Chen G.

We don't know.
 
Personally, I think the more substantial of Tolkien's stories - certainly the "Great Tales" of the First Age - deserve to feature on the big-screen. The Second Age stuff is basically a glorified bridge between the stories of the First Age and those of the late Third Age, and so I'm more accepting to it being a television series.
 
Warners have started a tentative move into the earlier stories of the Third Age with The War of the Rohirrim, and there's little stopping them from also doing the Angmar Wars (set-up heavily in The Hobbit), the Kinstrife, Battle of the Camp and the Oath of Cirion, which pretty much sums-up the worthwhile storylines presented in the appendices. One hopes they'll be emboldened to do those live-action.
 
At the same time, either way I don't want to get too much Tolkien: a streaming show and six films coming on seven, long though they may be, is still fine by me. But the sheer numbers of shows and films pulled by Star Wars and Marvel is overkill for me. Thankfully, Middle Earth projects have proved harder to produce, which helped keep the numbers in check.

They're really pushing the Galadriel and Sauron themes huh?
Someone pointed out that the SDCC choral intro could be from Shore's song. I had to make a transcription, and it does have an undeniable resemblance (the whole-step/half-step supremacy), though, as with all music we've heard so far, a more Bearish style.
 

0:00-0:14 SDCC Panel choral intro
0:18-0:37 McCreary's Galadriel theme
0:37-0:51 McCreary's Sauron theme
0:55-1:49 music from Main Teaser from July 14th
1:49-2:00 "Away I must wander this wandering day" from Main Teaser from July 14th

I laughed so friggin' hard!
 
 

I laughed so friggin' hard!
 
 

Ah I think it’s pretty self explanatory. The video looks like the opening for a soap opera.

I laughed so friggin' hard!
 
 

Sometimes I can’t believe I lived through that. Such a surreal experience.

I laughed so friggin' hard!
 
 

A common complaint among Denny's waitresses. 

The Hobbit Denny’s menus were the absolute peak. Nothing will ever tip them. 
 
well. Maybe the German burger spoiling Rise of Skywalker. 

KitKat, yes. But what about second KitKat?

It doesn't matter in terms of being actually realistic: it matters in terms of percieved realism. A good example are some of the Elven blades we see in this: do swords with hilts as huge as these actually exist? Sure! Just look at a 15th century Zweihander. But when most people see it, it registers as "fantasy sword!"
 
I think the triumph of Jackson's films rested on two things - the earnestness of the performances, and the naturalism of the production design. The combination of both of those things made it look more like a historical movie (very much modelled on Braveheart) than a fantasy movie of yore.
 
Its obviously a balancing act: Jackson didn't set out to totally historicize the fantasy a-la King Arthur: there are still fantasy creatures and impossible structures and - as with any action movie - beats that stretch credulity. But on the whole they nevertheless had a certain naturalism. This...doesn't have that feeling, for the most part.

oh my god who's in charge of this marketing budget

From what I’ve seen it’s the wide angle stuff that looks good. Squint and it looks like the PJ movies. But the closer you get to the details… yikes! 

While I hate to admit it, I do think some of the art direction, particularly some of the settings, looks...OK so far. It does look like they're giving some thought to that.  Though I completely agree that the whole thing looks much too "fantasy". 

Those cast members who think that for them to appear in a Tolkien adaptation is somekind of big, nigh-world-changing societal statement? Yeah, I think I know. Its...yeah...

How can anyone claim to have respect for the source material and say something like that? Most of the cast comments are filled with stuff like that. 
 
So Tolkien has to be "redressed". Apparently, in curtains. 

Yeah. If they don't want comparisons to the films (and that's silly to expect), maybe they shouldn't have tried so hard to make their show look like the films.  I mean, when you have that Balrog shot at the end of the trailer...please. It's obvious what they're trying to do.
 
In an event, given the significant amount of backlash to the show so far, I've noticed a shift in their (so far disastrous) marketing strategy. There's a lot of "we keep going to back to the books", and "we're not reflecting modern politics" etc. from the showrunners. No doubt in an effort to appease the significant portion of the Tolkien fan base that's sceptical of this project.  But all this is belied by the recent absurd comments by the cast (and I think you know what they are) who apparently didn't get the memo.  Their priorities are clear, and respecting Tolkien's vision, and spirit, doesn't seem to be paramount among them.
 
 

This is the real killer for me. There were an interview or two where the showrunners asked us to not compare to the movies, and its like "tough luck, buddy. In a world where people can't even watch the Bakshi film and avoid comparisons to the Jackson Lord of the Rings, how can your show avoid those comparisons?" But, beyond that, if you want to eschew comparisons to the films, why go for production design that so desparately wants to be a movie prequel?
 
And ontop of that they say that didn't want to do "a prequel" and yet thus far I'm seeing a lot of box-checking going on. I actually compiled a list:
 
 

The show will start out with a massive number of viewers, to be sure, and inevitably it will create a lot of new subscribers to Amazon Prime, which after all is why Amazon is doing it. Rings of Power is by far the biggest prestige project Amazon has going, and thus far they haven't had the kind of breakaway hits that Netflix and HBO have had. Being associated with Tolkien gives them that kind of instant "playing in the big leagues" credibility Amazon has lacked in streaming.
 
Of course, the viewership will drop off during the season and probably for subsequent seasons. But let's remember that Amazon already spent a massive amount of money buying the IP before they did the first shot. No matter how the show ultimately performs, Amazon is committed to this thing for multiple seasons. They have to be. And given that they've already built the primary sets, etc. subsequent seasons will almost certainly be cheaper.  
 
All that said, I can't help but think ultimately the show will be both an artistic and commercial disappointment. I don't see how it can't not be. Artistically, it's not really going to be Tolkien, no matter how good a "fantasy" show it is. They're never getting the die-hard Tolkien fans on board.  That ship has sailed. And it's the die hard fans being excited about a show, buzzing about it on social media, etc. that really gives a show the kind of "legs" that can turn it into a phenomenon. And the comparisons to the films will always be there, and they'll be negative. 
 
Commercially, Wheel of Time demonstrated that even a generic, middling fantasy show that was a critical failure (and that fans of the books hated) can still draw in viewers, and I have no doubt ROP can do that. But will it generate enough new subscribers to Prime to make it worth the investment? Only Amazon can say. But as hyped as this show is, and as valuable a "property" (I hate that word in this context) LOTR is, anything less than a Game of Thrones level cultural phenomenon will be a disappointment IMO. And does anyone really expect it to have that level of success?
 
 

I can’t stop laughing at this. 

I thought Rosemary’s Baby was really bad the one time I saw it.  Tess is my favorite of the Polanski films I’ve seen.

You have not seen what I have seen.

Beyond the choral aspect and the ample use of folk instruments, Shore has a very specific sound orchestration-wise: he tends to have a lot of different instruments in the same register doubling lines. That alone sets him apart from most film and TV composers: his way of thinking of the orchestra in "ranges" rather than in "colours", resulting a rather heavy, "rough" sound; which is to say nothing of his fondness for aleatorics and clusters and other modernist techniques. I actually think that was the thing that most readily hit audiences when they first heard it: that it wasn't yet another late-Romantic-styled score. It has its own unique soundscape.
 
Ontop of that - and this is absolutely where you should watch Monoverantus' channel - structurally his use of the leitmotif technique is much more thorough than what you see in other scores: its not a quilt of repeated musical reminiscences, which is what I expect of Bear's score, but rather a network of connected leitmotives that change their associations, their musical character, their connections to other motives and indeed their function within the piece and, in changing, relate to each other. By The Return of the King, it becomes difficult to tell individual themes apart anymore: they blur into each other completely, which is certainly not something I expect of any TV score.