I can’t be the only fan who is profoundly let down by this adaptation. They’ve stripped Jordan’s lovely individualistic characterizations, added story for no apparent reason (there wasn’t enough story to adapt?) and taken otherwise “family friendly” material and bloodied and sexed it up for no apparent story reason.

I agree 100% on the huge let down. Poor casting, brutal story and character changes and overall sloppy. It looked like some of the trollics were wearing gorilla costumes from the 80’s. They could have done something really great and they blew it!

They changed slot of things that make the characters who they are. Why are they older Rand, Mat and Person are supposed to be within days of each other. Why is Peeing married, where is the mayor? Way to many things wrong with this, I'm done

it seems auto spell is changing names

SO disappointed! Did the people associated with the show even read the book?  

Very disappointed, could only stomach a short time of watching.  I think they sold the rights to the lowest bidder.  I get changing the story to allow for time restraints, but making main character changes was unnecessary.  There is plenty of story to use without resorting to sexualizing the characters.  The characters were not well researched in comparison to the cast chosen.  I don’t think I can finish watching.  

Multiple issues and where do we true fans begin.

1) Battle of Two Rivers (as portrayed in the show) - does not take place in Eye of the World (as seen in show… yes it happens, but not described by Robert Jordan). The book is all about Rand and Tam fighting trollocs and Rand carrying him to Emonds Field to only discover about the fight then.

SAVING GRACE- weaving of one power for the fight was fantastic! Will give tons of credit there. I was always curious how filming would show the ONE POWER, but damn if they did not do a good job

2) Perrin married - simply put, why? Outrageous change to whole story

3) Rand and Egwene - book is all about their prepubescent frustration and inability to read emotions. NOT them sneaking sex. The whole first few books is all about their sexual frustration. Rand himself is always confused about sex until Min basically.

Very disappointed

4) Bella is a brown mare

5) Mat’s father was not described as an adulterous bastard

6) Moiraine was not hit with a Trolloc knife (I may be wrong, but I just don’t remember this)

7) Where is Thom?

that’s just seven problems. There are so many more and I just have to question why? It seems like the story didn’t matter at all. Game of Thrones was very book driven in the first few episodes and for some reason the best fantasy saga ever written can’t be adapted well.

I am supremely upset. 

From watching the first episode, this tv adaptation sucks. The only decent thing was some cool special effects, but everything else was lame. After I watched the lord of the rings movies and read the books that was a pretty good comparison between the lord of the rings movies and book. 

But for this TWOT TV series compared to the books. The books are a lot better. I was right when I told some freinds and relatives that I was skeptical about this tv series before it came out. It would have been great if they could have done a good job with it, but thats just not the case. But hey at least we still have the books to read.

Hoping everyone has a happy Thanksgiving.

This was absolutely horrible.  In order of severity, here are the offenses, ranked:

1.  What they did to Abell Cauthon

2.  What they did to Perrin’s backstory 

3.  Mat’s character change.  Way darker and morally questionable than he should have been.  Stealing????

4.  The overall tone.  Hideous.

5.  This should be number one.  The modern tendency towards oversimplification and bland dialogue.  My wife, who has not read the books, hated it as a new guest simply because it was so poorly made and acted.  With no preconceptions, she was turned off by the sophomoric tone and quasi-British accents that constitute acting nowadays.  
 

What a massive disappointment.  I wish I could say I was surprised.

I have to agree with all of the previous comments; this TV adaptation of  the WOT books is just straight up terrible! I was tempted to stop watching after the first few minutes. Very disappointing and makes you wonder why they were given so much liberty to destroy such a wonderful story. I thought I was watching a foreign movie and everyone all had the wrong scripts!

Did the writers and directors not read any of the books? What a huge let down…

9 hours ago, VanMan87 said:

Multiple issues and where do we true fans begin.

1) Battle of Two Rivers (as portrayed in the show) - does not take place in Eye of the World (as seen in show… yes it happens, but not described by Robert Jordan). The book is all about Rand and Tam fighting trollocs and Rand carrying him to Emonds Field to only discover about the fight then.

SAVING GRACE- weaving of one power for the fight was fantastic! Will give tons of credit there. I was always curious how filming would show the ONE POWER, but damn if they did not do a good job

2) Perrin married - simply put, why? Outrageous change to whole story

3) Rand and Egwene - book is all about their prepubescent frustration and inability to read emotions. NOT them sneaking sex. The whole first few books is all about their sexual frustration. Rand himself is always confused about sex until Min basically.

Very disappointed

4) Bella is a brown mare

5) Mat’s father was not described as an adulterous bastard

6) Moiraine was not hit with a Trolloc knife (I may be wrong, but I just don’t remember this)

7) Where is Thom?

 

that’s just seven problems. There are so many more and I just have to question why? It seems like the story didn’t matter at all. Game of Thrones was very book driven in the first few episodes and for some reason the best fantasy saga ever written can’t be adapted well.

 

I am supremely upset. 

I agree with most of this but one thing, there seems a misconception that the main characters are younger then they are at the start of the books, Rand, Perrin, Matt and Egwene are 19 and a half in eye of the world, so in many ways the depiction of them being immature and unaware of sex and relationships doesn't make sense in a lot of ways. 

As for the fight in Emonds Field while Robert Jordan may present it off page really it needed to be shown on screen in order to Show and not Tell, you would have had tons of exposition as characters explained what had happened. 

The changes to Matts background I like, it makes a lot more sense for his development and gives a sense of a wider world, like the subtle comment in episode 3 that confirms same sex relationships are a thing in the world of the wheel of time. As for his actions later on in episode 3 I think that demonstrates the effects of the knife on him. 

Pro's for me 

The difference in casting between Rand and the rest of the 2 rivers, it was subtle but my wife, who has no idea of the books or story, commented early on how he looks different to his dad and the other people in the 2 rivers. She also commented on how the dead Aiel had the same colouration as Rand. Those are the clever little things that can be shown on TV subtly as foreshadowing. 

The Introduction of Thom, while it doesn't happen until episode 3 it makes narrative sense in terms of introducing characters and gives him a great moment to appear. The introductions of the main characters was rushed as it was without fitting another one into the first episode. 

They writers obviously made a decision that the main story of Eye of the World doesn't really start until the party are split, so wanted to get us to that point to then dedicate time to the 2nd half of the book. This kind of makes sense 

Con's people have not mentioned. 

Padin Fain, a key character in the story who makes a brief appearance and then vanishes. I hope we see his story told in an episode soon or I worry he will become a side character and not the main antagonist he is in the books. 

Matt's finding of the knife, my wife was just perplexed, it could have been explained a lot better. 

There is so much not to like. I am not sure I can keep watching after the 1st 3 episodes.

• I was okay with continuity changes because you have to admit that the books could be slow. But that is one of the only things I liked.Other than the 1st episode was too fast.
• Sets and special effects are good for TV.
• There is no chemistry between the cast. The backstory changes make me not like most of the characters. In the books the best thing was the camaraderie of the Two Rivers folk, I don’t see it now.
• Matt was a likable scoundrel, now he is a thief and his dad is a womanizer - Why?
• I liked that they gave us a view of the Trollock’s attacking the Two Rivers but they cut/changed one of the most important scene’s for Rand’s character development. His dragging Tam to town wondering who he was. Why?
• Perrin married and pretty much otherwise unmemorable. Why?
• Egweyne grows apart from Rand because she wants to be a Wisdom and they can’t marry. They could have just followed the book here to the same result with no difference.
• But doing this turns Rand into an emo teen, I never saw him this way before . Why?
• Moraine and Lan seem to be cast best so far but there hasn’t been time to develop them.
• Nynieve casting seems okay.
• For a secondary character Eamon Velda seems good.
• Padan Fain didn’t get enough airtime so no opinion there.
• This will likely be deleted as you can’t say anything negative about diversity but there is too much of it.
• There are very strong central female characters in the books, why do you need 4 Taveren.
• The old and the ancient blood is a fairly strong plot point. Why do all the characters from the two rivers, a very secluded mountain region with few visitors since the trollock wars, look like international melting pot of central London.
• Can’t wait to see what they do with the Aiel after the above.

I am going to try to keep watching but this is not off to a good start.

I agree with everything being said so far. Especially when it comes to Matt being unnecessarily dark and untrustworthy. Tam said it best when he was talking to Rand about what the Village Council discussed. He talk about “four solid lads”.  Not three solid lads, a solid young lady and a thief.  I hate what this show has done with Matt and his father Abell (who was a leading member of the Village Council and someone others looked to for guidance). Also, Moiraine tells Lan “there are rumors of FOUR TA’VEREN” in the Two Rivers. 1st the people of Emond’s Field (and the entire Two Rivers for that matter) don’t know what a Ta’veren is, let alone that they may have four. 2nd Moiraine was LOOKING FOR ONE and only took all three after she discovered more than one and because she didn’t know which was the DR. The changes may seem small to someone who hasn’t read the series. But to those of us who have, the small changes lead to bigger things needing to be changed because of those and foreshadows even bigger changes in the story later on if the series is allowed to progress far enough. 

Anyone else’s video quality utterly horrible?