17 ms·

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, yo

by 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.
        fbdab103 4y ago
        I think he legitimately gave up on finishing the series a long time ago. Painted himself into a literary corner and rather then rely on some deus ex machina to sweep away the problems is choosing to never finish. I guess the real lesson: unless their name is Brandon Sanderson, do not start a partially completed series.
        ekianjo 4y ago
        > 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. Is he even working on it anymore? It looks like he is spending his time on numerous unrelated projects these days.
  - oneoff786 4y ago
    I disagree. There were many plot threads but most of them were just uninteresting. Too many characters were off in their own worlds in full plate plot armor. They could die and make their whole story irrelevant because they were on their own; or they could come back, which they did. The first two seasons were interesting because people were in the thick of it and their deaths were prior to their plot arcs reaching even their midpoints. I understand the books were more sprawling. But the show was very simple by the end.
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.

by 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.
      - fbdab103 4y ago
        I think he legitimately gave up on finishing the series a long time ago. Painted himself into a literary corner and rather then rely on some deus ex machina to sweep away the problems is choosing to never finish. I guess the real lesson: unless their name is Brandon Sanderson, do not start a partially completed series.
      - ekianjo 4y ago
        > 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. Is he even working on it anymore? It looks like he is spending his time on numerous unrelated projects these days.
- oneoff786 4y ago
  I disagree. There were many plot threads but most of them were just uninteresting. Too many characters were off in their own worlds in full plate plot armor. They could die and make their whole story irrelevant because they were on their own; or they could come back, which they did. The first two seasons were interesting because people were in the thick of it and their deaths were prior to their plot arcs reaching even their midpoints. I understand the books were more sprawling. But the show was very simple by the end.

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.