It's been a couple weeks since we learned that Amazon and Sony were canceling The Wheel of Time, their TV adaptation of Robert Jordan's beloved epic fantasy ser
They took a popular series from a genre fanbase, hoping that it would cross over.
But, they then tinkered with the original material so much that the fan base they were hoping would boost it to broader popularity was split, reducing hype outside of the book fans.
So, the hype didn’t spread.
But, the show was also weak in its own right with wooden acting and played out tropes shoring up dubious writing choices. I’m not sure how much the flat performances were the actors not getting into character, and how much was bad direction choices, but too many of the early scenes were just bland and lacked personality.
Since the series is such that the characters are what make the epic scale relatable, a lot of people that came to the show either because an existing fan wanted to share the experience with them, or they had it come up prompted on the service just shrugged and stopped watching by the third episode.
There were definitely good parts to the show, but getting to them meant wading through a lot of meh, and that just isn’t the way to build a viewership.
I originally couldn’t finish the first episode. I went back and tried again. Made it through and wondered why I bothered. Then I forced myself to carry on and was so damn bored by the third episode I was checked out. I let it play through, but didn’t really engage.
It was just so meh.
Since they changed several of the characters’ personalities, I couldn’t even rely on preexisting engagement to carry me over until the plot got moving.
When it first came out, I knew there was no way to stay 100% with the books. There was just no way to adapt the first three books without structural changes because a lot of what goes on to progress the story is internal to the characters. Later books would be even harder to adapt. So I went in eager to see how they made it work, because they had the budget to make it work. And then you get blandness. It was the equivalent of unsalted oatmeal.
This is one of the things I most wanted done right like LOTR was. Right off the bat you saw changes that basically ruined it (looking at both men and women for dragon reborn but then characters are caught off guard by a female using male magic.) and to top it off they really dug into personality and relationship changes with a lot of screen time going through them while many other things were not shown. I personally think 100% is possible unless you mean literally doing the thought overlay like they did in the original dune movies. You don’t really have to have all the thoughts if you show what they are doing and you can add a bit of dialogue between characters that is about what they were thinking in some cases (I don’t view that as really veering away from source for that type of thing.)
They took a popular series from a genre fanbase, hoping that it would cross over.
But, they then tinkered with the original material so much that the fan base they were hoping would boost it to broader popularity was split, reducing hype outside of the book fans.
So, the hype didn’t spread.
But, the show was also weak in its own right with wooden acting and played out tropes shoring up dubious writing choices. I’m not sure how much the flat performances were the actors not getting into character, and how much was bad direction choices, but too many of the early scenes were just bland and lacked personality.
Since the series is such that the characters are what make the epic scale relatable, a lot of people that came to the show either because an existing fan wanted to share the experience with them, or they had it come up prompted on the service just shrugged and stopped watching by the third episode.
There were definitely good parts to the show, but getting to them meant wading through a lot of meh, and that just isn’t the way to build a viewership.
I originally couldn’t finish the first episode. I went back and tried again. Made it through and wondered why I bothered. Then I forced myself to carry on and was so damn bored by the third episode I was checked out. I let it play through, but didn’t really engage.
It was just so meh.
Since they changed several of the characters’ personalities, I couldn’t even rely on preexisting engagement to carry me over until the plot got moving.
When it first came out, I knew there was no way to stay 100% with the books. There was just no way to adapt the first three books without structural changes because a lot of what goes on to progress the story is internal to the characters. Later books would be even harder to adapt. So I went in eager to see how they made it work, because they had the budget to make it work. And then you get blandness. It was the equivalent of unsalted oatmeal.
This is one of the things I most wanted done right like LOTR was. Right off the bat you saw changes that basically ruined it (looking at both men and women for dragon reborn but then characters are caught off guard by a female using male magic.) and to top it off they really dug into personality and relationship changes with a lot of screen time going through them while many other things were not shown. I personally think 100% is possible unless you mean literally doing the thought overlay like they did in the original dune movies. You don’t really have to have all the thoughts if you show what they are doing and you can add a bit of dialogue between characters that is about what they were thinking in some cases (I don’t view that as really veering away from source for that type of thing.)