[Tarrek]

There has been much talk of a Wheel of Time movie sometime in the future. What do you think of the possibility and do you think that it is possible to do it and stay true to the series?
Also, what acters would play the characters?

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Um... the series is like 15,000 pages long. There's no way they'll be able to stay true to it. Then again, given the amount of filler in the books...

If they make it past the first movie, I'd be surprised. Fantasy films don't tend to do that well, and, let's face it, the beginning of WoT is pretty generic. It would have to be really well made to be a success, I think.

[Lunaryon]

I think that if they can get Peter Jackson as director, they may just be able to pull the off the series.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Dear God, if you want them to stay true to the books, keep PJ away from it. Look what he did to LotR. :p

Maybe he'll redeem himself with The Hobbit, though.

[Lunaryon]

He cut some out, yes. Added things to it, but the fact is that from a screenwriter's point of view, what he did made the movie more watchable, and it wasn't TOO far away from the original.

[Glitch]

I think it could be done. THere's lotsss of filler in those books - not to mention they'd be able to cut out all of the internal monologues. I think it could be done - but I don't know that they'd make more than one of the movies.


This is one of my favorite book series, do not get me wrong. ;)

There is also talk of a Shannara movie -- so who knows.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Originally Posted by Lunaryon

He cut some out, yes. Added things to it, but the fact is that from a screenwriter's point of view, what he did made the movie more watchable, and it wasn't TOO far away from the original.

Oh, you don't want to go there, Lunaryon, trust me. I could write a book on why I hate those movies. :p I'm not even a "purist", I think [blasphemy] the book could definitely be improved in places [/blasphemy] but Jackson's (or more appropriately, Boyens' and Walsh's) additions created massive plot holes and made pretty much all the characters into 2-dimensional caricatures.

But, I digress. This is not a LotR thread. (Someone go start one so I can rant for 10 pages. :p)

Thinking about the WoT as films, I'm not really sure how well the magic system is going to translate into the visual medium. I mean, it's pretty complex and there are a lot of explanations in the book about the various weaves and interactions between Saidar and Saidin. They're not going to be able to convey much of that, but it was a huge aspect of the books. It's one of the things I hear praised about the series the most often, how scientific the magic system is.

And the problem with cutting the filler is that such a hypothetical movie-plot is going to diverge massively from the book plot, since you'll be cutting out entire books worth of material in some cases (since some plots are just totally extraneous). That might cause a bit of an uproar with fans.

Something tells me though, if they decide to make it a film series, it will end up pretty far from the books, anyway. Which might not be a bad thing.

[Lunaryon]

The Pattern could be seen as just that. A pattern, granted... I've only read the first book(Curse you impossible to find books, curse you!) But from what I understood, the magic could be seen as altering the weave, placing pressure here to cause things to alter there... Scary complex, but I could see some really cool scenes of just watching the weave change to allow the world to fit to the spell's effect.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Well, my main concern would be that in a visual medium, they wouldn't be able to make the magic as big of a deal as it is in the books. Do you understand what I'm saying? Like, they wouldn't have the screen time to focus on how magic works, since there's so very much story to tell.

I don't think I've ever seen a fantasy movie that makes a big deal out of applied magic. Has anyone here? It's usually just special effects without much of an explanation, in my experience.

And granted, I think they could do it that way, it's just that the magic system is one of the cooler things about the books and what sets them apart from other epic fantasy series.

[Glitch]

the books are all over here D: you could always order used copies from amazon for real cheap. :3

I know one kid rented the first book and got so into it he forgot to do his homework so he just read the wikipedia summaries on the rest of the series. So perhaps that's what the movie writer would do. lol

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Honestly, with the amount of filler in some of the later books, reading the wikipedia entry might be beneficial to anyone...

[Lunaryon]

Are the rest of the books after the first one worth reading?

[Suzerain of Sheol]

I barely remember them, honestly. They're just so bogged down with side characters that have nothing to do with the main plot. I mean, there's cool stuff that goes down in most of them, you just have to trudge through hundreds of pages of boring side-stories to get to it.

I'm of the opinion that Jordan was rather fond of the golden goose.

[Jurinjo]

Sorcerer's Apprentice is as in-depth as I've seen movies get into how magic works >_< And that wasn't an especially good movie either. A good one time watch through though, it wasn't all bad =)

[Night Fury]

hasn't finished reading it, friend's really liked it, had one person I didn't even know saw me with the 3rd book and they was like
O>O your officially awesome
not sure what to think of that, completely random occurrence
nor had I got to that book yet

I kind of would hope I get through the books before the movie comes out or anything like that, I guess I'm going to need to catch up on my reading

[Suzerain of Sheol]

The thing about this series is that there are some really cool ideas in the books, but they're just hopelessly mired down in boring filler and side-plots and weird/creepy sexual fantasies and a completely backfired attempt at empowering his female characters.

It's like... the good stuff gets lost amid all the problems that plague the books. If you can bring yourself to wade through the detritus and stick with the interesting stuff, you'll probably like the series, but if you have a problem (like I do) with going hundreds of pages without hearing from the main characters and instead following inane subplot #62 for chapters on end, then it probably isn't really worth reading.

I call it wasted potential. Maybe a film version will cut out all the fat. There's the seed of a good story hiding somewhere in there.