It could be good, but anytime I see that something like this is being produced by Amazon or Netflix, my first thought is, "So how many homo lovemaking scenes per hour, completely out of context to the story, will be injected here?" Their hyper-wokeness has ruined a bunch of what otherwise would have been excellent movies/series for me in the last couple of years.
Pretty likely to get that in WoT, given that Robert Jordan tended to write of the Aes Sedai Novice and Accepted dormitories as having considerable lesbian goings-on.
The things I noticed most in the trailer (having devoured WoT as a teenager through my 20's):
1. It opened with Nynaeve and Egwene. Neither of them are the main character of the story.
2. It never mentioned the name of the main character of the story, nor his arc. I don't think it even showed a clear image of the face of the main character and identified him as such.
3. It focused entirely on Aes Sedai (100% women, men definitely not allowed due to the male half of magic being cursed) and their capacity for magic, and their power relationship with the world. This is somewhat appropriate given the context of magic here but it feels also like a sop to modern political climates.
4. It had a brief glimpse of a character in the story called Logain, a minor character who is a male magic user. Setting him up to appear more important than he really is to the whole story.
5. The White Tower is supposed to be a contiguous monolithic structure shaped by magic, unfathomably high and large enough to house thousands (tens of thousands?) of Aes Sedai, but the structure they showed for the show was short and stumpy, brick-based, and generally unimpressive.
6. The room where all the magic using women met and held council (well, 23 of them if you know the books) just seemed too small in their presentation, and organized incorrectly. Very small screen like Dune 2000 on SciFi.
7. The casting for Lan just seems wrong. The asian guy with a leather wrap around his head. Lan should have iron hair, grizzled. Geralt of Rivia kind of character.
8. They had Warders, but no Warder cloaks.
9. I don't think they actually gave names to any of the major characters shown in the trailer... but not naming at least Rand is shameful. Or Lews Therin. Or The Dragon. (Kind of the same character through rebirth on the Wheel of Time). To me an appropriate trailer would name Rand, Perrin, Mat, and Moiraine. You might include Egwene and Nynaeve, too.
10. I don't like the costuming of the Aes Sedai. Moiraine is on target, but the rest don't seem to fit. Particularly Suian Sanche, the head of the Aes Sedai. The Aes Sedai all wear shawls/scarfs/stoles to denote their alliance to one of seven factions, called Ajahs. They are color coded and denote particular foci or ideologies. White, Blue, Green, Yellow, Red, Grey, Brown. The head of the Aes Sedai is called the Amyrlin and her shawl is rainbow colored with all 7 colors in it and is a component separate from her clothing, worn ritually. The way they showed this character in the trailer had the rainbow shawl far too subdued for what it is supposed to represent. It's like a crown. And while the various Aes Sedai do tend to wear dresses that coincide with their Ajah color, they should be wearing visible shawls as well. Particularly in council as was depicted.
All in all I'm cautiously optimistic about it, but it appears to be getting a Dune 2000 style treatment (I did not like the costuming in that at all, and it was clearly shot aiming at small screen consumption, tiny sets, etc). Or Shannara treatment, if you're familiar with that book series and how it was brought to screen recently. I found Shannara to be way too "Young Adult" and I expect that from WoT here, but WoT deals with a bunch of teenagers being thrust into saving the world through stupendous power. It's YA fodder made manifest. Shannara's treatment altered the age of everyone and turned the Elves of that world into a gaggle of horny emo-teens.
Jordan does not write women well, so I expect a lot of liberties to be taken in altering the characters of Nynaeve, Egwene, Elayne, Min, Aviendha and others. Which honestly needs to be done. It just needs to be done tastefully.
If it gets monopolized by the Aes Sedai focused storyline (or even altered to remove Rand/Perrin/Mat from the focal tripod that supports the story) to appease 5th generation feminism, I'll stop watching it.
