The Amazon Prime Video series ‘The Wheel of Time’, with a millionaire investment behind it, aspires to become (pending its prequel to ‘The Lord of the Rings’) its particular ‘Game of Thrones’ (HBO). Or is it perhaps more his ‘Witcher’ (Netflix)? Beyond the objectives set by the producers, the already concluded series of epic fantasy books written by Robert Jordan (1948-2007) and completed by Brandon Sanderson allows us to venture what can we expect from the new contender in the fantastic saga competition in which the big streaming platforms have become involved.
15 books and 10,000 pages: a lot of fabric to cut
Let’s start by introducing the novels on which the series has been based. There are 14 books, plus a prequel, totaling 10,000 printed pages, published between 1990 and 2013 (all five ‘Game of Thrones’ books appeared between 1992 and 2011). Its author, Robert Jordan, died in 2007, leaving detailed notes for another writer to finish what was to be the last volume. His widow entrusted the task to the then not so well known Brandon Sanderson, as torrential in his writing as the original author. The last title ended up becoming three novels.
Originally published in Spanish by Timun Mas, the Minotauro publishing house has reissued the complete series. If the series works, it has many seasons ahead of it.
In what world does it take place?
Robert Jordan, (Vietnam veteran, nuclear engineer and devout Episcopalian) took elements from Buddhism and Hinduism: time is cyclical, every 3,000 years there are characters that reincarnate, prevent evil from winning but cause a catastrophe that makes the world it restarts. And also of Manichaeism (a creator and a dark lord in perpetual tension).
A single power can be channeled to heal, move objects, immobilize by those who can connect with it, gathered in an order, the Aes Sedai (Sounds like ‘Star Wars’ to you?)which became only feminine as soon as its masculine aspect was contaminated (both represented by a symbol similar to that of yin and yang).
‘The wheel of time’ follows the appearance and search for the reincarnation of man who every several millennia, unable to control ‘the force’, simultaneously causes the cataclysm that restarts the wheel’s rotation.
A new ‘Game of Thrones’?
The success of George RR Martin’s series means that any adaptation of a fantastic series refers to it. But ‘The Wheel of Time’ drinks much more than ‘The Lord of the Rings’. A group of innocent young people from a region, under the tutelage of a powerful magician (who, like almost all of her co-religionists, has a Guardian, a swordsman at her service, in this case, the taciturn heir to a disappeared kingdom), travel overcoming adventures to find his destiny: to prevent the Dark Lord from winning after leaving the mountain where he has been imprisoned for millennia. One of them will be the one who makes it possible, while he faces creatures like the ‘trollocs’ and their lords. It will also sound like Tolkien, right?
Religious fanatics
But at the same time, ‘The Wheel of Time’ includes intrigues between different kingdoms, an order of militarized religious fanatics, a people who come from a desert that put themselves under the orders of the expected ‘messiah’… Although Jordan is a fundamental author of the genre by itself, they do not stop being elements that will be familiar to readers of Martin, or Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune’. The literary topic of the hero’s path does not admit so many variations either.
However, and if we focus on the adaptation, ‘The Wheel of Time’ has a handicap that can hinder the aspirations of being the new ‘GoT’. Jordan, exhaustingly descriptive, does not provide anywhere near the brilliant dialogue of Martin’s novels that left the writers of ‘Game of Thrones’ half done for.
the weight of magic
And the magic is much more present: the ‘mainstream’ viewer who followed the intrigues of Westeros as if they were a series about the Tudors can take a step back. Not so the one of ‘The Witcher’, a Netflix series with which it shares perhaps a more common niche.
The tricky question of gender
The role of men and women in Jordan’s books is a double-edged sword. Tainted by the Dark Lord, the use of the One Power by men is dangerous. The Aes Sedai, who pull the strings of kings and nations, amputate that possibility to any man, women fight in the front line lance in hand, they are the real power in each town and each house… The reading of the series may have an aspect of female empowerment in a narrative previously monopolized by the male hero and with passive female characters. But the tension between genders and the emancipation of men from this matriarchal ‘castration’ (with the rise of the protagonist) can be vindicated by the most ‘incel’ and resentful macho friquism.
Misogyny
In the adaptation, the producers seem to have been put on guard, accentuating the criminal misogyny of the inquisitors, including a woman among the candidates to be the Chosen One and turning close friends in the books into lovers in the series.
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There is room to play: already in the first season it is noted that they have undertaken an intense reconstruction of the architecture of the plot, anticipating and promoting a threatening male character.
Speaking of plot: the loom in the opening credits alludes to the Latticework, the allegory of Fate in the books where every person and action is a thread. And as in ‘Game of thrones’, yes, there are scenes shot in Spain. Look for the Alcazar of Segovia.