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The Wheel of Time (2021)
Season 1: Outstanding lead, but ultimately failed adaptation...
The Wheel of Time (2021) - Season 1.
It's been a while since I reviewed a movie or a TV series, but my frustration after binging the first season of The Wheel of Time was such that I felt the urge to lash out.
The season tells the story of Moiraine, a powerful Aes Sedai (read witch) who, with her Warder (read guardian), leads five mostly reluctant young people to a battle against, well, the resident dark lord of the land. All this while wading through the politics, social resentments, supernatural beings, and human frailty of the world they live in.
>>>THE GOOD:
Some of the costumes, most of the casting/acting, and all the make-up, with special nods to the actresses and actor behind Moiraine, her Warder and his love interest.
With the seasoned Celtic-witch looks one has come to expect from such a character, Rosamund Pike's Moiraine is engrossing to watch. She leads the story with a delivery spiked with just the right amount of arrogance, confidence, occasional contempt and, when warranted, some fleeting apprehension.
I don't know if the diverse cast mirrors the original story, but the way it is done here works. The viewer just notices that in this world, differences between people are based on something else, and the cast makes it easy.
Also, for a show that doesn't portray relationships (all sort of relationships) as it could have, it does a good job with the two involving Moiraine's Warder. They are well built into the story, significantly helped by the three performers.
Finally, a bittersweet one: Toward the end of the season, there is a sequence featuring a fighting pregnant lady that shows what the series could have been, not in terms of fight scenes (though this one is really good) but in terms of character development for each of the young people from the Two Rivers.
That sequence gives us an insight into the "genetic stock" of one of them, something started with a dead person in a cage. In stories like this, genetics are very often destiny, but for the arc to work, the young person still typically needs to grow in front of us for later deeds to appear as logical and natural evolutions, which here he doesn't...
>>>THE BAD:
The film sets and (natural) landscapes were not bad per se, but compared to the efforts by the costume and make-up departments, they were lacking, though I liked the peak in the "futuristic" past (3000 years ago).
A bit higher up on the scale of "bad," there was a lot of politicking and power rivalry that came to nothing. They could have been presented just as facts of the life, without hinting at things that never came to be or that eventually happened with a dud. Not everything from a book should make it to the screen if one can't give it justice.
To conclude this category, two of the young performers were clearly not up to the task, especially the one I alluded to earlier with the pregnant fighter.
>>>THE UGLY:
If we set aside the concept and portrayal of Aes Sedais (especially Moiraine), the fantasy world didn't work its magic on me, but that's not why this first season was a failure.
The Wheel of Time floundered in the adaptation: It failed to build a few key characters right, and failed even more in putting whatever fragments of character development and story threads it could muster in a cohesive story.
When we watch a movie or TV adaptation, we depend on whatever the writers have picked out of the original story and the vision and skill of the director(s) and producer(s).
The latter two didn't understand that although they were drawing from an original work, they had to build a story of their own, one well knitted together.
Besides the Wisdom (you'll have to watch to know who that is), the other youngsters were more or less botched. And by that I don't mean they didn't have enough screentime, but rather that the focus was almost always misplaced or not really helpful. We saw one of them very eager, a couple of them brooding for whatever reasons and a last one always on a lookout for mischief, but we never got to really see what made most of them tick.
As a contrast, by the end of the story arc, there is no action by Moiraine, her Warder and the Wisdom that would be considered by us as out of character, and that is because we got to know them!
When a story hinges on a moral choice to be made by a character, the viewers have to be given enough opportunities to see the character grow toward that choice. If not, it feels hollow when the choice is made, it feels like the hero is choosing the right thing just because he or she is a hero and that's what heroes do i.e, it definitely doesn't come across as organic.
And while I'm at it, grand and epic stories about the fight between good and evil require a sweeping and grabbing score. A group of characters on horseback in a wide cinematic shot, riding to the next stage of their adventure without the right music feels like a lost opportunity. Each an every scene like that should be used to engage us, make us buy into the epic proportions of what is at stake.
The Wheel of Time is definitely not equal to the sum of its parts, and not even the wonderful character portrayed by Rosamund Pike and the good job by Daniel Henney and Zoe Robbins could save it from itself.
PS: On Adaptations...
I have known about The Wheel of Time book series for a long time, but it never made it to my reading list. I found it more suitable as an entry to my waiting-for-a-screen-adaptation registry, and in that, it was in good company. I'd never read the books behind "Legend of the Seeker (2008)" or "Dune: Part One (2021)," either, but the adaptations made for good and excellent (in that order) moments of television and cinema.
In Villeneuve's "Dune: Part One (2021)," the key, it seems, was to discard a lot, hint at a few things and depict a plot that could stand on its own with a reduced selection of characters we like and those we love to hate. Fifteen minutes into Dune, I could tell a lot about all the main characters and was hungry for that elusive young woman in the hero's dream i.e., I wasn't trying to follow Frank Herbert's story but I was deep into Villeneuve's because the latter gave me everything I needed to get hooked...
The Thanksgiving House (2013)
Easily the best Hallmark Channel original movie of the 2013 Holiday season
The Thanksgiving House is the story of a character's transformation (leading her down the path of forgiveness, to a rebirth, and the embrace of a genuine and unassuming love), all that from her contact with remarkable people.
Mary Ross, a successful Boston lawyer, inherits a Plymouth house from her aunt and goes to the "country" with her boyfriend Rick to make an "inventory" of what's been handed down to her. Enters Everett Mather, a local high school history teacher who has been looking for the site of the first Thanksgiving since his teenage years...
Aside from Rick and every subplot involving him, the movie is a gentle and smooth ride toward an equally subdued ending. The house in the title is connected to the female lead in ways that explain who she has become both emotionally and professionally. Emily Rose portrays Mary Ross superbly. She is as aloof and detached as ever, with only the occasional display of emotion, but her work would not have been enough to put the movie above the fray this season if not for Everett's parents. The two experienced actor and actress made every scene count and were appropriately used by the story to nudge Mary toward the right emotions and decisions. They provided the kind of relationship she needed to see to understand that she could aspire to something better with her own father and in her own love life. From watching Everett's parents who welcomed her in their lives in an endearing way, she could see she didn't have to settle for what she had and could contemplate working to improve her own little family and look for a better companion. This process was filled with little gems, like when Everett's mother ignored the burgeoning bickering and brought her cookies and then gently forced herself into the house for a chat, or when Parker Mather welcomed her back to their home in a way that really made her feel welcome.
The story allowed Mary to interact substantially with Everett and his parents without any of it appearing forced down our throats (or hers for that matter), and the love story (yes there was one), was so subdued that those who expected direct statements and a big kiss before the curtain might have been disappointed. The movie chose to rely on little moments and innuendos, a choice that fitted well with the casting of Emily Rose. The evolution of the relationship was followed exclusively through her point of view, via her interaction with her assistant Victoria and close-ups of their faces. Mary Ross gradually warmed up to Everett and her Olive branch to her father wasn't at all as awkward as it could have been.
I understand why, in a way, Rick (the boyfriend) had to be so "beneath" her. Given where she was emotionally, a boyfriend was just for "dating" and arguably chosen solely for that purpose. Still, that relationship (in which they never seemed to spend the night under the same roof) made for the only awkward scenes in the movie. My only other beef with the story is the science behind Everett's research, but that is a minor quibble.
I liked how The Thanksgiving House gently brought its leads together, how its female lead found her way back to herself, and how she arguably fell in love with the whole Mather family...
Lucky Christmas (2011)
Clichés put together without caring about consistency
Lucky Christmas has a few issues at its core, and they have nothing to do with the fact that the bachelor who is thrown in the single mom's life is handsome or that boy kisses girl right before the end credits. This is a holiday TV movie and I believe a fair share of the viewing public understands the requirements of the genre. What we don't (or should not) tolerate is a sloppy and irritating ride to the big kiss.
Lucky Christmas is the story of a single mom (Elizabeth Berkley) who wins the lottery but gets her car (in which she left the ticket) stolen by the first major problem of the movie: the handsome bachelor's friend. That character has nothing to do in the movie and the more we see how handsome is developed, the less we understand the friendship which looks more like a plot device.
The second issue is handsome himself. There is something unsettling about his dreams and aspirations (as well as the kind of personality that would be associated with them) when seen within the context of his family. None of that seems to mesh well together. Not to mention who he hangs out with and how he chooses to deliver the ticket. We are well familiar with irritating romantic comedy ploys, so the ticket wandering around, in and out the house, is not surprising, but mailing it? Really? The movie seemed to be too determined to mess things up, creating a very inconsistent male lead character in the process.
The last issue, and the most damning, is how the single mom (who is despite that the most appealing of the bunch) ties forgiveness to finding the ticket and then professes that she doesn't really care about the money. There's something wrong in there somewhere, which makes the character appear more materialistic than she should have for the story to work.