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Sony to produce Wheel of Time TV series

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White Tower full of lesbians, yes. BDSM, no.

I certainly seem to remember a shit ton of spanking and switching, especially when they were trying to break Egwene.

I thought that was done with about same amount of subtlety as the early wonder woman stories by her creator.
 
Egwene straight up gets bent over another woman's knee on a daily basis, and deals with it by learning to "embrace the pain" like her Aiel girlfriend showed her.

There's only so many ways to say it.


Lmao I totally forgot about All of that stuff...remember the trials
 

AzureSky

Member
expecting it to become something like Sword of Truth, very low chance to be good.
I often thought about how WoT could be turned into a movie or series and there is just no way it can turn out decent.

It could be animated into something great, but noone will do that.
 
Egwene straight up gets bent over another woman's knee on a daily basis, and deals with it by learning to "embrace the pain" like her Aiel girlfriend showed her.

There's only so many ways to say it.

Exactly. I don't remember what Aiel had but didn't that involve nudity and physical punishment as well? How old were these characters again when doing this? Was Egwene even 18 yet?
 

KonradLaw

Member
Fans of WOT are ancient. Should have gone with Storm light archive instead.

But WOT has huge advantage -it's finished. Sanderson is a monster, so Stormlight will be done eventually, but it's not the only thing he writes. It will likely take 20 years before it's done. Plus it would require insane budget today. Hopefully two decades from now they will be able to make it happen on TV
 

siddx

Magnificent Eager Mighty Brilliantly Erect Registereduser
Cautiously optimistic is indeed the best description of how I feel.

As long as the make sure to fix the issues with depicting all women as shrill bitches and make the three main male characters more likeable, I am looking forward to seeing this world come to life.
 
Cautiously optimistic is indeed the best description of how I feel.

As long as the make sure to fix the issues with depicting all women as shrill bitches and make the three main male characters more likeable, I am looking forward to seeing this world come to life.

I was optimistic but I forgot about Faile.

Yeah..this has no fucking chance.
 

Sheytan

Member
Cautiously optimistic is indeed the best description of how I feel.

As long as the make sure to fix the issues with depicting all women as shrill bitches and make the three main male characters more likeable, I am looking forward to seeing this world come to life.

The Asha'mans version of the binding weave is basically
mind control, they have like foursomes with the aes sedai that they captured the same day.
 

Akuun

Looking for meaning in GAF
I'll be honest, I don't think a live action show can do this series justice. May be animation. How are they going to do Nynaeve vs Moghedien in the garden scene. It was exciting in the book, but the book also said it's basically looks like two girls chilling around.

At time it's also way more shonen rather than high fantasy
Good points, especially the shounen thing. Many story arcs build up to a point where
some main character or another (usually Rand, but Mat and Egwene have crappy moments with this too) just starts doing cool shit that's way beyond what they can normally do entirely on instinct, just because of bloodlines or something.
 

NandoGip

Member
To be honest, even if it's the worst show in the world, I'm going to be happy it exists.

Some (fantasy) casting ideas over at Tor. The article does point out that the first season especially is going to be whitewashed to all hell if you follow the descriptions in the books.

Some minor WoT spoilers in here.

http://www.tor.com/2017/04/20/casting-ideas-for-the-new-wheel-of-time-tv-series/

The casting for Lan is fucking perfect tho.


Most of those picks are not so good IMO. Lan is great though, I agree.

Makes me think now. I guess the one thing that will disappoint me is if everyone is white: :(
 

Hari Seldon

Member
Most of those picks are not so good IMO. Lan is great though, I agree.

Makes me think now. I guess the one thing that will disappoint me is if everyone is white: :(

I don't know who most of those youngsters are as I don't watch Teen Wolf, but they look correct to me. I guess the problem is that most of the main characters require early 20s actors so there is a big risk of pulling a Shannarah.

As far as white washing, yeah the first season is going to be bad. Making the borderlands an asian culture is a great idea. In later seasons it should get better as the boys encounter lots of different cultures. But the ancestry of the 3 boys is pretty central to the main plot. You could make Moraine any race really, the only thing that I recall about her was that she was short lol.
 

LordOfChaos

Member
But this is one thing they could simplify - the rules could still impact the story, but just be cleaner.


I think the heart of it would be easy to cover, the 5 types of weaves, interleaving several of them makes different things.

Some close up Power use could show weaves, while larger scale battles could show the meta effects (i.e beams of lightning rather than weaves within them).


This would best as an animated series IMO.


Yeah I can definitely see that, the comparable budget to make Power use look good would be much much higher with meatspace actors rather than anime.
 
Sony my dudes, sure I can't talk you out of this? No? Ok.

Cast young unknowns from the UK theatre/BBC, don't cast from the CW, & if you absolutely must have big names in the cast, limit yourself to one A-ish lister and some well known character actors. I'll end up watching this out of morbid curiosity, but I'll turn it off the second some part-time EDM DJ delivers lines in the same dialect as his Starbucks orders.

I'd be more than happy to have a series that isn't slavishly devoted to its source material in this case. There's plenty of material and a lot of cool individual scenes, but I feel like the most effective Television storytelling here is probably in a more stylized, loosely adapted saga. The more you try to stick close to the books here, the more glaring the omissions are when they eventually come, and when it gets real crazy, the plot could unravel altogether under the weight of it all. Just pick out the cool stuff/characters and have Forsaken lurking around like Cylons to give the viewers some water cooler speculation every week.
 

NandoGip

Member
I don't know who most of those youngsters are as I don't watch Teen Wolf, but they look correct to me. I guess the problem is that most of the main characters require early 20s actors so there is a big risk of pulling a Shannarah.

As far as white washing, yeah the first season is going to be bad. Making the borderlands an asian culture is a great idea. In later seasons it should get better as the boys encounter lots of different cultures. But the ancestry of the 3 boys is pretty central to the main plot. You could make Moraine any race really, the only thing that I recall about her was that she was short lol.

Yeah, I don't mind if the characters are accurate to the books. One of my favorite aspects of the books is how RJ mish-mashed many different cultures instead of your typical Olde English inspired everyone-is-british approach.

I actually hope it goes slightly reverse white-wash like the idea to cast Lan as Asian. It's a bit of a stereotype though to cast the sword master as an Asian I guess, but I'd rather have a little bit of a stereotype than an all-white cast. I'm not Asian though so can't really speak on that too much.

Sony my dudes, sure I can't talk you out of this? No? Ok.

Cast young unknowns from the UK theatre/BBC, don't cast from the CW, & if you absolutely must have big names in the cast, limit yourself to one A-ish lister and some well known character actors. I'll end up watching this out of morbid curiosity, but I'll turn it off the second some part-time EDM DJ delivers lines in the same dialect as his Starbucks orders.

I'd be more than happy to have a series that isn't slavishly devoted to its source material in this case. There's plenty of material and a lot of cool individual scenes, but I feel like the most effective Television storytelling here is probably in a more stylized, loosely adapted saga. The more you try to stick close to the books here, the more glaring the omissions are when they eventually come, and when it gets real crazy, the plot could unravel altogether under the weight of it all. Just pick out the cool stuff/characters and have Forsaken lurking around like Cylons to give the viewers some water cooler speculation every week.

I agree 100%. No way this would work if they tried to adapt it word for word. This is a huge risk though given the names attached to the production. It's very possible this could be great, but it's way more likely they'll miss the mark. We can only hope,
 

Hari Seldon

Member
I legit forgot about the spankings. Or I blocked them. There were some long, loving descriptions of spanking all through those books, which is so fucking infantilizing and ridiculous.

So if AMC gets this we might avoid the spankings, but Starz will lean into it haha.
 

Akuun

Looking for meaning in GAF
Egwene straight up gets bent over another woman's knee on a daily basis, and deals with it by learning to "embrace the pain" like her Aiel girlfriend showed her.

There's only so many ways to say it.
I found it ridiculous how the White Tower seemed (spoilers from the last few books)
to have absolutely no idea what to do with someone who wasn't broken by spanking.

"Spanking isn't making her behave! What do we do?"

"I dunno, more spanking?"

"It's not working!"

"Ok, clearly she should be our leader"

"K"
 
Some (fantasy) casting ideas over at Tor. The article does point out that the first season especially is going to be whitewashed to all hell if you follow the descriptions in the books.

Some minor WoT spoilers in here.

http://www.tor.com/2017/04/20/casting-ideas-for-the-new-wheel-of-time-tv-series/

The casting for Lan is fucking perfect tho.

That casting for Lan would maybe be the only thing to inspire actual hype for me. It will never happen.

These people should be ashamed for suggesting Penn Badgely for anything serious at all. He's the whiniest, most irritating dude, and I know Perrin's not necessarily a favorite but he's not a whiny pissant. And I don't think Badgely can play anything but himself.
 

Akuun

Looking for meaning in GAF
Perrin is probably the character I relate to the most out of the three main guys. He's not actually whiney. It's more like he recognizes that everything happening around him is super important, feels like he's in over his head, and is afraid to screw things up.

I really liked how his character grew throughout the series.
 

4Tran

Member
Yeah, I don't mind if the characters are accurate to the books. One of my favorite aspects of the books is how RJ mish-mashed many different cultures instead of your typical Olde English inspired everyone-is-british approach.
Using Early Modern Europe as a base for the setting instead of Medieval Europe was an inspired choice on Jordan's part.

I actually hope it goes slightly reverse white-wash like the idea to cast Lan as Asian. It's a bit of a stereotype though to cast the sword master as an Asian I guess, but I'd rather have a little bit of a stereotype than an all-white cast. I'm not Asian though so can't really speak on that too much.
It's not that much of a stretch. The swords in the books are basically katanas and there are a lot of Japanese-ish names in the Borderlands.
 

NandoGip

Member
Using Early Modern Europe as a base for the setting instead of Medieval Europe was an inspired choice on Jordan's part.


It's not that much of a stretch. The swords in the books are basically katanas and there are a lot of Japanese-ish names in the Borderlands.

True. I'm really curious to see how they'll do it.
 

LordOfChaos

Member
Egwene straight up gets bent over another woman's knee on a daily basis, and deals with it by learning to "embrace the pain" like her Aiel girlfriend showed her.

There's only so many ways to say it.

Legit never thought of it that way, but when you lay it out like that it does seem pretty plain to see, lol



I guess I assumed embracing the pain was just a battle thing for the Aiel


There was also the episode where Elayne (I think?) found a rod ter'angreal that made her do something she wouldn't remember, while all the wonder girls were giggling about it and Birgitte was embarrassed.
 

HStallion

Now what's the next step in your master plan?
Some (fantasy) casting ideas over at Tor. The article does point out that the first season especially is going to be whitewashed to all hell if you follow the descriptions in the books.

Some minor WoT spoilers in here.

http://www.tor.com/2017/04/20/casting-ideas-for-the-new-wheel-of-time-tv-series/

The casting for Lan is fucking perfect tho.

A lot of those choices just seem like random famous people instead of casting someone fitting. Emma Stone? Chloe Grace Moritz? Come on.

Also as far as I know Ken Watanabe is still dealing with stomach cancer.
 

NandoGip

Member
Great reddit post from someone semi in-the know:
https://www.reddit.com/r/WoT/comments/66kj23/the_wheel_of_time_tv_series_facts_speculation/

Since news broke of the Wheel of Time TV series today there's been a huge amount of speculation and discussion going on about the project. I thought it would be worthwhile to pause for a breath and take a look at what we know and what could be speculative. I've been covering the TV adaptation saga over on Dragonmount and on my own blog for the better part of a decade now, discussing the project with several people placed in the know, so hopefully this information will be accurate as of this time of writing.

What was announced today?

It was announced that Sony Television Pictures will be the company that physically makes the TV show. A smaller production company (probably created specifically for the project, like Bighead Littlehead for HBO's Game of Thrones) will actually drive the production but Sony will be providing the resources to make and shoot it. They will also provide some of the funding.

Sony will not show the series

Although they have a stake in several broadcasters, Sony TV are not a television network or streaming service themselves. They will partner with a network or streaming service who stump up the rest of the budget and distribute the series. We don't know who that is at the moment.

Well, let's guess! Who's in the frame?

Several sources seem to agree that AMC are the likely leading candidate to pick up the show. AMC have been on a roll with major genre programming recently, most notably The Walking Dead. They also have a highly fruitful past relationship with Sony, collaborating with them on Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul and Preacher. However, some critics have noted that AMC are very frugal and have not given these shows the budgets they really need even when they turn into ratings titans (leading to a very public, very nasty and still-not-resolved legal battle with Frank Darabont over The Walking Dead, and a near bust-up with Sony over Breaking Bad).

Also in the frame, but perhaps less likely, are Starz (whom Sony have worked with before on Outlander) and Showtime. Possibly more likely are FX, who showed that WoT mini-pilot/ad a couple of years ago. FX and Sony collaborated previously on The Shield, Rescue Me and Justified, whilst FX arguably have the two most critically-acclaimed shows on TV at the moment with The Americans and Fargo.

Amazon were apparently very interested in the project at one stage but haven't been mentioned in regards to this current news. Netflix also don't seem to be on the radar, despite their popular work with Sony on The Get Down. Although this could change quickly, it might be that Wheel of Time is headed to cable rather than a streaming service.
Wait, what about HBO?

HBO produce their big shows in-house rather than with an external partner company. In addition, HBO are extremely loathe to compete with themselves in the same genre space. Game of Thrones is wrapping up next year, but they are developing a spin-off and several SF projects (including further seasons of Westworld and potentially an adaptation of Isaac Asimov's Foundation) and are simply not interested in any other SF or fantasy projects at this time.

What do we know about the guy who'll be running the show?

Rafe Judkins almost won Survivor in 2005. More relevantly, he's also been a writer, producer, script editor or assistant on The 4400, Chuck, Hemlock Grove and Agents of SHIELD. His episodes of Agents of SHIELD are notable for being among those that do not suck. He's also been a long-term fan of Wheel of Time for decades.
A lot of Judkins' work has been in collaboration with Lauren LeFranc and it is possible-to-likely that she will be working on the WoT TV series, which may be of interest to those who've felt that a female presence in the writer's room would be valuable for a story so dependent on female characters.

Where will it be filmed? When will casting be announced? When will it be shown?

Hold your horses, people. These projects typically take a while to come together. The Game of Thrones deal was signed in February 2006, but they didn't film the pilot until November 2009 and the show didn't hit the air until April 2011. That's an extreme example, but it won't be on the air in 2017 or 2018. The most likely air date for the show would be some time in late 2019 or in 2020, assuming a deal is done with a network in the next few months.

Unfortunately, there are growing signs that there will be a Hollywood writer's strike in the next year or two. The 2008 Writer's Strike threw a lot of shows under the bus (arguably Heroes never recovered after its second season was wrecked by the strike) and Game of Thrones was delayed by a year due to it. If the strike happens, expect major delays to this project.

As for other issues of structure, plot, length, production requirements, visual effects, prosthetics etc, I put together some thoughts a few years ago that you may be interested in.

Just to add, this will be a long and at times no doubt frustrating process, but with enormous popularity of the books (which are now close to 100 million copies sold worldwide) and the firepower of Sony behind it, it will almost certainly happen and it will be taken seriously by the studio. Whether it's good or not remains to be seen, but I am fairly optimistic.
 

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
I would not mind books 8 to 10 being condensed to a 5 minute Montage.
Who wants to sit through four and a half minutes of people sipping tea?
loooool ouch
no lies detected

Are we just pretending the daily spankings don't happen?
I had legit forgotten about that. Man, it really was grotesque.
Didn't Faile and her cohort all have to walk around naked as well when captured?
In the snow too lol. In addition to being a blatant perv, Jordan clearly doesn't know shit about winter and how fast you'd die doing that.

You could make Moraine any race really, the only thing that I recall about her was that she was short lol.
Wasn't Moiraine a Damodred (same house as that douche Galad (and others I probably forgot)?

Edit:

Great reddit post from someone semi in-the know:
https://www.reddit.com/r/WoT/comment...s_speculation/
Thanks, very informative. However, this jumped at me:

HBO produce their big shows in-house rather than with an external partner company. In addition, HBO are extremely loathe to compete with themselves in the same genre space. Game of Thrones is wrapping up next year, but they are developing a spin-off
Whaaaaa?? I hadn't heard of this!
 

NandoGip

Member
loooool ouch
no lies detected


I had legit forgotten about that. Man, it really was grotesque.

In the snow too lol. In addition to being a blatant perv, Jordan clearly doesn't know shit about winter and how fast you'd die doing that.


Wasn't Moiraine a Damodred (same house as that douche Galad (and others I probably forgot)?

Edit:


Thanks, very informative. However, this jumped at me:


Whaaaaa?? I hadn't heard of this!

Wow didn't catch that GoT spin-off mention. Probably inspired from those spin-off books.. dunk and egg I think
 

Akuun

Looking for meaning in GAF
Wasn't Moiraine a Damodred (same house as that douche Galad (and others I probably forgot)?
IIRC yes, she's a Damodred. Which is interesting because
Galad is half brothers with Rand. So doesn't that make Rand distantly related to Moiraine?

You know, I read most of this series when I was a kid, and most of the pervy stuff flew right over my head at the time. Now that I'm thinking about it again, a lot of it really is pretty eye-rolling.
 

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
Wow didn't catch that GoT spin-off mention. Probably inspired from those spin-off books.. dunk and egg I think
I googled around and didn't find any confirmation that the spin-off was a thing, so I wonder how truthful that claim is. A year old source mentioned the HBO programming director Lombardo has no interest in a spin-off, but a more recent (January) one quoted the new programming director (Bloys, who replaces Lombardo) as being "interested" or at least open to the idea. I didn't research the claim much further since it seems to be pretty baseless for now, unless this person knows something the rest of the world doesn't...
 

NandoGip

Member
I googled around and didn't find any confirmation that the spin-off was a thing, so I wonder how truthful that claim is. A year old source mentioned the HBO programming director Lombardo has no interest in a spin-off, but a more recent (January) one quoted the new programming director (Bloys, who replaces Lombardo) as being "interested" or at least open to the idea. I didn't research the claim much further since it seems to be pretty baseless for now, unless this person knows something the rest of the world doesn't...

Check the reddit post, he has a blog tracking his journey through following the development of the show. The guy seems moderately credible plus whats the chance a spinoff doesnt happen? There are only 13 episodes left but a shit load of cut content and side stories that can be made into shows or movies
 

4Tran

Member
IIRC yes, she's a Damodred. Which is interesting because
Galad is half brothers with Rand. So doesn't that make Rand distantly related to Moiraine?
For the spoiler, no.
Rand is related to Galad through Tigraine Mantear. Tigraine was married to a Damodred, but she's not directly related to them (or to the Trakands).

Moiraine is related to Galad, Gawyn, and Elayne though. She's half-sister to Taringail Damodred so she's their aunt.
 

jwk94

Member
So what's this series about? Does it actually have time travel? If I find Game of Thrones to be hard to follow (too many family, kingdoms, etc to keep up with) would I like this?
 

Akuun

Looking for meaning in GAF
For the spoiler, no.
Rand is related to Galad through Tigraine Mantear. Tigraine was married to a Damodred, but she's not directly related to them (or to the Trakands).

Moiraine is related to Galad, Gawyn, and Elayne though. She's half-sister to Taringail Damodred so she's their aunt.

Ah, okay. Thanks for the clarification.
So what's this series about? Does it actually have time travel? If I find Game of Thrones to be hard to follow (too many family, kingdoms, etc to keep up with) would I like this?
Wheel of Time is kind of the opposite of GoT in terms of direction. GoT has excellent and complicated political intrigue while being relatively light on combat, monsters, and magic. Wheel of Time's political intrigue is much lighter but generally boring, but it has a lot of flashy combat and magic action. Its magic system is probably the highlight of the series in that it's very well developed, with interesting systems and rules that play a big role in the story.

The kingdom and culture stuff still gets complicated in WoT, but I found it much easier to follow because the books don't throw all of the various regions and cultures of the world at you at the same time.

As for the time travel stuff, it doesn't have time travel. It does play with concepts such as parallel worlds and reincarnation, though.
 

LProtag

Member
I've never read the books, but I remember staying up to watch that weird one-off pilot that aired in the middle of the night just to see what it was going to be like.

It was super odd.
 

4Tran

Member
So what's this series about? Does it actually have time travel? If I find Game of Thrones to be hard to follow (too many family, kingdoms, etc to keep up with) would I like this?
The first book is a pretty straightforward quest story that has a lot of structural similarities to the Lord of the Rings. The first season should tell the entirety of this book so it'll probably be pretty easy to follow. The second book is another quest so it shouldn't be too bad either. The third book on gets a lot more complex and a lot more convoluted.

Honestly, I think that the creative team will have to make a lot of changes in order to make the later books possible to follow. Still, the first couple of books will be pretty fun to see on screen, so you'll be eased in without too much difficulty.

Wheel of Time is kind of the opposite of GoT in terms of direction. GoT has excellent and complicated political intrigue while being relatively light on combat, monsters, and magic. Wheel of Time's political intrigue is much lighter but generally boring, but it has a lot of flashy combat and magic action. Its magic system is probably the highlight of the series in that it's very well developed, with interesting systems and rules that play a big role in the story.
I'd say that there's a lot of political intrigue in the story. I think that you're thinking of the later books when it becomes somewhat boring (I blame Elayne). In the earlier books, it played a much more interesting role. One particular example had fans debating the allegiance of a character for over fifteen years.

I've never read the books, but I remember staying up to watch that weird one-off pilot that aired in the middle of the night just to see what it was going to be like.

It was super odd.
You can ignore the Red Hawk thing because it was a cheap grab in order to retain the rights. Think Fantastic Four 2015 levels of effort. Done properly, the first few seasons of the Wheel of Time can be pretty entertaining.
 

NandoGip

Member
I've never read the books, but I remember staying up to watch that weird one-off pilot that aired in the middle of the night just to see what it was going to be like.

It was super odd.

Lmao out of all ways to be introduced to this series, you picked the absolute number 1 worst way to check it out.

Other options for you:

The books
Audiobooks
The comics (doesn't cover the whole series)
Theres a fan movie showcasing a scene from the first book
 

Akuun

Looking for meaning in GAF
I'd say that there's a lot of political intrigue in the story. I think that you're thinking of the later books when it becomes somewhat boring (I blame Elayne). In the earlier books, it played a much more interesting role. One particular example had fans debating the allegiance of a character for over fifteen years.
You're talking about
Verin
, right?

There is political intrigue in the series, but I think it's rarely central to the story the way it often is in GoT. The political intrigue in WoT is something that runs alongside the main story in WoT, while it's the main meat in GoT. There are many instances in WoT where you could ignore the political stuff entirely and just enjoy the action.

You're right in that it's way more interesting earlier in the series than later on, though. Early on, it was interesting but still rarely gripped me the way anything did in GoT. Later on, the intrigue chapters increasingly turned into something that I had to slog through to get to stuff that I actually cared about. As you say, the Elayne stuff was especially bad, ranging from boring to actively annoying. I also distinctly remember a long and rambling chapter where some side character kept thinking about how many dresses to buy for her retainer for being so loyal to her. I'm really glad Sanderson dropped that particular sideplot like a ton of bricks.
 

hythloday

Member
I have this in my mental "Wait and see" file. I'm firmly in the "not every goddamn book series needs an accompanying TV/movie/breakfast cereal" school of thought, but if it's done well, I will definitely watch.

So what's this series about? Does it actually have time travel? If I find Game of Thrones to be hard to follow (too many family, kingdoms, etc to keep up with) would I like this?

You might have a little trouble following the different nations and politics, but I have a feeling they're going to simplify a lot of it. Luckily there's a small cluster of main characters, and all the rest is flavor. The books have a problem where almost every character gets a name, so I had trouble because some random bar wench was mentioned by name suddenly and I had no idea who she was and if I'd forgotten her from some other earlier book. Nope, Robert Jordan just named a million characters.

Wheel of Time is kind of the opposite of GoT in terms of direction. GoT has excellent and complicated political intrigue while being relatively light on combat, monsters, and magic. Wheel of Time's political intrigue is much lighter but generally boring, but it has a lot of flashy combat and magic action. Its magic system is probably the highlight of the series in that it's very well developed, with interesting systems and rules that play a big role in the story.

The kingdom and culture stuff still gets complicated in WoT, but I found it much easier to follow because the books don't throw all of the various regions and cultures of the world at you at the same time.

As for the time travel stuff, it doesn't have time travel. It does play with concepts such as parallel worlds and reincarnation, though.

This is a good summary. In this series, the concept of "time" isn't "time travel," it's "history repeats itself." I'd also say WoT is a lot more tame than GoT. There's sex and nudity and a lot of violence, but it's not as in-your-face and obvious all of the time.

The first book is a pretty straightforward quest story that has a lot of structural similarities to the Lord of the Rings. The first season should tell the entirety of this book so it'll probably be pretty easy to follow. The second book is another quest so it shouldn't be too bad either. The third book on gets a lot more complex and a lot more convoluted.

I could have just read the first book and would have been perfectly happy. It had a nice story, I liked the characters, it kept me interested, and then it ended. I read the rest of the series and loved it, but if you're looking to just get your feet wet, there's no harm in stopping early. If I had one moment from Book 1 I wanted to see on TV, it would be
Moiraine's "weep for Manetheren" speech from the Two Rivers after the first Trolloc attacks. Put a good actress on that and I'd get choked up.

Honestly, I think that the creative team will have to make a lot of changes in order to make the later books possible to follow. Still, the first couple of books will be pretty fun to see on screen, so you'll be eased in without too much difficulty.


I'd say that there's a lot of political intrigue in the story. I think that you're thinking of the later books when it becomes somewhat boring (I blame Elayne). In the earlier books, it played a much more interesting role. One particular example had fans debating the allegiance of a character for over fifteen years.

You can ignore the Red Hawk thing because it was a cheap grab in order to retain the rights. Think Fantastic Four 2015 levels of effort. Done properly, the first few seasons of the Wheel of Time can be pretty entertaining.

Oh yeah they're going to have to cut swathes of material, as well as the magic
(if you can't channel, you can't see the weaves, so you'd have two Aes Sedai staring at each other really hard in a battle. Aside from any auxiliary flames, things flying around, etc the audience wouldn't see the magic itself. I think obviously they'd change that and have some nifty special effects.)
 
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