I’m just supposed to fill in the gaps from Early Cinema (1894-1904) to present day? I am still waiting for the 960-part 15 second essay on why SpongeBob is a great show.
"Vehicular manslaughter wouldn't make Sam a better character" I'm sorry but I really need some character justification for why Sam didn't drive Frodo to Mordor on his Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution
Not including the prologue to *_The Eye of the World_* in the show means the whole mystery of "Who is the dragon reborn" falls completely flat, because no one watching is shown who or what a "dragon" even is. We are told they are dangerous, yes, but that is no where as effective as *showing* us how dangerous they are. The prologue needed to be the opening of the show in order to inform the viewer that the dragon is the most dangerous entity in this fictional universe and to make the viewer realize that finding the dragon reborn is very important.
@Loki Jaxson Except those really nice and short episodes are canon to the books, but not to the show. Someone who didn't read the books and only watched the show will still be very confused. They mention saidin and saidar in the short lore videos and then act like the One Power is not split at all in the show. Lews Therin looks completely different in the first Origins episode than in the actual show. I recommend the shorts for the readers, but not for those who are trying to understand the show without reading the books, which you'd think it's the opposite of what you want from side content lore videos for the show.
@Loki Jaxson "They are really good though." I think they're better than any of the actual episodes. At least they made me think, "oh, that's kinda interesting to some miniscule degree" once or twice.
I do agree they didn't do a good job of showing what the Dragon means in this universe (and well, I don't think they did a good job of getting this universe across to viewers in the the first place). However, from the non-book readers who I know who watched the show (which amounts to like 5 people), all of them actually were pretty drawn into the mystery of who the Dragon is and it worked. From a book-reader perspective, it was a whatever, but from my small sample size, the show worked in that regards. My general impression is that non-book readers liked this show a lot more than book-readers, because book-readers know so much more of what this world really is, but the show did a good enough job of getting it across to non-book readers to get them invested.
There are 2 scenes that EotW NEEDS to set up the rest of the series, and they ignored both. You need the prologue with Lews having killed everybody he ever loved, and you need the climax with Rand swooping in at the eleventh hour and singlehandedly annihilating an army that otherwise would have overrun the all of Shienar and probably most of Cairhien and Andor. For the rest of the series, every single interaction Rand has with anybody save the Aiel is framed by this idea that the Dragon is both the most terrifying person alive, and humanity's only hope. If you don't show us the reasons people feel that way, none of Rand's story is going to work.
The book starts with the perspective of the Two Rivers kids, and all these outsiders coming into their lives. We don’t trust them like Rand, Egwene and co do not trust them-and it works! When Rand and Egwene argue and are overheard by Moiraine (about not trusting her), it’s uncomfortable BECAUSE we the readers don’t know if she is trustworthy. In the book, Moiraine tells them, “The Dark One wants you, and I will kill you before I let him have you.” Doesn’t sound like a friend, does she? Yet all that is gone when WE know she is there to help and is trying to save the world! The moment they chose to tell the story from Moiraine’s perspective, the whole thing fell apart.
That's one of my favorite things about the first few books. We realize later that what Moraine did was for their good and she couldn't explain everything.
I forgot about this pressure until you recounted it. Anyone could've been a dark friend. Truly felt different in the show. I guess that's why they had to add Perrin's dead "wife."
Yeah, if they wanted a mystery for the show, it could have been "what does this mysterious magic lady want, really, and is she a good guy or secretly a villain?"
@@calebmauer1751 Want mystery? Tar Valon itself is full of them. For the first book? WHY THEM? Why does Dark one want them, what makes them special? Because just being Ta'veren doesn't explain it, not until you undestand the trio way down the story. And then there's the darkfriend problem. Anyone can betray you, anyone can be DF. The suspense is there, no need for mystery.
The part of the aging up that gets me is Rafe said they did it to avoid being compared to a CW teen drama...and then injected all the nonexistent teen drama anyway with pumping up the 'Perrin has a thing for Egwene' thing that's maybe a couple paragraphs in the first book into a thing.
Holy shit that’s an apt point I couldn’t pick what it was I just thought it was incompetence but yeah It’s weird the clash of expecting an aged up gritty story and getting teen drama that’s also just shitting on the source
That wasnt even a thing go bck an dissect the lines its a platonic love...like that of brother and sister nothi g more nothing less. Perrin is literally lotalty and loves all his people he consideres egwene as family because rand likes her and would accept another if mat had a gf too.
Man, that scene was so unnecessary its not even funny. They take the situation with Mat being recast in the worst possible direction at every single turn.
I've seen some of the CW superhero stuff - they take prominent white male lead shows and wring them through a heavy feminist lens all whilst shoe horning diversity and inclusion with random non canon LGBT relationships and mass race swapping to create melodramatic utterly non-canon adaptations of said males often not even featuring that much in shows named after them to instead emphasise the female side cast with screen time and mass power ups galore (iris was made a speedster and led team flash at one point and Felicity was most Mary Sue character I've ever seen on tv as best hacker in world, CEO of Palmer tech with zero experience, cures paralysis and even nukes a town to save the world to no consequence even being forgiven by its only survivor lol). This should could be more CW short of infamous trope of taking white red heads and making each and every single one of them black but then they've been accused of that with Aviendha so I guess they don't even get a pass on that lol. Otherwise it's all there - neutered male lead, random gay romance on screen, fan fiction romance and melodrama, race swapping, Mary Sues and naturally the show runners tell us they're super fans despite almost zero canon accuracy. It's a bad bad show - CW level bad yet on 100x the budget. There's no saving it now, only ones preening over season 2 are the weirdos on Twitter who writes often in all caps and "ship" characters or those wanting clicks as pre-existing WoT content creators wanting to piggy back extra interest via show (my heart goes out to them).
@@t.hussain921 +Are you kidding? That scene was one of the best! captured all of the emotions so well. Did you miss how connected Moiraine and Suan are?
They're trying so hard to create the next Game of Thrones, but Game of Thrones's secret to success was faithfully adapting the books. As soon as they started making big changes just for drama, the series sunk like a rock to the point that nobody will buy the DVD sets. Wheel of Time started in the dumpster and quickly set it on fire.
GOT didn't even sunk. Even when they ran out of source material, people still watched regardless and the ratings only increased. Even after the finale, GOT is still the best fantasy show and every streaming platform is failing to replicate that success. WOT has no excuse since it has a completed source material and a bigger budget than GOT.
The game of thrones was NOT FATHFULL TO THE BOOKS. Sorry for caps but perhaps you should read the books before you comment. If you have read the books then you know I am telling the truth.
@@bobh2581 I have read the books and I know they made some changes. The books are more like political thrillers than big, dumb action movies. Season 1 was pretty much identical to the books. Season 2-4 got the main story beats. Seasons 5-8 went totally off the rails.
@@Yoursoulismine814 It went off rails when there was no more source material. It was pretty good up to that. Which is actually understandable, since not even George seems able to finish the story he started, since he has been writting winds of winter for more 10 years and the release is nowhere in sight.
41:07 The whole Perrin among the Tinkers is opposite from the books. He’d already met a mentor named Elias and started on the path to become a Wolfbrother, and he was always wary of 100% pacifism because of his experience with Trollocs and other baddies. Sure he questions the white-hot rage when he fights, but he’s still ready to defend himself or others. He’s always been my favorite charachter and the way Rafe annihilated him is disgusting.
Lol… Thankyou I’m here after season 1 and I’m confused… I read these on the late 90’s to 2000’s so it’s been a while but I clearly remember the detailed Elias part. He let them “find” him at his campfire as they were lost and hungry.
Perrin is my favorite also. Let's be honest though Jordan didn't do Perrin justice either- he was left out of so many books. I do like the show adaptation to add the fact he killed his wife by accident. This makes more sense why he is hesitant to kill and has a hatred of his axe. I think Jordan was going more for a political view and metaphor of the Vietnam conflict in Perrin and his internal conflict- this would be difficult to display on screen so I thought that was an interesting choice. Overall I think the show is ok - I still think Perrin is good in the show on par with the books but he doesn't get the time in either the books or the show he deserves.
yeah, i believe he specifically says "if someone hit me, i would strike them back, because not doing so would be telling them i'm ok with them hitting me and they'll keep doing it" or something like that, he was making some baller points
@@pach6678 my name is Michael so I thought you were making a threat against me, if you dare move against me my plans will unfold and your mother shall be brought into the discussion
You keep referring to Frodo as a stereotypical "chosen one". I was under the impression that Frodo is in no way special aside from his being a Hobbit, making him naturally less susceptible to the corruption of The Ring because Hobbits are not as greedy as the other races. The entire point of both The Hobbit and LotR is that Bilbo and Frodo are simply Hobbits and are in no way superior to their peers. Sam carrying Frodo up Mount Doom is a blatant reminder to the reader that Frodo is flawed just as the other characters are, and his ultimate corruption as he enters the Cracks of Doom exemplifies the fact that Frodo was not predestined or chosen to be the Ring-Bearer that would destroy The Ring.
I noticed that too. Frodo isn't a chosen one trope--he's not even the main protagonist (according to Tolkien, it's Samwise). A better example of the chosen one trope would be Harry Potter.
@@templeofthesmilingjackalop9860 Tolkien said a lot of things about LotR that I would consider inherently untrue. He outright denied any amount of implicit meaning in all of his works, completely ignoring the impact his experiences in life had on his writing. On one hand it is frustrating to see an author blatantly ignore the depth of their own work, on the other it allows us to have conversations on the different ways we view his works. I also don't think Tolkien ever said that Sam was the protagonist, he simply said that Sam was the hero of the story. It's pretty obvious that LotR has no main protagonist throughout the entire book, which is fitting considering how the Red Book of Westmarch was written in universe. All of the writers and editors wrote themselves to be the main protagonist. Sam becomes the main protagonist of his and Frodo's story-line around when they enter Shelob's lair because Frodo suffered severe dissociation due to the burden of The Ring and likely could not recall what happened. The narrative shift from focusing on Frodo to focusing on Sam is a heavy handed reminder to the reader that Aragorns and Gandalfs do not have to be the heroes of every story. I would say that Sam is the hero of his and Frodo's story, I would not say that Sam is the protagonist of his and Frodo's story. Either way though, Frodo is definitely not a chosen one.
@@ToomanyFrancis I think within the spiritual dimension of Tolkien's worldbuilding, there is an argument to be made that Frodo was divinely chosen to be the Ringbearer and that Providence/the unseen hand of Eru Illuvatar orchestrates the chain of events that leads him to become the Ringbearer, but I would also agree that he's not a traditional Chosen One in the same way that Luke Skywalker or Harry Potter are
It is so weird that studios will make a big deal of and spend money on adapting existing stories, only to be ashamed of that material. The industry's inability to take risks on unknown or new IP really hurts their ability to tell stories
It's even bigger than that. Most of the studios don't bother a lot with these adaptations. Maybe the show will get significantly better in season 2, if it happens. Other than that, a lot of these studios don't know how to use the source material to adapt them or the writers are clueless to how they should adapt it. The wheel of time has 14 books and it should be split into 12 seasons or so to justify its length. 1 season should have 4 books. If any one knows how to do good adaptations today, it's marvel. They adapt the specific comic book stories to make them better on film and even recreate some of the famous scenes in comics( Thor Love and thunder Falligar the behemoth, it's the best one yet and it's gorgeous). Even more so, that they have adapted one of the most reviled spider man stories into one of the best ones( No way home). It's how adaptation should be done and a necessary lesson for storytelling if you want to adapt. Even Moon knight has a good consistent pilot( and plot) and makes you care for steven grant, an imaginary personality made by marc under traumatic stress. Cgi is shaky but i really like the acting and screenwriting in it.
@@avanishdutta2658 As Normtrooper said though, they don't take risks on NEW IP. Marvel had to work it's way up to it's present level of creative freedom. They've been making movies and shows about Marvel properties for a long time and it's proven to be a near-guaranteed money maker, that's why it gets all the leeway. The issue is studios are too risk averse to allow creative freedom for something new to the screen like Wheel of Time. Although who knows if that was even an issue for the show.
The thing is, you really can't just adapt the book line by line to a screenplay. Just imagine all the endless luggage scenes in the latter books! Adaptation is a necessity. Unfortunately whoever adapted the WOT into a TV show seems to have very little love for the source material, failing to capture the spirit of the show. They even missed the dichotomy of the male and female powers, which was an _important_ plot point. It wasn't even that one was more powerful than the other, but that they were _different._ One of the later books has Rand and Nynaeve linking and the latter discovers to her horror that male weaving was like fighting a storm.
@@avanishdutta2658 hell no. Sorry dude, as a comic nerd growing up. The mcu are decent films, but have nothing to do with the comic stories. Names only. Iron man was the best, everything else was a let down. Thor is the worst, its just Hemsworth in cosplay. Thor in the comics is a bad ass, mcu Thor is an insult. Now, instead a Beta Ray, we get jane foster, a selfish character everybody hated. Now sony makes a nostalgia bate that wasnt very good, but had characters people love, the old spidermen and their villians. Now its time for "the message" with more awful characters.
@@ardendragoon Marvel comics always had "Messages" and social/political commentary. You can't complain about the movies doing stuff the comics always did. And those old Spider-Men movies were hardly any truer to the comics than the MCU, by your own logic.
horses are actually very good at finding their own way home ;) in fact, it's actually kind of a pain in the ass to train some trail horses because if they don't feel like sticking around by your side once you've gotten off, you have to do the walk of shame back home, too
@@Dante1864 That's Matt Mercer's baby; the problem isn't an Amazon problem, I suspect that 90% of Directors are merely incompetent with respect to High Fantasy. Now... there aren't many people in the world who are MORE competent with respect to High Fantasy than Matt Mercer and his crew.
"We have 7 hours to cover a 600+ page book." "Let's add in some bad fanfiction, throw in chunks of the second book, try to convince people that the books weren't worth reading via how badly we execute this, and if we're lucky, the series will be cancelled before our severing threads vital for future plotlines bites us in the rear."
@@RocketeerAndRoll Not really, fan fiction while usually bad is at least the labor of fans, a word I wouldn't use to describe the people involved in this show.
It's fine, any lingering plot threads can just have some Balefire dumped on them until the story only resembles the books by the location names, or it ceases existing altogether
Brandon Sanderson and Robert Jordan's wife are both in charge of the show. I think a lot of the changes they made will make sense later, and some of them make sense now. They have to cut corners and speed things up. You can't deny that. And they CERTAINLY can't cleanly follow the books and have a season for each book and have it match up perfectly.
@@connorgregory5625 but what happens if we are wheeling around time and such and they end up doing a "Game of Thrones", where the show's wheel is moving faster than the book's wheel and then they have to make up an eighth season that (just like GoT did) disappoints everybody because it creates a divergence in time where the plot in the show's ending sucks and the book ending is more based on tastes, but in either case, being that GoT is a historically accurate book, now history will be wrong in one of the timelines!
Tropes and storytelling devices aren't inherently bad. I haven't seen this show, but judging from this video alone, there's more wrong with it than just a poor attempt at an Abrams-esque mystery box.
That's a good way to put it. The literary trope is easy enough to accomplish, but giving it substance is not so much. It's like writing an action scene, you can just have a choreographer come in and make something cool or you could spend hours and hours writing a meaningful action scene where you can genuinely say the scene couldn't just be removed without impacting the characters and story. The tropes are cool and can definitely add a lot to the story, the problem is more when people start using them without thinking about why or how they were used originally
Corenni and Steppen are a symptom of a massive problem that plagues pretty much every fantasy adaptation. The writers don't want to write an adaptation. They want to write their own story but this adaptation is what they've been hired to work on. So what's the compromise? They just write their own story anyway and disguise it as an adaptation when in reality there is little to no attempt to actually follow the source material. The Witcher show is absolutely infested with this problem. Look, I sympathise with writers out there who want to strike out on their own, but can't because exposure is often more important than their individual skill and effort. I'm an aspiring writer too. I get it. But that *DOES NOT* give you the excuse to just hijack someone else's work for your own purposes. And these changes are so often (not always) extremely damaging to the overall story, and the writers get incredibly angry and defensive when criticised because they think their changes are improvements. It's sheer fucking arrogance. Nothing more.
Add to that for the last 5 years or so creative types have been so deathly afraid of offending anyone that they take no risks and produce a bland and boring product. If your first thought when creating something isn't "will this be interesting and engaging" but instead is "will I be attacked on Twitter for not 100% adhering to their narrative", then creativity is crushed.
I so wanted to like that show as I am a huge WOT fun. However, it turns out to be a bloated funfic; if only the author posessed a modicum of RJ writing talent or imagination...but, alas, he does not. I guess, it can be called "inspired by" instead of "adaptation of"?
The Witcher show writing is fine and captures the essence of the world of the Witcher for the most part. More shows like the Witcher should be acknowledged for their effort. Shows like Wheel of Time, Halo, and soon to be Rings of Power should be shamed for their greed and complete lack of regard for the source material. Lauren Hissrich has done an admiral job. The Witcher is not the show to use as an example.
@@AntiLordblue Sorry but you are just wrong. The majority of Season 2 had nothing to do with the storyline from the books. That's not up to your opinion. Season 1 was okay for the most part.
@@AntiLordblue The thing that gets me is that we have plenty of evidence that respecting the source material is the path to success. E.g. Peter Jackson made a particular point to respect the source materials and as a result the LOTR movies were wildly successful. So people can clearly see this is the correct approach, it's not like they're flailing in the dark here. It's almost like the people creating these new series are trying to fail. It's baffling.
The issue with Rand and Egwene, is that they took Rand's main motivation of being torn from his roots (Dad not dad, being forced to leave the TR, learning he can channel, learning he is TDR), and are replacing it with "why don't you want me". He isn't mad at egwene for her wanting to be AS, not really. He is mad at her for willingly leaving her TR self behind, while he is forced to. He also wants to keep her safe. Instead, they replace it with "I am a jaded dickhead". And then forces us to watch it play put 10 more times. Great.
Rand's interactions with Egwene in TEotW are pretty awkward and dumb. The show stayed true to that while aging their issues up. I didn't have any problems with this, really, but that's just my opinion.
EXACTLY! I got so mad when they showed the Tam fever dream stuff finally at the end of the season. I was already frustrated that they cut out the core of Rand's character arc for the early series. Finding out that they remembered it, but willfully ignored it in favor of some Degrassi tier bullshittery was a kick to the balls.
@@EtchTheGetch not dumb, naive. He thinks he may be a male channeler pretty early in the book, but even before that, Egwene seems to be jumping to become an AS, as Critical said. That means she would leave forever in his eyes (no matter the story Moiraine told all the villagers). So, once he knows he is potentially the Dragon, he naively assumes that all Aes Sedai will want to gentle him and Egwene wants to join them, she would become the enemy.
I liked your 4-hour essays more when they were 20-60 seconds. But I'm very interested to hear your take on this. I'm even more interested to hear comparisons to Morbius and your view on should I watch Wheel of Time Season 1 or Morbius 5 times in a row.
The frustrating part about the mystery surrounding who the Dragon Reborn is in the show is that a similar mystery is sort of already outlined in the first book. When Moiraine tells the party that the Dark One is looking for a boy the same age as Rand, Matt, and Perrin, all three are worried it might be them at some point. Matt is almost convinced at a certain point. Even by the end of the first book, Rand hasn't entirely put two and two together. He knows he can channel, but the realization that he's doomed to the Dragon's fate doesn't hit him until the start of the second. My point is, there was a perfectly good way for the showrunners to introduce mystery surrounding the identity of the Dragon, but they decided to throw out the world's rules and do their own thing.
Well that’s simply because they wanted to run with the whole narrative that the dragon could be a boy a girl, non-binary, a thing… lol no, in the books the dragon was most obviously going to be a male. 🤦🏾♂️
The real core of it is that they thought that they could rewrite significant parts of the story while at the same time banking on readers already having read the books and so understanding what's going on. How on Earth does the mystery of the identity of the Dragon work for non-readers? The flashback reveal of Rand's parentage has no meaning to them! They never mention any of the details of the prophecy that make that a confirmation. That really breaks the premise that they made central to the season.
Agreed. This show didn't know what the fuck it was doing. It claimed to be altered for people new to wheel of time, yet showed multiple scenes with absolutely no context whatsoever like you were meant to understand them all.
I've not read any of the books. I assumed they were going for a "they are ALL the dragon reborn" ending, and when Rand'al was so certain, I assumed it was a fakeout. I also though Mat staying behind was a huge plot point if they're ALL the Dragon reborn, and are all needed to seal The Dark one. Turns out no.
A high up executive at Amazon said to another lower executive "Make me a Game Of Thrones because GOT made a ton of money." They googled "fantasy books series like game of thrones" and found a popular series with a big existing fanbase that hadn't already been adapted and was completed. The showrunners and scriptwriters were hired to make the show. The motivation behind the show was never someone who liked the books. Because it wasn't a passion project they obviously decided to save money wherever possible. I believe a calculation was made on how faithful to be to the source material based upon keeping the existing book fans watching, balanced with pleasing new audiences, and this balancing act has lost a lot of what made the books so popular. Taking all that into account, they made a budget lackluster show. Fans of the books want something unbelievably amazing to match up with their opinions of the books, which it definitely isn't, and non book readers want something decent to watch. It's neither. Just disappointment.
Definitely. What puzzles me is, ok maybe an executive just googled fantasy books to adapt… why didnt they look for good writers who were also passionate fans?
@@esdraslopez4658 Because good passionate writers cost more money and usually are not 100% compliant when creative differences emerge. So, why pay more and risk confrontation when you have in-house generic writers that will do whatever you tell them to do for their low-tier paycheck?
I don't think anyone at Amazon expected Wheel of Time to make as much money as GoT. Firstly, HBO put a LOT more money into GoT than Amazon did Wheel of Time. I think its more that streaming services are desperate for content and they're just pumping out content to compete with other streaming services like its an arms race. Its quantity over quality. I mean Disney has so many IPs locked up they can create endless content. Netflix, at the time Wheel of Time was announced, was making so much money they could create endless content. Apple were ramping up their production. So Amazon responded.
I wouldn't call 90mil a budget show. That is almost as much as GoT had. Besides, WoT is just not as good as ASOIF. It is more in the league of Eragon, even though it is a little better.
Frodo and Bilbo Baggins weren’t chosen ones. The whole point of using Hobbits as his main characters was to show that even in a world where you’re the smallest and weakest you can defeat great evil with courage and determination. A chosen one would be if Frodo were the only person in the world capable of resisting the ring’s influence because of some magical heritage. That’s definitely not the case.
I had the same reaction. The ring had a hard time corrupting frodo and bilbo because they had no desire for power. if say the farmer hobbit got the ring he would have used the mighty and terrible power of the ring to grow better cabbages. Frodo had the ring in his pocket for like 20 ish years and he did nothing with it.
Isn't Frodo predisposed to be one of the only people in the world capable of carrying the ring because he's a hobbit? And Gandalf chose him because he was the least likely hobbit to be corrupted by power in the shire? Been some time since I read the books, I may be wrong but that's what I seem to remember
Bilbo is definitely a rare breed; a person who truly never craved power of any sort. And it was even difficult for him to give it up. But I don’t think it has anything to do with him being a hobbit or being Sauron’s long lost son or some other chosen one cliché, just him being a humble guy. The ring corrupted Sméagol and Frodo who were both Hobbits.
@Philip Gregory Yeah these people are wrong. Frodo WAS the chosen one. Just because he didn't posses any supernatural powers, doesn't make him any less of a main character. Just what the council needed and when it needed it the most.
and see, that's where WOT could've been great from the beginning. Spoiler alert, but Rand especially and the group are fucking traumatized throughout by this "chosen one" prophecy, and it works directly in the dark one's favor. By the middle of the series Rand feels less and less human within his own body, unable to control or change his fate other than a suicidal final battle. He sees himself literally stuck just like Lews Therin.
I'm also very disappointed they didn't add the Lews Therin chapter that's at the very beginning of Book 1. That was such a compelling chapter because here's is the guy who according to legend won an astounding victory against the Dark One, but when you're reading it it really doesn't seem like a victory at all . and even now at the tail end of Book 3 I'm extremely curious about what truly happened during the Madness
Oooooh. Is this your first time reading? There is darkness in your future, and cool swords!! 😂 Don't give up when it gets slow. I recommend an audio book if you're having a hard time. ❤
@@yurmomsaccount I’m reading for the first time and read to book three. What book do you think I should read to before I watch season two? Also I love cool swords so hopefully we get those in the tv show…
@@memeszorp5740 I know you did not ask me, but I would recommend just going forward with reading the books in general. The TV-series is quite far removed from the story told in the books.
The flashes and hints we get of the past are some of the most interesting parts of the series. And they removed a big one which is just sad. It's not the best one ofc but still. As for what truly happened during the time of madness I mean you already know what happened from the 1st book. Malw Aes Sedai went crazy and killed everyone and wrecked everything. I think Lews Therin and his hundred companions went crazy almost immediately although I'm not sure, that's just a theory. Others would have taken time as there's evidence of male Aes Sedai being active and helping during the time of madness
@@Lttlemoi Oh wow worldbuilding? Oh my gosh that's so cool. I love how every fantasy book nowadays is about complex, thorough, neverending worldbuilding as opposed to great plot and characters. Yay!
1:14:30 one of the things I hate most about the show is how they utterly failed to make being the Dragon something nobody wants. Far from being second to literal evil incarnate as far as the population is concerned, Moiraine announces that one of them is the Dragon in the first episode to...no response. Even male channelers are neutered in how they're presented in the show, as a perfectly manageable threat for the White Tower. All the male channelers are shut down fairly easily, Logain fights 3 Aes Sedai but we don't really know if that means anything because multiple Aes Sedai die fighting a couple of brigands outside.
« A couple of Aes Sedai die fighting a couple of brigands »… but a couple of untrained ( but poweful) girls and some generic channelers wipe out one of the worst Trollocs/Fades attack Shienar has ever faced…
Exactly... there is a mythos and legend...everybody knows about the breaking.... the Forsaken are used to scare little kids into eating their dinner. They know that the dragon broke the world... he did not just drop it and put a crack in it... oceans were elevated to the level of mountains...and mountains fell into the oceans. It took thousands of years to crawl back to where they are... so everybody...every culture...has cultural or genetic memories of this horrendous "breaking" event. Much like Noah and the Arc, it is built into every culture. And yes... I think if a small town got stirred up that a townsperson was the Dragon Reborn... i think that they could murder that person.... serious stuff. "Dude, your ass could be the Dragon Reborn.!" .... "Wow, like really?" To be honest there is so much history that has to be revealed as set up... but as pointed out in the video... ALL THE LORE DID NOT NEED TO BE SETUP IN THE FIRST SEASON. The good part of when your favorite book series gets made into a series... is that it is made into a series. That bad part is that the writers feel that they know best.... and of course their bosses pull their strings. I just don't know how so much could go wrong with Robert Jordan's wife approving everything. Well, maybe she got the technicality right... but she should have put her foot down. If you cannot do better than 30% of what the book was... perhaps it would be better if the Amazon team put it away and let somebody else do it.
Jordan was pretty specific about this; he did an interview talking about it. He wanted to write the chosen hero story but didn't believe that people would just go along with it because someone else said they had too. Rand throughout the books says over and over that he didn't ask for it, and in the first two books even tires to leave on several occasions only to be dragged back in because of concern for his friends (usually Matt and things related to the dagger) or because he is quite literally locked in the city.
I can't remember the last time I saw a tv or movie adaptation that quite literally went out of its way to disrespect the source material. I knew Wheel of Time was going to be bad, just not THIS bad.
@@Degarth LOL that's an interesting theory. Nerdy WoT fans bullying other kids for being into lesser fantasy series(probably Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series or something), so now little Rafe gets his revenge. He really seems to be taking it out on the male characters in particular. In the books, Lan Mandragoran is depicted as a paragon of masculinity and in the show Lan is depicted as.....well......not.
Dude, you're being nice, and I can appreciate that, I guess. I absolutely hated everything they did. Talentless hacks taking on a 15 book series they had no business even TRYING to make. Luckily they ruined it really quickly instead of dragging it out for 8 seasons like some other show.
16:50 - It was SO irritating. I understand that you were making analysis of show separate from the books, but in the books majority of Aes Sedai come from poor families, with Amerlyn at that point being a poor fisherman's daughter (which is the same in the show). And suddenly they turned away somebody because of ragged clothes - my BS meter hit the ceiling at this moment.
I felt that was the writers simply being unable to keep their politically reflexive "noble poor person done wrong by rich people in power" trope out of the story.
The majority of Aes Sedai didn’t come from “poor” families. Moraine for example, has noble blood, and Elayne is a princess. In fact, the reason why the fact that the Amirlyn Seat was a poor fisherman’s daughter is the fact that she became the Amirlyn Seat despite having such a lowly background.
@@submandave1125 never picked up on that, but you're kinda right, the Aes Sedai are super accepting of women from all across the land, and they actively WANT to foster powerful Aes Sedai
@@TheLouHam yes but the Aes Sedai don't have a class superiority complex, they're humble and actively want to foster strong Aes Sedai. Minus the Red, but they're a different story, and aren't reflective of the entirety of Aes Sedai.
I was wandering why almost nobody in the comment section was pointing that out. First time here, came here from Knights Watch and I almost wrote an according comment. Almost.
@@AntonVeliTajan it’s a reoccurring joke in his videos. Every time he says Brandon Sanderson he posts an accompanying photo of Brendan Fraser. I forget it sometimes and then it happens again and it makes me chuckle.
56:30 or so - There was a detail that really bugged me in the courtroom scene. At one point, an Aes Seddai is asked how long it's been since she "took the shawl." If they didn't mention it, I'd have been more forgiving, but the only shawl in the room is on the Amerlyn Seat. None of the Aes Seddai are wearing their shawls. Nothing about shawls has been mentioned before now. This very formal occasion in the Hall would have had EVERY Aes Seddai present wearing her shawl, but none of them are. Again, if the dialogue hadn't mentioned them, I'd have let that pass, but what was the costuming department thinking!? What were the directors thinking!?
Just one of the almost endless examples of outright lazy, amateurish, and sloppy writing. The title of the show should be TheWheel of What Were They Thinking. Probably the most agregeous example in the whole season is the episode 3 dark friend scene where she reveals herself and attacks them. I have never seen a scene in cinima with so much wrong with it from beginning to end. A total illogical nonsensical absurdity. You could do a 1 hour analysis and breakdown for just that one scene alone.
@@Dave3Dman I would actually be interested in that analysis. I think my brain was sufficiently turned off and my soul sufficiently numbed to miss whatever you saw there. (I remember it being sudden and such, with a bit of a hint of "oh, right, we need to hit this plot point," but it didn't stand out to me.)
They did Thom so very dirty. And... why? He's the character who actually has a reason to give you random exposition about history and stories and songs! +10 to the writers caring more about Stepin than the adapted characters.
Thom was also a positive male role model who offered a counterpoint to Moiraine. And he was her actual love interest. Two things these showrunners couldn't have in their fanfiction version of WoT.
Well he had to step-in to so they could kill someone. You know.... That's what these writers think makes a good story, characters dying. Like In GOT. Get it Stepin had to step in to die so we understand our characters could die at any moment.
@@IamVendelI'd forgotten Thom was Moiraine's love interest! That... was, now that you mention it, a cool element to the story, and it being removed in favor of a shallow "girls can't be friends without being lesbians!" is really irritating.
Good point. He would be a mean, colorful Exposition machine in a very natural way and also help to develop all characters, from the Two Rivers folk to Moiraine as well as help to develop the Two Rivers folk as a fatherly character who we at the same time kind of feel may be too good to be true and maybe a darkfriend or even Forsaken. THAT would have been so good and increased the tension! Like.. "Thom... how come you know so much about the Power and channeling...?"
The scene where Rand first channels lightning was fucking amazing in the books. In this scene, he's trapped in a room with one random girl. Now I don't mean to sound sexist, but unless she knew how to use that sword (which wasn't shown) then all Rand has to do is pick up the nearest stool, injure her, and afterward figure out a way to get past the... malicious door. In the books, Rand and Matt are stuck in a room together and there's like 10 men *outside.* Their leader has admitted to being a darkfriend and there is nowhere to go. Rand and Matt are completely, unequivocally, fucked. And the darkfriends are breaking down the door. As he starts to panic, it's like Rand is losing control of his senses. And the door keeps going crash, crash, crash as they try to break it down. And right as they are about to break it down, something is clearly wrong with Rand and *BOOM.* A fucking lightning bolt comes down nearly killing everyone there and creating a huge hole in the wall for the pair to escape. It was so powerful that Matt was blind for days. And up to this point we hadn't seen any character channel that much.
@@LordLucless in the book there is a dark friend woman that tries to kill them. She has a dagger, that when they drop it in the bucket starts to hiss and steam. They tie her up and leave her. It’s the first time you see the hesitancy to harm women.
What stinks about all of this is that we’re going to get fewer fantasy adaptations as a result of these failures. They will refuse to recognize why the series fail and chalk it up to some inherent flaw of fantasy. It is not that hard to make a good fantasy adaptation. Just adhere to the story. Don’t alter it and then blame the failure on the genre of fantasy. Which is inevitable at this point.
Studios like to blame fans rather than the genre. "oh I changed the very essence of the story that you've read over and over and over and have come to love, the very story that inspired you to become a writer because I have a political agenda that I NEED to insert and your mad about it? yOuR tOxIc!"
Something similar happened in the late 70s /early 80s, with Sci Fi. There was so much crap made, trying to capture a piece of Star Wars. Eventually, things calmed down. People thought Sci Fi would never recover, but it did. My fear is how long it will take to return and what awesome franchises will be destroyed along the way.
@@CmogVT agreed. It’s not their fault, it’s ours. Even while they’re the ones who failed to make a faithful adaptation. I just don’t understand, from a monetary standpoint, why a studio would alter the story knowing it is likely to alienate the fan base. They bought the rights in large part bc of the built in fan base. And then proceed to alienate the very reason the franchise was bought in the first place. What I hope happens is that the studio execs clamp down on all of this. They are all still answerable to the shareholders. So if the execs keep letting political agendas steer the horse, and the inevitable results are poor profit margins, then it’s their head on the block. So far, it’s woke writers, directors and producers steering this ship. But when they fail, the execs are going to have to rethink things or they’ll be gone. Which is why it’s imperative we boycott the dribble coming out.
Yes dude, it is the EVIL "wokes" that has infultrated all levels of the studio machine, ruining these adaptions with their secret, malicious intentions of putting a black person on screen Lmfao Just one step away from blaming the Jews....
The mystery of the dragon reborn in this show is like a “who dunnit” without knowing the crime committed. Was it a murder, arson or theft, nobody knows. This creates two problems for the audience, one, they have no idea what the significance of the “Dragon Reborn” is, and so why should they care. Two, any clues given as to who the Dragon is meaningless. To go back to the “who dunnit” analogy, matchsticks would be a significant clue(or red herring) in the case of arson, but if the crime was theft then it’s irrelevant. Mysteries need to feel possible to solve otherwise there is no reason to engage with them
I never read the books and completely agree with you. Who is the dragon is obviously like the "ring" in Tolkien but in LOTR they explained Frodo had to do it as anyone else is corrupted by it. Here? They really do not explain what the dragon is and how they are supposed to solve everything. LOTR also had a short prologue that shown the original battle when Sauron lost it and what happened. Like, what does it mean when an age falls here? Everyone dies? They are at medieval technology so it is not like they can go backwards much more..so what is the risk? Everyone enslaved? How? What does that mean? Also, I did not like everyone in that small village having "some" powers. They might as well put up a billboard saying two rivers, home to potential dragons!
@@bobross1829 yeah, they blew it. You should read the books if thats your thing but you shouldn't need to in order to understand the damn show. We only really know details about one age falling in the books but, as the name suggests, time is cyclical so it could have happened a hundred times. What was significant about the most recent fall is that it wasn't due to the dark ones hand directly but through his tainting of Saidin, male channelers went insane and the breaking of the world was their work. Essentially an apocalypse scenario with very few survivors and thats where the books open, mid apocalypse. When we come into the head of our main man Rand, it's thousands of years later and more of a Renaissance era in my opinion but its post-apocalyptic too. Weird vibes the show doesn't convey well. So the dark ones been sealed away all this time but its seal is weakening and as it does the Wheel weaves a new Dragon into the pattern. The Dragon Reborn is the most powerful male channeler and the strongest Ta'veren but the show does a pretty shit job at explaining what that even is too. Ta'veren are basically people playing with cheat codes. Inexplicable shit just happens around them, good and bad. The 3 boys are all powerful Ta'veren and the girls are some of the strongest channelers in millenia because of Rand. He has an unconscious affect on everything around him or its more appropriate to say the pattern weaves itself around him in a way to set him up for success in the last battle. Later in the books we see the more direct affect this actually has on Mat and Perrin but shit, I dont wanna ruin too much in case you do want to read them.
@@fenixchief7 Reading the books will not help you understand the show. Too much has been changed for the show to be connected to the world the books gave us
The show screwed up. They needed to make the book 1 prologue be the first thing people saw. I think the issue is that the prologue inspired so many copycats that it might feel generic; It occurs 3000 years in the past and it is not explicitly moving the plot forward... but it was absolutely necessary. It sets up the desperation of the survivors and the feeling that humanity is trying to recover from a cataclysmic event that is still ongoing. It sets up the scale of the magick system's potential and the horrifying damage it can do. And it shows why no one would want to be the Dragon Reborn.
16:30 Jordan is very explicit that the White Tower takes ANY woman who has some strength in the Power, and even if they’re too week to do more than light a candle they still train them to bind them to the Aes Sedai. The Amyrlin Seat was a fisherman’s daughter, for Pete’s sake. They just wanted to add class drama because it’s trendy. Just BS on top of BS that makes a weaker story.
If I remember right even if the girl is too weak to do anything substantial with the power, they still train her so she doesn't end up killing herself trying to channel
What killed the show for me was "we don't know who he or she is, but the dragon is reborn." These books have a heavy theme of the problems that arise when equal but opposite forces work against each other rather than in synchronicity. Notice how many times someone says "urgh, MEN" or "urgh WOMEN". Everything has an equal and opposite force, even the evil of Shadar Logoth was like antimatter to the taint on the one power. Rand was finally able to understand that he can't and SHOULDN'T be everything for everyone all the time. The dragon is a male channeler born into a world where women have be the defacto Federal government for hundreds of years. Balance.
Because studios are trying to capture the "everyone can be a winner" generation, wich is a good message but is a terrible bending of the source material and I'm absolutely sure that the original plan ( might have changed since reception have been sub-par) was to build at least one female channeler into the resolution of the dragon plot to "combine" both magic so that the patriarchy don't win again because: A- white dudes are now deliberately sidelined in Hollywood, which is not a problem in itself since they've been in everything but it's the "retcon" or the deconstruction of past characters that poses a problem... already established characters are stripped of their characteristics and accomplishments to accommodate the new redistribution of those feats and attributes to other existing or inserted ones so that the female audience that didn't read the books feels represented because they're a huge slice of the money pie and all of this is done by TV WRITERS constantly eyed by meddling studio executives who never reads anything but charts, projections and stocks trying to dumb down the lifes work of a talented book writer. B- there's no B.... I've stop watching that shitty PR exercise and fuk that union busting, tax avoiding, lobbying against social interests amazon corporation.
How did they manage to kill a story which emplified the best of the feminism, multicultural and travel broadens the mind and is good and pretty manage to kill it by black and white views and managing to be too 'woke'. It's like the writers have the depth, vision and life experience of a shallow muddy puddle.
That line was an outright rejection of the very core of the mythology and sends ripples out to literally every aspect of the books... all by itself it irrevocably makes this show intrinsically and vastly different from Jordan's vision. I was concerned how Hollywood would adapt a series that so passionately embraced gender roles when they outright reject the concept of gender to begin with, and those concerns proved well-founded.
@@mat3714 I think it's tragic that in order to push diversity we have to deny reality rather than accept reality and grow the best of it. Race is an important part of the books too. The Breaking was kind of their Tower of Babel story, and each race has to find commonality with the others- which is harder for neighbors than it is for people far away. The Aeil were accepted by the two rivers people immediately which was interesting. Same with the Ogier. But races that faught for years had to learn to appreciate one another in some way in order to fight in the same war.
"Hm, I've read the first book and I think we can do better." "Twist a couple things to make it a bit more contemporary?" "Yeah. I've decided I'm going to fridge a woman in the first episode."
@@connorgregory5625 that is like saying: you can't perfectly clean your house, so lets not do it at all. MAYBE you cannot perfectly adapt this story into the screen, but you can at least try to stay true to the source material.
@@conelord1984 aside from the worldbuilding and action scenes, the source material isnt all that good. They books are stuffed with filler and repetitive af inner monologues--see all the pages long descriptions of the guys ruminating on how they will never understand women, or the one later on in the series where perrin goes on and on and on about how he's a blacksmith and not a lord.
The problem is that the screenwriters didn't actually read or understand the book. The first book isn't really a fantasy book. It's a light horror book (set in a fantasy setting). The book is about the main character slowly understanding that he's actually a monster. And all the things he has to do so that no one finds out. Especially his friends. Every single moment is spent teaching or reinforcing that, at the minimum, the main character will go nuts and kill people. Or at worst, break the world again. Only by the end does the main character understand that while those things ARE true, he's not actually a monster. And thus comes the show's biggest mistake. By making the first season have 6 Main Characters (Rand, Perrin, Matt, Moiraine, Nynaeve, and Lan), you have fundamentally altered the horror story path from beginning to end. A horror plot doesn't become scary in retrospect if you lore-dump who the "monster" was at the end, instead of making that your main character and experiencing the journey with them.
This captures one of my main feeling about the show. Being the "dragon" sucks so bad. The show didn't convey that Dragon will save the world but probably destroy it afterward.
its worst then he just doesn't understand, he hates his audience. He once said on twitter 'oh you don't like how I wrote your fave character? Well now thier gay, and there's nothing you can do about it!"
Huh? Light horror? Maybe the final part of the book, I really liked that part, but otherwise I'm certain most people didn't believe for a second that Rand will go insane. He's obviously the protagonist, he's gotta win in the end (and get into a polyamorous releationship with THREE women who all fall for and actively pursue him because destiny), the six possible DRs twist is just not really compatible with the very gendered way the WoT magic system works.
Amazon paid through the roof to have the rights to a very successful book series that defines some of the best fantasy writing on Earth. All they had to do was FOLLOW THE SOURCE MATERIAL. As a reader of the book series, I was more than disappointed.. insulted more like it. I won't even waste my time on the second season, because they already ruined it.
I knew a lot would have to change and be omitted, considering that the story is only like 3 years chronologically, and filming something like that would just be physically impossible, but I was still just awestruck at how horrible it was. I had to stop partway through ep 1 because I was so disappointed, and I lightly skimmed other eps just to see how bad it would get. And when they went to Tar Valon instead of Caemlyn I just gave up. I've seen many awful adaptations in my life, but WoT was the worst. I don't know how anyone could look at one of the greatest fantasy epics of all time, with a deep world, fleshed out characters, complex and interconnected plot lines, and a crystal clear depiction of the world, and decide to just shit all over it. It's been over a year and a half, and even just thinking about it makes me so damn mad. It was excruciating to see
@@orinblank2056simple. A lot of people weather it’s from gen X or millennials they want to “leave their own mark” on the world. They can’t let go of their egos and I mean that in the sense that the believe strongly and mistakenly that they are they’re egos. When creating art, it should be enough to make that thing precisely as is when depicting when someone else’s piece of art. When creating your own art with no references except your own experiences (I mean not designing something) you must know yourself, deeply, very deeply. It’s why the greatest artists are never depicted as great during their time (Van Goh, Picasso) and although the rule isn’t always true (I would treat it as a 80/20 rule) for the most part it’s accurate.
The worst thing about the finale is they cheapen the magic system so much by just allowing Egwene to bring Nynaeve back because she's super super powerful tho. Spoilers for the books ahead! In the fourth book, and in one of the absolute most powerful scenes in the series, Rand tries and fails to use the Power to bring back a dead child. He cries and screams and (if I remember correctly) even briefly reanimates her in an inhuman zombie-like form, before Moiraine has to step in and urge him that even he can't reverse death. It serves to teach us that some things can't be magicked away. By the end of the series Rand is basically able to manipulate the pattern on a thread-by-thread level, and even then, when a major character dies, he can't just reverse their death. Because of course he can't, good god. It completely ruins any stakes your story has. Sure, the books would occasionally do something similar with Balefire death reversals, but that's hard-coded into the magic system and it's predictable in a way. But don't worry because *Egwene is very powerful guys and she can heal death now everybody*
All he needs to do is to summon enough balefire to exterminate the person who killed the other person and erase them from the weave before they had a chance to kill the other. Imagine the changes if Rand could erase 500 years of an adversary character.
Did Nyneave die? I saw the show but in the moment i was too shocked by the other inconsistencies (linking with 0 training? Not burning out while all the other sisters did? What? Exhibiting ridiculously more power than Rand? Why?) to realize they actually killed and brought her back. I thought she was just unconscious. Was it actually death?
@@degreeskelvin3025 At this very moment I don't really remember how the scene went, but I remember being under the impression that the other sisters died after burning out, so suddenly Nyneave taking the "burn" from Egwene and dying made sense, you know, she somehow absorbed it, burning herself even faster and dying. But I think Rafe said she just passed out or something.
My issue with Mat, and I loved Mat as a character, is that the Amazon show displayed him as a thief and a failed gambler. The Two Rivers is a tiny community. They'd immediately chase Mat away or shun him, yet Mat was allowed to hang about and do it over and over for years?
This is a point I didn't think about. There is a huge difference between a kid, even a teenager, pulling pranks like covering a dog in flour and releasing it, or "stealing" a pastry from the inn when the innkeeper's wife knows you're hungry and you've been helping out. Those are funny things adults will laugh off... But yeah, stealing and reselling a bracelet as a grown man is very crappy and wouldn't be tolerated. MAYBE if it was known he was taking care of his sisters... But I feel like people would still not put up with stealing. It does put him in a much more negative light although he is the same kind of personality in the books.
They killed Mat's character so bad that they ended up replacing him. I hate how in the books, he's just a goofy prankster and in the show, he's just a complete PoS.
The other big issue with Mat and his family is that in the books his father was a respected merchant and horse trader. He was a skilled fighter and respected enough to be on the Council of Emond's Field. It's doubtful someone letting their family be as they showed in the first episode would be any of those things.
I completely disagree with all of this. For one those things are implied in the books as well, go back and read it, it is heavily implied he has always been a gambler, trouble maker, and in smaller ways, a thief. Also compare Mat from book 1 to the show and you will realize Mat from the books character basically didn't exist. He is extremely unlikeable in Eye of the World when he is having any character and most of time he is just a goofball that does just extremely stupid things and gets the other characters in trouble. Mat in the show actually has motivations for the things he is doing and makes it WAY better
No I don't think you are understanding correctly. Mat gambled constantly and he's one of the few characters that regularly went to the nearby bigger towns and played dice. Matt also gambled with caravans that traveled through and entertainment troops. This was established in the books
Agree that too many fans were too forgiving with this show. There’s nothing wrong with the books, they aren’t boring, and they sold like crazy as they were coming out. No reason to dump the main plot point regarding men and women having different experiences with magic. It was already built to appeal to everybody.
@@arenkai Had people tell me the first book was horrible and had to be fixed.... They actually read a book series that they hated the first book... I am dubious.
Finally, an honest take on this show. It’s bad on it’s own, but it’s a _terrible_ adaptation of the books. And, knowing how the entires series goes, all of the “extra” stuff they added ruins the charm and complexity of the original story. I can’t even hate watch it, it’s that bad. There is zero chance this show won’t get cancelled before the final book.
Yes Rafe "fought" to keep the manetheran scene in the show, unfortunately he did not fight to keep it in the correct spot thematically and consequently the entire reason for Moiraine bringing it up was lost as she was using it to manipulate the Two Rivers people into letting their kids go off with her for their own safety essentially by emboldening them with a tale of their great past as warriors.
The manetheran speech had consequences that went through most of the books. It awakened the manetheran spirit and old blood of the people in the Two Rivers. It made them believe they were capable of much more than they thought possible. The two rivers people always stood out in any army they joined, even tho they were just mostly farmers. On the TV Show though, the two rivers people never learned of their heritage....
@@silverwingwarlock9314 In the books the boys are 20, but the community is strong and unwilling to just let some strangers take several of them away into unknown danger without a bloody good explanation - not even someone who helped protect the village during a trollock attack
@@OppositeOfNinja sorry I should of wort act more like kids in the book why In the series one of them is married, one is supporting his two little sisters and the outer two act more responsible. That sense would of ruined in my opinion the amazing ending of episodes 1 of 4 people being forced to leave everything they know to protect the ones they love and no time to say goodbye.
Except that in the book there is no such requirement of Chastity. It's just tacked on bulshit to create drama just like Jedi not being able to get married in the prequel trilogy. In the book, even offers to let him become her Warder. Heck, he actually marry to and impregnate one of the Aes Sedai??
My criticism of Wheel of Time is that they focused too much on the (sexual) relationships of the characters rather than the actual story. It hurt the story more than it helped. Without all the "I love you" shit, it would have left 10 minutes each episode for more story, allowing viewers to become more invested in the characters.
The big problem was how they made most of Rand's story fretting about Egwene... Egs: I'm breaking up with you. Rand: I'm sad, but okay. Egs: We're still friends, right? Rand: I'm still hurt, okay? Perrin: Egs is nice. Rand: You always loved Egs! Egs: Let's get back together. You can be my warder. Rand: Okay. [Sotto voce] I just realized I'm the Dragon Reborn. Ba'alzamon: Let's break the world and remake it however we want! Rand: Nah, Egs wouldn't like it.
Focused too much on the sexual relationships..? I mean, they just made it up. They are innocent, naive and inexperienced in the books. It ruined their characters from the start.
@@samueldavis5895Rand really never simps for Egwene lmao, they were never truly an item, he wanted to protect her but pretty much once they left the village they mutually drifted apart, there was never any real skin in the game. Rand did more simping for Mat if anything lmao
@@Arturian.music.officialimagine watching an aged up Harry Potter where Hermione gives Harry a handjob on train ride to Hogwarts Ron accidentally kills his boyfriend in a potion deal gone bad and Dumbledore and Snape have a steamy romance scene all in first film 😂
One critique I have for "The Wheel of Time" as a whole is the random acts of sexual tension. But for all of my complaint about that, it really stopped there. Including all of this unnecessary sex is just a gratuitous attempt to make it more like "Game of Thrones." Having Lan and Nyneave already romantically entangled ruins the slow burn that their relationship had in the books, which means we'll have to think of some other arbitrary way to add drama there later.
one of my (formerly) favorite WoT RUclipsrs said: " I like that Rand and Egweyne had Sex, it tries to cater to a more mature audience who does not identify with the conservative ideas about sex"....well...they live in a village of a few hundred people, not in 2022 America. where in the world are small town communities not somewhat conservative. Back in the day, good shows created trends (hairstyles mostly), now a days, shows try to pander to existing trends. everything needs to be made into a reflection of today.
fantasy doesnt need sex and gratuitous violence to be taken seriously, the dark one and the forsaken and myrdraal are all terrifying and more creepy and scary than even the orcs and nazgul in lotr, the despair at facing the dark one and his minions is a good way to show how the stakes are
I have no issue with them bringing in sex or sexual tension. I have issue with them bringing it where it doesn't belong. When done right - it can add to the emotional stuff (because sex complicates things and can be an emotional and meaningful thing) but they do it sooo wrong. Whenever its shown, it feels rushed and completely unemotive, as well as WAY TOO EARLY.
@@svenlauke1190 It goes beyond that. The world is still recovering from an apocalyptic event. This kind of free love sexual hedonism is really only feasible in a society that has access to advanced medical knowledge to the point where the risks aren’t that much of a factor, and WE haven’t even reached that point quite yet, to be honest. Not only that, but the population was utterly devastated, and the most effective way to foster a recovery from such an event is to encourage tight, monogamous familial bonds. It’s a major factor as to why our species has advanced as far as it has in real life, the monogamous nuclear family. It encouraged paternal investment and involvement in the rearing of children and THAT is largely what made our population start to skyrocket. So yeah, Dan Greene is completely full of shit.
@@radicaldreamer927 I donvt think homophobia comes down to medical knowledge and prevention of disease. Would especially not make sense in a world with magic healing.
What you said about trying to misdirect the identity of the dragon was spot on. In the books we get the prologue where the chosen one goes insane and dies, kicking off the Breaking of the World. Then we get a propecy that the chosen one will be reborn and pleading for the "Dragon to ride again on the winds of time". We then immediately cut to teenage boy who is the main POV character for the rest of the book. Gee. I WoNdEr WhO tHe DrAgOn is! This removes the soul of the story and replaces it with something else entirely. And it sucks
@@maxencedworaczek602 Same, I read it at 10 or 11 and I wasn't on to the chosen one trope yet. And to be fair, I don't think Moiraine even hints that one of them is the Dragon, it's just kind of a thing in the background that you have to piece together until the reveal at the end.
@@calebmauer1751 If memory serves, she never mentions that, at least not until much later, she justifies taking them based on the fact that trollocs attacked the village and she believes it involves one of the three boys and the villagers accept her word on her authority as an Aes Sedai. I know she picks Egwene for her talent but I forget exactly how she finagled her into the group and, of course, Nynaeve chases them down to fulfill her duty as Wisdom. They are pursued, which validates her concerns to the group and they don't question her judgement but, of course, certainly wonder why they are being targeted.
@@christianclark347 Moiraine did NOT pick Egwene (in the books)... Egwene forced herself on THEM out of pure selfishness. The boys KNEW they were targets... knew they HAD to leave, or everyone in Emond's Field would DIE. Right THEN... they became heroes, at least to some extent... particularly Rand and Perrin. Mat, less so, because he did want adventure... but still, he no longer had a reasonable choice... he had to draw the Fades and Trollocs away from his parents and sisters. Egwene CHOSE to leave... and ABANDON her parents. In modern parlance, Egwene chose career (becoming Aes Sedai) over family. (The show changes this, while keeping her choice of career over family, while it also removes the "consequences" of abandoning her parents, thus making her seem more noble than she actually is at this point in the books.) Nynaeve ALSO became a hero, by trying to "rescue" the boys and Egwene from the "wicked Aes Sedai schemes".
What a stupid comment. What you said about the books clearly implies and in fact is correct in saying that there’s no mystery whatsoever to rand being the dragon reborn in the books. It’s boring in that sense and as much as I love the books (i’m just about to start the fourth) The first was a mess and frankly I thought the show was way more interesting in how they Made it a bit more mysterious
It can't be overlooked that the director/showrunner *SPECIFICALLY* likes to antagonize fans and change things IN ORDER TO MAKE THEM ANGRY. That level of spite is a serious personal flaw brought into the show.
I pretty much gave up on the show in first episode because it was VERY obvious whoever was doing the screenscript had ZERO respect for the source and very much thought they could make it better by significantly altering characters and setting to the point where a lot of them don't feel anything like them.
He's a sociopath and Egwene is his self insert character, He's writing Twilight erotic fan fiction, not Wheel of Time. The two men fighting over him are a wolf and someone that's inhabited by an ancient being. Egwene is also "unbreakable" as a child because sociopaths always think they are right and think everyone else are morons. Same kind of people wrote Rey in new Star Wars. She doesn't need her friends, they may as well not even be there. Those characters also have to be less to make the self insert character more awesome. She's perfect and we should all worship the self insert and the person who wrote her.
@@hackintosh3899 yeah but Egwene acts pretty much the same in the books. I fucking hated her from the get go. I didn't like Nynaeve at first either but she has such an incredible arc, she ends up becoming one of my favorite characters. Egwene only gets snottier and more obstinate.
@@fenixchief7Egwene is not fully formed in the books and "unbreakable". She's supposed to be a brat, supposed to be immature and not self aware. She's basically female Mat. Anyone who says they loved Mat before he wakes up in Tar Valon and clowns Gawyn and Galad is lying to themselves and that was 3 books in. You aren't supposed to like either character for a long while. The main reason people don't like Egwene later is because she has no trust for Mat and Rand. With Mat it's because they are the same person. They are the alpha dogs in charge of a bunch of people, who have to project that they are right, even if they aren't so sure themselves. They can basically tell the other one is full of sh@^ and flying by the seat of their pants. With Rand she has to balance people who may suspect her allegiances will lead to their destruction and Rand possibly being mad. Jordan could have possibly explained this, but he probably felt he didn't have to. I don't know why people hate Nynaeve. She's funny, she has no reason to trust this Aes Sedai and she feels responsible for her people. I never hated Nynaeve. I hated Egwene and I hated Mat. Mat ended up my favorite character tied with Lan and Egwene has arguably the best ending arc.
I got ~7 minutes in, decided I should read the books first, and have returned after finishing all of them. I am now primed to hear your thoughts on the show.
"Vehicular manslaughter wouldn't make Sam a better character." Damn, I really never thought of it like that... 😂. It's funny, but a good point. I kind of brushed it off as "Well, they want us to feel something for Perrin right away." Then the writers didn't do much with him for the rest of the season.
Brandon Sanderson had an interesting idea for Perrin. Instead of fabricating a wife for Perrin to kill, Brandon suggested that if Perrin needs to kill someone who's important to him to make him more sympathetic, it should be Master Luhhan instead. Someone that Perrin has a strong connection to as a mentor and friend. There's just no excuse for how they did Mat's parents dirty. Abel Cauthon especially is literally one of the best, most reliable characters in the books, and he was anything but a bad father.
@@jaredhumpherys8335 Yeah. I like how Sanderson came out basically said, "Look guys, I tried." I really think Fantasy authors should have more input when books are adapted.
@@jaredhumpherys8335 Except... book Perrin was WAY too careful to actually do that kind of thing with ANYONE he cares about. Even Sanderson is wrong with respect to this issue. It's like saying... if we need to take a dump on the source material there's a right way to do this and a wrong way to do this; here's the 'right' way to do this. I mean, as much as we wished he might accidentally 'oops' his unnamed wife who also ruined his character arc later in the books; the guy was too careful to do that kind of thing.
I hated how they stripped the joy from the Tinkers and Thom. I get that they wanted things to be darker and for the Two Rivers to be less Shire like. But by stripping the joy from the tinkers you strip out what looks so appealing about the way of the leaf, even knowing the danger and pain it can bring.
Interesting, I felt the opposite about the Way of the Leaf. I really appreciate the show's explanation; if you fully expect to be reborn in the future, that encourages you to live a life now that makes the world a better place next time. That's the one thing the show did better than the books IMO.
@@josephward4918 Yeah, I think the Tinker section was the only plot line they nailed, apparently one of the few things in the books Rafe actually likes.
I think Thom's attitude fit pretty well with the situation they introduced him in. He has been banished from Caemyln for a while now, is in an old mining town that stoned an innocent Aiel, and sang a song that matched the tone while also delivering subtle but engaging exposition.
Other than that awkward introduction to the Tinkers, I thought the show nailed them. And I liked the show Thom more than the book Thom, who comes across as a bit corny IMO. Honestly, the show peaked in episodes 3 and 4, which heavily featured these two characters.
In the book Thom is a grumpy old curmudgeon with a heart of gold. Rough around the edges, but still likable. The show version isn't anything remotely like him. When he flashes that shit-eating grin at Mat after having stolen his money, it's clear that the writers created a completely new character. Gleemen are fairly respected people, they don't have a reputation of being pick pockets.
Sir, I've seen some short parodies that you do and today I decided to explore your channel, you made me watch an one hour and eighteen minutes video about a show that I've never heard of, based on a series of books that I also never heard of, of a genre that I don't really care, yet you kept me intrested the whole video(in your critique, not the show), here, take my subscription, you really deserve it, bravo
The spicy scene whit rand and egwene really made me laugh.. In the books rand doesn't do spicy stuff until waaaaaaay later with a certain Aiel... it made me think "wow they could not care less about the books" 😅 Shame, the books is one of the best series i have ever read if not the best
What this show missed out on was how young and inexperienced all the main characters were. All of them grew and matured as the stories stretched. All of the boys should be clean shaven and DON'T GIVE PERRIN A FRICKIN WIFE!!!
I love how you're articulating exactly what I found to be the problem of the show. It feels like higher up production execs are embarrassed about the source material, and that is without question my biggest problem with it.
The book has a mystery at the start which is "is he really the dragon, or a false dragon?" The new mystery is worse because there is no room for doubt as to whether he is or is just insane
43:39 This is very true to me as well. I really liked this part in the book, as a clear reference to Gandalf at the bridge of Khazad-dûm. Thom stays and fight in order to let his friends escape. This is the same scene from the book: RUN! He gave them a push, one hand on the shoulder of each of them, to get them started, and Rand stumbled away in a lurching run with Mat at his side. “RUN!” Thom sprang into motion, too, with a long, wordless roar. Not after them, but toward the Myrddraal. His hands flourished as if he were performing at his best, and daggers appeared. Rand stopped, but Mat pulled him along. The Fade was just as startled. Its leisurely pace faltered in mid-stride. Its hand swept toward the hilt of the black sword hanging at its waist, but the gleeman’s long legs covered the distance quickly. Thom crashed into the Myrddraal before the black blade was half drawn, and both went down in a thrashing heap. The few people still in the square fled. “RUN!” The air in the square flashed an eye-searing blue, and Thom began to scream, but even in the middle of the scream he managed a word. “RUN!”
freacking glorious man! the sacrifice, the despair, the fear it instills and the sense of loss. You don't even need to know who these characters are, or what is going on to understand that something important is being protected, and something important is being lost too.
I just want to say huge thanks for not spoiling later books. When watching other reviews of shows, they often cite stuff from all over the source material, but you really focused on just the stuff that was immediately relevant. As someone who has only read the first 3 books yet, I really appreciate that :)
I experienced the Wheel of Time through audiobook, and I would listen to it while working my night job. The Mad Wind was SO unnerving, especially walking around alone at night, I was really looking forward to hearing it in the show. The angle of it targeting your insecurities did not work for me. I missed the horror of these screaming, jibbering, MAD voices coming after you in the dark. It was just… SO FREAKY and to me the interpretation the show took left something to be desired.
Yeah, it pretty much turns from "Saidin's Madness Incarnate" to "Manipulative thing" which makes you wonder why EXACTLY it's such a horrifying threat. Compared to the THING that's jibbering about snapping bones and running blood and shearing flesh while coming at you like a rabid animal, that they KNOW has eaten darkspawn.
1999s Wheel of Time the videogame did the Mad Wind better than the show did, and it was just a huge bunch of skull-shaped mists charging at you. They were really scary
You're a better person than me, after the first episode I gave up on the show. I read 1-5 in 2008-09, and listened to audiobooks 1-3 again before the show premiered.
I too used unabridged audiobooks to listen to the complete series (something like 15 books) - each book being 23 to 40+ hours. A very long, but rewarding story. I was so stoked when I learned of the Amazon adaptation. The series went of the rails so quickly that I stopped watching before the end of the season. What a disappointment. I was really looking forward to years of great entertainment. “Foundation” on Apple+ also fell short with bizarre adaptation choices.
Just want to point out. Loial is DEAD, actually deader than dead. Fain used the dagger from Sadar Logoth. Remember the one that was corrupting Mat? No idea how he end up having it in the series. (In the book happens in book 2 and again in book 5). This dagger is cursed if it wounds you, you turn to dust you do not exist. They break the story FOR NO REASON so many times it's sad
I was already so disappointed by that time, i was thinking nothing could surprise me anymore...oh light was i shocked and surprised they killed Loial. Totally unbelievable, but on the other hand now we know what they rip out of the story line... Everything that detailed the world the author created so very miticulous. Because the writings of Loial and the songs from the gleemen(Rand becomes one in the end) will be history, tales, myth for the next era. Thus, they killed every reference to the books... "Duty is heavier than a mountain" they took the easy route and did a "based on" show. Those people should be fired for killing the potential of a very good tv show with fans around the world waiting for decades to happen. It is totally disrespectful.
I recall yelling out WHAT IN THE ABSOLUTE F**** when they stabbed and killed Loial. I had joked with my wife after episode three what could /would be the worst possible outcome of Rafe Judkins writing and direction? And I said, jokingly, "Oh just kill off Loial. I mean why not right?" I couldn't believe it. They did. They went there. What a JOKE THIS SHOW IS. And of course he isn't dead, from the dagger that you can't survive. Nope. Lame, lame, lame. Terrible writing and delivery.
@@drakedecker4874 The problem is not the stabbing. It is the instrument that is used. This specific dagger is cursed. Any other "pretend killing" would be fine if it wasn't for the zoom in when Fain is sheathing the Dagger from Sadar Logoth.
Yup, if Loial is alive in season 2, they missed the point of the dagger. There is only 2 people in the WoT series that you could stab with that dagger and won't die .. Padan Fain and Matt. Period. Everyone else shrivels up and dies from it in seconds. Flopping on the ground, screaming, skin turning black followed by death.
Perrin not blacking out and killing the two White Cloaks like in the book is absolutely key, it was something that haunted him through the entire series until the last books and is a fundamental part of his growth and of him finding peace with himself and with the White Cloaks. Horrendous that they missed that, they've changed so many things that it's impossible to complete a show that has nothing to do with the books.
What I don't understand is why they replaced what happened in the book with Perrin MURDERING HIS WIFE. Robert Jordan put in a very solid motivation for Perrin's reluctance to use his powers and to make every possible attempt as pacifism. It almost feels like the show runners thought it wasn't bad enough, that viewers would think, "Pfft, why would he feel guilty murdering *them*? I'd kill them and walk away, clean conscious." So, they thought increasing the shock factor would make it more believable, I guess? For an average person, if they had to murder someone, they'd have to deal with permanent trauma. Even if they could continue functioning as they were before, they'd have to deal with so much awful fall out (like legal issues, remembering the feeling of injuring a living person, considering their own mortality and how easy it is for a life to end, etc.) It stings even more when even a little bit of characterization of the WCs Perrin (should have) killed would have made the same point as killing his wife did. That is, if a particular WC offers Perrin some water, tend his wounds due to some torture, give a kind word... And then later try to stop Perrin escaping, and Perrin kills the only white cloak(s) that was kind to him. That would have kept the poignancy and also still make it believable that he can physically and mentally continue to participate in the plot, wtih the mental anguish presented in the book. Killing your wife--your life partner, your best friend, your love--would absolutely ruin any average person for YEARS. As he stands as a character, it would only be believable if Perrin retired to the most menial job he could think of. He wouldn't try to save the world. Not unless he had several months of genuine recovery and therapy, first... Which is in short supply in The Wheel of Time.
In the books, the Aes Sedai were growing desperate, pulling in literally every woman and girl they could find who had the talent. They theorized that, due to all the male magic users going crazy and needing to be killed, humanity was literally breeding the ability to use magic out of their own lineages. As a result, fewer and fewer Aes Sedai joined the White Tower every generation. The actual hierarchy in the White Tower was your power level, not the status you were born into. The poorest peasant girl with strong talent warranted far more respect than the grandest duchess with little ability. So the whole, "Nyeh, you guys are elitist, nyeh" thing with Nyneave makes zero sense. Also, she just randomly heals death as an untrained, unskilled wielder of the One Power, the ONE AND ONLY thing that is unhealable. Later in the book series, she literally learns how to heal people cut off from the One Power, and it's mind-blowing because the solution was so deceptively simple, that no one had tried it before. Only death remains unhealable. Not so in the show, where they needed yet another "girl boss" moment. Not to mention that the Aes Sedai purposefully sacrifice thousands of men fighting Trollocs only to swoop in and start wiping them all out because, once again, girl power. They castrated Rand so many times in the show, that it honestly didn't surprise me when they took out the scene of him hyped up on the Power from the Eye of the World, literally teleporting into the Trolloc army and disintegrating it with lightning and pure destruction. Nope, instead he has a conversation and complains while the women do all the work. Perrin's a weak-willed failure who has absolutely nothing in common with book Perrin, Mat's a psycopathic thief who barely cares about anyone around him and has zero redeeming scenes, and Rand spends the ENTIRE show screeching at everyone about trust and paranoia. Lan is supposed to be the stoic, incredibly dangerous yet loyal father figure for Rand, who teaches him how to fight, and shows him the difference between being a soldier and being a man, and when you should be one or the other. Instead he barely does anything aside from kill a few Trollocs and tear open his shirt crying about some random Warder. So much plot was cut from the show to fit the 8 episodes, and yet we spend an entire episode following said random Warder whose Aes Sedai died, as he gets despressed and kills himself, none of which was in the book. By aging up the characters they strip away their character arcs, their youthful naivety, and their moral purity. Rand and Egwene sleep together in the first episode! Do you want to know when Rand first sleeps with another woman in the books? Several books later, years into the story's timeline, after essentially conquering half the kingdoms on the continent. He loses himself in a bout of passion with a woman (not Egwene, he's never in a relationship with her in the books), and afterwards, is so ashamed of his lack of self control and tarnishing of her honor, that he tries to get married to her right away, to avoid scandal. There is so much more to complain about, from the butchering of the characters and plot, to just the overall mediocre quality of the show in general. TL;DR: The show is bad, read the books.
I mean I'm sorry but what you're saying here is a demonstration that you have no fucking idea whatsoever about the books. One if the big themes of the books is that AS aren't doing any recruitment at all. And that is one of the main reasons (or consequences) of them being in a downward spiral. And they definitely are turning people away. Lots of them. We have the Kin, remember? Nynaeve's mentor may have misunderstood why she was turned away, or lied about it, or Nynaeve could have misunderstood.
@@cara-seyun The opposite actually. They may seldom marry, but were _very discreetly_ encouraged to procreate as much as possible due to the whole ongoing decline of civilization and especially of people with the gift. Frequent allusions are also made regarding the relationship Greens have with their multiple warders. You just also have to remember they live hundreds of years and that presumably (I don't recall it being made explicit) does not include an extension of their fertile timespan. The point remains that diverse relationship structures are represented in the books but promiscuity is not prevalent and traditional monogamy is the norm in most places. I cannot comprehend how someone could read even a synopsis of the source material and think "this would be better as a soap opera where everyone living in constant fear of torture and death is oddly preoccupied with their hormones."
In regards to Mat they should have just had Moiraine say Mat was too sick to travel and left him. Not the ideal situation but it would have made sense and not been a character assassination.
Actually that would lead to the question why Moiranine doesn't simply wait until he is better. There is no reason why they need to hurry and should Mat be the Dragon (20% chance) then leaving without him is simply stupid. Moiraine reasoning in the show that if "cowardly" Mat is the dragon their plan wouldn't work anyway makes her continuing without Mat at least plausible. I also believe that they had already finished shooting the waygate-scene and couldn't reshoot it to have a version without Mat.
@@gildor8866 I would say not. She has been after the dragon forever. It's almost become her reason for being. And she KNOWS he's absolutely necessary. A "cowardly" dragon could be helped, could be slowly given the needed courage. Moraine is more then up to the task of helping him with that. Courage isn't something everyone is born with, sometimes it has to be learned. And again, Moraine has more then enough life experience to know this. So her dropping a potential cowardly dragon would make absolutely no sense at all.
@Gildor if you're telling me that they couldn't reshoot a scene in an open field with a simple structure then that is a massive red flag in regards to the competency of the people in charge of this show.
@@justinalbin7272 They could have reshot that scene but how would that have helped writing Mat out? The actor was gone so the scene would have been an exposition dump why Mat suddenly isn't there anymore with important decisions having been made off screen and then we'd still ask why Moraine would leave him behind if he's a dragon reborn candidate. They had to work with what they had and what they had were shots of Mat standing in the field, so they used them to make it look like he chose to stay behind. It's not perfect but at least it gives the character some agency and it happens on screen. Of course Mat not going with them makes little sense but it's not like the show had a choice there.
@@philippschmidt80 The solution was simple, just have Mat be too weak from the dagger to go with the group and be left behind in Tar Valon, just as he was in the books. Sure, that screws up the order of events from the books, but the show already did that by having them in Tar Valon and having Moiraine fully heal Mat of his connection to the dagger.
all the characters were massacred, even their superwomen moiraine and egwene, and what they did to Lan, Rand, Mat and Perrin was nothing but criminal..
@@HallyVee actually, have you even heard of The Wheel of Time books by Robert Jordan? because even a cursory browsing of them will reveal to your simple mind that the characters/ plot/ world in the books have very little similarity to the filth that is the show, why don't you try actually reading the books
@@bananachocopie her acting is frequently poor. They butchered the plot yes but they stuck quite closely to characterization. Some fun poked here and there like with Lan yes but otherwise nailed it.
@@zionmarcelo as I said, I agree the plot has been butchered. But the characterization is spot on quite often. Some minor quibbles ofc like Lan. Hate porn can be amusing but gotta grow out of it.
its a consequence of Netflix junk writing setting the blueprint. none of these "screenwriters" ever get selected based on merit but based on incestuous nepotism. it is why everyone can see the emperor has no clothes once they take up the writing instead of the original writer as seen in game of thrones.
As someone who's read the whole series 3 times (and am currently cunning a D&D style campaign set after the books) I went into the show with an open mind, expecting changes but giving it a chance despite the negative reception it got. I physically couldn't finish the series. Not that I didn't have the time, but it hurt to watch. I know they can't make a 1:1 copy but it felt like they were deliberately trying to change as much as they could just for the sake of changing it. I honestly feel bad for Harriet; she probably sold the rights to her late husband's work in hopes of it reaching a new generation of fantasy lovers, and instead they're spitting over Jordan's legacy. I would honestly sue them for defamation if I could.
I had a similar experience. While there were *occasional* flashes of the real WoT, most of the show was just disappointing. I kept on watching, thinking "The next episode can redeem everything... there's still time!" But I was mistaken. Eventually I found out that the writing team was deliberately playing out their own ideas about current social squabbles instead of thinking about RJ's work. Ah, well.
It was very important for the ideologically possessed individuals writing the series that they insert the following, interracially mixed people where it does not make sense, an openness to homosexuality, and although female authority exists in the book to make it petty, tyrannical, and to erase any notion of a male having a heroic moment especially wherein one is the primary savior of the girl. The series hit me as a propaganda piece for feminism.
As a newcomer to the Wheel of Time framchise, i am glad i avoided the show. I will stick to reading the books. Already finished Eye of the World and am currently on The Great Hunt. So good! Whike i was initially hesistabt due to my initial hesitancy with the gender politics themes (i wrongly assumed it was just going to be about misandry) but i am glad i was wrong. The world building and the lore within the story was so well done and the gender issue was so perfectly executed lore wise and stoeywise that it all worked seamlessly. Okus, the central theme of cooperation between the sexes works so well that i regretted my initial doubts. Such a great book series
@@orboakin8074 That is how I would advise you continue; stick to the books, avoid the show as though it were the Pit of Doom itself. Also, a slight head's up: the latter half of books 3 and book 4 is where the Wheel of Time truly becomes THE Wheel of Time,. The middle few books are a bit try (I had to power my way through Crossroads of Twilight and Path of Daggers on all 3 of my rereads, not that they're bad it's just that they're rather uneventful) but once you get through those and stick till the end, it'll change your perspective on many things in our world. That was my experience, at least :)
As someone who has heard of the books but hadn’t read them, I was curious to try out the show. It is shocking how many words are said while still conveying not one helpful bit of character or world-building information. Gave it 2 episodes. Would like my time back
@IntrepidTit Imo, the first book is a bit cheesy. However, the story really starts to pick up after then and you really do feel that you're exploring the whole world - so I'd reccomend reading the first and second books to get more of an idea of the series if you have time :)
@IntrepidTit The writer himself explains the first book was a love letter to his own inspirations like LoTR but it turns into it's own thing and establishes itself forward. I love them, book 4 was my personal favorite. ♥️
I read a recent interview with Rafe where he said season 2 will have a lot more surprises and changes for book readers. Like, what? No one is asking for that dude. It's so heartbreaking that incompetent people got to make this show. I stopped watching tv as a whole since WoT, not joking, I've completely given up on the entertainment industry.
I didn't finish the first season. We realized that we were getting so angry and upset with each episode pausing to rant for several minutes with each other during each, that we would be better off not watching. So we stopped.
Book readers I would say for the most part hate the show to some degree or have MASSIVE issues with it And people who haven't read the books haven't watched the show because it's just so cheap and... well, shit Literally who is Rafe making those changes for
Hollywood has a huge age-up problem, and I can see why they'd want to--even if it ruins the story. - It's easier to find competent actors if they have more experience. - Casting underage actors involves hiring a tutor for them and working around minor laws. - You can't sell sexy stuff with underage actors and not receive backlash. - Also, Sex appeal on posters is easier with early-20's actors. - I really think it's mostly that last thing. But it really destroys almost any coming-of-age story. We can tell if people are too old to be discovering the world for the first time. Being young explains a lot in these sorts of stories, and they just throw it out by casting old. Orson Scott Card has some horror stories of directors wanting to cast Ender as an 18-year-old, and it shows. It took forever for an adaptation of Ender's Game to come out, and even then it was clear that Ender was older than 13.
14:00 Rand understanding 'Egwene's choice' on that mountaintop is the most blatant misunderstanding/warping of Rand's character I could think of. FFS, how are we supposed to run into countless situations later in the story if Rand (or other male MC's) *understands women or how women think*! The divide in how the sexes rationalize and understand each-other and the world is central to the bloody plot!
The problem of the wheel of time is they disliked the source material and so essentially rewrote the story. However, they did a really bad job because modern storytellers feel compelled to do certain things which Robert Jordan did not. For example, a modern storyteller does not present heroes sacrificing anything for an abstract concept such as good or evil. Everything must be intensely personal. And you have to know what that intensely personal reason is. You're going to go on a long quest to achieve a thing? Nobody does that anymore, and so your fictional heroes can't do it either. No, they are compelled because of their own internal conflict which gets resolved in the story. Unfortunately, that is very opposite of what an epic narrative such as Jordans is all about. Bottom line, if you're not going to faithfully adapt a story that you don't believe in, make sure you could at least tell a good one on your own. This is like an epic fantasy adventure for people who don't like the genre.
The problem you describe explains why I dislike 90% of the movies I've seen in the past decade or so. The protagonists come off as petty, and they typically lay waste to everything around them chasing a self-centered goal.
"make sure you could at least tell a good one on your own" The problem is that this is the one thing they are incapable of doing, so have to undermine everyone else to shove their story in place of better ones.
I watched like 3 episodes really hoping to get into it. It really felt like forcefeeding myself the blandest food imaginable. I really don't understand people who give it anything higher than a perfectly average 5 or 6. I'm glad they can enjoy it, I just don't understand it.
Well, I think people who haven’t read the books can and do enjoy the show. I get what you’re saying cause I felt the same way about “Station Eleven”. I didn’t make it past the third episode. I just didn’t like the interpretation so I chose to stick with what I knew from the book and not watch the show. I hadn’t read any of the WOT books prior to the show but I’m now currently on LOC. For me b/c I watched the show first then started reading the books I don’t have a problem with the differences although there are many. I can still differentiate between the books and the show and enjoy it for what it is. 🤷♀️
@@Spiritandtruth4477 The show is bad and it has nothing to do with the books. There were 4 fake out deaths in ep 8 alone, even 90's fantasy was better.
That's not maybe Liam Neeson, that's Roose Boolton!! I love the chase scene where two normal humans are able to out run a pack of wolves for an extended period of time. But two tall lankier dudes get cornered by a 5 foot nothing girl in like 4 seconds, despite having a head start.
The scene where Morraine and Lan are fighting together came from a suggestion from Sanderson, which is why it shows more talent and care for Jordan's material than anything else in the show.
Frodo is not a Chosen One. He volunteers. He sacrifices his cozy life for something bigger than himself, that's what sets LOTR apart from "The Prophecies have long foretold your coming..." BS that inevitably leads to MarySueism that we are downing in right now. I can't take one more show with the line, "In time you will learn to control your powers..."
I appreciate your comment. Multiple times in the analysis here Frodo is mentioned as a 'chosen one', but the point of his character was that he was just an ordinary, small person who was willing to let himself get sacrificed to preserve the rest of the world.
@@maul42 Exactly, that's literally the whole point of the story. Frodo doesn't have any magic abilities, just a loyal gardener and a sense of duty. Unearned, poorly defined powers are the #1 biggest cliché that is ruining storytelling. We don't tell stories about teamwork and sacrifice and overcoming obstacles anymore. We just watch good-looking messiahs Mary-Sue their way through a plot for 90 minutes until they get the bad guy with their inherited superpowers.
Not only was Frodo not the choosen one. Sam becomes stronger. Frodo gets weaker, goes nuts, and the mission is ultimately carried out at the end, inadvertantly, by Gollum.
...except he absolutely can be read as a chosen one. It is alluded to fairly early on that Frodo was destined to be the one to carry the ring. Yes, he accepts the task... but it's also no accident that he, in particular, was in a position to do exactly that in the first place. Remember: both of Frodo's parents were killed, causing him to move to the Shire from Buckland and be adopted by his uncle Bilbo, with whom he shared a kinship for adventure and wanderlust. To say that Frodo - definitively - isn't a "chosen one" story is to deliberately overlook details provided in the story itself. If you've only seen the movie, you probably have a distorted view of the story, as it cuts out a LOT of detail and does only present Frodo's journey as a completely voluntary one.
@@OuroborosChoked the movie is trash. I've never been a fan of it. Sure, Frodo was chosen to be a ring bearer, but he wasn't "chosen" to win, defeat, or complete the mission. You aren't remembering the books right. He gives in at the end and the mission is completed by Gollum.
Yes finally someone’s being honest. Literally every other review try’s to say everything is just another interpretation but it’s not they literally destroyed everything that was good about the book.
@@inspectorjavert8443 they hate it for the wrong reasons lol. "OH no, they included gay people and people of color" made it really hare to criticize the show and not be lumped in with the "its too woke" crowd.
@@markfranzen5424 Race swapping characters that were clearly white in the series and adding homosexual characters (out of whole cloth, Moraine's relationship at least has some cannon support) when none were present is a legitimate reason to criticize an adaptation. If the opposite were done you know there'd be a justified uproar so why is it bad to criticize when the discrimination is against white/straight people?
I forgot how much I hate Nynaeve's reason for disliking Aes Sedai. As if the Tower would turn someone away for being a peasant. The show itself contradicts that narrative when it shows what life Siuan came from.
I don't know why this isn't discussed more often, but the biggest problem with the rewriting of the source material is that the untalented, yet arrogant, showrunners ignored the overall theme of the series. Throughout the series, this theme is frequently described, alluded to, stated outright, and often even relied upon by several plot points, but somehow still seems to be either a secret or unimportant to the show's producers. Simply stated, the overarching theme of the books is that the greatest human accomplishments require the input and cooperation of both men and women. This is an over-simplification, but women could only do certain types of female magic and men could only do certain other types of male magic. When they combine however, they can do far greater things together than they were capable of separately. It's kind of like a 'the whole is greater than the sum of its parts' sort of thing. IT'S ACTUALLY THE WHOLE POINT OF HAVING A DRAGON REBORN. The showrunners however, chose to throw all that out in favor of a very different - very slanted - worldview, which necessitated numerous changes. The changes didn't drive the worldview; the worldview drove the changes. Then, because they think they're brilliant, they changed a lot of other things to make the [perennially popular and massively successful] story more "interesting" at long last. Good thing they were there to finally make something worthwhile out of a book series that only sold over 90 million copies. Guess what? If you haven't written any bestsellers, then you shouldn't be rewriting any either.
Having women be dependent on men in any manner is mysoginist and overtly sexist duh. Haven't you been living in Western Civilization for the last 80 years? Men are, of course, incompetent and dependent on women however... This mirrors modern society exactly. If you haven't noticed, you've been delusional.
"Mat starts acting a dick for no reason." Yet another problem with the show. They didn't develop his character enough to know what he was like pre-dagger to really even notice his change of character.
Tbf I didn't notice there was anything weird with Mat on my first read either. I thought it was because of the shock of what happened that he started acting like that, didn't seem out of character to me. Only once it was revealed that he had the dagger with him I started finding his behaviour worrying and strange. That being said, the show definitely did it worse because they even had Mat be a brooding guy from the first episode because of his family problems so there was really no change of attitude for him in the show once he got the dagger.
The thing with the Oathrod scene that's bad is that the BAD GUY Elaida did what Siuan did in the show where she made Aes Sedai swear a fourth oath on the rod and it was considered a major scandal and more evidence that she was a meglamaniac. Of all the many MANY plotholes and worldbuilding issues in the TV show though, inexplicably cutting the scene where padan Fain is holding a keystone for the Ways is probably the biggest. IDK WTF happened in production that prevented the party from using a keystone to enter the ways vs using the one power.
You literally have verbalised my thoughts after having some time after watching. Halfway through the season I was starting to feel Stockholm syndrome. I wanted to love it but it just got more and more painful as the season went on.
yeah, it started okay, and i could often see what what the showrunners were trying to do, but I was more engaged on the level of comparing it to the books than I was able to appreciate it on its own terms... which is definitely a problem;
I just finished the audiobook of “The Dragon Reborn” and I’m on to “The Shadow Rising” (the audio versions of WOT are amazing and I highly recommend them, especially if you don’t have time to read the books). Having those first three books fresh in my mind makes many of these changes even more baffling and kind of heartbreaking. The Horn of Valere in Fal Dara? Thom “Glorified Side Character” Merrilin? Aes Sedai politics in Season 1? Who is the Dragon Reborn? Gee, I WONDER. I do appreciate the relationship between Lan and Nynaeve getting expanded upon, because the start of it in the books came out of nowhere but they end up being my favorite couple in the series. So I give the TV show points for that. But overall… the show’s a mess.
I'd suggest re-reading EotW if you think the show made their relationship any more of a "out of nowhere". In the books Lan develops a grudging respect for her, that turns into romantic feelings by Fal Dara and the trip into the Blight, but the reader is left to understand that alot of that must have come from the travel between the Whitecloak camp and Caemlyn. By the time they are into the Blight and camped at Malchier, their expressions of affection are ramped up heavily between both Lan and Nynaeve, which did feel like it was something that wasn't built as well. The show did little more to push the two of them together, and traded words of affection at Malchier for literally jumping into bed with each other at Fal Dara. The book at least kept them at arms' length from each other outside of expressing feelings. The show murdered Lan's character by showing him willing to sleep with Nynaeve (something that he would not do until after Moraine was gone in the books) and still say he can't be with her. He went from principled in the books to kinda scummy in the show. Though, whose character did the show NOT murder? Loial maybe, though him they ACTUALLY murdered.
@@totalldwarf640 Agree the last spate of Star Wars movies [sans Rogue One & Solo IMO] set the bar extremely low. I am wondering if the current generation of young people just don't have the attention span to take in a complex plot or depth of characters. My brother laments that his teen children have not watched the Lord of the Rings movies --they can't sit for more than 30 seconds...lose track of what's going on.
@@totalldwarf640 I actually was on board with him at the start. I always assumed most of the Borderlanders had Asian influences, so casting an stoic asian actor worked for me. The first few episodes I was ok with him and would have considered him one of the least offensive issues in the show. It wasn't until they made him wail and moan over another warder (Lan has seen countless people die and this was completely against his character) and having him sleep with Nynaeve while still saying he could never be with her which made him scummy. I'm not sure I'd say he is the worst character in the show, but as the season went on, he definitely got alot worse.
I’m convinced Game of Thrones is the modern day media Alexander the Great. It rose to incredible heights, conquered the world of media and then died suddenly in its youth, leaving the vast empire it created up for grabs. Now the squabbling Diadochi (every other fucking fantasy adaptation Amazon can get thier hands on) battle it out to try and recapture the magic of Game of Thrones.
Since George R.R. Martin was friends with Robert Jordan, it would be nice if he called Amazon out and said "You guys shouldn't try to turn his story into my series", but I guess he's too busy not finishing his book 🤣
One of the big changes that turned me off the show, besides everything that you mentioned - was the way that the showrunners decided to alter the nature of Saidar/Saidin; the contrast of how women and men used the power was a big part of the power dynamic and gutting that completely neutered the overall threat that the Dragon Reborn would have or any False Dragons like Logain. The fall to madness and inability to control the male half was also the core of why male channelers were feared and gave a bit more justification to the Red Ajah's crusade.
@@omaridavis8088 it's even worse, the whole point of letting free the dark one was so that men and women could use the same source of power... That was what they wanted to achieve.
I actually laughed out loud with the post-nut clarity comment revealing who the Dragon Reborn is haha I've read all the books twice and love WoT but this show is comically bad. Thanks for the video
Your explanation of how naive characters leads to seamless exposition struck a chord with me that I had never been able to put into words. The exposition dump at the start of the first tv show episode felt so different than the books and this sums up why so well. Great video sir
This is what I noticed too. I watched the first episode, read the book, then tried to go back to the show with questions on how they were going to portray certain things. It was so jarring to have them shove information in your face with seemingly no good reason, I assume just to get the plot out but while skipping parts they didn't want to/couldn't waste time filming.
I fully expected them to start every season with wind blowing into the start of a scene. Which is how every wheel of time book starts ignoring the preludes. Like why didn't they do that?
Thank god someone is doing an in - depth review and taking an objective look at the whole situations. One of my favorite book reviewer youtuber chalked the whole situation to - I loved it and if you disagree you are not really a true fan of the series.
@@rowan4371 sorry bro, let's just say that if you do a search for WoT book reviews, the first blonde young guy you see it's probably him. I am not sure who the OP is making reference off, but it is kind of the same opinion this guy had. Lost me completely. One can be a fan of something and also think a new product is trash. Like this show. This guy was also invited to the premier in London, so maybe a bit biased? No idea, but lost me right then and there.
@@gizzardgizzard3583 As long as they spend at least 2 episodes where all the screentime is Perrin calculating root 2 to at least 4 or 5000 decimal places, the show can be saved.
Maybe I'm alone in this, but I actually want the show to fail at this point. I hate what they've done to it, and I hope that one day someone else might be able to do it better
Not alone- I want bad things to fail financially so somebody finally is forced to learn. Seems not to happen with Star Trek (they keep rolling out the garbage,) maybe it can happen here.
I'm pretty sure that Siuan and Morraine was hinted as having a romantic relationship when they where novices in the books, something about pillowfriends I think, I can't be 100% sure though, been a long time.
Yes, and they would use a rare, priceless teleportation device - only as a means of hooking up, right? It was blatantly clear that the writers have zero knowledge of RJs world.
They did do some skinship, but never anything to point of hardcore scissoring Like a kiss, that's it, a single kiss when they were both high off of graduating to Aes Sedai
I don't understand the video. You didn't start with the history of cinema so I am a bit lost.
I’m just supposed to fill in the gaps from Early Cinema (1894-1904) to present day? I am still waiting for the 960-part 15 second essay on why SpongeBob is a great show.
Because there are no beginnings nor endings to the turning of cinema. But this was A shitty beginning.
Tbh, I found the lack of an explanation of how this show is a critique of capitalism to be the biggest problem with understanding the video.
@@Luinedhel That was flamin' good comment ya goat kisser !
Hey guys, today we're gonna talk about why The Wheel of Time failed.
Part 1: Early civilizations (4000 BCE)
"Vehicular manslaughter wouldn't make Sam a better character"
I'm sorry but I really need some character justification for why Sam didn't drive Frodo to Mordor on his Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution
The eagles took it.
There is a perfect reason to this: the Fellbeasts are known to drive monster trucks, which are capable of smashing regular vehicles.
Patriarchy
Sam doesn't have a driver's license.
Yeah, vehicular manslaughter would make Sam a time traveler or possibly even a multiverse traveler. Would have definitely added to the character.
Not including the prologue to *_The Eye of the World_* in the show means the whole mystery of "Who is the dragon reborn" falls completely flat, because no one watching is shown who or what a "dragon" even is. We are told they are dangerous, yes, but that is no where as effective as *showing* us how dangerous they are. The prologue needed to be the opening of the show in order to inform the viewer that the dragon is the most dangerous entity in this fictional universe and to make the viewer realize that finding the dragon reborn is very important.
@Loki Jaxson there’s side content? We talking like webisodes or what?
@Loki Jaxson Except those really nice and short episodes are canon to the books, but not to the show. Someone who didn't read the books and only watched the show will still be very confused. They mention saidin and saidar in the short lore videos and then act like the One Power is not split at all in the show. Lews Therin looks completely different in the first Origins episode than in the actual show. I recommend the shorts for the readers, but not for those who are trying to understand the show without reading the books, which you'd think it's the opposite of what you want from side content lore videos for the show.
@Loki Jaxson "They are really good though."
I think they're better than any of the actual episodes. At least they made me think, "oh, that's kinda interesting to some miniscule degree" once or twice.
I do agree they didn't do a good job of showing what the Dragon means in this universe (and well, I don't think they did a good job of getting this universe across to viewers in the the first place).
However, from the non-book readers who I know who watched the show (which amounts to like 5 people), all of them actually were pretty drawn into the mystery of who the Dragon is and it worked. From a book-reader perspective, it was a whatever, but from my small sample size, the show worked in that regards. My general impression is that non-book readers liked this show a lot more than book-readers, because book-readers know so much more of what this world really is, but the show did a good enough job of getting it across to non-book readers to get them invested.
There are 2 scenes that EotW NEEDS to set up the rest of the series, and they ignored both. You need the prologue with Lews having killed everybody he ever loved, and you need the climax with Rand swooping in at the eleventh hour and singlehandedly annihilating an army that otherwise would have overrun the all of Shienar and probably most of Cairhien and Andor.
For the rest of the series, every single interaction Rand has with anybody save the Aiel is framed by this idea that the Dragon is both the most terrifying person alive, and humanity's only hope. If you don't show us the reasons people feel that way, none of Rand's story is going to work.
The book starts with the perspective of the Two Rivers kids, and all these outsiders coming into their lives. We don’t trust them like Rand, Egwene and co do not trust them-and it works!
When Rand and Egwene argue and are overheard by Moiraine (about not trusting her), it’s uncomfortable BECAUSE we the readers don’t know if she is trustworthy.
In the book, Moiraine tells them, “The Dark One wants you, and I will kill you before I let him have you.” Doesn’t sound like a friend, does she? Yet all that is gone when WE know she is there to help and is trying to save the world!
The moment they chose to tell the story from Moiraine’s perspective, the whole thing fell apart.
That's one of my favorite things about the first few books. We realize later that what Moraine did was for their good and she couldn't explain everything.
I forgot about this pressure until you recounted it. Anyone could've been a dark friend. Truly felt different in the show. I guess that's why they had to add Perrin's dead "wife."
Yeah, if they wanted a mystery for the show, it could have been "what does this mysterious magic lady want, really, and is she a good guy or secretly a villain?"
@@calebmauer1751, 1000% agree. They managed to make a _far less_ compelling story than the original material.
@@calebmauer1751 Want mystery? Tar Valon itself is full of them. For the first book? WHY THEM? Why does Dark one want them, what makes them special? Because just being Ta'veren doesn't explain it, not until you undestand the trio way down the story. And then there's the darkfriend problem. Anyone can betray you, anyone can be DF. The suspense is there, no need for mystery.
Haven’t watched this show at all but I am definitely nodding and agreeing because you are wearing glasses
the glasses are the key to it all
@@ManCarryingThing do remember to keep them on when you inevitably make a 4 hour essay talking about the anti-capitalist themes in SpongeBob.
I was wondering why I agree with the guy despite me too not havent seen the show, but yeah, you called it. Its the glasses.
He looks earnest too
@@asafoetidajones8181 And as we all know, is it important to be Ernest.
The part of the aging up that gets me is Rafe said they did it to avoid being compared to a CW teen drama...and then injected all the nonexistent teen drama anyway with pumping up the 'Perrin has a thing for Egwene' thing that's maybe a couple paragraphs in the first book into a thing.
Holy shit that’s an apt point
I couldn’t pick what it was I just thought it was incompetence but yeah It’s weird the clash of expecting an aged up gritty story and getting teen drama that’s also just shitting on the source
That wasnt even a thing go bck an dissect the lines its a platonic love...like that of brother and sister nothi g more nothing less. Perrin is literally lotalty and loves all his people he consideres egwene as family because rand likes her and would accept another if mat had a gf too.
Man, that scene was so unnecessary its not even funny.
They take the situation with Mat being recast in the worst possible direction at every single turn.
I've seen some of the CW superhero stuff - they take prominent white male lead shows and wring them through a heavy feminist lens all whilst shoe horning diversity and inclusion with random non canon LGBT relationships and mass race swapping to create melodramatic utterly non-canon adaptations of said males often not even featuring that much in shows named after them to instead emphasise the female side cast with screen time and mass power ups galore (iris was made a speedster and led team flash at one point and Felicity was most Mary Sue character I've ever seen on tv as best hacker in world, CEO of Palmer tech with zero experience, cures paralysis and even nukes a town to save the world to no consequence even being forgiven by its only survivor lol).
This should could be more CW short of infamous trope of taking white red heads and making each and every single one of them black but then they've been accused of that with Aviendha so I guess they don't even get a pass on that lol. Otherwise it's all there - neutered male lead, random gay romance on screen, fan fiction romance and melodrama, race swapping, Mary Sues and naturally the show runners tell us they're super fans despite almost zero canon accuracy. It's a bad bad show - CW level bad yet on 100x the budget. There's no saving it now, only ones preening over season 2 are the weirdos on Twitter who writes often in all caps and "ship" characters or those wanting clicks as pre-existing WoT content creators wanting to piggy back extra interest via show (my heart goes out to them).
@@t.hussain921 +Are you kidding? That scene was one of the best! captured all of the emotions so well. Did you miss how connected Moiraine and Suan are?
They're trying so hard to create the next Game of Thrones, but Game of Thrones's secret to success was faithfully adapting the books. As soon as they started making big changes just for drama, the series sunk like a rock to the point that nobody will buy the DVD sets. Wheel of Time started in the dumpster and quickly set it on fire.
GOT didn't even sunk. Even when they ran out of source material, people still watched regardless and the ratings only increased. Even after the finale, GOT is still the best fantasy show and every streaming platform is failing to replicate that success. WOT has no excuse since it has a completed source material and a bigger budget than GOT.
The game of thrones was NOT FATHFULL TO THE BOOKS. Sorry for caps but perhaps you should read the books before you comment. If you have read the books then you know I am telling the truth.
@@bobh2581 Yet GOT has the excuse of incomplete source material, and even then it was way better than WOT lol
@@bobh2581 I have read the books and I know they made some changes. The books are more like political thrillers than big, dumb action movies. Season 1 was pretty much identical to the books. Season 2-4 got the main story beats. Seasons 5-8 went totally off the rails.
@@Yoursoulismine814 It went off rails when there was no more source material. It was pretty good up to that.
Which is actually understandable, since not even George seems able to finish the story he started, since he has been writting winds of winter for more 10 years and the release is nowhere in sight.
41:07 The whole Perrin among the Tinkers is opposite from the books. He’d already met a mentor named Elias and started on the path to become a Wolfbrother, and he was always wary of 100% pacifism because of his experience with Trollocs and other baddies. Sure he questions the white-hot rage when he fights, but he’s still ready to defend himself or others. He’s always been my favorite charachter and the way Rafe annihilated him is disgusting.
Lol… Thankyou I’m here after season 1 and I’m confused… I read these on the late 90’s to 2000’s so it’s been a while but I clearly remember the detailed Elias part. He let them “find” him at his campfire as they were lost and hungry.
Perrin is my favorite also. Let's be honest though Jordan didn't do Perrin justice either- he was left out of so many books. I do like the show adaptation to add the fact he killed his wife by accident. This makes more sense why he is hesitant to kill and has a hatred of his axe. I think Jordan was going more for a political view and metaphor of the Vietnam conflict in Perrin and his internal conflict- this would be difficult to display on screen so I thought that was an interesting choice. Overall I think the show is ok - I still think Perrin is good in the show on par with the books but he doesn't get the time in either the books or the show he deserves.
yeah, i believe he specifically says "if someone hit me, i would strike them back, because not doing so would be telling them i'm ok with them hitting me and they'll keep doing it" or something like that, he was making some baller points
The Wheel of Time had one FATAL flaw. It wasn’t Morbius, the best film in history, available now to see in theatres!
Morb on down to your local cinemaplex to experience Michael, the Living Vampire
@@pach6678 my name is Michael so I thought you were making a threat against me, if you dare move against me my plans will unfold and your mother shall be brought into the discussion
@@michaellolel9008 No I was talking about beloved cinema protagonist Michael Morbius
@@pach6678 you mean the best character in the history of cinema correct? 🤨
It was also woke PC garage
You keep referring to Frodo as a stereotypical "chosen one". I was under the impression that Frodo is in no way special aside from his being a Hobbit, making him naturally less susceptible to the corruption of The Ring because Hobbits are not as greedy as the other races. The entire point of both The Hobbit and LotR is that Bilbo and Frodo are simply Hobbits and are in no way superior to their peers. Sam carrying Frodo up Mount Doom is a blatant reminder to the reader that Frodo is flawed just as the other characters are, and his ultimate corruption as he enters the Cracks of Doom exemplifies the fact that Frodo was not predestined or chosen to be the Ring-Bearer that would destroy The Ring.
I noticed that too. Frodo isn't a chosen one trope--he's not even the main protagonist (according to Tolkien, it's Samwise). A better example of the chosen one trope would be Harry Potter.
@@templeofthesmilingjackalop9860 Tolkien said a lot of things about LotR that I would consider inherently untrue. He outright denied any amount of implicit meaning in all of his works, completely ignoring the impact his experiences in life had on his writing. On one hand it is frustrating to see an author blatantly ignore the depth of their own work, on the other it allows us to have conversations on the different ways we view his works. I also don't think Tolkien ever said that Sam was the protagonist, he simply said that Sam was the hero of the story. It's pretty obvious that LotR has no main protagonist throughout the entire book, which is fitting considering how the Red Book of Westmarch was written in universe. All of the writers and editors wrote themselves to be the main protagonist. Sam becomes the main protagonist of his and Frodo's story-line around when they enter Shelob's lair because Frodo suffered severe dissociation due to the burden of The Ring and likely could not recall what happened. The narrative shift from focusing on Frodo to focusing on Sam is a heavy handed reminder to the reader that Aragorns and Gandalfs do not have to be the heroes of every story. I would say that Sam is the hero of his and Frodo's story, I would not say that Sam is the protagonist of his and Frodo's story.
Either way though, Frodo is definitely not a chosen one.
@@ToomanyFrancis I think within the spiritual dimension of Tolkien's worldbuilding, there is an argument to be made that Frodo was divinely chosen to be the Ringbearer and that Providence/the unseen hand of Eru Illuvatar orchestrates the chain of events that leads him to become the Ringbearer, but I would also agree that he's not a traditional Chosen One in the same way that Luke Skywalker or Harry Potter are
@@ToomanyFrancis Wasn’t he uniquely suited to carry the Ring? I thought that even Sam couldn’t do it.
@@NarfiRef No
It is so weird that studios will make a big deal of and spend money on adapting existing stories, only to be ashamed of that material. The industry's inability to take risks on unknown or new IP really hurts their ability to tell stories
It's even bigger than that. Most of the studios don't bother a lot with these adaptations. Maybe the show will get significantly better in season 2, if it happens. Other than that, a lot of these studios don't know how to use the source material to adapt them or the writers are clueless to how they should adapt it. The wheel of time has 14 books and it should be split into 12 seasons or so to justify its length. 1 season should have 4 books.
If any one knows how to do good adaptations today, it's marvel. They adapt the specific comic book stories to make them better on film and even recreate some of the famous scenes in comics( Thor Love and thunder Falligar the behemoth, it's the best one yet and it's gorgeous). Even more so, that they have adapted one of the most reviled spider man stories into one of the best ones( No way home). It's how adaptation should be done and a necessary lesson for storytelling if you want to adapt.
Even Moon knight has a good consistent pilot( and plot) and makes you care for steven grant, an imaginary personality made by marc under traumatic stress. Cgi is shaky but i really like the acting and screenwriting in it.
@@avanishdutta2658 As Normtrooper said though, they don't take risks on NEW IP. Marvel had to work it's way up to it's present level of creative freedom. They've been making movies and shows about Marvel properties for a long time and it's proven to be a near-guaranteed money maker, that's why it gets all the leeway. The issue is studios are too risk averse to allow creative freedom for something new to the screen like Wheel of Time. Although who knows if that was even an issue for the show.
The thing is, you really can't just adapt the book line by line to a screenplay. Just imagine all the endless luggage scenes in the latter books! Adaptation is a necessity.
Unfortunately whoever adapted the WOT into a TV show seems to have very little love for the source material, failing to capture the spirit of the show. They even missed the dichotomy of the male and female powers, which was an _important_ plot point. It wasn't even that one was more powerful than the other, but that they were _different._ One of the later books has Rand and Nynaeve linking and the latter discovers to her horror that male weaving was like fighting a storm.
@@avanishdutta2658 hell no. Sorry dude, as a comic nerd growing up. The mcu are decent films, but have nothing to do with the comic stories. Names only. Iron man was the best, everything else was a let down.
Thor is the worst, its just Hemsworth in cosplay. Thor in the comics is a bad ass, mcu Thor is an insult. Now, instead a Beta Ray, we get jane foster, a selfish character everybody hated. Now sony makes a nostalgia bate that wasnt very good, but had characters people love, the old spidermen and their villians. Now its time for "the message" with more awful characters.
@@ardendragoon Marvel comics always had "Messages" and social/political commentary. You can't complain about the movies doing stuff the comics always did.
And those old Spider-Men movies were hardly any truer to the comics than the MCU, by your own logic.
horses are actually very good at finding their own way home ;) in fact, it's actually kind of a pain in the ass to train some trail horses because if they don't feel like sticking around by your side once you've gotten off, you have to do the walk of shame back home, too
My favorite saying about this show is “Them not knowing who the chosen one is, is like the Catholic Church not knowing who Jesus is.”
Reading this on Good Friday no less, is epic af 😂 😭 best. Quote. Ever.
They didn’t even know whether Jesus was a boy or girl.
"Vehicular Manslaughter wouldn't make Sam a better character" is an incredible quote thanks
Vehicular manslaughter wouldn't make Sam a better character but it would make LOTR a lot more interesting.
@West Virginia Gluten Free Pepperoni Roll I think you mean the voice of Simba.
Im just gonna say it. Amazon - adapting Lotr and WoT. Showcases Amazon cannot make Fantasy Series. Period.
@@somerandomchannel382 Vox Machina
@@Dante1864 That's Matt Mercer's baby; the problem isn't an Amazon problem, I suspect that 90% of Directors are merely incompetent with respect to High Fantasy. Now... there aren't many people in the world who are MORE competent with respect to High Fantasy than Matt Mercer and his crew.
"We have 7 hours to cover a 600+ page book."
"Let's add in some bad fanfiction, throw in chunks of the second book, try to convince people that the books weren't worth reading via how badly we execute this, and if we're lucky, the series will be cancelled before our severing threads vital for future plotlines bites us in the rear."
Bad fanfiction is the best way to describe this show.
@@RocketeerAndRoll Not really, fan fiction while usually bad is at least the labor of fans, a word I wouldn't use to describe the people involved in this show.
It's fine, any lingering plot threads can just have some Balefire dumped on them until the story only resembles the books by the location names, or it ceases existing altogether
Brandon Sanderson and Robert Jordan's wife are both in charge of the show. I think a lot of the changes they made will make sense later, and some of them make sense now. They have to cut corners and speed things up. You can't deny that. And they CERTAINLY can't cleanly follow the books and have a season for each book and have it match up perfectly.
@@connorgregory5625 but what happens if we are wheeling around time and such and they end up doing a "Game of Thrones", where the show's wheel is moving faster than the book's wheel and then they have to make up an eighth season that (just like GoT did) disappoints everybody because it creates a divergence in time where the plot in the show's ending sucks and the book ending is more based on tastes, but in either case, being that GoT is a historically accurate book, now history will be wrong in one of the timelines!
I really think JJ Abrams has a lot to answer for when it comes to modern TV and film storytelling with his whole “mystery box” schtick.
if anything the people that created JJ Abrams and keep employing him are the cultural criminals of this age.
they should not be walking free.
Tropes and storytelling devices aren't inherently bad. I haven't seen this show, but judging from this video alone, there's more wrong with it than just a poor attempt at an Abrams-esque mystery box.
The mystery box Schlick is good if it has payoff. Unfortunately the most common use is ‘oh look a cool mystery’ which is never addressed again
@@MarK-tf4hp that's because writing mystery boxes is easy. Revealing what the actual mystery is hard, especially if you want it to be satisfying.
That's a good way to put it. The literary trope is easy enough to accomplish, but giving it substance is not so much.
It's like writing an action scene, you can just have a choreographer come in and make something cool or you could spend hours and hours writing a meaningful action scene where you can genuinely say the scene couldn't just be removed without impacting the characters and story.
The tropes are cool and can definitely add a lot to the story, the problem is more when people start using them without thinking about why or how they were used originally
Corenni and Steppen are a symptom of a massive problem that plagues pretty much every fantasy adaptation. The writers don't want to write an adaptation. They want to write their own story but this adaptation is what they've been hired to work on. So what's the compromise? They just write their own story anyway and disguise it as an adaptation when in reality there is little to no attempt to actually follow the source material. The Witcher show is absolutely infested with this problem.
Look, I sympathise with writers out there who want to strike out on their own, but can't because exposure is often more important than their individual skill and effort. I'm an aspiring writer too. I get it. But that *DOES NOT* give you the excuse to just hijack someone else's work for your own purposes. And these changes are so often (not always) extremely damaging to the overall story, and the writers get incredibly angry and defensive when criticised because they think their changes are improvements. It's sheer fucking arrogance. Nothing more.
Add to that for the last 5 years or so creative types have been so deathly afraid of offending anyone that they take no risks and produce a bland and boring product. If your first thought when creating something isn't "will this be interesting and engaging" but instead is "will I be attacked on Twitter for not 100% adhering to their narrative", then creativity is crushed.
I so wanted to like that show as I am a huge WOT fun. However, it turns out to be a bloated funfic; if only the author posessed a modicum of RJ writing talent or imagination...but, alas, he does not. I guess, it can be called "inspired by" instead of "adaptation of"?
The Witcher show writing is fine and captures the essence of the world of the Witcher for the most part. More shows like the Witcher should be acknowledged for their effort. Shows like Wheel of Time, Halo, and soon to be Rings of Power should be shamed for their greed and complete lack of regard for the source material. Lauren Hissrich has done an admiral job. The Witcher is not the show to use as an example.
@@AntiLordblue Sorry but you are just wrong. The majority of Season 2 had nothing to do with the storyline from the books. That's not up to your opinion. Season 1 was okay for the most part.
@@AntiLordblue The thing that gets me is that we have plenty of evidence that respecting the source material is the path to success. E.g. Peter Jackson made a particular point to respect the source materials and as a result the LOTR movies were wildly successful. So people can clearly see this is the correct approach, it's not like they're flailing in the dark here. It's almost like the people creating these new series are trying to fail. It's baffling.
The issue with Rand and Egwene, is that they took Rand's main motivation of being torn from his roots (Dad not dad, being forced to leave the TR, learning he can channel, learning he is TDR), and are replacing it with "why don't you want me".
He isn't mad at egwene for her wanting to be AS, not really. He is mad at her for willingly leaving her TR self behind, while he is forced to. He also wants to keep her safe.
Instead, they replace it with "I am a jaded dickhead". And then forces us to watch it play put 10 more times.
Great.
Rand's interactions with Egwene in TEotW are pretty awkward and dumb. The show stayed true to that while aging their issues up. I didn't have any problems with this, really, but that's just my opinion.
EXACTLY! I got so mad when they showed the Tam fever dream stuff finally at the end of the season. I was already frustrated that they cut out the core of Rand's character arc for the early series. Finding out that they remembered it, but willfully ignored it in favor of some Degrassi tier bullshittery was a kick to the balls.
@@rhodie9338 it was a terrible reveal to a bad mystery. Real shame they went that route.
@@EtchTheGetch not dumb, naive. He thinks he may be a male channeler pretty early in the book, but even before that, Egwene seems to be jumping to become an AS, as Critical said. That means she would leave forever in his eyes (no matter the story Moiraine told all the villagers). So, once he knows he is potentially the Dragon, he naively assumes that all Aes Sedai will want to gentle him and Egwene wants to join them, she would become the enemy.
@@EtchTheGetch pretty much nails the teenage drama on the head.
I liked your 4-hour essays more when they were 20-60 seconds.
But I'm very interested to hear your take on this. I'm even more interested to hear comparisons to Morbius and your view on should I watch Wheel of Time Season 1 or Morbius 5 times in a row.
Morbius greatest movie in the world 🇧🇬💪💪💪💪!!!! 574 morbillion tickets sold.
You may enjoy A Discovery of Witches. Watched it twice. Just to take advantage of the free week to get the last season. 🤦♀️
“TIME TO MORB!”- Morbius
Only one of those have made over a morbilion dollars on the box office on the first weekend alone and it wasn't the wheel of time
wheel of torbius
The frustrating part about the mystery surrounding who the Dragon Reborn is in the show is that a similar mystery is sort of already outlined in the first book. When Moiraine tells the party that the Dark One is looking for a boy the same age as Rand, Matt, and Perrin, all three are worried it might be them at some point. Matt is almost convinced at a certain point. Even by the end of the first book, Rand hasn't entirely put two and two together. He knows he can channel, but the realization that he's doomed to the Dragon's fate doesn't hit him until the start of the second.
My point is, there was a perfectly good way for the showrunners to introduce mystery surrounding the identity of the Dragon, but they decided to throw out the world's rules and do their own thing.
Well that’s simply because they wanted to run with the whole narrative that the dragon could be a boy a girl, non-binary, a thing… lol no, in the books the dragon was most obviously going to be a male. 🤦🏾♂️
The real core of it is that they thought that they could rewrite significant parts of the story while at the same time banking on readers already having read the books and so understanding what's going on. How on Earth does the mystery of the identity of the Dragon work for non-readers? The flashback reveal of Rand's parentage has no meaning to them! They never mention any of the details of the prophecy that make that a confirmation. That really breaks the premise that they made central to the season.
Agreed. This show didn't know what the fuck it was doing. It claimed to be altered for people new to wheel of time, yet showed multiple scenes with absolutely no context whatsoever like you were meant to understand them all.
I've not read any of the books. I assumed they were going for a "they are ALL the dragon reborn" ending, and when Rand'al was so certain, I assumed it was a fakeout. I also though Mat staying behind was a huge plot point if they're ALL the Dragon reborn, and are all needed to seal The Dark one.
Turns out no.
nice try , but you missed the point ! the real core of the failure is their making it pc and woke !
do they explain in the show why it matters who is the dragonborn whatever?
As a reader, I was beginning to fear that Rand wasn't actually the Dragon at some point lmfao.
A high up executive at Amazon said to another lower executive "Make me a Game Of Thrones because GOT made a ton of money." They googled "fantasy books series like game of thrones" and found a popular series with a big existing fanbase that hadn't already been adapted and was completed. The showrunners and scriptwriters were hired to make the show. The motivation behind the show was never someone who liked the books. Because it wasn't a passion project they obviously decided to save money wherever possible. I believe a calculation was made on how faithful to be to the source material based upon keeping the existing book fans watching, balanced with pleasing new audiences, and this balancing act has lost a lot of what made the books so popular. Taking all that into account, they made a budget lackluster show. Fans of the books want something unbelievably amazing to match up with their opinions of the books, which it definitely isn't, and non book readers want something decent to watch. It's neither. Just disappointment.
Definitely. What puzzles me is, ok maybe an executive just googled fantasy books to adapt… why didnt they look for good writers who were also passionate fans?
@@esdraslopez4658 Because good passionate writers cost more money and usually are not 100% compliant when creative differences emerge. So, why pay more and risk confrontation when you have in-house generic writers that will do whatever you tell them to do for their low-tier paycheck?
I don't think anyone at Amazon expected Wheel of Time to make as much money as GoT. Firstly, HBO put a LOT more money into GoT than Amazon did Wheel of Time. I think its more that streaming services are desperate for content and they're just pumping out content to compete with other streaming services like its an arms race.
Its quantity over quality.
I mean Disney has so many IPs locked up they can create endless content. Netflix, at the time Wheel of Time was announced, was making so much money they could create endless content. Apple were ramping up their production. So Amazon responded.
This is what happens when Nepotism replaces Competence.
I wouldn't call 90mil a budget show. That is almost as much as GoT had.
Besides, WoT is just not as good as ASOIF. It is more in the league of Eragon, even though it is a little better.
Frodo and Bilbo Baggins weren’t chosen ones. The whole point of using Hobbits as his main characters was to show that even in a world where you’re the smallest and weakest you can defeat great evil with courage and determination. A chosen one would be if Frodo were the only person in the world capable of resisting the ring’s influence because of some magical heritage. That’s definitely not the case.
I had the same reaction. The ring had a hard time corrupting frodo and bilbo because they had no desire for power. if say the farmer hobbit got the ring he would have used the mighty and terrible power of the ring to grow better cabbages. Frodo had the ring in his pocket for like 20 ish years and he did nothing with it.
Isn't Frodo predisposed to be one of the only people in the world capable of carrying the ring because he's a hobbit? And Gandalf chose him because he was the least likely hobbit to be corrupted by power in the shire? Been some time since I read the books, I may be wrong but that's what I seem to remember
Bilbo is definitely a rare breed; a person who truly never craved power of any sort. And it was even difficult for him to give it up. But I don’t think it has anything to do with him being a hobbit or being Sauron’s long lost son or some other chosen one cliché, just him being a humble guy. The ring corrupted Sméagol and Frodo who were both Hobbits.
@Philip Gregory Yeah these people are wrong. Frodo WAS the chosen one. Just because he didn't posses any supernatural powers, doesn't make him any less of a main character. Just what the council needed and when it needed it the most.
and see, that's where WOT could've been great from the beginning. Spoiler alert, but Rand especially and the group are fucking traumatized throughout by this "chosen one" prophecy, and it works directly in the dark one's favor. By the middle of the series Rand feels less and less human within his own body, unable to control or change his fate other than a suicidal final battle. He sees himself literally stuck just like Lews Therin.
I'm also very disappointed they didn't add the Lews Therin chapter that's at the very beginning of Book 1. That was such a compelling chapter because here's is the guy who according to legend won an astounding victory against the Dark One, but when you're reading it it really doesn't seem like a victory at all . and even now at the tail end of Book 3 I'm extremely curious about what truly happened during the Madness
Oooooh. Is this your first time reading? There is darkness in your future, and cool swords!! 😂 Don't give up when it gets slow. I recommend an audio book if you're having a hard time. ❤
@@yurmomsaccount I’m reading for the first time and read to book three. What book do you think I should read to before I watch season two? Also I love cool swords so hopefully we get those in the tv show…
@@memeszorp5740 I know you did not ask me, but I would recommend just going forward with reading the books in general. The TV-series is quite far removed from the story told in the books.
The flashes and hints we get of the past are some of the most interesting parts of the series. And they removed a big one which is just sad. It's not the best one ofc but still.
As for what truly happened during the time of madness I mean you already know what happened from the 1st book. Malw Aes Sedai went crazy and killed everyone and wrecked everything. I think Lews Therin and his hundred companions went crazy almost immediately although I'm not sure, that's just a theory. Others would have taken time as there's evidence of male Aes Sedai being active and helping during the time of madness
I loved the first bit. It would have been a bit confusing but that would have been easily solved by some moiraine or village person monologue.
Have I read The Wheel of Time? No.
Have I watched the Amazon show? No.
Am I going to watch this video in one sitting? Absolutely
Obviously, I'm legally bound to encourage you to read the books. We have three different subreddits!
@@Sarsenwood And I'm morally bound to second that encouragement. Seriously, the books are amazing and have very deep and intricate world building.
The books are great.
@@Lttlemoi Oh wow worldbuilding? Oh my gosh that's so cool. I love how every fantasy book nowadays is about complex, thorough, neverending worldbuilding as opposed to great plot and characters. Yay!
@@lukebatchelor717 don’t worry that also have great characters
1:14:30 one of the things I hate most about the show is how they utterly failed to make being the Dragon something nobody wants. Far from being second to literal evil incarnate as far as the population is concerned, Moiraine announces that one of them is the Dragon in the first episode to...no response. Even male channelers are neutered in how they're presented in the show, as a perfectly manageable threat for the White Tower. All the male channelers are shut down fairly easily, Logain fights 3 Aes Sedai but we don't really know if that means anything because multiple Aes Sedai die fighting a couple of brigands outside.
« A couple of Aes Sedai die fighting a couple of brigands »… but a couple of untrained ( but poweful) girls and some generic channelers wipe out one of the worst Trollocs/Fades attack Shienar has ever faced…
@@ericsimard5889 2 powerful. The rest were rejected from the Tower, according to them.
@@ericsimard5889 c
Exactly... there is a mythos and legend...everybody knows about the breaking.... the Forsaken are used to scare little kids into eating their dinner. They know that the dragon broke the world... he did not just drop it and put a crack in it... oceans were elevated to the level of mountains...and mountains fell into the oceans. It took thousands of years to crawl back to where they are... so everybody...every culture...has cultural or genetic memories of this horrendous "breaking" event. Much like Noah and the Arc, it is built into every culture. And yes... I think if a small town got stirred up that a townsperson was the Dragon Reborn... i think that they could murder that person.... serious stuff. "Dude, your ass could be the Dragon Reborn.!" .... "Wow, like really?" To be honest there is so much history that has to be revealed as set up... but as pointed out in the video... ALL THE LORE DID NOT NEED TO BE SETUP IN THE FIRST SEASON. The good part of when your favorite book series gets made into a series... is that it is made into a series. That bad part is that the writers feel that they know best.... and of course their bosses pull their strings. I just don't know how so much could go wrong with Robert Jordan's wife approving everything. Well, maybe she got the technicality right... but she should have put her foot down. If you cannot do better than 30% of what the book was... perhaps it would be better if the Amazon team put it away and let somebody else do it.
Jordan was pretty specific about this; he did an interview talking about it. He wanted to write the chosen hero story but didn't believe that people would just go along with it because someone else said they had too. Rand throughout the books says over and over that he didn't ask for it, and in the first two books even tires to leave on several occasions only to be dragged back in because of concern for his friends (usually Matt and things related to the dagger) or because he is quite literally locked in the city.
I can't remember the last time I saw a tv or movie adaptation that quite literally went out of its way to disrespect the source material. I knew Wheel of Time was going to be bad, just not THIS bad.
*cough* The Nightwatch *cough*
@@jezackr3500 that's a whole other can of worms
It's like Rafe Judkins got bullied by someone who was a huge WoT fan and this is the culmination of an improbable, long-con revenge scheme.
@@Degarth LOL that's an interesting theory. Nerdy WoT fans bullying other kids for being into lesser fantasy series(probably Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series or something), so now little Rafe gets his revenge. He really seems to be taking it out on the male characters in particular.
In the books, Lan Mandragoran is depicted as a paragon of masculinity and in the show Lan is depicted as.....well......not.
@@robwalsh9843 Ngl, kinda was a fan of Dragonriders of Pern too, not just WoT.
Though GOD they'd fuck up Pern if they made an adaptation...
Dude, you're being nice, and I can appreciate that, I guess. I absolutely hated everything they did. Talentless hacks taking on a 15 book series they had no business even TRYING to make. Luckily they ruined it really quickly instead of dragging it out for 8 seasons like some other show.
it's greenlit for a second season, so they got another chance to sodomise the series
@@dihyaneverforget5163 it's greenlit for a third 😂
he is simply being fair not nice. you are simply emotinally biased probably cuz you love the books
@@riynu7774 i've never read the books and the show looks like complete shit. Everything about it looks bad.
You talking about the vampire diaries or somthing?
16:50 - It was SO irritating. I understand that you were making analysis of show separate from the books, but in the books majority of Aes Sedai come from poor families, with Amerlyn at that point being a poor fisherman's daughter (which is the same in the show). And suddenly they turned away somebody because of ragged clothes - my BS meter hit the ceiling at this moment.
I felt that was the writers simply being unable to keep their politically reflexive "noble poor person done wrong by rich people in power" trope out of the story.
Every scene had that much BS. They couldn't go sixty seconds without adding or rewriting absurdity in.
The majority of Aes Sedai didn’t come from “poor” families. Moraine for example, has noble blood, and Elayne is a princess. In fact, the reason why the fact that the Amirlyn Seat was a poor fisherman’s daughter is the fact that she became the Amirlyn Seat despite having such a lowly background.
@@submandave1125 never picked up on that, but you're kinda right, the Aes Sedai are super accepting of women from all across the land, and they actively WANT to foster powerful Aes Sedai
@@TheLouHam yes but the Aes Sedai don't have a class superiority complex, they're humble and actively want to foster strong Aes Sedai.
Minus the Red, but they're a different story, and aren't reflective of the entirety of Aes Sedai.
The reoccurring Brandon Sanderson/Brendan Fraser joke literally made me break this time.
@THIS After the fourth time seeing this, I’m thinking, yeah nah. 😬👎
@@christinearmington But he/she/it never replies to anyone's doubts - they're so mysterious and alluring...Maybe I'll click the link today...
I lost it 😂
I was wandering why almost nobody in the comment section was pointing that out. First time here, came here from Knights Watch and I almost wrote an according comment. Almost.
@@AntonVeliTajan it’s a reoccurring joke in his videos. Every time he says Brandon Sanderson he posts an accompanying photo of Brendan Fraser. I forget it sometimes and then it happens again and it makes me chuckle.
56:30 or so - There was a detail that really bugged me in the courtroom scene. At one point, an Aes Seddai is asked how long it's been since she "took the shawl." If they didn't mention it, I'd have been more forgiving, but the only shawl in the room is on the Amerlyn Seat. None of the Aes Seddai are wearing their shawls. Nothing about shawls has been mentioned before now. This very formal occasion in the Hall would have had EVERY Aes Seddai present wearing her shawl, but none of them are. Again, if the dialogue hadn't mentioned them, I'd have let that pass, but what was the costuming department thinking!? What were the directors thinking!?
Just one of the almost endless examples of outright lazy, amateurish, and sloppy writing. The title of the show should be TheWheel of What Were They Thinking. Probably the most agregeous example in the whole season is the episode 3 dark friend scene where she reveals herself and attacks them. I have never seen a scene in cinima with so much wrong with it from beginning to end. A total illogical nonsensical absurdity. You could do a 1 hour analysis and breakdown for just that one scene alone.
@@Dave3Dman not just the writers - the director, cinamatographer, and continunity... all of them.
@@Dave3Dman I would actually be interested in that analysis. I think my brain was sufficiently turned off and my soul sufficiently numbed to miss whatever you saw there. (I remember it being sudden and such, with a bit of a hint of "oh, right, we need to hit this plot point," but it didn't stand out to me.)
@@segevstormlord3713 Definitely worth a rewatch of just that scene with full focus to experience the multiple levels of unfathomable absurdity.
They did Thom so very dirty. And... why? He's the character who actually has a reason to give you random exposition about history and stories and songs!
+10 to the writers caring more about Stepin than the adapted characters.
Thom was also a positive male role model who offered a counterpoint to Moiraine. And he was her actual love interest.
Two things these showrunners couldn't have in their fanfiction version of WoT.
Well he had to step-in to so they could kill someone. You know.... That's what these writers think makes a good story, characters dying. Like In GOT. Get it Stepin had to step in to die so we understand our characters could die at any moment.
@@IamVendelI'd forgotten Thom was Moiraine's love interest! That... was, now that you mention it, a cool element to the story, and it being removed in favor of a shallow "girls can't be friends without being lesbians!" is really irritating.
Good point. He would be a mean, colorful Exposition machine in a very natural way and also help to develop all characters, from the Two Rivers folk to Moiraine as well as help to develop the Two Rivers folk as a fatherly character who we at the same time kind of feel may be too good to be true and maybe a darkfriend or even Forsaken. THAT would have been so good and increased the tension!
Like.. "Thom... how come you know so much about the Power and channeling...?"
The scene where Rand first channels lightning was fucking amazing in the books. In this scene, he's trapped in a room with one random girl. Now I don't mean to sound sexist, but unless she knew how to use that sword (which wasn't shown) then all Rand has to do is pick up the nearest stool, injure her, and afterward figure out a way to get past the... malicious door.
In the books, Rand and Matt are stuck in a room together and there's like 10 men *outside.* Their leader has admitted to being a darkfriend and there is nowhere to go. Rand and Matt are completely, unequivocally, fucked. And the darkfriends are breaking down the door. As he starts to panic, it's like Rand is losing control of his senses. And the door keeps going crash, crash, crash as they try to break it down. And right as they are about to break it down, something is clearly wrong with Rand and *BOOM.* A fucking lightning bolt comes down nearly killing everyone there and creating a huge hole in the wall for the pair to escape. It was so powerful that Matt was blind for days. And up to this point we hadn't seen any character channel that much.
This comment makes me sad for what could have been
I remember the second book but what scene are you talking about with the girl in the first paragraph?
@@oluade626 Yeah, that confused me too - he's referring to the scene in the show, not the book.
@@oluade626 Sorry yeah I was comparing the show version to book version.
@@LordLucless in the book there is a dark friend woman that tries to kill them. She has a dagger, that when they drop it in the bucket starts to hiss and steam. They tie her up and leave her. It’s the first time you see the hesitancy to harm women.
What stinks about all of this is that we’re going to get fewer fantasy adaptations as a result of these failures.
They will refuse to recognize why the series fail and chalk it up to some inherent flaw of fantasy.
It is not that hard to make a good fantasy adaptation. Just adhere to the story.
Don’t alter it and then blame the failure on the genre of fantasy. Which is inevitable at this point.
Studios like to blame fans rather than the genre. "oh I changed the very essence of the story that you've read over and over and over and have come to love, the very story that inspired you to become a writer because I have a political agenda that I NEED to insert and your mad about it? yOuR tOxIc!"
Something similar happened in the late 70s /early 80s, with Sci Fi. There was so much crap made, trying to capture a piece of Star Wars. Eventually, things calmed down. People thought Sci Fi would never recover, but it did. My fear is how long it will take to return and what awesome franchises will be destroyed along the way.
@@CmogVT agreed. It’s not their fault, it’s ours. Even while they’re the ones who failed to make a faithful adaptation.
I just don’t understand, from a monetary standpoint, why a studio would alter the story knowing it is likely to alienate the fan base.
They bought the rights in large part bc of the built in fan base. And then proceed to alienate the very reason the franchise was bought in the first place.
What I hope happens is that the studio execs clamp down on all of this. They are all still answerable to the shareholders. So if the execs keep letting political agendas steer the horse, and the inevitable results are poor profit margins, then it’s their head on the block.
So far, it’s woke writers, directors and producers steering this ship. But when they fail, the execs are going to have to rethink things or they’ll be gone.
Which is why it’s imperative we boycott the dribble coming out.
Yes dude, it is the EVIL "wokes" that has infultrated all levels of the studio machine, ruining these adaptions with their secret, malicious intentions of putting a black person on screen Lmfao
Just one step away from blaming the Jews....
No, they do what they all do. Blame the fans.
The mystery of the dragon reborn in this show is like a “who dunnit” without knowing the crime committed. Was it a murder, arson or theft, nobody knows. This creates two problems for the audience, one, they have no idea what the significance of the “Dragon Reborn” is, and so why should they care. Two, any clues given as to who the Dragon is meaningless. To go back to the “who dunnit” analogy, matchsticks would be a significant clue(or red herring) in the case of arson, but if the crime was theft then it’s irrelevant. Mysteries need to feel possible to solve otherwise there is no reason to engage with them
I never read the books and completely agree with you. Who is the dragon is obviously like the "ring" in Tolkien but in LOTR they explained Frodo had to do it as anyone else is corrupted by it. Here? They really do not explain what the dragon is and how they are supposed to solve everything. LOTR also had a short prologue that shown the original battle when Sauron lost it and what happened. Like, what does it mean when an age falls here? Everyone dies? They are at medieval technology so it is not like they can go backwards much more..so what is the risk? Everyone enslaved? How? What does that mean? Also, I did not like everyone in that small village having "some" powers. They might as well put up a billboard saying two rivers, home to potential dragons!
I think the biggest crime is how much it breaks the lore. Like seriously this was a dumb decision with no thought put into it....
@@bobross1829 yeah, they blew it. You should read the books if thats your thing but you shouldn't need to in order to understand the damn show.
We only really know details about one age falling in the books but, as the name suggests, time is cyclical so it could have happened a hundred times. What was significant about the most recent fall is that it wasn't due to the dark ones hand directly but through his tainting of Saidin, male channelers went insane and the breaking of the world was their work. Essentially an apocalypse scenario with very few survivors and thats where the books open, mid apocalypse.
When we come into the head of our main man Rand, it's thousands of years later and more of a Renaissance era in my opinion but its post-apocalyptic too. Weird vibes the show doesn't convey well. So the dark ones been sealed away all this time but its seal is weakening and as it does the Wheel weaves a new Dragon into the pattern. The Dragon Reborn is the most powerful male channeler and the strongest Ta'veren but the show does a pretty shit job at explaining what that even is too.
Ta'veren are basically people playing with cheat codes. Inexplicable shit just happens around them, good and bad. The 3 boys are all powerful Ta'veren and the girls are some of the strongest channelers in millenia because of Rand. He has an unconscious affect on everything around him or its more appropriate to say the pattern weaves itself around him in a way to set him up for success in the last battle. Later in the books we see the more direct affect this actually has on Mat and Perrin but shit, I dont wanna ruin too much in case you do want to read them.
@@fenixchief7 Reading the books will not help you understand the show. Too much has been changed for the show to be connected to the world the books gave us
The show screwed up. They needed to make the book 1 prologue be the first thing people saw. I think the issue is that the prologue inspired so many copycats that it might feel generic; It occurs 3000 years in the past and it is not explicitly moving the plot forward... but it was absolutely necessary. It sets up the desperation of the survivors and the feeling that humanity is trying to recover from a cataclysmic event that is still ongoing. It sets up the scale of the magick system's potential and the horrifying damage it can do. And it shows why no one would want to be the Dragon Reborn.
16:30 Jordan is very explicit that the White Tower takes ANY woman who has some strength in the Power, and even if they’re too week to do more than light a candle they still train them to bind them to the Aes Sedai. The Amyrlin Seat was a fisherman’s daughter, for Pete’s sake. They just wanted to add class drama because it’s trendy. Just BS on top of BS that makes a weaker story.
If I remember right even if the girl is too weak to do anything substantial with the power, they still train her so she doesn't end up killing herself trying to channel
There was still class division in the Tower but it was based on who could channel more power rather than wealth or social standing.
What killed the show for me was "we don't know who he or she is, but the dragon is reborn." These books have a heavy theme of the problems that arise when equal but opposite forces work against each other rather than in synchronicity. Notice how many times someone says "urgh, MEN" or "urgh WOMEN". Everything has an equal and opposite force, even the evil of Shadar Logoth was like antimatter to the taint on the one power. Rand was finally able to understand that he can't and SHOULDN'T be everything for everyone all the time. The dragon is a male channeler born into a world where women have be the defacto Federal government for hundreds of years. Balance.
Now that is the way to explain the men vs women.
Because studios are trying to capture the "everyone can be a winner" generation, wich is a good message but is a terrible bending of the source material and I'm absolutely sure that the original plan ( might have changed since reception have been sub-par) was to build at least one female channeler into the resolution of the dragon plot to "combine" both magic so that the patriarchy don't win again because:
A- white dudes are now deliberately sidelined in Hollywood, which is not a problem in itself since they've been in everything but it's the "retcon" or the deconstruction of past characters that poses a problem... already established characters are stripped of their characteristics and accomplishments to accommodate the new redistribution of those feats and attributes to other existing or inserted ones so that the female audience that didn't read the books feels represented because they're a huge slice of the money pie and all of this is done by TV WRITERS constantly eyed by meddling studio executives who never reads anything but charts, projections and stocks trying to dumb down the lifes work of a talented book writer.
B- there's no B.... I've stop watching that shitty PR exercise and fuk that union busting, tax avoiding, lobbying against social interests amazon corporation.
How did they manage to kill a story which emplified the best of the feminism, multicultural and travel broadens the mind and is good and pretty manage to kill it by black and white views and managing to be too 'woke'. It's like the writers have the depth, vision and life experience of a shallow muddy puddle.
That line was an outright rejection of the very core of the mythology and sends ripples out to literally every aspect of the books... all by itself it irrevocably makes this show intrinsically and vastly different from Jordan's vision. I was concerned how Hollywood would adapt a series that so passionately embraced gender roles when they outright reject the concept of gender to begin with, and those concerns proved well-founded.
@@mat3714 I think it's tragic that in order to push diversity we have to deny reality rather than accept reality and grow the best of it. Race is an important part of the books too. The Breaking was kind of their Tower of Babel story, and each race has to find commonality with the others- which is harder for neighbors than it is for people far away. The Aeil were accepted by the two rivers people immediately which was interesting. Same with the Ogier. But races that faught for years had to learn to appreciate one another in some way in order to fight in the same war.
The writers for the show thought they were a lot smarter than the source material. So they re-wrote it, but they overestimated their ability.
"Hm, I've read the first book and I think we can do better."
"Twist a couple things to make it a bit more contemporary?"
"Yeah. I've decided I'm going to fridge a woman in the first episode."
the source material can't be perfectly adapted into a show. If you think it can, you need to read the books again. They have PLENTY of flaws too.
Agreed. Of course the books weren't really that good. However, decent writers could have pulled a good show out of them.
@@connorgregory5625 that is like saying: you can't perfectly clean your house, so lets not do it at all. MAYBE you cannot perfectly adapt this story into the screen, but you can at least try to stay true to the source material.
@@conelord1984 aside from the worldbuilding and action scenes, the source material isnt all that good. They books are stuffed with filler and repetitive af inner monologues--see all the pages long descriptions of the guys ruminating on how they will never understand women, or the one later on in the series where perrin goes on and on and on about how he's a blacksmith and not a lord.
The problem is that the screenwriters didn't actually read or understand the book.
The first book isn't really a fantasy book. It's a light horror book (set in a fantasy setting). The book is about the main character slowly understanding that he's actually a monster. And all the things he has to do so that no one finds out. Especially his friends. Every single moment is spent teaching or reinforcing that, at the minimum, the main character will go nuts and kill people. Or at worst, break the world again.
Only by the end does the main character understand that while those things ARE true, he's not actually a monster.
And thus comes the show's biggest mistake. By making the first season have 6 Main Characters (Rand, Perrin, Matt, Moiraine, Nynaeve, and Lan), you have fundamentally altered the horror story path from beginning to end. A horror plot doesn't become scary in retrospect if you lore-dump who the "monster" was at the end, instead of making that your main character and experiencing the journey with them.
This captures one of my main feeling about the show. Being the "dragon" sucks so bad. The show didn't convey that Dragon will save the world but probably destroy it afterward.
Thats a great way to phrase it. Nice.
its worst then he just doesn't understand, he hates his audience. He once said on twitter 'oh you don't like how I wrote your fave character? Well now thier gay, and there's nothing you can do about it!"
@@gunmunz that is pure gaslighting.
Huh? Light horror? Maybe the final part of the book, I really liked that part, but otherwise I'm certain most people didn't believe for a second that Rand will go insane. He's obviously the protagonist, he's gotta win in the end (and get into a polyamorous releationship with THREE women who all fall for and actively pursue him because destiny), the six possible DRs twist is just not really compatible with the very gendered way the WoT magic system works.
Amazon paid through the roof to have the rights to a very successful book series that defines some of the best fantasy writing on Earth. All they had to do was FOLLOW THE SOURCE MATERIAL. As a reader of the book series, I was more than disappointed.. insulted more like it. I won't even waste my time on the second season, because they already ruined it.
I’m sooooo glad I stopped 5 minutes into the first episode. I said I would give it a chance if the internet said it turned around. Thank god
@@MyBiPolarBearMax The intro should have told you all you needed to know. I think I saw 10 seconds
I knew a lot would have to change and be omitted, considering that the story is only like 3 years chronologically, and filming something like that would just be physically impossible, but I was still just awestruck at how horrible it was. I had to stop partway through ep 1 because I was so disappointed, and I lightly skimmed other eps just to see how bad it would get. And when they went to Tar Valon instead of Caemlyn I just gave up. I've seen many awful adaptations in my life, but WoT was the worst. I don't know how anyone could look at one of the greatest fantasy epics of all time, with a deep world, fleshed out characters, complex and interconnected plot lines, and a crystal clear depiction of the world, and decide to just shit all over it. It's been over a year and a half, and even just thinking about it makes me so damn mad. It was excruciating to see
@@orinblank2056simple. A lot of people weather it’s from gen X or millennials they want to “leave their own mark” on the world. They can’t let go of their egos and I mean that in the sense that the believe strongly and mistakenly that they are they’re egos. When creating art, it should be enough to make that thing precisely as is when depicting when someone else’s piece of art. When creating your own art with no references except your own experiences (I mean not designing something) you must know yourself, deeply, very deeply. It’s why the greatest artists are never depicted as great during their time (Van Goh, Picasso) and although the rule isn’t always true (I would treat it as a 80/20 rule) for the most part it’s accurate.
Agreed..
The worst thing about the finale is they cheapen the magic system so much by just allowing Egwene to bring Nynaeve back because she's super super powerful tho. Spoilers for the books ahead!
In the fourth book, and in one of the absolute most powerful scenes in the series, Rand tries and fails to use the Power to bring back a dead child. He cries and screams and (if I remember correctly) even briefly reanimates her in an inhuman zombie-like form, before Moiraine has to step in and urge him that even he can't reverse death. It serves to teach us that some things can't be magicked away.
By the end of the series Rand is basically able to manipulate the pattern on a thread-by-thread level, and even then, when a major character dies, he can't just reverse their death. Because of course he can't, good god. It completely ruins any stakes your story has. Sure, the books would occasionally do something similar with Balefire death reversals, but that's hard-coded into the magic system and it's predictable in a way.
But don't worry because *Egwene is very powerful guys and she can heal death now everybody*
All he needs to do is to summon enough balefire to exterminate the person who killed the other person and erase them from the weave before they had a chance to kill the other.
Imagine the changes if Rand could erase 500 years of an adversary character.
Season one of this show needs erased with Balefire
They also cheapen the last battle with Ishy v Rand in ep8. Just a terribly put together episode from top to bottom
Did Nyneave die? I saw the show but in the moment i was too shocked by the other inconsistencies (linking with 0 training? Not burning out while all the other sisters did? What? Exhibiting ridiculously more power than Rand? Why?) to realize they actually killed and brought her back. I thought she was just unconscious. Was it actually death?
@@degreeskelvin3025 At this very moment I don't really remember how the scene went, but I remember being under the impression that the other sisters died after burning out, so suddenly Nyneave taking the "burn" from Egwene and dying made sense, you know, she somehow absorbed it, burning herself even faster and dying. But I think Rafe said she just passed out or something.
My issue with Mat, and I loved Mat as a character, is that the Amazon show displayed him as a thief and a failed gambler. The Two Rivers is a tiny community. They'd immediately chase Mat away or shun him, yet Mat was allowed to hang about and do it over and over for years?
This is a point I didn't think about.
There is a huge difference between a kid, even a teenager, pulling pranks like covering a dog in flour and releasing it, or "stealing" a pastry from the inn when the innkeeper's wife knows you're hungry and you've been helping out. Those are funny things adults will laugh off...
But yeah, stealing and reselling a bracelet as a grown man is very crappy and wouldn't be tolerated. MAYBE if it was known he was taking care of his sisters... But I feel like people would still not put up with stealing.
It does put him in a much more negative light although he is the same kind of personality in the books.
They killed Mat's character so bad that they ended up replacing him. I hate how in the books, he's just a goofy prankster and in the show, he's just a complete PoS.
The other big issue with Mat and his family is that in the books his father was a respected merchant and horse trader. He was a skilled fighter and respected enough to be on the Council of Emond's Field. It's doubtful someone letting their family be as they showed in the first episode would be any of those things.
I completely disagree with all of this. For one those things are implied in the books as well, go back and read it, it is heavily implied he has always been a gambler, trouble maker, and in smaller ways, a thief. Also compare Mat from book 1 to the show and you will realize Mat from the books character basically didn't exist. He is extremely unlikeable in Eye of the World when he is having any character and most of time he is just a goofball that does just extremely stupid things and gets the other characters in trouble. Mat in the show actually has motivations for the things he is doing and makes it WAY better
No I don't think you are understanding correctly. Mat gambled constantly and he's one of the few characters that regularly went to the nearby bigger towns and played dice. Matt also gambled with caravans that traveled through and entertainment troops. This was established in the books
Agree that too many fans were too forgiving with this show. There’s nothing wrong with the books, they aren’t boring, and they sold like crazy as they were coming out. No reason to dump the main plot point regarding men and women having different experiences with magic. It was already built to appeal to everybody.
What annoys me the most is the people bending backwards to justify this show by dimishing the books' achievements
@@arenkai Had people tell me the first book was horrible and had to be fixed.... They actually read a book series that they hated the first book... I am dubious.
Too forgiving? most people in online discourse I see about this show despise it.
@@mrschneider9891 I’m basing it on some videos I watched when the show was first released, I haven’t followed anything about this show since then.
@@chrisw6164 trust me from the get go alot of people have hated this show with an absolute passion. Honestly too much imo
Finally, an honest take on this show. It’s bad on it’s own, but it’s a _terrible_ adaptation of the books. And, knowing how the entires series goes, all of the “extra” stuff they added ruins the charm and complexity of the original story. I can’t even hate watch it, it’s that bad. There is zero chance this show won’t get cancelled before the final book.
Feminist propaganda.
@@dakotajones9709 oh my god seriously
@@adora_was_taken Are you kidding me?
@@dakotajones9709 And diversity propaganda to boot. The books gave significant power to females to be fair. But they were white 😂
@@ericbutler739 100%
Yes Rafe "fought" to keep the manetheran scene in the show, unfortunately he did not fight to keep it in the correct spot thematically and consequently the entire reason for Moiraine bringing it up was lost as she was using it to manipulate the Two Rivers people into letting their kids go off with her for their own safety essentially by emboldening them with a tale of their great past as warriors.
Its stuff like that from what I am reading is what makes this show so terrible.
and his boyfriend is the dead warder in E5
The manetheran speech had consequences that went through most of the books. It awakened the manetheran spirit and old blood of the people in the Two Rivers. It made them believe they were capable of much more than they thought possible. The two rivers people always stood out in any army they joined, even tho they were just mostly farmers. On the TV Show though, the two rivers people never learned of their heritage....
@@silverwingwarlock9314 In the books the boys are 20, but the community is strong and unwilling to just let some strangers take several of them away into unknown danger without a bloody good explanation - not even someone who helped protect the village during a trollock attack
@@OppositeOfNinja sorry I should of wort act more like kids in the book why In the series one of them is married, one is supporting his two little sisters and the outer two act more responsible. That sense would of ruined in my opinion the amazing ending of episodes 1 of 4 people being forced to leave everything they know to protect the ones they love and no time to say goodbye.
My man (carrying thing) made fun of video essayists so hard he became one
you either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain
the wheel weaves as the wheel wills
Except that in the book there is no such requirement of Chastity. It's just tacked on bulshit to create drama just like Jedi not being able to get married in the prequel trilogy. In the book, even offers to let him become her Warder. Heck, he actually marry to and impregnate one of the Aes Sedai??
Finally, he is living up to his most popular video. He is the video essay RUclipsr
The legend foretold. But first he must conclude his college studies...
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO he's a booktuber first
My criticism of Wheel of Time is that they focused too much on the (sexual) relationships of the characters rather than the actual story. It hurt the story more than it helped. Without all the "I love you" shit, it would have left 10 minutes each episode for more story, allowing viewers to become more invested in the characters.
The big problem was how they made most of Rand's story fretting about Egwene...
Egs: I'm breaking up with you.
Rand: I'm sad, but okay.
Egs: We're still friends, right?
Rand: I'm still hurt, okay?
Perrin: Egs is nice.
Rand: You always loved Egs!
Egs: Let's get back together. You can be my warder.
Rand: Okay. [Sotto voce] I just realized I'm the Dragon Reborn.
Ba'alzamon: Let's break the world and remake it however we want!
Rand: Nah, Egs wouldn't like it.
@@hoi-polloi1863unfortunately Eg is a major part of the books and Rand actually does simp on her and most of what you said as well… 😂
Focused too much on the sexual relationships..? I mean, they just made it up. They are innocent, naive and inexperienced in the books. It ruined their characters from the start.
@@samueldavis5895Rand really never simps for Egwene lmao, they were never truly an item, he wanted to protect her but pretty much once they left the village they mutually drifted apart, there was never any real skin in the game. Rand did more simping for Mat if anything lmao
@@Arturian.music.officialimagine watching an aged up Harry Potter where Hermione gives Harry a handjob on train ride to Hogwarts
Ron accidentally kills his boyfriend in a potion deal gone bad
and Dumbledore and Snape have a steamy romance scene all in first film 😂
One critique I have for "The Wheel of Time" as a whole is the random acts of sexual tension. But for all of my complaint about that, it really stopped there. Including all of this unnecessary sex is just a gratuitous attempt to make it more like "Game of Thrones." Having Lan and Nyneave already romantically entangled ruins the slow burn that their relationship had in the books, which means we'll have to think of some other arbitrary way to add drama there later.
one of my (formerly) favorite WoT RUclipsrs said: " I like that Rand and Egweyne had Sex, it tries to cater to a more mature audience who does not identify with the conservative ideas about sex"....well...they live in a village of a few hundred people, not in 2022 America. where in the world are small town communities not somewhat conservative.
Back in the day, good shows created trends (hairstyles mostly), now a days, shows try to pander to existing trends. everything needs to be made into a reflection of today.
fantasy doesnt need sex and gratuitous violence to be taken seriously, the dark one and the forsaken and myrdraal are all terrifying and more creepy and scary than even the orcs and nazgul in lotr, the despair at facing the dark one and his minions is a good way to show how the stakes are
I have no issue with them bringing in sex or sexual tension. I have issue with them bringing it where it doesn't belong. When done right - it can add to the emotional stuff (because sex complicates things and can be an emotional and meaningful thing) but they do it sooo wrong. Whenever its shown, it feels rushed and completely unemotive, as well as WAY TOO EARLY.
@@svenlauke1190 It goes beyond that. The world is still recovering from an apocalyptic event. This kind of free love sexual hedonism is really only feasible in a society that has access to advanced medical knowledge to the point where the risks aren’t that much of a factor, and WE haven’t even reached that point quite yet, to be honest. Not only that, but the population was utterly devastated, and the most effective way to foster a recovery from such an event is to encourage tight, monogamous familial bonds. It’s a major factor as to why our species has advanced as far as it has in real life, the monogamous nuclear family. It encouraged paternal investment and involvement in the rearing of children and THAT is largely what made our population start to skyrocket. So yeah, Dan Greene is completely full of shit.
@@radicaldreamer927 I donvt think homophobia comes down to medical knowledge and prevention of disease. Would especially not make sense in a world with magic healing.
What you said about trying to misdirect the identity of the dragon was spot on. In the books we get the prologue where the chosen one goes insane and dies, kicking off the Breaking of the World. Then we get a propecy that the chosen one will be reborn and pleading for the "Dragon to ride again on the winds of time". We then immediately cut to teenage boy who is the main POV character for the rest of the book. Gee. I WoNdEr WhO tHe DrAgOn is!
This removes the soul of the story and replaces it with something else entirely. And it sucks
I'm gonna say a truth I never said to anyone. I read Eye of the World when I was 14, and I was FLABBERGASTED at the reveal that Rand is the Dragon.
@@maxencedworaczek602 Same, I read it at 10 or 11 and I wasn't on to the chosen one trope yet. And to be fair, I don't think Moiraine even hints that one of them is the Dragon, it's just kind of a thing in the background that you have to piece together until the reveal at the end.
@@calebmauer1751 If memory serves, she never mentions that, at least not until much later, she justifies taking them based on the fact that trollocs attacked the village and she believes it involves one of the three boys and the villagers accept her word on her authority as an Aes Sedai. I know she picks Egwene for her talent but I forget exactly how she finagled her into the group and, of course, Nynaeve chases them down to fulfill her duty as Wisdom.
They are pursued, which validates her concerns to the group and they don't question her judgement but, of course, certainly wonder why they are being targeted.
@@christianclark347 Moiraine did NOT pick Egwene (in the books)... Egwene forced herself on THEM out of pure selfishness.
The boys KNEW they were targets... knew they HAD to leave, or everyone in Emond's Field would DIE.
Right THEN... they became heroes, at least to some extent... particularly Rand and Perrin. Mat, less so, because he did want adventure... but still, he no longer had a reasonable choice... he had to draw the Fades and Trollocs away from his parents and sisters.
Egwene CHOSE to leave... and ABANDON her parents.
In modern parlance, Egwene chose career (becoming Aes Sedai) over family.
(The show changes this, while keeping her choice of career over family, while it also removes the "consequences" of abandoning her parents, thus making her seem more noble than she actually is at this point in the books.)
Nynaeve ALSO became a hero, by trying to "rescue" the boys and Egwene from the "wicked Aes Sedai schemes".
What a stupid comment. What you said about the books clearly implies and in fact is correct in saying that there’s no mystery whatsoever to rand being the dragon reborn in the books. It’s boring in that sense and as much as I love the books (i’m just about to start the fourth) The first was a mess and frankly I thought the show was way more interesting in how they Made it a bit more mysterious
It can't be overlooked that the director/showrunner *SPECIFICALLY* likes to antagonize fans and change things IN ORDER TO MAKE THEM ANGRY.
That level of spite is a serious personal flaw brought into the show.
I pretty much gave up on the show in first episode because it was VERY obvious whoever was doing the screenscript had ZERO respect for the source and very much thought they could make it better by significantly altering characters and setting to the point where a lot of them don't feel anything like them.
He's a sociopath and Egwene is his self insert character, He's writing Twilight erotic fan fiction, not Wheel of Time. The two men fighting over him are a wolf and someone that's inhabited by an ancient being. Egwene is also "unbreakable" as a child because sociopaths always think they are right and think everyone else are morons. Same kind of people wrote Rey in new Star Wars. She doesn't need her friends, they may as well not even be there. Those characters also have to be less to make the self insert character more awesome. She's perfect and we should all worship the self insert and the person who wrote her.
@@hackintosh3899 yeah but Egwene acts pretty much the same in the books. I fucking hated her from the get go. I didn't like Nynaeve at first either but she has such an incredible arc, she ends up becoming one of my favorite characters. Egwene only gets snottier and more obstinate.
@@fenixchief7Egwene is not fully formed in the books and "unbreakable". She's supposed to be a brat, supposed to be immature and not self aware. She's basically female Mat. Anyone who says they loved Mat before he wakes up in Tar Valon and clowns Gawyn and Galad is lying to themselves and that was 3 books in. You aren't supposed to like either character for a long while.
The main reason people don't like Egwene later is because she has no trust for Mat and Rand. With Mat it's because they are the same person. They are the alpha dogs in charge of a bunch of people, who have to project that they are right, even if they aren't so sure themselves. They can basically tell the other one is full of sh@^ and flying by the seat of their pants. With Rand she has to balance people who may suspect her allegiances will lead to their destruction and Rand possibly being mad. Jordan could have possibly explained this, but he probably felt he didn't have to.
I don't know why people hate Nynaeve. She's funny, she has no reason to trust this Aes Sedai and she feels responsible for her people. I never hated Nynaeve. I hated Egwene and I hated Mat. Mat ended up my favorite character tied with Lan and Egwene has arguably the best ending arc.
I enjoyed that antagonism a lot. I like when the fans are salty.
I got ~7 minutes in, decided I should read the books first, and have returned after finishing all of them. I am now primed to hear your thoughts on the show.
"Vehicular manslaughter wouldn't make Sam a better character." Damn, I really never thought of it like that... 😂. It's funny, but a good point. I kind of brushed it off as "Well, they want us to feel something for Perrin right away." Then the writers didn't do much with him for the rest of the season.
Brandon Sanderson had an interesting idea for Perrin. Instead of fabricating a wife for Perrin to kill, Brandon suggested that if Perrin needs to kill someone who's important to him to make him more sympathetic, it should be Master Luhhan instead. Someone that Perrin has a strong connection to as a mentor and friend.
There's just no excuse for how they did Mat's parents dirty. Abel Cauthon especially is literally one of the best, most reliable characters in the books, and he was anything but a bad father.
@@jaredhumpherys8335 I saw when Sanderson said that and I totally agree.
@@DavidDecero Too bad the showrunner felt it necessary at all, UT at least Brandon's suggestion would've made sense and avoided an unfortunate trope.
@@jaredhumpherys8335 Yeah. I like how Sanderson came out basically said, "Look guys, I tried." I really think Fantasy authors should have more input when books are adapted.
@@jaredhumpherys8335 Except... book Perrin was WAY too careful to actually do that kind of thing with ANYONE he cares about. Even Sanderson is wrong with respect to this issue. It's like saying... if we need to take a dump on the source material there's a right way to do this and a wrong way to do this; here's the 'right' way to do this. I mean, as much as we wished he might accidentally 'oops' his unnamed wife who also ruined his character arc later in the books; the guy was too careful to do that kind of thing.
I hated how they stripped the joy from the Tinkers and Thom. I get that they wanted things to be darker and for the Two Rivers to be less Shire like. But by stripping the joy from the tinkers you strip out what looks so appealing about the way of the leaf, even knowing the danger and pain it can bring.
Interesting, I felt the opposite about the Way of the Leaf. I really appreciate the show's explanation; if you fully expect to be reborn in the future, that encourages you to live a life now that makes the world a better place next time. That's the one thing the show did better than the books IMO.
@@josephward4918 Yeah, I think the Tinker section was the only plot line they nailed, apparently one of the few things in the books Rafe actually likes.
I think Thom's attitude fit pretty well with the situation they introduced him in. He has been banished from Caemyln for a while now, is in an old mining town that stoned an innocent Aiel, and sang a song that matched the tone while also delivering subtle but engaging exposition.
Other than that awkward introduction to the Tinkers, I thought the show nailed them. And I liked the show Thom more than the book Thom, who comes across as a bit corny IMO. Honestly, the show peaked in episodes 3 and 4, which heavily featured these two characters.
In the book Thom is a grumpy old curmudgeon with a heart of gold. Rough around the edges, but still likable. The show version isn't anything remotely like him. When he flashes that shit-eating grin at Mat after having stolen his money, it's clear that the writers created a completely new character. Gleemen are fairly respected people, they don't have a reputation of being pick pockets.
Sir, I've seen some short parodies that you do and today I decided to explore your channel, you made me watch an one hour and eighteen minutes video about a show that I've never heard of, based on a series of books that I also never heard of, of a genre that I don't really care, yet you kept me intrested the whole video(in your critique, not the show), here, take my subscription, you really deserve it, bravo
Same
I hope this motivated you to read the books
The spicy scene whit rand and egwene really made me laugh..
In the books rand doesn't do spicy stuff until waaaaaaay later with a certain Aiel... it made me think "wow they could not care less about the books" 😅
Shame, the books is one of the best series i have ever read if not the best
yeah, i think Aviendha was his first
What this show missed out on was how young and inexperienced all the main characters were. All of them grew and matured as the stories stretched. All of the boys should be clean shaven and DON'T GIVE PERRIN A FRICKIN WIFE!!!
He and Egwene got spicy didn’t they? Way later? Like in some magic bubble or something?… guess I should reread them lol
@@samueldavis5895 nope, nothing more then puppy love between them in the books.I dont even think they ever kissed.
I love how you're articulating exactly what I found to be the problem of the show. It feels like higher up production execs are embarrassed about the source material, and that is without question my biggest problem with it.
The book has a mystery at the start which is "is he really the dragon, or a false dragon?" The new mystery is worse because there is no room for doubt as to whether he is or is just insane
43:39 This is very true to me as well. I really liked this part in the book, as a clear reference to Gandalf at the bridge of Khazad-dûm. Thom stays and fight in order to let his friends escape. This is the same scene from the book:
RUN! He gave them a push, one hand on the shoulder of each of them, to get them started, and Rand stumbled away in a lurching run with Mat at his side. “RUN!” Thom sprang into motion, too, with a long, wordless roar. Not after them, but toward the Myrddraal. His hands flourished as if he were performing at his best, and daggers appeared. Rand stopped, but Mat pulled him along. The Fade was just as startled. Its leisurely pace faltered in mid-stride. Its hand swept toward the hilt of the black sword hanging at its waist, but the gleeman’s long legs covered the distance quickly. Thom crashed into the Myrddraal before the black blade was half drawn, and both went down in a thrashing heap. The few people still in the square fled. “RUN!” The air in the square flashed an eye-searing blue, and Thom began to scream, but even in the middle of the scream he managed a word. “RUN!”
freacking glorious man! the sacrifice, the despair, the fear it instills and the sense of loss. You don't even need to know who these characters are, or what is going on to understand that something important is being protected, and something important is being lost too.
I just want to say huge thanks for not spoiling later books. When watching other reviews of shows, they often cite stuff from all over the source material, but you really focused on just the stuff that was immediately relevant. As someone who has only read the first 3 books yet, I really appreciate that :)
I experienced the Wheel of Time through audiobook, and I would listen to it while working my night job.
The Mad Wind was SO unnerving, especially walking around alone at night, I was really looking forward to hearing it in the show.
The angle of it targeting your insecurities did not work for me. I missed the horror of these screaming, jibbering, MAD voices coming after you in the dark. It was just… SO FREAKY and to me the interpretation the show took left something to be desired.
Yeah, it pretty much turns from "Saidin's Madness Incarnate" to "Manipulative thing" which makes you wonder why EXACTLY it's such a horrifying threat.
Compared to the THING that's jibbering about snapping bones and running blood and shearing flesh while coming at you like a rabid animal, that they KNOW has eaten darkspawn.
1999s Wheel of Time the videogame did the Mad Wind better than the show did, and it was just a huge bunch of skull-shaped mists charging at you.
They were really scary
sing your screams!
You're a better person than me, after the first episode I gave up on the show. I read 1-5 in 2008-09, and listened to audiobooks 1-3 again before the show premiered.
I too used unabridged audiobooks to listen to the complete series (something like 15 books) - each book being 23 to 40+ hours. A very long, but rewarding story. I was so stoked when I learned of the Amazon adaptation. The series went of the rails so quickly that I stopped watching before the end of the season. What a disappointment. I was really looking forward to years of great entertainment. “Foundation” on Apple+ also fell short with bizarre adaptation choices.
Just want to point out. Loial is DEAD, actually deader than dead.
Fain used the dagger from Sadar Logoth. Remember the one that was corrupting Mat? No idea how he end up having it in the series. (In the book happens in book 2 and again in book 5).
This dagger is cursed if it wounds you, you turn to dust you do not exist.
They break the story FOR NO REASON so many times it's sad
I was already so disappointed by that time, i was thinking nothing could surprise me anymore...oh light was i shocked and surprised they killed Loial. Totally unbelievable, but on the other hand now we know what they rip out of the story line... Everything that detailed the world the author created so very miticulous. Because the writings of Loial and the songs from the gleemen(Rand becomes one in the end) will be history, tales, myth for the next era. Thus, they killed every reference to the books...
"Duty is heavier than a mountain" they took the easy route and did a "based on" show. Those people should be fired for killing the potential of a very good tv show with fans around the world waiting for decades to happen. It is totally disrespectful.
I recall yelling out WHAT IN THE ABSOLUTE F**** when they stabbed and killed Loial. I had joked with my wife after episode three what could /would be the worst possible outcome of Rafe Judkins writing and direction? And I said, jokingly, "Oh just kill off Loial. I mean why not right?" I couldn't believe it. They did. They went there. What a JOKE THIS SHOW IS. And of course he isn't dead, from the dagger that you can't survive. Nope. Lame, lame, lame. Terrible writing and delivery.
Many theorize that Loial was stabbed in one of his books and is still alive.
@@drakedecker4874 The problem is not the stabbing.
It is the instrument that is used.
This specific dagger is cursed. Any other "pretend killing" would be fine if it wasn't for the zoom in when Fain is sheathing the Dagger from Sadar Logoth.
Yup, if Loial is alive in season 2, they missed the point of the dagger. There is only 2 people in the WoT series that you could stab with that dagger and won't die .. Padan Fain and Matt. Period. Everyone else shrivels up and dies from it in seconds. Flopping on the ground, screaming, skin turning black followed by death.
Perrin not blacking out and killing the two White Cloaks like in the book is absolutely key, it was something that haunted him through the entire series until the last books and is a fundamental part of his growth and of him finding peace with himself and with the White Cloaks. Horrendous that they missed that, they've changed so many things that it's impossible to complete a show that has nothing to do with the books.
What I don't understand is why they replaced what happened in the book with Perrin MURDERING HIS WIFE. Robert Jordan put in a very solid motivation for Perrin's reluctance to use his powers and to make every possible attempt as pacifism.
It almost feels like the show runners thought it wasn't bad enough, that viewers would think, "Pfft, why would he feel guilty murdering *them*? I'd kill them and walk away, clean conscious." So, they thought increasing the shock factor would make it more believable, I guess? For an average person, if they had to murder someone, they'd have to deal with permanent trauma. Even if they could continue functioning as they were before, they'd have to deal with so much awful fall out (like legal issues, remembering the feeling of injuring a living person, considering their own mortality and how easy it is for a life to end, etc.)
It stings even more when even a little bit of characterization of the WCs Perrin (should have) killed would have made the same point as killing his wife did. That is, if a particular WC offers Perrin some water, tend his wounds due to some torture, give a kind word... And then later try to stop Perrin escaping, and Perrin kills the only white cloak(s) that was kind to him. That would have kept the poignancy and also still make it believable that he can physically and mentally continue to participate in the plot, wtih the mental anguish presented in the book. Killing your wife--your life partner, your best friend, your love--would absolutely ruin any average person for YEARS. As he stands as a character, it would only be believable if Perrin retired to the most menial job he could think of. He wouldn't try to save the world. Not unless he had several months of genuine recovery and therapy, first... Which is in short supply in The Wheel of Time.
He had to be saved by a woman, as per the post modern, marxist, feminist ideologs that bastardized the series.
In the books, the Aes Sedai were growing desperate, pulling in literally every woman and girl they could find who had the talent. They theorized that, due to all the male magic users going crazy and needing to be killed, humanity was literally breeding the ability to use magic out of their own lineages. As a result, fewer and fewer Aes Sedai joined the White Tower every generation. The actual hierarchy in the White Tower was your power level, not the status you were born into. The poorest peasant girl with strong talent warranted far more respect than the grandest duchess with little ability. So the whole, "Nyeh, you guys are elitist, nyeh" thing with Nyneave makes zero sense.
Also, she just randomly heals death as an untrained, unskilled wielder of the One Power, the ONE AND ONLY thing that is unhealable. Later in the book series, she literally learns how to heal people cut off from the One Power, and it's mind-blowing because the solution was so deceptively simple, that no one had tried it before. Only death remains unhealable. Not so in the show, where they needed yet another "girl boss" moment.
Not to mention that the Aes Sedai purposefully sacrifice thousands of men fighting Trollocs only to swoop in and start wiping them all out because, once again, girl power. They castrated Rand so many times in the show, that it honestly didn't surprise me when they took out the scene of him hyped up on the Power from the Eye of the World, literally teleporting into the Trolloc army and disintegrating it with lightning and pure destruction. Nope, instead he has a conversation and complains while the women do all the work. Perrin's a weak-willed failure who has absolutely nothing in common with book Perrin, Mat's a psycopathic thief who barely cares about anyone around him and has zero redeeming scenes, and Rand spends the ENTIRE show screeching at everyone about trust and paranoia.
Lan is supposed to be the stoic, incredibly dangerous yet loyal father figure for Rand, who teaches him how to fight, and shows him the difference between being a soldier and being a man, and when you should be one or the other. Instead he barely does anything aside from kill a few Trollocs and tear open his shirt crying about some random Warder. So much plot was cut from the show to fit the 8 episodes, and yet we spend an entire episode following said random Warder whose Aes Sedai died, as he gets despressed and kills himself, none of which was in the book.
By aging up the characters they strip away their character arcs, their youthful naivety, and their moral purity. Rand and Egwene sleep together in the first episode! Do you want to know when Rand first sleeps with another woman in the books? Several books later, years into the story's timeline, after essentially conquering half the kingdoms on the continent. He loses himself in a bout of passion with a woman (not Egwene, he's never in a relationship with her in the books), and afterwards, is so ashamed of his lack of self control and tarnishing of her honor, that he tries to get married to her right away, to avoid scandal.
There is so much more to complain about, from the butchering of the characters and plot, to just the overall mediocre quality of the show in general.
TL;DR: The show is bad, read the books.
Also the Aes Sedai rarely marry, and effectively never have kids
I mean I'm sorry but what you're saying here is a demonstration that you have no fucking idea whatsoever about the books. One if the big themes of the books is that AS aren't doing any recruitment at all. And that is one of the main reasons (or consequences) of them being in a downward spiral.
And they definitely are turning people away. Lots of them. We have the Kin, remember? Nynaeve's mentor may have misunderstood why she was turned away, or lied about it, or Nynaeve could have misunderstood.
@@cara-seyun The opposite actually. They may seldom marry, but were _very discreetly_ encouraged to procreate as much as possible due to the whole ongoing decline of civilization and especially of people with the gift. Frequent allusions are also made regarding the relationship Greens have with their multiple warders. You just also have to remember they live hundreds of years and that presumably (I don't recall it being made explicit) does not include an extension of their fertile timespan.
The point remains that diverse relationship structures are represented in the books but promiscuity is not prevalent and traditional monogamy is the norm in most places. I cannot comprehend how someone could read even a synopsis of the source material and think "this would be better as a soap opera where everyone living in constant fear of torture and death is oddly preoccupied with their hormones."
@@HonoredMule yeah, I remember that now, not sure what 2023 me was thinking exactly
In regards to Mat they should have just had Moiraine say Mat was too sick to travel and left him. Not the ideal situation but it would have made sense and not been a character assassination.
Actually that would lead to the question why Moiranine doesn't simply wait until he is better. There is no reason why they need to hurry and should Mat be the Dragon (20% chance) then leaving without him is simply stupid. Moiraine reasoning in the show that if "cowardly" Mat is the dragon their plan wouldn't work anyway makes her continuing without Mat at least plausible. I also believe that they had already finished shooting the waygate-scene and couldn't reshoot it to have a version without Mat.
@@gildor8866 I would say not. She has been after the dragon forever. It's almost become her reason for being. And she KNOWS he's absolutely necessary. A "cowardly" dragon could be helped, could be slowly given the needed courage. Moraine is more then up to the task of helping him with that. Courage isn't something everyone is born with, sometimes it has to be learned. And again, Moraine has more then enough life experience to know this. So her dropping a potential cowardly dragon would make absolutely no sense at all.
@Gildor if you're telling me that they couldn't reshoot a scene in an open field with a simple structure then that is a massive red flag in regards to the competency of the people in charge of this show.
@@justinalbin7272 They could have reshot that scene but how would that have helped writing Mat out? The actor was gone so the scene would have been an exposition dump why Mat suddenly isn't there anymore with important decisions having been made off screen and then we'd still ask why Moraine would leave him behind if he's a dragon reborn candidate. They had to work with what they had and what they had were shots of Mat standing in the field, so they used them to make it look like he chose to stay behind. It's not perfect but at least it gives the character some agency and it happens on screen. Of course Mat not going with them makes little sense but it's not like the show had a choice there.
@@philippschmidt80 The solution was simple, just have Mat be too weak from the dagger to go with the group and be left behind in Tar Valon, just as he was in the books. Sure, that screws up the order of events from the books, but the show already did that by having them in Tar Valon and having Moiraine fully heal Mat of his connection to the dagger.
all the characters were massacred, even their superwomen moiraine and egwene, and what they did to Lan, Rand, Mat and Perrin was nothing but criminal..
This is ridiculous nonsense. You've clearly only browsed the books. The characterization is actually the strength of the show.
@@HallyVee actually, have you even heard of The Wheel of Time books by Robert Jordan? because even a cursory browsing of them will reveal to your simple mind that the characters/ plot/ world in the books have very little similarity to the filth that is the show, why don't you try actually reading the books
@@bananachocopie her acting is frequently poor. They butchered the plot yes but they stuck quite closely to characterization. Some fun poked here and there like with Lan yes but otherwise nailed it.
@@zionmarcelo as I said, I agree the plot has been butchered. But the characterization is spot on quite often. Some minor quibbles ofc like Lan. Hate porn can be amusing but gotta grow out of it.
@@HallyVee haha 'minor quibble like Lan' hahaha read the books before commenting or even actually watch the shows
A common theme in bad writing I'm more starting to notice is that characters only have personality traits due to events that happen in the story
its a consequence of Netflix junk writing setting the blueprint.
none of these "screenwriters" ever get selected based on merit but based on incestuous nepotism.
it is why everyone can see the emperor has no clothes once they take up the writing instead of the original writer as seen in game of thrones.
Oh damn, that's well said!
Ah I see you picked up on the new trend for modern star trek as well.
As someone who's read the whole series 3 times (and am currently cunning a D&D style campaign set after the books) I went into the show with an open mind, expecting changes but giving it a chance despite the negative reception it got. I physically couldn't finish the series. Not that I didn't have the time, but it hurt to watch. I know they can't make a 1:1 copy but it felt like they were deliberately trying to change as much as they could just for the sake of changing it. I honestly feel bad for Harriet; she probably sold the rights to her late husband's work in hopes of it reaching a new generation of fantasy lovers, and instead they're spitting over Jordan's legacy. I would honestly sue them for defamation if I could.
I had a similar experience. While there were *occasional* flashes of the real WoT, most of the show was just disappointing. I kept on watching, thinking "The next episode can redeem everything... there's still time!" But I was mistaken. Eventually I found out that the writing team was deliberately playing out their own ideas about current social squabbles instead of thinking about RJ's work. Ah, well.
It was very important for the ideologically possessed individuals writing the series that they insert the following, interracially mixed people where it does not make sense, an openness to homosexuality, and although female authority exists in the book to make it petty, tyrannical, and to erase any notion of a male having a heroic moment especially wherein one is the primary savior of the girl. The series hit me as a propaganda piece for feminism.
As a newcomer to the Wheel of Time framchise, i am glad i avoided the show. I will stick to reading the books. Already finished Eye of the World and am currently on The Great Hunt. So good! Whike i was initially hesistabt due to my initial hesitancy with the gender politics themes (i wrongly assumed it was just going to be about misandry) but i am glad i was wrong. The world building and the lore within the story was so well done and the gender issue was so perfectly executed lore wise and stoeywise that it all worked seamlessly. Okus, the central theme of cooperation between the sexes works so well that i regretted my initial doubts. Such a great book series
@@orboakin8074 That is how I would advise you continue; stick to the books, avoid the show as though it were the Pit of Doom itself. Also, a slight head's up: the latter half of books 3 and book 4 is where the Wheel of Time truly becomes THE Wheel of Time,. The middle few books are a bit try (I had to power my way through Crossroads of Twilight and Path of Daggers on all 3 of my rereads, not that they're bad it's just that they're rather uneventful) but once you get through those and stick till the end, it'll change your perspective on many things in our world. That was my experience, at least :)
@@jureb2278 thanks for the heads-up, friend👍👍
As someone who has heard of the books but hadn’t read them, I was curious to try out the show. It is shocking how many words are said while still conveying not one helpful bit of character or world-building information. Gave it 2 episodes. Would like my time back
Pls don't judge the books by it - they're really good and worth every hour of reading.
I made it 20 mins. Got bored.
@IntrepidTit
Imo, the first book is a bit cheesy. However, the story really starts to pick up after then and you really do feel that you're exploring the whole world - so I'd reccomend reading the first and second books to get more of an idea of the series if you have time :)
@IntrepidTit The writer himself explains the first book was a love letter to his own inspirations like LoTR but it turns into it's own thing and establishes itself forward. I love them, book 4 was my personal favorite. ♥️
@@Star.G227 that's what you say when you don't want to admit that you plagiarized.
I read a recent interview with Rafe where he said season 2 will have a lot more surprises and changes for book readers. Like, what? No one is asking for that dude.
It's so heartbreaking that incompetent people got to make this show. I stopped watching tv as a whole since WoT, not joking, I've completely given up on the entertainment industry.
I suspect many viewers of season 1 have a suprise for Rafe regarding season 2, they won't be watching.
And Aviendha will be black despite Rand being representative of that race of people already.
your not missing anything. just read some books, your mind will create a better visual experience than the Movies and TV shows are .
I didn't finish the first season. We realized that we were getting so angry and upset with each episode pausing to rant for several minutes with each other during each, that we would be better off not watching. So we stopped.
Book readers I would say for the most part hate the show to some degree or have MASSIVE issues with it
And people who haven't read the books haven't watched the show because it's just so cheap and... well, shit
Literally who is Rafe making those changes for
That cut to Brandon Sanderson shouting "WHAT ABOUT MY SON?" fucking killed me. xD
Hollywood has a huge age-up problem, and I can see why they'd want to--even if it ruins the story.
- It's easier to find competent actors if they have more experience.
- Casting underage actors involves hiring a tutor for them and working around minor laws.
- You can't sell sexy stuff with underage actors and not receive backlash.
- Also, Sex appeal on posters is easier with early-20's actors.
- I really think it's mostly that last thing.
But it really destroys almost any coming-of-age story. We can tell if people are too old to be discovering the world for the first time. Being young explains a lot in these sorts of stories, and they just throw it out by casting old.
Orson Scott Card has some horror stories of directors wanting to cast Ender as an 18-year-old, and it shows. It took forever for an adaptation of Ender's Game to come out, and even then it was clear that Ender was older than 13.
14:00 Rand understanding 'Egwene's choice' on that mountaintop is the most blatant misunderstanding/warping of Rand's character I could think of. FFS, how are we supposed to run into countless situations later in the story if Rand (or other male MC's) *understands women or how women think*! The divide in how the sexes rationalize and understand each-other and the world is central to the bloody plot!
The problem of the wheel of time is they disliked the source material and so essentially rewrote the story. However, they did a really bad job because modern storytellers feel compelled to do certain things which Robert Jordan did not.
For example, a modern storyteller does not present heroes sacrificing anything for an abstract concept such as good or evil. Everything must be intensely personal. And you have to know what that intensely personal reason is. You're going to go on a long quest to achieve a thing? Nobody does that anymore, and so your fictional heroes can't do it either. No, they are compelled because of their own internal conflict which gets resolved in the story. Unfortunately, that is very opposite of what an epic narrative such as Jordans is all about.
Bottom line, if you're not going to faithfully adapt a story that you don't believe in, make sure you could at least tell a good one on your own. This is like an epic fantasy adventure for people who don't like the genre.
The problem you describe explains why I dislike 90% of the movies I've seen in the past decade or so. The protagonists come off as petty, and they typically lay waste to everything around them chasing a self-centered goal.
"make sure you could at least tell a good one on your own" The problem is that this is the one thing they are incapable of doing, so have to undermine everyone else to shove their story in place of better ones.
Which is highly amusing considering WOT was written with the intention of subverting popular fantasy tropes
@@PP-Toi it was quite literally written, in the beginning, as a LotR clone.
@@ryanlew1980 How do you subvert common tropes without paralleling common themes?
I watched like 3 episodes really hoping to get into it. It really felt like forcefeeding myself the blandest food imaginable. I really don't understand people who give it anything higher than a perfectly average 5 or 6. I'm glad they can enjoy it, I just don't understand it.
Well, I think people who haven’t read the books can and do enjoy the show.
I get what you’re saying cause I felt the same way about “Station Eleven”. I didn’t make it past the third episode. I just didn’t like the interpretation so I chose to stick with what I knew from the book and not watch the show.
I hadn’t read any of the WOT books prior to the show but I’m now currently on LOC.
For me b/c I watched the show first then started reading the books I don’t have a problem with the differences although there are many. I can still differentiate between the books and the show and enjoy it for what it is. 🤷♀️
@@Spiritandtruth4477 The show is bad and it has nothing to do with the books. There were 4 fake out deaths in ep 8 alone, even 90's fantasy was better.
@@RespectTheSourceMaterial The last episode was final season of game of thrones bad. Just wrong on so many levels.
@@jaredhumpherys8335 final season got at least had good cinematography.
@@RespectTheSourceMaterial That's true, to the bitter end every department except writing gave it their all.
That's not maybe Liam Neeson, that's Roose Boolton!!
I love the chase scene where two normal humans are able to out run a pack of wolves for an extended period of time. But two tall lankier dudes get cornered by a 5 foot nothing girl in like 4 seconds, despite having a head start.
The scene where Morraine and Lan are fighting together came from a suggestion from Sanderson, which is why it shows more talent and care for Jordan's material than anything else in the show.
Because someone who actually cares told them they should do it, after they planned not to do it.
Given he left helping them in disgust at what they did to the show, I'm shocked they bothered to keep anything halfway decent.
@@Gumblethebear when did this happen? During season two shooting?
@zacharyiler136 damn when did he say this lol. I got the inkling that he felt this way but was hiding it to be respectful.
Frodo is not a Chosen One. He volunteers. He sacrifices his cozy life for something bigger than himself, that's what sets LOTR apart from "The Prophecies have long foretold your coming..." BS that inevitably leads to MarySueism that we are downing in right now. I can't take one more show with the line, "In time you will learn to control your powers..."
I appreciate your comment. Multiple times in the analysis here Frodo is mentioned as a 'chosen one', but the point of his character was that he was just an ordinary, small person who was willing to let himself get sacrificed to preserve the rest of the world.
@@maul42 Exactly, that's literally the whole point of the story. Frodo doesn't have any magic abilities, just a loyal gardener and a sense of duty. Unearned, poorly defined powers are the #1 biggest cliché that is ruining storytelling. We don't tell stories about teamwork and sacrifice and overcoming obstacles anymore. We just watch good-looking messiahs Mary-Sue their way through a plot for 90 minutes until they get the bad guy with their inherited superpowers.
Not only was Frodo not the choosen one. Sam becomes stronger. Frodo gets weaker, goes nuts, and the mission is ultimately carried out at the end, inadvertantly, by Gollum.
...except he absolutely can be read as a chosen one. It is alluded to fairly early on that Frodo was destined to be the one to carry the ring. Yes, he accepts the task... but it's also no accident that he, in particular, was in a position to do exactly that in the first place. Remember: both of Frodo's parents were killed, causing him to move to the Shire from Buckland and be adopted by his uncle Bilbo, with whom he shared a kinship for adventure and wanderlust.
To say that Frodo - definitively - isn't a "chosen one" story is to deliberately overlook details provided in the story itself. If you've only seen the movie, you probably have a distorted view of the story, as it cuts out a LOT of detail and does only present Frodo's journey as a completely voluntary one.
@@OuroborosChoked the movie is trash. I've never been a fan of it. Sure, Frodo was chosen to be a ring bearer, but he wasn't "chosen" to win, defeat, or complete the mission. You aren't remembering the books right. He gives in at the end and the mission is completed by Gollum.
5:50 really encapsulates it. The beginning is inoffensive, but the bad decisions keep piling up and by the end it's just a mess
Heh. If you've read the books, the first 20 seconds are offensive.
Hell, just knowing the casting choices was offensive.
The costume design is just wild, they look like they are dressed in futuristic sience fiction attire not medieval fantasy clothing
Yes finally someone’s being honest. Literally every other review try’s to say everything is just another interpretation but it’s not they literally destroyed everything that was good about the book.
You might wanna look up the Knights Watch review of the show, they hate it too
@@inspectorjavert8443 they hate it for the wrong reasons lol. "OH no, they included gay people and people of color" made it really hare to criticize the show and not be lumped in with the "its too woke" crowd.
@@markfranzen5424 Race swapping characters that were clearly white in the series and adding homosexual characters (out of whole cloth, Moraine's relationship at least has some cannon support) when none were present is a legitimate reason to criticize an adaptation.
If the opposite were done you know there'd be a justified uproar so why is it bad to criticize when the discrimination is against white/straight people?
I forgot how much I hate Nynaeve's reason for disliking Aes Sedai. As if the Tower would turn someone away for being a peasant. The show itself contradicts that narrative when it shows what life Siuan came from.
@@inspectorjavert8443 thank you for speaking some common sense.
"That wood's Ironwood, it would take 3 men your size to break it."
He isn't strong, she's just stupid.
Agreed. This show failed on so many levels. It felt the director and the writers were summer interns. I am not looking forward to season two anymore.
I don't know why this isn't discussed more often, but the biggest problem with the rewriting of the source material is that the untalented, yet arrogant, showrunners ignored the overall theme of the series. Throughout the series, this theme is frequently described, alluded to, stated outright, and often even relied upon by several plot points, but somehow still seems to be either a secret or unimportant to the show's producers. Simply stated, the overarching theme of the books is that the greatest human accomplishments require the input and cooperation of both men and women. This is an over-simplification, but women could only do certain types of female magic and men could only do certain other types of male magic. When they combine however, they can do far greater things together than they were capable of separately. It's kind of like a 'the whole is greater than the sum of its parts' sort of thing. IT'S ACTUALLY THE WHOLE POINT OF HAVING A DRAGON REBORN. The showrunners however, chose to throw all that out in favor of a very different - very slanted - worldview, which necessitated numerous changes. The changes didn't drive the worldview; the worldview drove the changes. Then, because they think they're brilliant, they changed a lot of other things to make the [perennially popular and massively successful] story more "interesting" at long last. Good thing they were there to finally make something worthwhile out of a book series that only sold over 90 million copies. Guess what? If you haven't written any bestsellers, then you shouldn't be rewriting any either.
This is exactly why I only made it through the first two episodes before judging it very loosely based on the books and stopped watching.
Having women be dependent on men in any manner is mysoginist and overtly sexist duh. Haven't you been living in Western Civilization for the last 80 years? Men are, of course, incompetent and dependent on women however... This mirrors modern society exactly. If you haven't noticed, you've been delusional.
"Mat starts acting a dick for no reason." Yet another problem with the show. They didn't develop his character enough to know what he was like pre-dagger to really even notice his change of character.
Tbf they don't really much in the book either. I gave it a fresh reread after the season ended.
Tbf I didn't notice there was anything weird with Mat on my first read either. I thought it was because of the shock of what happened that he started acting like that, didn't seem out of character to me. Only once it was revealed that he had the dagger with him I started finding his behaviour worrying and strange. That being said, the show definitely did it worse because they even had Mat be a brooding guy from the first episode because of his family problems so there was really no change of attitude for him in the show once he got the dagger.
The thing with the Oathrod scene that's bad is that the BAD GUY Elaida did what Siuan did in the show where she made Aes Sedai swear a fourth oath on the rod and it was considered a major scandal and more evidence that she was a meglamaniac. Of all the many MANY plotholes and worldbuilding issues in the TV show though, inexplicably cutting the scene where padan Fain is holding a keystone for the Ways is probably the biggest. IDK WTF happened in production that prevented the party from using a keystone to enter the ways vs using the one power.
It was also an incredible waste of time and money... for the CGI to do the magic instead of a simple leaf embedded in the wall.
You literally have verbalised my thoughts after having some time after watching.
Halfway through the season I was starting to feel Stockholm syndrome. I wanted to love it but it just got more and more painful as the season went on.
yeah, it started okay, and i could often see what what the showrunners were trying to do, but I was more engaged on the level of comparing it to the books than I was able to appreciate it on its own terms... which is definitely a problem;
@@maximeteppe7627 absolutely. The whole possible female dragon thing set me off on completely the wrong foot though. It really annoyed me.
Easier for me to start with the show. Then drawn in to listen to the books.
That cognitive dissonance where you try so hard to love something you've Waited for for so long but eventually cant stand
That's like the opposite of Stockholm Syndrome
Dude, I didn't even realize you ever did "long-form conent." You're so entertaining with it, and I hope to see more someday :0
I just finished the audiobook of “The Dragon Reborn” and I’m on to “The Shadow Rising” (the audio versions of WOT are amazing and I highly recommend them, especially if you don’t have time to read the books). Having those first three books fresh in my mind makes many of these changes even more baffling and kind of heartbreaking. The Horn of Valere in Fal Dara? Thom “Glorified Side Character” Merrilin? Aes Sedai politics in Season 1? Who is the Dragon Reborn? Gee, I WONDER.
I do appreciate the relationship between Lan and Nynaeve getting expanded upon, because the start of it in the books came out of nowhere but they end up being my favorite couple in the series. So I give the TV show points for that. But overall… the show’s a mess.
Next read the Green Pearl, by Jack Vance -- better than Lord of the Rings, and Wheel of Time.
I'd suggest re-reading EotW if you think the show made their relationship any more of a "out of nowhere". In the books Lan develops a grudging respect for her, that turns into romantic feelings by Fal Dara and the trip into the Blight, but the reader is left to understand that alot of that must have come from the travel between the Whitecloak camp and Caemlyn. By the time they are into the Blight and camped at Malchier, their expressions of affection are ramped up heavily between both Lan and Nynaeve, which did feel like it was something that wasn't built as well.
The show did little more to push the two of them together, and traded words of affection at Malchier for literally jumping into bed with each other at Fal Dara. The book at least kept them at arms' length from each other outside of expressing feelings. The show murdered Lan's character by showing him willing to sleep with Nynaeve (something that he would not do until after Moraine was gone in the books) and still say he can't be with her. He went from principled in the books to kinda scummy in the show.
Though, whose character did the show NOT murder? Loial maybe, though him they ACTUALLY murdered.
The TV show version of Lan is one of the worst when compared to the books Lan is fucking garbage in this trash pile of show
@@totalldwarf640 Agree the last spate of Star Wars movies [sans Rogue One & Solo IMO] set the bar extremely low. I am wondering if the current generation of young people just don't have the attention span to take in a complex plot or depth of characters. My brother laments that his teen children have not watched the Lord of the Rings movies --they can't sit for more than 30 seconds...lose track of what's going on.
@@totalldwarf640 I actually was on board with him at the start. I always assumed most of the Borderlanders had Asian influences, so casting an stoic asian actor worked for me. The first few episodes I was ok with him and would have considered him one of the least offensive issues in the show. It wasn't until they made him wail and moan over another warder (Lan has seen countless people die and this was completely against his character) and having him sleep with Nynaeve while still saying he could never be with her which made him scummy.
I'm not sure I'd say he is the worst character in the show, but as the season went on, he definitely got alot worse.
The wheel of time is truly one of the shows of our generation!
It sure will😀
It truly is
Cant argue there.
It's actually one of the shows I've ever seen.
It's such a tv series
I’m convinced Game of Thrones is the modern day media Alexander the Great.
It rose to incredible heights, conquered the world of media and then died suddenly in its youth, leaving the vast empire it created up for grabs.
Now the squabbling Diadochi (every other fucking fantasy adaptation Amazon can get thier hands on) battle it out to try and recapture the magic of Game of Thrones.
I've always thought the Diadochi wars would make an awesome series.
@@Mpetey123 get on it, Amazon
@@RoshDroz I don't know do you want one more thing destroyed or not lol
Since George R.R. Martin was friends with Robert Jordan, it would be nice if he called Amazon out and said "You guys shouldn't try to turn his story into my series", but I guess he's too busy not finishing his book 🤣
@@AA-hr1bk yeah I know, I was joking
It'd be funny if instead of a video essay it was "The Wheel Of Time Failed, here's why" and it was a screen recording of the entirety of wheel of time
One of the big changes that turned me off the show, besides everything that you mentioned - was the way that the showrunners decided to alter the nature of Saidar/Saidin; the contrast of how women and men used the power was a big part of the power dynamic and gutting that completely neutered the overall threat that the Dragon Reborn would have or any False Dragons like Logain. The fall to madness and inability to control the male half was also the core of why male channelers were feared and gave a bit more justification to the Red Ajah's crusade.
True, if in the show both men and women use the same power source, then why do the men go crazy but the women are fine????
@@omaridavis8088 because patriarchy
@@omaridavis8088 it's even worse, the whole point of letting free the dark one was so that men and women could use the same source of power... That was what they wanted to achieve.
@@omaridavis8088 Because the show is desperately trying to maintain the theme that men can't be trusted with any sort of power.
it's pretty obvious why they changed that aspect considering the current social climate.
The longer I live the more I learn to fear idiots telling me they've "fixed something" that wasn't broken
I actually laughed out loud with the post-nut clarity comment revealing who the Dragon Reborn is haha I've read all the books twice and love WoT but this show is comically bad. Thanks for the video
Yeah, I am just watching this and that part was genuinely funny.
I also read the series multiple times. Love it. I cannot bring myself to watch this farce.
Your explanation of how naive characters leads to seamless exposition struck a chord with me that I had never been able to put into words. The exposition dump at the start of the first tv show episode felt so different than the books and this sums up why so well. Great video sir
This is what I noticed too. I watched the first episode, read the book, then tried to go back to the show with questions on how they were going to portray certain things. It was so jarring to have them shove information in your face with seemingly no good reason, I assume just to get the plot out but while skipping parts they didn't want to/couldn't waste time filming.
I fully expected them to start every season with wind blowing into the start of a scene. Which is how every wheel of time book starts ignoring the preludes. Like why didn't they do that?
Thank god someone is doing an in - depth review and taking an objective look at the whole situations. One of my favorite book reviewer youtuber chalked the whole situation to - I loved it and if you disagree you are not really a true fan of the series.
Gee I wonder who that is…
is this youtuber blond by any chance?
@@coyote271280 Perhaps.
@@coyote271280 sorry I’m a bit out of touch with WoT RUclips’s, who is it?
@@rowan4371 sorry bro, let's just say that if you do a search for WoT book reviews, the first blonde young guy you see it's probably him. I am not sure who the OP is making reference off, but it is kind of the same opinion this guy had. Lost me completely. One can be a fan of something and also think a new product is trash. Like this show. This guy was also invited to the premier in London, so maybe a bit biased? No idea, but lost me right then and there.
Honestly the show had a big problem-it did not get to the part where Rand reads Das Kapital and throws a revolution aimed at those in power.
yeah I thought it was weird that they took out Mat's long winded lecture on dialectical materialism
@@gizzardgizzard3583 As long as they spend at least 2 episodes where all the screentime is Perrin calculating root 2 to at least 4 or 5000 decimal places, the show can be saved.
"Wir haben nichts zu verlieren als unsere Ketten!" - Rand
(Yes, it's from the communist manifesto, not das kapital)
That's from book 4. You might have to wait a while until they adapt that.
this show is NEO-Marxist, not regular old Marxist. cmon
Maybe I'm alone in this, but I actually want the show to fail at this point. I hate what they've done to it, and I hope that one day someone else might be able to do it better
Really says something when Winter Dragon was better.
Not alone!
Not alone- I want bad things to fail financially so somebody finally is forced to learn. Seems not to happen with Star Trek (they keep rolling out the garbage,) maybe it can happen here.
What if instead, it gets better? Unlikely, but what if ?
I'm pretty sure that Siuan and Morraine was hinted as having a romantic relationship when they where novices in the books, something about pillowfriends I think, I can't be 100% sure though, been a long time.
Yes, and they would use a rare, priceless teleportation device - only as a means of hooking up, right? It was blatantly clear that the writers have zero knowledge of RJs world.
They did do some skinship, but never anything to point of hardcore scissoring
Like a kiss, that's it, a single kiss when they were both high off of graduating to Aes Sedai