Just watched first two episodes of S1 WOT!

[chongjasmine]

Just watched first two episodes of S1 WOT! Thought it was pretty good. I enjoyed it more than I did the GOT TV series.

So, why do people not like it?

 

[SurrealSisyphus]

Well, it's the character assassination. I did not get beyond the first episode because I could see that if they had messed up so quickly then it was going to fall apart. I'd like to say, to their credit, the casting was incredibly spot on. Everyone in the main cast had looked just how I imagined them to except for Padan Fain.

We get our introduction to the series, the very first line of the show, with Moirraine stating "The world is broken. Many many years ago Men who were born with great power believed they could cage darkness itself. The arrogance. When they failed the seas boiled, mountains were swallowed up, and the Women of the Aes Sedai were left to pick up the pieces."

..However in The Eye of The World when Moirraine is speaking with Egwene, Egwene accuses men of destroying the world and Moirraine is quick to correct her that it was men and women who were responsible for the fall of the Age of Legends. Moirraine is of the Ajah that holds justice above all else and this is reflected in her calm analysis of the world. She is fair in all things.

This sort of misandrist worldview of the breaking is something you would more likely hear coming from someone like Liandrin. They had a vehicle for this sort of angle. It's difficult not to mention an aspect of 'wokeness', but really I feel that fails to properly address the issue of character assassination that is clear in every level.

Rand, Perrin, Mat, Egwene, and Nynaeve are all young adults.. Not teens growing into young adults. This change was made because the showrunners felt if they were as young as they were in the beginning of the series then people "could not relate to them." Because, you know, none of us were young teens turning to young adults. Very unrelatable. Unimaginable, even.

This really takes out a very special element of Wheel of Time which is the loss of innocence as the reality of adventure and the world at large settled into the young cast shaping them into the adults we have come to love. A large part of Perrin's arc is about a young man learning what it is to love and be loved in a relationship. By giving him a pre-existing wife they have effectively neutered this.

Plain and simple, it's not liked because it's not Wheel of Time, but a crude facsimile.

 

[hitmouse]

Another reason is that, even for those viewers who have not tried to read the source material, it is cliched and not very good.