Basically, it's way too soon to judge and we need context for most of this stuff. I'm trying to be fair. By there was Game of Thrones and "The Hobbit" trilogy and Legend of the Seeker and The Shannara Chronicles and The Last Kingdom, which isn't fantasy, strictly speaking, but was probably greenlight because swords, and they were all such disappointments. In the words of one of the song, "Been down one time, been down two times, and I'm never going back again."

00:03
Open with a shot of Nynaeve telling Egwene “be strong” and shoving her off a cliff.

Why? No clue. Other depictions of characters in water could be symbolic representation of the internal process of channeling, but if Nynaeve is teaching Egwene to channel, put a fork in it. The show has missed a major point of her character and totally destroyed their relationship.

The other option is that Nynaeve is simply teaching Egwene to Listen to the Wind, and maybe Egwene is expecting some mystical insights and Nynaeve, who does not realize she is drawing on an actual paranormal ability, is trying to teach her to pay attention and use her eyes and nose, and learn the proper methods of understanding the weather, like the Wisdoms mention to Faile in the LoC prologue. That’s the best case scenario, IMO. Because it also severely undermines Nynaeve’s characterization to have her play pranks in her capacity as Wisdom. A huge thing with Nynaeve is how seriously she takes her duties, which is why she ends up following the kids halfway across the continent. She buries herself in her duties, doing all she can to maintain the image she thinks is needed, to the point of forgoing things she enjoys, like dancing. Book-Nynaeve would see jumping off that cliff as frivolous at best, and more likely a dangerous pas-time for wool-headed fool boys, on a par with Rand, Mat & Perrin’s Sand Hills hike that got them all in big trouble. Pushing someone off the cliff by surprise, for any reason would be right out.
Three seconds in and I’m in full-blown, “watching Game of Thrones after season 3” mode.

00:15
Partial opening mantra voice-over. Okay. Maybe they are saving the whole thing for the actual show. No need to worry. On the other hand, it sounds like Rosamund Pike is affecting an English accent. Damnit.

00:25
The White Tower is barely a tower. It looks more like the illegitimate offspring of a steeple & a dome.

A major issue of the Aes Sedai is penis envy. They know they are inferior without men and they overcompensate by building a tower frequent described as a shaft, in sight of the mountain the more than any other natural feature, represents the legacy of male channelers. They would be looking to make the thing overawing and dominating the scenery.

00:28
With her dress not covering her ankles, show-Moiraine is officially a slut. And Moiraine never emerges out of the rain. She shows up first looking glamorous and regal and way way above this boring, ordinary, common village. The only thing that sets apart this woman coming in out of the rain and uncovering her head is the dramatic camerawork.

00:40
“The Power inside you… all over the world, there are different names for it.”

Name two. All over the world, it is called “the One Power” or “saidar”. In Seanchan, among the Aiel, and the Sea Folk. If the Amayar have a different name, no one would know. And I’m pretty sure no Aes Sedai calls it the “Power inside you” because that would imply it’s a personal possession, instead of a connection to a bigger and greater thing that she must embrace by submitting herself to the White Tower.

Optimistically speaking, it could be a way of trying to service the theme of everything else being different among different groups and times, from heroes to stories to even simple songs for entertainment having different lyrics.

00:46
Wow, what crawled up Leane’s ass and died?

00:49
I feel like people think this is the group with their backs to the camera, and one guy has a shield and another has two axes and it’s WTF, but the guy with the axes has light hair and it’s much longer than Marcus Rutherford’s. So we have action scenes that don’t involve the Two Rivers Five.

00:59
Longbow my ass.

01:10
“No matter what happens, the pain we face, the heartbreak, we keep standing.”

Cool line from Roose Bolton Tam, but a bit more metatextual than normal for a discussion with his son. Ordinarily not a problem but it’s a line that is far more clearly aimed past the fourth wall than something someone would say in a conversation about potential problems coming up. Like, in the books, when talking about how Two Rivers people bear down and keep plugging away, it’s always described in specifically mundane terms, like bad weather ruining crops. It’s understood that the audience has a brain cell or two with which to understand that this attitude of endurance translates to the bigger struggles the protagonists will face going forward.

Unfortunately, Game of Thrones quickly developed a penchant for having the characters spout off meta lines or things that sound cool in a trailer to set up the coming season or episode, without making a whole lot of sense as something a character would say in a particular context. “Break the wheel” comes most readily to mind.

01:17
NO ONE gets the drop on Lan.

Alternatively, Lan is perfectly willing to let you draw your blade and point it at him when he is trying to convince you to cooperate or heed his warning, because Lan is so badass, that your blade is not much more of a threat to him pointed at his throat than in its scabbard.

01:20
Logain breaking free of the sisters shielding him? On the one hand, it might be a good way to convey the threat.

Now on the surface, it’s a pointless demonstration to throw them against the walls (unless unlike most TV characters, they take serious injury and/or {haha, see what I did there? } are killed by it), instead of the many other things he could be doing with that slim opportunity. Or, it could just be a way to depict severing or otherwise incapacitating his captors.

However, a problem we sometimes got on The Bad Show, was characters momentarily acting incompetent to heighten the drama or make another character look dangerous. So, I’m very afraid that Logain slipping control while caged and imprisoned is just going to Worf the Red Ajah and in turn make them less of a threat when Rand is captured. Also, ALL we see of Logain before he’s stilled is the glance of him in his cage, surrounded by Aes Sedai, in the midst of an army, clearly utterly helpless and displayed as a trophy, and laughing. And this is after quite a few mentions of him as a major threat and an infamous figure. His career and downfall play out as the characters gradually catch up with the news (judging by any sensible timeline, he was already captured when the opening wind blows past Rand on the road), and it culminates with the powers that be demonstrating to all the world “hey, look everyone, he’s safely caged and no longer a problem!” And Logain laughs. Beyond building up the character enormously so that his subsequent escapes, recovery of his powers and appearance at the Black Tower are really exciting moments, it also serves as a thematic synecdoche for the overall struggle in the story. The people in charge do not have things under control and threats that are considered safely locked away are anything but. As we have seen with “the Dark One and all the Forsaken are bound” and yet, they spend most of the book pursued by Shadowspawn and Baalzamon is in their dreams.

And, I suppose, this could be a way to address that more directly and overly.

01:25
Maybe it’s because the only thing I’ve really seen her in is playing the queen in Henry VI, but Sophie Okenodo looks way too superior and snotty for Siuan’s background. That’s her saying “The Last Battle is coming”

Also, there are a fuckload of Aes Sedai on screen when Elaida, AFAIK, has not even been cast, and she’s only the second Aes Sedai to appear on the page with dialogue. Much less Siuan & Leane who don’t show up until book 2. Likewise with Elayne, who is the main character and only protagonist not from Emond’s Field, but with Season 2 starting production, has not been announced as a cast member yet.

1:27
”The only thing that matters is what you do.”
Get bent, show.
This better be the inverse of what I suspect with Tam’s line, which is a good symbolic tagline for the series, but does not make sense in any conversation he would be having in the books. In this case, there might. possibly. be a reason for her to say that, strictly in the context of the moment to a particular character.

But as a thematic statement, what matters FAR more than “what” you do, is why and how you do it. The Children of the Light are devoted to fighting the Dark One and the Shadow. Aridhol gave themselves utterly over to the fight against the Dark One and their battle cry was “the victory of the Light is all”. But they were consumed because how they fought the Dark One was wrong and unworthy. There is never much doubt, in the big picture and long run, what Rand and company are going to do. The conflict in the story, the heart of the characters, is the reason for which they do it, which informs whether or not they are going to do it right. Which is the difference between saving the world and breaking it.

01:30
Very curious about the context in which Nynaeve draws a knife to protect Perrin.

1:31
I guess the guy with two axes is a warder and he is jumping at Logain? It looks like the same glowy bubble that blew a bunch of people back 10 seconds ago. So is the bubble a shield, in which case, dick move, buddy (and ultimately futile, since Logain is too important to take an axe wound or two in the first season). Or does it represent him holding saidin?

Not sure how I feel about his dramatic leap. Is it a way to show the enhancement of being a warder? Because that really makes the Tower look dumb for not finding a way to do this with a lot more men, and Sanderson has Gareth Bryne express in tGS.

Tip for hiring ghostwriters: Anyone but a smart-ass nerd who thinks he’s so much more clever than the original author and can’t resist sticking in snarky asides that if he’s correct, undermine the story and original author’s world-building and if he’s incorrect only show the world how dumb he is.

Maybe Harriet missed Jim Sheathing his Sword, but she didn’t have to have Sanderson literarily rape us to make us miss RJ’s mightier pen. Not show-relevant, strictly speaking, except I’m getting vague BOHICA twinges watching the trailer.

1:36
“Whatever happens now, there’s no turning back.”

I think that’s Siuan. Good trailer line, and in the apparent book context, it makes sense to say. A trifle “overly dramatic” as a Sanderson character might say, but that could just be the music.

1:38
Myrddraal teeth, I don’t know about. It could be a good way to convey how not-right they are, despite looking very human except for the eyes, where their alien nature is conveyed on-page by mention of how little things aren’t right, like their movements and the whole cloak hanging still bit. That stuff is harder to notice and highlight on a screen, especially when it’s going to be dark a lot. But it’s also just wrong for what Myrddraal are. It’s a bestial thing, and they are absolutely not bestial in anyway, it’s like they are human evils made flesh, in contrast to the Trollocs who are the embodiment of base urges and drives.

1:46
Moiraine & Lan in action looks very cool. But her calling down a large scale lightning attack seems very reminiscent of Rand’s thing for clearing out the Stone, which was utterly shocking to her, with the implication being it was more than the scale of what he did. The clear context of Lan & Moiraine in that shot is fighting the Shadowspawn in Emond’s Field, and the sense I got from the book was that she was not powerful enough to just strike them down en masse like that. She was good enough to kill them one at a time, like Lan, but they were frustrated at not being able to be more effective, that they just killed some and the majority ran off when it was clear they couldn’t find what they came for and were up against more serious opposition than they expected. Also, Thom’s dialogue implies the people of Emond’s Field fought back better than anyone says, which is more in keeping with Moiraine shaming them with the story of Manetheren, the implication of which is “you guys are better than this.”

1:52
November 19 is not a good day for me. Jordan would have released it on a different day.

1:58
Apropos of nothing, the arrow-smile in the Amazon logo makes sense, because the arrow’s starting point is under the A in the word, and it points at the Z. Like, Amazon has everything from A to Z. But the same thing under prime video is I to E. So what?