Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy was a remarkable achievement on many levels, helping to establish a new standard for fantasy storytelling on screen. But despite its artistry and huge worldwide success, it didn't inspire many other filmmakers to tackle other great works of fantasy literature. It was HBO's Game of Thrones a decade later that truly opened the floodgates for tales of dragons and magic--from The Witcher and Cursed to Shadow and Bone and His Dark Materials, the last few years have seen a wealth of episodic fantasy adaptations. Amazon's The Wheel of Time is the latest.
The series is based on Robert Jordan's sprawling 14-book saga, and Season 1 primarily adapts the first novel, 1990's The Eye of the World. There's a lot to unpack in Episode 1, both in terms of characters and Jordan's intricately-designed world. It focuses on five young people from the forgotten backwater town of Two Rivers--Rand, Mat, Nynaeve, Perrin, and Egwene--who are visited one day by the mysterious and powerful Moiraine. She's a member of the Aes Sedai, an order of women which possess magical abilities known as the One Power. Moiraine believes that one of the five is the "Dragon Reborn," the reincarnation of a powerful figure from history who can save the world from evil. But the villainous Dark One is also on their trail, leading to a chase across hundreds of miles to reach the safety of the White Tower, home of the Aes Sedai.
It's always a challenge for writers to adapt much loved but detailed works of fantasy fiction when it comes to how much information to drop in order for those who haven't read the books to get a sense of the world. Episode 1 of The Wheel of Time struggles to strike the right balance. This is an expensive show and the screen version of Jordan's world looks impressive and lived in (some dodgy CGI notwithstanding), but there's no escaping just how generic it all seems. From the small Shire-esque town and the talk of magic and dragons to creatures attacking by night and a desperate quest, this is Fantasy TV 101. Obviously, the source material was heavily indebted to Tolkien too, but with sketchily drawn characters and some questionable acting in the early scenes, it feels disappointingly clunky and generic.
Thankfully, the season starts to pick up from Episode 2. While the first episode gave a lot of running time over to a big action scene, as the Dark One's Trollocs (horned orcs basically) attack Two Rivers, the next few episodes really give the characters time to breathe and develop. Rosamund Pike plays Moiraine and gives her a quiet intensity, ably conveying the huge burden she has taken on herself. The younger cast succeeds in differentiating their characters from one another, with Barney Harris's cocky Mat, Josha Stradowski's sensible Rand, and Madeleine Madden's ambitious Egwene, a young woman who possesses her own powers. In true fantasy quest style, the group gets quickly separated, and several episodes are spent cutting between their increasingly dangerous adventures as they make their way to the White Tower.
While it's initially hard to escape the feeling that much of this has all been done before, showrunner Rafe Judkins slowly reveals the details of the world, avoiding too many exposition dumps (there are some obviously). These include different tribes who occupy the land--most notably the malevolent Light and the peace-loving Leaf--the practices of the Aes Sedai, who are all teamed with a faithful male servant known as a Warder, and the Wheel of Time itself, which rotates through seven ages, ensuring that what has already happened will occur again. For the most part, action and thrills are well balanced with character-based drama--the pace is relatively slow and some viewers might want a few more battles and a few less introspective speeches. But Judkins gets credit for using the eight-hour running time of this first season to develop a steady, engrossing pace.
The Wheel of Time isn't as intensely gory as Game of Thrones--and totally avoids any suggestion of sexual violence--but this isn't a show for younger kids. The fight sequences are bloody with quickly cut but gruesome stabbings and dismemberments, and there is a nasty torture scene in Episode 5. All of this helps add to the brutal reality of the world, but it's certainly a lot stronger than the Lord of the Rings movies.
Amazon clearly has high hopes for The Wheel of Time, with a $10 million budget per episode and a second season already in production. Of course, the studio also has its Lord of the Rings series waiting in the wings, and inevitably The Wheel of Time might seem like a small footnote once that hits. But that's a while off, and this first season emerges as one of the most successful of the current crop of fantasy shows.
