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I was thinking the exact same thing a couple of days ago, when I heard about 1899 being cancelled. The thing is, I totally wanted to watch that, and it was on t

I was thinking the exact same thing a couple of days ago, when I heard about 1899 being cancelled. The thing is, I totally wanted to watch that, and it was on the "short list" of things I'd planned to start watching soon. But now that I know that it's cancelled, and especially knowing that it ends with a cliffhanger, there's no reason for me to ever bother starting it. Look, I know there are financial considerations at play for production companies and all. But at some point you gotta be willing to either commit and do something all the way, or not do it at all. This half-assing isn't helping anybody. This isn't just Netflix either. My big fear now is that the "Wheel of Time" series will be cancelled before the entire story is told. Which makes me very reluctant to start watching it. And if other people are also reluctant to start it for the same reason, that's going to hurt the viewership... which makes it all the more likely to be cancelled! You can't win.

fizx 4y ago
Wheel of Time was made by a team that respects the source material about as much as the team that ruined the last seasons of Game of Thrones. Unfortunately, you're not missing much.
- mindcrime 4y ago
  Fair enough. But I'd at least like them to finish it, so that in the off chance I like what they've produced, I'll have a complete product to watch. It would suck to get really engrossed in it and then find out they quit halfway through. :-(
- Izkata 4y ago
  > that ruined the last seasons of Game of Thrones. Didn't that happen because they completed the published books and had to figure out the rest on their own? (I never read or watched either one, I just vaguely remember hearing something like that)
  - snarf21 4y ago
    That was a major issue. They were told some general things that needed to happen but super high level. The other issue is that the story as written had sprawled uncontrollably and there was no way to reign it back in to a reasonable ending.
    - agentwiggles 4y ago
      This is essentially my theory on why GRRM still hasn't released the sixth book. He's essentially created plot tech debt that can't reasonably be brought together. I'm a huge fan of ASOIAF but the 4th and 5th books begin to introduce some serious story sprawl that makes no sense to start that late in the game. Most of the community on Reddit seems convinced that he can't possibly finish in two books (the series was originally planned as a trilogy, but changed to target 7 books). And it's pretty optimistic to think that we'll ever get to a seventh book given GRRMs age and pace of writing. The final two seasons of GoT are an absolute mess but at least some of the blame has to go to George. D&D did a fairly excellent job adapting the story when they had the books to work from and only truly went off the rails once they had to start trying to tie things together from vague notes from GRRM. They certainly bear some responsibility as well, but it's hard to fault them for failing to finish a story that the author himself just can't seem to get a handle on. I say all this with great sadness, but that's how it seems to me.
      - fbdab103 4y ago
        Totally agree with that interpretation. GRRM would seemingly get bored with a story-line or not have a planned resolution so he introduced a new one. Which is fun, I guess, but trying to tie everything back together again becomes impossible.
        agentwiggles 4y ago
        He wrote quite a lot about the difficulty of solving a series of events in Meereen in the lead up to A Dance With Dragons, which he referred to as "The Meereenese Knot". Looking at this analysis on Reddit, GRRM mentioned this particular piece of trouble multiple times over a 5-6 year period ( https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/2pp2m8/spoilers_all_an_analysis_exploration_of_grrms/ https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/2pp2m8/spoilers_all... ). The crazy thing is that, based on what we saw in the series, much of the Meereen plot _doesn't even figure into the endgame_. I'm sure George has bigger plans, but Daenerys in Meereen seems to be at best the run-up to where her plot ultimately leads in the books, and yet George is spending years and years adding dozens of characters and solving a knot of plotting that seems like a sideshow! How he'll ever get to the point in his remaining lifespan is beyond me. The man is 74. Even giving him an extremely generous 20 more years of life, he's just not on pace to finish the series unless something changes very, very soon. Meanwhile he's writing back story for Elden Ring, working on a series of TV shows, writing lore books and prequels to ASOIAF. Sadly the dude just seems to have lost the steam required to take it to the finish line. It's extremely sad as ASOIAF is legitimately great.
- nostromo 4y ago
  It’s befuddling. Big Co: let’s acquire this beloved series for $X00 million. … Big Co: ok writers, feel free to completely ignore the content we just paid endless riches to acquire and change it however you’d like. … Big Co: strange, the fans don’t seem to be as excited about this content as we expected!
  - ThunderSizzle 4y ago
    Big co: Must be because our fans are all racists and sexists. Let's blame all of those people for why our show failed
    - nostromo 4y ago
      After reading about how Coca-Cola allegedly fought proposed restrictions on SNAP benefits from being spent on sugary drinks by calling legislators racist — and it worked — it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s some truth here. https://twitter.com/calleymeans/status/1609929026889711617 https://twitter.com/calleymeans/status/1609929026889711617
      - mrguyorama 4y ago
        The fact is that anything that disproportionately affects poor people will disproportionately affect black people.
  - LarryMullins 4y ago
    It's a sort of entitlement. They think that because they bought the legal rights to a thing that they're entitled to the fans of that thing. Whoever has the legal rights gets to decide what is canon and if the fans don't go along with it, there is something wrong with the fans. They never should have made a WoT show, it was obvious from the start that the books are built on values which don't fly in modern media (particularly, gender essentialism.) Instead of butchering the story to make it comply with modern values, they should have simply written their own story. But of course the sort of writers who get hired for jobs like this aren't good enough to write their own stories. Companies think they can cheap out when hiring writers if they buy an IP that already has fans, and dumpster fires like this are the result.
- snarf21 4y ago
  WoT was hot garbage from the jump and not even Rosamund Pike could save it. GoT was awesome and did respect the source material. It is just that GRRM hasn't written in 20 years that caused major issues. The writing that he actually did was good. His problem was that he wove too many threads and people started getting bored and wondering if the story in the show would ever end. So they rushed the ending (so it could end) and made some questionable choices. However, it isn't like there were any good options for how to wrap it up. Epic fantasy is hard. Look at the middle 6 WoT books, almost nothing of relevance happens in 4000 pages. When GoT was signed I'm sure GRRM promised them that the next books were already "done" and ready for release but as is typical, 12 years later they had nothing. Honestly, they should have diverged from the source after season 4 and create a new story that could be concluded satisfactorily.
  - SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
    > Epic fantasy is hard. Look at the middle 6 WoT books, almost nothing of relevance happens in 4000 pages Reading this makes me kind of sad because the industry right now wouldn’t support that. That author would get pushed right out, epub-only releases, less marketing, etc. I wonder if we’ll ever have a long epic like this again.
    - NotACop182 4y ago
      Brandon Sanderson known for WOT, mistborn, storm archives has positioned himself to be in sole control of the adaption of his books. Which is great if he flops he will set an example even authors can’t be trust with their own material.
    - fbdab103 4y ago
      Do those deserve to exist? Even the most die hard WoT fan would concede that several books could have been cut down significantly, if not entirely. Authors are not getting paid by the word anymore, and they should respect the reader's time.
      - _carbyau_ 4y ago
- gamblor956 4y ago
  TBH, after the first 3 books WOT is mostly boring trash that largely consists of female characters standing around tugging on their hair or smoothing their dresses while the male characters mope around.
  - replyifuagree 4y ago
    ^ this guy clearly read the whole series!
    - hadlock 4y ago
      I got through the first five (maybe 6?) books and then just totally lost interest because nothing was really happening, and then the main character spends most of a book wandering through "the between world" or whatever. Perrin who had been one of the three main original characters (spoiler) turns out to be sort of a werewolf gets one totally random, token chapter about wandering through the forest on a snowy night or something. Very strong start, along with the next two books but yeah, I agree with GP just kind of wanders off and the plot stalls out. Maybe some day I'll have time to pick these books up and see if the other guy was able to tie things together.
      - motogpjimbo 4y ago
        Robert Jordan's wife was his editor. Once you understand that, you understand why his books are so poorly edited. A competent and empowered editor would surely have insisted on literally thousands of pages of cuts across the series.
        oneoff786 4y ago
        His wife was a “real editor”. She did Enders game
        motogpjimbo 4y ago
        I'm sure she was, but her work on Jordan's novels wasn't effective. Under normal circumstances, a writer wouldn't be able to get away with releasing 5 or 6 books in a row in which almost nothing of consequence happens.
- homeland221 4y ago
  At least there are copius amount of dragons cgi in S8 GoT. Wheel of Time is a waste of time to watch. That witcher Blood is also mediocre despite strong casts. I expect S3-S4 Witcher will be bad as well. Netflix is really going for dumpster metrics these days. Even if the viewership is no at Squid level, complete the storyline. HBO able to do that with Westworld. Netflix the biggest streamers cant.
  - FuturisticLover 4y ago
    Westworld cancelation wasn't shocking but I was hoping that they would finish the show with 5th and final season.
- allisdust 4y ago
  One of the worst book to series adaptations ever created. There was no sensible reason for the drastic changes in plot and characters they have done. Wish they would cancel and retry it with some other creative team.
  - joshstrange 4y ago
    Agreed, some of the more-minor things they diverged on just make absolutely no sense at all. I understand the TV adaptation isn't going to be a 1:1 but some things were changes just to be changed it felt like... Book spoilers ahead: Look, I get that Loial can't be as big/tall for obvious reasons (budget, that CGI would be heavy) and I get that we skipped Caemlyn for casting reasons (can't really have Elayne/Gawyn/Galad/Morgase/etc show up now only to disappear for a season or two) but the whole "any of them could be the dragon" or "they could all collectively be the dragon" was annoying. Look, I'll be the first to point out the sexism in the books, the women fawning over men they have met 1-2 times, acting like love-sick puppies, etc but I'm not really sure that pretending one of them could have been the dragon is the way to right that wrong, if that was even the intention (also, to my understanding, the dragon is always male because of Saidin. I was also under the impression there has only been 1 previous "Dragon", Lews Therin Telamon, but the show acts like there have been many?). The waygates really made me angry, where is the leaf of Avendesora? Literally every time they go into Ways we get a few lines to a paragraph describing the door and how it's opened but in the show you have to use the power to open it? How the heck is Loial supposed to open it when he, Perrin, Faile, Gaul, Chiad, and Bain supposed to travel back to the Two Rivers seeing how none of them can channel?
    - oscillonoscope 4y ago
      In the books, there is the 'champion of light' which has infinitely many incarnations and 'The Dragon' which was LTT and one incarnation of the champion of light. The show just combines these two terms. In my opinion, it's actually less confusing that way
- emptysongglass 4y ago
  I really, really enjoy the Wheel of Time series and hope it continues. I haven't read the books. The writing and acting have been consistently great.
kneebonian 4y ago
Never half-ass two things, whole-ass one thing. Ron Swanson, Parks and Recreation
_moof 4y ago
Fortunately with Wheel of Time the story has already been told. You can go read it whenever you want. And although I'm not normally a "the book was better" type, for this reader, the show really is disappointing.
- mindcrime 4y ago
  I'm on the last book literally right now. So yeah, I'll have read it either way. But I was kinda sorta thinking that a nice way to celebrate finishing the books would be to jump over and watch the show. I've heard mixed reports on how good (or bad) it is though, so I dunno. Anyway, WoT in particular aside, the basic principle is the same: if you're going to take on producing an epic work, I'd really prefer that you commit to actually finishing it. That's true pretty much regardless of what franchise/property we're talking about.
  - kaesar14 4y ago
    There might be fans of the show but I’ll never understand how, it’s god-awful. 0 respect for the source material and far more interested in winning diversity points in a story that was already quite interesting in its gender dynamics. That reads like an anti-woke critique but it’s just my genuine feeling.
    - Shaanie 4y ago
      If you haven't read the source material it's a fine show. Yes, just like all other shows nowadays diversity is the most important feature, but once you look past that it's not bad. Certainly better than rings of power in my opinion.
      - joxel 4y ago
        Unfortunately 49% of America are closet racists and can’t look past black people on tv. It’s really quite mind boggling. I consider myself an extreme nerd and yet I don’t have knee jerk reactions when I see a brown elf. I can only point to racism, possibly subconscious for most of the whiners.
acdha 4y ago
That was especially weird to do right around the holidays. Some people are single & stuck in the airport but an awful lot of people are not looking to binge a show during peak family season. I was planning to try it this month but…
treeman79 4y ago
For some reason the first half of Voltron season 1 is missing on Netflix. They produced the show. Confusing.
iforgotpassword 4y ago
I somehow managed to watch 1899 right on release and really enjoyed it, so am really bummed. But a lot of people around me just haven't gotten around to it because of the holidays, and now say the same thing as you do. And I've heard some fans of DARK saying they just couldn't get into it because it was too slow, but I really liked that style of storytelling. I just wish everybody and their mom would put on that show now even if they don't actually watch it, so maybe the numbers change and they reverse their decision. I actually took this as the final straw to cancel my Netflix subscription and will only ever sign up again if that show gets finished.
- jsnell 4y ago
  I doubt that the holidays are the explanation. 1899 released five weeks before Christmas. The peak viewership for a Netflix show is typically first or second week (I guess mostly since the first week tends to be partial) and drops of fairly rapidly. For comparison, Wednesday released 1 week after 1899, even closer to the holidays, racked up 5x the view numbers of 1899, and even had more viewers on Christmas week than 1899 had in its best. (For me, it's that the word of mouth on 1899 was not good. The specific complaints people had were just the kind of thing that would drive me up the wall. So while I binged a bunch of shows during the holidays with different subsets of family, 1899 wasn't even in the discussion with any of them.)
  - mixmastamyk 4y ago
    Where do you get these numbers? Thanks, interestingly, 1899 is number 2!
    - jsnell 4y ago
      Netflix publish them weekly: https://top10.netflix.com/tv?week=2022-11-20 https://top10.netflix.com/tv?week=2022-11-20
  - iforgotpassword 4y ago
    I guess it's one of those shows you need to mentally prepare yourself to watch. Maybe I'm just trying to make excuses now to feel better, but there's something different about watching a mystery show where I have to pay close attention if I really want to get it, and something like Wednesday which I can watch in whatever exhausted state of mind.
karaterobot 4y ago
If Wheel of Time gets canceled before the entire story is told, they'll just get Brandon Sanderson to start a production company and finish it.
- LegitShady 4y ago
  sanderson is nit a film maker or producer.
  - karaterobot 4y ago
    I looked it up and you're right, thanks
marcosdumay 4y ago
I really recommend watching 1899. It finishes the story before ending in a cliffhanger. And, honestly a second season would probably not be good at all, because there isn't much to add up to it.
- unshavedyak 4y ago
  Yea i quite liked it. Though i'm quite sour on Netflix for the cancellation. Debating not bothering subscribing to them for any shows with incomplete stories. I think of 1899 like the show Dark (also made by the same people i believe). Did i like Dark S1? Yes. Is it almost exponentially better when all the seasons are watched? Definitely. Gives me pains wondering what 1899 could have been when viewed through the Dark lens.
- ninth_ant 4y ago
  I can imagine if Dark had been cancelled after one season folks would have said the same as you did here. Yet seasons 2-3 were unexpectedly additive to the whole story.
  - hgsgm 4y ago
    Dark could have ended after 1 or 2 seasons (and S3 kind of tied itself in knots), but would require rewriting the make the ending work.
abadger9 4y ago
my wife and I absolutely hated 1899, but we also hated midnight mass as well - it's possible these types of series aren't our pallet but I wouldn't invest too much time with 1899.
LeftHandPath 4y ago
It seems like part of a larger trend of overemphasis on min-maxing profits by praying at the altar of data and using what those gods return to try to cut all the right corners on the product. In the end, there are things that don't show up in the data that do affect consumption.
dom96 4y ago
I watched the first episode of 1899 and could see why it was cancelled. Just an amalgamation of mysteries that don't seem to have much connection. On the other hand, I also watched Wednesday and thought it was missing a lot of what made The Addams Family great. But I guess it just wasn't made for me. > And if other people are also reluctant to start it for the same reason, that's going to hurt the viewership... which makes it all the more likely to be cancelled! You can't win. I don't think they look at viewership when deciding whether to cancel a show. They look at the percentage of people that continued watching more than just the first episode.
- mingus88 4y ago
  Here's why this really stinks. The writers of Dark wrapped up every mystery. It was through composed from the start and even the choice of 3 seasons was thematically relevant (same reason why the logo is a three sided knot) We have every reason to believe that 1899 would have connected every one of those mysteries, because the writers planned the whole show out. But if Netflix is only going to support reality cooking shows or breakaway hits, then we will never see another masterpiece on Netflix again. I checked out 1899 but then I got busy with my two kids, work, and the holidays. I even gave it two thumbs up. I fully intended to watch the whole thing, probably multiple times because of all the details they put into it. But I need the time and focus to actually sit and watch it (and read all the subtitles) But I guess according to their metrics, my single viewing of Ep01 hurt more than it helped because I didn't immediately binge the entire show to completion.
hgsgm 4y ago
I don't know that show. It is a cliffhanger that teases the next story, or a story ended in the middle? For shows that tease the next story at the end of an episode or season, you can just ignore the tease.
autoexec 4y ago
> But now that I know that it's cancelled, and especially knowing that it ends with a cliffhanger, there's no reason for me to ever bother starting it. Exactly. Every series that ends well, even if it only ever attracts a small number of fans, is a benefit for netflix's library and service. Every show that they cancel is just a time bomb that will either sit unwatched by those who know better or disappoint and piss off one netflix customer after another that hasn't been forewarned. Netflix needs to get their shit together.
ergvgdvgrd 4y ago
The irony with your comment about the Wheel of Time is that the _book_ very nearly was canceled... the writer died after taking a very long time to finish what he did, but then Brandon Sanderson stepped in and finished the series after the original author's death.
- allisdust 4y ago
  It wasn't nearly cancelled. Robert Jordan picked sanderson and passed on his notes, ending. He even wrote the last parts of the book. It's planned as well as it could be.
  - joxel 4y ago
    A few misleading statements here: it was RJs wife who picked Sanderson, after RJs death. Additionally, RJ had the last scenes written well before he even knew he had cancer. I believe he mentioned having it written while writing the very first book.
    - allisdust 4y ago
      Thanks for the corrections.
oerpli 4y ago
Though 1899 was really a genuinely bad series. I think if someone summarized the plot you would think it's a meme on r/iam14andthisisdeep Netflix might be doing weird stuff but 1899 is a really bad example because the mistake there was actually greenlighting the first season.
- oco101 4y ago
  I agree was\is really bad. Still canceling a series based on how many viewers they have in the first weeks is bad practice. I, for one, do not watch almost any movies or series durning the summer so winter I'm just catching up, and I probably missed great series also. At least they should wait at a 6 month to a year at least before deciding or not to cancel it forever.
Doxin 4y ago
So while 1899 technically ends on a cliffhanger, it works perfectly well as an open-ended story. I'd still recommend watching it.
treis 4y ago
> I heard about 1899 being cancelled. Ugh what a crappy way to start my morning :(. That was a legitimately good show and they ended on a massive cliff hanger.
flippinburgers 4y ago
Not watching TWOT at this point will be because the first season was an awful "adaptation".
joshstrange 4y ago
Just read the books or listen to the audiobooks (with the original narrators, Kate Reading and Michael Kramer) the show is terrible. I'll continue to hate-watch it just to call out how much they got wrong but more out of a sense of obligation than for any enjoyment. What's most frustrating is they made changes that aren't even for the better. At least Foundation made a good sci-fi show based on someone who walked by a person reading the actual book (spoiler, re-reading the book did not hold up well for me), WoT somehow made a "meh" show which diverged from the books for no good reason. I think I've fully moved into the "dear god please don't make a TV/Movie adaptation of a book series I love"-camp. I never read GoT but I liked the show and I think I've heard that, aside from the ending, the show does a pretty good job. Unfortunately I feel like way more often than not the Show/Movie is just a huge disappointment.

fizx 4y ago

Wheel of Time was made by a team that respects the source material about as much as the team that ruined the last seasons of Game of Thrones. Unfortunately, you're not missing much.

mindcrime 4y ago
Fair enough. But I'd at least like them to finish it, so that in the off chance I like what they've produced, I'll have a complete product to watch. It would suck to get really engrossed in it and then find out they quit halfway through. :-(
Izkata 4y ago
> that ruined the last seasons of Game of Thrones. Didn't that happen because they completed the published books and had to figure out the rest on their own? (I never read or watched either one, I just vaguely remember hearing something like that)
- snarf21 4y ago
  That was a major issue. They were told some general things that needed to happen but super high level. The other issue is that the story as written had sprawled uncontrollably and there was no way to reign it back in to a reasonable ending.
  - agentwiggles 4y ago
    This is essentially my theory on why GRRM still hasn't released the sixth book. He's essentially created plot tech debt that can't reasonably be brought together. I'm a huge fan of ASOIAF but the 4th and 5th books begin to introduce some serious story sprawl that makes no sense to start that late in the game. Most of the community on Reddit seems convinced that he can't possibly finish in two books (the series was originally planned as a trilogy, but changed to target 7 books). And it's pretty optimistic to think that we'll ever get to a seventh book given GRRMs age and pace of writing. The final two seasons of GoT are an absolute mess but at least some of the blame has to go to George. D&D did a fairly excellent job adapting the story when they had the books to work from and only truly went off the rails once they had to start trying to tie things together from vague notes from GRRM. They certainly bear some responsibility as well, but it's hard to fault them for failing to finish a story that the author himself just can't seem to get a handle on. I say all this with great sadness, but that's how it seems to me.
    - fbdab103 4y ago
      Totally agree with that interpretation. GRRM would seemingly get bored with a story-line or not have a planned resolution so he introduced a new one. Which is fun, I guess, but trying to tie everything back together again becomes impossible.
      - agentwiggles 4y ago
        He wrote quite a lot about the difficulty of solving a series of events in Meereen in the lead up to A Dance With Dragons, which he referred to as "The Meereenese Knot". Looking at this analysis on Reddit, GRRM mentioned this particular piece of trouble multiple times over a 5-6 year period ( https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/2pp2m8/spoilers_all_an_analysis_exploration_of_grrms/ https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/2pp2m8/spoilers_all... ). The crazy thing is that, based on what we saw in the series, much of the Meereen plot _doesn't even figure into the endgame_. I'm sure George has bigger plans, but Daenerys in Meereen seems to be at best the run-up to where her plot ultimately leads in the books, and yet George is spending years and years adding dozens of characters and solving a knot of plotting that seems like a sideshow! How he'll ever get to the point in his remaining lifespan is beyond me. The man is 74. Even giving him an extremely generous 20 more years of life, he's just not on pace to finish the series unless something changes very, very soon. Meanwhile he's writing back story for Elden Ring, working on a series of TV shows, writing lore books and prequels to ASOIAF. Sadly the dude just seems to have lost the steam required to take it to the finish line. It's extremely sad as ASOIAF is legitimately great.
nostromo 4y ago
It’s befuddling. Big Co: let’s acquire this beloved series for $X00 million. … Big Co: ok writers, feel free to completely ignore the content we just paid endless riches to acquire and change it however you’d like. … Big Co: strange, the fans don’t seem to be as excited about this content as we expected!
- ThunderSizzle 4y ago
  Big co: Must be because our fans are all racists and sexists. Let's blame all of those people for why our show failed
  - nostromo 4y ago
    After reading about how Coca-Cola allegedly fought proposed restrictions on SNAP benefits from being spent on sugary drinks by calling legislators racist — and it worked — it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s some truth here. https://twitter.com/calleymeans/status/1609929026889711617 https://twitter.com/calleymeans/status/1609929026889711617
    - mrguyorama 4y ago
      The fact is that anything that disproportionately affects poor people will disproportionately affect black people.
- LarryMullins 4y ago
  It's a sort of entitlement. They think that because they bought the legal rights to a thing that they're entitled to the fans of that thing. Whoever has the legal rights gets to decide what is canon and if the fans don't go along with it, there is something wrong with the fans. They never should have made a WoT show, it was obvious from the start that the books are built on values which don't fly in modern media (particularly, gender essentialism.) Instead of butchering the story to make it comply with modern values, they should have simply written their own story. But of course the sort of writers who get hired for jobs like this aren't good enough to write their own stories. Companies think they can cheap out when hiring writers if they buy an IP that already has fans, and dumpster fires like this are the result.
snarf21 4y ago
WoT was hot garbage from the jump and not even Rosamund Pike could save it. GoT was awesome and did respect the source material. It is just that GRRM hasn't written in 20 years that caused major issues. The writing that he actually did was good. His problem was that he wove too many threads and people started getting bored and wondering if the story in the show would ever end. So they rushed the ending (so it could end) and made some questionable choices. However, it isn't like there were any good options for how to wrap it up. Epic fantasy is hard. Look at the middle 6 WoT books, almost nothing of relevance happens in 4000 pages. When GoT was signed I'm sure GRRM promised them that the next books were already "done" and ready for release but as is typical, 12 years later they had nothing. Honestly, they should have diverged from the source after season 4 and create a new story that could be concluded satisfactorily.
- SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
  > Epic fantasy is hard. Look at the middle 6 WoT books, almost nothing of relevance happens in 4000 pages Reading this makes me kind of sad because the industry right now wouldn’t support that. That author would get pushed right out, epub-only releases, less marketing, etc. I wonder if we’ll ever have a long epic like this again.
  - NotACop182 4y ago
    Brandon Sanderson known for WOT, mistborn, storm archives has positioned himself to be in sole control of the adaption of his books. Which is great if he flops he will set an example even authors can’t be trust with their own material.
  - fbdab103 4y ago
    Do those deserve to exist? Even the most die hard WoT fan would concede that several books could have been cut down significantly, if not entirely. Authors are not getting paid by the word anymore, and they should respect the reader's time.
    - _carbyau_ 4y ago
gamblor956 4y ago
TBH, after the first 3 books WOT is mostly boring trash that largely consists of female characters standing around tugging on their hair or smoothing their dresses while the male characters mope around.
- replyifuagree 4y ago
  ^ this guy clearly read the whole series!
  - hadlock 4y ago
    I got through the first five (maybe 6?) books and then just totally lost interest because nothing was really happening, and then the main character spends most of a book wandering through "the between world" or whatever. Perrin who had been one of the three main original characters (spoiler) turns out to be sort of a werewolf gets one totally random, token chapter about wandering through the forest on a snowy night or something. Very strong start, along with the next two books but yeah, I agree with GP just kind of wanders off and the plot stalls out. Maybe some day I'll have time to pick these books up and see if the other guy was able to tie things together.
    - motogpjimbo 4y ago
      Robert Jordan's wife was his editor. Once you understand that, you understand why his books are so poorly edited. A competent and empowered editor would surely have insisted on literally thousands of pages of cuts across the series.
      - oneoff786 4y ago
        His wife was a “real editor”. She did Enders game
        motogpjimbo 4y ago
        I'm sure she was, but her work on Jordan's novels wasn't effective. Under normal circumstances, a writer wouldn't be able to get away with releasing 5 or 6 books in a row in which almost nothing of consequence happens.
homeland221 4y ago
At least there are copius amount of dragons cgi in S8 GoT. Wheel of Time is a waste of time to watch. That witcher Blood is also mediocre despite strong casts. I expect S3-S4 Witcher will be bad as well. Netflix is really going for dumpster metrics these days. Even if the viewership is no at Squid level, complete the storyline. HBO able to do that with Westworld. Netflix the biggest streamers cant.
- FuturisticLover 4y ago
  Westworld cancelation wasn't shocking but I was hoping that they would finish the show with 5th and final season.
allisdust 4y ago
One of the worst book to series adaptations ever created. There was no sensible reason for the drastic changes in plot and characters they have done. Wish they would cancel and retry it with some other creative team.
- joshstrange 4y ago
  Agreed, some of the more-minor things they diverged on just make absolutely no sense at all. I understand the TV adaptation isn't going to be a 1:1 but some things were changes just to be changed it felt like... Book spoilers ahead: Look, I get that Loial can't be as big/tall for obvious reasons (budget, that CGI would be heavy) and I get that we skipped Caemlyn for casting reasons (can't really have Elayne/Gawyn/Galad/Morgase/etc show up now only to disappear for a season or two) but the whole "any of them could be the dragon" or "they could all collectively be the dragon" was annoying. Look, I'll be the first to point out the sexism in the books, the women fawning over men they have met 1-2 times, acting like love-sick puppies, etc but I'm not really sure that pretending one of them could have been the dragon is the way to right that wrong, if that was even the intention (also, to my understanding, the dragon is always male because of Saidin. I was also under the impression there has only been 1 previous "Dragon", Lews Therin Telamon, but the show acts like there have been many?). The waygates really made me angry, where is the leaf of Avendesora? Literally every time they go into Ways we get a few lines to a paragraph describing the door and how it's opened but in the show you have to use the power to open it? How the heck is Loial supposed to open it when he, Perrin, Faile, Gaul, Chiad, and Bain supposed to travel back to the Two Rivers seeing how none of them can channel?
  - oscillonoscope 4y ago
    In the books, there is the 'champion of light' which has infinitely many incarnations and 'The Dragon' which was LTT and one incarnation of the champion of light. The show just combines these two terms. In my opinion, it's actually less confusing that way
emptysongglass 4y ago
I really, really enjoy the Wheel of Time series and hope it continues. I haven't read the books. The writing and acting have been consistently great.

kneebonian 4y ago

Never half-ass two things, whole-ass one thing. Ron Swanson, Parks and Recreation

_moof 4y ago

Fortunately with Wheel of Time the story has already been told. You can go read it whenever you want. And although I'm not normally a "the book was better" type, for this reader, the show really is disappointing.

mindcrime 4y ago
I'm on the last book literally right now. So yeah, I'll have read it either way. But I was kinda sorta thinking that a nice way to celebrate finishing the books would be to jump over and watch the show. I've heard mixed reports on how good (or bad) it is though, so I dunno. Anyway, WoT in particular aside, the basic principle is the same: if you're going to take on producing an epic work, I'd really prefer that you commit to actually finishing it. That's true pretty much regardless of what franchise/property we're talking about.
- kaesar14 4y ago
  There might be fans of the show but I’ll never understand how, it’s god-awful. 0 respect for the source material and far more interested in winning diversity points in a story that was already quite interesting in its gender dynamics. That reads like an anti-woke critique but it’s just my genuine feeling.
  - Shaanie 4y ago
    If you haven't read the source material it's a fine show. Yes, just like all other shows nowadays diversity is the most important feature, but once you look past that it's not bad. Certainly better than rings of power in my opinion.
    - joxel 4y ago
      Unfortunately 49% of America are closet racists and can’t look past black people on tv. It’s really quite mind boggling. I consider myself an extreme nerd and yet I don’t have knee jerk reactions when I see a brown elf. I can only point to racism, possibly subconscious for most of the whiners.

acdha 4y ago

That was especially weird to do right around the holidays. Some people are single & stuck in the airport but an awful lot of people are not looking to binge a show during peak family season. I was planning to try it this month but…

treeman79 4y ago

For some reason the first half of Voltron season 1 is missing on Netflix. They produced the show. Confusing.

iforgotpassword 4y ago

I somehow managed to watch 1899 right on release and really enjoyed it, so am really bummed. But a lot of people around me just haven't gotten around to it because of the holidays, and now say the same thing as you do. And I've heard some fans of DARK saying they just couldn't get into it because it was too slow, but I really liked that style of storytelling. I just wish everybody and their mom would put on that show now even if they don't actually watch it, so maybe the numbers change and they reverse their decision. I actually took this as the final straw to cancel my Netflix subscription and will only ever sign up again if that show gets finished.

jsnell 4y ago
I doubt that the holidays are the explanation. 1899 released five weeks before Christmas. The peak viewership for a Netflix show is typically first or second week (I guess mostly since the first week tends to be partial) and drops of fairly rapidly. For comparison, Wednesday released 1 week after 1899, even closer to the holidays, racked up 5x the view numbers of 1899, and even had more viewers on Christmas week than 1899 had in its best. (For me, it's that the word of mouth on 1899 was not good. The specific complaints people had were just the kind of thing that would drive me up the wall. So while I binged a bunch of shows during the holidays with different subsets of family, 1899 wasn't even in the discussion with any of them.)
- mixmastamyk 4y ago
  Where do you get these numbers? Thanks, interestingly, 1899 is number 2!
  - jsnell 4y ago
    Netflix publish them weekly: https://top10.netflix.com/tv?week=2022-11-20 https://top10.netflix.com/tv?week=2022-11-20
- iforgotpassword 4y ago
  I guess it's one of those shows you need to mentally prepare yourself to watch. Maybe I'm just trying to make excuses now to feel better, but there's something different about watching a mystery show where I have to pay close attention if I really want to get it, and something like Wednesday which I can watch in whatever exhausted state of mind.

karaterobot 4y ago

If Wheel of Time gets canceled before the entire story is told, they'll just get Brandon Sanderson to start a production company and finish it.

LegitShady 4y ago
sanderson is nit a film maker or producer.
- karaterobot 4y ago
  I looked it up and you're right, thanks

marcosdumay 4y ago

I really recommend watching 1899. It finishes the story before ending in a cliffhanger. And, honestly a second season would probably not be good at all, because there isn't much to add up to it.

unshavedyak 4y ago
Yea i quite liked it. Though i'm quite sour on Netflix for the cancellation. Debating not bothering subscribing to them for any shows with incomplete stories. I think of 1899 like the show Dark (also made by the same people i believe). Did i like Dark S1? Yes. Is it almost exponentially better when all the seasons are watched? Definitely. Gives me pains wondering what 1899 could have been when viewed through the Dark lens.
ninth_ant 4y ago
I can imagine if Dark had been cancelled after one season folks would have said the same as you did here. Yet seasons 2-3 were unexpectedly additive to the whole story.
- hgsgm 4y ago
  Dark could have ended after 1 or 2 seasons (and S3 kind of tied itself in knots), but would require rewriting the make the ending work.

abadger9 4y ago

my wife and I absolutely hated 1899, but we also hated midnight mass as well - it's possible these types of series aren't our pallet but I wouldn't invest too much time with 1899.

LeftHandPath 4y ago

It seems like part of a larger trend of overemphasis on min-maxing profits by praying at the altar of data and using what those gods return to try to cut all the right corners on the product. In the end, there are things that don't show up in the data that do affect consumption.

dom96 4y ago

I watched the first episode of 1899 and could see why it was cancelled. Just an amalgamation of mysteries that don't seem to have much connection. On the other hand, I also watched Wednesday and thought it was missing a lot of what made The Addams Family great. But I guess it just wasn't made for me. > And if other people are also reluctant to start it for the same reason, that's going to hurt the viewership... which makes it all the more likely to be cancelled! You can't win. I don't think they look at viewership when deciding whether to cancel a show. They look at the percentage of people that continued watching more than just the first episode.

mingus88 4y ago
Here's why this really stinks. The writers of Dark wrapped up every mystery. It was through composed from the start and even the choice of 3 seasons was thematically relevant (same reason why the logo is a three sided knot) We have every reason to believe that 1899 would have connected every one of those mysteries, because the writers planned the whole show out. But if Netflix is only going to support reality cooking shows or breakaway hits, then we will never see another masterpiece on Netflix again. I checked out 1899 but then I got busy with my two kids, work, and the holidays. I even gave it two thumbs up. I fully intended to watch the whole thing, probably multiple times because of all the details they put into it. But I need the time and focus to actually sit and watch it (and read all the subtitles) But I guess according to their metrics, my single viewing of Ep01 hurt more than it helped because I didn't immediately binge the entire show to completion.

hgsgm 4y ago

I don't know that show. It is a cliffhanger that teases the next story, or a story ended in the middle? For shows that tease the next story at the end of an episode or season, you can just ignore the tease.

autoexec 4y ago

> But now that I know that it's cancelled, and especially knowing that it ends with a cliffhanger, there's no reason for me to ever bother starting it. Exactly. Every series that ends well, even if it only ever attracts a small number of fans, is a benefit for netflix's library and service. Every show that they cancel is just a time bomb that will either sit unwatched by those who know better or disappoint and piss off one netflix customer after another that hasn't been forewarned. Netflix needs to get their shit together.

ergvgdvgrd 4y ago

The irony with your comment about the Wheel of Time is that the _book_ very nearly was canceled... the writer died after taking a very long time to finish what he did, but then Brandon Sanderson stepped in and finished the series after the original author's death.

allisdust 4y ago
It wasn't nearly cancelled. Robert Jordan picked sanderson and passed on his notes, ending. He even wrote the last parts of the book. It's planned as well as it could be.
- joxel 4y ago
  A few misleading statements here: it was RJs wife who picked Sanderson, after RJs death. Additionally, RJ had the last scenes written well before he even knew he had cancer. I believe he mentioned having it written while writing the very first book.
  - allisdust 4y ago
    Thanks for the corrections.

oerpli 4y ago

Though 1899 was really a genuinely bad series. I think if someone summarized the plot you would think it's a meme on r/iam14andthisisdeep Netflix might be doing weird stuff but 1899 is a really bad example because the mistake there was actually greenlighting the first season.

oco101 4y ago
I agree was\is really bad. Still canceling a series based on how many viewers they have in the first weeks is bad practice. I, for one, do not watch almost any movies or series durning the summer so winter I'm just catching up, and I probably missed great series also. At least they should wait at a 6 month to a year at least before deciding or not to cancel it forever.

Doxin 4y ago

So while 1899 technically ends on a cliffhanger, it works perfectly well as an open-ended story. I'd still recommend watching it.

treis 4y ago

> I heard about 1899 being cancelled. Ugh what a crappy way to start my morning :(. That was a legitimately good show and they ended on a massive cliff hanger.

flippinburgers 4y ago

Not watching TWOT at this point will be because the first season was an awful "adaptation".

joshstrange 4y ago

Just read the books or listen to the audiobooks (with the original narrators, Kate Reading and Michael Kramer) the show is terrible. I'll continue to hate-watch it just to call out how much they got wrong but more out of a sense of obligation than for any enjoyment. What's most frustrating is they made changes that aren't even for the better. At least Foundation made a good sci-fi show based on someone who walked by a person reading the actual book (spoiler, re-reading the book did not hold up well for me), WoT somehow made a "meh" show which diverged from the books for no good reason. I think I've fully moved into the "dear god please don't make a TV/Movie adaptation of a book series I love"-camp. I never read GoT but I liked the show and I think I've heard that, aside from the ending, the show does a pretty good job. Unfortunately I feel like way more often than not the Show/Movie is just a huge disappointment.