D&D Movie/TV Dragonlancing TV show being worked on by WotC confirmed

[Ruin Explorer]

but there is plenty of stuff out there on how WoT really begins to subvert tropes starting with TSR

Is there? I googled it quite thoroughly and I couldn't find anything, though maybe I don't know the right terms? Can you point me to anything?

 

[Parmandur]

I totally agree.

I remembered a lot from the first 2 books and rejoyced when the little details appeared in later books.

I often read books by skipping from one Mat chapter to another and finishing with all the Perrin chapters. Most of the time the story still worked well, as most of the time they did not intermingle with each other in a single book.

A strength of the TV show was how they tried to combine different plots to make the story less unwieldy. A great a difficult task.

I reminded me a bit of the Harr Potter: order of the Phoenix. Often cited as one of the worst movies because it deviated most from the source, it was my favoutite one, because of that. It was the one movie that did not feel stuffed with too much details.

In general, I agree with that as a philosophy approaching an adaptation. I feel that I gave the showrunners a long leash to do their own thing, and did not expect Eye of the World to be exactly adapted in only 8 hours. I just didn't like what they did.

 

[Parmandur]

The biggest "lore experts" are often people who don't even understand the themes of the books on even a very basic level. Like, with LotR, they can name every Elf in the entire thing off the top of their head, but they very often don't get any of the messages Tolkien was trying to send. Because their obsession is solely with the superficial and the specific, not with the tone, not with the meaning, not with the message.

I agree wholeheartedly with this: in fact, my problems with the Wheel of Time show boil down to the opposite, similar to my problems with Zach Snyders Watchmen: the show is slavishly devoted to certain surface details of the story, without showing a serious grasp of the deeper concerns (particularly the psychological).

Is there? I googled it quite thoroughly and I couldn't find anything, though maybe I don't know the right terms? Can you point me to anything?

I'd put it a bit earlier, in The Dragon Reborn, when the protagonist spends a whole novel in an extended psychotic break with reality, and then it gets gnarlier and gnarlier each book. The outline doesn't help here, I think, because it's less that the series undermines or subverts tropes ao much as dig it's nails deep into them in detail from the point of view of exploring profound PTSD and how people respond to that, getting really intense in the exploration of the interiority of the experience. The Wheel of Time is, ultimately, Jordan wrestling with hia trauma from killing and avoiding being killed in a pointless conflict in Vietnam, and how he dealt with that for the next 30 years.

The show...doesn't quite get it.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

The Wheel of Time is, ultimately, Jordan wrestling with hia trauma from killing and avoiding being killed in a pointless conflict in Vietnam, and how he dealt with that for the next 30 years.

The show...doesn't quite get it.

I did not get that too... but this explains some parts of the book that annoyed me... but I really understand how that influences the perception of the show.

Thank you for the new insight.

 

[Parmandur]

I did not get that too... but this explains some parts of the book that annoyed me... but I really understand how that influences the perception of the show.

Thank you for the new insight.

To be fair, I didn't get that for a while, myself. Certainly not when I was 14! In fact, it was only my current listen through that it really struck home how much all the characters are engaged in explicit PTSD reaction symptoms and how that drives the plot.

Me, at 14: "LOL, why are Egwene, Nyneave and Perrin acting so silly? That wasn't a rational decision."

Me, at 38: "Oh, no, all of these people are expressing different symptoms of PTSD, and hard."

In fact, @Ruin Explorer that's how I'd ppont to any subversion in the books: the action packed epic events aren't cool things thst the heroes bounce off of, they are serious traumas that bend and warp them...but then that bending and warping creates a pattern, a tapestry.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

"It's really about PTSD" puts it squarely in the same box as Lord of the Rings.

 

[Parmandur]

"It's really about PTSD" puts it squarely in the same box as Lord of the Rings.

100%. They both share taking violence with total seriousness and sorrow, too.

 

[Carlsen Chris]

It's like Moonlighting, but Dragonlance.

 

[SteveC]

Personally I'd say, ultimately, all that matters is that you tell a compelling story which:

A) Basically has the same/similar themes to the original.

B) Doesn't like, actively burn down the original unless that's very much the intention.

I absolutely get what you're saying but that is also going to make anyone who's a fan unhappy since unless they're there for the same/similar themes, it's going to just be "off."

There's definitely a spectrum where you have someone who's trying to do things "shot for shot" to line up with the text, and what basically amounts to bad fanfiction for the source. I think WoT heavily veered into fanfic territory, but I was a casual fan (I read the first two and a half books at first release and then noped out).

And also, the serious LotR fans still haven't forgiven it. I just had a conversation with one of them and the subject came up. I must admit I deliberately turned the conversation to the point where they said "Jackson should write his own books!" but then these were friends of mine and we were having a few beverages, so no (permanent) harm was caused and we all laughed it off in the end.

I don't have psychic or prophetic powers, but I think Dragonlance will have a lot of changes made to it to adapt it for modern audiences. Much like WoT I won't be too upset because it wasn't my thing at the time (due to some parts that I expect will get cut). I'm sure the purists will be upset. But will what remains be Dragonlance?

If I can give another example, I saw the Mario movie last weekend, which turned out was too scary for my daughter, so I saw some of it solo. I know a fair bit of Mario lore, and the movie updated things, but respected the fans and had many winks and nods to them. I think you can change many things if you're still showing the fans respect and put in enough easter eggs that they can chuckle at.

Will that be what happens? Hope so, but expect it to be something entirely forgettable, just like the animated movie was.

 

[DarkCrisis]

/sing

Soth walks by night
Kitiara flies by day
Dragonlancing strangers
Who just met on the way (to Dargaard Keep).