So far the casting is great and it seems like all the actors have a solid grasp of the source material. Lan and Moiraine stand out in particular.
I'm only on the second episode so I can't say much more but from the dialogue and portrayal of the Two Rivers village to the climactic battle scene in the first episode I'm pretty sold so far.
Robert Jordan is ROLLING IN HIS GRAVE that they aren't including his weird misogyny throughout! Destruction of a legacy! :rage-cry:
While they’re making changes, I hope Rand’s polycule is less cringe in the show
look, it's fine because all his sister-wives are friends and one of them is this totally hot warrior babe who like, didn't want to be with him at first but they were DESTINED to be together. And Ugh, I can't believe I'm having to explain this to your philistines. It's FINE OK!
Why would a man who said this deep wisdom need any part of his legacy changed:
"One odd thing that RJ shared with us was his advice to men. He said that men were like fish that had been removed from the tank placed on the ground. The idea was that a cat (a woman) watches the fish and often has no interest if the fish does not struggle enough before dying. The cats enjoy watching the fish flounder and flap around. But if the fish stopped, the cat loses interest. So Robert looked seriously at Brad and Bob and I (the only men present) and said: 'Keep flopping and they won't lose interest. Always keep flapping!'"
It means I've faked a terminal illness with all 3 of my ex-wives to keep them around longer, just imagine when they'd have left if I hadn't done that!
Also hope they address whatever you want to call Perrin's thing with Faile.
I think that's fairly easy to tone down. I don't think there's anything that's actively unfixable in Jordan's work with a deft change of dialogue and a couple of scene cuts.
As of Friday the Green Ajah have a pretty nice little thing going on. Kind of sweet and low key.
Nynaeve’s actor did a great job reacting to Lan’s departure for Moiraine’s tent after she learned about the Greens’ relationships with their Warders.
I genuinely don't understand how there are armies of nerds complaining about how they "ruined the books" by casting brown people.... Like Robert Jordan EXPLICITY describes Rand and the only white guy in the two rivers and he is bullied about it as a child, Elida also comments about how Rand's skin is too pale, his eyes too light, and hair too red to be from the Two Rivers. The first queen of Andor (the kingdom the two rivers is in) is also painted on the ceiling of the palace in Caemlyn and is described ad having black skin and tightly curled hair. This is all not to mention the fact that it makes sense that populations would be radially diverse here because this IS NOT MEDEVIAL FANTASY, it is POST APOCOLYPTIC, with the age of legends (only 3000 years ago, which is not nearly long enough to homogenize populations) being a futuristic, high-tech utopia. I am convinced like half these nerds haven't even read the books and the other half is willingly ignoring them and pretending that everyone in the Wheel of Time universe is while simply because it is "fantasy".
:wojak-nooo: NOOOO, the Two Rivers is an isolated region which means they must all be white! No geographically isolated area has ever been populated by non-white people!
:wojak-nooo: It’s called The Two Rivers, not Los Dos Ríos!!!
It seems like they have very selective memory about the books.
Obviously the strict gender divide is kinda problematic from a modern lens (i am interested to see if they deal with this in the show, especially considering some specific events later in the books), but it has a very feminist lens for it's time, and how anyone could read that, then watch the show and say it's too "feminist" is beyond me.
Excellent comment, I was just thinking about this while I was watching the show. The casting does a lot of storytelling itself. Even people who haven't read the books should be able to pick up on this after seeing the ruins of skyscrapers in the background.
Another great thing about the show is that there’s an entire subreddit devoted to people writing essays about how woke politics are ruining the show because the cast isn’t all wh*te
It’s r/whitecloaks, it’s a very small sub but it seems like an inorganic attempt to force a “wheel of time was ruined by sjws” gamergate-style narrative
It’s r/whitecloaks
OH MY GOD Did they really name themselves after the obvious klan analogue whose relevance to the plot is based on how they constantly try to kill people who are actively trying to help them and who end up helping the bad guy more than hurting him
Irony is dead and conservatives killed it.
you stupid leftists make everything about race and politics, just because they're religious fascists who wear white robes and go around lynching the people they've designated as the "other" doesn't mean they're a KKK analogue
Haven't got very far into it yet, but one thing I really enjoyed was Padan Fain showing all of his teeth every time he smiles. Both upper and lower rows. After the episode I tried in front of a mirror and I literally cannot show as many teeth while grimacing with all my strength as that actor can casually flash during a conversation. He actually manages a smile that I think would make most mammals uncomfortable. It's one thing to make his smile creep you or me out, but to manage a smile that would creep a cow out is impressive. That will work great for the role. Otherwise I thought it was pretty cluttered and clunky, but that's not exactly uncommon for first episodes, so I'll give it some time.
Warning: Book spoilers
I finished the series a couple years back and I think it's been really good so far. I didn't like the first episode during my first watch on account of some (what I see as) superfluous story changes. I think giving Perrin a wife was a strange choice; I get that they're trying to give him an easy-to-follow reason for hating fighting, with her death as motivation since we don't have his inner monologue from the books, but I think you could have him accidentally kill anyone for the same effect without shoehorning such a big change in. Hell it could have been just a teenage love interest and it wouldn't have bothered me. I also didn't like them making Abel Cauthon a "bad dad", in the books he's pretty cool and good friends with Tam iirc.
My biggest gripe is I don't like them making the decision to tease the idea that a woman could be the dragon reborn. I say this as a trans person myself so I've given a good deal of thought to the whole Saidin/Saidar split, how it's bound to the soul and how there literally is a Saidin-channeling woman in the books. Absent the existence of Lews Therin, I think the possibility of a trans-female dragon channeling saidin would be possible and fit narratively, but since the dragon REBORN is literally just Lews Therin again, we would guess that even if trans people are accounted for and accepted in the Wheel of Time universe, that the reincarnated dragon reborn would have the same gender identity as Lews Therin (male). But that's giving a lot of more credit than I think is deserved for this thought experiment, I doubt trans people even crossed the show writers' minds when adding in the "maybe its a girl dragon" tease.
That being said, episodes 2 and 3 were phenomenal, Shadar Logoth looks exactly as I had imagined, Thom looks fantastic and his actor plays him great, the main cast is excellent, the darkfriend's plot in episode 3 was great, probably even better than the scene it replaces in the books. I rewatched episode 1 and the changes didn't really bother me on rewatch as most of them don't matter (except the female dragon thing, I'm just head-canoning that as not a thing). I could wish that the pace was about half as fast as it currently is, but obviously this is a profit making tool for amazon and they wanna get as much main story out there as possible to hook people. Very excited for Friday when the next batch of episodes releases.
I also dislike the female dragon thing cause in my eyes part of the whole setting was "what if original sin but a dude did it".
While Jordan didn't execute particularly well I appreciate that he was trying to get there
Woah I never thought about it that way. Really interesting point.
I agree generally. The "Fridging Perrin's wife" thing feels like a writing shortcut to me, to wring extra pathos out of his story, and speedrun his arc. I think Perrin's arc in the books is generally one of the worst received for readers, and he's kinda off doin his own thing for so long, before it become relevant to everyone else, so I get big vibes that the writers are planning on shortcutting a lot of it in general. Which, I instinctively don't like, but also I understand somewhat what they're trying to do.
Also, someone pointed out to me something I wasn't aware of, that RJ's notes do mention a 'female dragon', for when the world needs a female channeler to save the world in the cycle, though in book canon, she is called Amaresu instead of dragon, so there's a chance that the show writers could be referencing that as well.
Yeah I noticed some of that "short cutting" with Mat too, having him steal from Two Rivers folk seems a bit out of character, but I guess they want to develop him as this rogueish archetype early on. Also I pretty sure he didn't really pick up gambling until Tar Valon but I could be wrong.
I didn't know those notes about a female dragon either, I always figured that there absolutely could be a female dragon in other turnings of the Wheel, but this specific turning's one was male and thus the Aes Sedai would be hunting exclusively male channelers.
I got some complaints about the adaptation, but overall, its seems solid.
Honestly, one of my favorite things is that its actually colorful; I'm soooo over sepia or grey moody fantasy, where everything looks so grim and lifeless. It has the drawback of giving you a clearer look at the trollocs, making them look a little cheaper and less intimidating, but I'll take it in exchange for having colors and generally well lit scenes.
Honestly, one of my favorite things is that its actually colorful
I liked that too and I thought the trollocs still looked really great.
:sicko-yes:
I liked rand a lot as well, my only wondering question is wtf is with wind everywhere?
Also padan fain is pog and dialectically (:zizek-preference: ) mist in the city looked like shit
The wheel of time turns, ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth and even myth is long forgotten when the age that gave it birth comes again.
In this age, called the third age by some, an age long gone, an age yet to come, a wind rose [in/above/around] [location]. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.
That's how the first chapter of (almost) every wheel of time book starts, with the readers perspective following the path of the wind as a device to set the scene and show a bit of how the world has changed between books.
I haven't watched the show yet, but if there's a lot of mysterious/symbolic/significant wind. I'd take it as a reference to that and be very happy.
Despite the changes to perrin and matt, i really liked the first three episodes with each one seeming to get better than the last. Lan is playing the warder perfect imo and Thom nailed his music scene as well.
I think it's great so far. It's moving at a pretty quick pace, but I think that's to be expected when you're trying to adapt a 27-book series to the silver screen. This may be giving the writers too much credit, but I'm hand waving all the changes away as part of the show's cannon due to the nature of "legends fading into myths" as the Wheel turns. I'm interested to see how they explain the possibility of the Dragon being a woman.
Some mild book spoilers ahead, about the possibility of a 'female dragon'
spoiler
I'd love if their justification was, basically, trans people. Cause the dragon basically has to be able to channel saidin, and we've seen in the books how a person's soul being moved to a body of the opposite sex doesn't change the version of the one power they use. The books never went one step farther to make the 'trans people have a different gendered souls', but it'd be in line with the book's lore. Obviously, that explanation would be pretty gender essentialist and gender binary enforcing, but the whole WoT series already is very 'men are like this, women are like this', so like, the core premise of the series is already pretty queer unfriendly unfortunately, as much as some gay and possibly bi characters do exist.
The most important part of this being the explanation the show goes with is, of course, angering chuds though. And it least it'd mean showing trans people existing in a big fantasy show. Also recognizing a trans-man The Dragon being possible, and therefore essentially guaranteed to happen in some turnings of the wheel, is pretty badass.
It was never really explored thoroughly because he died, but if you read the little of the background he left a well as some of the inferences in the novels it was clear he intended for there to be a female Dragon to be the counter point to Rand.
spoiler
Agreed on how gender binary enforcing the premise of the story is. And it will be interesting to see how they handle that baddie who was given a different sex in their reincarnated body.
For years, I keep toying with the idea of reading the series, then thinking about how there are too many books and am I really that interested? So I haven't read them yet. Maybe one of these days. Should I try watching the show without reading the books?
Yeah it seems to be conveying most of the themes of the books well enough, and honestly you're not missing a whole lot in terms of absence of internal monologue, that's where a lot of the mentions of weird misogyny are coming from. Honestly this is one of the rare instances where a fantasy novel series might actually be better done in a visual medium and by nature absent of some of the more problematic internal monologuing.
Oh, that's interesting! I think I will dip my toes in with the show then, and we'll see about actually reading the books if I enjoy the show. Thanks for the advice!
I saw the trailer and was a bit disappointed. The actual look of it, the film quality, seemed campy and amateurish, the way a d-list passion project kind of looks, you know what I mean? Not saying the content itself is like that, but the look of it, editing, etc. That’s really hard to get past for me
