The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (Prime)

[VincentHanna]

As someone who has never read a LOTR book, and only fully watched the rotoscoped 80's version which scared the bejesus out of me (not seen Jacksons films, just snippets, not really my cup of tea) I'm ambivalent to Jacksons changes but can see that, whatever decisions were made, Jackson made them "in good faith", respecting the Authors wishes whereas from the Amazon cast interviews previously the desire seems to be "I want change LOTR into what I want it to be and you can't stop me" which is just a very narcissistic way of thinking for me.

Have you even looked in to this?

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power showrunners address rumors that modern politics will influence the show

Exclusive: Co-showrunner Patrick McKay tells Total Film the show aspires "to being timeless" like Tolkien's work

www.gamesradar.com

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

I suppose the talking point is that, whilst changes to the Lore are always going to happen with any adaption, some changes (Jackson) are seen as respectful to the Author whilst other changes (Amazon) are considered disrespectful.

As someone who has never read a LOTR book, and only fully watched the rotoscoped 80's version which scared the bejesus out of me (not seen Jacksons films, just snippets, not really my cup of tea) I'm ambivalent to Jacksons changes but can see that, whatever decisions were made, Jackson made them "in good faith", respecting the Authors wishes whereas from the Amazon cast interviews previously the desire seems to be "I want change LOTR into what I want it to be and you can't stop me" which is just a very narcissistic way of thinking for me.

Yep, also have to consider Jackson is now over 20 years ago. Things change, the requirements placed on him if it was today may well have been different.

The rotoscoped one was the one I meant above. Probably closer to lore than Jackson and yet it flopped.
It was very dark thats for sure.

I think one of the advantages Jackson had was the cast he managed to assemble. If you watch the extras you see how they fed from the background etc.
It was very star studded. I suspect it would have been notably less if it was done without some of the actors in it.
Mortensen
Sean Bean
Sir Ian McKellen
Orlando Bloom
Sir Ian Holm
Hugo Weaving
Cate Blanchett
Christopher Lee
John Noble
Bernard Hill
Thats not even the complete list, but thats some line of talent

I know you haven't seen the films so you wont recognise the bit, but at one point Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) kicks an helmet, he breaks his foot doing this. Acting looks superb with the pain and scream until you find out that he broke his foot doing it! Little less acting then

Viggo Mortensen breaks his toe in LOTR

In this scene Aragorn believes Merry and Pippin to be dead. In a moment of great anger and hopelessness he kicks a helmet and falls to his knees in despair. ...

www.youtube.com

You should watch them even if they aren't very lore accurate , they are good films

 

[C Kent]

Have you even looked in to this?

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power showrunners address rumors that modern politics will influence the show

Exclusive: Co-showrunner Patrick McKay tells Total Film the show aspires "to being timeless" like Tolkien's work

www.gamesradar.com

ignoring any 'woke' crap, the show is being produced by nobodies with no industry credits, that's a massive red flag in itself let alone for a production that's costing a billion or 2.

 

[Mr Jack]

I suppose the talking point is that, whilst changes to the Lore are always going to happen with any adaption, some changes (Jackson) are seen as respectful to the Author whilst other changes (Amazon) are considered disrespectful.

It's because making a character black is a much bigger violation of the character than completely screwing with Faramir's entire character and role in the story. I'm not sure why that's hard to understand.

 

[ianh]

Have you even looked in to this?

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power showrunners address rumors that modern politics will influence the show

Exclusive: Co-showrunner Patrick McKay tells Total Film the show aspires "to being timeless" like Tolkien's work

www.gamesradar.com

I have now, thanks for the link and one statement stands out for me "We aspire to being timeless. That’s why these books still speak to people so much, because so much of what’s in them has not aged a day. And we aspire to do the same thing." yet the decisions made so far that we've seen are not "timeless" decisions, they are very specifically and pointedly "today's decision" which makes the showrunners quote of "We don’t want to adapt the material in a way that might feel dated." seem to be very much at odds to what they're ACTUALLY doing. Thing is I don't think he's "telling lies"at all, I just think his definition of "dated vs timeless" might be "old white men are dated and new modern multiculturalism will be timeless", which would be subjective and, looking back decades later may be correct, who knows.

It'll be very interesting, a year down the line, to revisit this thread and see if what the showrunners said in your link matches what they did. I suspect it won't I would suggest that, yet again, everyone saying "get woke, go broke" will, yet again, be shown to be correct but it'd be lovely to be wrong about that as, irrespective of whether I like LOTR or not, it'd be nice to have a "good" TV show.

Late Night Edit - Looks like I didn't have to wait a year after all but I'll still check back - an executive producer gave an interview to Vanity Fair in February and said “It felt only natural to us that an adaptation of Tolkien’s work would reflect what the world actually looks like” - sooooooooo from "we aspire to being timeless" to "an adaptation of Tolkien’s work would reflect what the world actually looks like".

Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ Series Rises: Inside ‘The Rings of Power’

One show to rule them all—the first look at a billion-dollar saga set thousands of years before J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendary trilogy.

www.vanityfair.com

Plus from the previous page the actress playing Disa said "For new generations this is their version of Tolkien............this is a reflection of the world we live in"

So again, not something "timeless" but something which will be extremely dated, very quickly.

Rings Of Power UK star: my character is the face of necessary redress of balance

British actress Sophia Nomvete says the series would help create ‘accessibility for generations to come’.

uk.news.yahoo.com

In simple terms the TV show is competing against a universally adored book and a trilogy of films, which seem to be universally loved and have won 14 Oscars between them and countless other awards, and if this was written & made with the same level of quality of those two I doubt there'd be many genuine complaints (you'll always get some anyway) but from the cast, execs and showrunners the story seems to be at odds to their claims.

I'm not sure why that's hard to understand.

As it was included in a reply to my post, are you asking me that question or is that an open question to the forum in general Mr Jack? I just wanted to make sure before answering so I didn't make any mistakes.

 

[Bigpig]

Accessibility?

What does that even mean?

LoTR is one of the best-selling most loved books in the World!!!!

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

Accessibility?

What does that even mean?

LoTR is one of the best-selling most loved books in the World!!!!

I believe it means in regards to discussions like this that it doesn't immediately turn people away as being just a show about middle aged white mens views of the world, and attracts other demographics.

The books are not easy reads, they are pretty dry bar little amounts of humour, a certain amount of adaption is 100% required.
Honestly I think most people think the movies were some nigh on lore perfect straight book plot now.

The problem is some of us think things like changing a character to add to the love interested (Arwen @ ford), adding surfing elves, adding a whole army into a battle that wasn't there (Elves @ helmsdeep) etc etc were not needed so broke unnecessary lore.
But at that point you have to wonder why they are deemed acceptable to these lore fanatics, when as said, making a hobbit black is so OMG you destroyed the lore!!!!1111!!1
I come to the conclusion its not about the lore at all, and the issue is something else. I wonder what that could be.

The great thing about movies and books etc is that nothing is actually damaged, the books are still there in their original format.
All the next director needs to do is create a new vision and get backing. So I am sure at some point another LOTR will be filmed, probably some years off yet, so Jacksons changes will likely be reversed, I suspect no surfing elf, but we will see.
Maybe the next wont use plastic armour, actually some of the WETA stuff was plastic as well funnily enough. Although the vast majority was very very well made, a real WETA staple.

Take things like spiderman (again lore gets changed but less so it wasn't that lore heavy in reality.) Each director applies their own interpretation along with the writers etc.

So assuming the rings of power is a flop, I am sure another more lore heavy version will come along backed by a couple of billion more dollars to wipe the floor with the rings of power about to be released seeing as its soooo bad.

 

[C Kent]

snip

Its almost like Amazon have realised the amount of blowback they are getting isn't making people want to watch so they've pivoted and told people involved to ignore all the previous marketing points and try to get 'middle aged white men' onboard.

I believe it means in regards to discussions like this that it doesn't immediately turn people away as being just a show about middle aged white mens views of the world, and attracts other demographics.

Game of thrones did more to attract those 'other demographics' than any other show in history, I wonder what they did right compared to the likes of WoT/this abomination.

Take things like spiderman (again lore gets changed but less so it wasn't that lore heavy in reality.) Each director applies their own interpretation along with the writers etc.

Comic Book characters aren't at all comparable, as they've been constantly rebooted and had their origins messed with time and time again.

Interestingly the western comic book market for the past decade has been hiring talentless hacks that are all about diversity - making characters gay/ bi, race swapping characters, killing off male heroes and replacing them with women. Guess what, the sales have tanked, no one is reading them!! Entertainment by in large is about escapism from RL, we don't want to preached at.

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

Its almost like Amazon have realised the amount of blowback they are getting isn't making people want to watch so they've pivoted and told people involved to ignore all the previous marketing points and try to get 'middle aged white men' onboard.

Game of thrones did more to attract those 'other demographics' than any other show in history, I wonder what they did right compared to the likes of WoT/this abomination.

Comic Book characters aren't at all comparable, as they've been constantly rebooted and had their origins messed with time and time again.

Interestingly the western comic book market for the past decade has been hiring talentless hacks that are all about diversity - making characters gay/ bi, race swapping characters, killing off male heroes and replacing them with women. Guess what, the sales have tanked, no one is reading them!! Entertainment by in large is about escapism from RL, we don't want to preached at.

GOT was mainly watched by the book readers initially. It slowly gained must watch status over time as more people talked about it. Thats a very common pattern in regards shows that become successful.
I converted a few people over time to watch it who then talked about it. Snowball into avalanche basically.
Its like all the outrage about season 8 and the OMG rubbish I cant watch it from some hardcore fans, and yet the actual viewing figures :

How Much Sex & Violence Does GoT Actually Contain? We Asked the AI. - Valossa - Video Image Speech and Audio Recognition AI

OULU, FINLAND - Game of Thrones has raised questions about the amount of explicit material. As a response to concerns of the numerous sexual violence

valossa.com

Ok so you dont like comic book characters, what about star wars when even George Lucas changed things over time. I remember nerds raging about that as well.

Comic books are a funny thing, they very much peaked then dropped off after "invention". They then had somewhat of a reasurgence and then another drop.
Tends to be that sort of cycle with these sorts of thing. I guess the middle aged white blokes who cant survive outside their safe space where everyone looks like them dropped off before anyone else started reading
Or maybe they finally grew up

 

[C Kent]

GOT was mainly watched by the book readers initially. It slowly gained must watch status over time as more people talked about it. Thats a very common pattern in regards shows that become successful.
I converted a few people over time to watch it who then talked about it. Snowball into avalanche basically.

Thanks for making my point for me I guess, a show that prioritised good story telling over current modern social statements based on an excellent series of books turned out to be good shocker

Ok so you dont like comic book characters, what about star wars when even George Lucas changed things over time. I remember nerds raging about that as well.

Most of the nerd rage with star wars, was either ewoks, jar jar binks, wooden acting or just plain old bad story telling.

Comic books are a funny thing, they very much peaked then dropped off after "invention". They then had somewhat of a reasurgence and then another drop.
Tends to be that sort of cycle with these sorts of thing. I guess the middle aged white blokes who cant survive outside their safe space where everyone looks like them dropped off before anyone else started reading
Or maybe they finally grew up

They've all moved over to manga and started reading that. God damn those pesky, set in their ways, racist/homophobic/transphobic white men reading Japanese comic books.. Or they're just reading content by creators via crowdfunding sites that are focused on telling a good story without the **** modern comics are about.

 

[fez]

GOT was mainly watched by the book readers initially. It slowly gained must watch status over time as more people talked about it. Thats a very common pattern in regards shows that become successful.

It really wasn't. It was pretty massive very quickly and just got bigger.

I remember people talking about it a lot very early on in the first season. It gained massive acclaim and viewership because it was really well made, a great story and a great cast.

I can't have too much faith in people making a massive show spanning multiple seasons when there isn't solid source material to work from and they are being pushed and pulled by the studios. We will soon see but nothing about this screams "classic".

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

It really wasn't. It was pretty massive very quickly and just got bigger.

I remember people talking about it a lot very early on in the first season. It gained massive acclaim and viewership because it was really well made, a great story and a great cast.

I can't have too much faith in people making a massive show spanning multiple seasons when there isn't solid source material to work from and they are being pushed and pulled by the studios. We will soon see but nothing about this screams "classic".

Maybe check the viewership numbers, it really wasn't a massive instant success at all.
Yes it had good viewership but it converted non fantasy people for years.
Many people don't like the fantasy genre which is why they all take some time to reach momentum, much like scifi as well actually.

I linked a different source above, but you can look on wikipedia as well viewers steadily increased season by season. Which shows over time people who started watching then stuck with it.

Game of Thrones - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[chroniclard]

I watched GOT from the start because I was already a fan. Tons of people I know had never heard of it until at least S2, 3 or even 4.

 

[fez]

Maybe check the viewership numbers, it really wasn't a massive instant success at all.
Yes it had good viewership but it converted non fantasy people for years.
Many people don't like the fantasy genre which is why they all take some time to reach momentum, much like scifi as well actually.

I linked a different source above, but you can look on wikipedia as well viewers steadily increased season by season. Which shows over time people who started watching then stuck with it.

Game of Thrones - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I know that it grew and grew, thats why I said it gained massive viewership. Over 2.5m per episode is good numbers for a cable network show in its first season let alone a fantasy one.

 

[VincentHanna]

Me and my wife (then girlfriend) watched GOT from the outset and had never heard of the books.

 

[Fubsy]

I watched S1 alone, in one sitting

Then immediately got wife (then girlfriend) to watch, while I re-watched to see her re-action to the rolling head... Hooked ever since, but did notice the downturn in the last few seasons.

Never heard of the books either at that point.

Thing is with GoT, on the whole it had it's own world, there was no immersion breaking "oh, you know that thing that's terrible in your reality, well here's some content about it or a lecture for you". I think this was mainly because almost every individual and group in Westeros was generally a **** in some way any way, if you were good and virtuous? Probably gonna die

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

I watched GOT from the start because I was already a fan. Tons of people I know had never heard of it until at least S2, 3 or even 4.

This, I know loads of people who watched it, but it was mainly book fans that did so at the start since they likely had already heard lots about it being worked on.
The first season was actually pretty slow for the first half it wouldn't have hooked many non fans at that point, but come the middle and the end it was great.
It nothing unique, I mean unless your glued to tv schedules etc its hardly unusual that you will fall in love with a TV series later than the start.
I actually watched the whole of Stargate franchise after it was first aired.

I know that it grew and grew, thats why I said it gained massive viewership. Over 2.5m per episode is good numbers for a cable network show in its first season let alone a fantasy one.

Really? Hell even things like expanse on Syfy managed 0.5M
NCIS was like 12 Million or something
The witcher S2 had something like 2 billion minutes watched in the opening week, with WOT also scoring highly in minutes watched (they seem to have moved from the viewing figures they used to quote to this kind of metric now, probably more accurate)

But really the point was that the book fans would have been heavily inclined to watch from the start.
The non book fans picked up over time, and as non book fans they would have had no idea if the Ned stark death, the red wedding etc was per the book or different.
Just like people who hadn't read LOTR 50 times wont know all the small snippets of information, or things like surfing elves were not a thing in the book.
Just like people who hadn't read WOT wouldn't know how significantly changed loads of things were.
These people really don't care about the colour of a hobbits skin, they don't care about characters being switched in events, they dont care about the addition or deletion of a character etc etc
They watch it on its merits and vote with their eyes.
These are the people the networks want to attract.

I think its great to see people attempting to create more fantasy on TV. Sure I would rather its close to the original source, but if its a choice of getting purple elves surfing on shields whilst multi firing their bow, or nothing at all, give me the purple elves

 

[Fubsy]

Come on, that shield surfing scene was brilliant.

 

[D3K]

They can do whatever they want with Silmarillion and the first two ages, I will never try reading that book again. The first twenty pages may as well be a phone book...

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

I watched S1 alone, in one sitting

Then immediately got wife (then girlfriend) to watch, while I re-watched to see her re-action to the rolling head... Hooked ever since, but did notice the downturn in the last few seasons.

Never heard of the books either at that point.

Thing is with GoT, on the whole it had it's own world, there was no immersion breaking "oh, you know that thing that's terrible in your reality, well here's some content about it or a lecture for you". I think this was mainly because almost every individual and group in Westeros was generally a **** in some way any way, if you were good and virtuous? Probably gonna die

This ending bit was poop in comparison to the majority but then it was started close to the books as source and slowly moved away.
GRRM basically didn't publish a book from the start until the end (still hasnt) and as such he told them his plans very generally for the ending in the books.
No one other than a few people know if they really got close or not, and whether he will ever finish the books and not change his mind on the ending now. Or if they had a different ending to specifically not ruin the books ending.
Parts I see see such as the Cleganes ending like that I can see, but not the same setting in the lol hollywood type setting, but the ending yes.

If you watch some early season 1 in fact really until partly season 2 its very slow paced and very un hollywood like.
Roll on towards the end and it feels massively more hollywood than the start, fast paced, seemingly details light etc. Victim of its own success by this point I think.

The arya assassination (flying ninja like stuff) felt very much not how GRRM would write it, but the final assassination very much like how he would.

When you go back to the early seasons, at the time, the more hollywood ones often got the biggest media buzz so i suspect this lead to the direction of travel.

One things thats interesting is that GRRM says he needs two books to complete it. Which as per the end of the last book seems very unrealistic. So whilst there was massive annoyance at the seemingly sped up ending to the TV series its not that out of line with what GRRM says himself.
If he kept to the normal place he had set I estimate its more like 4 books.