Wheel of Time: TV show - (Books in spoilers).

[conon394]

Third: If you're tired of my well-deserved criticism of very weird casting choices, nobody forces you reply.

Weird in what way? I could care less if all Rand's friends a re black if they are good actors have a good script. Back in the day the RSC came to Ann Arbor and I paid good money to see the entire Henry cycle. And they nailed it did I care for the odd women or asian or black dude playing a part in Henry the 5ths or 4ths England. Err no... Because I was too busy being impressed by the quality of the performance to care. And of course they were some right cool people to hang out with at what used to be the best pub in the town afterward (three days of plays). I worry more about poor adaption and poor actors that how they look or if the budget allows some perfect mirror of what was on the page, which of course is a fools errand since everyone sees in their mind what they want.

[alhoon]

Weird in what way?

Weird in the fact that Rand's friends in the book are Dark-white and from the same area, Moraine was not tall, she was not blond and I would guess not white but also dark-white perhaps even darker than Rand's friends. I have no idea what Ann Arbor is (I guess a town? Or is a theatre?) but I would be weirded out if I saw a black dude playing the part of Henry the 5th in a movie or TV series - theater I would be less weirded out since cash is tighter.
And I bet a great many people that say "It's fine, don't worry about them being cast at different skin" would be "huh?" if they decided to cast say... Scandinavian people for the Seanchan.

Wheel of Time is exceptionally detailed, so there's a lot on the page. Changing skin color's despite the abundance of actors is weird. This is not theatre, they had thousands of people available.
Wheel of Time is also very progressive, with women in all strata of society, homosexuality and specially polyamory being discussed and parts of life, people of all colors etc. There was really no need to start shaking up things so they could say "we made it MORE woke!!!!1111" because frankly, there is no other reason to miscast as wildly and refocus the series from the three protagonist boys to Moraine.


As for quality of performance... nope, I am pretty sure I will not be impressed. You see, good actors are expensive. I expect some of the cast would be rough diamonds, but I also expect some of the cast to be quite bad. I don't expect this production to go at production values seen in the really big shows like GoT (which also had some crappy actors along with the good despite the money - most new faces all started quite bad but grew in their roles eventually).

I put up saldaeans because they’re right next door. What. You think the world gonna turn white across an invisible diplomatic line?

And yet, Domani were copper-skinned while Saldaeans had ... almond-shaped eyes and mustaches. The eye shape of the Saldaeans tells us nothing about their skin color. It also doesn't support a Copper-skinned Domani being an Asian since Saldaeans do not have slanted eyes but almond shaped. Add the cavalry and the mustaches and they seem closer to Hungarians to me.

With the Seanchan being similar to South-Asians in colors and East Asians in culture, there was no need to make a Copper-skinned Domani an Asian. They should have cast a Native American (not a 1/16th native and 15/16ths Anglosaxon, mind you) or a Mexican.

[Common Soldier]

Weird in the fact that Rand's friends in the book are Dark-white and from the same area, Moraine was not tall, she was not blond and I would guess not white but also dark-white perhaps even darker than Rand's friends. I have no idea what Ann Arbor is (I guess a town? Or is a theatre?) but I would be weirded out if I saw a black dude playing the part of Henry the 5th in a movie or TV series - theater I would be less weirded out since cash is tighter.
And I bet a great many people that say "It's fine, don't worry about them being cast at different skin" would be "huh?" if they decided to cast say... Scandinavian people for the Seanchan.

Ann Arbor is a city in Michigan, noted for being thr location of the University of Michigan, one of thr foremost research universities in the US.

And while initially, it would seem odd to me, I think if thr performances were good it would not bother me if Henry 5th were played by a black character. In the Shakespeare movie "Much Ado About Nothing", Denzel Washington played thr Princr, and I don't know of anyone who was bothered by the princs being played by an African American for a play set in Renaissance Italy and white actor Keenau Reeve was Denzil's brother in the movie. The acting was good enough that you just did not think of it.

(Although thr Saturday Night Live Comedy show had a lot of fun spoofing the black character in 19th century Norway in Frozen 2 movie).

Wheel of Time is exceptionally detailed, so there's a lot on the page. Changing skin color's despite the abundance of actors is weird. This is not theatre, they had thousands of people available.
Wheel of Time is also very progressive, with women in all strata of society, homosexuality and specially polyamory being discussed and parts of life, people of all colors etc. There was really no need to start shaking up things so they could say "we made it MORE woke!!!!1111" because frankly, there is no other reason to miscast as wildly and refocus the series from the three protagonist boys to Moraine.

Keep in mind that many of the viewers the producers hope to attract likely will have never read the books - while producers hope ro attract the readers of the Wheel of Time series, they also hope to attract others who haven't read the books. Moat of the people who were fans of Game of Thrones never read the books, and never heard of George R. Martin before watching the series. The Game of Thrones would never have been the mega hit it was if it depended only on fans who read the books. These people are not going to be bothered if the characters don't precisely match their descriptions in the books.

And even those who read the book I don't think will be as bothered as you think. I read the books, but I don't remember the descriptions of a lot of the characters, so it wouldn't bother me if you made them black or asian or whatever.

As for quality of performance... nope, I am pretty sure I will not be impressed. You see, good actors are expensive. I expect some of the cast would be rough diamonds, but I also expect some of the cast to be quite bad. I don't expect this production to go at production values seen in the really big shows like GoT (which also had some crappy actors along with the good despite the money - most new faces all started quite bad but grew in their roles eventually).

And yet, Domani were copper-skinned while Saldaeans had ... almond-shaped eyes and mustaches. The eye shape of the Saldaeans tells us nothing about their skin color. It also doesn't support a Copper-skinned Domani being an Asian since Saldaeans do not have slanted eyes but almond shaped. Add the cavalry and the mustaches and they seem closer to Hungarians to me.

With the Seanchan being similar to South-Asians in colors and East Asians in culture, there was no need to make a Copper-skinned Domani an Asian. They should have cast a Native American (not a 1/16th native and 15/16ths Anglosaxon, mind you) or a Mexican.

There will be plenty of opportunity for actors to their roles, just as they did in GoT. And the producers don#t need to slavishly flow the book - Game of Thrones tv show successfully deviated from the books, and fans were ok with it.

As far as casting, Asians are a big market, so it is understandable if the producers changed some characters to make them more relatable to target adudiences.

[chriscase]

Shakespearean characters are so embedded in the cultural firmament it hardly matters what they look like provided they can deliver the pathos and especially the dialogue. WoT characters may be embedded in the imagination of readers but they are unlikely to achieve much recognition beyond that if the introductions are botched.

I really wish the issue of aging actors could somehow be dealt with. Just the first book could easily occupy multiple seasons of a TV series. I sometimes play with the idea of superimposing some kind of skin on the actors so one could achieve continuity as actors age and are even replaced. But the current state of CGI wouldn't be enough. You'd need a really expressive skin that allows the actor to emote well through it, but maintains an interesting and realistic facade. Maybe then some of my favorite series like Zelazny's Amber could get the treatment they deserve.

[Halie Satanus]

CGI can do those things, as with the planet of the Apes movies, but a show would have to fully commit to using it and as yet no show has that kind of budget. Even GoT was well short of movie production budgets coming in around 15m an episode for the final season compared to 150m for the last Apes movie.

Whether the show even gets made must be in serious doubt now due to CV19.

[Gaidin]

CGI can do those things. Just at a Star Wars movie budget for maybe 30 seconds(see Princess Leia). After three years you start noticing the young actors or ageless actors aging out of their looks. So not at a tv show budget for 10 seasons. What you're going to have to accept is tv logistics demand a 3 year 15 book story(book defined as about 700 pages minimum) is going to last about 13 years assuming they touch on most of the plot points.

Story timeline is going to shift to account for actor aging.

[alhoon]

CGI can do those things. Just at a Star Wars movie budget for maybe 30 seconds(see Princess Leia). After three years you start noticing the young actors or ageless actors aging out of their looks. So not at a tv show budget for 10 seasons. What you're going to have to accept is tv logistics demand a 3 year 15 book story(book defined as about 700 pages minimum) is going to last about 13 years assuming they touch on most of the plot points.

Story timeline is going to shift to account for actor aging.

Alas that is my greatest fear. GoT's last seasons were not to my liking, I didn't even manage to watch season 7 or 8 but from the criticism they draw, it was bad.

And here, we have a show that will probably have less budget on a more complex world. Sure CGI can help, but simply put, I think they will start putting 2 books per season sooner or later. Like make seasons 1-2 following the books 1 and 2. And then start craming more books per season, like book 3-4, 5-6, 7-9, 10-11, 12-14 for a show of 7 seasons. That is a realistic approach. And this relies on heavy cuts. I mean things like the whole hunt for the bowl of Winter and the rain-stuff to be shortened to a few minutes here and there. Or the whole arc with the climate acting up and draughts\frost being absent in order to not annoy the climate-change deniers.
Perhaps, if the show does very well they will stretch it to 9 seasons but I really don't think it will do so.
Success like GoT would be the rare success story for the shows that will follow it.


In any case, what I am talking about is people saying "Hurin who?" or the wolfbrothers being cut because you have to fit two books totaling 1500 pages in 10 episodes of 50 minutes each. That's 150 pages per episode from season 3+ ...

In comparison, LotR had 1100-1200 pages and needed 3x3h movies. 150 pages per 50 mins episode is like cramming Lord of the Rings in 2 movies instead of 3.
Is it feasible? Yes.
Would I like it? No.

[conon394]

Alas that is my greatest fear. GoT's last seasons were not to my liking, I didn't even manage to watch season 7 or 8 but from the criticism they draw, it was bad.

And here, we have a show that will probably have less budget on a more complex world. Sure CGI can help, but simply put, I think they will start putting 2 books per season sooner or later. Like make seasons 1-2 following the books 1 and 2. And then start craming more books per season, like book 3-4, 5-6, 7-9, 10-11, 12-14 for a show of 7 seasons. That is a realistic approach. And this relies on heavy cuts. I mean things like the whole hunt for the bowl of Winter and the rain-stuff to be shortened to a few minutes here and there. Or the whole arc with the climate acting up and draughts\frost being absent in order to not annoy the climate-change deniers.
Perhaps, if the show does very well they will stretch it to 9 seasons but I really don't think it will do so.
Success like GoT would be the rare success story for the shows that will follow it.


In any case, what I am talking about is people saying "Hurin who?" or the wolfbrothers being cut because you have to fit two books totaling 1500 pages in 10 episodes of 50 minutes each. That's 150 pages per episode from season 3+ ...

In comparison, LotR had 1100-1200 pages and needed 3x3h movies. 150 pages per 50 mins episode is like cramming Lord of the Rings in 2 movies instead of 3.
Is it feasible? Yes.
Would I like it? No.

Well you never know maybe artfully they craft a section of story out off a ton of world as JRRT did in the LOTR. And sorry to chriscase above I think Jordan did the same as Zelazny with Amber sort of endless world building on the fly. Amber read like a really weird tight noir and then it gets too big. WOT had some the same compactness and than I think just felt like I was reading stuff better put in a different book series. Zelazny is best when he stuck to one and done stories or serial short stories. I really think Norton was better than either in her world building and picking out stories to tell in it.

[chriscase]

Well with Amber the first five are quite consistent in my view. The second five are OK but have a bit of “bills to pay” scent to them. On the other hand it’s a bit difficult to pin down “world building” when the scenario presented is a many-worlds continuum that the characters can traverse with the powers of the mind. Absolutely any world imaginable fits there.

[Gaidin]

Well you never know maybe artfully they craft a section of story out off a ton of world as JRRT did in the LOTR. And sorry to chriscase above I think Jordan did the same as Zelazny with Amber sort of endless world building on the fly. Amber read like a really weird tight noir and then it gets too big. WOT had some the same compactness and than I think just felt like I was reading stuff better put in a different book series. Zelazny is best when he stuck to one and done stories or serial short stories. I really think Norton was better than either in her world building and picking out stories to tell in it.

It's not even that RJ did too much world building. I thought his world building was awesome. But even if you consider that, that's wordage that doesn't interfere with time-count on screen because that's more visual and audio on screen. Ok, world building says this country has a tendency to look like this or have this accent, fine, that takes word-count in a book, well, in a tv series, you tend to just see that. That's a lot of words from some very thick books that don't really interfere with the tv series. And as RJ got older and further in the series he got...more wordy. He once took 300 words just describing some woman's god damn dress. Once again, fine. Not really world building, but somewhere in book 7 or 8 he literally did this. I can't remember why or if it was even relevant to the story or world. But there it was. 300 words to describe in that much god damn detail, a one woman's dress. Not how the women from a country dress. But one woman was currently dressing at that point in time. In a tv series you would just see that. So that wordage wouldn't really interfere with the minute count on the screen nor vice versa.

So once again, alhoon is really panicking about the wrong logistics of putting a series like Wheel of Time up on the screen.

What this wordage is. Is a resource. This is stuff that the writers and producers don't have to dream up on there own to fill in blanks. It's great for them. It answers questions. They don't have to hope they're wrong because there's a lot of people that are very enthusiastic about this series that probably know a lot about it probably working on this tv project that know where to look this stuff up in the series to quickly answer questions. What does this country dress like? Well, let's get a fast reference for where from the wiki and straight up look it up in the series and you can probably find 3-10 references for most countries describing clothing habits for most countries that had a heavy presence in the series and not have to take a WAG on these things. What it isn't, however, is a thing that takes up screen time.

[alhoon]

"Not really world building, but somewhere in book 7 or 8 he literally did this. I can't remember why or if it was even relevant to the story or world. "
It was not. It was the dress of an Aes Sedai of not-import, one of the "not too bad" reds. It was an awesome dress, I give you that. And then, we have Egwene cleaning a fireplace for 1page and a half, with the nice porcelain dolls on the fireplace that gave "character" to the generic "clean this, apprentice!" tasks.

And I want to see those things on screen. I don't want Domani to be Asians, I want them to be bronze skinned. I don't want the Seanchan to be anything but South-Asian with drawl for speech and hilarious exchanges of "you speak as slowly as a drunken Seanchan".
And I want Moraine to be short, brunette, ageless-looking, and dark-white.

[Gaidin]

You should stop worrying about accents as well. Any half decent actor can learn an accent for a decent project.

[Halie Satanus]

Episode titles. Writer. Director.

101: Leavetaking. Rafe Judkins. Uta Briesewitz.
102: Shadow's Waiting. Amanda Kate Shuman. Uta Briesewitz.
103: A Place of Safety. Paul Clarkson & Michael Clarkson. Wayne Yip.
104: The Dragon Reborn. Dave Hill. Wayne Yip.
105: Blood Calls Blood. Celine Song. Salli Richardson Whitfield.
106: The Flame of Tar Valon. Justine Juel Gillmer. Salli Richardson Whitfield.
107: Title unknown. Writer(s) unknown. Ciaran Donnelly.
108: Title unknown. Writer(s) unknown. Ciaran Donnelly.


Composer for the show will be David Buckley.

[Common Soldier]

Alas that is my greatest fear. GoT's last seasons were not to my liking, I didn't even manage to watch season 7 or 8 but from the criticism they draw, it was bad.

And here, we have a show that will probably have less budget on a more complex world. Sure CGI can help, but simply put, I think they will start putting 2 books per season sooner or later. Like make seasons 1-2 following the books 1 and 2. And then start craming more books per season, like book 3-4, 5-6, 7-9, 10-11, 12-14 for a show of 7 seasons. That is a realistic approach. And this relies on heavy cuts. I mean things like the whole hunt for the bowl of Winter and the rain-stuff to be shortened to a few minutes here and there. Or the whole arc with the climate acting up and draughts\frost being absent in order to not annoy the climate-change deniers.
Perhaps, if the show does very well they will stretch it to 9 seasons but I really don't think it will do so.
Success like GoT would be the rare success story for the shows that will follow it.


In any case, what I am talking about is people saying "Hurin who?" or the wolfbrothers being cut because you have to fit two books totaling 1500 pages in 10 episodes of 50 minutes each. That's 150 pages per episode from season 3+ ...

In comparison, LotR had 1100-1200 pages and needed 3x3h movies. 150 pages per 50 mins episode is like cramming Lord of the Rings in 2 movies instead of 3.
Is it feasible? Yes.
Would I like it? No.

In Lord of the Rings, they cut out the entire Bombadil character and story arc, ans much as I liked the character in the book, the movie really didn't miss him at all. The Wheel of Time has lots of subplots and story arcs that could be deleted, and still not subtract from the series. The producers don't have to.slavishly follow.every character and every story arc, repeating every single spoken word in the book. For a series as complex as Wheel of Time, some streamlining will be inevitable.

And a tv series doesn't have to follow a book slavishly. I liked the short lived Dresden File tv series, even though hough the tv series was sgnificantly different from the books, which I also liked. Simply because the tv series isn't exactly like the books doesn't mean it will be bad.

[conon394]

[QUOTE]And a tv series doesn't have.to follow a bool.slavishly[/QUOTEE]

True it can't rub is how they do it, the not following. Certainly the books have a lot of on the road/chase/hunt episodes that will have to be compressed. Personally I could go for Rand's hissy run away fit after book 2 if recall that still leads to the with the crystal sword be massively condensed or cut out. The Hunt in the second book and the race in the first had a seance of tightness and necessity - In the third Rand just seemed whinny and bit of dick to his companions by bugging out

[Halie Satanus]

Pretty much put an end to the 'culture/ethnicity' issues...

[Gaidin]

I don't think I ever watch videos like that. But that one actually kept me in it. Thanks for finding that one.

[Common Soldier]

Excellent video. And realistically, given our diverse society, you couldn't get away without some diversiy even if the books didn't originally have it in them anyway, business considerations would justifiy it. But I am glad that it was clearly shown that the diversity in the casting was justified in the books.

[Halie Satanus]

I especially liked the bit at the end where they prove RJ really didn’t care about ethnicity. I thought it was fairly obvious given his non-real world descriptions and tendency to throw in details that made people stand out.

The universe of WoT, in real world terms, sounds very similar to current day Brazil. Where dark skin with blue eyes and red hair wouldn’t raise any eyebrows at all. Look at the Brazil national (football) team - Andor.

[Gaidin]

The irony of shooting for anything in real-world terms much less a specific country even if never really analogous, defies anything quoted in the video you yourself posted, much less said by Robert Jordan himself. I like the irony.