r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Chill0000 • Aug 21 '26

Hated Tropes [HATED] Adaptations done intentionally without help from the source

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Halo TV show: Before the show came out, the writers were praising their decision to not look to the games for inspiration when making the show

God Of War TV show: Chris Judge, the actor of Kratos in the games from 2018-Now, spoke up about his dislike on the show not hiring anyone who worked on any of the previous games. One of the original creators of Kratos also spoke up about them not having faith in the adaptation.

Supergirl 2026 film: the director for the film not only said he decided to not read Woman Of Tomorrow, the comic the film is adapting, because he wanted to do his own thing, he also didn’t look at comic art for inspiration to design Lobo and instead used an AI image generator to design Lobo’s look for the film

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772

u/corvettee01 Aug 21 '26

Wheel of Time TV show totally ignored Brandon Sanderson, the guy who only WROTE SOME OF THE BOOKS!

304

u/No_Blacksmith_2591 Aug 21 '26

I mean, it would have been ok if they ignored sanderson but followed Jordan's books to the letter... but nooo typical hollywood hubris says we're better than everyone else so we won't even read the books, we'll stick to bullet points from the cliffnotes.

93

u/Setzael Aug 21 '26

They lost me as soon as the opening monologue said that the Dragon could be any man or woman. I mean that's the whole damn reason the Aes Sedai are an all-female organisation.

24

u/pghnorthguy Aug 21 '26

And then the original Dragon is shown being called the "Dragon Reborn". Like they forgot how he got the name in the first place.

13

u/[deleted] Aug 21 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

7

u/EkbatDeSabat Aug 21 '26

They say TV shows operate on a different formula especially in the days of multiple screens. You gotta give more info at a faster / easier pace to the people who haven't read the books.

Which I think is total bullshit and hollywood has no spine because plenty of shows succeed without this formula, but that's the reasoning.

1

u/MisterTamborineMan Aug 21 '26

That sounds like the kind of argument Wheel of Prime apologists would give.

6

u/EkbatDeSabat Aug 21 '26

Sure but I literally said it was bullshit so take that mess elsewhere. 

21

u/No_Blacksmith_2591 Aug 21 '26

When i saw that i figured they had to be pandering to the weird Rosamund Pike fangirls that think she was the Hero in Gone Girl.

The rest of the episode told me that they were also completely ignorant of the source material.

21

u/HourlyBadIdeas Aug 21 '26

Also, it directly goes against the Dark One reincarnating Asmodean into a female body as further proof that the Dark One is anathema to the Wheel. Lews Therrin Tellamons soul always has and will be spun out into the weave as a man, just like Brigitte Silverbows will always be as a woman etc etc...

24

u/VelvetTomahawk Aug 21 '26

*Balthamel (not Asmodean) but you’re absolutely correct otherwise

6

u/HourlyBadIdeas Aug 21 '26

Clearly it's been too long since I last did a re-read, lol

7

u/VelvetTomahawk Aug 21 '26

No worries, with that many characters it’s bound to happen. Plus any reason to start a reread is, at worst, a happy accident

-2

u/FuckYourRights Aug 21 '26

The dragon isn't always a man, but when it is a woman the one power is tainted still just the other half

7

u/Kaladin-of-Gilead Aug 21 '26

RJ Straight up said the dragon is never female and can never be female. Full stop, the Dragon is the soul of LTT, who is a dude.

3

u/moose_kayak Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26

No. 

The Dragon soul is always male. In other ages t the champion of the light may be Amaresu but that's in other ages, not the second and third age. It's also not clear if she's a channeller spirit anyways. 

3

u/Kaladin-of-Gilead Aug 21 '26

yeah I think poster is mistaking the "hero" for the dragon.

The dragon CAN be the "hero" that's spun up for this turning, but it does not have to be the dragon.

It's like having a team of Batman and Wonder Woman and getting to choose one or the other. Wonder Woman can't be batman and vice versa.

1

u/FortifiedPuddle Aug 21 '26

Is that stated in the books?

12

u/gounatos Aug 21 '26

Oh man that was so grating. There was even a prophecy that led to all this, and pronouns in that prophecy and gendered magic and they just decided to go full stupid to be inclusive. In a world where women hunt and castrate the magic out of men.

1

u/Fenix42 Aug 21 '26

The prophecy is sooooo god dam dark. It basically boils down to "We know the devil is going to break out of hell and destroy the world. The only one who can MABYE stop it is the rebirth of the guy who fucked the world so bad that we still have not recovered. Also, he is 1000% going to go bat shit insane and wreck the world again in the process. Good luck, don't die."

2

u/Moreh Aug 21 '26

? Aes sedai are female because the men go mad

3

u/ealysillyforestthing Aug 21 '26

There used to be both men and women Aes Sedai but for the last three thousand years no man could be an Aes Sedai because they go mad.

Funny enough the Aes Sedai of this era are not the actual Aes Sedai, just a group of women channelers that called themselves that a few years after the Breaking

1

u/CiDevant Aug 21 '26

The second half is wrong.  The Breaking would have been living memory to channelers for about 500 years after.   Strong Aes sedai regularly lived to be 500+ years old until they made swearing the paths madatory.wore 

1

u/ealysillyforestthing Aug 21 '26

No it's correct. That info came about when revelations about the Kin came out

You need a reread

1

u/CiDevant Aug 21 '26

Any channeler who was around "a few years after" the breaking would certainly be old enough to have been an Aes Sedai before the breaking.

2

u/Kaladin-of-Gilead Aug 21 '26

Aes Sedai used to be a generic term for both male and female channelers

If you read any of the parts with the old age of legends characters they'll still refer to aes sedai that way, its just "modern" context in WoT that has them only as female.

1

u/Moreh Aug 23 '26

Yeah I know. I'm saying they're not female because the dragon is always a man

9

u/Yangoose Aug 21 '26

I also found it hilarious that in this super isolated small village in the mountains literally every single person is a completely different race.

Like, how would that even work???

10

u/gounatos Aug 21 '26

It's also funny because it meant that in this village or in the two rivers, people kept marrying only within their own race for more than 2,200 years.

-5

u/FortifiedPuddle Aug 21 '26

It’s not an isolated village in the books. There are periodic streams of visitors coming and going. Their products get exported all over. They depend on trade for lots of items, including manufactured goods. Many characters from there come and go in the world fairly easily.

Oh, and Rand and his mother both moved and settled there.

The kids just think it’s isolated because they are bored teenagers and maybe the whole fantasy trope of it. But really, yeah it’s at least connected enough that dudes from there can go off in to the world, have careers, bring back foreign wives and babies etc.

Or you know, there’s this new thing called colour blind casting. Since the 1950s. Could be that.

17

u/MaXimillion_Zero Aug 21 '26

"The old blood is strong in Emond’s Field, and the old blood sings."

Two rivers being relatively insular and isolated is an actual plot point in the series. The occasional gleeman or traveling merchant doesn't mean there's a bunch of people from all over the world moving in. Rand's appearance standing out compared to everyone else also doesn't make sense if everyone looks different.

Or you know, there’s this new thing called colour blind casting. Since the 1950s. Could be that.

It makes sense when a story is set in a region with a diverse population, and appearance isn't relevant to the story. Not a lot of it going on in Black Panther or Vikings.

-10

u/FortifiedPuddle Aug 21 '26

So you’ve not read the books then. Or my comment.

Yes, they have the opinion that it’s the arse end of nowhere. But if you read the books that’s really just the sort of opinion people have about all small towns. Just like the kids all think they’re poor, but they’re all comfortably middle class as it turns out. If not actual royalty.

We are in counter example shown an endless list of similar small towns and villages all over the world. And a whole bunch of them have less trade and fewer visitors. Two Rivers products are famous throughout the world. People have heard of it in other countries. You can find Two Rivers leaf all over the place. You cannot find products from random Black Hills village number four.

Within the area they get their pins and knickknacks from peddlers and traders. They have a significant export economy, and expect staple products to be provided by trade. Various characters are known as being good at trade. They have from the characters we know of several immigrants before the events of the story. And just a whole bunch of them afterwards, which suggests it was never actually that hard to get to the Two Rivers and people can emigrate there.

The idiot kids think they live in the arse end of nowhere. As all small town kids the world over think. People from other places think that too, because again this is a universal human attitude. Big city folk think it must be some tiny irrelevant place, and wouldn’t you know it that’s how real big city folk think about places too.

So just maybe it’s Jordan telling us about how human beings think about places? Rather than an objective fact, what with all the evidence provided that it’s not the case.

Rather like how The Shire is the beating economic heart of the north west, and not the irrelevant backwater the Hobbits think it is.

14

u/MoonIsAFake Aug 21 '26

But they do live at the end of the world (metaphorically speaking). I've re-read the books last year and my impression is that locals were not a bunch of travellers. They see traders coming from time to time and they may take a "jorney" to a town nearby to sell and buy goods, but for the most part people just live there the way real medieval people lived, spending their lives in a 20-miles radius from the home (a day's walk, basically). So, they should be indeed quite homogenous society. It doesn't mean that they should be "white" (I hate that concept and don't even want to use it), but interracial marriage should have long ago turn them all into some olive-ish or brown-is generic looking people.

-1

u/FortifiedPuddle Aug 21 '26

Why would you compare them to Medieval people? They’re at least Early Modern. Really by the end of the series they’re getting in to Modern. Jordan specifically wrote it to be something like 1600-1700s. I think it reads more like Tom Sawyer meets Tolkien personally. Certainly not Medieval. Very little fantasy is Medieval.

And in that time, as in the books, mobility is way higher. You have your trade networks that are robust and moving goods globally. You have option of leaving your little village, becoming a sailor and travelling the world. You have these massive cities. Which in the books is enabled by some sort of narrative magic where you’ve got so much trade and manufacturing going on. The sheer scale of the cities is crazy. Caemlyn isn’t even by a river and it’s huge.

Then there’s the sheer homogeneity of the world. Even people from different continents are basically the same but wear different hats. People from neighbouring nations are just the same culture entirely, but wear different coats. Maybe have accents. For all the remarking on accents the character do the difference between nations is like the difference between counties in real life.

1

u/MoonIsAFake Aug 25 '26

Mobility is mainly determined by technology. If you have to walk or ride a horse, a 50 miles to the nearest town is a two-days journey (in a good weather) one way. And then you have to spend as much to return. If you only have an ox to plow your land, you may only plow less than half a hectare a day. If you have to hunt for meat you have to spend a whole day in the forest. And so on so forth. That lifestyle basically prohibits you from travelling. You have too much work to do and travelling takes too much time that you are already short of. So, you live your life in a one-day-walk area around your village outside of some very special events (like you are being conscripted for war).

5

u/grizzantula Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26

As someone who has read the series through more than once; your premise is wrong.

They are isolated and they are insular. Many of them wanted to secede from Andor, Perrin himself even kicked around the idea, citing that they don't even see tax collectors this far in the middle of nowhere. The Two Rivers being a small, tucked away region is a very large plot point in the books.

It was so isolated, in fact, it's almost like it was the perfect place for the pattern to hide it's champion from the forces of the enemy. Hmmmmmm.

You're over thinking it.

-2

u/FortifiedPuddle Aug 21 '26

No, the point of the Two Rivers is that it’s a happy medium place for the heroes to grow up. It’s prosperous, but also industrious. Neither poor nor rich. The kids all get stable upbringings, get fed up big and strong, have to do work and learn things. All of them can read and write. It’s a deliberatly happy medium place.

It’s out of the way, but also connected. Tam and Abell can go out looking for the boys and get to Tar Valon etc. fairly easily. The party initially get to Caemlyn easily. The roads are the traditional fantasy “muddy tracks” that are actually extremely good for conveying even heavy wagons and enable swift movement. Hand waiving of course who maintains them.

News spreads easily in particular. Right at the start of the first book the villagers are concerned that foreign trouble is going to come knocking. They are plugged in to global events. They absolutly depend on selling their products to merchants etc. They even trade horses, which is pretty high market. They’re plugged into to a near Modern commercial economy and able to draw on manufactured goods. Including just a whole bunch of books, which achieve a crazy high level of circulation in only a few years. Things like The Travels of Jain Farstrider knit their world together into one culture.

It’s only our unreliable narrators who think it’s out the way. As all people in small towns do. But we also see them pass through endless, endless small towns and think that actually, they’re very familiar. That really their home and is replicated out everyone. That they’re not from some special little corner, because it’s a whole world of similar little villages. Some bigger some smaller.

It’s part of how Jordan plays with tropes. Ooh, the protagonists is from the special little hidden away village. But, actually the world is full of little villages. This one happens to be drawn in to the map at the front for plot significance. But really there are lots and lots of similar villages. They’re not special: they’re normal.

4

u/grizzantula Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26

You're moving the goal posts. I didn't say anything about being poor, unfed, unprosperous, or anything like that. The point is that The Two Rivers is out of the way, it's in the back country, it's insular, and it's isolated due to the geography surrounding it.

I don't really understand the point you're trying to make with Tam and Abell. They know the way to Tar Valon. That's it.

You mention the two rivers villagers being plugged into current events, but omit the part where they are, at the very least, an entire year behind current events because their only source of news and goings on is a singular traveling merchant.

The narrators are not unreliable on this topic. Queen Morgase, you know the ruler of the land that the two rivers resides in, herself remarks that she barely recognizes the two rivers as part of Andor. She mentions that Andor hasn't sent a tax collector there in GENERATIONS due to the difficult terrain surrounding the region (mountains of mist to the west, the river taren to the north, the white river to south, and massive swamps to east). Elaida goes on to dismiss the two rivers as a rustic fringe of the realm. Moiraine, multiple times throughout the series, remarks that the world has forgotten the two rivers AND the two rivers has forgotten, or isolated itself from, the world.

Jordan does like to play around with tropes, but this is not a good example of that. This is his take on a shire like setting. Again, you're over thinking it.

-1

u/FortifiedPuddle Aug 21 '26

But that shows that the Andoran Queen and her adviser do actually know about the Two Rivers. They choose not to exercise control over them, because Andor is way too big with way too many territorial claims as is. Their arbitrary map lines are getting smaller all the time. That’s a Theme.

But then their “too hard to send a tax collector” is bullshit. The geography stuff you mention don’t actually prevent people getting in across Taren Ferry as we know. Plenty of people manage. It’s limited state capacity, but that would be admitting a weakness instead of providing a convenient excuse to dismiss it. State capacity that includes the ability to actually get them to pay, or thinking they have any money to do so. Pressing that claim without backup is bad policy, as you eat tax revolts and suddenly you aren’t even nominally in charge anymore.

The Two Rivers are also only a little behind. When they’re worried about Logain he has only just been captured at that point. So, not that far. Not a year. And they seem to think events might involve them. Or spill over to them. That’s not a splendid isolation mindset.

Jordan’s whole thing is that all his narrators are unreliable and no one knows what is really going on. Especially his idiot teenagers. Sure sometimes with Elaida or Niall it’s more obvious. But even our main characters don’t know what’s going on. If they didn’t figure out some really important things they’d have lost the Last Battle. The Forsaken cackling about how they’re all dumb pawns are right. And also dummies who don’t know stuff themselves. That’s the point of WoT. No one ever knows everything. People make dumb choices based on not knowing things right to the end.

And he doesn’t sign post it when something is wrong. For example Lan has the emotional intelligence and coping skills of a rabid squirrel on crystal meth. What with being an orphaned former child soldier obsessed with death and all. He’s mister shit coping mechanisms. But Jordan doesn’t actually sign post that. In fact he paints Lan as cool role model for Rand. And has Rand take his incredibly awful advice about mountains and duty seriously. He relies on the reader to determine how bad a take that is. And, slowly over the course of the books reveals that maybe living life is good.

3

u/grizzantula Aug 21 '26

Yes, the queen of the land and her advisor were aware of the two rivers. Go figure the queen would be in the know about her land's geography lol.

It wasn't worth it send a tax collector. It would incur a higher cost than the actual tax revenue collected because of the rough geography. She says as much, but you'd dismiss it as an unreliable narrator.

"They seem to think events might involve them. Or spill over to them. That's not a splendid isolationist mindset"

My friend, that's literally a keystone of an isolationist mindset. They don't want events effecting them.

You're stuck on the unreliable narrator aspect as if the entire series is meant to be unreliable, and that simply just isn't the case.

You're way over thinking this. But at this point agree to disagree.

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u/EldritchFingertips Aug 21 '26

Sorry man, you're just not correct. About several things, not even just your main point.

The party reaches Caemlyn easily? Huh??? Rand and Mat spend the whole trip between Shadar Logoth and Caemlyn as penniless beggars constantly hunted by darkfriends, while Mat goes slowly insane and Rand keeps causing problems by accidentally channeling. Perrin and Egwene spend the same trip running from murderous ravens and then making a slow way with the Tinkers' caravan. It takes them all weeks and weeks to get there. You're forgetting like a quarter of the book!

And yes, everyone else is correct when they tell you the Two Rivers is a small backwater that has literally been all but forgotten by Andor, and most people there don't know anything but vague stories about the rest of the world beyond their borders. Some of them don't even believe Aes Sedai exist before Moiraine shows up.

0

u/FortifiedPuddle Aug 22 '26

Try reading the books buddy.

2

u/EldritchFingertips Aug 22 '26

Done that twice, thanks

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u/CiDevant Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26

Tam was exceptional no one else had ever done anything like that.  Additionally even a town a short ride away was essentiallyyreated as a foreign culture to them.

It was rare that Matt's dad had been as far as Tarren Ferry. A town a comparatively short ride away.

1

u/FortifiedPuddle Aug 21 '26

Tam did that lately, but if there is one Tam a generation that’s a lot of outlanders over time. If the main books don’t happen the al’Thors are going to be a tribe of tall red head Aiel looking folks in the Two Rivers. And that’s from one kid moving there.

Culturally no, absolutely not. There’s like one culture in the entire world. Visitors are periodic. Two Rivers folk absolutely go travelling. It’s just that these teenagers think the big city is fancy, because they’re young.

3

u/ealysillyforestthing Aug 21 '26

And there used to be a large mountain nation there up until the Trolloc wars

2

u/FortifiedPuddle Aug 21 '26

Exactly, so you don’t actually have to have even “the old blood” be restricted to one group. There used to be way more people living there, conceivably of all different types.

-1

u/FuckYourRights Aug 21 '26

Because it takes place in a post apocalyptic version of our world 

3

u/CiDevant Aug 21 '26

The story takes place 3,000 years after the prologue.

1

u/GloriousNewt Aug 21 '26

And then they seemingly go out of their way to sideline Rand while he's the main character