Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time

[Beorning]

Okay, so I just watched this trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11ZozKfRqvA

I'm intrigued, especially as this show will feature Rosamund Pike (whom I love). That said, I don't know anything about the novels - aside from the fact that they exist and seem to be quite popular.

So... could anyone tell me more of these books and Robert Jordan in general? I'm not asking for spoilers... in fact, I'd ask you not to spoil :) But in general - are these books good? And how does this trailer look when compared to them - i.e. faithful, not faithful..?

[clonkertink]

Ooh, neat.

Honestly, I feel like WoT might be one of those stories that's better in film/television format. I read up to about book 7 or so as a teenager, and I quite enjoyed them... until the Crossroads of Twilight. Crossroads could basically be summed up as: "Here's what everyone else was doing during the last chapter of the last book", and it bored me to tears.

That said, I always enjoyed the worldbuilding, and it had a lot of cool ideas. I'm looking forward to this.

Interesting that the trailer leads with Moiraine as kind of a perspective character. As I recall, she was sort of aloof and mysterious for the first chunk of the series - the novels start with the Two Rivers folks leading their normal fantasy-peasant lives, and Moiraine is sort of the Gandalf figure that rolls in and says, "Saddle up, bitches! We're goin' on an adventure!"

[HairyHeretic]

All in all its a pretty decent series. The first time I read it, it took me til book 3 to really get into it, and given its a 13 book series, it does drag a bit in places. When it was being written, the joke was it was taking so long that the author would die before it was finished. And then he did. But he left notes for the last 2 or maybe 3 and the series was finished off okay.

There are a few things I understand have changed in the series (making the characters a bit older for instance .. late teens to early twenties I believe) but I'm certainly willing to give the first few episodes a try and see how they measure up to the books. Much of the trailer looks good, though I might point out a couple of things that seemed a little off. They're not really enough to spoil the show for anyone who hadn't read the books yet though.

[Beorning]

Any weird philosophical or political ideas hidden in these books? I recall that one fantasy author was criticized here on E for that... although I think it was the guy behind the Sword of Truth books..?

[Oniya]

It might help if you know that this is the series that the Aes Sedai come from.  Fairly sure that there have been some RPs around here with that - erm - dynamic.  There's definitely some pseudo-Oriental stuff going on (the yin-yang is prevalent), and certain abilities are supposedly sex-linked (as in 'men are/aren't/shouldn't be able to do this thing.')

[Beorning]

Is the series very Tolkien-inspired? The trailer made me think it might be: there's a wizard-type leader of the party, a "Dark One" returning, an army of brutal monsters... and, even, some creepy thing in a hood...

Again, no spoilers, but doesn't it all look a bit like LOTR..?

[Oniya]

Orphan boy, raised by relatives, is tied to the defeat of the Ultimate Evil?

Am I talking about Frodo, Luke, or Harry?

[clonkertink]

"Frodo, Luke, or Harry" is the title of my crossover slashfic RP. >.>

[HairyHeretic]

I wouldn't say it takes much from LotR, but there are plenty of fantasy tropes that will allow you to make that kind of connection.

What you're seeing in the trailer doesn't put those elements into perspective. They will make more sense once you start to learn more of the story.

One thing I have noticed on subsequent watches of the trailer though ...

Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide

it sounds like Moraine is saying the you-know-who is going to be one of the five from Emonds Field. If so, that's going to be a major deviation from the books.

[thymoit]

Honestly, I feel like WoT might be one of those stories that's better in film/television format. I read up to about book 7 or so as a teenager, and I quite enjoyed them... until the Crossroads of Twilight. Crossroads could basically be summed up as: "Here's what everyone else was doing during the last chapter of the last book", and it bored me to tears.

I pretty much agree with this.  The first book is awesome and epic.  A very good and fast read and written to standalone.  When it went big the author put all his ideas into the other books and the series slowed down a lot.  There are great ideas, awesome over the top scenes, but there also used to be a saying "Friends don't let friends read the Wheel of Time" and that was because it's huge and there were big gaps between the books in the series.  Also things like Clonkertink mentioned - a whole book with everybody having WTF reactions to the previous book - what a waste.  I think I abandoned when Clonkertink did at the Crossroads of Twilight.  I was waiting for it in eager anticipation and... got a book of everyone reacting.  Bleh.

Not that it was just that book.  There was another subplot where a couple of characters are in hiding and join the circus and we have multiple chapters of meaningless side characters as they slowly cross the continent - whereas in previous books there were multiple magical ways of zipping from point A to point B to avoid doing a LOTR style trudge across the continent.

So in film/television format it could work - depending on if they cut the right things and don't pull a Game of Thrones with a horrible forced ending.

It might help if you know that this is the series that the Aes Sedai come from.  Fairly sure that there have been some RPs around here with that - erm - dynamic.  There's definitely some pseudo-Oriental stuff going on (the yin-yang is prevalent), and certain abilities are supposedly sex-linked (as in 'men are/aren't/shouldn't be able to do this thing.')

And also about how they handle this.  Part of the premise is that magic is gender based.  Males can't work Saidar (the female half) and women can't work Saidin (the male half) and they do different things.  Men are usually stronger as individuals, but women can link up and share power.  A huge part, not really a spoiler because it will be revealed early, is that Saidin is tainted and all male users go made.  As a result of the only magic users who don't go insane being female, there is a strong bias that for women being the more powerful gender.  This results in having strong female characters which could subvert the usually fantasy genre emphasis on strong males - but it's subverted because there are three very strong male characters who are always bucking female authority.  If they let the strong female characters (like Moiraine) shine, that would be true to the books.  If they just use strong females as adversaries to be overrun by the males, then they will lose a lot of what made Wheel of Time different.

[Azy]

I read up to about half way through book 5 I believe in high school.  The books were thick.  I just grabbed book 4 off my shelf and it is 980 pages.  They are all about that long.  Hopefully this doesn't spoil too much, but there was some splitting up, and it got a little hard for me to keep track of who was doing what.  I'm glad I saw this because I will probably watch to see how good it is.  There is potential for it to be really good. 

[Beorning]

Just started watching. One episode in...

Anyone else? Any impressions?

For those who have also read the books: does the show screw up anything important?

[RedRose]

I'm hesitating, do I watch or wait for the french

[Beorning]

I watched all three episodes that were released today. Not bad!

... I think, at least? I mean, I haven't read the books.

I have two observations, though:

Observations

Firstly, I feel like the show could use a bit more of worldbuilding in these first episodes. What are the trollocs, exactly? And who is the Dark One? People in this story are talking of him (?) like he's something obvious and known to everyone. So... some background could be useful?

Secondly - I can't help thinking that the story is treading in Lord of the Rings' footsteps. The main characters coming from a cheerful village where people are oblivious to the problems in the wider world? Check. An army of savage monsters? Check. Hooded spectral / demonic riders hunting the heroes? Check. The initial party getting scattered after a while? Check... Obviously, there's more to the story than these LoTR-esque aspects - nevertheless, it feels weird.

Overall, though, I'm hooked and I want to know what happens next!

Also... Rosamund Pyke as Morraine <3

[RampantDesires]

Am not sure what to spoiler here so just kind of mashing it all in there

The books kind of dump you into the middle of things in the beginning as well and then as the characters learn and are exposed to/explained things it makes more sense.  I kind of like that there's no big info dump.  These be farm kids going off on an epic adventure trope, it helps me as the audience empathize with them more because yeah I have no idea what's going on either :P  If I understood more about the world I would be far more judgy about their ignorance and missteps along the way (which ABSOLUTELY happened to me later on in the books when they STILL pulled the head in the sand bullshit, 'come on y'all you know better')

Rosmund Pike is life though, agreed <3  I'm glad you enjoyed them enough to keep watching Beornig!

[Phoenixrisen]

I think this whole thing could be a spoiler for anyone who hasn't read the books.

It's not too far from the books so far. There are some major deviations, but I think they did them to keep from spending an entire season just getting out of Emond's Field (the town). They did lose Rand getting it put into his head that he's not actually Tam's son, which becomes a major plot point in the books, so there's that. I also think they're condensing some book two stuff into it too, but I haven't reread the first book all the way through yet so I'm not positive on that. It's been a while.

for reference I believe they're not fully out of Emond's Field until around chapter sevenish, and we're talking meaty chapters. Lots of dialog which would definitely bog a show down.

[Iniquitous]

First - Hairy ... 15 books lol

Second - I binged all three episodes that dropped Thursday night that night. A couple things made me quirk a brow but otherwise the show is awesome and seems to be trying to stick with the source material.

Highly recommend.

[Azy]

I watched the first episode.  I liked it well enough.  It's been so long since I read the books that I couldn't say how closely they are being followed.  There were some differences I noticed.  In the book I'm pretty sure the Perrin character is described as blond, and I don't remember him being married at the beginning, but maybe I forgot.  But the picture of him is stuck in my head as this tall muscular blond guy.  And the guy with Moraine, Lan?  In the book he was described as this big hulking guy, and the actor isn't much taller than Moraine.  It seemed very much like they were playing fast and loose with the original character descriptions to make an ethically diverse cast.  I could have a faulty memory and be wrong.   

[Chulanowa]

I gave up on reading the series after the second book. I found it a pretty generic story ("Chosen One Orphan Boy Saves World From Ancient Evil" as seen upthread) and frankly I don't have the time in my life to just casually read fifteen brick-sized books.

The series seems alright so far. The screenplay is pretty clearly heavily adapted, but I think that's necessary; not just for the usual reasons of translating print to series, and tailoring scripts and such... but also because quite frankly no one actually wants to be saddled with another clown car like Game of Thrones - Wheel of Time will absolutely not be an eight-season affair and I don't imagine they'll even adapt a full fifth of the books into the series.

The one thing that I genuinely disliked was that... well, it's kind of ugly. The costuming is awful, it looks sort of like everyone just stopped by the mall on the way to set. Moiraine's outfit in particular looks like she mugged Wanda Maximoff. The sets aren't amazing either, and have the same plastic-y, clearly artificial vibe that you would expect from a 1990's television fantasy like Xena. The effects aren't bad, but also aren't spectacular, they look like early Marvel Studios stuff. I have no idea where that $10 million-per-episode budget is going, maybe the horses eat a lot?

Anyway, it's watchable, but I wouldn't classify it as "great." It's generally better than say, "Chronucles of Shanarra" was, but not amazingly so.

[RedRose]

Shannara was horrible
I have hope here

[Oniya]

Not gonna lie, I found Shannara to be more blatant LOTR-with-the-names-filed-off than Wheel of Time.

[Azy]

I liked Shannara.  All of the stories are kind of similar.  Ancient evil awakens and people come together, or there's a chosen one to stop it.  Really the only reason I didn't finish Wheel of Time was because after high school I got more into video games, and stopped reading as much.  The fact that each book was 900 some pages didn't help. 

[Flower]

Watching the first episode meows. Enjoying it so far. Makes me want to finally read the series.

[Phoenixrisen]

So, there's a thing that's been sick in my head since the second episode. Am I the only one that got Fable vibes from the opening scene? I mean, it got the point across regardless, but come on. Tell me I'm not the only one that saw it

[Azy]

I'm not really making the connection, other than they had to leave their village because it was attacked.