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15 months is still better than 2 years 
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Oct 10, 2023 15:25
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Future Me Hates Me posted:I think they reason Nynaeve didnt cut the arrow off and do whatever proper medical procedures are usually required for removing an arrow, is because the writers wanted to show it as a negative alternative to her being able to use the power. Same, I have literally no idea what to do in the event of an arrow to the knee other than 'call ambulance??' on account of living in a modern city in the 21st century so it didn't even register for me
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Oct 10, 2023 16:01
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His Divine Shadow posted:There's just no way even the best producers, writers and actors in human television history could do the long, complex storylines of the books justice in 8 episodes even if you had a time machine to go get them and tell them to get it done with that as it's sole restriction. So if the show can't do the books justice, then we are agreeing it is a lower quality product than the books right? Which is fine, because I just plan recommending the books if someone asks me what I think about the show. It is a shame because I was hoping that the show would have the quality of GoT first few seasons, which I and my friends got wrapped up in. Except this time there's a definite ending, unlike the last few seasons of that show. So potentially, even better.
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Oct 10, 2023 16:10
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Lol this show isn't going past season 3, I can only hope the ai in charge of programming at amazon is a fan
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Oct 10, 2023 16:23
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Shageletic posted:So if the show can't do the books justice, then we are agreeing it is a lower quality product than the books right? Which is fine, because I just plan recommending the books if someone asks me what I think about the show. IMO after season 2 I’m completely fine with recommending the show to anyone vaguely interested with fantasy. If somebody is an avid book reader, then I’m also fine with recommending the books. But there are many, many people I would never recommend the books to, because not many people are willing to read 4.5 million words or listen to 500 hours.
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Oct 10, 2023 16:27
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I'm not sure how you even compare the show to the books on a quality basis. The books were doing some new things at the time while wearing the clothing of trod ground. The show is an adaptation, so it won't really be doing that. They're also entirely different media. The show, to me, has distilled most of the good parts and cut most of the crap parts. It's like the opposite of homeopathy. Also these days recommending the books is just a fancy way to tell people you're really into spank play. The series has a reputation.
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Oct 10, 2023 16:40
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The eye of the world holds up favorably when compared to any book you care to compare it to. Some are better/worse, but you can hold a conversation about it without feeling absurd. The first season of this show does not. So yeah, recommending the books to new folks is pretty much the way to go. Maybe they jump into the show after EotW, maybe they don’t, and either way that’s fine, but there’s zero reason to say “hey friend, watch this train wreck” instead of “hey friend read this great book” if you want them to become a long term fan.
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Oct 10, 2023 16:51
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Anias posted:The eye of the world holds up favorably when compared to any book you care to compare it to. Some are better/worse, but you can hold a conversation about it without feeling absurd. Oh, word?
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Oct 10, 2023 16:56
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So, there's something that's always kinda bothered me here, keeping in mind that I'm pretty dumb and that this is by no means my area of expertise: they made The Lord of the Rings into movies. And the theatrical cut is not all that much longer than an eight-episode season. I understand that WoT and LotR aren't written in the same way and all that, but I find it incredibly hard to believe that you cannot fit EotW into the same amount of time as the whole-rear end LotR. Is Jordan REALLY so much more dense?
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Oct 10, 2023 17:02
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Well the word count of The Eye of the World is plus 300,000 words, while all four LOTR books are a little north of 550,000 words. I dunno, feels to me more happens in these books compared to the tolkien ones. A lot of stuff that could be cut for sure. His Divine Shadow fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Oct 10, 2023 |
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Oct 10, 2023 17:07
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Anias posted:The eye of the world holds up favorably when compared to any book you care to compare it to. EotW is one of exactly 2 books my wife started and never finished so mileage may vary on this take.
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Oct 10, 2023 17:10
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His Divine Shadow posted:while all four LOTR books are a little north of 550,000 words. 
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Oct 10, 2023 17:10
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DTurtle posted:Well, the books have 500 hours to do what the show needs to do in 64. Recommending books is way harder than for tv or movies due to the time commitment. But I feel like WoT is the best example of epic fantasy I've come across (versus different flavors of fantasy like Le Guin's writing for example). And if someone is looking for something in that vein, my recent and continuing reread makes it very easy for me to do so in that case.
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Oct 10, 2023 17:12
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CainFortea posted:I'm not sure how you even compare the show to the books on a quality basis. The books were doing some new things at the time while wearing the clothing of trod ground. The show is an adaptation, so it won't really be doing that. They're also entirely different media. The show, to me, has distilled most of the good parts and cut most of the crap parts. It's like the opposite of homeopathy. Have already had a couple ppl ask me my opinion on the books who don't have that connotation. WoT being seen as spank play? That seems like a very sectioned off internet view on the books, where even people who like books wouldn't know much if anything at all about it. The books are an excellently written example of its genre thatbmanages to pack in alot even compared to fantasy novels of the moment, with a definite end that most ppl seem to like (still haven't got there myself tho).
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Oct 10, 2023 17:16
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I think that EOTW is the worst of the WOT books. It's got pacing issues and structural problems (particularly through the very long middle section and confused ending) and feels like a LOTR knockoff. What saves it is Jordan's consistent prose and the original elements of the story. In short, the book isn't good. It's promising. But any adaptation is going to have to untangle the mess of the middle section and rewrite the confused ending, and if it's going to treat WoT as a cohesive work it needs to become far less Rand-focused and excise the LOTR elements.
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Oct 10, 2023 17:19
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Anias posted:The eye of the world holds up favorably when compared to any book you care to compare it to. Some are better/worse, but you can hold a conversation about it without feeling absurd. The Eye of the World is pretty good as a stand-alone book, but not very good as an introduction to the other 13 books and the type of story that is told there. And nowadays it really isn’t anything special.
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Oct 10, 2023 17:26
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Anias posted:The eye of the world holds up favorably when compared to any book you care to compare it to. Some are better/worse, but you can hold a conversation about it without feeling absurd. ehhhhhhhhhhhh
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Oct 10, 2023 17:41
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bio347 posted:So, there's something that's always kinda bothered me here, keeping in mind that I'm pretty dumb and that this is by no means my area of expertise: they made The Lord of the Rings into movies. And the theatrical cut is not all that much longer than an eight-episode season. Along with the already mentioned word count, Tolkien spends a lot of those words describing scenery (which the movies can do in a few shots), or on songs (which the movies cut). Eye of the World is mostly plot, so that's a bit harder to rework without cutting plot points. That being said, I think most people here agree that season 1 wasn't the best, so yeah, Eye of the World wasn't adapted all that well. But I'm fully on board with season 2. Seriously though, Tolkien could talk a lot about a tree, or a really nice chair. It's not bad, just a much different style. thrawn527 fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Oct 10, 2023 |
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Oct 10, 2023 17:46
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I'm sorry but every time someone mentions "landscapes" all I can think is, we're all reading the same book here right? The one that spends literal hundreds of pages cumulatively talking about embroidery and mirrored stand-lamps? I'm never even sure what passages "landscapes" refers to in LotR, there is hardly anything that stands out to me as extraneous
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Oct 10, 2023 17:51
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Data Graham posted:I'm sorry but every time someone mentions "landscapes" all I can think is, we're all reading the same book here right? The one that spends literal hundreds of pages cumulatively talking about embroidery and mirrored stand-lamps? To be fair, I haven't read THE TRILOGY since high school, and that was...well let's just say many years ago (over 20). But I remember them being overly descriptive to me, at the time. I might be misremembering. But like, I started reading Wheel of Time around the time, and it would take me around 1/3 the time to read of of those than a LOTR book, despite them being considerably longer, because I felt the story just moved much more than LOTR.
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Oct 10, 2023 17:56
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Health Services posted:I think that EOTW is the worst of the WOT books. It's got pacing issues and structural problems (particularly through the very long middle section and confused ending) and feels like a LOTR knockoff. What saves it is Jordan's consistent prose and the original elements of the story. In short, the book isn't good. It's promising. Yeah I agree with this one. EotW is OK. I don't mind knockoffs, and it's got enough of a "Things are different" hook for me to be interested, but it's hardly a paragon on it's own, especially with how odd and kinda amorphous the ending is. (And how it doesn't really fit in well with the entire rest of the series, but that's kinda an obvious gimme of "ok he was still fleshing things out, don't think about it too hard.")
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Oct 10, 2023 18:07
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Data Graham posted:I'm sorry but every time someone mentions "landscapes" all I can think is, we're all reading the same book here right? The one that spends literal hundreds of pages cumulatively talking about embroidery and mirrored stand-lamps? I mean the books are just written fundamentally pretty differently. WoT is filled with a lot more PoV changes and mostly uses the different scenery/clothing descriptions as characterization for nations and people but generally almost exclusively focuses on what the characters are immediately seeing or thinking. Meanwhile in LotR there's a lot more ambient description that's used to give the world flavor and vastly more narrator asides where you get to take a break from the narrative for a bit to hear about some historical tidbit or fact. It definitely gives both books a wildly different feel when read. EotW is the closest WoT gets to that kind of Tolkein style with how dreamlike some of the scenes get, and the numerous diegetic asides in text where you get lore dumps or long stories from Fain, Thom or Moiraine which basically stop after book 1.
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Oct 10, 2023 18:11
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I still wish S1 had been more like the first book. I liked the Eye of the World, the LoTR knockoff setting worked IMO in the beginning, it felt like in the first book all the supernatural enemies were more dangerous and serious business and to me it sorta reflected the main characters going from being over their heads at first, to becoming heroes over the course of multiple books.
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Oct 10, 2023 18:12
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Im also in the camp of thinking that EoTW is a weaker book. Mostly because I found Rand annoying and the vast majority of the book is told from his perspective. It also has the a lot of Thom or Moiraine explaining things about the world that comes off more like homework than having it come up more organically in the story. Probably necessary beacause of the amount of information that needs to be set up though. I only read the series for the first time this year so It may also be that I wasnt invested in the characters or story enough yet.
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Oct 10, 2023 18:30
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Shageletic posted:Have already had a couple ppl ask me my opinion on the books who don't have that connotation. WoT being seen as spank play? That seems like a very sectioned off internet view on the books, where even people who like books wouldn't know much if anything at all about it. That's just the SA echo chamber, same as the mentions of hundreds of pages of descriptions of embroidery. The books still hold up. The "slog" was mostly a slog when waiting 2 years between books. And I've recommended the books to lots of people and know of 20 plus that actually read them all and enjoyed them. I would not tell people to check out the show as some shining example of the genre. It might get there, I am holding out hope, but it's not there yet.
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Oct 10, 2023 18:34
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I did get the LotR ripoff complaint from my mom when she read EotW (she stopped partway through). I wonder if the first season was trying to avoid getting that same complaint.
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Oct 10, 2023 18:34
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Zore posted:
That dreamy and almost lurid description really lulls you when something shocking or horrifying happens, it's like getting slapped in the face. Im currently trying to get used to the more workman like and to the point descriptions in TGS but it's a big adjustment, and one I'm honestly gonna miss. Dingleberry2 posted:That's just the SA echo chamber, same as the mentions of hundreds of pages of descriptions of embroidery. The books still hold up. The "slog" was mostly a slog when waiting 2 years between books. Haven't had the chance to recommend it as much but my feelings mirror yours. And I'm a little surprised to feel that way in a reread done just when I hit middle age.
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Oct 10, 2023 18:53
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Colonel Cool posted:I did get the LotR ripoff complaint from my mom when she read EotW (she stopped partway through). I wonder if the first season was trying to avoid getting that same complaint. Why would they tho? They're currently trying to make another LotR I the same platform.
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Oct 10, 2023 18:55
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Shageletic posted:Why would they tho? They're currently trying to make another LotR I the same platform. All the more reason to make it less like LOTR. "Why did you make two shows that are the same?" They'd want the two shows to feel different.
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Oct 10, 2023 19:00
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They should've thrown rings of power into the bin and given all the money to the WoT show
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Oct 10, 2023 19:06
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Making season 1 a lord of the rings knock-off would have been an unrecoverable kiss of death. Not to say the show went about avoiding that perfectly, but it's clear why they wanted to avoid parallels and direct comparisons.
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Oct 10, 2023 19:10
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His Divine Shadow posted:They should've thrown rings of power into the bin and given all the money to the WoT show To be fair, they should throw both shows in the bin and give the money to Reacher which outperformed both.
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Oct 10, 2023 19:10
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Health Services posted:Making season 1 a lord of the rings knock-off would have been an unrecoverable kiss of death. Not to say the show went about avoiding that perfectly, but it's clear why they wanted to avoid parallels and direct comparisons. thrawn527 posted:All the more reason to make it less like LOTR. "Why did you make two shows that are the same?" They'd want the two shows to feel different. I mean this already seems like less than useful exercise since we are trying to peer into the mindset of tech executives dabbling in TV, but I always thought that suits preferred repeating sure fire formulas over any love of diversity in storytelling. Well, unless the RoP s series not doing well? I haven't watched an episode.
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Oct 10, 2023 19:16
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His Divine Shadow posted:They should've thrown rings of power into the bin and given all the money to the WoT show I still have absolutely no idea what was going on in Rings of Power. Like, legitimately, they had a fight in the village and I didn't know who was fighting, why, or what they were fighting over.
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Oct 10, 2023 19:17
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:I still have absolutely no idea what was going on in Rings of Power. I’m a WOT show liker and Rings of Power is some of the most boring poo poo I’ve seen in my life. I think I made it 4 eps in and absolutely couldn’t take anymore.
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Oct 10, 2023 19:32
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some cool behind the scene content up on social showing how they built the top of the falme tower in the middle of the Moroccan desert. Very grateful for them filming on location all over and not doing a MCU green screen extravaganza.
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Oct 10, 2023 19:34
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imo it's pretty clear that they wanted to avoid the LOTR vibe in part because a key pitch of the show is that it's the rare established fantasy IP that features lots of powerful women, particularly older women, doing Main Character poo poo; obviously the Rosamund Pike involvement likely plays a factor here, it's not like she and Daniel Henney are first billed on accident. this is pretty obviously a big part of why we end up at tar valon for a while in s1. personally I think that's fine, there's a lot of broad (and also deep and extremely specific) appeal in hard women making hard choices and their sworn knights, loyal unto death. in that vein i think they made the adaptational choice that it's much more appealing to watch lan mourn and get a sense of white tower social dynamics than to watch the EF5 bumblefuck their way through countryside adventures, and I think it's a defensible choice in theory. S2 again focuses in on the politics and aes sedai elements by adding stuff for moiraine and liandrin and alanna and making lanfear in many ways the season's focal point while cutting back considerably on the books' heroic fantasy adventuring and sword training. this is not, however, the same thing as tightening up and condensing WOT in the adaptation, because it merely alters the scope rather than reducing it. This is, I think, where a lot of the adaptational issues originate w/r/t pacing and focus, and I think is the source of much of the (non-racist, non-sexist) frustration with the adaptation that sometimes arises. Valentin fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Oct 10, 2023 |
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Oct 10, 2023 19:35
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buffalo all day posted:I’m a WOT show liker and Rings of Power is some of the most boring poo poo I’ve seen in my life. I think I made it 4 eps in and absolutely couldn’t take anymore. I've literally rocked a lotr character name for an online handle since middle-school and I couldn't not fall asleep during the Rings of Power show. An absolute loving snooze. I didn't finish it either. buffalo all day posted:some cool behind the scene content up on social showing how they built the top of the falme tower in the middle of the Moroccan desert. Very grateful for them filming on location all over and not doing a MCU green screen extravaganza. It's so annoying this poo poo only shows up on the prime video mobile app, or the website... But not on the app actually playing this poo poo on the TV! You know, where I'm actually watching the show! Gwaihir fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Oct 10, 2023 |
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Oct 10, 2023 19:36
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Some of the most gorgeous boring poo poo, admittedly. The sets, costumes, and all are next-level.
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Oct 10, 2023 19:41
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We can just wing the writing then right?
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Oct 10, 2023 19:43
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