A brief update before getting into the meat of the matter. Indeed, it has been quite some time since my last entry. Throughout this year I have had severely limited access to my office on campus, which had severely limited my efficiency in my studies making them take far more time than anticipated. Additionally, I have found it necessary to attempt to develop a working level of competency in German and Italian in addition to French as many of my secondary sources for my studies are in those languages. I have also had to work on multiple translations from ancient Greek into English, which is another time-consuming process, not quite critical edition levels but I am translating whole books here. So ultimately this year has not been great for my non-academic pursuits. Going forward into the next term I will be taking a couple classes and TAing again, however I will be committing to the once a week posting schedule. Starting this week, every week will have a smaller, more reactionary or rambling thought style post about various things much like this one. One post a month being a more lengthy and thought out essay style post about some more esoteric topic. I still have lost of notes and partially written posts from earlier this year, and you can expect those in the coming months in the form of those longer essay posts.
To preface this post, I want to provide some background on my personal investment in this topic. I am a massive fan of the creation of Robert Jordan. The world of the Wheel of Time is a fantastically rich setting. The intricacies of the geopolitical landscape is immense, each of the cultural groups of people, each of the nations, have their own well worked out societal customs, norms and cultural practices. Geographically the world makes sense and is believably a place that could exist. This, coupled with the slew of really well thought out and well written characters, made the story incredibly real and I cherished reading the series every time I opened the books. When I watched this trailer that came out, I paid a lot of attention to the images and scenes presented. And what I saw gave me some severe reservations about the faithfulness of the adaptation, the quality of the writing and the value of the production as a whole. Now, I have not been following the production of this show since it was announced as I don’t particularly enjoy films or television shows, so this is functionally my first exposure to this show and its development. I have also avoided watching or reading other peoples’ breakdowns and full impressions, so these are really just my thoughts after some rumination and contemplations after a couple viewings.
The first and largest concern I have is that the show seems to be condensing the first two books into the first season. That is turning approximately TWO THOUSAND pages into 8 episodes. To be fair each episode is supposed to be approximately an hour long. Yet if we compare it to the most recent epic fantasy series; Game of Thrones season 1 is a single book of under 700 pages that had been distilled into ten-hour long episodes. I make this comparison because both of these book series are intense massive character driven fantasy epics. Trying to avoid spoilers may be tricky here but I will explain why I think this is the case. There are several scenes shown with a lot of women called Aes Sedai, these women are the people who have access to the magic of this world. In the first book there are two named Aes Sedai and they never appear in the same location at the same time. There are others of these women, a group of them are spoken about and how they were mobilized to take part in a large civil war that is taking place elsewhere in the world at the time. At one part of the story, for the total combined length of one paragraph, these women are seen but only from a distance they do practically nothing. So unless changes have been made to the story itself then this shortened and abbreviated form of the first book means that the fundamental groundwork of presenting the narrative, themes, setting will leave the rest of the story feeling empty and bland. I seem to recall a certain show from several years ago that was almost universally panned by its own fans in its final season because the writers decided to shorten this character driven story in order to get to specific “epic scenes” of awesomeness that were actually stupid, nonsensical and just plain bad. I am further convinced that the first season of this show will be a rushed and highly abbreviated condensation of Robert Jordans first two books by examining the released titles of the first season. Episode four (of eight) is titled “The Dragon Reborn” which to me suggests it is the culmination of the first book as the ultimate reveal of the first book is who the actual Dragon Reborn is. It could possibly be a reference to a mid book scene involving a character named Logaine who believes he is the Dragon Reborn, but it is such a small scene in the book and its whole purpose is used to create a point of interaction between the primary character and some other individuals who become incredibly important in the following books. The other title I have concerns about is the episode “The Flame of Tar Valon” which, I don’t want to spoil too much but Tar Valon is the ultimate destination of the characters at the beginning of the book, but they don’t have an easy ride in getting there. Along with this title we have scenes of multiple Aes Sedai that I mentioned previously, it is in book 2 of the Wheel of Time that we get to see, are introduced to and spend time as characters with these various Aes Sedai individuals. That then implies to me that many of the scenes shown in the trailer come from the second book. A rushed story is almost always trash in the realm of quality and means that sacrifices have to be made by the writers, including on things like character development and progression.
I also have concerns about the emphasis placed on certain characters in the trailer. The story of the Wheel of Time revolves around three young men being the pivotal agents around which the world quickly falls into an ultimate battle of good versus evil. The trailer seemed to put more emphasis on two of the female characters in particular. The first being the Aes Sedai Moiraine, this character acts as the Gandalf style wise mentor and protector who aims to guide the other characters. She plays a pivotal role in the books and seems like she plays a similarly pivotal role in this trailer. No real problems there. The second character around whom the trailer seems to revolve is the young girl Egwene al’Vere. Egwene also plays an important role in the books but she does not have that same central fate based role as Rand, Perrin and Matrim. Why does this seeming alteration of refocus cause concern? Ultimately because if the story had been rewritten to create a new focus for the show, then that means it alters the impact of the characters choices and motivations. Egwene is the perfect example of this. If Egwene becomes a major central focus, then there is the possibility of her agency being removed. And agency is a massive part of her entire character, she chooses to leave Emond’s Field, while the boys have to leave, she chooses because she wants to have adventure, to experience the world outside the Two Rivers, to learn the One Power (despite the worldwide revulsion of those who can channel it). Her agency and her choices are one of the things that make her such an incredibly strong character. In fact, almost every female character in the series is an incredibly strong character and well written. So, if they have made these types of changes then they have changed the very nature of these beloved characters and the fantastic development they go through and entirely devalue their purpose in the story and the world. Trying to avoid spoilers while talking about the potential changes of the characters personality and development are quite hard so if you want to get my full detailed thoughts on this definitely reach out and I’ll break it down.
The third set of problems I see for the show coming from the trailer revolve around the visuals and aesthetics. One of the greatest aspects of Robert Jordans’ creation is the distinct visuals he presents in the world. Though it is through text his ideas come across quite clear and one of the biggest examples of the shows divergence from the clear descriptions comes in the reveal of the Myrddraal. These are monsters from the uncanny valley and otherworldly horror schools. From a distance they look indistinguishable from humans, up close the look just like humans except they have no eyes, nor eye-sockets, they have merely smooth flesh from the nose area up. With their dark hoods lowered, covering that portion they can mingle with humans. The trailers version however has an incredibly disappointing distended maw with sharp large fangs for teeth and is also really quite poor CGI. This is confounded by the displays of the One Power being used in the trailer. The few scenes showing it being used look really artificial. Bad looking CGI for the most fantastical portion of the world setting and the most impressive displays of power that the Aes Sedai perform (and the male counterparts who are tragically fated to be driven mad by the very power they are using) just makes those situations far less impactful and exhilarating for the audience. But this sadly also goes for the costumes and outfits that the characters are wearing in this trailer. They look terrible to me. Once again, Robert Jordan was very descriptive and clear when writing about the clothes that people wore and about the styles and fashions of the various cultures around the world. The costumes from the show do not seem to reflect these. Some of them are good I will acknowledge, but others have a bizarre modernization of the various late medieval/early renaissance fashions that are reflected in the books (generally they are late medieval/ early renaissance but there are groups and other styles from groups that show up later on in the series.) The most egregious costume that I absolutely can not stand is the rather bizarrely fluffy woolly jumper worn by one character. It looks like a hideously modern interpretation of medieval clothing by someone who has never read anything more modern than twitter and has certainly not studied any history let alone medieval or early modern history.
My final initial thoughts on the trailer and the show . . . . It is going to be trash. Maybe I’ll feel differently after a week or so and as such I’m going to give it a fair go but it’d be better to just read the books again. For all ya’ll out there who haven’t read the books, do that. Read the books and ignore this show until you have gotten through the first three books at least. At the same time, if you have perceived this trailer in a different manner than please get in touch with me and let me know why I am wrong as I would love to see a Wheel of Time show that accurately and faithfully reproduces Robert Jordans amazing and fantastic work.
All the best and God Bless
Gadfly Fiction 