@rucket said in The Wheel of Time:
Anyway, I think Sanderson has made a good point elsewhere, that television and movies are a different animal than novels. I agree with this, and having seen adaptation after adaptation shit on source material I've enjoyed in the past...
Of course. Absolutely. There is no way the exposition alone from a series like the Wheel of Time could possibly fit within a TV series, even one with many more than just 8 episodes per season. We can't possible sit through the equivalent of hundreds of pages explaining how the One Power works, for example. That'd be downright impossible.
Nor would it be reasonable for any of us to not lose some favorite secondary book characters or subplots altogether. Even big plots. Merging either (or just plain skipping them) are just about par for the course. Sometimes it's just to save on costs; sets are expensive so if they aren't going to be reused, it makes every sense to cut down.
Even some indulgences are fine. I'm a purist Tolkien fan but I didn't mind (too much ) that Glorfindel was removed and Arwen put in his place, or even when they had that subplot about her fate being 'tied to Middle-Earth'. It's a'ight. Elves at Helms Deep? Okay, I can roll with it. Legolas' acrobatic fights? Okay, that's fine.
But - to use the same examples as above - it's one thing to have Arwen's role upgraded and another to replace Pippin and have her be in the Fellowship. It's okay to merge some Aes Sedai with similar political views, or to make the One Power way simpler without explaining almost any of it directly. They'll get to the same point; Nynaeve is like, very strong and she really is something special as a Healer. We don't need to be told what a Spirit weave is.
If they can pull the Lord of the Rings' equivalent of adopting the material with the Wheel of Time series I'll be more than happy.
They can depart from the original material; they just shouldn't go their separate ways, and I'll have a really good time with it.