Where There's a Wheel...

The final weeks of 2021 brought the long awaited adaptation of The Wheel of Time to Amazon Prime. It's a TV series I was interested despite the fact that my interest in the books waned early.

I only made it through three of the 14 books in the series. They weren't bad, but I had consistently felt that each of the three was only a B-. For books as long as they are, and with 11 more in store, I simply exhausted my will to keep going. Perhaps if I'd had an inkling that the books might soon improve, things might have gone differently. Instead, many fans of the series promised me that in the middle books, thing would get a lot worse (repetitive and drawn out) before they got better.

But the main issues I had with the books were things that a TV series could potentially shore up. I had found the characters to be thinly conceived and shallowly written; with tight scripts and good actors, the characters could be far more compelling. I had found the female characters especially dull, despite the fantasy world that ostensibly gave them more power than the men; a re-telling of the tale could improve their agency, where the subjective perspective of the books sometimes made them shrew-like, depending on the viewpoint character.

Sure enough, the TV series met my expectations. But that was unclear in the beginning. The first episode -- particularly, the first half of the first episode -- had me doubting. The dialogue seemed wooden and the most of the performances quite stilted. But the incredible production values surrounding a large battle in the second half of the hour got my attention. Great makeup, exciting staging of action, skilled cinematography, and exhilarating music all combined to make me think "this is worth giving another chance."

And things only picked up from there. At least until episode 5, each episode built upon the last with stronger storytelling (tighter scripts), improved acting (from the cast of younger "unknowns"), and better pacing (deft interpolation of multiple story lines). And even if some would argue that the plot slowed down at mid-season, it was only so that action could give way to important character-expanding subplots.

I also like the visual style the show struck right from the first episode. This is clearly high fantasy -- and yet it walks a narrow line where it doesn't feel overly beholden to (or in avoidance of) other popular adaptations like The Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones. And the budget is deployed smartly. The price tag of each episode is quite high for television, but quite low (per hour of entertainment) compared to massive motion pictures that don't look much better than this. This show really could be the heir to Game of Thrones that Amazon Prime was no doubt looking for.

...though it is hamstrung a little bit by the plot. In this early stage of the 14-book epic (whose ultimate ending I don't actually know), most of the story is standard Chosen One fare. It's just different enough  for when it was first published in 1990, but feels pretty rote three decades later. But it isn't "bad," and my hope is that plot developments yet to come (that I never reached in my abbreviated reading of the series) will spice things up. Or perhaps the showrunner will see fit to tweak some plot points to modernize the tale (though such changes risk offending the pure fans, of course).

I'd say season one of The Wheel of Time lands at a B+ for me overall. I enjoyed it -- considerably more than the books -- and I'll be looking forward to season two when the series returns.