Wheel of Time S3

[Parmandur]

Each series gets better IMO
Crikey there are a lot of Nouns.
I haven't read the books

The books have way, way more nouns. And verbs, for that matter.

 

[Demetrios1453]

The books have way, way more nouns. And verbs, for that matter.

I would think adjectives would outnumber them both, to be honest lol... Those multi-page descriptions of the dresses in Elayne's wardrobe, for example. Granted, the series is definitely doing its part in keeping Jordan's legacy of lengthy and extravagant dress descriptions alive and well and translated to a new medium...

 

[Demetrios1453]

Feel like this dropped out of knowhere onto Amazon yesterday (the first 3 episodes at least). Didn't see a discussion thread for S3 so figured I'd get it started!

I got through the first 2, and while some of the FX are a bit rough this season, overall I'm digging it. Def some interesting choices with how their changing things (I'm currently on book 8 of my first reed through of the novels), but as with the first two seasons, so far it feels like the way they are condensing storylines works. Would love to hear from WOT experts what your thoughts are.

I'm curious which FX you though were a bit rough. The weaves look far better than ever, for example, in my opinion. The only FX that I can think of that was maybe a bit sketchy was the falling building in Episode 1, but that wasn't too bad.

 

[OB1]

I'm curious which FX you though were a bit rough. The weaves look far better than ever, for example, in my opinion. The only FX that I can think of that was maybe a bit sketchy was the falling building in Episode 1, but that wasn't too bad.

The weaves continue to look great, but the environmental effects they create in that battle were pretty bad. Wish filmmakers would go back to using trickery for scenes like that if they don’t have the budget to get the fx looking reasonable.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Watching it now and getting a lot of Dune feel with the messiah and the dessert people.

GoT is very "heavily inspired" by a number of sources, and tends to er... borrow... things from them with less alteration than you'd expect. Dune is absolutely one of those sources. I mean, credit where its due, at least GoT is inspired by so much different stuff that it ends up having its own thing going on rather than being purely derivative, but the Aiel are really pretty directly a borrowing of the Fremen.

So far 3 episodes in I really like this season.

The acting is again more confident and competent (just as S2 was from S1), and not just from the main characters (though particularly obviously there).

An awful lot of the characters have really good and believable chemistry. This is partly skill on the actors, partly good casting, partly sensible writing, but it's also definitely significantly down to the showrunner making sure everything and everyone works well together.

The budget is obviously pretty tiny compared to say, the giant waste of money that is Rings of Power, but they're coming up with frankly good uses of it, that make it kind of look like an ultra-high-budget BBC show (complimentary).

The magic and fighting in general feels pretty brutal and real and also makes sense, like, the moment that spear got picked up, you knew both where it was going to be aimed, and what those Warders were going to do about it (RIP).

I'm surprised at how good the fantasy landscapes and towns look. They're not perfect, but they're a lot better than I'd expect, and they don't have that "generic videogame" vibe that Rings of Power kind of does.

Minor point but it continues to be very diverse without feeling like it's maybe forcing it a bit as some shows do - WoT's setting helps here of course, it's inherently less "Western" than a lot of fantasy - I also appreciated that we're able to have a little person just be one of the badguys (i.e. past both the bigoted "bad because different" or "saint because different" eras).

IDk, I feel like it’s wheel spinning again and S3 is losing me.

Really? I'm not seeing that myself. Maybe I'm judging on a curve having watched other fantasy shows (including GoT and HotD, and god help us, RoP) and anime, but this strikes me as less wheel-spinning than I'm used to in a fantasy show (or indeed a lot of SF ones).

 

[payn]

Really? I'm not seeing that myself. Maybe I'm judging on a curve having watched other fantasy shows (including GoT and HotD, and god help us, RoP) and anime, but this strikes me as less wheel-spinning than I'm used to in a fantasy show (or indeed a lot of SF ones).

Yeah, really. I think we differ quite a bit on the Amazon template so maybe the wheel spinning isn’t as noticeable for you?

What strikes me as different this time is the wheel spinning is immediate and usually they wait until after the first three episode arc.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Yeah, really. I think we differ quite a bit on the Amazon template so maybe the wheel spinning isn’t as noticeable for you?

What strikes me as different this time is the wheel spinning is immediate and usually they wait until after the first three episode arc.

Maybe yeah. I'll tell what Amazon show has felt like wheel-spinning this season though, and that's Reacher S3 - I'm only five episodes in but it really feels like 3 of those episodes were fundamentally repetitive and got us nowhere.

(Whereas Invincible this season felt like very little time was wasted.)

 

[payn]

Maybe yeah. I'll tell what Amazon show has felt like wheel-spinning this season though, and that's Reacher S3 - I'm only five episodes in but it really feels like 3 of those episodes were fundamentally repetitive and got us nowhere.

(Whereas Invincible this season felt like very little time was wasted.)

Yeah that’s exactly what I’m talking about. The Amazon template. Start a good first act, then drag the ever loving crap out of the rest of the weekly release season, until you end all threads and reset for next season in a total of 45-50 min of runtime.

 

[Parmandur]

The weaves continue to look great, but the environmental effects they create in that battle were pretty bad. Wish filmmakers would go back to using trickery for scenes like that if they don’t have the budget to get the fx looking reasonable.

The budget is huge for television, bit compared the budget per hour versus a big blockbuster movie...

In terms of my frustration with the adaptation, my wife and I just recently began watching a High Fantasy anime called Frieren, which is closer to the pace of what a Wheel of Time book would be: 28 25 minute episodes, for a 700 minute season. 8 hour long episodes is way shorter at 480 minutes. A slow, animated show with small chunks of epislde would be much more well suited to the pacing and style of the Wheel of Time.

 

[OB1]

The budget is huge for television, bit compared the budget per hour versus a big blockbuster movie...

In terms of my frustration with the adaptation, my wife and I just recently began watching a High Fantasy anime called Frieren, which is closer to the pace of what a Wheel of Time book would be: 28 25 minute episodes, for a 700 minute season. 8 hour long episodes is way shorter at 480 minutes. A slow, animated show with small chunks of epislde would be much more well suited to the pacing and style of the Wheel of Time.

Understand the limitations of the TV budget (which is comparatively big) it just irks me when TV directors think they have a bigger budget than they do. Like, so much is good in WoT from the landscapes to the cities to the weave, and then a scene of a road being torn up by magic is so bad it takes me right out of the scene.

A huge adaptation like that would be amazing. Kind of like the drawling, long Chinese version of 9 body problem compared to the more compact Netflix version. I really like both and both do different things very well and are worth watching.