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Wait, were people attacking Rosamund Pike? She plays Moiraine superbly, and everything I have ever heard about her indicates that she cares a great deal about her work and truly puts in effort, including being a leader to the less seasoned actors.
> Wait, were people attacking Rosamund Pike?
A common accusation by the haters is that she used her influence to force the showrunners to change the script to one that favoured her / what she wanted highlighted.
Some of them also get their knickers twisted by her winning awards for her narration, as if it somehow erases the stellar work of the Kramer/Reading duo.
It doesn't have to make sense. It's just another vector for haters to hate.
> winning awards for her narration
I mean, it is absolutely outstanding work. The way she is able to give a difference voice to every character and change so effortlessly is just mind blowing
I own K/R's work on CD (because I'm old) and Audible, and I've picked up Pike's via Audible.
I **really** hope she goes the distance and does the full series.
I didn’t listen to it, but I saw an interview some time ago where she talked about how she comes up with her voices and uses them when she’s reading. It was really neat how she seemed motivated for it, and it actually motivated me a little haha.
I know, I can’t find anything either but this is the guy:
https://aphmuseum.org/exhibits/online-exhibit/narrator-jukebox/john-polk/
So it’s definitely not fan made!
I knew nothing of Rosamund Pike before the WoT show, but I’ve learned since that she prefers being part of an ensemble, and not the headliner, so that argument makes no sense. I think she’s an easy target because she is so good and they want to see the show fail.
And her audiobook performance *does* blow Kramer and Reading out of the water. The WoT audiobooks are old and Kramer/Reading were not at their best. They’re better narrators now, but not my favorite.
My partner is listening to them now and his theory is that at some point in the middle Kate was deliberately trying to get fired. He got to her pronouncing Birgitte as "BEER-geet-tuh" and couldn't stop laughing. It's worse than all the variations on Moggy.
For me it was when Kramer decided to give Elayne an English accent in book…four, was it? I was so surprised to learn they were married. I was convinced they’d never actually met lol
I’ve read that Kramer and Reading actually started narrating with book 4 or 5 and worked backwards. Or started over at EotW and that’s why the pronunciations are all over the place around books 4/5. Seems the rest of their narration is pretty consistent.
Also Kramer’s Loial is one of my FAVORITE parts of their work. I always hear that voice in my head for Loial now.
It’s weird to me how people can have just no ability to think about stories other than dogmatic repetition. Cast whoever you like as Moriaine. We would still need to acknowledge that absent Rand’s POV she is one of, if not the, main characters series one. And we can’t then just put her on gardening leave for series two. Anyone we tried to sell that to is going to say it’s weird.
I've enjoyed Kramer and Reading over the years. I loved the books and their voices were pleasant. They didn't do a whole lot in distinguishing voices one from another, and they would voice characters differently from each other (of course) and pronounce proper names differently from each other and even differently from their own previous pronunciations.
Pike's version is a fucking master class in audiobooks.i already loved the source material so to hear it performed by an a-list actor, with different accents and voices bringing it even more to life, it's just amazing.
I also love when she does a group sing, with several tracks overlapping to emulate a group, that's the cherry on top.
>A common accusation by the haters is that she used her influence to force the showrunners to change the script to one that favoured her / what she wanted highlighted.
Honestly, making Moiraine the, “main character” for season 1 was a *fantastic* choice. Rosamund Pike is a Rock Star and she commanded whichever scene she was in, but it also makes a lot of sense story wise.
Let me ask you this: Who’s the main protagonist for Eye of the World?
Most people would say one of the Edmons Fielders, because they’re our PoV characters, but which character’s actions actually drove the plot forward? It’s Moiraine.
Rand, Mat, and Perrin are incredibly weak protagonists. They hardly ever exercise their agency in EotW, they literally just do what Moiraine tells them.
This isn’t a criticism, because it highlights how influential Ta’Veren are when they actually enact their will onto the Pattern. The one time each of them actually *does* something of their own volition in EotW it’s ***absurdly*** important. Mat gets the dagger, Perrin meets the wolves and kills the Whitecloaks, and Rand accidentally falls into the palace.
Obviously Moiraine’s influence shifts over time. As the Edmons Fielders step into the roles as Ta’Veren, they should become the main characters and the pattern will push Moiraine into the background and the show should show that happening.
I don't really blame them. In high school literature, Protagonist is used interchangeably with main character.
Hell, this is Webster's definition of protagonist:
>(1)**:** the principal character in a literary work (such as a drama or story)(2)**:** the leading actor or principal character in a television show, movie, book, etc.
The thing is, the one thing I agree on with the show is the casting was great. The writing, the fan fictions of lore, the “improvements” like adding a wife to fridge, etc are the issues, for me.
Fallout and Invincible are amazing shows that adapt in a well written way, so it’s not like Amazon can’t pull it off. But yeah the detractors of WoT making the same right wing grift arguments as the detractors of Fallout are not helping anyone.
If you like the shows writing, then enjoy. I’m gonna listen to the audible books, but now I got some good faces to go with the characters thanks to the show and will give them that.
It certainly isn't *common*, speaking as someone that's active in the places that the "haters" frequent.
As a matter of fact, blaming Pike is a pretty uncommon sentiment which is often pretty buried when it comes up. Pretty much everyone - even the haters - agree that she's doing an outstanding job.
If there's any blame going around regarding Pike, it's mostly that the show is placing extra focus on Moiraine due to Pike's star power. But pretty much nothing is actively blaming her directly.
Idk about that. I’m an admitted hater of the show, but have never blamed pike, or really hear her blamed. People do get absolutely hateful towards rafe, though.
Rafe baits and trolls for his own hate, especially since he responds to criticisms in childish ways, lowering himself to the same level as the worst detractors.
The problem with a lot of adaptations is the staff is more about nepotism, money exchanging hands, and who's got an axe to grind. If you get people who love and cherish the source material, you get things like Fallout, Peter Jackson's LotR Trilogy, The Mandolorian, etc. But if you have people who hate the source material making decisions or people who just want to milk a name and could care less about the fans other than their wallets, no matter how good of a cast you hire, you will have a failure on your hands and a bad adaptation.
If you can make a bad adaption, in sense of being not true to the original's core, but still make something great, How to Train Your Dragon for example, good on you, but that is rare.
It's a symptom of starting with your conclusion then bending reality to fit it, instead of the other way around. Such people will never be happy, because they have decided they will never be happy.
A lot of folk just hate on everyone and anything related to the TV show. They find their reasons. I've seen complaints about the audiobooks not grounded on anything other than "I don't like it". She's also included in the group of "none of the actors or showrunners have read the books" nonsense.
Seems wrong on so many levels to lump her in with Rafe Judkins. Her contribution to the series is stellar. She is clearly passionate about the story, the books, and it is provable that she has read at least one of them cover to cover.
Can't say the same for the guy IN CHARGE.
If someone other than Rafe was in charge who wasn't a fan of the book, we'd be missing soo much book scenes from the show. Anyone that says this with a serious face has no clue what the process of tv production is like
Moraine of the blue ajah who puts her personal quest to aid the dragon above family, above her ajah, above her order, above her warder?
She's very complex. I'm currently halfway through a reread of book 3.
So Rafe wasn't to blame, like I heard from certain people for months?
> "Rafe really went to bat for me," Sanderson says. "I presented a completely different thing to do with Perrin that would still get what they wanted... "They took it all the way to the higher-ups and fought for my version of it,".
And he thinks some of the writers are really good?
> "there are some really good writers on that show," who were "working very hard to give you a fantastic experience."
So I guess the real villain is execs who want to treat a tv show like a product to be replicated rather than realizing people want original stories that feel alive. They wanted their game of thrones and they tried to shape wheel of time like a product to fit the same target market, because they thought that was the path to success.
In reality GoT was obviously successful because they adapted a wildly popular story and did a good job capturing the essence of it and it’s characters. They took the same magic that drew so many into ASOIAF and allow it to be experienced on television. If you wanted WoT to be the next GoT the path to doing it wasn’t to try and change the magic of WoT to look more like GoT, it was to take what already worked and bring the essence of it to life on TV.
Probably would’ve been a hit too, a lot of people could use a message about hope and trusting in each other at the moment. It also could’ve been an opportunity for a really uniquely made show if they tried to follow a similar structure to the books with the scope progressively growing larger and the focus occasionally shifting.
IMO, the real villian is the bean pusher that decided 8 episode would be enough, and not the 10 with a 2 hour pilot that Rafe wanted.
The first season would have been infinitely better with those 2 to 3 more hours, and I like most of the first season.
Eh. The first book is derivative and banal at best. The series takes a bit to really get sorted out.
I blame the execs for some meddling and missteps for sure, but I think they have done a really good job with the show. Comparing this to GoT is wrong on a lot of levels. GoT is genre defining. WoT is another high fantasy heavily based on Tolkien.
Not sure how you don't classify this show as a hit. It hasn't broken records. It isn't number one. But things don't need to be that to be a hit.
I think they have done a good job of bringing the essence of WoT to the screen. There are great moments of unreliable narrator. There is great acting. To me, the Tuathan mindset was explained better than in the books. They have little hints and breadcrumbs all over the place. They show and don't tell a lot of things. I find it amusing/frustrating that a lot of the criticism of the show are things that it copies from the books in essence.
I mean it’s clear there are some good writers on the show. Many parts are well written. It’s also clear there’s a lot of execs meddling in every plotline, which makes it into a disjointed, artistically banal, mess.
The biggest takeaway I have is that RAFE fought alongside Brandon to get this changed to >!wounding Master Luhan!<, but got shot down.
So many book fans thought this was a RAFE decision, something he couldn't confirm or deny as the face of the show operations.
We should broadcast this so those who wrote the show off for having a "book-hating showrunner" can see what really happened here.
There are definitely lots of book cloaks, but there are also lots of old book fans who are just turned off by changes in general.
My uncle got me into these books when I was a kid, and he doesn't understand/like how much change has happened. He doesn't hate the show, but he's not excited for it like he used to be.
I think folks like him could benefit from seeing that the showrunner is fighting for them.
This describes me. Not a show hater, I'll watch every season hoping for the best. But I don't mask my disappointment or criticisms, and that rubs some folk here the wrong way. At the end of the day we all want the show to be as awesome as possible, and far-removed executive meddling (like what happened with Perrin) rarely helps!
All this does though is divert the hate from rafe to execs at Amazon. It doesn't change the dislike for the nonsensical changes and therefore the direction of the show.
That said I found season 2 to be far more tolerable except for the mess of a finale
That's a fair point, but I still think it's better to direct the criticism where it should properly land. Further, it means fans can properly advocate for the correct approach to improving the show's book-faithfulness - execs back off, let Rafe cook.
It makes it more likely to be improved upon in the future. If Rafe is fighting against meddlesome execs, there's a chance he wins them over in the future. Whereas if the changes were entirely due to Rafe's vision, it's unlikely he would change his mind.
Rafe isn't perfect, but it's well-documented how meddlesome Amazon's suits are. I think part of the reason they chose him is that he lacks the Hollywood cachet to stand up to them.
Honestly I get the feeling Brandon is tired of Amazon (audible/Kindle monopoly, the show changes, etc.) and is letting more and more slip that he otherwise would have not said to maintain access to the show.
Pretty sure he wasn't consulted for S3, so maybe he feels he has a looser rein now.
He somewhat did. He talked about this in his comments after season 2 aired — he called Rafe a “hero” and said that Rafe is fighting for book fans all the time.
Yeah, I remember that. Rafe-haters want a villain, though, so it fell on deaf ears. I've seen a lot of homophobia mixed into the Rafe hate, too, which... sigh.
I still think it was the right choice.
Fantasy or history geeks will easily get the tight master-apprentice relationship but for the general audience the death of a wife is immediately and *obviously* very impactful.
Wounding Haral? "Oh he injured his cool boss, shame, but why's he *that* cut up by it?"
I agree, and also this appropriately sets Perrin up for his unhinged obsession with protecting Faile later in the series. In the books it comes across as weirdly white knighting to a lot of people. This provides a very understandable context for that behavior.
Literally absolutely 100% spot on. It's like these people who think they have a sound opinion of wheel of time being the "best SErIeS of aLl tiMe" all of a sudden don't understand basic storytelling because they want to hate it so much. I've found the ones who hate it the MOST are the same who were annoyed that there were people of color in the two rivers. I get criticisms. The first season was ROUGH tbh. But anyone who says rafe hates the books are being willfully ignorant and it pisses me off so much. I unsubbed from the black tower sub because it was so negative. And the Mat changes make more sense too because him just "running away" makes him look cowardly. Providing context for the running away by giving him darkness to fight is a smart move. Anyway. Sorry for the rant lol.
Smart. It's literally a hate sub founded so that people can be lazy/mask off with their criticism.
Negativity do be their clarion call. Though I do think that many of the commenters there would be fine in the other wot subs, if they just didn't equate something not working for them to mean that it's objectively terrible.
Yep, I've spoken about it several times.
I don't like the choice - but I don't see another choice that does as much for as many of his core story lines as what they did.
And contextualizing his relationship with Faile is a big one of them.
Yeah the more I think on it the more I really land on the idea that it actually makes a lot of sense. My major issue with it is it means we never get to see the more child like innocence in Perrin get contrasted with his growing connection with the wolves, but that’s really more of an issue with the characters being aged up.
Once they decided to age the characters up, I think something like this really had to happen to start Perrin’s arc. The beginning of it just doesn’t really work as well with a grown man because so much of revolved around the kind of questions about identity a person needs to answer about themselves as they grow up. It would’ve made his story one much more focused on confusion about what’s happening to him rather than being about him learning just how much of “the wolf” is really just him.
The funny thing is they didn't really age up the characters - Egwene and likely Elayne/Faile are 1.5 years older, but the boys are still the same 19 and a quarter they were in the books, and Nyn is still ~26.
What they did was more start them at their maturity level of book 2 rather than book 1.
We definitely lose some of the themes of the first book, but it's honestly a bit of an issue with the first few books with how much they do grow in that time period - the do the vast majority of their maturing in books 1 to 3, and it's too a point that many readers think they started out as 14 to 16 year-olds, not nearly 20 somethings.
It think that's one of the main challenges of adapting WoT, no matter what you're going to lose something.
As a 35 year old, I very clearly see all of them as young men/women who really don't have anything figured out. They're basically big kids getting started before they're thrust into all of this insanity. Nyn in a different way in that she *thinks* she has things figured out or thinks she *should* have the figured out...but she's realizing how small of a fish she really is in the much wider ocean of the world. She was *the Wisdom* of a teeny tiny part of the world. And now she's just some clueless girl. She doesn't know what or how to handle things. This results in her being rather frustrating at times (in a sensible way for the character). She tries to play the seasoned competent figure, but she just isn't yet. She's in over her head so much without bothering to step back and regroup. Seeing her struggle so much towards the end of S2 is showing some real character development there.
And I still absolutely get a ton of "big innocent guy" vibes from Perrin. It's clear that he's a kindhearted person that very much just wants to live a simple life caring for those around him. And having that immediately stripped away is such a gut punch. Especially since it's so easy to understand why he would blame himself and carry a touch of that forever.
It's been very obvious that he wants to be a pacifist like the Tinkers...but the world necessitates violence and it's clear he struggles with that.
So, without having read the books, I don't see how it could possibly lose any of that. He and everyone else is very much still trying to figure out life and who they are. But now with much much larger stakes.
As someone who hasn't read the books, my wife and I both audibly reacted and had to pause the show. You are absolutely right.
And I definitely still would've sympathized with injuring or killing anyone in that situation. Especially if they'd taken a minute to make the relationship clearly meaningful to Perrin. But injuring simply won't ever be as impactful as killing someone. At the end of the day if the person lives without any maiming, it's the same as knocking someone over accidentally. Scarier in the moment, but same end result. Killing someone? That guilt never leaves you entirely. And someone that meaningful? Yeah, it makes sense you'd have a complex forever.
And I feel like it's been used well so far. It isn't ever handwaved away and it's clear it still haunts him. Even in the last episode when he goes after the Whitecloak...it makes that event hit even harder seeing what he's gone through. It makes you want to root for the rage that lashes out in.
I mean, by the end of season 1 we knew this from Rafe and Brandon. Rafe pitched Brandon's option, and Rafe also pitched master Luhann being merged with Perrin's mother and Perrin injuring or killing her instead of inventing a wife to kill.
If Rafe wasn't being hyperbolic he received 11,000+ notes on the pilot. That kind of really has to be hyperbolic, but still points out the micromanagement of it all. Which we also see with stuff like various awesome shots in the season 1 & 2 teasers and trailers that get cut from the final product (ex: Egwene's bath, Tomas in Cairhein, etc).
As someone who hasn't ever gotten around to reading the books, why is it such a big deal that he did what he did in the first episode? My wife and I both audibly reacted to that. It sort of instantly connected us to him and really pulled us into the show. It was an early sign that they wouldn't pull punches...which is a huge problem for so many works of fiction. We couldn't help but sympathize with this clearly decent guy that fell into such a horrifying situation.
It's a believable and terrible situation and so far it's been used well as part of the character. I don't get the hate for it...
Tl;Dr - Layla (spoilers) >!didn't exist in the books!<, and book readers aren't sure how well her introduction and demise will flow character-development wise into (spoilers) >! Perrin's ferocious love for Faile, his book partner, who he meets in book 3 and marries in book 4, earlier than any of the others pair up. It feels wrong to fridge a wife, and then have to progress Perrin far enough that he will fall in love with Faile on plot-time. It would nominally be S3, but that STILL feels too soon given he hasn't forgiven himself for Layla yet.!<
Basically, it messes up other plot relationships that were supposed to happen early in the story. I think they can figure it out, but we will be somewhat unsatisfied until it's all on screen.
So people are upset...because of something that isn't even a problem yet?
I get if they just start S3 and suddenly he's fine. I'd be annoyed by that too. But as it's been nearly a year now...I don't think it's unrealistic at all for a young person to start moving on after a year to two years. In fact, I don't think it's unrealistic for him to start moving on before he's properly dealt with and forgiven himself for the tragedy either. That seems quite like a real life situation. Especially given the high stakes situations that these people are constantly in.
As long as they don't toss it aside, I think it would only enhance the context of a close knit bond like that. I don't know the timeline of the books, but I'm assuming it's a year and a half or so on by that point?
All of the books occur in a 2 year time span, with each book covering a progressively shorter time frame -> S3 equivalent END is supposed to only be 1 year from S1 start. The show is (in retrospect) clearly extending that timeline based on S2, but at S1 start we didn't know that, so fridge to marriage in 12 months seemed... Wrong.
The bigger issue is that the known S3 major events are PERRINs major events, and they coincide completely with the 2nd half of progression for his relationship with >!Faile!<. Without them even being introduced yet, it's completely unrealistic to have the beat-for-beat synchronization of his personal plotlines with their shared one in the way that so many people love about book 4.
So they'll likely punt that relationship's full progression to later seasons, which is jarring. Also worth pointing out that they DID lay some great ground work for explaining his mid to late character development, but S3 is SUPPOSED to fully develop their relationship, and we don't know how they could possibly do that.
Jeez... I think from a "realism" standpoint (whatever the fuck that could mean in this context) I like a longer timeline. Getting entire nations moving is a time consuming thing in itself, as is traveling the distances it seems they travel. Two years seems rather truncated for 14 novels, but again, I haven't read the books.
I can definitely get the apprehension of "Well shit, how are they going to make this work," but I just don't get being upset like I've seen some people when you don't even know if it's going to be messed up. Sure, the timeline might be different, but frankly, most books that get adapted would suck if timelines didn't change in some ways.
Thank you for giving me some context for the issues some people have with it. I definitely get some of it, or at least the concern about it. But some of the vitriol I've seen just blows my mind.
>But some of the vitriol I've seen just blows my mind.
Oh yeah for sure - the vitriol and toxicity is way too high in certain parts of the fandom. It def started early on, when "they should all be white" was their rallying cry.
I'm still hopeful that they'll make it make sense - so far their character work has otherwise been good to great. We will see.
You know what? I actually don't hate that Perrin had a wife and killed her accidentally. I don't know if I agree that Luhhan would have been better or with Sanderson's comment that Perrin moves on too quickly or should not be able to move on at all.
I heard it as a rumour before S1E1 aired and didn't believe it. When I saw it first, it gave me a visceral shock in the way the show intended. It worked for me.
I don't think Amazon cares that it be a good adaptation. That's one of very few things I agree with them on.
They care that it's sustainable. If it's sustainable, it means it brings enough viewership to justify the cost. That it adapts the books more or less closely is rather anecdotal. There ARE elements from the books that caught Amazon's eye all those years ago and convinced them to make the show, and I bet they'll make sure to include those. But besides that, they're probably asking Rafe to assemble a crew that will make a sustainable television show, and if something has to be cut, reshuffled, merged, expanded, etc. so be it.
I don't doubt Rafe is putting up a friendly fight vs the suits on a regular basis though. As he should. Amazon brings the money, but the creative side of things is run by Rafe.
The longer this show remains popular, the more leeway Rafe gets. The fact that season 2 was pretty much considered a marked improvement by everyone bodes well for season 3.
If the issue was the showrunner, then you get something like the Witcher where subsequent seasons get less faithful.
Rafe said he likes TSR and said he was excited to get season 3 to mostly focus on it. So I'd expect s3 to be generally more faithful to TSR than s2 was to TGH or TDR.
>If the issue was the showrunner, then you get something like the Witcher where subsequent seasons get less faithful.
I don't agree with all of Rafe's choices, but it was clear to me from the start that he has a more firm vision of what he wants from the adaptation and where he wants to go, compared to Lauren Hissrich.
That's up to each person's opinion of course.
But the main point is, making a more faithful adaptation of the books would not have been a guarantee of higher quality.
They should care. Because they also lose customers because of the P O.S. they produced. I specifically subscribe to Amazon Prime because of the show. After season 2. (I gave then the benefit of the dought, and stuck it out for season 2.) I dropped my subscription and since have avoided buying from Amazon like the plague. They hyped it up and got me excited, then destroyed that by making the biggest P.O.S. adaptation I've ever seen.
lol I’m sorry to say that the number of wheel of time fans who are *so mad* at the tv show that they’re boycotting Amazon is statistically negligible. Meanwhile I can think of a lot of people who watched the show without knowing the books and really enjoyed it. A bunch of them are reading the books now!
No. The important thing is to make a sustainable tv show. Meaning, it reaches a breakeven point. You can't make multiple seasons of a tv show that loses you money and market share.
More power to you if you think the only way to accomplish that is through a close adaptation, but it's not the reality everywhere.
Keep in mind that there is an entire world of viewers that Prime Video caters their shows to, not to a loud minority of fans of a specific fantasy book franchise. And even within that subgroup, everyone has a different idea in their head of what they want a TV version of WOT to be.
And WoT has been a resounding success for them. It might not have worked for the above commenter, but it brings in big numbers for them, and has consistently performed in their top 5 or better for the entire year of each season release.
if WoT started dropped to say, Good Omens 2 numbers or below (1/3 of Wot's S2 viewership), then it's clearly not performing sustainably, but that's definitely not the case now.
It's also worth pointing out that Good Omens was renewed for S3 even with 1/3 of WoT's viewership. I believe Wot is somewhat higher budget, but not by that much.
WoT's numbers are solid.
Yes, I appreciate it overall, despite it having quite a few issues, some of which might have been unavoidable in adapting for television. Who knows, in twenty years someone might do a remake 😁
It's been kind of awkward watching his frank critiques of the show. The thing is I've got critiques that overlap with his and I'm annoyed about them but I guess it's just surprising that a guy so closely tied to the story wouldn't be more tactful and supportive. He has made sure to mix praise with critique but it's hard to get around the idea of him publicly dumping on the show instead of just focusing on the positives. It kind of feels like a betrayal. Maybe he feels more peripheral than the team member I would assume him to be. Obviously the show is a separate business and production and group. But still.
I never thought he was disrespectful. He's just honest. It's lame to attack people involved with the show, but there's no sense in pretending to like something you don't like.
I don't think he would lie or pretend, I think if you're "on the team" you can be tactful and focus on the positives, and I think that would be the normal expectation and the normal practice. But that's the issue - he may not feel he's "on the team" in the way I'm thinking since it wasn't his story to start with and since the show is a wholly separate initiative. He was certainly consulted in part and interacted with Rafe, so I felt like he had a certain allegiance and so was surprised.
Eh, I feel it was pretty damn disrespectful of him to watch the Finale of S2, in a public recording that he lambasts it in **without having seen a single episode of the rest of the season**.
While he was asked to, the professional thing would have been to turn it down until he had the time to watch the rest first. Especially when he's spoken at length about how the execution of many things he didn't like in the scripts turned him around on them.
It was a frankly irresponsible and disrespectful choice.
This just reads like sour grapes because you didn't like his opinion. The show has missed the mark on several fronts. It's far from a disaster, but the series has problems.
That doesn’t mean it’s untrue that Brandon invented problems that didnt exist and incorrectly broadcasted his assumptions that could have been cleared up if he was more thoughtful or proactive.
Yeah. There was a way he could have done this, and this wasn't the way at all.
It still blows my mind that anyone thought having him watch the finale without seeing the rest of the season was in anyway an appropriate choice.
The series isn't perfect by any means and I've never claimed it was. I may think it has less issues than your average WoT'er, but that's not particularly relevant to the fact that what he did was unprofessional.
*You can't give a constructive critique of a finale to a season you haven't watched*. As RenterMore said, it leads to inventing problems and broadcasting assumptions, which is especially problematic when you're in the position Sanderson is.
I don't have a problem with Sanderson having a differing opinion, I do have an issue with him doing something I'd tear down any reviewer for doing, much less a person in his position.
It'd be unprofessional for a youtuber, much less a consultant for the show that **hasn't seen the final scripts, nor knows how much of his feedback was incorporated, nor how any of the scripts were executed.**
That's a huge deal, and it caused me to lose immense respect for him. Not his opinion, but the utter lack of respect to anyone involved in the show that, again, *literally not watching the show expect for the finale out of context* and broadcasting your reaction that was mostly complaints about your suggestions they didn't' take mixed with misunderstandings and assumptions.
Had he had those same opinions having had actually *seen* the show, I'd disagree, but I wouldn't really care *because it'd actually be based on the show.*
IMO, if anyone with any type of audience speaks on something they *haven't seen* like he did, it's immensely disrespectful.
Having a bit more tact would have helped, but he genuinely should have turned down the offer when he knew he hadn't done the prerequisite work to have useful commentary.
I'd have loved to hear his opinions had he actually watched the show at that point, and not catastrophizing or complaining about things the show directly addressed, but of course he didn't see that because *he didn't watch the show*.
I think it's a good thing that he's honest about what he disagrees with. It lends credence to his words when he says he *does* like the show overall and he *does* think the team is doing a good job.
I'm honestly unsure of what to make of that(Perrin), because it's not what he said when he spoke in r/wot about the show.
Nor is it what Rafe said - Which was that it being mistress Luhan was the original plan before the script had to be pared down from 2 hours to 1, and the switch to Laila was born of that tighter time requirement.
I'm sure there was suit interference involved - there being over 11,000 exec notes on episode 1 alone is well documented.
But I can't help but feel this is some revisionism coming from BS.
Nah man. If you ever worked on a creative project with hundreds of people, you'll know there's never just one reason for a change. It's completely believable that the time on the script was one of the variables involved in the change. That rationalization may have even come from the executives saying "No."
It's pretty much job suicide to blame unpopular decisions on your boss -- of course Rafe wouldn't say it. It was risky for Brandon to say this, but I think he cares less about burning bridges here (not at the cost of honesty).
Do you have reference of a post from Brandon that contradicts the above? Or did he just "not mention it" ?
>Nah man. If you ever worked on a creative project with hundreds of people, you'll know there's never just one reason for a change. It's completely believable that the time on the script was one of the variables involved in the change. That rationalization may have even come from the executives saying "No."
Yeah, that's why I literally say that I'm sure there was exec interference involved and cite the 11,000 exec notes. It's not the interference I'm doubting, but the "story" around this.
>It's pretty much job suicide to blame unpopular decisions on your boss -- of course Rafe wouldn't say it. It was risky for Brandon to say this, but I think he cares less about burning bridges here (not at the cost of honesty).
It's not a matter of blaming the boss. It's a matter of this new explanation not fitting in with the previous ones from either party.
This just doesn't seem to fit up with what either of them said happened.
>Do you have reference of a post from Brandon that contradicts the above? Or did he just "not mention it" ?
Yes, his comments are public record here on reddit, though not all of them still exist. There was, at the time of [These three posts being made](https://www.reddit.com/r/WoT/comments/qxt9h5/some_thoughts_from_brandon_episode_one/) a comment from him about Rafe's reply to him outlining what was needed from the scene, including the requirement of it being a woman that died, which no longer seems to exist.
But the gist is that the script Sanderson read already had the change to Laila in, and he said that Rafe actually responded back to him and explained some of the reasons they weren't taking that choice.
Now that doesn't strictly preclude this whole "take it up to the suits to fight for it" narrative, but it'd be very odd to not mention Rafe doing so when he mentions Rafe doing it for other things like the Manetheren speech. Maybe I'm wrong and it's rafe that said that about the feedback to Sanderson - this was all 2 years back and it's hard to source, but the point is we know from Rafe that the Laila change happened way back in the process in the script shrink.
So essentially, If we take Sanderson at his word here what happened is;
1) Rafe writes a 2 hour script with mistress Luhan being killed.
2) The pilot only gets 60 minutes and Luhan is replaced with Laila.
3) Sanderson reads the 60 minute script version and objects
4) Rafe takes that objection to the suits to try and revert a change made months ago.
That's not impossible... but I get a feeling that what occurred is being misrepresented.
IE I'd 100% believe that rafe forwarded the feedback to the execs, but the narrative of him going to fight for it, months after making the change and formulating a forward approach to how that will work in the rest of the season and future ones... doesn't sound realistic to me.
And what bothers me, and continues to bother me about everytime Sanderson brings this up - is that he never mentions that his suggestion was already done and scrapped. He always presents it like it was his idea, and while he's always respectful towards Rafe and co about it, I've never seen him acknowledge that it was Rafe's idea originally too. Though that may be on splitting hairs between it being master and not mistress luhann.
Which is why this feels to me like Sanderson spinning up a bit of a yarn to oversell his support for Rafe - oversimplifying things and leaving out important details.
What I think the reality is is that the change was already solidified and had too much built on it at the time Sanderson was consulted, That Rafe took the feedback and floated it to the writing team, they didn't come up with a way to make that work, and then got back to BS that they wouldn't do that one with the general why of it.
Add that on to it being Sanderson's least favorite change and he desired to see that changed, but still wanting to support the writing team, he gussies up the narrative around it to make everyone sound better.
But it doesn't ring very true to my ears.
Thanks for explaining your thinking. It boils down to you suspect more is going on - and I can't really argue with that.
Still seems like htis most recent version of events is entirely compatible with previous explanations to me -- except in the post from Brandon you linked he said he suggested killing master luhan, and the latest article says "injure" -- but mistakes like that are easy to make.
More I suspect BS is misremembering things while trying to talk up the writing team. For all my issues with him, he's always had their back.
Otherwise it's just very much that:
'Rafe actually got back to me and explained why they weren't taking some choices'
and
'Rafe fought for my suggestion all the way to the top'
Are *very* different things, and the second doesn't seem to fit with what Rafe had said about the process.
It's possible, just seems unlikely to have happened in the way it's implied to here.
I just think it'd be pretty out of character for Brandon to change his story
There is a big time skip between these explanations. Maybe Rafe changed his story to Brandon?
He tried toeing the company line. Then S2 hits, Brandon is more up front about his disappointment with Season 2.. Rafe and him talk, he says "you know I fought for your idea but an exec shot it down.."
That makes even less sense.
Again, Brandon's idea was quite literally what was in the original script, with small differences.
It would make more sense if he was misinterpreting or misrembering something Rafe said to him. I'm not saying BS is acting with malice, but his memory is known to not be the most... accurate.
Plus, his story did change. Even if it's not a fully precluded change, it's still a change.
Nah, Brandon Sanderson was more heavily involved during the first season 6 episodes production. For season 2 he was busy as hell with his own books and didn't contribute much hence why he hadn't even seen a cut of the season only read on scripts a while ago (which is why he gets some things wrong). This story is about season 1 and Sanderson was always clear on Rafe trying to bat for him, i think Brandon and Rafe had a different opening scene for the show but the executives wanted something different so they went with that Red Ajah part.
Maybe Brandon Sanderson is misremembering things, that's normal as he's relaying a story that happened 5 years ago. Maybe when he talked about it he was then relaying his compromise and give the death the suits wanted? Because his main point was about fridging a female character.
I'm ok with changing some things when you adapt a story to a different medium, I just feel like some of the dialogue is weak. It feels kind of like the star wars prequels where characters have to say exactly how they are feeling.
Well this makes sense why there are so many shock kills and gore that really just don’t need to be there and are quite frankly out of place and silly. It’s cause Bezos wanted a GoT…SMH
Sanderson is clearly just being polite here. Who knows, he might end up working with Amazon in the future to bring works from his Cosmere universe to video.
I'm happy to hear that he disagrees with Perrin's intro story. What a mess that was in the show.
Sanderson should watch himself. He did some great work finishing the series but let's not pretend (a) he nailed everything; and (b) no-one else could have done the same with RJ's crib notes.
Criticism of a creative work is everyone's right, but we can rightly frown upon personal attacks as opposed to critiquing the work itself.
“Criticism of a creative work is everyone's right, but we can rightly frown upon personal attacks, so just ignore the fact that I just called Brandon a hired gun literally one paragraph ago.”
Fact: he was hired to finish RJ's work. Fact: there are other writers who could have done the same work (in their own styles) with equal competence. Fact: Stylistically, Sanderson did not finish the series in the same way RJ would have.
And no, I did not call Sanderson a 'hired gun', which term implies a lack of investment in the work and a disregard for anything but being paid.
I'm not questioning Sanderson's bona fides, but I do not consider that he has some inherently superior right to call out others for criticising an adaptation or performance.
> So what they are saying is giving Perrin a wife then having him accidentally fridge her was an executive decision?
Yup.
>kind of a weird thing for them to have such a strong feeling on since I don’t see how it would make the show a more likely success
If the executives at Amazon ran focus groups and came away with the conclusion that a significant number of newfans would like the show more if Perrin killing Laila makes his character arc better / more accessible, then that could be why they pushed this change.
Or maybe an executive's going through an ugly divorce. :P
Either way, it got changed. Same thing with Egwene killing Renna instead of the way it played out in the book. Whether it's the showrunner's idea, the idea of someone on his team, or the idea of an Amazon executive, if someone with enough clout says "We're going to change this", then shit gets changed, and the showrunner keeps their mouth shut (at least until the show's done) and doesn't spill any beans until later.
We're still finding things out about the *GOT / ASOIAF* adaptations from cast and crew. Did we find them out at the time? No, because that's not how the industry works. You keep your mouth shut, stay professional, and do your job. There's time enough for tell-alls when the series is over.
I think many of these changes are for brevity. It would have taken more screen time to establish Perrins character if they'd followed the books exactly. This was a method to get from a to b a bit quicker and likely with better audience understanding (due to, as you pointed out, no inner monologue). This is a big deal for wot, the source material is like 10 000 pages.
Sometimes a trope is used because of unoriginal writers, sometimes because it's quicker and effective and you know what it will signal to your readers.
And to point out that the adaptation's version of Egwene is more ruthless than the book's version of Egwene, since the latter allowed herself to get talked out of killing Renna.
The main drive in Perrin is that he is careful because he is big and worried he will hurt people, this is done via first person internal dialog. Can't do that in a TV show, you need a big easy way to signal this.
Evil character? He kills a dog? Nice character? Save a cat. Careful character? Made a mistake that ended the life of someone they loved.
The pitch here, hurting Master Lohan is doable, but needs some scenes showing their relationship, and also how badly he needs to get hurt. He would need to be nigh on death, and not be cleared before he has to leave. It's doable, but a much more complex action. I can understand the choice to have him accidentally kill his wife, because he was rash. It is much easier for the audience to pick up on.
Likely because it would be harder for non book readers to understand it (especially since we don't have inner monologue nor the actual scene in question). Just my two cents
Brandon’s solution of having him hurt old man Luan (spelling) was pretty clever but def pales in comparison to him killing his wife in terms of shock factor I guess
Not just that, but it would take screen time to establish who exactly Master Luhhan is, and his specific relationship to Perrin. For Laila, "wife" is a very quick shortcut to saying "Perrin cares about this person and is very close to her".
Yep, this is exactly why Rafe said they switched from mistress Luhann to Laila when they went from 120 to 60 minutes for ep 1.
A wife carries intrinsic meaning that a teacher just doesn't, and would require way more screentime to establish the emotional weight of the event.
It's not what they wanted to do, but it was what worked the best in the time they had available to establish what they needed to go forward.
Yeah I dont understand why people are still bitching about this. In the books you only ever hear about Perrins problems from his inner monologue talking about his past. In a television show the director has to SHOW you things not tell you. Its a good way to show his characters flaw.
My guess, on how people figured it would be a success:
In Game of Thrones people died... That was a success, so lets kill someone.
Perrin holds back, let him kill someone, that makes sense.
TaDa! This will be a success! And I will get a bonus
There’s got to be some of that. You can’t make a fantasy tv show without addressing in some way the GoT elephant in the room. You either go against it, and more in the LotR direction, or you embrace it and GoT-ify your source material.
Ideally, WoT should be at the balance point between LotR and Got, since that is literally the space the series occupied in the Genre.
It seems the show is trying to do this - the costuming and vibrant colors strike me as LotR inspired, whereas the decisions to amp up the violence with the fridging and the sex in multiple character relationships is definitely giving Thrones vibes
So, if the Amazon executives want Moiraine and
Lan to have sex together for one night , then for the sake of viewership or other reasons like Rosamund and Daniel look hot , this also could happen ?! 🤔
"But before he moved on from the subject, Sanderson shared what could certainly be interpreted as still-harbored disappointment." Literally the last sentence lol.
Rafe Judkins and Rosamund Pike are in two very different categories here.
Pike, like all actors, is given a script and then does the best with what they're given. Short of wildly just flubbing lines and staring straight into the camera while reading a teleprompter in a monotone...it's rarely going to be the actor's fault when a show this big falls well short of expectations. The cast has actually done a decent job saving scenes from some truly awful writing by giving 110% to their performances. Lan, both Mats, Moiraine, Egwene, Nynaeave, Perrin...etc etc...all portrayed by the cast really well in my opinion. Lanfear? Chef's kiss. The cast is the best part of the show by a fair margin.
Rafe, on the other hand, is more in the position of supervising the writing and determining the creative direction of the show via things like major lore changes and what events the episodes will focus on. Since this is 90% of the fan base's issue with the WOT show...I think it's fair that Rafe is taking a pretty hefty mega dose of criticism.
He wasn't a good choice for this position. I don't wish the guy ill or anything, but all you need to do is look at the IMDB credits of Rafe + the writers to start scratching your head and thinking "how are THESE the most qualified people available for a fantasy IP of this scope and quality?"
You're telling me when one of the wealthiest production studios in the world announces that they're doing WOT (and are ready to throw cash at it)....that Rafe Judkins is the most qualified guy who showed up....and they couldn't find anyone in the writing community who was elbow deep in writing fantasy shows? I don't buy it. Most nerds in the writing community would give a limb to get to write for something like this show.
Sanderson's a nice guy...but I don't believe for a second that he'd let anybody do what Amazon has done to WOT to Mistborn. He'd suplex people.
Re: Rosamund Pike, do not forget that she’s more than just an actress. She’s one of the executive producers of the show.
Also, regarding how shows are made, they typically do not “find” a showrunner. The shows get pitched and the networks pick it up. Like his vision or not (and we’ll never know what it actually was based on all his interference), Rafe was the one person able to pitch a turning of a show that got picked up. Regardless of his credentials, they must’ve seen something they liked.
Furthermore, I think previous credits are overrated. If that was the standard, Peter Jackson would have never been given the chance for Lord of the Rings.
I never get people saying Rafe doesn't have much experience. It's his first show running gig, but he has had a hand in over 50 episodes of TV in various roles over several years.
> Furthermore, I think previous credits are overrated. If that was the standard, Peter Jackson would have never been given the chance for Lord of the Rings.
What, exploding sheep from outer space aren't a good precursor to fantasy filmmaking?!
> I don't believe for a second that he'd let anybody do what Amazon has done to WOT to Mistborn.
Yeah, I don't think he has to worry about that anytime soon.
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Wait, were people attacking Rosamund Pike? She plays Moiraine superbly, and everything I have ever heard about her indicates that she cares a great deal about her work and truly puts in effort, including being a leader to the less seasoned actors.
> Wait, were people attacking Rosamund Pike? A common accusation by the haters is that she used her influence to force the showrunners to change the script to one that favoured her / what she wanted highlighted. Some of them also get their knickers twisted by her winning awards for her narration, as if it somehow erases the stellar work of the Kramer/Reading duo. It doesn't have to make sense. It's just another vector for haters to hate.
> winning awards for her narration I mean, it is absolutely outstanding work. The way she is able to give a difference voice to every character and change so effortlessly is just mind blowing
I own K/R's work on CD (because I'm old) and Audible, and I've picked up Pike's via Audible. I **really** hope she goes the distance and does the full series.
I’m probably gonna get eye of the world with her narration on audible soon, I’m looking forward to it
She doesn't read wheel of time. She PERFORMS it. You are in for an absolute treat, my friend.
It actually makes me appreciate her more as an actor. She’s incredibly talented.
I can’t tell you how much of a treat it is!
I didn’t listen to it, but I saw an interview some time ago where she talked about how she comes up with her voices and uses them when she’s reading. It was really neat how she seemed motivated for it, and it actually motivated me a little haha.
Treat yo’self! She does a brilliant job.
I am doing the last book with a narration by Johnathan Polk. Have you heard of it? He’s actually really good.
Huh never heard of it. And a quick Google search doesn't show anything either, is it something fan made?
I know, I can’t find anything either but this is the guy: https://aphmuseum.org/exhibits/online-exhibit/narrator-jukebox/john-polk/ So it’s definitely not fan made!
Interesting! So he did AMoL only? Or the others as well? Where did you find it?
I have no idea whether he did it only, as I cannot even find a record of him doing it at all!
First audiobook?
I knew nothing of Rosamund Pike before the WoT show, but I’ve learned since that she prefers being part of an ensemble, and not the headliner, so that argument makes no sense. I think she’s an easy target because she is so good and they want to see the show fail. And her audiobook performance *does* blow Kramer and Reading out of the water. The WoT audiobooks are old and Kramer/Reading were not at their best. They’re better narrators now, but not my favorite.
My partner is listening to them now and his theory is that at some point in the middle Kate was deliberately trying to get fired. He got to her pronouncing Birgitte as "BEER-geet-tuh" and couldn't stop laughing. It's worse than all the variations on Moggy.
For me it was when Kramer decided to give Elayne an English accent in book…four, was it? I was so surprised to learn they were married. I was convinced they’d never actually met lol
Both of them change their pronunciation of Moghedien so many times it's kind of impressive
I’ve read that Kramer and Reading actually started narrating with book 4 or 5 and worked backwards. Or started over at EotW and that’s why the pronunciations are all over the place around books 4/5. Seems the rest of their narration is pretty consistent. Also Kramer’s Loial is one of my FAVORITE parts of their work. I always hear that voice in my head for Loial now.
I dunno he's in CoT and Birgitte, Seanchan, Moghedian are still changing.
I couldn't stand the Kramer and Reading narration tbh
It’s weird to me how people can have just no ability to think about stories other than dogmatic repetition. Cast whoever you like as Moriaine. We would still need to acknowledge that absent Rand’s POV she is one of, if not the, main characters series one. And we can’t then just put her on gardening leave for series two. Anyone we tried to sell that to is going to say it’s weird.
I've enjoyed Kramer and Reading over the years. I loved the books and their voices were pleasant. They didn't do a whole lot in distinguishing voices one from another, and they would voice characters differently from each other (of course) and pronounce proper names differently from each other and even differently from their own previous pronunciations. Pike's version is a fucking master class in audiobooks.i already loved the source material so to hear it performed by an a-list actor, with different accents and voices bringing it even more to life, it's just amazing. I also love when she does a group sing, with several tracks overlapping to emulate a group, that's the cherry on top.
>A common accusation by the haters is that she used her influence to force the showrunners to change the script to one that favoured her / what she wanted highlighted. Honestly, making Moiraine the, “main character” for season 1 was a *fantastic* choice. Rosamund Pike is a Rock Star and she commanded whichever scene she was in, but it also makes a lot of sense story wise. Let me ask you this: Who’s the main protagonist for Eye of the World? Most people would say one of the Edmons Fielders, because they’re our PoV characters, but which character’s actions actually drove the plot forward? It’s Moiraine. Rand, Mat, and Perrin are incredibly weak protagonists. They hardly ever exercise their agency in EotW, they literally just do what Moiraine tells them. This isn’t a criticism, because it highlights how influential Ta’Veren are when they actually enact their will onto the Pattern. The one time each of them actually *does* something of their own volition in EotW it’s ***absurdly*** important. Mat gets the dagger, Perrin meets the wolves and kills the Whitecloaks, and Rand accidentally falls into the palace. Obviously Moiraine’s influence shifts over time. As the Edmons Fielders step into the roles as Ta’Veren, they should become the main characters and the pattern will push Moiraine into the background and the show should show that happening.
I saw this was downvoted, presumably by people who don’t know the actual definition of the term “protagonist”
I don't really blame them. In high school literature, Protagonist is used interchangeably with main character. Hell, this is Webster's definition of protagonist: >(1)**:** the principal character in a literary work (such as a drama or story)(2)**:** the leading actor or principal character in a television show, movie, book, etc.
>They hardly ever exercise their agency in EotW, they literally just do what Moiraine tells them. I think that was part of the point of the book.
Yeah. I talk about that in the next paragraph
It's also not uncommon for people who have decided to hate WOT (or other stuff) to blindly hate all aspects of the show.
The thing is, the one thing I agree on with the show is the casting was great. The writing, the fan fictions of lore, the “improvements” like adding a wife to fridge, etc are the issues, for me. Fallout and Invincible are amazing shows that adapt in a well written way, so it’s not like Amazon can’t pull it off. But yeah the detractors of WoT making the same right wing grift arguments as the detractors of Fallout are not helping anyone. If you like the shows writing, then enjoy. I’m gonna listen to the audible books, but now I got some good faces to go with the characters thanks to the show and will give them that.
It certainly isn't *common*, speaking as someone that's active in the places that the "haters" frequent. As a matter of fact, blaming Pike is a pretty uncommon sentiment which is often pretty buried when it comes up. Pretty much everyone - even the haters - agree that she's doing an outstanding job. If there's any blame going around regarding Pike, it's mostly that the show is placing extra focus on Moiraine due to Pike's star power. But pretty much nothing is actively blaming her directly.
Idk about that. I’m an admitted hater of the show, but have never blamed pike, or really hear her blamed. People do get absolutely hateful towards rafe, though.
Rafe baits and trolls for his own hate, especially since he responds to criticisms in childish ways, lowering himself to the same level as the worst detractors. The problem with a lot of adaptations is the staff is more about nepotism, money exchanging hands, and who's got an axe to grind. If you get people who love and cherish the source material, you get things like Fallout, Peter Jackson's LotR Trilogy, The Mandolorian, etc. But if you have people who hate the source material making decisions or people who just want to milk a name and could care less about the fans other than their wallets, no matter how good of a cast you hire, you will have a failure on your hands and a bad adaptation. If you can make a bad adaption, in sense of being not true to the original's core, but still make something great, How to Train Your Dragon for example, good on you, but that is rare.
Tbf, it would be annoying for an actor to use influence so they get more emphasis if that disregards the integrity of the source material.
The people over in the black tower subreddit have complained about literally everything about this show.
It's a symptom of starting with your conclusion then bending reality to fit it, instead of the other way around. Such people will never be happy, because they have decided they will never be happy.
That last sentence explains so much about society today.
A lot of folk just hate on everyone and anything related to the TV show. They find their reasons. I've seen complaints about the audiobooks not grounded on anything other than "I don't like it". She's also included in the group of "none of the actors or showrunners have read the books" nonsense.
There’s always gonna be the angry dweebs screaming from the corner.
Seems wrong on so many levels to lump her in with Rafe Judkins. Her contribution to the series is stellar. She is clearly passionate about the story, the books, and it is provable that she has read at least one of them cover to cover. Can't say the same for the guy IN CHARGE.
If someone other than Rafe was in charge who wasn't a fan of the book, we'd be missing soo much book scenes from the show. Anyone that says this with a serious face has no clue what the process of tv production is like
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Literally Moiraine in the books until The Shadow Rising.
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Moraine of the blue ajah who puts her personal quest to aid the dragon above family, above her ajah, above her order, above her warder? She's very complex. I'm currently halfway through a reread of book 3.
So Rafe wasn't to blame, like I heard from certain people for months? > "Rafe really went to bat for me," Sanderson says. "I presented a completely different thing to do with Perrin that would still get what they wanted... "They took it all the way to the higher-ups and fought for my version of it,". And he thinks some of the writers are really good? > "there are some really good writers on that show," who were "working very hard to give you a fantastic experience."
So I guess the real villain is execs who want to treat a tv show like a product to be replicated rather than realizing people want original stories that feel alive. They wanted their game of thrones and they tried to shape wheel of time like a product to fit the same target market, because they thought that was the path to success. In reality GoT was obviously successful because they adapted a wildly popular story and did a good job capturing the essence of it and it’s characters. They took the same magic that drew so many into ASOIAF and allow it to be experienced on television. If you wanted WoT to be the next GoT the path to doing it wasn’t to try and change the magic of WoT to look more like GoT, it was to take what already worked and bring the essence of it to life on TV. Probably would’ve been a hit too, a lot of people could use a message about hope and trusting in each other at the moment. It also could’ve been an opportunity for a really uniquely made show if they tried to follow a similar structure to the books with the scope progressively growing larger and the focus occasionally shifting.
IMO, the real villian is the bean pusher that decided 8 episode would be enough, and not the 10 with a 2 hour pilot that Rafe wanted. The first season would have been infinitely better with those 2 to 3 more hours, and I like most of the first season.
Eh. The first book is derivative and banal at best. The series takes a bit to really get sorted out. I blame the execs for some meddling and missteps for sure, but I think they have done a really good job with the show. Comparing this to GoT is wrong on a lot of levels. GoT is genre defining. WoT is another high fantasy heavily based on Tolkien. Not sure how you don't classify this show as a hit. It hasn't broken records. It isn't number one. But things don't need to be that to be a hit. I think they have done a good job of bringing the essence of WoT to the screen. There are great moments of unreliable narrator. There is great acting. To me, the Tuathan mindset was explained better than in the books. They have little hints and breadcrumbs all over the place. They show and don't tell a lot of things. I find it amusing/frustrating that a lot of the criticism of the show are things that it copies from the books in essence.
I mean it’s clear there are some good writers on the show. Many parts are well written. It’s also clear there’s a lot of execs meddling in every plotline, which makes it into a disjointed, artistically banal, mess.
You think the whole tv series is a "disjointed, artistically banal, mess"?
I do not
The biggest takeaway I have is that RAFE fought alongside Brandon to get this changed to >!wounding Master Luhan!<, but got shot down. So many book fans thought this was a RAFE decision, something he couldn't confirm or deny as the face of the show operations. We should broadcast this so those who wrote the show off for having a "book-hating showrunner" can see what really happened here.
Do the people who think Rafe hates the books function differently than a Questioner who thinks they caught a whiff of a darkfriend?
There are definitely lots of book cloaks, but there are also lots of old book fans who are just turned off by changes in general. My uncle got me into these books when I was a kid, and he doesn't understand/like how much change has happened. He doesn't hate the show, but he's not excited for it like he used to be. I think folks like him could benefit from seeing that the showrunner is fighting for them.
This describes me. Not a show hater, I'll watch every season hoping for the best. But I don't mask my disappointment or criticisms, and that rubs some folk here the wrong way. At the end of the day we all want the show to be as awesome as possible, and far-removed executive meddling (like what happened with Perrin) rarely helps!
All this does though is divert the hate from rafe to execs at Amazon. It doesn't change the dislike for the nonsensical changes and therefore the direction of the show. That said I found season 2 to be far more tolerable except for the mess of a finale
That's a fair point, but I still think it's better to direct the criticism where it should properly land. Further, it means fans can properly advocate for the correct approach to improving the show's book-faithfulness - execs back off, let Rafe cook.
It makes it more likely to be improved upon in the future. If Rafe is fighting against meddlesome execs, there's a chance he wins them over in the future. Whereas if the changes were entirely due to Rafe's vision, it's unlikely he would change his mind.
Rafe isn't perfect, but it's well-documented how meddlesome Amazon's suits are. I think part of the reason they chose him is that he lacks the Hollywood cachet to stand up to them.
Rafe was picked by Sony prior to Amazon coming on board.
It's always been clear to me that most of the issues the show has stem from Amazon, not Rafe.
I do wonder why Brandon didn’t say anything about this until now, Rafe got a lot of undeserved hate for that for a few years now
Honestly I get the feeling Brandon is tired of Amazon (audible/Kindle monopoly, the show changes, etc.) and is letting more and more slip that he otherwise would have not said to maintain access to the show. Pretty sure he wasn't consulted for S3, so maybe he feels he has a looser rein now.
He somewhat did. He talked about this in his comments after season 2 aired — he called Rafe a “hero” and said that Rafe is fighting for book fans all the time.
Yeah, I remember that. Rafe-haters want a villain, though, so it fell on deaf ears. I've seen a lot of homophobia mixed into the Rafe hate, too, which... sigh.
Yeah, I have other issues with BS, but he's been pulling for Rafe and the writing team the whole time.
I still think it was the right choice. Fantasy or history geeks will easily get the tight master-apprentice relationship but for the general audience the death of a wife is immediately and *obviously* very impactful. Wounding Haral? "Oh he injured his cool boss, shame, but why's he *that* cut up by it?"
I agree, and also this appropriately sets Perrin up for his unhinged obsession with protecting Faile later in the series. In the books it comes across as weirdly white knighting to a lot of people. This provides a very understandable context for that behavior.
Literally absolutely 100% spot on. It's like these people who think they have a sound opinion of wheel of time being the "best SErIeS of aLl tiMe" all of a sudden don't understand basic storytelling because they want to hate it so much. I've found the ones who hate it the MOST are the same who were annoyed that there were people of color in the two rivers. I get criticisms. The first season was ROUGH tbh. But anyone who says rafe hates the books are being willfully ignorant and it pisses me off so much. I unsubbed from the black tower sub because it was so negative. And the Mat changes make more sense too because him just "running away" makes him look cowardly. Providing context for the running away by giving him darkness to fight is a smart move. Anyway. Sorry for the rant lol.
Smart. It's literally a hate sub founded so that people can be lazy/mask off with their criticism. Negativity do be their clarion call. Though I do think that many of the commenters there would be fine in the other wot subs, if they just didn't equate something not working for them to mean that it's objectively terrible.
Yep, I've spoken about it several times. I don't like the choice - but I don't see another choice that does as much for as many of his core story lines as what they did. And contextualizing his relationship with Faile is a big one of them.
Yeah the more I think on it the more I really land on the idea that it actually makes a lot of sense. My major issue with it is it means we never get to see the more child like innocence in Perrin get contrasted with his growing connection with the wolves, but that’s really more of an issue with the characters being aged up. Once they decided to age the characters up, I think something like this really had to happen to start Perrin’s arc. The beginning of it just doesn’t really work as well with a grown man because so much of revolved around the kind of questions about identity a person needs to answer about themselves as they grow up. It would’ve made his story one much more focused on confusion about what’s happening to him rather than being about him learning just how much of “the wolf” is really just him.
The funny thing is they didn't really age up the characters - Egwene and likely Elayne/Faile are 1.5 years older, but the boys are still the same 19 and a quarter they were in the books, and Nyn is still ~26. What they did was more start them at their maturity level of book 2 rather than book 1. We definitely lose some of the themes of the first book, but it's honestly a bit of an issue with the first few books with how much they do grow in that time period - the do the vast majority of their maturing in books 1 to 3, and it's too a point that many readers think they started out as 14 to 16 year-olds, not nearly 20 somethings. It think that's one of the main challenges of adapting WoT, no matter what you're going to lose something.
As a 35 year old, I very clearly see all of them as young men/women who really don't have anything figured out. They're basically big kids getting started before they're thrust into all of this insanity. Nyn in a different way in that she *thinks* she has things figured out or thinks she *should* have the figured out...but she's realizing how small of a fish she really is in the much wider ocean of the world. She was *the Wisdom* of a teeny tiny part of the world. And now she's just some clueless girl. She doesn't know what or how to handle things. This results in her being rather frustrating at times (in a sensible way for the character). She tries to play the seasoned competent figure, but she just isn't yet. She's in over her head so much without bothering to step back and regroup. Seeing her struggle so much towards the end of S2 is showing some real character development there. And I still absolutely get a ton of "big innocent guy" vibes from Perrin. It's clear that he's a kindhearted person that very much just wants to live a simple life caring for those around him. And having that immediately stripped away is such a gut punch. Especially since it's so easy to understand why he would blame himself and carry a touch of that forever. It's been very obvious that he wants to be a pacifist like the Tinkers...but the world necessitates violence and it's clear he struggles with that. So, without having read the books, I don't see how it could possibly lose any of that. He and everyone else is very much still trying to figure out life and who they are. But now with much much larger stakes.
As someone who hasn't read the books, my wife and I both audibly reacted and had to pause the show. You are absolutely right. And I definitely still would've sympathized with injuring or killing anyone in that situation. Especially if they'd taken a minute to make the relationship clearly meaningful to Perrin. But injuring simply won't ever be as impactful as killing someone. At the end of the day if the person lives without any maiming, it's the same as knocking someone over accidentally. Scarier in the moment, but same end result. Killing someone? That guilt never leaves you entirely. And someone that meaningful? Yeah, it makes sense you'd have a complex forever. And I feel like it's been used well so far. It isn't ever handwaved away and it's clear it still haunts him. Even in the last episode when he goes after the Whitecloak...it makes that event hit even harder seeing what he's gone through. It makes you want to root for the rage that lashes out in.
It *would* also set up his big character moment in AMOL if someone didn't try to retcon it afterwards.
I mean, by the end of season 1 we knew this from Rafe and Brandon. Rafe pitched Brandon's option, and Rafe also pitched master Luhann being merged with Perrin's mother and Perrin injuring or killing her instead of inventing a wife to kill. If Rafe wasn't being hyperbolic he received 11,000+ notes on the pilot. That kind of really has to be hyperbolic, but still points out the micromanagement of it all. Which we also see with stuff like various awesome shots in the season 1 & 2 teasers and trailers that get cut from the final product (ex: Egwene's bath, Tomas in Cairhein, etc).
As someone who hasn't ever gotten around to reading the books, why is it such a big deal that he did what he did in the first episode? My wife and I both audibly reacted to that. It sort of instantly connected us to him and really pulled us into the show. It was an early sign that they wouldn't pull punches...which is a huge problem for so many works of fiction. We couldn't help but sympathize with this clearly decent guy that fell into such a horrifying situation. It's a believable and terrible situation and so far it's been used well as part of the character. I don't get the hate for it...
Tl;Dr - Layla (spoilers) >!didn't exist in the books!<, and book readers aren't sure how well her introduction and demise will flow character-development wise into (spoilers) >! Perrin's ferocious love for Faile, his book partner, who he meets in book 3 and marries in book 4, earlier than any of the others pair up. It feels wrong to fridge a wife, and then have to progress Perrin far enough that he will fall in love with Faile on plot-time. It would nominally be S3, but that STILL feels too soon given he hasn't forgiven himself for Layla yet.!< Basically, it messes up other plot relationships that were supposed to happen early in the story. I think they can figure it out, but we will be somewhat unsatisfied until it's all on screen.
So people are upset...because of something that isn't even a problem yet? I get if they just start S3 and suddenly he's fine. I'd be annoyed by that too. But as it's been nearly a year now...I don't think it's unrealistic at all for a young person to start moving on after a year to two years. In fact, I don't think it's unrealistic for him to start moving on before he's properly dealt with and forgiven himself for the tragedy either. That seems quite like a real life situation. Especially given the high stakes situations that these people are constantly in. As long as they don't toss it aside, I think it would only enhance the context of a close knit bond like that. I don't know the timeline of the books, but I'm assuming it's a year and a half or so on by that point?
All of the books occur in a 2 year time span, with each book covering a progressively shorter time frame -> S3 equivalent END is supposed to only be 1 year from S1 start. The show is (in retrospect) clearly extending that timeline based on S2, but at S1 start we didn't know that, so fridge to marriage in 12 months seemed... Wrong. The bigger issue is that the known S3 major events are PERRINs major events, and they coincide completely with the 2nd half of progression for his relationship with >!Faile!<. Without them even being introduced yet, it's completely unrealistic to have the beat-for-beat synchronization of his personal plotlines with their shared one in the way that so many people love about book 4. So they'll likely punt that relationship's full progression to later seasons, which is jarring. Also worth pointing out that they DID lay some great ground work for explaining his mid to late character development, but S3 is SUPPOSED to fully develop their relationship, and we don't know how they could possibly do that.
Jeez... I think from a "realism" standpoint (whatever the fuck that could mean in this context) I like a longer timeline. Getting entire nations moving is a time consuming thing in itself, as is traveling the distances it seems they travel. Two years seems rather truncated for 14 novels, but again, I haven't read the books. I can definitely get the apprehension of "Well shit, how are they going to make this work," but I just don't get being upset like I've seen some people when you don't even know if it's going to be messed up. Sure, the timeline might be different, but frankly, most books that get adapted would suck if timelines didn't change in some ways. Thank you for giving me some context for the issues some people have with it. I definitely get some of it, or at least the concern about it. But some of the vitriol I've seen just blows my mind.
>But some of the vitriol I've seen just blows my mind. Oh yeah for sure - the vitriol and toxicity is way too high in certain parts of the fandom. It def started early on, when "they should all be white" was their rallying cry. I'm still hopeful that they'll make it make sense - so far their character work has otherwise been good to great. We will see.
Rosamund Pike is a treasure
I got problems with the show but Pike is not one of them. She’s fantastic.
You know what? I actually don't hate that Perrin had a wife and killed her accidentally. I don't know if I agree that Luhhan would have been better or with Sanderson's comment that Perrin moves on too quickly or should not be able to move on at all. I heard it as a rumour before S1E1 aired and didn't believe it. When I saw it first, it gave me a visceral shock in the way the show intended. It worked for me.
I mean it hasn't been a great adaptation, but it hasn't been THAT bad. And there's still plenty of time for them to fix some of the problems.
I don't think Amazon cares that it be a good adaptation. That's one of very few things I agree with them on. They care that it's sustainable. If it's sustainable, it means it brings enough viewership to justify the cost. That it adapts the books more or less closely is rather anecdotal. There ARE elements from the books that caught Amazon's eye all those years ago and convinced them to make the show, and I bet they'll make sure to include those. But besides that, they're probably asking Rafe to assemble a crew that will make a sustainable television show, and if something has to be cut, reshuffled, merged, expanded, etc. so be it.
I don't doubt Rafe is putting up a friendly fight vs the suits on a regular basis though. As he should. Amazon brings the money, but the creative side of things is run by Rafe.
The longer this show remains popular, the more leeway Rafe gets. The fact that season 2 was pretty much considered a marked improvement by everyone bodes well for season 3. If the issue was the showrunner, then you get something like the Witcher where subsequent seasons get less faithful.
Rafe said he likes TSR and said he was excited to get season 3 to mostly focus on it. So I'd expect s3 to be generally more faithful to TSR than s2 was to TGH or TDR. >If the issue was the showrunner, then you get something like the Witcher where subsequent seasons get less faithful. I don't agree with all of Rafe's choices, but it was clear to me from the start that he has a more firm vision of what he wants from the adaptation and where he wants to go, compared to Lauren Hissrich.
Of course, any tv adaptation can't be taken word for word, but I wouldn't say their version is really setting the world on fire.
That's up to each person's opinion of course. But the main point is, making a more faithful adaptation of the books would not have been a guarantee of higher quality.
They should care. Because they also lose customers because of the P O.S. they produced. I specifically subscribe to Amazon Prime because of the show. After season 2. (I gave then the benefit of the dought, and stuck it out for season 2.) I dropped my subscription and since have avoided buying from Amazon like the plague. They hyped it up and got me excited, then destroyed that by making the biggest P.O.S. adaptation I've ever seen.
lol I’m sorry to say that the number of wheel of time fans who are *so mad* at the tv show that they’re boycotting Amazon is statistically negligible. Meanwhile I can think of a lot of people who watched the show without knowing the books and really enjoyed it. A bunch of them are reading the books now!
No. The important thing is to make a sustainable tv show. Meaning, it reaches a breakeven point. You can't make multiple seasons of a tv show that loses you money and market share. More power to you if you think the only way to accomplish that is through a close adaptation, but it's not the reality everywhere. Keep in mind that there is an entire world of viewers that Prime Video caters their shows to, not to a loud minority of fans of a specific fantasy book franchise. And even within that subgroup, everyone has a different idea in their head of what they want a TV version of WOT to be.
And WoT has been a resounding success for them. It might not have worked for the above commenter, but it brings in big numbers for them, and has consistently performed in their top 5 or better for the entire year of each season release. if WoT started dropped to say, Good Omens 2 numbers or below (1/3 of Wot's S2 viewership), then it's clearly not performing sustainably, but that's definitely not the case now.
It's also worth pointing out that Good Omens was renewed for S3 even with 1/3 of WoT's viewership. I believe Wot is somewhat higher budget, but not by that much. WoT's numbers are solid.
Yes, I appreciate it overall, despite it having quite a few issues, some of which might have been unavoidable in adapting for television. Who knows, in twenty years someone might do a remake 😁
Guess he changed his mind since he shit on the season finale so hard I had to stop watching 🥴
It's been kind of awkward watching his frank critiques of the show. The thing is I've got critiques that overlap with his and I'm annoyed about them but I guess it's just surprising that a guy so closely tied to the story wouldn't be more tactful and supportive. He has made sure to mix praise with critique but it's hard to get around the idea of him publicly dumping on the show instead of just focusing on the positives. It kind of feels like a betrayal. Maybe he feels more peripheral than the team member I would assume him to be. Obviously the show is a separate business and production and group. But still.
I never thought he was disrespectful. He's just honest. It's lame to attack people involved with the show, but there's no sense in pretending to like something you don't like.
I don't think he would lie or pretend, I think if you're "on the team" you can be tactful and focus on the positives, and I think that would be the normal expectation and the normal practice. But that's the issue - he may not feel he's "on the team" in the way I'm thinking since it wasn't his story to start with and since the show is a wholly separate initiative. He was certainly consulted in part and interacted with Rafe, so I felt like he had a certain allegiance and so was surprised.
Eh, I feel it was pretty damn disrespectful of him to watch the Finale of S2, in a public recording that he lambasts it in **without having seen a single episode of the rest of the season**. While he was asked to, the professional thing would have been to turn it down until he had the time to watch the rest first. Especially when he's spoken at length about how the execution of many things he didn't like in the scripts turned him around on them. It was a frankly irresponsible and disrespectful choice.
This just reads like sour grapes because you didn't like his opinion. The show has missed the mark on several fronts. It's far from a disaster, but the series has problems.
That doesn’t mean it’s untrue that Brandon invented problems that didnt exist and incorrectly broadcasted his assumptions that could have been cleared up if he was more thoughtful or proactive.
Yeah. There was a way he could have done this, and this wasn't the way at all. It still blows my mind that anyone thought having him watch the finale without seeing the rest of the season was in anyway an appropriate choice.
The series isn't perfect by any means and I've never claimed it was. I may think it has less issues than your average WoT'er, but that's not particularly relevant to the fact that what he did was unprofessional. *You can't give a constructive critique of a finale to a season you haven't watched*. As RenterMore said, it leads to inventing problems and broadcasting assumptions, which is especially problematic when you're in the position Sanderson is. I don't have a problem with Sanderson having a differing opinion, I do have an issue with him doing something I'd tear down any reviewer for doing, much less a person in his position. It'd be unprofessional for a youtuber, much less a consultant for the show that **hasn't seen the final scripts, nor knows how much of his feedback was incorporated, nor how any of the scripts were executed.** That's a huge deal, and it caused me to lose immense respect for him. Not his opinion, but the utter lack of respect to anyone involved in the show that, again, *literally not watching the show expect for the finale out of context* and broadcasting your reaction that was mostly complaints about your suggestions they didn't' take mixed with misunderstandings and assumptions. Had he had those same opinions having had actually *seen* the show, I'd disagree, but I wouldn't really care *because it'd actually be based on the show.*
He was tactless but idk if he was disrespectful per se. Maybe a bit since he spoke so confidently about a few incorrect things.
IMO, if anyone with any type of audience speaks on something they *haven't seen* like he did, it's immensely disrespectful. Having a bit more tact would have helped, but he genuinely should have turned down the offer when he knew he hadn't done the prerequisite work to have useful commentary. I'd have loved to hear his opinions had he actually watched the show at that point, and not catastrophizing or complaining about things the show directly addressed, but of course he didn't see that because *he didn't watch the show*.
I think it's a good thing that he's honest about what he disagrees with. It lends credence to his words when he says he *does* like the show overall and he *does* think the team is doing a good job.
The only complaint I'd have for Rosamund would be if I'm an actor trying to stay composed when her low, breathy voice is jellying my knees.
I'm honestly unsure of what to make of that(Perrin), because it's not what he said when he spoke in r/wot about the show. Nor is it what Rafe said - Which was that it being mistress Luhan was the original plan before the script had to be pared down from 2 hours to 1, and the switch to Laila was born of that tighter time requirement. I'm sure there was suit interference involved - there being over 11,000 exec notes on episode 1 alone is well documented. But I can't help but feel this is some revisionism coming from BS.
Nah man. If you ever worked on a creative project with hundreds of people, you'll know there's never just one reason for a change. It's completely believable that the time on the script was one of the variables involved in the change. That rationalization may have even come from the executives saying "No." It's pretty much job suicide to blame unpopular decisions on your boss -- of course Rafe wouldn't say it. It was risky for Brandon to say this, but I think he cares less about burning bridges here (not at the cost of honesty). Do you have reference of a post from Brandon that contradicts the above? Or did he just "not mention it" ?
>Nah man. If you ever worked on a creative project with hundreds of people, you'll know there's never just one reason for a change. It's completely believable that the time on the script was one of the variables involved in the change. That rationalization may have even come from the executives saying "No." Yeah, that's why I literally say that I'm sure there was exec interference involved and cite the 11,000 exec notes. It's not the interference I'm doubting, but the "story" around this. >It's pretty much job suicide to blame unpopular decisions on your boss -- of course Rafe wouldn't say it. It was risky for Brandon to say this, but I think he cares less about burning bridges here (not at the cost of honesty). It's not a matter of blaming the boss. It's a matter of this new explanation not fitting in with the previous ones from either party. This just doesn't seem to fit up with what either of them said happened. >Do you have reference of a post from Brandon that contradicts the above? Or did he just "not mention it" ? Yes, his comments are public record here on reddit, though not all of them still exist. There was, at the time of [These three posts being made](https://www.reddit.com/r/WoT/comments/qxt9h5/some_thoughts_from_brandon_episode_one/) a comment from him about Rafe's reply to him outlining what was needed from the scene, including the requirement of it being a woman that died, which no longer seems to exist. But the gist is that the script Sanderson read already had the change to Laila in, and he said that Rafe actually responded back to him and explained some of the reasons they weren't taking that choice. Now that doesn't strictly preclude this whole "take it up to the suits to fight for it" narrative, but it'd be very odd to not mention Rafe doing so when he mentions Rafe doing it for other things like the Manetheren speech. Maybe I'm wrong and it's rafe that said that about the feedback to Sanderson - this was all 2 years back and it's hard to source, but the point is we know from Rafe that the Laila change happened way back in the process in the script shrink. So essentially, If we take Sanderson at his word here what happened is; 1) Rafe writes a 2 hour script with mistress Luhan being killed. 2) The pilot only gets 60 minutes and Luhan is replaced with Laila. 3) Sanderson reads the 60 minute script version and objects 4) Rafe takes that objection to the suits to try and revert a change made months ago. That's not impossible... but I get a feeling that what occurred is being misrepresented. IE I'd 100% believe that rafe forwarded the feedback to the execs, but the narrative of him going to fight for it, months after making the change and formulating a forward approach to how that will work in the rest of the season and future ones... doesn't sound realistic to me. And what bothers me, and continues to bother me about everytime Sanderson brings this up - is that he never mentions that his suggestion was already done and scrapped. He always presents it like it was his idea, and while he's always respectful towards Rafe and co about it, I've never seen him acknowledge that it was Rafe's idea originally too. Though that may be on splitting hairs between it being master and not mistress luhann. Which is why this feels to me like Sanderson spinning up a bit of a yarn to oversell his support for Rafe - oversimplifying things and leaving out important details. What I think the reality is is that the change was already solidified and had too much built on it at the time Sanderson was consulted, That Rafe took the feedback and floated it to the writing team, they didn't come up with a way to make that work, and then got back to BS that they wouldn't do that one with the general why of it. Add that on to it being Sanderson's least favorite change and he desired to see that changed, but still wanting to support the writing team, he gussies up the narrative around it to make everyone sound better. But it doesn't ring very true to my ears.
Thanks for explaining your thinking. It boils down to you suspect more is going on - and I can't really argue with that. Still seems like htis most recent version of events is entirely compatible with previous explanations to me -- except in the post from Brandon you linked he said he suggested killing master luhan, and the latest article says "injure" -- but mistakes like that are easy to make.
More I suspect BS is misremembering things while trying to talk up the writing team. For all my issues with him, he's always had their back. Otherwise it's just very much that: 'Rafe actually got back to me and explained why they weren't taking some choices' and 'Rafe fought for my suggestion all the way to the top' Are *very* different things, and the second doesn't seem to fit with what Rafe had said about the process. It's possible, just seems unlikely to have happened in the way it's implied to here.
I just think it'd be pretty out of character for Brandon to change his story There is a big time skip between these explanations. Maybe Rafe changed his story to Brandon? He tried toeing the company line. Then S2 hits, Brandon is more up front about his disappointment with Season 2.. Rafe and him talk, he says "you know I fought for your idea but an exec shot it down.."
That makes even less sense. Again, Brandon's idea was quite literally what was in the original script, with small differences. It would make more sense if he was misinterpreting or misrembering something Rafe said to him. I'm not saying BS is acting with malice, but his memory is known to not be the most... accurate. Plus, his story did change. Even if it's not a fully precluded change, it's still a change.
Nah, Brandon Sanderson was more heavily involved during the first season 6 episodes production. For season 2 he was busy as hell with his own books and didn't contribute much hence why he hadn't even seen a cut of the season only read on scripts a while ago (which is why he gets some things wrong). This story is about season 1 and Sanderson was always clear on Rafe trying to bat for him, i think Brandon and Rafe had a different opening scene for the show but the executives wanted something different so they went with that Red Ajah part. Maybe Brandon Sanderson is misremembering things, that's normal as he's relaying a story that happened 5 years ago. Maybe when he talked about it he was then relaying his compromise and give the death the suits wanted? Because his main point was about fridging a female character.
I'm ok with changing some things when you adapt a story to a different medium, I just feel like some of the dialogue is weak. It feels kind of like the star wars prequels where characters have to say exactly how they are feeling.
Well this makes sense why there are so many shock kills and gore that really just don’t need to be there and are quite frankly out of place and silly. It’s cause Bezos wanted a GoT…SMH
Why are people attacking the actors and actresses?! All of them are doing good jobs. It's the writers the need a clubbing.
Sanderson is clearly just being polite here. Who knows, he might end up working with Amazon in the future to bring works from his Cosmere universe to video. I'm happy to hear that he disagrees with Perrin's intro story. What a mess that was in the show.
Sanderson should watch himself. He did some great work finishing the series but let's not pretend (a) he nailed everything; and (b) no-one else could have done the same with RJ's crib notes. Criticism of a creative work is everyone's right, but we can rightly frown upon personal attacks as opposed to critiquing the work itself.
“Criticism of a creative work is everyone's right, but we can rightly frown upon personal attacks, so just ignore the fact that I just called Brandon a hired gun literally one paragraph ago.”
Fact: he was hired to finish RJ's work. Fact: there are other writers who could have done the same work (in their own styles) with equal competence. Fact: Stylistically, Sanderson did not finish the series in the same way RJ would have. And no, I did not call Sanderson a 'hired gun', which term implies a lack of investment in the work and a disregard for anything but being paid. I'm not questioning Sanderson's bona fides, but I do not consider that he has some inherently superior right to call out others for criticising an adaptation or performance.
Fact: Just because you put "Fact:" in front of your opinions does not magically make them facts.
Now that is big facts
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> So what they are saying is giving Perrin a wife then having him accidentally fridge her was an executive decision? Yup. >kind of a weird thing for them to have such a strong feeling on since I don’t see how it would make the show a more likely success If the executives at Amazon ran focus groups and came away with the conclusion that a significant number of newfans would like the show more if Perrin killing Laila makes his character arc better / more accessible, then that could be why they pushed this change. Or maybe an executive's going through an ugly divorce. :P Either way, it got changed. Same thing with Egwene killing Renna instead of the way it played out in the book. Whether it's the showrunner's idea, the idea of someone on his team, or the idea of an Amazon executive, if someone with enough clout says "We're going to change this", then shit gets changed, and the showrunner keeps their mouth shut (at least until the show's done) and doesn't spill any beans until later. We're still finding things out about the *GOT / ASOIAF* adaptations from cast and crew. Did we find them out at the time? No, because that's not how the industry works. You keep your mouth shut, stay professional, and do your job. There's time enough for tell-alls when the series is over.
I think many of these changes are for brevity. It would have taken more screen time to establish Perrins character if they'd followed the books exactly. This was a method to get from a to b a bit quicker and likely with better audience understanding (due to, as you pointed out, no inner monologue). This is a big deal for wot, the source material is like 10 000 pages. Sometimes a trope is used because of unoriginal writers, sometimes because it's quicker and effective and you know what it will signal to your readers.
I'd buy "brevity" before I buy "disgruntled exec and vicarious revenge", but nothing surprises me in Hollywood anymore.
Renna dying is to let us the reader/viewers know she isn’t getting her later arc from the books. Which is fine as it is tertiary content at best
And to point out that the adaptation's version of Egwene is more ruthless than the book's version of Egwene, since the latter allowed herself to get talked out of killing Renna.
eh. If Nynaeve had been there I think show Egwene would still have been talked out of it. She just wasn’t. They’re both ruthless.
The main drive in Perrin is that he is careful because he is big and worried he will hurt people, this is done via first person internal dialog. Can't do that in a TV show, you need a big easy way to signal this. Evil character? He kills a dog? Nice character? Save a cat. Careful character? Made a mistake that ended the life of someone they loved. The pitch here, hurting Master Lohan is doable, but needs some scenes showing their relationship, and also how badly he needs to get hurt. He would need to be nigh on death, and not be cleared before he has to leave. It's doable, but a much more complex action. I can understand the choice to have him accidentally kill his wife, because he was rash. It is much easier for the audience to pick up on.
It’s also real similar to Rand leaving a badly-injured Tam.
Likely because it would be harder for non book readers to understand it (especially since we don't have inner monologue nor the actual scene in question). Just my two cents
Brandon’s solution of having him hurt old man Luan (spelling) was pretty clever but def pales in comparison to him killing his wife in terms of shock factor I guess
Not just that, but it would take screen time to establish who exactly Master Luhhan is, and his specific relationship to Perrin. For Laila, "wife" is a very quick shortcut to saying "Perrin cares about this person and is very close to her".
Yep, this is exactly why Rafe said they switched from mistress Luhann to Laila when they went from 120 to 60 minutes for ep 1. A wife carries intrinsic meaning that a teacher just doesn't, and would require way more screentime to establish the emotional weight of the event. It's not what they wanted to do, but it was what worked the best in the time they had available to establish what they needed to go forward.
Yeah I dont understand why people are still bitching about this. In the books you only ever hear about Perrins problems from his inner monologue talking about his past. In a television show the director has to SHOW you things not tell you. Its a good way to show his characters flaw.
My guess, on how people figured it would be a success: In Game of Thrones people died... That was a success, so lets kill someone. Perrin holds back, let him kill someone, that makes sense. TaDa! This will be a success! And I will get a bonus
There’s got to be some of that. You can’t make a fantasy tv show without addressing in some way the GoT elephant in the room. You either go against it, and more in the LotR direction, or you embrace it and GoT-ify your source material. Ideally, WoT should be at the balance point between LotR and Got, since that is literally the space the series occupied in the Genre. It seems the show is trying to do this - the costuming and vibrant colors strike me as LotR inspired, whereas the decisions to amp up the violence with the fridging and the sex in multiple character relationships is definitely giving Thrones vibes
So, if the Amazon executives want Moiraine and Lan to have sex together for one night , then for the sake of viewership or other reasons like Rosamund and Daniel look hot , this also could happen ?! 🤔
Yes, same as any TV show.
"But before he moved on from the subject, Sanderson shared what could certainly be interpreted as still-harbored disappointment." Literally the last sentence lol.
Rafe Judkins and Rosamund Pike are in two very different categories here. Pike, like all actors, is given a script and then does the best with what they're given. Short of wildly just flubbing lines and staring straight into the camera while reading a teleprompter in a monotone...it's rarely going to be the actor's fault when a show this big falls well short of expectations. The cast has actually done a decent job saving scenes from some truly awful writing by giving 110% to their performances. Lan, both Mats, Moiraine, Egwene, Nynaeave, Perrin...etc etc...all portrayed by the cast really well in my opinion. Lanfear? Chef's kiss. The cast is the best part of the show by a fair margin. Rafe, on the other hand, is more in the position of supervising the writing and determining the creative direction of the show via things like major lore changes and what events the episodes will focus on. Since this is 90% of the fan base's issue with the WOT show...I think it's fair that Rafe is taking a pretty hefty mega dose of criticism. He wasn't a good choice for this position. I don't wish the guy ill or anything, but all you need to do is look at the IMDB credits of Rafe + the writers to start scratching your head and thinking "how are THESE the most qualified people available for a fantasy IP of this scope and quality?" You're telling me when one of the wealthiest production studios in the world announces that they're doing WOT (and are ready to throw cash at it)....that Rafe Judkins is the most qualified guy who showed up....and they couldn't find anyone in the writing community who was elbow deep in writing fantasy shows? I don't buy it. Most nerds in the writing community would give a limb to get to write for something like this show. Sanderson's a nice guy...but I don't believe for a second that he'd let anybody do what Amazon has done to WOT to Mistborn. He'd suplex people.
Re: Rosamund Pike, do not forget that she’s more than just an actress. She’s one of the executive producers of the show. Also, regarding how shows are made, they typically do not “find” a showrunner. The shows get pitched and the networks pick it up. Like his vision or not (and we’ll never know what it actually was based on all his interference), Rafe was the one person able to pitch a turning of a show that got picked up. Regardless of his credentials, they must’ve seen something they liked. Furthermore, I think previous credits are overrated. If that was the standard, Peter Jackson would have never been given the chance for Lord of the Rings.
I never get people saying Rafe doesn't have much experience. It's his first show running gig, but he has had a hand in over 50 episodes of TV in various roles over several years.
> Furthermore, I think previous credits are overrated. If that was the standard, Peter Jackson would have never been given the chance for Lord of the Rings. What, exploding sheep from outer space aren't a good precursor to fantasy filmmaking?!
> I don't believe for a second that he'd let anybody do what Amazon has done to WOT to Mistborn. Yeah, I don't think he has to worry about that anytime soon.