[Spoilers]Rings of Power 3: Tolkien’s actual writing… who needs that?

[Le Cygne]

14 minutes ago, Farerb said:

They also could have done romance with Elrond and Celebrían.

Oh yes! Elrond and Celebrian would have been very nice too. They would have loved to see it. These are nice things to get creative with in an adaptation.

And of course, people love to see ongoing loving relationships, too. Beginnings, remembrances, ongoing attraction... lots of ways to show things.

(I'm rewatching LOTR along with my re-read, and just got to the part where Aragorn sings the song of Luthien and Beren. After all this time, looking forward to Arwen's arrival.)

[SeanF]

46 minutes ago, Le Cygne said:

Yep. If they wanted to appeal to shippers, the real story was a nice opportunity. The movies played up the Arwen and Aragorn romance nicely, and they loved it.

The show even hinted at it, when Galadriel mentioned Celeborn. They could have had flashbacks or included it in the scenes from the past in the beginning.

Tolkien was a pretty good writer of romance.

 

[SeanF]

35 minutes ago, Le Cygne said:

Oh yes! Elrond and Celebrian would have been very nice too. They would have loved to see it. These are nice things to get creative with in an adaptation.

And of course, people love to see ongoing loving relationships, too. Beginnings, remembrances, ongoing attraction... lots of ways to show things.

(I'm rewatching LOTR along with my re-read, and just got to the part where Aragorn sings the song of Luthien and Beren. After all this time, looking forward to Arwen's arrival.)

I don’t watch much TV, but my impression is that, in a modern adaptation, we’d be more likely to get a graphic depiction of Celebrian’s torment at the hands of orcs, than her romance with Elrond.

[baxus]

16 hours ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

But we are not talking about his books but the partially fanfic his son published right? The worldbuilding is great but it is a source material severely lacking in characters.  That's why I love Adar I guess.

Edit: To compare something like Fast and the Furious to the pinnacle if SFX porn that Avatar is just shows that our tastes are completely incompatible.

No, RoP is not based on "fanfic his son published", it's based on LotR appendices. Actually, it didn't really turn out to be based on LotR appendices that much, but was originally supposed to. Also, Cristopher didn't publish fanfic, he edited his father's unreleased work and published that.

P.S. Avatar is basically Pocahontas with outstanding CGI. The only reason we all went to see it back in the day is that it was the first movie that had 3D done right, and because of that was visually stunning. If RoP had made such a breakthrough in CGI maybe we would be willing to overlook the lacking story and characters, like we did with Avatar. As it is, we're not willing to do so.

[AncalagonTheBlack]

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-rings-of-power-struggling-with-young-viewers-2022-10

Quote

The two-episode premiere of "The Rings of Power" was watched by 12.6 million viewers in the US in its first three days. Nielsen confirmed to Insider that the third episode was watched by 7.47 million average viewers in the US in its first three days, though Nielsen only measures viewing on connected TVs, which doesn't include other devices like laptops.

 

[Luzifer's right hand]

1 hour ago, baxus said:

No, RoP is not based on "fanfic his son published", it's based on LotR appendices. Actually, it didn't really turn out to be based on LotR appendices that much, but was originally supposed to. Also, Cristopher didn't publish fanfic, he edited his father's unreleased work and published that.

P.S. Avatar is basically Pocahontas with outstanding CGI. The only reason we all went to see it back in the day is that it was the first movie that had 3D done right, and because of that was visually stunning. If RoP had made such a breakthrough in CGI maybe we would be willing to overlook the lacking story and characters, like we did with Avatar. As it is, we're not willing to do so.

Well so a source material with any real character interaction at all.

Took him long enough to edit already written stuff and weirdly the only entertaining one was done together Guy Gavriel Kay a great author.

I just saw Avatar again in cinema and it is still without peer. Still one of the best uses of 3D and nothing released since it matches the beauty of it's nature scences. Hell even the short space scence still looks better than most SF released in the last 13 years. I can't relate to people who claim it does not look good anymore at all. The story is boring but that does not effect it's beauty at all.

 

 

[Cas Stark]

3 hours ago, AncalagonTheBlack said:

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-rings-of-power-struggling-with-young-viewers-2022-10

 

Thanks.  I wonder if that means viewership dropped off as the series went along. I know I found most of the episodes very difficult to get through, they were dull.  I would think that someone who had no familiarity with Tolkien so didn't know who was who or what to look for may have found them even more boring than I did.

I'm rewatching LOTR.  Jackson may never have done much else that was great, but the trilogy was an instant classic for good reason.  

[The Bard of Banefort]

Well, HOTD hasn’t really connected with younger viewers either. What shows do younger viewers watch anyway?

I’m in my 20s, but I watched ROP on my laptop, so I suppose my view wouldn’t count towards the final viewing numbers.

It’s ironic though, because all the marketing around inclusivity and YouTubers and the actors talking about their activism was clearly aimed at appealing to younger viewers. They would have been better off courting boomers. 

The lack of merchandise is undoubtedly also playing a role. How is it that Amazon of all places still doesn’t have any merch?

[Le Cygne]

5 hours ago, SeanF said:

I don’t watch much TV, but my impression is that, in a modern adaptation, we’d be more likely to get a graphic depiction of Celebrian’s torment at the hands of orcs, than her romance with Elrond.

I watch a lot, and there's lots of romance, both young and old audiences like it. They could have done something nice for the canon pairs (like PJ did with Aragorn/Arwen, for example).

It's a nice way to naturally get viewers to stay tuned. That's why there's so much Galadriel and Sauron shipping, they wanted something for her, and that's all they gave them.

[Cas Stark]

40 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Well, HOTD hasn’t really connected with younger viewers either. What shows do younger viewers watch anyway?

I’m in my 20s, but I watched ROP on my laptop, so I suppose my view wouldn’t count towards the final viewing numbers.

It’s ironic though, because all the marketing around inclusivity and YouTubers and the actors talking about their activism was clearly aimed at appealing to younger viewers. They would have been better off courting boomers. 

The lack of merchandise is undoubtedly also playing a role. How is it that Amazon of all places still doesn’t have any merch?

I'm curious, why did you watch on a laptop and not a TV?  I would think especially something like ROP would/should be watched on as large a screen as possible to get the full benefit of the good CGI.

[Calibandar]

1 hour ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Well, HOTD hasn’t really connected with younger viewers either. What shows do younger viewers watch anyway?

 

Euphoria.

[Caligula_K3]

1 hour ago, Cas Stark said:

I'm curious, why did you watch on a laptop and not a TV?  I would think especially something like ROP would/should be watched on as large a screen as possible to get the full benefit of the good CGI.

Lots of people in their 20s and 30s don't own TVs. My anecdotal experience is that unless you have a game console or really like sports, you're probably not going to have a TV, and will just watch everything on laptop or tablet.

I'm in my early 30s and work with people in the early 20s, including some still in university. So I can't speak about teenagers, but my impression is that The Mandalorian and Marvel TV shows are a huge deal among people in that age group. I also think (and this could be completely wrong) that nerd culture is getting less and less popular. There are still tons of people who love it, but I don't think it's as cool as it was five years ago to be really into Marvel, sci-fi, fantasy shows, etc...

[The Bard of Banefort]

8 hours ago, Calibandar said:

Euphoria.

That was my first thought too, but it wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of middle-aged men were also watching this show in private lol.

[The Bard of Banefort]

8 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

I'm curious, why did you watch on a laptop and not a TV?  I would think especially something like ROP would/should be watched on as large a screen as possible to get the full benefit of the good CGI.

Part of it is that it’s easier to hear the dialogue and rewind on a computer, but it’s also more private. I don’t have to worry about bothering anyone else in my house if I’m using headphones.

7 hours ago, Caligula_K3 said:

Lots of people in their 20s and 30s don't own TVs. My anecdotal experience is that unless you have a game console or really like sports, you're probably not going to have a TV, and will just watch everything on laptop or tablet.

I'm in my early 30s and work with people in the early 20s, including some still in university. So I can't speak about teenagers, but my impression is that The Mandalorian and Marvel TV shows are a huge deal among people in that age group. I also think (and this could be completely wrong) that nerd culture is getting less and less popular. There are still tons of people who love it, but I don't think it's as cool as it was five years ago to be really into Marvel, sci-fi, fantasy shows, etc...

I agree about the decay of geek culture. It really peaked during the mid-to-late teens, and the decline probably started towards the end of COVID. Part of it is just oversaturation and the resulting loss of quality—does anyone even know how many Marvel shows there are now?—and part of it, I think, is that by getting as big as they did, these properties lost some of what made them so special as niche products. You can feel the corporatization around it now.

People have also been let down by franchises, but I think overexposure might be a worse issue. Avengers: Endgame and The Rise of Skywalker both came out in 2019, and everyone online was saying how Marvel was a thousand times better than Star Wars and would be remembered more fondly. Only three years later, I think that’s already proving false. Star Wars seems to have reverted back to being a smaller yet passionate fanbase, whereas Marvel has lost a ton of its prestige in a short amount of time. It used to be considered the coolest property, now people use it as an insult (for example, whenever someone says HOTD is boring, the knee jerk response is always “Well, go watch Marvel then! This is serious television!”)

The thing is, I don’t know what’s replacing it. The pseudo-political, wannabe revolutionary trend that was big at around the same time (i.e. Breadtube, the Intellectual Dark Web, etc.) has also lost a lot of steam. Is it just YouTube and TikTok now? I’m not sure what the next cultural zeitgeist will be.

[Jace, Extat]

Kids today watch movies on their fucking phones. And they're so light-blinded by the time they're seven that their eyes no longer record color correctly,(assertion, not recorded observation) so the picture is always saturated to shit and they don't even care that they're looking at a muffled grey-brown kaleidoscope. 

So zombies is what's gonna be the next big hit. The nostalgia wheel turneth, for the folks who remember civilization, and the faceless amorphousness of the obstacle will appeal to those kids and the tiny phone screens. As well as their general solipsism. 

 

[Raja]

Y'all talking like some real old as fuck people in here

[Farerb]

4 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Part of it is that it’s easier to hear the dialogue and rewind on a computer, but it’s also more private. I don’t have to worry about bothering anyone else in my house if I’m using headphones.

I agree about the decay of geek culture. It really peaked during the mid-to-late teens, and the decline probably started towards the end of COVID. Part of it is just oversaturation and the resulting loss of quality—does anyone even know how many Marvel shows there are now?—and part of it, I think, is that by getting as big as they did, these properties lost some of what made them so special as niche products. You can feel the corporatization around it now.

People have also been let down by franchises, but I think overexposure might be a worse issue. Avengers: Endgame and The Rise of Skywalker both came out in 2019, and everyone online was saying how Marvel was a thousand times better than Star Wars and would be remembered more fondly. Only three years later, I think that’s already proving false. Star Wars seems to have reverted back to being a smaller yet passionate fanbase, whereas Marvel has lost a ton of its prestige in a short amount of time. It used to be considered the coolest property, now people use it as an insult (for example, whenever someone says HOTD is boring, the knee jerk response is always “Well, go watch Marvel then! This is serious television!”)

The thing is, I don’t know what’s replacing it. The pseudo-political, wannabe revolutionary trend that was big at around the same time (i.e. Breadtube, the Intellectual Dark Web, etc.) has also lost a lot of steam. Is it just YouTube and TikTok now? I’m not sure what the next cultural zeitgeist will be.

Every movie/TV show has become a battlefield and people are exhausted at this point. Talking about those things on the internet used to be fun.

I'm actually fine with geek culture dying. Maybe we'll start seeing true creativity and vision again instead of capitalizing on people's nostalgia.

[The Bard of Banefort]

2 hours ago, Raja said:

Y'all talking like some real old as fuck people in here

Hey man, I’m 26. I’m just old on the inside 

[HexMachina]

Who can afford to pay for a TV these days?!

I finished this season. I didn't really enjoy it and probably would not have continued if I was watching week to week, but I waited and binged it. Were I not so attached to Tolkein's works I think I'd have found this fine, a bit clunky but not terrible. 

Setting aside my love of the source material though, I did have a few issues, the main one being that I feel as though the show was wobbling between some dark material while wanting to stay very PG. I think they needed to commit to a target audience a bit more which may have helped the overall tone of the show.

Some good points about the show:

• Pretty good performances overall by the cast
• Some really great visuals
• Durin/Elrond
• The Harfoots - while I don't think they belong in this story, there was a definite charm to them which was fun to watch.
• Adar was an interesting character. I didn't much care for the elf and the other humans Adar went up against but as a character, intriguing. I would like to see more.

 

The negatives have already been discussed in detail so I don't think I need to repeat them

[Luzifer's right hand]

8 hours ago, Raja said:

Y'all talking like some real old as fuck people in here

Most of us were not even born in this millennium!