Wheel of Time thread

Two episodes down;

It’s…ok, so far. Much like Foundation, it looks like this is ‘inspired by’ the books, rather than adapted from, which is fine - expectations managed.

Very colourful. Watching it in HDR was almost hard on the eyes.

Just finished watching the first episode......Didn't like it at all. Right from the opening, it felt as though you were thrust into the middle of a sprawling 1000 page novel with zero context. As if you'd started reading book in the middle. And by the time the huge battle came, I was practically falling asleep due to impatience and confusion.   Of course, this is coming from someone with zero knowledge of the books, and maybe, the series was created assuming the viewer(s) have some knowledge of the books.   Still...  I thought someothing like the Expanse was done much better.

Not sure if I want to bother with this one. I might pick it up again later, give a second episode a try see if it gets any better....but that won't be for a while.

Gonna go back to watching Mouse Minus for the forseeable future.

I actually probably liked Perrin’s actor the best off the back of the first episode. He had a quietness to him that I thought fit the character quite well. I’m not sure what to think of his new standing within Emond’s Field, no longer apprenticed and with a family that was inevitably going to be jettisoned so that he can follow his story arc. Maybe Faile will make him shave his beard off this time? How’s that for subverting expectations!

I had a harder time with the other members of the Emond’s field five mostly due to the changes in their backgrounds or story not jibing with my memories; Mat no longing a rogue but an out-and-out thief with a broken home; Rand and Egwene with their new physical relationship and Nyneave and Egwene with that odd new Womens’ Circle ritual (no accidental drownings in the past 5 weeks)!

I think Mat’s actor has good potential, so it’s a shame he won’t be staying for the second season.

Nyneave’s character became one of my favourites in the books, but I’m hoping they smooth some of her rougher edges in the tv series as I found her moods a bit exaggerated in the books.

I’ll probably post more once I’ve watched the next couple of episodes.

Other than one preview, I haven’t read any reviews…are they quite bad?



I like to spread the joy of this video every so often

I’ve watched the first 3 episodes as a non book reader, and I love most of what I’ve seen so far. My only complaint is the kids waiting till they left their homes to complain to Moiraine (Who’s my favorite character so far) about where they are going. I also don’t consider myself a huge romance guy, but for some reason I’m highly invested in Rand and Egwene relationship. I ask my friend who read the books about them hoping he’ll spoil me a little about how they end up, and he just laughed and said wait and see. Which now has me expecting the worst now, I hope we don’t have a Ragnar and Lagertha situation going on.

I only watched the first episode so far, but i mostly agree with AnDromedary about the pacing. It's understandable that the showrunners altered, and sped up the plot points of EoTW's Edmond's Field chapters in order to hook the viewers with a grand battle at the ep's climax, but some of the changes felt unnecessary, while the omissions would leave non-book readers scratching their heads. Case point about omission, i understand that Nynaeve's story about her mentor's treatment by the Aes Sedai was a second hand account which is subject to the game of telephone, but i think the writer should have had Moiraine contest the accuracy of Nynaeve's story because it implied the Aes Sedai, who come from many backgrounds, discriminate based on a person's socio economic status instead of them looking down on those who weren't taught by their institution.

Mind you i'm only on the 1st ep so i don't know if it will appear in a flashback, but Rand's escape from the farm with an injured Tam was an omission that should have been included because the sequence contained an important character, and plot development that's also an impetus for Rand to leave EF. Another change that i felt was unnecessary was Padan Fain being casually outed as a bad guy to the viewer early on which was very on the nose, and it reminded me of RE3 remake's portrayal of Nikolai whose character lacked subtlety. There's no mystery as to how and why the dark friends learned about Rand, and friends presence in EF and it seemed like the writers had no faith in the audience piecing together the mystery behind why EF was discovered by the shadowspawn. Also i felt like the inclusion of Rand and Egwene canoodling was added in like it's part of a list a of things the showrunners thought the people who liked GoT might want to see but made it PG13.

About the casting. I thought i would despise the casting but it was mostly serviceable while even though Mat was toned down from the books he's a wholesome character and i like the portrayal so far. I'm not feeling Nynaeve's actress probably because her portrayal's persona is more subdued in comparison to the novel's which i loved, Perrin was cool so far but holy shit at what happened. I didn't think it was possible but Amazon's Perrin will become an even bigger Emo than the book's lol. Crawling in my skiiiiiin! BRREAKING THE HABIT! WAKE ME UP INSIDE CAN'T WAKE UP! SAVE MEEEEE! I'm neutral to Rand's actor but he looks like a spitting image of Ryan Phillipe. When i see Rand the car ride scene from Cruel Intentions where Reese Witherspoon teases Phillipe as FatBoy Slim's "Praise You" plays in the background runs through my mind, very distracting. About Egwene, i despised the character in the books but i think the show's incarnation presents an entirely new case for me. That fooking mole! It's like it's staring into my soul, beckoning me, please use cgi to make it go away?

On a related note about cgi, i like how the casting of weaves were rendered but felt like the music took away from Moiraine's fight scene due to how anachronistic it sounded. The cgi and costume of the trollocs looked surprisingly good, and was the highlight of the episode for me. Despite my issue with the story changes and pacing the show has potential and i give the first episode a 1 star out of 4. I jk, i can't put numbers to it but the ep was decent even though it could have been better.

I also liked the weaves - am I wrong in thinking the weaves were supposed to have muted colour, though? Red for Fire, white for Air etc, so either I'm wrong (which is very possible, it has been some time since I read any of the books), they decided to just have all one colour or Moiraine only wove Air against the Trollocs. The fight scene was very well done. The complaints about pacing are interesting; I get it - they've moved through a big chunk of book very quickly, but at the same time, I felt like - Trolloc fight aside - the pace of events actually depicted in the show have moved very slowly, almost too slowly. And I was really hoping to see Lan in action as described in the books; "a hurricane of steel, appearing and disappearing as needed". But the show - at least, so far - is Moiraine's story, so it makes sense to have her front and centre.



This is pretty much where I'm at. I still need to catch the 3rd episode, but since there are only 8, I've already decided that I'm going to watch the lot, regardless of quality. I'll decide whether or not to watch subsequent seasons based on the overall impression.

Cool - must've been my imagination, then.  I knew the weaves were invisible to normies, but for some reason I was sure that channelers could see weaves of other channelers (of the same side of the Source), because that was how they learned the different weaves.

I am very disappointed they didn't try and show some of the Breaking of the World in the first episode, even if it was overlaid with Moiraine's narration.  In fact, that probably would've been preferable.  At the very least, it would've cleansed the taint of Billy Zane's version from my mind.

Re: the other stuff, yeah...for 8 episodes, they were always going to have to slice huge chunks of information out of this book.  It sucks, but makes sense.  They have to make it watchable for people that haven't read any of the books.

Moiraine's movement in the Trolloc fight was impressive, I agree.  Almost like dance/kata, I liked it.

It's not your imagination it's that Jordan told us that channelers can see the weaves but usually doesn't describe them after their initial usage like Balefire's first time use by Moiraine, and whose description was very underwhelming. Jordan did the same for the heron mark sword techniques where he would describe the attacks in detail at first but then just name the attack without any further description like "Rand slew the first trolloc with Drunken Monkey Rethinks His Life, intercercepted the 2nd trolloc's overhead sword swing with Epileptic Eagle then ended it's life with Rampaging Whale Carried By The Wind."

All that contrasted by jordan taking an entire chapter to describe the furniture in a room in later books.