Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I suspect that many reviewers, especially the positive ones, did not read all the books. Granted, reading all the books is a massive undertaking. I'm 50 years old, I read the last book about 2 years ago, but started reading them 20+ years ago! The first few books were phenomenal, then a very slow sophomore set of books in the middle which just seemed slowed down to sell more copies had to be plodded through, then the last few books got good again. I'm also a big fan of Brandon Sanderson and feel he did a very good job with the last few books (except the very ending which was very unsatisfactory, but I digress). But to my point, you really have to have read the books to understand most of the negative reviews, the source material was just not followed. Sure Rafe warned us in interviews that things had changed, and there also have to be some necessary changes to adapt 14 lengthy books into what, maybe at best 8-10 seasons? So we are talking maybe 2+ books per season assuming the show was a hit and Amazon actually wanted to produce 8-10 seasons. Can it be done? Yes it can, just go back and review the Lord of the Rings trilogy which were quite faithful to the books and still managed to squeeze 3 books into 11 or so hours (non directors cut). Since we've already broached the elephant in the room, Lord of the Rings, we can also discuss the other missing piece here, production values and casting. Lord of the Rings had a lot of newcomers, and of course hindsight is 20/20, but I can honestly not think of a single character which was cast badly. In Amazon's WOT the character casting is all over the place. My biggest gripe is with Lan and Moraine. No I don't have an issue with Lan being cast as Asian, in fact much of WOT alludes to China (golden crane, seven towers), and Nepal. My issue is that Lan was supposed to be a very tall person (not only in numerous references, but one can also just look at the first WOT book cover), and Moraine was small. It was important to establish their dynamics, of how such power could come in the small package of Moraine, and how Lan could be gentle and noble even as a huge dude. Just that disconnect worked to sabotage my feelings for the 2 main characters. Acting-wise I do feel Daniel Henny does a good job, but his role as a silent and in the shadows until the fight starts feel was really changed, and again it messes with his dynamic. Rosamund Pike is an outstanding actress, and really my only hope for this series to be halfway decent. I think she does a decent enough job. But that's really where the character casting goes downhill quickly. Certainly the "boys" were cast way too old. Sure, in the books they were about 20, but the way they acted was much younger and more innocent. I think this would be a byproduct of the world they lived in, in such an enclosed and distant village. In this series they are fully grown young men, and I mean fully grown, some with beards, having sex, drinking beer, gambling, married, etc. The essence of many, if not most, of fantasy books written in the 70s, 80s, 90s, and many today is that transition between being a carefree youth to an adult with the weight of the world upon them, and how they react to that weight. That essence is why we all loved the books so much, first as youths wondering what the real world and being an adult was really like, and again as adults cherishing that bygone youth and innocence. Really if you distilled the WOT series down (just as if you did the same to LOTR) the single most basic ingredient you would find would be exactly that, the transition between youthful innocence and calloused adulthood. So right off the bat this was already missing. Rand: Lets start with the main character. OK physically he isn't cast badly, he is tall, good looking, has the red hair. Again he is cast too old in my opinion, not so much in looks as his smooth face is easily 20s. But he's already a lover, and not an inexperienced one, he has pretty good moves. Again, we missed his innocent youth, with emotions and hormones far beyond his control and a world he knew nothing about. No, we get the smooth "player" Rand, and that just misses the entire point of the books. Acting-wise Stradowski leaves something to be desired, he is way too wooden and inflexible and not very believable. Listen, I'm more than willing to give him a chance and let him grow into the role. I just wished they hit it out of the park with someone like Timothee Chalamet, now that would have been a great Rand. Perrin: SPOILERS... OK I think by now even those who watched know the spoilers here. Marcus Rutherford does a decent enough job of acting, but again cast too old. The big spoiler is that he is married, where in the books he was not. His future marriage in the books is a treatise on absolute love and loyalty and I think him already being married just does a disservice to his future marriage in the books. Of course with the traumatic nature of his wife's death in the first episode you just know PTSD and flashbacks are going to be an issue going forward, and this is going to take away from the incredible relationship he has later on in the books. But heck who knows, seeing all the changes maybe they are not going to even include Faile in the series. Anyway, again he is cast too old, not necessarily in looks, but as a married man. Mat: Again too old. Firstly they make him a gambler, a crappy one at that, and a criminal, and a sulky one at that. No, no, no, he doesn't become a gambler until much later on, his gambling is what marks him as Ta'veren and part of what endears him in the books. But here we see a much older "beginning" Mat already a loser gambling addict selling stolen jewelry for more chances to assuage his addiction, possibly because of how bad his parents are in the series. That's just an utter lack of understanding as to why the gambling was important to Mat's character. In the books the gambling was his manifestation of his power and authority, for good or bad, but inherently he wasn't a gambling addict. They just really took his character and ripped it apart and made him seedy and unlikable, and even saving his little sister wasn't enough as you can still see the reproachful looks and lack of thanks and see how ill regarded he was by even his own family. Acting-wise Harris doesn't do a terrible job, the issue is that he is pointed in the wrong direction. This brings me to my next biggest complaint, the production values. No not necessarily the fairly bad CGI, I mean it wasn't awful, but there were way too many uncanny valleys for the CGI to climb out of. The sets, costumes and locations were well done, beautiful at times, I will give them that, but just something in the production values wasn't there, or maybe it was just a lack of cohesiveness with the actors and their surroundings. Go look at the first 15 minutes of LOTR, or the first episode of GOT and you will immediately feel a connection to the characters and their surroundings. Overall it's an ok series, and would be halfway watchable maybe as I'm working out or fixing my wife's broken dresser. It leans towards the Twilight side with immature actors, but at the same time the actors are not presented as immature enough to be faithful to the books, and really to the entire point of WOT, that of coming to age. They veered off the source material way too much to the point of losing the point of the books.