[TV] The Wheel of Time

[Smallfruitbat]

It wasn't creative differences that he left, but he was brilliant in the role. I don't like how they skewed his character though, he is more thief than scoundrel but he has a lot more character than Perrin and pulled it off well. I hope things get better for him.

I've seen a couple of posts (though I may be mixing up forums) that suggested he didn't like the way Mat was being written and decided to jump. Not a fan of show Mat's character but the acting was spot on.

[Advo]

Regarding the last episode, I'm starting to think the eye of the world being the location of the prison is a feint. Seems too convenient. What if Siuan's dreams were 'implanted' by the black ajah, knowing at least a little about her and Moiraine's sidequest, in order to position them to send the potential dragon to the eye of the world? Its hinted at heavily when they discuss how legend and prophecy are 'reinterpreted' over and over through the centuries.

So instead of finding the dark one's prison, they just find the eye more or less how it is in the novel, but then we're introduced to the Forsaken as a style of ambush, to show just how far ahead they currently are. Not all of them, one or two at most. During which, somewhere along the way the dragon (lets face it, its Rand, he has no other character arc other than to be the dragon now) is revealed.

[Theangryone]

The newest episode was again a tad better in quality than the previous, but baffling in what they choose to focus on.

They allegedly wanted to focus on the more ensemble aspect of the characters, but with 6 episodes in now the Emonds Field gang has barely spent an episodes worth of time with Morraine. I can’t fathom why any of them trust her or what she’s saying enough to do or go with her.

Loial has no purpose or reason to be here.

The main focus of this episode has a confusing conclusion.

Pacing and world building continues to a problem. If they wanted Morraine to be the focus of the series, it would have been much better to have started with the Breaking and fast forward to Morraine and New Spring

[Xath]

Regarding the last episode, I'm starting to think the eye of the world being the location of the prison is a feint. Seems too convenient. What if Siuan's dreams were 'implanted' by the black ajah, knowing at least a little about her and Moiraine's sidequest, in order to position them to send the potential dragon to the eye of the world? Its hinted at heavily when they discuss how legend and prophecy are 'reinterpreted' over and over through the centuries.

So instead of finding the dark one's prison, they just find the eye more or less how it is in the novel, but then we're introduced to the Forsaken as a style of ambush, to show just how far ahead they currently are. Not all of them, one or two at most. During which, somewhere along the way the dragon (lets face it, its Rand, he has no other character arc other than to be the dragon now) is revealed.

The Black Ajah had little to no clue in the books at this point but since this is rafe of time who knows.

[Shadowferal]

Hey...but you have "travelling."

[Mace]

The newest episode was again a tad better in quality than the previous, but baffling in what they choose to focus on.

They allegedly wanted to focus on the more ensemble aspect of the characters, but with 6 episodes in now the Emonds Field gang has barely spent an episodes worth of time with Morraine. I can’t fathom why any of them trust her or what she’s saying enough to do or go with her.

Loial has no purpose or reason to be here.

The main focus of this episode has a confusing conclusion.

Pacing and world building continues to a problem. If they wanted Morraine to be the focus of the series, it would have been much better to have started with the Breaking and fast forward to Morraine and New Spring

Why are the males so crappy in this show.. it's really getting on my nerves, it's like they sucked all the cool or greatness out of the males, and inflated the female roles even more - makes no sense.

Egwene and Nynaeve are over inflated this early on, the boys, are pathetic, and the warder isn't cool either. Tam couldn't take out a trolloc, but every woman and her daughter in the village was able to take one down.

Lan doesn't come off as stoic or emotionless, nor dangerous, more like a pet than a wolf.

[Theangryone]

Like I said, the narrative choices are baffling. At this point is more than evident who the Dragon based on how much they are avoiding the character. All of this who is the Dragon is wasted energy. If they had leaned into it from the start it would be better, spent more time as a group with a stop in Camelyn or Tar Valon to direct them to the Eye. Problem with going to the White Tower is I can’t fathom why the Aes Sedai would allow Nynaeve or Egwene to leave.

If they wanted a Morraine show then they should have done New Spring and did some world building with the first season

[Triceron]

Right. Cowboy Bepop actually had ratings that were tanking. Wheel of time does not. They have held steady around 7.5 for a while now. Individual episode ratings are higher according to IMDB. Using negative forum posts increasing, on a fan site for the books/author, is not something Amazon would ever be likely to use as a metric on the health of the show. To even attempt to give that type of argument legitimacy is silly.

Rotten Tomatoes has a 84% critic rating and a 78% audience score. Meta critic is the worst at 55 critic, and 5.8 user. It is a divisive show, but a person not liking it isn't equal to "tanking hard" lol.

Cowboy Bebop's RT score (46% critic, 56% user) is only slightly lower score than WoT's Metacritic score. Cowboy Bebop's Meta critic only trails it a bit (47 critic, 4.9 user). If you already consider that tanking, then honestly WoT isn't far from that. Also consider that WoT's production budget is waaaaaaaaaay higher than Cowboy Bebop's. It makes it more difficult to justify that budget with that score.

Of course, they're still moving forward with the second season, but it seems like it may be an uphill battle from here on out, as opposed to say the growing popularity that series like GoT had straight out the gate. Word of mouth is not exactly going to be in WoT's favour.

[Surfd]

Somewhat anecdotal indicator of how well this series is doing:

I had read both GoT and WoT, and was fairly familiar with the types of people around my work environment who were likely to discuss them when they were only novels.

By the 6th episode of GoT, there were at least 4 or 5 people at Work who had never heard of the Book series before who were actively talking about the show.

We are 6 episodes in for WoT and so far not a single person at work is talking about it, or for that matter even seems to know the show exists, outside of two people who had already read the books.

[Theangryone]

According to THR Cowboy Bebop got canceled because of $$ and sharp decline in viewership. CB allegedly suffered a 59% decrease in streaming hours in its second week. I honestly have no idea what the numbers or for WoT. I will say I have a hard time believing they dropped 10 mill and episode on this. Apple’s adaptation of Foundation was 10 episodes and reportedly cost $45 mill and looked fantastic.

[molliewoof]

Maybe he hated living in Prague...

No mate. Prague's class

[Triceron]

According to THR Cowboy Bebop got canceled because of $$ and sharp decline in viewership. CB allegedly suffered a 59% decrease in streaming hours in its second week. I honestly have no idea what the numbers or for WoT. I will say I have a hard time believing they dropped 10 mill and episode on this. Apple’s adaptation of Foundation was 10 episodes and reportedly cost $45 mill and looked fantastic.

Yeah, it'll be difficult to parse until the show is fully out and if they ever get around to releasing numbers or stats on what shows are most watched on Amazon.

- - - Updated - - -

We are 6 episodes in for WoT and so far not a single person at work is talking about it, or for that matter even seems to know the show exists, outside of two people who had already read the books.

I agree with the lack of buzz. I don't know anyone talking about it, and the only reason I'm watching it is because of a free Amazon Prime 1 month trial that I activated for Black Friday.

[Rennadrel]

Why are the males so crappy in this show.. it's really getting on my nerves, it's like they sucked all the cool or greatness out of the males, and inflated the female roles even more - makes no sense.

Egwene and Nynaeve are over inflated this early on, the boys, are pathetic, and the warder isn't cool either. Tam couldn't take out a trolloc, but every woman and her daughter in the village was able to take one down.

Lan doesn't come off as stoic or emotionless, nor dangerous, more like a pet than a wolf.

Because activist writers like Rafe know absolutely fuck all about nuance, only hamfisting and neutering.

[Tyris Flare]

Found it interesting that in an article saying it was in the top 5 streaming demand that week, it was losing to some shows (including the Mandalorian) which haven't seen any new stuff in over a year.

Mostly though I think GoT was bottled lightning. Audiences are so atomized now that it's almost impossible that everyone is watching X

[Rennadrel]

According to THR Cowboy Bebop got canceled because of $$ and sharp decline in viewership. CB allegedly suffered a 59% decrease in streaming hours in its second week. I honestly have no idea what the numbers or for WoT. I will say I have a hard time believing they dropped 10 mill and episode on this. Apple’s adaptation of Foundation was 10 episodes and reportedly cost $45 mill and looked fantastic.

I don't buy that at all. The show was absolutely lambasted by fans of the anime and the majority of critics (outside a few sites that tried hard to shill for it). I don't think there was much actual viewership outside of people hate-watching knowing it would be bad, only to be proven right that it was indeed, awful.

[Beloren]

I, uh. I would love a good series on WoT, despite its faults it is and will likely always be *the* fantasy series for me, if mostly because I grew up reading it, wondering who killed Asmodean and all that.

But... to do this they need to cut the story A LOT. And the question is will it still be a good story after that. This is just going to be so easy to fuck up beyond recognition.

Also if they're looking for a GoT competitor.. this won't be it. The shock values of violence, sex, deaths of favorite characters are simply not in WoT that is much more epic fantasy with a complicated magic system that'll be incredibly difficult to visualize...

IMO , you don’t cut the story. You sit down and figure out what it takes to actually tell the story well.

The way Jordan wrote, each book could be two 24 episode seasons and still have action, suspense, mystery and wonder every episode. It’s that good.

You should have sat down and planned for a 2 season Eye of the world and done the best portrayal of the book.

Capturing the charm and wonder. Then see how people would have reacted.

They greatly cheapened the show if you ask me

[Rennadrel]

Found it interesting that in an article saying it was in the top 5 streaming demand that week, it was losing to some shows (including the Mandalorian) which haven't seen any new stuff in over a year.

Mostly though I think GoT was bottled lightning. Audiences are so atomized now that it's almost impossible that everyone is watching X

One thing that people also should remember is that literally everyone has a streaming service now. Viewership is once again divided so if people don't like the quality of shows on one service, they can go elsewhere. Much like we wanted to get away from the crappy cable service packages which were overpriced and didn't provide content on demand, now the collective costs of having a few streaming service subscriptions means you have to focus who your providers are if you want to watch most shows.

[Shadowferal]

One thing that people also should remember is that literally everyone has a streaming service now.

Umm..not everybody.
I've been catching stuff off someone else's...

...at least until my bro said "fuck this shit" after the 4th episode.

[Logwyn]

Somewhat anecdotal indicator of how well this series is doing:

I had read both GoT and WoT, and was fairly familiar with the types of people around my work environment who were likely to discuss them when they were only novels.

By the 6th episode of GoT, there were at least 4 or 5 people at Work who had never heard of the Book series before who were actively talking about the show.

We are 6 episodes in for WoT and so far not a single person at work is talking about it, or for that matter even seems to know the show exists, outside of two people who had already read the books.

We also had about 12 brothel/sex scences this far in for game of thrones a well. Might have peaked a little interest too

[Xath]

Hey...but you have "travelling."

Traveling to a fuckpad truly the most important use traveling could be put to.

- - - Updated - - -

IMO , you don’t cut the story. You sit down and figure out what it takes to actually tell the story well.

The way Jordan wrote, each book could be two 24 episode seasons and still have action, suspense, mystery and wonder every episode. It’s that good.

You should have sat down and planned for a 2 season Eye of the world and done the best portrayal of the book.

Capturing the charm and wonder. Then see how people would have reacted.

They greatly cheapened the show if you ask me

Which is why an anime would be perfect give a double cour or even triple for each book and do the story over 15 some years.