Alright, it finally dropped and I would be remiss in my long and dusty duties if I didn’t fanboy over it a little. But it’s late and I can’t add much to what I’ve linked below. By all means let’s assemble our Wheel of Time knowledge and see what can be said about all this in the comments.
Just as a little background, this is the series. It’s not the best series of all time and it’s not a founding classic, but it’s the pulp fantasy doorstop OG that I read through high school and university as my life shifted from analog to digital. I met Mrs. Hatboy on a fan forum discussing the books, and we all know how that ended.
It didn’t. It didn’t end. There are neither beginnings nor endings, you know.
So yeah. Upwards of twenty years we’ve been picking this story apart, and waiting for a movie or TV adaptation. And it will be here on the 19th of November.
There it is. Really not much to say. The fucking Myrddraal (its mouth and screech felt more draghkar-ey to me, but it has a hooded cloak and it is visible in a mob of Trollocs there) is perfect. Tar Valon looks amazing. The channeling looks excellent. I had my doubts about some of the casting but I think they’ll all grow on me.
Whatever’s happening with Egwene in the Harley Quinn pool is super neat and I wonder if it’s part of her Accepted raising, or a Dream she is having of her gaining the stole. They do seem to be throwing in some stuff from later in the series, which is actually fine.
Shadar Logoth and Mashadar looking good too.
I’m happy with the Emond’s Fielders being older than the barely-adults they are in the books, for one simple reason: they’ll want to make at least five seasons of this to make it worthwhile, and kids will go all Ron Weasley on them. Young adults will stay fairly consistent as the years go by.
Daniel Greene broke it down far more thoroughly than I ever could so I’ll just take his work and nod approvingly:
Works for me. It’s good to see the younger generation has this shit figured out.
The names are going to give me grief though. If that’s the way they’re going to be pronouncing Aes Sedai, Tar Valon, Egwene, Nynaeve and Aiel (and I’m sure it is; Greene has definitely studied the pronunciation guides in the books and the showrunners will have done the same), then it’s going to get ugly. Because I’m reading the books to Wump and Toop right now and that ain’t how I’m pronouncing any of the names, and Wump at least was not having it when she heard them. I’m saying them right, and Greene is wrong, and if the TV show does it his way then they’re wrong too.
Just the way it is.
Still, I see reason for optimism here.
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I will say there’s a lot more Logain here than I expected, from before he is gentled and seemingly during his capture as he channels and does various stuff. That’s a cool addition to the story, because Logain was pretty underwhelming until later in the books. Taim was the scary male channeler / false Dragon and there wasn’t much foundation to it but with a more actively threatening Logain, they can set Taim up.
Although I do wonder if they will combine Logain and Taim. Just a funny feeling I have, it’d take some work and the Healing of gentling / stilling is a huge deal, but if they trim down and simplify it, would that be needed? But of course for Logain to be Taim, the Forsaken would already have to be free OH WAIT, Taim wasn’t a Forsaken was he…
Never mind then. They can totally combine the characters.
Before I even watch it I wanted to comment on Logain showing up so soon and the other scenes you noted that are from a bit later in the series. Greene covered this as well…I don’t catch all of his stuff, but the WOT stuff I have usually watched. They are going to be shuffling around the events some, showing the buildup (remember that Logain was up to shenanigans during book 1, so in part that’s what they’ll show) and maybe flash-forwards or something when it comes to the other scenes that would be out of sequence.
Or they just want us to fantasize about all the cool shit that was in the series.
Me, I want that “I am a woman” thing from the Tower voting procedures. Yummy.
Yes, I know they won’t do it. At least not with frontal shots. But anyway, I’ll live.
OK time to watch!
Yeah, Rand meets Elayne in his attempt to get a closer look at Logain being paraded through Caemlyn already in book one. So that’ll definitely be in there. But I’m happy to see maybe more Logain stuff will be on-screen rather than just happening in rumours and gossip.
I definitely think there was a lot of reading-into going on in the trailer breakdown. Those action scenes were all cut and pasted to Hell and back, no way of knowing what some of them are and no way to rule out what they’re not on the basis of “that’s right next to Winternight.” The events could be set months apart.
Okay, going to bed now but I’ll certainly have more to add tomorrow. Goodnight!
I honestly don’t see how weeping white-coated “Warder” with great serpent ring can be anyone but Lews Therin. I don’t know if anyone confirmed the Warder thing but if it’s just about the IMDB casting, that can be misleading. Ilyena was an Aes Sedai, making Lews Therin a kind of Warder to her. They could just plain be lying, although I have no idea why. Anyway, I guess we just have to wait and see.
So I agree Moiraine doesn’t look right, and I think Greene was holding back from saying she’s supposed to be prettier, more stunning, stuff like that. Also younger, but I think they’re not doing the whole ageless thing at all so we gotta move on. I have no problem with Moiraine, I’m already there, this is Moiraine and I love it.
He didn’t like the healing, and I agree it’s kind of basic, but I think they’re giving themselves room for Nynaeve’s healing to be the epic version. So I think they intentionally muted the normal healing which, I think we all recall, was rather poo pooed by Nynaeve throughout the books. I like it.
I think I’m most excited about Mat, I think he looks like the actor is going to nail it.
So Rand and Egwene are going to bump uglies! Nice! That’s going to…complicate later things though, I’d think. Hee!
I don’t know what he means by Logain breaking out being a change…he broke out and escaped at some point I can’t remember exactly when. Or was set free but that can be changed NP.
I agree the axe guy is super goofy LMAO
The myrrdraal is about right…I think the draghkar have red lips, his are pale…I think it’s good!
The Moiraine and Lan fight scene is awesome, love it love it exactly it shows they are of one mind, and it’s pretty cool channeling the lightning too.
SO HYPED.
Wump was asking me how I pictured Moiraine (Wump herself had pictured her “smaller and fancier”), and I had to think about it a bit. I concluded that I’d kind of always pictured Carrie Fisher, buuuuut…
Perhaps the best summary I’ve seen so far of the basic “problem” with Moiraine’s casting was from my boy Clayton Snyder on Twitter:
If they’d cast another relative unknown, maybe that would have been better. Rosamund Pike kind of gives off a “this isn’t real, I’m a proper actor playing make-believe in fancy dress” and it feels obscurely mocking, or at least shared-joke-y? I don’t know. Something like that. The established actors in Lord of the Rings avoided that because of the seriousness of the material. The Wheel of Time will probably never have that, especially after the past ten or fifteen years of mediocre-to-meh fantasy adaptations we’ve gotten.
Good point, I agree. There’s also the possibility of still more post-production tweaking going into this, although I would assume that by the time you’re at teaser trailer stage, it’s pens down.
Agreed again. Wump was not at all whelmed by that casting, but we don’t see enough to know for sure I’d say. I get “Charlie from Numb3rs” vibes from him and that’s just fine.
Aye, there will be some hurt feewings among the non-readers.
Don’t remember that. He was caught, gentled, then the next time they see him it’s in Tar Valon.
But that scene, to me, might not even be him escaping. Maybe the shield fumbles and he has an outburst before they can shield him again. Just to set the stakes for how dangerous male channelers are and how shielding works, for later on.
Taim has more followers than Logain but yeah, they do both have (small) armies. So anything can be added in there, no problem. Maybe the capture is done differently, weaving the plots together better from the start. The luxury of having a completed story to work with.
Yes.
Yeah, on brief reflection it’s almost certainly not a draghkar. Which means we still get to see one of them, yay!
SQUEEEEEE- *glances at calendar, flicks through to November 19th* -EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE- *takes long breath* -EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…
I guess I’ll watch it. I really don’t watch TV these days. Still haven’t seen Game of Thrones, but I lost interest in that while waiting for book 4 anyway.
Anyways, I’ve just watched this trailer once, no analyses, and I’m not going to frame-by-frame it.
The fade is eyeless, so seems accurate enough. You reckon that screech sounds like the sweet siren song of a draghkar?
I haven’t watched Daniel Greene, but I did see a few of Nae’Blis’s videos a while back, and it was the pronunciation that made me stop watching. So that’ll be annoying if the show does the same.
Egwene in the pool is probably becoming accepted. Wearing a white dress (more eggshell blue, but whatever), and then getting streaks of the seven ajah colours as she emerges from the water (grey looked more like lavender, but whatever).
That stone structure on the plains was probably supposed to be a portal stone. The non-rainbow steps go up instead of down, but whatever.
Can’t say I like the look of the White Tower. Sure it’s massive, and more structurally feasible than the skyscraper I imagined, but does that matter when it’s Ogier masonry fortified by the one power? It doesn’t look organic, and that’s a distinguishing feature of Ogier masonry.
I wonder if we’ll see how the one power is woven later, as Egwene and Rand become more experienced with it.
So yeah, it’s probably a good adaptation. We’ll see if I remember to watch it in a few months lol
What I mostly remember about that show was:
– A couple of cool scenes that were also cool in the books
– Watching the episodes with friends who came over for dinner and drinks on a regular basis for that reason alone
– Crybabies losing their ever-loving minds about the end of the show (they have still not located said minds)
Otherwise, eh, it was fine.
Yeah I let a better content creator do that for me.
Nah, more like the shriek it makes after it’s attacked / disturbed. But that was clearly a Myrddraal I reckon.
Agreed.
That was my initial guess, yeah. The Amyrlin’s stripes are softer pastel too, which actually makes sense because rainbow stripes would start looking dumb really fast. On the other hand I do like the colour-coding of the Aes Sedai rather than depending on shawls (or, more often, just plain “knowing who each character is and thus what Ajah she’s in”, because that’s just not going to work here). It’s a shame Shadow and Bone snuck in cheekily while this beast was still being made, and stole the whole colour-coded mage-schools concept out from under them.
I’d prefer that to it being a Waygate, but “Waygate” is apparently confirmed (don’t know from where, maybe the Rafe Judkins AMA that went down last night, I didn’t see it). Why there is no sign of trees or other stedding-adjacent shit nearby is another issue.
Yeah, just re-reading The Dragon Reborn right now and Tar Valon as described in the book would be gaudy and inconsistent as fuck, so I can sort of see why they Minas Tirith’d it. The White Tower will grow on me but I kind of imagined something smoother, eggshelly and barrel-like.
I guess it depends how many seasons we get, how much effort they want to put into all that.
I’ll be tweeting about it so I’ll try to ping you!
There’s neither beginnings or endings, but there IS a lot of wind lol
It’s nothing less than a return to form, now that alt.fan.robert-jordan has faded to myth.
It’s kinda relaxing to be, for once, on the audience sidelines of a major SF/F-related pop culture event. The Wheel of Time has never really been a thing for me, not like LOTR, SW, or ASOIAF, so there’s like zero stress!
I’m happy Robert Jordan is getting his turn on the live-action screen stage, and I will definitely check out the pilot, as it’s not like there’s an abundance of live-action epic/high fantasy available on TV. If it’s good, great, I can watch some more. If it’s not good, well, I can just move on.
Man, yeah, Twitter went nuts last night.
Apparently Facebook did too, and that seemed to be where all the “why are the characters black, fucking woke agenda” complainers were, so once again I am happy to have curated myself away from that shit.
Something you need to understand about the specific paleolithic substratum of the Wheel of Time fandom I (and Mrs. Hatboy, and Aaron, and Veronica) belong to is, we have a very relaxed and uncritical view of something like this adaptation. Oh, we’ll talk about it even if you dunk us in wet concrete, but we’ve already torn every element of the story to shreds and nobody has said and done meaner stuff than we have with the material. So if this is a Lord of the Rings-level triumph, we’ll snort derisively and say “Ishamael needed to come back to life more times.” If it’s a clusterfuck of ungodly proportions and bankrupts Amazon into nonexistence, we’ll snort and say “fuckin’ called it.”
So whatever happens, it’s gravy. Where Lord of the Rings is timeless, The Wheel of Time is very much a late-Gen-X fantasy vehicle.
Quite so! I haven’t decided yet whether I will talk a lot about each episode, but let’s face it I probably will.
Oh yeah, I’m not reading all that before I spew my own reply here.
Regarding Danielle’s criticisms.. later in the books they mention that there is a lot of hand movements and gesturing when channeling, going so far to say that sisters can tell who learned what weave from whom by the way its woven.
Channeling looks great to me since so far all we see is basic stuff. Grabbing arrows is air, lightning is air and water, healing is air, water, and spirit. As the girls learn more about channeling I would love the colors of the threads to come in.
I’m happy that there are changes from the books, otherwise why watch? If they didn’t change things, the series would be +10yrs long and even I hesitate over the series making it that far, especially having to deal with the Slog.
I’ve always wanted the series to be animated, I was not really excited for the show and sort of considered it DOA after covid arrived. I teared up watching the trailer and now can’t wait for November.
Everyone mentioning Rosamund when it’s Lan who is the most off, imo.
My main complaint about Lan is that I pictured him older, but I’m not bothered by his ethnicity since Malkier is right next to Sheinar and with their military style and topknots I kind of always pictured them as having some kind of Asian influence. Oh, and Daniel Henney is too expressive, there’s that. Where’s the stone?
I have no problem with his ethnicity, but his size. I just found out he’s pretty tall, but his build doesn’t seem to encompass the size I always pictured for Lan.
Hmm. I guess I never thought of that. Moiraine was always small in my mind, and Perrin and Rand big. Loial obviously huge. Never thought about Lan. Interesting!
Lan is tall and strong but not overly muscly, IIRC. The guy does look a little skinny but not TOO much.
And this here is a really good point. Completely agreed.
Guess I’ve fallen all the way back into it, I’m going to watch the trailer again right now.
By the way, Aaron and Veronica and Rob at least – if any of you want to get on discord, there’s a bit of a monkeymoot happening there. KMA and Drr. Mat and Morelin showed up, and there is promise of Contro. But there’s always promise of Contro.
https://discord.gg/JyAzaX2j
It says that discord invite is invalid.
I like Lan and Moiraine. I haven’t seen Pike in anything so I don’t have any of the “Egwene and Rosamund Pike!” stuff.
You’re right, I think it was Taim who escaped. Maybe they’re rolling Logain and Taim in together? Or just a failed escape, to spice things up.
No time. Just spent 3 hours disassembling a playground and now our yard is wide open!
Dang it, here’s a new one to try:
https://discord.gg/YfWHfWhZ
After seeing the trailer I am hyped. I will have to start re-reading the series though (again 🙂 ) if I want to know how it went again. What I do not get so far is how they will follow the series. I saw that the first season is only 6 episodes long?
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