bored

You could argue that Bilbo is tied to the History of the Ring so that's a possible reason for the connection, but I do agree this time that it may just be a Howard Shore stylistic tendency here, though if it is, I will say it's a hell of a coincidence. 

I think I just discovered something. Bilbo's Fussy Theme has almost the same structure and melody of The History of the Ring. Look at this:
 
This is Bilbo's Fussy Theme. Look at the E - F - E - D - F - E - A melody, with minor chords a halfstep apart in the bass.

 
Now this is the History of the Ring theme. Look at that part of the melody: C - B - C - B - A - C - B - E, with minor chords a halfstep apart in the bass - it's the same as Bilbo's Fussy Theme!

 
 
Have you guys ever noticed this?

Yes.
But not the end of an era in the 90s.
 
The end of the era of classic Hollywood epics that started about 60 years prior.
I believe it's the last grand cinematic epic, also history epic, that was made, and made in 100% good faith.
 
In no way shape or form would it have been possible to make like that just very few years later.

While the first 2 episodes showed promise it became a show of diminishing returns for me after they arrived in Numenor and kinda.... broke the spell.
 
ROP S1 was ultimately slow and rather uninvolving. Gone are the visual aesthetics that made Middle-earth come to live back in 2001, in exchange for something that looked...too clean. Too much like TV maybe? Despite the reported billion dollar budget for the first 3 seasons.
 
Numenor actually looked less good than that place Deanerys was stuck in for GOT season 2.
And the brave and mighty Numenorions heading out to assist the South Landers as a bit climax for the season felt pretty underwhelming.
 
How many of these rebellious South Landers and Orcs did we see anyway? 30? 40? Maybe 50?
 
A Champions League semi final would stir up more ruckus then these ruffians did.
 
The Harfoot storyline was pretty decent initially. But they spent a whole season of having a mystery about who of the characters would turn out to be Sauron, it required Gandalf to be like "Dougie Jones" in Twin Peaks S3, for no other reason than "Mystery Box".
 
On a writing level it's a pretty piss poor adaptation of a lot of bits and pieces from Tolkien's extensive lore, and a lot that was added by the writers that really doesn't congeal into anything either way.
 
Without the fastidious attention to detail Tolkien gave to his prose and lore, or the sweeping but gripping histrionics PJ poured into just about any shot of his adaptation.
 
Its streaming "content". Seemingly mostly designed to set up season 2.

I have no idea what you're talking about... 
 
 

Well, I think its absolutely the wrong approach. It feels deeply cynical to me: trying to "munch" on the fans of these films by means of surface-level similarities, derivative designs and so forth. It also makes the show look like a Frankenstein of vague Jacksonisms combined with McPayne-isms: one second, the Elves look straight out of Jackson's films, the other moment they look like a pre-Raphaelite painting threw-up on them. Each of these two approaches are legitimate: its the mish-mash of both that doesn't work, and that invites unflattering comparisons even where they wouldn't come to mind otherwise.

I meant more general aesthetics as well as some of the composition elements you listed. French Horns and Trombones open for mankind, female choir for elves, descending string line that feels more hobbit-like but orchestration-wise can also fit with elves, chanting male choir for Dwarves/dark places of the world, Mount Doom chords and dark orchestra writing for Mordor.
 
It's more the main five cultures represented. Evil, dwarves, man, elves, and hobbits. Since Shore only had one new piece to compose, I imagine it was somewhat intentional.

I have no idea what you're talking about... 
 
 

The real nightmare would be waking up and looking at Mark Hammill's Twitter feed.

I have no idea what you're talking about... 
 
 

I have no idea what you're talking about... 
 
 

Now this is special pleading. While I agree that the show is indeed separate, it's modelling of itself on the films goes well beyond "some stylistic similarities": it courses through the show's veins pretty much continuously, in every department.
 
If Robert Aramayo doesn't "end up looking and sounding like Hugo Weaving" - as indeed he doesn't - then why pick an actor who could pass for a younger version of Weaving's Elrond, replete with concept art for Elrond scenes using Weaving's likeness? I also feel like Aramayo, in particular, took some cues from Weaving.
 
But its also in the script (callbacks of lines, e.g. Elrond's "And enough malt beer to fill the Anduin), shooting locations (New Zealand!), sets, props, weapons (Goddamn Narsil!), special effects (Durin's Bane!) and sound design, to name just a few examples.
 
I know all the stock excuses for why that is - "Well, both shows use John Howe as a concept artist so what we're seeing is not aping the films, its both properties channeling a pre-existing Howe sensibility" - No, the fact that Howe is concept design doesn't account for similarities in other departments. "Well, they went to shoot in New Zealand and, given the size of the country's screen sector, they ended-up with much of the same crew" - this is confusion cause and effect: they went to New Zealand TO get all this crew back, and at any rate most of those aren't on the Season Two payroll and yet, in some regards, the similarities have only increased: the Season Two Troll looks more like the Jackson Trolls that did the Season One monstrosity.
 
So, no, the similarities are there to, rather shamelessly, bamboozle casual viewers into thinking they're watching a prequel. And, indeed, this modeling also does extend to the music: not in the harmonic-melodic language (notwithstanding some inevitable similarities that were always going to crop-up in two compositions of such size) but in the associative use of timbre, and in some more basic choices like having an end-credits song. This, and the Shore and Plan 9 tracks all absolutely BEG YOU TO MAKE THE COMPARISON, and Bear certainly isn't helping it with his Blog where he treats his scores very rigorously as prequel scores.
 
If they were sharply delineated properties - visually and musically - with maybe the occasional homage, then @bored criticisms would indeed be out of place. But they're not. The fact that we got a copycat show does make one long for HBO to have made this show, instead, with all the trimmings, INCLUDING the Shore themes.
 
I'm not going to be sitting here banging on "SHOULD'VE BEEN SHORE" drum around Bear's score all the time: to do so would be to miss the forest for the trees. But at the same time, to say that its so completely different as to not call for a comparison...

You must have been bored.

Composed some new tracks based on Howard Shore's Lord of the Rings, and Jeremy Soule's Skyrim. Hope you guys enjoy, these were pretty fun to make!
 
 
 

We should have known better: the only way to realistically get a Shore or Shore-congruent score was if this show was being made by HBO. Being that it's by Amazon, I think the best thing would be to treat them as two separate Lord of the Rings properties, notwithstanding the Shore and Plan 9 contributions, all in Season One.
 
But sure, it would have been great to have a series where Gil-galad was flanked by guards in the Last Alliance garb, the Numenoreans would soldier off in their gear from Fellowship of the Ring, and welcomed by the "Second Age" Gondor music from the Rarities, and Elrond wielding Hadhafang, and the Eregion that's pictured in Rivendell, and so forth.
 
That's not what we got. But, look at it this way: OFF of Season One, we did get worthwhile Shore and Plan 9 pieces, not to mention contributions from the Wetas and so forth, which could be appreciated outside the narrative context of the show. And still yet, we're getting more Shore-congruent contributions from Gallagher this year, and from whomever two years down the line with Gollum and presumably much else beside yet to come.

Yeah, I liked the main album for RoP season 1 but I just can't get into it as much as I'd like to. The fact it's outside of Shore's musical world, one that was so thoroughly built with even a potential second-age Gondor leitmotif in the alternate prologue for Fellowship, only for the opportunity for it to be expanded being taken away due to rights issues, and some of Bear's stylistic weirdness (at least in this season), just makes it feel pointless, because all of this musical material won't build to anything more than what's established in this series.
 
Good for Bear, there's some quality stuff here, hope he develops it well, but it just has this hollow feeling for me knowing it will never build upon or towards Howard Shore's material besides some secondary ideas.

I still find this Shore-scoring discussion dishonest and two faced beyond words.
 
When it's about Shore in his 70s writing music for extensions of his classic franchise, the "scope for new leitmotifs is very thin" and the question is "how much he has left".
 
When it's about Williams writing music for extensions of his classic franchises, there is no movie stupid enough, no spin-off series superfluous enough for people to come out and fawn over the possibilities of what a semi retired Williams at a billion years of age might produce spectacular and memorable for "the catalogue of themes".
 
When it's suggested a composer scoring Middle-Earth should stay as close as possible to the Shore sound, that's "not realistic" and "irrelevant".
 
When Williams does not score every single entry in his franchise, the replacement composer MUST act as a surrogate for Williams' sound, because it's "indefinitely tied to the film" and would otherwise be dissapointing.
 

This is what bothers me. I don't know who saw Peter Jackson's films and thought, "You know what this needs? Big titty anime girls!" Don't get me wrong, I understand the appeal of both of those things, but putting them together just doesn't sit right with me somehow.

Backgrounds look great, Final Fantasy like characters less so. 
 
Looks like it will be better than RoP at least. Albeit a pretty low bar to clear… 
 
Interested for the score.
 
the tough woman in a man’s world trope is being done to death though at this stage. Feels like we get this story a few times a year in various media. 
 
 

Shore's music belongs to Warner's WaterTower Music, and since New Line are making this film Gallagher should be able to use Shore's themes freely. I mean, Warners' music producer for the Shore scores, Paul Broucek, is producing this score as well.
 
We certainly know Gallagher - who should be pretty familiar with Shore's score: I believe Doug said he read his book - had recorded a hardingfele part! A 20-minute chunk of the film was shown at annecy, at a point by which Gallagher had recorded a big chunk of score, and there were multiple testaments of people hearing the main Rohan theme.

I’m fine with everything about this except for reframing the movie around what the trailer implies is the most basic iteration of the “woman in a man’s world” plot ever. If the writers wanted to make a new character that’s fine, but don’t make her a less interesting version of Eowyn!

They're smart to start the trailer with Peter Jackson's name, Howard Shore's score, Miranda Otto's voice, and most importantly, the footage from The Lord of the Rings as a tie-in to the new film. It clearly distinguishes War of the Rohirrim from Rings of Power. They're letting everyone know this is not the latter, which I imagine they very much want to do.

It's funny seeing people acting like what I said about KK having 'information' on her fellow hollywood studio heads, is some sort of conspiratorial nonsense.
 
Don't you know that hollywood is a cesspool of degeneracy and power-mad elites that gladly step over the corpse of their perceived 'career hurdle' just to get ahead?
 
I mean, man, if you haven't learned yet about the evil that goes on in hollywood, I would recommend not looking it up for your own sanity.
 
People act like weinstein was a one-off.  Studios abuse whatever and whoever they can for profit. The majority of studios operate exactly like, and some even worse, than weinstein.
 
hollywood is evil, in every sense of the word. Why would lucasfilm and Kathleen Kennedy operate in any other way than the rest?

I don't find it annoying, I find it completely justified.
 
If you want to give her the credit for Andor, well, fine. Then in that case she deserves the blame for all the disasters that have come along with that.
 
Hmmmm. Let's see. Disney Lucasfilm peaked with TFA. Each film in the main saga since made less money than the last. TLJ deeply split the fan base and no one was satisfied with TROS. And while Rogue One performed decently, Solo and Dial of Destiny were outright flops.
 
There hasn’t been any Star Wars on the big screen, where it belongs, since 2019. And what’s the future? "Episode X" (i.e. Rey Returns) being directed by a political activist and documentary filmmaker who with exactly zero experience helming a project remotely this big. And a bunch of announced films that, like the Rey film, may or may not happen at all. 
 
On TV, Book of Boba Fett and the much-anticipated Kenobi series pleased no one and were DOA.
Ahsoka (like The Acolyte) haemorrhaged viewers as the season went on. Willow flopped and was cancelled after one season, then unceremoniously yanked from Disney+ altogether. Yes, yes, Andor was well regarded critically but reportedly the lowest rated of the SW shows. In fact the only outright success, both in terms of ratings and critical reception, was The Mandalorian…and even then, only the first and maybe second season. 
 
The result of Star Wars on TV has been a sludge of generic mediocrity. Hardly the stuff of a Game of Thrones level cultural phenomenon that you’d expect from a franchise like Star Wars. 
 
And all that’s to say nothing of all the cancelled projects & fired directors. Disney isn't close to recouping the money the spent for LucasFilm. How is any of this an even remotely defensible record?
 
Look, Kathy Kennedy is a Hollywood legend. She's undoubtedly one of the most successful producers in history, her record speaks for itself.  And she deserves every bit of credit for what she's done. She's excelled at giving creatives what they need to excel. That's what a good producer does.
 
But being a producer is a very different job than the one she has now. And frankly, she lacks the grand vision to lead something as sprawling as Star Wars. There's no cohesion or unified theme behind what's going on with the franchise. It's all disjointed and scattershot, all over the place in terms of story. Add to that the graveyard of abandoned projects, and Star Wars has paid the price for her lack of vision.
 
 
No...no, I don't think that's fair. Certainly, I agree that some of the "ire" is politically charged, but I think saying most of it comes from that place is a bit of a stretch. Of course there are plenty of sexist trolls out there who are going to hate her no matter what, just as there are people who are going to reflexively defend her no matter what because they question the motives of those questioning her. But if the "content" she was putting out was better, I don't think most people would care about all that.
 
In any event, The Acolyte was cancelled, not because of trolls, but because people didn't watch.