Myself and two others from my family watched the first three episodes of "The Wheel of Time" on Amazon Prime last night. The three of us have read the books many times. This post is my review and other thoughts. If I decide to discuss spoilers I will do so towards the end and will mark that section with a larger header indicating spoilers. (imdb.com|Amazon Prime)

QUICK VIEW:

PROS: It looks great, it sounds great, and it is obviously well made. It mostly sticks to the story.

CONS: Artificially imposed visual diversity that makes no sense for generations of geographically mostly isolated peoples. The people initially should look similar in skin color with some slight shade differences. It makes absolutely no biological common sense. That is not how reproduction works over generations. It is not a "melting pot". It is another case of modern writers thinking they need to push their ideology upon the audience rather than faithfully recreate stories that already have a big audience.

RESULT: They are getting blasted by negative comments and one star reviews. I kind of expect this when these artificial and unnecessary changes are pushed for the sake of ideology rather than simply remaking the story. They know the books and they don't need the plague that is wokeness corrupting that as well.

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SLOGAN: Wokeness - Ready to corrupt all of your favorite tales...

SHOULD YOU WATCH IT: If you can make yourself not compare it to the story and where they have twisted things it is actually very well made and has a lot of potential. I suspect all of the backlash is purely in reaction to the politically correct ideology, and other crap being forced into it for no good reason. If you can acknowledge that and toss it to the side it is a good show so far.

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(Image Source: observer.ug)

A great darkness is coming and the wheel of time turns through cycles. The darkness destroys the world. The dragon is reborn each cycle. It is the hope this time that the dragon reborn will break the cycle and save the world. Mix this in with high magic, dreams, vistas, great monsters and special effects.

Observations but no spoilers as such yet

Rand is the one that should stick out mainly due to his height and hair color. They got Rand's look correct but he's a little shorter than he likely should be. There are also some female blacksmith character additions seeming to be there purely for a "powerful feminist" role and to again fit diversity. Why does this matter? She did not exist in the stories and has replaced a male elderly character who is a family member of one of the main characters. She is still a family member since she is married to one of them but that shouldn't have been the case either. In the books these characters were all young and none of them were married. This brings up another forced issue. They were sexually attracted to each other but it was of a reserved nature and not consummated in the books which supports encounters with other cultures and ideologies later in the books that are less reserved. In the series they fairly quickly decide to make this less reserved and consummated between some characters that were very reserved and for the most part unrequited throughout the books for a LONG TIME. They toss that aside.

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(Image source: Screenrant.com)

Spoilers

Screenshots from this point on grabbed from the videos...
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Egwene and Nynaeve both appear to be almost Indian (as in Eastern) in appearance. No golden hair for Egwene for example. Her and Rand have very close contact and get into a position implying sex is about to happen. Later on he walks in without a shirt as she is sitting there. This should NOT have happened until way later in the series. There should have been sexual attraction and tension.

Perrin works for me in appearance but for awhile we were not sure whether he was Perrin or they were going to go woke and make HIS WIFE into Perrin. You read that right Wife. His dad doesn't exist. It was his wife working the forge. Once she died we realized they were not going to totally flub it and make her Perrin she was just a strong feminist forced stand in to replace his father in the story. Considering all the main characters were young at this stage none of them should have been married. In fact, the only one particularly sexually precocious in the books was Matt. Perrin biologically does not fit what a lone isolated village should look like but in how he holds himself, and overall appearance he can work. He appears to have more African stock.

Lan... Asian and not tall. Need I say more? The actor seems decent it is just that if you know what he is supposed to look like his Stature was a big deal in the book. They make him appear imposing very briefly when he first enters the inn with a cloak over his head and some camera angling but that's about it. The actor did a good job and I think he'll be fine for the roll. He just does not fit the image in the book.

Rand has the proper hair color. He actually can work. His biggest failing is he needs to be taller to fit a lot of the narrative in the story. We'll see how that pans out.

Padan Fain...

WOKE plague...

So many different skin colors may be something they try to force into everything these days. It absolutely makes no sense when you consider an isolated village interbreeding over generations. The skin color will end up being pretty homogenous. Rand was supposed to stand out because he was brought there as an orphan as a child and was not born there.

VERDICT:
As long as I view the series on its own and don't expect it to fit the books it has potential. I think they took unnecessary liberties with the setting and story to fit woke ideology and if not for that I suspect we'd all be singing the series praise so far.

I think how they did the trollocs is pretty bad ass... They also did a great job on weaving (aka magic).