The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

12 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

In the trailer Meteor-Man seemingly absorbs the fires around him, and we get what looks like an eye visage. But if it is Gandalf, and not Sauron, I have no doubt it's because of the famous line about the Secret Fire and the Flame of Anor.

[Corvinus85]

19 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Not saying it's a good idea, but I would not be surprised if that was a justification.

[Veltigar]

5 hours ago, Darryk said:

Ahahaha, fair enough.

I just felt the whole Iran thing was very much on the backburner and that it was so focused on the characters but I guess I did miss the political angle.

I think that's the crucial thing really. I don't particularly mind an agenda being pushed, as long as the film itself is great. I guess that goes for most sane people. 

[Zorral]

3 hours ago, Veltigar said:

. I don't particularly mind an agenda being pushed, as long as the film itself is great. I guess that goes for most sane people.

I give you then, Triumph of the Will and Birth of A Nation and Gone With the Wind and o so many others!  None of which had any effect whatsoever on how people viewed ever after the events and times of these great films.

[Krishtotter]

 

 

[ASOIAFrelatedusername]

If I recall correctly, Simon was the adaptation-friendly grandson and was never involved with any of Christopher's work. Is that another blatant attempt by Amazon to give the show legitimacy?

 

[Ran]

He and his father Christopher had a falling out over the Jackson films, and though they reconciled it was reported that they simply agreed to disagree. So, yeah, he was always pro-adaption (and, I guess, pro-more-money-for-the-Tolkien-Estate). 

[Veltigar]

14 hours ago, Zorral said:

I give you then, Triumph of the Will and Birth of A Nation and Gone With the Wind and o so many others!  None of which had any effect whatsoever on how people viewed ever after the events and times of these great films.

I'm not sure what you are trying to say exactly. Of the three examples mentioned, I have seen two and compared to their contemporary competitors, they were really much better as works of art. All have a reprehensible ideology behind it, but I think most people who saw it at the time were probably swept up by the skill on display. That's why their legacy can still be felt in today's movies. 

[Werthead]

This article - if accurate - apparently confirms that the $250 million Amazon paid for the rights has been folded into the Season 1 production budget, so the S1 budget wasn't really $500 million, it was half that.

[Veltigar]

Apparently the guy playing Gil-Galad is the same actor who portrayed Abraham Lincoln in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. I don't know why, but I find that hilarious 

[Zorral]

7 hours ago, Veltigar said:

I'm not sure what you are trying to say exactly

Really?

Another way of putting it then is this critic's:

Quote

“The Boys” is especially shrewd on this dilemma, explicitly satirizing toxic fandoms. As the so-called heroes got even more brazen this season, lying and committing crimes in public, their fans grew more enamored with them. What used to look like an engaged fan community was perverted into an incipient fascist movement.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/20/arts/television/antiheroes-the-boys-batman.html

 

 

[Veltigar]

2 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Really?

Another way of putting it then is this critic's:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/20/arts/television/antiheroes-the-boys-batman.html

 

 

Nope, still don't get what point you are trying to make exactly. Stuff that is well made is going to be popular. If that stuff pushes reprehensible ideologies people will still lap it up because it is dramatically exciting. By contrast, if it's wholesome and agreeable in its ideology but poorly made no one will respond to it. That's why everyone remembers the chariot race in Ben Hur, but not the fact that he talks to Jesus. You can deplore that instinct in people, but denying that it's there seems kind of off no? If that is what you are trying to say. 

By the by I guess that is also why most people seem to hate the Ghostbuster reboot and everyone loves Fury Road. Both are probably quite feminist (I assume since I didn't see Ghostbusters since I don't care about the franchise and the fact that it had bad reviews by my usual critics), but Fury Road is a master class of film class and is therefore likely to be remembered positively and have a positive impact because of it. 

[Zorral]

2 minutes ago, Veltigar said:

Stuff that is well made is going to be popular.

That is not necessarily true.  There are so many exceptions to this that the mind boggles you would even say it.

[Veltigar]

1 minute ago, Zorral said:

That is not necessarily true.  There are so many exceptions to this that the mind boggles you would even say it.

On this point, yes, you are right. I should have added a qualifier. Something along the lines of "Stuff that is meant to be popular, is well made and well marketed is going to be popular". Still not entirely correct, but more true than not in this discussion and probably as close as we're going to get without turning this thread into a doctoral thesis.

To return to Triumph Des Willens and Birth of a Nation, those blew everything else that was out there at the time of their release out of the water, they were marketed well and intended to be seen by as many people as possible. Small wonder that that was in fact what ended up happening. 

[polishgenius]

On 7/19/2022 at 4:48 PM, Veltigar said:

I don't particularly mind an agenda being pushed, as long as the film itself is great. I guess that goes for most sane people. 

I'm glad you've come around on Warrior being a great film regardless of the sociopolitical unfairness of pushing Eggerton as the spotless hero of the piece. 

[Veltigar]

1 minute ago, polishgenius said:

I'm glad you've come around on Warrior being a great film regardless of the sociopolitical unfairness of pushing Eggerton as the spotless hero of the piece. 

Damn, respect, that is a deep cut  Warrior flounders dramatically because of the resolution in which Eggerton's undeserving deadbeat character gets it all, so it can't possibly count as dramatically satisfying under my own arbitrary definition and don't feel any influence about it whatsoever  

[Zorral]

4 hours ago, Veltigar said:

Triumph Des Willens

It helps too, doesn't it, when the entire government and state from the very very very tiptop down are out there sponsoring it on every level.

Additionally, let us both make clear that we both (and so does everyone else) that popular does not automatically mean by any means good.  There is enormous amount of madly popular stuff out there, past and present and doubtless in the future too, world without end, that is drek and dreadful.  And a significant amount of it is outright vile, and quite a bit is intentionally evil, with evil intent.

 

[Isis]

I had a bit of a switch-flicking moment this week, while I was reading a Twitter thread from a Tolkien fan account with images from the trailer. I was just reading through the captions (paraphrasing): Galadriel shipwrecked, Galadriel riding a horse, Galadriel is on Numenor. GALADRIEL IS ON NUMENOR? And all of a sudden I transitioned from 'cautiously optimistic' about the show to fully welcoming of new characters, new plotline, new stuff generally from the show. My brain finally worked out that this is not an adaptation and has accepted this and can feel positive about that. So now I feel like: yes, give me new things that I was not expecting. I want new stuff. I want to be surprised.

I do wonder if there are people who were rabidly anti the PJ films who have not changed their minds at all and are fully prepared (20 years on!) to show up (e.g. here and other discussion forums and on Twitter etc) and just bitch about things in the ROP show not being canon. They can't all be people who were Tolkien fans before 2001 though. Either way, it's their loss. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 hours ago, Isis said:

I had a bit of a switch-flicking moment this week, while I was reading a Twitter thread from a Tolkien fan account with images from the trailer. I was just reading through the captions (paraphrasing): Galadriel shipwrecked, Galadriel riding a horse, Galadriel is on Numenor. GALADRIEL IS ON NUMENOR? And all of a sudden I transitioned from 'cautiously optimistic' about the show to fully welcoming of new characters, new plotline, new stuff generally from the show. My brain finally worked out that this is not an adaptation and has accepted this and can feel positive about that. So now I feel like: yes, give me new things that I was not expecting. I want new stuff. I want to be surprised.

I do wonder if there are people who were rabidly anti the PJ films who have not changed their minds at all and are fully prepared (20 years on!) to show up (e.g. here and other discussion forums and on Twitter etc) and just bitch about things in the ROP show not being canon. They can't all be people who were Tolkien fans before 2001 though. Either way, it's their loss. 

It could be good.  We will see.  I’m simply… discomforted… with the time compression I keep hearing about.  Compressing from Millennia… to mere decades is a really big change.

We will see.

[Werthead]

Bear McCreary will be the show's main composer and Howard Shore has created the main theme.

Amazon has released two of McCreary's tracks, "Galadriel" and "Sauron," and they are petty good. I have no idea how McCreary can be both so insanely prolific and so incredibly good when working in drastically different styles of music over many different projects over twenty years. The same guy did Battlestar Galactica, Black Sails, Da Vinci's Demons (which won him an Emmy), a Call of Duty video game and now this.

Amusing because I remember asking him on Twitter c. 2010 if he was interested in doing the GoT soundtrack and he said he was really unenthused by medieval fantasy as a concept.