Its unbelievable they had the choice of using the book's prologue of Lews Therin going mad, killing his family, confronting Ishamael and then blasting the world and THEY DIDNT USE IT! That scene sets everything up and pulls you in immediately. I get that they were only given a set budget from Money-bags Bezos but if you have THAT opening, then you use your budget and DO it!
Well, they had 10 Mio. per episode. That's more than GoT had in its first season and GoT looks WAY WAY WAY better and more professional. They could have done it, if they were not amateurs. WoT looks like a cheap soap opera.
@emhu2594 Egwene's agency in the book, choosing of her own free will to go on this adventure, face these challenges and overcome so much without a Destiny boost...Now that was empowering
A person cannot have two masters. Robert Jordan used world-building to advance his story because he cared about telling the story of Rand. Amazon's director, Rafe Judkins, cared about his social agenda and inserted his personal social messaging as an overlay to Robert Jordan's story. The original work came second. That's why the show is such a mess as well as offensive towards the source material. Peter Jackson's only master was Tolkien's work, not his own re-telling. Jackson famously explained this in detail himself.
@@samuelhadjaissa5201 wrong. The importance of gender in the duality of the One Power is crucial to the magic system. That is why only a man can become the Dragon Reborn. Saidin is aggressive and destructive and can not heal like Saidar. The show was a mess.
@@IndyMotoRider like i get that part and I agree that the show is pretty mediocre, but I feel the term "woke is just thrown around a lot to the point its become a mute criticism in of itself
As Rafe i would have made a 3 rd sex- before even becoming a man or woman one would be a dog and use the one power to become man (or woman) because -why not -tis idea has been expoited yet and makes 5 cent more in profit for me , and i would not care i destroyed later revenue when i get 5 cet more this christmas -that usa today and wall street , or the donkey keeping of certain ideas when you cannot change at all - but this bs from amazon make sme angry
@@samuelhadjaissa5201 So why make the dragon 1 of 5 instead of 1 of 3? Why make Moiraine and Siuan lovers instead of how the story potrayed it? I have nothing against any of those things, but the only reason to make the ladies as part of the prophecy and Moiraine and Siuan a couple was to push a agenda, whether the agenda is good or bad, its not true to the source and you have to begin to change all sorts of other things to push that forward. To watch with after reading to the books and not thing there is an agenda is crazy.
As a book reader, the books honestly have the best worldbuilding in any fantasy series. Ever. Honestly, even LOTR doesn’t come close to the WoT world. But the show? The world feels like it’s so empty and dull. It’s just forests, mountains, a city and one castle in a desert. The only culture they really got right was the Tinkers imo. Even the Aes Sedai don’t feel like their book counterparts.
Jordan's world building is so wonderful. I just finished the chapter where Mat and Rand have to go from farm to farm in order to get shelter for the night, and the amount of character and charm Jordan puts into it is wonderful. What does the show do? Time skip...
One thing with the diversity of the cast is that areas dont look different ethnically. Aiel apparently are the only people with a "look". Shinar people look like tar valon people who look like 2 rivers people. There is something about meeting different people's in the book. It makes the world seem bigger. The show makes it seem like NY state.
No, not even the Tinkers. Their colors supposed to be so bright and strong they hurt the eye, especially because they wore red with bright green and yellow and blue, etc. I don't care they look like gypsies otherwise, I always pictured them like gypsies but with those strong colors. The book never talks about their look in this context but the Tinkers supposed to be descendants of Da'shain Aiel. How is that possible that just in 3000 years Aiel remained more or less the same they looked like in the Age of Legends, tall, red or blonde-red haired, fair skinned people, meanwhile among Tinkers you can hardly find Aiel looking people? Had the showrunners wanted to be true to the books they could've hint that with their look at least to a certain level. But we already know that they didn't care.😕
@@liberTvalance Exactly. I think Thom's character says something like: "you cannot tell from where people are by their look, only by their accent and clothes". Having a first or second generation looking Asian or PoC character in a village which supposed to be isolated for thousands of years is just simply ridiculous. But what am I talking about? Lan says to Moiraine that "there are rumors about 4 ta'veren in the Two Rivers". HOW??? Who can tell about anyone they are ta'veren? This show changed the lore so much already, it's unrecognizable. It's a mediocre fanfiction. And people accepting the idea that this is a "different turn of the Wheel" is plainly ridiculous. 🤨
@@moma-b Great points. Just wanted to say, the books *do* talk about it. It's been over 2 decades since I read them, but deep in the series, it's explained that the aiel split into two groups ages and ages ago, and I can't remember exactly what the reason was for why. Wasn't it something to do with wanting to find a song or something. I may be way off. The WoT wiki page will have all of this info. But yeah, I was blown away when I read this, because the Tinkers are total pacifists in the book, while the aiel are tribal fighters.
Give Wheel of Time to the right person, and I think it could be as big as GoT, but I dont think the people in charge are good enough and it breaks my heart. I have been waiting for this to happen for sooooo long and this is what we get..... Sad.
Could. I honestly kinda understand where the showrunners are coming from. I think that WOT is better than GOT, but it is also not for everyone. It doesn't have the broad appeal of GOT. GOT has a lot of popcorn spectacle. WOT is more deeply emotionally stirring, but a lot of people aren't interested in stories which require such a high degree of emotional investment. WOT made true to the books could have been as good or even better than GOT, but it would also have been a big risk financially.
@@philipgeyer926 But the specticle is not what most people lpved about the show, atleast not the people I know and have heard talking about it. People loved the depth of the show, the characters, the lore, the writing. I know that changes needs to be made for an adaptation, but they have changed it to the point that its a different story and world imo
@@YipYipss Yes, but you need that hype to capture the audiences attention. If you ask most of them why they started watching GOT in the first place, they will likely say something about the spectacle. A successful show I think needs both spectacle to catch people's attention, and something more to keep them watching.
@@philipgeyer926 Fine, spectacle helps, but there is plenty of it in the books already. The attack on Winter night, the fight against Trollocks before they go into Shadar logoth, Trollocks attack on Byle Domons ship, Rand and Mat getting attacked on their journey, the fight at Fal Dara
You say it feels rushed and you are correct. Think about it this way. Episode 1 1st seven minutes are: Moiraine giving a monologue about how men were arrogant and caused the breaking and she needs to find the dragon reborn (nothing like the books), the red sisters chasing down some random mad male channeler (not in the books) and then the women’s circle ridiculous throw women into a dangerous river ceremony (not in the books). Episode 2 starts with 3 min of the Whitecloaks burning an Aes Sedai at the stake (not in the books). Episode 3 starts with 6 min of Nynaeve escaping trollocs (not in the books) and then Nynaeve getting knocked out by Lan (you guessed it, not in the books). That’s 16 min in 3 episodes of stuff that does nothing to build up the world, or create any character depth (other than to show how awesome Egwene and Nynaeve are, which is another theme repeated ad nauseam in S1). This show is a dumpster fire and bad writing, regardless of what they tried to adapt.
Do not forget: no mention of saidin and saidar but the red sister claiming "this power meant for women and women only". Latra Decume took the leadership position from Lews Therin! She was only a prominent Aes Sedai of AoL, now she is the "Tamyrlin Seat" - a position did not exist in the books. And she knows the Dark One can taint "your power"
I would actually go even further and say that the big battle scene in the opening episode is a waste of time. it occupies almost 12 minutes and must have cost the vast majority of the budget. It would have been far more effective both for story and budget to leave the Trollocks visual as a pseudo mystery, just like the book does. think GoT and the early exposure to white walkers. but this is just a product of one of the many problems they created by trying to avoid rand being the main character...
@@HamzaBoujelouah I'd actually go even further and say the big battle scene in the opening ep was a huge waste of time. it occupies almost 12 minutes, probably blew the whole budget and does very little for the story. would have been way better for story and budget to keep the Trollock visual a mystery, and just leave it at Rand's fight at the farm, arriving at the village already destroyed. Think GoT early exposure to white walkers - you get a sense of the enemy, but don't get the full reveal. In 12 minutes of ep 1, imagine how much you could have done with the characters.
I'm from Nigeria, and I absolutely love the book. Watched literally 1 minute of the trailer/teaser of the movie and almost threw my phone away! They aged them up, changed Mat and basically rushed the storyline because of this. I hate it worse than......
As a fellow Nigerian who loved the whole series, I had the same reaction as you. I was very disappointed not only with the casting choices but also the bad world building. I didn't feel like I was being transported to another world when watching the series, which is why I knew how bad it really was. Don't get me wrong, I know it's unrealistic to expect every fantasy adaptation to be like peter Jackson's LOTR, but they had enough money to make the series look decent at the very least, but no, they couldn't even do that.
Rafe wrote a hate you letter to the actual source material. It has very little to do with the tv series. The plot, characters, locations, and lore were changed by Rafe. The writing by Rafe also is poor, pacing is off, the CGI is low budget, and the additions were terrible.
The only way to truly understand how this show can make such bafflingly bad changes to the source material is to understand who Rafe Judkins is. He has a personal animosity towards the source material because it goes against his personal politics and worldview. He truly did set out to destroy the Wheel of Time rather than cherish it.
Rafe said, EXPLICITLY, he will make character's gay to stick it to people that don't like HIS series. He doesn't give a single fuck about Robert Jordan's work, he actively hates it and thinks his woke version is better.
Yep. Yep. Yep it was a hate letter. I imagine Rafe felt targeted when the original author publicly let it be known he absolutely detests smut-fanfiction of his work, and Rafe has never been able to get over it. This show's original scripts are smut-fanfiction, thankfully they cut that scene they wrote of Mat performing cunnilingus on some random woman... it might be popping up in Season Two🤣
Having now digested the 8 episodes, read through the leaked script for episode 1, I definitely believe it was a next GOT type of thing. Whether that's what Amazon asked for, or that was Rafe's sales pitch, or just Rafe thinking this is what people wanted, I don't know. The right way to pitch this story would've been to say, twenty years from now, what will be the next WOT series? Audiences have no problem immersing themselves in many massive worlds at the same time. We have LOTR, Harry Potter, Star Wars, GOT, Marvel MCU, and so many more. It's just silly to assume that any audience would want another Game of Thrones world. Don't give me Wheel of Time set in Game of Thrones. No, just give the fans the world and story they love and the non-reader audience will come along and enjoy the ride. And this production just does not feel like a billion dollar investment when you look at the IP rights, advertising, and the cost of production. This is Sharknado and SyFy channel garbage that would be cancelled after a single season. Keep reading the books, especially through book 4.
Very well put. There is a reason why you're trying to adapt a book series people love, and if the the established fans love it, then new audiences will love it too if you've done your job properly.
I don’t think they were trying to “recreate the next GOT” in terms of tone and actual story. Bezos wanted “the next GOT” meaning a hit fantasy series that would become mainstream and part of the cultural zeitgeist. Problem is the show runner has no respect for the source material and felt he needed to fix all the problematic part of the books (basically 90% of it). He also decided that strong men are a huge problem. He decided that gender binary in terms of the one power is a problem. He felt that Moiraine needed to be 90% of the story. And the dragon reborn mystery? All these things do is destroy any tension or stakes in the series.
@@charlestruppi7793 In terms of the next GoT point, yes that's exactly what they're trying to do, but you can't deny that most of the new fantasy shows that want to "be the next GoT" dumb it down to blood, violence and sex. And yes, the showrunner clearly doesn't care for the material. And even if he does, it's written like a fanfiction from someone who only wants to see Moiraine.
@@HamzaBoujelouah I generally agree, but I believe in the case of WOT, the show runner just feels that aging everyone up, more sex and violence are improving the source material. I think it’s coincidental that this tends to make WOT more like GOT. I may be wrong, but judging from comments and tweets it seems plausible.
@@charlestruppi7793 I think they very much were. According to Brandon Sanderson, the sex scenes were supposed to be more explicit (explains why the cast was aged up), Moiraine was supposed to flat out murder the ferryman (rather than just let him drown in her whirlpool), not to mention the general darker tone the show has. Egwene's coming of age story was even supposed to include animal sacrifice. All that very much sounds like they were trying to recreate GOT.
Finally someone talks about how stupid Rand and Egwene sleeping together is. A small village would have forced those two to marry. Also they would have dealt with Matt and his dad. Nyneve would have drug them out by their ears. It didn't even feel like a village.
This "adaptation" saddens me. Moraine in the books is a noble born, high class, short in stature and usually polite Aes Sedai. The entrance of Lan and Moraine into the Winespring Inn annoyed me since that type of entrance was definitely not part of their MO. It showed her being rude when there was no need to be rude. Mat's parents were not horrible people like they were portrayed. The main characters are too old. Nynaeve was casted well, but apparently the one power "block" was omitted. I did like the changes made to Thom. Loyal was not done justice and I didn't like the ways. It seems like they mixed Machin shin's voice with the portal stones visions and the "battle" between Rand and Ba'alzamon was like Ewgwain's vision during her accepted trials. The battle had no connection to the Tarwin's Gap battle, which was another wtf. That battle was won by a low level channeler. Algamar was rude to an Aes Sedai, which is opposite of how they treat women, and especially Aes Sedai in Fal Dara. This whole season screams "WOKE" and really pisses me off. This is by far my favorite series. I have read all the books and listened to the audio books (which are phenomenal with the voice acting) countless times. Lan is my favorite character and I hope this series doesn't destroy this character, but I am not holding my breath.
Totally agree with all you said and the "woke" part makes a lot of sense now that you mentioned it. The fact that Rosumand Pike was casted as "lead actress" as well as being the highest paid of the bunch.
"It showed her being rude when there was no need to be rude" she wasn't rude once. you're projecting. "The main characters are too old" they're the same age as the books.. 20.
I waited just over 20 years for a live action adaptation of the books I read, and this is what we get... I've watched 1 episode and that was enough for me. So disappointed. And it annoys the piss out of me that if you look through the Amazon reviews, so many people seem to love it. It's like asking someone who watched The Last Jedi, if they thought it was bad because of what it did with the IP and characters, etc. And you get this weird response of, "oh it wasn't too bad, I enjoyed it." Hopeless.
Don't trust the amazon reviews.. quite a lot of the 5 star reviews don't praise the show, they complain that others are giving it a 1-star. Whereas the 1 stars go into WHY the show sucks. The bottom line is that some people have chosen to take the argument over the show as a sort of proxy political argument.
Have to disagree on one point, this show has no chance of being great. Books aside, the writing was horrible, they made the girls Mary sues and it looked pretty bad all round. Amazon paid the gold price, not the iron price for this wreck.
you do know the "iron price" is when you steal something, right? if you do know that, i'm not sure exactly wtf you're trying to say. there's nothing wrong with the writing and a lot of it comes straight from the books. Would love to know how exactly Eggweenie or Nynaeve are Mary Sues when they did absolutely nothing of consequence in the shows... or do you mean Nynaeve's Holy Nova in ep 4, which is about as Mary Sue-ish as washing away a horse's tiredness... or her power blast against Machin Shin, which is about as Mary Sue-ish as balefiring a group of fades? Kind of hard for Egwene to be a Mary Sue when the only thing she did the whole first season was stab a guy from behind.
@@this.is.a.username Don't compare what an Aes Sedai can do after years of training to what an UNTRAINED girl can do. And while Nynaeve is for sure capable of doing some things even in book 1, they overdid it just because we can't have the girls of the show not be super powerful from the start, can we? It lowers the stakes so much because if Egwene and Nynaeve can do so much without training, why would the dark forces be a threat at all? "Kind of hard for Egwene to be a Mary Sue when the only thing she did the whole first season was stab a guy from behind." That's just not true, she also seemed to revive Nynaeve or at the very least heal some very serious injuries. And if the boys can go a whole season without doing anything useful (even Rand, the freaking Dragon, needed an angreal to do something in the show!) then the girls can wait until they get some training as well, otherwise you can't be mad that people are calling them Mary Sues. Edit: Also did you just say that healing fatal injuries is at the same level of power as making horses not feel tired, especially when the 2nd one was done after Aes Sedai training? Are you serious?
@@vuivraalbastra don't feed into this guys trolling efforts. Ignore him and let him be. He likes to rile people up and ignore any point of an argument that is valid but goes against his views.
This video review is the closest I have come to Wheel of Time (either book or show). Hearing that, in the show (I'm assuming only in the show), a woman is in active labor and kicking the asses of guys just takes the cake for me as far as mary sues go. I haven't had any kids as of yet, but I imagine fighting is not something you can really do while in active labor...Not even Rey from Star Wars was that bad.
What these people don't seem to understand is that we want the story from the books on TV and not their version of the story. If they want to do that they should write their own story.
They could have done a much better job of adhering to the story, but real world considerations like time and budget constraints were never going to permit a really close adaptation. If you don't believe that, consider how much of an audience you think you could retain if the main thing Egwene and Nynaeve did for a whole season was engage in petty arguments while making a trip from one town to another, and the other characters did little more in that season. That's basically The Fires of Heaven, and it's not even the book people most complain about for dragging on endlessly.
@@bobbun9630 you can scrap that off in a couple episodes. As you can do with a lot of the stuff from the books. I mean clothes description takes a lot and you can just show them and it takes 2 seconds. For 10 million $ an episode I don't see where that money went. Also where are the men storylines? We have Egwene and Nyneve, Moiraine and the Aes Sedai doing stuff but what do the men do?!? Whine about their feelings. I am a woman and I disliked most of the females and their way of treating men in the books as they didn't deserve that. In the show it just makes the men look like idiots who deserve to be treated that way. I have a big problem with the writing, editing and directing in the show not anything else.
@@bobbun9630 It is called a montage. You take a series of clips to show progress in a sequence to compress time. It does not work well with dialogue, but does work well with travel which is the focus of the first book especially after the party splits. Matt's dagger sickness, montage!. Travel times for all parties, montage!. Matt and Rand learning gleeman stuff, montage!. You could condense the weeks long travel by all parties to the capital of Andor into 5 minuets of screen time with ease and then keep all the book stuff rather than adding a L sex scene and a funeral that never happened. Also it would have made room for Elyas who should have been in the first season and the boat guy who was a major character for like 7 of the books.
really enjoyed listening to your breakdown of the show - I have no issues with them making changes to the book, but the changes they should've made were often ignored (for instance, giving Rand NOTHING to do)
Oh wow, I'm glad you enjoyed the video. I think trimming elements of the book to fit the 8 episode length (I mean there is a lot of the book which is just Rand and Mat walking), but a lot of the changes I heard Sanderson recommend that they don't do, they did. Which was the wrong choice to me. Also yes, giving Rand nothing to do was a very poor choice. It's like adaptating Harry Potter into a show and spending most of the run time focusing on Dumbledore, Ron, Hermione, Ginny and Neville, then having Harry beat Voldemort in the last 2 episodes.
I think the crazy thing is that while yes we all know that shows and movies are never as good as the books they came from, but the Amazon wheel of time has taken it to another level, it’s SO bad it’s like they tried to make it bad.
What I don't understand is the show's weird limbo between trying to please book fans and enticing new fans through unneeded changes, which ended up leaving the newcomers confused and book fans unsatisfied. I am a book fan. I was once not a book fan. EOTW was my first introduction to the WOT (obviously) I knew nothing about the world before reading. Surprise surprise I never felt confused when RJ didn't want me to, I was enticed. A faithful adaptation will have enticed new fans and kept them along for the ride BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT THE FIRST BOOK WAS FOR AND DID WELL BECAUSE THE SERIES HAS SOLD 90 MILLION COPIES. This show just does not feel like WOT (not even a 'different turning' which doesn't excuse it's failings as a piece of media btw). I hate to say it but D&D should've taken the reigns because the 4 seasons of ADAPTED (not original) material are the greatest seasons of television ever made and should be the standard we hold the bigger studios with more budget to.
I just want to thank you for still giving the books a chance even with this awful, disappointing show. For people that haven’t read the books, I worry that it makes them look bad. But no, it’s just the show. I read all the books before the show came out and I loved them. Amazing character, a great plot, and you get to watch the characters change and grow throughout the series. I really hope you enjoy the books as much as I did. And I hope the show may improve.
It's just sad that such a great and influential piece of literature got adapted by amateur hacks. They had great material going for them, and they chose to write their own amateur garbage. So sad.
Excellent review. The one word that best describes Amazon's series is "vulgar," mostly because of making the characters jaded, self-important 21st century adults. It's clear that no one involved with the show ever read or appreciated the books. Please finish reading the series - you will be even more amazed at what could have been.
The changes to the main characters were not one of the major "I'm bothered by this" points among the changes. I disliked the Mat changes most, mainly because of the way a jaded start makes his it harder to appreciate the changes in his personality due to dagger exposure syndrome. Really the dagger story is the main point of interest for Mat in the first two books. Diluting it makes his character seem fairly useless in the early story.
@@bobbun9630 Rand, Matt and specially Perrin are but a shadow of what they are in the books, you simply can't deny that. They don't have guts or will on their own and also simping for Egwene all the show who does EVERYTHING (killing, healing, saving people, resurrecting) included RESURRECTING Nyaneve without any training whatsoever. Also including Egwene in the possible Dragon candidates is beyond retarded, where's the explanation of the saidin and saidar (the 2 sides of the one power)? The scene against the trolloc army should be remembered as one of the worst battles in a fantasy show ever filmed, sending 5 channelers ALONE outside the walls, how can a writer be so bad to write such a bad idea? Because Rand couldn't save the day due to "EQUALITY".
@@francesccampos1343 "Also including Egwene in the possible Dragon candidates is beyond retarded" Except that's not what was done. Yes, it's unclear if the writers of the series are making that change at the point where Moiraine does this, but the basis for this is explained in Ep 6 when Moiraine expresses her distrust of ancient prophecies. That's the real change. Moiraine was there in person for Gitara Moroso's prophecy. There's no real basis for that sort of distrust going by the books. "Because Rand couldn't save the day due to "EQUALITY"." People who get upset about "woke" make me laugh. You're letting your politics get in the way of a reasonable understanding of what you're seeing. Moreover, many of you seem to have a distorted view of what RandLand is actually like in the books. Female dominated societies have been going on in RandLand ever since the breaking--thousands of years. That's not just true in Tar Valon. It's objectively true in Duopotamia as well, where it's noted in the books several times that though the Council and the Women's Circle are theoretically equal, somehow the Women's circle always gets its way.
@@bobbun9630 I know perfectly how capable and important the female characters are in Robert Jordan's world, and i like it a lot because both men and women have to cooperate in order to triumph against the evil. But they invented that scene with the channelers and the trollocs to put the spotlight in Egwene and Nyaneve, not said by me, said by the same productors because they "didn't want Rand to get all the spotlight in the last chapter". I don't put any politics, i despise them because i consider this as a way of distraction from the normal life. The productors and the woke cult established specially in Hollywood are the ones who put their political agenda in everything.
@@bobbun9630 Moiraine dedicated her life, and RISKED it, for about 20 years, to finding the Dragon Reborn after she and Siuan witnessed Gitara Moroso's Foretelling... and THAT is according to the SHOW'S narrative. Yes, it's absolute BS to inject that crap about Egwene and maybe even Nynaeve being the Dragon Reborn... and ESPECIALLY the crap about NYNAEVE. Moiraine and Siuan knew WHEN the Dragon was reborn... and WHERE. They KNEW Nynaeve was too old. They even pointed it out... and then tried to do an end-run around their own logic... which ironically makes them look like idiots. As for "many of you seem to have a distorted view..." "Female dominated societies have been going on in RandLand..." DUH! We KNOW that! It's not OUR view which is distorted. I find it incredibly difficult to believe that ANYONE who read the books doesn't know that the QUEEN of Andor is ALWAYS a QUEEN... and that the current First of Mayene is a woman... and the "main" Panarch, too... and the current leader of the Seanchan, and the next one as well... Or the "balance of power" between the Women's Circles and Village Councils in Two Rivers... and similarly the Chiefs and Wise Ones in the Waste/Aiel. I haven't seen ANYONE making an argument otherwise... which just makes YOUR argument to this point a strawman... red herring. What people ARE complaining about, in terms of the show being WOKE, is how the MAIN CHARACTERS are being portrayed... and that often includes turning Egwene and Nynaeve into Mary Sues... and USUALLY includes making Mat, Rand, Perrin, Loial, Agelmar, etc into pathetic useless (and boring) wastes. It has NOTHING to do with female-led societies/nations. Hell, even Valda gets turned into some kind of coward who drops his knife when he sees Perrin's yellow eyes... so that Egwene can jump on his back and stab him. (THAT scene would have played VERY differently, if he hadn't gone overboard and dropped his knife... but, NOOOO... the writer/director had to have him drop his knife, even though he was already distracted, giving Egwene all the opening she needed... but they had to go further and turn him into a coward who "crapped his pants" when he saw Perrin's eyes. Of course, it would have played very differently if PERRIN had killed him, using the opening that Egwene gave to him... but no, that couldn't happen either.) Did you ever stop to think that perhaps one of the most universally loved themes from the books is a BALANCE between men and women... that there are so many competent and heroic male AND female characters?
For people who never read the books, I think the experience must have been worse. The infodumps of lore were insane, I wonder how many people stopped watching immediately.
My non book reader brother tried watching it and fell asleep 10 minutes into each and every episode. I was too full of rage and confusion to fall asleep. I didn't even watch the finale after the first 8 minutes, I turned it off and cancelled my Amazon sub.
Great comment NewFlamenco because I wonder the same thing. If I didn't know a damn thing about wheel of time, I wouldn't have made it 10 minutes into this show without being confused and bored. I only enjoyed watching to see what I recognized from the books.
@@reverseworld224 Yea, same for me. But the cringe factor was strong with this series, just so painful. I doubt it is going to get a second season, despite them saying it will. Then again it is bizarre which shows get renewed these days.
I have a big problem with the Siuan and Moirraine relationship because the relationships of those has a major impact on the later story. It is likely they will remove those sections. If the show even get's that far. The problem is similar to the Egwene -Perrin "thing". As I know what should be coming later it will be strange if Perrin has a thing for Egwene.
In the books they had a relationship when they were young then they both went after men. The same can be done in the TV show. From the vision of Min, _the amyrlin will be the downfall of Moiraine,_ I may even think of some love drama. This is not an adaptation of a book anymore, they can write whatever sh*t they want. 😕
@@moma-b I do not get the impression that they had that kind of relationship in the book even as younger. I understand that some did get this impression. Even if its annoying that Rafe has a compulsive need to insert propaganda into the show. It would have been just as bad if Moiraine had a love relationship with Lan.
@@Mean_Man In the books it is stated they were pillow friends. That expression is described in The Wheel of Time Companion book as "forming a romantic attachment to one another". I dislike the scene between Siuan and Moiraine and not just because it is not true to the books but also because I think they had no chemistry at all. They did not manage to show their emotions well, their kiss seemed forced.
@@moma-b The definition "pillow friends" is not in the actual book. You need to read the index to find this. I got the impression that is was someone you shared your dreams with, and had sleepovers with. There is no need to put a flashlight on this relationship. It may or may not have been this way. Nobody cares until Rafe displays his compulsive need to push an agenda. Its makes the show corny. My biggest problem with the relationship is that it brakes the plot. Any relationships for those two would do that. Likely this means that all the plots it would break later has been removed from the show. Rafe seems to totally have missed how amusing many of the relationships are in the book. They often feel the urge to strangle the person they love the most. This is both entertaining and makes you like the characters. The relationships are extremely corny on the show. It creeps me when the show dose the declarations of love. The book was more discreet. Where (mostly the girls) gets pissed because the boys dont read between the line. The boys get confused and wonder why she is pissed because they totally missed the discreet declaration of love. The guys are generally rather blunt in the book. They just say that they like the girl. No silly poetry. Offcause the girls get pissed again because they expected poetry.
@@Mean_Man I agree. I wish they would adapt the books to film instead of rewrite a story using the names of the characters and locations and some parts of the story Robert Jordan wrote. This is not an adaptation, this is a mediocre fanfiction. 😕
I know i'm a bit late, but hearing someone who went into this series i loved for around 26 years completely blind, and agreeing with basically everything i complained about while watching this show is, frankly, both reassuring, and low key kinda heartwarming. I'm THRILLED you're enjoying the books. They are my favorite fantasy series, and it's wonderful that it's getting new fans. They DO get kinda slow in the middle, but trust me, A Memory of Light was one of the best books i've ever read, and the slowness in it's lead up is more than worth the payoff, in my opinion. Stick with it, and it WILL pay off, i promise. As for the show, maybe pirate the next season or two, if you care enough to go on. This was a dumpster fire, and I'm sad that THIS is what most people will associate with the name. Read the books, they are worth it friends. Give this generic turned garbage show a pass going on
Wholeheartedly agree! The books are worth the read definitely. Left feeling saddened that the series had come to an end. The characters felt like old friends, almost. Honestly, I want to see season 2 because I’m curious to see if they can mess it up even more than they already have.
“The canons of narrative in any medium cannot be wholly different; and the failure of poor films is often precisely in exaggeration, and in the intrusion of unwarranted matter owing to not perceiving where the core of the original lies.” J.R.R. Tolkien
One of the benefits of being a fan of grimdark fantasy is I don’t have to worry about my favorite series getting ruined because most of them are too graphic and explicit for television lol.
GOT tried to impress the fans, knowing that if they did it justice that they would have 60+ million guaranteed viewers. WOT apparently went out of their way to alienate and aggravate the 90+ million fans of the story
@@gilian2587 uh cause even if 45 million bought the first book not all of them would've read all the books where's there's 14 of them, and reason it's at 90 million is because it's so long
Just to note, Robert Jordan stated, "... this is not the medieval period, not a fantasy with knights in shining armor. If you want to imagine what the period is, imagine it as the late 17th century without gunpowder." That's the late 1600s, but without muskets and with magic. So Newtonian physics and type printed books are part of the world. It is still a relatively monocultured world like the books, and unlike the Amazon series.
I've been trying to compile my thoughts on the show for a while now; this synopsis i think does it best. It's so infuriating, because they have a great cast and most of the writing was already done for them (by Robert Jordan), but it seems like Rafe's arrogance can't handle that and persistently feels the need to smugly re-write everything to "own" it, and the reality is, he just isn't very good at it.
dark hair, dark eyes, tanned skin so yeah, pretty much. They'd never even seen a blonde until they were half way to Camelyn, and only once in Camelyn did they see "people whose skin was too dark or too pale" Also, wish they'd put Ran in a pair of high heeled boots, he is supposed to be a head higher than anyone else they meet in the first book... and put Loial on a pair of stilts or something, he is supposed to be 3 meters tall, shouldn't be too hard to film with some practice and creative camerawork.
One positive thing about this show is that it has introduced newcomers like me to the Wheel of Time story and now I am planning on reading the book instead as I've heard great things about it and I wasn't really feeling the show.
I hated that they change some small things for no reason at all, things like: Moraine didn't knew that Nynaeve could channeling? (wtf why? she says on the books that Aes Sedai can sense that). They gave way too much power/importance to Logain and way too much time on the white tower with characters that don't have any meaning at all. There are other things that im sure will be back to bite them in their asses in the future. They change the meaning of the Eye of the world and cause of that has to change a lot of things. Soo many unneeded changes
I started reading the books in the early 90's and fell in love with them. This show was highly anticipated by millions of fans, and then Rafe put out this mess. It is literally fan fiction with a SJW agenda. I am so disappointed and hope this series is cancelled. I would rather wait for another series or movie in the future.
Hopefully a show. It's they only way they'd have any chance of pulling off anything close to the heart of the source material and doing it well. Any movie or movies would suffer from massive cuts.
When this gets cancelled (and it will), they will blame the fans and the source material, not the idiots writing it, and will then claim that it is not economically viable as a series. It won't be remade. This is the nightmare scenario, because all we have is this fetid, steaming mound of trolloc shit.
I am just tired of Hollywood focusing too much on trying to surprise the audience by making changes to books. I think they thought the reason why GoT was so popular was because of the shocking surprises. I prefer good story telling.
One thing I hated was that nynaeve slept with lan, that goes against her character in a very big way, the nynaeve in the the books refused to have sex before marriage and looked down on some of the other characters for doing so.
@@channelnamepending8329 I hate what the writers did! These days it is getting harder to say no to sex because the media keeps promoting it and make it seems like a normal thing to do. There are people who actually want to wait until marriage to have sex. Why the writers think it is a bad thing?
It constantly blows my mind how all the studios keep wanting to make The Next Game of Thrones or The Next Harry Potter by trying to twist another adaptation to fit the same mold. It’s like it never occurs to them that the reason some adaptations do really well is because they are faithfully adapting good source material. They seem to want to cash in on the name to tell their own story, instead of letting their story stand (or fall) on its own merits. Just to be clear, when I say faithful I don’t mean identical. I understand that some changes are necessitated by the change from one medium to another. The movie Arrival changed quite a bit from the short story it’s based on while remaining true to the themes, and I think it’s actually better than its source. The upshot is that, yeah, it seems like studios take the wrong lessons from another adaptation’s success, and think they need to lift elements from successful adaptations rather than focusing on making a quality adaptation of the work in front of them. With WoT though, I think Rafe just incorrectly thinks he’s a better storyteller than Robert Jordan.
@@jabur81 You are correct in your assessment. Rafe can't even hold Robert Jordan's pen. Jordan ( or rather James Rigney Jr.) gets a lot of flack for being overly wordy and he is at times. However when I listened to the EOTW a few years ago on audio book I was shocked how much foreshadowing I missed the first time through. There is a lot of work and thought that goes into his writing if you are paying attention. Your Arrival analogy is a good one, but there is one that even more people will recognize. Forrest Gump. If you ever read the book it is quite a bit different than the movie. If they made a movie based strictly on the book it would not have been nearly as popular as the movie was. While the movie hits a lot of points from the book they make Forrest a much more likable character and change a lot of what he goes through to be a more coherent story. This is one of the few examples I have where the movie is actually better than the book.
I was the same in that I started reading the books because of the show. And in reading EOTW, there was so much cut out that could’ve made it an incredible start to the series. Which is why it felt incredibly rushed imo.
LOL you are only 1/2 way through book one, wait until you are 8 or 9 books in and realize how much they have screwed up in the show!!! They have assassinated so may character story lines with the shows woke, op women.
More ridiculous part is that Robert's world is already very Female dominance world and ruin the base of the whole story to bring more of what is already exist in the story.
Your mistaken, Perrin is in love with Rand. They ruined Lan on purpose. Lan would never behave that way. One man against the shadow. " whatever happens, face it on your feet" Dai Shan.
To me, part of the issue with the Perrin setup was making his "wife" out to be the obviously stronger member of the couple? They went out of their way to make her the strong blacksmith (they didn't even mention Perrin WAS a blacksmith until like the last 3 episodes?), and that she was doing better fighting the Trollocks (until Perrin accidentally kills her trying to assist). The attempt to over-GIRL POWER! this series is horrible, and the ironic part is that if they had followed the books word for word, most of the female characters would have eventually appeared both more powerful and actually likeable (or hated, if they were on the evil side). Just one side of the "woke cult" taking over entertainment before our eyes.
I feel no need to watch this. If they ever make a TV series and truly based on the story in the books I'll watch, but this is just a story some writers in Hollywood have thrown together, not the story written by Robert Jordon. It's so far off from what he wrote that if they put it in book form it wouldn't even be close enough to Jordan's work to be considered plagiarism!
See I didn't know that at the time, and I think it's a failing of the show. I don't know who the Aiel are and what they can do, so as a viewer who didn't know the book, I was lost.
@@HamzaBoujelouah Yeah, you're fine. I totally get it. The show failed to explain literally anything. lol. You won't really get to meet Aiel in the books until book 3 and you won't get to spend time with them until book 4. You'll mostly just be hearing stories and stuff. So, I get why they slipped this in as a cold open. It was the only way to have Aiel in the first season. Still, as you go through EotW you will at least be given some context for who the Aiel are that was MIA in the show because most character moments from book 1 just don't happen in the show. lol. Glad the show got you listening/reading the series tho! I'm hoping season 2 is better, but with how hard they're trying to bait GoT audiences, I'm not that optimistic. I also hate that the atmosphere around the show is you CAN'T talk about GoT despite the show clearly trying to appeal to the general GoT audience in tone and gore. Like, not a dealbreaker for me, but I'm gonna call a spade a spade, y'know?
@@mercedesplay_more_kof8488 Thom explains some Aiel lore in ep 3 to Mat when they bury the caged Aiel. After rewatching the show a few times there are definitely a lot more nods and hints to future plot points and world development that most people are missing. Season 1 as a whole would have definitely been a lot better if they had allowed the main trio to have more character development and emphasized more world building
@@manicpixiefangirl4189 Spoiler warning for books. (4 or 5. I can’t remember) She *was* forbidden to go fight. She broke the rules. They knew about it. That’s why the Wise Ones know who Rand’s mom is in the first place. Because she was already in trouble for her involvement in the war while she was pregnant. Her fighting on Dragonmount while pregnant is part of the prophecy and canon in the books. That’s how Tam finds her and how Rand ever got to be born on Dragonmount in the first place. 🐉
The beautiful thing about the source material prologue to the first book is that it could have been filmed as a cold open very easily in its original form. Showing him already insane and then finding sanity during his confrontation with Ishamael, and the creation of Dragonmount.... That would have been an excellent start which would have established the narrative stakes and done quite a bit of efficient world building besides. We didn't even need to see him killing his family. It's arguably better to leave that to the imagination and pick up in the immediate aftermath. The so-called Winter Dragon pilot was about 16 minutes long and full of about six or seven minutes of fluff. They could have easily covered it in 10 minutes, possibly less.
They can't really use the excuse that they didn't have enough time, because they focused more on adding in their own changes, and wasting time, rather than adapting the books as best as they could.
I really enjoyed listening to your view of the show. You speak well about your viewpoint and actually give ideas that would work better. I like this type of review instead of just saying this doesn't work and complain about it, you actually talk about methods that would make it better.
As someone who has read the entire series, they RUIN so many things that happen in the future. They introduce MAJOR plot holes by changing details from the original. The ending especially, it's VERY different and they changed details that were oh fuck's sake. In the books Rand and Egwene are pretty much set up, they're basically engaged by their families. It's not OFFICIAL, but unless one of them makes a dramatic decision they're pretty much certainly going to marry one another. The two of them however are young teens, they're awkward and they're still in that "Girls/boys are stupid" phase, plus there's the possibility that Egwene will become a Wisdom and literally leave Emmond's Field. So it's like "they'll get together, just later when they're a bit more grown up." Then they leave the Two Rivers and you start to question, ARE they still going to be together? What'll happen? I haven't seen the show, I watched Shadiversity's reviews which are WAY better. I have seen a few clips though, and the acting is SO BAD. Oh god every clip I see I'm just cringing at how bad the delivery is. In the books the Ferryman is, first of all clearly a prick, it's very heavily implied the ferryman would gladly rob them if he thought they couldn't fight back. Second he grumpily calls his workers and gets them across, then Moiraine pushes the boat out into the river and makes a whirlpool to sink it, and the ferry workers are panicking and going "WHAT!? YOU DIDN'T TIE IT DOWN YOU IDIOTS! GET MY BOAT!" And they DON'T KNOW she's doing this magic, and they're like "Oh, how unfortunate. Whirlpools right? Here, for your troubles" and they give him some gold to get a new boat, and he and his men are pretty grumpy, but it's not EVIL, it's necessary cause he would ABSOLUTELY cart the Trollocs over the river. He's not loyal or anything, and the trollocs are terrifying too. So she sank the boat and nobody gets hurt. In this show, she is ABSOLUTELY a murderer. Even if he's not cooperating or seeing reason, it is VERY easy for Moiraine to wrap him in flows of air, literally lift him off his feet, and then have Lan tie him to a tree. On top of that he must think his own son is a retard, he said his son was "on his way". LIKE HE WON'T SEE THE TROLLOCS AND RUN THE OTHER WAY?! Ok. Robert Jordan was very open that the first book in this series is basically fellowship, but how he thought it would REALLY go. Like "Hey you're the chosen one, let's go" Frodo is like "You got it mate, let's go." Robert Jordan is like, nah this is how it would go "Oh really? Here, have a beer, have two on me. Be right back" then he fucks off out the back door. They RUIN Lan's character, they RUIN the three boys, they humiliate EVERY male character and they make the women all overpowered mary sues. If you wanna see a REALLY good episode by episode review of this shit show, go watch Knight's Watch, after you've finished Eye of the World of course. Also listen to the version narrated by Michael Cramer and Kate Reading. Not only are most of them narrated by those two, but they're also great at it. If you wanna see Moiraine as the main character in her own story, go read New Spring. It's a prequel to Eye of the World that focuses on Moiraine before she left the Tower, and it's much shorter than the other books and is a fantastic read. Why didn't they just adapt New Spring? They probably didn't even read it. They actively hate Robert Jordan's works, they do not hide this at all.
@@HamzaBoujelouah I just finished book 6 of the wheel of time, and their voices only get better and better. Their narration is spot on and perfectly suits the series. Edit: spelling
Moiraine is an important character in the books, but a side character. She is there to teach Rand a lesson, then has business of her own. The show runners clearly hates the books and has never read them. We can see it in the choices. 2 episodes wasted on this boyfriend, the warder the ended himself. The series has nothing to do with the books, just the names.
New subscriber here! Just stumbled across your channel. I am a crappy person and don't give small UA-camrs a try very often, but I think you've got something good going here! Looking forward to seeing your channel grow!
They destroyed the setting of the entire series in 15 minutes. Magic is binary in that world. Gone. Two rivers is isolated little village...gone... Perrin a teenager is married and kills his wife..whelp he's ruined. The village is an obvious soundstage with zero realism... People aren't even dirty. Oh and the village, isolated for thousands of years since the breaking is a melting pot of races which ruins the entire journey of the boys....the whole series is about showing them new cultures and races and what makes them unique... Completely ruined inside 15 minutes
Hamza thank you so much for this review. You said everything perfectly and better than I could've explained. Your gripes are my gripes, and your point about Amazon's LOTR show is well taken, I hope they do that more justice.
Rand's mother fighting on Dragonmount while 9 months pregnant is about the only thing in the show that is faithful to the books. Granted we dont get a scene spelled out to us in so much detail... But how else does an Aiel child get born on a battlefiled? She was fighting as the Aiel fight and her pregnancy was no reason to ignore her honor and oaths.
hahaha, "but my son!" ty for the laughs it made getting through the show 1% more worth it....read the books everyone! or listen for free online!!! its a great audio experience.
Rafe really wanted Moiraine to kill the ferryman, but his original plan was just to have her blast him with a lightning bolt. Sanderson literally had to explain to Rafe, the showrunner, why she couldnt do that.
That Aiel scene - I loved it, it was done well, but like you said, a woman in labor doing all of that is beyond stupid. A simple sanity check could fix that. Could she do it on her own? No. So let's give her a sister which will do it and dies in the process, the last surviving soldier is pissed off so will go after the mother, veil or not, she may kill him as she did in the show, that's somewhat reasonable especially if he's hurt... problem solved. And they could do sanity checks for so many scenes to not make them look so stupid, like the Logain shielding, Morain's parody of a trial ('What have you been doing?' 'I cannot say' - so retarded), entering ways(like why do you need Loyal, how Padan got in), the "battle tactics" at the end... Like, for the world, I am not sure how the trollocs got over that wall in the gap. I guess the authors didn't know either so they showed us a trolloc with a pickaxe of all things. It's the stupidity that kills this show. Sometimes it's almost like an insult of intelligence. Like in horror when you scream, don't do it, don't go there. That's how I felt about Agelmar (and his sister)- a typical horror-like stupid character and they even gave him a stupid death. I couldn't but laugh when that happened...
i love men claiming they know what women in labor could or could not do. It's hilarious the only people I see having trouble believing that fight sequence are the ones with dicks. You paid zero attention to the books if you think ep 7 isn't pretty much how it happened. "The genre's called FANTASY, it's supposed to be unrealistic, you myopic manatee."
They DO have "sisters". Spear Sisters, a group of Aiel that are basically the women that decided they wanna be soldiers. They're badasses, and Rand's mother is one of them, though SHE is not Aiel, she JOINED the Aiel from the "Wetlands" as the Aiel call them. So she's from Rand's neck of the woods and pissed off to the wastes basically. In the books she DOES go onto the battlefield when she's pregnant, and she wasn't supposed to do this, but she kinda broke the rules and ended up giving birth and dying there. She did NOT take out 30 armored men WHILE giving birth. The soldiers aren't god damned monsters, they're not going to go after the pregnant woman who can't defend herself when there's THOUSANDS OF OTHER AIEL TO FIGHT.
"It's the stupidity that kills this show. Sometimes it's almost like an insult of intelligence." You nailed it. That is what I dislike about this show and so many other things being written today (especially things like The Last Jedi). They are just plain stupid and if anybody sat down and thought about what they were writing they would realize that things don't happen that way. Its like the writers don't have much in the way of experience in life and little useful schooling.
Thank you for this video. I feel somewhat vindicated, like someone else was actually watching the same show that I just watched. I've seen way too many reviews with the person saying that it was great... It was not. I'm really disappointed with the Amazon show. I've read all the books, played the TTRPG, and I was really looking forward to this being given the GoT treatment. I just feel cheated and ripped off. Low budget CGI, costumes, brutal writing, editing, what story was this? It wasn't the WoT. Noone cares about the show runner's personal proclivities and how he wants the world to be - just tell the story in the source material, it's better than anything Rafe can come up with himself.
My biggest concern with the TV show was that I did understand the plot. Was there a plot? It was clear in the book what the plot was, but the show seemed to be poorly adapted scenes from the book interspersed with fan fiction creations from the writers, showrunners, etc.
Apparently they've told Rafe to stick closer to the plot of the books (I saw that on Reddit so idk how reliable that is). I've also heard that Amazon has greenlit 2 extra seasons, so we'll at the very least have 3 season of WoT. If they start losing money and interest they yes, it will most likely get cancelled.
Oh man! It's Incredible how Amazon F*ck up WOT. I stopped seeing Daniel G. and others youtubers who has been invited by Amazon to the premier. They are bought by Amazon till the season end. The show is a shit full of their own 2021 moral and politics that affects everthing. It's incredible the level of shit they put in the show full of their own monstrously bad written plot instead of the original. They have put the money in buy youtubers, reviewers, rotten tomatoes, Imbd and so on, and marketing instead of put the money in make a good show. At this time I believe that Amazon don't wanna make a good show. This blow my mind. They prefer to spend the money educating us in the new feminism. Thnx for your opinion.
Ok, now that the season is over and you have all the lore the show was willing to disclose at this point, I want to ask you this (and no, it's not an obvious question): Why do you think Rand is the Dragon Reborn?
Well I have seen a few videos talking about EoTW and most have all said that Rand is the Dragon Reborn. I also think the book makes it obvious because they tell it from his POV and there's of course the scene where Tam says that Rand isn't his son.
@@HamzaBoujelouah but what about what the show has told you? Being adopted, or your mom being a badass, is surely not enough of a qualification to be The dragon, is it?
@@bidossessi True, I guess its because Rand was able to stop the Dark One? Albeit it was with that maguffin that amplified his channel. And on paper he fits the bill of a fantasy hero: -Farm boy sent on an epic quest -Had a cool sword that was given to him -Is the leader of a group of friends who look up to him for answers The show also does have him say that he is the Dragon reborn and he finds it out in the Ways.
@@HamzaBoujelouah true, he "fits the bill", but why does Moiraine believe him when he knocks at her door? That's what I'm getting at. How do we _know_ that he's not just some male channeler, but THE legendary dragon? What evidence does the show give to back this up? Or maybe my question should be: "what is the Dragon Reborn Checklist"?
@@bidossessi Oh yes, that I can agree with. Rafe very clearly didn't set it up properly owing to the need of "surprising" the audience with the supposed Dragon Reborn reveal. It very much reads as him going, yep, he's the Dragon in the book so he's the Dragon in the show. Just a big example of no set up with a forced payoff.
I think while driving through LA, Rafe saw some homeless surrounding a barrel full of burning garbage.. I believe that was the inspiration for this WoT adaptation!!!
The show might have been a OK fantasy show but it was a bad adaptation of the Wheel of Time. When adapting genre material to TV so many studio try to "modernize" the material but they take away what people love about it. The Wheel of Time TV series does that. Also having read the entire series the first season they wrote it in such a way that they will probably ignore most of the second book.
@@HamzaBoujelouah that is fair. I was trying to be generous. As a huge fan of the book series I was worried I wasn't giving if a fair shake when analyzing it as a generic fantasy series.
Great honest review better than “some” of the more well established wot channels who are in some sort of denial or something? You got my sub buddy. I’m a long time “30yrs” fan of the series, started reading the books as a young fisherman, got the eye of the world from a fellow fisherman and would read it most nites drifting out at sea before shuteye then followed the series for the following 30yrs dreaming of how great this would be as a movie or tv series , now I’m 48 and this is the garbage we got, very disappointed is an understatement especially knowing I’ll probably never get to see a true honest adaptation to the books😡
the only people in denial are those that want to see it on tv period. it was always going to be shit on screen. i've been saying that online since usenet days. this is as good as it is going to get and it's not that bad.
Thom Merrilin was by far the manliest character in the show. He's different than he is in the book but at least they gave him a dangerous vibe which is fitting considering his character arc. I did not get dangerous vibes from the warders or even Lan for the most part.
the wheel of time is complicated. the story is just so, so vast and you learn about the world as you go. it works really well in the books. on the show…it’s pretty choppy and i think that’s what’s getting people
I'm about halfway through book 3 now and I love the world building and the way Jordan doesn't tell you everything right away. You have to earn it by reading- it's good stuff.
Excellent Hamza. I'm actually rereading the series for the 6 or 7th time. I'm up to Book 6. Skimming the boring bits. This show is a travesty. I feel sorry for the ppl that like it. They don't know what they are missing.
16.00 ish. Moiraine, in the books wove wards around them all in the Blight to allow them to rest and sleep. From Tarwin's gap to the Eye with the Greenman was a lengthy journey. Not less than 24 hours.
Rosemund Pike as Moiraine. You really need to do a comparative listen to the original audiobook. The dual male and female narrators do such a better job than the Rosemund Pike version. No need to buy another book - most libraries have the audio version available.
TY for a great video. I've read the entire series in print and am now listening through a reread so if you're listening to the WOT books I couldn't recommend the OG versions instead of the new one more... I'm sure she's doing fine but the narration of Michael Kramer and Kate Reading is so iconic in fantasy and I love them :D I am so curious what you think about episode 8 after you read the rest of the book.... really... curious... :D
I was actually going to get the Kramer and Reading version but the audio sample wasn't the best quality. When I revist EoTW I will listen to that version though.
@@HamzaBoujelouah Robert Jordan would listen to the Kramer/Reading version to get an idea of the way other people read and voiced his writing, so he could be sure his intent while writing came through, and he loved them as well. Great vid here btw.
I appreciate you review. I feel similarly. I hadn't read the showrunners tweets or interviews but some reviewers include some odd ones in the review where Rafe seems to be teazing or trolling people who I suppose he sees as hardcore fans in what I consider inappropriate way. As if he doesn't take his job seriously enough. I do think he is over his head. He has worked on other properties but for this property I wish they had got multiple different individuals with experience working on successful epic adaptations. Ultimately the actors and actresses are not a problem. I realize in the book that different ethnicities are cosmopolitan in cities which is natural but are concentrated in certain parts of the overall world but there are many nearby small countries in competition and war with each other that could easily drive refugees to seek peace and stability in neighboring areas and out in the boonies allowing for a simple explanation for a cosmopolitan emonds field which actually does happen in the book later which can just be brought forward as its likely happened already often enough just not spelled out. so that is not beyond rationale. the story as he tells it doesn't have its own internal logic/reason that makes sense to me or that the story sticks to. also he seems to toss in barbs that are intended to 'trigger' some people. Im easy going person who is a more universalist type. every person is similar to me in that the only way I sort anyone is in the nice/not-nice binary. I dont group anyone outside that and don't even like binary thinking outside that, but I catch some weird rewrites that seemed to try to trigger people. Its odd. I will watch this regardless because If you break it into pieces there is something you can take from it that may help you enjoy it even if its just a small pieces. I've watched worse. I've just been annoyed at so many small things its hard to enjoy what is there to enjoy when I keep being taken out of the immersion by the lack of internal logic and the parts where the magic creep for untrained people has exceeded what a circle of trained people can do. I need things like this to have rules and gradations and learning and buildup. spells are supposed to be taught except for usually one self learned one (like healing for nynaeve) and eavesdropping for moraine, with all others being taught to you by someone else. but they just pretend that magic is wholy self actuated without training and learning and just hope and pray and wish and good things will happen. in the book Rand does learn things without assistance but there is internal logic reasons that make that stay true to the logic. hes 'remembering from past life' even when nynaeve learns things quickly in the book its through seeing others weaves and then replicating what she sees. they break all the book rules but they also break all their own impression of whatever rules it seems they seem to be trying to make. the lack of an internal logic is hard for me to ignore. I think I just need that even if it were a completely new property and had nothing to do with wheel of time. also the fighting needs to be written and planned and coreographed by experts. robert jordan did a good job of spelling this stuff out on the page so its not like it isnt even already spelled out. but when fighting or war are done in a poor way it shows. there are many battles where if they are similarly poorly executed will be offputting.
I'm a book fan and was really looking foreword to the show. Told all my friends to watch it then when it came out had to apologized to them all for wasting there time. TBH I've spent more time watching youtube content these past few weeks on how shit the show was than i spent watching the show
Honestly, I'm with you there. I finished book one and found many of the changes in the show baffling. I then showed my friend (who wasn't a book fan) and he kept asking me what was even happening because the show was so bad at explaining anything
I don't mind them changing things from the book, but the changes they make are not well thought out. It seems they throw in whatever they need in the moment for a single episode and there are already head scratching moments like Perrin having a crush on Egwene after killing his wife a few weeks ago.
I wonder how many books you have read? Have you finished it? Do you agree best books EVER? Although, im sure you understand now that several books barely have rand in them or other characters Jordan usually focus on a few theads with little updates on the others untol it all comes back together
@HamzaBoujelouah I finally found them lol. I just got excited this series meant so much to me. My step mom worked at ba book publisher and she used to give me copies of any books that they published that she thought I would like and I got The Wheel of Time 1 through 10 and a box set of five books in each one. This was during high school I waited 15 years to finish it lol. I cant imagine how those who bought Eye of the World when it first came out state sane that long
I agree with almost everything you said. This is probably going to sound silly...but Rands coat was out of place...the cut and synthetic lining threw me off every time I saw it.
will someone please cut that mole off that actress. Feeling like MTV/CW casting would have been better than what Rafe has done maybe besides the actors for Padam Fain's and Loial who should have had fluffy ears. The rest were either two short or did feel right to their characters.
Its unbelievable they had the choice of using the book's prologue of Lews Therin going mad, killing his family, confronting Ishamael and then blasting the world and THEY DIDNT USE IT! That scene sets everything up and pulls you in immediately. I get that they were only given a set budget from Money-bags Bezos but if you have THAT opening, then you use your budget and DO it!
It's baffling that they didn't use it... Like at all...
Doesn't mean they won't use it in the future
@@GypsyGuitarr Yes, perhaps, but it will be too late. Opportunity missed.
THANK YOU! Finally Someone says what's in my mind.
Well, they had 10 Mio. per episode.
That's more than GoT had in its first season and GoT looks WAY WAY WAY better and more professional.
They could have done it, if they were not amateurs.
WoT looks like a cheap soap opera.
The "anyone can be the dragon" plot line just kills the lore. Straight up
As a woman I thought it was empowering. Or something
@@emhu2594Wheel of time is empowering without this anyone can be a dragon shit
Why do we need a dragon when three girls that can barely channel destroyed an entire trollic army
@emhu2594 Egwene's agency in the book, choosing of her own free will to go on this adventure, face these challenges and overcome so much without a Destiny boost...Now that was empowering
@@breezy3392 not to mention what she became
A person cannot have two masters. Robert Jordan used world-building to advance his story because he cared about telling the story of Rand.
Amazon's director, Rafe Judkins, cared about his social agenda and inserted his personal social messaging as an overlay to Robert Jordan's story. The original work came second. That's why the show is such a mess as well as offensive towards the source material.
Peter Jackson's only master was Tolkien's work, not his own re-telling. Jackson famously explained this in detail himself.
dude there is no Political agenda to this series, call it bad all you want but nothing about this show is trying to be "progressive"
@@samuelhadjaissa5201 wrong. The importance of gender in the duality of the One Power is crucial to the magic system. That is why only a man can become the Dragon Reborn. Saidin is aggressive and destructive and can not heal like Saidar. The show was a mess.
@@IndyMotoRider like i get that part and I agree that the show is pretty mediocre, but I feel the term "woke is just thrown around a lot to the point its become a mute criticism in of itself
As Rafe i would have made a 3 rd sex- before even becoming a man or woman one would be a dog and use the one power to become man (or woman) because -why not -tis idea has been expoited yet and makes 5 cent more in profit for me , and i would not care i destroyed later revenue when i get 5 cet more this christmas -that usa today and wall street , or the donkey keeping of certain ideas when you cannot change at all - but this bs from amazon make sme angry
@@samuelhadjaissa5201 So why make the dragon 1 of 5 instead of 1 of 3? Why make Moiraine and Siuan lovers instead of how the story potrayed it? I have nothing against any of those things, but the only reason to make the ladies as part of the prophecy and Moiraine and Siuan a couple was to push a agenda, whether the agenda is good or bad, its not true to the source and you have to begin to change all sorts of other things to push that forward. To watch with after reading to the books and not thing there is an agenda is crazy.
As a book reader, the books honestly have the best worldbuilding in any fantasy series. Ever. Honestly, even LOTR doesn’t come close to the WoT world. But the show? The world feels like it’s so empty and dull. It’s just forests, mountains, a city and one castle in a desert. The only culture they really got right was the Tinkers imo. Even the Aes Sedai don’t feel like their book counterparts.
Jordan's world building is so wonderful. I just finished the chapter where Mat and Rand have to go from farm to farm in order to get shelter for the night, and the amount of character and charm Jordan puts into it is wonderful.
What does the show do?
Time skip...
One thing with the diversity of the cast is that areas dont look different ethnically. Aiel apparently are the only people with a "look". Shinar people look like tar valon people who look like 2 rivers people.
There is something about meeting different people's in the book. It makes the world seem bigger. The show makes it seem like NY state.
No, not even the Tinkers. Their colors supposed to be so bright and strong they hurt the eye, especially because they wore red with bright green and yellow and blue, etc. I don't care they look like gypsies otherwise, I always pictured them like gypsies but with those strong colors.
The book never talks about their look in this context but the Tinkers supposed to be descendants of Da'shain Aiel. How is that possible that just in 3000 years Aiel remained more or less the same they looked like in the Age of Legends, tall, red or blonde-red haired, fair skinned people, meanwhile among Tinkers you can hardly find Aiel looking people? Had the showrunners wanted to be true to the books they could've hint that with their look at least to a certain level. But we already know that they didn't care.😕
@@liberTvalance Exactly. I think Thom's character says something like: "you cannot tell from where people are by their look, only by their accent and clothes". Having a first or second generation looking Asian or PoC character in a village which supposed to be isolated for thousands of years is just simply ridiculous.
But what am I talking about? Lan says to Moiraine that "there are rumors about 4 ta'veren in the Two Rivers". HOW??? Who can tell about anyone they are ta'veren? This show changed the lore so much already, it's unrecognizable. It's a mediocre fanfiction. And people accepting the idea that this is a "different turn of the Wheel" is plainly ridiculous. 🤨
@@moma-b Great points. Just wanted to say, the books *do* talk about it. It's been over 2 decades since I read them, but deep in the series, it's explained that the aiel split into two groups ages and ages ago, and I can't remember exactly what the reason was for why. Wasn't it something to do with wanting to find a song or something. I may be way off. The WoT wiki page will have all of this info. But yeah, I was blown away when I read this, because the Tinkers are total pacifists in the book, while the aiel are tribal fighters.
Give Wheel of Time to the right person, and I think it could be as big as GoT, but I dont think the people in charge are good enough and it breaks my heart. I have been waiting for this to happen for sooooo long and this is what we get..... Sad.
My heart goes out to all the hardcore and longtime Wheel of Time fans.
Could.
I honestly kinda understand where the showrunners are coming from. I think that WOT is better than GOT, but it is also not for everyone. It doesn't have the broad appeal of GOT. GOT has a lot of popcorn spectacle. WOT is more deeply emotionally stirring, but a lot of people aren't interested in stories which require such a high degree of emotional investment. WOT made true to the books could have been as good or even better than GOT, but it would also have been a big risk financially.
@@philipgeyer926 But the specticle is not what most people lpved about the show, atleast not the people I know and have heard talking about it. People loved the depth of the show, the characters, the lore, the writing. I know that changes needs to be made for an adaptation, but they have changed it to the point that its a different story and world imo
@@YipYipss Yes, but you need that hype to capture the audiences attention.
If you ask most of them why they started watching GOT in the first place, they will likely say something about the spectacle. A successful show I think needs both spectacle to catch people's attention, and something more to keep them watching.
@@philipgeyer926 Fine, spectacle helps, but there is plenty of it in the books already. The attack on Winter night, the fight against Trollocks before they go into Shadar logoth, Trollocks attack on Byle Domons ship, Rand and Mat getting attacked on their journey, the fight at Fal Dara
You say it feels rushed and you are correct. Think about it this way. Episode 1 1st seven minutes are: Moiraine giving a monologue about how men were arrogant and caused the breaking and she needs to find the dragon reborn (nothing like the books), the red sisters chasing down some random mad male channeler (not in the books) and then the women’s circle ridiculous throw women into a dangerous river ceremony (not in the books). Episode 2 starts with 3 min of the Whitecloaks burning an Aes Sedai at the stake (not in the books). Episode 3 starts with 6 min of Nynaeve escaping trollocs (not in the books) and then Nynaeve getting knocked out by Lan (you guessed it, not in the books). That’s 16 min in 3 episodes of stuff that does nothing to build up the world, or create any character depth (other than to show how awesome Egwene and Nynaeve are, which is another theme repeated ad nauseam in S1). This show is a dumpster fire and bad writing, regardless of what they tried to adapt.
That is 16 minutes they could have used to establish the world and actually show story beats from the book.
Do not forget: no mention of saidin and saidar but the red sister claiming "this power meant for women and women only".
Latra Decume took the leadership position from Lews Therin! She was only a prominent Aes Sedai of AoL, now she is the "Tamyrlin Seat" - a position did not exist in the books. And she knows the Dark One can taint "your power"
@@HamzaBoujelouah not one scene is in the books. That is 8 hours they could have spent on the actual story.
I would actually go even further and say that the big battle scene in the opening episode is a waste of time. it occupies almost 12 minutes and must have cost the vast majority of the budget. It would have been far more effective both for story and budget to leave the Trollocks visual as a pseudo mystery, just like the book does. think GoT and the early exposure to white walkers. but this is just a product of one of the many problems they created by trying to avoid rand being the main character...
@@HamzaBoujelouah I'd actually go even further and say the big battle scene in the opening ep was a huge waste of time. it occupies almost 12 minutes, probably blew the whole budget and does very little for the story. would have been way better for story and budget to keep the Trollock visual a mystery, and just leave it at Rand's fight at the farm, arriving at the village already destroyed. Think GoT early exposure to white walkers - you get a sense of the enemy, but don't get the full reveal. In 12 minutes of ep 1, imagine how much you could have done with the characters.
I'm from Nigeria, and I absolutely love the book. Watched literally 1 minute of the trailer/teaser of the movie and almost threw my phone away! They aged them up, changed Mat and basically rushed the storyline because of this. I hate it worse than......
As a fellow Nigerian who loved the whole series, I had the same reaction as you. I was very disappointed not only with the casting choices but also the bad world building.
I didn't feel like I was being transported to another world when watching the series, which is why I knew how bad it really was.
Don't get me wrong, I know it's unrealistic to expect every fantasy adaptation to be like peter Jackson's LOTR, but they had enough money to make the series look decent at the very least, but no, they couldn't even do that.
GET THE AUDIOBOOKS IF YOU CAN THEY ARE GREAT.
Rafe wrote a hate you letter to the actual source material. It has very little to do with the tv series. The plot, characters, locations, and lore were changed by Rafe. The writing by Rafe also is poor, pacing is off, the CGI is low budget, and the additions were terrible.
Exactly
The only way to truly understand how this show can make such bafflingly bad changes to the source material is to understand who Rafe Judkins is. He has a personal animosity towards the source material because it goes against his personal politics and worldview. He truly did set out to destroy the Wheel of Time rather than cherish it.
Rafe said, EXPLICITLY, he will make character's gay to stick it to people that don't like HIS series. He doesn't give a single fuck about Robert Jordan's work, he actively hates it and thinks his woke version is better.
Yeah, but... muh representation!
Yep. Yep. Yep it was a hate letter. I imagine Rafe felt targeted when the original author publicly let it be known he absolutely detests smut-fanfiction of his work, and Rafe has never been able to get over it.
This show's original scripts are smut-fanfiction, thankfully they cut that scene they wrote of Mat performing cunnilingus on some random woman... it might be popping up in Season Two🤣
Having now digested the 8 episodes, read through the leaked script for episode 1, I definitely believe it was a next GOT type of thing. Whether that's what Amazon asked for, or that was Rafe's sales pitch, or just Rafe thinking this is what people wanted, I don't know. The right way to pitch this story would've been to say, twenty years from now, what will be the next WOT series?
Audiences have no problem immersing themselves in many massive worlds at the same time. We have LOTR, Harry Potter, Star Wars, GOT, Marvel MCU, and so many more. It's just silly to assume that any audience would want another Game of Thrones world. Don't give me Wheel of Time set in Game of Thrones. No, just give the fans the world and story they love and the non-reader audience will come along and enjoy the ride. And this production just does not feel like a billion dollar investment when you look at the IP rights, advertising, and the cost of production. This is Sharknado and SyFy channel garbage that would be cancelled after a single season.
Keep reading the books, especially through book 4.
Very well put. There is a reason why you're trying to adapt a book series people love, and if the the established fans love it, then new audiences will love it too if you've done your job properly.
I don’t think they were trying to “recreate the next GOT” in terms of tone and actual story. Bezos wanted “the next GOT” meaning a hit fantasy series that would become mainstream and part of the cultural zeitgeist. Problem is the show runner has no respect for the source material and felt he needed to fix all the problematic part of the books (basically 90% of it). He also decided that strong men are a huge problem. He decided that gender binary in terms of the one power is a problem. He felt that Moiraine needed to be 90% of the story. And the dragon reborn mystery? All these things do is destroy any tension or stakes in the series.
@@charlestruppi7793 In terms of the next GoT point, yes that's exactly what they're trying to do, but you can't deny that most of the new fantasy shows that want to "be the next GoT" dumb it down to blood, violence and sex.
And yes, the showrunner clearly doesn't care for the material. And even if he does, it's written like a fanfiction from someone who only wants to see Moiraine.
@@HamzaBoujelouah I generally agree, but I believe in the case of WOT, the show runner just feels that aging everyone up, more sex and violence are improving the source material. I think it’s coincidental that this tends to make WOT more like GOT. I may be wrong, but judging from comments and tweets it seems plausible.
@@charlestruppi7793 I think they very much were. According to Brandon Sanderson, the sex scenes were supposed to be more explicit (explains why the cast was aged up), Moiraine was supposed to flat out murder the ferryman (rather than just let him drown in her whirlpool), not to mention the general darker tone the show has. Egwene's coming of age story was even supposed to include animal sacrifice. All that very much sounds like they were trying to recreate GOT.
Finally someone talks about how stupid Rand and Egwene sleeping together is. A small village would have forced those two to marry. Also they would have dealt with Matt and his dad. Nyneve would have drug them out by their ears. It didn't even feel like a village.
Ikr??? In the books the village is like a family. Full of good, well meaning people. The show turned them into drug addicts living in filth.
@@ari1758 That's the Hollywood village. They can't imagine any other way and didn't actually read the book.
This "adaptation" saddens me. Moraine in the books is a noble born, high class, short in stature and usually polite Aes Sedai. The entrance of Lan and Moraine into the Winespring Inn annoyed me since that type of entrance was definitely not part of their MO. It showed her being rude when there was no need to be rude. Mat's parents were not horrible people like they were portrayed. The main characters are too old. Nynaeve was casted well, but apparently the one power "block" was omitted. I did like the changes made to Thom. Loyal was not done justice and I didn't like the ways. It seems like they mixed Machin shin's voice with the portal stones visions and the "battle" between Rand and Ba'alzamon was like Ewgwain's vision during her accepted trials. The battle had no connection to the Tarwin's Gap battle, which was another wtf. That battle was won by a low level channeler. Algamar was rude to an Aes Sedai, which is opposite of how they treat women, and especially Aes Sedai in Fal Dara. This whole season screams "WOKE" and really pisses me off. This is by far my favorite series. I have read all the books and listened to the audio books (which are phenomenal with the voice acting) countless times. Lan is my favorite character and I hope this series doesn't destroy this character, but I am not holding my breath.
So much for colour shifting cloaks.
Amen.
Totally agree with all you said and the "woke" part makes a lot of sense now that you mentioned it. The fact that Rosumand Pike was casted as "lead actress" as well as being the highest paid of the bunch.
@@eziop5539 they'd look like shit on screen. fan cloth was a dumb idea.
"It showed her being rude when there was no need to be rude" she wasn't rude once. you're projecting.
"The main characters are too old" they're the same age as the books.. 20.
I waited just over 20 years for a live action adaptation of the books I read, and this is what we get...
I've watched 1 episode and that was enough for me. So disappointed.
And it annoys the piss out of me that if you look through the Amazon reviews, so many people seem to love it.
It's like asking someone who watched The Last Jedi, if they thought it was bad because of what it did with the IP and characters, etc. And you get this weird response of, "oh it wasn't too bad, I enjoyed it." Hopeless.
Don't trust the amazon reviews.. quite a lot of the 5 star reviews don't praise the show, they complain that others are giving it a 1-star. Whereas the 1 stars go into WHY the show sucks. The bottom line is that some people have chosen to take the argument over the show as a sort of proxy political argument.
Yep. Quit after E1 too.
Have to disagree on one point, this show has no chance of being great.
Books aside, the writing was horrible, they made the girls Mary sues and it looked pretty bad all round.
Amazon paid the gold price, not the iron price for this wreck.
you do know the "iron price" is when you steal something, right? if you do know that, i'm not sure exactly wtf you're trying to say.
there's nothing wrong with the writing and a lot of it comes straight from the books. Would love to know how exactly Eggweenie or Nynaeve are Mary Sues when they did absolutely nothing of consequence in the shows... or do you mean Nynaeve's Holy Nova in ep 4, which is about as Mary Sue-ish as washing away a horse's tiredness... or her power blast against Machin Shin, which is about as Mary Sue-ish as balefiring a group of fades? Kind of hard for Egwene to be a Mary Sue when the only thing she did the whole first season was stab a guy from behind.
@@this.is.a.username Don't compare what an Aes Sedai can do after years of training to what an UNTRAINED girl can do. And while Nynaeve is for sure capable of doing some things even in book 1, they overdid it just because we can't have the girls of the show not be super powerful from the start, can we? It lowers the stakes so much because if Egwene and Nynaeve can do so much without training, why would the dark forces be a threat at all? "Kind of hard for Egwene to be a Mary Sue when the only thing she did the whole first season was stab a guy from behind." That's just not true, she also seemed to revive Nynaeve or at the very least heal some very serious injuries. And if the boys can go a whole season without doing anything useful (even Rand, the freaking Dragon, needed an angreal to do something in the show!) then the girls can wait until they get some training as well, otherwise you can't be mad that people are calling them Mary Sues.
Edit: Also did you just say that healing fatal injuries is at the same level of power as making horses not feel tired, especially when the 2nd one was done after Aes Sedai training? Are you serious?
@@vuivraalbastra don't feed into this guys trolling efforts. Ignore him and let him be. He likes to rile people up and ignore any point of an argument that is valid but goes against his views.
This video review is the closest I have come to Wheel of Time (either book or show). Hearing that, in the show (I'm assuming only in the show), a woman is in active labor and kicking the asses of guys just takes the cake for me as far as mary sues go. I haven't had any kids as of yet, but I imagine fighting is not something you can really do while in active labor...Not even Rey from Star Wars was that bad.
What these people don't seem to understand is that we want the story from the books on TV and not their version of the story. If they want to do that they should write their own story.
They could have done a much better job of adhering to the story, but real world considerations like time and budget constraints were never going to permit a really close adaptation. If you don't believe that, consider how much of an audience you think you could retain if the main thing Egwene and Nynaeve did for a whole season was engage in petty arguments while making a trip from one town to another, and the other characters did little more in that season. That's basically The Fires of Heaven, and it's not even the book people most complain about for dragging on endlessly.
@@bobbun9630 you can scrap that off in a couple episodes. As you can do with a lot of the stuff from the books. I mean clothes description takes a lot and you can just show them and it takes 2 seconds. For 10 million $ an episode I don't see where that money went. Also where are the men storylines? We have Egwene and Nyneve, Moiraine and the Aes Sedai doing stuff but what do the men do?!? Whine about their feelings. I am a woman and I disliked most of the females and their way of treating men in the books as they didn't deserve that. In the show it just makes the men look like idiots who deserve to be treated that way. I have a big problem with the writing, editing and directing in the show not anything else.
@@bobbun9630 It is called a montage. You take a series of clips to show progress in a sequence to compress time. It does not work well with dialogue, but does work well with travel which is the focus of the first book especially after the party splits. Matt's dagger sickness, montage!. Travel times for all parties, montage!. Matt and Rand learning gleeman stuff, montage!. You could condense the weeks long travel by all parties to the capital of Andor into 5 minuets of screen time with ease and then keep all the book stuff rather than adding a L sex scene and a funeral that never happened. Also it would have made room for Elyas who should have been in the first season and the boat guy who was a major character for like 7 of the books.
really enjoyed listening to your breakdown of the show - I have no issues with them making changes to the book, but the changes they should've made were often ignored (for instance, giving Rand NOTHING to do)
Oh wow, I'm glad you enjoyed the video. I think trimming elements of the book to fit the 8 episode length (I mean there is a lot of the book which is just Rand and Mat walking), but a lot of the changes I heard Sanderson recommend that they don't do, they did. Which was the wrong choice to me.
Also yes, giving Rand nothing to do was a very poor choice. It's like adaptating Harry Potter into a show and spending most of the run time focusing on Dumbledore, Ron, Hermione, Ginny and Neville, then having Harry beat Voldemort in the last 2 episodes.
He did run away from a girl half his size...
I think the crazy thing is that while yes we all know that shows and movies are never as good as the books they came from, but the Amazon wheel of time has taken it to another level, it’s SO bad it’s like they tried to make it bad.
What I don't understand is the show's weird limbo between trying to please book fans and enticing new fans through unneeded changes, which ended up leaving the newcomers confused and book fans unsatisfied. I am a book fan. I was once not a book fan. EOTW was my first introduction to the WOT (obviously) I knew nothing about the world before reading. Surprise surprise I never felt confused when RJ didn't want me to, I was enticed. A faithful adaptation will have enticed new fans and kept them along for the ride BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT THE FIRST BOOK WAS FOR AND DID WELL BECAUSE THE SERIES HAS SOLD 90 MILLION COPIES. This show just does not feel like WOT (not even a 'different turning' which doesn't excuse it's failings as a piece of media btw).
I hate to say it but D&D should've taken the reigns because the 4 seasons of ADAPTED (not original) material are the greatest seasons of television ever made and should be the standard we hold the bigger studios with more budget to.
I just want to thank you for still giving the books a chance even with this awful, disappointing show. For people that haven’t read the books, I worry that it makes them look bad. But no, it’s just the show. I read all the books before the show came out and I loved them. Amazing character, a great plot, and you get to watch the characters change and grow throughout the series. I really hope you enjoy the books as much as I did. And I hope the show may improve.
It's just sad that such a great and influential piece of literature got adapted by amateur hacks. They had great material going for them, and they chose to write their own amateur garbage. So sad.
Excellent review. The one word that best describes Amazon's series is "vulgar," mostly because of making the characters jaded, self-important 21st century adults. It's clear that no one involved with the show ever read or appreciated the books. Please finish reading the series - you will be even more amazed at what could have been.
The changes to the main characters were not one of the major "I'm bothered by this" points among the changes. I disliked the Mat changes most, mainly because of the way a jaded start makes his it harder to appreciate the changes in his personality due to dagger exposure syndrome. Really the dagger story is the main point of interest for Mat in the first two books. Diluting it makes his character seem fairly useless in the early story.
@@bobbun9630 Rand, Matt and specially Perrin are but a shadow of what they are in the books, you simply can't deny that. They don't have guts or will on their own and also simping for Egwene all the show who does EVERYTHING (killing, healing, saving people, resurrecting) included RESURRECTING Nyaneve without any training whatsoever.
Also including Egwene in the possible Dragon candidates is beyond retarded, where's the explanation of the saidin and saidar (the 2 sides of the one power)? The scene against the trolloc army should be remembered as one of the worst battles in a fantasy show ever filmed, sending 5 channelers ALONE outside the walls, how can a writer be so bad to write such a bad idea? Because Rand couldn't save the day due to "EQUALITY".
@@francesccampos1343 "Also including Egwene in the possible Dragon candidates is beyond retarded" Except that's not what was done. Yes, it's unclear if the writers of the series are making that change at the point where Moiraine does this, but the basis for this is explained in Ep 6 when Moiraine expresses her distrust of ancient prophecies. That's the real change. Moiraine was there in person for Gitara Moroso's prophecy. There's no real basis for that sort of distrust going by the books.
"Because Rand couldn't save the day due to "EQUALITY"." People who get upset about "woke" make me laugh. You're letting your politics get in the way of a reasonable understanding of what you're seeing. Moreover, many of you seem to have a distorted view of what RandLand is actually like in the books. Female dominated societies have been going on in RandLand ever since the breaking--thousands of years. That's not just true in Tar Valon. It's objectively true in Duopotamia as well, where it's noted in the books several times that though the Council and the Women's Circle are theoretically equal, somehow the Women's circle always gets its way.
@@bobbun9630 I know perfectly how capable and important the female characters are in Robert Jordan's world, and i like it a lot because both men and women have to cooperate in order to triumph against the evil. But they invented that scene with the channelers and the trollocs to put the spotlight in Egwene and Nyaneve, not said by me, said by the same productors because they "didn't want Rand to get all the spotlight in the last chapter".
I don't put any politics, i despise them because i consider this as a way of distraction from the normal life. The productors and the woke cult established specially in Hollywood are the ones who put their political agenda in everything.
@@bobbun9630 Moiraine dedicated her life, and RISKED it, for about 20 years, to finding the Dragon Reborn after she and Siuan witnessed Gitara Moroso's Foretelling... and THAT is according to the SHOW'S narrative.
Yes, it's absolute BS to inject that crap about Egwene and maybe even Nynaeve being the Dragon Reborn... and ESPECIALLY the crap about NYNAEVE.
Moiraine and Siuan knew WHEN the Dragon was reborn... and WHERE. They KNEW Nynaeve was too old. They even pointed it out... and then tried to do an end-run around their own logic... which ironically makes them look like idiots.
As for "many of you seem to have a distorted view..."
"Female dominated societies have been going on in RandLand..."
DUH! We KNOW that! It's not OUR view which is distorted.
I find it incredibly difficult to believe that ANYONE who read the books doesn't know that the QUEEN of Andor is ALWAYS a QUEEN... and that the current First of Mayene is a woman... and the "main" Panarch, too... and the current leader of the Seanchan, and the next one as well...
Or the "balance of power" between the Women's Circles and Village Councils in Two Rivers... and similarly the Chiefs and Wise Ones in the Waste/Aiel.
I haven't seen ANYONE making an argument otherwise... which just makes YOUR argument to this point a strawman... red herring.
What people ARE complaining about, in terms of the show being WOKE, is how the MAIN CHARACTERS are being portrayed... and that often includes turning Egwene and Nynaeve into Mary Sues... and USUALLY includes making Mat, Rand, Perrin, Loial, Agelmar, etc into pathetic useless (and boring) wastes. It has NOTHING to do with female-led societies/nations.
Hell, even Valda gets turned into some kind of coward who drops his knife when he sees Perrin's yellow eyes... so that Egwene can jump on his back and stab him.
(THAT scene would have played VERY differently, if he hadn't gone overboard and dropped his knife... but, NOOOO... the writer/director had to have him drop his knife, even though he was already distracted, giving Egwene all the opening she needed... but they had to go further and turn him into a coward who "crapped his pants" when he saw Perrin's eyes. Of course, it would have played very differently if PERRIN had killed him, using the opening that Egwene gave to him... but no, that couldn't happen either.)
Did you ever stop to think that perhaps one of the most universally loved themes from the books is a BALANCE between men and women... that there are so many competent and heroic male AND female characters?
15:22 well, he didn't actually defeat anyone, he ends up destroying a seal. I'm fairly sure he was just manipulated.
ten to one odds that you're right... he just got manipulated into breaking a seal.
Just another stupid useless male in a show filled with them.
Can you make another video after you have completed The Eye of the World book ? I would like to listen to your thoughts on finale after that
I am also very much interested in seeing a set of reviews before and after reading the books. I will cry with you 😢
Eye of the World review is coming out sometime this week!
For people who never read the books, I think the experience must have been worse. The infodumps of lore were insane, I wonder how many people stopped watching immediately.
My non book reader brother tried watching it and fell asleep 10 minutes into each and every episode. I was too full of rage and confusion to fall asleep. I didn't even watch the finale after the first 8 minutes, I turned it off and cancelled my Amazon sub.
@@BillyCistra lol, that about sums it up
Great comment NewFlamenco because I wonder the same thing. If I didn't know a damn thing about wheel of time, I wouldn't have made it 10 minutes into this show without being confused and bored. I only enjoyed watching to see what I recognized from the books.
@@reverseworld224 Yea, same for me. But the cringe factor was strong with this series, just so painful. I doubt it is going to get a second season, despite them saying it will. Then again it is bizarre which shows get renewed these days.
I have a big problem with the Siuan and Moirraine relationship because the relationships of those has a major impact on the later story. It is likely they will remove those sections. If the show even get's that far. The problem is similar to the Egwene -Perrin "thing". As I know what should be coming later it will be strange if Perrin has a thing for Egwene.
In the books they had a relationship when they were young then they both went after men. The same can be done in the TV show. From the vision of Min, _the amyrlin will be the downfall of Moiraine,_ I may even think of some love drama. This is not an adaptation of a book anymore, they can write whatever sh*t they want. 😕
@@moma-b I do not get the impression that they had that kind of relationship in the book even as younger. I understand that some did get this impression.
Even if its annoying that Rafe has a compulsive need to insert propaganda into the show. It would have been just as bad if Moiraine had a love relationship with Lan.
@@Mean_Man In the books it is stated they were pillow friends. That expression is described in The Wheel of Time Companion book as "forming a romantic attachment to one another".
I dislike the scene between Siuan and Moiraine and not just because it is not true to the books but also because I think they had no chemistry at all. They did not manage to show their emotions well, their kiss seemed forced.
@@moma-b The definition "pillow friends" is not in the actual book. You need to read the index to find this. I got the impression that is was someone you shared your dreams with, and had sleepovers with.
There is no need to put a flashlight on this relationship. It may or may not have been this way. Nobody cares until Rafe displays his compulsive need to push an agenda. Its makes the show corny.
My biggest problem with the relationship is that it brakes the plot. Any relationships for those two would do that. Likely this means that all the plots it would break later has been removed from the show.
Rafe seems to totally have missed how amusing many of the relationships are in the book. They often feel the urge to strangle the person they love the most. This is both entertaining and makes you like the characters. The relationships are extremely corny on the show. It creeps me when the show dose the declarations of love.
The book was more discreet. Where (mostly the girls) gets pissed because the boys dont read between the line. The boys get confused and wonder why she is pissed because they totally missed the discreet declaration of love. The guys are generally rather blunt in the book. They just say that they like the girl. No silly poetry. Offcause the girls get pissed again because they expected poetry.
@@Mean_Man I agree. I wish they would adapt the books to film instead of rewrite a story using the names of the characters and locations and some parts of the story Robert Jordan wrote. This is not an adaptation, this is a mediocre fanfiction. 😕
I know i'm a bit late, but hearing someone who went into this series i loved for around 26 years completely blind, and agreeing with basically everything i complained about while watching this show is, frankly, both reassuring, and low key kinda heartwarming. I'm THRILLED you're enjoying the books. They are my favorite fantasy series, and it's wonderful that it's getting new fans. They DO get kinda slow in the middle, but trust me, A Memory of Light was one of the best books i've ever read, and the slowness in it's lead up is more than worth the payoff, in my opinion. Stick with it, and it WILL pay off, i promise.
As for the show, maybe pirate the next season or two, if you care enough to go on. This was a dumpster fire, and I'm sad that THIS is what most people will associate with the name. Read the books, they are worth it friends. Give this generic turned garbage show a pass going on
Wholeheartedly agree! The books are worth the read definitely. Left feeling saddened that the series had come to an end. The characters felt like old friends, almost. Honestly, I want to see season 2 because I’m curious to see if they can mess it up even more than they already have.
“The canons of narrative in any medium cannot be wholly different; and the failure of poor films is often precisely in exaggeration, and in the intrusion of unwarranted matter owing to not perceiving where the core of the original lies.” J.R.R. Tolkien
excellent quote - I've said from seeing the 1st episode that Rafe just didn't actually understand the story Jordan told.
haha you are going to hate the two final episodes once you read the book
I just rewatched those last two episodes after finishing the book, and you absolutely called it. They're so bad 😂
One of the benefits of being a fan of grimdark fantasy is I don’t have to worry about my favorite series getting ruined because most of them are too graphic and explicit for television lol.
Sand Dan Glokta has entered the chat
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GOT tried to impress the fans, knowing that if they did it justice that they would have 60+ million guaranteed viewers. WOT apparently went out of their way to alienate and aggravate the 90+ million fans of the story
There aren't that Many fans of wheel of time
A Memory of Light sold 44 million copies; I would venture a guess that the number of fans of Wheel of Time is greater than 44 million.
@@gilian2587 no it doesn't have that many fans
@@buzzwithdrip6347 Support your conclusion? Evidence? Argument? Logic? Brain-stuff?
@@gilian2587 uh cause even if 45 million bought the first book not all of them would've read all the books where's there's 14 of them, and reason it's at 90 million is because it's so long
Dont worry, when you finish the other half of book 1 you'll dislike the last 2 episodes too.
I maintain that the crazy ferryman was the best part of this horrid, "adaptation." I died laughing again just hearing you talk about him.
It was stupid, but I'm glad it exists just so I can laugh about it
Just to note, Robert Jordan stated, "... this is not the medieval period, not a fantasy with knights in shining armor. If you want to imagine what the period is, imagine it as the late 17th century without gunpowder." That's the late 1600s, but without muskets and with magic. So Newtonian physics and type printed books are part of the world. It is still a relatively monocultured world like the books, and unlike the Amazon series.
I've been trying to compile my thoughts on the show for a while now; this synopsis i think does it best. It's so infuriating, because they have a great cast and most of the writing was already done for them (by Robert Jordan), but it seems like Rafe's arrogance can't handle that and persistently feels the need to smugly re-write everything to "own" it, and the reality is, he just isn't very good at it.
I just realized; this guy is the perfect Two Rivers phenotype. Dark eyed, dark hair.
dark hair, dark eyes, tanned skin so yeah, pretty much. They'd never even seen a blonde until they were half way to Camelyn, and only once in Camelyn did they see "people whose skin was too dark or too pale" Also, wish they'd put Ran in a pair of high heeled boots, he is supposed to be a head higher than anyone else they meet in the first book... and put Loial on a pair of stilts or something, he is supposed to be 3 meters tall, shouldn't be too hard to film with some practice and creative camerawork.
I wonder if his accent matches? Yeah... this guy could be a stand in for Mat Cauthon.
I appreciate you sharing your experience here. It’s a totally new phenomenon to see a show first book second review.
You really channeled Oz from Knight's Watch with that "But my son!!"
Oz is hilarious!
Watched them too. The funnier part was when it was revealed, in the show, that Lan boinked two men, they said, "BUT MY BUM!" That was hilarious.
Why is Rand in a modern sweater?
Because it was a remnant from before the breaking of the world? I don't know. Maybe there's an H&M in the Two Rivers.
One positive thing about this show is that it has introduced newcomers like me to the Wheel of Time story and now I am planning on reading the book instead as I've heard great things about it and I wasn't really feeling the show.
You read it yet
@@mk-hf2qs Some of it. Still getting my current backlog out of the way first but its on my "books to read" list.
same here- I quit watching the show and now almost done book 4 of the novels that are super awesome!
One last little silly thing - if you, sir, shaved your beard, you would be almost perfect for my minds interpretation of Aram!
It’s called using unproven writers and directors getting these projects for all the wrong reasons.
I hated that they change some small things for no reason at all, things like: Moraine didn't knew that Nynaeve could channeling? (wtf why? she says on the books that Aes Sedai can sense that).
They gave way too much power/importance to Logain and way too much time on the white tower with characters that don't have any meaning at all. There are other things that im sure will be back to bite them in their asses in the future. They change the meaning of the Eye of the world and cause of that has to change a lot of things. Soo many unneeded changes
Then there's all the time they waste doing NOTHING when they COULD dedicate that time to things FROM THE BOOKS.
I started reading the books in the early 90's and fell in love with them. This show was highly anticipated by millions of fans, and then Rafe put out this mess. It is literally fan fiction with a SJW agenda. I am so disappointed and hope this series is cancelled. I would rather wait for another series or movie in the future.
Truth.
Hopefully a show. It's they only way they'd have any chance of pulling off anything close to the heart of the source material and doing it well.
Any movie or movies would suffer from massive cuts.
When this gets cancelled (and it will), they will blame the fans and the source material, not the idiots writing it, and will then claim that it is not economically viable as a series. It won't be remade. This is the nightmare scenario, because all we have is this fetid, steaming mound of trolloc shit.
Agreed
Lol even sjws don’t deserve that kind of criticism
2:05 in the book they are actually all 19, with the exception of Egwene, who is two years younger.
I am just tired of Hollywood focusing too much on trying to surprise the audience by making changes to books. I think they thought the reason why GoT was so popular was because of the shocking surprises. I prefer good story telling.
It's so annoying when Hollywood takes the wrong lessons from popular media. Like how tone deaf do you have to be?
One thing I hated was that nynaeve slept with lan, that goes against her character in a very big way, the nynaeve in the the books refused to have sex before marriage and looked down on some of the other characters for doing so.
@@channelnamepending8329 I hate what the writers did! These days it is getting harder to say no to sex because the media keeps promoting it and make it seems like a normal thing to do. There are people who actually want to wait until marriage to have sex. Why the writers think it is a bad thing?
It constantly blows my mind how all the studios keep wanting to make The Next Game of Thrones or The Next Harry Potter by trying to twist another adaptation to fit the same mold. It’s like it never occurs to them that the reason some adaptations do really well is because they are faithfully adapting good source material. They seem to want to cash in on the name to tell their own story, instead of letting their story stand (or fall) on its own merits.
Just to be clear, when I say faithful I don’t mean identical. I understand that some changes are necessitated by the change from one medium to another. The movie Arrival changed quite a bit from the short story it’s based on while remaining true to the themes, and I think it’s actually better than its source.
The upshot is that, yeah, it seems like studios take the wrong lessons from another adaptation’s success, and think they need to lift elements from successful adaptations rather than focusing on making a quality adaptation of the work in front of them. With WoT though, I think Rafe just incorrectly thinks he’s a better storyteller than Robert Jordan.
@@jabur81 You are correct in your assessment. Rafe can't even hold Robert Jordan's pen. Jordan ( or rather James Rigney Jr.) gets a lot of flack for being overly wordy and he is at times. However when I listened to the EOTW a few years ago on audio book I was shocked how much foreshadowing I missed the first time through. There is a lot of work and thought that goes into his writing if you are paying attention.
Your Arrival analogy is a good one, but there is one that even more people will recognize. Forrest Gump. If you ever read the book it is quite a bit different than the movie. If they made a movie based strictly on the book it would not have been nearly as popular as the movie was. While the movie hits a lot of points from the book they make Forrest a much more likable character and change a lot of what he goes through to be a more coherent story. This is one of the few examples I have where the movie is actually better than the book.
I was the same in that I started reading the books because of the show. And in reading EOTW, there was so much cut out that could’ve made it an incredible start to the series. Which is why it felt incredibly rushed imo.
LOL you are only 1/2 way through book one, wait until you are 8 or 9 books in and realize how much they have screwed up in the show!!! They have assassinated so may character story lines with the shows woke, op women.
More ridiculous part is that Robert's world is already very Female dominance world and ruin the base of the whole story to bring more of what is already exist in the story.
Thank you for saying what I've been thinking! Subscribed.
But mah son?!?!
I did enjoy that nod to Oz
Your mistaken, Perrin is in love with Rand. They ruined Lan on purpose. Lan would never behave that way.
One man against the shadow.
" whatever happens, face it on your feet"
Dai Shan.
That's the exact quote I thought of when fake Lan was crying.
To me, part of the issue with the Perrin setup was making his "wife" out to be the obviously stronger member of the couple? They went out of their way to make her the strong blacksmith (they didn't even mention Perrin WAS a blacksmith until like the last 3 episodes?), and that she was doing better fighting the Trollocks (until Perrin accidentally kills her trying to assist). The attempt to over-GIRL POWER! this series is horrible, and the ironic part is that if they had followed the books word for word, most of the female characters would have eventually appeared both more powerful and actually likeable (or hated, if they were on the evil side). Just one side of the "woke cult" taking over entertainment before our eyes.
I feel no need to watch this. If they ever make a TV series and truly based on the story in the books I'll watch, but this is just a story some writers in Hollywood have thrown together, not the story written by Robert Jordon. It's so far off from what he wrote that if they put it in book form it wouldn't even be close enough to Jordan's work to be considered plagiarism!
Wait until you realise they changed it so that Perrin isn't after Egwene. Perrin's after rand.
I give it 50-50 chance.
Remember when Perrin tells Egwene that THEY are fine? Meaning him and EGWENE?
Don't think so. Perrin almost attacked Rand, he was too protective of egwene. It would make no sense. Not putting it past them, though.
For my entire career in the USMC, the WoT was my constant companion. The show sux
The Aiel killing half a dozen soldiers while in labor is pretty on-brand for Aiel. 😅
They’re basically martial arts super heroes.
See I didn't know that at the time, and I think it's a failing of the show. I don't know who the Aiel are and what they can do, so as a viewer who didn't know the book, I was lost.
@@HamzaBoujelouah Yeah, you're fine. I totally get it. The show failed to explain literally anything. lol.
You won't really get to meet Aiel in the books until book 3 and you won't get to spend time with them until book 4. You'll mostly just be hearing stories and stuff. So, I get why they slipped this in as a cold open. It was the only way to have Aiel in the first season. Still, as you go through EotW you will at least be given some context for who the Aiel are that was MIA in the show because most character moments from book 1 just don't happen in the show. lol.
Glad the show got you listening/reading the series tho! I'm hoping season 2 is better, but with how hard they're trying to bait GoT audiences, I'm not that optimistic. I also hate that the atmosphere around the show is you CAN'T talk about GoT despite the show clearly trying to appeal to the general GoT audience in tone and gore. Like, not a dealbreaker for me, but I'm gonna call a spade a spade, y'know?
@@mercedesplay_more_kof8488 Thom explains some Aiel lore in ep 3 to Mat when they bury the caged Aiel. After rewatching the show a few times there are definitely a lot more nods and hints to future plot points and world development that most people are missing. Season 1 as a whole would have definitely been a lot better if they had allowed the main trio to have more character development and emphasized more world building
The Aiel literally forbid women to fight when they’re pregnant. They couldn’t have missed the mark more if they had tried.
@@manicpixiefangirl4189 Spoiler warning for books. (4 or 5. I can’t remember)
She *was* forbidden to go fight. She broke the rules. They knew about it. That’s why the Wise Ones know who Rand’s mom is in the first place. Because she was already in trouble for her involvement in the war while she was pregnant. Her fighting on Dragonmount while pregnant is part of the prophecy and canon in the books. That’s how Tam finds her and how Rand ever got to be born on Dragonmount in the first place. 🐉
The beautiful thing about the source material prologue to the first book is that it could have been filmed as a cold open very easily in its original form.
Showing him already insane and then finding sanity during his confrontation with Ishamael, and the creation of Dragonmount.... That would have been an excellent start which would have established the narrative stakes and done quite a bit of efficient world building besides.
We didn't even need to see him killing his family.
It's arguably better to leave that to the imagination and pick up in the immediate aftermath.
The so-called Winter Dragon pilot was about 16 minutes long and full of about six or seven minutes of fluff. They could have easily covered it in 10 minutes, possibly less.
You Sir have earned a sub and a bunch of your vids have gone into my watch later queue. Great review, nice channel. Keep it up!
13:37 What annoyed me about that scene was the armor literally having a fucking gap right on the front, which like three of them get stabbed through.
They can't really use the excuse that they didn't have enough time, because they focused more on adding in their own changes, and wasting time, rather than adapting the books as best as they could.
I really enjoyed listening to your view of the show. You speak well about your viewpoint and actually give ideas that would work better. I like this type of review instead of just saying this doesn't work and complain about it, you actually talk about methods that would make it better.
I'm really glad you enjoyed it.
Great take, pal. You are absolutely right in every matter you covered on,
As someone who has read the entire series, they RUIN so many things that happen in the future. They introduce MAJOR plot holes by changing details from the original. The ending especially, it's VERY different and they changed details that were oh fuck's sake.
In the books Rand and Egwene are pretty much set up, they're basically engaged by their families. It's not OFFICIAL, but unless one of them makes a dramatic decision they're pretty much certainly going to marry one another. The two of them however are young teens, they're awkward and they're still in that "Girls/boys are stupid" phase, plus there's the possibility that Egwene will become a Wisdom and literally leave Emmond's Field. So it's like "they'll get together, just later when they're a bit more grown up."
Then they leave the Two Rivers and you start to question, ARE they still going to be together? What'll happen?
I haven't seen the show, I watched Shadiversity's reviews which are WAY better. I have seen a few clips though, and the acting is SO BAD. Oh god every clip I see I'm just cringing at how bad the delivery is.
In the books the Ferryman is, first of all clearly a prick, it's very heavily implied the ferryman would gladly rob them if he thought they couldn't fight back. Second he grumpily calls his workers and gets them across, then Moiraine pushes the boat out into the river and makes a whirlpool to sink it, and the ferry workers are panicking and going "WHAT!? YOU DIDN'T TIE IT DOWN YOU IDIOTS! GET MY BOAT!"
And they DON'T KNOW she's doing this magic, and they're like "Oh, how unfortunate. Whirlpools right? Here, for your troubles" and they give him some gold to get a new boat, and he and his men are pretty grumpy, but it's not EVIL, it's necessary cause he would ABSOLUTELY cart the Trollocs over the river. He's not loyal or anything, and the trollocs are terrifying too. So she sank the boat and nobody gets hurt. In this show, she is ABSOLUTELY a murderer. Even if he's not cooperating or seeing reason, it is VERY easy for Moiraine to wrap him in flows of air, literally lift him off his feet, and then have Lan tie him to a tree. On top of that he must think his own son is a retard, he said his son was "on his way". LIKE HE WON'T SEE THE TROLLOCS AND RUN THE OTHER WAY?! Ok.
Robert Jordan was very open that the first book in this series is basically fellowship, but how he thought it would REALLY go. Like "Hey you're the chosen one, let's go"
Frodo is like "You got it mate, let's go."
Robert Jordan is like, nah this is how it would go "Oh really? Here, have a beer, have two on me. Be right back" then he fucks off out the back door.
They RUIN Lan's character, they RUIN the three boys, they humiliate EVERY male character and they make the women all overpowered mary sues.
If you wanna see a REALLY good episode by episode review of this shit show, go watch Knight's Watch, after you've finished Eye of the World of course. Also listen to the version narrated by Michael Cramer and Kate Reading. Not only are most of them narrated by those two, but they're also great at it.
If you wanna see Moiraine as the main character in her own story, go read New Spring. It's a prequel to Eye of the World that focuses on Moiraine before she left the Tower, and it's much shorter than the other books and is a fantastic read.
Why didn't they just adapt New Spring? They probably didn't even read it.
They actively hate Robert Jordan's works, they do not hide this at all.
This show was made to intentionally disappoint people who read the books.
You're missing out mate, Michael Kramer and Kate Reading's narration is top tier in the wheel of time
I actually just started listening to it after finishing the Rosamund Pike version, Kramer and Reading's narrations are awesome
@@HamzaBoujelouah I just finished book 6 of the wheel of time, and their voices only get better and better. Their narration is spot on and perfectly suits the series.
Edit: spelling
Moiraine is an important character in the books, but a side character. She is there to teach Rand a lesson, then has business of her own.
The show runners clearly hates the books and has never read them. We can see it in the choices. 2 episodes wasted on this boyfriend, the warder the ended himself.
The series has nothing to do with the books, just the names.
New subscriber here! Just stumbled across your channel. I am a crappy person and don't give small UA-camrs a try very often, but I think you've got something good going here! Looking forward to seeing your channel grow!
Glad to know I'm the exception.
They destroyed the setting of the entire series in 15 minutes. Magic is binary in that world. Gone. Two rivers is isolated little village...gone... Perrin a teenager is married and kills his wife..whelp he's ruined. The village is an obvious soundstage with zero realism... People aren't even dirty. Oh and the village, isolated for thousands of years since the breaking is a melting pot of races which ruins the entire journey of the boys....the whole series is about showing them new cultures and races and what makes them unique... Completely ruined inside 15 minutes
Hamza thank you so much for this review. You said everything perfectly and better than I could've explained. Your gripes are my gripes, and your point about Amazon's LOTR show is well taken, I hope they do that more justice.
Rand's mother fighting on Dragonmount while 9 months pregnant is about the only thing in the show that is faithful to the books. Granted we dont get a scene spelled out to us in so much detail... But how else does an Aiel child get born on a battlefiled? She was fighting as the Aiel fight and her pregnancy was no reason to ignore her honor and oaths.
Rands mother was not Aiel, she was Tigraine of house Trakand and Aiel women did not normally fight visibly pregnant.
The world isn't medieval, it's more 17-18 century without powder guns
From my reading I would've said earlier than 17th.
hahaha, "but my son!" ty for the laughs it made getting through the show 1% more worth it....read the books everyone! or listen for free online!!! its a great audio experience.
Rafe really wanted Moiraine to kill the ferryman, but his original plan was just to have her blast him with a lightning bolt. Sanderson literally had to explain to Rafe, the showrunner, why she couldnt do that.
... WHAT?!?
How did this guy get hired???
@@HamzaBoujelouah Because he was a contestant on Survivor, obviously lmao.
Perrin loves Egwene?!?! It's worse that I've expected. Thankfully we've got 4 good seasons of GOT and the great LOTR trilogy.
Actually, it's vague enough that Perrin might love Rand.
@@maudley Rafe did say he would make random characters gay to punish idiots on Twitter for saying homophobic things about him, so...
That Aiel scene - I loved it, it was done well, but like you said, a woman in labor doing all of that is beyond stupid. A simple sanity check could fix that. Could she do it on her own? No. So let's give her a sister which will do it and dies in the process, the last surviving soldier is pissed off so will go after the mother, veil or not, she may kill him as she did in the show, that's somewhat reasonable especially if he's hurt... problem solved.
And they could do sanity checks for so many scenes to not make them look so stupid, like the Logain shielding, Morain's parody of a trial ('What have you been doing?' 'I cannot say' - so retarded), entering ways(like why do you need Loyal, how Padan got in), the "battle tactics" at the end... Like, for the world, I am not sure how the trollocs got over that wall in the gap. I guess the authors didn't know either so they showed us a trolloc with a pickaxe of all things.
It's the stupidity that kills this show. Sometimes it's almost like an insult of intelligence. Like in horror when you scream, don't do it, don't go there. That's how I felt about Agelmar (and his sister)- a typical horror-like stupid character and they even gave him a stupid death. I couldn't but laugh when that happened...
i love men claiming they know what women in labor could or could not do. It's hilarious the only people I see having trouble believing that fight sequence are the ones with dicks.
You paid zero attention to the books if you think ep 7 isn't pretty much how it happened.
"The genre's called FANTASY, it's supposed to be unrealistic, you myopic manatee."
They DO have "sisters". Spear Sisters, a group of Aiel that are basically the women that decided they wanna be soldiers. They're badasses, and Rand's mother is one of them, though SHE is not Aiel, she JOINED the Aiel from the "Wetlands" as the Aiel call them. So she's from Rand's neck of the woods and pissed off to the wastes basically.
In the books she DOES go onto the battlefield when she's pregnant, and she wasn't supposed to do this, but she kinda broke the rules and ended up giving birth and dying there. She did NOT take out 30 armored men WHILE giving birth. The soldiers aren't god damned monsters, they're not going to go after the pregnant woman who can't defend herself when there's THOUSANDS OF OTHER AIEL TO FIGHT.
"It's the stupidity that kills this show. Sometimes it's almost like an insult of intelligence."
You nailed it. That is what I dislike about this show and so many other things being written today (especially things like The Last Jedi). They are just plain stupid and if anybody sat down and thought about what they were writing they would realize that things don't happen that way. Its like the writers don't have much in the way of experience in life and little useful schooling.
Thank you for this video. I feel somewhat vindicated, like someone else was actually watching the same show that I just watched. I've seen way too many reviews with the person saying that it was great... It was not.
I'm really disappointed with the Amazon show. I've read all the books, played the TTRPG, and I was really looking forward to this being given the GoT treatment. I just feel cheated and ripped off.
Low budget CGI, costumes, brutal writing, editing, what story was this? It wasn't the WoT.
Noone cares about the show runner's personal proclivities and how he wants the world to be - just tell the story in the source material, it's better than anything Rafe can come up with himself.
My biggest concern with the TV show was that I did understand the plot. Was there a plot? It was clear in the book what the plot was, but the show seemed to be poorly adapted scenes from the book interspersed with fan fiction creations from the writers, showrunners, etc.
do you think amazon will listen and change the talent and their outlook? imo only if they lose money and subs. if it turns a profit they'll plod on...
Apparently they've told Rafe to stick closer to the plot of the books (I saw that on Reddit so idk how reliable that is). I've also heard that Amazon has greenlit 2 extra seasons, so we'll at the very least have 3 season of WoT. If they start losing money and interest they yes, it will most likely get cancelled.
Oh man! It's Incredible how Amazon F*ck up WOT. I stopped seeing Daniel G. and others youtubers who has been invited by Amazon to the premier. They are bought by Amazon till the season end. The show is a shit full of their own 2021 moral and politics that affects everthing. It's incredible the level of shit they put in the show full of their own monstrously bad written plot instead of the original. They have put the money in buy youtubers, reviewers, rotten tomatoes, Imbd and so on, and marketing instead of put the money in make a good show. At this time I believe that Amazon don't wanna make a good show. This blow my mind. They prefer to spend the money educating us in the new feminism. Thnx for your opinion.
Ok, now that the season is over and you have all the lore the show was willing to disclose at this point, I want to ask you this (and no, it's not an obvious question):
Why do you think Rand is the Dragon Reborn?
Well I have seen a few videos talking about EoTW and most have all said that Rand is the Dragon Reborn. I also think the book makes it obvious because they tell it from his POV and there's of course the scene where Tam says that Rand isn't his son.
@@HamzaBoujelouah but what about what the show has told you? Being adopted, or your mom being a badass, is surely not enough of a qualification to be The dragon, is it?
@@bidossessi True, I guess its because Rand was able to stop the Dark One? Albeit it was with that maguffin that amplified his channel. And on paper he fits the bill of a fantasy hero:
-Farm boy sent on an epic quest
-Had a cool sword that was given to him
-Is the leader of a group of friends who look up to him for answers
The show also does have him say that he is the Dragon reborn and he finds it out in the Ways.
@@HamzaBoujelouah true, he "fits the bill", but why does Moiraine believe him when he knocks at her door? That's what I'm getting at. How do we _know_ that he's not just some male channeler, but THE legendary dragon? What evidence does the show give to back this up? Or maybe my question should be: "what is the Dragon Reborn Checklist"?
@@bidossessi Oh yes, that I can agree with. Rafe very clearly didn't set it up properly owing to the need of "surprising" the audience with the supposed Dragon Reborn reveal. It very much reads as him going, yep, he's the Dragon in the book so he's the Dragon in the show. Just a big example of no set up with a forced payoff.
As a long time book fan I agree with most of your points. Also move onto the michael Kramer and Kate reading audiobook they are amazing
I think while driving through LA, Rafe saw some homeless surrounding a barrel full of burning garbage.. I believe that was the inspiration for this WoT adaptation!!!
You sure that was a barrel and not a dumpster?
Maybe even one of those BIG roll-off dumpsters?
@@Nyet-Zdyes nope it was garbage burning in a barrel. Rafe made his a dumpster fire cause he was never good at following source material!! 😜
@@MrKevmomoney Yeah... it's a real....
Now, where's that emoji for a steaming stinking pile of... when you need it?
The show might have been a OK fantasy show but it was a bad adaptation of the Wheel of Time. When adapting genre material to TV so many studio try to "modernize" the material but they take away what people love about it. The Wheel of Time TV series does that. Also having read the entire series the first season they wrote it in such a way that they will probably ignore most of the second book.
I wouldn't even say it was an okay fantasy show.
@@HamzaBoujelouah that is fair. I was trying to be generous. As a huge fan of the book series I was worried I wasn't giving if a fair shake when analyzing it as a generic fantasy series.
Great honest review better than “some” of the more well established wot channels who are in some sort of denial or something?
You got my sub buddy.
I’m a long time “30yrs” fan of the series, started reading the books as a young fisherman, got the eye of the world from a fellow fisherman and would read it most nites drifting out at sea before shuteye then followed the series for the following 30yrs dreaming of how great this would be as a movie or tv series , now I’m 48 and this is the garbage we got, very disappointed is an understatement especially knowing I’ll probably never get to see a true honest adaptation to the books😡
I picked it up in about 93' maybe 94' while in the Navy. Totally get where you are coming from.
the only people in denial are those that want to see it on tv period. it was always going to be shit on screen. i've been saying that online since usenet days.
this is as good as it is going to get and it's not that bad.
Thom Merrilin was by far the manliest character in the show. He's different than he is in the book but at least they gave him a dangerous vibe which is fitting considering his character arc. I did not get dangerous vibes from the warders or even Lan for the most part.
For the great hunt and moving on, get the audiobooks with Michael Kramer and Kate Reading as the narrators. You’ll enjoy it much much more.
I iust did, had a few credits saved up and even got Eye of the World by Kramer and Reading too.
You have done amazing job, enjoy reading book
the wheel of time is complicated. the story is just so, so vast and you learn about the world as you go. it works really well in the books. on the show…it’s pretty choppy and i think that’s what’s getting people
I'm about halfway through book 3 now and I love the world building and the way Jordan doesn't tell you everything right away. You have to earn it by reading- it's good stuff.
But.... my son!!!! ;D really good analysis Hamza. well done, i thoroughly enjoyed.
Glad you enjoyed it!
WHEN THEY EXCLUDED THOM'S FLUTE AND HARP.....I KNEW IT WOULD BE WOKE SHITSHOW WRITTEN BY DARKFRIENDS!!!
Excellent Hamza. I'm actually rereading the series for the 6 or 7th time. I'm up to Book 6. Skimming the boring bits. This show is a travesty. I feel sorry for the ppl that like it. They don't know what they are missing.
You may know this with multiple reads, but Jordan REALLY liked to hide awesome foreshadowing in "the boring bits".
16.00 ish. Moiraine, in the books wove wards around them all in the Blight to allow them to rest and sleep. From Tarwin's gap to the Eye with the Greenman was a lengthy journey. Not less than 24 hours.
Rosemund Pike as Moiraine. You really need to do a comparative listen to the original audiobook. The dual male and female narrators do such a better job than the Rosemund Pike version. No need to buy another book - most libraries have the audio version available.
I have listened to both, don't worry. Pike's version is very well done, but obviously Kramer and Reading's narrations are just godly!
TY for a great video. I've read the entire series in print and am now listening through a reread so if you're listening to the WOT books I couldn't recommend the OG versions instead of the new one more... I'm sure she's doing fine but the narration of Michael Kramer and Kate Reading is so iconic in fantasy and I love them :D I am so curious what you think about episode 8 after you read the rest of the book.... really... curious... :D
I was actually going to get the Kramer and Reading version but the audio sample wasn't the best quality. When I revist EoTW I will listen to that version though.
@@HamzaBoujelouah Robert Jordan would listen to the Kramer/Reading version to get an idea of the way other people read and voiced his writing, so he could be sure his intent while writing came through, and he loved them as well.
Great vid here btw.
I love your channel! Subbed!
I appreciate you review. I feel similarly. I hadn't read the showrunners tweets or interviews but some reviewers include some odd ones in the review where Rafe seems to be teazing or trolling people who I suppose he sees as hardcore fans in what I consider inappropriate way. As if he doesn't take his job seriously enough. I do think he is over his head. He has worked on other properties but for this property I wish they had got multiple different individuals with experience working on successful epic adaptations. Ultimately the actors and actresses are not a problem. I realize in the book that different ethnicities are cosmopolitan in cities which is natural but are concentrated in certain parts of the overall world but there are many nearby small countries in competition and war with each other that could easily drive refugees to seek peace and stability in neighboring areas and out in the boonies allowing for a simple explanation for a cosmopolitan emonds field which actually does happen in the book later which can just be brought forward as its likely happened already often enough just not spelled out. so that is not beyond rationale. the story as he tells it doesn't have its own internal logic/reason that makes sense to me or that the story sticks to. also he seems to toss in barbs that are intended to 'trigger' some people. Im easy going person who is a more universalist type. every person is similar to me in that the only way I sort anyone is in the nice/not-nice binary. I dont group anyone outside that and don't even like binary thinking outside that, but I catch some weird rewrites that seemed to try to trigger people. Its odd. I will watch this regardless because If you break it into pieces there is something you can take from it that may help you enjoy it even if its just a small pieces. I've watched worse. I've just been annoyed at so many small things its hard to enjoy what is there to enjoy when I keep being taken out of the immersion by the lack of internal logic and the parts where the magic creep for untrained people has exceeded what a circle of trained people can do. I need things like this to have rules and gradations and learning and buildup. spells are supposed to be taught except for usually one self learned one (like healing for nynaeve) and eavesdropping for moraine, with all others being taught to you by someone else. but they just pretend that magic is wholy self actuated without training and learning and just hope and pray and wish and good things will happen. in the book Rand does learn things without assistance but there is internal logic reasons that make that stay true to the logic. hes 'remembering from past life' even when nynaeve learns things quickly in the book its through seeing others weaves and then replicating what she sees. they break all the book rules but they also break all their own impression of whatever rules it seems they seem to be trying to make. the lack of an internal logic is hard for me to ignore. I think I just need that even if it were a completely new property and had nothing to do with wheel of time. also the fighting needs to be written and planned and coreographed by experts. robert jordan did a good job of spelling this stuff out on the page so its not like it isnt even already spelled out. but when fighting or war are done in a poor way it shows. there are many battles where if they are similarly poorly executed will be offputting.
I'm a book fan and was really looking foreword to the show. Told all my friends to watch it then when it came out had to apologized to them all for wasting there time. TBH I've spent more time watching youtube content these past few weeks on how shit the show was than i spent watching the show
Honestly, I'm with you there. I finished book one and found many of the changes in the show baffling. I then showed my friend (who wasn't a book fan) and he kept asking me what was even happening because the show was so bad at explaining anything
I don't mind them changing things from the book, but the changes they make are not well thought out. It seems they throw in whatever they need in the moment for a single episode and there are already head scratching moments like Perrin having a crush on Egwene after killing his wife a few weeks ago.
My sister read the book series again after a glimpse of the tv series. She needs a purgatory against this damned tv series.
I wonder how many books you have read? Have you finished it? Do you agree best books EVER? Although, im sure you understand now that several books barely have rand in them or other characters Jordan usually focus on a few theads with little updates on the others untol it all comes back together
I'm on book 12 right now. You can see my reviews for them in the Wheel of Time playlist on my channel.
@HamzaBoujelouah I finally found them lol. I just got excited this series meant so much to me. My step mom worked at ba book publisher and she used to give me copies of any books that they published that she thought I would like and I got The Wheel of Time 1 through 10 and a box set of five books in each one. This was during high school I waited 15 years to finish it lol. I cant imagine how those who bought Eye of the World when it first came out state sane that long
I agree with almost everything you said. This is probably going to sound silly...but Rands coat was out of place...the cut and synthetic lining threw me off every time I saw it.
In the books, the boys are around 19, while Egwene is around 16.
will someone please cut that mole off that actress. Feeling like MTV/CW casting would have been better than what Rafe has done maybe besides the actors for Padam Fain's and Loial who should have had fluffy ears. The rest were either two short or did feel right to their characters.
@@jonahdav9589 Sometimes it seems that mole is another character in the show.