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Amazon's new Lord of the Rings TV series New series will be a prequel set in the Second Age

#461 User is offline   Tiste Simeon 

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Posted 26 October 2022 - 08:23 PM

Yeah I did read Silmarillion a long time ago and remember it being quite dense, at least for the first few bits. Will be getting that one in audiobook. Hurin is the book version so it has the gorgeous illustrations !
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#462 User is offline   QuickTidal 

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Posted 03 April 2023 - 07:02 PM

They dug too deep.
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#463 User is offline   QuickTidal 

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Posted 04 April 2023 - 04:53 PM

...and it turns out that most people tuned out before the end of the season. I'm not at all surprised. And if you read people's accounts of why they didn't finish, they sound suspiciously like my own. Only 37% of viewers stuck with it to the end.

https://www.indiewir...ate-1234825392/


From what I understand (and in contrast with another Amazon show) WOT had mostly consistent viewership numbers for the whole season.
"When the last tree has fallen, and the rivers are poisoned, you cannot eat money, oh no." ~Aurora

“Someone will always try to sell you despair, just so they don't feel alone.” ~Ursula Vernon
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#464 User is offline   flea 

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Posted 04 April 2023 - 05:40 PM

View PostQuickTidal, on 04 April 2023 - 04:53 PM, said:

...and it turns out that most people tuned out before the end of the season. I'm not at all surprised. And if you read people's accounts of why they didn't finish, they sound suspiciously like my own. Only 37% of viewers stuck with it to the end.

https://www.indiewir...ate-1234825392/


From what I understand (and in contrast with another Amazon show) WOT had mostly consistent viewership numbers for the whole season.


I finished it, but a lot of it was hate-watching. The later episodes were actually better. The Mordor origin story is kind of interesting. The Elrond/Durin bromance is fun. I re-read the appendix, and at least there is nothing wrong with the details.

Throughout there is a problem with scale -- the battles, and the compression of the timeline, which totally avoids the basic problem of the Numenorean's fear of death. Making mithral a key to the Elves survival is not a completely terrible idea, since it does not run against canon, except that the Silvan elves always lived in Middle-Earth and were not fading.

Does Tolkien ever address why the three rings were made? I know there is text that says one of their purposes was to preserve, from which the series extrapolates. I actually re-watched the series, and on a second viewing it was not as bad.

I know people hate the Wheel of Time series, but it seems that mostly comes from fans of the books. I don't remember the plots well, and I though that Jordan was a bit of a hack anyway, and I enjoyed the first season much more than RoP. A friend, who is a LOTR fanatic, even with an Elvish tattoo, loved the series because of the way it portrays Morraine's character.
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#465 User is offline   QuickTidal 

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Posted 04 April 2023 - 06:00 PM

View Postflea, on 04 April 2023 - 05:40 PM, said:

I know people hate the Wheel of Time series, but it seems that mostly comes from fans of the books. I don't remember the plots well, and I though that Jordan was a bit of a hack anyway, and I enjoyed the first season much more than RoP. A friend, who is a LOTR fanatic, even with an Elvish tattoo, loved the series because of the way it portrays Morraine's character.


My wife is a non-reader/casual audience and she LOVED WOT...like she can't wait for S2. She put it on par with HOTD for fantasy tv viewing. So yeah, I think fans got a little more upset than needed at it...I enjoyed the heck out of it all the way through.
"When the last tree has fallen, and the rivers are poisoned, you cannot eat money, oh no." ~Aurora

“Someone will always try to sell you despair, just so they don't feel alone.” ~Ursula Vernon
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#466 User is offline   the broken 

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Posted 04 April 2023 - 10:59 PM

Don't know how much that means, giant audience = giant dropoff. The streaming services release whatever metrics they like, leaving us guessing. What's a normal completion rate? Who knows? Where did you get your metrics for the completion rate of WOT?

The less lore you know, the more enjoyable both shows are. Which may be the point. You might say they have to function as shows on their own, but they're also banking on the existing audience to draw in crowds, because if they made an original series it wouldn't have a built in audience, so it would have to stand or fall on its own merits rather than someone else's. So the point of them is to get the benefit of adapting the show without the drawback of having to be faithful to it.

Neither is as awful as the internet says they are, but both have significant issues, even as independent works.
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#467 User is offline   Macros 

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Posted 05 April 2023 - 07:08 AM

We watched 2 episodes and stopped. Wife has no real Tolkien knowledge beyond reading the Hobbit and watching LotR and Hobbit movies, wasn't overly drawn by it, and I just nope out of it.
Contrast that with Wot, wife knew nothing of, I've read the first 3 twice I think and got myself upto the crossroads of shite, we both thoroughly enjoyed the show and are looking forward to Season 2
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#468 User is offline   TheRetiredBridgeburner 

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Posted 05 April 2023 - 11:26 AM

We made it to the end of Rings of Power and will probably try series 2, although Mr Not a Blacksmith is far more interested than me in doing so.

Wheel of Time however we're both very on board - me as a book reader, him as a newbie. He wasn't struck on the last episode but we all know that wasn't the ending they wanted, and there are things that I definitely hope improve in the second series.

When you consider the problems WoT faced - main cast member leaving, Covid causing a break in production and then restrictions on set on return etc - and the far inferior budget, RoP should have wiped the floor with WoT in terms of quality and finished product, and never once looked like doing so.

In fairness though, only one of the above has Rosamund Pike who is an absolute dream of a casting.

This post has been edited by TheRetiredBridgeburner: 05 April 2023 - 11:30 AM

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#469 User is offline   QuickTidal 

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Posted 05 April 2023 - 12:17 PM

View PostTheRetiredBridgeburner, on 05 April 2023 - 11:26 AM, said:

We made it to the end of Rings of Power and will probably try series 2, although Mr Not a Blacksmith is far more interested than me in doing so.

Wheel of Time however we're both very on board - me as a book reader, him as a newbie. He wasn't struck on the last episode but we all know that wasn't the ending they wanted, and there are things that I definitely hope improve in the second series.

When you consider the problems WoT faced - main cast member leaving, Covid causing a break in production and then restrictions on set on return etc - and the far inferior budget, RoP should have wiped the floor with WoT in terms of quality and finished product, and never once looked like doing so.

In fairness though, only one of the above has Rosamund Pike who is an absolute dream of a casting.



The costuming and sets alone on WOT are scads better. There's so much CGI on ROP where WOT went practical and made a better show for it.
"When the last tree has fallen, and the rivers are poisoned, you cannot eat money, oh no." ~Aurora

“Someone will always try to sell you despair, just so they don't feel alone.” ~Ursula Vernon
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#470 User is offline   TheRetiredBridgeburner 

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Posted 05 April 2023 - 02:21 PM

View Postflea, on 04 April 2023 - 05:40 PM, said:

A friend, who is a LOTR fanatic, even with an Elvish tattoo


Yay for elvish tattoos! I have two :) they say "May it be a light for you in dark places when all other lights go out" and "All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost" respectively in Tengwar script.

This post has been edited by TheRetiredBridgeburner: 05 April 2023 - 02:21 PM

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#471 User is offline   flea 

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Posted 05 April 2023 - 02:44 PM

She wouldn't tell me what it meant. I had a photo, so I sent it to an "expert" to translate. Turns out it's "nine," but misspelled. We had quite a laugh when I reported this to her.
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#472 User is offline   TheRetiredBridgeburner 

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Posted 05 April 2023 - 07:16 PM

View Postflea, on 05 April 2023 - 02:44 PM, said:

She wouldn't tell me what it meant. I had a photo, so I sent it to an "expert" to translate. Turns out it's "nine," but misspelled. We had quite a laugh when I reported this to her.


Haha, amazing!
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#473 User is offline   the broken 

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Posted 06 April 2023 - 12:16 PM

Was WOT more practical? They both used a good deal of both. I wish productions would stop being afraid of CG, that's where a lot of the scale problems come from.
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#474 User is offline   TheRetiredBridgeburner 

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Posted 06 April 2023 - 12:24 PM

View Postthe broken, on 06 April 2023 - 12:16 PM, said:

Was WOT more practical? They both used a good deal of both. I wish productions would stop being afraid of CG, that's where a lot of the scale problems come from.


They used a lot more CG after the Covid break in production, because they were limited on numbers of extras (so all the Trollocs past the break are fully CG, rather than some being men in costumes). I think up to that point they'd done as much practically as possible.

This post has been edited by TheRetiredBridgeburner: 06 April 2023 - 12:24 PM

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#475 User is offline   QuickTidal 

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Posted 06 April 2023 - 02:20 PM

View PostTheRetiredBridgeburner, on 06 April 2023 - 12:24 PM, said:

View Postthe broken, on 06 April 2023 - 12:16 PM, said:

Was WOT more practical? They both used a good deal of both. I wish productions would stop being afraid of CG, that's where a lot of the scale problems come from.


They used a lot more CG after the Covid break in production, because they were limited on numbers of extras (so all the Trollocs past the break are fully CG, rather than some being men in costumes). I think up to that point they'd done as much practically as possible.


Yeah this.

Watching the first 6 or so episodes, you can see mostly practical effects...the Trollocs in that first episode (for example) are all stunt performers in makeup and costume, minus the magic...but yeah TRB is right, the HEAVY CGI in the final two eps were from COVID rewrites and cast/shooting issues....like the Blight was a scouted as an actual real location for the shoot in The Canary Islands, but COVID fucked them out of travelling there, so it had to all be done with CGI instead.

The production went out of its way to lean practical which you can read about at that link.

And it's not about being scared to use CGI, it's about using it WELL to enhance existing practical effects. MAD MAX FURY ROAD did this well as an example. The CGI used in ROP was just green screen totality and you can tell. I would have been more impressed if they'd done something more like the SW productions use like The Volume....at least then it feels more incorporated in a given scene.

Like look at this scene from Ep1:



EVERYTHING in that shot his bad CGI except the base of the boat and the actors....THE SAIL is inexplicably CGI. Like you could not get some canvas and make it look a little more real in the wider shots?

I'm not saying they didn't do some good practical effects in ROP though, they clearly did....but the CGI leaned into bad most times and felt like FFX Cut scenes from 2001.

Like on the WOT shoot they BUILT the Two Rivers, they BUILT Shadar Logoth...
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#476 User is offline   the broken 

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Posted 06 April 2023 - 09:37 PM

See, I think that's the wrong way to make a piece of media. You shouldn't be thinking 'we're going to keep things as practical as possible' or 'we're going to use as much CG as possible', you should be thinking 'we're going to tell this story, and we are going to use the best means available to do that. If your mind set is 'we're going to use a particular effect as much as we can,' you've messed up before you start.

ROP built Numenor, which looks very good. Khazad-Dum, Lindon, Eregion also look great. The orcs look great. Even the troll looks great. Some of the costumes are very good, the main failure is the Numenorian armour.

Edit: I mean, don't get me wrong, I had many issues with ROP, but this smells like a hit piece.

They go with the 37pc figure because it's lower, while the int'l audience is a more respectable 45pc. Foreign and domestic matters in theaters because US theaters give a bigger cut to the studio, but everyone is streaming this from Prime directly, so that's less important. The metrics for streaming are hard to judge because the providers are all so opaque, I would not be surprised if it was totally normal for the majority of people to not finish a show

This post has been edited by the broken: 09 April 2023 - 12:35 PM

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