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The Wheel of Time: Jane Farstrider Herself (Book Spoilers)


Ran

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I think that some people are way harsh on the general quality, I can scroll through Netflix and find a hundred shows in a minute that are worse in terms of dialogue or writing choices. Yeah, there’s some poor stuff if you’re talking from the perspective of a top tier show and an enormous budget but for streaming tv in general it’s decent quality.

The most egregious problem, imo, is that it sometimes feels like it’s been constructed under too much pressure, with too many constraints on what they wanted to do, maybe too many influences in the direction.

As for adaptation complaints, I’m definitely not onboard. I’d rather see them do something different, that way you get two things. And some changes are not only better but necessary. You can’t adapt the way people interact in Jordan’s world, it’s a heightened reality, nobody is normal, it would be like Parks and Rec in a fantasy world. And as popular as the book series is, the show is potentially aiming for literally tens of millions more viewers. You have to evaluate it as a tv show more than an adaptation.

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22 hours ago, Ran said:

The one depiction I've liked is by this fan artist, Ken Walker -- see here for an example, or here. I think the hair being done that way would have helped. I'm not sure why they read "shaggy" and went super-curly with it. Here is Walker's portrait of Loial, as well.

Those aren't fan pieces. That's professionally-commissioned artwork from The Wheel of Time Roleplaying Game, published by Wizards of the Coast in 2001.

15 hours ago, Maltaran said:

Did they move Dragonmount? In the books it’s northwest of Tar Avalon, but in the establishing shot when Mat and Rand arrived it was the other side of the river which would be east

Yes. Although they've shrunk the island massively, it's still the same shape, the bridges and the Ogier Grove are still in the same place etc. Those show that Dragonmount is now to the east of the city.

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1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Those aren't fan pieces. That's professionally-commissioned artwork from The Wheel of Time Roleplaying Game, published by Wizards of the Coast in 2001.

Ah-ha, explains why I couldn't find any of it on Deviant Art and other such sites, and why it looked like it was scanned off a page. 

Out of curiosity, do we know what RJ said regarding his involvement in art approvals for that? I know he said that New Spring the graphic novel was very much as close to his vision of characters as he could get short of drawing them himself.

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2 minutes ago, Ran said:

Ah-ha, explains why I couldn't find any of it on Deviant Art and other such sites, and why it looked like it was scanned off a page. 

Out of curiosity, do we know what RJ said regarding his involvement in art approvals for that? I know he said that New Spring the graphic novel was very much as close to his vision of characters as he could get short of drawing them himself.

I think about the same. He gave them a lot of information for the RPG that hadn't appeared anywhere else, though he wasn't as closely involved in the approvals for the Prophecies of the Dragon adventure book spin-off, and they did a few things in that book which narked him off.

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6 hours ago, Gertrude said:

I'm glad they cut Caemlyn from the show at this point. It can be written around, so go for it. I am not sad we're not getting their meet-cute because it was overly contrived. Blah blah, ta'veren, blah blah crush. I wanted an overhaul of the books and I am getting it and I couldn't be happier that they are cutting sacred cows left and right. This is the adaptation I wanted.

I'm happy at least one of us is getting the adaptation they wanted, but I confess that this perspective is confusing to me. I think it's atypical.

Usually when people want something adapted it's because they like the original material and want to see it in screen form. It's why fans of Percy Jackson and Artemis Fowl, for instance, get upset when they see the writers basically toss the story and put in their own stuff.

I agree with you that Wheel of Time isn't brilliant, but Wheel of Time is the story I was expecting to see. Sure, changes are necessary, but as you point out, over halfway through the season and we're to a large extent only seeing changes and hardly any of the stuff from the books is being kept.

For me, if the showrunners had eliminated the shrill gender interactions, cut much of the horizontal bloat that weighed down the latter part of the series and gave the show a strong focus on Rand and Egwene uniting the nations, I would have been pleased. 

But where are we instead? You say you're glad they removed Caemlyn. That's fine. For my part, though, I loved Caemlyn. Rand experiencing his first big city, the charming interactions he had with Gill and Loial (of which they kept a little; I hate Loial's design in the show, but the actor is awesome and I love his lines, even if some of them don't make sense in the context of being in Tar Valon), the encounter with the beggar, the fun ta'veren craziness in the palace, and of course Elaida's prophecy. 

Instead we have a character who was non-existent in the main series being developed and then killed off. We have a made up grief ritual which forces Lan to be dramatic and howl and pound on his chest like a little baby, which is unlike anything he has ever done in the books.

We get Egwene and Perrin being tortured right outside the city of Tar Valon, which is troubling for a couple of reasons: it means that Moiraine's eyes and ears are useless, and also it makes Aes Sedai come off as weak and incompetent that they would allow a group who go around torturing and murdering their members to hang out at their doorstep. That's insane.

There's plenty of room in books 2-4, which actually take place in Tar Valon, for the nature of bonds and Warder grief, etc., to be developed - using the book material!

It seems so pointless to me.

3 hours ago, Wouter said:

I learned about Caemlyn being dropped early on, IIRC before the first trailer even. And the reason it was dropped is simple: they lacked the budget and had to choose between, say, portraying Shadar Logoth and Tar Valon (as Werthead remarked probably with the same set) or portraying Caemlyn and Whitebridge.

I would have taken eliminating Tar Valon, which wasn't even in the first book, and not having the Winternight battle or the battle for Logain, and getting Caemlyn in turn. That's an easy trade off.

And I know people are going to insist that if the show isn't mindless and riddled with flashy battles, a wider audience won't watch. I disagree with that. 

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You can't build elaborate exterior and interior sets for a city that appears relatively briefly in Books 1 and 3, and does not become a regular location that is visited regularly until the very end of Book 5. It's absurdly expensive for very little return.

Tar Valon, however, debuts in Book 2 and appears in (I believe) every single book of the series after that until the end (though I believe it's only barely in Book 5), and is a primary base of operations for at least one or the other of the main factions in the series. It's the closest the series has to a Red Keep analogue set.

You could, perhaps, built it as a flip set which can pull double duty for other sets through redresses, but you have to be careful with that because it can look a bit obvious and cheap when you're doing that.

The same argument goes for the actors: casting Morgase, Gawyn, Galad, Elayne, Elaida, Gareth Bryne and Martyn Tallanvor for the sake of one scene, and then having to put holding payments down to stop the actors being recast the very next season if they get a better offer would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe the better part of a million. That's not counting actors who might actually not return for 2+ seasons (Morgase, Bryne and Tallanvor). WoT's budget is healthy, but not infinite and clearly they've had to make big compromises elsewhere.

As I've said before, HBO were blessed because GRRM seems to have - perhaps unconsciously given he'd just come back from Hollywood - written ASoIaF (or at least A Game of Thrones) to be almost adaptation oven-ready, with cliffhangers every few chapters corresponding to episode endings, much more naturalistic and memorable dialogue and more use of static locations than travelogues (obviously there are travelogues, but the story isn't 100% travelogue as WoT is for the first 3-4 books and LotR is), not to mention the overall story being only half the size of WoT's with far fewer moving parts.

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I'm fine with Caemlyn being cut, though I liked the throne room scene a lot, too. I understand the constraints they face, here, and also, building up Tar Valon and Aes Sedai politics early is a good choice... In principle. How they execute it is the real question. 

I was, and am, fully down with them making big changes. But then it has to work as a good piece of TV. And that's where I feel the show is failing. It's janky and ill-paced. It feels badly edited, with several connecting scenes obviously chopped away. The dialogue is bizarre, given that they took the liberty of deviating entirely from the books. That's fine, but then come up with something good. 

Also, I agree with whoever said the Warder storyline would have worked better in season 2. Give us time to get to know these characters. I think it's fine to go deep into the Warder bond. It's a fairly unique piece of world building, and fleshing it out is absolutely respectful to the author's vision and a good way to add tension to character interactions in the show. But it doesn't work as a story fit into the span of an episode. And it definitely feels strange we don't get this kind of character time with the main five. 

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12 minutes ago, Werthead said:

You can't build elaborate exterior and interior sets for a city that appears relatively briefly in Books 1 and 3, and does not become a regular location that is visited regularly until the very end of Book 5. It's absurdly expensive for very little return.

I guess I'm not convinced that most of these sets have to be elaborate.

Emond's Field, for instance. Almost the entirety of the events take place at Egwene's home. Have maybe a quick CG establishing shot of the town at night as Tam and Rand enter the village, and have everything else take place at the manor. The CG shot doesn't even have to be great, as the darkness of night can mask the low quality.

Now you do have the budget for Caemlyn. Have most of the action take place at Gill's inn, as in the books. You really only have two set pieces: the inn and the palace. You can have an establishing shot of Caemlyn, then we immediately have Rand and Mat at the inn.

There are a lot of changes that could be made to minimize the budget, yet still stay faithful to the interactions in the book.

20 minutes ago, Werthead said:

The same argument goes for the actors: casting Morgase, Gawyn, Galad, Elayne, Elaida, Gareth Bryne and Martyn Tallanvor for the sake of one scene, and then having to put holding payments down to stop the actors being recast the very next season if they get a better offer would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe the better part of a million. That's not counting actors who might actually not return for 2+ seasons (Morgase, Bryne and Tallanvor). WoT's budget is healthy, but not infinite and clearly they've had to make big compromises elsewhere.

I guess? The Wire had characters who just had cameo roles in one season become major players in another season, and characters who were major players reduced to cameo roles. I don't know how the logistics would be different.

And once again, GoT while having composite characters stayed faithful to the source material. I don't see why the same couldn't be done here?

But this is all speculative on both our parts. I think with some cleverness the book could be realized without bloating the budget. You say it's impossible.

We'll never know because what we got instead was an expensive show that looks cheap and has hardly any scenes from the book in it.

I would have preferred an animated series, to be honest.

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I understand that they are adapting the series as a whole, and not book by book. Plots like Stepin's can be inserted in several places and not feel out of place, but I trust they have a reason for it to be here. Maybe in order to fit everything they want in season 2, it got shunted to season 1, etc. Do I think they could have shaved a bit of time from it to give more time to something else? Yeah, I do. I still think the scenes work on their own and what I do like about them is that it really gives the warders importance, which I never got from the books. They were sidekicks, with Lan being the exception, and he was really poorly fleshed out due to his extreme (and IMO unhealthy) stoicism. It gives the world a little more depth to me, which is something I find lacking in the books. It has loads of details about the world, but they all feel a bit shallow when you really look at them.

I don't have a nostalgic connection to a lot of the elements people seem to have. There are parts of the book that I feel are powerful and I have emotional connections to those moments, but there's also a lot I could take or leave. In short, I always thought the books were ok, but had the potential to be a lot better. I am excited to see if some of that potential can be reached in a different medium and in different hands. I am also pretty patient and can wait to see how it unfolds and how all the elements are shuffled around and recombined. I am not going to get upset over the details. I already think show Thom is better than book Thom and can't wait to see what they do with him later in the series, where as in the books he kind of disappears and becomes an afterthought. I do wish we could have spent more time with him, but it is what it is. Am I concerned about how Rand and Elayne will now meet and connect? A bit, but I also have some trust that there is a plan and it will be fine. In short, I am not sweating the details and am enjoying the ride.

I don't know if this is the case with you, but as I am reading other opinions here and elsewhere, I am getting the feeling that the first book really connected with young males as a coming of age story. That wasn't the case for me, so I also don't have that emotional bond to contend with. They annoyed the piss out of me with how childish they could be.

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39 minutes ago, IFR said:

I guess I'm not convinced that most of these sets have to be elaborate.

Emond's Field, for instance. Almost the entirety of the events take place at Egwene's home. Have maybe a quick CG establishing shot of the town at night as Tam and Rand enter the village, and have everything else take place at the manor. The CG shot doesn't even have to be great, as the darkness of night can mask the low quality.

Now you do have the budget for Caemlyn. Have most of the action take place at Gill's inn, as in the books. You really only have two set pieces: the inn and the palace. You can have an establishing shot of Caemlyn, then we immediately have Rand and Mat at the inn.

Rand gets to the palace by jumping over a wall and going through the gardens. So you would need an exterior set for the palace, not just interior. One of the important bits about Caemlyn in the first book is Logain's parade, which the show still thought it was important to do. So now you need an exterior set for a city street, too. 

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35 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

Rand gets to the palace by jumping over a wall and going through the gardens. So you would need an exterior set for the palace, not just interior.

It would not have to be done this way. But even if it were, you don't have to have a glorious wide shot of a wall that was handcrafted and massive. Have Rand in an alley, he sees a wall, starts climbing it, and then the next shot is him on top of the wall. This doesn't need to be expensive. Lots of shows have closeups of a character climbing a wall, and then cut to them on top.

You could have a shot of the city after that, or just do a close up of Rand on the wall looking at the city. He hears a voice, then falls.

35 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

One of the important bits about Caemlyn in the first book is Logain's parade, which the show still thought it was important to do. So now you need an exterior set for a city street, too

And the show thought it was important to use it as a red herring for Mat's madness.

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I don't know if this is the case with you, but as I am reading other opinions here and elsewhere, I am getting the feeling that the first book really connected with young males as a coming of age story. That wasn't the case for me, so I also don't have that emotional bond to contend with. 

Possibly. Ever since I was very young, I've always tended to more "masculine" tastes, I guess. I mostly read male authors, and I'm very into science and computers, which the community around those hobbies aren't as women friendly as they really ought to be. (It honestly annoys me that there's a gender association with any activity.)

Anyway, at this juncture, our opinions are so different on the early portion of the books that one of us was bound to be disappointed. I'm glad you enjoy it, because at least we both don't lose.

For my part, I do hope it is like fionwe speculates and the story will become more faithful down the line, 

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5 hours ago, Darryk said:

I'm finding the show's version of Lan to be a lot more likeable than the book's version. Same goes for Egwene actually.

I agree he's more "likeable" -- like, he's a guy you'd want to have a drink with in a bar -- but in return he loses a lot of his mystery, the thing that set him apart from the other characters and all. By making him more approachable, you bring him down to earth, basically, and he starts to feel more like just another guy rather than someone who exists on the sort of heroic or epic scale that he does in the books.

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Just caught this interview.

A relevant passage:

"Marcus is just one of the most talented people I’ve worked with. I remember in our audition, we just kind of connected instantly in the scene. I was like, “Wow.” I felt that the chemistry was really strong, which is what these two characters need. I think we find them at the beginning of the series—Perrin’s holding a bit of a candle for Egwene and that causes a bit of a rift within his marriage. And so when they’re separated on the road, all these feelings kind of come up. Even though Perrin is physically bigger and stronger than Egwene, it’s actually her that’s protecting him a lot of the time, because he’s so broken and riddled with this guilt."

I really liked the platonic relationship they had early on in the books. But it appears Perrin has a thing for Egwene in the show.

Will we get our tawdry love triangle action? We'll see!

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1 minute ago, IFR said:

Perrin’s holding a bit of a candle for Egwene and that causes a bit of a rift within his marriage. And so when they’re separated on the road, all these feelings kind of come up.

What the hell? So that was supposed to be the marital issue? It feels like we're getting trolled. If the show meant to convey that Perrin was interested in Egwene, it wildly misses the mark because it's utterly invisible on the screen.

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Also, I don't think any feelings came up for Perrin except for that (completely understandable) thousand-yard stare he's got going. Egwene hugged him a couple of times and said "it's not your fault." But that's as much character interaction as we've had for those two.

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2 hours ago, IFR said:

I guess I'm not convinced that most of these sets have to be elaborate.

For a royal palace? Yes, they absolutely have to be elaborate and sell the idea this is a place where royalty hangs out.

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I guess? The Wire had characters who just had cameo roles in one season become major players in another season, and characters who were major players reduced to cameo roles. I don't know how the logistics would be different.

The Wire deliberately used local Baltimore theatre players for most of its roles because they knew they'd be readily available to come back at a moment's notice. At most, they used actors based relatively nearby in DC and New York.

They only went further afield for front-line actors (all the way to the UK for Dominic West and Idris Elba) and that actually caused them problems: West picked up other gigs after Season 3, which is why McNulty is barely in Season 4, despite being the closest thing the show has to a major protagonist.

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But this is all speculative on both our parts. I think with some cleverness the book could be realized without bloating the budget. You say it's impossible.

It is impossible to do that whilst meeting modern expectations for sets, effects and general production quality: Game of Thrones Season 1 was kind of borderline in 2011 with how cheap it looked at times (at least compared to other HBO and cable shows, compare to network shows it looked great) and you couldn't make that fly these days.

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9 hours ago, Ran said:

I mean, it's a historical drama set in medieval Scotland and England... Were you shocked by all the black Zulus in Shaka Zulu as well? 

I get your point about fantasy worlds, but am a bit confused about how Braveheart gets roped into it. If you had said The Lord of the Rings, that would make a bit more sense, fantasy to fantasy. The difference between LotR and WoT was that the former seems to have tried to strongly adhere to the world building of its 19th-century-born author and the latter has re-envisioned chunks of it to write what Jordan "hopefully" would have written if he had started writing in 2021 (. . .)

 

To clarify my point--media has done such an excellent job in diversifying casts that to go back and see Braveheart was just surprising. I'm not casting judgment on it. I wouldn't expect an historical account like this to necessarily cast for diversity (though if it did, I would be fine with that decision), and this is what my son and I actually talked about. Would making an historical film about a completely white culture, in an era where people of color are starting to find equal representation in film, be a good choice at all? I'm speaking specifically about big studio projects.

To be clear, I love Braveheart, but my point is that media has done a serviceable enough job in being more inclusive that an all white cast just stood out to me.

I think the question of historicism often gets linked to fantasy--as in, "this kind of culture in Sapkowski's books were based on Eastern Europeans, so they must remain white!"--so, my point about Braveheart was that a movie like that exists within a real moment in time, whereas fantasy does not have to (and should not) follow those rules. 

ETA: I think my point of Braveheart was also more of a side comment about an internal argument I've had reading reactionary responses to video game diversity (nothing around this board, obviously). These groups of people who are so afraid of diversified casting that is happening--and what clicked for me when I watched Braveheart is that the diversifying has already begun to such a degree that I movie I watched in the theater back in the early 90s which had an all white cast--and I never even consciously thought about it--now is a movie I watch and I notice that it's only white cast. Things have changed, I guess is what I'm getting at, and it was just kind of actually neat(?) to have that reaction--especially as a white man who grew up in a white town with, to be very honest, racist parents. I took me a long time to work past those ideologies. 

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1 hour ago, IFR said:

Just caught this interview.

A relevant passage:

"Marcus is just one of the most talented people I’ve worked with. I remember in our audition, we just kind of connected instantly in the scene. I was like, “Wow.” I felt that the chemistry was really strong, which is what these two characters need. I think we find them at the beginning of the series—Perrin’s holding a bit of a candle for Egwene and that causes a bit of a rift within his marriage. And so when they’re separated on the road, all these feelings kind of come up. Even though Perrin is physically bigger and stronger than Egwene, it’s actually her that’s protecting him a lot of the time, because he’s so broken and riddled with this guilt."

I really liked the platonic relationship they had early on in the books. But it appears Perrin has a thing for Egwene in the show.

Will we get our tawdry love triangle action? We'll see!

Wow. I don't see how the show as it is conveys this at all. 

It seems like a lot of character backstory stuff just got cut, and we're left with disjointed pieces that don't add up. In this case, I'm ecstatic that anything resembling a love triangle didn't make it to the screen. That was a dumbass idea. 

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1 hour ago, Ran said:

What the hell? So that was supposed to be the marital issue? It feels like we're getting trolled. If the show meant to convey that Perrin was interested in Egwene, it wildly misses the mark because it's utterly invisible on the screen.

That or the pregnancy issue. (I thought Laila was pregnant, others think Laila was barren)

Though I did think Perrin had some feelings for Egwene from the looks he threw her in the first episode. 

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