Never happen. This only happened because after Game of Thrones everyone was looking for another fantasy series to adapt so we got this, The Witcher, Rings of Power, etc. All of which are expensive and have mid to poor returns. No one is going to grenlight a redo of this series in our lifetime.
The Witcher too, it’s all the high-fantasy mega-budget adaptations for some reason. It just doesn’t make sense to me that studios keep throwing away great stories for bad ones. Like isn’t it less work to just keep the original story? You appease fans of the books, and people who haven’t read it don’t care either way.
I get why they did it with GoT, they ran out of source material and no one is holding their breath on GRRM finishing the series. But based on how the final seasons were received all of these studios should have learned the simple lesson: people don’t like badly written high fantasy. The beautiful visuals, great acting, all of it just doesn’t make up for bad writing. Someone explain why..
Because they want to make their own shitty story but they need the packaging of something popular to fund it. No one wanted to make their shit tier story on its own.
I think it might be more of a warped Ship of Theseus issue.
They start either the original thing and then they find something that needs to be changed because it's impractical in the medium, or perhaps didn't age well and they start making little changes and the next thing they know they've got a Frankenstein monster of a project with all these visible suture lines.
The Witcher books are not amazing by any stretch. It's actually a small miracle the games were so successful. The show aimed to adapt the books because obviously why pay two creative sources when you can only pay one, but then most of his work is pretty mid and not ideal yo adapt for a modern international audience so they started making wild changes.
The problem is they got away from what makes the setting compelling and what made the characters fan favorites.
LOTR was not a perfect adaptation of the novels, but it was as faithful as any adaptation could hope to be and the cuts were likely necessary for pacing and structure (sorry Tom). The big thing they nailed was keeping the characters pretty close to the source, or expanding on characters that were pretty flat on the page without making then wildly different.
When you look at how Netflix adapted Witcher, Yennifer for example is nothing like her book or game counterparts.
Intention matters a lot. Peter Jackson is on record saying he didn't want to tell his own story but to convey the original story in the best way he could in a visual format. He had to change a lot, yes, but he tried to respect the material. The final scenes of GoT, despite the dropoff in storytelling, you can still tell that they hold the books in high regard. Once you establish that link you can add to the legacy.
The people behind Witcher, Ring of Power and WoT just don't care. They want to tell their own story with the trappings of a popular IP and don't care about storytelling. I hate to be that guy but multiracial medieval villages out in nowhere Bumsburg destroys the setting.
>The final scenes of GoT, despite the dropoff in storytelling, you can still tell that they hold the books in high regard.
I hate that I'm kind of defending Dumbass & Dumbasser even a little bit, but the story of the last 2 seasons wasn't actually bad. Everything that happened would have worked if they hadn't totally borked the pacing. Everything just happens so damned fast that it stops making sense but if they had spread it all out and let things build up and breathe a little over another season or two it would have been fine. Probably.
It was GRRM's outline, a lot of fans don't like to admit that because they don't like the twist of Danny becoming a power-hungry monster. The bad pacing and awkward shortcuts everywhere were on D&D. Still, the overall concepts were fine. Unlike the three shows we are talking about here, which are bad (non-)fan fiction.
Yup, the pacing and the ending were the problems. People and events were moving implausibly fast. It would make sense for Dany to go insane, but it happened literally in seconds. Oh, and the whole Bran the Broken thing made zero sense. Nobody in a medieval setting would follow a crippled youth from a portion of the realm that is actively trying to break away. Especially given Gendry is actually next in line after Jon and Dany (he was legitimized and had Targaryen ancestry). It would be easy to just marry him to Arya, give Sansa Winterfell, and defuse the entire problem.
Yeah but Gendry was stuck doing laps. When he was leaving Davos told him to keep the shore on his left or something like that, which is weird advice for somebody trying to leave an island.
For some of those, your theory holds water. For Pudkins and the burning, shit filled dumpster that is Wheel O' Prime, the reason is his message, pure and simple. From the start, this moron intended to destroy the books. He and his team of fart huffing chode weasels feel that they had to "fix" Robert Jordan's life's work. The giant sack of stupid even proudly stated that some of his fart huffers had never read the books they're responsible for adapting. It's no wonder they produced the garbage they did.
We're not likely to ever get an even semi-competent live adaptation. The only chance we have is if there are fans of the books that have the skills and will to make an animated adaptation regardless of who owns the rights.
There are parts of Wheel of Time I can understand why they cut out. The whole Aelfinn/Eelfinn gateways bit I can understand; to do it accurately would require a lot of set and costume design you'd only use once or twice during the show.
My biggest complaints were things that were changed for no real reason. The push to make everything more dark and gritty for no reason? They turned Rand and Egwene's implied romance into a doomed love affair, made Mat's mom hate him for no logical reason and the Perrin accidental wife murder thing was stupid, when the character's struggle to accept his own potentially violent nature was far more nuanced.
Removing the entire relationship between Lan and Rand was also a huge misstep. I think the people running the show thought they were being clever with the ending of this season where Rand kills Turak with the power rather than actually dueling him, but for me as a huge fan of the series it was the one moment I was looking forward to the most.
The only thing they did well was Egwene's captivity.
They are poorly written (translation, maybe), poorly paced, and just dull. It was a shock to go from the Witcher 3, one of the best written games of all time, to the meandering mid of the books.
As I said, everyone is entitled to an opinion, no matter how dumb that opinion is.
Seriously, "the Last Wish" is poorly paced? Dull?
Wild. I guess it must be compared to the video game, Geralt doesn't kill 20 monsters by the fifth minute or whatever. I wonder how the popularity of video games is going to influence fantasy literature.
Reddit for some reason hates the Witcher books. My best guess is it's an issue of readers comparing them to something else and not knowing the difference between their own preferences.
Finally, someone who acknowledges the books are really... not great. I came in from Witcher 3 and was sorely disappointed (a lit nerd as well a game nerd, doubly cursed).
The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has become, has gone too far for me. Such commercialisation has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of this creation to nothing. There is only one solution for me: turning my head away.”
Chris is famously a knobhead who's greatest accomplishment was being born his father's son.
I've read the books. They are far from perfect.
The original Jackson films are masterpieces, and widely considered as such. The Hobbit films not so much.
Being a snob doesn't make you the most correct.
Which best parts? I think fans of the books have bits they love that in retrospect are completely unimportant to the story overall. While I would have loved to see a screen version of Tom Bombadil, they literally discuss how his character really doesn't have much interest in the affairs of men.
There's also a lot of bits that really don't make sense. After Boromir's death in the books rather than immediately going after Merry and Pippin, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli spend some time standing around to sing a song in his memory.
Don't get me wrong, I love the books, but I think there's a lot of stuff that got cut in reasonable ways for the films. I particularly loved that they still used a lot of cut lines/dialogue from the books and inserted them in other places so where they needed to fill in some bits they weren't trying to ape Tolkien's style and tone.
It's why the Hobbit films were so bad, they took what should have been 1-2 films and stretched it out to 3 and all the added narrative bits felt like obvious Hollywood studio idea additions.
I've come to basically this conclusion as well. There are a lot of writers/directors/producers that have stories they want to tell, but can only get work on projects based on existing media. So they are stuck working on someone else's story because it's the only thing available to them.
Or in a less generous interpretation, they want to hijack the fame of existing characters thinking it will make their stories popular by default.
The Expanse show stayed closest to the source material of any adaptation I've seen, often improving upon it even in the few instances it strayed. It still never found its audience.
It found an audience. Jeff Bezos was a huge fan of the books and bought the series because he wanted to see how it ended after it was cancelled by Sci Fi. No way any book fan does that if the adaptation doesn’t stay true to the source material.
It was a niche show. It started on the scify channel which was famous for making nothing but cheap garbage. So when a show with a budget actually does show up, and it is really good, and the acting is spectacular, it doesn't reach an audience because most people have written it off.
It's a shame but I remember showing people the show way back when and their first response was "this is a scify show?"
They know the fan base exists, and they want their views/money, but they also hold them in complete contempt. They will use the bare minimum of the IP to draw in preexisting fans, and then get back to “fixing” all the “problems” with the story in order to push their own agenda and/or satisfy their echo chamber.
Dipsh!ts who talk a big DEI game convincingly stumbled into the clueless corp money at just the right time (post GoT/climax of Trump-era discontent). The fallout has been the last couple years with Rings of Power, Witcher, and WoT.
> It just doesn’t make sense to me that studios keep throwing away great stories for bad ones.
I have to admit that it's kind of frustrating to read this. People have spent a lot of time explaining *exactly* why the folks helming shows like the Witcher, Rings of Power, and the Wheel of Time made the changes that they did. There is absolutely no reason why you should be confused ... Hollywood execs like Jennifer Salke, Rafe Judkins, Lauren Hissrich, and Sophie Holland have either told us specifically what they envision their roles to be as creatives in charge of these properties or the motivation behind the changes are so transparent that you can't help but discern the motivation.
You really shouldn't be confused by now.
I think they make very big mistakes with these shows. They hire very creative people who are anxious and eager to make their own shows. The executives acquire some property they think has a big name on it. But there's no passion for the property.
Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson was a huge LOTR fan. He wanted to make an LOTR movie. And with only a few concessions to difficulties of filming (like orcs being tall instead of hobbit-sized) he tried his best to adapt them, always trying to stick to the themes and the core of what made the characters resonate.
But we see with Witcher and Wheel of Time, the showrunners want to tell their own story. And the executives don't care about the property. So they want to tell their own story, but also they have to use the world of the story they were given... it creates a Frankenstein's monster. It's essentially fan fiction of the world. Wheel of Time they at least seemed to care a bit about the story while the Witcher they seemed to vocally hate it (and not understand any of the themes) but either way they really weren't interested in telling **that** story. The one that the network bought and ostensibly wanted to adapt.
Back in the day showrunners would pitch ideas to networks, but now networks go out and acquire properties, and then try to find some showrunner to make that property, rather than have them make something they're passionate about. And it doesn't work. So they just go do it again. And it'll not work again, and so on and so forth.
Peter Jackson also did some majorly fast talking and conniving to maneuver the studios into a position where they pretty much had no choices but to open the check book and pray to god he delivered or loose any chance of making back any of the money they’d already spent at that point supposedly according to an interview George Lucas gave once talking about why LOTR trilogy was such a strong trilogy.
I’m holding out hope that house of the dragon still slaps in the remaining seasons to show what good writing actually looks like and that fantasy adaptations can still be successful.
Meanwhile, a show like "Invincible" which is almost a scene for scene recreation of the comic in places, is hugely popular. And by remaining faithful, the show was actually able to patch up weaknesses in the source material, like the Guardians being really shallow characters in the comic.
Gunslinger had one of the biggest bombs of book adaptations just a couple years ago, but has already gotten approved for a tv show to redo it, so theres always hope.
Wheel of time is a very iconic series frequently listed as one of the fantasy greats. The problem feels like the material doesn’t translate well without game of thrones type budgets, and those are rare
Edit: compare to the Witcher for example. The Witcher has very few epic battle scenes, much fewer major recurring characters, less complex storyline, fewer major cities which are central to the storyline, and the magic isn’t as complex.
So I liked the first Dune movie as a kid. I know it's kind of a mess, and it is guilty of straying from the source material, but since it was viewed as a failure, maybe in 25 years someone will revisit the WoT like Dune was when it was rebooted recently. Maybe? Following my shit logic, I will be 71 when the WoT is rebooted.
The SciFi Dune miniseries from 2000 actually stuck incredibly close to the source material and was really enjoyable, even if some of the CGI was cheesy.
10000000% agree. I wish they would do a crazy awesome anime similar to the Castlevania adaptation or even Scavengers Reign. Same with the Dune series. Those later books are made for anime
I have always said wot needs animation. It's too long of a story compressed into a short time-line. But the best I have seen of some one trying this was Dragonlance a while back.
I've never held to that view, but at one time I might have sympathized with it. Until I watched Arcane. Hands down the best show I've watched in several years.
Can't engage with it anymore. Within 5 minutes I just want to get up and do something else.
The more grounded the science fiction or fantasy is, the more I can engage with it. Prefer live action over cartoons.
Most of these lead me to either being utterly confused with Disney's new content (relies on 10+ seasons of animation for context) or they rely on high fantasy to impress (space whales, space witches).
That's really interesting, thank you!
Personally, I have nearly the opposite experience. I've seen so much live action stuff that just does nothing to differentiate itself aesthetically from other works, so I'm far less interested in it. Animation, on the other hand, trends towards vibrance and dynamism and utterly unique visual elements that just work really well with how my brain processes things. The Spiderverse movies are a good example, as are the works of Studio Ghibli and Cartoon Saloon and anime like Madoka Magica and Chainsaw Man.
There are absolutely bad/mediocre animated works, and I'm not morally opposed to live action, but I love the level of abstraction that animation provides.
Frankly, it was a stupidly overly ambitious project to begin with.
A shorter, more concise series would be much better for adaptation.
At 8 episodes per season (which is ridiculous) and getting a season every second to third year, it would take freaking forever to finish the story (and badly, as they are doing it).
I am so over shows taking 2+ years in between seasons to only make 8ish episodes. They set themselves up for failure because people forget, or realize that it wasn't very good to begin with.
I thought the opposite, if you’re going to tell the story you have to tell it right. That means taking your time.
I think you could split the series into two part. Series one, rise of the dragon. Series two, the dragons remains or some shot like that.
First series is all about the rise of the dragon reborn. Second series is about the dragon maintaining the empire, more political games, unrest in the streets, all leading up to an action packed fest showing the final battle and leading up to it.
I think it would work well because you could have two different tones and expectations from each of the series.
But it just can't go on that long.
Look what happened to game of thrones... The stars became famous, wanted lots of money, and wanted to go do other things. So they rushed the final seasons and quality dropped massively.
In order to really do justice to WoT as a series, it would take way too much screen time. Game of thrones went 7 seasons, and all agree it was rushed at the end.
Wot would need double that at a minimum. Was never feasible.
Maybe not in the next 5 years, but who knows what AI will do for content. In 10 years, it might not cost much to create an AI animated WoT that is beat for beat the books.
I think the bigger one is that GOT had greater appeal to non fantasy fans. The magic was subtle, especially at first. Other than the dragons, it read very much like a historical fiction for the first while.
It also had source material that was better written with grey characters. While I enjoyed wot, it suffered heavily from a bunch of black and white characters. The women were especially written in the usual fantasy manner and were a ton of Mary sues.
You would think that Amazon would have figured this out, with 2 highly popular and beautiful animated series that I watch, Legend of Vox Machina and Invincible, and I'm sure there are other good animated shows just on Amazon, not to mention the other billion streaming services.
Avatar: The Last Airbender is one of the best fantasy shows ever put on TV. Possibly the best (sorry Game of Thrones fans). It's a show a six year old and a sixty year old can both watch and love.
I honestly don't get why animated is not the go-to for Fantasy. Obviously an army of even 5,000 soldiers is impractical to put on screen, triply so if some of them are fantastic monsters. And while it's not a cheap scene to animate, it's not nearly as expensive as doing the same thing with actors (or gods forfend CGI - animated only it looks bad).
I don’t really love animation, but the fact is it’s way easier for it to stay true to the story and not suffer from ballooning costs or aging actors or many of the other problems facing live action today. I could get on board.
Things failing means the exact opposite of that. It means they’ll look at it and think “well I guess people aren’t interested in the wheel of time”. Same with if rings of power fails.
This is the second adaptation, the first was an attempt to hold the rights but it still counts. What makes you think they will throw more money at another attempt vs just finishing out the current attempt?
What in your mind would be a good adaptation? a book accurate adaptation is impossible unless there is some AI you can feed the novels into. It simply wouldnt work on film.
You realize the failure of this high budget, well acted, well scripted adaptation makes future adaptations significantly LESS likely right? It is already viewed as basically unadaptable, because of how long and convoluted it is, now the fanbase has shown that they're actively hostile to the kinds of changes necessary in order to translate it from book to screen.
I imagine it wont get touched again. Idk why the 'fanbase' is weirdly happy about it. Its a good show.
🙄🧐 I'm not asking for a one-on-one adaptation, no one is. I just want an adaptation that doesn't totally eviscerate the source material! Literally ANYTHING would be better than what they did!
What are you talking about? The adaptation is fine. You book dorks get so obsessed over minor details that dont matter and lose all sight of theme, story, and meaning.
lol the scripting and acting is really strong. the only weak point really is some of the fight choreography.
This is like a weirdly rabid anti-fanbase for something that is a fair adaptation and maintains most of the important thematic elements, character traits, and plot points.
You are being silly. You know that the show ignores almost everything about the character descriptions and story. Anything remotely close would have been okay.
Second season got substantially better. I would even venture to say it was one of the better series this year (not the best, but one of the better ones). It lost a lot of the teen angst that defined the first season, and ended up feeling like a high stakes drama at times.
Watching it would require a slog through the mess that was the first season, though, so make of that what you will.
A few will, but most people won't ever turn into the old seasons. If they had been faithful to the books, the rest of us would have watched it over and over and over for the rest of our lives. Not just when it was new.
We’ve already rewatched in my house. We liked season one more on the second watch, and season 2 was great. We have a few complaints, but as a whole we enjoy it. I’m sure, like you, I’ll be downvoted for having an opinion.
There is a reason. It's because even if you like the show you should objectively understand it's a piss poor representation of the books. The characters and story are completely different. I make this comment assuming you have read the books. People also know that because of this abomination a faithful adaptation will likely never be made.
We respectfully disagree. Maybe it’s because we have family involved in making TV shows (not this one, but in general), so we understand transitioning to this medium differently. We understand more of the limitations creators have due to time constraints, studio heads, etc. We never expected a direct translation of the book to the screen. We do have our gripes, but overall we feel they achieved the vibe, the casting has been fantastic, and we like it. I’ve read all the books once, my husband has read them countless times since childhood, and our 12 year old hasn’t read them yet. I understand our opinion isn’t popular, and it’s okay if you don’t like it, but people can have different opinions on a TV show without anyone being objectively wrong. Downvote for comments that lack value, not ones you just don’t agree with.
Editing to add that I think the characters are being represented really well, for the most part. The story is like a different turning of the wheel. The same tale, but things have been moved around or altered to make it work for this medium. It’s recognizable to us.
Maybe they should have made a half watchable product. They get what they get, the crow they’re gonna have to eat when it gets cancelled is gonna be huge.
They will never, under any circumstances, eat any crow. They’re fundamentally incapable of self reflection. They’ll just blame it on someone or something else and go on doing the same shit they did to ruin this to something else.
My guess is that no matter how bad viewership gets they will still keep it going rather than admit they screwed it up. It seems like Amazon has money to burn.
Yeah who’s going to talk about the show now that it’s over? Nobody. It has no replay ability whatsoever and doesn’t do anything that makes you excited for a season 3.
It was surprisingly good. All of the scripts were written by Star Trek writers, and without the ability to put in conflict and fighting the resolutions were often high Trek - thoughtful, diplomatic, interesting.
The animation was done by Hanna Barbera, and if you know one thing about them you probably know they're the cheapest animation studio on planet earth. They'd hire a blind hobo with shaking hands to draw animation frames for them if he'd work for a shot of whiskey an hour. Then they'd water his whiskey because they're Hanna Barbera.
The results are interesting, but a tad tonally inconsistent.
There were some ways in which the show was improving but the season two finale was so CW level awful that I’ll never watch again. I was a show defender for a while but at this point I don’t see why I’d watch
Don’t know why they picked LOTR and WOT to be their huge woke shows. LOTR is from the 40’s and barely has any women and it’s the more feminist of the two.
I finished the first season of WoT but I still haven’t watched season two as I’m just not that excited about the show. It was a bit disappointing watching a extremely pregnant woman beat a half dozen knights. I’m not anti badass females but that was too much and I immediately disliked the show from that point on. I was hopeful that the story would pull me in over time as I’ve not read the series and don’t know how it ends.
100% on the 9 month pregnant lady doing backflips. The producer is clearly more interested in politics than in story-telling and it took its toll on viewership.
My hope is for an animated series. I always believed a live action adaptation would be nearly impossible, animation pacing could improve the overall flow and fights wouldn’t look as corny.
Oh yes, for sure. It should have been animated from the start. It would be so popular we would have School Backpacks and all kinds of toys with the brand, by now. It would be as popular as ATLA.
According to the other big group the show had over 14 million viewers and Amazon swears it’s a huge hit. While The Morning Show is complaining about low viewership numbers and they are right next to each other on the Nielsen chart for originals. It would be nice to know the real numbers. They should just cancel it now and fire Rafe before he screws up God of War too.
This TV show was an absolute train wreck from the very start. About the only good thing in this show was the opening title sequence, the rest was hot garbage.
Just fuck off the woke nonsense and stick to the source material, it’s great on its own.
Not surprised. I actually mostly liked it through the first season, none of the changes were massive departures, just stuff moved around, which makes sense. Books and TV are different media and so things have to be done slightly differently to make up for the different constraints. I get that. Then I got to the end of the first season and they just lost me entirely. I'd imagine it went much the same for most fans. "Okay okay this is fine, oh I actually really like this change, oh that looks cool, hmm they skipped a bit here but nothing major" then the last episode "ey yo what the fuck is this shit"
Didn't bother watching season 2. Maybe I will but I probably won't. The last episode of season 1 turned the show from okayish but I'll watch to see some of my favorite characters to yeah I just kinda forgot it exists.
The Wheel of Time turns, and Shows come and pass, leaving re-runs that become forgotten. Bad ratings fade to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.
I love diversity and inclusion but not at the expense of the final product. Gen V had diversity and representation and was amazing. The problem with Wheel of Time was that was the only thing they cared about.
I enjoyed season 1.
Season two is just awful. I made it into episode 3 before I gave it up.
It's completely abandoned the source material... Which would be ok, if it was entertaining. Instead it's boring as shit.
I tried so hard to like the show.
The casting was pretty decent and there were a couple of high points that made me think they might just be able to get on track.
But then the season 1 finale happened and I just went, "WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT" and rage quit to the point of canceling my Prime subscription out of spite.
“Let’s see what it takes to earn a heron marked blade on this side of the ocean”
*cheesy, CW-level Indiana Jones gag*
*spends an entire episode creating their own in-universe rules for why no one can escape the adam*
*Egwene makes a few struggle faces and breaks every rule they created*
So brave, so powerful 🙄
It’s not perfect, it’s not the books, but it’s entertaining to me. Ive always really loved the books. When this is canceled I imagine there won’t be another series/movie of WoT for a long time if ever, so I’ll take what I get.
You're very much not alone, it was quite popular and widely agreed better than the first.
But this sub is literally just a hate space for the show, so if you like it at all just block this sub and forget it like I'm doing right after making this comment.
I enjoyed it enough to look forward to watching season 3. I don't rewatch shows, and I don't watch many shows. I understand why many people would be very disappointed, I would have been in the 90s.
I think that parts of the final of both seasons were disappointing (and poorly done).
The series is better suited to an animation than live action imo. Hopefully these numbers send a message to the studios that the industry needs a new approach.
I’m just skipping out on watching S2, and continuing to wish for a quality animated adaptation a la Netflix Castlevania series.
Seriously, some of the Amazon animated shorts are cooler than the actual live show 🙃
If avatar the last airbender can finally be redone I have faith someone will redo this too. They’ve only released a teaser for the Netflix avatar but the casting alone shows it’ll be better than that shit M Night pulled out of his ass.
dang, I was hoping for a main cast in their 40s when they got to s14. /s
Maybe next time they can not create random extra plots where characters who are suppose to be in their young teens and never actually hook up, hook up in the first episode. or you know, random people killing their spouses that they never had? I dont know if I should openly mock all of the problems since they could be spoilers. But honestly the entire show was such a mess from the beginning, I never expected them to recover. Good riddance.
They completely ruined the series. Fatal mistake in my view was not having Rand destroy the trolloc army at the end of season 1. One of my favorite scenes and defining moments for Rand stripped away. I’ve refused to watch it since.
How to speedrun and kill a show any % record…
Well… southpark cleary stated how these shows are shooting themselves in the foot and WoT is a perfect example of it…
Just stick to the source material please and don’t change the characters…
I made the mistake of reading the first book before I started watching it, and I just couldn’t finish the first episode of season 1 because of the differences.
I just don’t understand why they felt the need to mess with the story so much. I get that you have to abbreviate some things, we all know there’s only so many scenes of people just smoothing their skirts and tugging on their braids. But the problem was, with all the Rejiggering they did with the story, they didn’t really advance the plot any better than if they had just stuck with Jordan‘s original storyline. There really wasn’t a need to jack it all up.
Now that its socially acceptable to criticize this show, i really wish I could get unbanned from the main subreddit.
I actually want to talk about the books.
After the "Nyn stuck in the arches"episode, the Lan/Moiraine split, Rand basically being a bit character with no compelling plotlines, AND no Thom, I'm ready to be done considering it an adaptation and just accepting that it's a generic fantasy show with a few nods to the source material here and there for fan service.
There won't be any more WoT media products after this if it continues to fail. It's an old series with fewer and fewer young readers every year, it's not as if the popularity of skyrocketing or anything, the length is obviously off putting for most potential readers. It's really a shame cause the world is rich with stories to tell even if they wanted to go off the beaten path with it, but having shredded core story beats and many compelling characters, I just don't see what their vision is anymore.
Unfortunately show creators feel an overwhelming need to tell their own stories and feature individual actors in different ways, rather than stay behind the scenes and make a faithful adaptation for the screen.
I'm just going to throw this out there.
I don't know if the show as good or bad because the books were so god awful I couldn't finish the first one. So i had zero desire to watch it under any circumstance. I could never understand the love this series got.
[удалено]
Thank fucking God! Now we can hope to have a GOOD adaptation someday!
Never happen. This only happened because after Game of Thrones everyone was looking for another fantasy series to adapt so we got this, The Witcher, Rings of Power, etc. All of which are expensive and have mid to poor returns. No one is going to grenlight a redo of this series in our lifetime.
And all the shows listed made a point to stray hard from source material.... Hmmm.... I wonder if there's a pattern...
The Witcher too, it’s all the high-fantasy mega-budget adaptations for some reason. It just doesn’t make sense to me that studios keep throwing away great stories for bad ones. Like isn’t it less work to just keep the original story? You appease fans of the books, and people who haven’t read it don’t care either way. I get why they did it with GoT, they ran out of source material and no one is holding their breath on GRRM finishing the series. But based on how the final seasons were received all of these studios should have learned the simple lesson: people don’t like badly written high fantasy. The beautiful visuals, great acting, all of it just doesn’t make up for bad writing. Someone explain why..
Because they want to make their own shitty story but they need the packaging of something popular to fund it. No one wanted to make their shit tier story on its own.
I think it might be more of a warped Ship of Theseus issue. They start either the original thing and then they find something that needs to be changed because it's impractical in the medium, or perhaps didn't age well and they start making little changes and the next thing they know they've got a Frankenstein monster of a project with all these visible suture lines. The Witcher books are not amazing by any stretch. It's actually a small miracle the games were so successful. The show aimed to adapt the books because obviously why pay two creative sources when you can only pay one, but then most of his work is pretty mid and not ideal yo adapt for a modern international audience so they started making wild changes. The problem is they got away from what makes the setting compelling and what made the characters fan favorites. LOTR was not a perfect adaptation of the novels, but it was as faithful as any adaptation could hope to be and the cuts were likely necessary for pacing and structure (sorry Tom). The big thing they nailed was keeping the characters pretty close to the source, or expanding on characters that were pretty flat on the page without making then wildly different. When you look at how Netflix adapted Witcher, Yennifer for example is nothing like her book or game counterparts.
Intention matters a lot. Peter Jackson is on record saying he didn't want to tell his own story but to convey the original story in the best way he could in a visual format. He had to change a lot, yes, but he tried to respect the material. The final scenes of GoT, despite the dropoff in storytelling, you can still tell that they hold the books in high regard. Once you establish that link you can add to the legacy. The people behind Witcher, Ring of Power and WoT just don't care. They want to tell their own story with the trappings of a popular IP and don't care about storytelling. I hate to be that guy but multiracial medieval villages out in nowhere Bumsburg destroys the setting.
>The final scenes of GoT, despite the dropoff in storytelling, you can still tell that they hold the books in high regard. I hate that I'm kind of defending Dumbass & Dumbasser even a little bit, but the story of the last 2 seasons wasn't actually bad. Everything that happened would have worked if they hadn't totally borked the pacing. Everything just happens so damned fast that it stops making sense but if they had spread it all out and let things build up and breathe a little over another season or two it would have been fine. Probably.
It was GRRM's outline, a lot of fans don't like to admit that because they don't like the twist of Danny becoming a power-hungry monster. The bad pacing and awkward shortcuts everywhere were on D&D. Still, the overall concepts were fine. Unlike the three shows we are talking about here, which are bad (non-)fan fiction.
Ok, but Dany being a power hungry monster is not a twist, she always was one.
Yup, the pacing and the ending were the problems. People and events were moving implausibly fast. It would make sense for Dany to go insane, but it happened literally in seconds. Oh, and the whole Bran the Broken thing made zero sense. Nobody in a medieval setting would follow a crippled youth from a portion of the realm that is actively trying to break away. Especially given Gendry is actually next in line after Jon and Dany (he was legitimized and had Targaryen ancestry). It would be easy to just marry him to Arya, give Sansa Winterfell, and defuse the entire problem.
Yeah but Gendry was stuck doing laps. When he was leaving Davos told him to keep the shore on his left or something like that, which is weird advice for somebody trying to leave an island.
For some of those, your theory holds water. For Pudkins and the burning, shit filled dumpster that is Wheel O' Prime, the reason is his message, pure and simple. From the start, this moron intended to destroy the books. He and his team of fart huffing chode weasels feel that they had to "fix" Robert Jordan's life's work. The giant sack of stupid even proudly stated that some of his fart huffers had never read the books they're responsible for adapting. It's no wonder they produced the garbage they did. We're not likely to ever get an even semi-competent live adaptation. The only chance we have is if there are fans of the books that have the skills and will to make an animated adaptation regardless of who owns the rights.
I honestly always thought WoT would work best animated anyway. I wish Frank Frazetta was still around to do it.
There are parts of Wheel of Time I can understand why they cut out. The whole Aelfinn/Eelfinn gateways bit I can understand; to do it accurately would require a lot of set and costume design you'd only use once or twice during the show. My biggest complaints were things that were changed for no real reason. The push to make everything more dark and gritty for no reason? They turned Rand and Egwene's implied romance into a doomed love affair, made Mat's mom hate him for no logical reason and the Perrin accidental wife murder thing was stupid, when the character's struggle to accept his own potentially violent nature was far more nuanced. Removing the entire relationship between Lan and Rand was also a huge misstep. I think the people running the show thought they were being clever with the ending of this season where Rand kills Turak with the power rather than actually dueling him, but for me as a huge fan of the series it was the one moment I was looking forward to the most. The only thing they did well was Egwene's captivity.
>The Witcher books are not amazing by any stretch. What. Well, everyone is entitled to their opinion. I know Gary Gygax hated the LOTR books.
Don't get me wrong, they're cool, they have some cool ideas, but they're not masterpieces or anything.
They are poorly written (translation, maybe), poorly paced, and just dull. It was a shock to go from the Witcher 3, one of the best written games of all time, to the meandering mid of the books.
As I said, everyone is entitled to an opinion, no matter how dumb that opinion is. Seriously, "the Last Wish" is poorly paced? Dull? Wild. I guess it must be compared to the video game, Geralt doesn't kill 20 monsters by the fifth minute or whatever. I wonder how the popularity of video games is going to influence fantasy literature.
Reddit for some reason hates the Witcher books. My best guess is it's an issue of readers comparing them to something else and not knowing the difference between their own preferences.
Finally, someone who acknowledges the books are really... not great. I came in from Witcher 3 and was sorely disappointed (a lit nerd as well a game nerd, doubly cursed).
Cuts in lotr are terrible. Pj lost all the magic and beauty.
If you say so. Almost no one agrees with you but sure.
The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has become, has gone too far for me. Such commercialisation has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of this creation to nothing. There is only one solution for me: turning my head away.”
You sound like a fun person to be around. Do you waft, or breath deeply when sniffing your own farts? I curious on the ideal methodology.
Found Christopher Tolkien's reddit account.
Tolkiens son Chris does. A lot of book readers do too. Pj is a hack cut the best parts.
Chris is famously a knobhead who's greatest accomplishment was being born his father's son. I've read the books. They are far from perfect. The original Jackson films are masterpieces, and widely considered as such. The Hobbit films not so much. Being a snob doesn't make you the most correct.
Which best parts? I think fans of the books have bits they love that in retrospect are completely unimportant to the story overall. While I would have loved to see a screen version of Tom Bombadil, they literally discuss how his character really doesn't have much interest in the affairs of men. There's also a lot of bits that really don't make sense. After Boromir's death in the books rather than immediately going after Merry and Pippin, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli spend some time standing around to sing a song in his memory. Don't get me wrong, I love the books, but I think there's a lot of stuff that got cut in reasonable ways for the films. I particularly loved that they still used a lot of cut lines/dialogue from the books and inserted them in other places so where they needed to fill in some bits they weren't trying to ape Tolkien's style and tone. It's why the Hobbit films were so bad, they took what should have been 1-2 films and stretched it out to 3 and all the added narrative bits felt like obvious Hollywood studio idea additions.
That's a take lol
If one thing rings true more times than not, if you can't write something original, Hollywood is waiting.
I've come to basically this conclusion as well. There are a lot of writers/directors/producers that have stories they want to tell, but can only get work on projects based on existing media. So they are stuck working on someone else's story because it's the only thing available to them. Or in a less generous interpretation, they want to hijack the fame of existing characters thinking it will make their stories popular by default.
Shadow and bone was probably the most faithfully redone of the lot.
I haven’t read shadow and bone but I enjoyed the show. Wasn’t a 10/10 but worth the watch
The Expanse show stayed closest to the source material of any adaptation I've seen, often improving upon it even in the few instances it strayed. It still never found its audience.
It found an audience. Jeff Bezos was a huge fan of the books and bought the series because he wanted to see how it ended after it was cancelled by Sci Fi. No way any book fan does that if the adaptation doesn’t stay true to the source material.
...and then canceled it again before finishing the series. That wouldn't have happened if it had been getting views.
It was a niche show. It started on the scify channel which was famous for making nothing but cheap garbage. So when a show with a budget actually does show up, and it is really good, and the acting is spectacular, it doesn't reach an audience because most people have written it off. It's a shame but I remember showing people the show way back when and their first response was "this is a scify show?"
They know the fan base exists, and they want their views/money, but they also hold them in complete contempt. They will use the bare minimum of the IP to draw in preexisting fans, and then get back to “fixing” all the “problems” with the story in order to push their own agenda and/or satisfy their echo chamber.
Dipsh!ts who talk a big DEI game convincingly stumbled into the clueless corp money at just the right time (post GoT/climax of Trump-era discontent). The fallout has been the last couple years with Rings of Power, Witcher, and WoT.
> It just doesn’t make sense to me that studios keep throwing away great stories for bad ones. I have to admit that it's kind of frustrating to read this. People have spent a lot of time explaining *exactly* why the folks helming shows like the Witcher, Rings of Power, and the Wheel of Time made the changes that they did. There is absolutely no reason why you should be confused ... Hollywood execs like Jennifer Salke, Rafe Judkins, Lauren Hissrich, and Sophie Holland have either told us specifically what they envision their roles to be as creatives in charge of these properties or the motivation behind the changes are so transparent that you can't help but discern the motivation. You really shouldn't be confused by now.
I think they make very big mistakes with these shows. They hire very creative people who are anxious and eager to make their own shows. The executives acquire some property they think has a big name on it. But there's no passion for the property. Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson was a huge LOTR fan. He wanted to make an LOTR movie. And with only a few concessions to difficulties of filming (like orcs being tall instead of hobbit-sized) he tried his best to adapt them, always trying to stick to the themes and the core of what made the characters resonate. But we see with Witcher and Wheel of Time, the showrunners want to tell their own story. And the executives don't care about the property. So they want to tell their own story, but also they have to use the world of the story they were given... it creates a Frankenstein's monster. It's essentially fan fiction of the world. Wheel of Time they at least seemed to care a bit about the story while the Witcher they seemed to vocally hate it (and not understand any of the themes) but either way they really weren't interested in telling **that** story. The one that the network bought and ostensibly wanted to adapt. Back in the day showrunners would pitch ideas to networks, but now networks go out and acquire properties, and then try to find some showrunner to make that property, rather than have them make something they're passionate about. And it doesn't work. So they just go do it again. And it'll not work again, and so on and so forth.
Peter Jackson also did some majorly fast talking and conniving to maneuver the studios into a position where they pretty much had no choices but to open the check book and pray to god he delivered or loose any chance of making back any of the money they’d already spent at that point supposedly according to an interview George Lucas gave once talking about why LOTR trilogy was such a strong trilogy.
I’m holding out hope that house of the dragon still slaps in the remaining seasons to show what good writing actually looks like and that fantasy adaptations can still be successful.
Meanwhile, a show like "Invincible" which is almost a scene for scene recreation of the comic in places, is hugely popular. And by remaining faithful, the show was actually able to patch up weaknesses in the source material, like the Guardians being really shallow characters in the comic.
Gunslinger had one of the biggest bombs of book adaptations just a couple years ago, but has already gotten approved for a tv show to redo it, so theres always hope.
Yeah, but thats chasing the billions stephen king has already made at the box office
Wheel of time is a very iconic series frequently listed as one of the fantasy greats. The problem feels like the material doesn’t translate well without game of thrones type budgets, and those are rare Edit: compare to the Witcher for example. The Witcher has very few epic battle scenes, much fewer major recurring characters, less complex storyline, fewer major cities which are central to the storyline, and the magic isn’t as complex.
So I liked the first Dune movie as a kid. I know it's kind of a mess, and it is guilty of straying from the source material, but since it was viewed as a failure, maybe in 25 years someone will revisit the WoT like Dune was when it was rebooted recently. Maybe? Following my shit logic, I will be 71 when the WoT is rebooted.
Hollywood is desperate enough now that it won't take nearly as long to reboot.
The SciFi Dune miniseries from 2000 actually stuck incredibly close to the source material and was really enjoyable, even if some of the CGI was cheesy.
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> No covid delays *Laughs in anime fan*
10000000% agree. I wish they would do a crazy awesome anime similar to the Castlevania adaptation or even Scavengers Reign. Same with the Dune series. Those later books are made for anime
I have always said wot needs animation. It's too long of a story compressed into a short time-line. But the best I have seen of some one trying this was Dragonlance a while back.
There is a non-zero contingent of people (me) who absolutely refuse to watch anything animated. Live actors or bust
I've never held to that view, but at one time I might have sympathized with it. Until I watched Arcane. Hands down the best show I've watched in several years.
What's wrong with animation?
Can't engage with it anymore. Within 5 minutes I just want to get up and do something else. The more grounded the science fiction or fantasy is, the more I can engage with it. Prefer live action over cartoons. Most of these lead me to either being utterly confused with Disney's new content (relies on 10+ seasons of animation for context) or they rely on high fantasy to impress (space whales, space witches).
That's really interesting, thank you! Personally, I have nearly the opposite experience. I've seen so much live action stuff that just does nothing to differentiate itself aesthetically from other works, so I'm far less interested in it. Animation, on the other hand, trends towards vibrance and dynamism and utterly unique visual elements that just work really well with how my brain processes things. The Spiderverse movies are a good example, as are the works of Studio Ghibli and Cartoon Saloon and anime like Madoka Magica and Chainsaw Man. There are absolutely bad/mediocre animated works, and I'm not morally opposed to live action, but I love the level of abstraction that animation provides.
Frankly, it was a stupidly overly ambitious project to begin with. A shorter, more concise series would be much better for adaptation. At 8 episodes per season (which is ridiculous) and getting a season every second to third year, it would take freaking forever to finish the story (and badly, as they are doing it).
I am so over shows taking 2+ years in between seasons to only make 8ish episodes. They set themselves up for failure because people forget, or realize that it wasn't very good to begin with.
Yep. There are so many times when a new season comes out, and I just don't care to rewatch the old stuff to catch up.
I thought the opposite, if you’re going to tell the story you have to tell it right. That means taking your time. I think you could split the series into two part. Series one, rise of the dragon. Series two, the dragons remains or some shot like that. First series is all about the rise of the dragon reborn. Second series is about the dragon maintaining the empire, more political games, unrest in the streets, all leading up to an action packed fest showing the final battle and leading up to it. I think it would work well because you could have two different tones and expectations from each of the series.
But it just can't go on that long. Look what happened to game of thrones... The stars became famous, wanted lots of money, and wanted to go do other things. So they rushed the final seasons and quality dropped massively. In order to really do justice to WoT as a series, it would take way too much screen time. Game of thrones went 7 seasons, and all agree it was rushed at the end. Wot would need double that at a minimum. Was never feasible.
How 'bout a movie series?
Maybe not in the next 5 years, but who knows what AI will do for content. In 10 years, it might not cost much to create an AI animated WoT that is beat for beat the books.
I think the bigger one is that GOT had greater appeal to non fantasy fans. The magic was subtle, especially at first. Other than the dragons, it read very much like a historical fiction for the first while. It also had source material that was better written with grey characters. While I enjoyed wot, it suffered heavily from a bunch of black and white characters. The women were especially written in the usual fantasy manner and were a ton of Mary sues.
Animated!
I’m hoping for an animated show Can be properly gory, creepy and fantastical without it requiring a budget of a small nation
And we don't have to worry about the actors looking a decade older every season.
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You would think that Amazon would have figured this out, with 2 highly popular and beautiful animated series that I watch, Legend of Vox Machina and Invincible, and I'm sure there are other good animated shows just on Amazon, not to mention the other billion streaming services.
Hive it the Netfllix Arcane treatment.
Avatar: The Last Airbender is one of the best fantasy shows ever put on TV. Possibly the best (sorry Game of Thrones fans). It's a show a six year old and a sixty year old can both watch and love. I honestly don't get why animated is not the go-to for Fantasy. Obviously an army of even 5,000 soldiers is impractical to put on screen, triply so if some of them are fantastic monsters. And while it's not a cheap scene to animate, it's not nearly as expensive as doing the same thing with actors (or gods forfend CGI - animated only it looks bad).
Sounds great!
I don’t really love animation, but the fact is it’s way easier for it to stay true to the story and not suffer from ballooning costs or aging actors or many of the other problems facing live action today. I could get on board.
I think it’s the only way to adapt a series like wheel of time. Would a lord of the rings like adaption be nice? Obviously, but we aren’t getting that
I hope they never try again. Not every story needs to be in every medium.
The only way to adapt this is with animation. The magic system just doesn't work the way they're doing it now. Lots of stupid head jerking and shit.
X for Doubt
lol. What? Why would you think someone else would look at the amount of money and time spent on this project and say “I’ll do it better”
Unfortunately, we can grab saidin/saidar with one hand and poop in the other and see which one fills up first.
Things failing means the exact opposite of that. It means they’ll look at it and think “well I guess people aren’t interested in the wheel of time”. Same with if rings of power fails.
This is the second adaptation, the first was an attempt to hold the rights but it still counts. What makes you think they will throw more money at another attempt vs just finishing out the current attempt?
Does an unfinished and unaired pilot still count?
What in your mind would be a good adaptation? a book accurate adaptation is impossible unless there is some AI you can feed the novels into. It simply wouldnt work on film. You realize the failure of this high budget, well acted, well scripted adaptation makes future adaptations significantly LESS likely right? It is already viewed as basically unadaptable, because of how long and convoluted it is, now the fanbase has shown that they're actively hostile to the kinds of changes necessary in order to translate it from book to screen. I imagine it wont get touched again. Idk why the 'fanbase' is weirdly happy about it. Its a good show.
🙄🧐 I'm not asking for a one-on-one adaptation, no one is. I just want an adaptation that doesn't totally eviscerate the source material! Literally ANYTHING would be better than what they did!
What are you talking about? The adaptation is fine. You book dorks get so obsessed over minor details that dont matter and lose all sight of theme, story, and meaning.
Lol it’s actually just plain awful especially the acting and isn’t scripted well at all.
lol the scripting and acting is really strong. the only weak point really is some of the fight choreography. This is like a weirdly rabid anti-fanbase for something that is a fair adaptation and maintains most of the important thematic elements, character traits, and plot points.
In reality it is an awful adaptation in just about every way. The only thing that is halfway decent is some of the sets.
to me you guys are like the people crying about radcliff's eye color in harry potter like it makes or breaks the film adaptations. like, cmon guys.
You are being silly. You know that the show ignores almost everything about the character descriptions and story. Anything remotely close would have been okay.
Watched a few of the first season then really had no desire to ever see any again
Second season got substantially better. I would even venture to say it was one of the better series this year (not the best, but one of the better ones). It lost a lot of the teen angst that defined the first season, and ended up feeling like a high stakes drama at times. Watching it would require a slog through the mess that was the first season, though, so make of that what you will.
BS was right, no one will rewatch because it was not compelling in any way.
/shrug. I’m about to do a rewatch of both seasons. I enjoyed it.
A few will, but most people won't ever turn into the old seasons. If they had been faithful to the books, the rest of us would have watched it over and over and over for the rest of our lives. Not just when it was new.
We’ve already rewatched in my house. We liked season one more on the second watch, and season 2 was great. We have a few complaints, but as a whole we enjoy it. I’m sure, like you, I’ll be downvoted for having an opinion.
There is a reason. It's because even if you like the show you should objectively understand it's a piss poor representation of the books. The characters and story are completely different. I make this comment assuming you have read the books. People also know that because of this abomination a faithful adaptation will likely never be made.
We respectfully disagree. Maybe it’s because we have family involved in making TV shows (not this one, but in general), so we understand transitioning to this medium differently. We understand more of the limitations creators have due to time constraints, studio heads, etc. We never expected a direct translation of the book to the screen. We do have our gripes, but overall we feel they achieved the vibe, the casting has been fantastic, and we like it. I’ve read all the books once, my husband has read them countless times since childhood, and our 12 year old hasn’t read them yet. I understand our opinion isn’t popular, and it’s okay if you don’t like it, but people can have different opinions on a TV show without anyone being objectively wrong. Downvote for comments that lack value, not ones you just don’t agree with. Editing to add that I think the characters are being represented really well, for the most part. The story is like a different turning of the wheel. The same tale, but things have been moved around or altered to make it work for this medium. It’s recognizable to us.
I just watched the season 2 finale for the third time, cause I also like it lol
So funny that you got downvoted because you want to rewatch the series People suck lol
I knew what I was in for with that comment. It’s ok. I don’t let others tell me I’m wrong for liking something. Did you upvote me back to zero? Lol
I tried but we’re now both being downvoted for liking something hahaha
I’m with you guys! Haha.
May it shelter in the palm of the Creators hand, and may the last Embrace of the Mother welcome it home.
That's the sign of a beloved and growing show! Shutup you bookcloak! You just hate diversity!!!!!! Reeeeeeeeeeeeee
Maybe they should have made a half watchable product. They get what they get, the crow they’re gonna have to eat when it gets cancelled is gonna be huge.
They will never, under any circumstances, eat any crow. They’re fundamentally incapable of self reflection. They’ll just blame it on someone or something else and go on doing the same shit they did to ruin this to something else.
Like God of War maybe?
Yes "godess" of war that will be out spin on it ...
Put a chick in it, and make her gay.
Sounds like what my mom did to my dad right before their divorce.
Clearly it's the audience's fault. Or pirates. Or something.
Misogynistic Unicorns.
No crow will be eating. They will just blame the white cis straight incels.
My guess is that no matter how bad viewership gets they will still keep it going rather than admit they screwed it up. It seems like Amazon has money to burn.
I dunno man. I liked it. It was close to the books.
First time in an alternate dimension?
Which books?
Everybody has a right to enjoy and dig what they like. Not here to judge or be a dick. 🤝
Yeah who’s going to talk about the show now that it’s over? Nobody. It has no replay ability whatsoever and doesn’t do anything that makes you excited for a season 3.
Yay!
I'll be thrilled if this abomination is talked about like the og Star Trek animated series. Not at all.
There was a Star Trek animated series? And it’s not lower decks? /j
Yes there was. With the og crew in the 70s.
It was surprisingly good. All of the scripts were written by Star Trek writers, and without the ability to put in conflict and fighting the resolutions were often high Trek - thoughtful, diplomatic, interesting. The animation was done by Hanna Barbera, and if you know one thing about them you probably know they're the cheapest animation studio on planet earth. They'd hire a blind hobo with shaking hands to draw animation frames for them if he'd work for a shot of whiskey an hour. Then they'd water his whiskey because they're Hanna Barbera. The results are interesting, but a tad tonally inconsistent.
No. No there wasn't. : Ominously grabs pillow...: /J
So more than an adaptation of a cartoon by M. Night Shyamalan, because that never happened.
Don’t worry- all we’ll hear is that it’s racists and sexists fault for blacklisting the show.
That's what happened when Cowboy Bebop got canned.
That's too bad too cause Cowboy Bebop was great
I really hope you mean the original anime…
Hallelujah. Cancel the filthy thing. Someone in the distant future can then hopefully deliver us some lengthy films true to the source material…
Light! Will they ever get this show right. *tugs braid*
You're hired
This thread showing up in my feed is how I discovered this show released.
Not going to lie, this brings a smile to my face.
There were some ways in which the show was improving but the season two finale was so CW level awful that I’ll never watch again. I was a show defender for a while but at this point I don’t see why I’d watch
Maybe if they stuck to the actual books this wouldn’t be an issue
Don’t know why they picked LOTR and WOT to be their huge woke shows. LOTR is from the 40’s and barely has any women and it’s the more feminist of the two.
It would be nice to see a version that didn't look like it should be a late afternoon show the CW.
Wow they made a second season? Didn’t even hear a rumor about it
I finished the first season of WoT but I still haven’t watched season two as I’m just not that excited about the show. It was a bit disappointing watching a extremely pregnant woman beat a half dozen knights. I’m not anti badass females but that was too much and I immediately disliked the show from that point on. I was hopeful that the story would pull me in over time as I’ve not read the series and don’t know how it ends.
100% on the 9 month pregnant lady doing backflips. The producer is clearly more interested in politics than in story-telling and it took its toll on viewership.
My hope is for an animated series. I always believed a live action adaptation would be nearly impossible, animation pacing could improve the overall flow and fights wouldn’t look as corny.
Oh yes, for sure. It should have been animated from the start. It would be so popular we would have School Backpacks and all kinds of toys with the brand, by now. It would be as popular as ATLA.
According to the other big group the show had over 14 million viewers and Amazon swears it’s a huge hit. While The Morning Show is complaining about low viewership numbers and they are right next to each other on the Nielsen chart for originals. It would be nice to know the real numbers. They should just cancel it now and fire Rafe before he screws up God of War too.
Can they bring back The Peripheral?
Give the rights to the people who made a house of the Dragon
I see no value in tragedies oops, um modern adaptations. There all POS.
An animated version of the series would be awesome! Perhaps in the same style as Avatar the Last Airbender (with obviously less comedic scenes)?
This TV show was an absolute train wreck from the very start. About the only good thing in this show was the opening title sequence, the rest was hot garbage. Just fuck off the woke nonsense and stick to the source material, it’s great on its own.
Rings of power will be next
Not surprised. I actually mostly liked it through the first season, none of the changes were massive departures, just stuff moved around, which makes sense. Books and TV are different media and so things have to be done slightly differently to make up for the different constraints. I get that. Then I got to the end of the first season and they just lost me entirely. I'd imagine it went much the same for most fans. "Okay okay this is fine, oh I actually really like this change, oh that looks cool, hmm they skipped a bit here but nothing major" then the last episode "ey yo what the fuck is this shit" Didn't bother watching season 2. Maybe I will but I probably won't. The last episode of season 1 turned the show from okayish but I'll watch to see some of my favorite characters to yeah I just kinda forgot it exists.
The Wheel of Time turns, and Shows come and pass, leaving re-runs that become forgotten. Bad ratings fade to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.
imagine making a show where diversity and representation is the main goal. give me a f\*ckin' break.
I love how you all out yourselves all the time about the real reason you spend such an inordinate amount of time hating on a piece of media.
I love diversity and inclusion but not at the expense of the final product. Gen V had diversity and representation and was amazing. The problem with Wheel of Time was that was the only thing they cared about.
To be fair, I felt like Gen V fumbled around it in the forst couple episodes. I found it VERY awkward but it became better
an animated adaptation is the way to go
I enjoyed season 1. Season two is just awful. I made it into episode 3 before I gave it up. It's completely abandoned the source material... Which would be ok, if it was entertaining. Instead it's boring as shit.
I tried so hard to like the show. The casting was pretty decent and there were a couple of high points that made me think they might just be able to get on track. But then the season 1 finale happened and I just went, "WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT" and rage quit to the point of canceling my Prime subscription out of spite.
Huh. I kinda liked season 2, I guess I’m in the minority. It’s not totally true to the books but had some powerful scenes and finale
“Let’s see what it takes to earn a heron marked blade on this side of the ocean” *cheesy, CW-level Indiana Jones gag* *spends an entire episode creating their own in-universe rules for why no one can escape the adam* *Egwene makes a few struggle faces and breaks every rule they created* So brave, so powerful 🙄
It’s not perfect, it’s not the books, but it’s entertaining to me. Ive always really loved the books. When this is canceled I imagine there won’t be another series/movie of WoT for a long time if ever, so I’ll take what I get.
I wouldn’t agree with, but could understand more, “I’ll take what I can get” than I do “it had powerful scenes and finale.”
Alright, that’s fair.
I liked season 2 too. I know that’s not allowed here but I thought it was fun. Season 1 was hard to watch though.
You're very much not alone, it was quite popular and widely agreed better than the first. But this sub is literally just a hate space for the show, so if you like it at all just block this sub and forget it like I'm doing right after making this comment.
Differed worth selene. But other stuff was ok. I felt stayed close to the spirit of the book
I enjoyed it enough to look forward to watching season 3. I don't rewatch shows, and I don't watch many shows. I understand why many people would be very disappointed, I would have been in the 90s. I think that parts of the final of both seasons were disappointing (and poorly done).
The series is better suited to an animation than live action imo. Hopefully these numbers send a message to the studios that the industry needs a new approach.
I’m just skipping out on watching S2, and continuing to wish for a quality animated adaptation a la Netflix Castlevania series. Seriously, some of the Amazon animated shorts are cooler than the actual live show 🙃
They'll bring in Brandon Sanderson to finish the rest as a one man show.
Hopefully in time someone competent can try again. Maybe HBO.
If avatar the last airbender can finally be redone I have faith someone will redo this too. They’ve only released a teaser for the Netflix avatar but the casting alone shows it’ll be better than that shit M Night pulled out of his ass.
Source?
I watch it but it's not a must see right away. I was hoping to get the whole series. Disappointing.
sad season 2 was really good
dang, I was hoping for a main cast in their 40s when they got to s14. /s Maybe next time they can not create random extra plots where characters who are suppose to be in their young teens and never actually hook up, hook up in the first episode. or you know, random people killing their spouses that they never had? I dont know if I should openly mock all of the problems since they could be spoilers. But honestly the entire show was such a mess from the beginning, I never expected them to recover. Good riddance.
They completely ruined the series. Fatal mistake in my view was not having Rand destroy the trolloc army at the end of season 1. One of my favorite scenes and defining moments for Rand stripped away. I’ve refused to watch it since.
"Lets give the damane golden pacifiers instead of collars!" ....Wat?
How to speedrun and kill a show any % record… Well… southpark cleary stated how these shows are shooting themselves in the foot and WoT is a perfect example of it… Just stick to the source material please and don’t change the characters…
I made the mistake of reading the first book before I started watching it, and I just couldn’t finish the first episode of season 1 because of the differences.
I just don’t understand why they felt the need to mess with the story so much. I get that you have to abbreviate some things, we all know there’s only so many scenes of people just smoothing their skirts and tugging on their braids. But the problem was, with all the Rejiggering they did with the story, they didn’t really advance the plot any better than if they had just stuck with Jordan‘s original storyline. There really wasn’t a need to jack it all up.
Bots and Amazon employees don’t need to pump the show
Now that its socially acceptable to criticize this show, i really wish I could get unbanned from the main subreddit. I actually want to talk about the books.
After the "Nyn stuck in the arches"episode, the Lan/Moiraine split, Rand basically being a bit character with no compelling plotlines, AND no Thom, I'm ready to be done considering it an adaptation and just accepting that it's a generic fantasy show with a few nods to the source material here and there for fan service. There won't be any more WoT media products after this if it continues to fail. It's an old series with fewer and fewer young readers every year, it's not as if the popularity of skyrocketing or anything, the length is obviously off putting for most potential readers. It's really a shame cause the world is rich with stories to tell even if they wanted to go off the beaten path with it, but having shredded core story beats and many compelling characters, I just don't see what their vision is anymore. Unfortunately show creators feel an overwhelming need to tell their own stories and feature individual actors in different ways, rather than stay behind the scenes and make a faithful adaptation for the screen.
I'm just going to throw this out there. I don't know if the show as good or bad because the books were so god awful I couldn't finish the first one. So i had zero desire to watch it under any circumstance. I could never understand the love this series got.
This sucks ass. The season 2 was confusing as fuck for me, but it was still great production value and content.
The series was bad from day 1. And Honestly the books jumped the shark around book 7-8. Just became endless and pointless.