The Wheel of Time 1.01
Sep. 7th, 2023 08:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessWith my usual brilliant timing, as everyone else starts watching season 2 of this, I start watching season 1 for the first time. I meant to do it sooner after finishing The Rings of Power, but didn’t. So, I haven’t read the book(s) on which the show is based. I like Rosamund Pike’s work, have done since she popped up with a real presence in ‘Wives and Daughters’. Is it too unenthused to say that the first episode gave me no reason to stop watching?
The unavoidable thing is the shadow (if I may) of LoTR. Expositionary voiceovers from a lady with magical powers? Check! (Voiceovers that seemed to contradict each other, but maybe I wasn’t concentrating hard enough, or maybe I got distracted at the reference to a ‘third age’), one who wields a magic ring, no less. The leader of the monsters was a bit ring wraithy with its cloak… Granted, most high fantasy has this problem, and I think the show was aiming for live action LoTR and Games of Throne fans.
And The Wheel of Time is more influenced by Eastern religions. The first three men we saw had topknots, but the race blind casting, especially when it came to the people living in Two Rivers, just makes me think this is a generic magic land. (Beautiful scenery so far, and the scene with the boats with candles was pretty, if not as impressive as when ‘Tangled’ did it.)
Pike had presence as Moiraine, and her character garnered much respect for not turning and running, abandoning the village, and then carrying on even when injured, and carrying on to heal after that, even if that was partly because she thought one of the four was the Dragon. (It was what the voiceovers said about the Dragon that seemed contradictory to me.) I really liked what we saw of her relationship with Lan Mandragoran and how they chose to depict her magic. I’m interested in the sisters with the bulbous rings and this idea that men can’t be trusted with magic, and how that and the village’s rite to womanhood (with the hint of misandry – I don’t know what to make of the dynamic between the sexes in this world yet), plus the class tensions.
Ha! I thought the village Wisdom’s accent didn’t sound quite right, and it turns out the actress is from New Zealand.
So, Moiraine is taking four traumatised young people, one of whom is very traumatised (did Perrin the smith accidentally kill Leila the real smith, or was it the monsters? Also, that feels like a shame, because I was intrigued by her.) I kind of felt like they agreed to go awfully quickly, but then the argument that they were drawing the monsters and so had to leave Two Rivers to save it was persuasive. Perhaps the people of Two Rivers were too well drawn: I was worried about Mat’s sisters (their parents were terrible) and one felt that Rand’s father knew way more about the great wide world than his son had realised previously. I felt like I’ve seen three of those four in other stuff.
I rolled my eyes at Rand (although he was playing the role normally assigned to a girl) and how much he was emoting that his girlfriend Egwene didn’t want to marry him and have his kids. That actor’s bone structure is a thing of beauty, mind, in a show full of people with great bone structure.
The unavoidable thing is the shadow (if I may) of LoTR. Expositionary voiceovers from a lady with magical powers? Check! (Voiceovers that seemed to contradict each other, but maybe I wasn’t concentrating hard enough, or maybe I got distracted at the reference to a ‘third age’), one who wields a magic ring, no less. The leader of the monsters was a bit ring wraithy with its cloak… Granted, most high fantasy has this problem, and I think the show was aiming for live action LoTR and Games of Throne fans.
And The Wheel of Time is more influenced by Eastern religions. The first three men we saw had topknots, but the race blind casting, especially when it came to the people living in Two Rivers, just makes me think this is a generic magic land. (Beautiful scenery so far, and the scene with the boats with candles was pretty, if not as impressive as when ‘Tangled’ did it.)
Pike had presence as Moiraine, and her character garnered much respect for not turning and running, abandoning the village, and then carrying on even when injured, and carrying on to heal after that, even if that was partly because she thought one of the four was the Dragon. (It was what the voiceovers said about the Dragon that seemed contradictory to me.) I really liked what we saw of her relationship with Lan Mandragoran and how they chose to depict her magic. I’m interested in the sisters with the bulbous rings and this idea that men can’t be trusted with magic, and how that and the village’s rite to womanhood (with the hint of misandry – I don’t know what to make of the dynamic between the sexes in this world yet), plus the class tensions.
Ha! I thought the village Wisdom’s accent didn’t sound quite right, and it turns out the actress is from New Zealand.
So, Moiraine is taking four traumatised young people, one of whom is very traumatised (did Perrin the smith accidentally kill Leila the real smith, or was it the monsters? Also, that feels like a shame, because I was intrigued by her.) I kind of felt like they agreed to go awfully quickly, but then the argument that they were drawing the monsters and so had to leave Two Rivers to save it was persuasive. Perhaps the people of Two Rivers were too well drawn: I was worried about Mat’s sisters (their parents were terrible) and one felt that Rand’s father knew way more about the great wide world than his son had realised previously. I felt like I’ve seen three of those four in other stuff.
I rolled my eyes at Rand (although he was playing the role normally assigned to a girl) and how much he was emoting that his girlfriend Egwene didn’t want to marry him and have his kids. That actor’s bone structure is a thing of beauty, mind, in a show full of people with great bone structure.
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