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Wheel of Time TV Show 7: And There Shall Be Wailing and Gnashing of Teeth


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36 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

Reviews from the British Press that are out seem...tepid, at best, though at least some of it seems to be generally against all fantasy, and I can't imagine they'd rate, say, the Witcher any higher. 

Lots of 2-3 stars from the UK press for The Witcher, but that fits my own opinion of the show's first season. 

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46 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

Reviews from the British Press that are out seem...tepid, at best, though at least some of it seems to be generally against all fantasy, and I can't imagine they'd rate, say, the Witcher any higher. 

I've only been able to find The Telegraph's review and it's 4/5 which is pretty positive.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/0/wheel-time-review-dungeons-dragons-cosplay-game-thrones/

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1 hour ago, Ran said:

Lots of 2-3 stars from the UK press for The Witcher, but that fits my own opinion of the show's first season. 

Right. This season seems to be right about there.

That was always a likelihood, I suppose, with Eye of the World being so much more an LotR like story.

58 minutes ago, AncalagonTheBlack said:

I've only been able to find The Telegraph's review and it's 4/5 which is pretty positive.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/0/wheel-time-review-dungeons-dragons-cosplay-game-thrones/

Found this from the New Statesman that absolutely trashes it, though the reviewer also doesn't seem to have watched past episode 1:

https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/tv/2021/11/amazon-prime-fantasy-series-the-wheel-of-time-is-a-colossal-waste-of-time-and-money

 

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Well, at least we'll get a drop of the first three episodes. Judging by my inability to quit watching Foundation, even WoT if is kind of sucky I'll probably still ride it out.

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A lot of the reviews are more concerning in that they presage that WoT is likely to be more a genre show than one with wider appeal, but not that it's a bad genre show. 

I haven't waded into Reddit to avoid spoilers, but did anyone else attend the Primers, and have non-spoiler impressions to share?

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7 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

I haven't waded into Reddit to avoid spoilers, but did anyone else attend the Primers, and have non-spoiler impressions to share?

@Werthead did but I think is still in London or in transit. I expect he'll post something at Wertzone.

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I read one that spent most of the review comparing it to GoT. While I can understand tying it back to the recent fantasy powerhouse, it was odd to fixate so hard on the comparison. 

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I'd sum the reviews up as saying the show is too rushed. It doesn't dwell enough on the characters, and that makes it hard to feel the stakes for them.

 

The Eye of the World meandered a lot, but the book helped you connect to Rand, at least, in the process. I think condensing the book and mostly focussing on the action hurts that part a lot.

 

If you know the characters, I think it'll be easy to get into the show and enjoy the action heavy highlights.

 

But if you know nothing about them, I'm guessing most of them won't stand out enough to care about because it sounds like there are too few character moments.

 

That's my understanding from the reviews, at least. 

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I attended the premier and saw the first two episodes there in IMAX, followed by the third from a press screener. So my sense (now the embargo is lifted) is as follows:

  • Overall, pretty good. The immediate takeaway is that, at least over the first three episodes, it's a stronger show than, say, The Witcher or Shadow & Bone (which I found both reasonably entertaining but nothing special), and at times matches the opening three episodes of Game of Thrones' first season (though it pays to remember that GoT S1 didn't really kick off until the end of the fourth episode), but at other times falls short.
  • The first episode is surprisingly and welcomingly focused on slowly building character interrelationships in the Two Rivers, some of them straight out of the books, some of them new (and arguably more contrived) and some which are from the books but were off-screen, and brought on-screen here. The Coplin/Congar dispute is very amusingly and economically handled and there's a lot of great choices here, mostly based around show rather than tell: we see a Women's Circle ceremony rather than hear about it, we see Mat getting over in his head at gambling etc.
  • In one of the best scenes in the first episode, we learn that Winternight/Bel Tine is a celebration of those who have died, their souls returned to the Wheel, and their inevitable return. The philosophy of the Wheel is simply taken as 100% fact by everyone, seemingly making religion obsolete. It's not massively over-expositioned, and it helps that it's Tam talking about it with the specific example of him and Rand missing Kari, rather than told from on high by Moiraine.
  • I'm not a massive fan of the changes to Perrin's character arc, mainly because the show seems to lowball the emotional PTSD from it. It doesn't help that no-one apart from Perrin knows what happened in the first three episodes and they rush so quickly from place to place and then into the wolf arc that Perrin seems to have no chance to process it. Given that Marcus Rutherford seems to be a very capable actor (his change from his calm, collected demeanour to almost terrifying rage during the battle scene when he loses control), it's a shame we haven't seen him fully tackle the change to his character arc. 
  • OTOH, the changes to Mat's arc, as much as it annoys Abell Cauthon stans, feels way more organically layered into the story and it builds Mat's character up, making him a tragicomic character from the start. Barney Harris is incredibly on point as Mat throughout.
  • Josha Stadowski is 100% Rand from the book. Like, he's just stepped right out of the pages and is rolling with it, with Michael McElhatton completely unrecognisable from his Roose Bolton persona, giving Tam al'Thor warmth and depth. Although there are some changes (they live in the mountains rather than the Westwood, and much closer to town), their scenes and storyline are probably the closest there are to the books and least-changed, and also amongst the most-effective, which might be an argument that changing some other things were not as necessary as has been claimed. Josha and Madeleine Madden also have a great chemistry which helps sell their complicated relationship, which fuels a lot character drama in the first two episodes (and fortunately stops just as it could have gotten annoying).
  • The Winternight battle is fucking intense and has an outrageous amount of stuff going on (the clips released so far are neither the most impressive scenes nor the majority of them). It was overwhelming to watch in IMAX and I need to see it again on a screen that's more sanely sized. But the visual effects are beyond anything I've seen in a TV show before and we get a crash course in the Five Powers (though not named as such) as Moiraine systematically uses fire, wind and earth to wreck carnage on the Trolloc armies. She later uses spirit to heal people after the battle and water during their flight from Taren Ferry. My only complaint here is that Moiraine is a bit indiscriminate in how she unloads on the Trollocs and it feels like some of the stuff she does would have killed anyone standing nearby. There's a sinister moment where she seems to say she can't use the Power to knowingly kill people, whilst the books seemed to register it as that she couldn't use the Power if there was even a vague chance of killing someone, which restricts the general level of carnage Aes Sedai can cause. I'm not sure if that's a subtle change or if Moiraine was able to use the Power mid-battle to sense there weren't any civilians nearby.
  • The Whitecloaks are an interesting bunch, although Eamon Valda's (now an Inquisitor, making me wonder if he's succeeding Jaichim Carridin's role) pure moustache-twirling villainy is a major character shift. But he plays it with such utter aplomb that it works quite well, especially contrasted with Geofram Bornhald's stiff-upper-lip, honourable-if-misguided vibe. Bornhald and Valda clearly don't like each other, which complicates the Whitecloaks nicely given we have exactly two scenes with them in the first three episodes. 
  • The location footage is breathtaking. Simple shots of the characters travelling with Lorne Balfe's music playing are incredibly effective, and rival anything seen in that fashion since LotR. In particular, the mountain scenes are spectacular and the locations they found for Caralain Grass are genuinely impressive. Emond's Field (never name as such but never named anything else either, oddly, with all references being to the Two Rivers region) and Breen's Spring are fantastic locations as well. The MVP location is Shadar Logoth, which has had far too much money and time spent on it to justify the 15 minutes they spend there. Fully expect to be back, as the books were, in later seasons.
  • The best scenes in the opening three episodes: most of the stuff in Shadar Logoth, the battle scenes on Winternight, the Lan/Nynaeve repartee and everything involving Rand and Mat in Breen's Spring (including meeting Thom and encountering their first Darkfriend in a brilliant bit of character work), but the kicker is the wounded Moiraine retelling the fall of Manetheren in a single three-minute monologue accompanied only by background music. That's a brave, cynicism-free thing to do in TV writing today and Pike nails it.
  • The worst scene in the first three episodes: easily Moiraine and Lan's arrival at the Winespring Inn. Not sure why the hell they used that to frontload the marketing for the show. There's a few other clunky scenes and moments, but that's the one that sticks out the most. It feels choppily edited (characters jump around between shots) and like there was more material there they cut out, maybe for the better or worse. 
  • Missed opportunity: there's an amusing bit where Moiraine turns into Columbo, expertly quizzing Nynaeve to find out her age and dismiss her as a Dragon Reborn candidate, and in doing so really pisses her off and helps explain better Nynaeve's later hatred of her. It's a good scene but oddly she doesn't repeat it with the other four (or their parents), which would have likely wrapped up the mystery in like five seconds.
6 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

Reviews from the British Press that are out seem...tepid, at best, though at least some of it seems to be generally against all fantasy, and I can't imagine they'd rate, say, the Witcher any higher. 

The Telegraph, which is usually a hard sell, gave their review the title "Game of Thrones cosplay" and proceeded to give it 4/5, which was a bit weird.

I'm eagerly awaiting The Guardian's two reviews where one trashes it and one praises it to high heavens.

So far the reviews seem to be:

Positive: Decider, TVLine, The Verge (with caveats), IGN, PolygonCollider, Radio TimesThe Telegraph (paywall), Bloomberg, Empire (caveating that they think the first episode is poor and it gets better from there)

Middling: Variety, IndieWire, io9 (but trending positive),

Negative: Rolling Stone, The Independent, The New Statesman

 

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17 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I attended the premier and saw the first two episodes there in IMAX, followed by the third from a press screener. So my sense (now the embargo is lifted) is as follows:

  • Overall, pretty good. The immediate takeaway is that, at least over the first three episodes, it's a stronger show than, say, The Witcher or Shadow & Bone (which I found both reasonably entertaining but nothing special), and at times matches the opening three episodes of Game of Thrones' first season (though it pays to remember that GoT S1 didn't really kick off until the end of the fourth episode), but at other times falls short.
  • The first episode is surprisingly and welcomingly focused on slowly building character interrelationships in the Two Rivers, some of them straight out of the books, some of them new (and arguably more contrived) and some which are from the books but were off-screen, and brought on-screen here. The Coplin/Congar dispute is very amusingly and economically handled and there's a lot of great choices here, mostly based around show rather than tell: we see a Women's Circle ceremony rather than hear about it, we see Mat getting over in his head at gambling etc.
  • In one of the best scenes in the first episode, we learn that Winternight/Bel Tine is a celebration of those who have died, their souls returned to the Wheel, and their inevitable return. The philosophy of the Wheel is simply taken as 100% fact by everyone, seemingly making religion obsolete. It's not massively over-expositioned, and it helps that it's Tam talking about it with the specific example of him and Rand missing Kari, rather than told from on high by Moiraine.
  • I'm not a massive fan of the changes to Perrin's character arc, mainly because the show seems to lowball the emotional PTSD from it. It doesn't help that no-one apart from Perrin knows what happened in the first three episodes and they rush so quickly from place to place and then into the wolf arc that Perrin seems to have no chance to process it. Given that Marcus Rutherford seems to be a very capable actor (his change from his calm, collected demeanour to almost terrifying rage during the battle scene when he loses control), it's a shame we haven't seen him fully tackle the change to his character arc. 
  • OTOH, the changes to Mat's arc, as much as it annoys Abell Cauthon stans, feels way more organically layered into the story and it builds Mat's character up, making him a tragicomic character from the start. Barney Harris is incredibly on point as Mat throughout.
  • Josha Stadowski is 100% Rand from the book. Like, he's just stepped right out of the pages and is rolling with it, with Michael McElhatton completely unrecognisable from his Roose Bolton persona, giving Tam al'Thor warmth and depth. Although there are some changes (they live in the mountains rather than the Westwood, and much closer to town), their scenes and storyline are probably the closest there are to the books and least-changed, and also amongst the most-effective, which might be an argument that changing some other things were not as necessary as has been claimed. Josha and Madeleine Madden also have a great chemistry which helps sell their complicated relationship, which fuels a lot character drama in the first two episodes (and fortunately stops just as it could have gotten annoying).
  • The Winternight battle is fucking intense and has an outrageous amount of stuff going on (the clips released so far are neither the most impressive scenes nor the majority of them). It was overwhelming to watch in IMAX and I need to see it again on a screen that's more sanely sized. But the visual effects are beyond anything I've seen in a TV show before and we get a crash course in the Five Powers (though not named as such) as Moiraine systematically uses fire, wind and earth to wreck carnage on the Trolloc armies. She later uses spirit to heal people after the battle and water during their flight from Taren Ferry. My only complaint here is that Moiraine is a bit indiscriminate in how she unloads on the Trollocs and it feels like some of the stuff she does would have killed anyone standing nearby. There's a sinister moment where she seems to say she can't use the Power to knowingly kill people, whilst the books seemed to register it as that she couldn't use the Power if there was even a vague chance of killing someone, which restricts the general level of carnage Aes Sedai can cause. I'm not sure if that's a subtle change or if Moiraine was able to use the Power mid-battle to sense there weren't any civilians nearby.
  • The Whitecloaks are an interesting bunch, although Eamon Valda's (now an Inquisitor, making me wonder if he's succeeding Jaichim Carridin's role) pure moustache-twirling villainy is a major character shift. But he plays it with such utter aplomb that it works quite well, especially contrasted with Geofram Bornhald's stiff-upper-lip, honourable-if-misguided vibe. Bornhald and Valda clearly don't like each other, which complicates the Whitecloaks nicely given we have exactly two scenes with them in the first three episodes. 
  • The location footage is breathtaking. Simple shots of the characters travelling with Lorne Balfe's music playing are incredibly effective, and rival anything seen in that fashion since LotR. In particular, the mountain scenes are spectacular and the locations they found for Caralain Grass are genuinely impressive. Emond's Field (never name as such but never named anything else either, oddly, with all references being to the Two Rivers region) and Breen's Spring are fantastic locations as well. The MVP location is Shadar Logoth, which has had far too much money and time spent on it to justify the 15 minutes they spend there. Fully expect to be back, as the books were, in later seasons.
  • The best scenes in the opening three episodes: most of the stuff in Shadar Logoth, the battle scenes on Winternight, the Lan/Nynaeve repartee and everything involving Rand and Mat in Breen's Spring (including meeting Thom and encountering their first Darkfriend in a brilliant bit of character work), but the kicker is the wounded Moiraine retelling the fall of Manetheren in a single three-minute monologue accompanied only by background music. That's a brave, cynicism-free thing to do in TV writing today and Pike nails it.
  • The worst scene in the first three episodes: easily Moiraine and Lan's arrival at the Winespring Inn. Not sure why the hell they used that to frontload the marketing for the show. There's a few other clunky scenes and moments, but that's the one that sticks out the most. It feels choppily edited (characters jump around between shots) and like there was more material there they cut out, maybe for the better or worse. 
  • Missed opportunity: there's an amusing bit where Moiraine turns into Columbo, expertly quizzing Nynaeve to find out her age and dismiss her as a Dragon Reborn candidate, and in doing so really pisses her off and helps explain better Nynaeve's later hatred of her. It's a good scene but oddly she doesn't repeat it with the other four (or their parents), which would have likely wrapped up the mystery in like five seconds.

The Telegraph, which is usually a hard sell, gave their review the title "Game of Thrones cosplay" and proceeded to give it 4/5, which was a bit weird.

I'm eagerly awaiting The Guardian's two reviews where one trashes it and one praises it to high heavens.

So far the reviews seem to be:

Positive: Decider, TVLine, The Verge (with caveats), IGN, Collider, Radio TimesThe Telegraph (paywall)

Middling: Variety, IndieWire, io9 (but trending positive),

Negative: Rolling Stone, The Independent,

 

Ok this makes me feel considerably better, and I'm now not expecting a disaster when I watch.

I'm eager go see the Manetheren scene. You're the second reviewer to call it out. It was a good moment in the books to, speaking to the ability of spoken story to convey deep emotion. I'm glad they mostly kept it intact.

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Good review, Werthead!

I'm honestly very encouraged by what I'm seeing. It sounds like those who have read the books will enjoy it, and for everyone else it will be something of a mixed experience. For me that was the best case scenario.

The show is incredibly limited by its source material, which is a far, far cry from being brilliant. It's a fun series with lots of problems, and nothing more than that. The characters and plot are fairly generic, but somehow the story is still endearing for the most part, and it has some very nice high points.

It appears that this is well represented by the show. This was never going to be an awards contender. But I think I'm going to have a good time watching it, and that's all I had hoped for.

The one big problem is that considering the cost of the show, it's unlikely to appeal to a very large audience outside of the book readers, so there are good odds on the show being canceled before completion.

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I dunno. Star Wars appeals to a lot of viewers, and I think WoT is to Fantasy in some ways what Star Wars is to Science Fiction. If the show manages something like that, with decent acting and cool set pieces, the viewership numbers can be higher than what the critical consensus might imply.

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41 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I'm not a massive fan of the changes to Perrin's character arc ...

OTOH, the changes to Mat's arc, as much as it annoys Abell Cauthon stans, feels way more organically layered into the story and it builds Mat's character up, making him a tragicomic character from the start. 

 

I'm sure we've talked about these changes before in this thread, but I'm going to play it safe for now.

Spoiler

OK, well I was hoping Perrins' changes would be more understandable in context. I mean, I get what they were going for (I assume) but think perhaps this wasn't the best idea long term. I can see how it might work in some ways, but am afraid of how it effects things long term in other ways. It sets up his unwillingness to act rashly as well as giving his obsession with rescuing Faile from the Shaido more context/depth later. Also kind of his unwillingness to be firm with her. On the other hand, his love story with Faile becomes weird to begin with. It would be hard to delay it since their best moments are in the Two Rivers. This is still something I am highly skeptical of until we see how they handle the Faile story.

And Mat - I've had time to sit with this change and I can see how it would work for him. Kind of explains some quirks of his personality and makes him different right away. Grabbing a sketch dagger, liking the finer things in life like a bit of lace, having money to gamble with being attractive to him, his internal monologue of being no one special and running from responsibility. Yeah, they did Abel wrong, but he can have a hero turn when it counts, just like his boy Mat.

 

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