The Wheel of Time not being shopped to other networks after cancellation
The Wheel of Time not being shopped to other networks after cancellation
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The Wheel of Time not being shopped to other networks after cancellation
25 comments
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I mostly don't even bother watching new series anymore, I've gotten so used to the good ones getting canceled way too soon
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If it's bad, you didn't waste time on it.
If it's good, it'll get canceled before finishing.
If it's good and finished, it'll still be good and finished when you binge it all later.
Though IMHO, the problem is the same (capitalism...) problem affecting film and gaming: people have forgotten how to spread their bets out over a wide mid-market for modest returns overall. Instead, everyone is a gambler now and only invests huge money into safe projects they expect a monster return on.
You look at older shows and they weren't all great, but they'd make 40 episodes a season for under a million. Often, they weren't even all that good, but you'd get a few episodes a season that were solid and eventually, usually after 2 seasons, the cast and crew has learned enough about the characters and the making of the show to be good at it. Shows and creators today have no runway. You don't get 80 episodes to figure it out and start making regularly good content. You get like 1 episode to become a mega success, or you get canceled.
If you want to make games you either become an indie and work with a dozen people or less, or join one of the like 5 megastudios that make all the big games on a team of thousands. The 50 to 100 person mid budget studio barely exists today in any industry. It's killing content, killing variety, and it's going to kill the mediums because the next generation of creators doesn't have a place to learn and practice their craft.
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The thing that burns me the most is that the cancellation of the show likely means that there will not be any further re-recordings of the audiobooks with Rosamund Pike. She re-recorded the first four books of the series to match the show.
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They took a popular series from a genre fanbase, hoping that it would cross over.
But, they then tinkered with the original material so much that the fan base they were hoping would boost it to broader popularity was split, reducing hype outside of the book fans.
So, the hype didn't spread.
But, the show was also weak in its own right with wooden acting and played out tropes shoring up dubious writing choices. I'm not sure how much the flat performances were the actors not getting into character, and how much was bad direction choices, but too many of the early scenes were just bland and lacked personality.
Since the series is such that the characters are what make the epic scale relatable, a lot of people that came to the show either because an existing fan wanted to share the experience with them, or they had it come up prompted on the service just shrugged and stopped watching by the third episode.
There were definitely good parts to the show, but getting to them meant wading through a lot of meh, and that just isn't the way to build a viewership.
I originally couldn't finish the first episode. I went back and tried again. Made it through and wondered why I bothered. Then I forced myself to carry on and was so damn bored by the third episode I was checked out. I let it play through, but didn't really engage.
It was just so meh.
Since they changed several of the characters' personalities, I couldn't even rely on preexisting engagement to carry me over until the plot got moving.
When it first came out, I knew there was no way to stay 100% with the books. There was just no way to adapt the first three books without structural changes because a lot of what goes on to progress the story is internal to the characters. Later books would be even harder to adapt. So I went in eager to see how they made it work, because they had the budget to make it work. And then you get blandness. It was the equivalent of unsalted oatmeal.
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This is one of the things I most wanted done right like LOTR was. Right off the bat you saw changes that basically ruined it (looking at both men and women for dragon reborn but then characters are caught off guard by a female using male magic.) and to top it off they really dug into personality and relationship changes with a lot of screen time going through them while many other things were not shown. I personally think 100% is possible unless you mean literally doing the thought overlay like they did in the original dune movies. You don't really have to have all the thoughts if you show what they are doing and you can add a bit of dialogue between characters that is about what they were thinking in some cases (I don't view that as really veering away from source for that type of thing.)
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Could anyone else afford to finance this? It wont get cheaper to make.
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Why sink money in a failed show none really cares about?
I made it through like 2 episodes and I get that diversity is important but wtf this show wants to make me believe there’s medieval villages with all ethnicities everywhere? I hate that I hate this so much.
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That’s my point why spend hundreds of millions on a likely loser?
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... the wheel of time is a post-apocalyptic setting, not a medieval one. They have high literacy rates, printed books, and, yes, the Emond's Fielders being diverse would be accurate, since they're the remnants of a powerful kingdom that was, itself, diverse.
Here's the real issue with the show. Any change they made replaced good writing with stale or outright hurtful tropes (they made up a character just so they could fridge her in the first episode). The End of season 1 was shot by covid and a lead leaving. And they were only just recovering the story from that in season 3.
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I too was a bit bored at times, but that even happened with GoT. I also enjoyed each season more than the last, which I'm sure is largely because of the plot, but I think the character progression was decent.
The actors were definitely growing into their roles and needed time to build chemistry. There's always the risk of using lesser known actors, but I usually prefer that to a fully loaded A-List cast that uses the big names for marketing purposes rather than fit.
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