Universal nabs rights to Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series

[Kunimatyu]

I hope the screenwriter takes a buzzsaw to the original material - this is one case where NOT staying true to the books will be vital towards making a decent movie.

I don't have high hopes here -- once it's on the big-screen, it'll be even more obvious that the series is just a poorly plotted LotR knockoff.

 

[Huw]

This could be very good with the right screenplay. Also, with the right set designers!

Added bonus: we get to find out how the names of most of the characters are pronounced

 

[drothgery]

I don't have high hopes here -- once it's on the big-screen, it'll be even more obvious that the series is just a poorly plotted LotR knockoff.

Huh? I mean, Jordan explicitly said way back when that the first 100 pages or so of The Eye of the World deliberately had a LotR-ish feel, but how does the series plot line up with LotR at all?

If Moiraine is Gandalf, why isn't she the most powerful magic user on the side of Our Heroes? Why does she fling around fireballs far more readily than he ever did? How come there are a thousand Aes Sedai (and thousands of other non-Aes Sedai with magic powers) instead of only a handful of Istari?

If Lan is Aaragorn, shouldn't he have restored Malkier, err, Gondor by now? Granted, long-lived girlfriend with magic powers, but Nynaeve isn't exactly Arwyn.

If the Two Rivers Folk are the Hobbits, shouldn't they be a lot less deadly (instead of typically being expert archers or having magical powers)?

If the Forsaken are the Ringwraiths, shouldn't they stay dead?

What's supposed to be the One Ring?

Etc.

 

[Spatula]

Yeah, I don't see the LotR-ripoffedness in WoT, aside from the books being set in the same farmboy-to-savior genre that Tolkien inspired. WoT probably has a lot more in common with the fantasy genre books that came after LotR, rather than LotR itself, which has always been rather atypical (main characters that aren't combatants, a BBEG that you never see, no final climatic fight, etc.).

 

[Plane Sailing]

I could see a book based on "Eye of the World" (which read as though it was a one-off which was so successful that he decided to keep on writing).

Perhaps something which went up to the one with that "sword" (as gaining that would have been a fully appropriate place to end the series too).

I've not got high hopes for the films though, as films rarely rise above the novels they are based on, and I just didn't like the novels very much (for all the well-hashed reasons).

Cheers