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The Wheel of Time on Amazon (1 Viewer)

El Floppo said:
ok... I have no idea about any of this. Olgier is the muppet? Snuffleupagus... ??
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Loial is an Ogier who looks like a muppet cast off. A snuffleupagus is a huge puppet type character from the 80s. The Ogier are supposed to be a 7-8’ tall race of people who are mostly pacifist stone masons, builders, and nature lovers with large twitchy ears and bushy eyebrows, not wooden looking black people with strange fros and catcher’s mitts for hands. I get why they couldn’t do everything to make him look correct without a huge budget for CGI, but I don’t get why we couldn’t have a better explanation of his relevance to the story thus far. 
 

He joins the group initially because he realizes there’s a story brewing, and he wants to write it. Remember when we first met him, he needed to collect his books? I guess you were supposed to infer more there. He’s supposed to be important because even Moiraine knows little about the Ways other than what she learned from books, and they needed to get to the Eye of the World quickly. The way gates were opened by simply plucking a leaf from the “door”, and anyone can use them if they knew where to look for them. They’re not supposed to be just standing out in fields for everyone to see. 
 

None of this should be a spoiler, and even if some of it is later addressed, I doubt it will be done well enough to matter. 

 
Here's another quiz: do you have to channel to open the ways? Do you have to channel to leave the ways? Is it bad to channel in the ways? Do you know who Padan Fain is? How did he enter or leave the ways?

 
jplvr said:
Loial is an Ogier who looks like a muppet cast off. A snuffleupagus is a huge puppet type character from the 80s. The Ogier are supposed to be a 7-8’ tall race of people who are mostly pacifist stone masons, builders, and nature lovers with large twitchy ears and bushy eyebrows, not wooden looking black people with strange fros and catcher’s mitts for hands. I get why they couldn’t do everything to make him look correct without a huge budget for CGI, but I don’t get why we couldn’t have a better explanation of his relevance to the story thus far. 
 

He joins the group initially because he realizes there’s a story brewing, and he wants to write it. Remember when we first met him, he needed to collect his books? I guess you were supposed to infer more there. He’s supposed to be important because even Moiraine knows little about the Ways other than what she learned from books, and they needed to get to the Eye of the World quickly. The way gates were opened by simply plucking a leaf from the “door”, and anyone can use them if they knew where to look for them. They’re not supposed to be just standing out in fields for everyone to see. 
 

None of this should be a spoiler, and even if some of it is later addressed, I doubt it will be done well enough to matter. 
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I’m a non book reader and I feel like I’m tracking the story beats fine. The omission of these details doesn’t strike me as a big deal. 

 
jplvr said:
LOL. I forget what's out of bounds here, but I assumed it was just spoiler information like: ____________ dies later.
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If it gets like GOT it's basically nothing that you couldn't point to in the show.    Ie book backstory about Loial = no bueno.   If it's something like "the brief mention of Ogier in Episode 2" = OK.  

:shrug:  

 
KarmaPolice said:
If it gets like GOT it's basically nothing that you couldn't point to in the show.    Ie book backstory about Loial = no bueno.   If it's something like "the brief mention of Ogier in Episode 2" = OK.  

:shrug:  
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I was in those threads enough, but while book was an evil word, I don't think it was to this sort of level.

I'll refrain in the future, I guess, but it shouldn't be a big deal. There's a scene which was cut from the show that I know about, and I'm afraid any explanation which they might have given in the show will only be available in some sort of director's cut, if ever. I don't think I said much they didn't try to infer in the show in some way, but the viewer should know who Loial and the Ogier are by now. We know in the show he likes books, he's helpful to the group (found Nynaeve for Rand), and he knows a good bit about the ways, but just like we spent no time getting to know much the main group from the Two Rivers in the beginning, we didn't get a lot of real information about Loial or why he's now tagging along. Instead we got half an episode of a quite literal throw away character, and another half an episode of lesbian romance, not that I mind the latter on the face of it. I'd have to get into more than 5 spoilers to explain why it was a stupid addition in that way. I'm not even mad about those additions because they were well done, but they were unnecessary, huge chunk of wasted time in regards to the actual story.

I like the show overall, and that was one of the top 2 episodes for me (4 & 7). I still think Judkins isn't the best for this job, or possibly the execs at Amazon are having way too much influence. Supposedly there's a new director involved with season 2, and he or she has tightened up the ship in some way. I forget the person's name or what exactly was said. That was the gist I got.

 
To leave here on a good note today, that Episode 7 cold open was excellent. There have only been 2 of those I really liked, and I wish they would've opened the whole series with the Logain one from Episode 4. Here's a rehearsal scene someone put up on Instagram. It looks like some of the action was changed. Would I be mentioning book spoilers to say that Maidens of the Spear are bad ****ing ***? Edit: looking at the comment, it appears this is the stunt team's version. Maybe Amazon should look into having them write more of the show.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CXoJ5YIlNHy/

 
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jplvr said:
To leave here on a good note today, that Episode 7 cold open was excellent. There have only been 2 of those I really liked, and I wish they would've opened the whole series with the Logain one from Episode 4. Here's a rehearsal scene someone put up on Instagram. It looks like some of the action was changed. Would I be mentioning book spoilers to say that Maidens of the Spear are bad ****ing ***? Edit: looking at the comment, it appears this is the stunt team's version. Maybe Amazon should look into having them write more of the show.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CXoJ5YIlNHy/
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Yea that was badass and exemplified an Aiel warrior. There are some bonus shows for various episodes and they did one on this battle scene. Pretty cool to see how they made it.

 
Overall, I don't think they've done a terrible job translating from the book.  The cast is meh IMO.  Perrin looks more like he's closer to 35 than 20, the Aes Sedi are supposed to look ageless but they all come across as someone's older ugly aunt.  I didn't think they did that badly with the Trollocs considering.

Most disappointing to me was Loial.  Only thing they got right with him was the voice.  Damn good thing they were able to salvage Herman Munster's shoes for the actor.

 
kentric said:
Overall, I don't think they've done a terrible job translating from the book.  The cast is meh IMO.  Perrin looks more like he's closer to 35 than 20, the Aes Sedi are supposed to look ageless but they all come across as someone's older ugly aunt.  I didn't think they did that badly with the Trollocs considering.

Most disappointing to me was Loial.  Only thing they got right with him was the voice.  Damn good thing they were able to salvage Herman Munster's shoes for the actor.
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My bar for fantasy failure on TV will always be the Sand Snakes in Game Of Thrones.

Compared to the Sand Snakes, everything on WOT looks like a scene from John Wick.

 
I thought the ways was horribly explained and horribly done. 
Would have liked to have seen the bad ### Aiel in the open put her black veil on #bookreference  

Still very enjoyable so far. 

 
KarmaPolice said:
Interesting.  I didn't know that was a thing.   Mine is a male and female reader that alternate depending on chapters/Povs.   

I always have my pods slightly faster, I think 1.2/1.25x.    I am pretty sure that's what I have Audible set at too.  
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Michael Kramer and Kate Reading.  They're married.  They seem to narrate the best fantasy audiobooks.

 
Tick said:
Michael Kramer and Kate Reading.  They're married.  They seem to narrate the best fantasy audiobooks.
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I will say that I really dislike how Kramer does Perrin's voice in the first couple books.  

 
I'm getting the sense that this is another of these shows that is going to be ruined to some extent by book readers.  

At least with GOT there was a realistic expectation that people interested in the genre would have come across and read a couple of the GOT books, with this, no way.  I hadn't heard of WOT until late cycle in GOT where it was talked about getting it's own series.  

Right now I give it a meh, to ok.  

 
culdeus said:
Right now I give it a meh, to ok.  
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Kinda where I am with it.

Thought they should have made Logain a bigger part of the first few episodes, he was cast well at least IMO. Pacing feels very sluggish at times. I'll continue watching cause I love the genre but my expectations aren't high anymore. 

Think I enjoyed Shadow and Bone more, and I didn't love that.

 
kentric said:
 the Aes Sedi are supposed to look ageless but they all come across as someone's older ugly aunt. 
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This and the warder's cloaks were cut for budget reasons, so i wasn't expecting a lot from the beginning

Pike is fantastic as Moiraine imo 

 
I'd love to hear any thoughts from non-book readers because book readers are likely going to be losing their minds. I kind of thought it was going to be alright and calm everyone down a bit, but while it might work for people not familiar with the work, it has taken a serious turn for those who have.

 
jplvr said:
I'd love to hear any thoughts from non-book readers because book readers are likely going to be losing their minds. I kind of thought it was going to be alright and calm everyone down a bit, but while it might work for people not familiar with the work, it has taken a serious turn for those who have.
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The scene you mean ruined the episode for me. 

 
Well, I'd still like to hear from the show only people, but I think it started going off the rails a little after 30 mins into the episode, and almost none of it past the point it turned was really that good. I thought the actor playing the "Dark One" was not great, and I really hope those "air quotes" make sense to everyone in the future, but I'm afraid they won't. That's me being super vague while trying to dial in on what I hated.

I'm afraid this series started out with 20 minutes of a giant turd and finished out the first season with 20 minutes of another giant turd. The entire time I was watching, I basically thought, "I hope people with no prior knowledge of this story liked it because there are going to be few in the other camp who do." I'll say again if I haven't already, I thought they were going to nail the ending through the first 30+ minutes and was excited about it.

I did think the scenes with Moiraine and Rand were good, and Yosha, the actor playing Rand gave me hope throughout. There were other scenes I liked, like Eg and Nyn on the balcony trying to sense the wind. Fain was cool, and I think the Perrin story line seemed strange because Barney Harris quit the show. But overall, I'm left with the feeling I'm going to hate watch the rest of this series like I did with TWD, and if that's the case, I assure you I won't post going forward. I only posted my negative comments because I thought they were on the right track in a lot of ways but making small but meaningful errors, and now I think they're probably going way, way, way off track.

This feels to me like they didn't know if they'd get to finish the whole series, so they sprinkled in beautifully executed moments from way later books throughout this season to show they had knowledge of the books. I'm a person who will not watch the female Ghostbusters movie, but even I'm a bit annoyed about the "woke" complaints people are making about the show. Still, I cannot understand why they are continuously changing key roles of men vs. women instead of just cleaning up the dialogue and letting actresses play their characters better than Jordan wrote them.

 
jplvr said:
Well, I'd still like to hear from the show only people, but I think it started going off the rails a little after 30 mins into the episode, and almost none of it past the point it turned was really that good. I thought the actor playing the "Dark One" was not great, and I really hope those "air quotes" make sense to everyone in the future, but I'm afraid they won't. That's me being super vague while trying to dial in on what I hated.

I'm afraid this series started out with 20 minutes of a giant turd and finished out the first season with 20 minutes of another giant turd. The entire time I was watching, I basically thought, "I hope people with no prior knowledge of this story liked it because there are going to be few in the other camp who do." I'll say again if I haven't already, I thought they were going to nail the ending through the first 30+ minutes and was excited about it.

I did think the scenes with and Rand were good, and Yosha, the actor playing Rand gave me hope throughout. There were other scenes I liked, like Eg and Nyn on the balcony trying to sense the wind. Fain was cool, and I think the Perrin story line seemed strange because Barney Harris quit the show. But overall, I'm left with the feeling I'm going to hate watch the rest of this series like I did with TWD, and if that's the case, I assure you I won't post going forward. I only posted my negative comments because I thought they were on the right track in a lot of ways but making small but meaningful errors, and now I think they're probably going way, way, way off track.

This feels to me like they didn't know if they'd get to finish the whole series, so they sprinkled in beautifully executed moments from way later books throughout this season to show they had knowledge of the books. I'm a person who will not watch the female Ghostbusters movie, but even I'm a bit annoyed about the "woke" complaints people are making about the show. Still, I cannot understand why they are continuously changing key roles of men vs. women instead of just cleaning up the dialogue and letting actresses play their characters better than Jordan wrote them.
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It was OK nothing special. I'll watch new seasons but probably won't rewatch. None of the characters connected for me other the maybe Moiraine but she isn't as interesting as Daenerys or Yennefer. None of the male characters interested me at all compared to GoT or the Witcher the two shows I was hoping this show might be.

 
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I have a similar opinion to Mile High. It was OK.  I didn’t really connect with the characters or storyline. Maybe I’ll watch the next season. I’m not sure. However, I don’t watch much in this genre in recent decades and I am probably unfairly comparing it to GOT and LOTR.

 
I have never read the books and the show is good imo. I am interested in when the next season is released.

However my wife and I did not watch the last episode of season 1 when it was released because we chose to binge Witcher instead.

Witcher >>>> wheel of time

 
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I've invested 30 years in the book series.  Waited for each subsequent release diligently...sometimes 2-3 years. I've also done 4 total re-reads, and have found multiple new things each time.  There's an avid community that really delves into this.  An adaptation over so many years, and with the unexpected author change was NEVER going to meet an avid reader's expectations exactly. 

  I remember having to 'forget' about the LOTR books 'somewhat' in order to truly enjoy the film adaptions by Peter Jackson.  It's possible, just takes some mental flexibility.

The Witcher is good,  but the complex and extensive world building with the intricate magic systems in Randland are second to none.  :geekrantover: :)

 
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The finale is today, correct?

I have not watched yet but I am a show only guy and will reply when I watch it. I will say that so far I am not really into this. I am watching just so I can follow the discussions in here as I find that interesting. It just struck me that this conversation is more interesting than the show.

 
Maggot Brain said:
I've invested 30 years in the book series.  Waited for each subsequent release diligently...sometimes 2-3 years. I've also done 4 total re-reads, and have found multiple new things each time.  There's an avid community that really delves into this.  An adaptation over so many years, and with the unexpected author change was NEVER going to meet an avid reader's expectations exactly. 

  I remember having to 'forget' about the LOTR books 'somewhat' in order to truly enjoy the film adaptions by Peter Jackson.  It's possible, just takes some mental flexibility.

The Witcher is good,  but the complex and extensive world building with the intricate magic systems in Randland are second to none.  :geekrantover: :)
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It would just be nice if it didn't look rushed, had coherent writing, and they actually developed the characters. It doesn't take familiarity with the content to find them lacking in those things. I had no prior knowledge with Witcher when I watched the first season, and I didn't like it at first. Once I read a few things about why it seemed like a mess, I gave it another go, and it was better, but certainly not great. I hear they've gotten better this season, and I just hope this WOT crew improves as well. 

Complaining about changes is going to happen, and I would agree there are a lot of nitpicks about things I don't care a lot about. I could add couple hundred words to this post about things I've seen people just wail over, and they just don't bother me all that much. There are terrible changes as well, and the womansplaining is off the charts, especially in  the last episode. The men are just incompetent fools who either have to be led in a direction by a woman, or they just ignore advice and do something stupid anyway. This sort of thing was not necessary to do with this story. Girl power was baked in, and you really just needed to clean up some of Jordan's admitted and recognized faults with writing women.

Glad I saw prosopis's post first, so I deleted the things I had described from this episode. I forget people still don't realize this thing gets released at 7 PM on Thursday, for Central time anyway. I checked at about 6:45 last night, and it was already out. 

You can also make a lot of excuses for the crew because of Covid and Barney Harris quitting during the hiatus. Sure, the trolloc horde looked like it was out of a cheap video game this time, but they filmed the episodes linearly, and they likely didn't have as much time as they needed to clean it up. Barney Harris missing meant they had to change up the handling of Padan Fain, since he was basically already in every episode and necessary for the direction they chose.

 
I haven't seen one episode yet.  Waiting to binge it all and nitpick endlessly....I joke.  Actually, I'm sure I'll be able to be reasonably unbiased.  I learned my lesson from my LOTR initial hate.  Being critical of a bad product is a different thing, too. I guess I'll see.  I'm doing the 2nd season of the Witcher first, before WOT. 

 
jplvr said:
It would just be nice if it didn't look rushed, had coherent writing, and they actually developed the characters. It doesn't take familiarity with the content to find them lacking in those things. I had no prior knowledge with Witcher when I watched the first season, and I didn't like it at first. Once I read a few things about why it seemed like a mess, I gave it another go, and it was better, but certainly not great. I hear they've gotten better this season, and I just hope this WOT crew improves as well. 

Complaining about changes is going to happen, and I would agree there are a lot of nitpicks about things I don't care a lot about. I could add couple hundred words to this post about things I've seen people just wail over, and they just don't bother me all that much. There are terrible changes as well, and the womansplaining is off the charts, especially in  the last episode. The men are just incompetent fools who either have to be led in a direction by a woman, or they just ignore advice and do something stupid anyway. This sort of thing was not necessary to do with this story. Girl power was baked in, and you really just needed to clean up some of Jordan's admitted and recognized faults with writing women.

Glad I saw prosopis's post first, so I deleted the things I had described from this episode. I forget people still don't realize this thing gets released at 7 PM on Thursday, for Central time anyway. I checked at about 6:45 last night, and it was already out. 

You can also make a lot of excuses for the crew because of Covid and Barney Harris quitting during the hiatus. Sure, the trolloc horde looked like it was out of a cheap video game this time, but they filmed the episodes linearly, and they likely didn't have as much time as they needed to clean it up. Barney Harris missing meant they had to change up the handling of Padan Fain, since he was basically already in every episode and necessary for the direction they chose.
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IMHO, I think it's just too damn long to be good, especially for the book reading audience.  I'd like to be wrong, but being SO massive a read leaves just too many chances to go off the rails.  Somewhere along the lines, everyone's going to be disappointed in the product.

And I'm absolutely sure the cast change and covid screwed up the cohesion.  Expecting season 2 to be better, and I'm sure they're making changes to plotlines, characters, etc. based on feedback and reviews.  Hell, can't say Amazon doesn't have the money?

 
I'll give the first season a 5 out of 10. Will watch subsequent seasons cause I love the fantasy genre but nothing really stood out to me really, from the acting to the set pieces to the storyline. GOT was filled with stunning character moments and reversals from episode to episode, and maybe not fair to compare the two, but as soon as I was done watching the season finale of WOT I through on a random GOT episode (season 1 episode 4) and the disparity in quality between the two was immense IMO. 

 
I would suggest the book readers need to relax a little.

Unlike GOT, the show runners here have the full story already fleshed out.  They undoubtedly pitched the show, with the basic outline of each season in place.  Sure, some things will be different - but within the confines of the show, everything will make sense, and come together by the end.  Certain things that might be "critical" in the books, may be less critical in the shows, depending on what they are cutting out  - and what they need to move characters from one story arc, to the next.

For example, in the books - the Dragon was only ever going to be male, and everyone knew that - but, in the show - it was easier as a mechanic to explain why everyone was needed - rather than flesh out some of the finer details of Egwene and Nynaeve - i.e. it was a quick and dirty way to get the characters moving.

 
As a non book reader I think rushing the story and not developing the characters is a mistake. Lots of non book readers seem to be saying the same thing. Who are these guys and why should I care what happens to them.

 
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Mile High said:
As a non book reader I think rushing the story and not developing the characters is a mistake.
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Having listened to most of the first book now - there is not a ton of character development in the book.  There is a fair bit of world building, and some interactions between the characters and non-relevant people. (I am only at the part of the book where they enter the Ways)

The book follows the same basic path - we meet the characters, they start off together, they get separated and have their own adventures, and they eventually get reunited.  There are more things happening along the way - and there is at least one character that Rand meets that I think plays a bigger role going forward, but had they included that in the 1st season, it would have been a 1-off meeting - I am sure the character will appear in the show eventually.

Min, a character we did meet in the TV show, had a different introduction in the book, but not a significant deviation in her story line.

 
KarmaPolice said:
Since you are in the thread, I'm guessing an episode of Wheel of Time?  ;)
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Fair.

I don't know if I like this show, hate it, watch it because I started it and I hate giving up, or because I'm usually almost drunk when I get to watch TV by myself these days.

 
Yankee23Fan said:
Fair.

I don't know if I like this show, hate it, watch it because I started it and I hate giving up, or because I'm usually almost drunk when I get to watch TV by myself these days.
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I think it's just OK.  But probably feel a bit like you -love some stuff,  hate some stuff.   One of the few things my wife and I gave been watching together, so I will continue on watching.  

 
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