Narg's thoughts on Season One of The Wheel of Time
"I lie awake at night wondering if i got it wrong all the time, because I think if you're not doing that then you’ve gotten arrogant and you're not doing the job and the job is to take these books that everyone loves and that I love luckily and make them into something that delivers on the heart of what's there because if I make just a literal interpretation of the books where their just saying the lines that are on the page and we deliver them to screen it will not feel right to the audience, it will not feel like the books they love because it's a very different medium" - Rafe Judkins
Hrrm sounds like you were expecting some criticism for your changes and wanted to get out in front of it. Well thanks for encouraging the strawman arguments of "You don't understand how adaptations work" and "a 1-1 adaption wouldn't work".
Narg is pretty sure that a fair percentage of the book readers watching the show have seen at least one if not multiple book to screen adaptations in their life time. Be it LotR's, Harry Potter, Legend of the Seeker, GoT, The Shannara Chronicles, His Dark Materials, The Witcher, Shadow and Bone or some other non fantasy adaptation.
From that experience they know that every adaption and how the writers approach it varies from project to project. They range from following the source material closely with only "minor changes" to just paying lip service to the original.
There are multiple reasons why changes are made...budget, time constraints, different mediums(not everything translates well or is possible), writer hubris, studio mandates/directions etc etc...
So what is Narg trying to say?
Every adaption is different, and Narg has never heard anyone say they expected the adaptation to follow the source material exactly. Humans are smart enough to know that an exact 1-1 adaption is unrealistic.
"so to bring it to screen and make people feel like there seeing the thing they read and that they loved we have to change things and so I think that's the balance that I’m always lying awake at night thinking about is…" - Rafe Judkins
"when are the right times to change things and when are the right times to keep things the same in order to tell the truest version of what's on the page" - Rafe Judkins
As far as Narg can see, the balancing that Rafe did, went something like this...
Narg has a hard time believing that what Rafe produced is anywhere near the "truest version of what's on the page". Just compare season one of 'Game of Thrones' to WoT. D. B. Weiss and David Benioff gave us something true to their source material, while what Rafe Lee Judkins gave us was a gross distortion/misrepresentation of the source.
Narg's personal opinion on adaptations of books he has read and enjoyed, is that he'd like to see the adaptations stick as closely to the original as possible. Narg wants to see what he read and loved come to life on the screen, not watch something that only pays lip service to the source material. Narg understands that not everyone shares that opinion, and Narg is cool with that. You like what you like and not everyone has Narg's impeccable taste...
As you can no doubt already guess... that means Narg is not impressed with the approach that Rafe and his team have taken with 'The Wheel of Time'.
"When the books came out they felt so blazingly fresh and different and new, so we want that same thing to be true of the show, and if you see us leaning away from certain elements in the books, often times it's because audiences have now seen them before!" - Rafe Judkins
Based on what Narg watched, they took that to the extreme. They didn't lean away from the books, they ran away from them as fast as they could...Virtually nothing in the show is the same as what Robert Jordan wrote or envisioned. Everything in the show except the names of some of the characters and places is different or new...mostly new...
Where Rafe went wrong INO is that when The Eye of the World came out it wasn't "blazingly fresh and different and new"... it was familiar. From the Tolkien vibe to the Arthurian references, there wasn't much that was new. What Jordan did well, was draw us in with the familiar, make us care and then slowly expand the story into something epic and new. Jordan didn't shy away from tropes and clichés, he just did them better and improved them. Writers shouldn't be afraid of doing something that has been done before, they just need to do it better. Few have done it better than Robert Jordan.
Rafe, INO tried to go epic and new straight out of the gate and the show loses the nuance, character development, subtle humour and depth that Jordan was able to imbue into his story. The show as a result becomes overly dramatised, feels rushed, becomes a landscape slideshow with weak to cringy dialogue and is loaded with poorly segued exposition and senseless battle scenes.
Question: Aside from the books themselves, what other TV shows or movies come to mind when you think about how you want the show to feel when viewers experience it?
Rafe: LoTR of course and GoT, but also not Shanarra
Narg new before he even started watching that this adaptation was going to have major changes, but even Narg was flabbergasted by just how far they'd gone. To compare this adaptation to LotR or GoT is a joke. The Wheel of Time TV show is firmly in 'Legend of the Seeker' and 'Shannara Chronicles' territory...just with a bigger budget.
Adapting something as big and complex as WoT to screen was always going to be a tough ask...and it seems like Rafe and his team didn't even try. They have just taken the framework of what Jordan wrote and used it to tell the story they wanted. Will it find an audience? Undoubtedly. Would Narg recommend it to anyone...not on his life!
Edit: Humans smart...RJ said it best...
That's it from Narg on his personal feelings, now on to some stats and comparisons which are a tad more objective!
Overall in the ratings department, WoT is keeping company with 'Legend of the Seeker' and 'Shannara Chronicles', both of which have there fans... but generally speaking aren't considered to be "Great" shows amongst a wider audience.
 |
| IMDb |
 |
| Rotten Tomatoes |
“as always with a beloved IP, you could get some criticism about not staying exactly true to people’s vision of what the series should look like as it comes to life, we are in touch with the core fans of the novels and we know the majority of them are really excited and happy,”
Narg has no idea what a "Core fan" is, but if the majority of fans love it, then Narg happy for them. While it's not Narg's cup of tea, if it's successful long term, it will drive more people to read the books, and Narg can't be unhappy about that.
 |
| Weekly Amazon Most Sold Fiction Chart |
Didn't manage to get to #1 and dropped down pretty fast which is disappointing but more people reading Robert Jordan's 'The Wheel of Time', makes Narg jolly...and it is the season to be Jolly! Merry Christmas everyone!