Wheel of Time Review Retitled: Surprise! A Man hates Women and Diversity.
Robert Jordan’s trite and lumbering dialogue desperately needed a spice-up before being let anywhere near a TV screen
As someone who actively consumes a lot of film content I find myself curious as to how different prominent and professional film critics and reviewers are to my own experiences as an audience consuming content. After all, art is in the eyes of the beholder and film is just that, another form of art that can be interpreted in many ways. How people interpret content is largeley based on and tailored to the individual's personal experiences and identity, which ultimately affects the reading of film in either positive or negative ways.
Now as a queer woman and a cinephile, I have some beef. Above is a review of the TV adaptation of the The Wheel of Time, written by one James Delingpole for The Spectator UK. I am in no way a misandrist or man hater, or anything along those lines, but this review has pushed my buttons to the enth. Too many times have I seem film reviewers (largely old white men) absolutely slam perfectly acceptable and creative content just for the fact that women may have depth of character, people of colour exist as does the lgbtqia+ community.
Never have i seen a review so biased and hateful, not even towards the TV adaptation but for the source materal too and it perplexes me how these reviews are allowed to continue being published and pass the editing room. Im not talking about being PC, but fuck if your going to review something base it on merit and not the fact that ripping source material to shreds, reducing the author to a failure in the fantasy literary world and then criticising the thespian abilities of the young actors, makes a review credible. Talk about hate shot after hate shot.
I don't normally get this fired up but today I'm on this hell app letting you all know, how lovers of the books, the show, the characters and the actors, have been so denegrated to "trite" and "tripe" is absolutely disgusting. You know how we learnt "If you don' t have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all?" this, I feel, should have been the lesson here, as the only purpose of this review was to let us all know that this guy just doesn't like the Wheel of Time, full stop. Here are a few beautiful examples I would love to share with yall:
Firstly I would like to point out the arrogant preconception that reading a 14 book epic fantasy series will be feasible on a 2 week holiday. Yet despite personal recs and global sucess, the persuasion to pick up the book actually stemmed from the fact that Robert Jordan was a decorated war hero, engineer and an absolute mans man which inspired Delingpole to follow through with the book recommendation, then using Jordan's military and mathematical macho backround to justify his disappoinment in the failings of the book, as if that instantly gives agency for good authorship. The failings in Delingpole's eyes being:
The reviewer didnt even finish the books, and i feel we can all agree that the best thing about the Wheel of Time is how well the characters develop and change throughout the story to make a well fleshed out and rich fantasy world. By reducing it to a Lord of the Rings rip off, we see how, instead of reading the way Jordan developed those ideas that yes, have existed in other stories too, have rather opted in just disregarding TWoT as a failed copy cat that has "basic dialogue, leaden prose and uninspiring characters." Ahh, there is the literary language I so look for in justification for poor reviews, and yet we haven't even got to the show yet. As a reviewer who seems to hate the source material, Dalingpole sure had hopes that the TV adaptation would be different in his eyes, but nope, its EVEN WORSE.
Now lets get to the meaty part cos boy its a doozy:
Fuck me where to start. For someone so reverent of Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings this guy sure does have some hang ups about unique fantasy names, especially outright naming the 3 examples who are played by poc actors as "annoying and unpronouncable". Sure "James", Mr Western White Man who, unsurprisingly, has a problem with foreign names, (the racist subtext is starting to smell a bit here). I wonder as such an avid reader and professional reviewer how illiterate he became when reading Dune, or any other series that has predmonitely white protagonist and unpronouncable names.
Now to Moraine and the Aes Sedai. Unfunny, pompous and crotchety witches/seers/spell-weavers who only exist as a dominating and powerful political and protector class to pander to new age feminism and paganistic hippies. WOW. God forbid women have any sort of agency and respect in an epic medieval fantasy except to be the lovers, mothers, sisters or whores of great male heros. And how dare such a "macho man" like Robert Jordan pander to these ideologies. The only thing that makes sense is if he wrote an entire, intricate world surrounding womens' power as an elaborate Barney Stinson ploy to make Jordan desirable to female audiences so he could essentially, fuck them. Yes, thats right. Delingpole believes that if a male author writes about powerful women, it must only be with predatory intentions. I dont care about defending Jordan, but I do care about how narrow this lense is, and that for this male reviewer, is the only logical explanation for a female-centred narrative written by a man. As if men can't write women with any authenticity. As if women can't exist unless to be of service to a man. As if we aren't over the tireless harmful gender roles and stereotypes that 100 years of Hollywood has reinforced. As if nothing can break out of that mold and formula unless its pandandering to minorities or feminism. I can't for the life of me see how this perspective could fly these days when it is based on so much misogyny and ignorance that I've got whiplash. And this isn't even confined to the books but bleeds into the TV series as well.
Cold but sexy-ish Gandalf? Delingpole has futher reinforced his Tolkien hard-on by essentially saying that Moraine is unlikable because she is mysterious and withdrawn (which if he stuck around, he might have learnt why there are 14 goddamn books) and that her only likability is by reducing her character to looks only. That the only redeeming quality for a MAIN CHARACTER is her fuckability. For someone who didn't finish the story or is even sticking around to finish this TV series, he sure has seemed to make up his mind. I think we can all agree that Rosamund Pike is doing an exceptional job as Moraine, and the nuances she is bringing in the show is dominating the screen by bringing the source material to life in a new, refreshing way. I goddamn screamed and cried when they canonically made Moraine a gay woman in a loving relationship with the goddamn Amyrlin Seat. What a power move. What a moment to witness, this small change that made me feel more seen and connected and personal than any other adaptation I've ever consumed, and made me hope for the future of representation on the screen. Not saying that the books and the TV adaptation are perfect, and that the debate on creative liberty is one I'm not going to get into here, but this level of criticism based on the Reviewer's personal bias makes me wonder if they were the best choice in critiquing this narrative.
Moraine isnt the only protagonist under fire. The four possible Dragons are reduced to "petulant teenages" with no "discernable personality", and now I start to wonder whether we have seen the same show and read the same book. Sure, they are doe eyed villiage folk embarking on a great adventure with life/death ramifications. Since when was innocence regarded as petulance, when was the mistakes of simple mountain folk thrust into larger destiny held to such a high regard, as if teenagers aren't fucking stupid and mess up sometimes. I doubt this reviewer has the same views of Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin if you get my meaning. Hypocritical doesnt even begin to describe the level of arrogance Dalingpole has to have his word be God and the only opinion that matters in this context. And he doesnt stop there.
I know there has been some controversy in this community about the way Barney Harris is interpreting the role of Mat as a serious, brooding and whiny figure instead of the kind, trickster like, humouros conman and scoundrel as he was portrayed in the books. Either way, my personal opinion had me (ironically) disliking Harris's portrayal the most out of everyone due to the fact he felt unfamiliar to me. Whether we see a different take with Harris being recast is a different matter, because Delingpole reveres the character who has adopted the most toxic traits, whilst belittleing the rest.
Reducing young emerging actors to the thespian abilities of school play mediocrity has me reeling. How dare Delingpole attack the greener actors and diminish the hard work and talent that goes into making this kind of series, as well as insinuating that hotness and racial/queer representation is the only reason these people were cast in the first place. Im sure he didnt have any problems with the young, predominately 'white' actors of Game of Thrones, as if they are the pinnacle of acting abilities. And yes I'm gonna look at this through a racial and queer lense because goddamn James seems to feel the need to attack every minority represention left right and centre within this review. For someone hell bent on not finishing either the books or the tv series to find out if these young actors can "grow into their roles", he really is not giving any space to change his mind. Which brings me full circle and is further supported by his conclusionary statements:
In conclusion James Dalingpole wishes Game of Thrones never ended and that any form of diversity is a hindrance to the sucess of television fantasy. The Wheel of Time is thus, a cheap knockoff of every medieval fantasy that has been popularised in culture, and any decision to include minority representation in the source material, or the adaptation has ultimately lead to failure in his eyes. And yet here, Delingpole reinforces that it is the most successful fantasy series since Lord of the Rings. So how did it go so wrong? Answer: it didn't, Delingpole just has a lifelong perscription of bigoted glasses and his script ain't changing any time soon.
I am not saying that my rant on this review is the only truth out there, we all have our own opinions and interpretations, but having a reviewer so biased against diversity, whether it be gender, race or sexuality, leads me to wonder why these kinds of reviews are allowed any agency at all. Everyone's a critic, sure, but never have I seen such a blatant disregard and disrespect of the books, the fans, the actors and even the studio execs. It irks me that this drivel is still being reinforced because these opinions don't actually give any form of depth or nuance, just hatred for the divulge in formula. The classic "Bring me back to the good ol days" mentality where anyone who wasn't a man was opressed. The Wheel of Time is not Lord of the Rings, nor is it Game of Thrones, it is beloved by many, myself included, and can stand on its own if we stop the comparisons to what 'was' normal and Hollywood formula and embrace that diversity is becoming the norm. Women exist, people of colour exist and so do lgbtqia+ people who are allowed to have agency in how we create a new norm and formula for medieval epic fantasies. I, for one, am someone who can seperate book from adaptation and am so far loving both, but to write this review as an attack on the narrative as a whole feels outdated and honestly pathetic. Here I am, reading the words of another angry old white man who is pissed off that representation is being normalised, when we should be embracing the fact that outdated source material being brought to modern audiences need to reflect a sense of modernity, which thus means, adapting women-lead narratives, casting lgbtqia+ and poc actors to adapt the roles and just outright not give people like this Reviewer any more agency to reinforce these harmful opinions. I'm also not saying the Wheel of Time is perfect, because like everything, it has flaws, but outright calling it a failure due to its type of content, makes me wonder if James Dalingpole has actually enjoyed anything since we emerged into the 21st century.
Anyway, rant over. Check out the full article yourselves and suss it out. Am i reading too much into this? I hope not, cos this is just one example of so many film reviews I have seen this year absolutely sloshing new films and series just based on the fact it is "Too PC" and this last one got me in the gut. I'm over it because I fucking love how film these days are setting the standard for progressing culture away from the dominant western patriarchal ideologies. It starts with small change, and i know that change is scary for book purists and fragile egos, but the only way we are going to see rich, personalised and diverse stories on screen is if we stop letting the voice of an old white man dictate what constitutes good content or not. I don't know, fight me about this if you want but I'm just fucking tired.
