[Amazon] The Wheel of Time

[Old_Nash]

 

[levzloi]

Looks like the money and production values are high enough, hopefully the writing and acting will be as well. 

[Dynaman]

I can't remember enough of the early books to know how faithful it is to the story.  Things do gain complexity throughout the series though and the first three are a good bit different from the later books.  

[Thom]

Well, alright then! I recall buying the first book in the Little Professor Book store in Kearney NJ many many moon turnings agone. Unfortunately, I've given up on it after the twelve for so book and the introduction of the thirtieth character and the fifteenth or so enemy to pop up... But, I'll definitely give the show a chance. Marked on the calendar.

[Dynaman]

1 hour ago, Thom said:

Well, alright then! I recall buying the first book in the Little Professor Book store in Kearney NJ many many moon turnings agone. Unfortunately, I've given up on it after the twelve for so book and the introduction of the thirtieth character and the fifteenth or so enemy to pop up... But, I'll definitely give the show a chance. Marked on the calendar.

Somewhere around where you jumped ship things start going back to basics.  It ends with a strong focus on the core set of characters from the first books.

[Thom]

Anyone else watching this one.

Saw the first four today and so far I'm liking it. There are a number of changes from the books that have me wondering 'why?' but all in all, it's a good watch. And thankfully, I've seen only one man-butt so far! Awesome!😀 Makes me wonder why they even did that scene that way..?

[Dynaman]

I only watched the first one and since it didn't really grab my interest I have not watched any of the others yet.  I agree they made changes that don't seem to make much sense since they will cause trouble sticking with the source material later on.  The trollocs came out very well on screen but some of the other FX were not really that good considering the budget they said they had.

[technoblue]

This is another series of books that I missed reading back in the day. For me, the first three episodes have been quite engaging although I'm waiting for Amazon to release a few more before I continue with it. I'm not a fan of watching one episode per week on streaming platforms. Given a choice, I'll wait to watch a bunch over a long weekend.

[Rock]

I am enjoying it. I do wish theu would do more variation in the magic than the light wing ribbons effect though. Really liked the ghost city ruins episode.  kind of reminded my of Dr Who!

[sqidd]

I didn't make it 5min. The anti male sexist messaging was too grating. My wife felt the same.

Edited December 2, 2021 by sqidd

[Thom]

2 hours ago, sqidd said:

I didn't make it 5min. The anti male sexist messaging was too grating. My wife felt the same.

Understood, though there is a good in-universe reason for that.

I'm going on the assumption that you do not know it, so if that is wrong just ignore this!😄

Spoiler

There are male/female channelers of the One Source. However, during the war against the Dark One 3000 years earlier, the male half was corrupted and all its users went mad and basically ripped apart the world. Any male channeler of the One Source is doomed to madness and so is summarily 'gentled.' It's a draconian measure to keep another breaking from happening.  And they are on a constant look-out for more male channelers as, again, they will go insane if left untended and could cause yet another breaking.

After the war, only the female half remained to salvage what civilization they could, which led to a mostly matriarchal society led by the Amyrlin Seat, the strongest of the female channelers, at the White Tower. 

 

[sqidd]

EDIT

Edited December 3, 2021 by sqidd

[levzloi]

3 hours ago, sqidd said:

I didn't make it 5min. The anti male sexist messaging was too grating. My wife felt the same.

Spoiler

Assuming they are following the structure of the books, and the nature of the world, it's really more of a deconstruction of imbalance and female-centric power.  The important nature of yin and yang, male and female, and the inherent differences and even inequalities in the genders.  The first episode was not good, it was rushed, poorly edited and the cold open ,which nobody likes, was completely irrelevant for the story,.  As a lover of the books, I'm still upset at some of the changes they have made, but it does get significantly better in episodes 2-4.  The red Aes Sedai (chanelers or magic users) you meet in that horrible cold open have the job of hunting down all male chanelers (magic users) who without exception will go insane and become extraordinarily dangerous because the male part of the "One Power" has been corrupted by the dark one.  As a result most red sisters are pretty blatantly sexist with a lot of them just hating men.  That is not the attitude of all women, or even all female magic users.  As the series progresses, we see that women are just as capable of screwing up the world as the men.  In other words, I'd give it more than a 5 min chance, it's a great story. 

 

[levzloi]

41 minutes ago, sqidd said:

So they wrote a story to support/give an excuse to a sexist agenda. Doesn't change what it is.

 

I'm not going to say that the Showrunners won't take it that direction, they could, given today's society they are very likely to lean that direction.  And I don't want to get this thread shut down for going political, so I'm not going to talk about that more.   However the book the first season is based on, was written over 30 years ago, by a man,  a Vietnam war vet,  and I can tell you it's anything but sexist towards men.  Simply because racism is portrayed in a work, doesn't make that work racist, by the same measure, simply because sexism is portrayed in a work, doesn't mean that work is sexist. 

Edited December 2, 2021 by levzloi

[levzloi]

11 minutes ago, sqidd said:

The show could have easily been written to where it wasn't men vs women. Any number of defining factors could have been used. The story was birthed as a sexist message. 

My personal feeling is that the point of the philosophy behind the books is that men and women are naturally different, complementary, and unequal (because who is equal?)  There are plenty of reasons not to like any given series, and heaven knows they did a terrible job building the worlds foundation in that first episode (due largely to studio interference reportedly) but in my opinion you are reading way to much into the motivations behind a great sci fi/fantasy question.   What if all the male magic users went insane and the women had to hunt them down?

[technoblue]

2 hours ago, levzloi said:

I'm not going to say that the Showrunners won't take it that direction, they could, given today's society they are very likely to lean that direction.  And I don't want to get this thread shut down for going political, so I'm not going to talk about that more.   However the book the first season is based on, was written over 30 years ago, by a man,  a Vietnam war vet,  and I can tell you it's anything but sexist towards men.  Simply because racism is portrayed in a work, doesn't make that work racist, by the same measure, simply because sexism is portrayed in a work, doesn't mean that work is sexist. 

Good points. I also think it's worth emphasizing how big and small screen adaptations are never one to one when compared to original work. Something is always lost in translation when rewriting and editing a story to fashion it into a script. Even popular big screen adaptations like Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings" or Villeneuve's "Dune" take artistic and editorial license that deviate from the original text. I expect no less from this adaptation of Robert Jordon's fantasy.

Luckily, I'm approaching this like "The Expanse" and plan to read the books later so I don't have any expectations. The fact that some of these powerful women of magic introduced early on may be sketchy, chaotic, and even potentially evil does not bother me as a viewer. The story is obviously trying to do something different that doesn't gel with how the fantasy genre puts characters into traditional roles. It reminds me of how Ursula K. Le Guin challenged traditional roles in her own writing. The test will be to see if the series can create consistency within its universe. That's what matters to me. 

Edited December 2, 2021 by technoblue

[Thom]

@sqidd Opinions will vary. Seeing how I saw very little sexim towards men in it, I would say it is just patriarchy and matriarchy put on end. And considering the history in the story, it is fitting.

[Dynaman]

Showing the Aes Sedai BEFORE the characters meet them was a very bad move on the part of whoever made that decision.  The books introduced them slowly as the characters got to know about them.  The books at least are not "Male sexist messaging".  The TV show is nowhere near far enough along to know what the intent there is either.

 

EDIT - as for in-universe consistency.  The books managed to do so though there is an obvious bit where it was stretched out from a single book(*) to a trilogy and then to the 15 or so it ended up being.

(*) - It has an obvious spot where the first book was left with a hook to continue it if it sold well enough.

Edited December 2, 2021 by Dynaman

[levzloi]

1 hour ago, Dynaman said:

 as for in-universe consistency.  The books managed to do so though there is an obvious bit where it was stretched out from a single book(*) to a trilogy and then to the 15 or so it ended up being.

(*) - It has an obvious spot where the first book was left with a hook to continue it if it sold well enough.

That's one place I will give them pretty extreme latitude, the ending of EOTW is really confusing.   Several things were ret-coned out of the first book specifically, Moiraine's staff for instance.  Honestly I'm not a big fan of the 2nd book, hopefully they will curtail almost all of the wandering around and just stick to the main plot points.  I feel the series starts to find it's way in the 3rd book, Mat finally becomes an interesting character, and then Jordan hits it out of the park for the next three books, before the plot bloat begins to set in during the next four books, and finally he turned it around in 11 and Brandon Sanderson was the least bad choice to bring it home in 12-14. 

1 hour ago, technoblue said:

The test will be to see if the series can create consistency within its universe. That's what matters to me. 

Obviously there are massive amounts of background material, secondary characters, bloat and story lines that can be cut re-arranged or merged without too much regret.  My biggest issue is that the show-runners/Amazon/writers seem to be going with a little to much JJ Abrams "who cares if it makes sense, It looks cool!"  I hated the first episode, but I understand how constrained they were by time and getting out of the two rivers, and I have to admit that their ham-handed use of tropes is useful for establishing characters and attitudes without to much exposition.  I genuinely enjoyed 2-4 and I'm excited to see 5 tonight, so don't think they've completely botched it, however, the attention to detail and in world rules seems to be going by the wayside in favor of what they must feel is dramatic on screen and very hand-wavy with the rules.  I think this season is just going to be like that, and I hope it's just studio interference that may be lessened in future seasons as the show-runners and producers who know the story might gain more power.  But time will tell. 

Edited December 2, 2021 by levzloi

[Thom]

I thought I remembered seeing this a few years ago.

Doesn't have the energy and trauma of the written word, but maybe as close as we'll get to the first scene in the book.

 

Edited December 2, 2021 by Thom

[sqidd]

EDIT

Edited December 3, 2021 by sqidd

[technoblue]

Hm. I guess if you feel strongly about men's health, then I can understand that point of view but the plot isn't a trigger for me.

No, I don't see it as an attack on men, but I'm also not reading in that context. Narrowing this discussion down to that one establishing scene, which is pretty shocking, I'll use sqidd's own litmus test to make my point. If the male/female roles were reversed, it wouldn't matter to me. Granted, I'm not naïve and I also understand that the scene would have its critics either way, but my point is that I would still give the show a chance no matter how it was constructed or who was playing the respective roles. So no hypocrisy here.

I'm pretty mellow these days and this is just a story that the showrunners are trying to bring to the screen. I'm also open to having stories that challenge the ethics, morals, and traditions of the audience. These stories are the ones that often teach us about ourselves.

Anyway, watching the FXX pilot that Thom shared, I'm glad that we started of the new series at a different place (for better or worse). The way the old pilot was set up with the forgotten memory/dreamlike sequence between the other characters was a little confusing.

[Thom]

@sqidd Who's defending sexism..? To be clear, if the genders were reversed, I'd still be watching and I'd still be against sexism.

[Keith]

10 hours ago, sqidd said:

So they wrote a story to support/give an excuse to a sexist agenda. Doesn't change what it is.

This is the sexism litmus test. If the roles were reversed and the women are who went crazy Twitter/FB/IG?etc would be calling for the banning of the show "because patriarchy". 

The show could have easily been written to where it wasn't men vs women. Any number of defining factors could have been used. The story was birthed as a sexist message. 

You're a Macross fan right? Just askin', no reason... Most certainly not because I'm wondering if you have the same spin on the whole Zentran Meltran thing... Nope!

Edited December 3, 2021 by Keith

[levzloi]

5 hours ago, sqidd said:

It's interesting to see how many people defend sexism (according to the "new rules") as long as it's pointed in a "approved" direction. I.E. men.

The sexism in the show doesn't bother me. The hypocrisy does. And because of the spotlight the show shins on that hypocrisy, I can't enjoy it.

I'm going to be honest, I think you're tilting at windmills here.  I think I know where you're coming from, everything put out in all forms of media over the last 20 years has increasingly been tailored to a particular political agenda that I largely disagree with.  That being said (again don't want to get into politics here),  I think you've formed an opinion on over 14000 pages of content by watching less than 5 minutes of a poorly edited episode of a made for TV adaptation.  But that is completely your right, as is my God given right as a geek to tell you how wrong you are. 

[Dobber]

I really want to applaud most everyone hear who as replied and remained civil and open minded to differing points of view, while calmly and patiently explaining the context from which they and the story are coming from. As was written above, I too can understand where Squidd is coming from. It’s one of the problems when we are told to be aware and more sensitive to whatever issue one side is for; ie Race/gender/sexuality/religion whatever. People will then do just that but it won’t always go in the direction people would want/expect. Like Squidd said the hypocrisy of the argument or stance…..but also as others have said the story was written some time ago and has a reasoning behind it. Though the timing of making a show with this kind of story in our more hyper-aware times can lead to it seeming like it is trying to make a political statement. Even if it wasn’t the intention..I dunno. Just my 2 cents.
 

All that said I haven’t seen this yet and not sure if I will watch. Some friends have watched it and said it is pretty rough….not politically or anything…just the production values and such aren’t that great. That the quality of the show is only so so.

Chris

[Thom]

59 minutes ago, Dobber said:

...

All that said I haven’t seen this yet and not sure if I will watch. Some friends have watched it and said it is pretty rough….not politically or anything…just the production values and such aren’t that great. That the quality of the show is only so so.

Chris

I'd say, taking it on its own with no comparison to the books, it's doing pretty good. The first ep was a bit rough, but IMO it is getting better. The character are engaging and well acted, and FX are holding up well. Those Trollocs are esp good. And I do like how they are displaying the One Power, though I miss the multiple colored aspect of it from the book.

If they were streaming the entire season in one go, I would have watched all the way to the end already.

[levzloi]

On 12/2/2021 at 10:13 PM, levzloi said:

I'm going to be honest, I think you're tilting at windmills here.  I think I know where you're coming from, everything put out in all forms of media over the last 20 years has increasingly been tailored to a particular political agenda that I largely disagree with.  That being said (again don't want to get into politics here),  I think you've formed an opinion on over 14000 pages of content by watching less than 5 minutes of a poorly edited episode of a made for TV adaptation.  But that is completely your right, as is my God given right as a geek to tell you how wrong you are. 

@sqidd,   I know you've deleted your posts on this, but I felt I needed to offer somewhat of an apology.  Although I still feel you jumped to conclusions on a very small sample size of 5 minutes of the first episode...  and although I would continue to defend Robert Jordan's work in the Wheel of Time... you were absolutely right about the direction Rafe Judkins (the show-runner) was taking the Amazon adaptation of the Wheel of Time.  He clearly wanted to insert his world view into Robert Jordan's world, and I can't emphasize enough how disappointed I am in the extremely heavy handed adaption we ended up with.  So @sqidd you were right.

On 12/2/2021 at 10:15 AM, levzloi said:

I'm not going to say that the Showrunners won't take it that direction, they could, given today's society they are very likely to lean that direction.  And I don't want to get this thread shut down for going political, so I'm not going to talk about that more.   However the book the first season is based on, was written over 30 years ago, by a man,  a Vietnam war vet,  and I can tell you it's anything but sexist towards men.  Simply because racism is portrayed in a work, doesn't make that work racist, by the same measure, simply because sexism is portrayed in a work, doesn't mean that work is sexist. 

 

Edited December 27, 2021 by levzloi

[technoblue]

I was happy with the first season. I’ve been reading the Ars Technica episode commentary as well. The writers who put it together are avid WoT book fans (something I can’t claim). I have observed that Amazon’s adaptation is controversial if you are coming from that side of it. I think I lucked out having fewer expectations on this. I was just keen to see more high fantasy on the small screen. It is curious, though, reading about how much was changed.

[levzloi]

8 hours ago, technoblue said:

I was happy with the first season. I’ve been reading the Ars Technica episode commentary as well. The writers who put it together are avid WoT book fans (something I can’t claim). I have observed that Amazon’s adaptation is controversial if you are coming from that side of it. I think I lucked out having fewer expectations on this. I was just keen to see more high fantasy on the small screen. It is curious, though, reading about how much was changed.

I'm not going to tell you what you can and can't like, I'm sure it's much easier to enjoy as a new viewer not attached to the books, but the story and characters have been changed significantly.  Existing story-lines and character development that they could have used on the Emonds Field five was sacrificed for new material that largely didn't make any sense or difference in the long run. 

First season spoiler

Spoiler

Rand is really the main character in the first book although each of the five have VERY important roles to play, and great storylines down the road.  They really sacrificed his development as a character and showing the true power and danger of the dragon reborn in the name of equity and mystery (the women were never possible dragons, only the three boys).

I personally feel the writing is the biggest issue, they seem to be going for the JJ Abrams "who cares if it makes sense, it'll look cool" style.  Which is really geared to piss off detail oriented super fans like me, just as it already has in Star Trek and Star Wars.  They have already casually done many things involving the one power that are explicitly impossible in the books, simply because that's the scene that they want on screen.  As big as the book series is, and as important as the one power is to it's story progression, I can't see how this attitude of making up the rules as they go along isn't going to come back and bite them.  They seem hell bent on rewriting it as they believe it should have been rather than actually adapting what is already on the pages.  Anyway, just my two cents.

[technoblue]

For me, JJ Abrams isn't all that either. I mean, there are some shows that he's been connected to that I did enjoy like "Person of Interest" and "Fringe." However, I've never seen 'Felicity' or 'Lost.' Of his movies, I liked "Super 8." The new Star Trek and Star Wars trilogies could have been much better. Alas, they both fell apart with their second films.

I guess I don't have enough context to be heavy handed in my own criticisms of Amazon's WoT, but there are some things that stand out to me.

Spoiler

So maybe it is the writing, but I was clued in early on (within the first two episodes) that Rand was the dragon reborn and that his home situation at the Two Rivers was not all that it appeared to be. The fact that this season of the show kept trying to force the audience into guessing who among the five was the dragon reborn came across to me as an obvious feint. I kept waiting for them to show Rand's power and give us the real deal. Thankfully, they did in those final episodes but I don't think it was necessary to draw it out. They could have focused on other things.

I am confused why Moiraine just let Rand go at the end (not that she could do anything about it). Still, it seems the exact opposite of what her intent was at the beginning.

The other complaint I have is with Mat (Matrim) Cauthon and this is a little unfair because I learned that they had to recast him. That said, I wish they had delayed things or worked on the script a bit more to make this unfortunate real-life SNAFU less obvious to those of us in the audience. I'm also confused about where they are taking the character. Is he supposed to be a lovable rogue who is devoted to his sisters? Or is he secretly a psychopath and was his dark Judas nature brought to the surface when he picked up that cursed dagger? I have no idea? This is where not having book context hurts because it just comes across as confusing in the live action adaptation. 

Oh! I am glad that they didn't push that love triangle idea between Rand, Egwene, and Perrin. That would have been boring and silly.

That's all I have to say for now. I am interested to see where the show goes next so there's that too. 

  

 

[levzloi]

Spoilers on the ending of the finale and loooong (I took way longer on this than i should have, but I guess I've still got a lot to unpack about this series.).
 

Spoiler

Yeah, from what I've read of non-readers reactions, they've generally varied between your reaction, "It's obviously Rand, otherwise they wouldn't have been trying so hard to avoid him and focus on the others", and "it can't be Rand, he's so boring".  I think in either case the tradeoff in character development was not worth it.  You can see from the chart below, that Rand it far and away the main character of the entire Wheel of Time, and that any efforts by Rafe to force other characters to the front is going to require them to make up content, which hasn't exactly gone well for them so far.

So I'm just going explain the main difference between the book ending and the show ending not all of it, because it's Very different. 

Lord Aglemar and his men traveled to Tarwin's gap to meet an army of Trollocs they knew were coming (the Sheinarians have an extremely deep respect for Aes Saidai by the way, his angry reaction to Moiraine was needless show drama as was Moiraines condescending remarks to his sister, Aes Saidai would consider it extremely rude to mention someones lack of strength like that).  Moirain refused to help them because she  and her crew had to get to the eye of the world to protect it, not "defeat the dark one".  The Eye of the World was a reservoir of pure uncorrupted Saidin, the male half of the one power.  It was Rand reflexively drawing on this massive source of power that not only defeated the "Dark One", but also turned back the Trolloc army at Tarwin's gap saving Lord Aglemar and the majority of his forces from being wiped out. 

So instead of Rand saving everybody basically accidentally in a way that can't be repeated (he remembers very little of the experience, not how he did it, and the eye of the world is depleted).  We have one woman tower trained but not strong enough to be Aes Saidai using two likely weak channelers, and two incredibly powerful but equally untrained channelers to absolutely wipe out the Trolloc army, and burn out and kill all but Egwene who then heals (healing is not one of Egwene's strengths) Nyneeve of being mostly if not all dead.  There are many problems from a book readers perspective. 

1 While linking is a thing, and it does result in one individual being able to channel much more than they can on their own, the sisters linked to the head of the circle are protected, and although they can be used to the point of exhaustion and pass out, they can not be burned out in the circle, only the one leading the circle can do that to themselves.  But who cares, It looks cool! 

2 If five random women had enough power to nuke a whole army of Trollocs, why haven't all 1000 or so Aes Saidai gathered in circles and just gone and nuked the blight and all the Dark Ones forces?  Their oaths do not prevent them from using the one power against shadowspawn and Dark friends.  But who care's, it looked cool. 

5 You can't heal death, and you can't heal burnout/stilling.  But who care's, it looked cool.....

4 So the Dragon reborn, the most powerful and terrifying channeler who has ever lived, has done nothing with the one power except break down a door, push a trolloc off a cliff, and disintegrate a bad guy that apparently saw getting disintegrated as a win.  But who care's, it looked cool?

Now to be fair, the first book's ending is almost universally considered confusing, and doesn't really work with the rest of the series.  So this is one area that the writers had a lot of latitude to come up with something different and better.  They did not. 

Spoilers on the nature of the One Power
 

Spoiler

Additionally the writers have gone out of their way to change or avoid talking about the nature of gender and the one power.  This is one of the fundamental building blocks of Robert Jordan's universe, and Rafe feels it's extremely problematic to say that men are men, and women are women, and generally speaking they are different, complementary, and unequal in many ways.  In the books the one power is split in two equal parts, Saidin(Male) and Saidar(female), essentially Yin and Yang.  Women are only able to touch and use Saidar, and men are only able to touch and use Saidin.  Each are very different in nature and handled very differently.  Saidar(female) must be surrendered too and then guided, to fight it would be to be destroyed.  Saidin(male) must be constantly fought, to surrender to it would be to be destroyed. 

They are fundamentally different, men cannot see women's weaves, and women cannot see men's weaves.  And in fact they are so different that neither gender can teach the other how to channel.  Unfortunately the male half of the power was corrupted at the end of the Age of Legends, and any man who touches Saidin will be slowly driven insane and become a threat to the world. 

That is why men who channel are hunted down and gentled, not because they are men touching the one power and men are cursed, but because the male half of the power is corrupted and that is all they have access to.  THAT is why the Dragon Reborn is so terrifying, not because he will save the world or destroy it, but because he is prophesied to save the world AND destroy it. 

Now, you may agree with Rafe that making women and men fundamentally different is problematic, but that is how Robert Jordan wrote it.  He meant it as a critic on gender relations and balance, and how the greatest feats of humanity where achieved when when men and women worked together, and that is tied to the very core of the story in every book.  Rafe and Co are now going to spend the rest of their time writing their way around this fundamental building block, and I think they have demonstrated that they don't have the chops for it. 

Spoilers on the Age of Legends

Spoiler

The finale's cold open showed the Age of Legends near it's end, however in the books at this point, the war against the shadow had been ongoing for hundreds of years, although highly advanced it was no longer utopia.  Book fans were pretty pissed off by the portrayal of Lews Therin Telemon, the OG Dragon (NOT dragon reborn) in this scene. 

In the books, He took 99 other male channelers with him and sealed the Dark One in his prison.  The female Aes Saidai of the time refused to help not because they knew what would happen as a result, but because they thought their own plan of using two massively powerful one power super-weapons, one male and one female, to shield the dark ones prison was the way to go.  Unfortunately the super-weapons had been captured and recapturing them was extremely problematic.  Additionally it was only a matter of time before the Dark One's forces figured out how to use them and completely destroy the forces of light. 

So the Dragon (who was in fact the supreme leader, not the woman shown in the show) acted out of calculated desperation, not male arrogance and hubris.  As a result of this, the Dark One was successfully sealed in his prison along with the forsaken (extremely powerful male and female channelers that followed the Dark One for various reasons). 

Unfortunately also as a result Saidin was corrupted by the Dark One when he was able to touch it through Lews Therin Telemon and the 99 companions.  This resulted in all of these incredibly powerful channelers and in fact all men who could channel going insane and tearing the world to pieces over the next several hundred years, bringing about the end of the age of legends, and bringing on a new dark age that people have been trying to crawl out of for the last 3000 years.  So they took this opportunity to show an extremely complicated and tragic situation, and turned it into "men are dumb and they always screw everything up, good thing women are here to pick up the pieces."  Sigh.....

Spoilers on how they could have handled a certain actor's absence

Spoiler

I thought this was handled very clumsily.  Obviously I'm willing to cut them some slack, because they were thrown a curve ball by Barney Harris not returning after COVID.  And if this were the only writing failure, I'd be much more forgiving.  However, by either re-shooting or reediting with different dialogue just two scenes (the outside the waygate scene, and the scene on the balcony when Rand thanks Moiraine for healing Mat)  they could have adjusted it to Mat is only partially healed, he must remain in Tar Valon to be attended to and fully healed by the Aes Saidai.  So he has to stay behind.  Then next time we see him, the looks different as a side effect of the healing process.  Boom awkward story beats defeated, and ironically much closer to the books. 

Edited December 28, 2021 by levzloi

[technoblue]

1 hour ago, levzloi said:

Spoilers on the ending of the finale and loooong (I took way longer on this than i should have, but I guess I've still got a lot to unpack about this series.).
<snip>

Thanks for taking the time to go over all these points, @levzloi.

Spoiler

That's unfortunate. If the books are giving a commentary on male and female roles and giving their own critique on how these roles can be warped in such a way as to stifle understanding and progress, then yeah I think I get how Amazon's adaptation has lost the plot by a fair bit. I'm now tempted to read 'The Eye of the World' to get started on the rest of the story, as it were.

Anyway, if I understand you correctly, the show seems to have taken this complimentary (yin and yang) nature of magic and grossly oversimplified it. Males are shown as corrupting magic or being corrupted by it---driven to insanity. Females are shown as being adept and well able to control it if they have the required skillset. The nuances that you describe about how the books say magic works between the two sexes is lost.

I thought that having females come across as domineering was going to be a way to show that things are out of balance. I was also hoping that this would lead us to a scene where a female magic user somehow fails in her ability and goes dark (like one of the red Aes Sedai). But if the showrunner is changing the rules and making their own for this adaptation, then that now seems unlikely.

 

[levzloi]

1 hour ago, technoblue said:

Thanks for taking the time to go over all these points, @levzloi.

Spoiler

Well, to be fair some of what you're predicting should still happen, but I doubt there will be the full on deconstruction of Female only power that the books present.  In the first few books, the Aes Saidai are painted as fairly close to all powerful and as close to all wise as you can get, it's later events that show just how badly they've screwed the pooch with their frankly conservative and tradition minded approach to world events, preferring to remain aloof than get involved.  I believe that most of their changes to the gendered nature of the one power are simply guided by the desire to avoid offending any Trans people or those who believe that gender is a spectrum.  I'm not going to get into that here, you can make up your own mind, (no politics on this site) except to say that it is a significant departure from the writing of Robert Jordan. 

Also the nations vary greatly in their leadership and power structures, some are matriarchal, some are patriachal, but most monarchies can have either a king or a queen based on descent, popularity, or wealth depending on the nation.   Some respect the Aes Saidai (especially the boarderlanders like the Shinarians), some fear/avoid or hate/loath them (like the Tearans that burned down Suian's childhood home and the Children of the Light/Whitecloaks that are the defacto power in Amdacia).

However it sure seems that the showrunners are going for a very feminist interpretation (according to their own tweets, and statements to the press).  for instance in the books, the Village Counsel made up of men including the Mayor, Egwene's father, share influence and control of Emonds Field with the Woman's circle lead by the Wisdom Nyneave.  They generally have influence on different aspects of life but work together and "usually" try to avoid stepping on each others toe's because, well who want's to spend every evening arguing with their spouse over village politics.  It's very traditional, yet collaborative.  In the show, we're just shown that the Women's Circle runs the towns affairs.

A further minor point is the female guards in the white tower that bring Logain before the Amarlyn Seat.  Logain is consistently described as a large powerful man, a minor noble who was trained in warfare and the sword.  So here he is dragged in by two slender women.  If Logain wanted to die or escape, all he had to do was wait till he was out of the hall where any of the sisters could easily subdue him, smash one of their brains in and goad the other into killing him, very simple for a man of his strength and experience.  In the books Men make up the vast majority of the armed forces including the Tar Valon Guard, there are significant exceptions, but they are still in the minority, just like reality.  Because lets be honest, on average men are bigger and stronger especially the types that want to be guards/soldiers.

One of those exceptions are the Maiden's of the Spear, like Rand's mom we saw in the episode 7 cold open.  Yes it was a little contrived to have her be that bad ass while in labor, but the Aiel in general really are that badass in the books.  Those that choose the spear, live for little else.  That actual scene never is explicitly described in the books, only that she was a maiden of the spear and died in childbirth on dragon mount during the Aiel war.  Pregnant Aiel women are not supposed to fight, but she refused to be held back for spoiler reasons so that Rand could be born where he was and fulfill prophecy.

One other egregious example, Lan is the ultimate bad ass, even the Aiel know of him and respect/are cautious of him.  He was raised on the blight, he knows everything about it.  There is literally nobody that is safer in the the blight than Lan.  The idea that he would need Nyneave's help to track Rand and Moiraine (whom he knows intimately and has worked with for 20 year) is laughable.  Now in the books Nyneave is in fact an excellent tracker, she was raised lovingly by her father who always wanted sons, and knew a great deal about hunting/tracking.  That's one of the things that makes Lan take notice of Nyneave and begins their relationship arc.  The fact that she can track him (really Moiraine) when he doesn't want to be tracked astonishes him.  However the TV writers removed her father and had her raised by the old wisdom so she could be mad at Aes Saidai, and now she's just better at tracking than Lan because reasons. 

Finally, you should totally read the books, they're great.  The first is an homage to LOTR, so the parallels are deliberate, after that it goes it's own way.  They are not perfect books, but if you can make it to book 4, you won't stop.  Robert Jordan has strengths and weaknesses, but when it comes to world-building the man is a titan. 

 

Edited December 28, 2021 by levzloi

[Keith]

Watched the first 2.5 eps, not as good as "The Witcher", "LOTR", "Netflix Castlevania", or even "Hercules" & "Xena." It has nothing to do with the presence/lack of whatever the male/female magic dynamic is supposed to be, I just didn't find it particularly fun, dramatic or exciting.

I at least expect a fantasy show to be as exciting as the old D&D cartoon.