[HN Gopher] Amazon spending $465M on season 1 of The Lord of the...
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Amazon spending $465M on season 1 of The Lord of the Rings series
Author : matthewsinclair
Score : 218 points
Date : 2022-07-05 10:57 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (winteriscoming.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (winteriscoming.net)
| sidlls wrote:
| Hopefully it doesn't turn into the dreck that the Wheel of Time
| series has turned out to be. And no, I'm not referring to the
| garbage "anti-woke" drivel that racists have peddled about the
| show. I'm simply referring to the fact that the series is so far
| removed from the actual story that claiming the series is "based
| on" the books is even a stretch. It's basically a completely
| different story that uses the same character names and some
| terminology.
| TedShiller wrote:
| Spending? Wasting
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It's going to be interesting how badly this will fail _if_ they
| are focused on making an international success that also can be
| viewed in China...
| j_barbossa wrote:
| Media productions are daughters of their time. We currently have
| a situation where the elite in Hollywood are desperate to bring
| diversity and blackwashing into the stories. When a new LOTR
| series is shot in 50 years from now, this will no longer be an
| issue.
| dougmwne wrote:
| As a fantasy series, it seems the ethnicities of the actors are
| quite irrelevant. I can understand that it can be a bit odd in
| historical dramas, but male actors used to play the female
| roles in plays. It seems pretty secondary unless the plot is
| explicitly about race. And historical accuracy, even in
| historical dramas is usually tenuous at best anyway.
|
| I'd suggest that when you say "blackwashing" people are going
| to take that as a signal that you have some pretty toxic
| politics.
| prepend wrote:
| I think it's an opportunity to explain how elves and dwarves
| ended up with different skin colors and whatnot. It's a good
| opportunity for world building.
|
| In the Hobbit movies there were some black elves and they
| didn't describe anything about them. Just that there were
| some Black Forest elves mixed in with all the other elves.
|
| I guess it slightly distracted where every minor detail had
| some back story and history, but I don't think detracted from
| the story. I don't think leaving out these details was in the
| top 100 flaws of the Hobbit movie.
|
| As someone really into Tolkien, I'd rather see them expand or
| adapt the lore than just swap out details. It's not that it's
| the end of the world, but it's dangerous to change details
| from someone else's work because I never know what was the
| actual important piece. I suppose I could change
| Michaelangelo's David's sex but it would be hard to recreate
| it with the same qualia as Muchaelangelo as I'm not him. It's
| not the sex of the sculpture that's important, it's my
| implementation. I'm sure Michaelangelo would have e carved an
| amazing woman, or African, or Asian, or any background. But
| few are Michaelangelo.
|
| An example of this that I think went kind of well is the
| Kevin Kostner Robin Hood movie where they cast Morgan Freeman
| and gave him a back story of being a Moor from the crusades
| who returned to England. I think this worked out better than
| if they had just randomly changed a Robin Hood character 'a
| race.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| Production costs have gone up a lot in New Zealand after Peter
| Jackson put them on the map. Also, if the government is covering
| 25% of the costs it creates an intended incentive to spend more.
|
| People spend a lot on content because successful content is worth
| it. I hope this is good.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| It can't be worse than wheel of time ... or can it?
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| Cool. And if the series flop it will trigger some major review to
| modern movie/tv making
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| _Maybe_ , but I'm skeptical. The TV/Streaming space seems flush
| with cash and several high budget series have flopped or
| otherwise significantly underperformed without an industry wide
| reflection or reaction.
|
| I suspect it is because these streaming service owners are
| desperate to build big content libraries rather than produce
| high quality shows.
| layer8 wrote:
| It may not happen with this series, because too many will
| probably still watch it even if it's terrible, but it's bound
| to happen for some franchise at some point, and maybe things
| will get interesting then.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| Last interesting sci-fi show I watched was The Expanse, it
| was on Prime. One may hope.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| For all that money wasted on politically correct elves and
| dwarven maidens, they could have filmed 10 seasons of "The
| Expanse", "Firefly", or some other new show.
| oaiey wrote:
| Or a real diverse series based on a diverse book series which
| never spent a dime on reminding everyone how diverse they are.
| Eg The Expanse.
| Miner49er wrote:
| Being black is now called "politically correct"? Why not just
| say black?
| sn0w_crash wrote:
| I think they mean having to hit a certain quota of
| ethnicities of people. LOTR has been very vocal about how
| "diverse and inclusive" this production is.
| mkaic wrote:
| I feel like I'm one of the only people here who's actually...
| quite optimistic and excited about this? Like -- I really don't
| see Amazon screwing _this_ up. Bezos is a fan of the franchise
| and is smart enough to know that this _can 't_ be screwed up
| without consequences. I also think that the lack of established
| talent being hired is actually a _good_ thing, because it means
| they looked beyond the famous names we 've all heard and
| presumably found a whole collection of diamonds in the rough. If
| Bezos is willing to spend half a billion on a bunch of unknowns,
| I'm going to bet that those unknowns are pretty darn promising.
|
| Anyways, thought I'd counter all the pessimism here with a bit of
| positivity. I'm stoked for this series, and if it turns out bad
| after all? Oh well, they tried. It wouldn't be the end of the
| world.
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| That percentage based rebate incentivizes accounting shenanigans
| to make it look as expensive as possible, who knows how many
| salaries included in that number Amazon was paying anyway, no
| matter if they would have produced that show or not.
| j5r5myk wrote:
| The Severance budget was over $300 million and that shot in NYC
| so $350 in NZ after rebate makes sense. I had heard they were
| spending $1 billion on the new LOTR, maybe that's including
| rights and marketing
| StevePerkins wrote:
| I'm going to need a citation on that. Sources that I read from
| a quick web search indicate that Apple is spending an average
| of $10 million per episode on its shows. How "Severance" could
| cost $300 million, when it takes place almost entirely on an
| indoor office set, defies plausibility.
| detritus wrote:
| Not to be That Guy, but crikey - think of all the good that could
| be done in the world for half a billion dollars.
|
| .
|
| Cue my usual thought about how the likes of Apple could
| make/break Fusion Energy (prove/disprove viability) for a small
| percentage of their bank balance.
| mouzogu wrote:
| well at least i don't need to feel so guilty about all those
| amazon returns.
| GenerocUsername wrote:
| It's going to flop due to perceived wokeness and pandering with
| changes to source material intent and vision
| ninju wrote:
| Old article...needs [2021] in title
| gonzo41 wrote:
| Could we just get a few more seasons of the Expanse. Or Dune.
| C'mon people we've done this one already.
| jollybean wrote:
| It's basically guaranteed, that even if it's bad, it will be a
| huge hit.
|
| The material/fanbase is just to energetic. They and kids, at
| minimum, will watch it.
| langsoul-com wrote:
| Even though the MMO got cancelled, I hope they'll make Battle for
| Middle Earth 3. Honestly, BFME 2 was the shit.
|
| Doubt it though, rts hasn't been the rage for a looooong time.
| antonymy wrote:
| This budget feels very out of whack with what we have seen of the
| production. No big names either in front of or behind the camera.
| All the recognizable credits are at the producer level, and some
| of those are of dubious reputation. I don't want to disparage
| unknown actors and crew members, but it seems awfully risky to
| expect them to carry this show without any veterans to rally
| around. I guess the logic Amazon is using is that LotR's brand is
| so strong it doesn't need star power, or experience, or anything
| else to carry it besides apparently a huge pile of money. But
| this seems like a really, really bold direction for a project
| when Amazon is still very new to producing media and they have
| yet to produce a single unqualified hit.
| theplumber wrote:
| Let's hope they won't turn it into a diversity thing checking all
| the boxes and loosing the plot
| tlear wrote:
| Whole thing is The Message and nothing more
| alldayeveryday wrote:
| Lol, the "diversity thing" is the star of the show here as
| evidenced by both the media they (creators) have put out
| (images, etc) + by their own admission.
| usrn wrote:
| I think that ship already sailed.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| >Amazon cancels Lord of the Rings MMO video game
|
| This stood out to me, let's just say the MMO came out as well.
| Then the entire thing looks like a long-term investment to
| reinvigorate the franchise.
|
| I actually really liked the WB Game's RPGs
| felizuno wrote:
| $465m was a pretty standard price tag for a single Ferrari/Red
| Bull/Merc F1 season pre-covid, and I think the merch
| opportunities and addressable market are probably pretty
| comparable
| anshumankmr wrote:
| Even with the rebate, how can they hope to recoup the investment?
| Merch? DVD Sales? Increasing sign ups to Prime? I have a doubt
| the profits from that will help them earn money to cover up the
| remaining 300 million or so they have still invested.
|
| And the "internet" really reacted negatively to the trailer as
| well. (I personally didn't hate the trailer myself but after
| having watched the original trilogy and the first Hobbit movie, I
| was feeling a bit underwhelmed cause it didn't do a good job
| selling the show to me.) So it really remains to be seen whether
| it will be a hit when it does to go to streaming.
| [deleted]
| asciiresort wrote:
| > Even with the rebate, how can they hope to recoup the
| investment? Merch
|
| Isn't that why Disney acquired Star Wars and Marvel?
|
| Imagine an Amazon theme park alongside Universal Studios and
| Disneyland.
| oblio wrote:
| > Even with the rebate, how can they hope to recoup the
| investment? Merch? DVD Sales? Increasing sign ups to Prime? I
| have a doubt the profits from that will help them earn money to
| cover up the remaining 300 million or so they have still
| invested.
|
| Probably all of the above plus it's a long term move.
|
| Amazon needs to build up a strong catalog and marquee TV shows
| are long term attractions. As an example, Mad Men, especially
| because it's set in the 1960s will probably still be watched in
| the 2060s. Game of Thrones would have been the exact thing but
| D&D completely tore it apart in the last 2 seasons.
| jpgvm wrote:
| Last 2 seasons of GoT still hurt to think about.
|
| It's not the ending that hurts it's how it got there. The
| last 2 seasons probably should have been 3 full seasons
| instead of the barely 1.5 we got and had a lot more build
| up/Dany descent into madness/Bran having some relevance that
| would justify his elevation to ruler, etc.
|
| The suddenness of everything, the exposition, everything was
| just poorly executed. Too much money spent on CG dragons, not
| enough money spent on episodes telling the story.
|
| The books can remedy my pain but have already waited so long.
| :(
| prepend wrote:
| I think the last two could have been 10 seasons and it
| would have been bad. The issue wasn't cramming too much
| material, the issue is they didn't have writers with ideas.
| They had been adapting GRRM and ran out of material to
| adapt and just went batty.
|
| I think the reason it is so compressed is because they
| could just charge through it quickly and make it work.
| greedo wrote:
| D&D were also trying to wrap it up quickly so they could
| move on to making the Star Wars series (that they
| subsequently got canned from).
| rcpt wrote:
| idk man that ending hurt pretty bad
|
| edit: also the complete destruction of Jamie's character
| out of the blue in one scene jfc
| jpgvm wrote:
| Yeah they did my boi Jamie pretty raw. :(
| randomsearch wrote:
| Spoiler! Maybe edit
| ilikecakeandpie wrote:
| It's been over for three years now, one of those years
| where everyone was inside for a long time, and was very
| hotly debated on social media. I think it meets the
| criteria for not needing a spoiler warning
| jffry wrote:
| Is there a need to conceal spoilers from a massively
| popular show that aired its final seasons 5 and 3 years
| ago, respectively?
| moonchrome wrote:
| >As an example, Mad Men, especially because it's set in the
| 1960s will probably still be watched in the 2060s.
|
| Why ? The only old TV shows I see being popular long term is
| era defining shows you watch for nostalgia (eg. Seinfeld,
| Friends). Maybe some real classics like Sopranos that
| everyone was watching at the time.
|
| Shows like Mad Men ? I really don't see it. And more
| importantly this LOTR show - how many people are even
| watching Game of Thrones now and how much interest will it
| generate in the future ? Unless this LOTR show is somehow
| groundbreaking with visuals (and it's a lot harder to do now
| then back when they did the films because the bar was so low
| back then) - I doubt it's a valuable long term play.
| xdennis wrote:
| > defining shows you watch for nostalgia (eg. Seinfeld,
| Friends)
|
| But what about new viewers? As someone who is too "young"
| to have seen them originally, I don't find either of those
| to be funny. But something much older, such as Fawlty
| Towers, stands the test of time.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Seinfeld Is not just watch r for nostalgia, its still in
| syndication, and also has a massive overseas fan base.
|
| Mad Men is timeless in its lessons, novel in its execution,
| and holds a unique place in TV history. It'll be watched
| for decades.
| treis wrote:
| Seinfeld is the exception. Heres the top TV shows of
| 1993:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-
| rated_United_States_tele...
|
| Seinfeld is the only one that people still watch.
| oblio wrote:
| All those shows are contemporary to the 90's. Seinfeld
| just has generic situational humor + great characters,
| and even Seinfeld will probably fade as its nostalgic
| watchers age and go away. It will just take 30-40 more
| years :-)
| wodenokoto wrote:
| There's a lot of landline / phone booth / message machine
| based jokes and story lines.
|
| I don't think 20 year olds will have an easy time picking
| up the show as they can't relate to those problems.
|
| I think Seinfeld is very much riding the nostalgia train
| now.
|
| Mad men don't assume any of its audience knew what the
| 60's was like, so it has a chance of being more timeless.
| frumper wrote:
| I still enjoy a good episode with Jessica in Cabot Cove,
| the murder capital of the world.
| moonchrome wrote:
| > It'll be watched for decades.
|
| By a few people - likely. But enough to justify investing
| half a billion into show production ?
| oblio wrote:
| > The hit Warner Bros. sitcom from the 90s, Friends, is
| still a big moneymaker for the studio with average
| earnings that are estimated to be roughly a billion
| dollars per year. Keep in mind that this is a show that
| ended nearly 15 years ago. Beyond all imagination, this
| is still one of the most-watched sitcoms in 2017. I know,
| hard to believe.
|
| https://reelrundown.com/tv/How-Much-Money-Does-US-Sitcom-
| Fri...
| moonchrome wrote:
| I specifically mentioned Friends and Seinfeld as
| exceptions. Mad Men is never going to have this status.
| Friends viewership numbers were 10x, even Sopranos had
| 2-3x viewership. And there will be no nostalgia factor
| there.
| bombcar wrote:
| And even if it DOES become evergreen, it's like Disney
| kid shows - sent to live in whatever monthly app (Prime
| in this case) to rot and die; there's not much _realized
| revenue_ from them, the way syndication has.
| anshumankmr wrote:
| I don't know. 465 million seems still steep for 8 episodes TV
| show. I am all for it cause Disney has seemingly skimped on
| their CG budget for their newer shows. So more competition
| means more TV shows will have film quality production.
|
| But it is a concern, if their show costs more than something
| like Avengers: Endgame which had some of the biggest actors
| in Hollywood involved in addition to the probably insane VFX
| budget.
|
| Obviously COVID would have affected the budget for the show,
| but I have a feeling that it went way over budget than was
| initially intended.
|
| Although I agree with the marquee concept. HBO had their own
| marquee show: Game of Thrones, though it produced a lot of
| quality stuff like the Pacific, Band of Brothers, Sopranos
| etc that can be watched for years to come. Game of Thrones on
| the other hand was a big disappointment for the fans and its
| negative reception probably made HBO wonder what they would
| do after it was over (hence the Targaryen origin show and the
| Jon Snow series are being developed... personally I'm
| skipping both)
| svantana wrote:
| Presumably some amount of
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting is at
| play. Since New Zealand is footing a fixed percentage of
| the budget, it would only make sense to artificially
| inflate the costs.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| Please don't use links as words. Links get abbreviated on
| hacker news.
|
| So "some amount of Wikipedia" doesn't get any message
| across.
| cs702 wrote:
| Keep in mind that Amazon needs to get only ~0.2M _incremental_
| Amazon Prime subscribers to recoup the investment. The lifetime
| value (LTV) of a Prime subscriber has been estimated at
| ~$2,300.[a] You can play around with the figure, but given that
| _every_ LOTR fan is going to want to watch this series _even if
| it sucks_ , I wouldn't be surprised is Amazon ends up getting
| far more than ~0.2M new Prime subscribers because of it.
|
| [a] https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/04/21/whats-a-
| pr...
|
| --
|
| EDIT: Updated the figures to more accurate (based on LTV).
| jackosdev wrote:
| I'm a fan, I've got Prime, and I'm not interested in the
| slightest, I'm done watching giant companies ruin good
| franchises and legacy characters. Would have to put a gun to
| my head to watch this one
| mmalachowski wrote:
| In Poland Amazon Prime is only 10 usd / year. So the math is
| much harder outside the US.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Wow that sounds like an amazing value, even with
| differences in purchasing power. Is amazon's retail network
| decent in Poland?
| algorias wrote:
| > but given that every LOTR fan is going to want to watch
| this series even if it sucks
|
| Citation needed. I'm a big fan of LOTR, but I didn't even
| bother with the last Hobbit movie. And I expect this series
| to be even worse than that.
| andybak wrote:
| I stopped after the first Hobbit movie and I'm very
| unlikely to watch this unless it gets rave reviews.
| rb666 wrote:
| Come on, it's really unlikely this show will be worse than
| the Hobbit movie.
| anoonmoose wrote:
| I am not so sure that your statement is obviously true.
| One of the issues with The Hobbit films is that they
| stretched one relatively short book into three
| movies...this time around, it looks like they're
| stretching some apocrypha from the appendix of a book
| into an 8-episode TV show. Feels like a fairly similar
| effort to wring blood from a stone.
| DeusExMachina wrote:
| Not that I am interested in defending Amazon's series,
| which I think will be a disaster, but I don't think the
| comparison with the Hobbit movies holds.
|
| True, the material they have rights to is from the
| appendixes of The Lord of the Rings. The difference,
| though, is that in this case they are going to create a
| completely new story. So, they can fill as many episodes
| they want.
|
| With the Hobbit, instead, they had the story already and
| they had to stretch it to create a trilogy.
| anoonmoose wrote:
| My opinion on this matter has less to do with stretching
| and more to do with creating. It feels like the further
| we get from what the author actually wrote- in terms of
| dialogue, characterization, etc.- the worse the final
| output is. LOTR isn't just good because hobbits, it's
| good because Tolkien's writing is good. The Jackson
| trilogy was close-ish to Tolkien's writing, the Hobbit
| films further, and this even more so. I'm of the opinion
| that this was a major issue with the last few seasons of
| Game of Thrones as well.
| algorias wrote:
| Exactly this. there's nothing about an existing
| _universe_ that prevents bad writing for _new_ stories in
| that universe. And big studio creative talent is at a
| historical low right now.
| shusaku wrote:
| I don't get the "stretched explanation", there was plenty
| of material. To me the problem was that the action
| sequences lacked the emotional gravitas of the LOTR
| trilogy. It was like watching a video game.
| cs702 wrote:
| Consider that many fans watch things they routinely
| disparage online. For example, many Star Wars fans
| routinely disparage "Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom
| Menace," and yet it's still one of the most-watched,
| highest-grossing movies in the history of cinema.
|
| Also, keep in mind there are people who are really
| _fanatical_ about LOTR. At the end of the spectrum, some of
| them enjoy this stuff so much that they regularly attend
| LOTR conventions dressed up as wizards, knights, hobbits,
| orcs, etc. Those people will watch the new series even if
| it 's only to criticize all the things it got wrong!
| algorias wrote:
| I _am_ one of those people (roughly speaking). Do with
| that as you will.
| baud147258 wrote:
| > Consider that many fans watch things they routinely
| disparage online.
|
| they might not bother to subscribe to Prime for that and
| instead just get a copy off the high seas
| anshumankmr wrote:
| Isn't the growth for Amazon Prime kind of stagnating in the
| US? I don't think they can get 1-2 million sign ups from the
| US alone.
|
| Plus, there would be folks who would subscribe for two months
| that the shows runs and then they may even quit.
|
| In India, I am paying 1000 rupees for my yearly subscription
| to Prime Video although the only thing I watch on it is The
| Boys. I don't what the numbers for Prime Video are in India,
| but it would earn them less as compared to someone signing up
| from the US or UK for sure.
|
| >but given that every LOTR fan is going to want to watch this
| series even if it sucks, the cost is totally worth it.
|
| There is also a big question mark on this as well.
| cs702 wrote:
| More like ~0.2M. I updated the figures to use the LTV of a
| Prime customer :-)
| yonaguska wrote:
| ProfXponent wrote:
| [deleted]
| CivBase wrote:
| > given that every LOTR fan is going to want to watch this
| series even if it sucks, I wouldn't be surprised is Amazon
| ends up getting far more than ~0.2M new Prime subscribers
| because of it.
|
| You're assuming they actually subscribe to watch it. Amazon
| Prime already has enough subs that it should be pretty easy
| for most die-hard LOTR fans without a Prime account to just
| watch it on a friend or family member's account. Or they
| could just pirate it.
| darkerside wrote:
| Isn't it more complicated than that? Many of those consumers
| already own Prime. How will this impact their desire to stay?
| Will people actually buy Prime for this and then keep it, or
| will they watch and then cancel?
| Victerius wrote:
| Your analysis makes sense, but I was under the impression
| that RoP was a pure passion project from Jeff Bezos with no
| regard for the financials or for a return on investment.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Based on what, second or third hand sources?
|
| Jeff Bezos isn't spending the money, Amazon is.
| both_cucumbers wrote:
| Amazon Prime customers spend $1968 / year on average.
|
| $465M / $1968 = 236,280
|
| For perspective, Disney Plus added 7.9 million users in just
| the first quarter of 2022.
| tgv wrote:
| I pay $36/yr for Amazon prime. That's over 50x less. You'd
| need 13M new users who want to pay for just that, and nothing
| else.
| treis wrote:
| You're comparing profits with revenue and not accounting for
| risk.
| SilasX wrote:
| Those revenues still have to cover the cost of buying the
| things they sell to prime members. It's not pure profit.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I sure hope they don't mess it up. LOTR is an amazing series,
| it would be a shame for it to go the way of the Star Wars
| prequels and company.
| panick21_ wrote:
| After Wheel of Time my expectations are so incredibly low, if it
| still manages to disappoint I will be impressed.
|
| I'm expecting a shitshow and a shitstorm of epic proportions.
| havblue wrote:
| One of the major themes of Wheel of Time is how myth changes
| over the ages as it passes from person to person, culture to
| culture. This can be very entertaining in the books because you
| read the inner thoughts of dozens of protagonists and
| antagonists. Each of them are ignorant in different ways and
| nobody really knows exactly how the wheel is going to weave
| things in the future.
|
| I'm not sure how a narrator or having someone's thoughts read
| aloud would be done in a show like this, though, and Amazon
| didn't try. There are definitely a lot of villains in it but
| from what I saw they couldn't make the subject of ignorance
| interesting.
| mrwh wrote:
| Have to agree! I'm not sure what I was expecting with Wheel of
| Time, but I wasn't expecting it to look so cheap. Also one of
| the central characters wears a pullover in early episodes
| that's definitely dry-clean only, and had definitely just been
| dry-cleaned. While it sounds like a little thing, it's the
| little things that add up to an immersive world.
| function_seven wrote:
| > _Also one of the central characters wears a pullover in
| early episodes that 's definitely dry-clean only, and had
| definitely just been dry-cleaned._
|
| Wait, which character? If it was Morraine or Lan, then she
| can totally "dry clean" stuff as needed, right? If it was one
| of the Emond's Field characters, then yeah, you got a point
| :)
| pluc wrote:
| I'm expecting a 465 million dollar joke about the ease of
| delivering products to Mordor using Amazon's infrastructure. If
| not in live action then at least as an advertising campaign
| based in supporting material.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Stop giving them ideas!
| pluc wrote:
| If the "ma" of the Amazon logo isn't modified with a
| pictogram of LOTR landmarks someone needs to get fired.
| "From A to Z through The Shire" should be their Superbowl
| campaign.
| harveywi wrote:
| Wheel of Prime
| PeterStuer wrote:
| I think we all would benefit from a 10 year moratorium on
| taking on epic legacy cultural icons by the current US media
| and entertainment crowd.
| jsmeaton wrote:
| Yeah, Wheel of Time was really bad. I tried so hard to like it
| but it had little to redeem it.
| vlunkr wrote:
| Wow I didn't even know that happened until right now. At least
| they're advertising for Rings of Power.
| d4rkp4ttern wrote:
| Tangential -- I wish they or someone else serializes Dune. It's
| so tailor made for a tv series.
|
| Also looking forward to Three Body Problem from nflx
| anshumankmr wrote:
| >I wish they or someone else serializes Dune
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0142032/
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That (and the follow-on) weren't too bad. Much better than
| Lynch's treatment.
|
| I must say, though, that I'm looking forward to part 2 of
| Villeneuve's _Dune_.
| MikusR wrote:
| The miniseries and especially Children of Dune are so much
| better that the recent movie.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I find it's a tradeoff.
|
| The new movie represents some of the visuals and
| environment better (in my mind), but skimps on the story.
|
| I feel that Baron Harkonnen is better, in the movie. He
| was almost comedic, in the series.
|
| Charlotte Rampling would not have been my choice for the
| Bene Gesserit mother, but I think she actually works.
|
| I'm not too happy with any of the other casting choices,
| except Gurney Halleck, but, for some strange reason, they
| never consulted me.
| anshumankmr wrote:
| Haven't had the time to watch it. Working my way through
| the book.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| It's pretty much impossible to adequately represent the
| books as a movie, and even a series can't really do the
| books justice.
|
| The new movie does a fairly decent job of translating the
| books to live action.
|
| The biggest disappointment, for me, in all of the
| treatments (including the movie), is the way the Fremen
| are represented.
|
| I'm a bit spoiled, as I grew up in Africa, and was
| familiar with tribes like the Touareg, so I know what
| real desert-dwellers look like. I'm pretty sure that
| Herbert wanted them to look like that. Hard to represent,
| with city-dweller, millionaire actors.
|
| Bedouin tribespeople look like dry twigs. Not much soft
| or fat. It would take _serious_ self-denial to adequately
| represent.
|
| Willem Dafoe would probably be able to represent Stilgar
| (in my mind). He'd have to go on a diet, and get a tan,
| though.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| The thing with dune is the first 2 books are perfect for that
| sort of thing. Then it goes kind of meta weird. Not sure most
| audiences would be up for that. The last movie I was pumped
| for. However, I did not realize you could make dune that mind
| blowing boring. It was very nicely done, but kind of boring. I
| think that is because the book breaks one of the rules of
| movies/tv 'show dont tell'. Whereas the dune books are nothing
| but 'tell'. It is why a lot of Steven King books fall flat in
| the movies. That can be tough. As that can get rather dull. As
| you look at what the chars are seeing but you are missing out
| on their commentary. They tried that in the 84 dune and it just
| came out awkward.
| cousin_it wrote:
| > _Whereas the dune books are nothing but 'tell'._
|
| I still feel like the books could be "shown" quite
| effectively. For example, think of the first scene in the
| book: a child sees his mother bring in a mysterious old
| woman, who then puts the child through a brutal test. In the
| book, the psychology of that situation is sold through lots
| of dialogue and internal monologue, but on screen you can
| make it come across with barely any words at all, by acting
| and cinematography and music and so on. Similar for other
| scenes in the book, it has so much cool imagery.
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| It will flop.
| breatheoften wrote:
| $465 million for one season of TV seems very expensive.
|
| But $465 million as part of the bootstrapping/rnd budget for some
| new gpu-adjacent compute offering would be pretty easy to justify
| ... and potentially being able to move some of the development
| cost associated with that new cloud offering out of aws and into
| some other budgetary boundary is almost certain to provide stock
| boosting effects.
|
| It seems obvious to me that the tech companies with streaming
| platforms have started using tv/movie production budgets as a way
| to fund research into offerings appropriate for development teams
| that are highly-creative/technically competent/and driven by
| result oriented pressure. Adding value to the production stacks
| used by those kinds of teams is hard but also technically
| worthwhile and pretty measurable. And having discerning and hard
| to please customers as early partners/beta testers for a new
| service could be very valuable.
|
| I suspect Apple is doing this kind of thing as well with their
| shows where you can see the same or similar high-end visual
| effects appearing on multiple of their shows -- feels like the
| kind of thing you'd expect to happen with different creative
| teams using converging 'in-house' tooling ...
| acomjean wrote:
| 250 Million was just licensing. So they're starting in a deep
| hole.
|
| Strange, Amazon seem to went the budget route for "Wheel of
| Time" which I enjoyed, (though popular I hadn't read any of the
| books). The effects were good, acting was good.
|
| But think of the product placement offerings Middle Earth
| offers amazon. The amazon prime delivery wagon. Alexa smart
| speakers were bountiful in that time as were "fire" tablets,
| forged from dragons breath.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| The acting in wheel of time was not good. It was bad enough
| to ruin the whole thing for me. Acting in high fantasy can be
| really tough because the rolls are commonly so different from
| what the actors are used to, but they did not get it done.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| An observation from an online review of WoT that I agreed
| with is that the writers were _far_ more comfortable writing
| scenes that were not in the original material than they were
| adapting existing scenes from the book.
|
| This does leave one to wonder why they bothered to license
| the books though. It's well agreed upon that it is a
| difficult property to adapt to screen, and the first season
| is (IMO) further evidence of that.
|
| P.S. The acting was merely "okay" for me; Pike (Moiraine)
| absolutely nailed her part, others were more hit-or-miss (my
| wife who had not read the books also liked Rutherford as
| Perrin). I don't know if Harris did a good job, or if it's
| just that Mat has the most personality of any actor, but I
| liked him as well; either way Harris is not going to be in
| Season 2, so it's moot going forward.
| Justsignedup wrote:
| Biggest worry:
|
| I have massive doubts that this show would bring in profits
| similar to Avengers: End Game. Because that's what it'll take.
|
| Even if this is a smashing success by streaming standards, Season
| 2 will be ridiculously toned down to keep the costs down to like
| 50MM. People will instantly say "quality dropped significantly"
| and then it'll collapse. Feels like this will go the way of Marco
| Polo which was an amazing show, destroyed by Netflix's lack of
| desire to spend any money.
| aaron695 wrote:
| addicted wrote:
| I'm not so sure the LOTR series is ideal for expansion.
|
| It feels like Peter Jackson has already tackled all the really
| interesting parts of the LOTR world.
| causi wrote:
| The better question is whether it's possible to create a LotR
| representation with even a shred of the original's soul. Chris
| Tolkien hated the Jackson trilogy, and then see how much
| further modern market demands pushed The Hobbit's execution. I
| don't want to see what _another_ ten years of compromises and
| pandering will do to the product.
| bmj wrote:
| Christopher Tolkein was hopelessly grumpy (or protective,
| depending on your perspective) about anyone doing anything
| with his father's works.
|
| Personally, as a fan of Tolkein's works, I thought LoTR was
| _fine_. I didn 't necessarily agree with all of Jackon's
| decisions, but, in the end, I enjoyed watching the movies
| (and still do). The Hobbit films are a different beast, for
| sure.
| arethuza wrote:
| Didn't his father sell off the film rights for PS10,000 -
| no wonder he is slightly grumpy about any movies!
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| Christopher Tolkien I think was fairly correct in his
| analysis of the LoTR films, and I think it became clear
| with the Hobbit what the ultimate conclusion of that style
| of treatment of the source material would be.
|
| What he got wrong is that they're perfectly fun and good
| films in their own right - it'd be more accurate to say
| they're heavily inspired by the LoTR books rather than
| being direct adaptions. In some cases they cut things which
| just would never have even worked on screen, and in general
| I don't think a deeply ponderous and weighty mood would
| have really been received that well. That said, some of the
| changes they made (e.g. to Denethor) were just gratuitous.
| tlear wrote:
| Denethor and Faramir treatment hurt..
|
| My number 1 gripe was the army of the dead being the deus
| ex machina making rest of the battle pointless joke. This
| is after making perfect entrance for Rohan
|
| I like the movies and enjoy watching them, some parts are
| masterpieces but some not so much.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| What was the original army of the dead like? It always
| seemed like the weakest point of all the films and
| certainly the most glaring plot hole of why didn't they
| keep using them.
| pfortuny wrote:
| More or less as in the film BUT they were eager to leave
| the Earth, and they only needed to heed their oath. They
| do so in a side battle (near Osgiliath IIRC) and,
| immediately, Aragorn sets them free.
|
| But they are not "an army at the ser ice of Aragorn".
| They just want to be liberated and to do so, they fulfill
| the promise they broke. They are not obligated to more
| (and Aragorn has no power to keep them "here"), much less
| to make them obey him.
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| In the original the army of the dead was used to capture
| the ships, and grab the army under a Prince in southern
| Gondor, (I think it was Imiril) and bring his army up
| from Osgiliath, to surround the armies of darkness on 3
| sides, who then broke and ran.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Were they a tide of untouchable murder ghosts though? Or
| were they more of a conventional zombie force that could
| be killed?
| pfortuny wrote:
| They cannot be killed but their aim is to abandon Earth,
| and they only need Aragorn to liberate them after they
| have fulfilled their oath. Not that Aragorn has true
| power over them. He has only the power to set them free,
| and they obey because that is the way to freedom.
| causi wrote:
| _I didn 't necessarily agree with all of Jackon's
| decisions, but, in the end, I enjoyed watching the movies
| (and still do). The Hobbit films are a different beast, for
| sure._
|
| Exactly my opinion as well. What worries me is that we saw
| what ten years of market shift did between LotR and The
| Hobbit. Now it's been another ten years of it. Instead of
| _showing_ bad people tearing down trees to fuel industry,
| we 're going to have some good character give a five minute
| long speech about it. There is going to be a romance plot
| between an orc and a non-orc. There is going to be a female
| orc and she is going to be a strong independent woman.
| There is going to be a ruler who is as bad Denethor but
| they're going to make a strong point about him also being a
| racist.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Oh gods no I ... I can see this happening, it's just too
| plausible.
| hedora wrote:
| Why wait, when you can watch this Gandalf^W Dumbledore
| prequel?
|
| https://decider.com/2022/05/30/fantastic-beasts-the-
| secrets-...
|
| (warning: Lots of spoilers in there...)
| darrelld wrote:
| At the end of the day stories reflect our society and
| LoTR is just another story.
|
| All of the classic stories we tell kids have evolved over
| time and are no longer true to their original source
| material. We take the thing we need, ignore the things we
| don't need, and add what's missing from our modern eyes.
|
| If you go back to the source material for things like
| Snow White, Pinocchio and trace them through the ages
| you'll see that they have constantly changed and
| adjusted.
| causi wrote:
| I think there's a difference between tuning a story and
| misappropriating it as a vehicle for your personal goals.
| This can be done well by giving us more background on
| what was a minor character or altering dialogue to give a
| different perspective of events. It can be done badly,
| such as by introducing us to Kimli, the lesbian dwarf
| queen with a mithril wheelchair.
| tgv wrote:
| Just wait until the magic moment where Sauron tells Frodo that
| he's his father.
| [deleted]
| panick21_ wrote:
| > It feels like Peter Jackson has already tackled all the
| really interesting parts of the LOTR world.
|
| I would say Hobbit is about the least suited part of the
| universe for adoption. There are far better stories.
| oblio wrote:
| Tolkien created a lot of content, an entire fantasy universe.
| With good storytelling there's a lot more to tell.
|
| If Star Wars, which let's be frank here, is a 2 bit creation
| compared to Tolkien's works, managed to become a multi billion
| dollar franchise, then the LotR world should be able to do the
| same, if it's managed wisely.
| notahacker wrote:
| But then Star Wars was envisaged as a series of films and the
| sequels and prequels are part of a directly related story
| with overlapping characters and pacing, with the original
| creators around to give it their blessing and the occasional
| bit of creative input. Fans can overlook a lot of shoddiness
| to see C3PO again or how Darth became Darth. The forging of
| rings or founding of Rivendell, not so much, and I think the
| story of how Gollum became Gollum is off limits to the series
| too.
|
| The Amazon LOTR proposal is basically some new fantasy
| stories set in a different millennium from the LOTR world
| which loosely tie in with some chronologies Tolkien wrote as
| lore rather than narrative, with a license which prevents
| them from reinterpreting events from the LOTR/Hobbit books
| from a Tolkien Estate that isn't exactly keen on giving the
| series canonical status. Instead of hobbits from the Shire
| and kingdoms of Rohan and Gondor under threat - all _places_
| that don 't exist, never mind the characters - we've got a
| blank slate fantasy civilisations called Numenor and Eregion
| (which will resemble LOTR in the same way most high fantasy
| civilisations tend to) and a pretty loose narrative arc which
| implies the bad guy eventually destroying them.
|
| The output might be very good stories in their own right, or
| it might be bland as hell, but the hardcore Tolkien fanbase
| is going to be hard to please. Create a series of episodes
| purporting to show the full history of the Second Age and
| it'll be [probably correctly] accused of being disjointed and
| completely lacking Tolkien's epic storytelling skill; create
| a compelling quest narrative involving dwarves and hobbits
| and it'll be accused of discarding Tolkien's actual histories
| in favour of a cheap knockoff of his plot structure.
|
| I mean, a licensee could probably randomly choose a third
| rate LOTR fanfic plot and sell millions of tickets to watch
| it, but that doesn't necessary mean its a good idea from a
| _creative_ standpoint.
| namelessoracle wrote:
| Them not doing Silmarillion is odd....
|
| I mean that had some very textual readings that would have
| been easily loved by the woke crowd. (The Beren storyline,
| overall strength of female heroes during the narrative)
| notahacker wrote:
| Assume the Tolkien Estate wanted more money for those
| rights...
| DrSiemer wrote:
| This over 5 hours long review of all the Lord of the Rings
| video games ever made should give a clear indication of how
| much this universe has to offer:
|
| https://youtu.be/poMnJKLGYo0
|
| It also clearly shows how all the cash grab attempts
| generally fail and how those that get the freedom to create
| something with passion usually end up successful. So yeah...
| Victerius wrote:
| > It feels like Peter Jackson has already tackled all the
| really interesting parts of the LOTR world.
|
| _looks sideways to The Silmarillion_
|
| _looks sideways to The Children of Hurin_
|
| _looks sideways to The Fall of Gondolin_
| vlunkr wrote:
| Yeah, This is a valid criticism of Star Wars, which is now
| stuck parading the same 10 characters around forever, but not
| LOTR.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| _Looks sideways to the licensing agreement that covers none
| of that material_
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| You can do interesting stories in any setting. LOTR is just a
| famous brand which means the show is going to be easier to
| market. I mean if you think about it the LOTR lore is mostly a
| somewhat christianised version of Norse mythology. It leaves a
| lot of room especially if you don't feel too bound to the
| original texts which are frankly uneven.
| wronglyprepaid wrote:
| > You can do interesting stories in any setting.
|
| While it may be possible, money grubbing capitalist pig scum
| like Disney seem completely incapable of it, so I doubt this
| will end well. Capitalists destroy everything because instead
| of focusing on stakeholders they focus on profit above all
| else.
| [deleted]
| darthrupert wrote:
| Silmarillion has some very interesting stories, though. Much
| more potential than in Hobbit, really.
|
| Potential can be squandered though.
| pdimitar wrote:
| I agree on the Silmarillion although every time I reread it I
| grind my teeth about how stupid the elves were to give in to
| some empty envy towards other elves when they literally had
| ZERO problems in their lives.
|
| Hits too close to home and it hurts, I guess. Because I've
| seen the same many times -- people literally seeking for
| problems because their lives are so careless and leisurely.
| Victerius wrote:
| As much as I would like to see live action Silmarillion, it
| would probably be the most expensive tv show of all time.
| Many epic scenes can't possibly be shot for real so the show
| would require odious amounts of CGI. Heck at this point, hire
| a studio that makes video game trailers and turn the whole
| thing into a 50+ hours CGI tv show.
| causi wrote:
| Silmarillion as done by Blur Studios would be _incredible_.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Yep, imagine the Valar and Melkor raising and leveling
| mountains on screen (the very early periods of Arda).
| Brrrr, that would be epic.
| SilverBirch wrote:
| Given the change in market dynamics around video streaming, I
| think there are going to be a decent number of projects like
| this, that no matter how good they are, stand no chance of being
| positive ROI anymore (if they ever were). I think a really
| interesting angle on this is what does Amazon do in the few years
| after the series comes out. They've sunk so much money into the
| rights for this, and it is a valuable property, but it's going to
| be impossible to spend similar budgets on anything new. I wonder
| if we're going to see a massively expensive season 1 and then
| simply nothing because they don't want to do a season 2 with
| 1/5th of the budget.
| drumhead wrote:
| The last hurrah for web money profligacy maybe. Investors aren't
| going to be too happy to see so much money spent without a
| commensurately large return in this economic climate.
| djbebs wrote:
| So much money for something that I can already tell will flop...
|
| I really don't understand why they put people who have no
| connection with the IP in charge of this. It's really quite sad
| to see such a beloved world getting an adaptation that is
| destroyed by poor writing and design by committee
| layer8 wrote:
| The IP is only used for its value as a brand.
|
| There's an argument to be made that such productions are prone
| to diminishing the value of the brand if they turn out to be
| subpar. On the other hand, mainstream consumers usually aren't
| too demanding. So brands tend to get watered down to minimal
| viable mediocrity.
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| I see that argument a lot but my thought is that people just
| aren't looking at a long enough time frame, I mean everyone
| was excited for fantastic beasts and it was considered okay,
| but it made a ton of money because of the brand. But then
| they made the second one which the general reaction to seems
| to be "What the HECK?" but it still had decent sells because
| people liked the brand and most importantly didn't realize
| they didn't like it until after they had seen it, now
| fantastic beasts 3 had incredibly low returns because all the
| brand had been burned at that point.
|
| I think a huge problem is that especially, in the tech sector
| where things move so fast, people don't realize that many
| things, especially societal matters can move very slowly from
| a human perspective. I mean everyone how many big name tech
| companies do you know off the top of your head that are dying
| now, slowly, but still making money because of inertia? Some
| things just take a while someone who loves something can
| eventually have their love of that thing burned if it goes
| poorly for long enough.
| layer8 wrote:
| Right, it can go either way depending on inertia and on how
| bad it is for how long. But there is a large middle ground
| of "not good but still profitable". Recent examples may be
| The Walking Dead and Star Wars.
|
| And I'd argue that for something to be financially
| successful it doesn't need to be especially good, or loved
| by a large number of people, it just needs to be mildly
| entertaining and be marketed well.
| larrik wrote:
| I mean, some could argue Star Wars hasn't been "good" in
| almost 40 years.
| prox wrote:
| World wide format demographics means we have a cookie cutter
| adaption that probably just plays the script as a checklist
| needed to be done instead of anything inspiring.
|
| How about a movie on a fictional global shopping conglomerate
| with a selfish CEO who doesn't want to pay fair wages.
| [deleted]
| troyvit wrote:
| I thought the same at first but then realized that long after
| this series disappears from Amazon Prime and our collective
| consciousness Middle Earth will still be here. That's my hope
| anyway.
| 202206241203 wrote:
| Evil cannot create anything new, they can only corrupt and
| ruin what good forces have invented or made.
| mabbo wrote:
| I suspect this will go down beside the Fire Phone.
|
| Amazon just sometimes gets this idea that if they spend enough
| money they're sure to win.
|
| I just wish the government would finally break them up so that
| AWS could keep it's profits and stop funding the rest of the
| unprofitable divisions.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| > I just wish the government would finally break them up so
| that AWS could keep it's profits and stop funding the rest of
| the unprofitable divisions.
|
| I really don't get this sentiment. AWS was a loss making unit
| once much like any other innovative idea. Amazon funds 1000s of
| different ideas with the intention that few will work. If
| government would break up companies like this, there would be
| no interest in pursuing ideas by big companies and no funding
| for stuff which has any R and D cost.
| mabbo wrote:
| I get where you're coming from, but it doesn't hold water
| when you reach the scale of a company like Amazon, for the
| time periods we're talking about.
|
| The entire retail market is being undercut by Amazon Retail.
| Competition is being reduced to fewer and fewer competitors-
| which is bad for the consumer in the long run. All the while,
| Amazon retail can afford to lose hundreds of millions of
| dollars per year, over and over again, because AWS makes up
| the difference. They can afford to build hundreds of high
| tech warehouses to reduce their costs further, all from the
| income from AWS.
|
| I don't know what the right answer is, but I don't think it's
| okay that things are operating this way.
|
| (And lets not even get into the abuse of customers and
| merchants on their retail marketplace, which frankly to me
| are enough that the government should have intervened long
| ago.)
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| It holds specially for company like Amazon. Do you know how
| many business Amazon is running on loss? AFAIK they are
| very liberal in spending in R and D or with long term
| motive. AWS was once such a project. Who would have though
| that companies are ready to spend 5x if you add extra
| services alongside the server.
|
| Also, AFAIK Amazon shopping site is not in loss in US. Your
| suggestion could have made sense if Amazon is using AWS
| money to strengthen the monopoly, but Amazon shopping is a
| profitable business, in part due to advertisement.
| rr888 wrote:
| > $465 million ... New Zealand ... would be rebating the
| production around 25% of its costs, or $116 million.
|
| So it probably cost $100 mil but Bezos found a way to get NZ
| taxpayers to pay for it.
| phasersout wrote:
| That's probably closer to the truth than most other ideas...
|
| does this new Arri camera really cost 4 million a pop? hm...
| well could be... I'm just a Wellington tax officer...
| notatoad wrote:
| if it was all just a scam to get NZ to pay for it, presumably
| they would have kept that going instead of moving production to
| the UK for subsequent seasons, where they get drastically less
| tax credits.
| ethagknight wrote:
| There must be some level of tax strategy across these streaming
| platforms to get a video series to pay for a buildout of IT
| infrastructure that then gets added to its general AWS service
| (or iCloud etc). Many US states have wildly generous film tax
| credits, so it's almost conning these states into footing the
| bill for the next AWS data center. (Edit: NZ is paying 25% into
| this project as an economic and tourism generator)
|
| As others have pointed out, this is a lot of money for a series
| without recognizable names, so potentially the true cost of
| production is a very overpriced contract for digital services.
| The article cites "expensive costumes and elaborate sets" as a
| cost driver, I guess we will have to wait and see, but that seems
| like a cover.
|
| To quote Arrested Development, "It's one banana, Michael! What
| could it cost, $10?"
|
| Nonetheless, exciting to see an updated and hopefully more
| approachable journey into Middle Earth. I love LOTR, but cannot
| get my family excited to hunker down for a 3+ hour movie compared
| to watching 1hr chunks of tv series.
| glanzwulf wrote:
| Considering there's not a single relevant main stream actor,
| director or writer on the team. I don't understand where they're
| spending the money on.
|
| Can't wait to see it, but my expectations cannot go lower
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Considering there's not a single relevant main stream actor,
| director or writer on the team. I don't understand where
| they're spending the money on.
|
| Honestly, I'd rather money spent on props, effects, etc. than
| brand-name actors. Look at Stranger Things; virtually no one
| famous in it.
| glanzwulf wrote:
| Yeah, and look at Stranger Things, it started with a 6M per
| episode budget and now (due to massive success and fame the
| actors got their share) is at 30M per episode. That means
| season 1 was 48M and now season 4 is at 240M.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| There's talent out there beyond celebrities and movie stars.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| But that talent comes cheaper, where is this $400MM going?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Hopefully: big sets, lots of extras, on-location shooting.
|
| Probably also some internal accounting bullshit like "the
| Amazon home page is worth $100M as an ad placement spot".
| prepend wrote:
| There's great talent, but they don't command large fees. So
| GP's question stands.
|
| They aren't spending money on actors and writers, so where is
| the money going? That's a lot of spirit gum.
| mooreds wrote:
| Totally OT, but this kind of stuff drives me up the wall:
|
| "Now, Deadline confirms that the first season of the show will
| cost $465 million to produce.
|
| For comparison's sake, Peter Jackson's whole Lord of the Rings
| trilogy cost $281 million to make. For something more recent,
| Game of Thrones was spending around $100 million per season after
| it really blew up -- this would be around season 6 -- and spent
| far less in its early days."
|
| The issue is that there is no inflation adjustment. $281M was
| different in the 2000s than it is now.
|
| In fact, per https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm
| $281M in Jan 2004 (the last LoTR movie was released in Dec 2003)
| is $443M in May 2022 dollars.
|
| Still eye popping numbers, but the costs for the series and the
| moves are no longer hundreds of millions of dollars apart.
| srveale wrote:
| Does anyone else find it ironic and kind of sad that Amazon, of
| all companies, has taken over a story about the evils of greed
| and lust for power, and which idolizes the simple, pastoral
| lifestyle above all else?
|
| There are few places less Shire-like than an Amazon warehouse.
| jmyeet wrote:
| This is going to be a disaster, Like GoT Season 8 level diaster.
| Mark my words. My reasoning:
|
| 1. The budget for the original LOTR trilogy was $281 million [1].
| Obviously there's inflation but we're also talking film vs TV.
| Films tend to be much more expensive to produce to the point
| where only theatrical releases tend to make films economical;
|
| 2. The showrunners are JD Vance and Patrick McKay. If you check
| their IMDB profiles they have almost no credits. How on Earth did
| they get this job? To put this in context: films are run by
| directors. Producers work for the director. TV shows are run by
| showrunners, which are really producers. Directors work for the
| producers. There's good reason for this. The showrunners need to
| maintain consistency across the entire season while individual
| episode directors will manage the schedule for their own episode.
|
| Producers are writers and you'd expect that any producer has a
| long list of writing credits and a premium TV showrunner will
| have lots of producer and writer credits.
|
| 3. No name recognition in the actors that I can see. There's
| nothing wrong with eelvating talented no name actors but you need
| to pepper in some name recognition. It builds hype and recognized
| actors tend to be recognized for a reason. GoT had Sean Bean and
| Peter Dinklage. There were also seasoned actors who just weren't
| well known (eg Lena Headley);
|
| 4. A lot of shows go downhill when they run out of original
| material. It happened to GoT in apsectacular fashion. It happened
| to the Handmaid's Tale (the book only covered Season 1). It takes
| a strong writing team to generate good original material. Being
| in Middle Earth is both a blessing and a curse. There is source
| material like the Silmarillion but that can also hamstring you in
| a way that greenfield writing isn't.
|
| 5. Statements made suggest the showrunners and Amazon just don't
| get the tone of Middle Earth, like they were trying to make GoT
| in Middle Earth. Not everything has to be GoT. Jackson understood
| LOTR. It's why his vision was so good.
|
| 6. Spinoffs are hard. The most successful spinoffs are organic.
| Frasier (from Cheers) and Better Caul Saul (from Breaking Bad)
| spring to mind. Both came from a successfully developed character
| that was proven to audiences and thus also had inbuilt interest.
| HBO is busy throwing mud at the wall to see if any GoT spinoff
| will stick. Even now I'm not sure HBO has any idea of how badly
| D&D shit the bed with GoT season 8. It undermined the interest in
| earlier seasons and nobody talks about GoT now. In seasons 3-5
| they were actually showing episodes in theaters (even IMAX
| theaters). Think about that. Nobody cares about these spinoffs
| and D&D are a big part of why. But they're also not organic.
|
| If you want to see what happens without strong leadership and
| understanding the source material, look at the Hobbit (yes
| Jackson was involved but he came in very late).
|
| Amazon has committed $1 billion to this and I believe they are
| obligated to produce at least 5 seasons. I predict we'll see 2 or
| even 3 different showrunners in that time and the whole thing
| will likely be incoherent. Look at American Gods Season 1 to 2 or
| the downfall of The Walking Dead for just how much this can doom
| a project.
|
| [1]: https://www.indiewire.com/2019/04/elijah-wood-lord-of-the-
| ri...
| robonerd wrote:
| > _There 's nothing wrong with elevating talented no name
| actors but you need to pepper in some name recognition._
|
| That pepper is doubtlessly good for marketing, but I think it's
| bad for the art. With some exceptions, every time a famous
| celebrity is in a movie, it breaks immersion for me. I think
| fame makes an actor intrinsically worse at their job, even when
| their acting skill is the reason for their fame.
|
| Except for Gary Oldman of course.
| quacked wrote:
| I don't think Jackson understood LOTR--I agree with Christopher
| Tolkein's criticism of the movies, although I do personally
| enjoy them, and I don't think you're "wrong" for liking them.
| I'll explain my take:
|
| As I am sure you are aware, Tolkein was a classic British
| academic, like James Herriot was in veterinary medicine. He had
| a fierce and deep fondness for England and all of the
| colonizers that contributed to the English identity and and
| nation via art, migration, and war, primarily focusing on the
| pagans, the Norse, the Danes, and the Germans (the "Saxon" in
| Anglo-Saxon is from areas very close to Germany, Belgium, and
| the Netherlands). If you ever read James Herriot's memoirs,
| you'll hear a lot of similar admiration for the distinct
| English sub-cultures and the unique dialects, practices,
| personalities, and looks they had based on their conquering
| ancestors and their subsequent evolution.
|
| As C. Tolkein complained, Jackson turned the IP into an action-
| spectacle that glorified war and battle. This doesn't initially
| make sense as a criticism, given that the novels center around
| a a massive war, but more investigation clears the matter up.
| LOTR was not military-forward because Tolkein loved war and
| action, but because he understood that the English identity was
| first and foremost a martial creation by the competition of
| unique cultures with long traditions of mythology and fairy
| tales, and it would be foolish to examine and display those
| cultures without the addition of warfare. A massive, ongoing
| war was the most convenient and English way to present his
| created cultures and languages, and he took the concept of
| honor and fealty between sub-nations very seriously. The
| England of Tolkein's youth educated their children that way,
| too; the history of England was taught to children as a series
| of battles that bookended reigns by different nobles. (This is
| supported by the childhood school memories of other famous
| English authors like Orwell and Dahl.)
|
| So LOTR is actually a sort of mythical folk ethnography of
| northwestern Europe, with a primary focus on a mythical England
| as its center. It is not a clean 1:1 map (you can't just say
| "Dwarves = Germans"), but there are extremely obvious
| parallels. Hobbits are like English country folk, Elves are
| Scandinavian roving royalty, the Rohan horsemen are like
| mixtures of Steppe raiders and northern Scots.
|
| A good example of how Jackson failed to understand Tolkein's
| creation was through his treatment of the hobbits. In the
| novels, the hobbits are crafty, industrious folk, who have the
| same eccentricities as the intelligent and cultured (but also
| petty and simple-minded) denizens of Tolkein's English country.
| The hobbits in the text are an ancient culture who perform long
| feats of academic genealogy, farm, distill, and are well-read
| and "mature" as we might compare them to modern humans--
| Tolkein's joke is that despite acting as landholding
| businessmen, scholars, and tradesmen, the main foursome are
| considered immature as compared to other hobbits.
|
| Jackson, on the other hand, treats them primarily as drunken,
| silly teenaged sideshow halflings. His portrayal is very funny
| and I am fond of it, but he completely misses the gravitas of
| the Shire as he lays it out in the Fellowship of the Ring. The
| novel-hobbits are a functioning proto-industrial agricultural
| civilization with their own myths, narratives, political
| factions, and warfare (just like the real-life residents of the
| English countryside), but the movie-hobbits are funny
| hillbillies with pretty architecture, with some exceptions like
| Bilbo.
|
| This theme of "complex martial culture reduced to laughs and
| action scenes" is common through all three movies, and it
| stretches through all of the cultures that Jackson portrayed. I
| think the most egregious casualty is in Return of the King,
| when the noble chivalry, restrained capacity for violence, and
| scholarship of Faramir is replaced with a silly "temptation of
| an inferior man" plotline, which to me shows that Jackson
| lacked the ability to take Tolkein's ideas really seriously. If
| you don't believe me, watch the Faramir scenes in the movie,
| and then go back in the book and read them. Novel-Faramir is a
| paragon of virtue, an intelligent, shrewd, and principled man
| who refuses to compromise his principles for the glory of
| Gondor, but also remains loyal to his father, as would be
| expected of a son of means and nobility in a battle-tested
| patriarchal culture.
|
| That said, I do enjoy the movies and I don't think you're wrong
| for liking them. Jackson did an excellent job with the art,
| music, geography, character relations, military scenes,
| heroism, and pacing. I simply don't think he understood the
| underlying soul of the novels.
| Corrado wrote:
| I would love for this to be good, but I'm afraid it's going to
| follow in the footsteps of "The Shannara Chronicles". I read
| every single one of the "Shannara" books as well as the sub-
| series (Word & Void, etc.) but I watched 2 episodes of Chronicles
| and couldn't stand it.
|
| I don't know if it's because I had a whole look and feel for the
| characters in my mind's eye and the show didn't reflect that. Or
| maybe it was because they told a story that was similar to the
| books but not quite the same. Or maybe it was bad CGI and
| writing. Whatever it was, the show just didn't sit right with me.
| This LOTR series feels very similar.
| albertopv wrote:
| I hope it'll be better than The Wheel of Time, not that it takes
| much...
| softwaredoug wrote:
| I think people are burned out by prestige TV
|
| The market is flooded and there's only so many complicated series
| people can keep track of at one time. It's like trying to read a
| dozen book series at the same time.
|
| Years ago with shows like game of thrones, the market was more
| sustainable. A single show could justify a high budget and
| dominate cultural discussions for a while. Now the market is so
| streaming forward and swamped by streaming services people can't
| keep up. It's just becoming work to keep up with these shows. Not
| to mention the whole thing could end poorly (ie Game of Thrones)
|
| You see this in the prevalence of limited series like Queens
| Gambit / Obi wan. People are just happy to have a self contained
| story where they don't have to work. Or they want throw away,
| mindless TV that they doesn't require much deep thinking.
| acchow wrote:
| > I think people are burned out by prestige TV
|
| Can you give some examples? I'm re-watching Westworld from the
| beginning now because I find most of what's out there to be
| boring
| wmeredith wrote:
| Not OP, but there's an embarrassment of riches right now when
| it comes to scripted dramas and comedies.
|
| Apple TV+
|
| - Severance
|
| - Ted Lasso
|
| - For All Mankind
|
| - Slow Horses
|
| HBOMax
|
| - We Own This City
|
| - Hacks
|
| - Barry
|
| - Tokyo Vice
|
| - Gentleman Jack
|
| - Peacemaker
|
| - White Lotus
|
| - Curb Your Enthusiasm
|
| - Minx
|
| - Insecure
|
| - Industry
|
| There are many more, but just on those two streamers that's a
| dozen+ shows that I've been really impressed by in one way or
| the other over the last year. And my list to watch has just
| as much on it.
|
| As for a direct recommendation, I highly suggest you check
| out Severance if you like Westworld. It's slower burn, but
| similarly twisty sci-fi thriller.
| elias94 wrote:
| I doubt anything interesting will came out from that expensive
| series. They're doing it for the money, not for the product. And
| that as always be a clear indicator of a low quality product.
| [deleted]
| marie1595 wrote:
| 0xcb0 wrote:
| I'm sure people find this offensive and offtopic, but As much as
| I'm a LOTR fan, I really can't wrap my head around why we spend
| so much money on creating a fiction series while millions of
| people are at risk of death from hunger, thirst, and climate
| change.
|
| With 465$M, so many people could be saved. :(
| the_only_law wrote:
| Good God can someone come up with a unique or at least mildly
| novel idea? I'm getting sick of seeing remakes and spinoffs of
| classic franchises or series that absolutely disrespect the
| originals by pumping out some garbage ass show that will somehow
| last longer than a season.
| rcpt wrote:
| Chernobyl 2
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > New Zealand, where the show is shooting
|
| I think they've switched to England and Wales haven't they? Which
| is probably closer to the author's inspirations (Tolkien never
| set foot in New Zealand.)
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > Which is probably closer to the author's inspirations
| (Tolkien never set foot in New Zealand.)
|
| Yes. A youthful walking holiday in the Alps was also a source
| of inspiration.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Man, half a billion dollars on an entertainment product - that
| money could be poured into something useful, like space.
|
| We shouldn't be spending money on earthly delights until we've
| fixed all the problems in space. What practical applications have
| hobbits given us, anyway?
| baud147258 wrote:
| > What practical applications have hobbits given us
|
| second breakfast, for one
| emptyfile wrote:
| Considering how awful the Hobbit movies were I can't see how this
| could be worse.
|
| In any case, after the horror that was Wheel of Time, I'm not
| watching any Amazon fantasy shows unless they get glowing reviews
| (from real critics, not tech news commentators).
| usrname wrote:
| Evil is not able to create anything new, it can only distort and
| destroy what has been invented or made by the forces of good.
| bezzzos bezzosn my bezzzos
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Just like Melkor creating the orcs...
| prepend wrote:
| Obviously, I'll wait and see once it comes out.
|
| But it seems odd to spend so much and not have a single
| established creator that has put out great content. And not to
| involve Jackson seems off because even having him in a consulting
| role would be a good sign.
|
| Looking at the imdb page this seems like a corporate driven
| project rather than a creator driven project with lots of
| different directors that haven't don't anything remarkable and
| seem to have just done other Amazon shows.
|
| Of course there are video projects done by unknowns that turn out
| great (Jackson had done Heavenly Creatures and Frighteners and a
| few others before LOTR), but I was kind of hoping there'd be some
| creative team who is really into Tolkien who tells great stories.
|
| Also, I don't recognize the actors at all. Like not a single one.
| Compared to LOTR, they didn't rely on stars but they had Ian
| McKellen, Elijah Wood, Sean Aston, Viggo Mortenson, Liv Tyler,
| Christopher Lee, Sean Bean, Cate Blanchett. It seems strange to
| not have anyone. I thought this was a cost cutting effort, but
| that doesn't make sense if $465M.
|
| I worry that this is Amazon saying "cost is no limit" to a
| project team instead of artists and creators.
| bshimmin wrote:
| I wouldn't say there's a big name star in there, but I've seen
| Peter Mullan in quite a few things, Nazanin Boniardi is
| moderately famous, Lenny Henry is definitely famous in the UK,
| and Morfydd Clark was tremendous recently in _Saint Maud_.
|
| As others have said, this doesn't necessarily matter too much.
| hbosch wrote:
| >Also, I don't recognize the actors at all. Like not a single
| one. Compared to LOTR, they didn't rely on stars but they had
| Ian McKellen, Elijah Wood, Sean Aston, Viggo Mortenson, Liv
| Tyler, Christopher Lee, Sean Bean, Cate Blanchett. It seems
| strange to not have anyone. I thought this was a cost cutting
| effort, but that doesn't make sense if $465M.
|
| Well, lets start off by admitting to ourselves that guys like
| Elijah Wood and Sean Astin in particular (heck, probably even
| Viggo Mortensen, at least in the USA) didn't really have strong
| resumes before Fellowship. As a kid, I don't think I could have
| told you who Orlando Bloom was before LOTR -- because he wasn't
| anybody.
|
| Secondly, when every major actor working today has either got
| fully hoovered into the Marvel or DC cinematic universes or is
| looking to exploit the next franchise with lopsided deals then
| yeah... I imagine it would make sense going with actors who
| have less "demand". You think about how Amazon is going to
| handle this show. The video component streaming on Prime Video,
| OK, sure. Game studios involvement, perhaps? Alexa skills and
| audio adventures? Integrated Fire device experiences of some
| kind? Unknown quantities of almost any digital content
| possible... it's much, _much_ easier to get this kind of "360
| degree" commitment from lesser known actors compared to, say,
| Timothee Chalamet as Frodo (or whatever).
|
| Also we ought to make sure we give credit to the lesser known
| actors, producers, directors, writers, stylists, designers and
| so on that create enthralling and award winning movies and TV
| shows every year! So let's at _least_ give some of these people
| the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise. Taking chances
| on creative endeavors is one of the great things people do for
| others in this world.
| prepend wrote:
| I'm not saying that that list were major stars. I'm saying
| they were known with substantial resumes.
|
| I don't recognize a single person in the RoP list. I watch
| 100 movies a year. Not a single person.
|
| So my point is that that is weird and there's no precedent
| that I know of where a show used complete unknowns for every
| role and was good.
|
| I think giving unknown actors is a great idea. For some
| roles, not all.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Agree with you in principle; but FWIW I knew Elijah Wood (if
| nothing else, from Deep Impact:), and couple of supporting
| established actors on periphery were a huge draw and added
| massive credibility - Ian & Kate delivered amazing
| performances to KEY characters; Liv Tyler's voice was
| legendary; and Agent Smith was there too! :D
| SeanLuke wrote:
| Well... Sean Astin was Rudy.
| frumper wrote:
| Goonies never say die.
| [deleted]
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| > Well, lets start off by admitting to ourselves that guys
| like Elijah Wood and Sean Astin in particular (heck, probably
| even Viggo Mortensen, at least in the USA) didn't really have
| strong resumes before Fellowship. As a kid, I don't think I
| could have told you who Orlando Bloom was before LOTR --
| because he wasn't anybody.
|
| I agree with what you said largely, but not Viggo Mortensen
|
| https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001557/
|
| Viggo was in a number of shows that would have American
| audiences familiar with his acting skills far before 2001.
|
| Most notably in my case https://youtu.be/Beogqr20uII?t=147
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| Dude! Crimson Tide, Carlito's Way... I know people like GI
| Jane.. not my favorite, but I'll give it to him. When was
| The Road? I think that was after. The Psycho remake... I
| know it got panned, but he was good in that, Anne Heche
| wasn't great, but he was really good.
| bobdvb wrote:
| I think I'd disagree with the assertion about Elijah Wood,
| Deep Impact was a pretty big film and he had a key role in
| that. He also had many other roles before that in some pretty
| notable films, especially The Faculty and heck, he was
| playing alongside Kevin Costner in 1994!
|
| Perhaps I am just old, and a keen film watcher, but I
| wouldn't describe him as a lesser known actor at that point
| in his career.
|
| Also, Sean Bean has long been a well known supporting actor.
| Anna Karenina, Goldeneye, Patriot Games, etc. But I would
| concede that he's very much more well known in the UK because
| of his TV roles, especially Sharpe which ran for 7 series.
| Again, not a lesser known actor if you're playing the bad guy
| in a Bond film.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| I'm genuinely puzzled by this assumption - that the top
| talent pool largely begins and ends with the best known
| actors. I'm not debating their obvious talent but I am
| confident that the industry limits who gets to be well
| known. One way is by excluding actors who aren't immensely
| attractive.
| prepend wrote:
| > assumption - that the top talent pool largely begins
| and ends with the best known actors.
|
| I don't think anyone is making this assumption, and
| certainly not me.
|
| What I'm saying is that in a show with such a big budget,
| not a single actor is well known or even decently known.
| That's unusual and not a good sign. It's possible that
| this show is unique in that it has all great actors and
| is not paying a ton for them. Certainly it's possible.
|
| But try to think of another show with even a moderate
| budget that was awesome with an entire cast of
| "unknowns."
|
| There are some movies, Kids comes to mind with a new
| director, writer, and stars like a then unknown Rosario
| Dawson and Chloe Sevingny. But that budget was like $400k
| and I think if they had had $40M they would have had
| different actors.
| bena wrote:
| For people like Elijah Wood, I would say that before he was
| working. Deep Impact was hokey, The Faculty was essentially
| a Class of 84/99 retread.
|
| They're alright, but just that.
|
| He was a notable child actor who was trying to transition
| into more adult roles. I'd say he was known, but not the
| first person you'd ever think of.
|
| Lord of the Rings changed that. It made him an "actor".
| From there, he got a lot more work and he was able to
| influence what he worked on.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Elijah Wood was famous as a child. That doesn't really
| translate into adult roles.
|
| I mean, seriously, look at Wil Wheaton or that Home Alone
| kid.
| abhorrence wrote:
| Often child actors (like Wil, for example) don't actually
| want to be actors and it's just overbearing parents
| making them do it. Naturally, for many of them, as soon
| as they reach adulthood and gain more control over their
| lives, they don't continue a career in acting.
| verve_rat wrote:
| >Taking chances on creative endeavors is one of the great
| things people do for others in this world.
|
| I totally agree... but $465 million? That's one hell of a
| chance.
| auggierose wrote:
| Given this other recent fantasy show on prime was just
| horrible, I am not surprised by this. Strangely, a lot of
| people liked it! Maybe it is going to be the same here. Don't
| even remember the name of this other show.
| istjohn wrote:
| Wheel of Time. I enjoyed it.
| Semaphor wrote:
| Same, but then I also never read the books.
| auggierose wrote:
| Didn't read the books either. Just such a badly written
| show with horrible actors.
| cgeier wrote:
| While I'm not particularly looking forward to this series,
| having rather unknown actors isn't putting me off at all.
|
| And why shouldn't they go with directors they are happy with?
| TV series often have a lot of different directors, often
| directing just a single episode of a season or even a series.
| karmasimida wrote:
| It is easier to have unknown actors/actress to sign up for
| longer contract I believe.
|
| Such high-profile show is unlikely to use super expensive and
| well known actors/actress for big roles, due to budget and
| commitment issue.
| napkin wrote:
| OP was simply pointing out that by the looks of it, the new
| series will not be helmed by any Auteur. Peter Jackson was a
| modern auteur and people's expectations for LotR have been
| set by his distinct style.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| TV series are often bad though. You can often see drastic
| dips in episode quality. Do they really know what they're
| doing with these directors?
| Sebb767 wrote:
| The budget-talent-ratio just seems off. Usually, movies spend
| a lot of money on hiring talent, which here clearly isn't the
| case here. So the question is where is that money going.
| Grandparent and I are afraid that we end with something
| graphically completely overproduced and no story.
|
| Also, if you provide a junior engineer with a few million,
| you can't expect perfect software, even with that budget.
| Same reservations apply here.
| newsclues wrote:
| In Hollywood you don't always hire people for talent but
| branding and audience awareness.
|
| If you have a brand like the Hobbit you don't need brand
| name actors or directors to attract an audience.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| You're missing the point: We (GP and I) don't think you
| _need_ known actors. There are great series with (then)
| unknown actors. It 's just strange to have such a massive
| budget (which usually would go, in part, to known actors
| and directors) and then forgo them.
|
| Also, for directors, there's definitely a case to be made
| that you need someone who can handle such a large budget.
| That's why I made the example with the junior engineer.
| Clubber wrote:
| Yes, some of the best titles have none or just 1 top tier
| actor at the time: Star Wars (Alec Guinness), West World
| (Anthony Hopkins), Game of Thrones (Sean Bean), Breaking
| Bad, The Wire. I'm sure there's other's I can't remember.
|
| Some directors prefer fresh actors for some movies. It s
| not necessarily a red flag, but it could be. Time will
| tell.
| adventured wrote:
| Not a great list for that premise. The Amazon Lord series
| not only lacks stars, it lacks famous mid-tiers as well.
|
| West World had Ed Harris, Evan Rachel Wood, James
| Marsden, Thandie Newton, among others. These are mid tier
| actors that are quite well known (even though they're not
| superstars).
|
| Breaking Bad had as its lead a very prominent television
| actor in Cranston. Malcolm in the Middle was a hit tv
| show that had a long run as far as TV shows go. He was
| already very TV-famous prior to Breaking Bad. Getting
| Cranston to carry Breaking Bad was them going with a TV
| heavy-weight with tons of experience and a deep
| familiarity for TV audiences.
| Clubber wrote:
| I forgot about Ed Harris, I think he's way higher than
| mid-tier; he's very good and has been around forever.
| West World was probably a bad example thinking about it.
|
| >a very prominent television actor in Cranston
|
| He wasn't very prominent (he certainly is now). The show
| was for a particular demographic (later GenX) but that's
| about it. I'd say it was on par with _That 70 's Show_.
| He was in a few Seinfeld episodes too. Compare that with
| the cast of LoTR and it's a stark difference.
|
| Point being, some directors prefer fresh faced actors for
| certain projects and it's worked out well. I'm sure with
| the supply and demand, there are a lot of good actors
| that haven't gotten much screen time.
| bbarnett wrote:
| And in Star Trek and B5!
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| But Malcom in the Middle was in syndication (151
| episodes), so plenty of people knew his face if not his
| name, because reruns were airing 2x a day in virtually
| every US television market, and this was back before
| streaming so syndication was a huge way to get audience
| awareness. . The That 70s Show comparison is apt, and
| while he wasn't Ashton level of famous from the show, he
| and the actress that played his wife (Jane Kaczmarek)
| were both better known than the actors who played the
| parents on That 70s Show.
|
| Cranston was also the perfect person to cast for Breaking
| Bad because his character was so different from who
| audiences expected him to be. It worked brilliantly, the
| juxtaposition between the kind of zany (if put-upon and
| long suffering) dad then playing a dramatic role of a
| high school teacher turned drug-lord.
|
| Having a cast of mostly lesser-knowns and unknowns is one
| thing. Having zero even recognizable names for a
| production that costs half a billion dollars is something
| else.
|
| And Bryan Cranston was a recognizable, if not super
| famous, name. That's part of why Breaking Bad worked, it
| subverted expectations and brought in some character
| actors that were at least visually familiar to audiences.
|
| Same with the LOTR films. Liv Tyler was actually really
| huge at the time, having been in a series of high-profile
| blockbusters and also famous as a pop-culture figure
| thanks to her dad her music video appearances. Cate
| Blanchett was already famous, having been nominated for
| Oscars and BAFTAs. Sir Ian McKellan had been knighted for
| 20 years and also had nominations and awards out the ass.
| Sean Astin and Elijah Wood were successful child actors
| trying to bridge to adult roles. No one was too big of a
| name to cost too much or detract too much from the story,
| but you had enough recognizable names to get people
| excited about the trailer.
|
| The Marvel films followed a similar thing. RDJ, obviously
| extremely famous already but Iron Man was his ultimate
| comeback role. ScarJo was also already a huge name (which
| Marvel used to their advantage for the next decade plus,
| b/c she was A-list and at the top of her career), and
| they balanced that with lesser-known names that became
| big stars.
|
| I don't think anyone is saying you need a star-studded
| cast. If anything, that works against you for properties
| like this, because people have already seen the
| characters in their mind or in other adaptations. But you
| usually need one or two recognizable faces, at least with
| a budget of this size. A smaller-budget show can have a
| cast of unknowns that hopefully then blow up into
| superstars, but we're talking about a budget that
| eclipses even the largest film properties, where you're
| not paying a lot of it towards the above the line
| expenses.
|
| I think Amazon execs think the power of the LOTR brand
| can overcome anything else, and maybe they are right. But
| I don't know if I would risk $500m of a production with
| zero recognizable names in front of or behind the camera.
| Even Stranger Things had Winona Ryder, after all.
| bena wrote:
| Breaking Bad didn't work because the character was
| different. There was significant push back from AMC about
| casting Cranston.
|
| Vince Gilligan went to bat for him because he was certain
| Cranston could carry the dramatic load after working with
| him on an episode of the X-Files.
| jhbadger wrote:
| In Star Wars, Peter Cushing was also a top tier actor,
| but his character (Grand Moff Tarkin) was admittedly a
| rather small role. And James Earl Jones was also rather
| well known, but maybe doesn't count because he was just
| voice acting for Vader (who was physically played by the
| body builder David Prowse).
| verve_rat wrote:
| But none of those had a budget this out of wack, that is
| the point being made here.
| newsclues wrote:
| Oh sorry. CGI is why, it isn't strange if you watch the
| credits and see armies of animators at multiple studios.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Why strange? Others have pointed out plenty of benefits
| that going with good but lesser known actors brings, so
| why take on more risk with more famous actors? They don't
| need them for their brand value in this case.
|
| Amazon would probably like to have the next Orlando
| Bloom, but doesn't need or want the current Orlando Bloom
| (or any other famous actor).
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Let me formulate it like this: The most expensive series
| so far was The Pacific, with a budget of $22 million per
| episode [0]. You'd expect a high budget series to spend
| _a lot_ on actors and directors - let 's just go with
| 50%. This would put this series on a budget equivalent of
| $800 million to $1 billion with a "normal" cast
| (depending on how much you calculate as budget for lesser
| known actors). Given 20 episodes [1], this comes down to
| an equivalent of $40-50 million per episode. Even
| extremely high production value series like GoT were well
| below this number. Just going with the actual number of
| $23.25 million per episode already makes this one of the
| most expensive series of all time.
|
| Now, this doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be bad,
| but having a lesser experienced cast burn through _that_
| much money smells like bad management and could therefore
| be an indicator that the series is highly over-produced
| with not much content to go with it. Of course, time will
| tell, but the lack of known-good talent in the management
| and the insane amount of money spent don 't make me
| overly optimistic.
|
| [0] https://stacker.com/stories/3159/25-most-expensive-
| tv-series...
|
| [1] https://www.slashfilm.com/568297/lord-of-the-rings-
| season-1-...
| tptacek wrote:
| The Pacific was definitely not expensive because of its
| cast (none of the leads, Sledge, Leckie, or Basilone,
| were well-known). You can just watch the show and see
| where the money went.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| In terms of established brands, I worry about the Dune
| Mini Series repeat. It was... fine. Felt scene by scene
| from the book, faithful, and unimaginative. I can't even
| remember if I watched it to end or not, let alone any
| additional detail.
| TomSwirly wrote:
| The Hobbit movies were some of the worst films ever made,
| which doesn't help your point.
| ankaAr wrote:
| From an IT perspective, we know that the money is going to
| management and marketing department. And maybe a new pool
| for HHRR.
| Teever wrote:
| theres a difference between hriing talent and hiring a
| name.
|
| many big actors are fabulous but theres a vast pool of
| actors to draw from who are equally fabulous but dont cost
| an obscene amount because their name isnt known.
|
| As a person who watches a lot of content it is nice to see
| some fresh faces and voices. that year where Benedict
| Cumberbatch played everything from a dragon in The Hobbit
| to Sherlock Holmes and even Khan in Star Trek sucked.
| prepend wrote:
| I think that them going with directors they are happy with is
| precisely the problem. Amazon has cranked out a lot of
| mediocre tv shows that don't have any significant greatness.
| What's strange about these directors is that they haven't
| directed anything I thought was good at all.
|
| The writers have uncredited writing credits on Flash Gordon
| and Star Trek Beyond [0]. I like those but it's just strange
| that that's all they have. Like that's it. Not even a
| complete screenplay.
|
| I'd love to read the story of how they assembled this team
| that is free of PR.
|
| [0] https://www.imdb.com/filmosearch?role=nm4260438&job_type=
| wri...
| Emma_Goldman wrote:
| >"They are happy with is precisely the problem. Amazon has
| cranked out a lot of mediocre tv shows that don't have any
| significant greatness."
|
| This - the fact that this is an Amazon production already
| tells us a great deal about what to expect.
|
| I have a low expectations for TV, but the Amazon catalogue
| has really plumbed new depths. It is an artistic wasteland.
| Just reading the title of this thread I therefore thought,
| 'How is this going to work out?' If you add to that the
| concerns of the OP, it does not look good.
| tptacek wrote:
| Having Jackson even nominally involved in the project would be
| a pretty terrible sign for me, after the Hobbit fiasco (which
| in turn colored my appraisal of ROTK and, in particular, the
| extended LOTR editions).
|
| As for the writer's room on this show, it looks solid to me:
|
| * Jason Cahill wrote a bunch of episodes for The Sopranos
|
| * Justin Doble wrote 4 episodes in S1 and S2 of Stranger
| Things, and those are the only two good seasons of Stranger
| Things
|
| * Gennifer Hutchison won a WGA award for her work on Breaking
| Bad, which is one of the best shows ever to air
|
| * Bryan Cogman wrote 11(!) episodes of Game of Thrones
|
| * Stephany Folsom was a writer on Toy Story 4 and Thor:
| Ragnarak
|
| The two show-runners (JD Payne and Patrick McKay) are people
| I'm not familiar with, but so was DB Weiss before Game of
| Thrones.
|
| Except for Sean Bean, I didn't know any of the GOT actors
| either; they're all famous _for_ GOT now. The Amazon LOTR show
| could be a debacle, but it won 't be because they chintzed out
| on actors.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Agree with Jackson being terrible to even have on for
| consulting due to what he did to The Hobbit. I wasn't happy
| with what he did with some key scenes in LOTR either. I feel
| the main reason he was left out though is because there might
| be animosity between him and the Tolkien family in terms of
| art direction.
| manmal wrote:
| The Hobbit production was so heavily rushed, I wouldn't
| hold the quality issues against Jackson.
| JauntyHatAngle wrote:
| Minor quibble, but add Charles Dance to your big name actors
| list. I can't think of any others though... dinklage was kind
| of known I guess?
| pflenker wrote:
| As a huge ASOIAF fan, I had the same concerns after Game of
| Thrones was announced and first details were shared. The
| crucial difference, though, is that GRRM himself was involved
| in the series.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| And we all know how it ended once they ran out of his
| material. Yes, I'm still salty.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| Is it possible the reason it ended so badly is the same
| reason they ran out of material?
|
| It's been 11 years since the last ASOIAF novel. I think
| GRRM may have written himself into a corner and is unsure
| how to tie up all the threads and satisfactorily end the
| series.
| tomtheelder wrote:
| I do think GRRM is struggling to tease the rest of the
| story out, but I don't think that was the problem at all
| with GOT. The key plot points were all basically fine. It
| just all felt so rushed and totally unconvincing.
| Daenerys going mad and Bran ending up on the throne are
| reasonable enough directions to take the plot, but the
| show _completely_ failed to develop either of those
| things, so when they did happen it just felt forced and
| not believable.
|
| They also did a bunch of other annoying/bad things that
| deviated from the early seasons (bringing along a bunch
| of nameless characters on adventures to just to kill
| them, wardrobe and makeup went in a frankly absurd
| direction for no obvious reason, emphasis shifted to
| "wow" moments in episodes instead of paced out plot, just
| dropped a bunch of story lines that were interesting,
| etc).
| bakuninsbart wrote:
| [Spoilers Below]
|
| I think you are spot on about ASOIAF, but I don't think
| this is the reason GoT ended badly. Books and TV Show
| started diverting much earlier, and the show had
| substantially fewer storylines, which is a good thing in
| this context I think. I also suspect that the ending we
| got is based on notes GRRM left. Daenerys turning evil is
| heavily foreshadowed, Bran ending up on the throne kinda
| makes sense, and so does Jamie not cashing in his
| redemption after all. WW not being the final arc mirrors
| LotR, and GRRM has repeatedly stated that he loved that
| way of storytelling. The first book is called Game of
| Thrones, the ending is about that as well.
|
| The problem in my opinion was just terrible execution: It
| was all really rushed and with terrible dialogue, so none
| of the story elements were developed in detail, and felt
| artificial and wooden.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| [Continuing spoilers]
|
| On Twitter late last year, I saw what was probably the
| single best idea that would have greatly improved the
| last few episodes, and could probably have been
| accomplished with a single scene (and maybe still could
| for a future "definitive edition").
|
| The idea is that at some point prior to the last two
| episodes, Danerys receives word that Mereen has fallen,
| and that the slavers have retaken it. Her greatest
| achievement in "breaking the wheel" is now gone, and her
| designs to be the next Aegon are no longer nearly as
| assured.
|
| Building on this idea, the scene could play out with her
| completely losing it and threatening to burn _Mereen_ to
| the ground, her advisors only barely talking her out of
| flying across the Narrow Sea right then and there.
|
| Mereen's destruction is averted, but the seed has been
| planted in the viewer's mind: Danerys has much less to
| lose now, and she's willing to rain fire on a populace
| with enough provocation. Now when the other shoe drops
| and she does this on _King 's Landing,_ the turn has
| enough narrative foundation to feel plausible and earned.
| asdff wrote:
| I really wish the show had another few seasons to get
| into the lore and tie up the azure ahai/lion of the night
| to the white walker narrative (if there are in fact
| connections as seem to be implied). I just find myself
| not understanding the motives of the white walkers. Why
| now? Who summoned them to rise up? The show never really
| answered what it set up in its first scene with those
| body parts the nights watchman found. I don't know who
| laid them there. I don't know why they are laid like
| that. I don't know why they are laid here and not
| elsewhere. I don't know what laying them there even does
| magically, if anything. It was a great scene imo, but
| without being properly addressed it just feels like
| provocative lore bait.
| Arrath wrote:
| I quite like this idea.
| xdennis wrote:
| If you look at the original pitch GRRM gave for ASOIAF,
| many of the plot points never happened (like Jamie
| murdering everyone ahead of him, blaming Tyrion, and
| taking the throne for himself).
|
| You say that the problem is the execution. I think it
| goes deeper. It's impossible to execute. GRRM knew this
| about many plot points and that's why he changed his mind
| about many things by the time he had to expand on those
| specific plot points.
|
| > Bran ending up on the throne kinda makes sense
|
| If he ever gets to the end, I'm certain he'll see that
| this doesn't make any sense.
|
| Or at least he won't write the same bullshit the show
| gave us: "he deserves the throne because he has the best
| story". I still want to throw the TV at the wall when I
| think about that.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| > It's been 11 years since the last ASOIAF novel.
|
| To put this in context: All 9 books of The Expanse were
| written during this period along with a six season TV
| show based on the same material. The two writers were
| involved in both actively.
|
| I've 100% given up on ever seeing how ASOIAF ends. Same
| with Rothfuss's Kingkiller, it's been 11 years and I
| stopped caring during the previous decade
| jessaustin wrote:
| Sure, but Expanse also ended on a weak season.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| But not on a bad one, which is more than you can say of
| GoT. Also, The Expanse has now "ended" the second time,
| so there's still hope.
| bsder wrote:
| Pffft. Amateur.
|
| David Gerrold is never going to finish the "War Against
| the Chtorr" series. The last book was _1993_. We 're
| about to hit _4 decades_ since the last book.
| asdajksah2123 wrote:
| This is exactly what happened.
|
| GRRM wrote himself into a corner he hasn't been able to
| disentangle.
|
| And the showrunners didn't have the luxury of waiting 11
| years between seasons.
|
| I do think they could still have done a better job, but
| it's hard to say from the outside because we don't know
| the budget, time and story constraints they were working
| under.
|
| By the time the final few seasons came around, almost all
| the actors had become famous on their own right, who were
| taking on a ton of other shows (and I doubt they were
| under contract for the entire run, especially since it
| was never expected to last as long as it did) and it must
| have been a massive challenge bringing them together to
| film the final few seasons.
| antisthenes wrote:
| > It's been 11 years since the last ASOIAF novel. I think
| GRRM may have written himself into a corner and is unsure
| how to tie up all the threads and satisfactorily end the
| series.
|
| A much simpler explanation is that GOT show
| creators/owners paid him off not to publish the newer
| books, until they consider the market life of the TV show
| exhausted.
|
| Unless GRRM is struggling with mental health issues, it
| doesn't take 11 years to finish a book. Heck, it's his
| series anyway. If he has trouble wrapping up all his
| plotlines, he can always write an 8th book to extend the
| story.
| smsm42 wrote:
| Nah, that sounds too conspiratorial. Martin by now should
| have enough money to basically not have to think of money
| ever again in his life, especially given his relatively
| modest lifestyle. It's not mental health issues, it's
| just he seems not to be very interested in finishing them
| up anymore. Writing 8th book is not gonna help if he has
| trouble mustering his creative juices to finish the
| sixth.
| asdajksah2123 wrote:
| That makes absolutely no sense. Why would they want him
| to not write books and give them a story.
|
| Even if GRRM wrote at the fastest pace he had ever
| written, the books would still be way behind the show.
|
| Here are the GoT Season release years by season: 2011,
| 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019.
|
| Basically, 1 season a year, with the final season taking
| 2 years.
|
| Here are the ASOIAF book release dates: 1996, 1998, 2000,
| 2005, 2011
|
| So it was 2 years at its best (the first 3 books), and
| then it increased to 5, and then 6. He had already been
| slowing up badly as he tied himself up in knots, that he
| has been trying, unsuccessfully, to untangle for some
| time.
| smsm42 wrote:
| Feels more like he has bitten off more than he could
| chew. He aimed to be today's Tolkien, but somewhere
| midway he run out of steam and decided there are other
| fun things to do. Can't really blame him - he doesn't owe
| anybody to dedicate his life to his book, even a popular
| one - but it's kinda clear by now that we shouldn't get
| our hopes up to have any proper conclusion to the story.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I never even bothered with Season 8.
| lordnacho wrote:
| A friend of friends was a massive GoT fan. Massive fan,
| could not wait to see more.
|
| Before the last season was done, he had a heart attack
| and passed away. People were saying for months after that
| how lucky he was.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That is sad.
|
| My father passed the year before 9/11. I sometimes think
| he was lucky to have not had to deal with that (or the
| aftermath).
| ren_engineer wrote:
| people who say only season 8 was bad are part of the
| problem, book readers were warning about important
| changes as early as season 3 and 4, GRRM left after 4 due
| to those changes because while not obvious at first, they
| would result in entire character arcs getting wrecked
| long term.
|
| The show started going "Hollywood" in season 5 and it was
| obviously declining in quality but people defended it and
| got what they deserved with season 8
| rizzaxc wrote:
| I'm happy that there were people who think like me in
| this regard. I personally was very bothered by season 4/5
| and didn't have much hope afterwards but everybody kept
| hyping the series to cloud nine; it made me very self
| conscious haha
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I pretty much agree. I watched through Season 7, but I
| think the thrill was gone, after 5.
| unmole wrote:
| I'm still pissed about what they did to the Dorne plot.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| And you'll be happier if you keep it that way :-) The
| only worse ending I know is that of How I Met Your
| Mother. Just skip the last two episodes there, seriously.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Have we forgotten about Lost?
| anshumankmr wrote:
| The last season of Game of Thrones is genuinely the worst
| possible ending to the show and genuinely takes the top
| spot for the most disappointing ending of all time. At
| least,HIMYM had its defenders but I've never seen a good
| thing spoken about the story in the final season.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| This is subjective, of course. But for me, the ending of
| GoT just cast a shadow over the other seasons. It's a bit
| less thrilling to watch them now, since I know it will
| lead to an inevitable jumping of the shark, but I still
| like them as-is. The ending of HIMYM, on the other hand,
| completely ruined the series for me. I honestly have a
| harder time enjoying them, knowing the actual ending.
| That's why I think the ending of HIMYM is worse.
| ipaddr wrote:
| What made the ending bad in that series? To actually see
| the women wasn't terrible.. Seinfeld had a bad ending but
| it doesn't ruin the show.
| Clubber wrote:
| >What made the ending bad in that series?
|
| For me, the ending seemed very scripted, very
| boilerplate, very forced, very unimaginative. It seemed
| like the writers were in the contract longer than they
| wanted too and they were just "phoning it in."
| Sebb767 wrote:
| -- Spoilers below --
|
| There were a lot of things I disliked. The first thing
| was the marriage of Barney and Robin, which was built up
| over the last one to two seasons and then undone within
| 15 minutes (and without good reason!). Overall, the
| Barney plot of going from married to divorced back to
| successful playboy to failing playboy to suddenly caring
| father was really bad (also, he failed as a playboy, but
| he also had a 30 day perfect streak?). The next bad thing
| was the dissolution of the friend group. Of course, life
| happens, but seeing them just not having time anymore was
| sad and it makes the build-up of the friendship in the
| older seasons just seem pointless.
|
| The worst thing, however, was bringing the mother in and
| then killing her off with basically no screen time. I
| mean, the whole series was about meeting her! The earlier
| seasons spend so much time just teasing points where they
| randomly met or saw each other! And then we get a scene
| meeting her and one of her dying and she's gone. And what
| really killed the series for me were the last 15 minutes.
| I was pretty sad seeing everything that was built up over
| 9 seasons killed within not even two episodes and then it
| ends with "just kidding, the whole point of this story
| was just to date Robin after all". Knowing this just
| ruins the whole point, especially since the last few
| seasons do their best to clearly exclude Robin as dating
| option, even going as far as to have her marry Barney.
|
| -- End of spoilers --
|
| I know they did it this way because the ending was pre-
| filmed around season 2 and I actually agree with some
| fans on that this ending is, when read as a summary, not
| that bad. It's just that they build up so much in these
| seasons and especially went in a completely different
| direction in the last one, just to make a 180 degree turn
| and end the series with a bad joke. That's what
| completely ruined it for me.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Seinfeld was very episodic and you could watch just about
| any episode and get some humor out of it (not as much as
| if you never missed an episode of course)
| smsm42 wrote:
| "Lost" is also a strong contender there. Yes, I am still
| disappointed about that.
| synu wrote:
| It's amazing how they managed to go from beloved
| franchise to salted earth in one season. People used to
| rewatch the seasons, but not so much now that they know
| where it's all headed.
| verve_rat wrote:
| Yeah, it could have been a franchise for the ages, even
| maybe another Star Wars... maybe.
|
| But that last season killed all that dead. Hell, there
| might have a way to rescue it until the last couple of
| episodes.
|
| It was truly remarkable to watch potentially billions of
| dollars of future value evaporate in real time.
| [deleted]
| Sebb767 wrote:
| If you look at discussions, you'll see that the actual
| decline started earlier, by some opinions as far as the
| end of season 4. The problem is that back then, it was
| not as clear that the series was declining - it could've
| been a super interesting new story thread or a new
| intrigue starting out. But now, with the knowledge that
| it leads nowhere, you can clearly see the problems
| starting out.
|
| Also, of course, it's less fun watching the stuff now,
| knowing that it will slowly fade out into a bad ending.
| tomtheelder wrote:
| I felt like I was being gaslit during seasons 6 and 7. It
| was already pretty damn bad by that point, but all my
| friends kept telling me I was just being negative and
| that it was still an amazing show.
|
| I hated being right about that one.
| synu wrote:
| That's true, though I suppose if they had stuck the
| landing the relative decline after the end of season four
| (which I agree with) would have been forgiven.
| uncertainrhymes wrote:
| There are plenty of shows that had no idea how to get out
| of what they started (looking at you, Battlestar
| Galactica). However, no show will ever fail to end more
| spectacularly than Lost.
| lliamander wrote:
| I hated the ending of HIMYM at first, but now I'm good
| with it.
|
| Part of my change in heart comes from rewatching the
| series, it seems to me that they had this as the intended
| ending all along. I also think it serves as an
| interesting commentary on the notion of love and romantic
| attachments that Ted struggles with throughout the show.
|
| But overall I am frustrated with the film industry's
| overall obsession with subverting expectations. Viewers
| want some sort of payoff, and withholding that can really
| burn people who've invested time into watching content
| (especially for long running TV shows). You can sometimes
| achieve payoff even while subverting expectations, but
| too often you end up with an incoherent mess.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| They obviously planned that ending in some way, since it
| was filmed before. Still, especially the last season
| definitely did _not_ seem to intend this ending _at all_.
| In fact, it seemed to me like Ted finally accepted the
| fact that it 's _not_ going to be this ending.
|
| That being said, I do think they could've made this work.
| If you read a summary, it doesn't sound that bad. The
| thing that really ruined it for me was the forced
| delivery within two episodes. It just felt like tearing
| down everything, with no consistent plot or delivery and
| then topping it off with a bad joke. If they scrapped the
| actual season 9 and instead made a season 9 and 10
| leading there, it would've been totally fine. And they
| knew this was coming!
|
| Also, on the subverting expectations part: This is
| totally fine. However, HIMYM is a comedy show. Playing it
| for a joke is fine, but that was more the "suprise, your
| mom has cancer!" type of subversion and definitely didn't
| fit the mood show.
| bergenty wrote:
| It was even before then. Season 6 was absolutely terrible
| and the storylines made no sense from that point on.
| bergenty wrote:
| I'm salty too. As soon as season 6 was released you could
| tell it was pure fly by your pants nonsense that had no
| integrity and catered to the lowest denominator.
| anshumankmr wrote:
| Sean Bean wasn't an unknown. He wasn't a star either, but he
| was the villain in one of better Bond movies and also was in
| the first Lord of the Rings.
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| Also the voice actor for the emperor's son in The Elder
| Scrolls: Oblivion. I'd say he was pretty well known and a
| bit of a star given that he was sought out for such roles
| and used in marketing, although not obscenely famous.
| [deleted]
| Terretta wrote:
| Perhaps a gimmick -- known name, killed off. Buzz!
| alexpotato wrote:
| No perhaps.
|
| Ned being killed off early is a key part of the "no one
| is safe in the game of thrones!" motif. Having a known
| actor and playing against type (nice guy when usually
| villain) just underscores the surprise.
|
| There is a similar story about Gene Wilder in Charlie and
| the Chocolate Factory. He first appears with a limp and
| then somersaults to show he's fine. The whole point of
| that scene is to have the audience think "I can never
| trust anything this guy says again".
| Tao3300 wrote:
| > Having a known actor and playing against type (nice guy
| when usually villain) just underscores the surprise.
|
| Normally you'd be right, except Sean Bean always dies.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Which makes Sharpe so much more impressive, he saved Sean
| Bean over multiple episodes / movies!
| ModernMech wrote:
| You're right, he was killed off early in Equilibrium too!
| tonfreed wrote:
| He was in the Sharpe movies as well
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| And Benioff and Weiss, for whatever criticisms people want to
| throw at them for the final season, were experienced
| writing/producing partners who had successfully adapted
| material before. Benioff is the one who pursued adapting
| ASOIAF with GRRM (and convinced GRRM that he understood the
| property and also that it was better suited for premium
| television, not as a feature film), got the HBO deal, and
| started working on it in 2006, along with GRRM. He wasn't
| just installed by the studio to be the showrunner -- he was
| the guy that worked to get the deal done for 5 years before
| it even debuted.
|
| No one involved in this project appears to have the same
| level of involvement. Instead of someone like David Benioff
| bringing a property to the network to adapt and develop,
| Amazon spent out the ass in a bidding war over the rights and
| then hired people to run the show.
|
| That can obviously work just fine, but in general, it works
| better when the showrunners and producers are the ones that
| pursued the material and sold it to the network (or steamer,
| in this case).
| prepend wrote:
| D&D had written a lot of movies (25th hour, troy, kite
| runner, wolverine, brothers) and there were some "known
| actors" (Lena heady, Peter Dinklage, aiden gillan, Charles
| dance, Sean bean).
|
| And I think the biggest problem with game of thrones is that
| the show runners crapped out after GRRM ran out of material.
| So I would want a better runner for Tolkien.
| hef19898 wrote:
| I just hope they have the overall story arc figured before
| filming, something Babylon 5 nailed down to a t back the
| day even if I think DS9 aged better for re-watching
| purposes. If they did not, or even worse stop following a
| consistent inner-world logic and rules (or not establishing
| one in the first place), the LotR series might just end as
| GoT or TWD... Which would really be a damn pity
| dylan604 wrote:
| >And not to involve Jackson seems off because even having him
| in a consulting role would be a good sign.
|
| Didn't the Tolkein group basically disavow Jackson and said
| never again after fiasco known as The Hobbit? If that's true,
| then it makes a lot of sense not to involve Jackson in any new
| project blessed by the Tolkein powers that be.
| titzer wrote:
| > And not to involve Jackson seems off
|
| Personally, the more I reflect on the Jackson series, the less
| I'm a fan. He borrowed heavily from the pacing, framing, and
| selectiveness of Bakshi's animated film, which didn't finish
| the trilogy.
|
| But worse, though inevitable when you have billions of $$ in
| your eyeballs, Jackson over-printed a lot of kids' imaginations
| with his depictions. I can't remember what I thought things
| looked like before I saw his films--and I probably read LOTR
| for the first time in 1993...
|
| And I'm not just "new stuff bad". But seriously, the source
| material looked way different in my head--and felt different,
| too. Especially the Hobbit.
|
| "Consult Jackson". Jackson had his say. He has no authority
| over new depictions; he didn't write a word of it.
| smsm42 wrote:
| I think Jackson did a fine job. That doesn't mean, however,
| everybody past him should copy what he did forever or ask him
| for his permission or opinion. One great production of Hamlet
| doesn't mean Hamlet has now look like that from now on
| forever and whoever did it owns the story. One of the things
| that makes the story great is that there are many angles
| possible and many creative approaches available. So no
| Jackson involvement is no problem for me.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| To me The Hobbit book was interesting in that it clearly was
| a link between fairy tales and what we now call the fantasy
| genre. Even in terms of writing style. It makes sense that
| that would have to be adjusted for the movie, especially
| since you'd want continuity in tone with the LOTR movies.
| mikkergp wrote:
| I still love the original animated hobbit. The pacing was a
| mess, but there was something about the creativity in the
| animated films of the 70's that we've lost I think. Wouldn't
| translate to a modern audience, but I love that, i dunno I've
| been calling it "leather bound fantasy" feeling.
| schnitzelstoat wrote:
| I had read LOTR just before the movies came out and I think
| Jackson did a pretty good job, although the books have a
| different feel with all the walking bits and the songs etc.
|
| I agree 100% about The Hobbit though, the movie was pretty
| decent, but really feels very different to the book. I think
| this is expected though as they extended a pretty small book
| to an entire trilogy of films and adapted what is essentially
| a children's story for a far wider audience.
| arethuza wrote:
| As lots of people have noted...
|
| _" thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too
| much bread"_
| tootie wrote:
| From what I've read, the show is basically guaranteed to run
| it's course which is 5 seasons. They probably gave the show
| runners some degree of long-term investment. They likely spent
| a ton on set design and character design to setup events that
| won't air for a few years.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Speculatively, is there some tax optimization purpose? Eg, if
| you invest in content that builds technology that could be used
| for other purposes? Amazon is pretty amazing at tax
| optimization. But R&D tax writeoffs are pretty great, so not
| sure what it would accomplish.
|
| hmm, so maybe this is just cover for the UFO skunkworks.
| kgwgk wrote:
| > But R&D tax writeoffs are pretty great
|
| Great like salary tax writeoffs and rent tax writeoffs. (And
| even if R&D isn't expensed right away it will still have the
| same impact on taxes in the end. Now it will be depreciated
| in five years in the US.)
| youngtaff wrote:
| It's shocking how much Amazon are getting from the NZ
| government
| heurisko wrote:
| I don't think it is the case here, but this happened in the
| UK.
|
| > Tax inspectors were told that A-listers from Hollywood were
| starring in a PS19.6m production that would be shot in the
| UK. However, the movie was never made and the only footage
| shot was seven minutes of "completely unusable quality"
| filmed in a flat, which cost just PS5,000.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/may/01/uk-film-
| executi...
| JCharante wrote:
| Why do known actors matter? When I see Chris Pratt in a movie I
| just think oh it's Andy from parks and rec. I see Forrest Gump
| but in a different movie or Jim Halbert in a horror movie.
| Known actors make it hard to be immersed.
| mikkergp wrote:
| I think it's not necessarily bad in it's own, but no known
| actors + no known show runner + studio without a track record
| of success + IP without involvement of its creator and Vague
| primary sources(ie no specific written narrative to follow)
| seems like a risky combination.
| fumblebee wrote:
| I agree that the feeling of immersion is at stake here (I
| feel this is why it was so off-putting to see Ed Sheeran in
| GoT scene), but I think this actually depends on the actor.
| There's so many that lack the talent or the will to mix it
| up, and consequently just playing themselves in roles. Chris
| Evans, Megan Fox, Jennifer Aniston, Jason Statham are some
| examples that come to mind.
|
| Then there's others, like Daniel Day Lewis, Di Caprio, Ralph
| Fiennes, etc. who's roles comes across as being fiercely
| distinct and yet still utterly convincing.
|
| This is a total paraphrase and possibly a mis-creditation,
| but I'm pretty sure Ian McKellen said something along the
| lines of "When you watch good actors, you think, they're a
| good actor. When you watch great actors, you actually believe
| they're a real person."
| hef19898 wrote:
| Christopher Lee is another one, always playing the villain,
| always playing it good and never just being Christopher
| Lee.
| nicce wrote:
| Nobody becomes known if they don't have their first time. I
| think it is not bad at all.
| synu wrote:
| It's not necessarily bad if you have someone amazing in
| charge of casting, but it's really hard to build a cast out
| of people who nobody has heard of who it turns out are
| actually incredible talents. Known actors are a known
| quantity in that regard, which is why it's safer to go for
| them. Normally you'd expect there to be some on a big
| budget project that isn't taking risks around quality.
| prepend wrote:
| For me, it's not that there are any unknown actors, it's
| that every single one is unknown.
|
| I like seeing "fresh" actors because they are unknown. LOTR
| had many unknown actors and lots who later went on to
| notoriety (eg, Karl Urban). But they also had some known.
|
| My apprehension isn't that there are any unknown, but that
| all are unknown. And I think that's a bad thing for a $400M
| project.
|
| Kind of like startups. I've met some great people who were
| working for their first company ever. I've also worked with
| some terrible people who didn't work out. To get small
| funding this happens all the time. But to get $465M in
| funding with a leadership team that's entirely new is
| unusual.
| themitigating wrote:
| Harry potter movie changed directors a few times right?
|
| Amazon is getting a 160mil tax credit in NZ.
|
| Regarding the team: "The team who will be creating the "LOTR"
| TV series includes: executive producers Lindsey Weber ("10
| Cloverfield Lane"), Bruce Richmond ("Game of Thrones"), Gene
| Kelly ("Boardwalk Empire") and Sharon Tal Yguado;
| writer/executive producer Gennifer Hutchison ("Breaking Bad");
| writer/executive producer Jason Cahill ("The Sopranos")
| writer/executive producer Justin Doble ("Stranger Things");
| consulting producers Bryan Cogman ("Game of Thrones") and
| Stephany Folsom ("Toy Story 4"); producer Ron Ames ("The
| Aviator"); writer/co-producer Helen Shang ("Hannibal") and
| writing consultant Glenise Mullins."
|
| So they have established people in the background and a well
| known franchise. As for not involving Peter Jackson maybe they
| just wanted to start fresh, no idea but George Lucas isn't
| involved of the Mandalorian
| cjwilliams wrote:
| I think hiring Bryan Cogman is a red flag.
| deadbunny wrote:
| Why?
| jowday wrote:
| > Looking at the imdb page this seems like a corporate driven
| project rather than a creator driven project with lots of
| different directors that haven't don't anything remarkable and
| seem to have just done other Amazon shows.
|
| With the exception of, say, the first season of True Detective,
| most TV shows use multiple directors. The director on a TV show
| is usually in charge of the technical execution of the writers
| script - they're not making many creative decisions the way a
| movie director does. The creative authority on a TV show
| generally rests on the lead writer(s), not the directors. When
| people talk about the Sopranos, they talk about David Chase;
| Breaking Bad, Vince Gilligan. And in both of those cases they
| had teams of writers under them who would write different
| episodes. This didn't stop those shows from having a strong
| auteur-driven vision.
|
| In the case of the LotR show, the lead writers are JD Payne and
| Patrick McKay. I think they're passionate about Tolkien from
| what I've read. Look them up if you want to know more.
| jollybean wrote:
| In TV 'Mr. Big' is usually the 'Showrunner'. Basically the
| original creators. It's like a form of creative production
| and management.
|
| For film, the Director is often kind of the version of
| 'Showrunner'.
|
| If the director was the one doing the pitching, raising the
| money - they they are that.
|
| If it's a big IP asset, like Star Treck, then it's different,
| sometimes a team effort.
|
| Like Kathleen Kennedy is the 'Big Honcho' for Star Wars and
| will have absolutely the 'last word' on everything, directors
| may not. Directors may have to negotiate their degree of
| freedom and may really want to avoid those situations where
| they are 'not in control', and will be forced to 'take
| notes'.
|
| So 'director', depending on the type of show, does not have
| to be the most critical thing, it really depends.
|
| Something that's heavily dependent on the quality of the
| acting, probably the director will matter a lot.
|
| A perfunctory serial, a bit less.
|
| For something so fundamentally institutionalized, like 'The
| Big Bang Theory' I'll bet you could remove almost any single
| person, and the gap would be filled in by the others who are
| all professionals. Like literally a child could direct an
| episode, because everyone would know 'what to do'.
|
| But yeah, it helps to have a 'core creative team' that has
| track record of resonance, this way, you have an idea of what
| you will get.
|
| Cohen Brothers, Villeneuve, Tom Cruise Inc., they use a lot
| of the same people. So you have less risk.
| deelowe wrote:
| Am I the only one struggling to understand this? Are 'Mr.
| Big' and 'Showrunner' references to something specific? Why
| are these terms in quotes?
| karaterobot wrote:
| "Mr. Big" and "Head Honcho" are euphemisms for "the
| person who is actually in charge", or the boss.
|
| "Director" and "Showrunner" are job titles you'd have on
| your resume. In the case of the showrunner, they're
| directly involved in day to day stuff. I've heard
| interviews in which showrunners say their job involves
| making 500 snap decisions every day: "which fabric swatch
| should we use? is it worth an extra $80k to film in this
| location?" that kind of thing. I guess the software
| equivalent would be a product manager? In Kathleen
| Kennedy's case, as head of Lucasfilm, she's making big
| decisions on everything, but likely not micromanaging
| individual decisions. So, she'd be the CTO or equivalent.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| Showrunner isn't a job title though. Most likely the
| actual title on the resume would most likely be
| "Executive Producer".
| jollybean wrote:
| Showrunner is definitely job. It's something you put on
| your resume.
|
| 'Executive Producer' is just a credit, it doesn't mean
| anything really. A powerful actor participating in a
| film, might get an exec prod. credit, not for doing
| anything at all.
| jowday wrote:
| He's putting those in quotes because they're generally
| not formal positions that are explicitly credited, but
| are informal phrases referring to whoever has final
| creative control over a series.
| deelowe wrote:
| That sounds like it's all a bit made up then...
| cygx wrote:
| Showrunners are a thing. See eg https://www.youtube.com/r
| esults?search_query=hollywood+repor... for some stories
| from the trenches.
| jowday wrote:
| It's not. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Showrunner
| deelowe wrote:
| So these are real terms then...
| logifail wrote:
| > the showrunner
|
| This term seems to have entered common usage quite
| recently.
|
| Q: Why?
|
| "In United States network television [the showrunner is]
| typically credited as an executive producer"[0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Showrunner
| xsmasher wrote:
| You can't use the terms interchangeably. An "Executive
| producer" credit may be applied to lots of people who are
| not the showrunner.
|
| >This credit is given to the showrunner, or the head
| writer, and is sometimes also given to other important
| members of the production. These could include the show's
| creator if different from the showrunner, other high-
| level writers (often future seasons' showrunners), the
| owner/creator of source material, a show's star, the star
| or writer or creator's manager, a high-level executive or
| creative type (like Steven Spielberg) influential in the
| show's creation, or any other number of people.
|
| >Many TV shows have multiple executive producers, and
| without knowing the specific situation, it's hard to say
| what the individual people do. For instance, a TV show
| derived from a movie (like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"),
| may bring with it Executive Producers from the original
| film, who have little direct involvement with the show.
| logifail wrote:
| > You can't use the terms interchangeably
|
| Right, but what's the actual definition of the term
| "showrunner"?
|
| It's "the leading producer", according to the first
| sentence of that Wikipedia article. Why aren't we talking
| about the "lead[ing] producer"?
|
| Is the term "showrunner" perhaps just industry jargon
| that slipped out into the mainstream?
|
| EDIT: Go read through the Wikipedia:Talk page for
| 'Showrunner'[0], the quote "so much conflicting
| terminology, contradictions within contradictions" seems
| pretty apt. An ill-defined and (?) informal position?
|
| Q: Is it just me or are people - particularly journalists
| - desperate to use terms that make them sound like
| they're part of the "in" crowd?
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Showrunner
| HWR_14 wrote:
| The showrunner is the person responsible for the long-
| term trajectory and story health of a tv show. It's a
| real term (Joss Whedon is the showrunner for the Whedon-
| verse shows), but "leading producer" is not a term, it's
| an attempt at a description.
|
| The showrunner can also have one of several actual
| official titles.
|
| To answer the specific question in "Ack", it's a
| recognition of the person who is day-to-day the final
| decision maker. They can be overruled from above by
| executives (the showrunner is not the supreme content
| creator overlord), but the executives are overseeing a
| lineup or channel. The showrunner is the one who are
| making sure the season goes right as a full-time job.
| logifail wrote:
| > It's a real term [..] the showrunner can also have one
| of several actual official titles
|
| Q: Is "showrunner" an official title, or not?
|
| EDIT: apparently not[0]:
|
| "The highest ranking producer is the showrunner, the man
| or woman ultimately responsible for the creative
| direction of the series. Showrunner is a function, not a
| title -- this person is credited as an Executive
| Producer. In many cases, he or she has "Created by"
| credit on the series"
|
| [0] https://johnaugust.com/2004/producer-credits-and-
| what-they-m...
|
| EDIT2: "A showrunner is the unofficial title given to the
| top-level creative decision maker and manager overseeing
| all episodes of an individual season of a
| television/episodic series. The showrunner is usually
| credited as an executive producer, producer and/or
| writer. "[1]
|
| [1]
| https://help.imdb.com/article/contribution/filmography-
| credi...
| jollybean wrote:
| You are misrepresenting those definitions a bit. Or they
| are poorly written.
|
| Showrunner is a thing, TV projects have them. They are
| the 'nexus' - both creative and a bit operational of the
| show. Like the 'founder' and 'visionary' of the show.
| They also kind of 'make the show happen'.
|
| Dan Levy is the 'Showrunner' for Schitt's Creek.
|
| Just type the name of your favorite TV show along with
| 'showrunner' and you'll see who it is.
|
| Usually will be 'creator' and 'writer'. They will
| probably get a producer credit. Note that 'showrunner' is
| generally not a specific kind of 'credit' but that a
| feature 'credit' isn't really a title either. 'Exec.
| Producer' can mean anything. Or nothing.
|
| The 'director' in TV is generally less important.
|
| For film, usually the Director kind of plays that role as
| the lead visionary, especially if they pitched and raised
| the money, got the team together, got the actors to sign
| up etc..
|
| Producers are generally not directly creative
| visionaries.
| jowday wrote:
| Sure - the MCU uses a lot of TV directors for example -
| since it functions more like a TV show than a auteur-driven
| series of films.
| asdajksah2123 wrote:
| And because it's a lot cheaper.
| odessacubbage wrote:
| i would argue that in many cases, having multiple directors
| is actually one of the great benefits of television and even
| within the constraints of a show, they still have
| considerable freedom to define the tone. tv is also a great
| format for relative unknowns to find their voice. steven
| spielberg was an 'unremarkable' tv director until he worked
| on Columbo and his episode- _The Perfect Murder_ was a
| breakthrough that still stands apart to this day. similarly,
| put together any two episodes of the x files and the range is
| pretty incredible, _Grotesque_ and _Jose Chung 's From Outer
| Space_ are only a few episodes apart and they might as well
| be entirely different shows.
| philistine wrote:
| Actually, you could say we're in the middle of a transition.
| All the Marvel shows have used one director for the whole
| season of their shows, and they're not the only ones to have
| moved on to this format.
|
| As for OP's point, with the series' budget so high, a gun-
| for-hire TV director might not be accoustemed to the
| staggering budget they have to manage.
| wmil wrote:
| That also has to do with the short length of the series.
|
| Having a single director direct 24 1 hour episodes is
| probably impossible.
| samatman wrote:
| This isn't even true, I went and looked up the directors
| for Daredevil out of curiousity and each season has a
| bunch.
|
| Edit: I guess you're referring to the various recent
| _miniseries_ Marvel has been doing? It 's never been
| uncommon in miniseries, for fairly obvious reasons.
| tptacek wrote:
| Not one of the Marvel Shows would break any reasonable TV
| top 10. The "1-2 showrunners, a writers room, and a
| rotating cast of directors" model is unimpeachably
| successful; it got us Breaking Bad, The Wire, The Sopranos,
| Deadwood, The Americans, and Mad Men, among many others.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| Atlanta and Barry both have small director pools, being
| mostly Hiro Murai and the series star/creator. Even those
| benefit from being able to switch for tonal benefit.
|
| To some extent I think Louie set the precedent there, as
| CK was given complete creative control. Comedians were
| asking for "the Louis deal". Glover (and Ansari) seemed
| to get it, and both had the sense to hire other talented
| people. Louie (the show) suffers from its self-indulgence
| to the point it can't be rated that highly, where Atlanta
| maybe mostly avoids that fate.
| tptacek wrote:
| Barry has something like 11 writers, and 6 directors,
| though Berg and Hader direct most of them. Arguably,
| writing in TV shows is more (or at least equally as)
| important than direction.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| But are those representative of the average 1-2
| showrunner outputs? No. They're not. Most tv sucks. The
| fact that some shows are not in the top 10 greatest
| series of all time is irrelevant.
|
| I would say the marvel tv series so far have been pretty
| solid. Even if you don't like them because you have an
| allergic reaction to marvel, their execution has been
| really good.
|
| If we must talk of THE BEST, then season 1 of American
| gods on StarZ was the best season of television I've ever
| seen. Mostly all written by Bryan fuller and Michael
| Greene. Not entirely. How do we weigh this? Hard to say,
| but man did that show crash and burn when they left.
| tptacek wrote:
| Most of everything sucks. The point is that the
| showrunner model, with rotating directors and writers, is
| the industry norm; it's not some goofy thing Amazon is
| doing to cut costs.
|
| I saw the first season of American Gods on Starz as well.
| It did not motivate me to watch the second season. That
| same year, though, we had The Good Place (showrunner),
| Better Call Saul (showrunner), The Deuce (showrunner),
| The Leftovers (showrunner), Maisel (showrunner), and
| Legion (showrunner). I think the model acquits itself
| nicely.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Also, say, things coming out of the other end of Disney:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mandalorian#Episodes
| nkurz wrote:
| Legion is at least one counter-example. They used award
| winning indie film directors on a per-episode basis:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legion_(TV_series)
|
| The result was that each episode often had a very distinct
| style, which matched well to the underlying theme of
| schizophrenia.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| They're limited series, effectively just glorified really
| long movies cut into 6 episodes. They also don't have real
| showrunners because Kevin Feige calls the shots on overall
| continuity and vision. It's doubtful that 5-9 season
| television is ever going to go to this model.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > I don't recognize the actors at all.
|
| That's a good sign. First, there are far more great actors than
| famous actors. Second, that's how you get someone to make a 7
| season (or longer) commitment. Look at the MCU. They don't get
| A-listers (except Ryan Reynolds), they make them in return for
| an N-movie commitment.
|
| The MCU also seemed to transition to hiring lesser-known
| directors, etc. so they could be trusted to be willing to
| follow the directions from corporate.
|
| I don't particularly need something done super-artistically. I
| need a long-running series to be _managed well_. Otherwise you
| end up with all the situations where the series takes an abrupt
| turn and fucks itself up.
| whiddershins wrote:
| Sometimes a director prefers unknown actors so the audience
| doesn't have an existing association with them.
| snarf21 wrote:
| I'm not optimistic after they shat the bed on WoT. Turning epic
| fantasy into visual media content is hard work and they aren't
| spending the money in the right place. I'll check it out but my
| expectations are extremely low.
| subsubzero wrote:
| Huge LOTR/Tolkien fan ever since I was a kid, loved the Ralph
| Bakashi animated LOTR film from the 70's(great rotoscoping and
| creepy mood), absolutely loved the Peter Jackson trilogy, liked
| the hobbit animated films Rankin and Bass(good music!, weird
| animation?), even found enjoyment in the newer Hobbit trilogy(3
| movies for 1 small book? Smaug was great though!).
|
| After seeing this amazon trailer though I am beyond
| disappointed in what they are creating and with the budget they
| have it is really sad. I could be mistaken but I feel like this
| will be looked at as a gigantic flop for amazon. The story
| looks like its not even based on anything Tolkien written,
| which is beyond me given there are so many interesting tales
| Tolkien wrote that have not seen the screen(Beren and Luthien,
| the fall of Numenor, the silmarils and Elvish wars of the 1st
| age).
|
| And like the parent above mentioned it is alarming that the
| actors are all unheard of and there are no connections to the
| successful franchises that Peter Jackson created, where is this
| roughly half a billion going? The CGI looks lackluster so its
| not there.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > there are so many interesting tales Tolkien wrote that have
| not seen the screen
|
| Beorn! Completely left out of the Hobbit movies
| https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Beorn
| [deleted]
| subsubzero wrote:
| Beorn was in the 1st Hobbit briefly, but he could have more
| screen time! I forgot about one character that never saw
| the light of day in any film(cartoon or movie) Tom
| Bombodil, he was a strange character even for Tolkien's
| universe and was rumored to be a demi-god. I would rather
| see stories about him than what amazon is sending out.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Tom Bomb[a]dil, he was a strange character even for
| Tolkien's universe and was rumored to be a demi-god.
|
| The theory is usually that he's one of the major gods,
| not a demigod.
|
| I feel like there was a Maia who mated with an elf, but I
| don't remember with any certainty. Demigods aren't a
| major feature of the world.
|
| EDIT: https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Melian is the Maia who
| mated with an elf. Their daughter, Luthien, is a normal
| elf, in much the same way that Elrond is a normal elf
| while Elros is a normal Numenorean. (Though Luthien
| doesn't seem to have been given a choice.)
| philsnow wrote:
| > The theory is usually that he's one of the major gods,
| not a demigod
|
| It's probably too blatant for Tolkien to have cone up
| with but Tom Bombadil has the same number of letters in
| first/second names as Eru Iluvatar. The ring has
| absolutely zero effect on him, but that would probably be
| true of any of the Valar just as much as Eru himself.
| boringg wrote:
| Agreed more about Tom Bombadil would have been the way to
| go. Can't believe he didn't make the cut. Not sure how
| they managed to do that.
|
| If this was built as if it was MCU they would have had a
| small cameo then a full movie on Tom Bombadil.
| twiddling wrote:
| A Taiki Waikiki directed Tom Bombadil series would be
| epic
| prepend wrote:
| Or a Taiki Waikiki short of Tom Bonbadil would be great.
|
| I've been expecting a 15-20 shirt put out that would fit
| into Fellowship with just Tom Bombadil and Elijah Wood et
| al. The cast and effects should be minimal so would be a
| great student project that would probably attract the few
| actors needed to make it.
| ryantgtg wrote:
| No he wasn't. He's in 2/3 of them.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I didn't see the Hobbit movies, but the fact that they had
| to leave _anything_ out of a 474 minute adaptation of a
| book that was 300 pages long is mind-boggling to me.
| XorNot wrote:
| Unheard of actors is generally a good thing when doing a new
| series: there isn't really a series where it's felt like a
| good thing that it was being initially run as "starring <well
| known actor>". If they're any good at all (and most actors
| are absolutely fine) then they'll be good.
|
| The CGI on the other hand I agree though I can put my finger
| on exactly the issue: the virtual sets "feel" small in the
| footage I've seen. There's a certainly quality to the
| limitations of CGI which generally constrains the camera
| because you can't actually pull out far enough to make it
| feel large (I suspect getting the lighting to cast onto the
| actors right is also a subtle challenge here).
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Idk. I don't think most actors are fine. It doesn't take
| much skill to pass suspension of disbelief that they're not
| acting. It takes a lot of skill to be an engaging
| character.
|
| Severance comes to mind as a good show that is immediately
| more appealing to me due to Adam Scott
| blakebreeder wrote:
| idk, all of the best characters in game of thrones were the
| established actors. ned stark, Robert baratheon, roose
| Bolton, tywin lanister.
| tptacek wrote:
| There are "established actors", if Michael McElhatton is
| the standard we're using, in the new show. Sean Bean was
| the biggest draw in GoT and was gone after the first
| season. When we're quibbling over the resumes of
| character actors, we've conceded the main point, which is
| that GoT didn't use star power to attract its following.
| blakebreeder wrote:
| I'm not quibbling over anything. I disagree with "Unheard
| of actors is generally a good thing when doing a new
| series" and the logic provided. It's just ridiculous on
| its face. Generally, people with more experience produce
| better results. Generally, people who have a history of
| producing better results produce better results. Who
| would have thought?
| tptacek wrote:
| That's wildly not the case in the performing arts; just,
| like, a crazy thing to say. Stars get cast over and over
| again because audiences are comforted by familiar faces,
| not because the stars themselves are somehow the best
| actors in the world. Ben Affleck is a leading man, for
| Christ's sake.
| blakebreeder wrote:
| You managed to ignore "generally" twice (specifically put
| in to avoid your exact kind of response), construct a
| strawman argument for me, and then failed to actually
| defeat that strawman argument. Who is talking about
| "stars?" None of the cast I mentioned in the original
| comment are stars. They're ESTABLISHED, EXPERIENCED,
| PROVEN actors. That's literally the whole point I was
| making.
|
| And your response to the strawman you constructed is...
| there is zero correlation between stardom and acting
| ability? It kind of seems like you and the op are saying
| there is an INVERSE correlation. But I'm the crazy talker
| here? okay.
| tptacek wrote:
| Yes, if we're going to just accept the "crazy talk"
| rhetoric (I'm fine with it!), I stand by what I said: you
| are the crazy talker here. :)
|
| I do love that citing Ben Affleck forced you to retreat
| into "I said generally!" though. We agree on something!
| Kranar wrote:
| Looks like you're confusing experienced actors with
| popular actors. Just because the actors are not popular
| does not mean that they are not experienced and
| distinguished actors; furthermore just because an actor
| is popular does not mean they are experienced or
| distinguished.
| visarga wrote:
| With that kind of money they could have bought DeepMind in
| 2014.
| havblue wrote:
| While Tolkien certainly has plenty of material that could be
| filmed, most of it seems to be in short story format where
| each story would be an hour or two. Amazon is assuredly
| looking for another Game of Thrones and I don't think they
| can get that from Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales or Children
| of Hurin.
| radicalbyte wrote:
| Only there is no material to work from - so they've
| basically taken the same strategy as the final season of
| GoT did but they're doing that from the start.
| kergonath wrote:
| There is _loads_ of material to draw from. The Unfinished
| Tales, the 13 tomes of the History of Middle Earth, some
| drafts that emerged later. The Lord of the Rings is
| _tiny_ in comparison. Some of the endings are missing,
| and some are only roughly sketched, but having the
| general outline of millennia of history really helps
| filling the blanks.
| smsm42 wrote:
| Numenor alone has enough to make a good series - you've got
| epic characters, great events, powerful kings, beauty, love,
| treachery, doom, magic, battles, betrayal and ruin. I've seen
| decent series done on much less than that.
| subsubzero wrote:
| So agree, its such a tragic story, the people of Numenor
| had life so good, until Sauron tricked them into throwing
| it all away. For me it was one of Tolkien's strongest
| stories and I always felt like it should have major screen
| time as it was a truly epic tale.
| bombcar wrote:
| I'm really surprised they didn't try to milk the
| Silmarillion (I've heard rumors of not being able to get
| the rights or something), because those tales are
| detailed enough to tell you how the plot goes, but sparse
| enough that you could write in tons of things if you
| wanted to.
| codeduck wrote:
| Beren and Luthien would make a fantastic tale as well.
|
| Disguising themselves as a vampire and a werewolf to steal
| a Silmaril from Morgoth in the pits of Angband? Makes the
| quest of Mt Doom look like a picnic. Pity we'll never see
| it
| kergonath wrote:
| > Beren and Luthien would make a fantastic tale as well.
|
| And the fall of Gondolin. And the Children of Hurin.
| Though not with a happy ending, both of them.
|
| Still, Gondolin has a great journey, love, betrayal, and
| an epic siege with mechanical dragons and balrogs.
|
| Hurin is more of a greek tragedy than an American TV
| series, but I'd still love it.
| danso wrote:
| Besides Sean Bean -- who was far from A-list -- how many of
| the Games of Thrones cast were well-known? Jason Momoa and
| Pedro Pascal, who've probably had the most post-GoT success
| so far (and who were two of the most popular/memorable
| characters on GoT), didn't have widespread recognition before
| GoT.
| subsubzero wrote:
| Good question, Like you mentioned, Sean Bean(very well
| known from goldeneye and LOTR), Lena Hedley was known for
| her terminator work, Peter Dinklage(Elf, Nip/Tuck), and
| lets not forget Natalie Dormer(playing Anne Boylen on the
| tudors, a popular TV series a few years before GOT).
| Basically if you watched popular scifi/historical
| shows/movies these characters(some) were well known.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Besides Sean Bean -- who was far from A-list -- how many
| of the Games of Thrones cast were well-known?
|
| None A-list, obviously, but (in no particular order) Lena
| Headey, Iain Glenn, Natalie Dormer, Peter Dinklage, Nicolaj
| Coster-Waldau, & Charles Dance, arguably.
| wmeredith wrote:
| Game of Thrones was packed with a murderer's row of
| character actors from British stage and screen.
| kergonath wrote:
| Yeah, it probably explains why a lot of Americans had not
| heard about them.
| muststopmyths wrote:
| Lena headey will always be on my A-list because of
| terminator:scc
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Ser Bronn spent seven weeks at the UK chart number one,
| bestselling single of 1995, had an album that went 6x
| platinum and another that went 4x platinum.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robson_%26_Jerome
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=r5V8ecsrxeY
|
| Ian McShane was Lovejoy on British TV for 8 years and after
| GoT has been in John Wick;
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_McShane
| err4nt wrote:
| I haven't seen GoT but Jason Momoa was already a decently
| well known name before that show, he has been in other
| things and he is so unique, once you've seen him you never
| forget him.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| Famous for Stargate Atlantis? He was great in that but
| not well known.
| wmil wrote:
| He was on Baywatch and North Shore before that.
|
| Famous is probably the wrong word, but he was known in
| the TV industry. Basically if you were adding an "exotic
| beefcake" to an ensemble cast someone would suggest Jason
| Momoa.
| odessacubbage wrote:
| thinking back to the bakshi film really makes me wish we
| could get an animated tolkien anthology like the animatrix or
| heavy metal. imo that would be a very good way to handle
| something like the silmarillion.
| karmasimida wrote:
| Technicality wise, I think the show looks solid that you can
| smell the money.
|
| I am not sure about your last complaint, the original LOTR is
| 20 years old, the actors/actress involved are in their
| 50s/60s (Sean Bean!), I am not sure what is your argument
| there, like what connection you want to establish?
| cromulent wrote:
| Did you ever see the Finnish LoTR series _Hobitit_?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobitit
| adynaton wrote:
| Or the Soviet adaptation
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khraniteli
| cloutchaser wrote:
| LOTR, and also Peter Jackson are not compatible with modern
| media. LOTR is completely opposed storytelling wise to the
| current dogmas of postmodernism and equity, it's fundamentally
| a story based on old western/european/christian myths,
| basically what gets called white supremacy these days.
|
| I think this will turn out to be an absolute morbid tv series
| as it will force LOTR into the current dogmas, but this is
| probably why no-one is involved who was involved in the films,
| as those actually respected the original story.
| bergenty wrote:
| In my opinion you could still make a compelling LOTR without
| the "white supremacy" vibes because there is a clearly
| defined good and evil and the constituents of those groups
| can be diverse (as the original is). What's impossible is to
| replace every protagonist with a female and expect any of the
| gravitas to hold up.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > LOTR is completely opposed storytelling wise to the current
| dogmas of postmodernism and equity
|
| Amazon literally make (made? not sure is it still going) a TV
| drama about Nazis. I think they can cope.
| workingon wrote:
| Never thought I'd live to see the day where people would
| unironically call equity dogma. But here we are. What a sad
| state of affairs.
| rglullis wrote:
| What other word would you describe when people cry over
| "lack of diversity" when the story is set in a fantasy
| world that did not have such type of diversity to begin
| with?
| roflyear wrote:
| What prevents you from casting minorities b/c it is
| fantasy? What crazy logic is that?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I love how it's fine for there to be dragons and magic in
| fantasy. But _minorities_? That 's a bridge too far.
| Akronymus wrote:
| Tolkien wrote from a perspective of what he experienced.
| That being early to mid 1900s england. Which simply
| didn't have many nonwhite people.
|
| Also, I think most aren't actually opposed to minorities
| being in the show, but rather the hamfisted way they
| think theyll be included with. (I personally expect
| racism being a big part of the show that will need to be
| fought.)
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > I personally expect racism being a big part of the show
| that will need to be fought.
|
| I agree that this would be extremely hamfisted.
| Especially considering the books already _have_ some
| metaphors for racism like the strained relationship
| between elves and dwarves. However, I also think this
| kind of a thing is just a symptom of bad writing - not
| some woke conspiracy.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > That being early to mid 1900s england.
|
| Not that I think this is _particularly_ relevant (as
| mentioned elsewhere, most of the characters aren't even
| _human_, and it's not like he generally specified "but if
| they _were_ humans, the Ringwraiths would definitely be
| white"), but LoTR was finished in 1949. There were lots
| of non-white people in the UK in 1949; if you've heard of
| the Windrush scandal, the people impacted by that arrived
| the year before, and it's not like they were the first
| non-white people in the UK...
| rsynnott wrote:
| Most of the characters in LoTR weren't even _humans_,
| were they? It's hard to see what issue people would have
| with minority actors playing an elf or whatever.
| freilanzer wrote:
| If I write a (non-human, not that that matters anyway)
| race and describe them as being of "ivory skin" vs "ebony
| skin" then it matters. If it's just regular people then
| it doesn't.
|
| It depends on the setting.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It matters if it's a key plot point. If it's got no
| impact on the plot, there's no harm in changing it a
| little. Plenty of other things described in the books get
| tweaked for TV/film; it's a little sus if only skin color
| changes get you upset.
|
| If you did a find/replace on LOTR for "ivory" with
| "ebony", zero elements of the story would be impacted.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Well, the oliphaunts might be a bit happier, unless that
| was The Hobbit (I haven't read these for about 20 years).
|
| But yeah, it'd be pretty weird if a TV adaptation _was_
| word-for-word the same as the book, honestly. That's
| virtually never done, and rarely ends well when it is.
| oxfeed65261 wrote:
| John LeCarre explicitly describes George Smiley as short,
| overweight, and balding. None of these apply to Alec
| Guinness or Gary Oldman in their respective portrayals of
| the character. This doesn't make their portrayals any
| less arresting.
| samatman wrote:
| There are plenty of minorities in Middle Earth.
|
| The Rohanim, for instance.
|
| Or, in the _racist euphemism_ way you 've chosen to use
| it, the Haradrim.
| [deleted]
| rglullis wrote:
| Oh, please... no one is complaining about having
| minorities. The point is retconning a different type of
| "diversity" into a story _just for the purpose of
| marketing for the current consumer base and its cultural
| sensitivities_.
|
| Taking a cultural landmark and just repackaging it (new
| version with 20% more "minorities"!) where the race of
| the actors does not change anything for the story being
| told is just _cheap tokenism_.
|
| By all means, I'd love to see _new_ stories and new
| characters, and these stories could benefit _greatly_
| from a diverse cast. You can use the diversity then to
| show how different people value different things, how
| conflict can come up due to these differences, how
| conflict can be solved _despite_ these differences, and
| so on... let 's just not pretend that this crap that
| Hollywood wants to shove down our throats is any good
| just because it ticks the right woke checkboxes.
| workingon wrote:
| There is a long history in theatre of casting people in
| roles who aren't the same as the character. Notably men
| would often be cast in female roles. Maybe, just maybe,
| if seeing a brown elf ruins a show for you the problem
| isn't with the show.
| rglullis wrote:
| "Fun" fact: men would play women because acting was
| considered a very low class activity, and women that
| acted were seen as prostitutes.
|
| Anyway, you just missed the point and I am not in the
| mood of arguing with someone who can't understand nuance
| in thought. Have a good day.
| workingon wrote:
| Yeah, the guy who can enjoy a show with a brown person
| playing an elf is the one who can't understand nuance in
| thought.
| rglullis wrote:
| Precisely. The same guy who thinks that parroting their
| self-righteousness is a virtue. The same guy who can not
| understand the difference between diversity and tokenism.
| That's the guy who can not understand nuance in thought.
| workingon wrote:
| Your cognitive disconnect is ridiculous. Pointing out
| that you finding that a show is worse because they cast
| brown people as elves is not a fault of the show has
| nothing to do with my self-righteousness, though you're
| happy to spread your own self-righteousness throughout
| this thread while talking about how butthurt you are that
| they'd dare destroy your favorite show by casting brown
| people in a traditional white role. I care little about
| e-cred. You also aren't the guy that gets to decide what
| the difference between diversity and tokenism is.
| rglullis wrote:
| > Pointing out that you finding that a show is worse
| because they cast brown people as elves
|
| Go ahead and tell me where I am saying anything about my
| personal opinion about this particular show. (Hint, I
| didn't!) Also, please tell me why you chose to ignore
| everything I wrote in the third paragraph of the top
| comment.
|
| You are passing a value judgement over what you _think_
| you read instead of what was _actually_ written, and you
| continue to try to push that as an argument.
| notahacker wrote:
| Oh please... a subthread which the GP started by
| retconning Tolkien as "what passes for white supremacy
| these days" to argue it was being ruined by casting (with
| digressions into Marxism spoiling beauty) now _itself_
| gets retconned as "nobody complaining about having
| minorities"
|
| Every film makes hundreds of decisions to appeal to
| different sections of movie audiences and live up to
| expectations of modern movies from casting unusually
| attractive people to typecasting English accents in a
| non-English world to cutting half the original scenes in
| a book and shoehorning an implied love interest in there,
| yet somehow all this pandering to consumers' cultural
| sensitivities that actually change established storylines
| get less hostility than the decision to cast a black
| woman in a fantasy series whose entirely new [for
| licensing and lack of material reasons] plot lines aren't
| even known yet. If people consider Tolkien's world not
| having segregated casting to being "crap Hollywood wants
| to shove down our throats", it's hard to believe they're
| doing so more out of concern diverse issues aren't being
| represented properly and less out of hostility to the
| idea that white people might not always be the default.
|
| the irony is of course that whilst being far from woke,
| Tolkien thought white supremacist ethnography utterly
| risible, included a Legolas/Gimli subplot as heavy-handed
| as any Hollywood antiracism parable, wasn't especially
| bothered about describing skin tones or appearance, and
| to the extent he did, made it clear that Middle Earth as
| a precursor to the modern world included darker skinned
| people.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > where the race of the actors does not change anything
| for the story being told
|
| So what's the problem with casting someone of a different
| race then? There are plenty of talented non-white actors
| in Hollywood that get passed over for roles because the
| "canonical" race of so many classic characters is
| "white". I agree that the motivation at the corporate
| level is sometimes to check a "diversity" check box - but
| for the actors this means getting work and getting paid
| as opposed to _not_.
| rglullis wrote:
| The issue is not with the casting.
|
| The issue is with the lack of _new_ stories and the idea
| that just putting some color on "stories where the
| classic characters is white" is _enough_.
|
| Diversity is something to be cherished. But if all we do
| is to, e.g, take Mozart pieces and give to conductors of
| different races and backgrounds, are we really promoting
| diversity or are we just putting a corporate spin in
| institutionalized racism, and implicitly perpetuating the
| idea that "classical" (or better, "erudite") music can
| only be valued if it comes from dead white people?
|
| I haven't been watching much TV or movies lately, and one
| of the main reasons is that it seems that most of things
| come out are just re-heated servings of old stuff. The
| one exception that I can think of is _Atlanta_ , which
| deserves praise exactly because it is more focused in
| telling a story and taking risks than in merely following
| a certain formula to please the audiences.
|
| So, to repeat: the story of LoTR has been told already.
| It has its context and its place. To get diversity now, I
| rather see these talented people telling _new_ stories,
| with their _own_ voices and their _own_ perspectives, not
| just put on some kind of display by the studios and used
| to manufacture fake virtue.
| prepend wrote:
| I hear this argument quite a bit and think it's shallow.
| Of course, I'm not against diversity in casting, but am
| against bad arguments.
|
| Stories have internal consistency. So while Tolkien has
| dragons and magic, they all make sense together. If a
| character pulls out an iPhone it doesn't fit and detracts
| from the stories.
|
| Saying "but iPhones? That's a bridge too far, how can you
| believe in dragons but not iPhones." The story isn't
| random and it's not everything.
|
| Tolkien goes into genealogy of characters so switching
| the skin color requires lots of other changes to maintain
| that sense of reality. If a character now has purple skin
| instead of green skin, then that might mean something.
|
| I think this also applies to any story and it's not so
| much about changing characters demographics and more
| about bad storytelling that detracts from the reality of
| the story.
| runarberg wrote:
| > Tolkien goes into genealogy of characters so switching
| the skin color requires lots of other changes to maintain
| that sense of reality.
|
| But Tolkien didn't specify what traits inherit in which
| races did he? How do you know how skin tone inherits in
| this magical world?
|
| Even in our universe we have species such as Chimpanzees
| which grow darker skinned as they age? How do you know
| the same doesn't happen with wizards? In our natural
| world color is indeed quite dynamic. Even human skin
| tones, hair colors, etc. are quite dynamic in our world
| (even among related individuals). In a magical world
| there is nothing preventing the different races from
| being even more dynamic and diverse.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Indeed. There are elves that live for thousands years and
| have magic powers. There are some humans who have a
| normal lifespan and others, like Aragorn, that live for
| hundreds of years. Elves and humans can somehow cross-
| breed. Why should we assume that Middle Earth genetics
| work anything like normal Earth genetics? It's so _weird_
| to insist on keeping this one aspect of human genetics
| when everything else seems to be up for grabs.
| cygx wrote:
| _Why should we assume that Middle Earth genetics work
| anything like normal Earth genetics?_
|
| Note that Middle-earth Earth ('Arda') supposedly _is_
| normal Earth: LotR takes place during the Third Age,
| whereas we 're currently in the Sixth or Seventh Age.
| runarberg wrote:
| Even if you assume that genetics works the same way in
| Middle-earth (where you know, magic exists) and today's
| earth, why would anyone assume it works the same on the
| magical species as it does with modern humans?
|
| Modern humans are one of the most homogeneous species we
| know of (apart from the our crops that we have bred into
| homogeneity) and even humans show very dynamic
| inheritance patterns. A red hair can pop up after several
| generations of different hair colors for example.
|
| There is no reason to assume that genetics in different
| (often magical) species is less dynamic then in modern
| humans. If anything we should have more variety and more
| dynamic traits as different races are interbreeding then
| today. If only for the reason that more diversity opens
| more possibilities for more creative and fun stories.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| This usage of equity is, what, five years old? Does
| something that new really call for an "I never thought I'd
| live to see the day"?
| rglullis wrote:
| I think that OP is not objecting to the usage of "equity"
| but its association with "dogma".
| bradleyjg wrote:
| It's a good sign that something is dogma when emotions
| run very high over exact word choices.
|
| For example there were huge controversies in the fourth
| century over homoousion ("same in essence") vs
| homoiousios ("similar essence").
|
| Reminds me of equity vs equality.
| tomp wrote:
| Equity is a deeply evil ideology. The only way to achieve
| equality of outcome is to repress the out-performers.
| Promoters of this dogma of course deny that, but the result
| is inevitably always the same. [0]
|
| [0] Vancouver School Board cuts honours programs
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-
| sc...
| snowwrestler wrote:
| You're just really confused about what equity is. It's
| not "equality of outcome." The whole point of seeking
| equity is to free the out-performers from the chains
| holding them down.
|
| Edit to add:
|
| Seeking equity is about surfacing relevant merit, and
| fighting irrelevant demerits. For example if someone has
| the skill to be a great engineer they should not be given
| the job of taking notes in meetings just because they are
| a woman. Gender is irrelevant to engineering. But many
| people who aren't male find their engineering career
| progression slowed because of their gender. That is not
| an equitable outcome.
|
| But obviously it's impossible to create an _equal_
| outcome: you can't magically make everyone on Earth a
| great engineer.
| tomp wrote:
| Can you define what "equity" is then, according to your
| understanding?
|
| To me, "freeing the outperformers" sounds like
| "meritocracy" which I wholeheartedly support!
| snowwrestler wrote:
| See my edit. Equity means your outcome is determined by
| relevant metrics, and not by irrelevant metrics.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| They didn't really cut it, they renamed it. AP classes,
| independent study, and dedicated schools for high-
| performing students, rather than just individual classes
| in the main schools.
|
| https://vansd.org/highly-capable-services/
| tomp wrote:
| bad example, but there are tons of others
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/04/us/california-math-
| curric...
|
| _" The draft rejected the idea of naturally gifted
| children, recommended against shifting certain students
| into accelerated courses in middle school"_
| ceejayoz wrote:
| You should read that article a bit more.
|
| > The model has been in place since 2014, yielding a few
| years of data on retention and diversity that has been
| picked over by experts on both sides of the de-tracking
| debate. And while the data is complicated by numerous
| variables -- a pandemic now among them -- those who
| support San Francisco's model say it has led to more
| students, and a more diverse set of students, taking
| advanced courses, without bringing down high achievers.
|
| > California's recommendations aim to expand the options
| for high-level math, so that students could take courses
| in, say, data science or statistics without losing their
| edge on college applications. (The move requires buy-in
| from colleges; in recent years, the University of
| California system has de-emphasized the importance of
| calculus credits.)
| xdennis wrote:
| I think it's because "equity" is a code word used by people
| who think equality is bad.
| cloutchaser wrote:
| Equity means equality of outcome, basically meaning you
| believe every person is equal in their results.
|
| This is religious dogma, because it's just not true. We are
| not the same, and you will always have differences in
| outcome in society.
|
| If you cannot see this, you are trapped in religious level
| dogmatic thinking.
|
| (PS: if you want to talk about equality, which we might
| perhaps call equality of opportunity, I'm all for it. But
| equity is certainly not that).
| adrianN wrote:
| A charitable interpretation of what you call modern dogma
| is that people acknowledge that we're not all the same
| (that's what diversity is about, I think), but that the
| differences aren't predicted by gender or race or culture
| or whatever. That is of course also not very compatible
| with LotR.
| insickness wrote:
| Any two groups of people classified by "gender or race or
| culture or whatever" will have different outcomes.
| Italians and Irish will have different incomes,
| representations in corporations, etc. The dogma is to say
| that all differences can be ascribed to systemic
| injustice.
| cloutchaser wrote:
| If they're not predicted by gender or race, then why do
| companies need 50% women? The very fact that that is a
| goal, means you do not believe these aren't predicted by
| race or gender, but that they are, and if you don't have
| 50% employees you are discriminating.
|
| Of course the people in favour also say what you just
| said, which just shows how completely conflicting their
| views are.
| adrianN wrote:
| I guess either not everybody follows my charitable
| interpretation, or they try to counteract supposed
| systemic biases by introducing quotas.
| roflyear wrote:
| Too much equity can be a bad thing, but you don't go
| around saying drinking water is bad b/c too much of it
| will harm you.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| > Equity means equality of outcome, basically meaning you
| believe every person is equal in their results.
|
| > This is religious dogma, because it's just not true. We
| are not the same, and you will always have differences in
| outcome in society.
|
| > If you cannot see this, you are trapped in religious
| level dogmatic thinking.
|
| Equity is something that societies create, not an
| assertion about people's innate abilities or a statement
| of fact about the universe.
|
| For example, we make buildings handicapped accessible
| rather than simply declaring that all people are able to
| walk.
|
| > (PS: if you want to talk about equality, which we might
| perhaps call equality of opportunity, I'm all for it. But
| equity is certainly not that).
|
| Perhaps it would be illustrative to show that you could
| actually make the exact same rhetorical sleight of hand
| about "equality of opportunity":
|
| "Equity of opportunity means you believe every person is
| equal in their opportunity. This is religious dogma,
| because it's just not true. We are not the same, and you
| will always have differences in opportunity in society."
|
| This is clearly silly because "equality of opportunity"
| is a goal you are aspiring to rather than a statement of
| fact about current society, but the same applies to
| "equity."
|
| You could also say the same thing about "justice" or any
| other concept that's not actually a statement of fact
| about society.
|
| I'm actually not sure where the idea that "equity" is an
| assertion that outcomes are equal as a matter of fact
| comes from. It doesn't seem to be a definition that is
| used anywhere except when people are trying to make this
| argument that "equity" is obviously absurd and therefore
| we should abandon it and focus on "equality of
| opportunity."
|
| Note that this is completely separate from any argument
| about to what degree we should attempt to achieve
| "equity" versus "equality of opportunity"; it is simply
| an issue with this argument using a dubious definition of
| "equity" to show that "equity" is obviously absurd being
| a bad argument.
| tester756 wrote:
| I believe the difference is
|
| "Everyone will be working highest paid jobs" vs "Everyone
| can have highest paid jobs (if they put effort)"
|
| You can't make people go for highest paid jobs, but you
| can definitely let them decide if they're interested in
| trying to get them.
| runarberg wrote:
| As a fan of post-modern movies, I would love if this was the
| case. However I'm afraid that you are misremembering history
| a bit here. Postmodern movies heydays have long passed. I'm
| afraid the reached their peak in the 90s with e.g. the Danish
| dogma movies (pun intended), independent American movies like
| Clerks, etc. In fact Pulp fiction was a counter punch to the
| scene by taking elements of postmodern movies, telling a pulp
| story and dressing it in a Hollywood film. Ironically it is a
| long running joke among postmodernists to over-analyze Pulp
| Fiction with a postmodern reading.
|
| Postmodern films got a tiny resurgence around 2007, but never
| with the same popularity as the pomo scene of the 90s.
|
| So Lord of the Rings is made between those two modes. The
| movie industry is living in the wake of the unexpected
| Titanic success, and the studios are trying to create the
| next big hit. Movies like Gladiator, Pearl Harbor, Cast Away,
| Meet the Parents, The Mummy, Moulin Rouge! or Chicken Run
| etc. is what most people are seeing. The themes of the post
| modern movies is indeed far away.
| bsaul wrote:
| although i wouldn't have worded it the same way, there's
| definitely something true in your comment. I'm still amazed
| that people keep torturing stories made at different eras
| with different mentalities to try and promote today's
| philosophy instead of coming with original materials. If you
| want diversity and black people on screen, why not create
| stories about the amazing empires that ruled the african
| continent in the past, rather than rewrite parts of LOTR ?
| cloutchaser wrote:
| > amazing empires that ruled the african continent in the
| past
|
| because then you'd have to confront that african empires
| had slaves too
| prepend wrote:
| I think that would be an interesting story. And I think,
| with time, we'll get more of these stories.
| rglullis wrote:
| Because that would require all these studios to actually
| _create_ new things and take risks. And that 's not what
| these corporations are known for, right?
| prometheus76 wrote:
| This parasitic move is intentional and done for several
| reasons. A brief summary of what I mean:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFxu3Q71NvE
| zpeti wrote:
| Yeah, this is a great explanation.
|
| And it's not just characters they destroy, but beauty,
| any past tradition whether good or bad. It really is
| about dismantling everything. (and somehow magically once
| you dismantle everything some sort of equity based
| marxism is what we're supposed to have). Why is marxism
| as a philosophy immune to dismantling? That's the million
| dollar question...
| scoutt wrote:
| Aside for the lack of new, original and iconic characters
| and stories, we are living in a bad period for reboots of
| our favourite stories to be re-made and re-written by
| americans.
|
| I only hope it will end soon.
| titzer wrote:
| > I'm still amazed that people keep torturing stories made
| at different eras with different mentalities to try and
| promote today's philosophy instead of coming with original
| materials.
|
| Been happening since forever. Jesus was a dark-skinned
| Middle-easterner. It's funny that in nearly every story
| over the world of people who have claimed to seen Jesus in
| a miracle, he appears as their own race!
| rglullis wrote:
| There is a difference between making projections of
| mythical, transcendental figures and outright retconning
| a character just to support a certain narrative.
|
| We can not prove anything about Christ's appearance and
| Christian values do not change based on that. So it's
| only natural that people will represent Him as they are
| used to see their own people.
|
| It is a whole other game to change the description of a
| character with a well-established description and a set
| context.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > If you want diversity and black people on screen, why not
| create stories about the amazing empires that ruled the
| african continent in the past
|
| That'd be a hell of a story. Compare the extent of an
| actual African empire:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_Empire
| treis wrote:
| Because there's not wildly successful books with wildly
| successful movies about the amazing empires that ruled the
| African continent.
|
| And it's hardly rewriting parts of LOTR to have a black
| actor portray Legolas. Everything is still the same except
| the color of the guys skin. You'll be fine.
| xdennis wrote:
| > Everything is still the same except the color of the
| guys skin.
|
| That's exactly what people mean when they say wokesters
| use people's cultures as skins, with no content.
|
| If you wanted to add African representation, let's say
| Zulu, you'd add something specific to Zulu culture:
| people, language, songs, stories, etc. But instead they
| just change some skin colours in an existing story.
|
| That's not representation, that's just skin.
| treis wrote:
| Yes, people want what you describe too.
|
| What I describe means you don't effectively hang a
| "Whites Only" sign on one of the larger productions
| happening today.
| tomtheelder wrote:
| I think the counterargument would be that casting people
| of different races isn't really supposed to be about
| culture at all. In theory it's meant to provide a sense
| of inclusion to those who might not look like the
| characters as they were intentionally written. As in:
| "LOTR is still for me, even if I don't look like a
| European."
|
| I don't really want to get into the validity/efficacy of
| that. I just don't really have an informed opinion. But I
| do think that's the reasoning.
|
| I think that wanting to have a more diverse cultural
| backdrop for the stories we tell is something I can
| definitely get behind, but I don't think it's really that
| related to having a more racially diverse cast for a
| story with a decidedly Anglo/Euro origin.
| chimineycricket wrote:
| >"LOTR is still for me, even if I don't look like a
| European."
|
| What? Is there a law that says I can't enjoy art that
| doesn't include my skin color? If there's a TV series
| about Nelson Mandela, would you be okay with a white
| actor playing him? What about Rosa Parks? It's for
| inclusion right?
| bsaul wrote:
| The problem is that racially diverse cast while keeping
| the same euro-centric stories is all they've been doing
| for the past 15 years, because all they really care about
| is looking "nice".
|
| If they produced movies with original storylines more
| regularly, then every minority would naturally find
| something they could relate to, simply because author
| would naturally produce contents aligned with their time.
|
| Instead of that, studios give the impression of beeing
| hostage of the "diversity mob" which demand its payback
| on every single content. It's just pathetic, and a missed
| opportunity for truely great and interesting content.
| jl6 wrote:
| I didn't think Legolas was in this new series at all?
| hef19898 wrote:
| If they had a black Legolas in LotR and Hobbit, sure, why
| not. Since they didn't, well, having a black Legolas just
| destroys continuity. But who am I complaining about
| missing continuity, after all we have the latest Dr.
| Strange with the sole purpose of including the Fantastic
| 4 and X Men into the MCU without invalidating the
| entirety of the MCU so far.
| treis wrote:
| >Since they didn't, well, having a black Legolas just
| destroys continuity
|
| Again it's just skin color. Little bit dramatic to call
| that destroying continuity.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Well, any actor not closely resembling Orlando Bloom
| would be a continuity issue for me. That has nothing to
| do with skin color, just with not retconning characters
| physical appearances. Because personally I don't like
| that. E.g. Heimdall in the MCU should look like Idris
| Elba in _every_ movie he shows up in.
| zpeti wrote:
| How about the repeated obsession with female characters
| who can easily beat up men? James Bond, Thor, the
| foundation, but basically any story now.
|
| Anyone who actually understands physics and biology knows
| that this is basically an impossibility. Ask any female
| MMA fighter. Yet basically every movie now has a female
| character who takes over from a man and is stronger. It's
| ridiculous.
|
| And this isn't about looking down on women, there are
| plenty of women I have insane respect for, and my
| favourite politician of all time was a woman.
|
| But watching these women beat up men is laughable tbh.
| Maybe ask some famle survivors of domestic violence how
| they feel about this.
| treis wrote:
| >How about the repeated obsession with female characters
| who can easily beat up men?
|
| The thing you complain about is in the source material.
| Remember? "No man can kill me", "I am no man", stab stab
| stab.
|
| >But watching these women beat up men is laughable tbh.
| Maybe ask some famle survivors of domestic violence how
| they feel about this.
|
| How is that any different than tiny weak Hobbits killing
| giant spiders and otherwise being the heroes of the
| story?
|
| Weak actually being strong is a repeating theme across
| the fanatasy/superhero/comic genre. And since they're
| primarily written by physically weak nerds the motivation
| is obvious. Now that women are being included in the
| process they're doing the same thing for the same
| reasons.
| zpeti wrote:
| Storytelling, that's how. Which doesn't exist.
|
| What you'll notice is that in better storytelling, there
| will be an explanation of why the hobbit can beat the
| giant spider. Outsmarting it, being invisible with a
| ring, whatever. Good storytelling means you make the
| impossible seem possible.
|
| Now, all we have is token women who we all know are there
| because they are women, beating up men in ridiculously
| impossible ways, with no explanation of how. It's just
| that the writers want you to know that women are strong
| grrrrr. Because feminism. Well, it makes for terrible
| cinema.
| treis wrote:
| > there will be an explanation of why the hobbit can beat
| the giant spider
|
| Please give me a timestamp in this scene when that
| happens:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfJirrzRQ60&ab_channel=Th
| eLo...
| notahacker wrote:
| tbf Tolkien himself tries to explain it as a mixture of
| desperation and loyalty to Frodo, a super elven sword and
| the spider impaling herself in an ill-fated attacking
| move. Doesn't really come across in the film. :)
|
| I'm not sure where good storytelling comes into men in
| films dodging bullets and beating up dozens of assailants
| or why the stylised violence suddenly becomes less
| believable because the person winning against improbable
| odds is female though. Or where the Tolkein original
| plotline involving a woman with a broken arm defeating a
| Nazgul lord so strong it's prophecied no man can kill him
| in a swordfight fits into woke propaganda trends :D
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Sam is using a magic item. Compare the summary from the
| LOTR wiki:
|
| > Using the Phial of Galadriel, they managed to at first
| fend her off. The light of Earendil's Star shone from the
| Phial, causing unbearable stabbing pain to Shelob's
| darkened senses, but she returned to attack Frodo,
| poisoning him with her stinger in a surprise attack just
| as they reached the exit of the cave on the Mordor side.
| Her venom paralyzed Frodo, and she then wrapped him in
| her web.
|
| > Sam then assaulted the creature using Sting and the
| Phial of Galadriel in order to rescue his master. In a
| pitched battle, Sam managed to stab one of her eyes and
| injure her leg, but she held the upper hand. However,
| when she tried to use her stinger to inject Sam with
| venom, he dodged at the last moment and was able to stab
| her in the abdomen with Sting. This wounded her enough
| that Sam forced her to retreat using the Phial of
| Galadriel.
| hef19898 wrote:
| We see a ton of bad story telling, agreed. How women are
| protrayed is not among the reasons.
|
| Disclaimer: I have been handled pretty easily by women in
| BJJ and kickboxing / boxing drspite being 20 kg heavier
| and a head taller. And I am not un-trained. Get over it,
| competent and strong women do exist.
|
| Edit (because I have to get of my chest): The latest Dr.
| Strange is propably the best example of bad story telling
| I've seen in a _long_ time. I quit the MCU after Black
| Widow (I like the character and Scarlett Johansson) and
| swore to _maybe_ watch the next Thor, max. Until I saw
| Dr. Strange was already free on Disney+, and I needed
| some distraction. All that _bad_ film did was making me
| not watch any MCU film ever again...
| bbarnett wrote:
| So many have said that film was bad, but I just watched
| it.
|
| I've seen a lot worse. Didn't seem bad here.
| bsaul wrote:
| "there's not wildly successful books with wildly
| successful movies about the amazing empires that ruled
| the African continent"
|
| I guess that's the interesting problem the studios and
| equality advocates should try to solve. To me, what
| they're doing right now is close to an insult to the
| african-american community. It's like saying "there are
| really no original cultural production coming from your
| community, nor anything remotely interesting in your past
| writing about, so we'll have to recycle ours to make some
| room".
| zpeti wrote:
| Back around 2015, it was that, switching out characters
| as black. Fine.
|
| 2022 it's something much more sinister. It's the entire
| postmodern philosophy mixed with equity forced into
| stories. LOTR is about good and evil and the triumph of
| good. It doesn't dismantle what good or evil is, it
| doesn't question everything, it's just a great story.
|
| Unfortunately modern writers cannot bring themselves to
| write stories like this anymore, everything has to be
| questioned, everything has to be changed, everything
| sacred has to be unsacred, everything beatiful has to
| become ugly.
|
| It's hard to put it into words. But it is happening.
| People in the media industry really have lost all sense
| of good storytelling.
| treis wrote:
| >Back around 2015, it was that, switching out characters
| as black. Fine.
|
| That's what the GP is complaining about.
|
| And I don't get why that rates a "Fine". What's wrong
| with race neutral casting?
|
| > 2022 it's something much more sinister. It's the entire
| postmodern philosophy mixed with equity forced into
| stories. LOTR is about good and evil and the triumph of
| good. It doesn't dismantle what good or evil is, it
| doesn't question everything, it's just a great story.
|
| You can't look at Tolkein's life and the LOTR and then
| just call it a great story. You can see the echoes of his
| personal experience in the work. It's no different than
| today.
| prepend wrote:
| I have a morbid fear that studios want the "conflict" as
| it's 1) news and any news is good news, 2) set up a right
| vs wrong narrative that puts their tv show on the right
| side against whatever jerks are being
| racist/sexist/whatever.
|
| So it seems like a non-creative way to get free promotion,
| but I think it distracts from storytelling.
|
| The example I remember is how bad the 2016 ghostbusters
| reboot was. And the studio had this whole narrative about
| how sexist trolls were maligning the movie and this got
| repeated with any criticism. It seemed like astroturf that
| highlighted a small amount of internet sexist complaining
| and used it to smear any criticism for any reason. That
| seems like something that would be attractive to a
| beancounter-type.
| bsaul wrote:
| very interesting theory... I used to attribute those
| choices to lazyness and "playing it safe", but your point
| is a reall possibility. I sincerely hope you're wrong
| though.
| runarberg wrote:
| You do know that Lord of the Rings is a fiction right? It
| happens in a reality where literal magic exits. I mean does
| the story specify the skin color of every character? Does
| it say that every elf is white skinned? I mean this is in a
| magical world, for all we know hobbits skin tone changes
| with age like that of Chimpanzees, being light when they
| are young, and darker as they get older. Or maybe non-
| binary genders are actually quite common among wizards.
| There is plenty of room for diversity in a fictitious
| universe. In fact a lack of diversity requires the special
| reading here, not the other way around.
|
| Then the story is literally about a bunch of races solving
| a problem by working together. I mean the text it self
| literally celebrates diversity. Why wouldn't you depict
| that in your casting?
| bbarnett wrote:
| Different species, not races.
| mrob wrote:
| In Lord of the Rings, humans, elves, and orcs can all
| interbreed, so they are all the same species.
| runarberg wrote:
| Different species can also interbreed in the natural
| world. E.g. wolves and coyotes regularly produce fertile
| offspring (most often via dogs since wolves and coyotes
| mate at different times), grizzle bear and polar bear
| likewise (will happen more often as polar bears migrate
| south from the melting ice caps). Even humans interbred
| in the history of our species with different species of
| humans (most notably Neanderthals).
|
| I think the both terms are correct, but I like races
| better because species also includes every lifeform which
| can never be characters, like ravens, wargs or even
| tobacco plants.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Just like donkeys and horses then?
| mrob wrote:
| Donkeys and horses produce infertile mules. Elves and
| humans produce fertile offspring. Aragorn has elvish
| ancestors.
| [deleted]
| robonerd wrote:
| > _Donkeys and horses produce infertile mules._
|
| _Usually._
| samatman wrote:
| In the Dark Sun setting from AD&D, the offspring of
| humans and dwarves are also infertile. Also called muls,
| which isn't the most creative move but hey.
|
| I don't recall there being any children of dwarves and
| men in the Tolkien legendarium, though I've not read it
| all by any means.
|
| Given how common "interfertile but with sterile
| offspring" is between related species in nature, it's
| relatively rare in games and fantasy settings.
| runarberg wrote:
| Sorry, I'm used to use the word _race_ in a fantasy
| setting and _species_ in a natural setting. A _race_ in a
| fantasy world is any species a character of that story
| can belong to.
|
| This gets confusing e.g. in Star Trek where races exist
| in the fantasy sense _and_ in a cultural sense (e.g.
| Being black (cultural race) is as much a part of Benjamin
| Sisko as being a human (biological race) is).
| bbarnett wrote:
| Yes, I agree. I just feel it important here, as the
| divides are huge, both culturally and especially
| physicallly, than what we used to think of as 'race'
| between humans.
| Akronymus wrote:
| >... instead of coming with original materials.
|
| I personally think they are simply not capable of making
| something engaging, BECAUSE they feel the need to promote
| todays philosophy over good storytelling. (They as in the
| streaming services)
| slightwinder wrote:
| > And not to involve Jackson seems off because even having him
| in a consulting role would be a good sign.
|
| Probably better that way. The project has no right for the 3rd
| age, meaning the stories of the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit-
| Books, where Jacksons main-expertise is. Not having him
| involved is just safer for the legal side.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > But it seems odd to spend so much and not have a single
| established creator that has put out great content. And not to
| involve Jackson seems off because even having him in a
| consulting role would be a good sign.
|
| Wasn't the estate's unhappiness with Jackson's work (either
| genuine or as part of the long rights war) a big part of that?
| the_lonely_road wrote:
| They are probably hoping this is season 1 of 10 of a breakout
| show. Impossible to do that if you use famous actors in season
| 1 (unless they die in season 1 like Sean Bean in Game of
| Thrones) because they will all be demanding untenable salaries
| by season 3 killing the shows ability to continue. I'm stoked
| for such a high budget fantasy show to be coming out and don't
| really care how true to Tolkien it is so long as the story and
| characters are compelling.
| smsm42 wrote:
| I don't think having the names recognizable is a sign of
| anything. If you look into the history of what are the iconic
| classic movies now, you'd see that it's not unusual to have
| people who are either relatively unknown or nothing special to
| come into one great movie and have a spectacular career
| afterwards. Great movie can launch an actor, but great actor
| alone can rarely save a bad movie.
|
| I am much more concerned about show's creators attempts to
| "improve" Tolkien and turn it into a Platform(TM) for the
| Message(TM), instead of concentrating on telling a good story
| using the material Tolkien left us. That, unfortunately, is not
| an uncommon occurrence nowdays. If that happens, the series is
| doomed to mediocrity or worse, regardless of which names are
| attached to it or how much is spent on it.
|
| Still, we obviously have to see it before making any judgement.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > (Jackson had done Heavenly Creatures and Frighteners and a
| few others before LOTR)
|
| No one ever mentions his first, a splatter flick:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Taste
|
| Hilariously bad but a fun watch.
| synu wrote:
| Meet the Feebles never seems to come up either.. one of the
| weirdest movies I've ever seen.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meet_the_Feebles
| MisterTea wrote:
| I have yet to see it. I grabbed bad taste around 2005/6 via
| torrent after hearing a sound bite in a death metal song. I
| found out about Meet the Feebles but couldn't find a
| working torrent at the time and forgot about it. I'll have
| to remind myself to find and watch it one day.
| evanelias wrote:
| I remember the "making of" extra on the Bad Taste DVD being
| great. Jackson's low-budget special effects are really quite
| impressive.
|
| I believe this is it on youtube:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POXwP4ucPe4
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > And not to involve Jackson seems off because even having him
| in a consulting role would be a good sign
|
| Not if The Hobbit is anything to go by.
| darkerside wrote:
| From reading the article, $200M was for the rights alone, and NZ
| is rebating 25% so it comes out to more like 150M net on
| production of the actual show.
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| Sounds to me like it's rather $665M in total, with a rebate of
| $116M.
| framapotari wrote:
| No, the NZ rebate is based on production costs, which doesn't
| count funds spent on purchasing the rights to a project.
| namelessoracle wrote:
| Star Wars Episode 3 was made off of 115 million to put things in
| perspective. Even adjusted for inflation.....
| tlear wrote:
| This will make last 2 seasons of GoT seem like War and Peace.
| That trailer.. Read books probably 5-6 times, read
| Silmarillion(!), watched the movies probably 10 times, even
| watched Hobbit twice(that was painful). Only tattoos I have are
| in Cirth.. I could have easily dumped thousands of bucks on
| merchandise and other crap together with my kids over the years
| if it looked even remotely decent.
|
| I am not subscribing to prime or watching this garbage.
| niek_pas wrote:
| Claiming that this is garbage based on a single trailer seems a
| little premature.
| robonerd wrote:
| That seems like an odd take. The purpose of a trailer is for
| the production to make their best argument to the audience
| about why they should see this show. If a trailer looks good,
| people get hyped for the show or movie and buy tickets when
| the time comes. If the trailers looks like crap, most people
| won't watch the show or movie. The whole purpose of a trailer
| is for people to judge whether or not to invest more of their
| time and money in that production.
|
| There simply isn't enough time for people to watch
| everything, there is way too much media for that. And this
| LOTR show is going to be much longer than a typical movie,
| because it's a TV show. I expect 8 hours at minimum, assuming
| each of the 8 episodes is an hour. Expecting people to watch
| it before judging whether it's worth their time doesn't make
| any sense. Which is why trailers are made...
| snickerbockers wrote:
| This is going to be terrible. I can't imagine the SHEER FUCKING
| HUBRIS modern TV writers must have of they think they can write a
| fanfic that stands next to Tolkien's greatest work.
|
| These writers' only experience is working on a 4th film in JJ
| Abrams' Star Trek reboot universe which ended up getting
| cancelled too.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| It's probably just a job. Some Amazon executive says, "Hey, can
| you write us some Lord of the Rings episodes for X dollars?"
| Writer says, "Sure." I don't think hubris enters into it, the
| same way that construction workers don't usually compare their
| output to the Roman Colosseum.
|
| I also don't think that the Tolkien universe is somehow
| sacrosanct. If the show sucks, then it sucks - it doesn't take
| away from the original writing. There's plenty of bad media
| based on the Tolkien books as well as endless merchandise and
| other cash grabs. There's even a Gandalf Funko POP[1], for
| goodness sakes.
|
| It would be _great_ if the show was good though. We 'll see. As
| others have mentioned, Amazon studios seems to have pretty poor
| taste and produce a lot of crap. Though _Patriot_ is quite
| excellent.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/Funko-Movies-Gandalf-Action-
| Figure/dp...
| CivBase wrote:
| > If the show sucks, then it sucks - it doesn't take away
| from the original writing.
|
| I disagree. Tolkien's work is not just a story; it is a
| fictional world. Merchandise exists outside that world, but
| new stories in that world become an inherent part of that
| world. Good stories elevate the value of that world. Bad
| stories damage the value of that world.
|
| Keeping with your first example, imagine if a cheap, ugly,
| concrete, brutalist structure was added onto the Roman
| Colosseum. The original structure may still be a work of art,
| but the addition would detract from it. Imagine putting cheap
| steak sauce on an expertly prepared, high-quality steak. The
| steak may still be delicious, but its value would be lessened
| by the added sauce. The same is true for fictional worlds
| like Tolkien's.
|
| All that said, most of my favorite fictional worlds from my
| childhood have been tarnished by cheap cash grabs, so I have
| learned to scrape the sauce off the steak and enjoy the
| original for as much as I can. It's still a great steak,
| after all. If Amazon's show bombs - which seems likely - I'll
| do the same for Tolkien's works.
| usrn wrote:
| Eh. It wouldn't be the first forgotten Lord of The Rings
| show/movie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubynOv3VKB8
| asdff wrote:
| The problem is that these things don't exist in a vaccuum.
| The funko pop doesn't really matter, its not taking many
| resources from other projects. This show potentially is
| taking resources, talent, money etc. If it sucks, that means
| chances are there will be a very long dry spell before
| investors decide to try another Tolkein work. So it does kind
| of take things away from the fandom if it does end up sucking
| and burning money without much to show for it.
| usrn wrote:
| > If it sucks, that means chances are there will be a very
| long dry spell before investors decide to try another
| Tolkein work.
|
| After seeing the fruits of the investors being involved I
| think I'm ok with that.
| seydor wrote:
| Despite their popularity, tolkien's works were considered
| simplistic and juvenile. And tastes do vary, but the books
| aren't particularly great
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Quality doesnt matter anymore. It will get views because it has
| a brand attached to it and lots of people already have prime.
|
| I don't know what their break even number is but prime is
| fucking expensive. If this pushes 1% of people who are on the
| edge of buying prime and not buying prime into making that
| decision its a massive win for them.
|
| I don't think it will be any good. But 95% of film and tv is
| terrible and it keeps getting made.
| larrik wrote:
| > prime is fucking expensive
|
| Prime is similar to or cheaper than Netflix (depending on
| your Netflix plan), and yet also includes "free shipping", a
| selection of free movies, a selection of free books, all the
| "Prime Gaming" goodies, and a bunch of other stuff.
|
| Netflix, meanwhile, charges you extra for 4k (and by some
| perspectives, HD).
|
| I dunno, Prime doesn't _feel_ that expensive, even if it is
| more than Disney+ or HBO.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| I guess if you put it next to netflix its not that
| expressive but I rarely use Prime for video. Once in a
| while something happens to be on there and its nice but
| 8/10 times their movie is only available on some channel I
| have to pay extra for.
|
| I'd probably view prime differently if they allowed me to
| pay monthly like netflix or other services.
| josteink wrote:
| > But 95% of film and tv is terrible and it keeps getting
| made.
|
| As the amount of things being made seemingly have increased
| tenfold, while the amount of watchable stuff seems at best to
| stay level, I say the figure is probably closer to 99% as we
| speak.
|
| And the overzealous eagerness to retell already successful
| stories, but with _the message_ [0] forcefully attached, is
| causing noticeable political fatigue in increasing portions
| of what could have been the mainstream demographic.
|
| But the fact that they keep doing on it, implies they think
| it makes financially sense? Anyone got any more background on
| what's going on behind the scenes here?
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/G2CG1R7nVJg
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Yeah I realized a while back that the quantity of content
| that is being created is largely due to the fact that many
| more demographics are being targeted widely now.
|
| As a white 20-40 year old guy 50 years ago nearly 100% of
| the mainstream content was targeted at me or my family. Now
| that number is lower. I don't think its drastically lower
| but lets say its 80%. That means at least 20% of the
| content that is being created in 2022 I'll pop on and go,
| "Eh. Not for me." Which is great. Because for someone else
| who has been watching content not targeted at them their
| entire life they turn on and go, "Holy shit this is exactly
| what I want."
|
| Easy way to make that content? Just retell the same stories
| and change things around a bit so other demographics can
| relate to it.
| racl101 wrote:
| > I don't think it will be any good. But 95% of film and tv
| is terrible and it keeps getting made.
|
| Yep.
|
| And unlike Netflix, Amazon has deep pockets, to take such a
| huge gamble.
|
| Personally, based on everything I've heard I've set my
| expectations to be very low.
|
| I could take it or leave it.
|
| I'll wait for people to watch it and if they tell me it's not
| good I won't even bother.
|
| I love this series so much to not sully my memories of it by
| even watching this to find out just how bad it is.
|
| I don't need the currency of being able to bitch about it or
| complain or to say that I knew it was gonna suck.
|
| That's how much I like the original Peter Jackson movies.
| asdff wrote:
| Quality matters if you care about having a cash cow and not
| just a one off. Paramount+ is big on telling us halo TV's
| first episode set records on their service, but I haven't
| seen any data from other episodes which is telling. I don't
| think that a series scoring 6 on rotten tomatoes can
| continually smash records and continue to look like a sound
| investment for media buyers.
| xdennis wrote:
| > Quality matters if you care about having a cash cow and
| not just a one off.
|
| I'm not trying to be provocative, but how do you explain
| superhero movies then? They all seem to be the same and are
| a huge cash cow.
|
| IMHO, if you throw hundreds of millions of dollars at
| something and the same in marketing, they will come because
| the majority of people will just watch what's on.
| asdff wrote:
| Because those do have quality to them. Actors and
| directors people have heard of, no money held back on
| production budget, and people actually think they are
| good movies. Avengers infinity war has a 91% fan rating
| on rotten tomatoes and an 85% critic rating. These marvel
| movies aren't one offs, they are a constant cash cow of
| seemingly consistent quality in the eyes of their fans
| who fill these theaters.
|
| Meanwhile with the halo series you just don't have that.
| No one has heard of the actors or directors. It's been
| widely panned by critics and fans. It probably will be
| cancelled before long once paramount can no longer ride
| off the success of the first episode which if it doesn't
| continue means people were baited into watching it with
| the Halo IP more than anything.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Yeah superhero movies are not quality TO ME. But I have
| family members who do and will see every single marvel
| thing made. Even the ones they dont love they will enjoy
| because its the characters they enjoy and its building a
| universe they are invested in.
|
| They are well filmed. The action tends to be good. They
| have stars in them. They have characters in them people
| care about. Those are all things that will draw a lot of
| people towards them.
|
| Halo has 1-2 characters people give a shit about and zero
| stars. The LOTR show seems to be the same...
|
| I'm not saying you HAVE to have those things for
| something to be quality but to keep people coming back
| those things help a lot.
| frumper wrote:
| The first episode auto played for me after I finished
| another show. It wasn't on more than a minute, but I
| wouldn't be surprised if events like that helped drive the
| record.
| ausbah wrote:
| >I don't think it will be any good. But 95% of film and tv is
| terrible and it keeps getting made.
|
| what is the most objective judge of quality if not what
| people are willing to watch
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| I don't know. I don't think popular can be equated with
| good though. Love is Blind was hugely popular. It is
| terrible tv. The same can be said about most content. If
| you come up with an objective system that everyone agrees
| on you will be a billionaire. But anyone can tell you that
| popular doesnt equal good.
| Shorel wrote:
| I think the issue is not that quality doesn't matter. If any,
| it matters more than anything.
|
| The issue is, execs have no idea at all of what is quality.
| In fact, they more often than not lower the quality of the
| films and series with their changes.
| dopeboy wrote:
| As a desperate Star Wars fan, I concur. It is a canon and
| world I am so bought into that I will consume substandard
| content. I imagine the same applies to LOTR fans.
| azekai wrote:
| As a long-time SW fan, I can't do it anymore. Book of Boba
| Fett was so plodding and awful I am washing my hands of
| Disney Wars.
| oaiey wrote:
| They should have taken 100M of that and fund the remaining three
| seasons of The Expanse.
| hedora wrote:
| As much as I like The Expanse, I miss the old days, when Amazon
| (or Netflix) would have used the $465M to fund one season of
| each of 46 high-risk shows -- zero of which would be warmed-
| over sequels.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| As has been hinted at here, the fact that they included Strange
| Dogs into season 6 is a pretty clear hint that more is coming.
| There is no reason to include that if they aren't going to
| adapt the Laconia storyline at some point, since the only
| purpose of that story is to introduce us to this new planet and
| what the Mars rebels discovered there.
|
| I suspect they're going for a film trilogy with a much bigger
| budget per minute filmed than the TV series. For one thing,
| some of the action gets a lot bigger in scale. Two, the time
| jump means all the main characters are now in their 70s and
| 80s. Avasarala is over 100. Either they go the Twin Peaks route
| and actually wait 30 years and hope everyone is still alive and
| working, or they go the Disney route and spend ungodly money on
| digitally aging everyone. Or they could just recast, but I
| think doing that as season 7 of the same show would have been
| pretty jarring.
| seanwilson wrote:
| Can they write around the time jump? Is it that critical to
| the story?
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Eh, maybe. They'd have to handwave a lot about how
| technology advanced so quickly. The Laconians having much
| better technology than everyone else is critical.
| oaiey wrote:
| Yes. But come on, makeup, some gray hair.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| This would have been great! Allthough, as far as I heard, one
| of the reasons for stopping was the time jump in the books
| (full disclosure: I didn't read the books).
| oaiey wrote:
| There is a time jump. But come on, put some gray hair on and
| some makeup.
| Pakdef wrote:
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that we've not seen the end of _The Expanse_ 's
| universe.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Yeah, what was with that planet with the alien dog thing?
| jffry wrote:
| I don't want to spoil too much, but that was basically the
| entirety of a novella which is the beginning of a plot line
| relevant to the final 3 books in the series.
|
| I don't know why they would include it if they don't have
| plans on continuing the show in some form in the future.
| It's not like there was any shortage of content in the
| mainline story to cover.
| hedora wrote:
| I hope you're right, but they had an entire scene in the last
| episode where the main characters complained at Bezos for
| cutting off funding.
|
| This is not the mark of a show that they plan to renew. :-(
| Beltalowda wrote:
| > This is not the mark of a show that they plan to renew.
| :-(
|
| Amazon doesn't own the TV/movie rights of The Expanse
| (beyond the seasons they funded), they're owned by Alcon
| Entertainment. So basically, whatever Amazon does or
| doesn't plan to do is kind of irrelevant and there isn't
| really anything stopping from the show appearing on, say,
| Netflix, or the BBC in a few years time. This is also why
| it transferred from SyFy to Amazon relatively easily.
| oaiey wrote:
| Haha. Duarte is playing a different game than bezos... I
| hope. That scene is already in the book.
| impalallama wrote:
| The Wheel of Time series was of such middling quality that I'm
| more skeptical of this than ever. Not that a Silmarillion tv show
| really has much appeal to me anyway.
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