The Wheel of Time TV Show 5: Eye of the Fandom [BOOK SPOILERS]

[fionwe1987]

1 minute ago, Ran said:

Yes. It makes it feel very drab. Jordan put so much thought into describing the costly, extravagant gowns, even introducing details about a top tailor for Aes Sedai in Tar Valon... but then what we get are well-made, well-cut, boring one-note clothing on everyone. 

It's either a deliberate aesthetic choice, or it's a due to budgetary limitations making costlier textiles, brocades, etc. a lower priority.

If it's a budget thing, maybe they'll change this down the line, but that'll still make season 1 stand out as weird AF.

Weirdly, Siuan, who's described as wearing drab clothing, is shown wearing the most ostentatious gown of all, so far as we've seen. I kinda feel it's an unnecessary change to her personality. She's shown to have very simple tastes, and there's even a scene where Egwene realizes she can't be in Siuan's study because the decorations have changed and become so overtly luxurious. 

1 minute ago, Ran said:

Pretty sure that that's exactly what the statues represent: memorial statues of warders who presumably died in the service of the White Tower. It's not a book thing at all, but I'm okay with it. Maybe outside the Hall of the Tower is a weird place, though. Would have assumed it'd be nearer to where trainees were barracked and trained.

Exactly. The Hall is the center of their power. It would be weird for them to showcase Warders outside. I wonder if they just went looking for existing cheap statuary, found mostly male statues, and plopped them here.

[Gertrude]

1 minute ago, fionwe1987 said:

Weirdly, Siuan, who's described as wearing drab clothing, is shown wearing the most ostentatious gown of all, so far as we've seen. I kinda feel it's an unnecessary change to her personality. She's shown to have very simple tastes, and there's even a scene where Egwene realizes she can't be in Siuan's study because the decorations have changed and become so overtly luxurious. 

The Amerlyn is seen in the most ostentatious gown. There is a brief clip of Siuan later in what appears to be a very plain dress (the part where she says to someone "the last battle is coming").

[Ran]

I did like Siuan's formal Amyrlin outfit. It's more what I would have expected, even if it doesn't necessarily fit her character.  That definitely had more complexity and decoration to it than what we've seen for basically everyone else. 

Will be curious to see what the Trakands look like.

[fionwe1987]

Oh I get that it might be passed off as the Amyrlin in formal session wearing fancy clothes. We just never see that in the books, directly, so it's fine, as long as they keep it to that. I hadn't noticed her clothes in that part where she's talking about the Last Battle. The little we can see of what she's wearing does seem simpler, which is good.

The Trakands better have way more elaborate clothing. I remember watching GoT and thinking that if they ever adapt WoT, the dresses better be way more fancy than what we see the likes of Cersei and Danaerys wear. So far, I'm not seeing that, except with Siuan's gown.

[karaddin]

If it is budgeting then S1 should definitely be the worst on that front, so fingers crossed we will see that improve over time. They might also want to go harder on the overly simplistic colouring for season 1 and then dial it back once viewers are familiar with the factions.

Either way I'm happy to give them slack and time on these fronts.

[fionwe1987]

The determinative thing, in the end, will be the acting, the dialog, the narrative. And so far, I've seen one very cheesily directed scene, and a lot of cuts where it's hard to say anything about the acting or the direction without context.

In terms of narrative, the decisions to loop in Tar Valon and White Tower politics, and expanding Logain's role, are good ones. These are actual offscreen events in the books, and intersecting that with the main arc of the characters helps, I feel, both in making the story less obviously similar to LotR, but also in increasing the stakes on some plot arcs in the next seasons. This is what makes me cautiously optimistic, but the execution can still be bad, I guess, and ruin the entire show.

Oh, and I'm absolutely glad they didn't make every character white. WoT was the first epic fantasy where I could comfortably not imagine everyone as white, and that meant a lot to me, so it's good to see that carry over to screen. 

[Lord Patrek]

3 hours ago, Linda said:

Haven't looked through the whole thread, so I may be repeating something, but almost everything we've seen so far of clothing and outfits make me shake my head. Why do costume designers insist on ignoring existing descriptions when adapting a book? Especially when the author provided massive amounts of detail about costumes. We saw it with Game of Thrones and its clear Wheel of Time will be as bad. So frustrating and unnecessary. And don't even get me started on the casting.

I'll probably try to watch, because WoT was my big obsession before ASoIaF, but I am expecting to rant as much about that as GoT. Damn it, don't adapt books if you feel you have to change a bunch of things beyond what the constraints of a different medium demands. 

Casting went against pretty much everything the characters look like, so why expect production to follow RJ's vision when it comes to clothing???

[karaddin]

9 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

The determinative thing, in the end, will be the acting, the dialog, the narrative. And so far, I've seen one very cheesily directed scene, and a lot of cuts where it's hard to say anything about the acting or the direction without context.

In terms of narrative, the decisions to loop in Tar Valon and White Tower politics, and expanding Logain's role, are good ones. These are actual offscreen events in the books, and intersecting that with the main arc of the characters helps, I feel, both in making the story less obviously similar to LotR, but also in increasing the stakes on some plot arcs in the next seasons. This is what makes me cautiously optimistic, but the execution can still be bad, I guess, and ruin the entire show.

Oh, and I'm absolutely glad they didn't make every character white. WoT was the first epic fantasy where I could comfortably not imagine everyone as white, and that meant a lot to me, so it's good to see that carry over to screen. 

We're pretty much on the same page. As long as those first components are at least decent and not tanked by something else, I'll stick with it while they find their feet and look for things to enjoy in it. I always felt this was simultaneously very challenging but also the potential for improvements in streamlining the narrative, so another reason to cut them slack.

[David Selig]

https://www.gq.com/story/inside-amazons-wheel-of-time - new article about the show in GQ, with a lot of info about the production process.

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“I say sometimes that showrunning is basically just laying your body over the show and trying to protect it as you take 10,000 swords into your back,” Judkins told me wearily one day over the phone. He said he'd had his assistant keep track of how many suggestions Amazon had had, just for the pilot. In the end “we got 11,000 notes,” Judkins said. Actual number. “Even if I only do like a 10th of those, that's still like multiple notes per second,” he said. Executives had questions about individual shots and how the show was depicting magic. They had questions about style and tone. And they were friendly questions, but they were also infinite, and every time Judkins got one—usually while he was on some faraway set full of new and different problems to solve—he had to consider whether it was worth doing or whether to dig in. “It's very hard to take your little precious kernel of an idea and deliver it at the end of the production-and-notes process,” he said.

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First, Dudman had to figure out what they were not. “You're sort of saying, ‘Okay, you can't have any influences or imagery tying into orcs and Lord of the Rings,’ ” he said. Then he had to figure out how to make something that a stuntman could sprint around in a forest in. Trollocs are supposed to be tall. “But I didn't want to put them on stilts because of the fact that we're running through woodland, and running downhill on stilts is just really not a good idea.” In the end, Dudman's team decided to use the same Kevlar prosthetics they give to people who have lost limbs. “And the stunt guys were up on them and off, straight away. It's actually been a very good call.”

But Dudman also needed a lot of Trollocs. “If you're making, say 20, how do you make it look as though you've created 40 or 50?” he asked. “And the answer is: They've all got horns. One of the things we decided early on is, they all have a variety of horn shapes. So if all those horns attach magnetically, and every single horn can swap with another horn on a different head, and they can also have two or three ways of putting them on, then you actually end up with 30 different silhouettes of creature for no extra money.”

In the end, Mike Weber told me, the Trollocs looked so good on camera that a whole tranche of their budget that had been slated for VFX, to make the monsters look real, was saved for something else. And this is how you make a show like The Wheel of Time.

 

[Werthead]

4 hours ago, Ran said:

The "armor" on the Children of the Light is Legends of the Seeker level, but at least it's not the Nilfgaardian armor weirdness from the first season of The Witcher. As I think the guy in front is Abdul Salis, playing Eamon Valda (which is interesting, if that's correct, because Valda doesn't appear until TGH; I know they mentioned they pull in some TGH stuff in the first season), this isn't a group of Inquisitors so the lack of anything but arm harness is a bit disappointing. Especially as the Logain clip showed some sort of town or city guardsmen with substantially more armor (presumably Ghealdanin soldiers or guards?).

IIRC, Valda does not appear in the flesh until Lord of Chaos, but he is mentioned a lot from EotW onwards. Jaichim Carridin first appears in The Great Hunt.

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Pretty sure that that's exactly what the statues represent: memorial statues of warders who presumably died in the service of the White Tower.

Interesting if this was some kind of political accommodation, that the Ajahs might argue over which sisters or Amyrlin Seats to build statues to (since the greatest and most successful Amyrlins seem to be Greens and Blues, and the worst by far were Reds, so there'd presumably be no or few Red statues compared to others) but they could agree that Warders who gave their lives in service to the Tower should he honoured as good examples of subservience and sacrifice to the Aes Sedai, or something along those lines.

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Casting went against pretty much everything the characters look like, so why expect production to follow RJ's vision when it comes to clothing???

Except that for me, and a lot of people, they pretty much nailed most of the characters. The only issue I had was with Mat and Tam (not their look or acting abilities, but the lack of consistency with the rest of the population), because it basically leaves Rand's sole distinguishing feature as being "the only ginger in the village," which is a bit less distinctive than being the only redhead plus the tallest guy by like half a foot plus being the whitest guy around, which made him stand out more.

Most of the other quibbles I think are unavoidable: do you spend months trying to track down a 5-foot actress with the required gravitas and authority to play Moiraine, or do you say fuck it and go with the Oscar-winning, high-profile actress who's having a major PR Moment which can only benefit the show, plus is a pretty good actress and otherwise a ringer for the character despite being 7 or 8 inches taller? That's a no brainer to me.

[fionwe1987]

18 minutes ago, karaddin said:

We're pretty much on the same page. As long as those first components are at least decent and not tanked by something else, I'll stick with it while they find their feet and look for things to enjoy in it. I always felt this was simultaneously very challenging but also the potential for improvements in streamlining the narrative, so another reason to cut them slack.

Yes, I hope they are actually able to improve on the books, where some really good arcs get diluted and wasted. 

Take Perrin and the Tinkers. The books spread this story out so thinly that it loses a lot of force, but at the core, this is a good story. You have a man hesitant to use violence but able to do it well, interacting with a people who abhor violence, and there's some genuinely good discussions of violence in there, and the potential to explore the tragedy of violence and the inadequacy of a one-sided Oath of nonviolence in a world where absolute evil is out to get you. And then you have the Aiel as a counterpart to this, as well. This can make for a very well done arc, on TV.

That they hired Maria Doyle Kennedy to be Ila gives me hope they're going to focus on this narrative arc, and expand it. 

[fionwe1987]

3 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Interesting if this was some kind of political accommodation, that the Ajahs might argue over which sisters or Amyrlin Seats to build statues to (since the greatest and most successful Amyrlins seem to be Greens and Blues, and the worst by far were Reds, so there'd presumably be no or few Red statues compared to others) but they could agree that Warders who gave their lives in service to the Tower should he honoured as good examples of subservience and sacrifice to the Aes Sedai, or something along those lines.

Can't imagine how that discussion went with the Reds. You can't have two statues of your useless Amyrlins who were removed, maybe you'd like us to put in statues of men instead? 

[Werthead]

2 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

Can't imagine how that discussion went with the Reds. You can't have two statues of your useless Amyrlins who were removed, maybe you'd like us to put in statues of men instead? 

It's a stretch but I can see the Reds being petty enough to even accept a statue of a dude over one of Rashima Kerenmosa, reminding everyone how badass the Green Ajah can be.

Or there's different chambers and there's statues of Amyrlins and major sisters of note elsewhere.

[Ran]

29 minutes ago, David Selig said:

https://www.gq.com/story/inside-amazons-wheel-of-time - new article about the show in GQ, with a lot of info about the production process.

Very interesting about the production, particularly on the way they've ended up integrating a bunch of aspects ... though my eyebrows shot up at the Weber guy's quotes regarding the Red Eagle/Radar effort to "clean up the rights".

ETA: Also mentions the recasting of Mat Cauthon for the second season, noting no one was willing to discuss the reason. Hrm...

[David Selig]

Daniel Henney mentioned in the article that he will have a naked hot tub scene. Will this become a new staple for fantasy shows? Inquiring minds want to know...

[fionwe1987]

35 minutes ago, David Selig said:

https://www.gq.com/story/inside-amazons-wheel-of-time - new article about the show in GQ, with a lot of info about the production process.

 

Good article. I'm liking what I read about how passionate they are, and what I'm reading about the practical effects and set design is very promising.

The enormous costs and the need to produce costumes in house might explain the one note clothes, in terms of color. But that still of the Red Ajah also showed that while the colors were uniform, the cut of the clothes definitely were not. And I feel when it's more than just cut scenes, that might give them enough personality to overcome the sameness of the colors?

27 minutes ago, Werthead said:

It's a stretch but I can see the Reds being petty enough to even accept a statue of a dude over one of Rashima Kerenmosa, reminding everyone how badass the Green Ajah can be.

Or there's different chambers and there's statues of Amyrlins and major sisters of note elsewhere.

Yeah, maybe each Ajah has a separate entrance, or there's a bunch of entrances, and the Blues and Greens prefer the one with statues of Warders.

[fionwe1987]

1 minute ago, David Selig said:

Daniel Henney mentioned in the article that he will have a naked hot tub scene. Will this become a new staple for fantasy shows? Inquiring minds want to know...

This is from the books, in Baerlon, though the nudity isn't emphasized or anything. On screen, though, I imagine that is hard to ignore. And I guess they're going to play up Lan's sexiness.

 

[Ran]

7 minutes ago, David Selig said:

Daniel Henney mentioned in the article that he will have a naked hot tub scene. Will this become a new staple for fantasy shows? Inquiring minds want to know...

Doubtless in Fal Dara. They have their co-ed, Japanese-style baths. Or maybe Baerlon, as Fionwe says.

A second thing I noticed near the end: nearly 11,000 notes for changes to the pilot from Amazon Studio execs feels absolutely insane. If the figure is true, there are a couple of conclusions one could draw.

[fionwe1987]

12 minutes ago, Ran said:

A second thing I noticed near the end: nearly 11,000 notes for changes to the pilot from Amazon Studio execs feels absolutely insane. If the figure is true, there are a couple of conclusions one could draw.

Yeah that doesn't sound great, does it? If the big budget comes with a ginormous rectal probe in the form of an incessant stream of notes, it doesn't promise that the vision of the creative team is being realized.

The best spin on this is that the extended time between shooting and release, due to the pandemic, caused this number of notes to be sent, but it's pretty absurd even so. 

ETA: that they spent so much setting up their own studio and moved a bunch of people to Prague seems to imply that cancellation won't happen unless the show really bombs. Or am I reading too much into that?

[Werthead]

Well, the new studio could be used for a new production, even a new Amazon production, if necessary so it's not necessarily a major financial loss.