Interviews and News Articles

[Maximillion]

19 minutes ago, JenniferL said:

It was a comment on the fans claiming that the show was a flop because they personally didn’t like it. 

 

Critically it has flopped - that does not mean the show won't also be watched a lot and gain a good number of regular viewers.

 

[Elder_Haman]

4 minutes ago, Maximillion said:

Critically it has flopped

That’s just a straight lie. It has a 72% positive score with critics on Rotten Tomatoes and 90% positive or mixed reviews on Metacritic. 
 

I get that you don’t like it. But it’s manifestly wrong to say that Wheel of Time is a “flop” with critics. 

[JenniferL]

The aggregate on RT is 72% positive from critics and 82% positive from the audience. It’s fine if you don’t like it. Opinions are going to vary. But most people like it and Amazon considers it a success by whatever metrics they are using. Stop trying to gaslight the forum. 

[Maximillion]

12 minutes ago, JenniferL said:

The aggregate on RT is 72% positive from critics and 82% positive from the audience. It’s fine if you don’t like it. Opinions are going to vary. But most people like it and Amazon considers it a success by whatever metrics they are using. Stop trying to gaslight the forum. 

 

Critical acclaim, rightly or wrongly, is driven by the people with the loudest voices.

When you dig into the 'top' reviewers on RT the show is rated at 55% - many critics that write for publications like The New York Times.  Many people will never go to RT, but they WILL read the reviews of these top publications.. that's the NYT, CNN, Variety, New Statesman, Hollywood Reporter, Financial Times, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Screen International - it's been very poorly received and that is what their readers will be reading about.  Some of the reviews are brutal.

This show is certainly not winning any awards.

 

 

 

Edited November 24, 2021 by Maximillion

[JenniferL]

 I like how you ignore the 82% of fans who are positive about the show, along with anything else that doesn’t fit your personal narrative that you can’t possibly have the minority opinion about this. No one is forcing you to watch the show. If you don’t like it, that’s fine. But quit trying to convince everyone that we are wrong somehow. 

[Elder_Haman]

10 minutes ago, Maximillion said:

 

Critical acclaim, rightly or wrongly, is driven by the people with the loudest voices.

When you dig into the 'top' reviewers on RT the show is rated at 55% - many critics that write for publications like The New York Times.  Many people will never go to RT, but they WILL read the reviews of these top publications.. that's the NYT, CNN, Variety, New Statesman, Hollywood Reporter, Financial Times, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Screen International - it's been very poorly received and that is what their readers will be reading about.  Some of the reviews are brutal.

This show is certainly not winning any awards. 

 

Shorter @Maximillion: if I cherry pick my sources, I can make the data fit my preferred narrative. 

Edited November 24, 2021 by Elder_Haman

[Maximillion]

4 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

Shorter @Maximillion: if I cherry pick my sources, I can make the data for my preferred narrative. 

 

It's not cherry picked - it's the actual RT rating from top critics.

They have classed 22 reviewers as their 'top critics', 55% of which rated the show 'Fresh', the other 45% as 'Rotten'.

That's a flop amongst their top critics and I don't think it unreasonable to say that these are the people who will garner significant eyeballs on their opinion.

Edited November 24, 2021 by Maximillion

[Elder_Haman]

1 minute ago, Maximillion said:

 

It's not cherry picked - it's the actual RT rating from top critics.

They have classed 22 reviewers as their 'top critics', 55% of which rated the show 'Fresh', the other 45% as 'Rotten'.

That's a flop amongst their top critics and I don't think it unreasonable to say that these are the people who will garner significant eyeballs on their opinion.

So more of the “top critics” gave it a positive rating than a negative one and you’re still going with “flop” eh? Face it, you’re wrong. It’s okay to admit it. 

[AdamA]

This has played out pretty similarly to how I predicted. It was sitting at a low of 59% on Rotten Tomatoes when only the big outlets that screen everything had published, inundated with reviewers who are forced by their publishers to review pretty much all new shows, betraying what I think is genre fatigue from people who'd rather be watching something else. Now that more genre sites and professional critics watching by choice have chimed in, it's up to 72%. That's still lower than I expected given the effort Amazon is putting into this and the big game talked by Rafe and Co., which left me expecting something more in the low to mid 80s, but it's higher so far than The Witcher ended up.

 

Not quite as much asymmetry in critic/fan ratings as Witcher. 72/82 compared to 69/91, but Witcher has over 20,000 fan ratings, whereas WoT is currently sitting at a bit over 2,000.

 

It's definitely not going to be the failure that the most negative people on here are thinking, but I don't see it being as popular as The Witcher, either, if for no other reason than Prime Video has nowhere near the subscriber numbers as Netflix. Obviously, Amazon is hoping shows like this and LOTR may change that, but it'll take years for that to happen if it ever happens. This may already be Amazon's most popular show until LOTR. It has more than double the fan ratings of The Expanse, quadruple Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. It's a bit behind The Boys Season Two right now, but will almost certainly pass it by the end of the season. At least in terms of Internet interest metrics, Jack Ryan is more on the order of Mrs. Maisel and less The Boys, not really in the same ballpark.

 

I have no clue how to parse the Salke comment. The only remotely high-profile thing I can think of Prime debuting this year is Underground Railroad, which was well-made, but not exactly a crowd pleaser. Invincible was terrific, but too violent for a lot of people and kind of came out of nowhere without a marketing campaign. Really, WoT and The Boys are the only shows so far that seem like any sort of "hit" at all. Mrs. Maisel and Fleabag won all kinds of awards, but still nobody watched them.

 

I wouldn't put a ton of stock in "Top Critics." Those are the people who don't want to be reviewing this. The Witcher was 42% positive from top critics only. Even when you look at MCU shows, which are generally pretty loved, Hawkeye is 87% positive right now, but 60% counting only top critics. Fans of genre television are not at all exclusively focused on what the New York Times and Washington Post think. They're more likely to get their advice from YouTube.

[Maximillion]

21 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

So more of the “top critics” gave it a positive rating than a negative one and you’re still going with “flop” eh? Face it, you’re wrong. It’s okay to admit it. 

 

No.

55% is not a good top critics score.

Not as bad as The Witcher at 42% - but that was total sh*t.

 

 

[Elder_Haman]

4 minutes ago, Maximillion said:

 

No.

55% is not a good top critics score.

Not as bad as The Witcher at 42% - but that was total sh*t.

 

 

55% rated it “fresh” as opposed to 45% that rated it “rotten”. So more liked than disliked. That is not a “flop”. 
 

You can accurately state that the reviews were lukewarm or mixed. You can say that the show did not meet with widespread acclaim. Any of these descriptions would be accurate. 
 

But there is no metric by which it is a “flop” no matter how desperate you are to make that case. 

[Maximillion]

2 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

55% rated it “fresh” as opposed to 45% that rated it “rotten”. So more liked than disliked. That is not a “flop”. 
 

You can accurately state that the reviews were lukewarm or mixed. You can say that the show did not meet with widespread acclaim. Any of these descriptions would be accurate. 
 

But there is no metric by which it is a “flop” no matter how desperate you are to make that case. 

 

The marketing and budget make a 55% score a flop IMO.

Hype and expectation are a double edged sword.

 

[Arthellion]

Only thing that matters to Amazon is viewership.

 

As long as people keep watching it’ll keep getting made.

 

Also Witcher season 1 was great ? I say that as someone who never read the books.

 

The general vibe I’m seeing Amon non readers for WoT is liked it to meh. No hate. All the hard hate is from book readers

[Agitel]

23 minutes ago, Arthellion said:

Only thing that matters to Amazon is viewership.

 

As long as people keep watching it’ll keep getting made.

 

Also Witcher season 1 was great ? I say that as someone who never read the books.

 

The general vibe I’m seeing Amon non readers for WoT is liked it to meh. No hate. All the hard hate is from book readers

 

And they hope buzz around the show will generate new subscriptions. 

[mogi68]

It's cool that you want the show to fail and all @Maximillion but isn't this getting a little off topic?

 

Back to interviews and news articles :

Rafe is doing an AMA on reddit at Noon EST / 9:00AM PST

 

[Elder_Haman]

52 minutes ago, Maximillion said:

 

The marketing and budget make a 55% score a flop IMO.

Hype and expectation are a double edged sword.

 

Keep moving the goalposts, brother.

[Maximillion]

14 minutes ago, mogi68 said:

It's cool that you want the show to fail and all @Maximillion but isn't this getting a little off topic?

 

Back to interviews and news articles :

Rafe is doing an AMA on reddit at Noon EST / 9:00AM PST

 

 

I do not want the show to fail - but I think the show runner has done an appalling job.  I was worried before based on the interviews he gave and since hearing comments from Sarah and BS - and reading between the lines - I don't think they had enough of a say. 

What I would actually really like is for Rafe to be booted into touch and get a good Showrunner to work on the story and production for season 2 -8 and the whole thing to be able to complete the story in a manner much better than we have seen in the first 3 episodes.

I am not going to pretend that the show is great just because I want a full 8 seasons.

Edited November 24, 2021 by Maximillion

[Agitel]

I mean, I think the show has issues it needs to iron out, I agree, but "appalling" just comes across as hyperbolic to me. I think most of us defending the show aren't denying it has areas to improve upon, and actually we probably have a lot of agreement about what those areas are, just disagreements about the implications. We're just more glass half full types. "Appalling" doesn't even sound "glass half empty", it sounds "the glass is empty." And many of us are definitely not there. I have seen some glass half empty people around, though.

Edited November 24, 2021 by Agitel

[AviendhaSiswai]

1 hour ago, AdamA said:

It's definitely not going to be the failure that the most negative people on here are thinking, but I don't see it being as popular as The Witcher, either, if for no other reason than Prime Video has nowhere near the subscriber numbers as Netflix. Obviously, Amazon is hoping shows like this and LOTR may change that, but it'll take years for that to happen if it ever happens.

 

So I just googled this out of curiosity... Netflix has around 210 million subscribers, and Amazon actually claims to have over 200 million Prime subscribers now. HBO has ~150 million (as of 2017). I'm sure a lot of people use their Prime subscriptions mainly for the delivery bonuses, but at least that means they have easy access to Prime Video if they become curious about the show, because they're already paying for the service.

 

Does Amazon ever release stats about their shows like Netflix sometimes does? I wish we had daily ratings the way we do for network TV....

[Agitel]

My understanding is that Amazon doesn't have any regular pattern of releasing metrics like some platforms do.

[JenniferL]

Season two is halfway through principle photography. That means the scripts are already written and being filmed. They are not reading this forum feedback, I promise you. 

[Agitel]

32 minutes ago, mogi68 said:

It's cool that you want the show to fail and all @Maximillion but isn't this getting a little off topic?

 

Back to interviews and news articles :

Rafe is doing an AMA on reddit at Noon EST / 9:00AM PST

 

 

Looks like he's going through the comments oldest to newest and replying now.

[Maximillion]

11 minutes ago, JenniferL said:

Season two is halfway through principle photography. That means the scripts are already written and being filmed. They are not reading this forum feedback, I promise you. 

 

 

I am pretty sure they will still have options on which scenes to include or cut - or even parts of scenes.

I bet for example there is more shot in EF than we saw in Episode 1. 

Would have been better I think to see more of that fleshed out than some of the added scenes that were included.

But even if not, then my understanding is that Season 3 has been green lit - giving that to a new Showrunner is needed IMO.

I would hope they are listening to feedback - both positive and negative.

 

 

 

 

Edited November 24, 2021 by Maximillion

[Agitel]

I took caps of far more than I planned.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hope I got those inserted right.

 

 

[Agitel]

There are some really substantial responses mixed into that last batch, if anyone only glossed over it.

 

The "Moiraine's eyes and ears" for the ta'veren rumor I'm still "meh" on, though. 

Edited November 24, 2021 by Agitel