Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Both the five and one star reviews largely come from people who have read the books. Which is interesting in itself. Some of the fanbois are like "iT's A nEw TuRnInG oF tHe WhEeL", and a ton of the women who read the books are here in the reviews dunking the raw deal men are getting in the series. Go figure. There are those who are frustrated that it has the frantic pacing of Ender's Game, with as much left out. There are those who fixate positively or negatively on...how they "modernized" certain aspects of casting. There are those who feel that all the compromises make it more exciting, because there are fifteen books and thousands of pages in the source content. And sometimes, you will indeed skim paragraphs if you read the source material all the way through. As for me, I know the source content. And I know that the book is always divorced from the source content, because that's just the reality of film and series adaptations. It's always been a conscious decision to do this. A ritualistic sacrifice of dark tradition. It's always done with the best intentions, and sometimes, it even produces a palatable outcome. But let's put all of that aside and just assume you are not coming to this show with any knowledge of the material. Let's look at the Wheel of Time series on its own. It stinks. Why? Well, with the budget they have at their disposal, and the dearth of talent out there, they wound up with nothing but tropes. On the road, most destinations were indistinguishable. The cities, large and small, had every earmark that they came from the same builders. Even the ruins *felt* like they were created by the same hands as the towns; as the big city. The way characters dressed was so random, there felt like no coherent culture among any party. The musical score simply did not exist. I binged five episodes and don't remember one song. We all can hum a few bars from a random track out of LOTR. The effects could not have been cheap, and yet there are CW shows that are still more dazzling, which have twenty something episodes per season. The pacing is bananas. They fixate upon developing characters slated to die more than they fixate on characters you just *know* are at the core of the main story. We all probably watched a series or two where they did twenty something episodes per season and were like "they really could pare this down to ten or twelve episodes". This show is the opposite. It should be more episodes per season, just so they have the time to make all of the frantic chaos make sense. At the long and short of it all, it is great they are making a series for a wonderful fictional world. And it will surely sell a ton of the books. But this product falls as flat as the majority of modern productions. We have seen what present-day producers have done to beloved franchises like 'Trek, and 'Wars and so forth. You can check those fan reactions to such endeavors on 'Tomatoes. This is akin to those flops, and like those flops, you will have your smooth brains who are like "Oh Yeah, more product to consoom!". And if you find yourself liking this, well...good for you, I suppose. I can't like it. I'm going to watch the rest of the season, but I just don't see how it can improve in any meaningful way. It's bad enough I know the source material and am sitting there like "NO! There are THREE, not FOUR, darn it!" And other such call out moments. But the filmography is amateur, and time and money clearly wasted on one-off scenes and settings you know will never be revisited feels like a teen girl with daddy's credit card. The effects are meh at best. And while the guy who wrote the books was long winded in the extreme, the show just drags on with pointless subtext scenes until you actually skim through them. Which is ironic considering just how much they have skipped through the source material. One thing holds true, though. An uncomfortable, if familiar, consistency-- Nynaeve is still the most annoying character. That's just like the books.