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The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power


Ser Drewy

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5 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

Of course this is going to suck.  Almost all Amazon original programming is somewhere between terrible and mediocre.  I can't think of a single program that would rank as great.

Patriot is some of the best television I've ever seen.

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8 minutes ago, Darryk said:

Amazon has been a mixed bag so far.

The Boys, The Expanse, Invincible = great

Wheel of Time = not only poorly written but bad production value as well. 

Of those, I've only watched WOT, which was bad, and is sadly the closest parallel to a LOTR adaptation, which, combined with the trailers and the casting and everything else is known suggest a strong warning light is already blinking.

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As someone who hasn’t read most of the LOTR books but has enjoyed all of the movies, I’m fairly excited for this show. I think a lot of people who remember liking the movies will check this out purely based on goodwill. Whether they continue watching it will depend on how good the premiere is. 

I’ve mentioned on other threads how anti-fandoms are almost as popular as normal fandoms these days, and I think this show is a prime example of that. There’s already a cottage industry of YouTubers who preemptively hate TROP lol. They’ll all watch the show though, ensuring that it will be renewed. Apathy is a much bigger death-knell, which is the hurdle the GOT spin-offs are facing instead right now.

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5 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

As someone who hasn’t read most of the LOTR books but has enjoyed all of the movies, I’m fairly excited for this show. I think a lot of people who remember liking the movies will check this out purely based on goodwill. Whether they continue watching it will depend on how good the premiere is. 

I’ve mentioned on other threads how anti-fandoms are almost as popular as normal fandoms these days, and I think this show is a prime example of that. There’s already a cottage industry of YouTubers who preemptively hate TROP lol. They’ll all watch the show though, ensuring that it will be renewed. Apathy is a much bigger death-knell, which is the hurdle the GOT spin-offs are facing instead right now.

I’m extremely skeptical.  If this is fanfiction writ large… it will be quite poor.

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5 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I’ve mentioned on other threads how anti-fandoms are almost as popular as normal fandoms these days

Surely being a fan of Tolkien makes it understandable to express distaste at the cynical hijacking of his name to push something that barely resembles Tolkien's works in any way.

Just as disliking what Disney is doing with Star Wars instead of unquestionably accepting whatever is fed to you doesn't make you an "anti-fan", it just makes you a fan with standards.

 

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16 hours ago, Darryk said:

Amazon has been a mixed bag so far.

The Boys, The Expanse, Invincible = great

Wheel of Time = not only poorly written but bad production value as well. 

I vehemently disliked Invincible. Poor writing that thought substituting cynicism for intelligence or wit would automatically make it great. All the more baffling given it's on the same channel as both The Tick and The Boys, which take the same idea and make it work very well.

The Expanse, of course, did not start on Amazon.

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I’ve mentioned on other threads how anti-fandoms are almost as popular as normal fandoms these days, and I think this show is a prime example of that. There’s already a cottage industry of YouTubers who preemptively hate TROP lol. They’ll all watch the show though, ensuring that it will be renewed. Apathy is a much bigger death-knell, which is the hurdle the GOT spin-offs are facing instead right now.

To some extent, yes. I think there's massive red flags around some aspects of this show and other (somewhat fewer by now) elements that seem positive, but of course until it airs we cannot say for sure. There's a lot of people investing in the fact it's going to be crap before it airs and they do that until they can't then back down and say actually it was okay. Of course, the opposite happens as well: the One Ring's fanboying of the show and not really engaging with even mild criticism is probably the most extreme example of that.

There is also the modern media landscape where something can't start poorly but dramatically improve, or start well but then degrade. It's either * Total Shit, Kill Everyone Involved or ***** The Greatest Thing Evaaah and there is absolutely no inbetween. That's fairly tedious. Nuance is a thing.

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56 minutes ago, Werthead said:

There is also the modern media landscape where something can't start poorly but dramatically improve, or start well but then degrade. It's either * Total Shit, Kill Everyone Involved or ***** The Greatest Thing Evaaah and there is absolutely no inbetween. That's fairly tedious. Nuance is a thing.

On the other hand, YouTubers who were bashing Stranger Things after season 3 are praising the hell out of it this after this season.

I think the perception of series can change sometimes and that the top Youtubers will give credit where credit is due.

The problem with LOTR is whether it's good or bad, it has barely anything to do with Tolkien and that alone is a reason to dislike it. It's not right to use Tolkien's name for something that is so far removed from his writings.

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57 minutes ago, Darryk said:

The problem with LOTR is whether it's good or bad, it has barely anything to do with Tolkien and that alone is a reason to dislike it. It's not right to use Tolkien's name for something that is so far removed from his writings.

Would you argue we should remove the LotR name from Peter Jackson's movies, or the 1970s animated films, or the 1950s and 1980s radio play versions, or the various video game adaptations?

A lot of them have changed things from the source material to varying degrees, sometimes quite wildly. That's why they are called adaptations.

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2 hours ago, Werthead said:

Would you argue we should remove the LotR name from Peter Jackson's movies, or the 1970s animated films, or the 1950s and 1980s radio play versions, or the various video game adaptations?

A lot of them have changed things from the source material to varying degrees, sometimes quite wildly. That's why they are called adaptations.

Nowhere near the level of what Amazon are doing.

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41 minutes ago, Darryk said:

Nowhere near the level of what Amazon are doing.

I invite you to rewatch the animated Return of the King, complete with disco-dancing orcs and very strange musical numbers (at least their version of The Hobbit based the musical numbers on the poems in the book).

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22 hours ago, Werthead said:

I invite you to rewatch the animated Return of the King, complete with disco-dancing orcs and very strange musical numbers (at least their version of The Hobbit based the musical numbers on the poems in the book).

And did anyone say that's a good thing? And, maybe even more importantly, would anyone who said that's bad be labeled various types of -ists for saying so?

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32 minutes ago, baxus said:

And did anyone say that's a good thing? And, maybe even more importantly, would anyone who said that's bad be labeled various types of -ists for saying so?

Not sure what you mean here.

A lot of people - including myself - have been criticising this series for various credible problems, such as the timeline compression, eliminating the epic spans of time that are a key part of Tolkien's work and the inherent silliness of "Meteor Man" as a concept (there are other, possibly equally silly concepts in Tolkien, but at least they come from Tolkien). I think there's also been a reasonable, "well, let's actually watch the thing before getting hysterical about it," attitude from many.

A lot of other people online - not on this forum - have been hysterically frothing and screaming about the show, in many cases being fine with sweeping changes to the source material in other adaptations but losing their shit the second a black person shows up on screen. Calling out those people as racist where that is a clear part of their agenda is fully justified.

There are hardcore defenders of the show like the One Ring team - a stance as bizarre to take at this juncture as the hysterical critics - who have taken advantage of this to call all critics of the footage so far racist, which is both a lie and intellectually cowardly. There is plenty of silly or poor stuff in the material released so far (like the unconvincing CGI and #meteorman) which has nothing to do with casting. I don't think anyone has done that in this or any preceding thread here on the matter.

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The TORN people are weird. Weren't they super against the show to begin with? I recall they were reporting all sorts of negative stuff early on, and IIRC were rooting for Bryan Cogman to take over from the showrunners. Then this pivot. Did someone push out the guys who were running it, or did they simply see which way the winds blew and changed tack?

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6 minutes ago, Ran said:

The TORN people are weird. Weren't they super against the show to begin with? I recall they were reporting all sorts of negative stuff early on, and IIRC were rooting for Bryan Cogman to take over from the showrunners. Then this pivot. Did someone push out the guys who were running it, or did they simply see which way the winds blew and changed tack?

As far as I can tell, when Amazon started off this idea they used the "Young Aragorn" idea that Del Toro and Jackson had floated during the Hobbit development process, since an outline and various ideas were floating around New Line/Warner Brothers from way back then. TORN picked up the idea and ran with it long past the point it had been abandoned and the Second Age idea had been developed instead, and got very annoyed whenever anyone suggested it wasn't going to be Young Aragorn (since that would suck).

TORN then got into a pissing contest with various other fansites and especially newer YouTube sites. TORN had the inside skinny on the Jackson movies and clearly loved having insider access and knowledge, and with this show they no longer had that. There was a period of various YouTubers getting great inside information (Fellowship of Fans in particular) and TORN trying to angrily say they were lying, but then being proven wrong.

TORN then seemed to have a complete 180 change of heart and have been breathlessly praising the show ever since. Whether they suddenly got better inside information, officially accredited by Amazon or whatever, is unclear, but they've been hyper, hyper-positive on the show for the last year or two.

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43 minutes ago, Ran said:

The TORN people are weird. Weren't they super against the show to begin with? I recall they were reporting all sorts of negative stuff early on, and IIRC were rooting for Bryan Cogman to take over from the showrunners. Then this pivot. Did someone push out the guys who were running it, or did they simply see which way the winds blew and changed tack?

I mean, I remember they were super positive when Young Aragorn was rumoured and wouldn't hear a word against it. To the point where they actually argued the show will be respectful to canon because... Amazon spent a lot of money on it?

At some point, they seem to have lost their 'insider' position and went through a pouting phase. Maybe they've got scoops again so they're back to fanboying to the nth degree. Or maybe they're hoping being really positive will get them some Inside Information for S2. 

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