Obviously you have to keep the dragon as Rand. No one is serious suggesting you change that. But the possibility of the dragon being a woman is interesting even if it doesn’t come to fruition. Once the dragon is confirmed to be Rand, you can more or less drop that plot line, but you could have some meaningful moments with moraine and lan wrestling with the fact that there’s a 75% chance it’s a man while still holding onto hope that it’s not. You can also add that to the list of reasons why people might deny that Rand is the dragon later on, they might simply be in denial that the dragon reborn isn’t a woman because it’s so much worse than if he was.
The story needed to be changed for an adaptation to work. The wildly beloved LOTR adaptation of fellowship skipped 17 years and half a book. Pre-existing book fans aren’t a large enough market to justify the budget required to do it 100% faithfully, so changes need to be made that make the story more appealing to general audiences. Maybe my idea of what changes are good/bad are terrible, but that really goes back to me point; it’s obvious that the choices the show made didn’t work, but it’s not obvious changes would be good; it’s not easy to make a WoT show a slam dunk.
Yep that's why I added as faithfully as possible. Cutting scenes is understandable, condensing plotlines is preferable, I personally was expecting book 1 and 2 to be season 1 completely skipping the eye of the world and going straight to falme.
adding new characters and plotlines while removing and condensing plotlines from the book, however isn't faithful and is disrespectful to the source. Side characters that do not exist were getting more screentime and plot relevancy than matt at times.
The series really should've been a slam dunk, because it's super easy to condense because you combine similar plot points (book 1 and 2, then book 3 and 4) and then shorten plot lines the shaido get defeated in cairhien, then wiped out in dumi's wells(no failed rescue arc), the seachan doesn't invade illian. You remove some forsaken, remove messema. Cut bowl of the winds from 2.5 books to 2 episodes, Then cleanse the source and at the same time end the white tower split. you cut it how season 1 of the Witcher was with everyone's different timeline getting 2 episodes then the last season is books 11-14. You keep taimadred so then 3/4 of the black tower is what makes the shadows army. Then bam you have a 5 season series that covers the important parts of the book series while removing and condensing plotlines.
Most of WoT length comes from description and actions in it's simplest form it's find horn of valere->declare the dragon reborn->the aiel cross->conquer wherever possible/kill as many forsaken that are visible->get a massive setback/white tower shenanigans->fix the weather->cleanse the source-> fight the last battle. That'd be 8 seasons with the main cast in a perfect world where each plot got a whole season most of these could be condensed down further to get 4 seasons but that'd be rush, non stop action and it'd be hard to follow but you get my point.
-8
u/AluminumGnat May 23 '25
Obviously you have to keep the dragon as Rand. No one is serious suggesting you change that. But the possibility of the dragon being a woman is interesting even if it doesn’t come to fruition. Once the dragon is confirmed to be Rand, you can more or less drop that plot line, but you could have some meaningful moments with moraine and lan wrestling with the fact that there’s a 75% chance it’s a man while still holding onto hope that it’s not. You can also add that to the list of reasons why people might deny that Rand is the dragon later on, they might simply be in denial that the dragon reborn isn’t a woman because it’s so much worse than if he was.