I just look at it as an adaptation. I expect a decent number of changes. Whether I agree with them or not, I expect them. I still enjoyed the episodes, even though some changes seemed unnecessary in my mind
Your expectations were more accurate than mine. When I hear adaptation I think more in the realm of medium. Like the HP movies were an adaptation of the books but we're reasonably faithful. What really really surprised me was jumping so far from canon from the jump. I believe someone else called it a different turning of the wheel but my entire WoT group, who've been together for 20 years, ranged from "Without a doubt the most disappointing thing I've ever laid eyes on. An absolute abomination." To "its not WoT but I'll watch it." From a pure business standpoint it's surprising to me. Why take a risk that is guaranteed to cost you a large part of the fandom when those are your base? I remember when GoT came out. I was rounding up people left and right to watch. Had watch parties at my house. Seems strange to be like "nah, were going our own way." I'm guessing the show will fail and that will be sad because I was looking forward to the world falling in love with Matt and speaking the old tongue.
You are way to purist to have accepted almost anything. The books can’t be done as TV unless they wanted to spend twenty years doing them. Most fans aren’t this pure.
Never expected them to be able to do exactly. Also didn't expect them to do stray so far from canon as to be best described as "another turning of the wheel." I guess we will see to your most fans comment. This is the most committed fandom I've been part of in my life. I don't know any who were actually happy with this adaptation except those who have a direct relationship with the show runner.
You are speaking for and to the most committed part of the fandom. It's like being in a twitter bubble. I think many in this thread have been fans, but not super fans like you. I don't have every detail memorized and I have forgotten more than I remember even though I've read the books twice. Also, yes there are definitely significant story divergences for sure, but I don't find them that dramatically different in terms of the expected outcomes of those changes. Just slightly different paths to get to the same outcome...at least it looks that way to me. Of course someone who is expecting them all to go together and meet at the Golden Stag in and see Min and Thom and then all that goes along with that, would definitely consider it different, but there is enough the same that I can still enjoy it for being the WoT as well as it's own thing. It's kind of like when I played the video game in the late 90's, I could at least pretend I was in that world. Full disclosure, coming in I told myself I would not get bogged down in it being the books because I also knew that would ruin the experience and put a criteria on it that it could not live up to.
More accurate. Though this adaptation is on the level of Texas chainsaw massacre as far as resembling the story which it is adapted from.
I don't know anything about Chainsaw to even know what that means. When I think of absolutely awful adaptations, The Idris Elba, Dark Tower movie, is my benchmark for worst ever. This is nowhere even close to that. I am not even sure what that movie was about. Another absolutely awful adaptation would be The Legend of the Seeker, which was basically a cartoon. At least this has the same characters, personalities and basic plot presented in a way that respects the grand scale and tone of what the books achieved. Even if you hate it because it is not WoT to you, it is hard for me to understand not appreciating the scale of it and the way it looks. I think if you are not a book reader and weren't judging it based on that expectation or standard, it can't be rated at lower than a 7/10. My wife who is not a book reader loves it, and she immediately said LotR. Sticking with that analogy I could see thinking of this as the movie adaptation of the Hobbit, which wasn't as good as LotR and certainly took a hell of a lot of liberties. That said, I am watching the Hobbit and enjoying it even though I recognize it is inferior. In this genre there just aren't that many things you can turn to and enjoy that capture the look and feel and grand scale, which mean a lot to me. BTW, I am not trying to convince you. I feel bad, because you dug yourself into a hole with your expectations that could never be achieved with a 14 book series on film.
I would say dark tower is a good comparison point. The characters have the same name. Personalities dramatically changed. Setting changed. World knowledge changed. Eventually I'll have a sick day and have nothing else to watch and force my way through this. You keep trying to write my mind thoughts as if I would only have accepted perfection in faithfulness to canon. That isn't the case. But they didn't even try. I mean rand bangs egwene in ep 1? Well, you've just rewritten both of their characters. Perrin the party boy now widower? Welp, that's not Perrin. Matt gambling in the winespring? Emonds field in the mountains with no farms? 4 taveren? I won't convince you but please stop misrepresenting my thoughts as if I had unrealistic expectations. The eye of the world wouldn't have been overly difficult. They made the choice that they wanted to "improve" the story and, as usual, failed. I'll stop spamming this thread though because I've moved into the next stage of grief.
Not even close wrt Dark Tower, and there is so much more story left to tell. I apologize if it came off that way about your expectations, but I also don't think you are thinking through the complexity of production and your expectations are that it is all easy. It would not be easy at all if they are planning for the long haul. For example, the time it would take to present all books in our years versus the time that actually occurred (2 years and 6-7 months). We are talking about a minimum of 10 years here. I understand the Egwene/Rand change in this context because they had to age the characters up and couldn't make them kids, because if they were kids they would be 30 by the time this ends. As such, turning the overt attraction between the two of them in the books early on, with now intentionally older characters (like GoT) because they can't show kids becoming adults like Harry potter style, it makes some sense. The Perrin thing I really dislike so I am with you there but I can get past it. My biggest issue there is his personality was always "Rand knows about women or Matt knows about women" and obviously now he knows about women.
welp, you may not want to watch episode 4. You will rage, Even I had a hard time with it. Still trying to see the good in it but yes, this is a different story. I don’t dislike it as it’s own thing, but it is hard to separate. The final scene is just insanely divergent.
Just finished it Spoiler Are you thinking they’re actually going to make Nynaeve the dragon? There is no way. I think it’s a red herring and they’re just stunned at how powerful she is. Too much of the story is tied up in a male dragon and how to handle him going insane
Spoiler yeah pretty sure Rafe has confirmed in an interview that Rand is still the dragon. I think they are going to use this to explain Nynaeve only being able to use the power at first when she is pissed off, and it teases her healing abilities. don't really love it but I get where they're going with it I think
Spoiler yeah no way is she the dragon. They’re just trying to use that end scene for whatever reason as a plot device. I didn’t love it but I’m going to give it a full season and then probably rewatch it in a sitting or two before I come to a final conclusion.
No, just the way that scene played out. They were using it to show that she channels when she is angry, but what it took for her to do that seemed pretty damn extreme considering none of that was in the books.
I went to the Amazon page last night to add my 1 star review And noticed a lot of angry fans. Also a lot of very professionally worded five star reviews with reviews that, whether you enjoyed the show or not, were just not true. Guessing they hired a marketing team to spam the reviews.
I quit watching after ep 1 because this isn't my first rodeo. I can see when showrunners don't have it and don't think they need it. But what you're describing is my least favourite thing about bad adaptations of popular books. We all accept that there isn't enough time for every detail to be added. But when they make up new "cooler" scenes that actually cost time and money and make the story less...well it's trash. It's like the beetle squishing scene monologue in GoT.
Lol, that’s quite the talent you have that allows you to determine who the fans were from the marketing plants. There are thousands and thousands of voters on RT and IMDB and so far it has a 7.4 on IMDB and 82% on RT.
It wasn't terribly hard. When you have a polished wording "Amazing imagery that modernizes the story while faithfully staying true to the soul of the story." There were quite a few that seemed very similar in that regard.
So a few anecdotes set you off both ways? The fact is that you quit after one episode, so you are not even commenting on what the rest of us are or probably what those people are. It feels like now you are just looking for reasons to justify your opinion to quit, that is literally based on one episode. The show has it's issues and it is not close to a purist representation of the books, but on balance a super majority of people like it as represented by the RT and IMDB scores and not a hand full of possible marketing plants. Anyway, I am done shitting up the thread.
I didn't mind the end of episode 4 that much. The show runners haven't quite figured out if they want male/female channelers to be able to see each others flows.
AMA with the showrunner His response on a possible female dragon: Spoiler The change we made was not just with the fact that a woman could be the Dragon, the core change we made was that people are NOT 100% convinced that these 3000 year old prophecies are 100% accurate. I think it feels a little bit more true to the world, and you see the characters questioning the prophecies of the Dragon and the details of it much more in the show than in the books (although there are some scenes in the books that show this as well, we've just expanded on that). It seems quite trusting for the Aes Sedai, who trust no one, and especially Moiraine, who trusts less than no one, to believe with 100% certainty ANYTHING that was written thousands of years ago
I totally get the questioning whether it was real. I didn't feel that is a departure from the books. If they make someone other than Rand the Dragon that will be fucking stupid.
I read the books 7+ years ago and so I don’t remember enough details to make the show bad. I am enjoying it but not loving it so far.
Was hoping this thread would be enjoyable place to compare to books. I’m with Blackfish I’m not getting hung up on them being exactly congruent. Gonna dip out because it’s just like GoT nerds and already unbearable.
Think it’s just the one guy shitting on the show. The overall plot feels the same to me. All the changes are pretty minor or I’m just curious to see where they go with it. I’m liking the show so far.
I read The Eye of the World when it was first published. I read everything, including the prequel, on release up until Knife of Dreams. Then I lost all interest. By that time there were so many characters and plots within plots that it wasn’t even fun to read anymore. A few days in the life of each character/plot and then wait for the next book. Maybe one day I’ll go and binge them all in a row to the end and find satisfaction. As far as the TV series goes, it’s been so long since I read them that I don’t even notice if something is off. I just think, “huh, I don’t remember that,” and continue enjoying it.
You and I are the same. I honestly wondered how they would make book 1 into a full season, so I’m actually ok with making big changes if that’s what it takes to make the show interesting. show is well cast, it’s well acted, and looks pretty darn good. It’ll be interesting to see how many changes they have to make, and I think the value of a television series is you can make a lot of things up that happen “off scene” in the books and aren’t first hand accounts.
I think most of us feel the same way. A high quality big budget fantasy series is great for entertainment even if it is loosely based on the source material, and I would not even consider this loosely.
Yes, I was realizing that during this episode based on how things progressed. I wonder if they just skip Caemlyn altogether or that becomes a focus of season two. They skipped Min also so maybe they don’t get into any of the women this season and leave that for once they reveal the Dragon, which I assume is episode eight.
I just finished the episode. I need to go back and review the chapters because I am having trouble connecting it all chronologically. I still do enjoy it, but wish there was a bit more meat to it and that they stayed a little more with certain scenes like Perrin and the white cloaks, which was enjoyable. I did not expect or ever picture Lan to have emotion, and certainly not that type of emotion. I’m fine with it because it adds depth, but I always pictured him as completely stoic with the exception of his relationship with Nynaeve, which is obviously happening much quicker than in the books.
Also I was just thinking about it and the introduction of Loial as well as Loial being with Nynaeve felt very rushed, and unexplained. I have no idea why Rand was in the library, how he got there, and how or why Loial and Nynaeve connected. It almost felt like there were scenes cut out.
Like I said in the tv show thread, I really like this show. I would probably love it if I hadn't read the books. I can't help but get sucked into the what is different which distracts from the authentic experience of experiencing it for what it is.
Min was in some leaked photos. She makes an appearance in season 1 and I'm guessing they'll bring her in a little differently as a borderlander
So it seems that we could only see or there was only 8 statues of the forsaken Obviously Ishamael is one I think the other guarantees are Lanfear, Moghedien, Asmodean, Sammael One statue had a Semirhage look to it, another Aginor, I feel like Demandred has to be there too I feel like you can combine Semirhage and Mesaana, combine Rahvin and Sammael. Get rid of Balthamel, Be'lal...I hope they keep Graendal but idk if that will make 8 Ishamael Lanfear Moghedien Asmodean Sammael Semirhage Demandred One of Aginor or Graendal That would be who I went with
Actually Moghedien would work well blending with Mesaana's storyline in the white tower. Sounds like people think there is 4 women statues. I found it hard to tell what some of the statues looked like. If it's 4 def the ones I listed plus Graendal. I'd like them to play up Graendal and Sammael working together since they were a little different in that regard from the rest of the forsaken
It’s amazing how much of these books I’ve forgotten. I don’t even recognize some of the forsaken’s names
Some are only there for a little bit. Spoiler Be'lal gets balefired out in like 30 seconds. Aginor and Balthamel don't last much longer until they get brought back. Others go by other names as they're hiding in the Aes Sedai.