And maybe worth keeping in mind that these little snippets are so poorly written, you have to wonder how much communication there was between Random Marketing Guy who whipped these up and the actual production team. Rafe may know all the subtle ins and out of the lore, the DR, saidar vs. saiden, etc., but whoever wrote these little bios may not. They are riddled with errors, bad writing, and bad grammar:

For example:

A mysterious and powerful Aes Sedai capable of channeling the One Power, her arrival brings with it concern, and threat of chaos.

shouldn't it be "and a/the threat of chaos"

Aes Sedai may never speak that which is not true, but the truth one tells you is not always the truth you may think.

This is so clunky it hurts my head. I doubt RJ ever worded it so poorly.

She’s promised to marry Rand, but others see her potential.

What does this even mean? (I know what it means; it's just very clumsy.)

The town Wisdom wishes to train her, and the arrival of an Aes Sedai who wants to take her from Two Rivers further complicates her once simple life.

So now it's Two Rivers, not the Two Rivers?

She’s quickly realizing she could be more important than anyone ever imagined.

Except for all those other people who saw her potential...?

When Moiraine arrives in Two Rivers, he pays little mind.

Okay, Two Rivers it is! Oh, wait a second...

Nynaeve is fierce and assertive, commanding respect as the youngest Wisdom the Two Rivers has ever seen.

?

I could go on! (and on and on) but the point is, maybe we should not take these dinky little write-ups like they are the gospel truth.

1 hour ago, Maximillion said:

Can't remember where but I heard the colourful patches of his cloak are going to be on the inside.

Yeah I heard the same thing, but thought a few small colorful touches on the outside might still show up.

5 hours ago, Elder_Haman said:

But I don’t think it speaks to the idea that they are going to change the story in the way @Maximillionsuggests. 

100% agree. 

55 minutes ago, Maximillion said:

I don't put ANYTHING past the people who make these shows, though.

Also in complete agreement.

Very few ideas these days are 'off the table.' A year ago, I would have said making someone besides Rand the Dragon was absolutely insane and could never ever happen. Nowadays... I'm not sure I would even be surprised.

What would surprise me is if one of the 11,000 notes Rafe says the production team has received from their Amazon overlords did not include some suggestion/spitballing about Rand and a 'white savior complex,' and whether it might be possible to change the identity of the Dragon Reborn. I trust Rafe enough to ignore that particular sort of suggestion, but if the show is a $uccess and Big Daddy Amazon decides they want to make certain changes a few years down the road that Rafe disagrees with, who do we think is going to win that fight?

Again, I think a lot of these world-breaking what-ifs are extremely unlikely. I do think a lot of the smaller changes are worrying, though less from a political prism (for now) and more from a book-purist-insofar-as-that-is-possible-in-a-major-TV-adapataion perspective. We will have a much better idea where things stand in 3 weeks.

23 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

There is just no reason to believe this.

Amazon Studios does have an Inclusion Playbook (as I'm sure many companies do by now) that establishes diversity/inclusionary quotas for all types of roles on film projects they work on both behind the scenes and in front of the camera. It's not as ominous as some people might fear, and it does include a bold header that says The story comes first. It also includes the following language: To reduce invisibility in entertainment, and where the story allows, we aim to include one character from each of the following categories for speaking roles of any size, and at minimum 50% of the total of these should be women: (1) lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or gender non-conforming / non-binary; (2) person with a disability; and (3) three regionally underrepresented racial/ethnic/cultural groups (e.g. in the US, three of the following: Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Middle Eastern/North African, or Asian / Pacific Islander or Multi-Racial). A single character can fulfill one or more of these identities.

And: Creative teams are required to submit detailed plans for auditioning and casting to ensure that candidates from underrepresented communities are considered and hired. The plans must also outline strategies for how the production will cultivate an inclusive environment.

On the flip-side, it also says this: The Inclusion Policy recommends casting characters from all backgrounds, as long as it does not compromise the authenticity of the narrative. For example, when a movie or series focuses on a particular racial/ethnic group, or is set in a homogenous context or location, it will be exempted from the requirements to diversify casting.

To see the full Inclusion Policy for yourself: https://dei.amazonstudios.com/inclusion-policy/

So, I don't know that we can assume all aspects of the Wheel of Time are going to be free from 'modern-day' influences, whether you agree with quota-driven policies or not.

30 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

Not everything has to be about politics.

No, it sure doesn't! And yet, it increasingly seems to seep into every untouched corner. Just because WoT doesn't have to be about politics, doesn't mean it won't be.

31 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

Sometimes people can just make art. 

Would that it were so.

19 hours ago, Skipp said:

I will say that the Dialogue/script is a little clunky when Rosamund is talking about "The Last Dragon".  I think they could have worded those lines better.

Warning: this is very nitpicky!

I also felt like there was a lot of clunkiness in the dialogue in the initial teaser. These three lines jumped out at me:

"The only thing that matters is what you do." (I think this was Siuan speaking, but I could be wrong.)

"No matter what happens, all the pain we face..." (Tam)

"Whatever happens now, there's no turning back." (Moiraine)

(I'll say at the outset, I am not sure which (if any) of those lines are direct quotes from the books. I don;t have e-versions that I can cross-reference.)

That said, to my ear, the repeated use of the same simple words and similar phrasing is like being hit in the side of the head with a blunt piece of wood. Many writers spend a lot of time trying to make sure they don't repeat the same words over and over in close proximity... That, of course, is personal preference, but when you read bad writing, the overuse of the same word jumps off the page like they were written in red ink. In cases like this (meaning the above 3 examples) there is a temptation to argue that 'that's what a character would really say! They would all use the same words as one another, and the same types of phrases, so we're just representing the most realistic, natural modes of speaking.' That is not necessarily untrue, but part of a writer's job is (imo) to represent something that feels natural and realistic without slavishly adhering to that approach at the cost of your finished product sounding dull and repetitive. (This applies to many forms of art; I am only applying it to dialogue in this case.) 

A counter argument might be that the repetition in this trailer is intentional in order to hammer home a theme. That theme, I suppose, would be something about how stuff happens, and how the consequences of that stuff matters. Which, sure. But we couldn't workshop the language for another half-hour and come up with some slightly more interesting phraseology. Not saying we need Shakespearean verse every other line, but some of these sentences sound like they were written in one pass. (See similar threads/posts about young(ish) TV writers attempting to adapt the style of a Bestselling author who spent years penning his prose.) Ultimately, these lines just sound so... basic. Uninspired. Sterile. Spiritless. Unimaginative. Again, we don't need Tam speaking in iambic pentameter or every character to sound like they are regurgitating a medieval thesaurus, but a little linguistic creativity would go a long way.

This is, obviously, entirely subjective. Some will say simple, straight-to-the-point sentences and two-syllable words are preferable to overly-wrought, pretentious dialogue, but I think there can be a sweet spot in between—it just takes time and effort to find it... and I'm not sure we've seen any examples yet. (Acknowledging, of course, that we have a very small sample size to draw from.) 

(I will write another post on the things I do like soon! ? )

I think a lot of us tended to agree with the speculation that they would play up the 'Who is the Dragon Reborn' angle for Season 1... and that seems to be basically confirmed in this clip. Could be a lot of fun with misdirection, although I hope they don't lean on this too hard as a marketing tool since a even a 2-second google search will give the answer away to any interested newbies, and then what? Maybe better to develop some new series-long tagline like "Will the Dragon save the world, or break it all over again?"

With the show only 4 short weeks away now, does anyone have any educated guesses on when a full trailer might drop? What is the shortest time frame they would leave between trailer and premiere?

(And does it seem like just yesterday to anyone else that we were all guessing at when the show would finally come out, right about the time we were starting to get those first tiny teasers (the sword, the guitar, the Winespring Inn) and speculation was all over the board as to when it would premiere? That was a year ago!!!)

3 hours ago, Maximillion said:

I was quite surprised to see that there was a film coming next year - the first of a trilogy.

I'll believe it when I see it. Still waiting for that Dark Tower TV series. 

Good work, @JaimAybara

I noticed this, too... Some colorful 'tassels' hanging off his back/hip? And if you slow-mo the clip, it looks like the 'tassels' move with Thom as the camera zooms, suggesting they are part of his garb (as opposed to a decoration on the wall behind him.) Could this be a small nod toward the gleeman's colorful cloak, or is it a less-significant decoration on his guitar case or other bard-like accessories?

7 minutes ago, Elgee said:

I never thought of Tom being 70. Is that accepted lore?

I grabbed it from this, from wot.fandom.com/wiki: 

Thom's age is not specifically given in the novels. He is said to be white-haired, but still attractive enough to attract considerably younger women such as Dena, whilst Elayne notes that he is still handsome. At one point Morgase muses that Thom was "twice her age" during their relationship,^[3] presumably in 984-85 NE when Morgase was 27 (turning 28), which would have made Thom around 54-56 at the time (and therefore about 70 at the start of the series) but at another point Thom is described as being "in his prime" at that time, suggesting a younger age.^[4]

Robert Jordan's notes on Andor attempt to be more precise, saying that Thom is about 19-20 years older than Morgase. This would had made Thom in his late forties during his relationship with Morgase and about 60 or 61 when the main series events begin. The contradictory information is presumably why Thom's age was not canonised in The Wheel of Time Companion.

I'm embarrassed to say I didn't read the bottom part the first time around, though, saying he could be as young as 60. My bad!

And a guy in his early 60's could look like Wilhaume in that clip... I guess I have to eat my words on that one! ?

1 hour ago, mogi68 said:

He might still have the cloak...we've only seen one tiny shot of the guy

For this one, I think Rafe hinted that the Wardrobe Team came up with a creative solution to incorporate some element of the iconic gleeman attire (I have heard the suggestion that the inside of his jacket could have some patchwork design to it, perhaps) which tends to suggests they are not going with a full-on rainbow-colored cloak. I think Rafe's words were something along the lines of 'they nailed it' in regards to this. As with so many things, will have to wait and see.

Yeah, I dunno... I understand the company line about an old silverfox in a particolored cloak singing and doing somersaults being to cheesy for modern TV, I just don't buy it.

A patchwork cloak can still be faded and travelworn to keep it realistic; it doesn't have to be as bright as a box of crayons. To me, the very idea of there only being a handful of true gleemen travelling the country in their unmistakable attire was one of the most iconic elements of the early novels... Ditching it under the pretense that it wouldn't work on TV strikes me as a pretty lame excuse. (Not picking on you, @TheMountain—I think we heard a line from Rafe nearly a year ago saying just that.)

Nor does TV Thom need to do somersaults onto the tops of barrels or walk on his hands—but I don't recall him doing so in the books, either. Rand just mentions that Thom can, or at least that is Rand's impression of what a typical, crowd-pleasing gleeman is able to do. Dramatic, performative mannerisms could easily be toned down for the screen without violating a single written word from the books.

I'm not opposed to TV Thom playing guitar, since the actor will actually be able to play it—I fully expect Thom from the books could have played guitar as well (and a half-dozen other instruments.) So this is not a deviation so much as it as an addition to the character (a slippery semantic slope, I know.)

As long as they give him at least one scene with a harp, possibly in a court setting, like others have suggested, I'll consider that an appropriate adaption. 

I'm not terribly opposed to aging him down, either, if that was done to get the best actor for the job, and by all accounts Alexandre Wilhaume is a phenomenal actor... but they are chopping nearly 20 years off Thom's age. (Thom being roughly 70 when the book series starts, and Wilhuame not yet 50.) Still, it seems like they have aged him down an entire generation. Thom in the books might by spry for his age, but he is unmistakably portrayed more as a 'younger' (or at least younger at heart) old man as opposed to an over-the-hill middle-aged man, if that makes sense. Which made for such great variety in the core group of main characters! You had the late-teenage E5 (with Nyneave being a bit older than the other 4); then ageless Moiraine and stone-faced Lan in the middle; and Thom tagging along, representing the senior citizens. Now, with the E5 aged-up (and Nyneave not appearing much older, if at all, than the other 4) and Lan looking relatively young and Thom barely 50, the age dynamic of the entire group is condensed that much closer to one another. Is that a big deal in the long run? Maybe not, I don't know.

I guess I just don't believe the ivory tower excuse that some difficult choices 'absolutely have to be made, because TV.' I think it's more likely the opposite: 'We decided to make certain unnecessary changes simply because we could, because TV.'

This is the Thom I know!

I'll give the new guy a fair shake, but this is one big change I am leery of. I think you can draw a straight line from Batman Begins to 'Make Thom Merrilin dark and gritty.' 

1 hour ago, Rose said:

Can we talk about that song in the background? I can't make it out very well but I think I like it a lot! 

What little we can hear sounds great to me. 

6 hours ago, redgiant said:

That is what worries me when I see stuff like this make it into anything, be it a trailer or the show itself. Its not just the finished product we see, its the myriad of crew and processes this had to go though to make it to us, and no one stopped it.

100% with you on that one. Like you say, the storyboarding (a lot of which is done digitally now with moving, animated frames like a living comic book) and scripting and behind-the-scenes work that goes into every single shot makes you wonder how a single bad shot ever ends up in any show. But maybe that's exactly the problem--who is going to stand up and say, Wait a minute, cut the cameras, are we sure this actually looks good? Maybe we should send the crew home for a few weeks and send this one back to the drawing board.

Rafe seems like a very cool, very easygoing, friendly guy, but I wonder sometimes (perhaps unfairly) if that demeanor leads to more sub-par ideas being given the go-ahead. Not saying you want some iron-fisted tyrant running the show, but there has to be a middle-ground where the boss is willing to say No, that Artistic Idea is not good. Go back and do it over. And maybe Rafe does, but some of these scenes that are drawing heavy criticism (the words CW and cheesy are showing up a lot) make you wonder. This is his first time running a show, after all. There's no guarantee he's the best person for the job.

On the counterpoint, even with a 10$ million/episode budget, sometimes you realize you shot a scene and it doesn't look quite right later on in the editing bay, but you can't go back and reshoot the whole thing for a variety of reasons, and you just have to work with what you've got. That's life. Somebody (I forget who) made a great point about the Innkeeper at the Prancing Pony in LOTR pointing to Strider, and how hokey it *could* be viewed as... and I look back on every frame of that scene fondly and think it's a masterpiece! Go figure! But that's why I am a little more forgiving about silly-looking shots or maybe a line of dialogue delivered with a weird cadence... I can give the benefit of the doubt with that stuff. It will be the broader, sweeping changes (whatever they end up being) which the writers, costume designers, and prop designers had months, if not years, to meticulously plan out that will be tougher to swallow if they turn out poorly.

5 hours ago, redgiant said:

I don't see how you look at this clip and pronounce them as 'terrifying' or 'better than LOTR orcs'.

I'd be terrified if I saw one in real life. On screen... I mean, what is terrifying on screen anymore, these days? We've all seen a gazillion monsters... even as cool as the Fade is, I'm not terrified. I smiled when I saw it. But I do think these trollocs look like the kind of brutal, stinking, soulless manimal that would absolutely rip your arm off and start chewing on it like a cob of corn while you bled to death in front of it. As for 'better' than LOTR orcs... Not better, nor worse—just different. And we won't be able to really judge the believability of the make-up until we see more.

5 hours ago, redgiant said:

What I see is an odd set of wobbling creatures, which they seem bent on hiding a full-on view of.

Yeah, they have a bit of a wodgy feel to me, too, but I think that is based more on their pudgy faces and maybe one shot of them marching (waddling?) next to the Fade's horse... there just isn't enough footage to judge by. And is that because the showrunners are determined to hide something....? Well, a week ago, we had zero trolloc footage. I'd like to see more, too, but they should keep some of it under wraps for the show. Almost all films with monsters save the visual reveal for the moment on screen when the monsters actually show up—that's like 90% of what makes any given monster scene work, since we all know it's people in makeup or CGI. They've got to maintain some element of surprise for the shock of seeing these stunt men in shaggy costumes invade Emond's Field and start ripping people's limbs off.

5 hours ago, redgiant said:

I get no impression that these creatures can run fast, and their barrel-shaped bodies look more like World of Warcraft owl beasts then a lean, muscular, dangerously quick adversary to be afraid of.

 

I expected more of an athletic, muscular neck and torso look. I'll reserve judgement until I get a full-on look at them and their movement.

You don't have to have Superman's physique to be quick and agile. Imagine seeing a silverback gorilla in the wild—they're lumpy, stoop-backed, and look a little slow-witted, but they could chase you down in about 2 seconds and rip you to pieces without breaking a sweat. I know the books have trollocs described as 7 or 8 feet tall, and it does not look like we're getting that (except maybe that one Narg-like boss-trolloc raising his arms up?) but a 6-foot-tall (plus the horns) beast-like minotaur-mutant with arms like the Rock, horns and tusks and wicked-looking axes forged on the black hills of Shayol Ghul, with gorilla-like strength and rabid ferocity, undoubtedly stronger and quicker than almost everyone in any sleepy village except the young, athletic men and women in their prime, led by a Fade with a mouth like Dracula mated with a lamprey, that's a pretty substantial threat. Making the trollocs 12 inches taller or more athletic-looking might make them more scary (and, realistically, nearly impossible fro anyone but a Warder or channeler to fend off) but is it necessary? 

I just hope we don't have any chees-bucket scenes where some Old Lady conks a trolloc on the head with a barstool or a wooden spoon and it goes down, because TV. Even these barrel-chested, wobbly abhorrations should be able to utterly decimate a village like Emond's Field without any real resistance (other than Tam, Lan, and Moiraine fighting back.)

From nsmallw:

I'm just not entirely sold with how they've chosen to represent channeling. Anyone feel similarly or have constructive thoughts on it. 

Thanks!

I'm still not in love with it, but I find two things encouraging: One is the hint of colored weaves in the corner of the puzzle-poster they released. Whether you (or I) think colorful-rainbow weaves would look better or worse than plain white ones, the intriguing part is that it strongly hints they still have one or two tricks up their sleeve they haven't showed us yet. The second is the black taint enwreathing Logain's channeling; they slow-mo'd it on The Dusty Wheel, and even though it is blurry, you can sort of see how the black stuff is slick and oily, coated the pure Power like scum on the surface of a pond. I was pleased to see this, because my initial thought when I saw the clip was, Oh, women channel white and men channel black. That's dumb. But the truth (and I should have guessed it sooner) shows that they put a bit more thought into it.

And it remains to be seen whether everyone in-world can see these weaves or just the channelers. That may or may not play into what we as the viewer are shown or not shown in each instance.

Not to pack too many thoughts into one post, but I have a inkling that as some of our main characters start to learn more complex weaves, that will be mirrored on screen, as well, and most of what we are seeing is the equivalent of uneducated country bumpkins wielding the Power without any real grace or artistry. (The Forsaken basically regard modern-day Aes Sedai like they're children drawing with crayons.) Imagine seeing a full season of supposedly well-trained Aes Sedai wielding the Power in all manner of ways—healing, stopping arrows, bringing down the thunder—and then in Season 2, Lanfear shows up, arches an eyebrow in disdain, and delicately forms a small weave that looks like a scarf being crocheted or something similar, and in its complexity it is vastly more powerful than any large-scale, brute-force channeling we have seen thus far. Could be pretty cool.

9 minutes ago, DaddyFinn said:

Where are the naysayers now? All of these clips need debunking.

I got nothing! Last two clips have looked incredible!

And he channels without using his hands. In the cage, too, he appears to bust out using just his mind. Good subtle way to show viewers how powerful he is compared to your average Aes Sedai.

YEAHHHHHH!!!!!!
 

'And you can't outrun a fade,' could be a killer Season 1 tagline, like Winter Is Coming. 

It's creepy, adequately fantasy-sounding without being too magicky, and it immediately makes even a casual viewer think 'Well, gosh, if you can't outrun it, what can you do?' 

100% Pie-in-the-sky speculation: they turn the Myrddraal into a main antagonist for Season 1 (maybe even causing some purposeful cross-confusion between Rand's early dreams of Ba'alzamon...could it be the fade? After all, you can't outrun a fade, even in your dreams) and when Rand and Mat get separated from the main group, it is that much more stressful because they still have Big Bad Fade #1 hunting them down, and now Moiraine and Lan are not around to protect them.

Later, at the Eye of the World, instead of the two Forsaken popping out of nowhere, Big Bad Fade #1 finally catches up to Rand and the gang and they finally manage to kill it. And we're all so happy! But then Rand looks over the valley (or wherever they happen to be; I can't quite remember how this part plays out) and sees the Trolloc ARMY amassing at Tarwin's Gap, with like 50 Fades! And we all go, 'Ooooooh Snap!' And the newbie-viewer freaks out, wondering how our heroes could ever possibly stop 50 fades, when it took a whole season just to kill one! And then Rand goes Berserker with the Power from the Eye, wipes them all out, and after the smoke clears, his own friends are looking at him like he's the monster... and that finishes off the season.

11 hours ago, Skipp said:

And while the arrows are grouped together you can tell some are ahead of the others so they have been fired at different times/distances.

I appreciate you posting this picture—and you're right, the arrows are not all 'neck-and-neck' like I described them.......... but they're pretty darn close. Within 12-18 inches of one another, at least, which means they were either fired within a nanosecond of one another; I do wonder what the odds are of six (or more) well-trained archers *trying* to fire at the same time at the same target (and not a bull's eye target 20 paces away over a level field away like in Robin Hood, but like a Ramsay Bolton shooting high and away into the sky, and wait for it, wait for it, wait for it.... direct hit! kind of shot) and still have all 6 arrows that tightly clustered. Maybe I'm wrong; maybe it's more likely than I'm assuming. But instinctually, I think not.

Still, will have to wait and see how it all works together in context.

I want more!

The poster is awesome, and I love the colored threads, but yeah, hard to imagine why she would by lugging around a trolloc's body... because its head definitely is still attached to the body.

I suspect the *only* reason for this poster was to clearly show us a trolloc, finally. And the puzzle element was cool. Would be surprised if there is an actual scene in the show that even looks remotely this, though. She might point to a dead trolloc or even grab one and dramatically shake its corpse to convince the E5 that the threat is very real and they need to leave town with her, but I think this particular image is one big photoshopapalooza.

I don't think it feels too rushed to leave Emond's Field at the end of Episode 1. Even if Winternight were a 10-minute scene, that still leaves 40-50 minutes of happy-go-lucky Emond's Field activity beforehandd (minus whatever cut-aways we get to Logain, etc.) That's half a feature-length film of pastoral scenery, getting to know the gang, the Quarry Road, meeting Fain, dancing, feasting, and whatnot. Nor do I think there's any need to make Winternight much longer than 10 minutes or so—it's not a big battle scene like Hardholme or Battle of the Bastards. It's a chaotic razing. Fire, monsters, screaming, frantic fighting, find your friends, race away, roll credits. 

And it will make for one heck of a cliffhanger to see our E5 fleeing into the night, leaving their village in flames behind them. Start the show with an epic Logain battle; finish strong with a wild, heart-pounding Trolloc attacks... take a deep breath then hit 'play' for Episode 2.

1 hour ago, AdamA said:

many of the Trollocs would have ridiculous shin splints and arthritis and not be able to fight because bipedalism on hooves makes no sense.

That is hilarious.

1 hour ago, AdamA said:

It's a hero's journey, not a historical drama.

And that is true. Well put.