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Ars Technica has a series-recap-thing going on for "The Wheel of Time" series on Amazon: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/11/two-book-readers-recap-the-first-three-episodes-of-amazons-the-wheel-of-time/
In the event that you dislike people ruining great books for stupid political agendas, perhaps you should steer clear of this review of Amazon's TV Series.
These recaps won't cover every element of every episode, but they will contain major spoilers for the show and the book series. If you want to stay unspoiled and haven't read the books, these recaps aren't for you.
#1 The way magic works in the Wheel of Time (WoT) is crucial to the plot of the entire series. This is ignored entirely in the first three episodes. Which makes me think, they're going to be doing even more stupid things.
#2 Being inclusive and trying to say, but the girls should also be included as possible main plot "Dragon Reborn" hype is stupid. Egwene goes from village girl to badass quite well on her own in the books, thank you very much.
#3 Lan in the first few episodes sucks. In the books, he can take a few dozen trollocs on his own. Whereas in the first few episodes, Moiraine is barely able to take down a nice grouped up bunch? That is stupid beyond words. (We will gloss over the deliberate destruction of the town's property, because apparently it's easier to throw bricks.)
#4 Mat is a thief and his parents are evil, essentially. His Mom is a drunk, apparently driven to it by his Dad who is shown as unfaithful and essentially a deadbeat.
#5 There is a lot of sexing going on. This is a long ways away from Perrin and his lady falling down the stairs on top of each other and being embarassed.
#6 Where is Elyas?
This is no faithful adaptation from the books. In the event that you happened to like "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe", but were put off by "The Silver Chair", because they turned Peter into a whiny brat... you will be even more put off by the random stupid changes they made in this book. Rand wasn't always a brooding semi-sociopath and Mat is a lot more honorable than portrayed by these first few episodes.
[...] Probably the most annoying things to me are the twisting of characters and plot to make them more "woke". Like, if they'd added a scene in Lord of the Rings where someone asks, if Frodo and Samwise are gay. You know, because they are traveling together, so you must be gay. What kind of stupid?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by looorg on Saturday November 27 2021, @01:16AM (3 children)
I have not seen any of the four episodes released so far. A few friends that really like the book series had nothing good to say about this adaptation tho. I'll watch it eventually unless it totally goes down in flames and I have nothing better to do.
But more in general there appears to be an overall trend so this isn't all that surprising. The surprise is why they keep doing it over and over again and then wonder why people think it's shit.
Cause this seems to happen to a lot of movies and tv-shows based on books and comics. They want to borrow the lore, the fanbase and parts of the story and then they go about reworking other parts of it to fit some current agenda or idea of how things should be. It tends to be bad. The old fans will be pissed and most people that never heard of it before either don't care or don't know or are just not that interested in it to begin with.
I doubt this show will build some kind of new fan base on people that have not read the books. They might but it won't last long. At least not long enough to cover the books.
After Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones (and all the Marvel stuff etc) they more or less signed up every fantasy, scifi, whatever franchise they could and it seems the writers just can't help themselves. They just have to change things just for some reason. Even tho they are more or less handed ready scripts in some form or another that just have to be translated. They don't need that kind of story rework. The stories are not becoming better cause characters all of a sudden change sex, skin colour or how much they fuck or whom they do it with. It just usually makes it worse.
Game of Thrones became worse and worse the longer it got and the last couple of episodes, or season, just didn't make any sense at all. It really had become the "oh tits and dragons!"-show. With a big big budget so more dragons, more battles and more tits. Story be damned.
Same thing happened quite recently with Y: the last man on TV. The show had just bare things in common with the comic. Instead they shifted focus toward it becoming some kind of pro-woman political show. While the main focus of the comic was more or less all about Yorick and the journey (and some other things but it was never a political drama). Here that almost become some sidetrack to the show. Result? Cancelled before the first season was complete. It just become so shit it was unwatchable.
If you pay money to buy the rights to something I kind of expect you to make that thing. Not to make a new thing set in about or a bought setting. The story they want to tell about current events and politics just doesn't fit.
In some regard it seem to be the same with remakes of any kind. They are just never, or very rarely, as good as the original. The new crap just doesn't fit in and it feels forced and crap. One wonders why considering they are spending millions on getting the rights to make them and then just take a big dump on everything.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @02:32AM (1 child)
I never watched Game of Thrones, it just sounded like political bullshit in a fantasy world. Your dispassionate review has convinced me that there might be more to it, so I will check out a few episodes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @06:56AM
Tits? TMB still checks in a AC, once in a while. Too bad he never managed a complete human relationship with someone of the opposite gender.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @02:33AM
Exception is Bad News Bears (2005) which is much better than the original.