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I don’t understand the hate for Amazon’s LotR compared to what they did to Wheel of Time! I’ll admit I’m not a huge LotR fan, but I didn’t hate the time I spent

I don’t understand the hate for Amazon’s LotR compared to what they did to Wheel of Time! I’ll admit I’m not a huge LotR fan, but I didn’t hate the time I spent watching the Amazon adaptation. Wheel of Time though, they drove a truck through that poor franchise. Then backed up over it, and drove over it several more times!

IshKebab 2y ago
I haven't watched the Rings of Power though I have seen enough YouTube analyses of it to know I don't want to. I think the issue with it is that they spent $1bn on it, so you'd think they'd make sure the story and action scenes were top notch, not middling cliche.
- tonystride 2y ago
  I get it, I just finished Arcane and that was pure chef’s kiss. It can be done and it’s so disappointing when it’s not, especially considering the budget. Although maybe with that much money involved it’s probably hard to keep one unified vision as I’m sure there are many interests competing. That being said, it was still better than Wheel of Time. I’d argue that LotR was watchable, where as WoT was absolutely not!
- ethbr1 2y ago
  > though I have seen enough YouTube analyses of it to know I don't want to Eh. Probably don't trust ragebait TV. YouTube optimizes for clicks and eyeball time, not honest considered takes.
- AtlasBarfed 2y ago
  Do you like even reasonable accuracy to the canon of a fairly well fleshed out and documented universe? Do you like character development that rises above B-grade movie tropes? Do you find blunt multicultural recasting for the sake of awkward forced multicultural injection, shock value, virtue signalling annoying? Do you like epic battles between empires fought between more than 10 people? Do you like timelines to be somewhat realistic?
ghjfrdghibt 2y ago
I'd forgotten about WoT. I was going to mention what they did to The Expanse when they took over the show but as a straight steaming pile of shit WoT takes it. I couldn't even finish the third episode.
- w0m 2y ago
  I liked most of the first season of WoT; though it got more and more divergent (and felt worse for it) as the season went on. The final episode lost me. I've been meaning to watch the second season but haven't been able to bring myself to do it yet. (I say this as one who happily completed multiple rereads of the original series as new books came out)
  - tonystride 2y ago
    Agreed, it started out alright but got worse and worse as it diverged from the books. The finale of S2 is truly laughable. If you switch your expectations to fantasy/comedy you mighhhhht be able to enjoy it?
  - cthalupa 2y ago
    There's no world where anyone adapts the book series closely with live action. The series is simply too long, particularly for the level of CGI, etc., we expect out of this sort of "premiere" television. I think overall they've done a good job given how difficult the task is, though there's certainly some changes that I think were mistakes, and other things that while I might not outright believe are mistakes, are different from how I would have done it. I will say I agree that the last episode of S1 is my least favorite, but, they had a lot stacked against them and had to rewrite the final two due to Mat's actor not coming back after covid forced a filming break. That set off a chain reaction with a lot of far reaching consequences. I liked S2 more than S1. Quality went up on basically every metric for me, though the finale still wasn't as epic as I would have hoped for... but is probably about all you can hope for without a LOTR-like budget. If they somehow make it to Dumai's Wells, hopefully they have more money then.
    - 2y ago
cthalupa 2y ago
I'd consider myself a WoT megafan. I've read the full series more than 10 times since AMoL, and did a re-read of the series before every book release when it was being written. I'm in the middle of a re-read right now, even - I just finished a chapter from A Crown of Swords right before opening HN and reading this article. And... I think the WoT adaption is fine. It's not exactly how I would have done it, and there are a few choices that I think are just bad, but on the whole I have enjoyed the show and think it captures most of the primary elements of the series. It's a 14.5 book series where the books average 600+ pages. Any adaptation is going to have to make massive changes, at least if they're filming it with real people. They also got dealt a raw hand with covid resulting in all sorts of set limitations and Mat's actor just... not returning after they filmed the first 6 episodes.
- phinnaeus 2y ago
  Is that seriously why Mat just disappears?? Good grief.
  - xracy 2y ago
    Yeah, made for some continuity difficulties that I think they handled pretty well considering the circumstances.
  - cthalupa 2y ago
    Yeah. His storyline was supposed to track the original series much more closely, but filming got shut down for covid, and the actor didn't come back when it resumed. Deleted all his socials, etc. Didn't take any more work until just recently, too. No one knows what the deal was - lots of people speculated it was vaccine requirements when it was announced, but filming resumed before vaccines were available, so that couldn't have been it.
    - aleph_minus_one 2y ago
      > No one knows what the deal was - lots of people speculated it was vaccine requirements when it was announced, but filming resumed before vaccines were available, so that couldn't have been it. Relevant: > https://www.reddit.com/r/WoTshow/comments/154r20d/barney_harris_issued_legal_complaint_against/?rdt=47779 https://www.reddit.com/r/WoTshow/comments/154r20d/barney_har...
ivansmf 2y ago
I have not read the books, so I guess I'm the target audience. It was very hard to watch. The actors were fine, actually better than fine, but the writing was painful. There are lots of standard adventure and fantasy arcs that are just impossible to carry forward with the type of "modern" they wanted. For instance, you cannot have the most diverse village in the history of villages anywhere, then later the Orc (?) stares at one of the kids once and goes "you are not from this village, you are certainly from this other village because of how you look". How? Aura color? At least change it so the kid has a tattoo or some birth mark then. I could go down a long list of dumb stuff like this that makes me come back to reality instead of allowing me to stay with the flow and enjoy the fantasy.
- buildbot 2y ago
  There’s actually an in book way to explain that, the clothing is always described as specific to the two rivers, and only Aiel have red hair. I agree The show was awful!
  - geraldwhen 2y ago
    Wheel of time takes place in Brooklyn, in the Amazon cinematic universe though.
    - buildbot 2y ago
      I don’t think that the ethnicity of the actors really matters all that much, the height & hair color are the only real trait that describes how Rand stands out. Honestly the only character with a skin color description I can recall is Tuon? And that isn’t really something that matters either… Bigger issues as other people pointed out are things like inventing weird bullshit storylines when you have 10k pages of content to draw from, or messing with the “hard rules” of the magic system, such as you can’t burn out in a circle, or heal someone from death.
      - geraldwhen 2y ago
        It ruined the suspension of disbelief immediately for me though. A rural village that doesn’t do constant international trade should have people living there that all look, speak, dress, and act similarly. But the village looked like like an HR training video. To contrast, a new season of squid game just came out. Everyone is Korean. Everyone speaks Korean. Everyone looks Korean. This makes the show feel more real.
FireBeyond 2y ago
> And... I think the WoT adaption is fine. It's not exactly how I would have done it, and there are a few choices that I think are just bad, but on the whole I have enjoyed the show and think it captures most of the primary elements of the series. It's (and I say this as someone who sees themselves quite progressive) a bit too feminist. It seems determined to make Nynaeve and Egwene the heroes of the show, the badasses on which everyone, including Rand, rely on. Not content with them already having access to the Power, and being among the strongest among the Aes Sedai, Amazon made them even more powerful and heroic than the books. In contrast, in the books, Nynaeve and Egwene (it may be Elayne - in either case, two of these three) were actually rather "put out" by the fact that Rand was who he was and his access to the Power. Paraphrasing from the book: "They were shocked, and not a little annoyed and upset. The Tower had told them that they were the strongest they'd seen with the Power in centuries, perhaps the strongest ever, and along comes Rand, barely able to control it himself, and yet even with them both fighting with all their might, he controlled both of them so... effortlessly... and then to say he wasn't even using a fraction of the Power he'd drawn before!" I do give kudos to Amazon for respecting the diversity of the books, though.
chrisweekly 2y ago
I might be in the minority here, but I couldn't stand the Wheel of Time book; given its popularity I gave it about 200 pages before discarding it as poorly-written, under-edited, over-wrought, unoriginal, derivative drivel. Different strokes, I guess.

IshKebab 2y ago

I haven't watched the Rings of Power though I have seen enough YouTube analyses of it to know I don't want to. I think the issue with it is that they spent $1bn on it, so you'd think they'd make sure the story and action scenes were top notch, not middling cliche.

tonystride 2y ago
I get it, I just finished Arcane and that was pure chef’s kiss. It can be done and it’s so disappointing when it’s not, especially considering the budget. Although maybe with that much money involved it’s probably hard to keep one unified vision as I’m sure there are many interests competing. That being said, it was still better than Wheel of Time. I’d argue that LotR was watchable, where as WoT was absolutely not!
ethbr1 2y ago
> though I have seen enough YouTube analyses of it to know I don't want to Eh. Probably don't trust ragebait TV. YouTube optimizes for clicks and eyeball time, not honest considered takes.
AtlasBarfed 2y ago
Do you like even reasonable accuracy to the canon of a fairly well fleshed out and documented universe? Do you like character development that rises above B-grade movie tropes? Do you find blunt multicultural recasting for the sake of awkward forced multicultural injection, shock value, virtue signalling annoying? Do you like epic battles between empires fought between more than 10 people? Do you like timelines to be somewhat realistic?

ghjfrdghibt 2y ago

I'd forgotten about WoT. I was going to mention what they did to The Expanse when they took over the show but as a straight steaming pile of shit WoT takes it. I couldn't even finish the third episode.

w0m 2y ago
I liked most of the first season of WoT; though it got more and more divergent (and felt worse for it) as the season went on. The final episode lost me. I've been meaning to watch the second season but haven't been able to bring myself to do it yet. (I say this as one who happily completed multiple rereads of the original series as new books came out)
- tonystride 2y ago
  Agreed, it started out alright but got worse and worse as it diverged from the books. The finale of S2 is truly laughable. If you switch your expectations to fantasy/comedy you mighhhhht be able to enjoy it?
- cthalupa 2y ago
  There's no world where anyone adapts the book series closely with live action. The series is simply too long, particularly for the level of CGI, etc., we expect out of this sort of "premiere" television. I think overall they've done a good job given how difficult the task is, though there's certainly some changes that I think were mistakes, and other things that while I might not outright believe are mistakes, are different from how I would have done it. I will say I agree that the last episode of S1 is my least favorite, but, they had a lot stacked against them and had to rewrite the final two due to Mat's actor not coming back after covid forced a filming break. That set off a chain reaction with a lot of far reaching consequences. I liked S2 more than S1. Quality went up on basically every metric for me, though the finale still wasn't as epic as I would have hoped for... but is probably about all you can hope for without a LOTR-like budget. If they somehow make it to Dumai's Wells, hopefully they have more money then.
  - 2y ago

cthalupa 2y ago

I'd consider myself a WoT megafan. I've read the full series more than 10 times since AMoL, and did a re-read of the series before every book release when it was being written. I'm in the middle of a re-read right now, even - I just finished a chapter from A Crown of Swords right before opening HN and reading this article. And... I think the WoT adaption is fine. It's not exactly how I would have done it, and there are a few choices that I think are just bad, but on the whole I have enjoyed the show and think it captures most of the primary elements of the series. It's a 14.5 book series where the books average 600+ pages. Any adaptation is going to have to make massive changes, at least if they're filming it with real people. They also got dealt a raw hand with covid resulting in all sorts of set limitations and Mat's actor just... not returning after they filmed the first 6 episodes.

phinnaeus 2y ago
Is that seriously why Mat just disappears?? Good grief.
- xracy 2y ago
  Yeah, made for some continuity difficulties that I think they handled pretty well considering the circumstances.
- cthalupa 2y ago
  Yeah. His storyline was supposed to track the original series much more closely, but filming got shut down for covid, and the actor didn't come back when it resumed. Deleted all his socials, etc. Didn't take any more work until just recently, too. No one knows what the deal was - lots of people speculated it was vaccine requirements when it was announced, but filming resumed before vaccines were available, so that couldn't have been it.
  - aleph_minus_one 2y ago
    > No one knows what the deal was - lots of people speculated it was vaccine requirements when it was announced, but filming resumed before vaccines were available, so that couldn't have been it. Relevant: > https://www.reddit.com/r/WoTshow/comments/154r20d/barney_harris_issued_legal_complaint_against/?rdt=47779 https://www.reddit.com/r/WoTshow/comments/154r20d/barney_har...

ivansmf 2y ago

I have not read the books, so I guess I'm the target audience. It was very hard to watch. The actors were fine, actually better than fine, but the writing was painful. There are lots of standard adventure and fantasy arcs that are just impossible to carry forward with the type of "modern" they wanted. For instance, you cannot have the most diverse village in the history of villages anywhere, then later the Orc (?) stares at one of the kids once and goes "you are not from this village, you are certainly from this other village because of how you look". How? Aura color? At least change it so the kid has a tattoo or some birth mark then. I could go down a long list of dumb stuff like this that makes me come back to reality instead of allowing me to stay with the flow and enjoy the fantasy.

buildbot 2y ago
There’s actually an in book way to explain that, the clothing is always described as specific to the two rivers, and only Aiel have red hair. I agree The show was awful!
- geraldwhen 2y ago
  Wheel of time takes place in Brooklyn, in the Amazon cinematic universe though.
  - buildbot 2y ago
    I don’t think that the ethnicity of the actors really matters all that much, the height & hair color are the only real trait that describes how Rand stands out. Honestly the only character with a skin color description I can recall is Tuon? And that isn’t really something that matters either… Bigger issues as other people pointed out are things like inventing weird bullshit storylines when you have 10k pages of content to draw from, or messing with the “hard rules” of the magic system, such as you can’t burn out in a circle, or heal someone from death.
    - geraldwhen 2y ago
      It ruined the suspension of disbelief immediately for me though. A rural village that doesn’t do constant international trade should have people living there that all look, speak, dress, and act similarly. But the village looked like like an HR training video. To contrast, a new season of squid game just came out. Everyone is Korean. Everyone speaks Korean. Everyone looks Korean. This makes the show feel more real.

FireBeyond 2y ago

> And... I think the WoT adaption is fine. It's not exactly how I would have done it, and there are a few choices that I think are just bad, but on the whole I have enjoyed the show and think it captures most of the primary elements of the series. It's (and I say this as someone who sees themselves quite progressive) a bit too feminist. It seems determined to make Nynaeve and Egwene the heroes of the show, the badasses on which everyone, including Rand, rely on. Not content with them already having access to the Power, and being among the strongest among the Aes Sedai, Amazon made them even more powerful and heroic than the books. In contrast, in the books, Nynaeve and Egwene (it may be Elayne - in either case, two of these three) were actually rather "put out" by the fact that Rand was who he was and his access to the Power. Paraphrasing from the book: "They were shocked, and not a little annoyed and upset. The Tower had told them that they were the strongest they'd seen with the Power in centuries, perhaps the strongest ever, and along comes Rand, barely able to control it himself, and yet even with them both fighting with all their might, he controlled both of them so... effortlessly... and then to say he wasn't even using a fraction of the Power he'd drawn before!" I do give kudos to Amazon for respecting the diversity of the books, though.

chrisweekly 2y ago

I might be in the minority here, but I couldn't stand the Wheel of Time book; given its popularity I gave it about 200 pages before discarding it as poorly-written, under-edited, over-wrought, unoriginal, derivative drivel. Different strokes, I guess.