Television The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

Widow

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Andycoleno9 said:
As a person who read every single book and watched all movies dozen times
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Me too but I'm not worried. . I've read all the books a couple of times and I have watched the films no less than 20 times each, it's a running joke in my house of 'oh, LOTR, not seen this in ages'

Let's just enjoy the show without deep delving or picking apart every single detail. The Hobbit movies didn't get close to the first three but I found ways to still enjoy them and at it's worst, the Rings of Power should be able to deliver this standard.

I see a similar take in the new House of the Dragon thread. People getting their knickers in a twist because a character has a different colour top on than he does in the book (I'm paraphrasing, obviously)

Maybe I'm just lucky that while the finer details can be annoying, I won't be letting them get in the way of enjoying a story a love so much.
 

RedSky

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The reviews have been very positive so far, the advertising has been very poor though, that last trailers music was... interesting. But the short clips they've been releasing show the quality of the show, they've all been very good.
 

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Widow said:
Me too but I'm not worried. . I've read all the books a couple of times and I have watched the films no less than 20 times each, it's a running joke in my house of 'oh, LOTR, not seen this in ages'

Let's just enjoy the show without deep delving or picking apart every single detail. The Hobbit movies didn't get close to the first three but I found ways to still enjoy them and at it's worst, the Rings of Power should be able to deliver this standard.

I see a similar take in the new House of the Dragon thread. People getting their knickers in a twist because a character has a different colour top on than he does in the book (I'm paraphrasing, obviously)

Maybe I'm just lucky that while the finer details can be annoying, I won't be letting them get in the way of enjoying a story a love so much.
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I think this is the best way to approach them. Even the LOTR trilogy, widely and understandably considered about as great as an adaptation can be, made some changes that dismayed a lot of the fans but I actually think a lot of them worked really well and were a necessity due to the condensed nature of film in relation to book (not all changes ofc).

I don’t expect this to hit the same heights the trilogy did, but if they can replicate some of the atmosphere and feel of a Tolkien work I’ll be happy. The nature of the work they’re adapting is a bit of a positive and negative. More creative freedom due to the vagueness of the story, and the negative is they haven’t got the same access to the beautiful dialogue and level of detail when it comes to the narrative.

I’m looking forward to it and I like what I’ve seen from the trails so far
 

Red Shorts

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Andycoleno9 said:
As a person who read every single book and watched all movies dozen times, i am so underwhelmed with reviews and trailers. I am worried that this will be a disaster.
I doubt that we will see powerful story and powerful scenes like.......this

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Don't watch then, save the already decided dissapointment you put on it and let us enjoy it
 

Red Shorts

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Andycoleno9 said:
Did i say that? fecking hell... :confused:
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Sorry, I misread your super positive post as negativity. How silly of me.

You go into something thinking it's going to end up bad due to such high expectations, it will end up being disappointing. Just separate it from the films, the books and enjoy a new chapter of this story.
 

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I've stayed away from pretty much everything. Going in knowing very little. Will let it wash over me.
 

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There are a lot of people out there who think that the point of this show is to drive an agenda. I don't think that Amazon would invest this much money just to push a worldview.

I have as many misgivings going in to this as I had HoTD for similar reasons. The Hobbit movies were as bad if not worse than season 8 of GoT but HoTD has proven to be quality so far so I'm more than happy to give this a tentative try.
I have been burnt by shows that I was looking forward to before Shannara Chronicles being a prime example but I'm still prepared to go in with an open mind even if a bit guarded.
 

Bobski

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I just hope that it is better than The Wheel of Time atrocity they put out.
 

tomaldinho1

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It can’t be worse than the Hobbit but it won’t be close to LOTR. All the critics so far have been focusing on the spectacle and CGI etc. which really isn’t what most fans care about as long as it’s not bad.

WoT was a tester for them and they messed that one up badly. Have they learned from their mistakes or just gone down the marvel/Jurassic park/transformers route of a plot written by a 4 year old and the entire budget spent on CGI? Hopefully the former.
 

simonhch

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Bobski said:
I just hope that it is better than The Wheel of Time atrocity they put out.
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Wheel of time was fecking shite for sure. Biggest issue I had with that was how clean everything was. Looked like sets rather than a real world. Amateurish. But the reviews on this look great so far. Peter Jackson’s involvement is definitely a plus, although as we saw with the Hobbit, not a guarantee. My expectations are low, which is a good thing. Expecting it to be epic is almost certain disappointment.
 

Amarsdd

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Anyone here got to see the early screenings for the first two episodes? I had tickets to go to one on Friday but feckin life got in the away!
 

Bobski

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simonhch said:
Wheel of time was fecking shite for sure. Biggest issue I had with that was how clean everything was. Looked like sets rather than a real world. Amateurish. But the reviews on this look great so far. Peter Jackson’s involvement is definitely a plus, although as we saw with the Hobbit, not a guarantee. My expectations are low, which is a good thing. Expecting it to be epic is almost certain disappointment.
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Yep, too clean, looked like a cosplay convention, but really it was the writing and choices they made. You have one of the best prologues in the genre to work with and don't use it, create a mystery around who was the dragon when there was no need for it, made it into some sort of prize to be gained rather than something to be terrified by. The unwillingness to establish the magic system correctly and then had nonsense like Egwene(or was it Nynaeve?) effectively healing death in the last episode. Really?

I would also mention pretty much every male character outside of Logain being awful for some reason.

Hope they had the backups to the backups on that.
 

roseguy64

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simonhch said:
Wheel of time was fecking shite for sure. Biggest issue I had with that was how clean everything was. Looked like sets rather than a real world. Amateurish. But the reviews on this look great so far. Peter Jackson’s involvement is definitely a plus, although as we saw with the Hobbit, not a guarantee. My expectations are low, which is a good thing. Expecting it to be epic is almost certain disappointment.
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Peter Jackson is not involved. He was consulted early on but then they just cut communication with him.
 

justsomebloke

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Cascarino said:
I think this is the best way to approach them. Even the LOTR trilogy, widely and understandably considered about as great as an adaptation can be, made some changes that dismayed a lot of the fans but I actually think a lot of them worked really well and were a necessity due to the condensed nature of film in relation to book (not all changes ofc).

I don’t expect this to hit the same heights the trilogy did, but if they can replicate some of the atmosphere and feel of a Tolkien work I’ll be happy. The nature of the work they’re adapting is a bit of a positive and negative. More creative freedom due to the vagueness of the story, and the negative is they haven’t got the same access to the beautiful dialogue and level of detail when it comes to the narrative.

I’m looking forward to it and I like what I’ve seen from the trails so far
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Hoping for the best and this is the right frame of mind to approach it in. However. It's hard to get around the fact that the Jacksons have been steadily straying further and further into entirely misplaced confidence in their ability to improve the story by changing and adapting it. LOTR got worse and worse in that respect for each film (still great though), and The Hobbit trilogy was much worse still. If it'd only been details and minor stuff that would be one thing, but unfortunately that is not the case. Characters and plotlines are simplified into banality, while fighting scenes are acrobatised to the point of becoming deeply boring. The first big Moria fight, that was visceral and intense and felt brutally close. No one could watch that and not care. By ROTK you had Legolas doing his acrobatics, but that functioned as a bit of light relief in the midst of all the tension, and it was still magnificent. In The Hobbit, it's pretty much all Legolas and you just don't care. In short, they need to rediscover some gravitas and complexity. That shouldn't be so hard with these stories, I just hope that's the direction they've decided to go in.

EDIT: Like above poster, I stand corrected - I also thought this was a Peter Jackson production. I hope Fran is well and truly out too.
 

RedSky

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SuperiorXI said:
The marketing so far. For what it's worth I want it to be good but there's lots of alarm bells.
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The marketing has been bizarre. The only bits I thought were good were short 45 second introduction videos of the characters/locations. Those were really good.

The early reviews surfacing on Reddit are suggesting this is a very good show. I think i'll hold fire and watch the two episodes back to back tomorrow.
 

tomaldinho1

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Critics are about as split as I’m sure fans will be so far. Some calling it a catastrophe and saying it’s just reliant on the spectacle/visuals and others saying its not amazing but a good watch.
 

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justsomebloke said:
Hoping for the best and this is the right frame of mind to approach it in. However. It's hard to get around the fact that the Jacksons have been steadily straying further and further into entirely misplaced confidence in their ability to improve the story by changing and adapting it. LOTR got worse and worse in that respect for each film (still great though), and The Hobbit trilogy was much worse still. If it'd only been details and minor stuff that would be one thing, but unfortunately that is not the case. Characters and plotlines are simplified into banality, while fighting scenes are acrobatised to the point of becoming deeply boring. The first big Moria fight, that was visceral and intense and felt brutally close. No one could watch that and not care. By ROTK you had Legolas doing his acrobatics, but that functioned as a bit of light relief in the midst of all the tension, and it was still magnificent. In The Hobbit, it's pretty much all Legolas and you just don't care. In short, they need to rediscover some gravitas and complexity. That shouldn't be so hard with these stories, I just hope that's the direction they've decided to go in.

EDIT: Like above poster, I stand corrected - I also thought this was a Peter Jackson production. I hope Fran is well and truly out too.
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I think with the Hobbit the production issues played a massive role in its failure. I don’t fully remember all the details but iirc Jackson took over very late and at points they were filming while the script was still being constantly overhauled. That combined with some poor big decisions with regards to length and characters sort of torpedoed it from the start.

I think adapting and changing some things were necessary for LOTR (even some of the big changes that generated outrage at the time, considering the format they were working with), but I agree that some of the changes were to the detriment of the films and this did get worse over the trilogy and think you’ve nailed the reasons why, The Fellowship is definitely the best of the three imo, though I love them all. Gimli’s characterisation is one I wished they’d approached differently.

Regarding gravitas and complexity, one of the advantages they have will be the medium they’re working with. Very hard to condense the themes into film running times, whereas the longer run time will allow them to hopefully really lean into Tolkien’s themes, and convey both the grand scale and scope of the world.

I have no real gauge of how I think it’ll be, I think they have some big advantages but also some real obstacles to overcome.
 

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RedSky said:
The marketing has been bizarre. The only bits I thought were good were short 45 second introduction videos of the characters/locations. Those were really good.

The early reviews surfacing on Reddit are suggesting this is a very good show. I think i'll hold fire and watch the two episodes back to back tomorrow.
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The only thing I have liked so far is the Balrog, and they nicked that from the original movies :lol:

Thing is, a lot of productions now seem to just bake themselves in CGI, what happened to practical effects and real world location shooting? This thing so far looks like Lord Of The Green Screens.

Reviews do seem to be split yeah... but even those I don't really trust with these big expensive productions.
 

justsomebloke

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Cascarino said:
I think with the Hobbit the production issues played a massive role in its failure. I don’t fully remember all the details but iirc Jackson took over very late and at points they were filming while the script was still being constantly overhauled. That combined with some poor big decisions with regards to length and characters sort of torpedoed it from the start.

I think adapting and changing some things were necessary for LOTR (even some of the big changes that generated outrage at the time, considering the format they were working with), but I agree that some of the changes were to the detriment of the films and this did get worse over the trilogy and think you’ve nailed the reasons why, The Fellowship is definitely the best of the three imo, though I love them all. Gimli’s characterisation is one I wished they’d approached differently.

Regarding gravitas and complexity, one of the advantages they have will be the medium they’re working with. Very hard to condense the themes into film running times, whereas the longer run time will allow them to hopefully really lean into Tolkien’s themes, and convey both the grand scale and scope of the world.

I have no real gauge of how I think it’ll be, I think they have some big advantages but also some real obstacles to overcome.
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Good points all. You're right that the format ought to be a big advantage here, with much less need to condense and simplify.
 

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SuperiorXI said:
The only thing I have liked so far is the Balrog, and they nicked that from the original movies :lol:

Thing is, a lot of productions now seem to just bake themselves in CGI, what happened to practical effects and real world location shooting? This thing so far looks like Lord Of The Green Screens.

Reviews do seem to be split yeah... but even those I don't really trust with these big expensive productions.
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I've not seen any split reviews weird. There was a Daily Fail review which called it a stinker, but that's Daily Fail. There was one that said it was too Tolkien (????). The others I read were all positive, it's also crammed full of lore, all the Tolkien fans that watched it on Reddit said it was fantastic with a few small issues but that could be explained later on in the show.

There's plenty of real world shooting and practical effects though, they built a small town including a dock. All the Orcs are practical effects too.

But then i've watched pretty much every single piece of footage that's come out rather than just the pretty crappy trailers so perhaps that's why i'm more upbeat. I imagine if you go into the show wanting to hate it because it's Amazon, you'll probably hate it because it's Amazon. But if you go in with a clear head hoping it will be ok, you'll be pleasantly surprised. Whether the show translates as well from big to small screen is a different matter.
 

AaronRedDevil

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Judgement day is upon us. I'll see you all when it's finished. Then I'll watch it. I can't stomach to wait a week.
 

sport2793

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RedSky said:
I've not seen any split reviews weird. There was a Daily Fail review which called it a stinker, but that's Daily Fail. There was one that said it was too Tolkien (????). The others I read were all positive, it's also crammed full of lore, all the Tolkien fans that watched it on Reddit said it was fantastic with a few small issues but that could be explained later on in the show.

There's plenty of real world shooting and practical effects though, they built a small town including a dock. All the Orcs are practical effects too.

But then i've watched pretty much every single piece of footage that's come out rather than just the pretty crappy trailers so perhaps that's why i'm more upbeat. I imagine if you go into the show wanting to hate it because it's Amazon, you'll probably hate it because it's Amazon. But if you go in with a clear head hoping it will be ok, you'll be pleasantly surprised. Whether the show translates as well from big to small screen is a different matter.
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Yep in fact one of the bigger YT Tolkien channels (Nerd of the Rings) rated it as trending better than the Hobbit films after watching the first couple of episodes and that time will tell where it will land relative to the LOTR trilogy.
 

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sport2793 said:
Yep in fact one of the bigger YT Tolkien channels (Nerd of the Rings) rated it as trending better than the Hobbit films after watching the first couple of episodes and that time will tell where it will land relative to the LOTR trilogy.
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Damning with faint praise if ever I heard it. The Hobbit movies were awful.
I'm hoping for the best with this. I don't expect LOTR trilogy but if it competes with HoTD that's all I ask.
 

Hugh Jass

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Critics divided. Some saying its pretty good (not near as good as the films). Others saying it atrocious.
 

Random Task

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Massive Spanner said:
It has 83% approval on rotten tomatoes. How’s that divided?
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But how many of those positive reviews were brought by the showrunners? The user reviews will be a more accurate description.

Hollywood seems to be in a slump in terms of creativity these days, so I'm keeping my expectations in check for Rings of Power. Something halfway consumable will be fine :cool:

Hopefully it can at least compete with House of the Dragon which has been good so far.
 
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