Is the Wheel of Time any good?

Is the Wheel of Time on Amazon a good show? I enjoyed it quite a bit. I thought of it as high-budget Xena, if you remember that series at all. But there are so many other people who have varying opinions about this show that it is hard to discern the true measure of it. Almost every friend I know who bothered to read the books (disclaimer: I didn't) has said some version of the following (this is a direct cut/paste of a conversation I've had but I'm not saying who it was):

"Not liking Wheel of Time. Many reasons. Casting sucks. Forced diversity. Not even close to the books. Action scenes out of Xena. Some of the set pieces look okay...but way too dependent on these landscape shots. Makes everything else look out of place. Wardrobe and costume design is horrible. Not going to waste any more time on it."

Another friend of mine said, "I love this show, because it features strong women. People who hate this show probably don't like admitting that women can be strong."

And another friend of mine said, "This simply isn't how the books went. They've changed everything. The Dragon Reborn should never have even the possibility of being a woman, and they brought that up in episode one to satisfy the diversity police. But that's wrong. The Dragon Reborn is a dude. At least they got Rand's hair color right."

Anyway...it's all very weird to me. I guess the diversity police really did get a hold of the Wheel of Time series and said, "None shall pass until you meet our criteria and then this will be spooned to the masses!" Or something like that. However, that's their call, right? I mean...let's face it...writers go begging to studios to produce their stuff, because it's everyone's dream to get something turned into a movie or a television series (and get a payday with fame and oohs and aahhhs).

Sooo...with all that begging...I mean...the writer doesn't really have the power now do they? That's just how business works. That's why the workers at Kellogg's are having such a hard time trying to get the company to cave into their demands (by striking). It's hard being the little person trying to get the big company to give into your thing. I mean...you could put your foot down and scream, "NO! I will not allow this to happen!" And that would be fine too. It just means that the company would buy some other dime a dozen fantasy series and promote that, and yours would fly into obscurity. Or in the case of striking workers, the reality is they could all be fired.

What's weird is seeing all of my especially misogynistic friends being upset with the series as if their boycott is going to cancel anything (the series has already been renewed for season two). Their anger stems from the fact that a beloved property of theirs has an estate that has "sold out" to a corporation that will change the material so that they can line their pockets and satisfy a narcissistic demand to see their story on the screen, acted out and portrayed by professionals, and lavished with hundreds of millions of dollars. What narcissistic person wouldn't want that? They throw aspersions at Amazon for exercising "I do what I want!" in capitalist America while they say nothing at the sellout owners of the intellectual property of the late Robert Jordan. In many cases, they are the worst kind of hypocrites, because given the chance, they'd sell out in a heartbeat to have the money and prestige of an Amazon series...even if it compromised everything that they believed in regarding white male privilege. Funny how that works, isn't it?

The fact of the matter is...when new properties are turned into series...the worst impulses of writers whose works are being adapted are going to be mellowed by the diversity police. And this is how it should be. We don't need works that glorify fascism, that glorify male privilege, or who insist on making everyone one race. We don't need works that show women cooking and cleaning and black people in the role of household servants and Asian people working in laundromats. Those days are gone. You can write that stuff and probably get an audience of some kind. But for a big corporation to adopt it into something that the public will consume...it's going to get changes. Otherwise, they won't buy it. And this is upsetting to a good deal of folks, but let them rage.

Is the Wheel of Time any good? I thought it was fun. What I don't understand is why so many people wanted this story to be taken so seriously? And I think, this lack of being taken seriously is behind the outrage of people who hated what happened to "The Wheel of Time." To some, the story of the "Wheel of Time" was a sacred thing, because...well...they read it. With books thick enough to be a door stop...a lot of men who read the books put in some serious effort and time to slog through it all. And their time is valuable dammit! So yeah...they read it...so "sacred" it has now become. For someone like Amazon to come along behind them and "trivialize" the story with casting changes, inclusion, diversity, etc. seems to have ruffled their sensibilities. "How dare they?" I could imagine one saying. "Would they have done this to Harper Lee?" However (and for what it is worth) I don't see statues of Robert E. Lee as sacred but other folks do (shrug?). So, I'm okay with them being boxed up or even recycled while others scream and cry about it all night. Maybe it even ruins their lives? I have no idea. I guess Obi-Wan Kenobi was right when he said to Luke that a lot of what one believes in life extends from a certain point-of-view. It's just a weird phenomenon to watch in real-time, and...I don't get it. But...whatever.

As for the Wheel of Time, I think you should watch it. I enjoyed it more than Cowboy Bepop, but not as much as The Expanse.

I'm optimistic that the Wheel of Time series will be both entertaining and accepted by Jordan's rabid fanbase.

"The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning." (I think that this little tidbit appears on the first page of every book in this gigantic series)

I do have an admission when it comes to The Wheel of Time. I am a second-generation geek of long standing when it comes to these books. I have never read them for various reasons. The first is because people who had read them warned me that they liked them until about the 6th book (or so) and then it was just a chore to go from there to about the 13th book. To be honest...that is not really selling this series. Then there are those who say that they are not fans of how Sanderson finished them off (after Robert Jordan died), and that Jordan is verbose in a terrible way. I guess he was an author (like George R.R. Martin) who wrote himself into the weeds and couldn't find his way back. Additionally the shortest book is 650 pages while the longest is over 1200. Most weigh-in at over 800 pages.

That being said, I was briefly excited when The Wheel of Time trailer from Amazon Prime dropped last week. However, after watching it a couple of times, I have thoughts about what I saw. My comments fly in the teeth (of course) of true fans of the series. I hope that I'm proved wrong. On second watch, the series looks like something from the CW with a slightly bigger effects budget for the landscape shots. The actors are attractive but expressionless and the trailer shows them on sets with CGI laser spells and sky-beams. Additionally, the indoor stuff looks like it was shot in a converted high school gym. I'm honestly getting a Shannara Chronicles vibe, but without a person wearing yoga pants.

However, I'm still going to watch it. Maybe it won't be just another derivative fantasy offering? It seems to me that it is super easy to make fantasy projects look cheesy. I'm not sure how Lord of the Rings avoided this trap, but they did. So did Game of Thrones. I hope that the people behind this project have studied the success of those two franchises for clues, because the fandom surrounding The Wheel of Time honestly is a bit toxic. It's almost like a religion, probably helped along this road by the fact that Sanderson is a Mormon and was a professor at BYU. And since a lot of people in Hollywood are artsy, and hence...liberal...I fear that people who have liberal views are probably going to try and change some of the subtext of Jordan's work to make it more woke. They need to not do this under any circumstances. We live in a time of severe polarization in politics, and I think that meddling with a story that is so gendered centric that there is gendered magic at its core...would be a huge mistake. It will anger the trolls, of which there are millions.

Amazon must be very excited to have two of the biggest fantasy franchises in that genre's history. As Spider-Man has often said, "Those with great power have great responsibility." I guess we are going to see soon how well Amazon handles that responsibility. Below is the trailer for the first season of The Wheel of Time in case you haven't seen it.