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The Wheel of Time | Amazon Prime | Adaption of Robert Jordan's expansive fantasy epic

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33 minutes ago, Menor said:

I hate how everything has to be 8 episodes nowadays. Although I guess there are budgetary considerations here as well.

 

I think 10 episodes would have been fine for this. There are definitely parts you can condense but it seems like they went a bit overboard in the first segment of the novel.

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I see some very positive reviews and some very negative ones. I suspect I will land somewhere in the middle (the very positive ones seem to be writers who are...more forgiving of certain things than I likely will be, the very negative ones seem to be writers who have a distaste for certain fantasy tropes). 

 

That said GOT comparisons for this are tiresome, I get why they do it but this show shouldn't be like GOT. 

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1 hour ago, Eternal Legion said:

Considering they’re doing ~continuous production anyway, there was really no need to do 8 ep 1st season, we’ll see where it ends but I have big concerns if they try to end at the end of book 1

Spoiler

Based on what I've read I'm fairly sure they will end at the end of Eye of the World. 

 

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2 hours ago, charlie Jatinder said:

Is it Witcher level bad or very bad.

I liked Witcher alright. Like 7/10.   

 

Have read more about this, the changes sound awwwwwful to me. Not even planning to watch one ep. Non readers might not mind, but I'd just recommend the books instead, lol.

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6 hours ago, Eternal Legion said:

I liked Witcher alright. Like 7/10.   

 

Have read more about this, the changes sound awwwwwful to me. Not even planning to watch one ep. Non readers might not mind, but I'd just recommend the books instead, lol.

 

I'm going to give it a chance.

 

But I also wholeheartedly recommend giving the books a try

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Watched the first episode so far. Was actually in many parts better than I expected but the pacing was way too fast (like seriously who came up with doing that). Hopefully the subsequent episodes don't go at lightspeed like this because it just didn't work well at all. The beginning of Eye of the World has a great buildup, just follow that! The changes were as dumb as I thought but there were some neat parts to somewhat balance things out. Overall enough to keep me watching but the second and third episodes have to be better. 

 

Spoiler

The change with Perrin killing his wife was idiotic. His relationship with his wife had zero depth whatsoever so this is just needless gore/trauma porn. I admit I did feel something at the death but that had more to do with a good performance from the actor than anything from the writing. 

 

The Mat backstory change I don't like, but won't present too big of an issue comparatively. Overall I did like Mat's performance, shame the actor is being recast. But Abell Cauthon was a badass in the books so it does make me sad in that way. 

 

Nynaeve was good, iffy on the Nynaeve backstory change but maybe the old Wisdom was actually just too weak and just misinterpreted the Aes Sedai reactions. Performance was great, probably my favorite of the cast. She is very obviously not actually dead, but it was a weird choice to even do that fakeout. 

 

Rand was generally good, liked all of this parts. Tam's speech about the Wheel of Time was easily the best part of the episode. But I wish he and Tam had more moments (see my comment about the ridiculous pacing). 

 

Egwene was also good, though she suffered the most from the incredibly rushed pacing. I felt like her scenes didn't have time to breathe. 

 

One change I did like was Rand and Egwene's interactions. Not the sex part really, that felt a bit weird in a fairly conservative rural village, but they did seem to have an authentic romantic connection. I feel like there will be more of a tragic feeling when she eventually falls out of love with Rand. That said, this also suffered from the pacing issues. 

 

Moiraine and Lan were good, the channeling effects were a mixed bag though.

 

Trollocs were neat other than a couple iffy CGI moments, the Fade was a mixed bag. The Winternight attack overall had the appropriate level of terror.

 

Some really neat landscape shots, hopefully the series has more of those. 

 

They removed "Narg smart." and Narg didn't even talk. 0/10

 

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Episode 2 also falls flat unfortunately, the show still just feels like its rushing through the book and a lot of moments lack proper weight. Will probably keep watching out of curiosity but even if I ignore my issues with adaptation, feels like a disappointingly mediocre show so far. Best part of the show so far was the first half of episode 1, since then it just feels limp and lacking energy.  Only thing is this episode I really liked was the Whitecloak intro, the rest felt like one big "eh."

Spoiler

The show badly misses Thom. Everything feels so dark and grim and brooding. Mat lacks the levity he brought to the books as well. 

 

Moiraine from the books, while she certainly would have been willing to let the ferryman die, would have at least tried to save him most likely. 

 

"Weep for Manetheren" not as impactful as the books, at least they got it in there though, and Pike delivered it decently. However, I can only imagine how awesome it would have been to place it in the original role as a badass speech to the entire village. 

 

Ba'alzamon looks bad but was just a quick shot, hopefully his extended appearances are better.

 

Rand/Egwene is now nicely awkward. This part is solid. 

 

Moiraine's scene with Egwene, teaching her about the One Power, was quite well done. 

 

Eamon Valda is definitely different from the book character but I quite like this show version, so it works. Need some explanation of how he is capturing all these Aes Sedai. Whitecloaks overall are neat despite the goofy costumes. 

 

No Draghkar (lame). 

 

Nynaeve finally reenters the picture at the very end after the group gets separated. Great scene with her sneaking up on Lan and holding a knife to his throat. 

 

Getting to Shadar Logoth at this point is just way too fast. And the entire scene just falls flat. In the book it was a really gripping and tense scene, you had Mordeth, Mashadar (which looks bad here, just some generic black paint instead of the grasping fog of the book), but also the Fade had forced the Trollocs into the city and it was absolute chaos. Here it's like go in, Lan gives a half-assed explanation of the city that ignores the role that mistrust and Mordeth played in its corruption, Mat randomly finds the dagger (because for some reason, they felt the need to cut out Mordeth), Mashadar chases them out. It lacks any of the impact of the book scene. 

 

I just feel like this series lacks the scope, sense of place, and coming-of-age magic of Eye of the World. It's too gray, too grim, and too rushed to have impact.  

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Barring a shocking twist/improvement, surely the most hilarious $240M ever wasted on a TV show adaptation.   
 

On the one hand I am sad — just two weeks ago or so when I hadn’t heard any details whatsoever, I was very excited about it and it pretty much rekindled my dormant interest in the books/world, which I am happy about. So I would have preferred a show that I loved+massively well-received, commercially successful, goes 10 nicely paced seasons or whatever. Also a new better adaptation, should it eventually happen (which I expect it will) will have its work cut out for it even more now with the GA than if they had done a great one as the first attempt.
 

On the other hand, definitely a little spiteful part of me that is kind of chuckling in morbid glee. Along the lines of reasoning “conditioning on being commercially unsuccessful, I prefer commercially unsuccessful+personally disappointing to commercially unsuccessful but personally loved it” & “ conditioning on personally disliking it, prefer personal dislike+broad failure to personal dislike+broad success.”

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