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I mean, yeah, it's a "teaser" if you define "teaser" as something that tells you essentially dick about what you're trying to watch.
I wanted to give some feedback on the Amazon page, but my fanboy agro kept turning my sentences into paragraphs. It didn't help matters that I'm actually trained as a screen writer, so I have a better-than-average grasp of film theory and cinematography to pull from ad nauseum. Anyway, to avoid tormenting some brow-beaten cubicle dweller, I decided to paste my response to the teaser, here.
First, the teaser trailer:
This is what I was struggling to write before I threw up my hands and dumped it, here:
"The story's main character is a teenaged boy, the Dragon Reborn, and there's not a single mention of the Dragon; nor the fact that the Source is bifurcated into two genders, male and female; who Baalzamon is; who the Foresworn are; or any of the basic information, vital to even approaching the show, that (for an example) the original 'Avatar: the Last Airbender' covered in less than 30 seconds in its opening.
I don't understand why this is even challenging; the teaser practically writes itself. All you'd need to do is a vignette in the vein of 'LOTR' with Morraine as the narrator. Just for an example:
"Long ago, in the Age of Heroes, the greatest mages imprisoned the Shepherd of Lies, the Dark Lord Baalzamon...or so they thought. Before the bore was sealed, Baalzamon reached out his Hand and poisoned Saidin, the male aspect of The Source, what you call magic in this day and age. Now, only his Foresworn, slaves bound to the Shadow, can touch Saidin and retain their sanity. The Dragon Reborn, the most powerful mage of the Age of Heroes, succumbed to madness. He destroyed himself, while men broke the world..."
I would have it end by revealing that Moraine is talking to Egwene while she's practicing her magic around a camp fire. She continues: "But the Wheel of Time revolves anew..." Morraine turns her eyes off screen. Egwene follows, and we get the money shot: our first glimpse of Rand, setting up camp. Moraine smiles, and whispers: "and I believe Dragon...has been Reborn." For the closer include a shot of Rand as he looks up. Matt and Perrin, his future generals, enter the frame, looking down, concerned for their best friend, then stare at Morraine and Egwene; and then we spike the music, flash the series logo dramatically and, that's it, we're out! Easy peasy.
Granted, I don't know what the script for the first episode is like, but I'd be bet my dog's balls that there was a wealth of footage to chop together something better than this. Anything that actually conveys a coherent narrative that consists of a 'Who? What? Where? When? and Why?'*
Already I'm getting 'Star Wars' flash backs, especially because I'm already hearing the same rogues gallery of anal polyps in hipster glasses telling me I'm not the trailer's intended audience, wwwwhen I have 7 books in 'The Wheel of Time' series on my Audible even as I speak; so don't tell me, 'The trailer's not [for me]!' If it's not for me, then, riddle me this: how do I know the series isn't for me, either?
I've already snarled at the Small World ride consisting of the main cast of teenagers, so I won't go off about that too much. I'll just say this, 'The show runners turned Emond's Field, a podunk strip of farmland so far removed from the Kingdom of Andor's notice that even its tax collectors forgot about it, and turned the village into a McDonald's commercial. Rand Al'Thor is supposed to stick out like a sore thumb because he's tale, blue-eyed, and ginger, how is that gonnuh work when half of the Emond Fielders are brown? These jackasses sacrificed a major plot point for the sake of ideology.' And that's all I'm going to say about that.
Besides the obvious pandering in the trailer, and the questionable casting decisions, I don't want to hate this show. Brandon Sanderson, Robert Jordan's hand-picked successor, has certainly ladled his praises on the series, but always in the most opaquest of terms, qualifying that people will like "the direction the series is taking". Myself? I'm already steeling myself for another sodomizing of a beloved IP, because that's been the stupidity du jour for the past decade or so. Frankly I don't blame anyone for looking at millenials as a lost generation of entertainers; if I wasn't trying, as a millenial to tell a decent story, I'd probably throw up my hands and say the same thing. Still, while I'm prepared for the worst, I am genuinely hoping for the best. I'm trying to, at least! But this description of the series is already lifting my fanboy hackles:
If the whole series is primarily from Morraine's perspective, than I don't want to watch it. I will, for as long as I can stomach, but, given that Morraine is a sociopath by occupation, because Aes Sedai are a globalist illuminati of witches, I'm concerned Amazon is going to push away the story's innate moral objectivity in favor of the same edge-lord-y horseshit that trashed 'Game of Thrones'. Having the story be primarily from the kid's perspective, as they mature, is what retains its ethical bedrock.
'WOT' is not a morally solipsistic story, it's a story where the people don't always know precisely what the right thing to do is, because they only have their wits and resources to figure it out. There is a world of difference between characters saying 'There's no good or bad!' and saying 'I don't always know what's good or what's bad, and I feel like I never do!' One is mature, the other is just the facile denial of moral absolutes, at all, using an absolute statement.
Goddammit, I don't want to hate this show. I'm going to will myself to be optimistic, because I'm not a fanboy who thinks 'WOT' doesn't have flaws. Far from it. I stopped reading around book 11, never finishing the series, precisely because its flaws, which grated before, became insufferable. No amount of drama, world building or political intrigue could distract me from every time the series' misandry poked me in eye.
Spoilers! the character everyone universally hates, who never ceases to be a main character in the plot of every book, laughs at a man for being raped at knife point.
Clearly, 'Wheel of Time' has flaws, but do you know why I kept reading despite that scene? When a protagonist I'm supposed to root for mocked another for being violated? Because Robert Jordan wasn't a misandrist when he wrote 'Wheel of Time'. He was just a fucking boomer, and boomers are typically, and intensely, gynocentric. Spoilers over!
(As an aside: Iiii'm also not crazy about the generic-as-geritol score, either. What little I've heard just sounds like bland orchestral filler, the kind Netflix wanted stuffed into 'Wheel of Time' because otherwise it's not "fantasy".)
Meanwhile, I'm listening to Blind Guardian, who dedicated a seven minute power metal epic to the 'WOT' story, and it makes me want to weep.
*This isn't hard; not to be shitty, but we learned this stuff practically on day one when I was being certified as a commercial film editor. For a teaser we don't need the "when" or the "where", those don't matter, what we need are "who", and "what" and (usually) "why", but not always. For instance, in the very first trailer for 'Aladdin' we know the "who", Aladdin, and we know "what" he wants, but we don't know the "why". Precisely because it's a teaser, not a trailer or a "teaser trailer".