Wheel of time casting, AUTHOR vs AMAZON prime | KNIGHTS WATCH
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- Опубліковано 4 вер 2024
- Let's look at who Robert Jordan would have picked to cast in the wheel of time TV show.
Man Carrying things video on why the wheel of time is bad: • The Wheel of Time™ Fai...
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They didn't cast for the show, they checked boxes off. Everyone can see it and any defense is laughably disingenuous.
Now that Blizzard's diversity algorithm was revealed, I can see why they wanted to cast overweight and/or older women as Aes Sedai, for the diversity points.
That's how they do it these days they're trying to tick the diversity and inclusion boxes not knowing how obviously forced and cringe it is.
Indeed. Same as in the Witcher. And they will rightfully share the same fate.
@@ctrlaltdebug Actually a lot of Aes Sedai are described as "plump" (although plump is different from morbidly obese) mainly those having clerical functions that wouldn't or couldn't be physically active. Notable exception Verin running off *everywhere* after book 1, quite sedentary before book 1
@Christian Acquasanta there is a big difference between plump, which Mat likes that basically means curvy and dumpy middle aged women. The majority of Aes Sedai in the books are ageless and at least quite pretty. Many are actually stunning.
What really got me was how some influential people in the WoT community (Dusty Wheel and Dan Greene) went out of their way to dismiss the author’s casting choices by saying things like there weren’t many actors of colour in his day to choose from which is why he went with white actors.
As a black man, it was infuriating to listen to. WoT has “diverse” characters, and they makes sense within the context of the lore and story of Robert Jordan’s vision.
Exactly. I am also all for inclusion and diversity, and it is boggling my mind that of all the shows, it's Wheel of Time where they want to screw around with the casting. Wheel of Time's world is already diverse. There are many, many main characters that come from all sorts of backgrounds and locations that pull from cultures across the world. What is the point of tossing all that out the window and introducing tokenism. It's bullshit diversity for the sake of metrics and almost just as bad as excluding minorities.
Hold on... Didn't he make the casting decisions when he was writing the books. That's the 90s, at the bare minimum, right?
It's not like it was the fucking 50s.
@@revpembroke3082 You gotta remember, there were no black people in movies until 2005. Just like there were no black TV show, black TV network, black musicians, black actors, black film industry, well-known black athletes, or even black politicians until Obama.
@@sofakingimmature obama was the first black man
@@sofakingimmature I really hope you're trolling.
“Rand, how many turnings of the Wheel have there been?” *Horse Rand starts aggressively counting off with one hoof*
They go to the books to try and justify themselves until they find something like this, and then they just say that the author’s intent is irrelevant anyway.
Or, “we have to cast with modern sensibilities in mind. We’ve *progressed* since then!”
@@ryanodom6101 that’s some bullshit. The Eye of the World came out in January of 1990. The series is only 32 years old. They’re treating it like LOTR or some other critically acclaimed series that came out in a time that makes them uncomfortable.
@@jgamer2228 Shit man...most people I know and myself included think back on the 90s as a BETTER time than now lol.
@@darwinlost6384
The 90's arguably had much more diversity, and more NATURAL diversity, than what we see now. Shows like Fresh Prince, Family Matters, Cosby Show (though that was more mid-late 80's), etc, were all EXTREMELY popular, and not just with black audiences. Because they tried to write a good show. They didn't try and pander to a certain demographic. They didn't tout is as being "finally a show with mostly black actors!" or anything ridiculous like that. Identity politics wasn't a (mainstream) thing back then, and people just wanted to see good stories with good characters.
But these days, you can't have that. You have to have the identity politics agenda shoved front and center in everything. And it only goes one way. Replacing a white character with a non-white (usually black) actor? Wonderful, progressive, stupendous, stunning, brave. But don't you DARE replace a non-white character with a white actor. That will get you subject to the social media attack machine, who will not only level tons of harassment, but will literally call for the person responsible (and often times the actor as well) to be killed.
@@darwinlost6384 I was a ‘97 baby, so I can’t speak for that decade but the 2000 era was the golden age of childhood ignorance
A good example of people not caring about height is Hugh Jackman's Wolverine, dude is way too tall for the role (Wolverine is a manlet) but no one minds because Jackman is still a great match in most other regards. Casting doesn't need to be perfectly accurate to the source material, just close enough that when you see the actor you instantly believe they're the character, something that WoT largely fails at
It also fails in it's characterization of the characters. Lan is not Lan from the books, he seems overly emotional, incompetent and useless when compared to his female counterparts. That's just one example, yet the entire main cast is marred by the poor writing. (Of the show).
Rand is not even a character, he's a place holder. He's supposed to be the antithesis to the Frodo character. A chosen one who doesn't want to be the chose one but has to deal with the consequences of his own existence. Yet, in the show he finds out he is the dragon and there's barely a reaction.
Matt isn't a good natured trickster, he's a broody gambler with a broken home.
Perrin isn't the loyal, thoughtful big guy, who is incredibly careful because he's aware of his strength. He's a wife killing, jealous goon, who spends all his time moping.
Again, I could go on and on. It isn't just the casting, this whole show is just pure trash!
Exactly in the comics Wolverine is really short at 5'3 but Hugh did such a good job embodying the demeanor and attitude of wolverine we can overlook height. Outside of height and being slightly less bulky due to being taller he very much looked like wolverine.
Danzig was my call for Wolverine.
I would add to this that height can be altered by perspective. See: Gimli.
A good example of actor height being unacceptable for a character is Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher. One of the most important physical attributes is completely ignored for star power.
This reminds me of the argument around historical accuracy in BF5.
The devs of the games tried as they might to say that because players were willing to overlook a weapon in the game that was never used in the first world war, then it also meant there was no issue to put in female amputee british soldiers fighting with an mechanical arm.
Once you give an inch to dishonest people they will stretch it over a mile.
Battlefield 1 was well liked but as a world war 1 shooter it pretty much failed. I am usually not a proponent of bots in pvp games but BF 1 needed them. There should have been at least a few hundred active units on a server to make it seem believable. There are other issues - too many SMGs, too many selfloading rifles, carrying machine guns around (there were only a few LMGs in ww1). Also, as an Austrian I hate that they represented us as discount Germany instead of showing the diversity of our old empire. BF 1 is a good game, but a terrible ww1 shooter.
@@chrismath149
Based Austria needs better representation.
yep
"where's my LGTBQ person with lightsaver cutting down enemies in WW1 huh!, this is so patriarchal!"
The only thing they had to do is to say the game was set in a dieselpunk fantasy universe or something
Robert Jordan was smart to make his wishlist cast
It’s like he anticipated what could happen lol
He knew what Hollywood was becoming...
Too bad these people didn't care and just ignored it.
@@primmakinsofis614 But that would mess with Disney's money machine!
@@primmakinsofis614 NOOO! Don't do this! People will start killing great authors to get their material into public domain xD
As a Lovecraft reader: First time?
Saw so many companies using his work, followed by: "Lovecraft was a bigot, we don't like him and distance ourselves from him completely....Now gorge yourselves on our Lovecraft-based merchandise."
He was very racist, against anyone who wasn't a proper, well bred Englishman, this racism includes most of the Americans. He was also less stable than a house of cards in a storm. That doesn't mean he didn't write some good stories.
@@Some_Really_Random_Dude. Hence he married Sonia Greene, a woman of Jewish decent.
@@DarknessProphet Oy vey! They got him too!
@@DarknessProphet You can be racist and not anti-semitic.
Making the two rivers ultra diverse this early in the story detracts significantly from what happens to the place later in the books, which in turn detracts from Perrin's arc....because they didn't do enough to screw him up already.
They had no clue how a village operates. Sex before marriage is a big no no, its not some modern city with no morals.
@@ardendragoon I would normally say that was a huge oversight on their part, but I think we all know that it was intentional. They can't have strong empowered wahmen without having them engage in promiscuous bullshit. Nevermind the insanely high level of contempt that nynaeve had for things like that.
There just.....isn't anything at all that they did well or even passable in this show. Literally nothing.
My thoughts exactly
I thought that was kinda weird too cuz it wasnt in the books. Two rivers seemed way too diverse for a village that no one went to.
Just dont be an ass and equate no morals to promiscuity in 'big cities'. That makes no sense.
There is plenty to criticise without injecting your own morals.
Dont be a rafe.
What the guy is basically saying is "if the author was willing to cast a 6' 4" guy to play a 6' 6" character, we are therefore entitled to cast a 4' actor of a different skin tone, different hair colour and type, different complexion, different age by 50 yeras, different demeanor and, why not, in fact a girl".
Daniel Green and Dusty Wheel’s entire argument for going against Jordan was basically “well Ben Afleck isn’t 6ft 6in like Rand, so that gives them license to change everyone.”
The irony is that they are trying to use their platform to create support for their ideology, but they are just creating more opposition.
Yes, people who never had a political bone in their body are pushing back against it.
Nice profile picture.
And yeah, these shows always feel like someone's ideology filled writing project wearing the skin of a beloved work.
Literally, nobody cares, at least nobody important.
Man Carrying Thing is a close friend of Daniel Greene, who we know has been very generous to the show, so I was glad to see he at least wasn’t afraid to mercilessly tear it apart.
Shame, I like Greene, but he is blinkered by his politiks
Didn't Daniel Greene give the show a 6/10 he isn't that big of a defender of it tbh.
@@jonbaxter2254 I used to enjoy Daniel Greene's work, but he started getting political in his videos and I was put off by it. I stayed subscribed for a while until he actually defended the WoT show and I just couldn't take him seriously anymore. So I unsubscribed and never looked back.
@@KyU433 That’s still generous, but you’re right, he’s come away not too positive in the end. The thing with Daniel is he tends to zoom in on particular things in his analysis and look at them out of context, only gaining proper perspective later when he zooms out. We can see this with his ranking videos, where he will place something somewhere just thinking of a particular aspect of it, and when he steps back at the end of the video and sees how he’s placed things in relation to one another, he drastically changes everything. Similarly with WoT, he spent each episode looking at specific little things he liked, and it wasn’t until the he looked back on the season as a whole that he realized how bad it was, though even then he defends it more than it deserves. But still you can see his politics biasing him to like the agenda they’re pushing and turn a blind eye when it costs the story.
@@justthinkingoutloud2538 The most egregious thing I ever heard Daniel Greene say is "UA-cam treats its creators fairly". I think he's probably just a regular guy when it comes to politics personally, but that surprised me.
I'd love to see a Knights Watch casting roster. Maybe each member bring their own casting & debate their merit.
I actually want to see this! Lol
Yeah same
Hear me out. They very well may change Tuon's skin color. You see they can't have a black woman being protrayed as someone who owns slaves.
so... Tuon will be cast with a Red head?
Oh shit you're right
Ohh you know they willl her entire empire will now be very Victorian British. just watch.
@@yurioorlov177 ... wait! They can insert white male only slave owners and male pregnancy society.
Wow, Robert Jordan’s castings we’re so much better and clearly illuminates what he saw as important qualities for each character.
hollywood must be in a tough place if those were the best actors they could find for the role.
I'll say. I was saved by the grace of their reviews, so I haven't watched this crap, but I've seen a few clips, and OHHHHHHHHHHH BUDDY BOY those deliveries are ASS. I'm sure there are SOME good lines, but every single last line I've seen a clip of has been SO freaking BADLY delivered.
I think bad script and bad directing is the big problem. The cast is not to blame. Some of them manage even to shine (mat, nyn).
@@asafb1984 I'm not saying the actors are bad, just unfit for the role.
@@simpson6700 Statistically with the delivery I've been seeing, SOME of the actors are dogshit.
Might need more data to determine which ones, but SOME of them are bad.
@@haku8135
Rosamund Pike, Barney Harris and Alvaro Morte are decent. The rest are all CW tier mediocre actors. Either too hammy (Valda, Liandrin, Nynaeve) or just wooden (Rand and Perrin).
That "best actors for the role" is 100% cope. Why can't they just admit that the show runners want to score DEI points? From casting choices to major plot changes. It's apparent throughout the show! They made Moiraine the show's protagonist for crying out loud! The show-sworn said that it's because Rosamund Pike is a well known actress to lead the show in the first season. Well okay then, if the rumours are true, she is still going to be the main protagonist in the second season as well, why?
The COPE from these people is endless!
Always funny how the "best" is always a minority. Someone who is, what, 5% of the population? Really the best?
Padan Fain was described EXPLICITLY with NO flowery language as being a skinny, pale as hell old man.
They REALLY couldn't find an old guy to play the role? They had to get a black dude that doesn't even fit the other descriptors?
@@haku8135 to be fair, the smile of the guy they chose is super creepy. I think he will work
@@kyle18934 A creepy smile does not a character make.
@@haku8135 padom Thame in the books mainly is a creepy person going insane. I don't think his nationality matters to much.
his nationality matters in the first book maybe the second. after his nationality doesn't matter as much.
I don't like what they did with the other characters from the wheel of time, but a peddler who travels around everywhere is fine
What Amazon did to WoT is criminal. Actively changing the characters and story of one of the best epics ever written just to push their woke leftist agenda.
I still stand by what I said year ago, WoT would be amazing if they made it a long running western anime. Think of how long One Piece has been on and how true the anime has stayed to the manga. If they animated WoT with the style of the comics (the EotW comic adaption was amazingly well done), dropped nothing and let the series take as long as it takes, it would be one of the best shows to ever air.
I agree with you completely, if they made WoT as an anime, with the comic adaptation as a guide, it would be the very best. I would also be cheaper, and shows (from Amazon) Invincible and The Legend of Vox Machina prove that it can be done, and done well.
This is actually one of the only books I've read that I see as animation
@@vanneli
The Invincible animation extended the death of the superheroes by quite a lot. In the comics, Omni-Man offs them in a blur, whereas the show has them fight and die one by one.
Definitely what I had in mind as well. Voices are easier to replace for a long running series too.
I can't help but agree! An anime-like adaptation will solve so many image issues and they'll have much better scenes on that budget and can stay true to the source material. I wanted it to be something like AOT with more realistic faces and backgrounds. Even Aes Sedai could have real no-age faces as it's an animation. They missed the point and the unique vibe of the books, the intense world building, details and storylines so much that it hurts me at the personal level making it a generic and forgettable incredibly cliche fantasy-chosen-fight-evil story. The only difference from loads of other TV shows is that they put millions on it. Didn't expect anything else from Amazon though. Few moments were decent for me like Shadar Logoth design (where is Mordeth??) and Tar Valon and this is it. Not to mention the terrible casting and writer's "fanfition" so that the only thing they got right is character's names.
Textbook case of filmmakers seeing a bestselling book and going, "We can do this better than the author that everyone loves!"
It happens to nearly every book-turned-movie.
Desperaux.
Upside-Down Magic.
A wrinkle in time (newer version.)
Redwall.
Chronicles of Narnia.
To name a few.
@@PoserPosse Lest we forget, LIGHTNING THIEF
Producers completely ignored everything, apparently thinking they could write a bestseller better than the actual bestseller.
@@PoserPosse Oh, man, I remember watching the animated Redwall show and being like, "What in the name of holy Hell!" I was eleven then and a lot less critical of media, and it pissed me off.
@@PoserPosseagree for the most part dune and ender did pretty good tho.
@@Dragonmoon98
It's pride, gotta be. And then the remake of the movie! As if it were necessary.
@willmangrum3686
Eleven is the perfect time to get the real feeling of how Redwall was written. And the cartoon was toned down, as if children wouldn't be able to handle the tv version of the book they read.
@cscs88
Glad someone who commented has read the book. It's a great feeling to know that some books were respected.
Their argument essentially boils down to:
"3.14 is _not_ exactly equal to pi, so I'm allowed to draw a circle with 4 sides."
Gandhi had a mustache Hltler had a mustache; their practically the same person.
and they were pen pals
@in desperate need of a scotch well considering the way britishs colonized india for ovr 200 years ,we can give rights to Gandhi in this topic
@in desperate need of a scotch do you think people should love the colonizers in their country?
This video has changed how I imagine the characters when I read Wheel of Time. Thanks. It was really nice and helpful in picturing the scenes.
nice
I gave the WoT show as many allowances as I could. I think what broke me was when Moiraine told Siuan to "get on her knees" and then later said Siuan only answered to one woman in front of the group. These lines were really cringe and obviously forced. Especially the second line throws all discretion out the window about the secrecy behind Siuan's bias toward Moiraine. I agree with most of Man Carrying Thing's review, but that is one area where we differ. His political stance makes that stuff more palatable for him
For me, I picked up on a major red flag during the opening monologue. It was when Moiraine talked about the men going and sealing the Dark One away. "Such arrogance," were her words. It's kind of like looking at the men on the Titanic and saying, "Letting women and children go first? What arrogant dirtbags." That was the first sign that a man-hating feminist was in the driver's seat of this show.
@@echoesofthevoice9570 It's like saying men going off to fight WW2 were arrogant.
@@echoesofthevoice9570
Seriously, a better line for Moiraine would've been something like "They succeeded...but the Dark One's vengeance is boundless. Men became cursed, corrupted...tainted...to the point of madness." It would've hinted at just how powerful the Dark One truly is _and_ given credit to the men for sealing the Dark One away, but no...no, like all Hollow-wood woke writers, the men have to be derided and women praised.
I used to like Daniel Greene until he shilled out for amazon's terrible adaptation of the wheel of time
also the two rivers is as close as you can come to a society in a box canyon the people coming in to the two rivers argument is the most disingenuous thing I've ever heard
I know. Tam was unique in his time for bringing in an outlander wife.
I usually like to listen to differing opinions, but I just couldn’t stand the praise so I unsubscribed to the Goblin somewhere in there. Can’t say I respect his viewpoint on storytelling anymore, if “that” was something he was willing to praise.
Still love his how S8 was made (GoT) though.
Honestly just think he was in denial. He wanted to desperately like it so he didn't specifically hate on it as much as he could have. I think Brandon Sanderson is a bit more of a worse culprit of shilling the show.
@@AcmeWingbaby Whats funny is that GOT S8 is more expensive and entertaining than WOT S1 lol
@@ColombianThunder
That's the most pathetic I've seen Sanderson, saying the show "is in good hands" when it clearly isn't.
Before the show channels like Daniel Greene and The Dusty Wheel were the staunchest of defenders of WOT and it’s canon. All that changed with a bit of politics then a TV show.
They bent over faster than someone reaching for the dropped soap. Can't stand to even listen to their prattle now.
Matt hatch use to be a massive fan of Robert Jordan. I believe he even met him before he died. Now that the TV show came out I have seen him say multiple times RJ wasn't a perfect writer.
Fuck off
They were given special treated by amazon and the showrunners, even inviting him to the premiere and allowing him to act almost as a jounalist, that's recognition, notoriety and exclusive content. All they need to do is avoid any kind of criticism and in any case justify the mild criticism they have to external sources (adaptation, covid, 8 chapters instead of 12) never asking responsability of the actual showrunners.
@@francesccampos1343
It's actually quite pathetic to see the so-called superfan channels become the biggest shills for this heap of garbage. I've read the first book fairly recently for the first time and even I'm pissed at how much Judkins intentionally changed the story.
When thinking of game of thrones, regardless of how it ended the casting was perfection.
@in desperate need of a scotch lower your fucking standards to a realistic level, if the women are bombshells next to normal looking men there would be an uncanny valley vibe to the whole thing. We don't need anymore Hollywood perfect standards of beauty, especially in medieval type fantasy. Those standards of beauty have lead us nowhere good.
The Shadow Rising: (p. 573):
"In the midafternoon he finally spotted a figure climbing the mountain, scrambling up wearily. Aviendha. Mat had been right; she was bare as she was born. And showing some effects of the sun, too, Aiel or not; it was only her hands and face that were sun-darkened, and the rest of her looked decidedly red."
The Fires of Heaven: (pp. 806-807):
"She stood in one smooth motion, surprisingly pale where the sun had not touched her, slender and hard-muscled, yet with roundnesses and softnesses that haunted his dreams. This was the first time he had allowed himself to look at her openly when she flaunted herself, but she did not seem aware of it."
I think getting upset over the casting for WoT is a bit like complaining that your shit sandwich is served on a plate that clashes with the table cloth.
No amount of accurate casting would have saved it.
The casting choices were the canary in the coal mine that this show was going to be shit.
Well there are some acting choices in tv shows that saved the day, evnethough the entirety of it sucked.
Henry Cavill in Witcher being the honorary mention here, as the Witcher sucks hard, but Henry Cavill makes it watchable.
When you look at people like Dusty Wheel and Greene, they have access. Access to actors, writers, showrunners, even Brandon Sanderson. If they say what all of us fans actually think, they will immediately lose that access. It is in their direct benefit to tow the line and play along with the madness that this show is actually good. They HAVE to willfully disregard the problems in order to keep their golden goose. Its a matter of having integrity, unfortunately its the same problem with that ideology.
Yup agreed. Dusty wheels channels exist for the live show so ya.
It's precisely what makes them spineless cowards in the end. They have no principles or are otherwise unwilling to stand by them.
Same as Dark Melvin from Knights of Melvin Channel has said about the Disney Star Wars channels all praising the garbage. To quote him your a 'Disney Shill!'
Well, they didn't have to make that disgraceful trainwreck of a video. We aren't asking them to declare a crusade against woke scavenging of established IPs. We just expect them not to make disingenuous, patently absurd arguments and call us racists.
Same thing they did in Dune with the Fremen and the Harkonnens. You literally have to cast a certain type of people in a certain light.
Dune is a perfect example of the racism of today. Casting all Harkonnen as bald whites (mostly - Bautista is biracial) is no problem. Fremen? Oh theyve got to be rainbow people, despite being a band of xenophobic nomads.
@@jmlaw8888 I don't see how the Fremen are rainbow people in the new movie. Villeneuve wanted to evoke the North African/Saharan culture from which they originated. In the book they are believed to be the descendants of the Zensunni Wanderers, which probably find their roots in the Nile region. It's book accurate for them to look like they could be from anywhere between Sudan and Morocco.
@@jmlaw8888 Nah they look north African enough. Sadly there were not any actual north African people casted. I hope that changes in the next few movies.
@@retro2103 I don't buy that any of the Fremen we've seen were meant to be darker-skinned African. Herbert would have made it explicit in their description. People trying to justify the casting generally do so disingenuously and out of fear of cancel-culture. This isn't new at this point. Companies absolutely make these decisions out of fear, whether they realize that's what it is or not. Because we're told people with darker skin are oppressed and therefore deserve more representation.
If the Fremen were described as so dark-skinned in the book, I would stand behind all of them being cast accordingly. They're not. Their culture is largely lifted from Arabic Islam. The casting for Stilgar is probably the best; though I don't like the character direction. The attitude Javier Bardem portrays is too bitchy sad-boy and not noble enough to be Fremen. The Fremen are meant to have this sort of noble spirit that the movie doesn't capture well.
Overall, I liked the movie well enough, but impressive cinematography and good-to-passable character work only goes so far to impress. It's definitely missing some of the essence of the book.
@@HarantheBlue Have you ever been in North Africa? I have. It's quite ethnically and racially diverse. They don't all look like Arabs, in fact the Arabs mainly live along the coast, go deeper inland and you find darker skinned people like the Haratin. The exploitation of Arrakis is obviously a nod to the (neo)colonialism of western powers for their own gain. The thing they want is even called 'spice', the colonialism cannot be more on the nose. What is wrong with leaning into that obvious allegory and visualise what's already clearly meant in the text.
I'm surprised you focus on the Fremen's skin colour so much, because the one obvious studio mandate isn't "make the Fremen black", but "Liet Kynes must be a woman" and even then, the story isn't ruined like with the Wheel of Time where the altering of gender and race will cause severe problems and divergences from the books down the line.
The Wheel Of Time series looked awful from the trailers. I’m happy I never got into this Amazon prime series. I’d rather read the books instead. lol
Slight difference in height? Slightly thicker shoe soles/heels with proper camera angles.
Hair color? Dye or a wig.
Eye color? Contacts or post processing.
Wrong build in terms of muscle mass/definition? Actor works out.
Wrong build in terms of BMI to a degree?
Feed the actor or use a prosthetic.
Wrong build in terms of bone structure?
Get a different actor.
Wrong build in terms if complexion?
Get a different actor. Make-up only goes so far.
Wrong build in terms of both of these features (aka baseline racial qualities, opposed to ethnic subsets), get a different actor for that role.
Actor significantly too tall? Hire the CGI folks from the hobbit/lotr, or get a different actor...
camera angles also for when someone is too tall or short
You guys are awesome, I love your reviews and your thoughts about the Amazon series. I'm so disheartened about what Amazon has done to this series.
Amazon's adherence to DIE casting is disgusting. No different than NSDAP's hiring prerequisites.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
So happy you made this video! :D
I've been curious about this since you mentioned it in the last one.
I still say they should have gone with MyAnna Buring for Moiraine. When I first watched The Witcher a couple years ago and saw her playing Tissaia de Vries I immediately thought "this is almost exactly how I pictured Moiraine Damodred looking". She's actually the right height instead of over half a foot taller and could act the part well.
Thought the same. She would have made a perfect moiraine. Never did like rosamand pike for the role.
Had that exact thought when I first saw her. She would have been such a better choice.
She would have been a better choice but I think you need to include the part where Aes Sedai are ageless. I mean you could do a lot of CGI on her or find someone who really is younger that plays older, as Shad said.
@@matthewblankenzee5452 I was tho. when first seeing her in episode 2 I thought could be mature looking 30 or youthful appearing 45. didn't know who she was or realize she had been in Twilight.
I'm not against the thought of casting younger actresses who could act the part well like Shad suggested. but would you then constantly change their makeup or use CGI to make them appear different ages at various times in the episode? otherwise you'd just have poised, mature Aes Sedai who all look quite youthful rather than ageless.
Also not against that idea since real world I'm not sure what exactly would need to be done for agelessness as described in the books. I don't disagree with u... regardless I think she would have been perfect 4 or 5 years ago when they filmed it and is my top pick from then until someone suggests a better alternative.
@@INIMICVS_MALLEVS To see Aes Sedai ageless has a couple solutions. You could use CGI on everything but that is $$$ intensive. You can use, as Shad suggests a lot younger actresses. IMHO the best is a combo of both those. There is something called a star filter which was used early on in film that makes anyone very good with a youthful glow. What you do is cast women in their 30's that look great, use a star filter when the shot is with them alone. Then on the scenes with multiple actors use the CGI. Hopefully that would reduce the cost.
15:59 Yeah well... Elijah Wood wasn't really the height of a Hobbit. They used camera tricks. You can solve a few inches in height with shoes/boots. Look at the dude who played Hagrid in Harry Potter. He isn't that big in real life.. We aren't asking for an exact casting down to the minute detail. But if a character is described as a fair skinned and ginger female or male, you kind find a lot of people that fit that description! That should be apart of the casting requirements! It's not that hard. You can work around height. You can fake a prosthetic.. hell you can used coloured contacts to get the eye color right. Arguably you can do the same with hair colour by dying it. But skin is not something easily changed. They tried to do that in Witcher season 2 and it just looked like obvious white-face. It didn't fit. Most roles should be race and gender locked based on source material in my opinion.
The tallest cast member of the Fellowship played Gimli the dwarf. Height really has little to no bearing on casting since fancy camera work can alter those needs as necessary.
44:46 I always pictured Padan Fain as Adrien Brody (King Kong 2005). Nearly every description included a "hooked nose" and that is what I imagine.
This is how the creator of the most popular fantasy books/wot channel in UA-cam dealt with the aviendah casting, unironicaly:
"I'm pleased to see thay found someone tanned enough to play aviendah".
Seriously, that's how racist his attempt to be not racist sounds!
Who was that?
At least most of these racists are morons, confessing without any pressure to do so at all.
@@frankie3010 Daniel Greene I think
@@frankie3010 Daniel Greene in one of his news segmants
@in desperate need of a scotch I’ve stopped watching him too although not because of Wot, he’s just moved away from reviewing and discussing books that interest me.
You right shad. If you making an adaptation from a book you need to follow the lore and keep to what the author describes for the look of characters.
Sorry, I'm only gonna say this, if the original author of the book says to you "You should use this actors or people like this because that was my idea", you should respect it...
You know why? Because if he had the imagination to write a book, in his mind as a writer, he had images of the things that happened. That's it. You can choose not to follow it, but that would be such a stupid move to do...
Anyway, great video. I was really interested to know Shad and OZ opinion about this :D
The people who are adapting the show, hate the original authors. See Witcher, Primes LotR...
It is fun to think about the diversity in two rivers , they were so isolated they did not know were part of Andor and didnt pay tribute XD
That because they were under sanctions for running an Aparthied Village were everyone was separate but equal. No one was allowed to marry outside their race to ensure that a true global village continued to exist in the middle of no where.
I personally do not agree with the morality and sensibility of Rand having multiple wives, for example, and felt somewhat uncomfortable reading it 20 something years ago, but even as a teenager I understood it is a fictional, fantasy story set in a different world with relatable but different world-specific peoples and cultures, in a different time. It's still a compelling, engaging, and overall expertly crafted story regardless and it should not be sacrificed and butchered by the whims of modern propaganda and ideologies. I'm not interested in someone else's version of the story being brought to screen. I want the real version, not the hypocritical, narcissistic treatment by misguided hacks that *BY THEIR OWN ADMISSION* _actually want_ to score political brownie points at the expense of making a faithful adaptation within the restraints of the given media. Thanks, but no thanks, to say the least.
What hurts the most about this is that we had one chance to see this incredible story told on screen. No one is going to take on something so huge again when this flops. And they will point to all the wrong reasons as to WHY it flops.
So sad and true... I've never wanted a book to be adapted more, and now have never wanted a quicker failure in hopes that it could still have a chance again in the future!
Watched 3 episodes, walked away, will never come back. Race shaping avi was the last straw. I was willing to let yall watch season 2 see if it got any better, but after that, nope.
The first season of Wheel of Time felt like something made by people who hated the books for people who have never read the books... I expect season 2 to be no different.
Regarding casting, I actually don’t care about the appearance differences (for the most part). My issue is more with the lack of care on a whole range of examples. To take one, they repeatedly lift the line about the EF5 being recognisable by their accents… and then don’t give them a distinguishable accent. Similarly if rand is supposed to stand out for his hair colour and complexion in the two rivers, I don’t want to see other red haired people walking around in the background. A local community theatre stage play would not make these kinds of errors.
Thanks for speaking up about this. Most of the more popular channels are out there defending this nonsense.
Although I think the casting of WOT is completely wrong, I could overlook all that if the program itself wasn't a pile of shit.
amazon studios has an officially published "inclusion policy" that's mostly a woke manifesto that says they have to have specific percentages of races/sexualities/genders on cast and crew, but there's also one part that i actually agree with, that they completely violate:
"Amazon Studios is committed to authentic portrayals. It is our intention, whenever possible, _to cast actors in a role whose identity aligns with the identity of the character they will be playing (by gender, gender identity, nationality, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, and disability)_ and in particular when the character is a member of an underrepresented group/identity."
There’s a word for that: tokenism. It creates the illusion that you are blindly casting people without regard to their backgrounds, when in reality, you are idiotically ticking off checkboxes for the sake of appeasing corrupt corporate executives. You can’t possibly get perfect diversity ratios in every casting call and audition. The only way to achieve this is to cheat by discriminating against certain volunteers until you reach the quotas, which in itself is extremely unethical and unfair.
Underepresented means non white to them, that policy is there to avoid absurd european or black samurais, is not there to prevent other absurdities when such absurdities go into blackwashing or doing the same for whatever group they deem that needs some representation because they feel pity for or want to push some agenda.
The only way Wot could have been faithfully adapted is by getting a high quality Japanese animation studio (Studio Ghibi comes to mind), give them all the notes and all the source material and actually use that.
Not let some lefty strap the series to his feet just to make himself look taller.
Get Mappa to do it. Watching them animate weaves would be mesmerizing.
@@awilson5684 Cool yeah, but I think Ghibi animation has better talent to portray the cultures and world of WoT. Either Or, Hanna Barbarra would have done a better job than the garbage Amazon show we got.
nah man ufotable would be spectacular the quality level of their animations is god tier
@@aussieronin6902 True, they've been rocking it recently
So you'd want them all to look Japanese?
Thank You for keeping on The Wheel of Time. I think it is a travesty what they did with The Wheel of Time show. How Amazon seems to buy or influence the UA-camrs and critics/reviewers. Making So few people with reach talking about how horrible this show is. How it is nothing like the books.
At one time, The Wheel of Time had almost as many fans as the lord of the rings. It was the Movies that really pushed the lord of the rings mainstream. The Wheel of Time could have been something great. Thank you
Cope
@@jasonhaven7170 how is it cope?
Thanks for doing this video. I've been waiting for someone to do something like this comparing the 2
The "actor doesn't match 100%" argument is a direct analogue to the "movies with space wizards" argument people will try to throw out to deflect criticisms of the Star Wars sequels' consistency.
Wolverine - Hugh Jackman - is a great example of embodiment of character (bar writing specifically over all films), even though at 6ft 3 ins he's a foot taller than comicbook Wolverine. Looks and portrayal was pretty spot on.
Robert Jordan's picks were perfect ideals for adaptation... there are plenty of living actors who could have matched closely to his guide... The showrunner's didn't want that.
Perrin is my favorite character. He looks and acts absolutely nothing like he does in the book. His strength and imposing physique are a big part of his behavior. Even his facial hair has importance in the narrative. The show got everything wrong about him.
beard comes later.
@@anonymouslyopinionated656 That's exactly right. He shouldn't have a beard yet. And they've ruined the reason why he grows his beard. With this Fake-Fic wife he killed.
Starting with a beard instead of growing it for Faile is a huge mistake
exactly starting with big young boy, then overtime till meet Faile, he became man. what a crock of S*it show they made, director & character manager should be hanged, and then Jeff Bezo should payout the damage.
33:10 People in the WoT fandom need to stop with this idea that the Borderlands are Asian in appearance. Just no. The only Borderland nation that can fit the Asian look is Saldaea. Why? Because Saldaeans are the only ethnicity that is described as having tilted eyes. You know, the defining physical attribute of Asians (East-Asian). Malkier is very much not Asian because Lan noticed a Borderlander wasn't Malkieri simply because he had the tilted eyes of a Saldaean.
Yep. I always got Russian vibes from the north besides Saldaea. Cold snowy and hard. Not to mention height.
Yeah, as I've remarked before, look on the EotW book jacket, Lan is very tall, especially as compared to Moiraine. I always got the Icelandic/Nordic vibe. Just because those of Fal Dara had a top not doesn't mean they are Asian.
Hopefully this trainwreck woke show will get cancelled and the rights will end up with a Japanese Animation studio.
Oh, ever since I started watching you in the wake of season one I've been waiting for this.
Even if you look past the differences in the characters ethnicity, the cast still don’t fit the descriptions from the book. For example most of the Two Rivers men depicted wear beards, Two Rivers men don’t wear beards. It’s a part of the fashion and culture of the region. Egwene stops wearing a braid which shows how she wants to grow past the Two Rivers and be more like Moiraine. Rand is visually striking to his countrymen which makes him stand out and affirms our belief that there’s something special about him. Filmmaking is a visual art and every detail creates the story, unfortunately the people making this show were too busy patting themselves on the back over there stunning and brave changes to pay attention to these details
Yeah, you’d expect a small isolated town to be pretty ethnically homogeneous and for a foreigner (separated by a very long ways) to stand out
I only knew about the Shadiversity channel, so I was confused when Shad came out saying youtube started de-ranking him. Then I found this video. Now it all makes sense.
When I write (for my sins) I create sort of "mood board" for each of my main characters. This includes photos of actors (or just people whose photos I find on the Internet - oooh, that sounds a bit creepy...) that I think would be good fit to play them. Perhaps Jordan did something like that so had these exact people in mind when describing the characters - so it's sort of casting in reverse.
It is not creepy I do not have board but I do the same thing with fictional characters who I would want to play them.
Shad…. I’m sorry… but you’re Australian… to be Captain American you would have to be American.
Period.
End of discussion.
Seriously, the most iconic American superheroes are Superman, Batman, Spider-man, and Captain America, and 3 or those 4 have all be casted with British actors!!! What gives?!?
At least give us Americans freak’n Captain America, please!!
@in desperate need of a scotch Wikipedia says he was born in Boston Massachusetts, USA 🇺🇸
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Evans_(actor)
Nobody will ever convince me that there is a better casting for Thom than Sam Elliott
Comments like "We know they're lying." are why I watch you guys while I've stopped watching most other YT. It is nice to hear other people who refuse to be gaslighted.
Heyo! Man carrying thing shoutout, love to see it. That video he made almost perfectly pointed out all the flaws in the show.
There actually is an official artist for the book's characters that Robert Jordan endorsed, since the characters are portrayed as he envisioned them. Not a very diverse group of characters, the two women that come from the Twin Rivers are drawn like they're northern Italian, while Rand and the other characters are pale and typical white European. You don't see a black character until the Seanchan are introduced.
And what's the problem with that? There doesn't have to be diversity in everything. If Robert wanted a group of diverse Europeans, then what is the problem with that?
@@ddfstar7588 I never said there was anything wrong with that. Just pointing out that the characters already have a chosen appearance.
Sea folk ate the only black people in WoT what do you mean Seanchan?
@@admirekashiri6651 What are you talking about?
@@admirekashiri6651 No, the Sea Folk aren't the only Blacks in WoT...
SOME of the Seanchan are Black, like Tuon,
IIRC, the Tairens are also mostly Blacks.
Don't worry for the black character, Shad. Raceswapping/Genderbending is fine only if the character in question is white and/or male.
We don't want that shit we have our own stories and characters this shit pisses me off to the core its clear what the Industry is doing.
35:48 Bruh I literally read this scene 5 minutes before Shad brought it up
Y’all gotta talk about the absolute destruction of Percy Jackson that they’ve done with the casting of Annabeth and Grover in the new show.
One of the few people in the first book that gets a 100% TOTALLY EXPLICIT straightforward NO ROOM FOR ARGUING description of their skin tone is Padan Fain.
Padan Fain, when he is introduced, is OUTRIGHT described as being PALE.
And they made him black. They do NOT give a single flying fuck about representation, they want to eliminate as many white people as possible from their show, unless they can make them EVIL or otherwise jokes. Even the ones that are already evil, they might still make black as with Padan Fain, because the number of white people was STILL too damn high.
ANYONE that tries to say these people are NOT race changing people because of their agenda and they actually believe they're representing the characters correctly?
Yeah, point out how Padan Fain's introduction EXPLICITLY describes him as a skinny, pale as fuck old man and look at the man they decided FITS THAT.
This discussion deserves a more in depth ripping apart of Daniel Greene's video with Dusty Wheel that is shown. I went and watched the whole thing, for 45 minutes I'll never get back, and Shad's comment about how the arguments that they make are self-defeating is VERY accurate. They can't seem to make up their minds whether they are trying to state that the majority of the people are from ethnic groups of homogenous or diverse ancestry, apart from the bloodlines of the first queen which is very dispersed and diluted over thousands of years.
Check out Jaclyn Smith for your most beautiful women list.
Personally, I think Alan Rickman's talent was woefully underutilized as Snape in Harry Potter. Can you just imagine the impact of Rickman as the nastier, more malicious Snape from the book who was still doing the right thing but could never be mistaken for a "good" person. He could have blown everyone's minds.
Alan Rickman would have been a fucking amazing Mazrim Taim.
Amazon has even violated their own DEI rules. One of them is that if at all possible the actor should have as many attributes of the character in real life.
BUT that is overridden by their other rule about quotas and how many POCs they have to have. So obviously their rules at contradicting each other, but we can easily see which rule they want to follow.
That rule is only to protect non-white roles.
I was so sad when Robert Jordan passed but now I’m grateful in a way. Because he would be LIVID if he could see what they did to his magnum opus. Then again if he was still alive this atrocity would have never happened.
He would've pulled a Roald Dahl and rescinded the rights to the series.
I'm a leftie with views pre-2010 (no problem with gay marriage, equal rights, income & wealth inequality and so on) and i HATE what they've done with WOT. It's obnoxius narcissistic virtue signaling and i absolutely loathe injection of politics into movies and tv shows.
I agree with you, on those sort of things I’m liberal but I cringe at the woke political of today, I think it’s making me into a conservative haha, who would’ve thought..
@@AG-vb6vv I think a lot of people are getting more radical as grifters on the internet have gotten smarter at brainwashing people. We can see sensible republicans be disgusted at the illogical alt right propaganda and become more left and liberal people be disgusted by social justice warriors coining new terms and making everything too diverse turning them right. It’s important to stay grounded and meet people in real life and that’s when you’ll realize where your values lie. For example something like abortion is so easy to say “don’t kill a baby’s life!” But when you see a woman crawling on the floor bleeding with a hanger in her vagina crying to get the baby out because she doesn’t want to give birth and be connected to her abusive boyfriend forever/stay in the relationship pregnant as you know everyone he knows will force you to stay with him. It’s easy to have humanity take over and realize that woman’s life matters more than her purpose to serve as a host to a fetus. This is life. It’s nuanced and irrational sometimes but mostly it’s emotive and not logical in the slightest. You can’t codify your politics in either this or that, we’re all humans and we all follow a basic moral humane code, everything else is just filler - for example trans people, I don’t give a flying fuck what people identify their gender as, like I said this stuff is just filler. If a trans person is getting beat within an inch of their life THATS when my values will show, I will help that trans person and make sure my politics disallows that from happening to someone else. When you boil things down to that it doesn’t matter if you’re right or left- as long as you’re a decent human being thats okay with me. Its FINE to complain about our entertainment in media because it’s one of those filler things
Liam Neeson as Lan? Yes!!!! Ok, maybe Liam Neeson of a few years ago but still, the demeanor, the way he speaks and carry’s himself, that would be amazing.
Every aspect of the whole show is just so underwhelming. It’s a total fail and Amazon had to pay channels like dusty wheel, wot up, etc. to shill their guts out in a vain attempt to play damage control with the fans.
I always assumed 2 rivers looked Spanish because I knew a guy from Spain with the last name Ibarra.
I watch Kung fu movies without a single person that looks like me.
This woke crap needs to go away.
Also, is it not taken into account that Robert Jordan didn’t do an audition? He could only pick from actors he actually knew or knew the name of.
All you need to win this argument is to use the example of police descriptions. Yes, you may get the wrong guy, but if you're doing even a halfway decent job, they're going to at least be understandably close, where as if you're looking for a 5'11, 200lb, blond, white male with green eyes, and you arrest a 5'6, 150lb, black haired, Brown eyed, Asian male, you'd look rather foolish.
When you're dealing with books, they give you a description of what the person looks like to give your imagination a meaningful representation to work with, which based off of, you can then use to cast an accurate actor to visually match that description.
Just because someone isn't the EXACT same height or the EXACT same body shape is a nonsense argument, being slightly off is an entirely different situation than not being close at all, anyone to trying to make the argument that because an actor doesn't match a character EXACTLY is justification for you to be able to disregard everything else, is just stupid.
Alan Rickman would have been a great Rahvin. He had the charisma and intimidation that that role needs.
I'm a woman and very pro-women's rights and recognition, but I must say it...modern female actors in most of our genre films are picked for their homeliness. I think that beautiful actresses are out of favor by the SJWs and I find THAT very offensive. I'd love to see actresses on the level of Gina Lollabrigida and Sophia Loren in our fantasy entertainment!
In case Oz doesn't know, Sophia Lauren is Italian actress who is attributed with saying (in reference to her full figure) something like: "everything you see I owe to spaghetti". She is great in El Cid with Charleton Heston.
Patrick Stewart (as Gurney Halleck) played a baliset briefly in the extended version of the 1984 Dune movie - so it kinda makes sense that he could portray a gleeman. (And there was that one ST:TNG episode where a flute found as an archaeological artifact triggers a sequence where Picard relives the life of the person who had owned that flute . . .)
Thanks for people like you guys pointing this crap out.
Yeah Rafe Judkins will probably be remembered just as fondly as Rian Johnson.
Casting doesn’t have to fit perfectly. Karl Urban has short dark hair in his everyday life, yet when he played Eomer in the lord of the rings he had long blonde hair. It’s not rocket science.
I’m so excited to see who you cast!!!
I have a feeling alot of the problems with the current acting on screen begins and ends with 1 person, the show runner. I, from all the evidence presented, think he runs this thing with a iron fist. And does not allow people to have any ideas but his.
Clearly, an acceptable margin of error of 5% allows for an error of 90%
Also, Min's portrayal annoyed me the most since she aside from Matt is one of my favorite characters. To give credit where due it makes sense in their alternate universe since it seemed as if she was born there and fit in with the rest of the city. To take away credit when due it doesn't reflect the character and wasn't the teasing tomboy from when she first appeared in the books.
Agreed, that's why Isabella Rossellini is such a perfect call for the roll. Not as she is now, of course, but the flirty tomboy she has portrayed before is the right feel for the character.
It's not even about proportional representation though. The BBC did a report a couple of years back about the Cambridge Universities student demographics which were 16% non white students. Which is exactly what you would expect with the UK being around 16% non-white. Still the student they were interviewing said "it was a start". So as rational as the position of proportional representation might seem its unnecessary in arts and not what the social marxists want anyway, they want "supremacy" not equality.
Patrick Stewart had a scene in the director's edition of Dune(1984) where he was playing the baliset and singing, hits Thom Merrilin to a Tee!
An important point I haven't heard brought up yet in previous videos (not sure if its in this one yet) is that IMO we should *also* be looking at the *cover art* of the original books. IMO this is similar to how Shad would refer to medieval art (e.g. archery), in that the art of the times provides valuable context and would have shaped how people pictured the characters in their heads. In fact (for better or worse), it pretty much forms part of the canon.
A popular example is Harry Dresden from Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files. He's never depicted with a cowboy hat in the books (just his duster), but practically everyone who's seen the cover art would be perfectly happy for him to sport a hat along with his duster in a live action adaptation. Note: I hear the Dresden Files TV show didn't do this, but that's another topic entirely.
Harry Potter is another example - though in that case, the art matched the books pretty well, but imagine what it would have been like if Harry had been black in the cover art?
fun fact. dresdan specifically says he hates wearing hats in the books
It depends -- except for the bigtime authors, the publisher gets to pick the cover art, and they can be just as lazy or money-driven as these directors. Recall how China didn't put Fin on the Star Wars poster because China is (really truly) racist, and some book publishers would do the same thing.
@@amyb.6368 Absolutely true - but I don't know, the art for the Wheel of Time books is absolutely iconic.
It's case by case, for sure - but with iconic art IMO it should at least be considered. Also different publishing houses have different relationships with the authors. IDK what Jordans relationship was with them at the time.
Similar to history I guess. The context, relevance and impact at the time all matters. (As does the art)
I think the horse could act better than most of the cast.
On the Dusty Wheel thing about the differences in height. The Dusty Wheel has set up a strawman that everyone who has a problem with the casting is a racist or want it one hundred percent like the books, so all he has to do is disprove that there can be 100% accurate casting.
Props to the editors for the little jokes like "Egg Wayne". I don't always see them if I'm more listening than watching a video but I appreciate them when I see them.
I actually liked the casting for Fain. I never had a super clear picture of him in my mind, but I always thought of him as being wiry, slimy, and at first someone with enough charm to just barely cover his malevolence.And I always thought of his voice as matching that; not powerful, but the sort that both puts you at ease and your teeth on edge, somehow
His appearance is immediately described as "pale." Dude was pasty. No ebony-skinned actor can fit that description.
Just finished Knife of Dreams- and have started the Gathering Storm just a few hours ago- it is the first one that has Brandon Sanderson as the co-author (and is truly the "beginning of the end of the story") so I am really excited to see how it turns out. I don't know what I am going to do when I am finished with Wheel of Time, probably sit around depressed until Winds of Winter or the next Stormlight Archives book is released (I certainly won't be getting my epic fantasy fix from the show unfortunately...).
Try The Poppy War or The Warded Man.
1:10:35 I've brought that up so many times. People seem to give Game of Thrones a "diversity pass" for some reason, even though there are no black Starks, no albino Dothraki, no disabled Children of the Forest, no trans direwolves, and all the White Walkers are...well...white.