Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I had high hopes for this series, having loved GoT, Witcher, etc., and having read the books years ago. Perhaps if my expectations were lower I would've been less disappointed, but even folks who haven't read the books seem to have similar reactions. The writing is just... poor. The actors seem ok, but there's no characterization so we don't care about them. The plot is just fed to us in long lines recited by Aes Sedai, and it's hard to care about that, either, since we don't see it happening. Even a simple montage or illustrated sequence about the prior events that led up to this search for the Dragon would've been more engaging. Think of the way epic fantasy video games tell their background stories before you start playing. That's better than an exposition dump. Yes, there are bizarre & seemingly needless changes from the books, but it hardly matters insofar as you aren't invested in anyone anyway. I think it was a mistake to have 4 instead of 3 young folks in the village, or it was a mistake to try to introduce so many characters simultaneously. GoT gave us more time with each character and immediate stakes for us to care about each of them. That's what's missing here. There are incredibly elaborate sets and a lot of CG (clearly, that's where the $10 million per episode budget went). The long action sequences fall flat, though, because we simply don't care about anyone yet and - let's be honest - we know the main characters have to survive these first few episodes. With respect to what NYT's review called a "thinkpiece-friendly" approach to gender, many viewers will likely be turned off. Apparently, Aes Sedai control magic & men are not only angry and resentful about that, they are also cowardly & physically inept for... reasons? In the first battle, the men run away and hide while elderly farm women try to fight off the monsters with pitchforks. One man (I won't give it away) accidentally ends a loved one with "friendly fire," thus telling us that even when men are brave, they are horribly inept. And of course, the Aes Sedai's magic just game-ends everything around, which is cool to watch but doesn't make the show suspenseful. To be fair, that's a problem with a lot of fantasy. If you show a mage who's so powerful that she can do everything from heating bathwater to spraying lighting bolts with her hands, it removes a lot of potential conflict & tension that would make a story interesting. What people are calling "bad casting" is the fact that every character looks different from described in the books. I don't mind that so much, but at some point we have to acknowledge the show wasn't cast in a way that supports the source material. For example, the first episode is set in a tiny isolated village, yet every frame shows as much diversity as NYC's Times Square or a Green Peace ad. That diversity, while beautiful from an aesthetic and ethical standpoint, seems far more modern than the setting. I'm fine with race-swapping as long as it makes sense, e.g., make the people in each region look mostly the same so viewers can follow the story & track the characters' travels more easily. That creates a sense of scale, like we're traveling through different cultures. This was done expertly in GoT - we can recognize differences in the Dothraki and the Lannisters, for example. Credulity is strained even further in WoT when the 3 couples we see in the first episode are all interracial. If that's that's standard, we'd expect everyone to be multi-ethnic. Showing a diverse cast and telling us they're all born in an isolated village is immersion-breaking. Instead of feeling like we're in a big, multi-cultural universe, we're left feeling like we're watching an NYC high-school play. In summary, the rich source material and huge $10 million budget per episode means that this show could be saved if better writers and directors are hired. Sadly, Robert Jordan is no longer with us, but there must be fans of his work who truly love the material and could help translate it to screen in a better way than what's been done here so far. Unless I hear that changes are made for future seasons, I can't see myself continuing to watch, because the episodes I've seen so far were boring. Additionally, I'm sorry to see so many fans are upset. Perhaps it'd be better for Amazon to just write a new sword-n-sorcery epic rather than change one that has so many existing fans. FTR, I'm a woman, but it strikes me as unspeakably cruel to change an adaptation of books beloved by boys around the world and portray men as cowardly and inept. Hollywood needs to find better ways to uplift women without belittling men. Personally, it doesn't empower me to see men portrayed this way. I think of my boy cousins & friends who loved these books growing up and will be horrified. WoT is, at its heart, an adventure story, and it should be enjoyable for all viewers.