizes that probably because all of the times he’s disappeared in the past he’s got the One Ring in his possession and it will be his responsibility to bring the Ring to Mount Doom. So he wanders off. The rest of the Fellowship continues their journey but a band of orcs comes across them while they are all sleeping. Fortunately, Arwen shows up to fight the orcs off. Fade to black as we hear Gollum whistling and realize it was him we heard whistling through the entire movie… But hey, all the characters are about where they should be in the plot so none of the changes were bad and everything is necessary for character development and to “show not tell.”

Not necessarily perfectly clear, no, but orders of magnitude clearer than the show presented.

What will be the end-season climax?

At least in Rings of Power they had a tiny little farming terrace inside Moria to feed the entire dwarf civilization…….

Yup. I think amongst all the arguments, Lanfear is for the most part agreed upon as a great character. Personally, I would have liked to have her introduced as the damsel in distress Selene who maybe rolls her eyes behind Rand’s back when he refuses to fall for her suggestions, but post-Moiraine stabbing, she’s great.

I’m thinking of it more from the lore/worldbuilding point of view. Had all the writers been familiar with the source material I think we might have a better understanding of how things work in this show. Just look at all the debates we’ve had here; they all involve some of there most fundamental and some of the most thoroughly-explained lore. Saidin/Saidar, warder bonds, a’dam, the dagger, etc. We’ve all argued to death over them because they haven’t been well-explained and they’ve been inconsistent. I wish the show had been solid enough that what we were all discussing was the color of Rand’s jacket or how big a Two Rivers bow is like the proper nerds we are but we can’t even get past the things that shouldn’t be debatable. This is where I think a read of the books by the entire writing team could have helped.

Actors are given extensive training. Combat training, dialect training, etc. I read something regarding the show Yellowstone where all the leads went through a week of grueling cowboy training. Why is it too much to ask the writers to read the book? Or how about a getaway where they all listen to the audiobook together? I understand that there are 14 books, but it is clear that some writers didn’t even read the first. That should be a basic job requirement and really shouldn’t be too much to ask.

Mathematically, neither does yours.

But it is a metric that means statistically nothing. If those numbers are fair game, then I can obviously say that I use as a metric the fact that there are 80% fewer user reviews so clearly nobody cares enough to watch. Mathematically, it is 100% as valid a statement.

I don’t. I don’t have a clue how season 2 was received compared to season 1 other than the fact that it was likely watched more by people who liked season 2 than didn’t. I don’t think audience reviews should be used at all at this point because they are skewed. That’s all I’m trying to tell you. But you keep wanting to use them as if they prove something.

No, we absolutely cannot agree and I’ve explained why twice. If that’s the hill you want to die on, fine, but then it is completely legitimate to say that such a large majority or the people who watched season one hated it and didn’t bother watching season 2 so naturally audience reviews skewed up by the small minority who stuck around.

I agree with that, too, but you keep bringing up audience score. Either it’s a number worth using or not. Not to mention that audience score is likely to go down over time as those who watched and reviewed early are more likely to be returning fans and are predisposed to rate it highly.

I don’t, either, but as I cautioned earlier, I’d stay away from the audience scores argument. Statistically, what is shows right now is that only the relatively small group of people who rated the show positively in the first season came back to rate the second season and the larger majority who didn’t like it didn’t come back. To make it simple, say you have a movie that 10 people watch. 8 hate it and rate it a 4. 2 love it and rate it a 10. You’d have a score of 5.2, or 52%. The 2 who loved it come back for season 2 and rate that a 10 again, 2 people who didn’t like it come back to give it another chance and give it a 6, and 6 hated the show so much that they didn’t bother coming back for season 2. Season 2 would then have a rating of 8, or 80%. Based on the percent alone it would seem a massive improvement but the underlying issue is that the original experience was so bad that the second season gets skewed positively since its viewer retention low primarily those who are predisposed to enjoy it. This is an over-simplification but you certainly have this phenomena with WoT user scores.

Whatever they do story-wise, I hope they figure out the fast travel problem. If you look at critical reactions to GoT, one of the most-criticized elements of the last couple seasons was how suddenly characters could be just about anywhere at any time. It was a drastic shift from early seasons where travel actually meant something. I completely understand that WoT has built-in fast travel options but they’ve already shown a willingness to get characters to a location by any means possible to advance the plot and it has just been too convenient. We’ve lost any sense of scope of the world or journey.