Yeah, a bunch of no-life trolls are trying to review bomb it by commenting on the trailer on youtube.
More importantly, they're the only ones who care that they're doing that
Who reads comments on youtube trailers?
Also, that's a site for Amazon Prime UK, which is just one of dozens if not hundreds of subchannels Amazon has. The trailer on the main channel has 11M views, which is massive for that channel. (In comparison, The Boys gets about half of that.)
Last edited by Itse; 08-27-2022 at 08:37 AM.
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A week before it comes out, the latest trailer for RoP has <400k views and 5k likes in 3 days. Most of the trailers have 10x more dislikes than likes. This is a staggering amount of apathy for a multibillion project based on one of the largest media properties to ever exist.
Theres no thread in the OT about it and it hardly gets mentioned in the Amazon Prine thread.
Try and find a positive comment in the reviews, i dare ya
That's the trailer posted on the Amazon Prime UK account. The one posted on the main Amazon Prime account has over 11 million views.
Edit: Also, looking through the comments, they are generally pretty negative but they all seem to be negative about viewing this as a cash grab putting out a Hollywood styled pulp under the LOTR brand but that doesn't measure up to Tolkien's writing. I don't really see any comments about representation in it. The negative commentary is all about how the writing looks like schlock, not about who is in it.
I'm not even sure how it's relevant at all to the cover of EA NHL 2023.
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I’m a Tolkien purist and I’m not enthusiastic about this show breaking from canon.
I will give it an honest viewing though, but certainly don’t have high hopes.
At least one reviewer whose judgement I trust has described the series as ‘Tolkien in name only’. I would be very surprised to find that it rises above the level of schlock.
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Neil Gaiman seems to have enjoyed it. Problem is really is that second age has a bare handful of material. Just broad strokes and not enough to really make an actual story out of. Certainly no dialog. Adding that plus the fact they don’t get to use all of the source material and they were never going to be faithful to the story because they’d have to inject actual smaller stuff and characters to fill things out.
Neil Gaiman seems to have enjoyed it. Problem is really is that second age has a bare handful of material. Just broad strokes and not enough to really make an actual story out of. Certainly no dialog. Adding that plus the fact they don’t get to use all of the source material and they were never going to be faithful to the story because they’d have to inject actual smaller stuff and characters to fill things out.
The real problem, of course, is that they don't have Tolkien to write it. And the natural audience for the series consists of millions of Tolkien fans, who as a class are notorious sticklers for canon and turn up their noses at second-rate writing. Turn those people off, and you have a recipe for a bomb.
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It’s not like Tolkiens writing (mainly dialog) translates very well to screen anyway. If Tolkien was alive and not a product of 100 years ago his dialog would be much more modern and screen friendly. And I think the movies have shown (even the more inferior Hobbit movies) that if you adapt, make up or even mangle things plenty will tune in to watch it.
It’s not like Tolkiens writing (mainly dialog) translates very well to screen anyway. If Tolkien was alive and not a product of 100 years ago his dialog would be much more modern and screen friendly.
Tolkien wasn't a product of 100 years ago. He was a product of 1,000 years ago. His dialogue was never ‘modern’; he drew most of his style from the Norse sagas and other mediaeval poetry. He was, in fact, reacting sharply against the humdrum stories and squalid prose that were fashionable in the early 20th century; and that is a large part of what made his work so popular.
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And I think the movies have shown (even the more inferior Hobbit movies) that if you adapt, make up or even mangle things plenty will tune in to watch it.
An interesting thing happened with the Peter Jackson films. The Two Towers grossed more than The Fellowship of the Ring, and The Return of the King grossed more than The Two Towers. The trend was steadily up.
But the first film in the Hobbit trilogy grossed less than The Return of the King, and each film after that grossed less than its predecessor. The trend was steadily down.
The producers of this series don't just have to keep the audience coming back for three movies. They have to keep people tuned in episode after episode for five solid years. And they have to do it while making up nearly all of their own storyline. It isn't just adapting Tolkien's work; it's constructing an entirely new work based on a few pages of his notes.
It's a tall order, and I have no confidence that the people involved will be able to pull it off. I'm not sure anyone could.
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Come on you can at least fact check the stuff you write. Hobbit movies (which I agree other than the first were crap) were very steady in money. 1.017 billion to 959 million to 962 million. 3 movies that two of were bad made a cool 3 billion in three years. Oh also all the hobbit movies made more than FotR or tTT. Only RotK outdrew the hobbit movies. The market is absolutely out there for generic fantasy based on the Tolkien name. You and Tolkien purists might not love it but there are droves who will watch it just because of the production values they’re putting into it. Now it will probably be nothing more than generic fantasy trope which is a shame since the source material deserves better but it will absolutely make money and lots of it.
Tolkien wasn't a product of 100 years ago. He was a product of 1,000 years ago. His dialogue was never ‘modern’; he drew most of his style from the Norse sagas and other mediaeval poetry. He was, in fact, reacting sharply against the humdrum stories and squalid prose that were fashionable in the early 20th century; and that is a large part of what made his work so popular.
An interesting thing happened with the Peter Jackson films. The Two Towers grossed more than The Fellowship of the Ring, and The Return of the King grossed more than The Two Towers. The trend was steadily up.
But the first film in the Hobbit trilogy grossed less than The Return of the King, and each film after that grossed less than its predecessor. The trend was steadily down.
The producers of this series don't just have to keep the audience coming back for three movies. They have to keep people tuned in episode after episode for five solid years. And they have to do it while making up nearly all of their own storyline. It isn't just adapting Tolkien's work; it's constructing an entirely new work based on a few pages of his notes.
It's a tall order, and I have no confidence that the people involved will be able to pull it off. I'm not sure anyone could.
You are correct. Tolkien was a medievalist. He shunned many parts of the modern 20th century and lamented the loss of time gone by. All his stories reflect this too; everything was always grander and better in the ancient histories of his legendary world.
His works were therefore not screen friendly, but frankly I thought the film adaptations were amazing. Definitely different than the books, but you have to understand that there was no way the films would be a shot for shot remake of the books.
Rings of Power COULD be awesome and remain loyal to source material. But I have a feeling the writers took creative license and tried to make it for 21st century audiences. We shall see.
Rings of Power COULD be awesome and remain loyal to source material.
Well, they already have Celebrimbor in the series along with Míriel, Pharazôn, and Isildur. In the source material, Celebrimbor died over a thousand years before the other three were born. This is taking liberties with a vengeance.
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Now it will probably be nothing more than generic fantasy trope which is a shame since the source material deserves better but it will absolutely make money and lots of it.
The question is, will it make back the billion-dollar cost of production plus enough to provide a decent ROI? Or are the producers doing the equivalent of building the Climate Pledge Arena in Saskatoon?
For comparison purposes, the total production cost of Game of Thrones was $560 million. Betting double that amount on a licensed spinoff that merely uses some of the place and character names from the original property? Risky.
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Well the second age and first age as written are basically unfilmable. It’s like a history book where important events are decades or centuries apart. You add in there the absolute mess that the IP rights are and how it’s split between multiple entities and it’s really impossible to use all the disjointed material Tolkien wrote and rewrote. (Like RoP can use the appendices but not the additional source books or Tolkiens letters) No one other than Tolkien purists are going to care that Celembrimbor died a thousand years before because the events as written don’t work on the screen. The series will do well based on if it’s enjoyable and well made and not that it appeals to purists which would likely make the series worse for most casual fans.
I think they’d have been better off going for first age rather than second because at least there is a coherent story again but once again rights. (And they also likely want to use some familiar names and things like hobbits and such) Still much rather have the second age then the original idea which I think was something about rangers or Aragorns youth or something.
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