Fantasy Wheel of Time

[TheVileOne]

I think some people have really forgotten what effects and production looked like back then. Even looking past that funny attempt at a comparison I'm unsure of what have caused some to have had higher expectations. Other than Game of Thrones I can't remember any fantasy looking spectacular (and that show didn't do it all the time either) so I'm honestly not sure where the idea that the baseline would lie above this comes from. It's a step up from The Witcher, which was the most recent attempt that got good attention.

As for the characters, I didn't find most of them very likeable in the book either. Particularly Nynaeve was rather more annoying in the book than in the show. The change to Perrin was a bad move in my view as well, although what I can't criticize about it is the effect on him. He's mostly in a state of internal grief during the show this far and if anything it hinders showing more facets of the character (although he was pretty dull in the book, so perhaps that's it for now).

As for them following Moiraine, I don't see much of an issue there. The Aes Sedai are well known so it's not like there is some random person asking them to leave their homes out of nowhere. They are also all in shock after having seen what they thought were fairytale creatures murder a big part of their town. More were coming and they are told that they are the ones they are after so they need to leave both to escape and to not bring the Trollocs down on the village again. Shocked people that are out of their depth are certainly likely to follow someone that's an authority figure, and it's unlikely that there are many that would hold more authority at that point than an Aes Sedai, especially after the display during the defense of the village. I'd say that any of them being stubborn and wanting to stay at that point would make them more unlikable and illogically written, not less.

I'd say what I've seen with this show looks on par with Legend of the Seeker in terms of production values. The color palette actually reminded more of Cursed on Netflix.

I think what the show is missing is a sense of cinematic scale or scope. There's a claustrophobic sense to the cinematography at times that I don't get while watching Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones or even The Witcher for that matter.

How did she even know those four kids were the Dragon Reborn candidates? How do they know they were the ones Moiraine was talking about? It all just happens in a very rushed, clunky manner without really establishing these things and concepts to the characters. The audience knows about the Dragon Reborn candidates because Moiraine talked about it earlier with Lan, but how do Mat and Perrin suddenly know what she was talking about?

 

[Mjolnir Reborn]

I'd say what I've seen with this show looks on par with Legend of the Seeker in terms of production values. The color palette actually reminded more of Cursed on Netflix.

I think what the show is missing is a sense of cinematic scale or scope. There's a claustrophobic sense to the cinematography at times that I don't get while watching Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones or even The Witcher for that matter.

How did she even know those four kids were the Dragon Reborn candidates? How do they know they were the ones Moiraine was talking about? It all just happens in a very rushed, clunky manner without really establishing these things and concepts to the characters. The audience knows about the Dragon Reborn candidates because Moiraine talked about it earlier with Lan, but how do Mat and Perrin suddenly know what she was talking about?

I haven't seen Legend of the Seeker. The ones I know that have don't seem to agree but I'm not arguing using anyone else's opinion. I wouldn't compare to LotR, as those are epic feature films, and GoT is the peak in fantasy shows so I don't think it can be the standard for what's acceptable. It certainly looks more costly than The Witcher, despite them having about the same budget. The Trollocs, while certainly not film quality, look far better than the dragon in the Witcher, despite that the dragon does so much less. Judging from past and contemporary shows I don't see the issue so to me it just comes across skewed expectations. Personally I expected it to look worse, with the Trollocs looking like the Sylvan in The Witcher and so on.

Cinematography isn't something I include in production values. I agree that it usually has pretty small shots, with some larger ones thrown in here and there. This is something they certainly can work on as it won't be about spending a lot more money.

I'm not going to argue against that the set up is rushed, especially since they took time to add some pointless stuff. I'd have to rewatch the episode to remember the exact dialogue so I can't comment on those specifics, my point is just that I don't see an issue in that they are following her under those circumstances. A member of the famous Aes Sedai giving help in the face of a deveastating attack by monsters should be seen as the best option at that point. I also think it makes sense that the longer they manage to stay ahead of the following enemy the shock of the first attack and the new revelations lessen and they start questioning things, even if it's not necessarily written the best.

Of course everyone has their own reactions to things. I went into it knowing that it's an adaptation of a book I didn't care much for, and feeling like high fantasy is hard to do on a show, so my expectations were lower.

 

[TheVileOne]

Not really a fantasy series per se, but I think The Terror miniseries was pretty impressive for a TV budget and looked feature level/quality in terms of production value, design, cinematography, acting quality, etc.

 

[Albright]

Best episode so far. I dig the production value of it this time. Looking forward to the next episode even more than for the new season of the witch(er)

 

[Iceman]

Enjoyed the latest episode. The show's been on a good run since the 4th for me. Can't believe it's already coming to the end. I could watch this for many more weeks.

 

[Iceman]

So finished watching the first two, and not sure I want to continue.

I would persevere till the end of the 4th if you can. I really like that episode. If you still don't like it at that point then I think it would be a good time to bow out.

 

[TheVileOne]

I would persevere till the end of the 4th if you can. I really like that episode. If you still don't like it at that point then I think it would be a good time to bow out.

I think it did get renewed for a second season, so I might revisit it at some point.

 

[Iceman]

I think it did get renewed for a fourth season, so I might revisit it at some point.

4th season renewed already? Ok cool, that 4th episode is easily my favourite. Great ending but quality character stuff before that too.

 

[Albright]

If you would’ve watched until the fifth episode, they probably would’ve renewed it for 5th season

 

[Iceman]

If you would’ve watched until the fifth episode, they probably would’ve renewed it for 5th season

The creators are watching Vile’s posts. The fate of the show rests entirely on how far he gets.

 

[TheVileOne]

4th season renewed already? Ok cool, that 4th episode is easily my favourite. Great ending but quality character stuff before that too.

Sorry I meant renewed for a second, that's what I meant. You mentioned to try to watch through the fourth, so I think that's why I repeated that. Mental hiccup, sorry.

 

[Iceman]

Sorry I meant renewed for a second, that's what I meant. You mentioned to try to watch through the fourth, so I think that's why I repeated that. Mental hiccup, sorry.

Thanks. I’ll be very disappointed if this gets cancelled before we get a ton of seasons.

 

[TheVileOne]

Well, they've already started filming S2, so that one will happen at least.

 

[Iceman]

How far into the books are we likely to be by the end of season 1? Realise some guesswork involved with that.

 

[Bren]

End of Book 1 it seems.
They might have a wee bit of the start of Book 2.

 

[heatvision38]

Kinda disappointed with S1. Too many changes for the sake of change. Some things rushed that they needed to slow down on and other things slowed down when they didn't need to. Kind of all over the place. I hope they can polish up S2 like Witcher S2 was.

I should have cared more about what was going on in this finale but it was just all over the place.

 

[Holy Slapper]

That kicked so much ass!

 

[Iceman]

Really enjoyed that finale! Season 2 needs to get here fast.

 

[Iceman]

End of Book 1 it seems.
They might have a wee bit of the start of Book 2.

Thanks. Hopefully that means they can do a ton of seasons given how many books there are.

 

[KaijuDude1992]

Just got done binging this today and honestly, I enjoyed it although I did start to notice the decline in production value the longer it went on, but I really did enjoy the worldbuilding.

Much like The Witcher I am not familiar with the source material at all, but I never found it hard to follow and there's a lot of interesting ideas in this that could have been explored more IMO.

I think more set up could have been used for The Dragon Reborn concept and I wanted to know a bit more backstory on The Dark One aswell as the motivations of Trollocs besides just being barbaric beasts.

I know they are pretty much the Orcs of this Universe and alot more will probably be explained in Season 2 but still there was like no build up at all to their introduction which was kind of jarring at first.

I am definitely interested in continuing this show though because it really scratched my fantasy/medieval itch and I want more shows like this, but they need to up the scale aswell as the overall cinematic quality of it.

 

[Bren]

As a book fan, disliked the show.
Trying to look at it objectively, as just another show, was decidedly meh.

 

[Iceman]

Seems like book readers in general for both this and The Witcher aren’t too impressed with the shows.

 

[Mjolnir Reborn]

It seems like the first and last episodes were the ones to throw me off the most with the changes from the book. It's not that I'm against changes since the Logain episode is one of my favorites and that was entirely made up for the show, but the mentioned episodes had some changes that didn't sit that well with me. Maybe it will work better after I've just gotten used to them as sometimes the issue is just expectations not being met.

Overall the first season was enjoyable enough and I hope it will be the kind of show that improves with the crew getting more experience.

 

[Albright]

The dark king looked like a waiter or butler.
They should really upgrade the costumes in season 2

 

[SirStrangefolk]

Last episode was definitely my least favorite. They made some choices I thought were a bit odd, speaking as a book reader.

I did start to notice the decline in production value the longer it went on

This was mostly noticible for me with the last two episodes. Unfortunately there were some pretty major production issues and it showed.

- They wanted to make the season longer but Amazon didn't allow it
- Between the filming of episodes 6 and 7 they had to completely stop production due to lockdowns
- During this break in filming they lost one of their main cast members (Barney Harris who played Mat) so they had to write him out of the show in the middle of the season
- When production could start again they could not travel to filming locations they had previously arranged due to covid travel restrictions, meaning they had to build new sets and do additional CG environments
- They couldn't film with large crowds and not all extras were able to show up for filming so they couldn't have the Shienaran army and Trollocs fight each other up close and all the trollocs had to be fully CG rather than the mix of CG and practical they were earlier.

Hopefully for the future seasons they won't suddenly get hit with such setbacks in the middle of the season and it will look better for it.