So, if you have 250 mill, you can buy the TV rights to Lord of the Rings...[SOLD

[W8taminute]

Yeah, no I'm not so interested in this. 

[acctingman]

I just don't get why people have their panties all wadded up over this? I mean, it's everyone's right to bitch, complain and even articulate in an adult manner why they think this show will suck, but saying it will suck when 1 second of it hasn't even hit the airways boggles my mind.

[steve58]

Probably because a lot of the LoTR characters/world has been written to fit todays woke world view :-\

And let's leave it at that so as not to raise the ire of the JH or Gusington beasties. >:D

[Sir Slash]

I have no faith that anyone can do Tolkien but Tolkien. My prediction is this will be about 10 % Tolkien, 80 % Hollywood and the rest advertisement for merchandise to follow. I can already see an Amazon truck pulling-up to the Dwarves to delivery new picks and shovels. Hoping I'm wrong here of course.  :-X

[al_infierno]

Critical Drinker does a pretty good job summarizing fans' concerns while maintaining a level head about the whole thing:

[W8taminute]

Since there is no "like" button on this forum let me just say...

W8taminute liked a post by steve58

[Gusington]

^heh

[JasonPratt]

Yeah, time has passed and we've all gotten older since I posted that notice about the estate keeping a close eye on things. Also, Chris Tolkien died meanwhile.

I do think trailers count as more than one second hitting the airwaves, but i allow that trailers don't always reflect the quality of the product. Usually the trailers seem much better!  :hide: But I also allow that LotR was a definite exception to that generalization when Fellowship launched its first trailer because the marketing team behind it clearly had NO IDEA what they were trying to do. "You will find adventure. Or adventure will find you."

That said. I've also heard lately that in one way the estate HAS kept a leash on things: the producers are basically forbidden to use any actual plot from Tolkien's writings, in the sense of depicting it directly -- they can reference things, but not show it. Characters can be used, but not in actual plot from JRRT's work. This may be related to the original show writers all being fired and/or fleeing the production some time ago.

I will grant that the actual trailer (which dropped a little before the SuperBowl) looks better than I feared, considering how badly they mucked up the teaser trailer featuring the series title being poured with molten whatever -- something that was created and shot using an actual damn Bigature in real life, but which was post-produced so badly it looked as derpy as heck (not even hell). How does that happen with the super-camera they were shown filming it with? No idea.

On the other hand, some of the trailer was giving me 1980s Legend production vibes, so... ....yay?  :bd:

My true concern, aside from their own announcements about marketing the show for buzzwords and buzzwords (insert missing vomitcon here), is that I just got finished watching Amazon slaughter a massively popular potentially never-ending cash-cow fantasy property, The Wheel of Time, and parade around in its gutted corpse while the corpse was still trying to plead for its life. I have less than no faith at this time that the showrunners will even be minimally competent, much moreso that they'll be truly respectful to Tolkien's work and its legacies.

I have no reason at this time to be able to hope I'm wrong, though I promise I will be glad and grateful to be wrong! (Which is why I keep repeating "at this time".)

...I just realized I've been genuinely afraid to go watch the trailer again, since having skimmed it in passing this weekend while getting ready to do something else. I'm afraid it'll be worse than my brief skim indicated. That's a miserable feeling.  :-\

[Destraex]

It is indeed a miserable feeling. To always be negative about movies these days. I have very little faith either.
I really really want to enjoy this series as I am a massive LOTR fan. But if I am honest I know I will not get the battle scenes I want to see from it.
The LOTR movies were good in part because they discussed tactics and things made sense. I doubt the ring of power will bother. Because it won't be for that kind of audience. I get a game of thrones with toned down sex kind of vibe from the trailer.

[JasonPratt]

Update to clarify, from a recent Vanity Fair article: Amazon bought the rights to use material from the LotR Trilogy, the Hobbit (unclear if that includes any new material from that film trilogy but probably not?), and the Appendices.

They are forbidden by Tolkien's estate to use anything from ANY OTHER TOLKIEN WRITINGS for their story of the Second Age, including all the material Tolkien wrote about the Second Age separately from information about that Age found scattered throughout the Third Age books (Hob/LotR/Appends). Nothing at all can be used from the Silmarillion, for example, nor from any of the books edited by Christopher Tolkien from JRRT's historical notes about the Second Age.

So the writers took the few scattered bits of information from those sources, and used them "like stars in the sky" to work their plot from.


.....at this point I almost feel sorry for the writers, like they lost a drunken dare with the Estate. 

(Almost sorry. The writers still had their agenda, and that was obvious from the beginning, and the Estate evidently acted to insulate representation of JRRT's work from socio-political tampering. Not that they were going to turn down 250 million dollars to pimp out what amounts to the farts of the Second Age collected in jars, of course.  ::) )