Interviews and News Articles

[Reader]

12 minutes ago, Harad the White said:

The critics are up. Has the audience gone down, slightly?

the book fan civil war continues...

[Harad the White]

1 minute ago, Reader said:

the book fan civil war continues...

The N&Ns (Naysayers and Nitpickers) take a page out of the sports fans Book who denigrate their own team by accusing the opponents of "Overrated, overrated."

[JenniferL]

2 minutes ago, Reader said:

the book fan civil war continues...

Hate watching still counts as watching! 

[Reader]

From Amazon UK. Not at all polarised ?
 

[ArrylT]

Well the RT rating was at 82 - dipped to 79 but as you'll see in point 2 - has started climbing a bit again.

 

1 - The top critics who had a 55% fresh rating has now increased to 58% (14/10).

All Critics reviews have increased it to 86% (42 / 16 split)  - its original rating according to Wikipedia was 72%

 

2 - Audience rating has bounced up a 1% point

 

And just so everyone understands what this means is that 80% of the people rating it on RT are giving it 3.5 or more stars out of 5.   

 

The average rating itself is currently 4.1 stars

 

3 -  On IMDB we have an additional 3k ratings - yesterday was 24k and now its at 27k.   Overall the season itself is holding steady at 7.5 - the same rating Episode 1 gets.

 

Episode 1 currently has 6159 ratings

Episode 2 currently has 4936 ratings (8.2 average)

Episode 3 currently has 4737 ratings (8.1 average)

Episode 4 currently has 3821 ratings (9.1 average)

 

 

(doing this so we have a time stamp to compare to in a few days or a week)

 

 

Edited November 28, 2021 by ArrylT

[ArrylT]

https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/wheel-of-time-vs-game-of-thrones

 

We know GOT & WOT are going to be constantly compared  - this article explains why WOT differs and deserves a chance to shine on its own merits.

 

Boiled down nicely here:

 

Spoiler

 it's The Iliad vs. Odyssey. Both works certainly share familiar elements and, in some ways, feed off of each other's success (they’re both poems by Homer, after all). Still, they're entirely different texts attempting to tell totally different narratives.

 

Edited November 28, 2021 by ArrylT
addited spoiler

[Kudzu]

On 11/28/2021 at 6:51 AM, Harad the White said:

I may have missed it but any posted news on the reason for the Matt replacement? Donal Logue just seems to0 old and heavy for Matt.

 

Donal Finn, not Donal Logue. I just googled Logue and he would indeed be an odd choice for Mat.

[ArrylT]

3 hours ago, Kudzu said:

 

Donal Finn, not Donal Logue. I just googled Logue and he would indeed be an odd choice for Mat.

 

Yeah he would be better cast as Logue-ain. ?

[ArrylT]

https://deadline.com/2021/11/the-wheel-of-time-mat-cauthon-role-donal-finn-rafe-jenkins-plans-amazon-series-1234870995/

 

Speaking of Donal Finn - Rafe seems optimistic on that front - and possibly series length.

[CaddySedai]

I would indeed like eight. lol

[AdamA]

On 11/24/2021 at 10:54 AM, AviendhaSiswai said:

 

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....

I'm not sure how much you can trust the Netflix stats anyway. They did famously count a "watch" as something like two minutes without turning it off. It's entirely possible part of my perception is that Netflix is really good at creating hype. Shows like Stranger Things and The Witcher blitzed social media and felt really popular like they'd creeped into general pop culture.

 

We might all be underestimating Wheel of Time as television. My wife has now already started devouring Eye of the World, nearly read all of it while we were away for Thanksgiving. She's reading it in bed next to me right now instead of going to work. I was expecting it to jump in aggregate RT ratings, but not all the way to 86%. And it already has more fan ratings than The Boys now, so at least by that metric, it is now Amazon's most popular show. And it was already #1 in IMDB interest ratings.

 

I know a lot of people like to dismiss Rotten Tomatoes, but the nature of any aggregate is that you can always trust a lot of opinions more than one opinion. Where RT is misleading is when a show has very few reviews. There are a lot of 100%s out there with only 5 total ratings, for instance, and digging in a bunch are one paragraph mentions bundled with six other shows in a "what's on this week" type of column. But this has a lot of reviews. Any individual person is free to disagree, of course. There still are a few legit scathing reviews out there, and clearly a few people in this thread feel the same way, that this is terrible television. But in terms of popular opinion, it seems obvious this is succeeding right now. It's generating plenty of interest, and way more of it is positive interest than negative. Every trend is upward.

[themann1086]

Anecdotal, but I was with my future in-laws over the weekend and several of them were talking about the show, unprompted from me. When they learned I was a fan of the books they asked some questions about starting to read the series, too (what book to start with, what to expect, etc). All good things!

[AdamA]

22 hours ago, Arthellion said:

So uh…big jump today on Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes UI is terrible about this for some reason, but this is because they started counting the individual episode reviews.

 

For what it's worth, when this gets compared to Game of Thrones, at least in the later seasons, since they didn't do critics screenings at all, the entire rating is only individual episode reviews. For Wheel of Time, the front page of ratings is all reviews of the six-episode critics screeners, which are 72% positive. The individual episode reviews so far are 100% positive, which is part of why I expected the aggregate rating to go up eventually, because the week by week recaps tend to be by genre fans, whereas the critics full-season preview ratings are done by larger publications that review everything and assign some full-time professional critic to batch this in with 30 other things they need to watch that week to get to print.

[JenniferL]

Wheel of Time was the second most pirated show last week, after the release of Hawkeye. https://deadline.com/2021/11/hawkeye-venom-let-there-be-carnage-most-pirated-movies-tv-series-1234881693/

[Skipp]

46 minutes ago, JenniferL said:

Wheel of Time was the second most pirated show last week, after the release of Hawkeye. https://deadline.com/2021/11/hawkeye-venom-let-there-be-carnage-most-pirated-movies-tv-series-1234881693/

oh no! It is rating is failling in Pirating circles, couldn't Stay #1 for 2 weeks in a row.

[Deadsy]

12 hours ago, AdamA said:

Rotten Tomatoes UI is terrible about this for some reason, but this is because they started counting the individual episode reviews.

 

For what it's worth, when this gets compared to Game of Thrones, at least in the later seasons, since they didn't do critics screenings at all, the entire rating is only individual episode reviews. For Wheel of Time, the front page of ratings is all reviews of the six-episode critics screeners, which are 72% positive. The individual episode reviews so far are 100% positive, which is part of why I expected the aggregate rating to go up eventually, because the week by week recaps tend to be by genre fans, whereas the critics full-season preview ratings are done by larger publications that review everything and assign some full-time professional critic to batch this in with 30 other things they need to watch that week to get to print.

 

 

I swear I read some reviews by critics who had only seen 3 episodes.

Anyhow it's nice as long as it's fair. But if they really are averaging the overall % of 59 reviews with the % of 6 reviews for episode 4, it's a pretty stupid way to do it.

[DaddyFinn]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2021/11/30/amazons-the-wheel-of-time-hanging-in-there-with-hawkeye-and-the-witcher-demand/?sh=7875d1042ce7

 

I guess that's a win?

[Elder_Haman]

12 minutes ago, DaddyFinn said:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2021/11/30/amazons-the-wheel-of-time-hanging-in-there-with-hawkeye-and-the-witcher-demand/?sh=7875d1042ce7

 

I guess that's a win?

That's absolutely a win! Now time to hear all the rationalizations for why these numbers don't matter...

[SinisterDeath]

1 minute ago, Elder_Haman said:

That's absolutely a win! Now time to hear all the rationalizations for why these numbers don't matter...

I'm sure we'll hear all about why WoT TV Show is failing because it's below the failing hawkeye.
https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/hawkeye-ratings-lowest-marvel-series-disney-plus/
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/hawkeye-viewership-40-behind-loki-204622219.html

[Elder_Haman]

3 minutes ago, SinisterDeath said:

I'm sure we'll hear all about why WoT TV Show is failing because it's below the failing hawkeye.
https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/hawkeye-ratings-lowest-marvel-series-disney-plus/
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/hawkeye-viewership-40-behind-loki-204622219.html

TBH, the Marvel properties have been losing steam. I think Spiderman will amp things up again, but of the post Infinity War offerings: WandaVision and Loki were great. Black Widow, Shiang Chi were average. And Eternals, What If? were below average to poor.  

[Harad the White]

https://www.mediaweek.com.au/tv-demand-amazon-scores-a-clean-sweep-with-the-wheel-of-time/

"This week 'The Wheel of Time" came in at 28.43 points above market average in Australia and 25.05 points above average in New Zealand."

 

Those guys, especially NZ, know their fantasy.

 

 

[SinisterDeath]

2 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

I think Spiderman will amp things up again

100%. I can't wait to see how bad Tom Holland messes up the MCU.

 

I've actually read conflicting viewership numbers about Hawkeye. In one article its 40% below Loki, in another it's the top most watched Disney+ show in 39 countries.

Eitherway, for a new series to compete with MCU neck and neck, even if that series is lower than the top-watched MCU series is still an achievement. 

I want to see how this competes with "The Boys Season 3" and "Invincible Season 2".

[AdamA]

14 hours ago, Deadsy said:

 

 

I swear I read some reviews by critics who had only seen 3 episodes.

Anyhow it's nice as long as it's fair. But if they really are averaging the overall % of 59 reviews with the % of 6 reviews for episode 4, it's a pretty stupid way to do it.

Straight Tomatometer doesn't really make sense for a lot of reasons. One of those is equally weighting full season reviews with single episode. When they publish ranked lists, they'll use an adjusted score that accounts for number and quality of reviews as well as how many total reviews the critic has published. You'll see in those lists something with a 100% on the Tomatometer sometimes go as low as 80 or so and something with a 90% Tomatometer I've seen go as high as 105 when adjusted.

 

I've never seen a way to just get an adjusted score without a title being on one of these ranked lists, though. It's the only fair way to compare one rating to another.

[mogi68]

Reportedly Season 2 is halfway through filming

https://collider.com/wheel-of-time-season-2-halfway-finished-filming/

Apologies if already posted

[WhiteVeils]

This is quite the wow article.
Wheel of Time: Amazon’s Prime Video series isn’t the new Game of Thrones. It’s better. (slate.com)