[TV] The Wheel of Time

[Chapel]

It is a poor adaptation that markedly adds unimportant changes to the core story.

It disparages the male protagonists to introduce flaws that did not exist in the completed book series (Rand isn't lecherous, Matt isn't a philanderer, nor is his father Abel and Perrin isn't a wife murderer with grief issues).

It reduces the male characters strengths (taveren) and inflates the female protagonists abilities in inappropriate ways (not possible for them to be Dragon Reborn) for no reason but to 'headline' the female characters.

I just treat it as an alternate universe 'Wobbly Wheel of Time' where the men are side characters and 'wamyn power'.

- - - Updated - - -

Plus adding the GoT treatment to sex up the show by aging the protagonists unnecessarily.

[Flurryfang]

After having watched the two first episodes, i do find it odd how little future proof the show is when it comes to the story to come.

There seems to many core elements of future plots/elements, that have been pushed away to make an interesting first season.

Like, channeling is completly de-mystified, while in the books it is mystical until the final end. That you can see channeling and that it has a clear effect on people is also odd, as one of the main factors of channeling is that it is invisible to people who can't channel.
It will make for some wierd scenes in the future, where channelers fight each other and people around are supposed to not notice......

[Shadowferal]

My bro was keeping tabs on the show, but after the 4th episode...and expletive laden criticism he said flat out he wasn't given "this piece of shit" any more of his time.

[Tyris Flare]

The difference? It's called living up to expectations. All of these stories are driven by quality story telling and good characters, flaws and all. What's that line I've heard numerous times from shit show runners, directors and writers in Hollywood over the last few years? Oh yeah, something about subverting expectations? Every time that phrase has been used, the end result has been a complete and utter bastardization of beloved characters and franchises. People don't want their expectations subverted, they want to see the characters they know and love represented with respect. Know why Kevin Smith keeps getting his ass reamed out on Twitter for that pile of shit He-man show? Because it disrespects the protagonist, ruins the character of his main companion in Teela and makes her into a psychotic bitch with a Twitter activist haircut and completely lacks any form of nuanced writing that could actually tell a good story that focuses on her. That's exactly what I expect WoT to be because fuckheads like Rafe have zero fucking concept of nuance and none of those dumb fucks even passed Creative Writing 101.

So, you should really watch Arcane. It like the complete opposite of so much modern garbage, you will immediately feel better.

[Delekii]

I wasn't the one who brought claims, you were and I was showing you a rebuttal. Nobody gives the shit of any one/small subsection of fans, but judging by the the various sources/media I have looked at a lot of people gave the show a chance (the high numbers you talk about) but have little to no interest in continuing to watch this bastard child of Rafe and Jordan (its called retention, and this show is going to fail there).

Maybe because I am not an egotistical nutjob that thinks not only can I adopt a series, but you know what, I am smarter than the author and let me arbitrary make changes to fit MY political/social agenda, not what made the story a cohesive and narrative respected piece of literature. Just because some people like to eat shit and call it chocolate doesn't mean I should. Usually if I am a fan of something I don't feel the need to constantly change pieces of the story to fit a social narrative, I let the piece I enjoy stand for itself. It's hilarious you think people that constantly change things to get social points give more than 2 fucks about the story they are turning into frankensteins monster.

"various sources/media"
85% amalgamated critic rating, 80% user rating

Like I said; people have tunnel vision and see what they want, but numbers don't. The numbers simply don't support what you are saying.

The reality is that the actual bubble is people like you on internet forums like this who think that social progression ruins things, when most people just don't give a shit.

[Corvus]

"various sources/media"
85% amalgamated critic rating, 80% user rating

Rotten Tomatoes has an unusual way of calculating scores. Its much higher than elsewhere. Metacritic has it at 55 critcs and 63 viewers, while IMdB (owned by Amazon) is at 75 from the viewers

[Delekii]

Rotten Tomatoes has an unusual way of calculating scores. Its much higher than elsewhere. Metacritic has it at 55 critcs and 63 viewers, while IMdB (owned by Amazon) is at 75 from the viewers

Sure, that's fine; 7.5 from viewers is still a-ok (and it's from 31k votes, so it's not a small sample). I can't even load metacritic.

Edit: there we go, I loaded metacritic. The score there is an average but the scores from critics range from 20 to 100. Literally, the full gamut from 20 to 100. Rotten tomatoes seems to veto outliers before taking an average, so when you say Rotten Tomatoes has an unusual score, I'd make the argument that it's metacritic's that is weirder.. but it's not, it's just a devisive show among the critics they use.

I don't know how anyone could realistically give the show a 25, that's just nonsensical. So is 100, but 25? Come on. Clicking through to read the actual review, it doesn't even show a score, so I'm not even sure where the number came from.

Edit: To add further, none of the low scoring reviews mention changes to the story or socially progressive motivations at all.

[Corvus]

7.5 isn't great given what they are aiming for. GoT, even after its disastrous last season is sitting at 9.2 from 1.9 million voters. Amazon (and Bezos more specifically) wants this to rival GoT - on those numbers it's a long way short.

[Biomega]

I don't even know where to go for review scores anymore. RT, IMBD, and Metacritic have been skewed so much by their industry conflict of interest it's really tough to find something you can believe is at least a little bit independent. So I have no clue what the prevailing opinion of viewers is - there is outcry from fans all over the place, but of course that's selection bias because people who like the show just fine are much less likely to post online than people who have something to complain about, so we have no idea how representative that reaction actually is.

At the end of the day, the only thing I can know for sure is whether or not *I* like it, and I don't. We'll have to see what happens to the show to get a gauge on overall reaction, if they cancel it at some point it didn't work; if it runs until the end, I guess it did.

[Kharadin]

I suppose if you like terrible color grading ren fair level costumes and butchering of good works of literature it's decent.

I don't think that's the case. And it seems to be doing quite well critically.

[Ragedaug]

As an average person who didn't know about this, I still don't care what the book says if I'm watching this show for the sake of watching the show.

I think the point is that that change would make it a completely different story, where just some of the people and places have the same name, but it's a different story happening.

That makes the title misleading. Instead, it should have a distinct title and the small print should say, "Inspired by Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series".

[Triceron]

I think the point is that that change would make it a completely different story, where just some of the people and places have the same name, but it's a different story happening.

That makes the title misleading. Instead, it should have a distinct title and the small print should say, "Inspired by Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series".

That's exactly what 'Based on' means. This is literally semantics when 'Based on' already implies that it's not the actual source. It's literally no different than 'Inspired by'.

You don't look at something that's based on something else and expect it to be exactly the same, otherwise it wouldn't even need to say 'based on'.

Like if we were to talk about the Back to the Future musical being 'based on' or 'inspired by' the movie, there's literally no difference in the wording even if the musical aims to translate the movie 1:1 in musical theatre form; it's still implied that it's not the same thing as the movie and will have creative liberties taken. Or say a movie literally 'based on' true life events, the movie can take creative liberties regardless. It's not a documentary or biography.

And circling back to points I've made all too many times, this is literally no different than how LOTR and Game of Thrones approached their respective movie/shows all while being 'based on' the original novels. There was no need to imply later seasons of GoT were simply 'Inspired by' because all the changes they made to the show, or have the Hobbit be 'Inspired by' because of all the additions and changes that never existed in the original novel. At the end of the day, we're still talking about Adaptations.

[Gigantique]

Nynaeve doing an AoE Full Restore heal without a shred of training was the straw that broke the camel's back for me.

Damn shame. The production value is clearly really high but if the show isn't going to take its source material seriously then it's not worth watching for me personally.

[Geckoo]

It's an average fantasy show. Despite the effort to promote it as something else... it is not. You can find a bunch of similar shows across all platforms, they are okay to kill time, but not the kind of thing you are waiting for each week. I haven't read the books so i don't know how good or bad it is as an adaptation, but it didn't take too much to guess that it's not very good at that either.

When it comes to introducing more diversity/representation there are some genres that work better than others and a medieval fantasy setting is not the kind of setting that works well with that precisely because we have some knowledge of how a medieval society, even on a fantasy setting, would work. This means that an isolated village on a remote area is not very likely to have the kind of diversity that the show depicts and by no means does this mean that there is no place for diversity, but it needs to make sense within the context of that medieval fantasy setting. Anyway, it's certainly not the main reason why the show is bad, but it is one of the reasons.

[Kharadin]

It's an average fantasy show. Despite the effort to promote it as something else... it is not. You can find a bunch of similar shows across all platforms, they are okay to kill time, but not the kind of thing you are waiting for each week. I haven't read the books so i don't know how good or bad it is as an adaptation, but it didn't take too much to guess that it's not very good at that either.

When it comes to introducing more diversity/representation there are some genres that work better than others and a medieval fantasy setting is not the kind of setting that works well with that precisely because we have some knowledge of how a medieval society, even on a fantasy setting, would work. This means that an isolated village on a remote area is not very likely to have the kind of diversity that the show depicts and by no means does this mean that there is no place for diversity, but it needs to make sense within the context of that medieval fantasy setting. Anyway, it's certainly not the main reason why the show is bad, but it is one of the reasons.

Idk I'm waiting for it every week.

And it's not a medieval setting, it's a post-apocalyptic future Earth setting with high fantasy (i.e. magic) and fuedal europe elements. A cataclysmic event that causes mass immigration from population centers can easily be argued as a good reason for many parts of the world after such an event being a genetic melting pot.

[Corvus]

The story is meant to take place three thousand years after the apocalypse. Manetheren fell a thousand years before the story.

I think a thousand years is enough time for an isolated backwater that the books make clear has close to no contact with the outside world beyond the occasional trader to end up fairly homogeneous.

[Kharadin]

The story is meant to take place three thousand years after the apocalypse. Manetheren fell a thousand years before the story.

I think a thousand years is enough time for an isolated backwater that the books make clear has close to no contact with the outside world beyond the occasional trader to end up fairly homogeneous.

What makes you think that?

[Smallfruitbat]

Well, at the very least they would all speak with the same accent.

[Corvus]

What makes you think that?

For a thousand years practically no one has entered the two rivers. That Tam Al'Thor not just left but came back with a foreign wife was a major thing.

So for a thousand years they only had themselves to breed with. The only way to have such racial distinctiveness in a fairly small population with out outsiders coming in would be for them to practice racial segregation when it came to marriage.

[Kharadin]

For a thousand years practically no one has entered the two rivers. That Tam Al'Thor not just left but came back with a foreign wife was a major thing.

So for a thousand years they only had themselves to breed with. The only way to have such racial distinctiveness in a fairly small population with out outsiders coming in would be for them to practice racial segregation when it came to marriage.

How do you know that? Do you have some training in genetics/epigenetics and population dynamics or is this just your own intuition/common sense?