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Mistborn Screenplay News & Information


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For those that didn't know, Sanderson is currently writing a screenplay for the Mistborn trilogy. We don't know when it'll be finished or what will happen beyond that.

I haven't seen a thread specifically devoted to this, so I wanted to kind of start one (but if there is a thread someone please redirect me towards it). 

There's a lot of information about it out there, but today Sanderson just updated us on how the main heist will change, and in one of the revisions Shan is both Elend's sister making a play to secure the position as heir, and is also the main mark of the heist. 

 

Other changes that have been talked about recently include Dockson & Ham being turned into women for the screenplay. (Roughly 37 minutes in). Sanderson would also ideally like to have the trilogy adapted as a film, a television show, and then back to film. 

 

Vin's training with metals and Kelsier has been combined into them sneaking into Keep Venture (one of Sanderson's lessons, but I can't remember which one at the moment).

 

If anyone has any more tidbits or just wants to talk about the adaptation, please comment below!

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The thing I find most odd is the bit about the atium stash. Does it refer to the ACTUAL ayium stash or some fake stash? Because if it was the real thing it wouldn't make sense. Other things I find odd is that I thought that Vin seeing and confronting Shan when she was about to kill Elend was her acting on her own to try and save him because she just happened to learn of her plans, rather than it seemingly being a part of the plan. 

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12 minutes ago, Spren of Kindness said:

Shan Elarial as Elend's sister would be interesting.  It would definitely make some things easier.  Though for some reason, Shan Venture is going to be really hard to get into my head.  I always think of her with her full name, Shan Elarial.

Make Elariel her middle name? Shan Elariel Venture?

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I really like this change. In the original, Shan always came across as quite one-dimensional, and seemed to exist mainly to be a foil to Vin. I hope in this version she becomes more fleshed out and her motivations are explored further. It also might make her relationship with Elend more interesting. 

Ham and Dockson as women also sounds pretty cool. I wonder if they’ll end up being mother figures to Vin. 

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28 minutes ago, The Awakened Salad said:

Ham and Dockson as women also sounds pretty cool. I wonder if they’ll end up being mother figures to Vin. 

Yet, a declared allomancer has to be noble, don't they? A Pewterarm masquerading as an ordinary soldier works for a man, but a woman? Sure, the noble houses should have female guards in their allomantic component, but the janissaries?

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2 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

Yet, a declared allomancer has to be noble, don't they? A Pewterarm masquerading as an ordinary soldier works for a man, but a woman? Sure, the noble houses should have female guards in their allomantic component, but the janissaries?

I’m not sure what you mean by this. Brandon said above in his post that he wanted more to include more female soldiers, which is what Ham is, and that Scadrial’s gender norms aren’t the same as ours. I don’t see why there wouldn’t be non-allomancer female soldiers. 

Edited by The Awakened Salad
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2 hours ago, The Awakened Salad said:

I’m not sure what you mean by this. Brandon said above in his post that he wanted more to include more female soldiers, which is what Ham is, and that Scadrial’s gender norms aren’t the same as ours. I don’t see why there wouldn’t be non-allomancer female soldiers. 

Economic efficiency basically is the issue, not norms. They are Skaa anyway, so why care about norms? Norms are for people, they are property.

No, training soldiers costs money. Soldiers rarely fight, but they often march. So you have to ask who is likelier to finish a training that involves regular marches of 30km with heavy loads? Also, you need your Skaa to make new Skaa. And based on that reasoning you will make a preselection.
These considerations go away, as soon as pewter enters the game of course. But a woman often winning physical contests with men is supicious. They may have a seeker around.

So Ham as a woman requires dropping her close connection to the guards.

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Going back to an earlier thread discussing genderbending Mistborn characters, I still feel that making Marsh Kelsier's sister would be the best candidate.

Their sibling dynamics don't change all that much; you could leave in the history that they were romantic rivals for Mare as an LBGTQ angle. Best of all, when Marsh(a) becomes an Inquisitor, I think it'd be even more jarring since up to them we wouldn't have seen any female Inquisitors (on top of being a sympathetic character becoming apparently "turned to the dark side" ... who then instead remained a hero... But who then actually gets forced to turn to the DS.... And so on).

In my mind, Asia Kate Dillon (who played The Adjudicator in John Wick 3) would be a GREAT Marsh.

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21 minutes ago, Nathrangking said:

He also mentioned this

 

Whoa, that's a HUGE change. For one, the whole surprise reveal about Yomen will have to go bye-bye... To be replaced with what, if anything?

OTOH from another perspective it makes a lot of sense - it's a "god metal" after all, and Scadrians especially all already have some Ruin in them in a very literal way. And it relieves later parts of the story, in Era 2 and so on, of having to explain somehow that Preservation had modified the Allomantic Table to allow for atium Mistings, and then Harmony changed it back to re-add Chromium (and Nicrosil), and also avoid the question of if there were therefore malatium Mistings as well.

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Yeah I'm not sure I like that. Its a nice idea on paper, yes, but based on the story we know, it doesn't work. It would completely kill the Atium Allomancer twist in HoA and would make battles with regular Allomancers far more difficult than can really be justified. It just has too many wide sweeping implications and would change far too much I think for it to actually work. That's a massive change.

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36 minutes ago, aneonfoxtribute said:

Yeah I'm not sure I like that. Its a nice idea on paper, yes, but based on the story we know, it doesn't work. It would completely kill the Atium Allomancer twist in HoA and would make battles with regular Allomancers far more difficult than can really be justified. It just has too many wide sweeping implications and would change far too much I think for it to actually work. That's a massive change.

It seems his plan is to diverge from the books a bit. Someone was not sold on Ham and Docks being Women. He said that:

 

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Hmm. He's envisioning a television show (long format serial) set between movies 2 and 3?

Are movies 2 and 3 supposed to map to The Well of Ascension and The Hero of Ages? Because I'm not sure I've ever sat there and wondered what happened/wished to see more of what happened between Ruin escaping the Well and Vin forcing the other would-be Kings of the Final Empire to sear to Elend as Emperor, and Elend showing up at Fatren's gate as the Emperor Uncalled For.

Then again I've always felt the pacing of The Well of Ascension could use some expanding or adjusting; I guess 2/3rds of WoA could be in Movie #2, and the other 1/3 plus more material put into the serial?

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1 hour ago, robardin said:

Hmm. He's envisioning a television show (long format serial) set between movies 2 and 3?

Are movies 2 and 3 supposed to map to The Well of Ascension and The Hero of Ages? Because I'm not sure I've ever sat there and wondered what happened/wished to see more of what happened between Ruin escaping the Well and Vin forcing the other would-be Kings of the Final Empire to sear to Elend as Emperor, and Elend showing up at Fatren's gate as the Emperor Uncalled For.

Then again I've always felt the pacing of The Well of Ascension could use some expanding or adjusting; I guess 2/3rds of WoA could be in Movie #2, and the other 1/3 plus more material put into the serial?

No, no, the tv series is supposed to be Well of Ascension. Movie for book 1, tv series for book 2, movie for book 3. Only two movies total. 

Edited by lizbusby
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My problems with this is that, alternate universe or not, it seems to be polishing the wrong edges. Among all Mistborn's books, TFE has the least structural or plot problems.
I consider Sanderson a genius, but I really care about so many differences.
The idea of changing genders is the one that sounds less problematic to me, my only annoyance is that he plans to focus even less on the Crew (which already sounds weird, they already have a much smaller role than they should), so what is the point ?
Shalan being more developed is a good thing, but kinship with Elend sounds forced. Isn't Straff and Zane enough now, will we have another member of Elend's family as the villain? Furthermore, it was the absence and a more palpable villain in the first book that made it so oppressive. The moment that TLR first appears, the tension is so great that you take your breath away.
Even with my concerns these changes to the script are largely acceptable, but Atium usable by all Allomancer sounds really horrible to me. And it is what most disappoints me, because it is a change of tone that really changes a good part of the core of the series. Atium did not follow the pattern for other god metals were a quirck, but every magic system has strange peculiarities (even when it arose from an mistake or early development).
Honestly, something good can still come out (Sanderson very rarely disappoints). But I've already lost a lot of the joy in knowing that Sanderson himself is writing, Sanderson as the author could maintain the identity of the work more than anyone, but the result of that seems more cinematic but less Mistborn.

Edited by Raphaborn
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I agree with the prior comments about the changes to atium use. It would be a massive change to the entire setting and to the magic system, and would have significant implications for how the non-book Cosmere fandom would have the magic system revealed to them using Sanderson's Laws. I will be very interested to see how Brandon and the rest of the show's writing staff implement these changes to the setting.

That being said, Brandon may choose to follow the lead of the films and TV series and have Harmony alter Allomancy at the end of Era 2, to provide a means for Scadrians to expend the investiture of the Ruin shard and make it easier for Harmony to control and for him to act. If he can figure out how to make it work in the films and TV series' version of the Cosmere, he could always backport it to the books and explain it as a deliberate choice by Harmony to give himself more freedom of action to contest the mysterious Shard that is assailing the Scadrian system.

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10 minutes ago, lizbusby said:

No, no, the tv series is supposed to be Well of Ascension. Movie for book 1, tv series for book 2, movie for book 3. Only two movies total. 

Ah, that actually makes a great deal of sense!

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8 minutes ago, TheOneKEA said:

I agree with the prior comments about the changes to atium use. It would be a massive change to the entire setting and to the magic system, and would have significant implications for how the non-book Cosmere fandom would have the magic system revealed to them using Sanderson's Laws. I will be very interested to see how Brandon and the rest of the show's writing staff implement these changes to the setting.

That being said, Brandon may choose to follow the lead of the films and TV series and have Harmony alter Allomancy at the end of Era 2, to provide a means for Scadrians to expend the investiture of the Ruin shard and make it easier for Harmony to control and for him to act. If he can figure out how to make it work in the films and TV series' version of the Cosmere, he could always backport it to the books and explain it as a deliberate choice by Harmony to give himself more freedom of action to contest the mysterious Shard that is assailing the Scadrian system.

I wouldn’t bother at all if Harmony made that change (he has control over Ruin, and could have changed humanity to be 50/50 Preservation and Ruin, which would be a good justification) but this change at the beginning of the adaptation already distorts events a lot. Even with the best moment of the trilogy for me, Elend discovering the deposit of Atium thinking he is totally useless at that moment but realizing the Seers at the last minute and in charge against the Koloss army. If everyone burns Atium it already loses much of the dramacity. In addition to being an obvious breach of one of the laws of Alomancy. One metal or all, just except Lerasium (because it is the origin of Alomancy and because humans have more Preservation than Ruin and Lerasium has different qualities than Atium).

Edited by Raphaborn
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4 minutes ago, Raphaborn said:

I wouldn’t bother at all if Harmony made that change (he has control over Ruin, and could have changed humanity to be 50/50 Preservation and Ruin, which would be a good justification) but this change at the beginning of the adaptation already distorts events a lot. Even with the best moment of the trilogy for me, Elend discovering the deposit of Atium thinking he is totally useless at that moment but realizing the Seers at the last minute and in charge against the Koloss army. If everyone burns Atium it already loses much of the dramacity. In addition to being an obvious breach of one of the laws of Alomancy. One metal or all, just except Lerasium (because it is the origin of Alomancy and because humans have more Preservation than Ruin and Lerasium has different qualities than Atium).

I agree with many of your points. We'll have to wait and see if Brandon chooses to proceed with this change, or if he decides that it's too disruptive and too difficult to reconcile into a coherent narrative that can be filmed or shot and make sense to a non-book Cosmere fan.

We have a few WoBs which imply that Harmony expended some of his Ruinous Investiture to make the changes to the koloss, and it's plausible that he could do it again to make changes to the kandra, for example. Brandon has been very vague about exactly how Harmony balances his two Shards.

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2 hours ago, aneonfoxtribute said:

Yeah I'm not sure I like that. Its a nice idea on paper, yes, but based on the story we know, it doesn't work. It would completely kill the Atium Allomancer twist in HoA and would make battles with regular Allomancers far more difficult than can really be justified. It just has too many wide sweeping implications and would change far too much I think for it to actually work. That's a massive change.

In my opinion it's a change for the better, though the ship has long sailed for going back and editing the written material (pulling a George Lucas).

Yes, we lose the Seer Mistings Are A Thing twist, but that was never really that big of a reveal - more of a confusion point. Having 16% of the people who went out in the mists falling to "mistsickness" actually being Snapping is good enough, without the added "and 1/16 of those struck by mistsickness were atium burners". And it would allow for Elend's little army of atium burners in the final battle with the hundreds of thousands of koloss to be composed of all Allomancers, instead of a fraction of a fraction of the people. Even the aluminum and duralumin "gnats" Snapped by the mists, who would otherwise have nothing particular to do in that fight.

Yomen's an interesting enough character, being able to trap Vin the Baddest Mistborn of All Time and being a faithful following of TLR years after he died, without having to be a supposedly impossible type of Misting.

As for "battles with regular Allomancers" - the biggest restriction on facing an atium burner can simply be its rarity, not its rarity PLUS its supposed exclusive use by Mistborn. You don't need atium to justify why the noble houses were so keen on having Mistborn - they're "armies unto themselves" in a way far beyond simply the Mistings of the prime "battle metals", pewter and steel. Which of course, also means that a Mistborn with atium is far more dangerous than just a Pewterarm or Coinshot with atium, much less Joe Aluminum with atium.

Edited by robardin
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