S01.E01: Leavetaking

[Maximum Taco]

14 hours ago, Tachi Rocinante said:

Not a book reader, but do they plan to do one book per season? Won't that take forever??

First ep was OK.  The first few of The Expanse were kinda slow too.

I haven't read them either (14 is too many) but one of my friends is a super fan, he says Season 1 is supposed to be book 1, 2 and parts of book 3. 

Edited November 23, 2021 by Maximum Taco

[Haleth]

13 hours ago, Black Knight said:

The showrunner has a plan to cover it all in 8 seasons - which is the same as GoT ended up.

The GoT show runners had the luxury of writing their own final 3 seasons.  This show has a lot more books to cram into 8 seasons  

Curse you, George Martin!

[Danny Franks]

27 minutes ago, Maximum Taco said:

I haven't read them either (14 is too many) but one of my friends is a super fan, he says Season 1 is supposed to be book 1, 2 and parts of book 3. 

I think the first season is mostly going to be book one, but with a few bits and pieces of the next two books (and perhaps some of the prequel novella) thrown in. But there are also some plot threads from the first book that have been pushed back into season two.

Rafe has talked about trying to adapt the series as a whole, rather than just trying to adapt each book at a time, and that makes sense to me because it means they have to figure out right off the bat which storylines to minimise or even exclude completely.

[Humbugged]

26 minutes ago, Danny Franks said:

I think the first season is mostly going to be book one, but with a few bits and pieces of the next two books (and perhaps some of the prequel novella) thrown in. But there are also some plot threads from the first book that have been pushed back into season two.

Rafe has talked about trying to adapt the series as a whole, rather than just trying to adapt each book at a time, and that makes sense to me because it means they have to figure out right off the bat which storylines to minimise or even exclude completely.

And that will be good for the slog where 3 books are written right over each other ,all based on events that that happened the same time

Edited November 23, 2021 by Humbugged

[Danny Franks]

Edit: turns out the video has spoilers for the second and third episodes. Reposting it in the media thread.

Edited November 24, 2021 by Danny Franks

[ferjy]

On 11/19/2021 at 6:24 PM, ribboninthesky1 said:

I appreciate the Rand actor's bone structure. He's handsome.  Nynaeve was interesting, but then she disappeared (died?

Too pretty boy for my liking. He’s prettier than his gf! 😄

Agree about Nynaeve, I was hoping she’d be the central character of the young group, but it looks like it will be Egwene. A shame, I found Nynaeve to be the better actress. 

The show isn’t grabbing me yet. I’ll watch the other two episodes then decide, but I’m not impressed so far. 

 

[Dobian]

I didn't read the books, just like I didn't read the GoT books.  So I'm fully prepped for this!  I liked the first episode, even though some of the character names were hard to pronounce.  So more LotR than GoT with the epic quest in a high magic universe.  GoT was basically a political drama in a low magic universe.  I'm totally on board until D&D take over as show runners for season 5.  Then I'm out!  :D

[diebartdie]

On 11/19/2021 at 8:34 AM, Zonk said:

Also can, somebody, anybody please be gay in these shows? (but that's not going to happen, is it?)

I doubt any main characters will be gay or lesbian which really sucks. Know what else sucks? I don't see this show being able to pull off any sort of trans representation either. Maybe someday.

[Which Tyler]

6 hours ago, diebartdie said:

I doubt any main characters will be gay or lesbian which really sucks. Know what else sucks? I don't see this show being able to pull off any sort of trans representation either. Maybe someday.

Watch, and find out

[Zonk]

18 hours ago, diebartdie said:

I doubt any main characters will be gay or lesbian which really sucks. Know what else sucks?

Lesbians I would never discount. They are much more pallatable for the straight male demographic. Which I guess is nice for the lesbians (even though the reason is not), but I'd still like to see some gay guys apart from the occasional non threatening sidekick who shows up every few episode, at some point.

18 hours ago, diebartdie said:

I don't see this show being able to pull off any sort of trans representation either.

Trans representation in fantasy is a bit of a tricky subject. Because there is magic, I'd expect a perfect transformation and thus the character should probably be played by a cis-actor. And there are examples of this, like Ozma from the Oz books (and shitty TV show).

[Scarlett45]

I watched episode one and I was intrigued. I am not familiar with the source material at all, but I found the exposition easy to follow. 
 

So very tragic how that young man killed his wife accidentally.

[rhiamon]

On 11/20/2021 at 5:15 AM, DearEvette said:

I liked this quite a bit.  I think it got the spirit/feel of the start in Two Rivers right, imo.

For all that the actors don't look like I headcast them back in the day, the casting is great and they feel right.  Especially Nynaeve , Mat and Lan. 

On 11/20/2021 at 5:15 AM, DearEvette said:

Off to a promising start imo and the scenery is breathtaking.

My feelings exactly. I'm only now able to watch this (finally!) and caught the pilot last night. My heart did a little double-beat at the first view of Lan, and Mat was always my favourite - or I guess I should say the first - so I was glad to recognise him immediately too. Like some other people mentioned it will be interesting to see if/how giving him a darker background story pays off.

Two Rivers and its atmosphere made me feel right at home and I really liked Tam in particular. 

[rmontro]

On 11/20/2021 at 2:53 AM, thuganomics85 said:

Non book reader here, so was kind of confused by a lot of stuff at first and still can't remember most everyone's names without looking up IMDB (to be fair though, fantasy really makes things more complicated on that front!) 

Non book reader here, and I also noticed it was difficult keeping up with everyone's names.  In a book, this wouldn't be a problem so much, because they would be giving the names constantly, and you would learn them ("Bill said...", "Daffy walked across the floor", that sort of thing).  I found myself wishing they would identify them in the subtitles when they speak (like "Lucille:  Come with me"). 

Wow, trollocs are intimidating.

[rhiamon]

8 hours ago, rmontro said:

I found myself wishing they would identify them in the subtitles when they speak (like "Lucille:  Come with me.”

To be honest, also as a book reader who doesn’t necessarily follow every item of casting news in advance, this would be helpful!

[Black Knight]

I'm not sure how it works when watching Amazon Prime stream on your TV, but I stream it on my desktop computer and it's really nice because it just takes a quick move of the mouse to activate the X-Ray, which instantly shows a dropdown identifying all actors and characters who are in the scene currently playing. Great for learning character names as well as placing that actor you know you've seen before.

[rmontro]

8 hours ago, Black Knight said:

I'm not sure how it works when watching Amazon Prime stream on your TV, but I stream it on my desktop computer and it's really nice because it just takes a quick move of the mouse to activate the X-Ray, which instantly shows a dropdown identifying all actors and characters who are in the scene currently playing. 

I watch it on my TV, and they do have this feature, I just forgot about it.  I can't remember how it's activated, but that's a good point, I'll have to remember to use it in the future.  I think you just have to pause the scene.

I've also watched another episode of Wheel of Time, and they do include the character's name in the subtitles once in awhile.  So they do what I said before, just not very often.  I probably noticed it subconsciously the first time I watched, and that's what gave me the idea.  I always watch TV with the subtitles on.

[Black Knight]

13 hours ago, rmontro said:

I've also watched another episode of Wheel of Time, and they do include the character's name in the subtitles once in awhile.  So they do what I said before, just not very often.  I probably noticed it subconsciously the first time I watched, and that's what gave me the idea.  I always watch TV with the subtitles on.

I do too. In my experience, the character name appearing in subtitles tends to happen when the character speaking isn't being shown, like when they're doing a voiceover, or if there is some crosstalk happening. Basically whenever a viewer cannot tell visually who is speaking. People who can hear fine would be able to distinguish between voices, but that doesn't work for someone like me.

[DoctorAtomic]

I actually read the books and still forget who is who.