Robert Jordan's "The Wheel of Time" Visible Spoilers Thread

[HaemishM]

but I can imagine that they only had enough money for 8 episodes and needed a big ending.

They didn't even have a "big" ending though. That great battle looked like it was taking place in a hallway and even the CGIed monsters didn't look like there were more than 20 of them at a time. They really need to learn proper battle staging from GoT.

[Ashamanchill]

My wife and I were straight up laughing at the Trolloc 'army'. I've seen more people assault Stormwind than that.

[slog]

This popped up in my feed today. Rafe is the showrunner, and it turns out the plan from the start was to diverge from the Books with the full understanding that the hardcore book fans wouldn't like it.

https://twitter.com/TheWheelOfTime/status/1474093697885220871/photo/1

So I guess the message is something like 'If you read the books and really know the lore, we didn't make the show for you intentionally because we are gambling on attracting a different audience."  I can respect that.

[Ashamanchill]

Ok I'll write a lot more about this later, but for now I'll start with this: before the first episode aired he did a very popular AMA with the fans bragging about how well he knew the books, declaring how much respect he had for the source material, and assuaged fears of, well, exactly what happened. Now, he is bragging about how next to no one on his writing staff has read so much as a summary blurb about the series, and about how much better he can do than RJ

If it was the plan all along to heavily diverge from the series, then he didn't have the mother fucking guts to say so when asked before things started. The more I look into the show runner the more I see what an entitled hack, and asshole to any fans of the material he claims to be adapting, including the woman he hired as a WoT consultant.

[lamaros]

Dude is just reconning his own story to make himself seem less incompetent.

[Khaldun]

I kind of doubt they attracted some other audience.

[Sir T]

Ya the bull and shit are swirling around those statements.

[slog]

I kind of doubt they attracted some other audience.

It's a great question.  The only thing I found in 20 seconds of googling is a Reddit post.  Assuming it's 100% accurate  , the show has vastly exceeded Amazon's expectation at 15 to 20 million viewers per week and we should get at least a season 3.

[Khaldun]

First episode did seem to have gotten a lot of viewers; I just find it hard to believe it retained them all the way to the end.

[Sir T]

Especially without the generous amounts of T&A that graced the early seasons of Game of Thrones.

[Threash]

I am morally offended by a show that choses to show extreme closeups of gory injuries but will not show a single titty.

[SurfD]

I am morally offended by a show that choses to show extreme closeups of gory injuries but will not show a single titty.

They probably blew their entire budget for Tits on season 2 and the Aiel.   I mean, it's going to be comical seeing how completely they butcher that entire culture given there is no way they can present them like they are in the books and keep the show at it's current tame rating.  The Aiel were gratuitous nudity everywhere.

[Rendakor]

I am morally offended by a show that choses to show extreme closeups of gory injuries but will not show a single titty.

They showed an extra's boob or two in the bath scene.

[Khaldun]

"There's 57 tits out there!"

[HaemishM]

There's at least 2 complete boobs in the writer's room. 

[MediumHigh]

If this survives 3 seasons I'll pick it up or until I read the books and only one guy I know kinda sold me on the series but it didn't feel like a must read "right now".

[Ashamanchill]

My theory is this show gets supported until Jeffery's shiny new 500 million dollar toy LotR show gets rolling, then it gets quietly dropped.

[slog]

My theory is this show gets supported until Jeffery's shiny new 500 million dollar toy LotR show gets rolling, then it gets quietly dropped.

I'm hoping for 4 seasons.  5 seasons would be ok, but anymore than that is usually synonymous with the show creators and actors wanting to move on to something else and the quality goes to hell.

[Sir T]

*watches as this turns into the Simpsons and never ends*

[Threash]

*watches as this turns into the Simpsons and never ends*

The wheel of time turns and ages come and pass leaving mediocre books that turn into mediocre tv shows and even those are long forgotten when a new shiny tv show comes along.

[Ashamanchill]

Until the Bezos Reborn appears again, able to channel The One Budget, and remakes the world.

[Khaldun]

I think the Bezos is somebody else in this whole saga. Rhymes with "Fark Gun".

[Ashamanchill]

The show wouldn't exist without Bezos asking of his executives: "Where's my Game of Thrones?" (I'm not making that up either), so whatever else he is to us, he deserves a high place in this shows cosmology.

[slog]

The show wouldn't exist without Bezos asking of his executives: "Where's my Game of Thrones?" (I'm not making that up either), so whatever else he is to us, he deserves a high place in this shows cosmology.

He's supposedly not running Amazon anymore.  Supposedly.

[Threash]

The show wouldn't exist without Bezos asking of his executives: "Where's my Game of Thrones?" (I'm not making that up either), so whatever else he is to us, he deserves a high place in this shows cosmology.

He saved the Expanse too.

[Salamok]

Well at least we have identified the successor to Uwe Boll

[Rasix]

Well at least we have identified the successor to Uwe Boll

I had a similar shower thought, the last episode felt like Uwe Boll's Wheel of Time. This last episode was a lay up. The timeline and activities layed out in the book would have still worked with all of the nonsense they had already baked in. Instead it just felt like they ad libbed the entire thing. You could have ended up with a lot of cool shit, but instead you have Egwene and Nynaeve the batteries, Perrin the useless, Morraine the useless and now even more useless, Shienar getting stomped, and Rand still being an ineffective and somewhat powerless, whiny moron. Seriously, him travelling and chunking the trollocs would have been awesone. Additionally, they fumbled the Forsaken introduction and the seals.

Plus the Seanchan are now dumb. Way to alpha strike an 8 year old.

[Teleku]

To be slightly fair, the last two episodes apparently got messed up because of the covid gap.  Even ignoring losing Matt unexpectedly, I guess they weren't able to get locations and shit they originally wanted, so had to adjust.  But having said that, I'm sure it would still be shit on a shingle.

This whole thing is a mess.  Last episode killed any hope that I had.  Getting 82% on RT is just a damning indictment of the general critics they pick up considering how badly acted and edited this whole thing was.  Though it's telling if you switch it to Top Critic filter and it drops to a hard Rotten score.

[Salamok]

Getting 82% on RT is just a damning indictment of the general critics they pick up considering how badly acted and edited this whole thing was.  

The acting was above my minimum acceptance criteria (which ain't all that high).  I can forgive the casting and the sets/camera work is good enough to not flop this show by themselves but I seriously hope the director never gets hired for anything more serious than a commercial ever again and the writers can join him.  I could story board a better season 1 than this, whoever put these idiots in charge and gave them the green light should be fired.  If Jordan was alive I don't think he would have let this happen as such these guys just shit all over a dead man.

[Khaldun]

Seriously? Jordan himself had no fucking sense of how to control his own series, he would have just counted the money (or his wife would have) and said whatever, go ahead. Not saying that this season was in any way good, but let's not fool ourselves about the quality of the source material. Eye of the World is only narratively tight because it's the book that is most ripping-off other work.

[Ashamanchill]

Pushes up glasses, achktually, Jordan was ambivalent at best, and somewhat hostile to his work being adopted to film or TV.

Seriously? Jordan himself had no fucking sense of how to control his own series, he would have just counted the money (or his wife would have) and said whatever, go ahead.

While the first part of the sentence is true, I dont think the second part is even remotely fair. As you can see, I have several issues with the series, it's writing, and its author, but let's get one thing straight, he cared about WoT quite a bit. When he was diagnosed with amyloidosis in late 2005 he could have just brought the series with him to the grave. He could have let it gone fallow, and not given a shit who picked it up after his death. But he took a lot of time out between sucking down rads to write insanely detailed notes to make sure his successor finished his series how he intended. I really dont think he would have sat there while someone rewrote all his characters to suit their own agendas, right from the start.

[HaemishM]

Mid-to-late '90's Jordan, who was happily stretching out a 5-part series into this monstrosity would have had no problem cashing the check GRRM style. Once he got a look at what his legacy would be if he died without finishing the series, probably less so. Impending death has a way of focusing a motherfucker.

[Ashamanchill]

I disagree. It's right there in Khalduns statement.

Seriously? Jordan himself had no fucking sense of how to control his own series, he would have just counted the money (or his wife would have) and said whatever, go ahead.

The reason he couldn't control the length of his series is because he fell waaaaaaay too in love with his own characters and world, to the point where none of it could be pruned. See also: Our debate about Harriet as Editor. That's why he started adding in POVs from people that reasonable people didn't care the fuck less about. And for those that had the official compendium released after his death, he had an excruciating and very neck beardy ranking of every single One Power user, woman or man, to ever exist in the series. He would have flipped out at someone casting a 6'1" Perrin instead of a 6'2" Perrin louder than any fan.

[Rendakor]

Yea I'm with Ashaman; he would have micromanaged the project to death, and there's a decent chance it just would have been scrapped as no showrunner would want to put up with him.

[Morat20]

The reason he couldn't control the length of his series is because he fell waaaaaaay too in love with his own characters and world, to the point where none of it could be pruned.

Pretty sure that corresponded with him replacing his editor with his wife (or was that yet another doorstop fantasy writer?). Anyways definitely fell into the "Too big to edit" level of sucess.

A good editor is important, and one of their jobs is to take a ax to your book and chop out vast swathes of useless bloat. Characters, plots, plot threads, ideas, hooks, places, everything. Chop, chop, chop down to something more minimalist.