The Wheel of Time: The Thread Reborn (Book Spoilers)

[A True Kaniggit]

As a long time book reader, I think it is mandatory that I make at least one more complaint than, "The trollocs are too horny for me". (Even though they are. Where are the feathers? Where are the wolf ones?)

Soooo...... Nynaeve. The earrings. She didn't have earrings mentioned in the books! (Does that satisfy?) Sounds like a complaint to me.

 

Whatever. I'm gonna keep on watching.

[Corvinus85]

I thought I spotted one wolf Trolloc. A fair few had boar features but most were Beastmen from Warhammer.  I like the Trolloc suits, just the CGI part isn't very good.

[Cas Stark]

I started watching this,  it isn't doing much for me, but I'll give it a couple more episodes.

[Lord Patrek]

16 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

I thought I spotted one wolf Trolloc. A fair few had boar features but most were Beastmen from Warhammer.  I like the Trolloc suits, just the CGI part isn't very good.

Seen from afar, they're all right. But close-ups show just how B-movie monsters they look. With the budget they had for each episode, you would think that they could come up with better visual effects for Trollocs. The same goes for the brief appearances of Ba'alzamon. They look so cheap.

They went all out for the exterior scenes, taking advantage of all the beautiful scenery the Czech Republic and Slovenia have to offer. The rest often suffers visually, however.

[Gertrude]

Let's be honest - how good were the trollocs gonna really look? They look like I imagined them - gross and scary, but ultimately a little goofy.

[Iskaral Pust]

We’ve enjoyed the first three eps.  They’ve made some choices for the adaptation to work, and overall I’m fine with them.  The performances by Moraine, Matt, Thom and Lan have been the best, while the others are good enough.  The production quality is pretty darn high considering the challenge in rendering a fantasy medieval world.  And WoT was a cheesier world setting than GoT’s grim realpolitik.

My biggest complaint is how many fans are taking it out to the wood chipper in the Amazon reviews, with the primary complaints about the ethnic/racial variety in casting and that it doesn’t exactly match the book or how they pictured it in their heads.  This is why we can’t have nice things.  I hope it gets enough support for Amazon to keep renewing it.

[Gertrude]

22 minutes ago, Iskaral Pust said:

My biggest complaint is how many fans are taking it out to the wood chipper in the Amazon reviews, with the primary complaints about the ethnic/racial variety in casting and that it doesn’t exactly match the book or how they pictured it in their heads. 

Someone hasn't been keeping up with the pre-show conversations :p

[Leofric]

I watched the first three episodes and am enjoying it for the most part.   It definitely got better in the 2nd and 3rd episodes, and I will continue to watch.      I only read the first book some 30 years ago when it was first published, so while I recognize some of the names and the basic plot points, the details are long gone.   

I didn't continue reading the book series at the time, partly because it seemed so similar at the time to the Lord of Rings and the Sword of Shannara where some young villagers are hunted by the evil minions of some Dark Lord because of they are heirs to some power (The One Ring, the Bloodline of Jerle Shannara, or being the Dragon Reborn) and are protected and guided by a powerful wizard type (Gandalf , Allanon, and Moraine).     The other reason was I had just moved 3,000 miles away from home and started a new job and had no money for new books, so had to be content with delving into older books in the library.

 

[Scott_N]

Expectations were pretty low going in based on the earlier threads on here. But both me and my wife like it so far. It's not great but more than enough for us to continue watching. None of us have read the books which - again based on what I'm reading on here by those who have - feels like an advantage. We have no baggage when it comes to either story or characters. We even thought the first episode was fine.

Likes:

• The young cast works really well. Likeable and with good chemistry and performances feels natural and unforced despite lines that were awkward at times.
• Thom. Seems like a cool dude we want to see more of.
• The weaving was fine and I say that as someone who is not too keen on magic, per se.
• Rosamund Pike, of course.

Didn't like quite so much:

• Whitecloaks. They look ridicolus in their squeaky whites and would look silly even at a costume party. And that stupid shoulder thing? There's nothing in their portrayal that suggests they'd be capable of knocking off a bunch of Aes Sedai.
• The Fade. Just feels like a Black Rider rip-off (I suppose you could say the same of the trollocs/orcs but that just seems like maybe more genre typical, I'm not sure).
• Trolloc CGI.
• Everyone and everything is too clean.

Questions:

• Given how immensely physically superior the trollocs seem to humans - strength, speed and endurance - how can any individual human actually stand up against them in a fight? It beggars belief so we just handwaved it away.
• Is EP 1 all we'll see of Rand's dad? Surley not given the actor?

 

 

[Corvinus85]

57 minutes ago, Iskaral Pust said:

We’ve enjoyed the first three eps.  They’ve made some choices for the adaptation to work, and overall I’m fine with them.  The performances by Moraine, Matt, Thom and Lan have been the best, while the others are good enough.  The production quality is pretty darn high considering the challenge in rendering a fantasy medieval world.  And WoT was a cheesier world setting than GoT’s grim realpolitik.

My biggest complaint is how many fans are taking it out to the wood chipper in the Amazon reviews, with the primary complaints about the ethnic/racial variety in casting and that it doesn’t exactly match the book or how they pictured it in their heads.  This is why we can’t have nice things.  I hope it gets enough support for Amazon to keep renewing it.

I wouldn't give too much credit to Amazon reviews. The Boys had loads of 1 star reviews from people offended by the language, the gore, or the social commentary, and here it is, with a 3rd season upcoming. They even made a video where the actors read some of the bad reviews. 

25 minutes ago, Scott_N said:

Questions:

• Given how immensely physically superior the trollocs seem to humans - strength, speed and endurance - how can any individual human actually stand up against them in a fight? It beggars belief so we just handwaved it away.
• Is EP 1 all we'll see of Rand's dad? Surley not given the actor?

It would have been nice if they established that Trollocs are rather lazy and prefer an easy fight. But even in the books it was sometimes ridiculous how humans were able to stand up to them. 

And yes that should be it for Rand's dad this season based only the book, but I think it's been mentioned he appears in another episode. (there is an off page thing in the book they made have done with him)

Well considering how much the first book feels like it was influenced by LOTR, it's pretty clear the Fades were inspired by Ringwraiths, though from the online reactions I've seen, non-readers tend to compare it more with Voldemort.

[Denvek]

3 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

And yes that should be it for Rand's dad this season based only the book, but I think it's been mentioned he appears in another episode. (there is an off page thing in the book they made have done with him)

I think there's some flashbacks to the Aiel War planned, so I'd expect to see him in that showing him finding baby Rand - they didn't have the "babe crying on the mountain" babbling as Rand took poisoned Tam to the village after Winternight, so they'll need another way to show Rand's origins.

Also, I think part of Lan not taking the mentor role for Rand yet is because they're going to have Thom be the one to explain the significance of Tam's sword having the herons, so with Thom not being there at the start they can't have Lan teaching Rand how to use it yet.

[Gertrude]

Quick question - we've been pretty free with our book knowledge - do we need to change the title to reflect that? Do we need a books and a show only thread now that it's out?

[Werthead]

8 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

I thought I spotted one wolf Trolloc. A fair few had boar features but most were Beastmen from Warhammer.  I like the Trolloc suits, just the CGI part isn't very good.

There were loads of them. The interesting thing is that the wolf Trollocs fight on their hind legs but run on all fours, which is a clever way of differentiating them at a distance. When they're crossing the river there's a very clear shot of a wolf Trolloc on the left hand side of the screen as well as several of the other types crossing the river, and in the long shots of tons of them piling through the woods you can see lots of wolf-types running along.

[Myrddin]

I actually liked the Trolloc designs and execution. To Gertrude's point, they are pretty goofy sounding in the books, even though described as being terrifying. I never had a good image of them in my head. The show has translated Jordan's weird but scary mutant design well. And the quality of the masks are well done. No floppy masks, but solidly built to withstand the required stunt work. That's a lot when you have 20-25 of them on screen at the same time.

 

[Iskaral Pust]

10 hours ago, Gertrude said:

Someone hasn't been keeping up with the pre-show conversations :p

I learned my lesson from Star Wars.  If the fan base has lots of discussion before they even see the content, then I’m heavily discounting the value of that discussion.

[Poobah]

Yeah I do think the trollocs look a bit silly, but also agree that Jordan's descriptions of them were on the silly side too. To be honest in my imagination I usually went to a more generic orc type creature rather than the bestial furry/feathered mutant creatures Jordan describes. I think they did a pretty good job overall of faithfully translating them to the screen and imbuing them with some scariness.

[aceluby]

Watched these over the weekend and think it's pretty middling.  Honestly, it's about where I expected since EotW is pretty tropey and cheesy, especially in the first 2/3rds or so of the book.  It's not bad, but it's not great either.  It reminds me a lot of Shadow and Bone with a heavy YA trying to be adult vibe, but without the content to really support it.  Thom is easily the best of the cast and steals pretty much every scene he's in.  The CGI is borderline SyFy quality though, which really hurts since there has been so many battles and trollocks, and the CGI takes away from it.  Will definitely continue, but I do think that they should have learned from S8 of GoT and worked more on character development and toned down some of the big battle scenes.

[fionwe1987]

I agree, the Trollocs are about as good as they're likely to get, barring a much bigger CGI budget. 

However, they're never again going to be this level of a threat, are they? They become mostly amassed cannon fodder for the main characters, so I'm not surprised they didn't put much more effort into it.

Now channeling, they definitely can do better with. More distinct coloring of the weaves, less of this charging up that we're seeing, etc. 

[Corvinus85]

My non-reader brother has watched all three episodes. His quick review was that it hasn't grabbed him so far, but it's not bad, and he hopes it will get more interesting.

[SpaceChampion]

4 hours ago, Myrddin said:

I actually liked the Trolloc designs and execution. To Gertrude's point, they are pretty goofy sounding in the books, even though described as being terrifying. I never had a good image of them in my head. The show has translated Jordan's weird but scary mutant design well. And the quality of the masks are well done. No floppy masks, but solidly built to withstand the required stunt work. That's a lot when you have 20-25 of them on screen at the same time.

 

The Trollocs are about the only thing as I imagined them.