Spoilers ahead, if anyone cares. Spoiler: you shouldn't.
The three primary male characters in this series are Rand, Mat, and Perrin.
In the TV show, Rand is dating and fucking Egwene. Mat comes from a broken home with a lecherous and alcoholic father. Perrin is married, and he accidentally slaughters his wife in the very first episode.
None of this happens in the books.
Rand and Egwene seem like a thing initially, but it never happens. Mat's dad is a stand-up dude and a pillar of the community. Perrin is very single and doesn't accidentally murder anyone.
Let's summarize the changes:
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Rand goes from having no physical relationship with Egwene to fucking her in the first episode
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Mat's father goes from good and decent member of the community to drunken adulterer
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Perrin is given a fucking wife out of nowhere, and he accidentally kills her for cheap effect
I've never seen such radical, unnecessary, and terrible changes to a beloved series. I've also never seen the sheer cope I witnessed when surveying the WoT communities online. People are glossing over these massive, character-wrecking alterations like they're somehow part and parcel for adapting anything to TV/film. No, retards, this is not normal. This is fucked.
Brandon Sanderson, the dude who finished writing the books after Robert Jordan died, is on record saying that he tried to fight these changes, and that the fans would be upset about them. He of course moderated his position because you can't burn any bridges in the industry - especially not when you've got a whole bunch of your own books you'd like to see adapted. But even with his tacit permission to hate this nonsense, people are still posting about how they cried when they finally saw their favorite books on TV.
I'm rambling. I knew it would be bad. But Jesus Christ, I never expected it to be this flagrantly disrespectful. Robert Jordan is turning over in his grave.
I was already done by the 1st line "In the TV show, Rand is dating and fucking Egwene". That change alone is so unnecessary and changes so much of the dynamic between the characters that it's already not worthy of being called an adaption.
I expected it to be a dumpster fire and thus had 0 expectations, but I still hate everything about this.
JFC, this.
How the fuck they thought any of this would work just shows the massive disconnect between the producers and book fans.
Wow that’s worst than I thought! Plus the director can’t shut up about lgbt representation. So glad I read the books. These morons are clueless about the story.
WoT isn't fucking ASOIAF. Jordan didn't put any sex or even swearing in his books. This is just the showrunners trying to copy Game of Thrones' success by turning everything they do into a clone of it. Shoving their politics into it isn't even the biggest problem.
This was always going to be a shitshow, and it was never going to work.
He did but he made it somewhat historically appropriate like with "Mother's Milk" and other examples topical to the books like "Blood and Bloody Ashes". Most insults in the books relate to the actual book concepts hence why scrawling the Dragon's Tooth on someone's door is a sign of disrespect. Likewise calling someone a "Darkfriend" is considered one of the most insulting things anyone can be called in some regions of RandLand that when done it can often lead to duels to the death.
It depends on how easy is it to notice I guess. Farscape might lean more towards the cartoonish side of things but the BSG remake didn't have many problems likely due to "Frak" being phonetically similar enough to "Fuck" in the first place.
...and here I am thinking The Witcher adaptation was the worst thing I've seen. Jesus Christ! I don't even want to pirate this.
Oh, I guess you didn't yo-ho-ho Foundation (so-called) either .....
Ugh. Couldnt even finish 1/2 an episode.
In Poland there's a lot of random The Witcher merch now again (like https://osheeshop.eu/wiedzmin,188,0.html), but it's all based on the games.
The character who is written as consciously and constantly making sure he's as careful as possible around people because of his huge size and strength and spends several pages throughout the series being uncomfortable with his axe and the actions he's performed with it starts off the series as a murderer?
Of his own invented wife. He literally plunges his axe into her gut.
After watching, I find myself wondering if people who haven't read the books will even know what the hell is going on?
People typically fear/hate Aes Sedai, so why would she make an entrance like that? (bc she's a strong independent woman, and she deserves it!!!)
Lan is the embodiment of death, but he can barely hold his own against a Trolloc, and hides on the ground as Moiraine kills dozens, lol.
All the added scenes with Egwene and Nynaeve in Ep.1, they tried so hard to be like look! Women! Women important! Women powerful! See? Women! But they never explained what the women's circle even is, or why any of it was important, or it's dynamic, so it was all pointless gratification. And they burned up how much time on that trash instead of doing actual character development?
Egwene could have been introduced exactly like the story Tam told about Rand bringing her baskets of berries. An old crush, but NOOOO.
Why is Nynaeve so protective? Why is she important? Why do the other characters respect her so much? Obviously because she's a WOMAN! Can't be any other reason, like idk, her being their Wisdom, since they never explained what that is.
There's ample room in the story for female empowerment. But this is just too much. It's so cringe, like the scene in Avengers when all the women have to get together to secure the gauntlet. Forced and unnecessary.
Don't even get me started on the "weird diversity that has no place there or in the books where all of this was written". Source:https://communities.win/c/KotakuInAction2/p/13zzR9ycMu/the-woke-of-time-or-how-to-adapt/c
They don't adapt material because they like it, it's because it's a recognizable corpse they can hang their woke sjw shit on and something they can subvert to eliminate interest in the radically different original material.
So the main three are all from the hood.
Wheels don't last in the hood, never mind time.
I want to give Wheel of Time a try. Do I just start with the first book? Or is there a better starting point? (i.e. better arc or a later released prequel?)
Also is the older tv series worth checking out?
There is a prequel, but I would just start with the first book, "The Eye of the World". That was the way everyone experienced the books as they were released.
Link to Sando talking about WoT? The only thing I could find was him talking about how wonderful he casting was.
I cried when I saw the trailer--from one of the last untainted media properties of my childhood being destroyed.
First man is a slutmaker. Second man has a terrible father. Third man murdered his wife. I can almost detect a pattern here…
The Wheel of Time Winter Dragon Pilot was better than this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZOCCEuROPk
I get that some creative liberties are necessary when adapting material but seriously, why not just write your own fucking story if you aren't going to respect the source material at all? Is it maybe because you can't do storytelling or writing for shit and have to steal an established piece of work for anyone to be remotely interested? Rafe Judkins has been outright spiteful shit to the original book audience.
Oh thank God. I was beginning to think Sanderson was on board with this retarded mockery. He's been a consistently enjoyable author for audible listening and this would have sucked.
I'll just pretend this show never happened and move on.
I agree, but Brandon Sanderson has nothing to do with books, he's another leecher.
He finished the series with several thick books and did a great job. That is not nothing.
Especially because he was specifically sought out by Jordan's widow. And he's a better author in my opinion.
What do you mean?
WOT in unfinished. The last book in the series is KOD.
BS wrote fan fictions.
BS himself admitted back in 2008-2013:
'Scenes for the last book, either in written form or dictated during his last months. This includes some completed scenes. [BS later admitted that he rewrote the last scene: putting POVs, characters into it etc.]'
'A lot of these are fragments of scenes, a paragraph here and there, or a page of material that he expected to be expanded to a full chapter.'
'What was handed to me was a big pile of half-finished scenes or paragraphs where he wrote, "Well, I am either going to do this, this, or this. I was thinking of this, but it could be this."''
''Harriet handed me full creative control for the first draft. But going into it, nothing was off-limits. So I wrote them like I write any novel. Nothing is taken for granted, nothing is sacrosanct.''
''Finally he [BS] spoke of plotting, and how sometimes Jordan's notes have said two contradictory things 'maybe I'll do this, or maybe I'll do this other completely opposite thing'. Brandon said he then often had to choose between them, or sometimes choose a third thing entirely.''
''The thing about the notes is that a lot of the notes were to him, and so he would say things like 'I'm going to do this or this' and they're polar opposites. And so there are sequences like that, where I decide what we're going to do, and stuff like that.'
'Did you have to invent any of it yourself, or did Jordan leave a lot of it for you?
Brandon Sanderson: He left some of it for me, and then I had to make the rest.
'In the interviews that were posted this week, Brandon said he wrote Egwene's death scene [Jordan was undecided about it, just as in the case of Bela, Siuan etc or in the case of Aviendha, Galad etc], came up with Lan's final scene in ToM, and that it had been his idea to reunite Rand with Tam. Now that the final book is out, I have a feeling we're going to hear more about who wrote what, and that many fans will be surprised at how much Brandon had to come up with on his own. '
'Hey Terez any thoughts on Jason's statement in a recent interview that the outline was done by Harriet not RJ? That was the first I'd heard of that and was curious if you knew how it worked?
Terez: We've been told several times by Brandon that Alan was the outline guy, and Maria assisted him. I think Harriet gets technical credit sometimes for what Alan and Maria do, which is not to say that Harriet's own contributions aren't essential.'
I gotcha.
I don't really agree with your conclusion. I'll just say that I loved Wheel of Time, and Robert Jordan is one my absolutely favorite authors. Those books were a huge part of my childhood. I used to dream about a TV show, and now ... ugh.
Anyway, I've only read the Sanderson-WoT books once. They were fine. I mean, I'm also a big Sanderson fan, and I think he did about as good a job as could have been done. He was given an INCREDIBLY difficult task and yeah, he and others have fully admitted that he had to come up with a lot of material from scratch. But, I don't think it's fair to call them merely fan fiction.
My biggest problem with Sando-WoT books is that the characters didn't feel right. Jordan was a master of characters. Sando-Mat just doesn't feel like Mat. Sando-Rand is just a bit off. etc.
Again, no knock on Brandon Sanderson, I think he did a better job than almost anyone else.
2 for 2 on badly done adaptations now, although the Billy Zane one off between Ishamael and The Dragon was likely done to retain the rights to it.
Book 12 (AMOL): Jordan wrote about 15 000 words ('A lot of these are fragments of scenes, a paragraph here and there, or a page of material that he expected to be expanded to a full chapter.')
This was calculated by an editor.
What!? You can't put Saidar and Saidin into a single thing, the split is the whole point of the books
Oh no, friend. The Woke of Time is ALL WOMEN, ALL THE POWER, ALL THE TIME! What even is Saidin?
I didn't even think about the changes to the one power and the prophecy. Is the dragon reborn only a threat to the world if he's reborn as a male?
Personally, at this point, I hope it is Egwene. That'd be the icing on this cake.
Would cause so many fuckups throughout the book given what happens to Rand because he's the Dragon and what happens to Egwene because she's a pissy brat. The fact they're on completely different battlefields at the very end being one of the bigger ones.
Rofl, of course.
And he isn’t even married til later on. I just tell people to read the books.
I can't imagine his wife from the books even exists in this series. How could he happily remarry after literally sinking an axe in his previous wife's chest?
I honestly don’t understand why they bother to adapt books if they are going to butcher them. Books are clear the dragon reborn is a male. Also Egewen and Rand aren’t together
They adapt books because they want a built-in audience. Then they change the story to grab a second audience. The second audience is largely defined by people who probably wouldn't like the books, so the changes made are necessarily antithetical to the source material. This obviously upsets and alienates the original audience, but the producers don't care about that. They figure most of the people who are invested in the property will stick with it regardless, and those who don't can be smeared as racists and sexists.