I’m worried that the Mistborn movie may have already made its biggest mistake

The Mistborn Movie adaptation may have already made its biggest mistake, but I’m still hoping for the best. As a big fan of MistbornBrandon Sanderson, and the Cosmere universe, who is also an avid film buff, I am cautiously optimistic about this adaptation to the screen. On the one hand, I would love to see a wider audience exposed to the cosmos, a fictional universe full of beautiful stories that push the boundaries of what imagination can achieve. on the other, The Hollywood landscape for fantasy adaptations isn’t stellar right now.

Brandon Sanderson’s updates on the Mistborn Film in 2023 suggests that the project is on pause for now, but the author assured fans that it is only a matter of time before his stories are brought to the screen. So, although there may not be an official project to discuss, Several reasons seem confirmed for Mistborn Adaptation, such as that it will be a feature film. Imagining Mistborn As a film trilogy offers a lot of room to speculate, because we can refer to how the stories of the books can translate to the medium based on similar movies.

Mistborn would work better as a TV series than a movie

An 8-episode TV season is perfectly suited to The Last Empire

My biggest concern for Mistborn Is that I don’t believe the film medium is right for the story. There are only so many successful fantasy adaptations to use for reference, but word count can be used as a decent metric to suggest how long the movie should be in comparison to the book. The Last Empire Is a little more than both The Fellowship of the Ring And The Deadly HallowsTwo famous fantasy novels that have been adapted into feature films. One of them is three hours; The other is divided into two films.

Theoretically, a Mistborn The movie should be long enough to cover all its ground. However, because of Hollywood’s tendency to put limits on movie lengths, I would expect studios to aim for a roughly two-hour film, primarily focusing on Allomancy action and the relationships between Winn, Kelsier, and Elend.. With Brandon Sanderson directly involved in writing the script, it’s hoped that the product wouldn’t dissipate its character development or world-building, but it’s still hard to imagine squeezing everything necessary into a movie that Hollywood would be okay with giving a green light . This is a criticism of the film industry, no Mistborn.

Now I certainly don’t want to suggest Mistborn should use Game of Thrones As a model, because that seems to have led to issues with some other fantasy shows. But I think George RR Martin had the right idea to be adapted to television. Mistborn Is not nearly as sprawling a story, however I firmly believe that an eight-episode season could greatly benefit the story and establish the basis for the Cosmos as a television universe..

A misborn adaptation needs to launch the Cosmer Universe

The cosmos is too wide for movies

It is possible that I am going ahead now, but a Mistborn Adaptation cannot be considered without the full scope of the cosmos behind it. If Mistborn is made into a movie, The Stormlight Archive is the next question. I can hardly imagine the former fitting the movie format, though I certainly can’t see The Stormlight Archive Working as a film without dropping a significant part of its story. Maybe shorter novels like Tress of the Emerald Sea Would benefit from alternative film formats, but I believe the main theaters of the cosmos belong on television.

Not to mention, the Mistborn Movie would have to set up threads connecting to the larger cosmos. The films would have to introduce Hoyd, make sure the audience understands the concept of the shards, show Kelsier’s audience but hide him from the direct Mistborn history, and more. With television, all this can be handled with better and more graceful pacingAnd it can be clear that one is presenting a larger story without feeling it.

Why Brandon Sanderson wants Mistborn to be adapted to film

Brandon Sanderson imagines his movie adaptations differently than the books

Brandon Sanderson is often asked about a Mistborn Movie adaptation in the last decade, and he has made many worrying comments. In 2021, he spoke about his approach to adapting his own books to the screen, discussing how he approached the idea of ​​making changes to fit the shifting medium. Read his quote (by Reddit) below:

I have come to the view that there are two general ways to approach adaptation. One is to try to be very faithful to the real text, and the other is to transform almost the whole thing for the new medium, while trying to keep the soul of it the same.

I’ve actually written mistborn treatments that do both of these. As an exercise, I recently did (for the screen) where I threw out every scene from the book and asked myself, “If I were to do what was absolutely best for a film, but telling the same story, what would I wrote that?”

The treatment for the screenplay was very different from the book, while at the same time still being the book – the same soul, the same characters, the same basic plot beats. But no actual scenes from the book except Vienna/Misery on the balcony. Everything was approaching the story from a cinematic point of view – and I found that in many cases, the new treatment was stronger.

I’m inclined to trust Brandon Sanderson, because he hasn’t let me down yet. From the point of view of someone who is not at all affected by adaptations that make changes to the source material, I do not think that what he says is completely wrong. to me, The Lord of the Rings is proof that this mindset works. But with all that said, the route of a TV show for a more direct Mistborn Adaptation still seems more appealing, like It’s the character development in his stories that appeals to me, and I’d hate to see that suffer due to time constraints.