The Wheel of Time Talk Show—Ep. 27 of Intentionally Blank

[Music] hey so uh you have finally achieved my level of fame and success you've got a book adapted for screen does it count because it's the first book of a series that is 10 books away from the one i wrote that's true but you worked on it i did work on it yeah um i am a consulting producer um i was actually kind of surprised i thought i would be buried in the end credits and i'm in the front credits you're in the front credits i was very pleased to see you i'm the least important person in the front credits um which you can tell by my name happening and then they go to the special people right because you in credits it's like the most special people go first but the people who are deserve to go first but can't get first in this go last yeah right um this is like when you get your oscar winner to play thor's dad um and things like that roll so i'm right before those people this this was basically my experience with serial killer and i actually like this i think it is a valuable thing to go through because i wrote this book and then we spent years turning it into a movie and then it was a movie and then like at the very end of the credits like after all of the little like union symbols scroll by or whatever those are it says based on the novel by dan wells and then it goes black and that's the very end so you got the you got that credit on the movie which is kind of prestigious yeah uh but also it was a nice humbling thing right like no one was out there shouting from the rooftops guess what we finally made a dan wells movie um they made their own movie and i got a little credit at the end of it and that's a very nice like you know right know where you are kind of situation it is interesting um because uh we had different experiences with ours um because you were i would say much more involved than i was i was pretty heavily involved my involvement in the wheel of time uh is centered around two things first off i read all the scripts and i give feedback directly to the showrunner um who his name is wraith and he is amazing uh really great writer um he was on agents of shield for a long time and um then is the the head of this thing um and he listens to me and we talk about it and i try to i try to prepare him for what the wheel of time fandom will say book fan about certain things he's doing in the movies that's got to be a super important role because i would assume that a tv writer is not prepared for that kind yeah i mean rafe is actually pretty decent there's there's things that he's not quite aware of but i mean he he picked this up because he was a fan of the books yeah that's true legit fan of the book so he knows a little bit about book culture and things like that but um i lived it for five to seven years um being just in the um in the limelight with regards to the seriousness so there's a lot of things about the series that i know um that i i can tell him about then i just give him my structural as a writer sort of here's what i would do here's what i like what i don't like wheel of time notwithstanding and so it's kind of two-prong it's like here's what i think is most true to wheel of time in places where um i i think you're in some some dangerous areas and here's where narratively i think the story could be better and then the other big hat i'm wearing is um they put my name in the credits i think in the eyes of everyone above rafe my job is to be them to be able to say huh huh look he's involved right yeah um yeah which is a really important the figurehead yeah i mean harriet's the real figurehead but harriet is in her 80s now and um harriet is not going to be uh accessible um in the way that i am um and so she's also by the way a consulting producer so our names are both in the credits and i actually went to harriet before and said are you okay with me being a producer on this because there's a boundary there that i want to be careful not to cross because the wheel of time is not brandon sanderson's yeah real time is robert jordan's and i helped out um and did a lot of helping out in the end of the series but it's not mine and i never want to imply that it is but yeah those are kind of my roles uh so they did a lot of b-roll filming of me uh here and in prague when we went there of just kind of for behind the scenes sort of making of stuff um and they asked me um to publicize and things like that um but uh interestingly my contract does not have non-disparagement um i am allowed to say whatever i want um um about the show in any way that is interesting um i generally like to respect what people are doing and i happen to really like um what they're doing with the wheel of time but i am allowed to say i hate it if i do if you do uh in fact i warned rafe ahead of time i'm like if you bring me on this is one of the things um i will need to be able to tell it straight to the wheel of time fans um and he said i'm okay with that um so well and that's i think also a key part of your role is uh kind of fan liaison in a way um you know they they want to have somebody there who can you know be a a symbol even if nothing else a symbol to the fans that look we know who you are and we respect you and we're making this show for you right even while at the same time you know and we should do a podcast about this at some point the differences in scale between book industry and tv industry are such that while yes they are definitely tipping their hats to hardcore fans they have to appeal to people who have never read the books before or the show will die yeah you can't survive only on um a a books fandom for most shows um there are some rare exceptions um i mean harry potter had enough readers that harry potter the movies could be successful with only people who have read harry potter yeah um but for the vast majority of books even something very successful as a book series you need to have a larger audience otherwise the budgets um for these things are so big that you can't make your money back yeah um and my big worry because you do i think you have to appeal to the non-fans but ideally you're going to have the fans as well yes and my big worry with any adaptation and i'm very worried about this with wheel of time as well is that the hardcore fans are going to whine so much about the things that have been changed and about how about the imperfections that they're gonna scuttle their one best chance to ever get an adaptation yeah i mean at the same time i don't want them to feel like they have to not express what they want right like you're allowed to dislike a piece of art absolutely and the wheel of time and these these things get adapted are so beloved um and we have seen so many times that producers or writers um mostly i'm going to say the producers have just ignored the the soul of a property that yes i i would say i'm not worried about that uh the reason i'm not worried about that is twofold um number one it didn't happen to lord of the rings um and a lot of people who weren't you know back in the day in the trenches of world war fellowship of the ring um the internet was really mad about fellowship of the ring um they did not like the the budding very new internet the changes you know there were there were a lot of changes that people were super upset about and you're right we it 20 years ago now we forget like having arwen instead of glorfindle yes pissed off the entire world it did uh cutting out tom bombadil even though it was a really really good decision it made everyone angry yeah uh even like things that are iconic now like vigo mortensen as aragorn um some people really hated diego martinson um as aragorn uh it originally he wasn't kingly enough right they were they were leaning into the scroungy scrappy dirty ranger um rather than the this man is a king biding his time until he can sees you know what what uh what is owed to him or whatever um and these sorts of things like um and you know what peter jackson made and his team i should say um made a fantastic piece of media that stayed true to the soul of the books but in not every aspect right like they picked the soul the part of the books that they felt they could adapt and they did a really good job and it has stood the test of time um and so if you do that i think that you're in in a good spot um and uh it's interesting it's it's made me think a lot about adaptation working on this because yeah i got the first scripts if you guys have not watched wheel of time i would recommend you go watch them uh i think they are very good uh the episodes i also love them um but when i got the first uh the first two scripts and i read them i sat and thought for a long time because adaptations i have now come to come to understand come to kind of come to kind of under i have now come to understand uh seem to fit into two general groups with a spectrum between okay um and this is the faithful adaptation on one hand the we're gonna try to scene by scene remake this this is the harry potter one harry potter school adaptation yeah game of thrones um early seasons was trying this that's true um that doesn't mean you don't add things or take things away but the the sole idea is we're going to try to adapt recreate yes we're going to recreate this and then there's the other school all the way on the side which is the i read this thing and i'm inspired by it and i'm going to go make another thing that is inspired by it this is your shining um yeah school of of storytelling and wheel of time is like right here if this is the halfway point it's 75 percent um or maybe 50 percent um but between the two pulls um it is rafe saying all right um i feel like i cannot adapt the wheel of time to the screen in a way that is going to convey what's in the books um and so instead i'm going to try to do my best to bring the same emotional experience to people um through using very few of the original scenes he does try to put them in when he can and lines of dialogue where he can but that's not his guiding motif he's not sitting his team's not sitting and taking this chapter and say how do we adapt this chapter it's how do we adapt this character's arc and translate it entirely to a cinematic experiment experience feeling like if we if we don't have to have any of the same touchstones if we don't need to as long as that gives the same emotional feel to who this character is something that will appeal to people that will tell the story but you know almost in like a a robin hood kind of way yeah you know we've heard the story of robin hood so many times that there is like an er robin hood somewhere that exists right and every version of it is different and has different dialogue and has different characters and i do kind of feel like that's where this one is heading and i'm well i was gonna say i'm cool with that but it is important for our listeners to know that my opinion as a fan of wheel of time doesn't really matter i read the first book um and i don't remember almost any of it okay in fact after we got through episode one i'm like okay that's the entirety of what i remember from the wheel of time series uh there was a village full of people trollocks attacked it and then they left and so everything since then is completely new to me and we're recording this uh with four episodes released thus far and uh my wife who has never read any of the books is 100 addicted to it i am really enjoying it especially once we hit episode three and suddenly matt had a character um took him a while to develop a personality parent doesn't have one yet i assume that's coming uh so in the books matt doesn't get a personality to book three really book four really i'm joking but uh no but that makes sense because matt is very much the audience insert character in the same way that harry potter dorothy gail you you want to see yourself reflected in him took a long time for rubber jordan to really nail down who matt was um and it's interesting because matt is the character that was the hardest for me to get right um like my mat gets better through my three books um but my mat is pretty off in the first uh book the gathering storm um that i wrote but yeah so matt is is an interesting character for that reason um in the book um there are only two viewpoint characters i think the entire first book i have to go back and look um i guess you can yeah if you count lorraine and matt it is rand for almost all of it until they split apart and then um it's perrin and rand oh that's right i believe now we might get some some other viewpoints later on but it is mostly the you know rant book um and rand gets a personality by episode three as well which was which was nice i should say a non-whiny person episode two his whining because it's very true to the books oh well um and uh take your word for it yeah um i've told this story before sorry for those who've heard it before but one of my favorite things about the wheel of time is that when i read them as a kid i spent the whole time being like man i empathize so much with rand warren keeps telling him what to do and he doesn't have to do any of this stuff and why won't she just tell him what's going on and leave him alone and she is and then i read them as an adult and i had a different experience i'm like you stupid kid listen to maureen okay you are going to get yourself killed so quickly if you do not listen to have you not seen the stuff that she does she's got it together listen to maurice and that's funny um because i've read the wheel of time many times and so um i i loved in episode two saying that uh by the way they'll be minor spoilers we'll try not to give major scales um um we'll do our best yeah we're just gonna talk about the experience of making being an author in the world of hollywood is an interesting thing because nobody knows what to do with you no one knows what to make of you except in my case rafe who absolutely knows what uh you know yeah he's a writer i get along really well with all the writers um and the show runner is often a writer um but um well and you know you this is maybe broader than just the topic of let's talk about wheel of time but um you know i think i mentioned castle at some point yeah um people have a very weird perception of what authors are like and hollywood in particular has a very weird perception because what a hollywood writer gets paid is leagues beyond what your typical novelist gets paid um most people working even on like mid-list tv shows on some networks that nobody watches are probably making as much or more per episode than i am making on a book deal okay um which is really interesting yeah i would say that because it highlights our different experiences my experience has been that in hollywood the writer is so low on the totem pole and paid very um i won't say poorly because you you paid television and film are different is another yeah we have to make it clear but in film a lot of times the writer is not treated with the respect that i think a writer deserves yeah and in our world we get treated with a lot of respect absolutely yeah but the money is very good the money is very different so like if you are staff writer on a tv show then yes you're not making a ton but if you are writer if you wrote enough of the script that you are listed in the credits as the writer for this episode uh then that is probably five figures um you know and i when i sold ghost station last year that was ten thousand dollars that's less than an episode of an average tv show um you know most of my sales are a little more than that but like victoria schwab when she uh and i i genuinely i don't know where her uh tv deal is right now but one of her books uh had been uh they were working on a pilot for it and she actually worked into her contract that she got to write the first draft of the script uh partly for the credit but mostly because that was a good like 60 000 of money because that's what you get as the writer on a big show for one episode which is nuts and you're just like ah i get seven figure deals for all my books this is chump change either way let's just say that the the writer's guild does a good job of watching out for writers um payments in hollywood and i don't think it is i don't think it is over inflated i bet they could be paid more oh yes well and and i do want to make that clear i'm not complaining that those writers get more uh than they should i'm just saying that if that's what you're pulling down per episode then when you set out to write a show like castle or a movie about a writer um your perception of what they make is going to be very skewed um but uh the respect that an author gets a novelist gets is very different from their respect and writer gets inhaled absolutely uh which is kind of this interesting thing um and that's why they don't quite know like me they wheel of time when i i went to set i uh everyone was wonderful they were just delightful uh cast crew everyone um but i got the sense that they didn't quite know what to make of me because not only am i a writer and a producer i'm a producer on the show so how do you treat a producer which type of producer am i um because there are producers in hollywood that they get their producing credit because they introduce such and such such and such at a party and said this deal gets made i get a producer credit and they said yes and that's all they've had to do with the production ever um right but and then there are also producers that if this person says we have to do this thing poor rafe is going to have to figure out how to make us do it so let's make sure this person is happy so that they don't say do the thing and we get them out of here quickly before they ruin things yeah and then there's producer of this person really knows their stuff we're really glad that they're here they might point out some stuff that is really useful to us and then there's um like this is this producer is the ceo's daughter and if she isn't treated well then like producer means so many different things and they're like what is brandon we have no idea he's not just the producer and a writer though he's the other writer they got hired to write on the thing and so what is his role um but at the same time he is very famous in his field is he like an actor the person that we have to treat like a they had no idea they didn't know what to make of me they never do in hollywood they don't uh and it's it's very strange um hey so getting i i'm i'm curious yeah i want to get back to some of the adaptation questions yeah uh because i don't remember the books uh in the series so far yeah my favorite character by a mile is nineveh okay she is so much fun to watch she is incredibly entertaining and one of my favorites also yeah um how true is she to the books she is extraordinarily true to the books i would say is one of the characters so here's the thing i think all the characters in soul and personality are very true to the books that's the thing that rafe has accomplished most of the scenes are different um from the books but they convey the same people with one major change their world is darker and their lives are harder okay um that's the the biggest biggest change this is uh this is the influence of the grim dark movement um i wouldn't call wheel of time grim dark but this is uh you know everyone's older and you can be meaner to them because of that yeah so uh let's go ahead and say we're going to give some spoilers we're going to delve into a little more spoiler definitely um here uh tril still i mean it's the early episodes so doesn't spoil that much but for instance um in the books matt coffin's dad is uh one of these delightful characters he's he's kind of like matt he's a little bit of a wisecracker but you see that he's the seasoned wisecracking guy who understands responsibility and um he's like that would be one of the first people if you could take someone on a quest you i'd pick matt's dad because he would keep you entertained but he's not gonna be irresponsible it's like you get the sense he was really irresponsible when he was younger and now he's learned how to be a responsible individual in the movie he is a lecherous womanizer who beats his family yeah um this is one of the ones that the fans are up in arms on and i actually warned rafe about this i'm like come on you you don't have to do this to abel coffin do you he is he is the delight throughout the books uh he has very bit parts but when he when he shows up you have a good time oh so you see him again oh yeah oh yeah okay wheel of time is um is very much there are very few characters that don't show up later on people you meet just in a and this is just one of the things rubber jordan love to do people you hang out with for a scene come back later on um probably not something that they're gonna be able to do as much in the movie yeah um or in the television show um with but yeah but even even so that does help explain like if they're leaving that option open yeah that helps explain episode one which spent so much time on all these people in the village and the whole time i was thinking this is the one part of the book i remember they're gonna leave this village so soon i don't need to know any of these people but if they come back yeah maybe i do yeah so not to give too many spoilers but um all those people are relevant characters um and many of them that you were talking about appear in my books and i got to write them that is so bananas uh so yeah um by the way for the audience who's out there you know because i know that there are hardcore wheel of time fans who are incensed that you are having this conversation with the absolute chucklehead here who doesn't know the series um when brandon signed for me my copy of the gathering storm he wrote for dan who will never read this book it is a long journey um but regardless you're experiencing now this is part of why we love having adaptations exactly so everything's darker um so which i suspect is more so than a grim dark thing it's a game of thrones tv show yeah that's what i mean game of thrones tv show is which is kind of a grim dark grim dark thing um and like you know iguane getting pushed off the cliff at the beginning um this is less grim dark and more we need dynamic interesting visual scenes to film she's going to get pushed off a cliff into a river i i wrote it to ray from like why why why are we pushing women off of cliffs as uh as uh part of their uh their womanhood ceremony why um because it looks good on camera looks good on camera and he didn't actually say that she's like well you know there's some things we need to adapt and things like that and um and this felt like a good dramatic scene for our actors to do and you know um but uh but yeah that that sort of stuff and so um so you know naive her life is um is a little darker but mostly her her she's one of the ones in the books that it had been awful for already and so it doesn't change like you know the big change in episode one um is um spoilers episodes for episode one perrin killing his wife parent does not have a wife in the books right um at this point in the series um and so he kills his his wife um it replaces a scene later in the first book where he kills some white cloaks um with a bit of berserker rage um and um it's a very controversial which is change what you were talking about with trying to capture the spirit of it yeah even if not the actual it's not scene by scene like uh this is the the one change so um there are a lot of things i suggested and i'm shocked they actually did this is my okay the most surreal part about all this is that i made a bunch of suggestions and rafe listened to me because my experience i don't know if your experiences this is in hollywood is my experience is i make a bunch of suggestions they pat me on the head and ignore me right for the most part that's what happened with me as well yeah um you don't you know it's kind of this you don't know filmmaking you don't know the things we're doing um we've got our vision got you on the head and i can understand that to an extent and one thing that i can look backwards on now having seen the final product and understanding scriptwriting much better than i did eight years ago um all the things where they ignored me they were right to ignore me and the places where they took my advice they were right to take my advice interesting um so the big the biggest change other than i guess i should get back to my story i read the first two episodes and i sat there for a while and i had to shift my view from this is going to be a one-to-one adaptation to this is more um like the shining i don't go that far i uh i think it is more like the uh the lord of the rings adaptations i think peter jackson maybe was a smidge on this side more i'm gesturing toward the side um of the uh the straight up adaptation versus the the soul of it but he's in the middle he's like right down the center and i think wheel of time is more like that than it is like more of a recreation than it is a reimagining well i think it's on the reimagining side but it's really close to the lord of the rings um and not really close to the shiny if you imagine 50 50 between these two it's close to the 50 50 line just over the line into reimagining um but that took me a while and i sat there with those scripts for a while um and um chatted with rafe and eventually decided you know what i'm cool with this right like this is some of my favorite adaptations did this um i just have to shift my brain and wheel of time has this uh this built-in mechanism for doing that so it's my head cannon uh it's called the wheel of time um and the mythology of the wheel of time is that these characters have all lived before and done this exact story before really they've lived it yeah not just like in reincarnations but no in reincarnations but this same story gets cycled through truth it's not a hundred percent but if you look in the books there's uh for instance there are legends in our time then we we think that what the life we're living in america and things like this would be the first stage maybe the seventh age and they're in the third age um right and so in the wheel of time they have the legends of john glenn who flew to the bel the moon in the belly of an eagle they find a mercedes symbol um they uh they talk about all these lit myths of america and russia they there's even a thing about dear abby um like the idea is that these things have been gone so long so far we're so far past these that they've become legend right but we have in our time the stories of merlin who is tom maryland naive um we're gonna go to the stone of tear which has the sword in the stone um we have um lose theron uh or not uh of arthur pendragon not lose there and the pen dragon like we have the whole arthurian lore which we have during our age has become myth the stories of all of randolph thor and perrin who's based off of peyron the um the the slavic god the names of all of them and things like that so the whole idea is they lived that the whole thing through and then we have legends of them then they have legends of us by the time it gets back to them and they don't live it one to one but the same story happens with the same soul so as this thing is endlessly cycling around yes this isn't a retelling of the books you read yes this is a retelling of one of the other cycles yes that is the same story as the books you read that is my head canon um i don't think it's so cool allowed to call it his head canon in public but um but that is like and i even said to him the first time we did a call on the the scripts i said this is my head cannon because the books have uh this built-in mechanism and that frees me and liberates me to just let you make the show you want to make and i'm going to try to help you make the best version of it that you're trying to make yeah uh which allows me even on things like i didn't like parents wife being killed um i understood why he put that scene there i think it's actually a good scene i think perrin berserking during the trollic attack and killing somebody on accident or wounding someone is a really important scene for you if you're going to cut the white cloaks thing that he just doesn't have time for yeah um it really establishes him straight up the gate establishes his main conflict parent's main conflict is creator destroyer through the books and it's just uh he's got he's got this thing inside of him he's um and he's scared to let it out um and i thought it was good but i recommended don't make it a wife uh because the trauma of killing someone that close to you is going to make it hard for me to um except that he can even function uh going forward um and i just recommended it be his master blacksmith and that he wound them because once you've killed someone then there's a line you've already crossed that a lot of through the book's parents story is will he cross this line or not but he does kill those white cloaks in the in the first book um with the berserker rage and things like that so um but it lets me even like accept this is the most controversial change to me and i'm totally cool with it i wouldn't have done it but i can be like you know what in this version of the fear of the wheel this is just what happened to poor parent uh he's got a much rougher time of it he's just gonna deal with it he's just gotta deal with it and i really liked how they filmed that scene yeah the scene was cool um i did say earlier uh four episodes in perrin doesn't really have a a character yet for me his personality is mostly just i'm so sad that i killed that girl i liked so parents really hard because um in the books perrin's uh parents whole thing is i am a big strong dude if i'm not really careful i will hurt somebody and so i have learned my entire life to think things through and i generally just don't say my mind so he is the big strong silent guy but you're in his perspective for a good chunk of the books and so you see it he even learns um and uh i won't say what they're going to do with this in the show but he learns he gets the power to smell people's emotions in the books um cool which is all internal and so he can read people's emotions and tell you what people are thinking it's really convenient for parent to be in his viewpoint when you're writing him to be like oh yeah he could tell this person was simmering anger angry even though they weren't showing it it's really dynamic for writing a novel in a visual medium him being able to smell people's emotions doesn't help you tell his story at all yeah well especially if he is so closed off yes if he's not the kind who's going to immediately capitalize on that information then there's nothing to show yeah and i mean paren i'm i i do want to say he does talk in the books we're going to be in the things like he doesn't stay quiet all the time i mean but he does he is the quiet silent type yeah um and characterizing that he needs people to play off of um to to make him really work and in the books a wayne perrin is the way that that happens she pulls him out of his shell as they are isolated together from the rest of the group and they meet with the tuatha on and things like that like this is where parents starts to actually blossom before that he was just the big quiet guy who followed everyone around yeah um and so um yeah i do have a question about that but we'll let the the new pages come in just butt in and don't don't wait for permission just el throw elbows take him out if she takes me out then i'll fill the time i'll just make up some yeah about wheel of time yeah yeah yeah so she takes me out and then no more books get written well i mean she's not gonna kill you what do you think take out heard him but don't kill him okay here's my potentially snotty question okay go for it um episode two yes they this is because you talked about how they're isolated and they are they they have this group of six people that leaves the town and then uh eventually turns into seven people but they they all get separated when they go to the big city full of scary monster shadows it seemed to me from the show and i i genuinely am not sure if there is a important plot point that i am not understanding or a world building thing or if it was just filmed weird um everyone fled from the city and like is there a reason why they all ended up in as far as i can tell completely different biomes right that didn't happen in the in like is that city like the nexus of biome multiple different landforms um they get split up and there's really only two biomes um you've got the white cloaks around and you've got trollux around and so you end up um they're all going the same direction in the books um it's more like matt and rand are on the road okay going village to village the village and um perrin and aguain end up in the wilderness by themselves um going through the forest staying away that way but headed in the same general direction the same general direction okay and so and we don't follow maureen we don't know what happened to her in the um the books uh to the same extent because we're not in her viewpoint oh right um and so um we get a lot of pair here's perrin and aguain and here is matt and rand um on the road okay well that is fascinating to learn because the the moraine story and nave is it naive uh i say naive um but a lot of people say nav so i what did they say in the movie in the show uh audiobooks and i think the show match with naive naive okay i'm not going to say that all of a lot of that stuff uh you can say whatever you want it's she's she's what ninaway there's a there's an arthurian legend nimue nimue that uh that he got video no but uh that is the most interesting of the plot lines right now um partly because i love naive so much uh partly because especially in episode four when that other dude the false dragon shows up and we get to we get to meet all of the asada and we learn more about them that's incredibly cool stuff at what point do we learn that or was was that fake scenes made up so that we could know there is what was going on this is all in the books but it's condensed and you're seeing perspectives that you learn about afterward okay um but all this stuff like he's moving up um multiple um icidi that are relevant to the story later on that don't show up at this point in the books um it's just compressing right uh a lot of compressing going on and a lot of it's really good um yeah like this is what you would need to do to adapt uh the wheel of time and the stuff that's happening like with naive and lan and the i said eye and stuff that is the bulk of what makes up the wheel of time the book series okay but um and some of this is in the first book um don't get me wrong but basically the wheel of time can be lumped into four eras hey here's my here's my brand this is what i love brandon era one is books one through three which are quest fantasies in the traditional token essence okay um number one run away from the scary monsters number two chase down this thing that someone stole number three um may we've got to chase down a certain member of our of our group who might be going crazy because they are uh now channeling the one power and have decided to leave us all behind so three chase narratives essentially for the bulk of the books um and then book four becomes something completely different book four is where it becomes a world building political intrigue epic um book four becomes doom and it is most the most most people's favorite book in the series um because book four is it is heavily influenced by dune um and it uh it leans into a lot of those same ideas um but done in the wheel of time way and the world expands and it becomes a political intrigue series instead of a quest fantasy series it's about the same time that game of thrones came out so kind of jordan was channeling that same thing so books four five and six are world building political intrigue epics um in the vein of dune or game of thrones okay um and then it starts to transition again into i don't want to say for sure because i wasn't in robert jordan's head but the the i might be a little bit tired of the main storyline let's explore the lives of a lot of different characters in this world going in different directions and start new interesting stories with them okay some characters parents become main characters um characters like i sedai that had bit parts become main characters um and so a big kind of expansion of the world exclusively there are other facets of it in particular yeah uh very big expansion of the cast which culminates in the tenth book um which um a lot of those work really well the tenth one is the least popular in the whole series okay um tenth book is generally people's least favorite because it is a parallel novel where he the cast got too big and so he had to split two books in half and show all the uh everyone's favorite characters in book nine and then book ten is the same time period with a whole bunch more characters okay um and um people generally didn't like that one as much book 11 starts the wrap-up that was his last one and that's the last era of the of the wheel of time books which is the we're going to kind of go back to books four through six and refocus on the main characters and the world building epic and the kind of plot line of the main characters and my three are in that um you did what 12 13 14. yeah um and so that's so basically what rafe is doing here is he's saying okay the bulk of the time of the wheel of time and people a lot of people's favorite parts take place in this world building building political intrigue era that's what the wheel of time really is in its soul so i'm going to accelerate some of those plots and put them in season one and expand some of the things that were going on behind the scenes um that we know happened we're going to show them on screen and we're going to kind of compress a lot of that to give you that same feel so that it has a smoother transition away from quest epic a request fantasy into uh political intrigue yeah which seems like a very good decision it was a great decision yeah um i that's i'm like most of his decisions i wholeheartedly support uh once i got into my head this isn't going to be a scene by scene then this in particular i'm like this is great like my favorite episodes of the whole season are four five and six i think um six being my favorite okay um four it was awesome yeah so and they lean into these ideas quite a bit and uh his cast is really good and moirin and lan in particular are really good and um so giving more screen time to warren is not something i'll ever complain about yeah i really like more in fact there's a character later in the series who ends up getting a lot of the doing a lot of same stuff maureen would do and i still to this day she's my least favorite character because i'm like you're not my real mom i only want to read about moirang you are just a fake version of maureen go away well and uh getting rosamond pike for the show was huge because she is killing it she is great she is doing an absolutely wonderful job of being you know the uh the gandalf but i like the whole cast the whole cast is very good um eguin is great and dawn and i watched it and we were just killing ourselves trying to figure out where we knew her from she's the the weird friend from the live-action door of the explorer have you seen the live-action door not it is so good like and and i know that wait wait that's the look that everybody has it is incredibly funny i love the live-action door of the explorer what kind of plane is in it what kind of funny um like like you're actually laughing with the movie about the jokes that they wanted yes okay because the the basic premise of it is um that dora has grown up in the jungle talking to animals and then she gets sent to los angeles for a real education in high school and so first of all they've aged her up a little bit she's like in 15 or 16 instead of a little kid uh and she has no concept of how the real world functions and she still acts as if she's in a cartoon okay and it is so funny okay anyway it greens in that you'll have to get us to watch that in the sometimes yeah um the the really the other character that i loved is the the red ice today okay leandron leandron and her i did recognize because uh she's lady macbeth in the patrick stewart okay uh which my daughter and i actually just watched a couple weeks ago and so we recognized her instantly she's so good at being likable and evil at the same time the biggest disparity between a character from the books how much i like them and the character in the show and in the scripts you haven't gotten to that like the biggest disparity is leandron really his there leandron is so good and she's fine in the books don't get me wrong but she's definitely not a big factor in these early books i mean she does appear in book one uh technically um and she does some stuff but you don't really start paying a lot of attention to leandra until later on and the way she is written uh she's in this is she's great uh i just i really like their leandro yeah she's doing who's the green ice today uh alana is it it's probably alana because she's not alana i can't remember which one they slaughtered into that role i don't remember it's not a lie i don't remember i can't recall most of their names oh it's not it can't be alana no because i know what they're doing later on who is it um yeah in any anyway [ __ ] is is that character sticking around for a while because she was a lot of fun um i will not i will not say um whether that character sticks around uh or not but um yeah okay whatever yeah yeah um but yes even the kind of the four mooks from the village kind of the her there are four frodo's uh they've all been really like like i said once they get into their roles i'm still waiting for perrin to to wake up but but they're all interesting and and they're they're fun to to watch so it's really the parent book um i mean there's multiple parent books but book two is where you're like oh wow parents really interesting um there's some in book one but it's book two where that really happens so and then book four for matt this might be a question that you cannot or do not want to answer do you know what their plan is are they doing like one book per season i think modified with some of this extra stuff we're talking about um i'm not sure what i'm allowed to say here but i think it would be unreasonable to expect 14 seasons out of a television show agreed and so um i think it would be unwise to plan for 14 seasons and to instead plan on condensing material to combine seas books into seasons very good um very diplomatically said i think that would be a very wise decision and indeed most conversations i've been in long before rafe was involved that was one of the things everyone talked about this probably can't be 14 movies or 14 seasons where is a chance for us to accelerate some of this and connect some of us yeah which you know just brings me back to my original point of view i i don't want the hardcore fans to turn their noses up at this because it has failed to pass a purity test you know i want them i want people who love these books to be able to love the series for what it is rather than hate it for what is what it isn't yeah uh we are you know kind of blinded in some ways by something like spider-man how many spider-man reboots have we seen yeah uh but most things never get that chance game of thrones likely will never get another series or movies or i mean they'll get a prequel or something like that and they're already working on a prequel but but the books we're never going to get a different adaptation of those books um once something gets adapted once that's all you get and if it does turn up again like if there's another string of harry potter movies 50 years from now that's 50 years from now some of us might not even be around um and so like this is your shot guys love it for what it is rather than yeah you don't have to love things you don't like but also don't get hung up on like um i believe strongly that that an adaptation is a new piece of art even one that is sticking close to it um let the new piece of art be the new piece of art because it doesn't change the books yes you can always go read the books again and people who love the show can go read the books and get something new from them and when i have been working on the adaptation of mistborn this has been one of my kind of primary things don't be enslaved by what i wrote myself in the book when i write uh screenplay and adaptation treatment stuff do what is best to tell this story on the screen yeah so that the you know if the series is really popular that lends immortality more immortality to the books yeah and so uh yeah well and that might be the really upbeat note to end this on my wife who is not a nerd yeah i mean not a not a fantasy nerd um she is she wants to read the books now she likes the series so much that she wants to pick up the the books and start reading those and so if this is something that brings in more fans and introduces robert jordan to more people then i i am happy to call it a success well and let's not paint this as it's this really terrible adaptation that is we have to suffer because it'll bring more people in it is legitimately good no i and yeah i i hope that people have listened to us rave about it for 50 minutes and understand that we both really like it people say the same thing about the aragon film christopher will be like well it introduced the world in the books to uh to a new audience and that that really that's the positive thing he'll say about it um that's not what we're saying here uh we're not we're not giving a backhanded uh compliment um it is legitimately a good adaptation i would agree with you don't get hung up on the fact that it is not the style of adaptation that you might have wanted um i was willing to let this go um it wasn't that hard but i did give it some thought and at the end of it i have i'm very glad that i did because um it lets me enjoy this thing for what it is yeah how's that ben [Music]

Channel: Brandon Sanderson

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Length: 52min 26sec (3146 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 08 2021