Amazon, the shipping company, is sponsoring a television adaption of Robert Jordan’s lengthy fantasy epic The Wheel of Time. I read the books many years ago. The author is not without skill but, overall, the series fails in several important ways.
In this post, I want to talk about the adaption.
It will suck. That much has been clear since the casting. The main characters, who come from an isolated network of villages, have been cast as an ethnic smorgasbord resembling what one might find on the streets of New York City. All the female actresses are ugly. 4/10 at best. Might have to do with the director being a Mormon homosexual. None of this logically necessitates the failure of television series—all races have produced competent actors—yet all previous attempts at forced diversity have resulted in disaster. It seems the people who worship diversity simply lack talent. Everything they touch turns to dross.
This was all speculation until the show-runners began releasing clips. Now we have actual examples of the appalling dialogue present in the show. Here’s a two and a half minute sequence of a woman renting a room at an inn. Watched it? Good. Now we can begin the dissection.
Perrin: How did the ceremony go today?
Rand: Don’t know actually. We… uhh… We haven’t talked yet.
Perrin: I’m sure she’s just busy.
Rand: Yeah, yeah. I’m sure.
This exchange is not in the book. The show announced it would not be using dialogue from the books some time ago but we can dig up a comparable section:
“There are other villages,” she replied heatedly. “Nynaeve says the villages north of the Taren always choose a Wisdom from away. They think it stops her from having favorites among the village folk.”
His amusement melted as fast as it had come. “Outside the Two Rivers? I’d never see you again.”
“And you wouldn’t like that? You have not given any sign lately that you’d care one way or another.”
“No one ever leaves the Two Rivers,” he went on. “Maybe somebody from Taren Ferry, but they’re all strange anyway. Hardly like Two Rivers folk at all.”
Robert Jordan’s dialogue is not the best but it is at least distinct. Rand and Perrin’s conversation, as depicted in the clip above, is the sort of thing you might overhear downtown. It conveys nothing except that there’s something askew in Rand’s relationship with the girl. Robert Jordan’s dialogue, on the other hand, sounds a little antiquated. His characters never say “yeah.” His passage shows there’s a stiffness in the relationship but it also shows that Rand cares about the girl, it conveys some information about the world and it conveys the good natured parochialism of the characters.
The clip continues with a cloaked figure stomping into the tavern. An icy cold falls over all present. Nynaeve clutches a dagger and says “Name yourself, stranger.” Who talks like that? That’s not antiquated. That’s weird. When you enter a restaurant, the waitress doesn’t demand your name. When you stop at a motel, the clerk doesn’t shout for your identification at the doorstep. Also, she knows he’s a stranger. He knows he’s a stranger. Why bring it up? That’s like touring a remote Sichuan village and addressing a resident as “Chinaman.”
“Name yourself, stranger,” indeed. What’s she going to do? Look him up in a database to be sure he’s who he claims? The whole sequence is hamfistedly orchestrated to introduce these two characters to the viewer in a way which makes no sense in context. Reminds me of the elves in the Hobbit movie pointing arrows at each other while having conversation so the audience knows they’re dangerous. Rednecks point guns at each other all the time, right?
A bland sequence follows wherein the innkeeper remembers to do her job. Then she drags the stranger, who just came in from the rain and of whom she is shown to be afraid, away from the fireplace to her room. This is the sort of glassy eyed indifference to the customer seen in an NPC innkeeper from an open world video game.
And that’s the clip. The dialogue reeks and the character behavior makes no sense.
Many book readers feel, naturally, unhappy with all this but the usual fanatics have shut down discussion with their bad faith accusations of bigotry. I’d talk about that but you already know exactly what’s happening. It’s all so tiresome.
On a lighter note, the show’s lead actress had a rather amusing interview.
Rosamund Pike has revealed that her new feminist fantasy series The Wheel of Time will show 'more naked men than women'.
The actress, 42, said it was 'quite pleasing' to readdress the nudity imbalance 'since women have been asked to expose themselves forever and a day.'
…
'We've got all the boys frantically dieting and working out hard for their naked scenes and all of the women going out for lovely dinners.'
One doubts Pike has been asked to expose herself for quite some time. Television depicts naked women for the sake of titillation but, in the actress’ mindset at least, depicting naked men is an act of retribution. She relishes the thought of males fretting over their appearance the way she has fretted all her life. Not wanting to appear petty, she implies that male nudity will somehow undo previous female nudity. This parallels the political philosophy of punishing men, whites or some other group for the failures of a separate group. If a fellow says that life was better for his grandfather in the 50s, some grouch will interject that 50s life was worse for blacks, as if the present suffering of the first fellow will somehow alleviate the alleged historical suffering of blacks.
Spite makes a poor foundation for any project.