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Sab669 posted:Same. Read the books once and will never read them again. Lotsa cool concepts but dang it's too big for me. I'm excited for it to go on a diet for TV I think I read the first 6 books, years ago, but I only remember a handful of stuff. I tried getting into the series again at one time but couldn't get past the braid tugging.
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Sep 6, 2021 10:19
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I Am Fowl posted:I am all for this series getting edited down and remixed in the adaptation, so this is encouraging. But messing with the narrative of those early books... one thing I will say about the books is, the pacing and the narrative structure are really great up to maybe about book 5. They are not actually hugely complex, the narrative whilst it diverges around various characters is well-structured with time jumps that occur when switching narratives at particular, well-chosen points, and the compelling parts of the books is basically all the stuff you'd expect from decent quality fantasy; the characters (well, mostly only the male characters... sigh), the action, and really amazing worldbuilding. In particular, book 1 of WOT is a real page-turner. The pacing is just great. It starts with a mystifying but very cool and fantastical prologue, and then just chucks us into the arse end of nowhere to follow an entirely linear narrative about some country bumpkins getting caught up in poo poo they have no preparation for (and often gently caress things up unintentionally). The book is basically a thinly-veiled gloss on that classic Fellowship of the Ring-style 'unknown adventurer from nowhere' trope, in many ways, but to be honest that's a narrative that has worked well for fantasy (when it's well-executed) since the inception of the genre. I'm hoping that the folks making the WOT series don't fall into the trap of messing with stuff just because they feel they should give it their own 'spin' without having any real justification for doing so. Or maybe I'm just hoping that their budget pressures aren't so great that they've had to condense down what is a very solid narrative from the early books to the point where the benefits of that narrative structure are lost. One of the things that I think a lot of adaptations have forgotten recently, or perhaps never understood in the first place, is why the LOTR films actually turned out as good films in their own right. It wasn't just that the film makers managed the seemingly-impossible feat of condensing that monster of a source text down into three well-paced films. It's the particular choices they made in doing that. For example, they spent a lot of the editing process for FOTR just cutting out poo poo that wasn't laser-focused on the one element of the story that was important about all else; Frodo's journey as a character (and as part of that, the Ring's journey as a character). That was the focus of the book they were adapting, and it was a drat good story, so they identified it as the core to the book's narrative and stuck with it. One of the other remarkable achievements of those movies (and what made the films truly shine) was just how much of the source text dialogue they managed to directly make use of in the screenplay, even where that text on paper would have looked clunky or like it just couldn't work in a modern film. If your source writer is a good writer, it makes sense to utilise their prose as much as possible in your adaptation, right? That won't always be the case but often it is. However, when you look at something like the recent His Dark Materials adaptation by the BBC, it feels like they maybe just decided to 'spice up' the first season of the show by including lots of stuff that's never in the books, or wasn't in the first book (which that season is focused on adapting), and it's all extraneous to (but could arguably help 'explain' or give background to) the main narrative. Perhaps they thought it made the story more exciting in some way? Or perhaps they felt that the basic story (a girl going on a journey to find her lost friend) wasn't 'big' enough for a modern audience? It's not clear to me at all why they did what they did. They also decided to intercut all that extraneous stuff in with the main narrative a lot. If that's done really well, it can lead to a great adaptation. But in the case of that series it just breaks up what is a solid, simple narrative structure from the first book. The intercutting of other extraneous narratives continuously draws attention from what should have been by far the most important thing in the show; the main character and her journey (amongst other things, that character was so compellingly written by the original author that she was a huge reason why the books were so successful in the first place). It felt like there was no real justification for why we were seeing all that other stuff; it gave us glimpses into the wider world of what was going on, sure, but it also spoiled for us the gradual reveal of how the fantasy world works, what the cool mechanics of it are, and the mystery inherent in the books' narrative structure. So many of the best moments in these kinds of genre fiction are those moments where some cool or bizarre thing is revealed to us for the first time; that's the magic of fantasy, often enough. And the process works because we experience those moments through the eyes of a (usually stereotypically 'fish-out-of-water'/to some extent ignorant) main character who we are compelled to identify and sympathise with, and who we can share the wonder of these fantastical happenings with. Anyhow, I hope WOT doesn't fall into that trap. You can't just copy and paste a book onto screen (or at least you can but it generally turns out crap). But equally it's important that they're able to actually identify what was good about the books in the first place. We'll see. /essay
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Sep 6, 2021 15:35
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On the other hand, take the Expanse. While events are largely the same, plotlines and characters are rearranged and condensed into more streamlined storylines with gripping interpersonal drama replacing being inside our PoV's head. They added a whole new storyline in the first season of a beloved character from the second book to show the larger political situation in the system. They pulled forward a lot of character development beats from later books so that there weren't any characters stuck treading water while the mains are set up. The show and the books are fairly different stories at this point, but they're both really good and are each suited to their medium. I'm hoping WoT gets this balance right.
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Sep 6, 2021 18:27
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The trouble with the early books isn't complexity, but rather length. You inherently trim off a lot of the length in an adaption because so many words are devoted to visual description, but even book 1 has a lot of heft to it. This wouldn't be a problem in an animated work, but a live action one has to deal with all the difficulties of live actors.
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Sep 6, 2021 18:37
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Book 1 is like 700 pages, and 400 of that is just running from Trollocs. They all suffer from pacing issues IMO, but especially ~6-10.
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Sep 6, 2021 18:57
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yeah when i re-read the first few earlier this year I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly they go by, there's obviously plenty you can trim but those parts are still mostly interesting unlike later on when they get really tedious
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Sep 6, 2021 19:01
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eke out posted:yeah when i re-read the first few earlier this year I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly they go by, there's obviously plenty you can trim but those parts are still mostly interesting unlike later on when they get really tedious Even the running from Trollocs can be cut down quite a bit in a visual medium. There are things that happen in the first book that have big effects later on, but you can work those in pretty easily and still cut a lot. As long as Bela is still a badass horse/god it should all be fine.
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Sep 6, 2021 20:33
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I demand the preservation of Narg
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Sep 6, 2021 20:42
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I read the books up to like 8 before stopping and I don't remember jack poo poo other than braid tugging and smoothing of skirts and Rand and his harem. Spoiler concerning romantic pairings.
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Sep 6, 2021 21:17
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I’m not worried about them cutting things, but I am worried about them cutting all of the flashback/history exposition that adds so much depth. Like, the idea that prior to the Breaking there was no war. I also bet the entire Seanchan plot gets cut.
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Sep 6, 2021 21:25
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Upgrade posted:I also bet the entire Seanchan plot gets cut. There's absolutely no way they could do this. That stuff is so woven into the story it would be impossible / absolutely god-awful.
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Sep 6, 2021 22:10
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There's just no way to do that at all, it fundamentally changes like half the series. Look, i don't want to hear the seanchan talk with Texas accents any more than the next person, because there is no way that it isn't Lin-Manuel-Miranda-in-His-Dark-Materials bad but you can't take them out of the story.
IRQ fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Sep 6, 2021 |
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Sep 6, 2021 23:06
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Just a reminder that there is a Book Barn thread if you wanna discuss stuff that probably won't be in season 1. It's easier than having to deal with tons of spoiler text.
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Sep 6, 2021 23:12
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IRQ posted:. Look, i don't want to hear the seanchan talk with Texas accents any more than the next person
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Sep 7, 2021 03:14
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How are u posted:There's absolutely no way they could do this. That stuff is so woven into the story it would be impossible / absolutely god-awful. It's gonna happen for a few reasons. * Setting up the Seanchan requires a lot of exposition that they'll skip * In the first few books their key contribution comes in Book 2, at Toman Head, and they can just have that occur elsewhere - have Rand declare himself in some other battle, have the horn get sounded during that battle, and either cut out the leashing entirely (and reveal the Black Ajah elsewhere) or have that be a feature of some other group * They don't become a significantly bigger plot point until the later books (5-9) for any of the main characters (and even then its Mat, not Rand really) * Their involvement during Book 3-5 is very minor character centered and these characters are probably gonna be cut I'm calling it. Also they're going to cut a bunch of the Foresaken. I wonder whats gonna happen with Caemlyn, though. That's probably out of Season 1. IMO the series is going to be much more centered around the Borderlands and Tar'Valon
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Sep 7, 2021 04:02
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Going to be a lot of angry nerds. I agree with you 100%.
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Sep 7, 2021 04:06
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E: wrong thread
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Sep 7, 2021 04:14
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I'm also really curious how explicit the series is gonna be. The book is pretty tame (except for the Very Bad Mat scene), but if this is being positioned as a GOT -type show, I could see them trying to sex/gore it up.
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Sep 7, 2021 04:23
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Upgrade posted:I'm also really curious how explicit the series is gonna be. The book is pretty tame (except for the Very Bad Mat scene), but if this is being positioned as a GOT -type show, I could see them trying to sex/gore it up. There's a whole bunch of gore in the books what are you talking about. There's quite a bit of (implied) sexual violence happening as well, mostly off screen. RJ doesn't revel in the details as much as some but it's absolutely still there.
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Sep 7, 2021 04:36
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Upgrade posted:I could see them trying to sex/gore it up. Uhhhhh.. I meannnnnn Lanfear literally removes Kadere's skin whole while he's still alive and pops him like a meat balloon in front of Rand and Co at the docs in Cairhein at the big showdown at the end of book 5
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Sep 7, 2021 04:53
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a lot of this would be better off in the actual book thread but in general the series doesn't really need them adding random sex/gore poo poo given that things of that nature already exist
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Sep 7, 2021 05:00
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Yeah, 100%.
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Sep 7, 2021 05:03
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To leave out any specific spoilers, the sexual content of the books are usually but not always offscreened and implied, and the gore of the books is occasionally shockingly vivid but still not super common. Otherwise it's sexier than gorier than LotR only in that it's written 35 years of sensibilities later. Anything from "Pretty much PG-13" to "Some shocking violence/disturbing visuals once a season or so and the occasional bit of sex or nudity" would be a natural fit for the book. Full HBO "Gotta have boobs/dick at least 2 out of 3 episodes and make sure it's strongly implied the rest of the time" would stretch the mood more.
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Sep 7, 2021 05:31
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Oh LOL Dave Hill is writing for this show.
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Sep 7, 2021 07:13
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Killer robot posted:To leave out any specific spoilers, the sexual content of the books are usually but not always offscreened and implied, and the gore of the books is occasionally shockingly vivid but still not super common. Otherwise it's sexier than gorier than LotR only in that it's written 35 years of sensibilities later. Anything from "Pretty much PG-13" to "Some shocking violence/disturbing visuals once a season or so and the occasional bit of sex or nudity" would be a natural fit for the book. Full HBO "Gotta have boobs/dick at least 2 out of 3 episodes and make sure it's strongly implied the rest of the time" would stretch the mood more. I would say the gore is almost always used to emphasize something, usually a pivotal moment. Both the relative lack of it most of the time and the severity when it shows up serve to further make the point. I think adding more gore would take away from the careful use of it already present really.
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Sep 7, 2021 07:49
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Open Source Idiom posted:Oh LOL Dave Hill is writing for this show.
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Sep 7, 2021 09:47
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El Grillo posted:Who's Dave Hill Famously terrible Game Of Thrones writer slash forums meme.
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Sep 7, 2021 10:03
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Open Source Idiom posted:Famously terrible Game Of Thrones writer slash forums meme. How is he famously terrible?
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Sep 7, 2021 10:47
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How are u posted:How is he famously terrible? He was the subject of some very dumb things David Benioff and D. B. Weiss said (and he also said, though that's via third party reportage). He's not, like, a terrible human being as far as I know. But yeah, he's a GoT writer that joined during the period when the show was going downhill, and was a pretty good example of D&D promoting white dudes with no experience like themselves, over, you know, experienced long term writers. You get the sense that there was a lot of young dumb rockstar energy going on in that writers room -- e.g. the D&D publicly bagging on an actor for having different opinions to them about their characters, some of the weird stuff about women, etc. So anyone who prospered in that environment gets a bit of hairy eyeball from me. But yeah, also he's a forums meme -- though I think, also significant in the sense that his only experience was on Game of Thrones, and then he's hired here. Which probably gives you a bit of sense of what this series might be aiming for in terms of tone / content / whatever. Edit: LOL, the other big Thrones writer, Bryan Cogman, was hired by Amazon for their Lord of the Rings series. Open Source Idiom fucked around with this message at 11:29 on Sep 7, 2021 |
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Sep 7, 2021 11:25
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How are u posted:How is he famously terrible? Wikipedia posted:He is known for writing four episodes of the HBO series Game of Thrones: in season 5, "Sons of the Harpy"; in season 6, "Home"; in season 7, "Eastwatch"; and in season 8, "Winterfell". I mean that Season 5 episode was one of my most hated up until that point. I don't really remember what I thought of his episodes in 6/7, but I recall thinking 5 was when the show started going to poo poo. And again I don't recall exact thoughts of that S8 episode either but it certainly wasn't a good season. "Famously terrible" are strong words, but having a writer whose entire resume is "wrote 4 episodes for the lovely half of Game of Thrones" is... A bold idea Sab669 fucked around with this message at 13:47 on Sep 7, 2021 |
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Sep 7, 2021 11:36
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He's a coffee boy who pitched a super lovely story idea to D&D one day and they were so blown away by how good they thought it was, they invited him to be a writer for the biggest show in the history of TV up until that point. It's 100% emblematic of how insanely bad they were at certain aspects of running the show.
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Sep 7, 2021 14:26
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Open Source Idiom posted:But yeah, he's a GoT writer that joined during the period when the show was going downhill, and was a pretty good example of D&D promoting white dudes with no experience like themselves, over, you know, experienced long term writers. Wikipedia says he joined the show as an assistant to the writers in Season 2. Three seasons later they let him write an episode. Why is that "promoting white dudes with no experience instead of long term writers" and not just... Giving an opportunity to someone who has been on set for 3 seasons?? FLIPADELPHIA posted:He's a coffee boy who pitched a super lovely story idea to D&D one day and they were so blown away by how good they thought it was, they invited him to be a writer for the biggest show in the history of TV up until that point. Please tell me more about his responsibilities on set that I'm sure you're definitely legitimately familiar with  Like don't get me wrong, I'm not defending him or D&D - I'm in full agreement that Season 5 and beyond just got worse and worse, but come the gently caress on dude 'a coffee boy they invited to be a writer' is quite the hot take. He wrote 1 episode per season for 4 seasons. That's it.
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Sep 7, 2021 14:44
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Sab669 posted:Wikipedia says he joined the show as an assistant to the writers in Season 2. Three seasons later they let him write an episode. Why is that "promoting white dudes with no experience instead of long term writers" and not just... Giving an opportunity to someone who has been on set for 3 seasons?? "Assistant" is what coffee boys are called. My best friend worked as Bill Paxton's assistant for 2 years while he made The Greatest Game Ever Played. His job duties consisted of running errands for him like picking up his clothes and food and poo poo. Assistants do not participate in the creative process at all. That's not their function. So yeah, D&D hired their coffee boy with no experience whatsoever to be a writer on their show- the biggest show on TV ever up to that point. Not sure why you feel compelled to white knight this guy but it doesn't change the fact that they could have hired anyone (the best writers in the world would have killed for a chance to work on that show) but they chose their coffee boy. Does writing 1 episode per season make someone not a writer on the show? I don't get your point at all.
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Sep 7, 2021 15:01
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I'm not white knighting him, I'm just saying there are lots of legitimate things to criticize the show over and pretending like you know the entirety of the someone's job duties is a really dumb thing to use as the foundation for the rest of the criticism. Of course writing 4 episodes makes someone a writer. My point was that it's not like they asked him to write an entire season. He was entrusted with a relatively small task once per season, and probably with some degree of oversight. Like that's literally how gaining experience works. You start off with none. You work with people in the industry. They slowly entrust you with a small project. Then you get a new job doing a bigger project for someone else (writing on WOT for Amazon will probably come with more work!) Here's another guy who helped write a little more than 1 episode per season on GOT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_Cogman quote:Bryan Cogman eventually became a writer for HBO's Game of Thrones. His wife was working as a nanny for David Benioff, at the same time that Cogman was working on a pilot pitch script (for a project that never materialized). Benioff agreed to read over Cogman's script, and was impressed enough that he hired him as a personal assistant. Benioff began working with Cogman and got him a job as a writer's assistant on NBC's My Own Worst Enemy. Was this guy also just a coffee boy? Sab669 fucked around with this message at 15:24 on Sep 7, 2021 |
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Sep 7, 2021 15:12
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We only want people that never started at the bottom and were simply born as great writers, don’t you see!?
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Sep 7, 2021 15:27
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latinotwink1997 posted:We only want people that never started at the bottom and were simply born as great writers, don’t you see!? Hiring writers with experience (or perhaps not firing the two writers with experience) instead of surrounding yourself with a boys club of people with far less privilege than you, who directly owe you for their big breaks in the industry, might be a feasible third option?
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Sep 7, 2021 15:31
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Sab669 posted:He was entrusted with a relatively small task once per season, lol yeah man, writing 10% of the biggest show on TV is a small task What a strange hill to die on
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Sep 7, 2021 15:37
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i can't really say that i know or care about who this insanely specific guy is in relation to a series that is already complete and doesn't need people to just make poo poo up from nothing to fill out the last few seasons
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Sep 7, 2021 15:39
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He wrote a few episodes of GOT, and is writing for WOT^. Specifically he wrote episode 4, titled "The Dragon Reborn". Which is probably an important episode. But yea I agree, if nothing else we can all be thankful that the show writers - regardless of who they are - are adapting a complete series.
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Sep 7, 2021 15:43
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Open Source Idiom posted:Hiring writers with experience (or perhaps not firing the two writers with experience) instead of surrounding yourself with a boys club of people with far less privilege than you, who directly owe you for their big breaks in the industry, might be a feasible third option? I’m definitely referring to the guy from GoT being hired for WoT. D&D clearly were dumb, I have no doubts on that.
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Sep 7, 2021 16:01
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