Amazon's "Wheel of Time" adaptation is the worst thing ever commit to film

After the attack on Emond's Field, Moiraine spirits the three boys men and Egwene away. Why Egwene? Is it like the books? No, it's because Egwene might somehow be Lews Therin reborn. None of the stealth or dissent from the villagers from the book is in the show; everyone is pretty chill with Moiraine being an Aes Sedai and the "four ta'veren" accept it as a matter of course that they need to leave. Perrin's recently murdered wife (by him!) isn't really an issue, everyone mentions how sad it is briefly and that's the extent of it. And then we're off to start the second episode!

It opens with Eamon Valda (portrayed phenomenally by the incredibly talented Abdul Salis, the only good casting decision besides Lan) being cartoonishly evil. He has an Aes Sedai tied to a stake and he is cheerfully ranting to her about how he enjoys the brutality of some meat. And then he burns her to death. How was she taken? How was she shielded? What happened to the gibbets in Amador, and the show trials, and everything the Children of the Light are known for? Doesn't matter, Valda is evil, Hollywood's idea of Christians (witch burners) are bad, burn this broad and have him laugh while he watches and continues to eat.

Smash cut to Moiraine's party at Taren Ferry. Remember the frantic flight through the woods in the dead of night from the books? Remember how they were all terrified and trying to come to grips with the magnitude of everything that's happened? Remember Rand's unknown channeling to allow Bela to keep up with the racehorses and warhorses? Remember how Lan's behavior with the ferryman was so excellently used to indicate his and Moiraine's worldliness, their resources, their versatility the greed of Taren Ferry folk, and just that whole fantastic chapter of rousing the crew and the distrust everywhere and the journey across the river, the sinking of the ferry and the rowers' flight into the fog afterwards? Rafe Judkins hopes you don't, because none of that is included here. The ferryman rows them across solo, and Moiraine proceeds to kill him. There's also a fist of Trollocs inexplicably right across the river, raging at them and just standing there watching and bellowing. I guess Trollocs don't have bows in Rafe's Wheel of Time, because there's no danger whatsoever from the massed forces within bowshot. So anyway, Trollocs are impotent, don't have ranged weapons, and Moiraine kills the ferryman. Neat.

They run into Valda and a company of Whitecloaks in the forest. Moiraine lies (remember, the Three Oaths only apply now when the writers want to make you aware of them) and then we're on our way again. She gets tired and passes out, and Lan unilaterally decides to take everyone to Shadar Logoth. Moiraine wakes up when they get there and tells him that he's killed them all before passing out again.

Mordeth isn't here. The boys explore a bit and then Mashadar happens and then they all run away. It's all very unremarkable and completely forgettable. The split-up happens like in the books, but no one has Moiraine's coins and it's a proper mess:

• Domon doesn't exist - Rand and Mat just begin trekking with no real destination in mind.
• Elyas doesn't exist - Egwene and Perrin go off on their own. A wolf had licked Perrin's leg wound at some point though, so I guess that's where the wolfbrother concept comes from here. But it's a mess too, because instead of protecting his dreams, the wolves terrorize him. One is eating his dead wife's intestines. I am fairly certain that the writers of the show just skimmed a plot summary and called it a day. "Perrin, wolves, dreams, got it."
• Lan and Moiraine are on their own, because Nynaeve had been presumed dead after Winternight. But she comes back now! There was no Baerlon, but she did manage to track them to and through Shadar Logoth (in the night?) somehow. She disarms Lan - because she's a very strong woman - and holds him hostage for a bit.

Perrin and Egwene meet the Tinkers. They don't have a caravan, or wagons, or anything, they're just beatniks who walk around everywhere. A lot of fat ones, too, somehow. Aram is black now. Nothing of note happens, because like every other scene in the series, this is purely Rafe Judkins and isn't based on anything in the books at all.

The third and final episode that we have so far is even more forgettable than the first two. Moiraine is poisoned and they need to somehow find and meet up with Liandrin and her party to get her Healed. We're introduced to Thom (he has a guitar, is very young, and has no mustaches - in case you missed it the first time) playing his guitar (he has a guitar) in Four Kings. You definitely remember Four Kings from the book - Rand and Mat had been on the road for weeks after Whitebridge, desperately making their way to Caemlyn after seeing Thom presumably killed in Whitebridge? They'd been performing with his flute and juggling (which he'd taught them aboard Domon's Spray) to get food and shelter from the winter? And the innkeeper Saml Hake was super sketchy, and had his two brutish bouncers basically trap them in after they'd agreed to perform, presumably so he could rob them after the crowd dispersed? And Darkfriend Howal Gode came? And when they were just about fricked, Rand accidentally channeled lightning and fried Gode and blew the fricking basement up and they fled into the storm? That huge, defining moment?

Yeah, that doesn't happen here. Four Kings (in the heart of Andor) has an innkeeper named Dana. She is a (strong) woman, and she is very much not Andoran (black), and she is an innkeeper despite it being Andor and nowhere near Ebou Dar. She's definitely very fat, though. She flirts with Rand. She asks him if he and Mat are gay and stresses that it's totally cool if they are, no one has a problem with same-s*x couples. He says they're not and he can do better than Mat. They make out. Then he stops because Egwene. Then she reveals that she's a Darkfriend and chases him with his own sword. Then she chases him and Mat with his sword. Then Thom (he has a guitar now) - who they've never met before - casually knifes her in the throat. End scene.

Throughout all of this, it hasn't been winter at all. The unnaturally prolonged winter was a major narrative item, a significant motivator for a lot of things, and a constant source of conflict in the actual story. Everything here is comfortable and green and fine. And it's all so very clean, even when people have been trekking through the woods for days.

CONCLUSION

Amazon and Rafe Judkins' Wheel of Time is not an adaptation of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. It is not based on it. Aside from some proper nouns and some vaguely-almost-sort-of-kind-of-similar narrative beats, this bears absolutely no resemblance to Wheel of Time. It is a different story, about different people, doing different things for different reasons. There is not a single filmed scene that is at all similar its alleged source material. Not one. And this is a fricking shame, because this travesty of CW show pretending to be WoT is going to be an enormous number of people's only exposure to the property. And it bears no resemblance to that property whatsoever. And beyond that, it's bad. Even for an original story, what we have here is just terrible all around. The pacing is an incoherent mess, the acting is all over the place, the worldbuilding and character development is utterly nonexistent, the CG is somehow both too much while also being not nearly enough, the practical effects are hilariously bad, and everything is just so, so, so, so very badly done in every sense of the word.

This is a work without a single redeeming attribute. As a Wheel of Time adaptation it goes out of its way to aggressively fail at every turn, willfully bearing no resemblance to - and actively preemptively retconning - what it claims is its source material. As a standalone work, it's just bad. Badly written, badly shot, badly scored, badly acted, badly paced, everything is just objectively bad by every conceivable metric.

Rafe Judkins is a talentless hack with an explicit and well-documented contempt for the work he was mystifyingly tapped to adapt into a Game of Thrones contender. This has been evident ever since he was hired, and is immediately evident from what is very literally the first minute of his show. This is neither for fans of the books, nor for people wholly unfamiliar with The Wheel of Time. It is an abomination, too wildly disparate from its source material to even be called a parody. It is a work entirely his own, and entirely devoid of merit.

@Wizdumb337 @S*x @FearOfBees @mellokind