THE WHEEL OF TIME S1: Book Reader Thread

[michaelm]

So I just watched episode one. The really harsh reviews are unwarranted (and get some matters wrong). The glowing reviews - the few I saw - are also unwarranted.

It’s mostly OK, veering into cheese a bit too often. The costumes indeed often look a bit too RenFaire/LARP. Locations are gorgeous, though - and from what I’ve read, most of the wide shots aren’t CGI (a few are and they’re pretty obviously so).

So before I go and watch episode 2, some bullets:

Good

• Casting - everyone’s well cast here, even if they’re not given great material to perform. Nynaeve and Egwene are particularly good, as is - lamentably - Mat.
• Ambition - the show’s clearly swinging for the fences. I admire that, even if they don’t connect as often as they miss.
• Score - there’s a nice mix of Eastern and Western traditions going on with the score, though it sometimes veers off into fairly generic epic orchestral.
• Trollocs - mostly good. A few dodgy shots, and I’m not a fan of their being all completely covered in fur (I didn’t see any of the bird-like Trollocs described in the books) but they’re big, nasty, and scary.
• New worldbuilding - the ceremony of lights. Lan and Moiraine taking a nonsexual bath together (a reference to the Borderlands culture, though I don’t think Moiraine would ever, ever do this).
• Pace - The show moves, and doesn’t feel like the product of a series known for taking its time.

Bad

• Making Perrin a married man only to fridge his wife in the first episode - absolutely dumb and unnecessary
• Making Mat a gambling addict with loser parents - again, seems to be a fundamental misreading of the character
• The bullshit with the Dragon possibly being a woman - again, a fundamental shifting of the world Jordan built, and WHY the Dragon is a figure of fear and superstition
• Rand’s a guest star, as is Perrin.
• Moiraine TELLING the four young Emond’s Fielders one of them is the Dragon IN FRONT OF THE ENTIRE VILLAGE. This signals a harm to the core worldbuilding and cultural elements of the story that it’s hard to grasp.
• Moiraine wielding so much of the Power in the fight - she’s basically doing Forsaken-level things here, which leads me to wonder HTF they’re going to escalate going forward.
• Tam is relegated to some trite, cliched lines and despite being cast well makes zero impression on the viewer
• The effects can be dodgy, and the battle features some flat out bad digital effects

My wife, who has zero familiarity with the source material, said the pilot feels like they’re trying to convey a couple hundred pages of information in one episode, instead of letting it unfold and doling it out more slowly. I’d agree.

There’s a weird and completely unnecessary feint in which NYNAEVE is among the suspected Dragons but it’s dealt with before the episode is over. Again, just adding complications that aren’t needed and do nothing for the story.

It just feels like they’ve tossed some (excuse my overuse of the word) fundamental elements and history of the story in favor of typical 21st century “character arc” shit which leads nowhere and adds no depth. The Dragon is a figure to be feared and mythologized - and is most definitely a man. To have Moiraine TELL the youngsters one of them is the Dragon is roughly the equivalent to a Jesuit showing up at a Catholic school and telling four kids one of them is the Antichrist.

(Yeah, the comparison breaks down because the Dragon is actually a champion of the Light, but to the common folk, thousands of years have transformed him into a figure of fear, destruction, and harm.)

Lan introducing Moiraine as Moiraine SEDAI also utterly contradicts their traveling MO in the books. Moiraine WANTED relative anonymity; they used aliases and/or did not announce their titles. Again, the show is leading the viewer by the nose and leaving a lot of worldbuilding in the dust.

Overlord will absolutely hate it. I honestly don’t know how doc will feel. I’ve already reconciled myself to watching the entire first season (unless it just becomes unbearable) but I’m really uncertain about watching the second (and later seasons, if we even get them).

[fafhrd]

The first three episodes are live. Just finished the first one. It’s… not good. The next two I’ll watch more out of morbid curiosity than anything else.

There is SO MUCH that is just fundamentally wrong with the characters and their relationships and even the worldbuilding.

Stuff that’s already been more or less spoiled:

1. Yup, Perrin’s married. And yup. His wife exists purely to be fridged (AND HOW). Also, she’s Emond’s Field’s blacksmith. No sign of the Luhhans at all. And it never occurred to me to be annoyed by it until now, but Perrin already has a beard. In fact, there are far more people with beards in Emond’s Field than there should be. And Michael McElhatton is wearing possibly the worst fake beard I have ever seen.
2. I was right about the Indiewire review misinterpreting Mat’s relationship to his sisters. But it’s an easy mistake to make since Mat’s parents are hideous drunken assholes, so Mat has basically taken on the responsibility of raising them. So much for Abell Cauthon being the best horse trader in the Two Rivers.

Stuff that’s news to me:

• Nynaeve wasn’t born in the Two Rivers! She was brought from “somewhere else” and raised by the previous Wisdom.
• A Wisdom isn’t allowed to marry or have children!
• Rand and Egwene are fucking! But Egwene is going to accept Nynaeve’s offer to be her apprentice, so that’s going to have to stop
• Moiraine and Lan bathe together (and may be fucking)!
• The Women’s Circle isn’t another branch of the town government that mirror’s the Town Council, it’s just every woman of age in town, and braided hair signifies membership.
• There were rumours of four ta’veren in the Two Rivers which was why Moiraine decided to go there! People who will bend the pattern of the Age around them are just the subject of idle gossip, and not really a big deal I guess.
• “The stories say a single Aes Sedai can change the course of a battle.”
• Nynaeve gets dragged off by Trollocs in the attack on the village, never to be seen again.
• There are overgrown skyscrapers and shit in at least one part of the world. Way to downplay how massively destructive The Breaking was, and really uncomfortable shades of the short lived Shannara show.

Cut stuff:

• Rand’s run back to town dragging a delirious and dying Tam, and having to beg Moiraine to heal him after Nynaeve says there’s nothing to be done.
• Moiraine’s speech about Manetheren and the origins of the name of Emond’s Field.
• No Thom yet.

Stuff I liked:

• The actual attack on Emond’s Field was decently done. I actually do like the visualization of Moiraine’s use of the Power.
• That’s it, I guess.

A Specific Thing I Didn’t Like:

• They give away that Padan Fain is bad news by having him watch the beginning of the Trolloc attack, grin, then slip away.

Just with this first episode it’s abundantly clear that they’ve got no room to breathe. Which makes the additions so much more infuriating because if they took the new shit out they’d have had a bit more room for good character and world building stuff from the books.

Oh yeah:

have to say again that the moment when Rand al’Thor finally makes peace with the Wheel of Time, and he explains his psychological breakthrough in such a manner that the reader finally gets it, too, is just so moving.

Tam just comes out and fucking says it in the first episode, almost word for word.

[headless_fett]

Yeah, this sounds as bad as I thought it would be.

[fafhrd]

Moiraine wielding so much of the Power in the fight - she’s basically doing Forsaken-level things here, which leads me to wonder HTF they’re going to escalate going forward.

I don’t agree with this at all. She throws some fireballs, summons some lightning, uses air to hold some Trollocs for Lan to slice apart, and her final desperation move is pulling a bunch of bricks out of the inn and smashing the remaining Trollocs with them (and destroying the inn in the process. Gee, thanks, Moiraine). This is all stuff she did in the books, and nothing even approaching something like Rand’s black hole that kills only Darkspawn that he uses in the Stone, or Deathgates, or balefire (which she can also use).

[michaelm]

That trick with the stones from the buildings is absolutely nothing she did in the books. And she was able to slice Trollocs in half at a distance using the Power in the show.

Just watched Episode Two. A significant uptick in quality. I’ll write more tomorrow, but while it’s still moving fast, it does breathe a bit more.

There’s a really lovely scene in Episode Two in which the Emond’s Fielders sing a song about Manetheren, and Moiraine gets to tell the story (which in the book, was told to the people of Emond’s Field when they went all BURN THE WITCH on her).

I really like the actor playing Mat, and bummed he’s gone.

[fafhrd]

That trick with the stones from the buildings is absolutely nothing she did in the books. And she was able to slice Trollocs in half at a distance using the Power in the show.

She throws a bunch of bricks and uses knife sharp weaves of air. Both well within her power level, and frankly quite a bit less destructive than what damane do on the regular. I’m really not seeing how this is ‘Forsaken level’ power usage. And the Forsaken themselves aren’t actually all that hot shit when it comes to power levels. They just have tons of knowledge that the present day Aes Sedai lack, but the amount of power they’re capable of wielding isn’t leaps and bounds more than Moiraine can (she takes out 1.5/two single handed, depending on how you count her fight with Lanfear). I feel like you’re forgetting that Moiraine is one of the most powerful channelers in the Tower up until Egwene, Nynaeve, and Elayne show up. I think only Siuan and Cadsuane are more powerful.

[overlord]

I am getting so angry at what I am hearing I feel like I’m going to have to force myself to at least give this a shot.

From the very beginning it seemed like the folks making this show were more interested in their vision than bringing to life the Wheel of Time.

[richard_dickson]

Yeah, it’s a good thing they dropped three of these. If people only had that first episode to stew on for a week…

The whole thing has that cheap cable/syndicated sheen to it, from the lighting to the sets and costumes to how it’s shot and edited. This doesn’t look like the prestige production Amazon is touting it as.

I’m decades away from having read the book but the changes still irk me. Where’s Tom (although I haven’t seen Episode 3 yet)? What the hell are they doing with Perrin? What’s with Moraine and Lan sexy bath time? Rand and Egwene hooking up? And the whole thing just feels so rushed given they’re expecting this to go seven or eight seasons.

And that prologue in Episode 1 is deadly. “The world is broken” immediately casts it as a bargain store version of the prologue in Fellowship of the Ring (Pike has more than a few lines in the episode that sound like they’re plucked directly from Galadriel’s dialogue), it delivers information that’s better delivered in context later on, and has none of the sense of urgency it thinks it does. Not the best foot forward.

The second episode is so much better than the first, though that’s not a high hill to climb. The ferry scene is good, they convey the menace of the pursuing trollocs very well, and Shadar Logoth is appropriately creepy. Hopefully the third episode continues the upward trend.

[michaelm]

That trick with the stones from the buildings is absolutely nothing she did in the books. And she was able to slice Trollocs in half at a distance using the Power in the show.

She throws a bunch of bricks and uses knife sharp weaves of air. Both well within her power level, and frankly quite a bit less destructive than what damane do on the regular. I’m really not seeing how this is ‘Forsaken level’ power usage. And the Forsaken themselves aren’t actually all that hot shit when it comes to power levels. They just have tons of knowledge that the present day Aes Sedai lack, but the amount of power they’re capable of wielding isn’t leaps and bounds more than Moiraine can (she takes out 1.5/two single handed, depending on how you count her fight with Lanfear). I feel like you’re forgetting that Moiraine is one of the most powerful channelers in the Tower up until Egwene, Nynaeve, and Elayne show up. I think only Siuan and Cadsuane are more powerful.

Yes, she’s one of the most powerful Aes Sedai/channelers before Nynaeve, Egwene, and Aviendha show up. I don’t remember her using bricks nor the sharpened weaves of air, but will defer to your memory.

I dunno. That whole just felt like something we saw much later in the books - the first time we see Moiraine really unleash the Power onscreen*, she creates a localized earthquake, a wall of fire, and then she essentially passes out. In the first episode, she did a LOT more than that and didn’t seem to break a sweat.

~~

Agreed with Richard about the quality of the visuals and just overall dialogue. The decisions about Mat and Perrin’s backstories are just fucking baffling, man. Those just REEK of writers not trusting the source material and using Writing 101 techniques to give “depth” to characters.

At the same time: almost every show, including almost every show we consider a classic or great TV from the last 20+ years, takes a while to figure itself out and settle on a tone and approach. This show has an enormous amount of pressure on it, from its fan base to (not wholly unfair) comparisons to Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings. And from what I can tell, this is the head showrunner’s first time being the top person in charge. So I’m willing to give the show a bit to find itself.

And, finally: I’m going to work on letting the show being the show, and not require it to be a 1:1 translation of the books. It’ll likely take the entire first season to do that and, if I can handle it, a rewatch after some time. I had to do this with Fellowship of the Ring as well: my entire first viewing was focused on the changes, rather than soaking in the story onscreen. It was my second viewing that really helped me accept the film for what it was. (To be clear, I’m in no way saying The Wheel of Time is as good as Jackson’s adaptation of Tolkien.)

* In the book, the attack on Emond’s Field isn’t shown to the reader firsthand. The above action happens when the group has fled Baerlon and are about to be forced into Shadar Logoth.

[richard_dickson]

Someone on another board approves of the Dragon possibly being a woman because “reincarnation always going to the same gender implies the non-existence of trans people” and yeah that sure is a take.

[doc_happenin]

Haven’t watched the pilot, but I did squeeze in the Wheel of Time: Origins short (which are available on the X-Ray tab on Amazon, which is definitely a choice). First one is an Aes Sedai nareating to a group of initiates (including Moiraine) about the Breaking of the World.

First, it’s terrible narration. Not fir what is said, but how it is delivered. Flat, lifeless. The animation is interesting. I think some of it is actually live-action elements that have been drawn over. Has a weird stuttering effect. We do get a shot of Lews post-madness when he realizes what he has done!

It gets the basics, shifts the timing (the Breaking lasts for a hundred years, not the nearly three hundred) and is fine. Good primer. Dunno if non-readers will get much out of it, but if somone gets hooked on the show, they’ll be happy to have this.

[michaelm]

doc, I have yet to watch the third episode but will say this: the first episode is ROUGH for book readers. Really, really difficult. The attack on Emond’s Field is done pretty well - save one really dumb change re: Nynaeve - but even being prepped for knowing they go pretty far off-book…it’s a lot.

Second episode, though, is MUCH better. Still not great, still exhibiting some worrisome tendencies, but BETTER.

Couple of thoughts:

Moiraine says in episode one that there are “rumors” of FOUR ta’veren in the Two Rivers. This is weird as fuck for a number of reasons, not the least of which I presume a lot of viewers will have absolutely no idea what a ta’veren is. One wonders, given how isolated Emond’s Field is, HTF Moiraine heard these rumors…and that the rumors would actually use the term ta’veren. NONE of the characters, as displayed in the first two episodes, give any indication of being targeted by the Pattern.

The whitecloaks: man do I HATE their costumes. Easily the worst designs/executions we’ve seen thus far. Entirely too modern looking (down to the person I presume is meant to be Geofram Bornhald) having trendy 2019 haircuts. It’s a weird and unneeded extrapolation to go from actual white cloaks to these guys being dressed entirely in white robes. They absolutely did not look like a military order but like a bunch of Jesuits going on a fashion shoot.

Side note: they show an Aes Sedai, gagged and with her hands cut off…but my understanding of how channeling works is that neither of these, by themselves, should prevent channeling. The pain and discomfort might, as that might be too much to allow the needed concentration, but I didn’t think they needed any specific body parts to channel.

[man_e_faced_god]

Watched episode one last night, and due to all the negativity around the visuals my expectations were low. Also was spoiled to the Perrin’s wife dying, so got to digest that fact beforehand.

I found myself enjoying the show more than I expected! Especially the visuals, which I kept taking myself out of the story to look at from a “does that look bad?” perspective. I thought the costumes were fine, maybe Rand’s sweater could have used some more dirt. The only two things that jumped out as looking bad were the lighting on Moiraine as she channeled air (not the weaves themselves but how she was illuminated), and the village “green” or in this case brown looked like it was freshly raked by the film crew.

As for the actors, I thought they were promising. Nyneave did irritability well and Egwene was compelling. Rand was fine, a bit of a blank slate, but I enjoyed his scenes with Tam. And yes Mat was good and I already hate they have to recast him. The only one I’m not sold on right now is Perrin, who comes off as a touch stupid. And about the whole wife scene, I think they could have done without him accidentally dealing the final blow. I get they wanted to introduce his relationship ship “the axe” but the writers could have had him see the look on his wife’s face after he goes berserk and then just have her die from her previous injuries. As it stands, he now has to deal with a fuck ton of guilt and shame.

But overall, I’m just letting the changes slide because I realize in a medium of 8 episode seasons, trying to adapt so much content means things get sped up and condensed quite a bit.

[overlord]

As many have commented on over the years, one of the most endearing parts of Jordan’s writing is that the main characters become who they are because of events in the books. Sure, they had personalities, but Rand isn’t hard and arrogant at the outset, nor is Perrin torn between his dual nature in the early going. These are villagers who grow into legends, not super-complex and tragic characters at the outset.

The Amazon folks seem like they had no faith in the source.

[richard_dickson]

The whitecloaks: man do I HATE their costumes. Easily the worst designs/executions we’ve seen thus far. Entirely too modern looking (down to the person I presume is meant to be Geofram Bornhald) having trendy 2019 haircuts.

I’m finding a lot of the costuming in general feels a little too modern. That may be intentional, but it often comes across as lazy.

[doc_happenin]

I don’t suppose there is a wind blowing off the Mountains of Mist to open the show, huh?

[michaelm]

The whitecloaks: man do I HATE their costumes. Easily the worst designs/executions we’ve seen thus far. Entirely too modern looking (down to the person I presume is meant to be Geofram Bornhald) having trendy 2019 haircuts.

I’m finding a lot of the costuming in general feels a little too modern. That may be intentional, but it often comes across as lazy.

Rand in particular seems to have a line on the Westlands version of Abercrombie & Fitch.

I don’t suppose there is a wind blowing off the Mountains of Mist to open the show, huh?

There is not…but the first episode closes out with Moiraine’s voiceover of those opening lines.

[michaelm]

Just finished up the third episode. Overall, another move up in improvement over the first episode. In terms of character work, this was the strongest episode yet.

…but that’s damning with faint praise. Because one thing the show hasn’t excelled at is characterization. It’s so busy shuffling everyone around and tossing off names and information that character is getting lost or left behind.

I can’t tell if it’s the writing or the acting or both, but Perrin is a huge fucking dud here. The actor can certainly cry on cue but this awful, unnecessary tragic backstory means Perrin’s a one note, uninteresting character. And worse, it appears that they’ve cut Elyas out entirely. Or they’re leaving him for much later.

While Barney Harris continues to do good work as Mat, the plotting and pace of the show is letting him down: in the book, it’s CLEAR that Mat is changing under the influence of the dagger (even if Rand doesn’t know the source of the change); thanks to the show making him not just immature but an addict and child of an abusive, dysfunctional home, his selfish appeals in this third episode feel like it’s just Mat being awful. I really, really hate that Mat, of all characters, is the one they’re making want to go home the most since it was the opposite in the books.

I like the actor playing Thom, even if his mustaches are too understated. And - thus far - I’m OK with Thom not quite lining up with the book version in terms of personality and presentation.

But the whole Darkfriend sequence was botched. First, she’s chasing after them in a tiny village with a sword - a tiny village the show just got done telling us in which everyone knows everyone else. It sort of begs suspension of disbelief that NO ONE helped her out or at least stepped in to see what was going on. Second, seemed very familiar with the sword - where does a barkeep, born and bred in a tiny mining village, learn to do that? Third, Thom HEARS HER say one of them is the Dragon Reborn and his reaction is…hey, come with me. Again, this just seems like a staggering misreading of the source material.

Nitpick: I get why, for non-book reading viewers, Thom knows things about the Aiel he shouldn’t (such as what they call the Waste [“the three-fold land”] but it still grates. Second nitpick: Egwene and Perrin have never heard of the Tinkers? WTF?

I will say the landscapes they’re using are absolutely gorgeous, even if it sort of pushes against disbelief that they’re all still in the relatively same geographic area. And the show has shown an overall trajectory of improvement. Still have grave concerns, though.

[wasp]

So I have only completed episode 1. I posted these thoughts elsewhere but here was what I thought.

I really liked episode 1, but in some ways it is such a mixed bag for me overall. So much stuff I liked mashed up with stuff I was more “eh” on, and the overall feel of the episode was a bit choppy. Some of the pros came with cons, and vice versa. As such, I am not gonna try to do a cohesive review on this one, I will just break it down to what I liked and didn’t like.

Liked:

-The Liandrin scene. It was a cool idea how they revealed the madness and Fleetwood is gonna be so great as Liandrin.

-Tam. The role was a little sketched out and the writers threw him a couple bum lines, but McElhatton did a great job and his monologue with the lantern montage was far and away my favorite moment of the episode. Give me them themes, baby!

-Egwene and Nynaeve. Again the introductions/roles are a tad rushed in this episode but Madden and Robins did a great job with what they had to work with. I think Madden might be a star in the making and Robins has certainly never been better.

-Mat. Some cognitive dissonance with how they’ve changed Mat’s family dynamic, but as many expected it, Barney more or less nails the Mat vibe, though the show has a bit more glum of an outlook on the character than the book does. Feels like it’s gonna suck for a bit when we experience the actor change.

-Rand. It’s early. I am not sure on this one. Without the inner monologue, Rand does run the risk of being simplified into a leading man pretty boy who just pines for the girl he can’t have and yearns for simpler times when the weight of the world isn’t thrust upon him. But I was worried about Joshua making Rand likable (vs. being like a Hayden Christensen Anakin), which I do think Rand needs to be at the start, and I think he succeeded in making him likable. Even with not much to work with.

-Subtle channeling effects. When Moiraine warms the bath, I thought that was cool and I like the time it took.

-Landscape shots. Some great ones in the first episode and I thought they did the most work in giving the show some sense of scale and grandeur where other aspects felt a little more TV. Expensive TV! But TV.

-Sound design. On the whole it was good but not incredible, but I have to give this a shout-out because we all know the importance of wind in WoT and the sound design around the wind in this episode, be it the general ambience or the wind listening scene, was just so great and so appreciated. I love how it gets paid off with that monologue at the end, too.

-Padan Fain. Loved him. One of the few characters that felt almost completely like the book character. Want more of him.

Mixed:

-The score. Sometimes it works really well and other times I am not sure it is pushing the right feel. It’s not always good when it’s memorable and sometimes it’s more forgettable when it’s better, haha. But I do think it is interesting and probably would give it higher marks than many TV original scores.

-Channeling in general. What a total mixed bag. I like the way it is done when it is more subtle or interacting with real objects. I think, however, it wasn’t established slowly enough and the FX get bad when they go harder. There are gonna be a lot of “power creep” and “overpowered” remarks given that we’ve already seen Moiraine unleash every possible element almost on some Trollocs.

-Trollocs. Some shots of them are great. I would say this is a mixed that leans way more towards positive. But they do fall victim to some bad CG and dang I wish we got a “Narg smart” or something like it to give them a but more personality. Still, I give this show a lot of props for even trying to do Trollocs like this and mostly succeeding.

-The humor. The show tries and there’s moments where it works, but it definitely feels like a different sense of humor from the books. This really doesn’t have the same sense of levity that the beginning of EotW had.

-Production design and cinematography. I think the production design/art direction was quite good but you do see some of the budget limitations. The cinematography was more of a mixed bag, great landscape stuff and generally good for the quieter scenes, but quite poor during the action which was a big chunk of the episode. Shaky handheld and poor lighting. The highlights, brightness, contrast were all kinds of wrong when Moiraine went big magic mode.

-Two Rivers. Beyond some beautiful landscapes around it, this does NOT feel like the somewhat idyllic and sheltered “Two Rivers” (R.I.P. Emonds Field) of the books. That might have been intentional, to separate from Shire comparisons, to try to make the show feel a little more grounded and gritty, etc… but you get some mixed returns. I was expecting to be sad when I saw the village destroyed, and I just wasn’t. On one hand it makes it easier to see why some characters like Mat and Egwene are ready to leave. On the other hand it doesn’t feel like the “home” Egwene and Perrin act like they miss in that last trailer, especially when the secondary characters in the town are so thinly drawn or not even there at all.

Disliked:

-The opening scene. What a disappointing way to open your epic new fantasy show. Shots of Moiraine dressing with an awkward monologue that feels quite rushed. They tried to do the Galadriel FOTR prologue thing when it wasn’t needed and completely flubbed the execution. Worse, they undercut so much of the intrigue that the general audience could have felt towards Moiraine and Lan by just sort of bluntly explaining their whole mission and motivation.

-Perrin. This is nothing against Rutherford, who has been fine so far. But the fridging just doesn’t work. Laila is barely a character. Barely! So we have a big departure from the books, which would be okay if done well, but it’s not just misguided in concept, it fails dramatically. Our while introduction to Perrin and then the set off for his internal conflict is built on a farcical gimmick. It sucks and it also really pushes the mood of the episode, along with Mat’s backstory and the emphasis on Winternight’s atrocities, a little too grimdark for the beginning of the story. Perrin might never be allowed to smile again.

-The editing. Perfectly fine in the conversation scenes but feels like a hack job any time it tries to do more. The action is especially bad in this area. I hear this aspect gets better as the show goes on. I hope so because it’s important.

-The action. Almost a mixed for me because there were plenty of cool individual moments in the action but they are very poorly connected to each other. That could be editing or maybe they could have been staged and planned out better. Hoping for better action from Wayne Yip’s episodes since he is somewhat known for directing it.

-The departure from Two Rivers. Different from the books. There it was rushed in a way that made sense with the story. Here it was rushed in a way that felt like they decided they had to end the episode in one minute, haha. That said, I loved the dramatic effect of seeing those torchlights coming down the mountain and Moiraine’s final lines of the episode, so I would say it did end on a strong note.

…I have not finish Episode 2 but I am about 2/3rds through and it is a BIG improvement over the first episode. Much better pacing and some interesting dramatic conflicts. Ferry scene was actually a smart adaptation change. Yeah, I am digging it. Can’t wait for Shadar Logoth…

[michaelm]

Great post, wasp!

Something I posted in the other WOT thread: whether it’s deliberate or not, the Trollocs’ movements often have a stop-motion feel to them, which I love. It feels deliberate, like a callback to Harryhausen’s films and effects.

OTOH, I just realized why the Trollocs feel off: in the books, they’re consistently armored up in black, spiky mail. In the show, they don’t seem to wear armor at all.