Frankly, I am bummed by this news.
I read the books, but seeing how it was a decade+ ago since I last went through some of them, most of it is a blur and I can forgive some of the changes in favor of smoother storytelling.
While the show brought familiarity back, and season 1 was painfully bad in almost all ways, from adapting/changing characters to lore. The show was leaps better in S2 and with S3 each episode felt very cinematic and now told a more cohesive story.
So, even though it was adapted, I was looking out for each new episode and had high spirits for a good S4.
Alas, if it is not picked up by any other studio, the “unfilmable book series” will remain that way, no one will burn their hands on it again. So, those cheering its demise, take that in consideration.
In closing, Prime definitely did not do it full justice at the starting line and it was expensive to catch up to that fact …
But the show was treated and produced better than Rings of Power, which does get another stay and money pumped into it, a choice I rather saw turned around.Same. I am actually kind of pissed about how much neckbeardery there was around this online because the last season was legitimately getting good and I was excited to see it through, but all of the “um akshually the dagger was crimson” shit probably killed the show.
Yep I couldn’t get through the first 2 episodes of season 1. On paper it should have been great! I skip ahead to 2 and 3 thanks 😊
Didn’t read the books until recently. It was an okay show without the context of the books. The first season was slow and confusing but it seemed pretty par for the course for the YA fantasy genre.
Lot of people hating on it here for not sticking to the books, which is fine, I guess, but I’m glad shows like this are made otherwise the only shit I’d have to watch are “The Bachelor Season 405”, “Generic Cooking Competition 7”, and “Real Housewives of Bumfuck City”.
I agree with most others in here, they ran roughshod over major character traits and plot points for no discernable reason. Wasted an episode of the first season on some random Warder.
That said, the biggest crime was the 8 or 9 out of 10 emotion and yelling in basically every scene. Wheel of Time can definitely drag on, so maybe they were trying to spice things up? Idk, it was weird.
At least this Rand fucks, though.
I mean, Rand was running a harem for half of the series
If you want the loyal fans to watch it, stop fucking it up! Keep the source material, and let your cooky ass writers write their own shit.
Perrin having and killing his wife?
A total cut of Gaul?
Aviendha and Elayne for… some reason?
Perrin straight up actually killing geofram bornehald? Which is a WHOLE plot point by the way.
Moraine killing the shit out of seanchan at falme definitely breaking the 3 oaths?
It goes on and on. So much questionable decision making.
If you want the loyal fans to watch it, stop fucking it up! Keep the source material, and let your cooky ass writers write their own shit.
cough cough Halo
cough cough WoT
cough cough LotR
cough cough Witcher
They just can’t fucking help themselves. Like incontinent tomcats, they’ve just gotta spray their stink all over everything, because “we can do it better.”
It’s like the Witcher. People aren’t going to respect your OC by fucking up a recognizable name, they will just find you incompetent
Perrin having and killing his wife?
I had to look this up, and am now even more pissed that it wasn’t even Faile, which at least would have the benefit of a dead Faile.
benefit of a dead Faile.
Made me laugh!
There’s lots of ways the books could be improved, and that is definitely one. That was an exhausting character to read, in her later arcs.
Yeah, making it Master Luhan would still have fucking sucked, but at least it wouldn’t have involved fridging. Plus, it would have given Perrin the overall character development they wanted, without impacting his romantic character arc in such an incredibly destructive way.
To give the showrunners some benefit of the doubt, doing this could have gone some way to help explain Perrin’s overprotectivness.
I also don’t prefer her lol. I guess I should havebeen more specific.
Brando Sando commented on this. The choice was made to accelerate Perrins character development. I guess he suggested that Perrin kill Haral Luhan, but it was ultimately rejected by the writers.
I guess he suggested that Perrin kill Haral Luhan, but it was ultimately rejected by the writers.
Wow. I assume their amendment was stated “let’s just fridge some random woman, instead!”
The fate of most shows nowadays. Greedy companies don’t give a shit about telling a good story or giving it a proper ending.
All they care about is number go up.
Stop giving them your money and attention.
I’d like to see creators who own their rights put in contracts that the story must be told in full, and that whatever pacing is decided on (1 season per book for example) needs to be maintained. I know most studios would walk away, but I’d love for someone to have the balls to tell them that
You want to make my 10 book series into a TV show? Put your money where your mouth is and pony up 10 seasons worth
I just want to see creatives actually owning their creations in the future and not being slowly choked out by corporations and their greed.
“It you don’t sign over everything, we’ll just use Ai to rip you off and get away with it.”
Honestly I don’t see actors in the future owning their own likeness. “Want to be an actor? Well we’ll own your face and voice forever”
They’ll continue to own their likeness’. Studios just won’t hire them.
While i agree mostly, if someone wanted to edit some of The Slog down, I’d have no problems with that.
I’m surprised it lasted 3 seasons to be honest. I hated it.
I couldn’t make it past the first episode.
I made it through the first season, but just barely, and I didn’t go back.
I’m a completionist, and i couldn’t finish the 1st season. I’ll let Miracle Max express how it felt: “why don’t you give me paper cuts, and pour lemon juice on it!”
I felt that way about the Fallout show. The acting (and the CGI) was so freaking bad
That’s funny. Because unlike WoT, I loved Fallout. The bad acting was part of the schtick.
Yeah, I have friends who love that show and I could barely make it to 4 episodes. They literally killed off the best character/actor in the second or third episode.
Your opinions are bad and you should feel bad.
Just to start off, the casting of the main character was genius, because depending on the camera angle she goes from gorgeous to uncanny valley and that’s the most Fallout thing I’ve ever seen on film.
Glad they finally put a nail on that one. You got to stop funding projects made by people who don’t even like the source material.
Bond and Dexter improved by straying from the source material (up to a point). Bourne trilogy is better for ignoring the disguise element.
But in general you are correct.
Good point.
I thinknwe could say those creative teams still clearly love their source material, even as they deviated from it.
A great adaptation feels like a valid alternate take on the original story, rather than expressing complete disdain for the original story.
I think to know where to deviate from source requires a thorough understanding of and appreciation for it first.
I think the Watchmen movie is the only example I can think of where deviating from the source material was actually a good thing. Even then, it was a tempered change that still captured everything else about the comic, and they didn’t try to “fix” anything else.
You don’t make a successful book-to-movie project that makes millions of dollars by shitting on the source material that already made millions of dollars. Hollywood writers are egotistical assholes that do not make millions of dollars. The book was successful for a reason. Don’t fuck up a good thing.
I agree with your point, but the lack of
spoiler
dead fake space squid
was still a silly, unnecessary and confusing change. It completely lost the critical “look out, they are coming for you from space” aspect, which is the only way his plan might have worked.
Man I don’t think I could disagree with a comment more. He captured nothing about the comic. He missed the point entirely.
Can you expand? I thought it was pretty much shot for shot, except the exchange of common external enemy and exclusion of pirates.
Agreed.
But how does the TV series fit into that?
I hated it from the first episode.
They had amazing material to work with, all they had to do was adapt it to TV.
A group of amateurs made an awesome Wheel Of Time episode with a budget of about $5 and an afternoon of shooting. Amazon should have just given them the money to do it.
Uh Link please!
Give this a whirl:
Wow, that’s good! Actually better than the Amazon one
Fuck’s sake, it had just started to properly settle down and get good
It legit was getting good. The first season was rough. I loved the books so I’ll watch it. Later episodes were getting better.
Great job!!
Now do it for Rings of Power.
So will Prime use this freed up budget to fund some decent programming, or will they just throw it at another big budget Bezos money pit project like the Lord of The Rings tv show and that awful Citadel tv universe?
My prediction: This is being sacrificed to pay for a Bond 007 tentpole show that won’t be any good.
Meanwhile Amazon owns the rights to Stargate and does nothing with it.
I have a sneaking suspicion amazon picked up wheel of time only because they wanted to fill a high fantasy slot in the portfolio. Now they have rings of power with built in IP recognition, typical executive brain will put focus there instead.
Naw, it will be another Meliana Trump documentary
Murderbot
It’s not … A great show?
But it’s fucking cheap (small cast, limited sets so far), and it’s trying to be charming.
It’s the streaming equivalent of comfort food.
We need more content like this to keep streams full, then we have a few prestige shows like andor or whatever.
What we have now is crap writing burning prestige money (twot/LOTR-trop) and leaving us with unwatchable crap.
It could be better. I read the books and they’re rushing through the story at 90 miles an hour. And they are leaning into everything like it’s all quirky comedy which does a disservice to the source material. The characters are supposed to be characters, not caricatures. You should to care about what happens to these people but in the series they so far feel disposable. They’re also overdoing the voiceovers and on screen displays to the point of annoyance. The “rise and fall of sanctuary moon” inserts are a hoot though.
Yeah, the pace is stupid, the problem is it’s 22 minute shows, and I think they’re trying to finish in less than 10 episodes.
For 22m shows they should do 18-20 er season, but the format generally sucks for anything except comedy.
But I was optimistic because the short length also means it doesn’t have to be burdened by all the overwhelming pretense of the heavier stuff, it can be chill about it.
Oh god they did what to murderbot?! These bastards. What a waste of good source material
That’s an apple show what does any of this have to do with anything
I’m making a point that we need more casual, cheap stuff like this to fill in viewing hours, with a few prestige shows for the high end.
Twot was trying to be prestige and ended up a complete disaster, while starving other good shows of that cash.
The boys is also fairly cheap in comparison (getting more expensive obviously as time goes on, but nowhere near twot/trop).
Tech companies had so much money they started throwing money at shit, that was the problem.
This is why you wait to see if the series is going to get an ending before starting it.
Everybody waits to see if it gets an ending…nobody watches…cancelled after first series.
I saw the first episode, it got more than it deserved.
I’ve not read the books, and just enjoyed it for the story it told…who cares if it’s not the books? I didn’t. I’m not a subscriber of books having to be adhered to. I was just glad it was a different story that wasn’t yet another Marvel / DC / Star Wars / Star Trek reboot (not saying I don’t like those, but they have been done to death). Pity WoT ended up another casualty of the vocal “IT’S NOT WHAT I WANTED” brigade, like Cowboy Bebop, and seems to be being attempted on Rings of Power.
Then as the target audience, a person who’s not a fan of the series and has bad media taste, get fucked by this early cancelation and cry.
Meh
They screwed it up completely within the first 5 minutes of the first episode so not a big deal for anyone who’s actually read the books.
I have read the books several times and mostly enjoyed the adaptation tbh. Literature and film are not the same. Stylistic choices which work in one don’t work in the other.
This was my reaction, exactly. 10 minutes in and I’m screaming “WTF?!”
Even people who hadn’t read the books, realized how rushed things were in some cases, and then dragged out filler in others.
It was obvious they had the same issue as several other recent adaptations: The showrunner wants to make original content, and think it’s so good that people wont care that it differs from the source or even changes the story and characters.
Yeah I watched the first two episodes of Foundation and immediately peaced out. And that one’s even more ridiculous because the foundation books are more of an outline than an actual fleshed out story. So really, all they had to do was fill in the blanks. And they still fucked it up beyond all recognition. I’m sure it was probably enjoyable to somebody who’s never read even one of the Foundation books. But for somebody who’s read the entire series it was an insult.
I really tried for both of them, but they seem to fall into the same mistake.
The wild thing is how the Fallout show was one of the most source accurate adaptations in a while.
I could never get past Loial not having expressive ears. Like 90% of Ogier emotion is described by the positioning or movement of their long ass ears
Or the fact people from Two Rivers are often identified by their physical look and way they speak, but the TV series starts out with every person from their tiny isolated village being ethnically diverse.
Red Rivers peeps are darker skinned than your typical “white.” Rand is specifically noted for being much fairer than normal, even with a farmer tan.
It’s why they stand out from the pseudo-English that surround them.
Why would you assume otherwise and then get mad about it?
If there’s an ethnicity they would resemble, it’s certainly not “Anglo.” Even an ambiguous “Mediterranean” doesn’t explain why Rand’s tan wouldn’t let him blend in.
So you are right, in a way, but in a way we all know you didn’t intend by “ethnically diverse”
I’m not OP, but I don’t think they meant “weren’t Anglo” but instead that the villagers were literally diverse, i.e. a lot of different ethnicities.
It does put a confused spin on both “huh, you’re from the two rivers? You look like one of those Aiel” and the post-siege development of two rivers where the increased diversity from folk moving from different places to there causes tension in the villagers.
I may be wrong, though.
zzz… so desperate to make it a racist comment.
They took forever to build out the characters and the story. Good production for a series, but had the worst pacing. Sadly, their build up now leaves you hanging. I am not sure why Amazon is cancelling their series, without proper finales. I am guessing this has to do with overspending on Bond.
Similar to Netflix’s approach, they most likely found that viewership drops sharply after the first 2 or 3 seasons, so more money to be made elsewhere.
But similar to Netflix, they’ll find that people aren’t willing to give things a chance and will associate all your original productions with crap, if you keep doing it.
Also true, but that’s not what shareholders and executives care about. They just want the next quarterly profits to go up to get their payouts
