The Wheel Of Time - Robert Jordan's Books (Season 2/9.1.23)

[TheNatureBoy]

Just watched ep 5

My “good character” radar is still flawlessly impeccable. Invested in Nynaeve stocks and already got my returns at the end of episode 4

She has been a standout from the time she's been given.

The names on the show are to me. Could use some Coli nicknames for them.

That Inquisitor dude has been fun when he pops up. Was hoping Professor from Money Heist could provide a spark, but he already got neutered by the witches

 

[stepbackj34spud]

So is the mixed chick not the chosen one? Its gotta be between her and the red head dude right?

 

[Uchiha God]

So is the mixed chick not the chosen one? Its gotta be between her and the red head dude right?

I'm not familiar with the books, in fact, I didn't know anything about this universe until the amazon show and it's pretty evident it's the red head dude. they're not even being coy about it

just his name alone sounds like he's destined for grander things, and he has all the heroic traits and mannerisms most "children of prophecy" usually do in these fantasy worlds

I'd bet my house it's him

 

[MajesticLion]

Expound on this.

Spoiler

- skipped Baerlon
- no initial encounter with Min (!)
- no Bayle Domon (!) after escaping Shadar Logoth
- skipped Whitebridge
- skipped the Grinwell farm
- skipped Four Kings
- skipped Howal Gode...and more importantly the lightning strike and subsequent sickness
- skipped Caemlyn...and thus no Morgase, Elaine, Gawyn and Galad (!)
- no meeting with Elyas Machera (!)
- no Geofram Bornhald (!)
- no Jaret Byar (!)
- Mat and Rand arriving at Tar Valon from the east, from the wrong side of the River Erinin
- no Shining Walls, no Power-wrought bridge leading into Tar Valon
- Lan acting out of character
- no Warder shifting cloaks

Some things will seem nitpicky, others are major changes, especially central characters that weave in and out of the story throughout. When you add the missing pieces all up, it becomes what a committee thinks WoT should have been...and not the complex wheels-within-wheels saga that it truly is. The remit for this entire show being on Amazon in the first place was that Bezos wanted something to compete with Game of Thrones. If that's the case...this ain't it.

I wouldn't go as far as to call it CW-level quality, but you'd struggle to prove to any serious fan of the series that the show so far is any more than say...Freeform quality. Seems harsh, I know. But it is what it is.

 

[Arianne Martell]

You mean Valda right? How can anyone hate Loiol?

yessssss Valda

 

[LordDeathwatch]

I swear if y'all don't start spelling that man's name right. It's Loial.

As far as your points @MajesticLion I agree but only to an extent. When we saw that the 1st Season was going to be 8 episodes, we knew they were going to essentially have to gut the story and reduce the complexity by more than half to make that fit. It's also a given that a television or film adaptation will deviate from the source materials but the soul of it should remain the same.

I think the soul of the show is intact but it's a very thin margin. As you already listed, they removed so many key moments and have injected some superfluous content in a bid to make it a unique experience that it's almost unrecognizable at times. Then again, if they included everything on the list, it'd be a 20 episode season and pacing becomes an issue. As magnificent as the books are, and they are, there are stretches that fukking drag because of the density and details he put into nearly every interaction.

The balance that needs to be struck results in a longer Season but allows for the changes they've made to flourish on their own since those seeds have already been planted. This last episode was probably my favorite so far; no action but plenty of character development, politics, and some world building.

 

[Brandeezy]

So is the mixed chick not the chosen one? Its gotta be between her and the red head dude right?

It's the

Spoiler

red head aka Rand

unless they say "fukk the source material".

 

[Diondon]

My dawg's waves

 

[LordDeathwatch]

My dawg's waves

Must be using the One Power to keep it that fresh.

 

[MajesticLion]

I swear if y'all don't start spelling that man's name right. It's Loial.

As far as your points @MajesticLion I agree but only to an extent. When we saw that the 1st Season was going to be 8 episodes, we knew they were going to essentially have to gut the story and reduce the complexity by more than half to make that fit. It's also a given that a television or film adaptation will deviate from the source materials but the soul of it should remain the same.

I think the soul of the show is intact but it's a very thin margin. As you already listed, they removed so many key moments and have injected some superfluous content in a bid to make it a unique experience that it's almost unrecognizable at times. Then again, if they included everything on the list, it'd be a 20 episode season and pacing becomes an issue. As magnificent as the books are, and they are, there are stretches that fukking drag because of the density and details he put into nearly every interaction.

The balance that needs to be struck results in a longer Season but allows for the changes they've made to flourish on their own since those seeds have already been planted. This last episode was probably my favorite so far; no action but plenty of character development, politics, and some world building.

Editing for time is always a thing to be expected. The question here now is just how much stuff can you take out and it still be the same thing?


I even left out a huge chunk of other sequences myself

Spoiler

- meeting Loial in Caemlyn so they could use the Ways to get to the Borderlands
- Fal Dara
- The Eye of the World
- finding and theft of the Horn
- Ingtar (!!!!) and following the Horn to Falme

but they carve out alllll that and go straight to Tar Valon? C'mon now...

This is like...the Ultimates version of WoT, give me back 616

 

[LordDeathwatch]

Editing for time is always a thing to be expected. The question here now is just how much stuff can you take out and it still be the same thing?


I even left out a huge chunk of other sequences myself

Spoiler

- meeting Loial in Caemlyn so they could use the Ways to get to the Borderlands
- Fal Dara
- The Eye of the World
- finding and theft of the Horn
- Ingtar (!!!!) and following the Horn to Falme

but they carve out alllll that and go straight to Tar Valon? C'mon now...

This is like...the Ultimates version of WoT, give me back 616

Most of the things in your Spoiler tag should be on the back burner until the 2nd going on 3rd seasons unless, as we previously stated, there's more episodes per season. If they even tried any of that in 8, it really would be an abomination.

I'll give you the Ultimates comparison to a degree but they had some high points that surpassed the 616 running concurrently. The potential is there, they just have to have more like Episode 5 and nothing else resembling the debut.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

This thread is going to be rough for those of us who are unspoiled .

One small request: When spoilertagging stuff, make a note if it's a book spoiler or a show spoiler. Too many hints out there about who we should be looking at to be the "chosen one".

This. If it's a show spoiler I can look at the date and know if I've watched the show yet. But folk throwing out book spoilers that are like 10 books in advance.

Maybe the book spoiler folk need their own thread so they can have their own discussion lol. What's the point of even watching an episode-by-episode show for it's own merits if all you can think about is how this affects but you think will happen 10 years down the line?

 

[detroitwalt]

This. If it's a show spoiler I can look at the date and know if I've watched the show yet. But folk throwing out book spoilers that are like 10 books in advance.

Maybe the book spoiler folk need their own thread so they can have their own discussion lol. What's the point of even watching an episode-by-episode show for it's own merits if all you can think about is how this affects but you think will happen 10 years down the line?

I said this months ago. Need to keep book spoilers out of the show thread. Not sure how we didn't learn anything from GoT threads because they had this same issue.

 

[nieman]

I haven't even seen many spoilers from the book in this thread, other than name drops and locations...and at least history. I still haven't even finished the book series, so even I don't know the end. But other than the names that have already been listed on the casting sheets, there hasn't been anything that told of the key events in the story.

As for the chosen one, if you've ever seen any type of fantasy series, you at least have it narrowed down to 2. That's generous, because you should already know. The book spoils the chosen one on page 1, and then confirms it midway through in case you didn't catch on. Figuring out who the chosen one is is irrelevant to the story. The story isn't about that at all. So even if you know, you're just getting started.

The show has even already told you how it all ends.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

I haven't even seen many spoilers from the book in this thread, other than name drops and locations...and at least history. I still haven't even finished the book series, so even I don't know the end. But other than the names that have already been listed on the casting sheets, there hasn't been anything that told of the key events in the story.

As for the chosen one, if you've ever seen any type of fantasy series, you at least have it narrowed down to 2. That's generous, because you should already know. The book spoils the chosen one on page 1, and then confirms it midway through in case you didn't catch on. Figuring out who the chosen one is is irrelevant to the story. The story isn't about that at all. So even if you know, you're just getting started.

The show has even already told you how it all ends.

Breh, I didn't even read a couple pages of comments because I was already seeing too many spoilers, but just in the pages I did read off the top of my head I saw:

Spoiler

1. Who the "chosen one" is

2. Multiple future events the "chosen one" is going to be involved in and descriptions of what he's going to be like that totally fukk up my view of him

3. Clues that Nynaeve was going to remain a major character and thus must still be alive when we didn't know she was still alive

4. A nickname for Moraine that spoiled a coming plot twist

5. A description of Perrin's character that we didn't know anything about yet, which led me to figuring something out faster than I should have.

6. Information about the dagger Matt found that told us what was going on more specifically than we had been told by the show.

If we didn't have book spoilers in here, that would all be fun shyt to discuss and debate in the thread. Who is the chosen one? What does Moraine intend? Is Nynaeve still alive? What's up with the wolves? What's happening to Matt? But with book readers throwing out shyt left and right for no reason, those discussions would just feel stupid now instead of fun. Debates are fun even if you are pretty sure you know the answer, but they feel lame and pointless when the answer has been straight-up spoiled by information completely outside the show.