12 hours ago, WhiteVeils said:

Here's something...

https://deadline.com/2021/12/the-wheel-of-time-season-2-recurring-cast-guy-roberts-gregg-chillingirian-1234885579/

Before clicking the link I thought the actors might be at least slightly Asian looking. Apparently the actors playing Lord Agelmar and his wife ARE Asian looking. This diversification of races in all nations hurts the show I feel.

So many excuses have been on why the two rivers have African and Indian looking actors "the books say they have dark features" so does most of southern europe. But now they are mixing things up in Sheinar and I think in ep6 Siouan Sanche (the blue eyed blonde) becomes and old black woman.

I think they are trying very hard to not have any European looking actors in this show. Rand, Mat, Liandrin, Bornhald, Arams mom are the few exceptions. Thom has a distinctive American look to him somehow.

The theme we have seen in areas so far is european, with architecture, clothing. weather, forests, weapons. The diverse skin tones makes it all seem very jarring. Feels more like modern day multicultural countries like USA, Canada, Australia rather than the old world theme of Randland where people are mostly the same in their corner of the world. There is definitely a modern agenda being applied rather than the authors vision.

12 hours ago, AdamA said:

 Casting Dolph Lundgren and Hafthor Bjornsson as Rand and Perrin is certainly more true to the books,

 

Are you joking or is that what you really thought from reading the books? Rand should be a tall ginger male with bright eyes, slightly muscular from work on a farm. Perrin should be shorter but wider with strong arms from working at a forge.

I thought they made a good choice for Lan but there are too many smiles and fidgeting with the hands. I feel this isn't acting but characteristics of the actor himself. The adjustment of sizes between Lan and Moiraine above look good.

I think if they shaved Mats face to make him look younger it would have helped early on. If they are replacing him I think an actor similar to Tom Holland would do well.

I always imagined Eqwene, the innkeepers daughter, to be stockier (not fat) but more like a Bavarian barmaid at Oktoberfest carrying 3 steins in each hand. I wouldn't want this actress to serve me a single stein in fear she might drop it.

I feel that any time someone weaves there's a lot of hand gestures and dancing about. I haven't read the books in a while but I am sure that part of the testing to be Aes Sedai requires a woman to not only cast complex weaves but also to do so quickly and under pressure.

We have seen Aes Sedai casting quickly in the forest fight and even the unschooled Egwene casts rather fast in the tent but anytime weaves are shown (usually Moiraine) it seems to take forever.

They say a chaneller can turn the tide of battle and can replace 100 men but I think an archer can shoot 5+ arrows in the time it takes Moiraine to pick up a rock and throw it. I really hope chanelling in future episodes is done much faster. As it is now chanelling seems to slow the pace of fight scenes.

A fireball should be a very basic weave for someone who has passed the tests. I would like to see fireballs flying like machine gun fire in future fights with trollocs.

Fighting with the one power should be like any other fighting. It is a tool or a weapon. It should be treated as matter of fact not a spectacle to awe onlookers. Weaves should snap together almost instantly.

I don't know maybe they could even stretch their CGI budget if they spend less time showing off weaves and more time putting the Saidar to work ?

What do you guys think.

2 hours ago, TheMountain said:

I would have started it the same way as in the books. With the Prologue!

Me too. It would have given a glimpse of what is possible in the world and I also feel it would have grabbed audiences attention. What we have now is people riding around with swords and Moiraine dancing around in the streets for 10 minutes to cast a fireball. The prologue shows Travelling!

3 hours ago, Wolfbrother31 said:

 

Upon a reread I actually found Matt to be pretty annoying through the first three books... He's constantly making dumb mistakes & whinging & comes across as still a kid. So I like the change ... And performance wise - Barney is doing the best. It's really a shame to lose him. Wish they would tell us why. 

That's the way he is supposed to be. Gets get more mature later in the books due to experiences (not age).

This is how you make a story interesting. You have immature people and mature people. You have young people and old people, rich poor, good evil etc You need to have contrasts and growth.

So far Mat, Perrin and Rand all seem to have the same boring grim personality. There is little interesting about these characters and I feel they will just get more grim and serious. Boring.

Perrin should have been most mature because of Master Luhan's influence and the recent death of his family, Rand should have been and average personality changing depending on the situation and Mat should have been always the joker (big smiles and childishness regardless of the situation) until he gets the dagger.

Lan is the character that should have been grim based on his life experiences. A rock for the rest of the party. Instead he is all smiles and touchy feely nonsense.

7 hours ago, Sir_Charrid said:

With the prologue we may as well stop all pretense and ignore all the work RJ did to hide the truth of the world from us for so long. Yea there where hints but I imagine most readers the first time through didn’t pick up on them because they where subtle. 
 

Having Lewis knelt, flat screen TVs all around him, a metallic type of clothing on, outside the widows showing a high tech land of monorails and flying cars ravaged with no context what so ever just throws the viewer out. 
 

The Shanara Chronicles, See and even the game Horizon Zero Dawn let on from the first scene you are on earth and they are written that way. If Rafe changed that reveal that would be like Charlton Heston landing next to the Statue of Liberty in scene one of planet of the apes. 
 

As for Caemlyn I will ask again what do you cut out? A story arc that is far more important for foreshadowing? To those who say do it later, do you like your story telling to be so linear that a thing is premptied and then in the next scene comes to pass? I prefer far more nuanced story telling as do many of my friends. Those things that happen in season 1 to set up one of the last scenes of the whole series that make people go back and rewatch to see the things they missed. The Bond is one of the key traps set by the dark lord if not the key trap. It makes up the entirety of that final play by Moridin to break Rand and let loose a second Lewis Therin. That deserves more then a line of exposition or a mention the season before. It deserves to sit and fester and build, something that can be called back to to remind the audience. When Moreaine dies Nyn can now ask, has he gone like Steppin, again reminding the audience of that key crux moment. You don’t need to have Rand at the final battle and Nyn yell out, Rand if Alanna dies you will go crazy and want to die because your bonded to her.

Not sure what you are on about. Metallic clothing and flat screen tv's?!

"His eyes caught his own reflection in a mirror hanging askew from bubbled marble. His clothes had been regal once, in gray and scarlet and gold; now the finely-woven cloth, brought by merchants from across the World Sea, was torn and dirty, thick with the same dust that covered his hair and skin. For a moment he fingered the symbol on his cloak, a circle half white and half black, the colors separated by a sinuous line."

Also described are tapestries on the walls and gold and ivory furniture. He also wears a pale gray cloak. Throw some weird looking terangreal in there defying physics or glowing and you will have the home of Lews Therin in Tar Valon. It would be about as alien to our world as it is to current day Randland.

If it was included audiences would know to expect something more from this show than a bunch of people with swords and drab clothing riding around in the woods. The current show is a very generic fantasy show that doesn't meet standards established by GoT and The Witcher. It needs more to set it apart from the rest of the new shows starting up to target those audiences.

2 minutes ago, Sir_Charrid said:

This is the main reason I am really pleased they have not shown the Prologue of the books yet, starting out in a ruined high tech environment showing people wearing high tech clothing spoils all of this. 

 

I also agree, for non book readers the information that is key to the story is being put across. Gentling, The bond, trollocs, faders, and dark friends etc. it is being delivered in a non exposition dump way in easy to swallow bites that are sinking in. For instance Gentling, Thom tells, then it is shown with Logain. Warders, we are told and then shown about the Bond. This isn't just a story telling approach but is also used in all forms of education to help details and facts sink in. There is alot of information a casual viewer needs to understand and it is important they don't feel lost, or even worse, stupid for not already knowing "all the details". 

Without the prologue or Caemlyn this story is just a bunch of villagers running around the woods with a pretty tower at the end.

On 11/28/2021 at 5:01 AM, Sir_Charrid said:

Lan at the start of the books is a very wooden character who is pretty much one dimensional and really reminds me of Aragorn. I have no problem with the emotion his character shows later on (which I imagine in part where do to Robert Jordan developing and changing the character as he got to know him). Authors generally change characters over long series as they write them I imagine had Robert re written eye if the world he would have changed a lot in it based on how the world developed in his head. 

Lan changes later in the books for a reason. He gets worse for Myrelle but he does get softer for Nynaeve. It is too soon for him to be getting soft and never this soft.

On 11/27/2021 at 7:01 AM, MasterAblar said:

 

Who do I need to bribe to make this happen? I have money.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don't

"and abruptly he pulled one hand out, slashing at her face with the ruby-hilted dagger.

One minute Lan was in the doorway, the next he was at the bedside, as if he had not bothered with the intervening space. His hand caught Mat’s wrist, stopping the slash as if it had struck stone."

from the reunion in Caemlyn Book 1

35 minutes ago, LordyLord said:

I think this Review below succintly explains the issue with the episode and to an extent the whole series.

 

Its a very objective critique

 

"I don't think we have a single scene from the book" LOL. No mucking about. I like this girl.

6.5 is too generous for this episode though.

Anyway she has said everything I am thinking far better than I could say it, and much more politely.

Neither is Lan like any ordinary human, or so many people think.

Found some footage of Lan fighting

https://i.imgur.com/QZfMTN1.mp4

More efficiency of movement and less flailing around is what I expect from warders.

2 hours ago, Bruan said:

No, your metaphor is quite good. It also highlights the problems I’m having with the show. You see, the story isn’t the destination. The story is the path taken to the destination. You change that path, you change the story. We could both start out in a suburb and walk to city hall. I choose to go through the industrial park and the ghetto. You choose to walk through the green spaces and China town. It doesn’t really matter that we both end up at city hall, we’ll each be telling our own and very different story about the trip.

Well said. Also it isn't really about the destination. Anyone can go to that destination. The story is about the people and whether you feel invested in them. There has not been enough focus on the main characters for us to know them. They feel generic.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-reviews/wheel-of-time-review-1235048788/

"Judkins is in much more of a rush, and it’s only one episode before the characters, who barely have names, much less personalities, are galloping away. What follows is a monotonous and fairly predictable series of jaunts from one town to the next, from one encounter with threatening strangers to the next, from one contrived separation of the group’s members to the next. I never felt like I was watching an unfolding story, but I absolutely felt like I was watching the whiteboard in a writers room, more the pushing of note cards toward a destination than an adventure."

Also

"...but it’s definitely like watching somebody else film their visit to a Wheel of Time theme park on an iPhone. It’s not the real thing, and you’re not really there, and, in and of itself, it’s almost shockingly devoid of artistry or narrative momentum. But its adjacency to a thing that lots of people love is likely to prove sufficient for many of them."

It's so true. ?

17 hours ago, fra85uk said:

I agree with both, just suggesting a way to be less angry.

Why not be angry? We should all be angry. This is the one shot at a show we have been waiting for 2 decades and instead we get something so very dumb and bland. This could have been epic even with limited resources.

22 hours ago, Dead Warder said:

@AusLeviathan, honestly man, you're gonna have to find a way to let this go. If you believe me on anything, then believe me when I say that I loathe this adaptation far more than you. This forum has a general pro-show lean but if you think that your voiced disappointment is going to steer the ship around or change the hearts/minds here, then I have to say you're in for more of that disappointment.

 

For now, we can fall back to enjoying the source and do our best to either A) ignore the show and pretend it doesn't exist or B) continue to delve forward with the knowledge that it's something completely different.

 

Ya gotta find a way to come to terms, otherwise it's going to eat away at you and make you even more bitter.

I'm with @AusLeviathan

I feel many of us including myself were desperate for this show to be good because we love WoT so much.

I don't know if this site has any cross promotion / financial ties with the show but there is definitely a lean towards supporting the show no matter what. "Anything can be forgiven" seems to be the general attitude.

We all want the show to be good and it could have been much much better but many of you are sitting here polishing a turd while the rest of us are backing away and saying "that is shit!"

If there is snot hanging out your nose I am going to tell you ASAP so you don't keep walking around all day with snot on your face.

On 12/5/2021 at 2:53 PM, AusLeviathan said:

I just want Rand the main character from the books but I can't have him because he's a man and men are bad so he must be put out of focus.

 

I just want Egwene from the books but I can't have her because she's a woman and must immediately shown to be unbreakable and strong from the beginning without her journey and she must also not be allowed to have the personality traits that made her interesting.

 

I just want Lan from the books but I can't have him because he's a strong man and strong men are toxic and must instead be portrayed as incompetent emotional cry babies.

 

I just want the Warders from the books but I can't have them because men who are badass warriors are wrong and need to instead be sensitive, useless and apparently there more to provide sex for Aes Sedai than to actually do their jobs.

 

I just want the story from the books but the story prophesied a male chosen one in a world where women held the power and that doesn't fit the message of men are bad and women are good so we must change the story because even in a universe where men who gain that universe's magic power are destined to go insane we still can't actually give men anything and we must make it clear that the chosen one can be a woman (regardless of how little narrative sense that makes).

 

I just want something, anything that actually fits the book and hasn't been corrupted to the point of being unrecognizable and losing everything that made it good in the books.

100% agree. The characters don't actually seem to have any character and little personality that is fitting to how the story should be.

Instead of the wheeloftime story we get a rewrite that has names/places/factions from the books. It all feels like fan fiction to me.

It's a real shame because I knew that no WoT show would be 100% as in the books but I never thought it would be this bad. It exceeds the worst of my expectations.

5 minutes ago, Gothic Flame said:

As I understand it, he wanted something that equalled HBO's GoT. 

He must be so disappointed. This is worse than the failure at the end of GoT. At least GoT got off the ground and had a lot of buzz surrounding it. WoT is so bland no one is really talking about it in any good way outside these forums.

On 12/4/2021 at 10:57 PM, RextheDog said:

i understand the opposition to the changes in Lan, im hoping he gets a bit of 'form' back, but making him more Human can theoretically only help the WOT universe

 

ask yourself do you really want the guy to be robotically undefeatable? is that the character you want to see?

Absolutley YES

On 12/4/2021 at 8:49 PM, JacJohns said:

Absolutely terrible. Every episode I watch makes me shudder at the absolute failure of the entire production. This doesn't feel like something that RJ would have allowed while he was alive. There's almost nothing left of the story now, no trace of the greatness or vision of the original works.

 

This episode takes more out of the story to replace it with cheap game of thrones writing. What they have done to all of the characters up to this point is disgusting. None of them act the way they should. 

 

Matt was supposed to be happy in the beginning, mischievous. They made him a walking pile of teen angst. He basically didn't change after getting the dagger. Except for that very non book scene with the slaughtered family.

 

Perrin has been absolutely gutted. Nothing left of the original character at this point except the eyes. Reminds me of what they did to Goku in the Dragonball movie. Sad.

 

Rand. Rand basically has no character. They took all his development away to give it to Moiraine. 

 

Lan. They made him a useless, emotional baby. RJ probably rolling in his grave over that. This episode especially killed the soul of his character.

 

Thom. The least gleeful gleeman ever. Even his into is depressing.

 

I have no idea who thought any of this was ok. My wife had to calm me down after this one. Shame on Rafe. This episode especially seems like he's just trying to copy Game of Thrones' senselessly gritty formula for a story that needs humor and rationality to make the characters and story work.

 

This episode will be my last, I can't take anymore of Amazon Rafing the story to death.

Amen. It's a disgrace and an insult to RJ's legacy. If they didn't have the budget to do it right they should have held back the IP until they had enough.

This feels like a bit of cash grab to me, using the title "Wheel of Time" just to bring in audiences not realising this could have been an epic sustained and well loved tv show. Instead they came up with an utterly forgettable product.

If Bezos was willing to invest an hour or two of his income this could be truly epic.

On 12/4/2021 at 6:43 PM, FatManAngreal said:

By all means let me hear your theories around how he's managed to kill so many Aes Sedai? They are the most powerful people on the planet and we literally saw him burn one alive. It was made very clear through the direction of the scene that Valda feels completely safe because they've got no hands, but then states they don't need their hands to channel? It just doesn't stand up.

Also cutting off someones hands makes it nearly impossible to tie their hands behind their back when your cooking them alive. Also if you are being cooked alive you can use the one power in defense of your life...

On 12/3/2021 at 1:42 PM, Harad the White said:

At least it wasn't "roaring with madness." ?

His focus wasn't on Rand. It was on Mat. They are trying really hard to point audiences away from Rand.

Lan is too emotional. Too much too soon. I would have preferred him to be portrayed like an Asian Henry Cavill in the Witcher

A lot of cool bits have been skipped and replaced with long boring discussions.

Great characters seem to have been skipped and the focus has been placed on insignificant background characters.

Where is Elayne, Gawin, Galad, Morgase, Min, Bayle Domon, Basil Gill, Gareth Bryne? No lets skip all them because we don't have time and instead lets focus a whole episode instead on Stepin who was barely mentioned and died in the background in the books...

Padan Fain has not been shown entering Shadar Logoth and if you think about it, that is one of the most important things to happen in the books.

I'm starting to feel like the writers of the series have no concept of what is a key moment in the story and instead are looking for cool moments to grab audiences. Unfortunately I feel it is all coming across a bit beige instead.

1 hour ago, Theseus78 said:

It's probably going to be more about how difficult it is to tell the actors apart or if we can get the visual facial expressions across vs an inconvenience to the actors.

There is a trope where the the actors remove their masks simply for the audiences benefit. This is done because it is believed the audience won't be able to tell who it is. I am 100% certain that we will be able to tell main characters apart with the lower half of their face covered.

Besides we don't know why this style arose. Maybe it's an outdoors thing like hats. Maybe it is to protect the face from the sun or to keep bugs out of the mouth. Maybe Taraboners feel naked without it in front of strangers but are ok without it in their homes. There are ways to get around it without unmasking everytime the actor appears.

2 minutes ago, KakitaOCU said:

But it fits with the books more than you think.  Do a search for Wheel of Time White Cloaks.  a good hunk of the pictures of Galad, of Dain Bornhald and others show a longer cloak draping over the sword arm.

Looking at the image of them confronting Moraine, I don't see anything impeding a sword arm.  I see a white sash going up over the right shoulder, but not interfering with the arm.

I also see a clear sign that they have heavier armor for real battles.  The main tunic is quilted, consistent with a gambeson meant to provide padding and interior support with plate.  Also, the deliberate armor down the left arm matches with a few different armor styles where you use it like a shield.

All in all I see nothing in their uniform that precludes heavier armor when appropriate or that would hinder their sword arms.  (And I say this as someone with a decade of sword training and experience with real armor).

Are your opinions coming from your own experiences or how it looks to you?  

LOL. My experiences? When have I ever traveled for weeks through hostile territory with a sword? What I do know is that I would be wearing my breastplate all the time and not just when I decided it was time to fight. Helmet can be carried on the saddle and quickly be worn. I expect my cloak to be protecting my entire back from the elements and to stay out of the way in a fight for my life. If I were wearing arm armor I would expect it to be attached to something sturdy like my breastplate or a gorget, not cloth.

On 12/1/2021 at 10:18 AM, templar7 said:

I totally understand how you feel on this, but it's no less Jordan's story really. It's just a different turning if the wheel. I myself was worried that the show would mirror the books too much. Fantasy on screen is a tough sell when balancing realisim and wonder. 

I really don't think they had much choice but to go darker. 

I love the books too, but if they cast 16 year olds and capped the lexicon at Blood and ashes it would just come off like Narnia or Disney/Esq. IMO anyway. But I totally respect your opinion.

If they cast 16 year olds the actors would probably be 30 by the time the series ends. Assuming 1 book per season. Moraine will look 56 so they better film all her scenes now if they want to maintain that ageless look.