Wheel of Time: The 2nd Turning (Book Spoilers Inclusive)

[Corvinus85]

56 minutes ago, Ran said:

I thought the Seanchan and Moiraine's new outfit were pretty nice. What Ishamael is doing with them, I've no clue. And Perrin's actor is just perpetually incapable of not looking confused and lost.

I look forward to reading the commentary on the forum, but don't intend to watch.

hehe, will try not to disappoint.

It bemuses me that even when the source material is exhaustive in its description of how things look (places, clothing, weapons) to the point of earning criticism for it, creators of adaptations still contrive to just do their own thing. 

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, Corvinus85 said:

hehe, will try not to disappoint.

It bemuses me that even when the source material is exhaustive in its description of how things look (places, clothing, weapons) to the point of earning criticism for it, creators of adaptations still contrive to just do their own thing. 

This is pretty standard. When you want to hire the best set designers/costume designers etc, if you say, "You don't need to actually design anything, just follow these 100% descriptions from these books," they'll say, "nope," and vamoose. Mainly because they want to do their own thing and make it look good for their portfolios for future projects. Being locked into pre-existing designs from earlier sources which might not look great on screen and might reflect badly on them is not something any decent costume or set designer will do. And in the current market, set designers and costume designers are in such hot demand they can go off and do anything else they want.

There are exceptions, of course, like with Lord of the Rings where there were huge numbers of book fanboys and fangirls working on the project wanting to nail 100% the look (and using actual book artists for set and production design).

This is pretty much where things like the bollock armour from The Witcher Season 1 and the comical Lannister open-faced helmets from GoT came from as well.

Edited May 24, 2023 by Werthead

[Ran]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

This is pretty standard. When you want to hire the best set designers/costume designers etc, if you say, "You don't need to actually design anything, just follow these 100% descriptions from these books," they'll say, "nope," and vamoose. Mainly because they want to do their own thing and make it look good for their portfolios for future projects.

And yet so many award winning costume designers when their awards for exacting historical costumes. They may research heavily some range of eras and blend things together that were never blended together, but they were definitely homaging the eras of their costumes. Just from 2010 on, from 2011-2014 every winner was a historical film with heavy historical reference. 2017, 2019 (where Jacqueline Durran won her second for Little Women, after having won in 2012 for Anna Karenina), and 2020/2021 as well.  

There's a great deal of scope in RJ's descriptions to actually design things that are interesting. Mostly I think costume designers brought onto fantasy productions tend to take fantasy to mean a complete freedom to do what they want, and they don't rate the literature something is based on.

And sometimes it's the showrunners behind this. The Lannister armor was almost accompanied with katanas for Lannister knights, but D&D were dissuaded (probably by George).

 

Edited May 24, 2023 by Ran

[Myrddin]

21 hours ago, Werthead said:

There are exceptions, of course, like with Lord of the Rings where there were huge numbers of book fanboys and fangirls working on the project wanting to nail 100% the look (and using actual book artists for set and production design).

This was a huge boon for Jackson, no doubt. Having BOTH John Howe and Alan Lee guiding the design was beyond amazing. Jackson could've just cheated out and used their previous portfolio of artwork as inspiration for his own artist. Instead he hired them to design not just the locations, costumes, and weapons, but also the minutia that is almost invisible on screen.

Except for maybe the comic adaptations of WoT, there isn't really comparable art on the level of Howe and Lee prior to production. Not, the stuff in the Big White Book should not serve as reference for anything...

[IlyaP]

On 5/25/2023 at 4:44 AM, Ran said:

There's a great deal of scope in RJ's descriptions to actually design things that are interesting. Mostly I think costume designers brought onto fantasy productions tend to take fantasy to mean a complete freedom to do what they want, and they don't rate the literature something is based on.

You know, this is a very good three-line summary of why the design thus far hasn't worked for me. In fact, I found the design of the clothing in the FPS from 1999 more accurate than anything in the show to date. (And with a better score and more vibrant colors, too!)

[IFR]

Whenever this thread reappears I'm forced to recall that I did indeed endure the crucible of season 1. 

I won't be watching season 2, but I eagerly anticipate both the horrified reactions from one camp, and the "well, it's not the best of shows, but lobotomize yourself and it's enjoyable despite all the flaws in an endearing season 8 Game of Thrones kind of way" from the other camp.

[Poobah]

I'm looking forward to the next season with some mix of trepidation and cautious optimism.

There are many things I hope they improve upon from the first season which was flawed in many ways but to me did show promise - I never expected the impossible, because nothing could live up to the  nostalgia-fuelled haze of imagination that was my introduction to epic fantasy and I'm relatively willing to engage with it as its own thing, at least to a larger extent than some others it seems. The question will be what the forthcoming season shows - does it build on where I feel the first did well and cast aside the issues that beset it (some of its own making and some not - covid and the recasting issue) or will it dive deeper into the missteps it's writers chose to make?

I certainly have my lines when it comes to respect to source material (Rings of Power, Amazon's other big fantasy show galloped far past them, but I have greater reverence for and thus less tolerance when it comes screwing with Tolkien's opus than I do Jordan's) so as the plot progresses out of the relatively anomalous Eye of the World and into the more defined territory of The Great Hunt and The Dragon Reborn I'll be paying attention to where they embrace and deviate from canon. There are major deviations that I expect - largely in amalgamating the plots and especially the repetitious climaxes which I think are totally reasonable - but lots of details I hope are kept. The only thing to do is to wait and see I suppose but either way while Amazon has already commissioned (or even begun filming?) the third season I think this one will be rather make or break for the greater longevity of the series. 

[IlyaP]

10 hours ago, IFR said:

Whenever this thread reappears I'm forced to recall that I did indeed endure the crucible of season 1. 

I won't be watching season 2, but I eagerly anticipate both the horrified reactions from one camp, and the "well, it's not the best of shows, but lobotomize yourself and it's enjoyable despite all the flaws in an endearing season 8 Game of Thrones kind of way" from the other camp.

Hey, don't you forget about those of us who watched Lexx for you so you didn't have to! 

[Jace, Extat]

3 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Hey, don't you forget about those of us who watched Lexx for you so you didn't have to! 

Lexx...

 

[IlyaP]

3 minutes ago, Secretary of Eumenes said:

Lexx...

 

Or *shudder* Silversun.

[Poobah]

Shoreh Aghdashloo spotted on Wheel of Time set

Edited May 30, 2023 by Poobah
Didn't embed right the firs time.

[SpaceChampion]

 

[Starkess]

 

I try to avoid following news of the show--I watched S1, heavily disliked it, and have no intention of watching it going forward. Unfortunately, the show continues to permeate WoT fan spaces. In any case, thought this was an interesting statement. Sounds like I made the right choice in peacing out from this.

Interestingly, I followed back the thread this came from and found it to be a frustrating mess. Basically a long list of people complaining that everyone who doesn't like the show is a bigot. How is that a helpful stance to take? Ugh, now I'm getting angry again, which is why I try to avoid show news at all!!

[Poobah]

39 minutes ago, Starkess said:

 

I try to avoid following news of the show--I watched S1, heavily disliked it, and have no intention of watching it going forward. Unfortunately, the show continues to permeate WoT fan spaces. In any case, thought this was an interesting statement. Sounds like I made the right choice in peacing out from this.

Interestingly, I followed back the thread this came from and found it to be a frustrating mess. Basically a long list of people complaining that everyone who doesn't like the show is a bigot. How is that a helpful stance to take? Ugh, now I'm getting angry again, which is why I try to avoid show news at all!!

As I mentioned up-thread I'm not at all surprised that there will be big changes in order to amalgamate TGH and TDR. The question for me was always how well they'd execute it rather than if they'd do it. In my mind the amount of repetition/similarity in some plotlines and resolutions (as fans we've all memed on Rand killing the dark one Ishamael and then a revolving door of other male forsaken every book climax for most of the series, but also there's stuff like the girls going to, leaving, then returning to the tower, getting captured multiple times, going on two similar quests to find some unknown something in a coastal city etc.) as well as the sheer the length and amount of books required some major reworks in order to make a viable show.

I'm sorry that you've been feeling labelled a bigot by association for disliking the show, you're entitled to dislike it and offer criticism of course, and I wouldn't assume anyone I'm discussing things with on here to be a bigot in isolation just for disliking the WoT show. Unfortunately I think it's a natural reaction from fans/supporters to be defensive and to assume that criticism is in bad faith on social media where there are a lot of bad actors and the sad truth is that the show's casting choices revealed a fuckton of bigots in the fandom. 

Anyway it seems like you made a good choice and I hope you manage to avoid further entanglements with the show since it seems to distress/frustrate/anger you.

[IFR]

13 hours ago, Poobah said:

Unfortunately I think it's a natural reaction from fans/supporters to be defensive and to assume that criticism is in bad faith on social media where there are a lot of bad actors and the sad truth is that the show's casting choices revealed a fuckton of bigots in the fandom.

Perhaps you mean you encountered explicitly worded racism in these objections?

I've personally encountered plenty of defenders of the show who were of the opinion that having a purist opinion on casting was a de facto racist opinion.

I - and others - thought the cosmopolitan casting of Two Rivers characters was logically nonsensical, and I've seen many responses to this point as immediate declarations of racism.

I also recall a conversation here where I stated I found Lan's funeral ritual very silly and thought it undermined Lan's character. It was suggested that I was culturally insensitive because the writers said this ritual was inspired by Korean funeral practices. I think it was also suggested that I supported toxic masculinity. Both of these comments had a lot of likes too.

I personally have no problem being accused of racism or sexism. These are accusations people will whip out like some politically correct gunslingers of the West, so it just makes me laugh. But it renders certain elements of story impossible, or at least impossibly tedious, to discuss because it suddenly becomes a field full of landmines that you have to tiptoe through to address your grievances lest you get called a Nazi. You can't simply say "This doesn't make sense."

Edited June 1, 2023 by IFR

[Poobah]

53 minutes ago, IFR said:

Perhaps you mean you encountered explicitly worded racism in these objections?

I've personally encountered plenty of defenders of the show who were of the opinion that having a purist opinion on casting was a de facto racist opinion.

Of course you can have objections to the show and not be a racist but social media being what it is there's rarely room for nuance and a lot of bad actors.

That said I feel like if you spend enough time in and around these sorts of discussions of media it's pretty easy to spot the racist dogwhistles. Beyond the racist screaming and moaning about "wokeness" there were a ton of "I'm not racist I'm just a book purist" positions which quickly fell apart under scrutiny in to a desperate search for justifications for why all the characters had to be white and why casting black actors ruined everything forever. Even at a glance it's pretty telling when someone claiming to be a text purist gives zero fucks about any other detail but spends thousands of words on reddit or dozens, hundreds even, of twitter posts talking about skin colour. No other details, just a tell-tale hyperfixation on race.

Beyond the obvious conclusions that we can reach when someone fixates on race those arguments tend to also rather belie the whole "hardcore fan who cares about the text's integrity" angle because they show a profound lack of engagement with Jordan's worldbuilding, themes, and approach to culture in the Wheel of Time. As a setting it's stealthily actually far future post-apocalyptic, not medieval or renaissance, a world whose starting point was one that was far more connected and globalist than even the modern day and was then shaken up even more through mass migrations and diaspora out of the mega cities as a result of the breaking. Jordan does give a few passing mentions to things like skin colour or eye shape for a few characters (though I think he mentions Faile's huge beaky nose more often than either) but the characters pretty much never remark upon it and meanwhile he and they are devoting a great deal of thought and exposition to what in my view he considers to important things - social customs, mores and folkways, foods, accents, clothes and in doing so he pulls from and mixes cultures from all around the world - to Jordan this is what actually differentiates people, what makes someone Cairhienin or Illianer or Shienaran or whatever not skin colour.

[Ran]

1 hour ago, Poobah said:

Jordan does give a few passing mentions to things like skin colour or eye shape for a few characters

Look up "coppery" in your e-books and you will find a range of Domani people being identified. Aiel are fair-haired and fair-skinned, but tan to exposure. The Andorans are generally fair-skinned, often fair haired and blue eyed. The Sea Folk are uniformly dark (the Sharans even darker) and darker than most Tairens and darker than the Ebou Dari too, and the Amayar are lighter.  The Cairhienin are pale and very short. And so on.

I have never understood how we went from the plain reading of the text, in which Rand is picked out as an outsider in the Two Rivers, and you have all these explicit descriptions of varying ethnicities (tall, willowy, coppery Domani, darkly beautiful Sea Folk, tall red-haired Aielmen, etc.) associated with various countries, to this "Oh, well, Randland was a big mixed-up cosmopolitan place before the Breaking of the World and it has remained that since." No, what's happened in Randland is that new ethnicities formed as the Breaking formed new isolated  communities that developed into nations, and that all the displacements of the Trolloc Wars just formed new enclaves and subsequent isolated groups that developed into distinct groups of their own with their own fashions and their own common appearances.

I absolutely understand that if someone prefers to see much more cosmopolitan, multi-ethnic setting than is described in general for the novels, but that's different than that's what actually in the novels, which is that Jordan liked having a short-hand of different countries having distinct physical differences as well as cultural and fashion differences.

Edited June 1, 2023 by Ran

[Rhom]

Ultimately the worst possible outcome happened; they chose a racially diverse cast... who couldn't act.  That is the truly unforgiveable sin.  The actors were bad and the scripts they were given were bad and the direction they were given was bad.  

[Corvinus85]

What Jordan basically did was take cultural aesthetics from the real world and gave them to people of certain different ethnicities compared to real world equivalents. The Aiel are desert dwellers who have some similarities to real-life desert people, but they all look Scandinavian. The Cairhienin are likely white but also short, yet they have fashion styles that can be associated with Qing China and with feudal Japan.

As Ran correctly point above, the descendants of the Age of Legends people were forced to form isolated communities that only slowly expanded, and then got trounced again by the next calamitous war and so on. How did the Aiel identify it was the ancestors of the Cairhienin that aided them if the Cairhienin don't have some kind of cultural and ethnical distinctiveness?

I do hope that season 2 will provide better world immersion by having people speak with varied accents, but I won't hold my breath. I know Judkins answered some questions about the Seanchan accent, which will be different, but only because of how many times it was referred in the book and fans expect it. I wonder if we'll get Illianer accents, Sea Folk accents, Lugarder/Murandian etc. 

 

 

[Werthead]

4 hours ago, Ran said:

Look up "coppery" in your e-books and you will find a range of Domani people being identified. Aiel are fair-haired and fair-skinned, but tan to exposure. The Andorans are generally fair-skinned, often fair haired and blue eyed. The Sea Folk are uniformly dark (the Sharans even darker) and darker than most Tairens and darker than the Ebou Dari too, and the Amayar are lighter.  The Cairhienin are pale and very short. And so on.

Although Jordan (and Sanderson) allowed for exceptions: lighter-skinned Domani appear and Ishara Casalain, the founding Queen of Andor, was not just black but "very" dark-skinned (based on a stained glass window depiction of her in The Path of Daggers).

3 hours ago, Rhom said:

Ultimately the worst possible outcome happened; they chose a racially diverse cast... who couldn't act.  That is the truly unforgiveable sin.  The actors were bad and the scripts they were given were bad and the direction they were given was bad.  

This feels slightly hyperbolic. Daniel Henney, Rosamund Pike, Alvaro Morte, Alexandre Willaum and Sophie Okonedo were all excellent; Zoe Robins was mostly great; and Madeleine Madden was very strong when she had good material to work with, but she did get saddled with some of the more variable writing and didn't seem to quite know what to do with that material. Barney Harris was generally great.

I found the blandest performer of the main cast was Josha Stradowski, although whether that's down to him or down to said poor writing (and he was the main victim of the attempt to defocus things on Rand and make this more of an ensemble) is arguable. Annoying because he 100% nailed the look of Rand. Marcus Rutherford was hard to get a read on, as the Episode 1 events effectively turned him into an emotional zombie for the whole season. Hammed Animashaun was highly promising as Loial but had limited screentime (and suffered from the slightly odd way they decided to portray Ogier).