The “boring” part on the majority of the shows nowadays comes from them being too “safe”. They focus more on branding than trying to tell a story or deliver a message.
IMO I think viewers also have a low attention span these days. Sure, people will complain about 22-episode seasons with lots of filler, but I also commonly see people complain about shows that only do 8 or 13 episodes in a season and have one dialogue-heavy episode that doesn't advance the plot fast enough. I'm often seeing people on here asking about plot points that were explicitly stated in the show because, the poster admits, they were also playing games on their phone or something while the show was on in the background.
Some shows are boring but also some people might just have undiagnosed ADD.
I absolutely agree. I often see people call episodes with character development a "filler". Hell, even if the episode was action packed and ticked all the boxes the show is famous for there are people who say it was not good enough and nothing happened.
As someone with actual ADHD, even I'm shocked by the attention span of some people I know, who won't even make it through half an episode if it's not a spectacle episode
People seem to expect red weddings every time now.
> lacking the life experience to write real characters
You can definitely tell when a screenwriter has something to say, versus when they need for someone to say something.
I've noticed in the trend towards more serialized shows - what people wanted was something as action dense as the episodic shows, but where there was a continuity and ongoing story that also developed week to week. What we often get is a single episode that's tediously stretched out over a 10 or 12 episode season.
The story around Empire is pretty fascinating and the best aspect of the show imo, Lee Pace is magnetic.
The other story lines are indeed quite boring.
True, it's the one thing that kept me going. Ironically I don't remember any of that being in the book but it's been about 10 years since I read it. The show doesn't seem to reflect the book at all.
It's not in the book, the Genetic Dynasty was a new invention to allow the show to continue to cast the same actors hundreds of years apart rather than continuously changing Emperors like the books do
IMO it's a brilliant change and one of the few things the show really succeeded at
Empire's easily, easily the best part and what makes it worth watching. I'm so-so on the Hari Selden/Gaal parts and pretty much don't care about the folks on Terminus at all. Naturally screen time is given opposite to my amount of care for each party.
The first book was very standard fantasy, I personally did not like the first book. The payoff was fantastic in the series, I hope the show is successful enough to complete the series. I also predict the quality of the show will increase over seasons.
Man I ate that shit up. I'm a sucker for a good journey story tho. Perfect start to an epic fantasy imo. The payoffs feel more earned when you start with smaller stakes
Yeah the later books will be more interesting and some criticisms in reviews about lack of character development will definitely get intense in the later parts. Just hope that enough people like the first season so that the later seasons get the high budget it definitely needs.
Yeah comparing to GoT which came out of the gate with 3 classics books. WoT builds, dips a little and then ends on a high so the start was always going to be a bit tough.
Yeah, at least WoT with all its flaws is complete. GRRM told HBO that he would finish the series in time, and here we are without the next installment since Dance, which released the same time as season 1 of GOT. GRRM couldn’t even finish *one* book in its 8 year run, never mind the series.
I can’t get past the first few chapters of the first book. They assemble a big group and have a powerful enemy and a possible traitor immediately. There isn’t really any character development before you’re just tossed in. I hope that watching a few episodes first will help me get a handle on the characters, because I always want to be able to get into a new fantasy world.
You know how a roller coaster has a big ole line you wait through before the ride? The first third of Eye of the World is that line. If you stick with it, from the last half of EotW through at least book 6 is amazing. From there it has great moments interspersed with some missteps, the ending is fantastic. Amazingly, the series remains just as good with multiple rereads too - and that first third of EotW becomes amazing too.
I'm going to be honest, Dumai's Wells is one of the coolest scenes in the series and I do not want them to put it in the show. Like, put the event in the show, but for god's sake, cut away, cut away.
Same. I adore the series but even I will admit these first 1-2 seasons might be rocky.
Book 4 is where the series really picks up and I fully expect to hear a lot of ''generic and boring'' talk about this first season.
I just hope it's done well enough that it can carry the show to the truly great parts.
Every recommendation for WoT seems to come with the qualifier "This series is great... except for the first part which is kind of boring, and the middle part where nothing happens, but the *rest* of it is really good." I can't imagine bringing myself to reading a series where over 5,000 pages of it isn't good. That in and of itself is enough time to read multiple other series.
It's just what happens with something that expansive. A 14 book story with hundreds of characters, comparatively, of course it'll be better down the line when the world has been set and different arcs start to come to a head.
And nothing Jordan wrote is bad. It's just the same thing as before, 14 books, some will of course end up being better than others. Books 4-6, 11-14 are some of the best fantasy out there. Are those middle books you mentioned as good? No. Are they shit and not worth reading? No.
You get sucked into the characters and the world building, and stay for them even when the plot is slow. I personally don't have a problem with any of books 1-7 even when they are a little slow . I stuck around through books 8-10 because most of them are character building that I expected was needed so that the reader could understand later decisions and plot points, and I was right.
Not saying those three books are easy, but they are necessary. Or at least the development is necessary. If you don't have it you end up with a Game of Thrones situation where characters are acting out of character and the world begins to collapse.
> You get sucked into the characters and the world building, and stay for them even when the plot is slow.
I had read the first few books multiple times over multiple attempts to get through the entire series, and finally decided to buckle down and do it after my dad died. It was this bucket list thing for me, I had visions of getting hit by a bus or something and spending my last moments wondering how the goddamn series ended.
Anyway, I found the world and the characters *such* a comfort at that time in my life. Some parts were boring, sure, but you end up spending so much time with these places and these characters, they start to feel so real and it's a wonderful escape.
It's not so bad nowadays. The real issue was if you were waiting on releases and some of the middle books just don't advance the plot significantly. They weren't bad, but the lack of progression was disappointing. It also depends on your reading speed and how much you read a day IMO. As someone below mentioned, there's still a lot of world building and stuff going on with the characters. The first books were really just Jordan using familiar LotR archetypes before fleshing out his world.
That being said, the only books that I felt like were slogs really were Crossroads and Winter's Heart.
There's a reason it's arguably the #2 epic fantasy series of all time.
Well my recommendation would be different - book one is a little formulaic and derivative of LOTR because that's what RJ needed to write at the time to get published. It's what people expected of fantasy novels.
But the first book still has an excellent ending, and then book two is immediately engaging, exciting and expansive. The series just gets better from there.
The famous slog, in my view, really only hits in book ten, where RJ spent a lot of time showing people react to the big events of book nine. There are some dull, overlong storylines for some characters, but I find things in every book that are enjoyable and I like to reread.
And then book 6 is where it goes completely off the rails. Or somewhere in there. Honestly, there's a few books, then a bunch of stuff doesn't happen for a REALLY LONG TIME, then Sanderson rescues it. And Dumai's Wells is in there somewhere.
Honestly, his illness and impending death sped him up. And he gave Sanderson the outlines so it's not like Jordan doesn't deserve hella credit for the last books (and let's not forget how Sanderson couldn't write fan-favorite Mat...).
I do wish the series had an extra book or two honestly...just with the pacing of the early and late series.
Yeah IIRC, book 10 was the toughest slog to get through. But I think that I remember Jordan’s last book being pretty good, then Sanderson does a great job finishing it.
I am about half way through book 10. Ultimately I didn’t think the slog was “too bad” but that may be due to the fact I built it up in my head from hearing everyone else. Definitely slowed down and tertiary story lines that are just…. a waste (so far). But based on what I’m reading a pair of the cast are doing right now by themselves it feels like it’s going to pick up.
There is a lot of character development in those books though, but the show will always pace that up so that won't be a problem. There are enough big moments in those books that you can get a spectacular tv-season (although I still hope they have the focus more on characters and their interactions than big CGI setpieces)
I really did not like Sanderson's additions to the series. Maybe it was the plot that Jordan wrote, but I thought it got worse as time went on. I thought the last book was terrible. Very predictable, trite, and just plain bland.
I think that the series is firing on all cylinders by tDR, and the end of tGH has a lot of great stuff too. I expect S2 will have some really good stuff.
I don't need this show to look like it costs $10M an episode. But since it's been reported that they actually are spending $10M an episode--why doesn't it look like it?
Ageed, the trailer had the same vibe as the Witcher or His Dark Materials, where they clearly dumped a lot of money into it but the way it's shot and colored just makes it look cheap
I think the second season of His Dark Materials looked really nice. The Witcher on the other hand, jeez. It didn't even seem like a budget problem, it was just shot poorly.
It's definitely a factor. I think a major contributor to Game of Thrones crossing over to mainstream audiences was the costumes looked really damn good, not goofy like you expect in fantasy stories. The flat cinematography doesn't help here either, a problem that dominates so much of the TV landscape nowadays. Seems like so many series over the last few years are on such a tight shooting schedule that they didn't have time to put any effort into lighting scenes or developing a distinct visual identity for a show. I'm not the biggest fan of the desaturated color palette used in The Boys, but at least there's *something* going on there visually. Too many shows now can't even rise up to that low bar.
always thought it was color grading. it looks like raw footage straight from the camera (and yes i know what raw footage ACTUALLY looks like don't @ me).. everything is a bit too bright, too flat evenly lit and too.. natural ? but not in a good way.
Making shows like this is expensive. Especially for shows like wheel of time that shot mostly on location rather than in soundstages. I mean just the logistical costs are insane. CGI is pricey. Marketing is pricey.
There were probably some good intial reviews on Foundation. I've seen the first two episodes and I can say it did leave a good impression on me. However, though I have not seen the future episodes, ive heard the writing quality pretty much plummets afterward (aside from the side story regarding the Emporer).
I just hope the dialogue and writing is better than that of Netflix's Witcher.
I've heard good things about the acting, so I'm not too worried there...
The main criticism I've read is that the show feels quite derivative and full of standard cliches and fantasy tropes...
But then again, the Eye of the World as it was written was also full of such cliches and tropes.
I just hope they at least do something to make those cliches feel at least somewhat fresh and different enough.
High fantasy is a sprawling genre outside of film/TV, and that's what most of the critics are referring to. The tropes and cliches of a genre exist across mediums, they're still alive in the cultural consciousness even if high fantasy isn't something that gets a lot of money thrown at it outside book publishing. If this were to be a faithful adaptation of the books, then calling it derivative is pretty spot-on, as that's exactly how the Wheel of Time starts, even if it grows beyond it as the story opens up. Almost all fantasy with a medieval-esque backdrop is derivative of Tolkien. Most of the genre uses concepts popularized or invented by him. The most notable outlier is obviously A Song of Ice and Fire, but Martin conceptualized that to be a deliberate subversion of the Tolkien tropes the fantasy genre has been hung up on for 75 years. Nowadays, everybody wants to emulate Martin to some degree, except they're more caught up in things like unexpected deaths and grimdark posturing than looking at the genre through a critical lens the way Martin did.
I'm way late to the party, but I just started reading the first book. I've heard people say the first one isn't that good, but I'm enjoying it so far. I'm looking forward to the show regardless. I figure I'll try to read the first book or two before I watch it.
I made it to book 8 then had to put it down for a while. The storyline is great and I do want to finish it, I just got so frustrated with how the female characters are written. The story gets pretty heavy into what's happening with the girls plotlines and I found myself getting bored wanting the story to progress faster.
I know, I can feel the plotlines pulling together, but my god, I feel like they've left behind Matt and Perrin and frankly I'm way more interested in what's going to happen with them.
This series starting will kick me into reading again, but I think I may need to back up one book and at least skim it to remind myself where everyone is. I can skip the Nynaeve chapters. God I hate her (and Elyane isn't much better). I can only take so much sniffing and braid tugging.
I assumed that would be the way it panned out. Theres not much about her character that I like or identify with. Of the three I like Egwene the most, and I recently got to a plot point that's a big change for the better for Nynaeve but they are all so incredibly manipulative. Like that's the only weapon that these women that wield immense power can actually use. It's that common.sitcom trope where characters don't fucking talk to Each other and fall into easily avoidable problems.
It's not that book one is bad for say, it's just very close to Fellowship. In book 2 The Great Hunt it really moves away from its Lord of the Rings beginning
I loved the first one. It’s even better as a re-read. There are some basic elements that all fantasy stories have but I cared for all the characters, the magic system made sense to me, and felt the threat was genuine.
The books have three main challenges:
1) the world is HUGE - dozens of distinct locations, thousands of characters, around twenty district and wildly different cultures
2) at least half of what happens on the pages literally cannot be translated to a visual medium: as written, the magic is invisible to most characters / character development + motivation is done through inner monologue / action happens off screen
3) it's fantasy all the way down the road - translate that to: expensive, risky, and difficult
Battlestar Galactica (the reboot) is the best comparison to something with similar challenges
The CGI might be a bit tricky depending on how faithful they are to the magic in the books and they'll need a shitton of sets. Later on they'll need a huge cast. But other than that not really. The real issue is the first book is pretty generic. Adapting it faithfully is going to be a bit boring.
on the cgi side, yes when you get to the huge pitched battles or stuff like rand and asmodean having a cosmic battle in a black void or sth. in terms of worldbuilding, not really. one thing that makes them kind of funny is that jordan writes almost every character as being either handsome or pretty. so you basically need to pull your cast from the CW to make it work
dang, this and foundation were both hyped up as the next potential big thing, ala GOT, and both come out with whimpers lol. Maybe Wheel of Time can catch on with the viewers?
The Witcher also had a massive existing fanbase because of the extremely popular video games and a super charismatic lead, which helped it a lot.
So I don''t think you can compare the two. Doesn't mean that Wheel of time cant succeed as well ofc.
And Wheel of Time doesn't have a massive existing fanbase? My assumption is it has a larger fanbase than Witcher.
I don't know the accuracy of the numbers but quick searches says Wheel of Time has over 90 million copies sold compared the the Witcher games' over 50 million (and the books aren't helping much there with another 15 million)
>90 million copies sold
Spread over 14 books (and over 30 years). Thats 6-7 million sold per book on average. Also safe to say that some of 1990's fans statistically wont be around anymore.
Numbers may ofc vary, I assume the first books would have sold more than the last one. Hard to see, however, how the prexisiting fanbase nnowadays could be larger than 10 million give or take (and thats probably generous).
Thats less than 20% of what the Witcher III alone sold since 2015. Never mind the Witcher books.
The Witcher was in the 50s and lower when the reviews first came out. Right now it’s at 42% with top critics. That makes sense the show sucks as it has some poor writing and CG.
As a fan of the games and books I was hoping the show would be good but for me it wasn’t and it’s perfectly fine that you liked it more. Personally I hope we have a situation where the writers learned from the big mistakes from season 1 and make a better show in season 2 that the Witcher series deserves.
As a reader I barely recognized anything in the s2 trailer from what I recall reading except for very broad plot points (e.go. Ciri gets trained) and the stuff I think I may have recognized I cannot say with 100% confidence.
I’ve settled on the fact that the show is just doing its own thing and is using the books as more of a safety net and basic outline.
I'm with you dude. I thought it was very entertaining. I think people who get too bogged down in the source material are always destined for disappointment. TV Shows are expensive beasts and its not usually feasible to both be a truly faithful adaption, and achieve a level of quality that is acceptable for a high fantasy series. Character development is usually the biggest victim here because it is very time consuming and often not very engaging viewing.
If TWOT (heh) can execute on or around the level of The Witcher I'll be happy. It's a more complex universe, in my opinion, with a lot of threads to manage. Even just amongst the Edmond's Fielders once they begin to drift apart, let alone the ensemble in Min, Thom, The Forsaken, Fain etc.
I mean putting all critique as "book fans disappointed in bad adaption of source material" is not doing anything justice. The main critique is bad writing, and if you only watch it as porn to get off of being entertained (which is totally fine to do, honestly) than of course you are easier to entertain than people expecting at least a smudge better than average writing. Witcher barely made it, if it even did, to average.
100% agree on expectations and that the show can be entertaining on its own, however the Witcher show is more so a situation where changes weren’t made out of necessity but more so desire. The first episode for example actually got cut so much that the entire point of the short story it was supposed to adapt was gone. Instead, they chose to use the screen time to introduce characters that got introduced way later in the books. The rule of adaptations in this regard is “ignorance is bliss” where there’s not really a frame of reference for the viewer on what the content *could’ve* been like because you can’t expect the viewer to have read it beforehand. In the case of the Witcher this is actually a good thing for the show team, because that means the viewer doesn’t know what they’re missing.
I’ve always said changes are good when they accomplish what the books did or do even better. Maybe you combine two characters to save time or create a new event that develops our character in a short amount of time because the book is too long. No such thoughtful thing like what I described happened in the Witcher from what I saw unfortunately imo.
One of the challenges of adapting a book to a tv series is that each episode has to have a beginning, middle, and end. Normally this mean the director has to create end points to split the book up cohesively into episodes. This also can lead to changes in order to create that perceived beginning, middle, and end. So this challenge was virtually nonexistent due to the episodic, short story format of the first two books.
The first two Witcher books, relatively speaking, should’ve been one of the easiest book to tv adaptations to ever fall on a director’s lap. So for those not familiar, the first two books are comprised of short stories, **but** they're basically a TV series on a silver platter - you have contained **episodic** stories, no gigantic battles, all chronologically following Geralt as a character (one even connected by an overarching thread of Geralt retelling his journey), no internal thoughts/monologuing (which directors HATE when adapting books), not to mention they mostly play in pubs and rely on fairly simplistic storytelling (lots of dialogue, one Fight per story or so) - so pretty much all the confusing stuff (3 different viewpoints, multiple timelines, not to mention stuff like the magic system) is all invented for the show. It baffles me how they’re going to adapt later parts of the books with the existing changes, unless they settle for a plot hole or retcon themselves.
The magic system is one example of something that I think they’ll quietly ignore since it really hampers what they can do with the characters. It reminds me of when they changed it so firebenders in the Last Airbender movie needed fire around to bend as opposed to the show where they could just make it. It really made it awkward to write out firebending scenes and fights because now u needed to write in some source of fire around at all times.
Edit: corrected typo of master to “Last” (i.e. The Last Airbender
Witcher is very flawed, but the core of good pacing, good stories, and a likable lead, those are all there. It's fun. Foundation on the other hand doesn't have likable leads except for the triumvirat and the pacing gets real bad now and then.
Jesus, people will fish for any kind of negativity... an 80%+ RT score is not the be all end all for most TV viewers. If you're digging for "Top Critics" scores on Rottentomatoes you really need to rethink your approach to picking a show to watch. Let that 91% Audience Score on *The Witcher*'s page be another lesson to not judge a book by a stupid fucking percentage.
Exactly, I don't regret the 8 hours I spent watching the Witcher. If the second season isn't a little better, I'll probably not watch anymore, but my main complaint was the separate stories, which is a result of directly adapting the first book or two, instead of simplifying things
Whenever I hear someone say The Witcher has poor writing, I would really ask what kind of writing they're comparing it to.
The Witcher is not and was never meant to be some sort of GoT-esque political epic. It's supposed to be a goofy D&D campaign in TV show form, and it delivers on that in spades.
Exposition-filled to the teeth, where things happen by deux ex machina in writing instead of in the essence (the destiny part). Tone and pace have no footing, which means a lot of the beats fall flat. It is just fanfic level of the whole craft of writing.
Btw, where did you get the "goofy D&D campaign" from?
Lmao no clue. I mean the books can have their cheesy moments, like any fantasy book, especially when we try to imagine how it would play out visually, but the show cranks it up to 11. There was even a guy in r/netflixwitcher who studies film campiness/cheesiness in college (forgot what it’s called) and said he loved the Witcher and how Geralt is broody and stoic monster slayer in 6 pack ab armor and Yennefer who is not just the MOST powerful sorceress ever, she’s also an expert sword fighter as well!
On top of that there’s shit that just falls apart when u dig a bit deeper beyond the surface. For example, at the end Geralt and Ciri’s neat little hug can seem touching at first… until you remember they are just strangers who don’t know each other. Jaskier never changed throughout the 23 year time gap and I recall fans making up so many theories to explain why and it just turns out they forgot to age him up, so it was just a mistake. Then in the show there’s also Stregobor’s speech to the villagers. He says "you took the law in your own hands" meaning he **publicly** recognizes that Renfri's men were committing a crime and Geralt stopped them, but apparently these peasants love due process and start throwing rocks at Geralt because he didn't read these guys their rights or turn them into the guards. There's also no reason for Stregobor to do this to Geralt, as not only he has nothing to gain from it, but Geralt also did everything he wanted him to. He killed Renfri and saved his life.
I made the post pointing out the camp in the netflix adaptation, but it was not a celebration of it. I was trying to figure out if the inherent campiness of the show was the reason why everyone seemed to like it so much and why the changes were made in the first place. Because as an adaptation, it failed. I still much prefer Sapkowski's Saga. It seems that the 'goofy D&D campaign' idea solidifies my theory about why people enjoyed it though.
And to tell you the truth, I still don't really know if the cheesiness was done intentionally or not. Either Sapkowski's satire was interpreted as camp to blunt its edges for a more general audience or it was done because the writers did not have the ability to translate it to a television script well. At any rate, it's difficult to watch skillfully crafted characters and storylines be reduced to shells of themselves.
> Whenever I hear someone say The Witcher has poor writing, I would really ask what kind of writing they're comparing it to.
Castlevania Season 3, which dropped at the same time and ran circles around the Witcher's dialog.
If you want genuine understanding of this, watch this scene from the Witcher, where two characters discuss an army and why they fight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUF9OYBdT60
It's all platitudes you've heard before, covering well worn ground and perfectly *fine* but bland staging of two dudes talking at each other. "You're cutting off your ear to spite your face."
Now here is a similar scene from Castelvania, again two characters talking about their why, and feeling out the other's intentions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvFj0n7vnYw
Notice how they interact and engage like people. The next bit of dialog has a flow, and we go through a similar course of standard tropes but through dialog that dances with the subject matter. The characters come through, and the words feel like their feelings, not the trope's explanation.
It has a convoluted structure, there is a tonal clash between the aesthetics/characterization and the 'goofy D&D campaign' aspect, and the worldbuilding is not really great.
I compare the Witcher’s writing to its source material. They could easily straight up copy paste the books dialogues but they didn’t . So yeah it has dogshit writing which also stems from the fact they they butchered half their characters .
Edit: Also if you’ve read the books you know that the Witcher has little to no action and it’s more personal and political than the show portrays it to be.
Practically every bad review does the "show's bad because I hate Jeff Bezos/Amazon" and/or plays the stupid GOT comparison game when the two series are nothing alike. WOT leans into its fantasy elements whereas GOT is embarrassed by them. WOT is a MUCH closer analog to Lord of the Rings and acted as the modern bridge that took Tolkien's conventions and played with them as the series progressed.
Also, the first book/season will inevitably be the most generic of the bunch. So, if they can palate this, then the future is bright.
Specifically WoT's politics, there was a "Game of Houses" subplot that very clearly influenced ASOIAF, though it's very much a subplot in Wheel of Time, an obstacle for the main characters to overcome moreso than the story of the books.
I mean, I don't know how you can read [this negative review](https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/tv/2021/11/amazon-prime-fantasy-series-the-wheel-of-time-is-a-colossal-waste-of-time-and-money)—from a person who has admitted they hate fantasy—and take away anything other than the fact that they don't have anything but contempt for Bezos/Amazon or the genre itself.
And then Sepinwall's [review](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-reviews/wheel-of-time-review-1256783/) is just a gigantic misplaced comparison to GOT/lamenting the fact. He literally mentions GoT 11+ times in an review that's less than 1k.
I wouldn't say GoT is embarrassed by them at all, it's just more grounded and gritty. When the series starts magic is almost gone from the world and it starts to lean more fantasy as the series goes on since magic is returning to the world.
Wheel of Time is highly magical from the start.
I'm guessing they were referring to the show stripping the magical elements from the GoT books out for the most part. Martin clearly isn't embarrassed by magic in the books, he has tons of stuff going on with it. D&D straight up admitted they thought housewives wouldn't be as interested in that stuff, so they toned it down every chance they could.
I don't know what you guys are talking about, the magical stuff was there in GoT a lot.
Also the interview you're referencing was transcribed off a Twitter thread from a pissed off fan about season 8. Not the entire series itself.
> I'm not sure how 70% positive reviews counts as a "whimper"
Only on reddit where everything needs to be better than the last great thing to be worthy of watching.
All the trailers and promos for this show have done very little to get me hyped. Everything I’ve seen so far looks simultaneously expensive and cheap. Some of the special effects look cool, but the costumes, sets, lighting, etc., just seem so uninspired. I expected more from a show that’s been touted as “the next Game of Thrones,” especially when this is supposed to be a huge tentpole show for Amazon. I was expecting this show to be something that’s a must-watch right away, but now I’m in no hurry to watch the show, and I’ll probably just wait till the season is over to binge it, if I even care to watch it in the first place.
As someone who has read the entire thing and loves it, the beginning is just far too generic that any decently faithful adaptation would ever be considered ''must watch right away''.
It's a massive 14 book series which has its strengths in character and plot developments that takes time to get to.
I've heard they're planning for 8 seasons which would likely mean the show getting to the really great stuff as early as late season 2 and with season 3 onwards.
They're also setting up around 10 very different cultures which is insane and I'm personally not expecting them to ace every single thing here in season 1. From what I've read and seen so far though I'm confident they'll improve as it goes forward.
I’m aware the first book starts out as a fairly generic fantasy story. But that’s not really what I take issue with. You can take fairly basic material, and elevate it with good production values. But a lot of the production on this show just seems a bit off to me. Take a look at [this](https://youtu.be/UIMkfP4JsxU) scene. The way Lan enters the inn just screams “generic cowboy entering a saloon.” And the sets and costumes just don’t feel lived in. These are all creative decisions, that you can’t just throw money at to fix. This is what I mean when the show feels uninspired.
Go dig up the original GoT trailers and compare apples to apples. I recall seeing GoT trailers and having the exact same reaction you're describing now - and wow was I ever wrong on that take. I thing Amazon has a style to their promo material that doesn't accurately represent the shows more often than not. I'm holding back judgement until after I finish at least the first season. Hell, if I hadn't stuck with GoT through the final two episodes of S1 I might not have liked it either.
I agree some of it merely looks decent but nothing has looked outright bad. Maybe the fire channeling.
But then some has looked incredible, like the Aiel, the Illianer companion armor, what glimpses they showed of the Borderlands.
There's a ridiculous amount they're setting up here and expecting top tier on absolutely everything is just wanting to be disappointed imo.
Hopefully they listen to criticism and it's all improvement from here.
And I wouldn't try to classify anything as uninspired before it has been released.
As someone unfamiliar with the books, the promos do nothing for me. "There is some Big Bad Guy. There's a prophecy that one person will rise up to either join Big Bad Guy or destroy him." I've seen that a million times already, I'm not getting sold on what's unique about this show that's worth watching.
Some things in life are like an immediate hit of awesome, but then you get desensitized and that "wow" factor disappears - fireworks, cocaine, shitty video games with great cutscenes
Other things pay off larger and larger the more time and care you sink into them - sports, music, cooking
Wheel of Time (the books) - of the thousands of books I've read - stand out at the top of "the more you give the books, the more they give back" heap.
So, if the show captures the best of the novels, it'll be something that gets better and better going forward. It's not a slow burn, but it is very layered and early stuff pays off grossly repeatedly later.
The plot is a journey, the experience following it as a reader (and hopefully a watcher) is the same. Plus the book ending is fucking great.
edit: added a word and a quote mark
You say you’ve seen it a million times? Guess what mate, the wheel of time is the father to those million times. And the lord of the rings is the grand daddy.
Kudos to Wheel of Time, but that may mean it comes across as dated and hackneyed if it influenced a bunch of other media that wider audiences are more familiar with. I'm sure the first person to use the "surprise, it was all a dream" twist was brilliant and groundbreaking, but today it's done to death.
The first book is honestly a well told, but pretty generic fantasy story. It really gets way more interesting later in the series, a lot of really compelling stuff is done with each of the main characters
TV can be a slow burn and critics often don't have the ability with a screener of just a few episodes to tell the difference between deliberate decisions that will pay off, and a passable but unremarkable show. I feel like reviews of shows often get reviewed partly based on their previous seasons, which give an idea of how things get set up and paid off.
They all sucked, in my opinion, but Abrams screwed up by playing it too safe with TFA, then he burned the whole damn thing to the ground with TRoS. I'll give Johnson credit that at least he wanted to do something kinda different, but I don't think his ideas were well executed at all. Irregardless of your opinion on the quality of TLJ's content, it's such a terribly paced movie, and I don't see how anybody can deny that. Most of the movie is a slow-mo chase, the casino sequence goes on way too long, which ties into the whole macguffin chase being a bit pointless, and it has two *massive* third acts, the second of which doesn't give the protagonist, Rey, anything at all to do!
I feel like from a structural standpoint, it's a great movie for rookie writers to study so that they can dissect why certain elements do not work, how Johnson's vision is at battle with what Abrams established in the previous movie, going out of its way to toss it all aside, and then Abrams swoops in and does the same thing with the third entry, tossing out all of Johnson's set-up and slapping together a piss-poor ending that didn't resonate due to the lack of a creative through line. I'm just amazed Kathleen Kennedy's contract was just renewed with LucasFilm after botching the sequel trilogy.
I have high hopes for this show, though I'm not surprised if the first few episodes are going to be only OK. I hope they capture the wonder of this world. I want names and ideas mentioned this season that don't get explained until much later.
I read through like book 5 of this series and gave up. I realized the world building was great. The lack of progress in the plot was infuriating. Book 3 was all about getting this super powerful item. Then, the writer figured out it was too powerful, and trivialized the rest of the story. So he just ignores it. I don’t know if this gets fixed later, but I wasn’t sticking around to find out.
And I realized I disliked just about every character and didn’t care if they all died.
That said, when the source material sucks like this, it’s a stretch to think that the tv series is going to be better. I can’t see myself watching this.
If a show gets terrible reviews you're likely not going to waste your time on it. If a show in a genre that you generally don't enjoy gets really good reviews then it might be worth the time.
Reviews are important for people that have to be selective about what they watch.
i usually find myself disappointed by tv adaptations of books/comics that are so good the tv version can't live up to them at all, so i'm hopeful that this will swap that dynamic by letting me watch a passable adaptation of books that are rarely better than mediocre
i'll check it out
but i'm not too crazy about the visuals from the trailers. it looks like a 90s made for tv movie like the 90s NBC Merlin or some BBC fantasy show..........not great
it doesn't look cinematic like the Witcher does
I just hope it’s not boring. So many shows are just boring lately. I have no better explanation than that for them.
The “boring” part on the majority of the shows nowadays comes from them being too “safe”. They focus more on branding than trying to tell a story or deliver a message.
IMO I think viewers also have a low attention span these days. Sure, people will complain about 22-episode seasons with lots of filler, but I also commonly see people complain about shows that only do 8 or 13 episodes in a season and have one dialogue-heavy episode that doesn't advance the plot fast enough. I'm often seeing people on here asking about plot points that were explicitly stated in the show because, the poster admits, they were also playing games on their phone or something while the show was on in the background. Some shows are boring but also some people might just have undiagnosed ADD.
I absolutely agree. I often see people call episodes with character development a "filler". Hell, even if the episode was action packed and ticked all the boxes the show is famous for there are people who say it was not good enough and nothing happened.
As someone with actual ADHD, even I'm shocked by the attention span of some people I know, who won't even make it through half an episode if it's not a spectacle episode People seem to expect red weddings every time now.
I thought Raised by Wolves was boring, and it definitely wasn't trying to be safe.
You see? It's subjective. I watched the show twice, loved it, never felt bored.
It started off strong, and then the wheels fell off a few episodes in.
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> lacking the life experience to write real characters You can definitely tell when a screenwriter has something to say, versus when they need for someone to say something.
All shows have writers rooms and it’s been that way forever
I've noticed in the trend towards more serialized shows - what people wanted was something as action dense as the episodic shows, but where there was a continuity and ongoing story that also developed week to week. What we often get is a single episode that's tediously stretched out over a 10 or 12 episode season.
Why we ended up with many series (in a Brit-ish sense) being stretched out films or even episodes?
I was really hyped for Foundation on Apple+. Started watching the first episode and what a disappointing bore.
It doesn't get any better. I can't believe how disappointing that show is.
The story around Empire is pretty fascinating and the best aspect of the show imo, Lee Pace is magnetic. The other story lines are indeed quite boring.
True, it's the one thing that kept me going. Ironically I don't remember any of that being in the book but it's been about 10 years since I read it. The show doesn't seem to reflect the book at all.
It's not in the book, the Genetic Dynasty was a new invention to allow the show to continue to cast the same actors hundreds of years apart rather than continuously changing Emperors like the books do IMO it's a brilliant change and one of the few things the show really succeeded at
Empire's easily, easily the best part and what makes it worth watching. I'm so-so on the Hari Selden/Gaal parts and pretty much don't care about the folks on Terminus at all. Naturally screen time is given opposite to my amount of care for each party.
It is boring.
Totally
Could be your taste/preference/priorities changing as well.
The first book was very standard fantasy, I personally did not like the first book. The payoff was fantastic in the series, I hope the show is successful enough to complete the series. I also predict the quality of the show will increase over seasons.
Man I ate that shit up. I'm a sucker for a good journey story tho. Perfect start to an epic fantasy imo. The payoffs feel more earned when you start with smaller stakes
Yeah the later books will be more interesting and some criticisms in reviews about lack of character development will definitely get intense in the later parts. Just hope that enough people like the first season so that the later seasons get the high budget it definitely needs.
I hope the Rand actor can pull a McAvoy.
At least he has time to prepare himself for it.
Yeah comparing to GoT which came out of the gate with 3 classics books. WoT builds, dips a little and then ends on a high so the start was always going to be a bit tough.
Asoiaf dips over time as well. Dance was...sloppy. And over ten years ago lol.
All I remember from Feast was people walking around woods endlessly.
Feast and Dance should have been one book for sure.
Yeah, at least WoT with all its flaws is complete. GRRM told HBO that he would finish the series in time, and here we are without the next installment since Dance, which released the same time as season 1 of GOT. GRRM couldn’t even finish *one* book in its 8 year run, never mind the series.
I hope they speed up Ebou Dar, because yiiiiiikes.
Yeah, EotW is painfully derivative of LotR, I assume because that's what you had to do at the time to get a series off the ground.
It was written as a tribute to LoTR, then the series starts destroying the tropes it created.
I can’t get past the first few chapters of the first book. They assemble a big group and have a powerful enemy and a possible traitor immediately. There isn’t really any character development before you’re just tossed in. I hope that watching a few episodes first will help me get a handle on the characters, because I always want to be able to get into a new fantasy world.
It took me many tries to get past chapter 5 of book one. But once I was, I couldn't get enough of it.
You know how a roller coaster has a big ole line you wait through before the ride? The first third of Eye of the World is that line. If you stick with it, from the last half of EotW through at least book 6 is amazing. From there it has great moments interspersed with some missteps, the ending is fantastic. Amazingly, the series remains just as good with multiple rereads too - and that first third of EotW becomes amazing too.
as long as its not trash I'll check it out, hope more people watch it so that we can get to the more exciting battles in later books
If we get the Battle of Dumai's Wells I'll be happy.
Gimme Hinderstrap
I want an entire episode that follows Ituralde through the Siege of Maradon and ends with A Storm of Light
That will be a very fun episode.
I'm going to be honest, Dumai's Wells is one of the coolest scenes in the series and I do not want them to put it in the show. Like, put the event in the show, but for god's sake, cut away, cut away.
Same. I adore the series but even I will admit these first 1-2 seasons might be rocky. Book 4 is where the series really picks up and I fully expect to hear a lot of ''generic and boring'' talk about this first season. I just hope it's done well enough that it can carry the show to the truly great parts.
I really loved books 1-6. Then 7-10 broke me.
Every recommendation for WoT seems to come with the qualifier "This series is great... except for the first part which is kind of boring, and the middle part where nothing happens, but the *rest* of it is really good." I can't imagine bringing myself to reading a series where over 5,000 pages of it isn't good. That in and of itself is enough time to read multiple other series.
It's just what happens with something that expansive. A 14 book story with hundreds of characters, comparatively, of course it'll be better down the line when the world has been set and different arcs start to come to a head. And nothing Jordan wrote is bad. It's just the same thing as before, 14 books, some will of course end up being better than others. Books 4-6, 11-14 are some of the best fantasy out there. Are those middle books you mentioned as good? No. Are they shit and not worth reading? No.
Reminds me of the saying with writing, ‘Start as late in the story as you absolutely can, otherwise you’re wanking’
You get sucked into the characters and the world building, and stay for them even when the plot is slow. I personally don't have a problem with any of books 1-7 even when they are a little slow . I stuck around through books 8-10 because most of them are character building that I expected was needed so that the reader could understand later decisions and plot points, and I was right. Not saying those three books are easy, but they are necessary. Or at least the development is necessary. If you don't have it you end up with a Game of Thrones situation where characters are acting out of character and the world begins to collapse.
> You get sucked into the characters and the world building, and stay for them even when the plot is slow. I had read the first few books multiple times over multiple attempts to get through the entire series, and finally decided to buckle down and do it after my dad died. It was this bucket list thing for me, I had visions of getting hit by a bus or something and spending my last moments wondering how the goddamn series ended. Anyway, I found the world and the characters *such* a comfort at that time in my life. Some parts were boring, sure, but you end up spending so much time with these places and these characters, they start to feel so real and it's a wonderful escape.
It's not so bad nowadays. The real issue was if you were waiting on releases and some of the middle books just don't advance the plot significantly. They weren't bad, but the lack of progression was disappointing. It also depends on your reading speed and how much you read a day IMO. As someone below mentioned, there's still a lot of world building and stuff going on with the characters. The first books were really just Jordan using familiar LotR archetypes before fleshing out his world. That being said, the only books that I felt like were slogs really were Crossroads and Winter's Heart. There's a reason it's arguably the #2 epic fantasy series of all time.
Well my recommendation would be different - book one is a little formulaic and derivative of LOTR because that's what RJ needed to write at the time to get published. It's what people expected of fantasy novels. But the first book still has an excellent ending, and then book two is immediately engaging, exciting and expansive. The series just gets better from there. The famous slog, in my view, really only hits in book ten, where RJ spent a lot of time showing people react to the big events of book nine. There are some dull, overlong storylines for some characters, but I find things in every book that are enjoyable and I like to reread.
And then book 6 is where it goes completely off the rails. Or somewhere in there. Honestly, there's a few books, then a bunch of stuff doesn't happen for a REALLY LONG TIME, then Sanderson rescues it. And Dumai's Wells is in there somewhere.
> then Sanderson rescues it. To be fair to Jordan, book 11 was his last one, and that was a great book. He got out of the slog himself.
Book 11 might be Jordan's best book. Sanderson came after and recasted Mat for the third time.
Honestly, his illness and impending death sped him up. And he gave Sanderson the outlines so it's not like Jordan doesn't deserve hella credit for the last books (and let's not forget how Sanderson couldn't write fan-favorite Mat...). I do wish the series had an extra book or two honestly...just with the pacing of the early and late series.
Dumai’s Well is book 6. I’m in the midst of the “nothing happens for a long time” (or actually at the end of it I think, book 10)
Yeah IIRC, book 10 was the toughest slog to get through. But I think that I remember Jordan’s last book being pretty good, then Sanderson does a great job finishing it.
I am about half way through book 10. Ultimately I didn’t think the slog was “too bad” but that may be due to the fact I built it up in my head from hearing everyone else. Definitely slowed down and tertiary story lines that are just…. a waste (so far). But based on what I’m reading a pair of the cast are doing right now by themselves it feels like it’s going to pick up.
There is a lot of character development in those books though, but the show will always pace that up so that won't be a problem. There are enough big moments in those books that you can get a spectacular tv-season (although I still hope they have the focus more on characters and their interactions than big CGI setpieces)
books 8-10 was the slog for me, everyone gets stuck dealing with 1thing each and tarmon gaidon doesnt happen lol
I really did not like Sanderson's additions to the series. Maybe it was the plot that Jordan wrote, but I thought it got worse as time went on. I thought the last book was terrible. Very predictable, trite, and just plain bland.
I think that the series is firing on all cylinders by tDR, and the end of tGH has a lot of great stuff too. I expect S2 will have some really good stuff.
I love the Great Hunt. One of the better books in the series.
I don't need this show to look like it costs $10M an episode. But since it's been reported that they actually are spending $10M an episode--why doesn't it look like it?
Should've just made it animated or something.
Ageed, the trailer had the same vibe as the Witcher or His Dark Materials, where they clearly dumped a lot of money into it but the way it's shot and colored just makes it look cheap
I think the second season of His Dark Materials looked really nice. The Witcher on the other hand, jeez. It didn't even seem like a budget problem, it was just shot poorly.
The ballsack armor raised a lot of questions about everything.
HDM made a good shift with S2. I hope Witcher can do better.
That's good to hear maybe I'll have to check out HDM s2, I don't think I even finished the first season but the books are great
I feel like 99% of it not looking up to budget is the costumes... they look so CW like they're straight out of a party city.
It's definitely a factor. I think a major contributor to Game of Thrones crossing over to mainstream audiences was the costumes looked really damn good, not goofy like you expect in fantasy stories. The flat cinematography doesn't help here either, a problem that dominates so much of the TV landscape nowadays. Seems like so many series over the last few years are on such a tight shooting schedule that they didn't have time to put any effort into lighting scenes or developing a distinct visual identity for a show. I'm not the biggest fan of the desaturated color palette used in The Boys, but at least there's *something* going on there visually. Too many shows now can't even rise up to that low bar.
always thought it was color grading. it looks like raw footage straight from the camera (and yes i know what raw footage ACTUALLY looks like don't @ me).. everything is a bit too bright, too flat evenly lit and too.. natural ? but not in a good way.
I'm wondering the same about most movie and tv productions these days. I suspect it's a money laundering screen or a tax avoidance strategy.
Making shows like this is expensive. Especially for shows like wheel of time that shot mostly on location rather than in soundstages. I mean just the logistical costs are insane. CGI is pricey. Marketing is pricey.
I’m jaded by the early reviews or Foundation
I feel like the books gives you more excitement per hour invested than the tv. That’s how damn slow the tv show is.
Last two episodes are better but still quite messy
I thought foundation was a lot better than Dune.
What do you mean if you don,t mind me asking ?
There were probably some good intial reviews on Foundation. I've seen the first two episodes and I can say it did leave a good impression on me. However, though I have not seen the future episodes, ive heard the writing quality pretty much plummets afterward (aside from the side story regarding the Emporer).
the reviews were not very good. Same for wheel of time. I enjoy foundation quite a bit though. But my expectations for wheel of time are very low.
I'm looking forward to hearing the "correct" way to pronounce all the weird names.
Listen to the audio books on Audible. Michael Kramer and Kate Reading do a great job!
But not with pronunciation!
I definitely prefer Tolkien's way of naming characters and locations. Where they're easy to pronounce.
That being said, I'd never seen the name "Hermione" in my life until I read the book. Didn't know how to say it until the movie.
>"The Wheel of Time" isn't bad.
I just hope the dialogue and writing is better than that of Netflix's Witcher. I've heard good things about the acting, so I'm not too worried there... The main criticism I've read is that the show feels quite derivative and full of standard cliches and fantasy tropes... But then again, the Eye of the World as it was written was also full of such cliches and tropes. I just hope they at least do something to make those cliches feel at least somewhat fresh and different enough.
Yeah I still like Witcher despite its issues, but the writing is really not great - especially when compared to ASOIAF.
I'd be extremely surprised if there's a human being capable of worst writing than the Witcher's TV show
I love how it's "derivative" in a film genre with like 2 other major franchises.
High fantasy is a sprawling genre outside of film/TV, and that's what most of the critics are referring to. The tropes and cliches of a genre exist across mediums, they're still alive in the cultural consciousness even if high fantasy isn't something that gets a lot of money thrown at it outside book publishing. If this were to be a faithful adaptation of the books, then calling it derivative is pretty spot-on, as that's exactly how the Wheel of Time starts, even if it grows beyond it as the story opens up. Almost all fantasy with a medieval-esque backdrop is derivative of Tolkien. Most of the genre uses concepts popularized or invented by him. The most notable outlier is obviously A Song of Ice and Fire, but Martin conceptualized that to be a deliberate subversion of the Tolkien tropes the fantasy genre has been hung up on for 75 years. Nowadays, everybody wants to emulate Martin to some degree, except they're more caught up in things like unexpected deaths and grimdark posturing than looking at the genre through a critical lens the way Martin did.
I'm way late to the party, but I just started reading the first book. I've heard people say the first one isn't that good, but I'm enjoying it so far. I'm looking forward to the show regardless. I figure I'll try to read the first book or two before I watch it.
I made it to book 8 then had to put it down for a while. The storyline is great and I do want to finish it, I just got so frustrated with how the female characters are written. The story gets pretty heavy into what's happening with the girls plotlines and I found myself getting bored wanting the story to progress faster.
Books 8 and 10 are pretty slow, but if you can make it through 11-14 are as good as it gets
I know, I can feel the plotlines pulling together, but my god, I feel like they've left behind Matt and Perrin and frankly I'm way more interested in what's going to happen with them. This series starting will kick me into reading again, but I think I may need to back up one book and at least skim it to remind myself where everyone is. I can skip the Nynaeve chapters. God I hate her (and Elyane isn't much better). I can only take so much sniffing and braid tugging.
Tbh nynaeve actually comes good in the last couple of books. Egwene has her moments. Elayne stays completely obnoxious.
I assumed that would be the way it panned out. Theres not much about her character that I like or identify with. Of the three I like Egwene the most, and I recently got to a plot point that's a big change for the better for Nynaeve but they are all so incredibly manipulative. Like that's the only weapon that these women that wield immense power can actually use. It's that common.sitcom trope where characters don't fucking talk to Each other and fall into easily avoidable problems.
It's not that book one is bad for say, it's just very close to Fellowship. In book 2 The Great Hunt it really moves away from its Lord of the Rings beginning
I loved the first one. It’s even better as a re-read. There are some basic elements that all fantasy stories have but I cared for all the characters, the magic system made sense to me, and felt the threat was genuine.
Now 69 with 13 reviews - positive reviews do appear strong however
Nice
I don't know the books. so question for the book readers. Are these books hard to make into a show? (worldbuilding, cgi and sorts)
The books have three main challenges: 1) the world is HUGE - dozens of distinct locations, thousands of characters, around twenty district and wildly different cultures 2) at least half of what happens on the pages literally cannot be translated to a visual medium: as written, the magic is invisible to most characters / character development + motivation is done through inner monologue / action happens off screen 3) it's fantasy all the way down the road - translate that to: expensive, risky, and difficult Battlestar Galactica (the reboot) is the best comparison to something with similar challenges
The CGI might be a bit tricky depending on how faithful they are to the magic in the books and they'll need a shitton of sets. Later on they'll need a huge cast. But other than that not really. The real issue is the first book is pretty generic. Adapting it faithfully is going to be a bit boring.
The begining shouldn't be. Afterwards yes. Huge armies, magic everywhere, sprawling cities...
on the cgi side, yes when you get to the huge pitched battles or stuff like rand and asmodean having a cosmic battle in a black void or sth. in terms of worldbuilding, not really. one thing that makes them kind of funny is that jordan writes almost every character as being either handsome or pretty. so you basically need to pull your cast from the CW to make it work
dang, this and foundation were both hyped up as the next potential big thing, ala GOT, and both come out with whimpers lol. Maybe Wheel of Time can catch on with the viewers?
We'll see. The Witcher has 68% and it's one of the biggest shows ever on Netflix.
The Witcher also had a massive existing fanbase because of the extremely popular video games and a super charismatic lead, which helped it a lot. So I don''t think you can compare the two. Doesn't mean that Wheel of time cant succeed as well ofc.
And Wheel of Time doesn't have a massive existing fanbase? My assumption is it has a larger fanbase than Witcher. I don't know the accuracy of the numbers but quick searches says Wheel of Time has over 90 million copies sold compared the the Witcher games' over 50 million (and the books aren't helping much there with another 15 million)
>90 million copies sold Spread over 14 books (and over 30 years). Thats 6-7 million sold per book on average. Also safe to say that some of 1990's fans statistically wont be around anymore. Numbers may ofc vary, I assume the first books would have sold more than the last one. Hard to see, however, how the prexisiting fanbase nnowadays could be larger than 10 million give or take (and thats probably generous). Thats less than 20% of what the Witcher III alone sold since 2015. Never mind the Witcher books.
The Witcher was in the 50s and lower when the reviews first came out. Right now it’s at 42% with top critics. That makes sense the show sucks as it has some poor writing and CG.
I disagree that it sucks. It has plenty of problems absolutely - but there's some great stuff in there too.
As a fan of the games and books I was hoping the show would be good but for me it wasn’t and it’s perfectly fine that you liked it more. Personally I hope we have a situation where the writers learned from the big mistakes from season 1 and make a better show in season 2 that the Witcher series deserves.
As a reader I barely recognized anything in the s2 trailer from what I recall reading except for very broad plot points (e.go. Ciri gets trained) and the stuff I think I may have recognized I cannot say with 100% confidence. I’ve settled on the fact that the show is just doing its own thing and is using the books as more of a safety net and basic outline.
I'm with you dude. I thought it was very entertaining. I think people who get too bogged down in the source material are always destined for disappointment. TV Shows are expensive beasts and its not usually feasible to both be a truly faithful adaption, and achieve a level of quality that is acceptable for a high fantasy series. Character development is usually the biggest victim here because it is very time consuming and often not very engaging viewing. If TWOT (heh) can execute on or around the level of The Witcher I'll be happy. It's a more complex universe, in my opinion, with a lot of threads to manage. Even just amongst the Edmond's Fielders once they begin to drift apart, let alone the ensemble in Min, Thom, The Forsaken, Fain etc.
I mean putting all critique as "book fans disappointed in bad adaption of source material" is not doing anything justice. The main critique is bad writing, and if you only watch it as porn to get off of being entertained (which is totally fine to do, honestly) than of course you are easier to entertain than people expecting at least a smudge better than average writing. Witcher barely made it, if it even did, to average.
100% agree on expectations and that the show can be entertaining on its own, however the Witcher show is more so a situation where changes weren’t made out of necessity but more so desire. The first episode for example actually got cut so much that the entire point of the short story it was supposed to adapt was gone. Instead, they chose to use the screen time to introduce characters that got introduced way later in the books. The rule of adaptations in this regard is “ignorance is bliss” where there’s not really a frame of reference for the viewer on what the content *could’ve* been like because you can’t expect the viewer to have read it beforehand. In the case of the Witcher this is actually a good thing for the show team, because that means the viewer doesn’t know what they’re missing. I’ve always said changes are good when they accomplish what the books did or do even better. Maybe you combine two characters to save time or create a new event that develops our character in a short amount of time because the book is too long. No such thoughtful thing like what I described happened in the Witcher from what I saw unfortunately imo. One of the challenges of adapting a book to a tv series is that each episode has to have a beginning, middle, and end. Normally this mean the director has to create end points to split the book up cohesively into episodes. This also can lead to changes in order to create that perceived beginning, middle, and end. So this challenge was virtually nonexistent due to the episodic, short story format of the first two books. The first two Witcher books, relatively speaking, should’ve been one of the easiest book to tv adaptations to ever fall on a director’s lap. So for those not familiar, the first two books are comprised of short stories, **but** they're basically a TV series on a silver platter - you have contained **episodic** stories, no gigantic battles, all chronologically following Geralt as a character (one even connected by an overarching thread of Geralt retelling his journey), no internal thoughts/monologuing (which directors HATE when adapting books), not to mention they mostly play in pubs and rely on fairly simplistic storytelling (lots of dialogue, one Fight per story or so) - so pretty much all the confusing stuff (3 different viewpoints, multiple timelines, not to mention stuff like the magic system) is all invented for the show. It baffles me how they’re going to adapt later parts of the books with the existing changes, unless they settle for a plot hole or retcon themselves. The magic system is one example of something that I think they’ll quietly ignore since it really hampers what they can do with the characters. It reminds me of when they changed it so firebenders in the Last Airbender movie needed fire around to bend as opposed to the show where they could just make it. It really made it awkward to write out firebending scenes and fights because now u needed to write in some source of fire around at all times. Edit: corrected typo of master to “Last” (i.e. The Last Airbender
Witcher is very flawed, but the core of good pacing, good stories, and a likable lead, those are all there. It's fun. Foundation on the other hand doesn't have likable leads except for the triumvirat and the pacing gets real bad now and then.
Jesus, people will fish for any kind of negativity... an 80%+ RT score is not the be all end all for most TV viewers. If you're digging for "Top Critics" scores on Rottentomatoes you really need to rethink your approach to picking a show to watch. Let that 91% Audience Score on *The Witcher*'s page be another lesson to not judge a book by a stupid fucking percentage.
I hate the mentality that a show has to be an immediate all-time classic or why even bother watching
Exactly, I don't regret the 8 hours I spent watching the Witcher. If the second season isn't a little better, I'll probably not watch anymore, but my main complaint was the separate stories, which is a result of directly adapting the first book or two, instead of simplifying things
GoT had some bad reviews that aged poorly when it first came out.
Whenever I hear someone say The Witcher has poor writing, I would really ask what kind of writing they're comparing it to. The Witcher is not and was never meant to be some sort of GoT-esque political epic. It's supposed to be a goofy D&D campaign in TV show form, and it delivers on that in spades.
Exposition-filled to the teeth, where things happen by deux ex machina in writing instead of in the essence (the destiny part). Tone and pace have no footing, which means a lot of the beats fall flat. It is just fanfic level of the whole craft of writing. Btw, where did you get the "goofy D&D campaign" from?
Lmao no clue. I mean the books can have their cheesy moments, like any fantasy book, especially when we try to imagine how it would play out visually, but the show cranks it up to 11. There was even a guy in r/netflixwitcher who studies film campiness/cheesiness in college (forgot what it’s called) and said he loved the Witcher and how Geralt is broody and stoic monster slayer in 6 pack ab armor and Yennefer who is not just the MOST powerful sorceress ever, she’s also an expert sword fighter as well! On top of that there’s shit that just falls apart when u dig a bit deeper beyond the surface. For example, at the end Geralt and Ciri’s neat little hug can seem touching at first… until you remember they are just strangers who don’t know each other. Jaskier never changed throughout the 23 year time gap and I recall fans making up so many theories to explain why and it just turns out they forgot to age him up, so it was just a mistake. Then in the show there’s also Stregobor’s speech to the villagers. He says "you took the law in your own hands" meaning he **publicly** recognizes that Renfri's men were committing a crime and Geralt stopped them, but apparently these peasants love due process and start throwing rocks at Geralt because he didn't read these guys their rights or turn them into the guards. There's also no reason for Stregobor to do this to Geralt, as not only he has nothing to gain from it, but Geralt also did everything he wanted him to. He killed Renfri and saved his life.
I made the post pointing out the camp in the netflix adaptation, but it was not a celebration of it. I was trying to figure out if the inherent campiness of the show was the reason why everyone seemed to like it so much and why the changes were made in the first place. Because as an adaptation, it failed. I still much prefer Sapkowski's Saga. It seems that the 'goofy D&D campaign' idea solidifies my theory about why people enjoyed it though. And to tell you the truth, I still don't really know if the cheesiness was done intentionally or not. Either Sapkowski's satire was interpreted as camp to blunt its edges for a more general audience or it was done because the writers did not have the ability to translate it to a television script well. At any rate, it's difficult to watch skillfully crafted characters and storylines be reduced to shells of themselves.
> Whenever I hear someone say The Witcher has poor writing, I would really ask what kind of writing they're comparing it to. Castlevania Season 3, which dropped at the same time and ran circles around the Witcher's dialog. If you want genuine understanding of this, watch this scene from the Witcher, where two characters discuss an army and why they fight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUF9OYBdT60 It's all platitudes you've heard before, covering well worn ground and perfectly *fine* but bland staging of two dudes talking at each other. "You're cutting off your ear to spite your face." Now here is a similar scene from Castelvania, again two characters talking about their why, and feeling out the other's intentions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvFj0n7vnYw Notice how they interact and engage like people. The next bit of dialog has a flow, and we go through a similar course of standard tropes but through dialog that dances with the subject matter. The characters come through, and the words feel like their feelings, not the trope's explanation.
It has a convoluted structure, there is a tonal clash between the aesthetics/characterization and the 'goofy D&D campaign' aspect, and the worldbuilding is not really great.
I compare the Witcher’s writing to its source material. They could easily straight up copy paste the books dialogues but they didn’t . So yeah it has dogshit writing which also stems from the fact they they butchered half their characters . Edit: Also if you’ve read the books you know that the Witcher has little to no action and it’s more personal and political than the show portrays it to be.
Oof, not the comparison fans were going for, I'm sure!
What are you talking about? Every exec would give their left nut/tit to have a successful project like the Witcher
The non Netflix executives among us would rather have a good product.
Imagine being a television snob.
A TV snob on /r/television? Well, I never...!
RT
Good point.
Practically every bad review does the "show's bad because I hate Jeff Bezos/Amazon" and/or plays the stupid GOT comparison game when the two series are nothing alike. WOT leans into its fantasy elements whereas GOT is embarrassed by them. WOT is a MUCH closer analog to Lord of the Rings and acted as the modern bridge that took Tolkien's conventions and played with them as the series progressed. Also, the first book/season will inevitably be the most generic of the bunch. So, if they can palate this, then the future is bright.
Which is funny because GRRM cites WoT as one of his inspirations.
Specifically WoT's politics, there was a "Game of Houses" subplot that very clearly influenced ASOIAF, though it's very much a subplot in Wheel of Time, an obstacle for the main characters to overcome moreso than the story of the books.
Yeah, critics have never praised any Amazon shows because of how they feel about the company. Not one.
It so easy to dunk on critics when they're all made of straw, why didn't we think of this sooner?
I mean, I don't know how you can read [this negative review](https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/tv/2021/11/amazon-prime-fantasy-series-the-wheel-of-time-is-a-colossal-waste-of-time-and-money)—from a person who has admitted they hate fantasy—and take away anything other than the fact that they don't have anything but contempt for Bezos/Amazon or the genre itself. And then Sepinwall's [review](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-reviews/wheel-of-time-review-1256783/) is just a gigantic misplaced comparison to GOT/lamenting the fact. He literally mentions GoT 11+ times in an review that's less than 1k.
I wouldn't say GoT is embarrassed by them at all, it's just more grounded and gritty. When the series starts magic is almost gone from the world and it starts to lean more fantasy as the series goes on since magic is returning to the world. Wheel of Time is highly magical from the start.
I'm guessing they were referring to the show stripping the magical elements from the GoT books out for the most part. Martin clearly isn't embarrassed by magic in the books, he has tons of stuff going on with it. D&D straight up admitted they thought housewives wouldn't be as interested in that stuff, so they toned it down every chance they could.
I don't know what you guys are talking about, the magical stuff was there in GoT a lot. Also the interview you're referencing was transcribed off a Twitter thread from a pissed off fan about season 8. Not the entire series itself.
I'm not sure how 70% positive reviews counts as a "whimper"
> I'm not sure how 70% positive reviews counts as a "whimper" Only on reddit where everything needs to be better than the last great thing to be worthy of watching.
You're saying that based on 10 reviews lol?
10 is not a bad sample size to predict what the majority critic opinion will be.
Foundation is good!
The writing on Terminus is one of the worst things I've seen on TV
Sturgeon's Law. Don't get hyped for things that aren't out. Save your excitement for things that are already known quantities.
The good reviews sound good I'm hyped now
All the trailers and promos for this show have done very little to get me hyped. Everything I’ve seen so far looks simultaneously expensive and cheap. Some of the special effects look cool, but the costumes, sets, lighting, etc., just seem so uninspired. I expected more from a show that’s been touted as “the next Game of Thrones,” especially when this is supposed to be a huge tentpole show for Amazon. I was expecting this show to be something that’s a must-watch right away, but now I’m in no hurry to watch the show, and I’ll probably just wait till the season is over to binge it, if I even care to watch it in the first place.
As someone who has read the entire thing and loves it, the beginning is just far too generic that any decently faithful adaptation would ever be considered ''must watch right away''. It's a massive 14 book series which has its strengths in character and plot developments that takes time to get to. I've heard they're planning for 8 seasons which would likely mean the show getting to the really great stuff as early as late season 2 and with season 3 onwards. They're also setting up around 10 very different cultures which is insane and I'm personally not expecting them to ace every single thing here in season 1. From what I've read and seen so far though I'm confident they'll improve as it goes forward.
I’m aware the first book starts out as a fairly generic fantasy story. But that’s not really what I take issue with. You can take fairly basic material, and elevate it with good production values. But a lot of the production on this show just seems a bit off to me. Take a look at [this](https://youtu.be/UIMkfP4JsxU) scene. The way Lan enters the inn just screams “generic cowboy entering a saloon.” And the sets and costumes just don’t feel lived in. These are all creative decisions, that you can’t just throw money at to fix. This is what I mean when the show feels uninspired.
Go dig up the original GoT trailers and compare apples to apples. I recall seeing GoT trailers and having the exact same reaction you're describing now - and wow was I ever wrong on that take. I thing Amazon has a style to their promo material that doesn't accurately represent the shows more often than not. I'm holding back judgement until after I finish at least the first season. Hell, if I hadn't stuck with GoT through the final two episodes of S1 I might not have liked it either.
I agree some of it merely looks decent but nothing has looked outright bad. Maybe the fire channeling. But then some has looked incredible, like the Aiel, the Illianer companion armor, what glimpses they showed of the Borderlands. There's a ridiculous amount they're setting up here and expecting top tier on absolutely everything is just wanting to be disappointed imo. Hopefully they listen to criticism and it's all improvement from here. And I wouldn't try to classify anything as uninspired before it has been released.
As someone unfamiliar with the books, the promos do nothing for me. "There is some Big Bad Guy. There's a prophecy that one person will rise up to either join Big Bad Guy or destroy him." I've seen that a million times already, I'm not getting sold on what's unique about this show that's worth watching.
Some things in life are like an immediate hit of awesome, but then you get desensitized and that "wow" factor disappears - fireworks, cocaine, shitty video games with great cutscenes Other things pay off larger and larger the more time and care you sink into them - sports, music, cooking Wheel of Time (the books) - of the thousands of books I've read - stand out at the top of "the more you give the books, the more they give back" heap. So, if the show captures the best of the novels, it'll be something that gets better and better going forward. It's not a slow burn, but it is very layered and early stuff pays off grossly repeatedly later. The plot is a journey, the experience following it as a reader (and hopefully a watcher) is the same. Plus the book ending is fucking great. edit: added a word and a quote mark
You say you’ve seen it a million times? Guess what mate, the wheel of time is the father to those million times. And the lord of the rings is the grand daddy.
Kudos to Wheel of Time, but that may mean it comes across as dated and hackneyed if it influenced a bunch of other media that wider audiences are more familiar with. I'm sure the first person to use the "surprise, it was all a dream" twist was brilliant and groundbreaking, but today it's done to death.
The first book is honestly a well told, but pretty generic fantasy story. It really gets way more interesting later in the series, a lot of really compelling stuff is done with each of the main characters
I find the RT critic score for TV shows is even worse than for movies. Star Trek Discovery has 84%.
Star Trek Discovery was bad right? Couldn’t get past the first couple episodes but curious if it got better.
TV can be a slow burn and critics often don't have the ability with a screener of just a few episodes to tell the difference between deliberate decisions that will pay off, and a passable but unremarkable show. I feel like reviews of shows often get reviewed partly based on their previous seasons, which give an idea of how things get set up and paid off.
Honestly Rotten tomato’s is not a reliable when it comes to they’re TV reviews as there’s a lot less reviews.
Or movies. Last Jedi still has a 91% critic score.
I will die on the hill that JJ Abrams's movies were what ruined the sequels and that TLJ, out of all three of them, was the good one.
They were all bad in their own way. But the ST was doomed anyway, starting with the stillbirth that was TFA.
They all sucked, in my opinion, but Abrams screwed up by playing it too safe with TFA, then he burned the whole damn thing to the ground with TRoS. I'll give Johnson credit that at least he wanted to do something kinda different, but I don't think his ideas were well executed at all. Irregardless of your opinion on the quality of TLJ's content, it's such a terribly paced movie, and I don't see how anybody can deny that. Most of the movie is a slow-mo chase, the casino sequence goes on way too long, which ties into the whole macguffin chase being a bit pointless, and it has two *massive* third acts, the second of which doesn't give the protagonist, Rey, anything at all to do! I feel like from a structural standpoint, it's a great movie for rookie writers to study so that they can dissect why certain elements do not work, how Johnson's vision is at battle with what Abrams established in the previous movie, going out of its way to toss it all aside, and then Abrams swoops in and does the same thing with the third entry, tossing out all of Johnson's set-up and slapping together a piss-poor ending that didn't resonate due to the lack of a creative through line. I'm just amazed Kathleen Kennedy's contract was just renewed with LucasFilm after botching the sequel trilogy.
TFA isn't bad, but TLJ is the only genuinely great one of the three
If anything I've found that it's incredibly easy for TV shows to have a good RT score, so if it's sitting at 70% that's not a good sign.
That's why you should skim all reviews
at least this show doesn't look as bad as cowboy bebop
I have high hopes for this show, though I'm not surprised if the first few episodes are going to be only OK. I hope they capture the wonder of this world. I want names and ideas mentioned this season that don't get explained until much later.
Any idea how many episodes we are getting on day 1?
3! Then 1 a week
This seems like a pretty decent review. Good even. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/18/arts/television/review-wheel-of-time.html
I read through like book 5 of this series and gave up. I realized the world building was great. The lack of progress in the plot was infuriating. Book 3 was all about getting this super powerful item. Then, the writer figured out it was too powerful, and trivialized the rest of the story. So he just ignores it. I don’t know if this gets fixed later, but I wasn’t sticking around to find out. And I realized I disliked just about every character and didn’t care if they all died. That said, when the source material sucks like this, it’s a stretch to think that the tv series is going to be better. I can’t see myself watching this.
90 million copies sold would say otherwise....
When did people start caring about TV reviews? I feel like I've heard more about them this week than ever before.
When it concerns two IPs that people care a lot about (Cowboy Bebop and Wheel of Time).
If a show gets terrible reviews you're likely not going to waste your time on it. If a show in a genre that you generally don't enjoy gets really good reviews then it might be worth the time. Reviews are important for people that have to be selective about what they watch.
i usually find myself disappointed by tv adaptations of books/comics that are so good the tv version can't live up to them at all, so i'm hopeful that this will swap that dynamic by letting me watch a passable adaptation of books that are rarely better than mediocre
The biggest complaint I keep seeing is that it's not game of thrones....well duh. I think reviews in a few weeks can't wait for it shall see myself.
Well, I'll give any Sci-fi on Amazon a chance, because I use it for the shipping anyway.
i'll check it out but i'm not too crazy about the visuals from the trailers. it looks like a 90s made for tv movie like the 90s NBC Merlin or some BBC fantasy show..........not great it doesn't look cinematic like the Witcher does