1 hour ago, Andra said:

Something I saw elsewhere, that I think would have gone well with that article:

 

Apparently at least some of the design for Tar Valon was also used for Shadar Logoth.

It’s pretty well known that TV and SD are the same set repurposed.

I remember how comically obvious it was back when the show was airing - they kinda just threw some plants and a camel in their and went, “it’s an exotic city now!”

While it certainly started going it’s own way (dramatically so after season 4), season 1 of GoT was as close to a 1-1 adaptation as could have been done.

Hell, even the shit that they added in was good. The Robert/Cersei conversation was made up just to kill time basically.

Whatever the secret sauce was that made early GoT so great, the stars will probably never align for WoTshow to ascend anywhere close.

1 hour ago, Andra said:

With the single exception of Shaiel/Tigraine.

 

 

It still blows my mind that even Thom got a better choreographed fight scene than Lan.

21 hours ago, Andra said:

Yes he does.

But he doesn't say - in that context of the term - that he told Bezos this wouldn't be it when agreeing to do it.

 

Which isn't really pertinent to what people are saying when they bring it up.

 

Amazon wants WoT to be that blockbuster, whether Rafe ever promised it would be or not.  And they aren't getting it, whether Rafe promised it would be or not.

 

The statements from the fans that poke fun at "Next GoT" predictions aren't for Rafe failing to deliver something he promised.  They are for Amazon not realizing that what he has delivered isn't what they have said they wanted for five years.

When myself and a lot of people think "I want a show to be like Game of Thrones", I mean I want it to be well written, have great characters, and strong production value (I can forgive spotty production if the first two are strong).

WoT didn't really deliver any of the above IMO. The GoT comparisons stem at least partially from Amazon and the people behind the show trying really hard to bill it as prestige television, when it really has more in common with cable tv shows.

2 minutes ago, nsmallw said:

I thought they had completed filming before the covid shutdowns. I think I've blocked 2020 out of my mind 

1-6 (except for the very end of 6) were pre-covid, 7 and 8 were filmed after various restrictions in the Czech Republic cleared.

8 hours ago, nsmallw said:

The scope of the battle against Logain's army concerns me some. There are huge battles later on in the books at least and I worry that they won't be able to show the scope and detail the battles sufficiently. The AS go to capture Logain with 9 sisters and about 10 Warders max and no real regular soldiers which is odd considering your potentially going to have to fight a battle. 

I hope Amazon steps up and as the seasons progress  and

gives larger budgets and even increase the number of eps. 

 

Yeah the scope thing was weird - this was pre-covid too I think. Like the introduction to episode 4 in Ghealdan looked cool in terms of the set and enviroment....but all you see is 3 dudes running away in a besieged castle. Even just like 20 extras would have done a lot with clever filming.

On 2/8/2022 at 2:45 AM, Cauthonfan4 said:

 

 

Perrin went from someone who was deliberately thoughtful because of his large size, but willing to protect his friends

 

To someone who fridged his wife and didn't do a single thing while egwene busted them free of the white cloak camp. 

 

Neither of these changes were an improvement of the source material in the slightest.

 

 

 

I could have had my mind changed about the whole "Laila the Fridge Wife" situation, but they handled it, and basically everything about Perrin, very poorly imo.

If I axed my possibly pregnant (speculation) wife, dead serious I'd have just walked into the night and let the trollocs take me - I'm not going on an adventure the next day and fiending after my buddies girl. They've sort of written themselves into a situation where they either need to convincingly portray him as dealing with the emotional blowback of what happened while having him still be a good character and moving his character arc along, or just kinda pretend it didn't happen. So far they've done an awkward combination of both.

As for the Valda tent scene - it would have been sooo easy to have a couple of guards in there with Valda for Perrin to hulk out on, while still allowing Egwene to have a heroic moment. Instead they went with him just "lurching around menacingly" while Egwene saves the day. I just don't get what they're thinking in the writers room sometimes.

3 minutes ago, Andra said:

 So "Demand" = "Buzz."

Which in the streaming world doesn't translate to $.

So the show undeniably did well in terms of initial viewership - as I mentioned in another comment, between fandom hype, availability of Amazon Prime, and a huge marketing push, it's not surprising at all.

But there was a lot of "buzz" about The Rise of Skywalker. And....yeah. 

We can all sling various stats, figures, anecdotes, and personal opinions on the show all day long - the only true deciding factor it the overall performance and reception of season 2 when we get it. The show won't be able to rely as heavily on book fandom good will this time around, the quality of the first 2-3 episodes will probably decide the future of the show IMO.

5 minutes ago, JeffTheWoodlandElf said:

I posted about this thread the other day. For all that's been said about how toxic fans have tanked the imdb/metacritic score, one look at a more casual community and it's immediately clear that the show left almost no impression on anyone who watched it. If any score is underrepresented, it's all the 5/10 reviews that people were too apathetic to write. 

It has been interesting observing people outside the WoT fandom and cloistered online communities react. Pretty much anytime new content comes out regarding the upcoming LOTR show, at least half the reactions seem to be something along the lines of, "Please please don't be like WoT."

13 minutes ago, JeffTheWoodlandElf said:

I'd be more concerned with how the show is jumping off a cliff in popularity. Just in the last day, WoT has dropped 21 spots on imdb's list of popular TV (down to 70). And that's on the back of another 20+ point drop last week. Compare that to The Witcher which only saw an 11 spot drop and is still at 22.

 

https://www.imdb.com/chart/tvmeter/?ref_=tt_ov_pop

I'll admit that I myself am deeply skeptical of most of the metrics that Amazon/WoTshow are constantly throwing up. Personally I think the shows sucess was largely built upon fandom hype and an unprecedented marketing campaign.

The only true "tell" (lol) we'll get is how season 2 goes - if it really impressed a large group of new fans, and the critical members of the WoTbook fandom are really just a "loud minority", it'll replicate or surpass the sucess  of season 1. 

From what I can gather from in person anecdotes and observation of various communities online, alot of people who watched it weren't impressed, and a fair amount of the shows goodwill in the community has been burned. If the first few episodes of season 2 don't knock it out of the park, its gonna get rough IMO.

1 hour ago, Andra said:

Which would also mean that any property that had any pre-existing fan sites (like this one) would have the deck stacked in their favor.

 

Do you know of a link to how they calculate their scores?  Because the only thing I could find that specifies a difference from conventional ratings is their statement that they limit their scores to the first thirty days after the premiere.

Their methodology is....nebulous to say the least.

What is Demand? | Parrot Analytics Help Center

They don't measure viewership - they measure online engagement and demand, i.e., how much was the show talked about on social media, and try to correlate it as some metric of demand. The issue: its biased towards shows that have a weekly release, which create longer timeframes for online engagement. Also you'll notice they place Arcane in front of Squid Game, so they're clearly not measuring viewership.

Tldr; Parrot Analytics measures stuff like whether the name is being searched for on Google and (primarily) online chatter - including the negative kind.

On a side note; there was a pretty huge and humorous thread on r/television regarding these stats, with the overwhelming majority of top responses being something along the lines of "how?" or "it was meh".

27 minutes ago, nsmallw said:

Yes I wasn't sure if those folks in white n gold were Accepted or Tower Guard. Not very impressive. Hopefully they do better with them as with so many other things. 

If you’re in need of a laugh, make a mental image of them getting absolutely steamrolled by Aiel during the Blood Snow.

15 minutes ago, flinn said:

Or  you have a completely inexperienced showrunner who is taking on a mammoth and blew his budget on things he could have done differently.

WoT is a Grand Canyon sized leap in scale from what a lot of the key personnel on the show have worked.

The shows budget woes remind me of a lot of professional (American) football players. Many of them come from impoverished backgrounds, they suddenly find themselves flush with cash and deck themselves out with jewels, throw piles of money at women, crash Bugati’s into pylons, etc. Then next thing you know they’re declaring bankruptcy.

Might explain why the show was down to using a PlayStation 2 to generate episode 8s CGI.

2 hours ago, nsmallw said:

I believe that episode was finished before the covid shutdowns, so the idea that they couldn't spring for more logain troops/tower guard doesn't fly at all. Amazon just didn't commit enough money to season 1. If they'd given 25 percent of what they've given to the LOR TV show , then the season would have been much better

Considering what we saw of the Tower Guards in episode 6, I’m not sure they would have been particularly useful in a fight anyways ?

it’s possible Covid restrictions limited the amount of extras they could bring, but imo should have just filmed at night to mask the limited number of people on “set”.

3 minutes ago, fra85uk said:

That episode, while it is considered the best, represents the the beginning of the end.

In fact, (i)it serves to guide the viewer towards the fan-fiction of ep5-6 (ii)  it collapse the internal consistency of the magic system with a multiple miracle-healing out of nowhere (iii) it definitely put aside the ones that should be the main characters.

 

Furthermore, from a technical point, it features the worst battle scene ever recorded with, cherry on top, the idiotical death of the king of Gheldean.

It was reasonably well written - unsurpringly it was guest written by Dave Hill (GoT alumni).

The battle was hilarious though - they couldn’t spring for a few more LARPERs?

And lest we forget him - it introduced us to Sir Stepin the Sad, the protagonist of season 1.

I’m most likely going to skip the premier of season 2, and wait to see what the reviewers/community have to say before I decide if I’m gonna watch.

Episode 8 and the responses from the show runner left me a bit jaded. I’m not sure if the direction their choosing and story telling quality are for me.