The First Five of "The Wheel of Time"

I had a friend in high school who loved Robert Jordan's "The Wheel of Time" books, so while I haven't read them, I'm well aware of their popularity and longevity.  I was looking forward to the new adaptation, which Amazon was touting as one of their more ambitious productions.  Unfortunately, I think they oversold this.  They oversold this a lot. 

"The Wheel of Time" is a fantasy series, where dark forces are massing as the primary magic users in this universe, the Aes Sedai, are searching for the reincarnation of a powerful figure known as The Dragon.  This search brings the Aes Sedai Moiraine (Rosamund Pike) and her bodyguard "Warder" Lan (Daniel Henney) to a small village and five young people, one of whom they believe is the Dragon - Mat (Barney Harris), Rand (Josha Stradowski), Egwene (Madeleine Madden), Perrin (Marcus Rutherford), and Nynaeve (Zoë Robins).  An attack on the village by Trollocs forces the group to flee toward the Aes Sedai stronghold, the White Tower, but they get split up and encounter further dangers.

I've tried not to look at too many comparisons of the book series to the screen adaptation, but it seems like one of the primary problems here is that the creators have taken a series that was originally geared more toward young adults, with a younger set of characters, and aged everybody up so that we could get something that feels closer to "Lord of the Rings" and "Game of Thrones."  The trouble is that nobody does the work of making sure that the five youngsters are properly written to reflect this change, so they come across like an especially dim set of early twenty-somethings who act like very young teenagers.  In other words, they're CW protagonists tramping through what's supposed to be a prestige television show, and come off as pretty ridiculous.  

Now, this isn't always a fatal blow to a series.  I'm a great lover of terrible '80s fantasy films and cheesy '90s syndicated adventure shows.  The simple pleasure of watching a bunch of familiar character types going off to have an adventure together can be enough.  The trouble is that "The Wheel of Time" doesn't understand how to do this.  And it's not smart enough to subvert the old tropes, or ambitious enough to do anything new with them. And it doesn't have the deep pockets to hide the deficiencies with fancy effects.  The better actors do what they can, but too many of the cast look like they don't want to be there.  And while the opening sequence is beautiful, all too soon we're stuck with a bunch of remarkably tedious characters who just feel like they're going through the motions.  

Frankly, it's incredibly disappointing that a series with a pretty decent level of production quality and with source material so beloved should be this badly written.  The pacing is pushing way too fast, skimping on the character moments to get to the action.  Rosamund Pike and Daniel Henney, who are easily the best actors on the roster, are barely keeping my interest.  I'm honestly not sure whether any of the younger cast members have any actual acting ability because they're given such awful dialogue and barely any character traits, let alone actual characterization.  Rand has a thing for Egwene, but she's standoffish.  Nynaeve doesn't trust the Aes Sedai.  All five of the kids start manifesting various powers, which some react to better than others.  

The worst part is that the show just isn't very entertaining.  There are an awful lot of characters to keep straight, and the show is more worried about the plot than making any of them likable or interesting to follow.  There's an absolutely deadly dearth of humor, aside from a few minor characters who show up way too late in the proceedings to make much of a difference.  I don't mind that the show is silly, with its dodgy effects and trite hero's journey narrative, or even that it's so self-serious and treats everything in deadly earnest.  I just don't think it's very much fun.  And if it's not fun, what's the point?  

I criticized "The Witcher" for a lot of these same issues, but at least "The Witcher" gave me two good characters and let Henry Cavill beat things up regularly.  With "The Wheel of Time," there's no such luck.

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