Wheel of Time (spoilers)

[Berkut]

So, after the first season, I am extremely ambivalent.


The production value is overall pretty good B+.


The acting/characters ranges from bad (Perrin, Egwene, Rand, most of the AS) to ok (Nyneave, Siaun Seanche, Tham),  with like two or three that I would consider good (Moraine, Lan, Mat). D


A lot of the story choices just seem kind of baffling. C


Compared to GoT, their casting seems like they mostly found a bunch of Brans, and few if any Arya/Jon/Rob/Joffrey etc. Most of the main actors simply lack any particular charisma, much less acting skill. I especially cannot stand Perrin. Uggh.


The story changes - some make sense, but most do not, so far. Maybe they will later. Why did only Moraine and Rand go to the Eye of the World? The idea that Lan would stay behind just kind of destroys the very idea of who Lan was, and then he follows them, but doesn't actually even find them. So what was the point of that?


The entire fight at the end where the sister of the Lord of Fal Dara gets a few women who can channel and promptly burns herself out but destroys an entire army of trollocs and Fades? Really? Is that all it take to kill thousands of the bad guys?



And the entire OH NOES NYNEAVE IS DEAD OH WAIT NO SHE ISNT. Jesus. Isn't NOT doing that like somewhere in "Dramatic Writing 101"?


I will keep watching because I am kind of a sucker for these things, but I suspect it will not last. It shoots for Game of Thrones Season 1, and is a lot more like Game of Thrones Season 7. Except with much, much less talent among the actors.

[HVC]

I felt it was getting better and then the Witcher dropped and I remember what good acting in fantasy was like and my opinion of it dropped. Still finished it, but was less into it.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Have you ever read the books or did you go into it cold?

Personally, I rate it very similarly to you--it's an "okay" fantasy series and I like that sort of thing, it has none of the makings of a TV classic, but a "time filler" sure, and sometimes shows like that make a lot of money which may be all Amazon is pursuing in any case.

I think the WoT book series...had problems, but in spite of them is still probably one of the best of the "long-form" epic fantasy / sword and sorcery genre series. It certainly isn't the best written fantasy (but sword/sorcery, epic 14 book series generally aren't the top of the genre anyway, regardless), Wheel of Time's "peak" in the books was a little less than A Song of Ice and Fire's, but I give Robert Jordan more props than GRRM because he published 11 books over a 17 year period and some were extremely long. Jordan got particularly unlucky and died of an untreatable and rare blood disorder at age 58, and his series had to be finished from his notes and a few written segments he already had done of the final book by Brandon Sanderson (for length reasons they split the "final" book into 3 releases, which is how the series sits at 14 total books.) Jordan also, in his final work written entirely himself was pulling together a lot of the many narrative threads he had spun out and was clearly working towards a real resolution, so I think he was on good pace to finish the thing had he not gotten sick.

All that being said, I have always said this book series could not be adapted to TV and film, Brandon Sanderson did a little consulting on this TV series and he echoes those thoughts--that Wheel of Time is much harder to adapt to screen than say, ASoIaF / GoT--one thing to keep in mind is GRRM's history involved an extensive past in writing for actual TV shows, so in a way his books had more of a TV pacing to them to begin with. Wheel of Time really isn't like that. The other main issue is Wheel of Time goes through...phases, and you don't get a real complete picture until literally near the very end of the series:

Books 1 - 3: These are Lord of the Ring rip-off, adventure novels, written (not deliberately, but later remarketed for) in a "young adult" fantasy style. The character development is low, and while there's interesting stuff, this set of three books is kind of a "soft" introduction to the world in the form of a fairly straight forward adventure series that is complex in its world building but simplistic in its character building.

Books 4 - 6: This is where IMO the series gets more adult, it becomes more about political intrigue, subterfuge, lots of fan favorite characters get much more in depth Point of View chapter treatment, you start to see the characters be much better fleshed out and complete, interesting people versus the "archetypes" in Books 1-3.

Books 7 - 10: This is what many considered the "low point" of the series in its original print run. What really happened here is by the end of Book 6, Jordan had spun a lot of narrative threads, and how best to deal with them was probably an open question. He chose to basically spend 4 books leaning in to them quite hard, a lot of important stuff happens in these four books, but at the same time a lot of it is world building, "filling in empty spots" and etc, so the "main narrative arc" at times feels to not move at all. Personally I think these four books hold up much better in a re-read than in original publication--in original publication they were frustrating because you'd wait 18+ months for a new book entry, and get one that maybe had a lot of interest stuff about important secondary characters and world building, but didn't really advance the core narrative arc set in books 1 to 60.

Books 11 - 14: Originally intended as two books, 11 is the last Jordan wrote, and he promised 12 would be released as one book "even if it was 3000 pages" (which it would have been.) When he died, his wife / editor Harriet and the author she hired to finish it decided it was more appropriate to split it into three volumes. While not fully everything gets resolved (and that's fine, in my opinion), finally most of the side stories, and the main narrative arc get brought to a real conclusion.

Now how do you make a TV series out of that? It's hard because Book 1 is almost like it's from a different series than say, Books 4 and 6 (two of the highest rated books by fans.) The characters from Book 1 are simplistic, tropes of fantasy archetypes. Even some of the "worldbuilding" isn't fully finalized in Book 1, there's a few things in Book 1 that kind of just never get brought up or used again--hell, the very nature of the Eye of the World and the pool of liquid saidin is kind of never really explained at all in the rest of the series, and in Book 1 it was portrayed as a super important thing of ultimate import.

Rand is mega important, but he is very under-developed in Book 1. Mat spends most of Book 1 sick with "cursed dagger from Shadar Logoth" disease, and has almost no point of view chapters. Perrin actually probably has the most interesting PoV and character development in Book 1, but even his is fairly light.

With all those structural limitations, I actually think the showrunners were correct in making it an ensemble. Characters like Lan and Moiraine are actually more interesting than most of the Emond's Fielder's in Book 1, and no one or even two characters in book one really gets developed enough to be a good focus for a TV show. However making it an ensemble also means going off the path of the Book--the Book is a lot less secret that Rand is the Dragon Reborn. Why? Because like 80% of the Book's PoV is from his perspective. Also in the book it is made clear the Dragon is one of the three boys, and that neither of the female members of the EF5 are viable candidates. The confrontation with the two forsaken (Aginor and Belthamel) and "Ba'alzamon" at the end of Book 1 is also...probably one of the weirdest and hardest to understand parts of the entire 14 book series. A lot that happens in that chapter conflict with later "rules" of the series, and narratively it's jumbled and difficult to understand. It is not surprising to me that it didn't translate well to TV--I don't actually think it was a well written part of the book. Jordan had approval from Tom Doherty to write a 6 book series, but everything in the last few chapters of Book 1 has a feel of "I want to make this a plausible complete ending for the entire story in case we never see book 2", which doesn't make a ton of sense because he actually wrote Book 1 and 2 as one effort, so there was never any real doubt about Book 2, but maybe he wanted Book 1 to be popular enough to justify things or something, so he didn't want to leave it on a cliff hanger, I don't know.

Anyway--I think the TV show made a lot of good decisions to try and adapt a book series that just won't play easily on television, and that required low fidelity to the original written work, which has enraged some of the book fans. I frankly don't mind at all for a TV adaptation to go in a different direction.

However where I got sour on the TV series, which was around Episode 7 or so--they started making decisions that not only were very different from RJ's work, but in ways that IMO didn't help the story be any better for TV...they just were dumb and made little sense. Not good storytelling, and it makes me question if this showrunner is going to do well going forward. We'll see I guess. I rate the overall first season in maybe a C range, some of the episodes I really enjoyed, but some of the narrative choices especially the last few episodes were just poorly done--this is nothing to do with "omg they changed from the book", but more "you changed from the books and actually...did something even worse?" Like the books need changes to be suitable TV and that is fine, but when you make changes that are actually worse storytelling and worse for a TV audience than the original work? That's harder to understand. Where Robert Jordan's tale actually did a good job with storytelling that would relate well to a TV audience, I think you should show a little more care about changing it for the sake of changing it, especially if the replacement is poor.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I felt it was getting better and then the Witcher dropped and I remember what good acting in fantasy was like and my opinion of it dropped. Still finished it, but was less into it.

Yeah, the acting is mostly average to poor. I generally like Rosamund Pike in a number of things she's done, so she's more than adequate. They went with a "very young and inexperienced" cast for the EF5, and... well, we're seeing exactly that. The Witcher went with a very well-known and established actor for Geralt, but at the same time I doubt you could cast anyone of that tier for one of the "5 main" characters in Wheel of Time; they likely are requiring these actors to sign long term contracts, and not to sole lead roles but to parts in an ensemble cast, you'd have trouble signing experienced veterans under those circumstances. Barney Harris that played Mat was, in my opinion, the best of the young actors they found for the 5, and for reasons that still aren't public he either left the cast or was fired from the show before the last episode was filmed, and is recast in Season 2...which is not good because I think he was the lone member of the young acting group that showed significant promise to me. These kids are young enough some may develop into better actors with time.

Like Berk I'm really doubtful Perrin (Marcus Rutherford) is one that will develop into much...not to shit on a young actor in his first significant role...but he is not good, he almost plays Perrin like he has an intellectual disability.

[celedhring]

I thought the show was okay. The acting, I agree, was generally poor and particularly the young cast is pretty unengaging. The dialogue didn't help, either. Watching this show really made me realize what a small miracle GoT is, last seasons notwithstanding.

However, I thought the show found its stride as it went on, and I liked the last episode quite a bit. You can see there's a depth to the world and the story that makes me want to see more. I only read the first book, and that was like a decade ago, so I can't really say much about story changes.

[Berkut]

Yep, that is exactly how I feel as well.

I never finished readying the series - I gave up around book 6 or something, IIRC. I am actually picking them up again and seeing if I can get further.

I don't mind changes for TV. I really do not - in fact, I tend to find those changes interesting, and enjoy kind of understanding why they were changed (like for casting reasons).

But some changes just don't seem to make much sense, even from the standpoint of trying to put myself into the shoes of the show writers. Where the story as written is just better, even on screen, then whatever ridiculousness the show writers came up with.

[Threviel]

Did they go into the logistics of all those candles?

[Berkut]

Did they go into the logistics of all those candles?

I don't want to spoiler anything, but episode 5 is primarily concerned with candle manufacture in the Two Rivers and associated supporting industries.

[Threviel]

Did they go into the logistics of all those candles?

I don't want to spoiler anything, but episode 5 is primarily concerned with candle manufacture in the Two Rivers and associated supporting industries.

I would not have guessed that. In that case I was wrong and they did think things through.

[Darth Wagtaros]

I didn't get far into it.  A 1:1 translation of the books would be a disaster, but some of the changes made seem to be there to artificially introduce drama in lieu of character development.  The acting was bad.

[Eddie Teach]

I have an abundance of free time, and it didn't put me to sleep, so I'll probably watch season 2.

[Grey Fox]

I hate to say it but OvB is right. Nothing happens in the 1st book. Thats the mistake of the showrunners, they should have made the 1st season up to the 3rd book.

[Berkut]

I hate to say it but OvB is right. Nothing happens in the 1st book. Thats the mistake of the showrunners, they should have made the 1st season up to the 3rd book.

Having just finished speed reading through the first book....you guys are mostly right. The entire thing go be effectively summarized in just a few pages.

It's not a bad book, I mean, it is the introduction after all, but yeah....its a pretty long book that when you finish you kind of realize that not much really happened, and what did happen, didn't make a lot of sense.

[garbon]

Did they go into the logistics of all those candles?

I don't want to spoiler anything, but episode 5 is primarily concerned with candle manufacture in the Two Rivers and associated supporting industries.

I would not have guessed that. In that case I was wrong and they did think things through.

[Grey Fox]

I hate to say it but OvB is right. Nothing happens in the 1st book. Thats the mistake of the showrunners, they should have made the 1st season up to the 3rd book.

Having just finished speed reading through the first book....you guys are mostly right. The entire thing go be effectively summarized in just a few pages.

It's not a bad book, I mean, it is the introduction after all, but yeah....its a pretty long book that when you finish you kind of realize that not much really happened, and what did happen, didn't make a lot of sense.

I've read the first 3 books in French and in that translation the books are doubled. 6 books of mostly nothing. I switched to English from book 4.