Wheel of Time - Amazon TV Adaption

[Global Warming]

Amazon is adapting the classic Wheel of Time fantasy series by Robert Jordan for TV, and they recently released a cast list. Unfortunately, it looks like they stole a page out of the Netflix playbook...

Any thoughts on how this adaption is going to go? I'm personally curious to whether the writers can manage to turn Robert Jordan's books into something that will hold an audience's attention from episode to episode. While it's a classic series, there are a whole lot of stretches where, to put it charitably, very little happens.

 

[FriedCFour]

Wasnt there some awful Pilot that aired awhile back? It cant be much worse than that.

 

[Global Warming]

Wasnt there some awful Pilot that aired awhile back? It cant be much worse than that.

It's available on YouTube...

But yeah, the bar has been set very low.

 

[Husky_Khan]

I don't think I can quite envision a Wheel of Time series without Billy Zane in it unfortunately. Regardless of quality or content it'll always pale in comparison on that sublime level.

 

[Culsu]

In all honesty, I do think Zane's eerily upbeat performance was quite a nice interpretation of the character. Granted, he knew jack all about the source material, but a lot that's written sounds a lot better than it would actually look on screen. Ishamael's whole overly pompous shtick, raised fists and all, would look like some weird anime from the nineties rather than a scene meant to invoke dread if it was translated 1:1 to the screen.

As for the casting, I more or less expected it to end up like this, so I had no high hopes that were in danger of being crushed. Don't get me wrong, I still hate it. You'd really have to squint your eyes and look through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars to see Perrin and Nynaeve in the actors they picked for them. Race-swapping them is just such a typical US entertainment media move that by now all the reaction it draws from me is a massive eye roll. Part of the fascination, in-universe as well as a reader, that the WoT setting has is that you get to experience new cultures with the characters on their journey. Look how different the Aiel look and act. The Seanchan. The Seafolk. Ebou Dar. That Rand looked so different from the "average" Two Rivers folk was an issue oft commented upon, and that Tam had married an outsider was quite unusual to start with.

Now Mat and Perrin have two completely different sets of skin color and hair form, and somehow I'm supposed to believe that Rand being a hand taller with a different hair color is a big deal?!? That's leaving aside the fact that the Two Rivers are a reclusive lot and have probably not had much outside genetic input for maybe twenty generations or more (most likely not since the end of the 100 Years War, maybe even the Trolloc Wars). They've intermarried so much you're really unlikely to get such vast phenotypic differences as between Mat on the one hand and Perrin and Nynaeve on the other.

Just another wasted opportunity. It'd been cool to experience the characters' reactions to totally new people and looks as they journeyed on. But with the Two Rivers being mixed race that kinda looses its impact. Maybe this is just an American thing, I don't know, given how overall ethnically diverse the country is. Because for the overwhelming majority of the world seeing someone with a vastly different skin color was a pretty big deal up until recently, and for large parts that still holds true.

 

[Culsu]

The known main cast so far:

The only one who's close to what was established so far, also through official media like comics, is probably Mat.

The cast as imagined back in the day by Robert Jordan (you know, the guy who wrote the series):

 

[Navarro]

In all honesty, I do think Zane's eerily upbeat performance was quite a nice interpretation of the character. Granted, he knew jack all about the source material, but a lot that's written sounds a lot better than it would actually look on screen. Ishamael's whole overly pompous shtick, raised fists and all, would look like some weird anime from the nineties rather than a scene meant to invoke dread if it was translated 1:1 to the screen.

Fun fact - Billy Zane did actually play a shonen-esque villain, for a video game. "Winter Dragon" also did have a very nice depiction of Lews Therin's madness, as you can see, and an aesthetic for the Age of Legends that at least wasn't generic fantasy.

 

[Deleted member 1]

This is only slightly better than the original Witcher series attempt to make The Lady of Time and Space black when her original hair and eye colour were something of a plot point in their own right... Fortunately this was abandoned.

 

[Husky_Khan]

The known main cast so far:

The only one who's close to what was established so far, also through official media like comics, is probably Mat.

The cast as imagined back in the day by Robert Jordan (you know, the guy who wrote the series):

Maybe that motivation for adventuring abroad is mitigated a bit when you already come from an oddly diverse and cosmopolitan culture representing most of the worlds ethnic groups already despite travel being so limited for so many. I never actually read the books but when I see this kind of casting... it makes me ponder such things.

I could be completely off base of course.

 

[Deleted member]

If the acting and writing are good, the ethnicity of the actors is irrelevant. If they are subpar, then the writers will lean on it as a plot point, and things will get even worse.

 

[Culsu]

If the acting and writing are good, the ethnicity of the actors is irrelevant. If they are subpar, then the writers will lean on it as a plot point, and things will get even worse.

But is it? The Two Rivers is supposed to be this reclusive backwater, where Tam al'Thor leaving and marrying an outsider was something super out of the norm because people married within the Two Rivers for dozens of generations (which was why the Old Blood was still so strong there), and where Rand's hair color set him apart fom the majority. And now you turn Nyneave and Perrin into black folk. If you make the origin area of the series this ethnically diverse, it undermines the established lore. For no other reason than either a) make a checkmark on a focus group spreadsheet, b) be "diverse" for the sake of woke diversity, or c) a combination of both. As I already said in the "Popular Things in Scifi and Fantasy that many people love but you hate."-thread, I've got nothing against ethnically or otherwise diverse casts. In fact, I'd love to watch something like Tyrant set in 12th century Bagdad, or a series centered on Old Egypt and the cataclysm we've come to know as The Sea Peoples, or something centered on the Nubian pharaohs, or maybe an wholly Indian fantasy series. Or something like Rome.

What I do have something against is making casting choices for pure political and/or marketing reasons that, for no other reason than that, then screw with the lore and thereby diminish the overall quality of the product. If you have intermarriage on a local level for maybe 2.000 years without any significant input of outside bloodlines I'd say it's highly unlikely, if not outright impossible that you end up with still vastly and easily discernable phenotypic differences like fully different skin colors as an end result. Especially, as mentioned above, when someone's hair color is what makes them stand out. So, what then? How to explain the differences?

Logically, that'd mean both Perrin's and Nynaeve's families ought to be recent additions to the Two Rivers - which they clearly and most emphatically are not, given the prominence of Manetheren blood in their heritage. So you end up with logical inconsistencies that nibble away at the foundations of the setting, and for what? To fill a quota? That's what bothers me: if it doesn't need changing, then don't. change. it!

 

[Lanmandragon]

But is it? The Two Rivers is supposed to be this reclusive backwater, where Tam al'Thor leaving and marrying an outsider was something super out of the norm because people married within the Two Rivers for dozens of generations (which was why the Old Blood was still so strong there), and where Rand's hair color set him apart fom the majority. And now you turn Nyneave and Perrin into black folk. If you make the origin area of the series this ethnically diverse, it undermines the established lore. For no other reason than either a) make a checkmark on a focus group spreadsheet, b) be "diverse" for the sake of woke diversity, or c) a combination of both. As I already said in the "Popular Things in Scifi and Fantasy that many people love but you hate."-thread, I've got nothing against ethnically or otherwise diverse casts. In fact, I'd love to watch something like Tyrant set in 12th century Bagdad, or a series centered on Old Egypt and the cataclysm we've come to know as The Sea Peoples, or something centered on the Nubian pharaohs, or maybe an wholly Indian fantasy series. Or something like Rome.

What I do have something against is making casting choices for pure political and/or marketing reasons that, for no other reason than that, then screw with the lore and thereby diminish the overall quality of the product. If you have intermarriage on a local level for maybe 2.000 years without any significant input of outside bloodlines I'd say it's highly unlikely, if not outright impossible that you end up with still vastly and easily discernable phenotypic differences like fully different skin colors as an end result. Especially, as mentioned above, when someone's hair color is what makes them stand out. So, what then? How to explain the differences?

Logically, that'd mean both Perrin's and Nynaeve's families ought to be recent additions to the Two Rivers - which they clearly and most emphatically are not, given the prominence of Manetheren blood in their heritage. So you end up with logical inconsistencies that nibble away at the foundations of the setting, and for what? To fill a quota? That's what bothers me: if it doesn't need changing, then don't. change. it!

Yeah this is one of those situations where the casts race is actually relavent to the story. Plus for "diversity" in wouldn't be hard to add later. As you said they travel all over and add new charecters all the time. You could easily have say berlain be black. Mayne (sp) is fairly far south and they have alot of contact with Sea Folk. So her line could've been crossed with them. I could also easily see moraine as an Asian. Because cairherin always came off as France/Japan hybrid to me. Make the Seachan look say Indian maybe?( India Indian). Arad Domon as Arabs could be easy veil and all that. I mean I literally just came up with this shit off the top of my head in like 5 mins. The casting director needs to stop being lazy (or flush his ideology). Making WOT diverse without messing up the story isn't hard.

 

[Deleted member]

But is it? The Two Rivers is supposed to be this reclusive backwater, where Tam al'Thor leaving and marrying an outsider was something super out of the norm because people married within the Two Rivers for dozens of generations (which was why the Old Blood was still so strong there), and where Rand's hair color set him apart fom the majority. And now you turn Nyneave and Perrin into black folk. If you make the origin area of the series this ethnically diverse, it undermines the established lore. For no other reason than either a) make a checkmark on a focus group spreadsheet, b) be "diverse" for the sake of woke diversity, or c) a combination of both. As I already said in the "Popular Things in Scifi and Fantasy that many people love but you hate."-thread, I've got nothing against ethnically or otherwise diverse casts. In fact, I'd love to watch something like Tyrant set in 12th century Bagdad, or a series centered on Old Egypt and the cataclysm we've come to know as The Sea Peoples, or something centered on the Nubian pharaohs, or maybe an wholly Indian fantasy series. Or something like Rome.

What I do have something against is making casting choices for pure political and/or marketing reasons that, for no other reason than that, then screw with the lore and thereby diminish the overall quality of the product. If you have intermarriage on a local level for maybe 2.000 years without any significant input of outside bloodlines I'd say it's highly unlikely, if not outright impossible that you end up with still vastly and easily discernable phenotypic differences like fully different skin colors as an end result. Especially, as mentioned above, when someone's hair color is what makes them stand out. So, what then? How to explain the differences?

Logically, that'd mean both Perrin's and Nynaeve's families ought to be recent additions to the Two Rivers - which they clearly and most emphatically are not, given the prominence of Manetheren blood in their heritage. So you end up with logical inconsistencies that nibble away at the foundations of the setting, and for what? To fill a quota? That's what bothers me: if it doesn't need changing, then don't. change. it!

It depends on how it is handled. It was a bad decision, but it doesn’t ruin the series by itself. That’s all I meant. It does change a major plot point, but not unmanageably so; I can think of a few mental loops to make it all work. Needless and complicated, but possible.