New Trailer Discussion Thread

[2RiversFan]

20 minutes ago, Agitel said:

I didn't want to start a new topic for this, but how many episodes is Season One? I know 8 were approved. Then COVID happened and I heard we're only going to get 6 for Season One and the other two are being bumped to Season Two. But I looked for confirmation and I see some recent sources saying 8 and others saying 6. Anyone know for certain?

 

I guess I could search a little harder...

 

Edit: According to the WOT wiki, episode seven will be out on 12/17 and episode eight on 12/24, so there it is.

There are definitely 8.

The first three drop on Friday, Nov 19.  Then another single episode will drop each Friday after that until Christmas Eve.  

I don't have a link for you - too lazy after a difficult workday ?

[Pembie]

The trailer looks much more exciting than I have found the books to be honest 

The trollcs look great 

[DaddyFinn]

Last two episodes are unnamed at the moment. I guess that causes confusion

[TheMountain]

...does anyone else think that the trailer, as well-made as it was and as much as it showed great production values, was a bit of a missed opportunity? In my head, I always imagined the trailer sweeping past The Taint, The Breaking, the madness, prophecy, infinite reincarnations, The Dragon Reborn, etc. The current one about "standing against the Dark One" comes across as a little generic imo, and the Wheel of Time is anything but.

Edited October 30, 2021 by TheMountain

[DaddyFinn]

1 hour ago, TheMountain said:

...does anyone else think that the trailer, as well-made as it was and as much as it showed great production values, was a bit of a missed opportunity? In my head, I always imagined the trailer sweeping past The Taint, The Breaking, the madness, prophecy, infinite reincarnations, The Dragon Reborn, etc. The current one about "standing against the Dark One" comes across as a little generic imo, and the Wheel of Time is anything but.

Some of those would have been nice. I don't think it's generic though since I have not seen similar fantasy shows.

[Agitel]

I didn't walk away from the first trailer negative, but I did not walk away feeling hyped. I thought the first one felt generic. I agreed a lot with those comments.

 

The second one was different for me. I felt very hyped. Now, there is a lot unique to the world of WOT that was not included in the trailer, and I still want to see that (in the show, at least), but I felt this most recent trailer had personality and a vision. And I will say it is what I kind of expected. Character focused, gives a bit more of a pitch about what these characters are doing. 

 

I can see how cool some additional teasers and trailers on the set up would be. I'm not sure it'll happen. I'm interested in seeing how they cover it in the show.

[king of nowhere]

5 hours ago, TheMountain said:

...does anyone else think that the trailer, as well-made as it was and as much as it showed great production values, was a bit of a missed opportunity? In my head, I always imagined the trailer sweeping past The Taint, The Breaking, the madness, prophecy, infinite reincarnations, The Dragon Reborn, etc. The current one about "standing against the Dark One" comes across as a little generic imo, and the Wheel of Time is anything but.

i don't think anyone could do a good job of summing up WOT in two minutes of trailer. all that stuff was introduced to us across several books.

[DojoToad]

26 minutes ago, Agitel said:

I didn't walk away from the first trailer negative, but I did not walk away feeling hyped. I thought the first one felt generic. I agreed a lot with those comments.

 

The second one was different for me. I felt very hyped. Now, there is a lot unique to the world of WOT that was not included in the trailer, and I still want to see that (in the show, at least), but I felt this most recent trailer had personality and a vision. And I will say it is what I kind of expected. Character focused, gives a bit more of a pitch about what these characters are doing. 

 

I can see how cool some additional teasers and trailers on the set up would be. I'm not sure it'll happen. I'm interested in seeing how they cover it in the show.

I don't need anything other than the 19th to get here...

[Ralph]

Hi all

 

Long time lurker (esp last few months waiting for the show), first time poster. 

 

https://www.cbr.com/wheel-of-time-madeleine-madden-refused-stunt-double/

 

Here seems she says clearly it was initiation into the women's circle

[nsmallw]

On 10/29/2021 at 2:29 PM, johnnysd said:

Interesting to see some of the negativity.

 

From what I have seen the TV show will adhere to the books at about the same level that GoT did.  The last trailer really shows how close they will be.

 

The changes I see:

 

Logain -showing and not telling on Logain is absolutely the right choice, not only because he becomes very important but it sill also show why Dragons (false or true) are to be feared

 

Mystery of how the DR is: People are losing their minds over this one. It makes sense to me and really does not change anything. Rand will still be DR, and there will still be Saidar and Saidin. It will make for better TV though

 

Moiraine being more upfront. -Makes sense. Also gives some punch to leaving as in the books everyone just sort of agrees to let them go just because she is AS

 

Consolidation of cities -yeah we lose some scope, Caemlyn and Elayne (and one of my favorite book scenes) is pushed to 2nd season. Not super happy about this but let's see how they introduce here. 

 

Seeing Tar Valon in Season 1 -makes sense it will streamline the story and definitely a big hook for views

 

Thom -Guitar, make sense. Not being in EF, not so awesome but I have my own theory on it and it may work better.

 

Whitecloaks actually hunting AS. BIG change, possibly the one BS does not like. I sort of love it because it makes the WC formidable and scary. In the books they just come across as a cult without much threat.

 

Enhancing Egwene's role. She is in some ways the second most important character in the books. I think it is a good move.

 

I think people NOT watching it because of these levels of changes are just cheating themselves. 

 

The danger becomes that each change slightly alters the arc and if not careful you wind up with the later seasons of the show where the book path no longer made any sense.

 

Like many here I am in double digits in reading the books, but I welcome the changes because of two things. First, I get to experience something NEW in WoT. I thought that would never happen, and second it is cannon that the WoT story has played out thousands of times, and we get to see another turning. Personally I find that extremely cool.

 

 

 

 

I like your idea of the changes being done to the Whitecloaks being what BS felt was the biggest change. 

I have been wondering what BS meant by his statement and your idea is the best one I've seen thus far. 

[DojoToad]

52 minutes ago, nsmallw said:

I like your idea of the changes being done to the Whitecloaks being what BS felt was the biggest change. 

I have been wondering what BS meant by his statement and your idea is the best one I've seen thus far. 

We all knew that the Whitecloaks were a danger to Aes Sedai from the books - so the show making that more prominent is not a big change in my opinion.

 

Changing the Whitecloak plate mail to white dresses, however, could be the change BS referred to that fans wouldn't like.

[TheDreadReader]

12 minutes ago, DojoToad said:

We all knew that the Whitecloaks were a danger to Aes Sedai from the books - so the show making that more prominent is not a big change in my opinion.

 

Changing the Whitecloak plate mail to white dresses, however, could be the change BS referred to that fans wouldn't like.

 

Have we seen any images of them in actual armor yet or just in their "dresses"?

 

I find some of the conversations about the whitecloak armor to be a little frustrating.   Wearing full plate has its tactical advantages and disadvantages.   From a tactical perspective it makes less sense for them to be out and about in full plate in situations where it would be tactically disadvantageous to them.   The increased caloric and protein needs from carrying that much weight on you all day while under movement creates logistical problems too.   BS being a pretty "hard" writer, I think that he'd understand some of those things.  

 

The other side of that might be that BS understands that the audience might not consider those other aspects.  So this being the change that BS was referring is very possible.  

 

 

[Deadsy]

On 10/27/2021 at 12:08 PM, TheMountain said:

I liked the trailer for the most part. The CGI is a bit iffy in some parts, but the production value is clearly high overall. The landscapes and sets look really good.

 

Not a fan of the Whitecloak dresses. I also found their expressions kind of stereotype comical villain.

 

It also does a much better job than the teaser of explaining the story, though I'd say that it still misses the mark by a lot by not really digging into male channelers going mad, the breaking of the world, the Dragon, etc. It still comes across as rather generic:

"A Witch from The Tar Valon School of Witchcraft and Definitely Not Wizardry searches for the chosen one who will stand against the Dark Lord. Also, Moraine is a Gryffindor by the way, except she wears blue."

 

I see them dancing a lot around and sidestepping the male/female gender dynamics though. Not just the "one of the five of you" comment, but the One Power being split into two halves. None of the material directly from Amazon mentions Saidar and Saidin, and Rafe in his trailer breakdown video only referred to it as the One Power, even when talking about the taint with male channelers. I'm starting to wonder if they sidestepped the somewhat thorny gender binary issue by removing Saidar and Saidin completely.

 

There's a lot to like in the trailer for sure, but I'm definitely not feeling the warm and fuzzies or boarding the hype train like everyone else here lol.

 

 

 

There is no way they were ever going to mention saidin or saidar in a trailer. That would be a WTF moment for anyone who hasn't read the series. And you can see in much of the content they've shown that when men channel it looks different. They also have mentioned several times that women protect/serve the world.

Edited November 1, 2021 by Deadsy

[king of nowhere]

8 hours ago, DojoToad said:

 

Changing the Whitecloak plate mail to white dresses, however, could be the change BS referred to that fans wouldn't like.

they did not change anything about the whitecloacks. they do wear armor, under their white tabards. you can clearly see the shape of the armor underneat the cloth

[Deadsy]

To the people complaining about Egwene focus, I counted 16 clips with her and 15 clips with Rand. It's going to be ok. He'll have his time to be the main character for the next 7 or whatever seasons.

Also, here is a ranking of the top 7 characters by PoV word count:

 

Character	# of POVs	% of Total POVs (1,379)	Word Count	% of Word Count (4,373,157)	Average Word Count per POV
Rand al'Thor	236	17.1139%	917,726	20.9854%	3,888.67
Perrin Aybara	154	11.1675%	540,762	12.3655%	3,511.44
Egwene al'Vere	130	9.4271%	529,812	12.1151%	4,075.48
Matrim Cauthon	116	8.4119%	486,811	11.1318%	4,196.65
Elayne Trakand	83	6.0189%	355,856	8.1373%	4,287.42
Nynaeve al'Meara	61	4.4235%	271,190	6.2012%	4,445.74
Moiraine Damodred	33	2.3930%	123,639	2.8272%	3,746.6

[DojoToad]

2 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

they did not change anything about the whitecloacks. they do wear armor, under their white tabards. you can clearly see the shape of the armor underneat the cloth

I thought their armor shone in the sun when they charged. Kind of hard to do that when it’s covered by white linen. But my recollection may be faulty. 

[TheMountain]

5 hours ago, Deadsy said:

To the people complaining about Egwene focus, I counted 16 clips with her and 15 clips with Rand. It's going to be ok. He'll have his time to be the main character for the next 7 or whatever seasons.

Also, here is a ranking of the top 7 characters by PoV word count:

 

Character	# of POVs	% of Total POVs (1,379)	Word Count	% of Word Count (4,373,157)	Average Word Count per POV
Rand al'Thor	236	17.1139%	917,726	20.9854%	3,888.67
Perrin Aybara	154	11.1675%	540,762	12.3655%	3,511.44
Egwene al'Vere	130	9.4271%	529,812	12.1151%	4,075.48
Matrim Cauthon	116	8.4119%	486,811	11.1318%	4,196.65
Elayne Trakand	83	6.0189%	355,856	8.1373%	4,287.42
Nynaeve al'Meara	61	4.4235%	271,190	6.2012%	4,445.74
Moiraine Damodred	33	2.3930%	123,639	2.8272%	3,746.6

Number of clips doesn't really tell you much. I think it's plainly obvious to most people subjectively that Moraine and Egwene have been the focus of the teaser and trailer.

 

Regarding the word count in the books... even when he hardly had any chapters in some of the later books as the ensemble expanded, he was still the mover and shaker of major events. He was the nexus of everything happening around him in the world. Often the only major plot movement in the books would be whenever Rand showed up.

 

I will also add that a lot of people found the Aes Sedai politics one of the most boring plotlines, yet we're clearly getting more of it now... yay.

Edited November 2, 2021 by TheMountain

[Tim]

18 minutes ago, TheMountain said:

Regarding the word count in the books... even when he hardly had any chapters in some of the later books as the ensemble expanded, he was still the mover and shaker of major events. He was the nexus of everything happening around him in the world. Often the only major plot movement in the books would be whenever Rand showed up.

 

I don't agree with this but it's particularly untrue of Crossroads of Twilight, where all he does is decide to meet with the DOTNM. In any event, you're disproving your own argument: if what you say is correct then it really doesn't matter if Rand is only shown fleetingly in the TV show, let alone a promotional trailer.

 

20 minutes ago, TheMountain said:

I will also add that a lot of people found the Aes Sedai politics one of the most boring plotlines, yet we're clearly getting more of it now... yay.

 

If you really mean "Aes Sedai politics from The Fires of Heaven onwards" (i.e. post Elaida becoming Amyrlin Seat), then I think this is not only unknowable at this point but almost certainly incorrect (assuming the TV show gets that far).  RJ wrote literally hundreds of separate AS characters, strewn amongst 3 distinct power-bases (to say nothing of the Wise Ones, Kin and Windfinders). There will be rationalisation of characters pretty much across the board, but nowhere will it be more necessarily severe than in terms of the Aes Sedai. For instance, if we get that far I'd be very surprised if we get the Pevara / Saerin / Seaine / Yukiri / Doesine plotline at all.

[DaddyFinn]

39 minutes ago, TheMountain said:

I will also add that a lot of people found the Aes Sedai politics one of the most boring plotlines, yet we're clearly getting more of it now... yay.

And a lot of people loved the Aes Sedai politics. So what's the matter?

[TheMountain]

Again, as I said, the number of scenes in the teaser and trailer isn't really the metric to be looking at here. The major beats, the narration, the impactful scenes, etc all give the *impression* that Egwene and Moraine are the focus. Rand, Perrin and Mat come across as minor characters.

[TheMountain]

5 minutes ago, DaddyFinn said:

And a lot of people loved the Aes Sedai politics. So what's the matter?

Oh, I just find it interesting that the show is leaning so hard into the Aes Sedai stuff and clearly gonna show more of it, potentially at the expense of screentime for other characters/stories, while it's not necessarily universally acclaimed as the most riveting part of the books.

[DaddyFinn]

11 minutes ago, TheMountain said:

Oh, I just find it interesting that the show is leaning so hard into the Aes Sedai stuff and clearly gonna show more of it, potentially at the expense of screentime for other characters/stories, while it's not necessarily universally acclaimed as the most riveting part of the books.

I agree that it shouldn't take the spotlight. Books had pretty good balance IMO. 

[AusLeviathan]

48 minutes ago, TheMountain said:

The major beats, the narration, the impactful scenes, etc all give the *impression* that Egwene and Moraine are the focus. Rand, Perrin and Mat come across as minor characters.

Rafe basically sold Amazon on making a series with strong female characters to counterbalance GOT's sometimes poor treatment of most of its female characters. So yeah it's not surprising that Amazon marketing is pushing Moiraine and Egwene relatively more than they should be as far as the first book is concerned.

 

That's probably also why the Aes Sedai politics have been added in season one since EOTW is highly focused on the male characters.

 

I actually think this is the only reason the series is being made, I doubt Amazon would've made the series if they were just told that its first season would be about three boys being chased because one of them is the chosen one.

Edited November 2, 2021 by AusLeviathan

[DaddyFinn]

45 minutes ago, AusLeviathan said:

I doubt Amazon would've made the series if they were just told that its first season would be about three boys being chased because one of them is the chosen one.

I'm not sure if that would be entertaining. It's fine in the books because it's so much easier to explain stuff and hear their thoughts etc. but TV is a different beast.

Edited November 2, 2021 by DaddyFinn

[Tim]

I think the decision to include e.g. Logain, Tar Valon etc. in series 1 is likely to have been driven by a desire to set up multiple plot lines relatively early in the piece.

 

TEOTW is told almost exclusively from Rand's POV, with a brief exception between Shadar Logoth and Caemlyn where we also get Perrin and Nynaeve. The Great Hunt introduces Egwene, Bayle Domon, Fain and (briefly) Moiraine and Min, but it's still essentially two plot lines which converge at the end.

 

It's really not until The Dragon Reborn and in particular The Shadow Rising that we start to see RJ's talent for interweaving multiple plot lines emerge.

 

It's difficult for TV to present group scenes in any form other than as omniscient observer, so it's not like the first season can just cycle between the POVs of the EF5.

 

I think a season 1 which was following a single group for almost the whole time would both make the series seem simplistic (which would be ironic for a show premised on a book series which may just have the most convoluted multi-character plot of any series of books ever written) and also give audiences a misleading sense of what is in store.

 

Introducing some of these additional elements in series 1 gives viewers a better sense early on of what they will be getting from this show, which hopefully (even with some inevitable rationalisation of plot lines and characters) should be a narratively dense and complex tapestry of competing storylines and character objectives that makes GOT look straightforward. But I suspect series 1 will still look very straightforward compared to what comes later on.