Just watched ep 1 & 2 of Season 1

[Marek Mercury]

It looks like there's barely 3 of us here now. Suppose there's a shedload of tweeting or tick tocking about WOT instead. Anyway, per the subject line, and I have notes!

TV show spoilers ahead.....


.

.

.

The good:
Set design, clothes, locations. Acting also good.
The attack on the al'Thor home scene was great - although only one Trolloc?
The Myrddrraal design is pretty good. Smacks a little of Peter Jackson LoTR, but hey, RJ borrowed handily from Tolkien so why not.
I think the Trolloc design is really great when it's costumes and physical, and really not working when wholly digital.

The bad:
The dialogue is problematic. It's, um, bland. And the use of simplistic gutter language is lazy. RJ could really write when he got into it - and their choice to make the language banal and common becomes obvious and incongruous when they have Moiraine give the Manatheren speech but instead of a grand moment with a blazing light in front of a mob in a moment of tension, it's while riding along as a group on horseback, after the kids sing a song about Manetheren (gah!). Now that wonderful speech catches the ear wrong. And it shows the writers don't know what to do with RJ's writing.

I think the writing is a bit clunky in places. The plotting is slow slow quick quick slow. And then there is the MAJOR plot hole at the end of episode 1, and unforced error. Seriously wow! Moiraine told everyone one of them is the Dragon Reborn while still in the Two Rivers. Wouldn't she just ask the parents where the kids were born? And Tam is awake and well and could easily answer the question.


The confusing:
Where is Thom Merrilin?

I would not have said RJ was subtle, but the writers seem to have been at sea with his subtlety. The telegraphing is over the top - Perrin and his first meeting with wolves, Egwene and the water and control metaphor for the One Power being hit over our heads in the first scene of episode 1.

And apparently they needed to create more motivations for the characters' traits so made up some unnecessary new things:
Perrin dislikes violence, not because he's decent, but because he killed his (nonexistent) wife accidentally.
Mat suddenly has parents who are drunks and philanderers, and now he's an outright thief who steals from people.
Nynaeve hates Aes Sedai because the old wisdom was turned away from the White Tower.

Wtf is up with that Game of Thrones style skinned sheep in the shape of the black tear nonsense? Ugh, idiotic and meaningless (just like GOT to be fair).


The curious:
No visit to Baerlon, means not meeting Min. I guess we'll meet her later?

Mat and Rand haven't jumped onto a boat after leaving Shadar Logoth.


I know there was more but i'm tired and it's not worth it.

Overall I'd give it 3.6 roentgens. Not great. Not terrible.


MM

[Cassie]

Watch episode 3 and some of your questions will be answered.

I agree that the Trollocs are well made.

The good and the bad are personal.

Cassie

Post by Marek Mercury
It looks like there's barely 3 of us here now. Suppose there's a shedload of tweeting or tick tocking about WOT instead. Anyway, per the subject line, and I have notes!
TV show spoilers ahead.....
.
.
.
Set design, clothes, locations. Acting also good.
The attack on the al'Thor home scene was great - although only one Trolloc?
The Myrddrraal design is pretty good. Smacks a little of Peter Jackson LoTR, but hey, RJ borrowed handily from Tolkien so why not.
I think the Trolloc design is really great when it's costumes and physical, and really not working when wholly digital.
The dialogue is problematic. It's, um, bland. And the use of simplistic gutter language is lazy. RJ could really write when he got into it - and their choice to make the language banal and common becomes obvious and incongruous when they have Moiraine give the Manatheren speech but instead of a grand moment with a blazing light in front of a mob in a moment of tension, it's while riding along as a group on horseback, after the kids sing a song about Manetheren (gah!). Now that wonderful speech catches the ear wrong. And it shows the writers don't know what to do with RJ's writing.
I think the writing is a bit clunky in places. The plotting is slow slow quick quick slow. And then there is the MAJOR plot hole at the end of episode 1, and unforced error. Seriously wow! Moiraine told everyone one of them is the Dragon Reborn while still in the Two Rivers. Wouldn't she just ask the parents where the kids were born? And Tam is awake and well and could easily answer the question.
Where is Thom Merrilin?
I would not have said RJ was subtle, but the writers seem to have been at sea with his subtlety. The telegraphing is over the top - Perrin and his first meeting with wolves, Egwene and the water and control metaphor for the One Power being hit over our heads in the first scene of episode 1.
Perrin dislikes violence, not because he's decent, but because he killed his (nonexistent) wife accidentally.
Mat suddenly has parents who are drunks and philanderers, and now he's an outright thief who steals from people.
Nynaeve hates Aes Sedai because the old wisdom was turned away from the White Tower.
Wtf is up with that Game of Thrones style skinned sheep in the shape of the black tear nonsense? Ugh, idiotic and meaningless (just like GOT to be fair).
No visit to Baerlon, means not meeting Min. I guess we'll meet her later?
Mat and Rand haven't jumped onto a boat after leaving Shadar Logoth.
I know there was more but i'm tired and it's not worth it.
Overall I'd give it 3.6 roentgens. Not great. Not terrible.
MM

[Chucky@Work]

Post by Marek Mercury
It looks like there's barely 3 of us here now.

Glad I checked back in!

Post by Marek Mercury
Suppose there's a shedload of tweeting or tick tocking about
WOT instead. Anyway, per the subject line, and I have notes!

We're all over on Discord:

https://discord.gg/CeBw2s4b

Link expires in 7 days. If you're interested.

Post by Marek Mercury
TV show spoilers ahead.....
.
.
.
Set design, clothes, locations. Acting also good.

Agreed.

Post by Marek Mercury
The attack on the al'Thor home scene was great - although only one Trolloc?

Yeah, wasn't there only Narg in that scene in the book? I read it a few months back (reading the books to my kids so we can watch the show together in maximum snobbery), but there were only one or two. Because Rand then gets to drag Tam out of there without getting butchered.

Post by Marek Mercury
The Myrddrraal design is pretty good. Smacks a little of Peter Jackson
LoTR, but hey, RJ borrowed handily from Tolkien so why not.

Aye, it's a Nazgûl / Dementor / liver fluke. Which, fuck, terrifying. Full marks.

Post by Marek Mercury
I think the Trolloc design is really great when it's costumes and
physical, and really not working when wholly digital.

Also agreed. I liked the way some of them ran on all fours and the rest ran on two legs.

Post by Marek Mercury
The dialogue is problematic. It's, um, bland. And the use of simplistic
gutter language is lazy. RJ could really write when he got into it - and
their choice to make the language banal and common becomes obvious
and incongruous when they have Moiraine give the Manatheren
speech but instead of a grand moment with a blazing light in front of a
mob in a moment of tension, it's while riding along as a group on
horseback, after the kids sing a song about Manetheren (gah!). Now
that wonderful speech catches the ear wrong. And it shows the
writers don't know what to do with RJ's writing.

Hmm. Well, I guess the addition of swears and occasional colloquialisms is unavoidable now that Game of Thrones has set the archetype for what a successful fantasy adaptation looks like. I was okay with it, it wasn't that bad.

I liked the Manetheren song but agree that the speech itself could have made a more rousing "fuck you" at their departure from Emond's Field. The way they just rode out was kind of abrupt and strange.

Post by Marek Mercury
I think the writing is a bit clunky in places. The plotting is slow slow
quick quick slow.

Aye, exactly.

Post by Marek Mercury
And then there is the MAJOR plot hole at the end of episode 1, and
unforced error. Seriously wow! Moiraine told everyone one of them
is the Dragon Reborn while still in the Two Rivers. Wouldn't she
just ask the parents where the kids were born? And Tam is
awake and well and could easily answer the question.

Yeah, that was a bit "so the plot could happen". I mean, it was easily remedied, she could have asked and they could have gone "they were born on the tenth on Nunya." End of.

Post by Marek Mercury
Where is Thom Merrilin?

Well it seems like they didn't want to overcrowd the Emond's Field parts, but he does show up in the next episode. I don't know if that counts as a spoiler since the marketing has been plastering him all over the place for months so I at least was aware that he was going to appear at some point.

Post by Marek Mercury
I would not have said RJ was subtle, but the writers seem to have
been at sea with his subtlety. The telegraphing is over the top -
Perrin and his first meeting with wolves, Egwene and the water
and control metaphor for the One Power being hit over our heads
in the first scene of episode 1.

The wolf thing I can kind of see, we don't get inside Perrin's head the way we would in the books.

The thing that annoyed me about Egwene and the river was, when the time comes for her to learn to embrace saidar, there isn't even a callback to that scene and a reminder that surrendering is important. We see it because we've read all about how female channeling works and saidar being like a river, but it's just not mentioned in the show. Maybe it's a little nod for the readers, but without it being connected to the actual channeling lesson, it's a pointless nod.

Post by Marek Mercury
And apparently they needed to create more motivations for the
Perrin dislikes violence, not because he's decent, but because
he killed his (nonexistent) wife accidentally.

Yeah, they have to amp up the drama and angst. I guess because otherwise, the Whitecloaks being as downright evil as they are, there would be no tension at all in Perrin's choice to kill them.

Post by Marek Mercury
Mat suddenly has parents who are drunks and philanderers, and
now he's an outright thief who steals from people.

I kind of liked this added complexity of Mat's character and background. It also makes me wonder if his sisters becoming novices will come back later, the way it did in the books. I guess that will have to wait for season 4 or 5 or something. If they get that far.

Post by Marek Mercury
Nynaeve hates Aes Sedai because the old wisdom was turned
away from the White Tower.

I didn't really get that, or at least I think there was probably more to the anecdote than we're seeing. The Tower *we* know would not turn away a shabby-dressed peasant if she could channel. So either she couldn't channel and the whole thing was a face-saving lie, or the show's White Tower is a lot more elitist and channelers aren't that scarce. Which really changes the landscape.

Post by Marek Mercury
Wtf is up with that Game of Thrones style skinned sheep in the
shape of the black tear nonsense? Ugh, idiotic and meaningless
(just like GOT to be fair).

Didn't see any Game of Thrones connection there, I thought it was either another nod to readers, a hint of ta'veren twisting set up nice and early, or just an artsy little bit of imagery (like the blood in the water making a dissolve to the next scene, and other Dragon's fangs elsewhere). Or all of the above.

Post by Marek Mercury
No visit to Baerlon, means not meeting Min. I guess we'll meet her later?

Yeah, they skip Baerlon and introduce a whole new town for no reason I can see (again, apologies for minor episode 3 spoilers). Min is cast so I guess we will see her at some point. I tend to doubt Rand will end up with three wives, but a love square may still be on the cards.

Post by Marek Mercury
Mat and Rand haven't jumped onto a boat after leaving Shadar Logoth.

*nod*

Post by Marek Mercury
I know there was more but i'm tired and it's not worth it.
Overall I'd give it 3.6 roentgens. Not great. Not terrible.

Hee. I'm still trying to come up with something to say on my blog about it but I think I'll wait for more episodes. I'm low-key enjoying it so far and it is nice to see the story make it to a big-budget high-effort adaptation at last. It's been a minute.



- ***@w

[Sean M]

Post by ***@Work

Post by Marek Mercury
Wtf is up with that Game of Thrones style skinned sheep in the
shape of the black tear nonsense? Ugh, idiotic and meaningless
(just like GOT to be fair).

Didn't see any Game of Thrones connection there, I thought it was either another nod to readers, a hint of ta'veren twisting set up nice and early, or just an artsy little bit of imagery (like the blood in the water making a dissolve to the next scene, and other Dragon's fangs elsewhere). Or all of the above.

It seemed like GoT in the artsy imagery that kind of mystery boxes but never really gains significance - like i feel the white walkers made some kind of art piece out of corpses at one point, maybe into that sort of Phi motif they kept using but ended up not meaning anything. I might just be making that up, though, and inventing even MORE setup that ended up not meaning anything than the show is actually guilty of, which was already plenty.

In this case it may just be bored myrddraal making Dragon's Fangs out of this and that, the Fade equivalent of drawing graffiti on a bathroom wall.

Post by ***@Work
Hee. I'm still trying to come up with something to say on my blog about it but I think I'll wait for more episodes. I'm low-key enjoying it so far and it is nice to see the story make it to a big-budget high-effort adaptation at last. It's been a minute.

The writing and direction are uneven, and I'm baffled by some of the changes, but some I think really do make sense from a television design perspective, and occasionally even improve the tension/worldbuilding of the story. I have no demands for source material purity, and am enjoying it (with occasional sighs / groans / grumbles / shouting at clouds) for the same reason you mention - it's great to finally see the adaptation, so I'll happily see where it goes, even if my expectations aren't high. I think the casting so far is sensible to occasionally great. Fain's smile is a small thing, but stands out to me. Casting the actor who played Roose Bolton as loving old Tam - I thought I'd have a hard time accepting it, but I immediately did. Maybe it's the beard.

S

[Chucky@Work]

Post by Sean M

Post by ***@Work
Hee. I'm still trying to come up with something to say on my blog about it
but I think I'll wait for more episodes. I'm low-key enjoying it so far and it is
nice to see the story make it to a big-budget high-effort adaptation at last.
It's been a minute.

The writing and direction are uneven, and I'm baffled by some of the changes,
but some I think really do make sense from a television design perspective,
and occasionally even improve the tension/worldbuilding of the story. I
have no demands for source material purity, and am enjoying it (with
occasional sighs / groans / grumbles / shouting at clouds) for the same
reason you mention - it's great to finally see the adaptation, so I'll happily
see where it goes, even if my expectations aren't high. I think the casting
so far is sensible to occasionally great. Fain's smile is a small thing, but
stands out to me. Casting the actor who played Roose Bolton as loving
old Tam - I thought I'd have a hard time accepting it, but I immediately did.
Maybe it's the beard.
S

Objection! Fain's smile is not a "small thing". It's enormous and fucking glorious.

Anyway we just got through the season finale and there's a whole lot of opinions about it - my main gripe is still that Loial is too small and I want them to fix that in season 2 by showing grown-up Ogier who are 10 feet tall, making Loial's 6'3" stature clearly that of a 90-year-old kid.

I'm going to copy-paste my blog post about it here, just for fun, but there are also a lot of good comments under the original post so I'll link that too (here: https://hatboy.blog/2021/12/26/the-wheel-of-time-an-amazon-prime-video-production/).

---

This blog post is proudly brought to you by the Black JeopardyTM category “FID’NA”. As in, I’m fid’na bitch-slap the next mealy-mouthed gatekeeping little cunt who says the words “true fan” or “emotional investment in the books” halfway into the next internet argument. I’ll destroy you, not out of righteous outrage or defensiveness over my fan-cred, but simply because it’s fun.

Let’s start at the end.

The show was a solid adaptation, and although I was left baffled by a lot of the decisions the creators made I wasn’t disappointed, let alone offended, by the product. I’ll check out season 2 and I found the whole thing very interesting.

What else? Having exchanged hundreds of messages over Discord and Twitter about this show, I find myself without much else to say here. I started out hyped and excited by this show, then as the episodes went by I got steadily more meh as they cut and changed more and more things, but ultimately I was left feeling like it had been a fun and intriguing and very watchable experience. I enjoyed watching it with Mrs. Hatboy and Wump and Toop, and we always have the books still. The TV show didn’t go back in time and punch teenage Hatboy in the dick while he was reading Lord of Chaos. The TV show didn’t sneak into my goddamn house and burn my copies of the books. It’s fine.

As you can no doubt imagine in the event you haven’t seen any of it first-hand, there is a lot of divided opinion on social media. That’s what social media is for.

Some people were fine up until the last episode, and then decided the whole thing was a bust. Some people thought the final episode was the best episode, although for me I guess it would have to be episode 5, with Stepin’s fate and Perrin and Egwene escaping Valda. That was a high point for me.

Anyway, point is, yeah the show sort of shat the bed and fell apart after a bit, but I honestly wasn’t expecting anything else.

Part of the disappointment, for me, was in discussing the pros and cons of each development and deviation from the books with other long-time WoT nerds. Not the discussion itself – that was a highlight – but the realisation that we had definitely put way more thought and care and consideration into the story than any of the showrunners had. I went ahead with the benefit of the doubt and the possible explanations and ways they could explain or justify decisions, based on an obsessive familiarity with the source material. But at a certain point, I just had to accept that the writers of the show just weren’t there with me. As I’ve joked time and time again with Disney / Marvel / big budget CGI BST spectaculars, give me a call and I’ll fix your fucking story.

But sure. I’m nobody, there’s no reason to give me any credence. This was their show, and I’m glad it did well. I hope they’re happy with the result and that it gets more time and money to get more seasons out. Like I say, I’m not mad at the show. I’m not even disappointed, really. It was an adaptation and adaptations are hard.

I get, on an intellectual level, the need to put something of your own creative flair into a translation of someone else’s work from one medium to another. You don’t want to scene-for-scene, line-for-line convert a book into a TV show or movie. That’s how you end up with Bilbo trying to pickpocket a troll and the troll turning out to have a talking purse. No. Peter Jackson’s hand was very clear in the Lord of the Rings adaptations, and I know it’s unfair to compare anything to such a perfect set of movies, but that’s the bed they made for themselves. His hand was clear, but the adaptation was nevertheless flawless. FLAWLESS.

In contrast, I’m having a very hard time picking out what Rafe Judkins’s creative vision was here, and how his hand is visible. Aside from “just changing things so they’re not the same as the books,” which is … okay, sometimes that’s a good idea, like I say. But other times, I had to wonder why.

And the determination, good idea or why, is going to be different for everyone and for every scene, line, character, arc, and special effect. So short of going through the whole series and labelling every single change from the books as good idea or why, there doesn’t seem much point in it.

Big picture? The book series is enormous, the world and plot are far-reaching and ambitious, and something had to be condensed or rearranged to allow a TV show of uncertain episode commitment to happen. Can every aspect of the geography, history, politics, alternate worlds, magic systems and cultures go in there? Probably not. But it almost seemed like more effort to do it differently. The material was all there. All they had to do was less work, and it would have been better. You don’t need expensive high seas tall ship shoots – just put a guy (for example) in Atha’an Miere garments in the marketplace in Tar Valon, and you’ve shown that the Sea Folk are a thing. Like I say, that was an example of a thing they did, and it was good. But there was precious little of that.

I could go on and on. And I probably will, as more thoughts shake loose and I let this simmer for a while. But my main take-away is just sort of confusion. I can see how the Game of Thrones writers lost their way, because Martin is asleep at the wheel. Jordan is dead, and Sanderson knows his shit, and the books are there. Everything you need, plot and script and characters and sets, is provided for you. You don’t need to make anything up. Anything you do make up, runs the risk of reducing the quality of the finished product. A far higher risk than the chance it might enhance it. Enhancements happened, but that risk was taken an unnecessary and baffling number of times, for reasons that escape me. Was it all just the hubris of an artist thinking he could improve on a work he was contracted to bring to new audiences? It sort of seems that way.

But then, Jordan thought he could improve on Tolkien too, and all he really did was write more books. He, too, took that risk. And here we are.

Confession time: I never liked the casting of Moiraine. Rosamund Pike was not right for the role and it irked me from the start. Her performance was fine, especially considering the performance actually required of her (which overlapped with “Moiraine” on only occasional beats), but I never liked the casting choice. As I said here already, but now I can be clearer on the subject because I’ve actually seen the show.

Confession the second: I never warmed to Loial. Sorry. Again, Hammed Animashaun did a fine job and his delivery was great, but the costuming was so fucking goofy and the size scale was so absolutely wrong, it literally reduced him to “weird human.” Given that Loial is my favourite character from the books, and all they needed to do was a bit of goddamn forced perspective from time to time, how hard could it have been to make him look 150% human size? I mean I get that they didn’t have a Lord of the Rings budget, but they had a budget, right?

Anyway, that’s it for my confessions, and that’s it for me and this TV show, at least for now. I’m looking forward to the next season, despite my grumbling and head-scratching. Some of the casting was just amazing. Overall, the show was more or less on a par with a decent Terry Pratchett book adaptation. With the caveat that there has really not managed to be a good Pratchett adaptation yet, but the decent ones might edge out the Wheel of Time TV show on faithfulness to the source material, even if they swung and missed. At least they swung.

In the meantime, I got a bit of perspective up me as I watched the first episode of the latest Pratchett adaptation The Watch on HBO. It was fucking appalling. So yeah, I’m going to sit and watch more of The Wheel of Time, not necessarily because it’s a good adaptation, but because you clueless shitbirds don’t know what an offense to the source material really is.

--
***@w
www.hatboy.blog

[A dead myrddraal]

Post by Marek Mercury
It looks like there's barely 3 of us here now. Suppose there's a
shedload of tweeting or tick tocking about WOT instead. Anyway, per
the subject line, and I have notes!
TV show spoilers ahead.....
.
.
.
Set design, clothes, locations. Acting also good.
The attack on the al'Thor home scene was great - although only one
Trolloc? The Myrddrraal design is pretty good. Smacks a little of
Peter Jackson LoTR, but hey, RJ borrowed handily from Tolkien so why
not. I think the Trolloc design is really great when it's costumes and
physical, and really not working when wholly digital.
The dialogue is problematic. It's, um, bland. And the use of
simplistic gutter language is lazy. RJ could really write when he got
into it - and their choice to make the language banal and common
becomes obvious and incongruous when they have Moiraine give the
Manatheren speech but instead of a grand moment with a blazing light
in front of a mob in a moment of tension, it's while riding along as a
group on horseback, after the kids sing a song about Manetheren
(gah!). Now that wonderful speech catches the ear wrong. And it shows
the writers don't know what to do with RJ's writing.
I think the writing is a bit clunky in places. The plotting is slow
slow quick quick slow. And then there is the MAJOR plot hole at the
end of episode 1, and unforced error. Seriously wow! Moiraine told
everyone one of them is the Dragon Reborn while still in the Two
Rivers. Wouldn't she just ask the parents where the kids were born?
And Tam is awake and well and could easily answer the question.
Where is Thom Merrilin?
I would not have said RJ was subtle, but the writers seem to have been
at sea with his subtlety. The telegraphing is over the top - Perrin
and his first meeting with wolves, Egwene and the water and control
metaphor for the One Power being hit over our heads in the first scene
of episode 1.
And apparently they needed to create more motivations for the
characters' traits so made up some unnecessary new things: Perrin
dislikes violence, not because he's decent, but because he killed his
(nonexistent) wife accidentally. Mat suddenly has parents who are
drunks and philanderers, and now he's an outright thief who steals
from people. Nynaeve hates Aes Sedai because the old wisdom was turned
away from the White Tower.
Wtf is up with that Game of Thrones style skinned sheep in the shape
of the black tear nonsense? Ugh, idiotic and meaningless (just like
GOT to be fair).
No visit to Baerlon, means not meeting Min. I guess we'll meet her later?
Mat and Rand haven't jumped onto a boat after leaving Shadar Logoth.
I know there was more but i'm tired and it's not worth it.
Overall I'd give it 3.6 roentgens. Not great. Not terrible.
MM

I loved the whole season. It was great, and very faithful to the books.

[Chucky@Work]

Post by A dead myrddraal
I loved the whole season. It was great, and very faithful to the books.

I guess myrddraal (other than Shaidar Haran) get to be snarky after they're dead?

***@w