Where were you when we watched Rings of Power?
Where were you when we suffered Wheel of Time?
Then I assume you’ll enjoy the Fallout show no matter what. Did you watch HALO, and if you did - Did you enjoy it?
Rings of power was alright once you accepted it’s just a completely different adaptation with no connection to the previous films. And is also not being true to the books to a T. It’s far enough away from the events that I love in that world that I can separate it enough and still enjoy it.
I still would’ve preferred a more page by page adaptation of the Hobbit onwards though, especially the hobbit since it’s my favourite LOTR book.
Rings of power was alright
No it isn’t. It’s terribly written. The speech of Sauron to Galadriel was something a five year old wrote. Galadriel just jumped into the middle of the ocean? Also she took a pyroclastic blast right to the face and doesn’t even have a scratch? Whereas other characters are fully blinded.
And all the changes, which each on their own might be forgivable, but there where just so many that it all added up to something off-feeling and weird. It would be like shifting each note in a Mozart piece by a little in different directions, and then listening to the whole thing wouldn’t be pleasant. This is another one of those things where they made changes for sake of change or to fit a particular story/reveal they wanted to write. Tolkien’s works were already a masterpiece, what was the benefit in changing it? At best it adds absolutely nothing to the final product itself, and at worse just makes the whole legendarium muddied and disjointed.
For example, when the show took place Aman was not cut off from Middle-Earth yet. Specifically because it was cut off after Sauron poisoned the hearts of the Numenoreans and convinced them to attack the Valar and invade Aman. As a punishment Eru Illuvitar sunk Numenor into the sea and made all of Middle-Earth “round”, so that sailing west would just bring them back around to the other side of Middle-Earth. So to get to Aman after that required sailing through a special path that only the Elves knew about, which is what we see in the show. But before the sinking of Numenor, anyone could sail west to Aman. And, IIRC, in the show we actually see a glimpse of Aman in the distance of one of the Numenorean ships. They regularly would see the shores of Aman in the far distance and wonder about it.
So if Aman was only reachable by the secret path, why could the Numenoreans see it from their ships? But in either case, this is a huge change in the lore and order of events. It might not matter to the casual viewer, but to fans of Tolkien (the people who are the hype-men for these kinds of stories, and generally the reason shows like this ultimately get green-lit) it doesn’t make sense and breaks the story.
Wheel of Time is not bad imo. At least not season 2. The thing with that series is that it’s not possible to adapt every single thing from 14 books to 8 seasons with 8 episodes. I went into it as a new turn of the Wheel, and while the first season didn’t do much for me, with the second one I can actually see the beginnings of something that can become really good. I’m cautiously optimistic about the coming seasons now.
The thing with that series is that it’s not possible to adapt every single thing from 14 books to 8 seasons with 8 episodes.
Completely fair, but when they spend entire episodes on things that could have been easily and faithfully reduced to a 10 minute scene, or spent more than half of the first season on “who’s the dragon? it’s such a mystery!!” when that wasn’t even a plot point of the first book. It’s a fair argument, but not when they completely squandered their available screentime on frivolous things. At that point it’s just a cop-out.
I went into it as a new turn of the Wheel
I get this was the approach of a lot of viewers, but when you have to do personal mental gymnastics to justify liking the way the adaptation was done, then you’ve already admitted that it’s bad. And forget things like the order of events and such. I’m talking about radically changing the world rules, how the One Power works, and characters assassinations. Rand is supposed to be one of the most gentle and caring people alive. To the point that was slowly driving himself mad with trying to keep everyone safe and alive. The effort to do the right thing was breaking him inside and it’s one of the major aspects of his character. And then in the show he murders a guy to get into the hospital where Logain was living. Nope, I have no interest. I have the books and I can enjoy those.
