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Amazon buys up Middle-earth, it searches the One Ring! (Rings of Power news thread)


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The wall or hedge they're sitting on is clearly in a state of great disrepair...

 

3 hours ago, Monoverantus said:

an elaborate ruse to make us all subscribe to Fellowship of Fans

 

 

I mean, I don't get anything from more people joining. I still regard my main medium of discussion over the show to be in text.

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My biggest worry is that this would be like Sword of Shannarah or Wheel of Time…

 

and so far that’s exactly what it looks like. 
 

I have pretty much no faith in Amazon when it comes to producing original TV and movies.

Every scrap of news that comes out about this show gets worse and worse. 
 

This could be a very expensive flop for Amazon. 

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8 minutes ago, Jay said:

Looks like fish scales

 

I think they were going for leaves, but who knows? Maybe she gets bored on that raft and does a spot of fishing. Wouldn't be the worse thing Amazon have come up with...

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5 hours ago, His Royal Noelness said:

This could be a very expensive flop for Amazon. 

 

The thing is, The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings are first and foremost singular works of literature. Works of literature that Peter Jackson made very successful direct adaptations of (especially in the case of LOTR).

 

But in my judgement, as much as I love all his books, the ability to expand the rest of Tolkien's legendarium in film and television, beyond those stories, and create a kind of MCU/Star Wars "shared universe" (which make no mistake, is what they want to do) has been greatly overestimated. And I also tend to doubt the appeal of these kinds of stories to the general public is what they presume it will be.  I think people love the Jackson films, but do I think there's big hunger among the average viewer to see more Middle-Earth on screen? I'm not sure about that. And given that there's deep skepticism about this project among fans of the book, I'm not sure who the audience is. In a way it's akin to Fantastic Beasts...who's really fan of that series? And those movies at least have the involvement and blessing of the author.  

 

That said, Amazon will likely regard it as a success no matter what, since it will bring a lot of attention to Prime Video, no matter how many viewers they retain after what I'm sure will be a massive audience the first couple weeks. But I do wonder if whoever ends up buying the film rights to the books from Zaentz might not end up overpaying. Beyond remaking The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings (they are, after all, the only novels in the series), which will happen eventually, I'm not sure where else there is to go with this, especially given that little of what will end up on the screen will actually be Tolkien.

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Don't get me wrong, Nick. I have my reservations. Very much so. Anything to do with the Harfoots makes me roll my eyes; there's a rumour about the "mystery man" they encounter which I pray to be false; Halbarad's character may be setting-up the Rohirrim in a way that may or may not come across as forced; and I'm not crazy about the quotas being filled in the casting.

 

But there are things about this premise that I do want to see. I've always thought the stories of Celebrimbor and of Pharazon's life were worthy of dramatization, and its intriguing to see all the major civilizations of Middle Earth - Dwarves, Elves and Men - at their prime. Some of the casting I quite like: his hairdo notwithstanding, Aramyo's a good pick for Elrond, as is Morfydd Clark for Galadriel, and Peter Mullan was born to play spearmen and Dwarves.

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12 hours ago, Jay said:

I hadn't really looked at the new pics until now.  Now that I have, boy, I'm disappointed too.

 

Nothing looks real, worn, lived-in.

 

All the costumes are super clean and pristine.  Everyone's hair is perfectly cut and styled.  Everyone's beard is perfectly trimmed.  It looks like I'm looking at actors on a stage, not a real fantasy world at all.

Compared to other series - The Witcher, GoT, Shadow and Bone, or even the recent Wheel of Time - I think the costumes look fine, if not more in-line with the Hobbit films. Promo pics almost always look like different from their film counterparts because they're photographs that don't share the same lighting, colour grading or are posed in such a way that they look different.

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15 hours ago, Chen G. said:

But there are things about this premise that I do want to see. I've always thought the stories of Celebrimbor and of Pharazon's life were worthy of dramatization, and its intriguing to see all the major civilizations of Middle Earth - Dwarves, Elves and Men - at their prime.

 

I once thought as you. The first time I saw Star Wars, Obi-Wan's wistful words in his desert adobe about the clone wars and his pupil who turned to the dark side inspired such wondrous images in my imagination. I WANTED to see that story. Then I saw it put to screen, and well...

 

 

 

 

 

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Oh, there are certainly things I actively want to NOT see. The Valar is one. Nope. No thank you. Don't "depict the undepictable" - all it can hope to be is demystifying. I could also do without seeing Valinor at all - which we know we will see - but as long as we don't see the Valar as such, I'm willing to give it a shot.

 

But the story of Celebrimbor? That's totally doable. So is Pharazon's. Can it be fucked up? Damn straight. But there's nothing inherent in it that makes it a bad choice for a filmmaker to pick-up.

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I gotta admit, I read and loved LOTR like 3 times and I've always been mostly bored reading Silmarillion and the other published stories written in a more mythic style.  And whether the Tolkien diehards like it or not, I think that describes the majority of the fanbase.  It's a weird, probably impossible line this show would have to walk to be broadly appealing like LOTR/Hobbit and true to Tolkien's work.  And for a billion dollars it'd better have broad appeal!

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All I know is that, after being disappointing by the later seasons of GoT and thinking The Witcher was awful (didn't watch S2 though), I'm ready for a great fantasy show with awesome visuals and good writing.

 

Not sure if I'm going to get this from Amazon's LOTR, but I hope it's good.

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1 hour ago, Disco Stu said:

I don't know why, it just feels like the audience for this kind of fantasy story just isn't there anymore, even for Tolkien.   I could be very wrong!

 

I'm inclined to agree. I think the mania that might have once existed for classical fantasy of this kind, right off the brink of the original trilogy has been dramatically diluted by the endless barrage of minor fantasy with mediocre execution (a la Wheel of TimeThe Witcher, and probably The Hobbit films themselves). Game of Thrones managed to become what it was for being essentially the antithesis of Tolkien in the same genre.

 

I just don't see this drumming up that kind of enthusiasm, unless it ends up being really good.

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3 hours ago, KK said:

It was worse than I expected. Looked very generic fantasy...

 

The video game-esque CG aside, the production design/visual aesthetic looks generally uninspired.

yeah this is a big yikes

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I mean, it just looks like it has a similar aesthetic to The Hobbit trilogy. Certainly doesn't look any worse.

 

I don't really get the onslaught of negativity it seems to be getting everywhere. I'll give it a chance and hope for the best.

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There's one implication of this trailer that I'm absolutely, postively dreading: this "Meteor Man" (kill me now) discovered by the Hobbits possibly being Gandalf, and the whole thing being played as "Gandalf was found and tended to by a young Hobbit and then she died/passed and - you see, boys and girls - he's attached to Bilbo and Frodo because he sees her in them. Neat ainit?"

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Just now, Chen G. said:

There's one implication of this trailer that I'm absolutely, postively dreading: this "Meteor Man" (kill me now) discovered by the Hobbits possibly being Gandalf, and the whole thing being played as "Gandalf was found and tended to by a young Hobbit and then she died/passed and - you see, boys and girls - he's attached to Bilbo and Frodo because he sees her in them. Neat ainit?"

 

Well I think your concern throws a bigger problem into sharp relief...i.e. if the creators are showing a such fundamental lack of judgement (to say nothing of respect for the "source" material) on this point, which is a rather large one, what does that say about the rest of the show?

 

 

 

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My most generous take: Númenor looks good, though that may be a low bar. I like the shot of Elves fighting Orcs, and think there'll probably be some really cool battle scenes.

My least generous take: Fanfic. Whether it's Galadriel leading her people up a 90 degree wall of ice or stuck on a raft in way too much promotional material, I don't feel the regal mysticism of her character at all. I can't see anything in this trailer (be it weird wood girl, slow-mo Spartacus or Meteor Man) that would deserve a Alan Lee or Ted Nasmith treatment.

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Yeah ok this looks bad.

 

But also every single person bombing the Youtube comments with that Tolkien quote about evil not creating anything new is a pathetic loser who needs to be stuffed in a locker.  Get a life!

 

 

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1 hour ago, Monoverantus said:

My most generous take: Númenor looks good, though that may be a low bar. I like the shot of Elves fighting Orcs, and think there'll probably be some really cool battle scenes.

 

I really did like the armour! and I'm very taken with Romenna - the pictures I've seen of the actual set-build also inspire confidence. I'm not against a warrior Galadriel if only because this is a younger version of the character we're seeing and it kinda fits.

 

I'm not feeling the short-haired Elves; or the Troll. But the thing I'm really dreading is anything and everything to do with "Meteor man".

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45 minutes ago, Monoverantus said:

Also, the style of the whole trailer is pretty uninspired. The font is stiff, the cuts are lackluster, and the narrative is vague and unengaging. Say what you want about the Hobbit trilogy, but that first trailer got me hooked.

 

 

 

Indeed! The above comparisons with The Hobbit aren't doing the Amazon show any favours...but boy was this first teaser bloody fantastic. The movies/products that both teasers are selling are just leagues apart (regardless of what we ended/end up getting).

 

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To go against the grain (and my own expectations), I'll be honest and admit this appears to be more visually cinematic than I anticipated it to be based on the recent unnaturally glossy promo images; the photography being closer to "Game of Thrones" than "Wheel of Time" that I had been fearing. Absolutely terrible trailer music notwithstanding, but that's par for the course these days. Even still, when is this awful trend going to end? It really works hard to undermine the Middle-Earthian presentation here.

 

"It looks like The Hobbit." Well that would have been the sum of all fears for me, but these particular shots don't look anything like what I remember seeing in those overly processed to within an inch of their lives Hobbit movies:

 

9ErV6U6.jpg

 

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I see more of the original trilogy in the general photographic style on show here, which is a big surprise to me. 

 

So yeah, overall, I'm still hopeful, 'specially since Shore is on board. Will reserve judgment till I've actually watched the thing. 

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