The Wheel of Time
Amazon's attempt at a "Game of Thrones" level fantasy franchise is light on star power and production values but hits all the right buttons for sword-and-sorcery aficionados.
Fantasy on screens has always been a fireball-or-fizzle affair.
It had a brief heyday in the late 1970s and early ‘80s with hard R-rated fare like “Conan the Barbarian,” then bit the dust when it started peddling to kiddies. We saw a resurgence in cheap stunt-centric TV shows in the ‘90s and Aughts, a few middling movies here and there, and then the 800-pound gorilla of “Game of Thrones,” which combined old school flesh-and-blood with intricate plots and multidimensional characters.
Since it ended and before the GoT prequel boots up, and without any high-profile fantasy feature films on the docket, there’s something of an opening to appeal to geeks like me who can’t get enough of magic spells and demonspawn. And Amazon is hoping to fill it with “The Wheel of Time,” a goodly new 8-episode series debuting this week.
The book series it’s based on may not be a household name — but then, neither was George R. R. Martin’s “A Song of Fire and Ice” before it got turned into GoT. And the novels by Robert Jordan were best sellers, eventually spanning to an astonishing 17 total books that actually outlived Jordan himself. (Take note, Mr. Martin.)
I only read the first three, though the show is enticing enough to rekindle my interest in picking up the series again.
The first season, which will release the first three episodes this Friday and then one new one per week through Christmas Eve, roughly encompasses the first book, “The Eye of the World,” in which a group of youngsters from the tiny mountain village of Two Rivers find themselves conscripted into a larger world of magic, intrigue and forces threatening a new dark age.
Rosamund Pike (“Gone Girl”) headlines as Moiraine, a heroic but somewhat imperious member of the Aes Sedai, an order of women-only magic users who act as protectors of the (unnamed) land but are often viewed as meddling usurpers of power. Think the Druids from Shannara, the Bene Gesserit from “Dune,” the Istari from “The Lord of the Rings,” etc.
The show, with Rafe Judkins as showrunner for a rotating cast of writers and directors for each episode, doesn’t exactly break new ground in terms of innovating beyond standard fantasy tropes — but then, neither did Jordan’s books. It’s the familiar setting of the passing of ages in which the forces of light and dark trade holding sway, with new heroes emerging when the call is needed.
Moiraine shows up in Two Rivers along with Lan Mandragoran (Daniel Henney), her warder, the warrior assigned to protect each Aes Sedai. They’re seeking out the Dragon Reborn, the reincarnation of a destructive figure, a man who could wield magic, who nearly ended the world thousands of years ago. The hope is this time the Dragon will be a more Christ-like iteration, with proper tutelage/control.
She’s narrowed it down to four villagers born 20 years ago: Egwene (Madeleine Madden), a woman who has already shown magical ability and is set to be apprenticed to the local “wisdom,” Nynaeve (Zoë Robins), sort of an untrained pastoral Aes Sedai; her erstwhile lover, the painfully earnest Rand (Josha Stradowski), a standard-issue hero-in-the-making sort; sly Mat (Barney Harris), a thief-and-gambler type who frets about his younger sisters; and Perrin (Marcus Rutherford), the lumbering young blacksmith with a golden heart and outsized sense of guilt.
Since Moiraine can’t pin down which one it is, the plan is to take the whole quartet to the White Tower, the home of her order, so the Dragon can be properly identified and trained. The others, we sense, will quickly become disposable.
Things jump into hurry-up mode when Two Rivers is attacked by an army of trollocs, huge beasts that resemble a gorilla mixed with a bear wearing moose antlers, led by a Fade, an eyeless creature mounted on a black horse that might as well be a straight copy-and-paste from the LoTR ringwraiths.
Over the course of the first few episodes, the group is continually hunted and threatened, eventually having to split up as the mighty Moiraine is injured and other forces enter the fray.
These include the gypsy-like Tinkers, who offer a helpful hand but maybe have ulterior motives; Thom Merrilin (Alexandre Willaume), a charming but vaguely threatening gleeman, aka traveling bard who becomes a mentor to Mat; Logain (Álvaro Morte), a power-mad man already claiming to be the Dragon Reborn; and the White Cloaks, a religious order that stands against the forces of darkness but zealously persecutes the Aes Sedai.
I don’t recall the Robert Jordan books being particularly violent and fleshy, and there seems to have been a conscious attempt by the WoT makers to “sex up” the proceedings to put them on an equal footing the with notoriously naughty GoT.
For example, there’s a steamy bath scene with Moiraine and Lan, coupled with the suggestion that Aes Sedai and their warders share a bond that typically extends to more conjugal exchanges. And gosh knows there is plenty of blood, guts, beheadings and pus. I wouldn’t let my kids watch.
The depiction of magic is cool and unique, as the Aes Sedai and their few male counterparts seem to gather the wind or life essence from around them and use it for fireballs, lightning, telekinesis and other powerful effects. They can even heal most any wound, though not their own.
In general the production values of WoT are not on the level of GoT, or at least where they wound up in later seasons. The trollocs and other creatures are rendered in merely OK-ish CGI, and there’s a sense of sets and background players being constrained to only what we can see in the visible frame.
The show also did not exactly go out of their way to secure a lot of high-profile talent beyond Pike, with most of the key roles filled with newbie youngsters or vaguely familiar character actor types in a broad multicultural band of palettes. But maybe if the show goes on for multiple seasons, the striplings will become stars in the way Kit Harington, Emilia Clarke et al did.
(My bet would be on the copper-coiffed, apple-cheeked Stradowski.)
I’ll be interested to see if “The Wheel of Time” finds a mass audience the way of “Game of Thrones” did. The first season seems to be a whole lot of chase-chase and “roll for initiative” type of encounters without a grand backdrop of politics or a deep sense of history. Maybe that’ll come if the show’s allowed to develop.
But, who am I kidding? If you were a Dungeons & Dragons-playing dweeb like me, even reasonably well done sword-and-sorcery storytelling like this is bound to go straight into my veins like a potion of joy. I’m geared up for the last few episodes and ready to divide the loot.