Wheel of time

[Excior]

On 10/9/2023 at 10:58 AM, cailano said:

I was so disappointed by the seemingly arbitrary changes made to the first two episodes of Season 1 that I abandoned ship. I don't mind when the film versions of books have to make some changes as I understand that it's a different medium, but the WoT episodes I saw reminded me of that lame attempt MTV made at the Shannara books more than it did a legitimate effort to treat the source material with respect.

I'm basically ignoring it and hoping someone else gets the rights down the road. I'm assuming it will be many years, which is a bummer.

 

I truly wish the Shannara series would have been better. The Elf Stones of Shannara was what got me into reading. I was really disappointed with what they gave us, Perhaps it a different channel had picked it up it would have been better.

[Neopopulas]

When i saw the Shanara series i was so pumped, way more so than WoT. I read Shanara much much earlier than i did wheel of time so i was really excited for it and it was very disappointing. Partly it was very budget constrained and that was obvious, whereas Amazon has all the money and less of the heart.

[Lord Foul]

I gave Season 2 episode 2 a watch, to see if it does actually get any better... nope! Dull, dull, dull. Even the fight scene was rather dull, and the rest all felt like the kind of filler you get in series that are trying to spin things out to fill 10+ episodes with only enough material for half that.

I think I'm done with it.

LOTR and GoT both managed to make the transition from page to screen work well. They made changes, yes, but they were changes that helped to keep the story engaging in the other medium. And, crucially, they had decent characters who were interesting and fun to watch and you found yourself actually caring about (for good or bad). WoT hasn't managed to do that. I don't care about any of the characters, heroes or villains. It's just not interesting enough to keep me sitting there watching.

 

Edited October 12, 2023 by Lord Foul (see edit history)

[TheFred]

Funnily enough, I was thinking of starting a thread about this because there was a thread about it back on old MW and I've just been watching the second series.

In that thread, I was a bit of a first series apologist but, the truth is, it wasn't very good. It wasn't terrible but I kept watching it hoping that it would get better and... it didn't. A lot of the changes were very jarring for me but, above all, it was just a bit... meh.

So I started watching the second series thinking "well, let's give it another chance, maybe it will get better" (but not really believing it). But... it did! Honestly, I liked the second series a lot. I wouldn't say it's just better, I'd say it's good, very good even; I really don't know what you lot are talking about, it's way better than the first series.

I still find some of the changes jarring but some of them work and, in all fairness, even some of the things that seemed weird about the first series started to come good as they came back around to hit key plot points from the books (for example, Moraine's... situation... in the second series I find a bit of a stretch, but it makes more sense now than it did before). I wouldn't necessarily have done it like that but, for the most part, I don't really mind it.

I do think the best episodes are later in the series, and it's probably only after maybe 1 and 2 that I realised I was really enjoying it (Nynaeve's tests in episode 3 were really good) but I wouldn't say that the first ones were weak or anything.

[Melkar]

I’m also one of the minority who thoroughly enjoyed the series. The first season was ok, but I felt it took a nosedive in the second half of the series (and thank god they didn’t decide to change the identity of the Dragon Reborn) to the point where I wasn’t sure where they were going with it. The second series was a massive improvement, and one that just got stronger and stronger as it went on. The one thing I would say is that although I’m not a fan of the actors portraying the main characters (Perrin and Rand in particular are so one note and wooden), it was the villains that made the series what it is. Ishamael and Lanfear in particular were absolutely awesome, and you can tell the actress playing Lanfear in particular was having an absolute blast playing her.

I’d say to anyone on the fence about the second series after the first couple of episodes to stick with it, it gets so much better further on in.

[chongjasmine]

I prefer the books to the show. I am always more of a book person.

And the show changing the storyline of the actual author only made me prefer the books more.

[Sellsword]

I enjoyed the series well enough (both seasons), though admittedly I tried not to put too much thought into it and just enjoy the show for what it was. I will say one thing though--it inspired me to give the books another look, and I'm currently finishing up book #2.

I tried reading the series ages ago (before Jordan died), got through book #8 before putting it down and moving on to other things. I'm told that this is pretty common though, so going to give it another shot and see if I can't finish the series this time. The writing is better than I remember it being from my first read-through 20 years ago...still not magnificent, but pretty solid.

Many of the changes the show made are indeed weird choices, but I'm trying not to be too much of a curmudgeon about it.

[TheFred]

I don't think it's only liked by the minority, actually; even the first series has pretty good reviews and ratings. Possibly better than I would have given it, honestly, and I liked the second series very much.

I was chatting to someone else about it recently, actually. They liked the first series too but actually kinda disliked the first two episodes of series 2. I think it's fair to say that it only gets good from S2 E3 onwards. That is, admittedly, a long time to wait for something to get good... though it's not like the rest of it is a massive chore, it's just pretty mediocre.

I definitely wouldn't have done all the changes like that, but by the end of series 2 I was far happier with what they'd altered than I was in series 1 - (some of) the changes started to make more sense and things just generally came together a lot better. In a way it actually kept me on my toes, as there were twists I didn't expect! At any rate, I've kind of come to terms with it; no show based on a book will ever be exactly the same as the source material, nor should it be.