Fearsome beasts, dark lords, scrappy young heroes and world-weary sorceresses. Throw these in the cauldron with a few dashes of magic and stir vigorously.
Bring to a boil and toss in $10 million per episode and you have Amazon’s big budget adaptation of The Wheel Of Time, an epic fantasy adventure based on the sprawling series by Robert Jordan and, later, Brandon Sanderson.
Before we get going, full disclosure: This mostly spoiler-free review only covers the first four episodes of the show. I'm also writing individual reviews of each episode of Season 1 so I'm taking my time.
The good news? I’ve liked each episode more than the last for the most part. The show keeps getting better after an admittedly rocky start.
The purpose of this review is to give a more broadstrokes take on what works—and what doesn’t—in this new adaptation of Jordan’s fantasy epic. Detailed discussion of each episode will happen in later posts.
The Wheel Of Time is being spearheaded by showrunner Rafe Judkins. Its most famous cast-member is Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl) who plays the Aes Sedai sorceress, Moiraine. There are a few other recognizable names in the cast and numerous relative newcomers. Fans of Vikings will enjoy seeing Peter Franzén as one of the Warders, looking years younger than he did as King Harald Finehair.
Perhaps my very favorite performance on the show, however, comes from Daniel Henney who plays the Warder Lan Mandragoran, Moiraine’s companion and protector. Henney’s performance is beautifully understated. Lan is the strong silent type, but Henney teases out a subtle, poignant and at times surprisingly funny performance.
Second disclosure: I’ve only read the first entry in The Wheel Of Time series. I read The Eye Of The World and then stopped and have only returned to the second book recently. I reviewed Game Of Thrones having read every published novel in that series. Here I come with only some knowledge of the source material.
A part of me was simply daunted by the length of the series. Fourteen books! And they’re all pretty long! And so many other books and games and movies and TV shows to read and play and watch! Good grief, who has the time for it all?
Fortunately for me, the first season largely focuses on the first book, and by the time Season 2 is out I will have finished The Great Hunt. Eight episodes means that much of the novel is going to be cut or glossed over, for better or worse. Don’t expect a 1:1 translation here, but do expect what I think is a pretty faithful effort that’s true in spirit, if not in every detail, to the original.
The Cast Is Great
I mentioned above that my favorite performance in the show is Daniel Henney as Lan Mandragoran, but I should also note that pretty much the entire cast has grown on me over time. The first episode starts off a little rough, but by the time the fourth episode’s credits rolled I was hooked. This imperfect adaptation is at the very least good enough to make me excited to see more.
Much of this is thanks to the strength of the casting. Yes, many (most?) critics are swooning over Pike, and she’s perfectly fine as Moiraine, but really the entire cast is quite good. I wasn’t sold at first, especially on Rand al’Thor, ostensibly the first book’s central protagonist, though relegated to an equal among many here.
Rand is played by Josha Stradowski who is almost too pretty and whose hair looks almost too modern (okay, definitely too modern). The young cast, with Stradowki at its center, worried me at first that we were headed into fantasy CW territory. The fact that Rand and Egwene (Madeleine Madden) are in bed together within minutes of the show’s opening did little to assuage my fears.
Fortunately, I think those fears were largely unfounded. Nearly every member of the cast has grown on me, and those that haven’t I’m being patient with. I suspect it’s more about writing and direction than the actors themselves. I’ll withhold criticism for now.
The strength of the cast is a big part of why I enjoyed the first four episodes, and more and more so as the season marched on. Barney Harris plays Mat Cauthon perfectly—both his charm and the darkness that begins to overtake him (it’s a shame he’s been recast for Season 2). Marcus Rutherford is the perfect Perrin, a big old teddy bear of a man, strong and compassionate and humble, who wears his pain on his sleeve even while keeping any complaining to himself. Madden, as Egwene, is likable and given a less restricted role than her character in the books. She has a light about her that really draws you in.
Characters you meet later on, like the rugged gleeman Thom Merrilin (played by Alexandre Willaume) and the charming Tuatha'an Aram (played by Daryl McCormack) add to the rich tapestry of fantastical people you’ll meet along this epic adventure. It’s a wildly diverse cast, and a sprawling one.
Some Puzzling Changes
One big change I’m not sure about just yet is the idea that any of the five main young people at the center of the story—Rand, Mat, Perrin, Egwene and Nynaeve (Zoe Robins)—could potentially be the Dragon Reborn. It’s an odd change.
The gendered nature of magic remains in place from the books. Only women can use the One Power without going mad. This has been true ever since the Dark One (good grief do I despise how cheesy and generic that always sounds) broke the world. Men who tap into channeling go insane, as we see with Logain Ablar (Alvaro Morte) who proclaims himself the Dragon Reborn. Women do not. They stop the crazy male mages from ruining everything.
The entire point of the Dragon Reborn, from what I know of the story, is that a male magic user will emerge who will either be insane and break the world, or avoid said madness thanks to some prophecy, and heal the world by defeating the Dark One. Women aren’t the Dragon Reborn because they face no such restrictions or risks when channeling. Like Dune’s Bene Gesserit, the Aes Sedai have a monopoly on magic but someday—according to prophecy—a powerful male magic user will emerge to bring balance to the Force. Instead of a Kwisatz Haderach, this person will be the Dragon Reborn. You get the drift.
Yes, I get this is all very binary (as is Dune) and we live in a world in which an increasingly non-binary understanding of gender is emerging. But this fantasy series hinges on this dichotomy, however dated it might feel, and to me it makes more sense to just stick to the original’s binary gender magic rather than, er, reinvent the wheel as it were. There are other fantasies that can be adapted that make no such distinction or that embrace a more modern understanding of gender. It’s just a story. It doesn’t have to reflect the politics of the moment.
That being said, does it matter? Not really. Or at least I don't think it will.
The fact is, I’ve found myself enjoying the show more and more each episode and I look forward to what's yet to come.
So what is the major shortcoming I refer to in the headline of this post?
Hang on, because it’s a doozy.
The Whole Thing Feels Cheap
For a television show that costs more in its first season than Game Of Thrones, everything about its production feels weirdly cheap and fake. This is, to put it mildly, a pretty big deal.
Amazon funded the construction of an entire village set just to burn it down. They paid for hundreds of costumes. They must have poured countless millions into the CGI and special effects for all the magic (this is high fantasy, unlike Thrones, so there’s plenty of spellcasting to go around).
But nothing feels real or lived in. Everyone’s hair is too perfect (a problem many TV shows have) and nobody is ever dirty. Clothes are always pristine and too often just look like costumes rather than clothes (yes, we know they’re costumes but we should be able to trick our brains into forgetting this fact).
I don’t mind the magic, which at least avoids the Harry Potter vs. Voldemort magic laser beam duels (mostly) but the effects feel oddly dated when they should be cutting edge.
The monstrous Trollocs (furry orcs, basically) look downright bad--almost laughably so. At least the eyeless Myrddraal are pretty creepy, though I can’t shake what’s always bugged me about The Eye Of The World, that it’s just Fellowship of the Ring all over again (Trollocs are Orcs, Myddraal are Ring Wraiths, Moiraine is Gandalf, Rand is Frodo, Lan is Strider, The Two Rivers is The Shire etc etc).
I place a great deal of importance on immersion, and one thing HBO did really well with Game Of Thrones is create a world that felt extraordinarily real. Costumes did not seem like costumes. Winterfell and King’s Landing felt like real places.
In Wheel Of Time, Emond’s Field just feels like a set, too pristine by half. (By all means, make a pristine little village but it should not feel less realistic in 2021 than the Shire did—almost 20 years ago to the day--in Fellowship of the Ring).
I admit that I sort of settled into not caring as much about these details as the show progressed and the story started picking up, but I still haven’t shaken my disappointment entirely. When you don’t establish place very well and the world-building is unconvincing and the sets seem fake, immersion suffers.
Thankfully, much is salvaged by the strong cast and engaging story once things get going after the first episode—which is dreadfully slow until, quite suddenly, it’s roused from its slumber into chaos and fire.
Oh, and one final note: I have been watching screeners. The quality of these screeners is quite good but not as good as it will be on Amazon Prime when this launches Friday. It’s possible some of the cheapness and quality issues will not be as noticeable then. If so, I will update this review and include this in my following episodic reviews as well.
Note: A reader has pointed out that this story, unlike Thrones, is set in a “Renaissance” time period, so people will naturally be cleaner. Maybe a little cleaner than Medieval times, sure, but people in the Renaissance still rarely bathed. Farm boys in particular were no cleaner. And besides, it’s not just about looking clean—it’s about costumes and sets looking fake that’s the bigger problem.
Verdict
Alas, I cannot offer a verdict of the first season having only watched half of it, and even if I’d watched all 6 screeners by now I would still not have watched all 8 episodes required to issue judgment. I can say that I’m enjoying myself. I recommend you give it a shot and that means watch more than one episode, because the first is also the weakest (so far).
The Wheel Of Time is off to a flawed beginning, but it’s still fun and exciting and I care about the characters and hope they succeed against THE DARK ONE.
And yes, I’m being tongue-in-cheek just now but you kind of have to be when a fantasy series refers to its Big Bad that way. I suppose after spending all this time with so many more interesting and complicated villains—and I mean actual villains, not “shades of grey” antiheros—it’s a little hard to go back to Dark Ones and Chosen Ones and the accompanying tropes.
At the same time, I suppose it’s that earnestness which makes this series charming. The show makes it a little less so. There are more sex jokes. It can be bloody, and it’s characters aren’t all black and white (Moiraine is certainly more ruthless than Gandalf, even if she’s no Bayaz).
But it’s still a pre-grimdark fantasy which is, in many ways, refreshing; a nice change of pace. We have our Thrones and our Witchers aplenty these days. Sometimes it’s nice to go out into the wide world with some good old-fashioned heroes and watch an epic showdown between good and evil unfold.
I’ll be posting individual recap/reviews for each episode of Wheel Of Time on this blog so be sure to bookmark this space and follow me on Twitter or Facebook.
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