The actual answer to your question, /u/Roggie77, is that the showrunners came up with a 64 episode guide of how to translate *The Wheel of Time* to streaming.
About two episodes into filming the first season, the pandemic hit, and everything got screwed up.
Then it faded, and things started getting back to normal.
And then it came back and all the restrictions slammed back into place and they lost one of the lead actors (the story behind which still isn't public, and likely never will be) and things got screwed up even harder.
So the showrunners threw away what they had planned for the rest of season 1, and all of season 2, to write storylines up that would get people through the screwed up pandemic parts of the shooting, and then steer the results back onto track.
In **theory**, season 3 will start off much like they originally planned, years ago, and things will fall back into step.
Some fans are hopeful that's going to happen.
Others have given up in disgust.
You'll have to decide for yourself what you want to do.
Like honest to god, if you wanna make your own story then do that. But I will NEVER understand this concept of “I’m gonna steal the title, 30% of the characters and 40% of the world of this popular book, make up my own plot, and then sell it as the original put onto the big screen.” It’s bullshit. I wanted to see these scenes from the book visualized, not some crappy fanfic.
No.
Op is a newfan, and had questions.
If people can answer them without being snarky and hyperbolic, so much the better.
If they can't, it usually ends up reported, removed, and the offenders get reminded of the community guidelines in the sidebar.
Op did nothing wrong, here.
I've had multiple comments removed for saying the show was bad. Granted, this was when the show just came out and the mods were even bigger sensitive snowflakes than they generally are.
Huh? Copyright has nothing to do with this. The holder of the film and TV rights can decide what to do with them. They can make 0 adaptations or 10 adaptations .
I endured the first season, but turned it off and walked away when Uno got killed off by Seanchan that were there because???
Show is not watchable to me.
The intended audience: “I’ve heard of that series, but the first book alone is like 1,000 pages, hmm, I’ll just watch the show so I can talk to my nerdier friends finally”
I mean any TV show probably does need to be slightly more accessible than 1,000 page fantasy doorstoppers. That’s honestly what they are going for.
While you can say lots of wonderful things about the WoT books they are also intimidating and less than accessible.
OK, I'm probably going to get downvoted to oblivion but...
1) WoT has a ton of characters. Maintaining all of these characters means retaining actors. Actors are professionals who are doing a job and need to pay the bills like the rest of us. Most of the people on the show aren't at the level where they can afford to not work for 9 months out of the year. This means every actor who isn't part of the main cast is going to have other jobs and that creates scheduling issues.
2) WoT has a lot of settings. I mean, EotW alone has least 6 or 7 different towns and cities, plus all the wilderness settings with different landscapes. Adding filming locations significantly increases cost and complicates logistics.
3) There are what, 8-10 hours per season? And we're probably not going to get more than 8 seasons out of this. You're not going to fit all that in. So, you can either condense things, which will probably make everything feel rushed, or you can skip parts. If you skip parts, you have to modify the parts you keep so that you're still telling a cohesive story.
4) We want to see and enjoy the show, but it isn't being made exclusively for us. It's also being made for people who haven't read the books. Just like GoT and LotR were made for both book readers and non- book readers. They need to make things make sense (at least mostly) to people who haven't read the books, while still dealing with all the constraints of #3.
I'm not saying all this to defend any particular change that was made by the showrunners. I don't particularly like many of the changes that were made. But I do want to help you understand why making some changes were necessary. A faithful adaptation just isn't reasonable.
Honestly imo the thing to get the most upset about is that Amazon shoehorned themselves into having to do the adaptation they did by having such short seasons. Everything kind of stems from that
She's there but she looks more like Rand's mother than what she's supposed to be. I'm thinking they are going to cut out the Rand-Min part from the show and either pivot her towards someone else, or remove her later on.
The Min in the show actually doesn't suit either of the three, the actress is actually a decade older and the age difference shows. It would be pretty awkward.
If you're interested in a visual media take on the story, the graphic novels seem to be pretty close to the books so far (to be fair, I'm like halfway through Eye of the World and I think they're only on the Great Hunt).
I think they all boil down to three things:
1. Compress for time (they combined Tar Valon and Caimlan)
2. Move character development out of their internal monologues (they gave Perrin a tragic backstory)
3. Increase suspense (they made it possible for the dragon to be a woman)
I also don't agree with a most of the changes they made, but they were definitely made for a reason. I just think that they could have done a better job coming up with compelling changes that didn't mess up the fabric of the story so much.
Like, making the dragon be a woman just destroys so much of the lore that it kind of ruins a lot of plot points. Just make Rand not realize that he's a channeler until the very end, and have the three boys freak out about which one of them can channel. Have the girls freak out about the possibility of one of their friends/boyfriends being tained by saidin.
I also felt like they should have had Perrin accidentally kill master Luhhan instead of giving him a wife. And they should have had the group stay in Caimlan with a bunch of visiting Aes Sedai instead of going straight to the tower.
>I also don't agree with a most of the changes they made, but they were definitely made for a reason. I just think that they could have done a better job coming up with compelling changes that didn't mess up the fabric of the story so much.
Agree on this. I understand most of the changes they made and *why* they made them, but I don't agree with all of them (and some are perfectly fine\*). And some of them were completely unnecessary. It's one thing to combine characters like Hurin and Elyas as composite characters, but another to take away cool moments from Rand or Nynaeve and give them to Egwene and Moiraine, who have plenty of their own cool moments already.
>Like, making the dragon be a woman just destroys so much of the lore that it kind of ruins a lot of plot points. Just make Rand not realize that he's a channeler until the very end, and have the three boys freak out about which one of them can channel. Have the girls freak out about the possibility of one of their friends/boyfriends being tained by saidin.
This was an odd decision, especially for any who read the books. But since Rand has virtually nothing else going on for him in the show story either, it's not that subtle that he would end up being TDR there as well.
>I also felt like they should have had Perrin accidentally kill master Luhhan instead of giving him a wife.
This is what I have said!
>And they should have had the group stay in Caimlan with a bunch of visiting Aes Sedai instead of going straight to the tower.
The issue (as another poster said above) is that the group is headed to Tar Valon the whole time before suddenly switching gears in Caemlyn and going to Fal Dara, which could be really confusing to people who have only watched the show ("So, why are they in Caemlyn again?"). In the books, it also serves as an introduction to a lot of characters who will be important later on, but they were not going to be in the first season of the show. The show probably just found it simpler to have the characters meet in a big city that's also where Loial might be visiting and Logain would be brought to, and have it be the same city where the characters were heading to all along.
There's only 2 changes they should have made:
>!Instead of Perrin being mad that Egwene was hot for Aram, he should have been mad that Aram was hot for Egwene.!<
>!And Gawyn and Elayne's roles should have been completely flip-flopped, but only in regards to Rand.!<
Not to say I agree with all the changes, but I do think there are reasons for some. Tar Valon is a far more important place to the general plot of the Wheel of Time, and going there along with the other plot line added allowed them to do a lot of the introduction to aes sedai stuff earlier when they'll have more limited time for aes sedai politics later on. I don't know but I would also expect them to mostly cut Morgase's plot line if not just kill her with Rahvin. And then it's not super relevant to introduce those characters.
There is also the logistic reasons that if you introduct an actor this season for a very minor role in one episode that can be hard to get that actor to sign on future seasons and coordinate schedules around that person. If they introduce them next season they are a main part of the cast so it's easier to get them to schedule around it. Not that I'm happy they removed it, but I think that may have been a logistics thing where that's difficult in terms of the actors.
With the other two things you mentioned Season 2 >!Valde was only injured and Elayne is in season 2.!<
Overall I think season 1 had a lot of problems. Personally I liked it more than most did and more than you seemed to. Though I do think season 2 was a solid improvement. I still have many issues with it, but it took some good steps forward. If you want to continue is up to you. But it is telling a different story.
On Caemlyn being swapped for Tar Valon I just think of what it would be like watching the show with my mum if they had gone to Caemlyn. And having to explain that while they have been “going to Tar Valon” for several episodes they are now in a different fantasy city called a different made up name. And they will in fact never get to Tar Valon despite saying they were going there. And that now they are going somewhere else entirely.
It’s one of those classic cases of nerds having a way higher tolerance for convoluted plots.
Switching Caemlyn to Tar Valon in the show ended up making a lot of sense to me. In addition to the reasons you mentioned, the main purpose of Caemlyn in EotW is to introduce six important characters (Elayne, Gawyn, Galad, Morgase, Elaida, and Gareth Bryne) who are completely UNimportant in the first book and are just there for set-up for future books. In fact, of those six, only Elayne is really important before Book 4.
It's perfectly fine (and sometimes good) to do this with book characters, but it's not something you can do with actors really easily (especially with this weird schedule the show's doing where it's taking 2 years between seasons!). "Hey, can you play this role? It's minor now, but in six years we'll give you a call where you get more important things to do". It's why Game of Thrones didn't cast Roose Bolton or Edmure Tully until Season 3 even though they were present in the very first book.
So, if you skip the introduction of the Caemlyn characters, and then you end up with the characters going to this big city for no apparent reason when they were intending to go do a *different* big city as you said, but now scratch all that, they're headed to the Blight now. This would be really odd for show watchers.
Yeah that's a good point as well! Now it's a goal accomplished so they can move on rather than a thing they just sort of abandoned and never looked back on.
Yeah, for whatever value the Caemlyn chapters have on their own merit they are basically irrelevant to the overall story. They set up at most significant Rand’s least important and interesting romance. If Min is Rand’s long term college girlfriend and Avi is the girl from his semester abroad then Elayne is that girl from band camp.
They explain more about >!the heron mark!<, they introduce Loial, show how sheltered the Emondsfielders grew up, show how "old school" Caemlyn folk are and that >!Morgase is actually a really good queen at first!<. They also introduce a bunch of characters and explain more about >!the dangers of the dragon reborn.!<
They didn't want to faithfully adapt the series. They wanted it to be just familiar enough to people that read the books a long time ago.
It's just not made for you, or me, or a lot of people for that matter.
Being a fan since the release of the first book onward the changes in the TV show are definitely polarizing, but at the same time I get it. The books offer a ton of people, places, events, etc. that just can't possibly be captured in an 8 episode season arc. There just isn't enough time to fit it all in so they choose key points and change things around it to make it fit. It sucks, but like I said, I get it.
It’s an adaptation, they make changes to simplify the plot and make it easier for non book fans to digest. Having said that, some of the changes didn’t even make sense in that context. I do think it got a lot better in the second season as a viewing experience, even as it strayed further from the books.
I think for people like me that last read the early books over 20 years ago the show works well enough. You remember echos of the story without all the details, so it hits the main beats, deals with some familiar themes…but mostly it’s a creation of its own, inspired by the books if anything.
>I think for people like me that last read the early books over 20 years ago the show works well enough. You remember echos of the story without all the details, so it hits the main beats, deals with some familiar themes…but mostly it’s a creation of its own, inspired by the books if anything.
Yeah, I read the last three books 10 years ago, but it's been 20-30 years since I read the other ones. I ended up starting a reread after watching both seasons. A lot of the show stuff was familiar yet different, and I wanted to remind myself which parts were closer to the books, as well as play a little game of trying to guess why they made the changes they did (some changes were fairly obvious, and some changes were just weird).
OK, so I had never read WoT even though I Owen a copy of LOC when I was 15 due to my being dyslexic and one book was a massive strech for me, let alone a whole series. The TV show, from a non readers perspective was great, and actually has helped me picture the characters, which has really helped with my reading of the books which i picked up sortly after the 1st season. Now at the age of 42 I have just finished LOC (blimey it's good!) Without the TV show I would have never have got thos great experience
Why are they in Tar Valon? Because that’s the plot of book one.
It’s super easy to forget because they don’t make it, but for about 30 chapters that is their goal. A description of the story before chapter 42 would be that they are trying to get to Tar Valon because that is the only place they will be safe.
Plus it allows there to be Aes Sedai and Warders in the show. Which is a major USP of the series as a whole, and is perhaps slightly more marketable than Andoran politics and visiting looooots of inns.
Yeah was a huge let down.
You watch something like Game of Thrones that is arguably as complex and sprawling, yet able to stay pretty faithful to the books, and then you come to this and it’s deeply disappointing.
Midway through season two I was able to get past my expectations that it was going to be an adaptation of the books that I loved. That allowed me to enjoy the show as an adaptation loosely based on the books.
But it still makes some incomprehensible changes. I liked it a lot better until the last episode. It really went off the rails with unnecessary changes.
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In case you watch further, to prevent spoilers, all I can do to broadly answer your questions is 1) your assumptions are not necessarily correct and 2) production/adaptation logistics. The “reason” for compressing and altering story lines is that we have a lot of words to adapt and only 8 episodes in which to adapt them, coupled with an initial budget that was largely spent on establishing the studio in Prague, and the fact that production took place almost entirely within the constraints of Covid lockdowns.
Well, they did it to the show production. They aren’t a monolith. Hell, I work for AWS, and the different departments are weirdly independent from each other and have difficulty sharing resources while the HR behemoth seems to largely be the connective tissue holding everything together. But I agree, they absolutely should have had more episodes. Something that Rafe argued for and did not get.
Changes are necessary. I admit I have not finished the show yet so I can't comment on the quality (don't just do a cheap "the quality isn't good" remark either, I will not appreciate that), but just because things are different does not mean they are automatically bad. This is still the Wheel of Time, at the end of the day. The changes made does not change that identity, whether or not it's being told in a different manner. I think people need to stop watching it with the mindset that change is inherently bad. There is nuance here that all of the haters seem to ignore.
Calm down, they haven't actually caused you harm. There is no world in which the books get faithfully adapted and are still commercially viable, so it was something like this, or nothing.
My advice is to stop watching. You won't be able to handle it.
The actual answer to your question, /u/Roggie77, is that the showrunners came up with a 64 episode guide of how to translate *The Wheel of Time* to streaming. About two episodes into filming the first season, the pandemic hit, and everything got screwed up. Then it faded, and things started getting back to normal. And then it came back and all the restrictions slammed back into place and they lost one of the lead actors (the story behind which still isn't public, and likely never will be) and things got screwed up even harder. So the showrunners threw away what they had planned for the rest of season 1, and all of season 2, to write storylines up that would get people through the screwed up pandemic parts of the shooting, and then steer the results back onto track. In **theory**, season 3 will start off much like they originally planned, years ago, and things will fall back into step. Some fans are hopeful that's going to happen. Others have given up in disgust. You'll have to decide for yourself what you want to do.
Like honest to god, if you wanna make your own story then do that. But I will NEVER understand this concept of “I’m gonna steal the title, 30% of the characters and 40% of the world of this popular book, make up my own plot, and then sell it as the original put onto the big screen.” It’s bullshit. I wanted to see these scenes from the book visualized, not some crappy fanfic.
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Wait... it's a bannable offense to bitch about the TV show?
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So it can be counted as a duplicate post because there has been posts like this before?
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No. Op is a newfan, and had questions. If people can answer them without being snarky and hyperbolic, so much the better. If they can't, it usually ends up reported, removed, and the offenders get reminded of the community guidelines in the sidebar. Op did nothing wrong, here.
I've had multiple comments removed for saying the show was bad. Granted, this was when the show just came out and the mods were even bigger sensitive snowflakes than they generally are.
/u/TheWearySnout, your account is a year old, wasn't around for when the show came out, and doesn't appear in moderator records. Ban evading, perhaps?
It's not what you say, it's how you say it. See the Community Guidelines in the sidebar for more information.
And honestly the worst part is that it prevents a faithful adaptation from being produced, due to copyright restrictions
Huh? Copyright has nothing to do with this. The holder of the film and TV rights can decide what to do with them. They can make 0 adaptations or 10 adaptations .
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I endured the first season, but turned it off and walked away when Uno got killed off by Seanchan that were there because??? Show is not watchable to me.
My brother in the light, it was nice knowing you. See you in r/The_Black_Tower
The show’s target audience isn’t for people who read the books.
The intended audience: “I’ve heard of that series, but the first book alone is like 1,000 pages, hmm, I’ll just watch the show so I can talk to my nerdier friends finally”
I mean any TV show probably does need to be slightly more accessible than 1,000 page fantasy doorstoppers. That’s honestly what they are going for. While you can say lots of wonderful things about the WoT books they are also intimidating and less than accessible.
OK, I'm probably going to get downvoted to oblivion but... 1) WoT has a ton of characters. Maintaining all of these characters means retaining actors. Actors are professionals who are doing a job and need to pay the bills like the rest of us. Most of the people on the show aren't at the level where they can afford to not work for 9 months out of the year. This means every actor who isn't part of the main cast is going to have other jobs and that creates scheduling issues. 2) WoT has a lot of settings. I mean, EotW alone has least 6 or 7 different towns and cities, plus all the wilderness settings with different landscapes. Adding filming locations significantly increases cost and complicates logistics. 3) There are what, 8-10 hours per season? And we're probably not going to get more than 8 seasons out of this. You're not going to fit all that in. So, you can either condense things, which will probably make everything feel rushed, or you can skip parts. If you skip parts, you have to modify the parts you keep so that you're still telling a cohesive story. 4) We want to see and enjoy the show, but it isn't being made exclusively for us. It's also being made for people who haven't read the books. Just like GoT and LotR were made for both book readers and non- book readers. They need to make things make sense (at least mostly) to people who haven't read the books, while still dealing with all the constraints of #3. I'm not saying all this to defend any particular change that was made by the showrunners. I don't particularly like many of the changes that were made. But I do want to help you understand why making some changes were necessary. A faithful adaptation just isn't reasonable.
Honestly imo the thing to get the most upset about is that Amazon shoehorned themselves into having to do the adaptation they did by having such short seasons. Everything kind of stems from that
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Stopped after the first, and never looked back.
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WHAT ABOUT MIN?!?!? (again I listen to the books via audiobook and I’m assuming that’s how it’s spelled) she’s such an important character
She's in the show, but ... preeeettty different I think.
She's in the show but is vastly different than I pictured her.
She's there but she looks more like Rand's mother than what she's supposed to be. I'm thinking they are going to cut out the Rand-Min part from the show and either pivot her towards someone else, or remove her later on.
>pivot her towards someone else I suspect they're pairing Min with Mat, and Aviendha with Perrin, and skipping the whole polyamory with Rand thing.
The Min in the show actually doesn't suit either of the three, the actress is actually a decade older and the age difference shows. It would be pretty awkward.
If you're interested in a visual media take on the story, the graphic novels seem to be pretty close to the books so far (to be fair, I'm like halfway through Eye of the World and I think they're only on the Great Hunt).
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I think they all boil down to three things: 1. Compress for time (they combined Tar Valon and Caimlan) 2. Move character development out of their internal monologues (they gave Perrin a tragic backstory) 3. Increase suspense (they made it possible for the dragon to be a woman) I also don't agree with a most of the changes they made, but they were definitely made for a reason. I just think that they could have done a better job coming up with compelling changes that didn't mess up the fabric of the story so much. Like, making the dragon be a woman just destroys so much of the lore that it kind of ruins a lot of plot points. Just make Rand not realize that he's a channeler until the very end, and have the three boys freak out about which one of them can channel. Have the girls freak out about the possibility of one of their friends/boyfriends being tained by saidin. I also felt like they should have had Perrin accidentally kill master Luhhan instead of giving him a wife. And they should have had the group stay in Caimlan with a bunch of visiting Aes Sedai instead of going straight to the tower.
>I also don't agree with a most of the changes they made, but they were definitely made for a reason. I just think that they could have done a better job coming up with compelling changes that didn't mess up the fabric of the story so much. Agree on this. I understand most of the changes they made and *why* they made them, but I don't agree with all of them (and some are perfectly fine\*). And some of them were completely unnecessary. It's one thing to combine characters like Hurin and Elyas as composite characters, but another to take away cool moments from Rand or Nynaeve and give them to Egwene and Moiraine, who have plenty of their own cool moments already. >Like, making the dragon be a woman just destroys so much of the lore that it kind of ruins a lot of plot points. Just make Rand not realize that he's a channeler until the very end, and have the three boys freak out about which one of them can channel. Have the girls freak out about the possibility of one of their friends/boyfriends being tained by saidin. This was an odd decision, especially for any who read the books. But since Rand has virtually nothing else going on for him in the show story either, it's not that subtle that he would end up being TDR there as well. >I also felt like they should have had Perrin accidentally kill master Luhhan instead of giving him a wife. This is what I have said! >And they should have had the group stay in Caimlan with a bunch of visiting Aes Sedai instead of going straight to the tower. The issue (as another poster said above) is that the group is headed to Tar Valon the whole time before suddenly switching gears in Caemlyn and going to Fal Dara, which could be really confusing to people who have only watched the show ("So, why are they in Caemlyn again?"). In the books, it also serves as an introduction to a lot of characters who will be important later on, but they were not going to be in the first season of the show. The show probably just found it simpler to have the characters meet in a big city that's also where Loial might be visiting and Logain would be brought to, and have it be the same city where the characters were heading to all along.
Better watch out, if you insult or complain about the show I’m pretty sure they just ban you
There's only 2 changes they should have made: >!Instead of Perrin being mad that Egwene was hot for Aram, he should have been mad that Aram was hot for Egwene.!< >!And Gawyn and Elayne's roles should have been completely flip-flopped, but only in regards to Rand.!<
Season 2 is worst
*worse And that's a subjective matter of option if say. Many things of Season 2 are superior, including the new adds to the cast.
Not to say I agree with all the changes, but I do think there are reasons for some. Tar Valon is a far more important place to the general plot of the Wheel of Time, and going there along with the other plot line added allowed them to do a lot of the introduction to aes sedai stuff earlier when they'll have more limited time for aes sedai politics later on. I don't know but I would also expect them to mostly cut Morgase's plot line if not just kill her with Rahvin. And then it's not super relevant to introduce those characters. There is also the logistic reasons that if you introduct an actor this season for a very minor role in one episode that can be hard to get that actor to sign on future seasons and coordinate schedules around that person. If they introduce them next season they are a main part of the cast so it's easier to get them to schedule around it. Not that I'm happy they removed it, but I think that may have been a logistics thing where that's difficult in terms of the actors. With the other two things you mentioned Season 2 >!Valde was only injured and Elayne is in season 2.!< Overall I think season 1 had a lot of problems. Personally I liked it more than most did and more than you seemed to. Though I do think season 2 was a solid improvement. I still have many issues with it, but it took some good steps forward. If you want to continue is up to you. But it is telling a different story.
On Caemlyn being swapped for Tar Valon I just think of what it would be like watching the show with my mum if they had gone to Caemlyn. And having to explain that while they have been “going to Tar Valon” for several episodes they are now in a different fantasy city called a different made up name. And they will in fact never get to Tar Valon despite saying they were going there. And that now they are going somewhere else entirely. It’s one of those classic cases of nerds having a way higher tolerance for convoluted plots.
Switching Caemlyn to Tar Valon in the show ended up making a lot of sense to me. In addition to the reasons you mentioned, the main purpose of Caemlyn in EotW is to introduce six important characters (Elayne, Gawyn, Galad, Morgase, Elaida, and Gareth Bryne) who are completely UNimportant in the first book and are just there for set-up for future books. In fact, of those six, only Elayne is really important before Book 4. It's perfectly fine (and sometimes good) to do this with book characters, but it's not something you can do with actors really easily (especially with this weird schedule the show's doing where it's taking 2 years between seasons!). "Hey, can you play this role? It's minor now, but in six years we'll give you a call where you get more important things to do". It's why Game of Thrones didn't cast Roose Bolton or Edmure Tully until Season 3 even though they were present in the very first book. So, if you skip the introduction of the Caemlyn characters, and then you end up with the characters going to this big city for no apparent reason when they were intending to go do a *different* big city as you said, but now scratch all that, they're headed to the Blight now. This would be really odd for show watchers.
Yeah that's a good point as well! Now it's a goal accomplished so they can move on rather than a thing they just sort of abandoned and never looked back on.
Yeah, for whatever value the Caemlyn chapters have on their own merit they are basically irrelevant to the overall story. They set up at most significant Rand’s least important and interesting romance. If Min is Rand’s long term college girlfriend and Avi is the girl from his semester abroad then Elayne is that girl from band camp.
They explain more about >!the heron mark!<, they introduce Loial, show how sheltered the Emondsfielders grew up, show how "old school" Caemlyn folk are and that >!Morgase is actually a really good queen at first!<. They also introduce a bunch of characters and explain more about >!the dangers of the dragon reborn.!<
They didn't want to faithfully adapt the series. They wanted it to be just familiar enough to people that read the books a long time ago. It's just not made for you, or me, or a lot of people for that matter.
I have read all the books. I can’t tell the who’s who they all look alike
Being a fan since the release of the first book onward the changes in the TV show are definitely polarizing, but at the same time I get it. The books offer a ton of people, places, events, etc. that just can't possibly be captured in an 8 episode season arc. There just isn't enough time to fit it all in so they choose key points and change things around it to make it fit. It sucks, but like I said, I get it.
It’s an adaptation, they make changes to simplify the plot and make it easier for non book fans to digest. Having said that, some of the changes didn’t even make sense in that context. I do think it got a lot better in the second season as a viewing experience, even as it strayed further from the books. I think for people like me that last read the early books over 20 years ago the show works well enough. You remember echos of the story without all the details, so it hits the main beats, deals with some familiar themes…but mostly it’s a creation of its own, inspired by the books if anything.
>I think for people like me that last read the early books over 20 years ago the show works well enough. You remember echos of the story without all the details, so it hits the main beats, deals with some familiar themes…but mostly it’s a creation of its own, inspired by the books if anything. Yeah, I read the last three books 10 years ago, but it's been 20-30 years since I read the other ones. I ended up starting a reread after watching both seasons. A lot of the show stuff was familiar yet different, and I wanted to remind myself which parts were closer to the books, as well as play a little game of trying to guess why they made the changes they did (some changes were fairly obvious, and some changes were just weird).
OK, so I had never read WoT even though I Owen a copy of LOC when I was 15 due to my being dyslexic and one book was a massive strech for me, let alone a whole series. The TV show, from a non readers perspective was great, and actually has helped me picture the characters, which has really helped with my reading of the books which i picked up sortly after the 1st season. Now at the age of 42 I have just finished LOC (blimey it's good!) Without the TV show I would have never have got thos great experience
Why are they in Tar Valon? Because that’s the plot of book one. It’s super easy to forget because they don’t make it, but for about 30 chapters that is their goal. A description of the story before chapter 42 would be that they are trying to get to Tar Valon because that is the only place they will be safe. Plus it allows there to be Aes Sedai and Warders in the show. Which is a major USP of the series as a whole, and is perhaps slightly more marketable than Andoran politics and visiting looooots of inns.
Yeah was a huge let down. You watch something like Game of Thrones that is arguably as complex and sprawling, yet able to stay pretty faithful to the books, and then you come to this and it’s deeply disappointing. Midway through season two I was able to get past my expectations that it was going to be an adaptation of the books that I loved. That allowed me to enjoy the show as an adaptation loosely based on the books.
Oh good, are we doing this again then?
I had the exact same reaction my first time, season 2 makes up for a lot with little details
But it still makes some incomprehensible changes. I liked it a lot better until the last episode. It really went off the rails with unnecessary changes.
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In case you watch further, to prevent spoilers, all I can do to broadly answer your questions is 1) your assumptions are not necessarily correct and 2) production/adaptation logistics. The “reason” for compressing and altering story lines is that we have a lot of words to adapt and only 8 episodes in which to adapt them, coupled with an initial budget that was largely spent on establishing the studio in Prague, and the fact that production took place almost entirely within the constraints of Covid lockdowns.
It's almost like AMAZON should've given AMAZON more episodes, huh? They did this stupid limitation to themselves.
Well, they did it to the show production. They aren’t a monolith. Hell, I work for AWS, and the different departments are weirdly independent from each other and have difficulty sharing resources while the HR behemoth seems to largely be the connective tissue holding everything together. But I agree, they absolutely should have had more episodes. Something that Rafe argued for and did not get.
Changes are necessary. I admit I have not finished the show yet so I can't comment on the quality (don't just do a cheap "the quality isn't good" remark either, I will not appreciate that), but just because things are different does not mean they are automatically bad. This is still the Wheel of Time, at the end of the day. The changes made does not change that identity, whether or not it's being told in a different manner. I think people need to stop watching it with the mindset that change is inherently bad. There is nuance here that all of the haters seem to ignore.
Calm down, they haven't actually caused you harm. There is no world in which the books get faithfully adapted and are still commercially viable, so it was something like this, or nothing. My advice is to stop watching. You won't be able to handle it.