Greetings, fellow Sword and Sorcery geeks. For those of you who’ve been disappointed with Game of Thrones, relief was in sight when you learned that Amazon was turning The Wheel of Time (TWOT) into a TV series! At least, you did when you heard about the series finally being produced after *decades* (and I’m not exagarrating) of this saga languishing in Holywood production Hell. But of course, being today’s Hollywood they had to ruin it.Your first warning came long before this series went to broadcast.
Let’s back up a bit for anyone unfamiliar. Back in the early 90s, Robert Jordan began a series of fantasy novels known as The Wheel Of Time. And for a while it was some amazing Fantasy work, comparable to the first three books of George RR Martins’s “Game of Thrones” (GoT) books. And just like GoT, TWOT went off the rails after a few books, but managed to close strong. Unlike GoT, which I’m not sure hasn’t ended yet (I watched the series but stopped reading after the 5th book). Although TWOT went horribly wrong for a while, the series closed strong, especially in the last three of the 13 book series. Which makes what Amazon’s done to the series so disgusting.
At this point, if you haven’t read the books, I apologize for the level of inside baseball. I can’t explain everything for the non fans, as it would bloat the post, and I’m not calling them spoilers since the series started 30 years ago. Read the damned books. So let’s dive in…
As I write this I’m actually on vacation. Normally I wouldn’t blog on vacation, but this is too rich a topic, and I’m amazed that none of my favorite pop culture YouTubers have jumpoed on this. As for my situation, Sister Babe and the mom of one of Little Bob’s buds stumbled upon a killer beach house on deep discount, which we’re using as a pre-Christmas mini vacation. I was already planning in not watching TWOT when I’d learned that right off the bat they’d race-swapped three main characters (for the fans, it’s Perrin, Egwene, and Nynaeve). I was just planning on a simple, uninterested boycott, but when I’m on vacation I like to watch/read subject matter I normally wouldn’t. couple that with our beach house predecessor forgetting to sign out of her Netflix / Prime / etc accounts, I figured I’d check to see how bad bad could be. And holy crud, TWOT managed to be worse than I could have imagined. Or maybe I’d give them a chance if book three’s episodes decided to even up the race swapping by making the Sea Folk a bunch of pasty Gingers. But I digress…
The first book, The Eye of the World opens with a prologue from a previous age where Lews Therin breaks the world in the process of fighting The Dark One. Cut to Chapter one, with our main character, Rand Al Thor walking with his father, Tam just outside their village. The Amazon series wastes no time in informing us that we’re not getting the same story by opening with Liandrin leading a group of Red Ajah to hunt down and still a man who can channel. Wait, WTF? Liandrin doesn’t even appear until The Great Hunt! She’s already happening?
The next scene takes us to Two Rivers’ Womens’ Circle meeting (And a very diverse crowd at that – only missing a wheelchair bound trans-woman in a hijab) in the woods to initiate Egwene and braiding her hair. As I’m writing this I’m partially into the third episode (I can only watch after the rest of the house has gone to bed – I don’t need Little Bob or his friends having nightmares about the Mydraal. Or toxic woke feminism). So how else did they violate the characters, Two Rivers, and the story in general? Let me count the ways:
- The Two Rivers is incredibly racially diverse, as every remote villiage would be. Unless I missed something, there were no nonwhite couples in the scene – every nonwhite chracter has a white partner.
- Mat’s mom is a drunkard and his dad is openly trying to hook up with a black woman with his wife watching.
- Mat is kind of a loser, losing at gambling and stealing from other townsfolk to sell merchandise to Padan Fain
- Fain gets race swapped too (I always envisioned Paul Giamatti as perfect to play Fain)
- Thom Merrelin doesn’t appear for Bel Tyne, and doesn’t even show up for a few more episodes
- Moraine and Lan take a bath together, holding hands at one point during. Nothing more happens, but this is way more than happens between them in the books.
- Perrin still works in the forge, but instead of master Luhan, he now works with a woman. Who is his girlfriend, and of course is white.
- The trollocs roll Two Rivers, and for some reason instead of fighting most of the townfolk scatter and hide, as if they won’t just get hunted down.
- But of course, the only attack comes when Moraine starts blasting them, with Lan scoring the assist
- But of course, we see a shot of The Womens’ Circle ganging up and taking down a Trolloc
- Nynaeve gets dragged off by the fleeing Trollocs. Wait, WTF?
- Oh, not to worry, at the start of the second episode she manages to escape, gets the jump on the Trolloc chasing her and kills a Trolloc in one on one battle. Because Girl Power!
There are a few more details I left out, but you get the idea – and we’re barely into the series. Here’s the worst part about all of the garbage listed above – It is completely unnecessary! How so? While not woke, the books feature elements that a healthy Leftist culture would be applauding instead of perverting:
- Throughout the series there is no shortage of strong women who complement the men in the stories rather than belittling or dominating them – the Aes Sedai, The Wise Ones, The Sea Folk, and don’t get me started on the Seanchan and the Damane…
- Speaking of the Seanchan, they are racially diverse as a result of their vast empire
- Two Rivers does end up becoming more diverse, as refugees from neighboring warring nations end up settling there.
I’ll keep watching over the next few nights, and when we depart so will my interest in the show. And it’s a damned shame, as book 2 (The Great Hunt) is one of my all time favorite books. And there is zero chance I’ll be watching.
Sadly, this tweet sums up for whom the Amazon series – it includes many interest groups, just not ofans of the actual books
#WheelOfTime is feeding us! So refreshing to see in a gorgeous epic fantasy series 😍 pic.twitter.com/kXBEgkIjCO
— Profess Nerdiness 🦋💚💚 (@ProfNerd1) December 15, 2021
Brother Bob is no longer on Facebook (although you can see his archives there), and is winding down his presence on Twitter, but is ramping up on Minds and Gab, as well as Parler, and has his biggest presence on MeWe.
Cross posted from Brother Bob’s Blog
