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More Braid Tugging - Amazon’s Wheel Of Time S2 (occasional book spoilers)

footle

By footle
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Thor

Thor

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Posted
1 hour ago, Ry said:

Watched the first episode. Was mostly pish. 

 

Cant believe how cheap it looked at times. Like a soap opera. A decent choice of camera filter could have rectified that a bit. 

You could always piss on your telly and see if that makes a difference. :coffee:

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Treble

Treble

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Not read the books. I liked that first episode, but it was pretty shaky. Introducing a large cast of characters in one location with very little action or other variety is suuuuuper dull. Some of the cast are legit bad and really stage school, and when on screen made it feel like Merlin. 

 

As WoT's inevitably gonna be compared to GoT, think of how episode one showed so many different costumes, locations, climates and action to make it intriguing. And yes, knockers, which was extremely lazy. But the other stuff was good. In WoT it skirted with being completely generic fantasy. 

 

Last criticism (promise): trollocks? Seriously? :D

 

Plusses: the core concepts; some of the cast; the magic use; the scenery. 

 

 

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monkeydog

monkeydog

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I quite enjoyed the first couple of episodes.  I liked that it mostly stayed with the main characters. It didn't need to cut to scheming villains in the Tower of Twiddleyank or whatever.

 

I've not read the books, or much fantasy outside of Tolkien and Abercrombie, so it being quite tropey oddly refreshing.

 

I kept mishearing the name of the ork rip offs as trollops. 

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Gotters

Gotters

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Gave the second episode a go last night and it wasn't quite as terrible as the first, but still looked really cheap.

 

I still struggle believing the budget for this, it looks like something the sci-fi channel pushed the boat out on, not the huge budget thing it's been claimed to be. They've either been ripped off or inflated the claimed budget to gather some headlines.

 

So far it just feels like a middle of the road in the pack fantasy thing like the Netflix Arthurian legend backstory show but I don't know the source material books here at all so accept it could be a slow start and the world builds out a bit.

 

I think it's the world building that sells these things, GoT instantly got my attention despite not being interested in fantasy shows - nothing else has managed that instant attention grab.

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Ry

Ry

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Watched episode 2 and 3. Better than that first episode. I mean it's ok, nothing special. At times I'm thinking I'm watching a CBBC young adult show. 

 

The young lead actor with the red hair is atrocious though. Why they cast him is beyond me. 

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footle

footle

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9 hours ago, Ry said:

Watched episode 2 and 3. Better than that first episode. I mean it's ok, nothing special. At times I'm thinking I'm watching a CBBC young adult show. 

 

The young lead actor with the red hair is atrocious though. Why they cast him is beyond me. 


it may help his characterisation if he’s terrible to begin with. If he does end up being truly awful it’ll doom the show: it’s probably the single hardest part to play.

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El Geet

El Geet

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On 22/11/2021 at 10:26, macosx said:

I read the books as a youth, one of those series that had “like Tolkien at his best” writ large on the back. 
This was poor though, switched off after 15 minutes, just looked pound shop.

Same. Seem to remember really liking them but giving up after god knows many books but this brought back zero memories of the book. Other than the names and Trollocs. It’s actually slightly depressing how little I do remember of the books.
 

Thought the first episode was very weak personally. Really odd pacing and the fight scenes against men in furry suits were a bit rubbish and unnecessarily gory. 

 

I’ll prob give it a couple more

episodes. I actually really enjoyed Foundation so who knows?

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Festoon

Festoon

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Seriously, if you can find it, Adam Roberts blog where he reads and writes about each book in the series is hilarious.

 

"Anyway, the opening seven-or-so chapters drag, as our three heroes dawdle about in foppishly-named Fal Dara fortress."

 

Just makes me chuckle.

 

But he also makes some very good observations in general:

 

"Reading is a different pleasure to re-reading: the one exploratory, an encounter with newness; the other reassuring, an encounter with familiarity. But what Jordan has done here is produce a book such that the reader feels as if she is rereading it even when she is actually reading it for the first time."

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davidcotton

davidcotton

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38 minutes ago, macosx said:

@El GeetUsed to joke about these protracted Fantasy epic series like wheel of time, golden torc, Shannara etc.  :) The Wishsong of Shannara, The New Extension of Shannara, The Kids College education of Shannara.

Think it was Fiest who admitted to doing a couple of rift war novels to help pay for a divorce!

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Unofficial Who

Unofficial Who

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Having noped out of the books about six volumes in I was reluctant to watch this but my partner was keen.

 

And four episodes in...they aren't bad. Quite liking it so far.

 

Although the other impression I got is that a lot of Dragon Age writers are probably feeling a tad nervous due to some of the...well...similarities. (And Wheel of Time the series seems to have borrowed back in terms of the look of it.)

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Thor

Thor

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52 minutes ago, Unofficial Who said:

Having noped out of the books about six volumes in I was reluctant to watch this but my partner was keen.

 

And four episodes in...they aren't bad. Quite liking it so far.

 

Although the other impression I got is that a lot of Dragon Age writers are probably feeling a tad nervous due to some of the...well...similarities. (And Wheel of Time the series seems to have borrowed back in terms of the look of it.)

Similarities to Lord of the Rings too. It's all fantasy, innit. ;) 

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Stig

Stig

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I've given it 3 episodes and tapping out. Nothing is grabbing me at all.

 

Not enough lore to set you up with, throws you straight into something leaving you feeling a little confused.

 

They desperately wanted action which has resulted in poor pacing. The first 2 episodes in particular feel so rushed, with all these different groups and people just turning up too. It moves from one place to another and barely has any time to breathe.

The script and dialogue is shonky and some of the acting is really bad.

 

I hate to make the obvious comparison, but it just looks really cheap compared to Game of Thrones and HBO productions. This feels like mid range, between BBC level and HBO. I really hope they do a better job with LOTR.

 

I had a better time with Shadow & Bone on Netlfix.

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Stig

Stig

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3 minutes ago, Lovelyman said:

I think people are misremembering how 'expensive' GoT looked a lot of the time. 

 

 

Well in the earlier seasons maybe, but WoT is £10m per episode which is double that of GOT early seasons and it doesn't look better than those.

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JoeK

JoeK

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I suspect the aspect of it looking cheap is what annoys me. I'm all for pure fantasy - I like that sort of thing - but considering how much money was spent on it, I'm surprised at how amateurish the production comes across. I would never expect AAA film quality effects and that's not a problem.

 

What is a problem is editing issues and film sequencing that should be drummed out of anyone in the industry before you've left fucking college. I have no idea who's doing the production of the thing, but they are fucking crap considering how much money has been ploughed into the thing.

 

There are cardinal sins being made in the episodes that feel like the project was given to an enthusiastic fan, rather than someone who knows what they are doing. 

 

 

 

 

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