The Two Wheels of Prob682 Shown Again Here
A outset —
Andrew and Lee dissect The Wheel of Time'due south television premiere
Amazon's new series premiered last night, and there's a whole lot to talk about.
Enlarge / Our lead characters, from 50-R: Nynaeve, Mat, Lan, Moiraine, Egwene, Perrin, and Rand.
Amazon Studios
Andrew Cunningham and Lee Hutchinson have spent decades of their lives with Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson'due south Wheel of Time books, and they're bringing that knowledge to bear as they epitomize each episode of Amazon'southward new WoT Tv series. These recaps won't cover every element of every episode, but they will contain major spoilers for the prove and the volume series. If y'all want to stay unspoiled and oasis't read the books, these recaps aren't for you.
New episodes of The Bike of Time volition be posted to Amazon Prime subscribers every Friday.
Andrew: I thought it would exist best to start this first one off past establishing our Book Reading Cred.
A friend gifted me a paperback copy of The Center of the World in what must have been mid-2003, which I have pinpointed so precisely because I know that Crossroads of Twilight had come out but that information technology hadn't even so come out in paperback. Then I burned through them all once or twice in high school, and so re-read the whole series again sometime in the mid-Sanderson era, and so did my last total-series re-read in 2019 after I talked about EotW on my book podcast.
Lee: Fashion back in 1997, when dinosaurs roamed the globe, a coworker at the friendly neighborhood Babbage'south suggested I attempt this fantasy series she'd been hooked on chosen "The Bike of Time." She loaned me her copy of Eye of the World, and then yeah, same matter—information technology was like falling into a mad vortex of dizzying addiction. The latest volume at the time was the just-released Crown of Swords, book 7, and I blazed through the serial in just a few months. At that place have been several re-reads since then, every time a new book landed (even the mess that was Crossroads of Twilight), but at this point it'south been probably a couple of years since I picked one up. However, I've got my wife to fill in the gaps for me—I infected her with WoT as I was infected, equally is tradition, and she is if annihilation even more excited well-nigh the show than I am.
Andrew: My wife, sadly, had besides many antibodies to catch Bike of Time fever. Maybe from reading so much Tolkien? And like, I get it. It tin be a hard series to sell to a skeptic. The conversation e'er goes something similar "well, it's fourteen gigantic books, and the first one especially is by and large a Lord of the Rings pastiche, and it spends a lot of fourth dimension in this "men exist similar this/women be like this" space that hasn't aged especially well..."
Lee: Half-antisocial the characters in WoT is a huge core part of the fandom! Maybe we can get her into it afterward the show!
Enlarge / The world of Wheel of Time is lovingly (and expensively) recreated.
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Andrew: I mean, I saw A Knight's Tale in her "lookout man it again" Netflix queue, so I know she's watched sillier stuff.
All of that being said! When these books are good they are even so really engaging. Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones comparisons are going to be inevitable throughout this project, so I volition but pause that seal now—those books and that series sort of revel in their claret-soaked nihilism, but Robert Hashemite kingdom of jordan and Brandon Sanderson loved all their characters and very, very rarely deployed "surprise major character death" or "free sexual assault" as a commuter of narrative.
Lee: That's a good way to put it. I've always thought of WoT vs. GoT as kind of like a Star Trek vs. Star Wars pairing—WoT is the Excelsior, all smug and superior and ready to smack you with that transwarp drive. GoT is the Millennium Falcon—dirty, loud, with some swearing, but it's got it where it counts. Where WoT is all graceful lines, flowing ho-hum-move dresses, stark and shining Whitecloaks, and a camera that tin never hold still, GoT is dirt, mud, filth, and and so yous sh— yourself when y'all die. (Aes Sedai, on the other mitt, clearly do not poop at all.) The differences aren't just thematic, though there'southward lots of that—the two shows visually are very, very different experiences.
Andrew: OK, let's jump into these first three episodes, which all, collectively, have kind of a "sweaty Television pilot" feel to me. There's a lot to say about what they are and are not doing well individually, but as a group they are all doing a ton of heavy lifting—they have to establish a whole agglomeration of pro- and antagonists and start building their personalities and story arcs. They visit a few locations and talk nearly a bunch more of them. Nosotros either meet or hear well-nigh, by my count, three completely singled-out subcultures (the Whitecloaks, the Tinkers, and the Aiel). It's all a scrap dizzying, and some of the introductions piece of work better than others.
Overstate / Abdul Salis' plow as the slimy Whitecloak Questioner Eamon Valda is a highlight of the early episodes.
Amazon Studios
Lee: It's a hard inquire for a Telly writer to become us into this story—yous don't have the luxury a book author has where yous tin can merely go ahead and take a thousand pages to do whatever. And Eye of the World is one of the biggest meals to go through in the whole saga. Folks who are coming into this show expecting to see their favorite scenes echoed back at them onscreen are going to accept to realign their expectations, because every bit you lot say, we've got and then much we accept to become into. What we run across of the Whitecloaks is first-class, and Eamon Valda (Abdul Salis) is gratifyingly unctuous. We speed through the Tinker encounter without the aid of a major supporting character—I suppose nosotros'll become to that in detail, just something to exist aware of is that a lot of swizzling has been done to shape the narrative for Boob tube. If you lot're still angry that Tom Bombadil didn't show up on screen to sing y'all songs or that yous never got to come across the Scouring of the Shire, you might have issue with WoT's streamlining for Television receiver.
(Speaking of characters whose names sound like "Tom," Thom Merrilin has an absolutely electrifying introduction—though, sadly, the grapheme lacks giant, white twirly mustaches. We'll probably have more to say nearly Thom in a future piece.)
You're an excellent volume reviewer—folks, check out Andrew'due south podcast!—and I'd honey to hear your take. What is the right way for a monstrous book-to-Telly adaptation to slim down? How exercise you lot balance the need to tell that story with the need to be a coherent, functional, standalone adaptation?
Andrew: Seconded on the Whitecloak introduction. It would exist very, very easy to make them dour and joyless pricks, since as a group they are typically the most interested in imposing their rigid thought of what "goodness" is onto characters who we already know to be fundamentally "good." Making the most prominent Whitecloak—and our introduction to the organization writ large—a slimy, horny sadist who murders Aes Sedai with a smile is one of the strongest moments we get here.
And that'due south sort of what y'all need to do, correct? TV shows especially rely on this kind of shorthand, the power to tell us what nosotros demand to know most a person or a group of people with a combination of visual cues and one or ii characters. Obviously, some of a book's depth and complexity can be introduced later, one time audiences have gotten a scrap more comfortable. Only in the early going in a show like this it's all about combining performances and visuals to create memorable first impressions. The Whitecloak sequences are cracking at this. The scenes where Moiraine or Lan stand and monologue at the rest of the characters for multiple minutes, less so.
Overstate / Lan (Daniel Henney) and Moiraine (Rosamund Pike) don't exactly match the characters' descriptions in the books, but the performances are spot-on.
Amazon Studios
Lee: Moiraine is kind of the primary driver of plot for this batch of episodes, too, and Rosamund Pike has to carry a lot on her blue-draped shoulders. She gets to kicking off the story—without whatever Age of Legends prologue to speak of—and she sets the world's phase for us. I swear I don't want to brand this an extended book-versus-movie thing, but information technology is worth commenting that even in the showtime few minutes, the show updates the books' canon a chip—in the world of the Wheel of Time, souls are reborn again and again later they die, spun out by the Wheel in new bodies. And in the testify, a man tin can be reborn every bit a adult female, or a adult female as a human—something that was non in the books (Aran'gar and Osan'gar nevertheless—though folks who have never read the books don't need to worry about the reference).
Moiraine is hunting, as we're told, for the Dragon Reborn—the reincarnation of the human being who, thousands of years agone, "bankrupt the world" and ushered in an age of anarchy and darkness. Though the first Dragon was a man, the electric current Dragon Reborn could be anyone of a certain age. At that place are long-term plot implications hither, and a agglomeration of the start season is concerned with leading the audition on well-nigh precisely who this Dragon is. All Moiraine knows is that it's almost certainly one of our v main characters—the rougue-ish Mat, red-haired Rand, heart-searching Perrin, pensive Egwene, or Nynaeve, the village Wisdom (call up half doctor, half person who punches you in the face for disturbing the peace).
Andrew: If there's one "well actually" moment I will entertain as a book reader, it'due south the revelation that Egwene or Nynaeve could be the Dragon Reborn. On the ane manus, I really capeesh a lot of what the show is doing to add together nuance to the books' dated and rigid gender roles. 2 Rivers women in the books are intelligent and resilient, but they're also a bunch of arm-crossing, braid-tugging, foot-tapping scolds. Two Rivers women in the show, from the glimpse we see, maintain that same sense of community but likewise become to beverage and party and take sex. Rand and Egwene are doing sexual activity to each other. And explicitly putting Egwene and Nynaeve on even narrative footing with Rand, Mat, and Perrin serves to emphasize how central they will be to the rest of the story moving forward.
On the other mitt, the split up betwixt the male and female halves of the I Power is foundational to pretty much everything in the entire series (gender is strictly binary in Randland, though the show seems open to experimenting with this, and I hope that it does). The Dragon Reborn is in danger, and Moiraine needs to find him, specifically because he is a homo who will channel the corrupted male one-half of the Ane Power, dooming him to eventual madness. The last fourth dimension the Dragon Reborn went mad, he snapped the globe in half like a fresh Oreo. Fifty-fifty among people who believe he will save the world, there'due south a belief that he must be tightly controlled. This is, again, pretty foundational stuff. And I'm however not sure how the determination to mess with that is going to play out long-term.
Enlarge / Nynaeve al'Meara (Zoë Robins) is a character the show gets a handle on pretty quickly.
Amazon Studios
Lee: I hold—and at that place are some things in later episodes that actually make me wonder how the One Ability works in this accommodation. Though, if we're calling out changes, the one that stuck out to me was the fact that instead of making all 3 of The Boys (Mat, Perrin, and Rand) inept with The Ladies, Perrin (Marcus Rutherford) starts out married! He's got a wife! And she's non a wasting wallflower or nagging aroused person—she's an all-business blacksmith lady, who seems like she knows how to work the forge even meliorate than Perrin does.
Andrew: A wife whom the testify tragically about instantaneously murders so that Perrin tin can suffer from a Deep and Constant Sadness. It'due south 1 of the testify's cheapest shots, and it was my least favorite thing in all three of these episodes past kind of a lot!
Lee: Yeah, they stuff her into the refrigerator immediately.
Discussing this without trying to race through information technology to expect at the narrative consequences is hard—almost as difficult as adapting this series in the beginning place. And without spoiling things for not-book readers, Perrin's choice near whether to "have up the axe" or "take upwardly the hammer" makes upwards the majority of his character arc, and this is a hard thing to see the consequences of. At first, I thought I was going to hate it—but the more I call back most it, the more interesting it becomes. It's fascinating to see these characters I've lived with in my head for 20+ years suddenly doing something new. I remember I like it.
Enlarge / Rand, Perrin, and Mat (Josha Stradowski, Marcus Rutherford, and Barney Harris) enjoying a rare moment of peace.
Amazon Studios
Andrew: That feeling of, "Ooh, I am excited to meet how they modify this!" is the healthiest attitude for a book reader to have going in, I think. The first flavor of Game of Thrones was a very straightforward, true-to-the-volume accommodation of A Game of Thrones. The sheer length of WoT and how the scope and focus of the books alter as they move forward meant that was always going to be a lot harder to practice for Heart of the Earth. Honestly, for me, the fact that this show is happening at all is so wildly improbable that I am planning to merely enjoy the ride. But that's a kind of trust that the artistic teams backside these adaptations tin easily lose, as David Benioff and D.B. Weiss did by the time Game of Thrones had slogged through to its final seasons.
Zooming in a fleck: what characters are working for yous in these first three episodes? Who seems to have a handle on the character and who doesn't? I have thoughts, just I want to hear yours starting time.
Lee: Allow me start real quick with our Main Five—Rand, Mat, Perrin, Nynaeve, and Egwene. They're all perfectly adequate, though Nynaeve (Zoë Robins) and Mat (Barney Harris) are probably given the most to do. Anybody except Rand (Josha Stradowski) has some nice character-building moments (though, I expect the community to be divided equally hell by Perrin's married woman, and seeing Mat'southward cheerful horse-trading dad turned into an alcoholic domestic abuser stings a bit). The "which one is the Dragon!?" misdirection is stiff—so strong that a major interaction between Rand and his male parent Tam is cutting entirely out of the offset episode. (I'm sure the whole "you're not really my son" flake will show up afterwards, only its absenteeism is jarring.)
Andrew: There are definitely crumbs here vis-a-vis Rand's origins ("no one has red hair in the Two Rivers" is expressed at least in one case that I saw), but, yeah, one do good of not being in Rand'due south head for 95 percentage of the story is that he can blend in with the rest of them a little more.
Lee: On the Aes Sedai side, the ones nosotros come across in the first few episodes are excellent—Moiraine is Moiraine, and I'd take to dig to find a real complaint near the way the graphic symbol is portrayed. (The only disquisitional thing I can call back of is that Expressway is maybe a little alpine for the part, and that's minor criticism indeed.) Lan (Daniel Henney) doesn't actually match my mental picture of "Brooding Conan-looking Human Mountain," merely he's got a nimbleness and a careful, deliberate grace that I'1000 really enjoying. And he'due south definitely got a face up of planes and angles.
How nigh y'all?
Andrew: Yeah, he did non friction match up with Lan physically in my caput, but the distance he maintains from all the not-Moiraine characters and the way he and Freeway interact sold me on the performance. I call back another early standout is Nynaeve, whose arc is tweaked for the prove (she'southward carried off by and escapes from Trollocs during the initial assault on Emond's Field and catches up with the residue of the political party from there, rather than following of her own volition), but in ways that are consistent with her character in the books. She'south a fleck older and more capable than the other Two Rivers-ians (??), she's driven by acrimony but also by her compassion. She'south doing a good job.
Lee: She is definitely less of a sullen rage-filled harridan in the show—I don't recall she's thumped anyone with a stick fifty-fifty once. So far.
Andrew: There'due south fourth dimension!
The characters who take changed more are the ones who struggle more than. Madeleine Madden, who plays Egwene, isn't doing anything wrong, only she hasn't left much of an impression yet. And Harris is simply coming across as apartment and unlikable equally Mat. Some of that might be the show's fault! Because, as you mentioned, show-Mat is substantially more than unsavory and less Han Solo-ian than book-Mat. Merely I exercise wonder if the onscreen struggles contributed at all to his recasting for season ii.
Enlarge / Mat and Padan Fain (Johann Myers), who appears in the first episode but hasn't (yet) reappeared.
Amazon Studios
Lee: Aye—too early on to tell, but that would definitely follow from what we've seen so far. There's certainly lots for him to exercise, since we go to Shadar Logoth relatively speedily, and it's the second large setpiece subsequently Emond'southward Field, and from the dagger springs a big chunk of Mat's character arc for the get-go few books.
Andrew: To my memory we don't actually get a PoV chapter from Mat until book three, then it's as well possible that if you were just reading EotW to research the function, there would not be a whole lot to proceed at that place.
Source: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/11/two-book-readers-recap-the-first-three-episodes-of-amazons-the-wheel-of-time/
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