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

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The problem is, if you write a series like this, 100% based on the source material and so perfect that even the Tolkien geeks were going, wow I never realised that...

... you can pretty much guarantee it would only see one season as the vast majority would switch off, and it would be economically canned.

Tolkien was writing in a different age (no pun intended), failure to modernise will only see the subject matter less relevant and harder for most normal people to waste their time watching.

Good TV/theatre rarely appeals to experts on the subject :
Top Gun, expert pilots cant get over the flight issues for example

I remember the online hate against LOTR Fellowship. And yet for many it was very watchable and many people who never read LOTR or the Hobbit watched all three films.
 
Soldato
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JRR Token presents...

Edit: Meh, I pay for Prime for the delivery. If you guys say it's crap I probably won't waste my time. I'm certainly not tuning in from release. I'd rather watch the Jackson films again as the quality is known.
 
Soldato
Joined
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The problem is, if you write a series like this, 100% based on the source material and so perfect that even the Tolkien geeks were going, wow I never realised that...

... you can pretty much guarantee it would only see one season as the vast majority would switch off, and it would be economically canned.

Tolkien was writing in a different age (no pun intended), failure to modernise will only see the subject matter less relevant and harder for most normal people to waste their time watching.

Good TV/theatre rarely appeals to experts on the subject :
Top Gun, expert pilots cant get over the flight issues for example

I remember the online hate against LOTR Fellowship. And yet for many it was very watchable and many people who never read LOTR or the Hobbit watched all three films.


There's a section of hardcore nerds in any fanbase who will never be satisfied with anything presented in film or on TV - they are to be ignored. Their expectations are beyond reasonable. Then there's fans of IP's who have realistic expectations and aren't going to go into 4 page rants on Reddit and forums because a minor carchter was left out, or because that shield looked a bit wrong.

I prefer to ask the question - did it remain true to the spirit of the source material, even though changes were made?

LOTR Trilogy? YES

GOT up until the point they ruined it? YES.

Hobbit Trilogy? NO that was an absolute shambles.

I'm not sure about that, look at the LOTR Trilogy people who knew nothing of JRRT, abosutely loved it, because the source material was largely left to speak for itself, it had no agenda's, and most of all because it was a brilliant piece of art. If the source materiall is good, and you handle it well people will watch, the people who don't want to watch a fantasy epic about Elves and Dwarves and magic rings, aren't going to watch a sanitised, modernised, or buggered about with version of it either.

They'll just watch Love Island or Fast and Furious 57 anyway.
 
Soldato
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Funny how they couldn't wait to show off the stupid black Dwarf (without beard no less!) to Vanity Fair, but left her out the trailer.
shes in the trailer? 45 seconds in

the less said about female dwarfs without beards in the Tolkien universe the better, cant criticise or you are a racist
 
Soldato
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shes in the trailer? 45 seconds in

the less said about female dwarfs without beards in the Tolkien universe the better, cant criticise or you are a racist

Yeah you're right, I missed her.

People won't silence me with slurs, they're water off a ducks back, and it is the internet what do I care anyway!

:D

I was hopeful for this at the start, but everything I have seen and read since has been detrimental to my vision of Tolkien, same thing with the Hobbit, it was clear pretty early on they had screwed it up, and what did we get? an absolute travesty.
 
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We should be entering a golden age of adaptations from classic fantasy/sci fi novels as the tech has finally caught up, instead I'm dreading which IP these studios buy next. I'm just extremely grateful that the Malazan book of the fallen series is pretty much impossible to turn into a coherent show :)
 
Soldato
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We should be entering a golden age of adaptations from classic fantasy/sci fi novels as the tech has finally caught up, instead I'm dreading which IP these studios buy next. I'm just extremely grateful that the Malazan book of the fallen series is pretty much impossible to turn into a coherent show :)

Absolutely. They'll never ruin Erikson, too vast, too complex. It makes ASOIAF look like a young adult fanstasy novel.

It's like games, with all the tech available now, gamnes should be so much better, not that there aren't great games, but they're not pushing boundaries really except graphically(and slowly and at incredible cost to the consumer)...but what do we get a lot of the time? worse games than their counterparts made 10-15 years earlirr,. look at BF franchise for example, 10 year old BF titles are better than the slop they serve up now. Truly sad.

I thought GOT heralded that Golden age of adapatations, but it hasn't. That Shannara thing was bloody awful, Woke of Time looks a disaster, The Witcher is pretty mediocre and Cavill is forced into being a background caracter in his own show while the endless boring fem's drive the "plot" forward (a'la Picard, which was an absolute slap in the face for fans, I'm disgusted at Stewart for signing up to this, his own cucking), Foundation was the most boring thing I've seen in ages, just content, that's all it is, like The Mandolarian and Bobba Fett (another cucked cararahter like Picard) - just content, and don't get me started on Female Space Jesus in Disco!!!!

:D

Tbh thes days, gaming is a just far better use of my time and money.
 
Soldato
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Visually, I thought it looked pretty spectacular but if I'm being honest I think the visuals was always going to be the strong point for this show. The character speaking and what they said? Pretty less than spectacular.

I like the look of it but the look is only half of the show. If the writers write some boring dull dross then I don't see it doing very well.
 
Soldato
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I like the Critical Drinker I often find him to be sharp and on the point with his criticisms. The one from that video that struck home most was the point made about using characters from outside the Hobbit and LOTR that hadn't been fleshed out and the fall out of the different Kings of Man that ultimately drove some of the tribes of man to work with Sauron. In a few sentences he proposed an opening that would allow you take advantage of the IP in new ways that doesn't risk damaging what has gone before it. The idea that Gondor may have a darker past and behaved poorly towards other Kingdoms of man and maybe precipitated some of the later problems was a good of the cuff concept.
 
Soldato
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Difficult one as they call it Rings of power not LOTR. They were never going to reboot it as a very hard task to follow Peter Jackson's adaptation so a prequel to the books was a better option. Plus the Tolkien estate are all greedy bleep bleep bleep and never let anyone add or touch on the lore. It's under more wraps than the KFC secret recipe. Seeing how we have no full plot yet, I'm not gonna judge yet, however hoping it fully will touch on the 20 rings and Saurens original plans.
 
Associate
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I like the Critical Drinker I often find him to be sharp and on the point with his criticisms. The one from that video that struck home most was the point made about using characters from outside the Hobbit and LOTR that hadn't been fleshed out and the fall out of the different Kings of Man that ultimately drove some of the tribes of man to work with Sauron. In a few sentences he proposed an opening that would allow you take advantage of the IP in new ways that doesn't risk damaging what has gone before it. The idea that Gondor may have a darker past and behaved poorly towards other Kingdoms of man and maybe precipitated some of the later problems was a good of the cuff concept.

Agreed, I only recently started watching his videos and he's very astute in his observations.

I hold little hope for this series, I fear even with low expectations I'll be disappointed. Oh well, if that's the case I'll just watch the Jackson trilogy again!
 
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