Yikes. Sounds like I made the right decision by not watching.
Legolas Send a noteboard - 22/04/2025 09:59:22 PM
View original postThere was some mild promise to the beginning of the season, but it settled into the same old dreck, that seems to have no connection with the books, or the show's own continuity, so much as shallow fan perceptions of several of the characters and agenda-driven rewrites. They just write with their own assumptions in mind, and do nothing to establish a basis for the ideas they are assuming. Everything is geared toward spectacle and diversity/LGBTQ fan-service, and the spectacles are uninteresting and unimaginative, and the diversity stuff is insufficient to carry any message, other than "look how diverse, look what good allies, we are!" Even when they try to write to make their favorite characters "win" they inadvertently undermine the image they are trying to convey or sabotage something else to accomplish what they want.
As someone with obviously rather different political views than yours, I first approached the show both expecting and welcoming certain adjustments to the sexual and racial politics of the books. Things like upgrading Moiraine and Siuan's relationship, adding more nuance to Jordan's exaggerated differences between cultures and nations and of course an adjustment to the way Jordan depicted gender - the whole 'men are from Mars, women from Venus, they can't ever possibly understand each other' thing was old-fashioned even at the time he started the series and hasn't aged well since.
But what they've done went far, far beyond that - and often indeed the result is worse, not better, than what Jordan wrote, even from a progressive perspective. Non-readers would probably be shocked to learn that egregious non-politically correct elements like the 'fridging' of Perrin's wife weren't in the books at all, with only the show writers to blame. When you read interviews with the cast or articles written by fans of the show, the way they describe the books has nothing to do with what's actually in them - I was going to link an article I came across that's particularly bad in that regard, but it's such utter garbage that there wouldn't even be any fun or any point in analyzing it.
Of course, we have to keep in mind that visual adaptations are always going to make changes which don't hold up to thorough analysis the way a book plot might - one could easily find plot holes and inconsistencies in even the best examples of the genre. But at least the characters need to make sense and have credible development, plus some bare minimum of coherence in the plot - this adaptation clearly fails on both accounts.
View original postFor the record, Rand's story was NOT good, they did not in any way capture his tGS plot, OR properly depict his growing arrogance. The annoying thing is that they might very well be satisfied with what they made, because it makes Rand's arrogance less earned and more of a character flaw, rather than the result of what he has been made to do for the sake of literally everyone else. And, of course, it plays into their agenda of "fixing" Egwene's story issues, and clearing her of the blame from a lot of things. In this case, her suspicions of his madness and hair-trigger willingness to see arrogance or ego in everything he did, down to a belt buckle someone else made as a gift, is now justified. Even flipping the order of becoming Car'a'carn and drawing Callandor and taking over a country messes up his arc and the way those things interact.
Egwene would be another case where I could definitely see a good adaptation being able to improve on the books as they are. Sort of like how Game of Thrones' Cersei is better and more interesting than the book version (at least, in the four seasons I've watched
). Obviously, that's not what we actually got. And Rand's arc in the books works well enough as it is - needed to be abbreviated, obviously, but otherwise they should've left well enough alone. View original postDespite the hype at the beginning of the season, they forgot to develop Aviendha after writing her romance with Elayne, and don't see to realize they've made her a bitchy lesbian stereotype, constantly tearing down the man she has to work with, and telling his girlfriend she can do better. Their idea of an arc for Lan was to have him meet an Aiel born in Malkier, refurbishing the least important part of Mat's tFoH arc, and watering it down for Lan, before realizing they forgot to put in the Darkfriend stuff for Ingtar, so they could stick that in Melindhra and call it a day. Nynaeve was, again, robbed in adaptation, despite what looks like conscious attempts to improve her this season. There was her determination in the opening episode to help Mat deal with his issue, but in their rare subsequent interactions, it was mostly snarking at each other and then Mat fell through the door to the Eelfinn by accident and had them offer a cure.
Converting her close friendship with Elayne into a romantic/sexual relationship was unnecessary, I agree, though also kind of obvious and it doesn't really bother me as such, nor does it cause too many problems down the line. Neglecting to develop her character outside of that, though, that's a big problem.
View original postPerrin was dragged rapidly through the motions of his Lord Goldeneyes plotline, without earning anything and continuing the process of making him deeply stupid. He absolutely had NO character development, starting off the season deciding to give up the fight and just go home, and ending the season giving up and surrendering to the Children of the Light. They paid some lip service of offering himself to spare the village, but at the end, they made it into a big thing about non-violence. Aram also lost his minor character arc. In the books, he struggled to accept the Way of the Leaf, and then, when the Way failed him in his eyes, he embraced extreme alternatives with fanaticism. Here, he lashed out in a moment of desperation and his grandmother abandoned him (Ila spends most of her on-page dialogue trying to convince friends, acquaintances and strangers to embrace the Way and forget their history of violence, turns her back on her grandson for the least offensive, most justifiable act of violence imaginable; there are insane fundamentalist religious types who would show more welcome and forgiveness to a gay Satanist prostitute than Ila has for her flesh and blood), and he moped around until he was handed a blacksmithing business.
View original postMorgase was made into a tyrannical murderer for shock value, and it went nowhere. Rahvin was embedded in the family, with likely no thought for the ramifications, and no indication of what, exactly, he gets from this or how he is using this position for his agenda. Or, you know, what his agenda is, beyond trying to get a trio of deranged lunatics to cooperate. Morgase's sons her assigned the personalities of douchebags, and no other layers were shown, and they even had dialogue to explicitly state that is what they are. They think that they made Elaida more evil in this adaptation, but all they did was make a damn good case for her deposing Siuan, while also undermining Tower politics by making them stupid and inept, because their idea of how to stage an election campaign involves ridiculous shenanigans, like tricking the other side into sending legislators on important missions, and the other side actually falling for it! Siuan was supposed to go out like a badass, a political martyr, spitting defiance with her last breath, but when you separate her speech from the thematic and diegetically unrelated action scenes taking place at the same time, it's an incoherent rant.
Ughh.
View original postThe truth is I love Moiriane. I have always and will always love her. I would die to protect her. Twenty years ago, Gitara Sedai had a Foretelling. Moiriane and I were there. She saw the Dragon was born again. The world is changing. We cannot stand behind these walls and pretend we still have control. The only thing we have control over is what we do. So what will you do? Will you stand behind this woman who stands for nothing? Who loves nothing but power. It's not the Tower or or the Seat that makes us who we are. It is us. Us. We are the power. The light shines through us. That is the truth. I am Aes Sedai. I have sworn on the Oath that my sisters have sworn on for 3,00 years. So you hear my words and know that they are true. If you stay here, you will burn with this Tower that you claim to love. But I will never burn because I am Siuan Sanche, daughter of the river, water itself. I defy you. I defy you, Elaida!
View original postThis speech deserves to be followed up with "LoL, off with your head!"
It really does, that's awful.
View original postIDK why they like Elayne so much, but they also failed to do much to give her an arc, rather her plot was, like Moiraine, just a series of scenes meant to tell you how cool she is. Thom is back and their idea of how to make viewers interested in him is to have a character say "Who are you, Thom Merrilin?" in his final scene of the series.
View original postLike I said, the Aiel are just props. The characters the writers gave the most attention to were a child and Malkier-born adopted Aiel Darkfriend.
View original postIt's an awful show and a horrible adaptation.
So are you going to persevere and also review season four?
Season 3, episode eight
- 19/04/2025 03:46:15 AM
125 Views
I have to ask
- 19/04/2025 05:00:27 PM
42 Views
Yikes. Sounds like I made the right decision by not watching.
- 22/04/2025 09:59:22 PM
21 Views