Hand, no! Unless they manage to carve their own path deeper it will look like another thing they're copying from GoT. Like the "wolves" and so many other things.

Eye, yes but I hope that is not played out as a redemption arc.  

The person above me has crumbs round his face from stealing my monster cookie.  AND isn't even remotely sorry.

13 hours ago, Jaysen Gore said:

The thing for me with the WoT property is that if we get Season 3, we get Rhuidean and the Battle of Edmond's Field, and if we get Rhuidean, we get a season 4, which will be the Wells. From there, the rest of the series is almost guaranteed.

If they do them justice! 

I'm hopeful lessons will be learned from Season 1, but is it enough to get things on track?

2 hours ago, KakitaOCU said:

Not the way logic works.  Those who didn't like the adaptation approach everything from the perspective that he has ruined or damaged or whichever description they want to use.  They then take anything that CAN be meant in a negative light and hold it up as proof.  Confirmation bias at its best.

And no, it's still not a bad look.  The idea that he was offered a project, is a big fan of said project and so didn't want to let others mishandle is not a bad statement, even if some don't like the result.

He also said very early on that the biggest changes happened in the early books since that's when Jordan was a lot more fast and loose and still defining things.

I'm at work at the moment, so limited in what I can dig up.  I am 95% sure there have been comments from Rafe that *he* pushed for the adaptation to be made rather than someone had it in motion and he got hired.  Anyone else remember this?

21 hours ago, Testeria said:

Really reading the book I now see all two rivers people (except Rand) as of south Indian physique. There should be enough good actors in Bolywood to take this off. But they would look not enough like Americans and this is the main audience of the show... still pity.

Interesting, I see where you're coming from, I saw them as more Hispanic.  

2 minutes ago, Jaysen Gore said:

Bookcloaks is derogatory. They prefer to be called Children of the Page..

If someone made T-shirts with these on, well, 'shut up and take my money'

1 minute ago, DaddyFinn said:

They can redeem him, for sure ?

Now that is something I would like to see done.

53 minutes ago, DaddyFinn said:

It looked like Egwene didn't stab him in a fatal spot. Yes, there is a large artery in that region but she probably missed it. No big deal. They wouldn't waste a good villain like Valda so soon

I loved the guy playing Valda, he was one of the highlights in terms of performance.  No, I absolutely don't want to see him wasted as a character.  I get what you're saying that she *might* have missed the artery, but the constant use of '-you think X is dead but guess what, they're not' is already overused.

1 minute ago, Skipp said:

Funny that I had read this article but completely blocked Gawyns name from my memory.

To be fair, most of us do that!

Why are we sure Valda survived?  

I mean, yes it's entirely possible he survived but there have been too many instances already of defeating death.  I guess at this rate they will need to cut Hinderstap.

16 hours ago, Spiritweaver1 said:

Very interesting thread.  Here are some questions for you seer types.  I would be very interested in your reasoning for each of what could  be yes/no answers.

 

Will Liandrin winkle the girls out of the tower and try and feed them to the Seanchan?

 

Does the  White Tower split?

 

 

Thought I'd just drop an opinion on these two...

1. No, I suspect Liandrin will happen upon them in another location and forcibly kidnap them there.

2. Yes, but I think they will kill Siuan off.   

The person above me is suspicious of the Cookie Monster

I hope that they can pick things up in season 2.  I'm somewhat nervous that they are alluding to more Moiraine story; the justification being they want more Rosamund.

@notpropaganda73 It's called Anne, follows the story of one of the victims Mothers fighting for justice.

While I agree more time with the EF5 would have improved, I feel the showrunners squandered the time budget they had.  I know that's not necessarily a popular opinion.

I seem to remember Brandon Sanderson mentioning he queried the scene in episode one pushing Egwene off the cliff.  The response was something like -but it looks cool, we need to hook people.  -It's one of his reddit posts.  My experience is that you don't necessarily need something cool and whacky to hook people.

Last night I binged a series on the Hilsborough disaster and fall out from it.  It's not something I would normally watched but a friend recommended it.  From the outset, I was caught.  OK, there's some bias as I watched it unfold on TV while it was happening.  One scene of a family interacting and I was glued to it.

Brandon Sanderson talks a lot about 'promise' in writing.  For me, WoT failed to keep most of its promises.  An ensemble piece where I know so little about any of the characters.  5 minutes of the show I mentioned in the previous paragraph and I understood the family dynamic.  8 hours into the first series of Wheel of Time and I know roughly the same about the EF5 as I did in episode 1.  I do know about Steppin and Karene who are now dead and Valda who is presumably so.

Trollocs in appear in episode one -we get a glimpse of a few in following episodes but they seem to disappear as a threat.  The opening scene we hear about how the Dark One needs to be challenged by the Dragon, but nothing happens to establish him as a threat.  Yes, there's a guy with firey eyes in the dream world, but no one explains who he is and what he's doing.  Watch and Find Out can't be the default answer to all these questions, maybe for one or two things but you end up with 8 episodes worth of questions and very little in the was of answers.  The shame is that they had opportunity with the time and money they had to build a sturdy base for the story but the decisions they took let them down.

15 minutes ago, Squatting Monkey said:

After reading a 42 pages of this forum, I will chime in. 

 

I watched the first episode and then read the first book as I watched the next two.  I even started on the second book.  I am not trying to be a polemicist here, and I can see many of the issues that pull book-readers away from the t.v. adaptation, but to be completely honest --and maybe it gets better as it goes on.  I haven't been very impressed with the first book. 

 

People talk about the character moments and the nuance -- but I haven't been engaged by much of it.  For the most part, I am just constantly distracted by the "homage" to Tolkien's work.  It is almost allegorical to the Fellowship.  I haven't' found many aspects of  WoT (first book anyway) that feel at all original.  What doesn't seem to port from Tolkien appears to port straight from LeGuin, McCarthey, and even Moorcock.  You can clearly see Tolkien's influences in Beowulf, the Kalavalla etc. But they do not seem to make up all of the major plot points/characters of his maiden novel.  Should I continue reading this series or is it more of the same.

Welcome to the discussion! 

I don't think I'm alone in saying EoTW is the weakest book of the series.  It begins as very much an 'homage' to Tolkien.  WoT was one of the first to break out of Tolkiens shadow.  From book 2 the series carves its own path, I would recommend pushing forward.  

As to the TV series, it's pretty polarising.  Some people have enjoyed it, and I'm happy for them.  A lot of people are massively disappointed that the adaptation never really materialised instead we got a 'loosely based on'

Episodes 1-6 were  already shot before covid, so that doesn't really excuse the earlier episodes.

34 minutes ago, DaddyFinn said:

No mystery for us book readers.

So why sacrifice character development to try to create a mystery surrounding who is the dragon?  Ultimately that decision harmed the story for a lot of people.

4 minutes ago, DaddyFinn said:

I don't understand why this is brought up so often. What does it matter if every single detail of the series is available on the internet? 

I bring it up, because they were playing it to be a mystery when there was no mystery to be had -unless they changed who the DR was.  I also believe that playing into the mystery of 'who is the dragon' cost character development for Mat and Perrin.

I don't see that giving more time and money would improve things.

The choice to make a secret of who the Dragon Reborn was and play it up as a mystery failed for me.  It had fans pissed off because they were hinting the girls might be it, and overall they didn't spend enough time with the EF5 to flesh out why it might be Mat or Perrin.  It's also pretty easy to Google who is the Dragon Reborn and get to the answer.  There was no mystery to lean into but still they did it.

Across the board, there were production issues -bad blocking, clumsy framing, time wasted on 'cool looking shots' that didn't really add to the story.  The whole world felt empty -even in the scenes filmed pre-Covid.  The fight scenes in episode 4 looked like something out of a college production, where they had just learned to play with pyrotechnics.

There were some nice moments and certainly parts that fleshed things out, there were also a lot of unearned emotional beats.  Episode 1 when you barely know the characters name and you get hit with Roose Bolton crying and lighting a candle, then everyone looking sad at lamps on the river.  If we had a chance to get to know the characters a little better that would have been a good scene.  I just didn't care about them and it felt indulgent.

Having Moiraine out of commission for so long, so early -again that was a miss.  If it was supposed to be foreshadowing something -well, they could have spent the time better.  Like have her get to know the boys.

Signs are they are writing S2 to spend more time with Moiraine and Lan than we get in the books (to get more out the two actors) that's no way to drive a story.  For me, most of the issues can be laid at the feet of the "writers" and the decisions they have made.

6 minutes ago, Gothic Flame said:

...and faith.

The trouble is, companies such as Amazon are fickle.  If it's not performing how they want it to, they'll simply pull the plug and then the best laid plans will crumble to dust.

I was fairly sure that those who got stilled at Dumai's Wells were all red.  I believe when Egwene has the Black Ajah from her camp executed they have the warders penned because they are expecting them to go crazy when their AS are killed.  I believe at this point, they have already been stilled.

Recontextualisation should not be the 'go to' for story telling.  When it's used to good effect (sixth sense) it works extremely well.  What they've done so far in the show, not so much.  At some point, you need to get on with telling the story and not use it as a device constantly.

4 minutes ago, Gothic Flame said:

It's about "presence." Cavill had that look on his face that said "I'm going to wreck your world." And one look at that face coming at me would have had me turning to the guy next to; "I think I left the stove on. I'll be right back...tomorrow."

I agree with you there, yes he had the the presence and that is something I feel WoT has failed to establish with any of their actors.  They don't 'feel' dangerous, even Lan who should be able to cut you in half with a glance.

As to Richard I, it's not a case of not wanting to see Generals and Kings die in battle.  It's the farcical manner in which he got killed off.  Yes, this is fantasy and we get over the top fights that make no sense. The point I was making was although that particular Witcher scene was ridiculous, it was no more so than some of the 'fights' we've seen in WoT.

That's not the question I'm asking.  I know that Lan feels the bond break when Moiraine goes through the Ter'angreal.  That is a breaking of the bond, not Moiraine being cut off from the source. I would go so far as to say we don't have any evidence of the effects of someone being stilled on the Warder bond.

2 minutes ago, JeffTheWoodlandElf said:

 

 

Obviously, these are just areas where I feel money could have been saved on a per-episode basis. I don't actually know how any of the finances here shake out. But still, it's odd to me that the number which Amazon seemed unwilling to change was not the $80 million total budget for the season but the $10 million budget per episode. 

 

Why not go slightly cheaper and make 10 episodes if that's what Rafe really wanted? 

I question where the money was spent.  The CGI was lacklustre at best, every location felt empty and the battle scenes, including the one in episode 1 were just 'meh.

9 minutes ago, KakitaOCU said:

Except she wasn't stilled, Rafe never actually said she was stilled, the visual effects are not consistent with stilling, Lan doesn't even recognize the bond as being broken and the story still has several significant issues coming with Warders dying.  
 

  Hide contents

Alanna loses one, putting her in an unstable mental state that leads to Bonding Rand.  She will later be capture being held as a knife over Rand.

As you said, Moraine vs Lanfear.

Egwene Bonding Brigitte has stakes higher if you understand the bond.

Androl and Pevara.

Rand Min, Elayne, Aviendha.   

 

There's a bunch of stuff going on that matters without jumping to "They're inventing a horrible new story!"

Do we actually know what happens to a warder when their Aes Sedai is stilled?  -From the book perspective?  I can't think on one instance where it happens.  As to warders dying, well given that an Aes Sedai can die without causing the Warder to go into a blood rage, I feel the stakes have been reduced significantly.