But a lot of the backstory of Alendi's time wasn't talked about in Final Empire. There were references to the Deepness and the Well of Ascension, but it was integrated into the story well without flashbacks, and they didn't really reveal what happened. I also don't think you'd need the narrator to say "Ash fell from the sky". The advantage with films is that we get the visual cues. We would not need a narrator telling me this when we can see quite clearly the ash, the sun, the dead planet. It's far better seen than told.
I'm more concerned if Allomancy can be accurately displayed in a way that makes sense to viewers--all of the powers and such.
Meh, that's the difference between a movie and a book. But IMHO the trailer needs to quote that line. Not the movie itself, I guess. I was thinking weird that day. But here's what I
would have said, I think, had I not been distracted. The film needs to somehow convey the story of Alendi in a way that makes sense - otherwise the "main" plot kind of falls apart. They do have to appeal to those who haven't read the libretto yet, after all. And it's either 10-second flashbacks at the beginning of every scene (to drop little epigram-esque tidbits) or a miniature exposition at the start of the film. And to keep it interesting, it'd need to go into more detail than the book did - not less. When we're only seeing a little bit of it every five pages or so, it's fine to just have a general idea of what's going on, and it's enough to just "hear" Alendi's voice. But if we're getting it all at once (and I really think it'd have to be done in one go, to keep the plot moving), it's got to stand on its own as a full story, which means we need background and detail for the
background story itself.And then I remember that there's a bit where Vin steals the book that has the epigrams in it and I realize
that's the perfect time to tell the story, and it still doesn't have to go into much detail, because then it'd make sense to just let Alendi's voice narrate while 10-second flashbacks are played with special-effects borders, and I think how stupid it is that I just wrote two paragraphs about how well it'd work to do something different. Self-facepalmed.
I'm of the opinion that a film based on a book
has to deviate slightly from the written details in order to better convey the essence of the plot. In an entirely different medium, what matters is not whether they got the color of Vin's hair right; what matters is whether they portrayed her character accurately and told the basic story successfully. I actually don't mind added content, as long as it's good content, and I don't really care if they have to cut out a few things from the source material, as long as the things they cut are unimportant. I think the Lord of the Rings trilogy did this very successfully.
So, no, it's not necessary to explicitly say, "Ash fell from the sky." at the beginning of the movie, but it'd still be a pretty good line for the preview, IMO. Then again, Brandon didn't
need to say it in his book, either; in fact, he did a pretty good job of "showing" that ash was falling indirectly immediately afterward anyway. But (!) it's a great opening line; while it generally hurts any medium (writing, film, etc) to explicitly
tell the audience about...things... that line in particular was a pretty good exception - at least for the book. Which is why I think it'd work in a preview. Anyway. I'm gonna stop flapping my, uh, fingers.