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Post by Deleted on Sept 2, 2021 22:23:55 GMT -5
Started as novels, but there was a comic adaptation of the first book at least so it's comic-related...
They've take a few liberties, aging up some characters and modifying some relationships by the look of it, but overall, this looks very good...
-M
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Post by thwhtguardian on Sept 4, 2021 17:31:33 GMT -5
That actually looks pretty great.
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Post by berkley on Sept 15, 2021 0:41:26 GMT -5
I like Rosamund Pike a lot, so if she's the main character that's an incentive for me to give it a try. Production values look pretty high, good sets, beautiful scenery (wonder where it was shot?). I haven't read the books, so at least I won't be disappointed with any changes they may have made. I understand the novel series is pretty long, though - I wonder how many seasons or episodes they have planned, assuming they're going to do the whole thing?
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Post by wildfire2099 on Sept 17, 2021 13:38:45 GMT -5
I'll probably check it out... looks suitably epic. I really remember very little of the details of the plot, so I'm sure changes wouldn't bother me.
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Post by thwhtguardian on Nov 19, 2021 17:04:56 GMT -5
I think my main issue with the novels and why I could never make it past the first two is my only real issue with the show and that's the fact that the characters come across as little more than D&D classes rather than actual characters. The mythology is interesting, the scenery and costuming are fantastic and the actors do a good job with what they have...but there's so little character development. It's just, "This one is the head strong, but noble knight in training and that one over there is a rogue with a heart of gold" and then we move onto something else.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 19, 2021 17:21:17 GMT -5
I think my main issue with the novels and why I could never make it past the first two is my only real issue with the show and that's the fact that the characters come across as little more than D&D classes rather than actual characters. The mythology is interesting, the scenery and costuming are fantastic and the actors do a good job with what they have...but there's so little character development. It's just, "This one is the head strong, but noble knight in training and that one over there is a rogue with a heart of gold" and then we move onto something else. I thought the costuming was terrible. As my wife put it, it looks like they are wearing Claire's Urban Ren Faire line rather than clothes someone in a farming community based on sheepherding and tobacco planting would wear. The jewelry (especially earrings) looked way too modern and out of place for a medieval level fantasy peasant farming community that is isolated and has little economic contact with other communities except for wandering peddlers (especially mining communities where precious metals would be had to make such jewelry), and as a whole would have looked a whole lot more authentic if they has simply raided a bunch of Ren Faire cosplayers wardrobes than what they actually went with. The changes they made to the characters dynamics in the village (especially Perrin) radically change who the characters are and sabotage elements of their arcs from later volumes for the sake of romantic melodrama on par with the types of things you see on the CW angsty teen and twenty-something shows. I've only made it through the first episode, and while there were elements I liked, there was a whole lot I did not like. I'll watch episodes 2 and 3 before fully making up my mind, but it did not make a very good first impression on me, and my wife decided it wasn't worth her time about 20 minutes into the first episode. I hope it picks up its game, as this is a series I really wanted to like and was very much looking forward to. -M |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 23, 2021 23:41:39 GMT -5
Finished the first three. It got better, but I am still not completely sold. I feel some of the changes made for television have undermined the core of certain character's personalities and and core conceits which will undermine some of the development and growth in their arcs arcs moving forward. Some of the performances are weak and I am not sure if its due to the direction or the actor's themselves.
I've heard several people comment that Josha Stradowski's performance evokes Hayden Christensen's Anakin Skywalker, and I agree, however they meant it as a compliment and I still feel his performance as Anakin was one of the most wooden, laughable, and unappealing performances in genre media in living memory. The character was unlikable and unappealing until he was redeemed by the superiors voice acting efforts in the Clone Wars which transformed the character into one I could get behind. Rand is a personal favorite of mine (though Perrin and Thom Merrlin are my favorites overall from the books), but I find him painful to watch on screen so far. The performance of Barney Harris as Mat Cauthon isn't much better, (but a least I have the hope the new actor in season 2 will be better there), so the scenes with Rand and Mat off on their own were nearly unwatchable to me until Thom Merlin entered the picture.
I also still have issues with the costuming and choices made therein, but that got better (except for the lack of a colorful patchwork cloak for the gleeman) in episodes 2 and 3.
I will keep watching, as it does trend in the right direction as it moves forward, but I am still not feeling it overall.
-M
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Crimebuster
CCF Podcast Guru
Making comics!
Posts: 3,919 
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Post by Crimebuster on Nov 29, 2021 2:14:46 GMT -5
Episode 4 was definitely the best so far, and Episode 3 was better than the first two, so I'm hopeful it's going to be at least halfway decent by the time the season ends.
All the performances were bad in the first couple episodes. They should have, I dunno, reshot or even recast if needed, which is what Game of Thrones did after the first pilot was bad. Some of them are getting better and growing on me a bit. Others, not so much. Egwene is giving me nothing at all, she's just an empty costume at this point, and the choices they have made with Perrin are a total record scratch. So that thread is the hardest for me.
The guy playing Rand is very slowly growing on me, so we'll see.
Overall I think there's so promise but the producers have made some odd choices that don't fill me with confidence. We'll see.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 27, 2021 3:47:19 GMT -5
What a disappointing mess the last 2 episodes were. I will probably at least start watching season 2 when it hits, but everything I love about the books is missing from this series, the characters are nearly unrecognizable, and I feel there is this weird cognitive dissonance in that if you haven't read the books, the series doesn't make a lot of sense as it just leaves out or poorly explains a lot of key lore and plot points, but if you have read the books, the series doesn't make a lot of sense because things have been weirdly and needlessly changed to undermine the lore the thematic underpinnings of the series and robbed of everything that gave it its charm.
It just seems like the showrunners either don't trust the material or don't really understand it. From little things like calling Lews Therin the Dragon Reborn when he was the first Dragon to either confusing or intentionally changing the different ways the Source works for men and women-in the books men must aggressively control the One Power while women must submit to it and let it flow naturally through them, accepting the One Power and becoming one with it rather than conquering it, in the show it is the opposite as the Forsaken explains to Rand that to channel he must submit to it and let it flow through him and become one with him while Morraine describes how she learned to channel and having to seize the one power and master it. Not sure if they meant this change to be intentional and were trying to make some sore of thematic or sociological statement about the nature of masculinity and femininity in opposition to that portrayed in the book or whether they just plain screwed the pooch and got it backwards because they didn't understand what was actually in the books. Either way it fundamentally changes the lore and the portrayal of the one power and how its used which is at the heart of so much of the books' thematic underpinnings.
And the other stray thought was, for a show with such a high budget, I am not sure what they spent it on. Maybe they blew the vfx budget on the early episodes, but the CGI got progressively worse as the season progressed, and the editing of the last episode in particular looks like the editors were asleep at the wheel.
There were things I liked about the season, and I even liked a small portion of the changes made (and acknowledge some changes needed to be made to cram that big a book into an 8 episode season). There were performances that stood out in a positive way, but overall the negative far outweighs those meager positives and my overall feeling is one of wasted potential and missed opportunities. A strong second season could go a long way to rehabilitating my impressions of the show, but the second season really does need to be a reclamation project, and it will be an uphill battle because they killed some of my favorites (who continued to play huge important roles in later books) or have fundamentally altered favorites to remove or change the things that drew me to the characters. But we'll see.
-M
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