Quote from: Reckall on February 17, 2022, 11:10:56 AM
Anyway, the show runners just admitted that they don't have the rights to The Silmarillion or The Unfinished Tales, so...



It is worth repeating that again: the show runners behind a billion dollars, multi-season series set in Tolkien's Second Age just admitted that they don't have the rights to the Silmarillion or The Unfinished Tales.

https://boundingintocomics.com/2022/02/16/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-rings-of-power-showrunners-admit-they-dont-have-the-rights-to-the-silmarillion-or-unfinished-tales/

All that they have is what it is told about the Second Age in The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and the Appendixes.

Their justifications, reported in the link, are a Theatre of the Absurd. Basically, the few things they have rights to are like "stars that they will connect to create the Second Age novel that Tolkien never wrote". Which is Chernobyl-level gaslighting considering that Tolkien... hum... wrote about the Second Age just fine - in the material they don't have the rights to.

Right now I wouldn't want to be a PR person working for Amazon Studio. This whole mess is crumbling faster than even the most pessimist fans ever expected.

This isn't new info; we've known since Amazon got the rights.  But maybe they assumed having fewer actual rights gave them greater freedom to fuck with the lore, especially since more casual/movie fans wouldn't know anyhow.

There's also the fact that (at least in my opinion) the Second Age is by far the dullest of the Three Ages, like an overlooked middle child.

And actually, given the structure of The Silmarillion itself, I think the best avenue for a movie or mini series would be to take the last few cleaned up posthumous stories (Children of Hurin, The Fall of Gondolin, and Beren & Luthien) and make movies/shows out of each on its own.  All of them could work, even without a huge amount of backstory, if properly done.  But it seems like no one working in the industry today has the skill, knowledge, or balls to do that.

Quote from: Persimmon on February 17, 2022, 06:37:30 PM
And actually, given the structure of The Silmarillion itself, I think the best avenue for a movie or mini series would be to take the last few cleaned up posthumous stories (Children of Hurin, The Fall of Gondolin, and Beren & Luthien) and make movies/shows out of each on its own.  All of them could work, even without a huge amount of backstory, if properly done.  But it seems like no one working in the industry today has the skill, knowledge, or balls to do that.

I wonder why? Instead of following the model of the Joker they are all trying to be the next Marvel. And Marvel isn't doing so great at that. Is it just a total lack of creativity and imagination?

Quote from: jhkim on February 17, 2022, 06:05:57 PM
My rule of thumb has always been that a book adaptation is most likely going to suck, even if I liked the book (often *especially* if I liked the book). Wokeness doesn't change that - it just puts a different coat of paint on top.

I've seen very few adaptions of anything that fully satisfied due to this or that change.
But of the ones have seen theres a rare few that stand out.
John Carpenters The Thing gets a fair portion of "Who Goes There" right. I just dislike the alien being turned into yet another fucking boring invincible do-anything monster.
The Rankin-Bass animated adaptions of the Hobbit and LOTR were overall pretty good. Just short and skipping a bit much.
Bemusingly the Russian and Finnish adaptions of the Hobbit and LOTR somehow capture more the feel of the books than the movies did. The Finnish version of Gandalf I particularly liked.
The Hines adaption of War of the Worlds is surprisingly accurate to the books. But dragged down by some really poor CGI and other oddities. Still worlds better than the Tom Cruise movie.
The animated movie adaption of Watership Down is pretty good. Just missing parts. The TV series less so. And the new CGI movie is a complete mess.
Despite numerous changes the anime adaption of Starship Troopers is still better than the garbage movie. The CGI series wasnt bad once it distanced itself from said move.

On the flip side I still like the anime adaption of Lensman. But just ignore the Lensman title and watch it as its own thing. And thats even easier with the original The Thing movie as its not even called Who Goes there and aside from a few beats, its mostly its own thing.

Quote from: squirewaldo on February 17, 2022, 06:44:35 PM

Quote from: Persimmon on February 17, 2022, 06:37:30 PM
And actually, given the structure of The Silmarillion itself, I think the best avenue for a movie or mini series would be to take the last few cleaned up posthumous stories (Children of Hurin, The Fall of Gondolin, and Beren & Luthien) and make movies/shows out of each on its own.  All of them could work, even without a huge amount of backstory, if properly done.  But it seems like no one working in the industry today has the skill, knowledge, or balls to do that.

I wonder why? Instead of following the model of the Joker they are all trying to be the next Marvel. And Marvel isn't doing so great at that. Is it just a total lack of creativity and imagination?

In a word, yes.  As someone noted earlier in the thread, people in general don't read much anymore and as a college professor I can definitely vouch for the fact that the intellectual horizons of our young people are shrinking by the year.  Where does inspiration come from?  I would argue that it comes from exposure to lots of different sources, viewpoints and ideas.  That's why I love RPGs.  Since I was a kid, I was curious about the world and different places, peoples, and things.  I don't see that too much these days amongst my college students.  They don't go to college to learn.  They see it as a box to check en route to fortune.  But actually working for that doesn't seem to matter.  They think if you pay the tuition (or get a loan) that should be enough.

As for creative thinking, it seems that has been jettisoned entirely from our education system in favor of checking "standards" boxes.  How can you think creatively if you're never even required to think at all and can only regurgitate exactly what you've been spoon fed?  Most of my colleagues literally give out exam questions in advance.  Others let the students make their own tests because "that's a valid form of assessment."  I don't do these things.  So on my most recent exam, probably 30% of the students left the essay portion entirely blank because they had skipped class and/or done none of the required reading.  They wrote nothing, couldn't even conceive some kind of B.S. response.  And get this--I allowed them to bring a page of notes to the exam with anything they wanted on it.  And of course the students don't like me because I'm a "hard ass" and I get criticized by colleagues for "ineffective & uncompassionate" teaching.  Whatever.  I've got tenure and my scholarship is respected around the world.

Sorry for the rant.  But to me the lack of creative thinking is indeed an epidemic in our society as a whole.

Quote from: Persimmon on February 17, 2022, 07:04:55 PM

Quote from: squirewaldo on February 17, 2022, 06:44:35 PM

Quote from: Persimmon on February 17, 2022, 06:37:30 PM
And actually, given the structure of The Silmarillion itself, I think the best avenue for a movie or mini series would be to take the last few cleaned up posthumous stories (Children of Hurin, The Fall of Gondolin, and Beren & Luthien) and make movies/shows out of each on its own.  All of them could work, even without a huge amount of backstory, if properly done.  But it seems like no one working in the industry today has the skill, knowledge, or balls to do that.

I wonder why? Instead of following the model of the Joker they are all trying to be the next Marvel. And Marvel isn't doing so great at that. Is it just a total lack of creativity and imagination?

In a word, yes.  As someone noted earlier in the thread, people in general don't read much anymore and as a college professor I can definitely vouch for the fact that the intellectual horizons of our young people are shrinking by the year.  Where does inspiration come from?  I would argue that it comes from exposure to lots of different sources, viewpoints and ideas.  That's why I love RPGs.  Since I was a kid, I was curious about the world and different places, peoples, and things.  I don't see that too much these days amongst my college students.  They don't go to college to learn.  They see it as a box to check en route to fortune.  But actually working for that doesn't seem to matter.  They think if you pay the tuition (or get a loan) that should be enough.

As for creative thinking, it seems that has been jettisoned entirely from our education system in favor of checking "standards" boxes.  How can you think creatively if you're never even required to think at all and can only regurgitate exactly what you've been spoon fed?  Most of my colleagues literally give out exam questions in advance.  Others let the students make their own tests because "that's a valid form of assessment."  I don't do these things.  So on my most recent exam, probably 30% of the students left the essay portion entirely blank because they had skipped class and/or done none of the required reading.  They wrote nothing, couldn't even conceive some kind of B.S. response.  And get this--I allowed them to bring a page of notes to the exam with anything they wanted on it.  And of course the students don't like me because I'm a "hard ass" and I get criticized by colleagues for "ineffective & uncompassionate" teaching.  Whatever.  I've got tenure and my scholarship is respected around the world.

Sorry for the rant.  But to me the lack of creative thinking is indeed an epidemic in our society as a whole.

Well it sounds like you would know being in the belly of the beast.

Quote from: oggsmash on February 17, 2022, 06:24:22 PM
  Might be a bit of a false equivalence to compare a sci fi tv show (some of the movies on that channel have budgets under 100k) with a show that has a budget with damn near 9 zeros.  The first would need uber talent to be good.  The second, just fucking show up and keep your bullshit to yourself.  Big difference.

I didn't claim anything about them being the same, I mentioned it because it was one of Reckall's examples of innovation.

Still, at least from my point of view, I often associate expensive blockbusters with being uncreative trash. I do like some of the more expensive productions, but there are also tons that suck -- and many low-budget movies and shows that are great. It is far from automatic. I think there is a mild correlation, because like everyone else, talented people like money. But it's a weak correlation from my experience.

Quote from: Persimmon on February 17, 2022, 07:04:55 PM

Quote from: squirewaldo on February 17, 2022, 06:44:35 PM

Quote from: Persimmon on February 17, 2022, 06:37:30 PM
And actually, given the structure of The Silmarillion itself, I think the best avenue for a movie or mini series would be to take the last few cleaned up posthumous stories (Children of Hurin, The Fall of Gondolin, and Beren & Luthien) and make movies/shows out of each on its own.  All of them could work, even without a huge amount of backstory, if properly done.  But it seems like no one working in the industry today has the skill, knowledge, or balls to do that.

I wonder why? Instead of following the model of the Joker they are all trying to be the next Marvel. And Marvel isn't doing so great at that. Is it just a total lack of creativity and imagination?

In a word, yes.  As someone noted earlier in the thread, people in general don't read much anymore and as a college professor I can definitely vouch for the fact that the intellectual horizons of our young people are shrinking by the year.  Where does inspiration come from?  I would argue that it comes from exposure to lots of different sources, viewpoints and ideas.  That's why I love RPGs.  Since I was a kid, I was curious about the world and different places, peoples, and things.  I don't see that too much these days amongst my college students.  They don't go to college to learn.  They see it as a box to check en route to fortune.  But actually working for that doesn't seem to matter.  They think if you pay the tuition (or get a loan) that should be enough.

As for creative thinking, it seems that has been jettisoned entirely from our education system in favor of checking "standards" boxes.  How can you think creatively if you're never even required to think at all and can only regurgitate exactly what you've been spoon fed?  Most of my colleagues literally give out exam questions in advance.  Others let the students make their own tests because "that's a valid form of assessment."  I don't do these things.  So on my most recent exam, probably 30% of the students left the essay portion entirely blank because they had skipped class and/or done none of the required reading.  They wrote nothing, couldn't even conceive some kind of B.S. response.  And get this--I allowed them to bring a page of notes to the exam with anything they wanted on it.  And of course the students don't like me because I'm a "hard ass" and I get criticized by colleagues for "ineffective & uncompassionate" teaching.  Whatever.  I've got tenure and my scholarship is respected around the world.

Sorry for the rant.  But to me the lack of creative thinking is indeed an epidemic in our society as a whole.

I can personally vouch for that. My creative horizons were pretty small until I kept reading lots of stuff and putting aside any preconceived notions that there was a definitive way to think about or write anything. Reading tvtropes as it rose to popularity in the 2010s was pretty helpful during that period in my life (altho the site has plenty of issues, like trying to assume unwarranted authority over fiction).

Desperation is starting to run high at Amazon. Latest ploy was to put together a group of "diverse" youngsters, called "superfans", to gush about the show. You know the mantras: "OH MY GAWD! This is SO diverse and INCLUSIVE! My heart bursts at seeing PEOPLE LIKE ME playing elves - so REPRESENTATIVE!!"

The "superfan" video was nuked to hell so hard, so fast and so much that Amazon unlisted it, like, 40 minutes after they put it out. It survives only in the comments of those who saw it and were able to get a direct link.

Now, this is not funny by itself. It is as cringe as f**k and one can evel feel pity for the (bad) actors whose career survived all of one hour.

What IS funny, however, is that Amazon managed to trot out at least two other groups of "Oh, so much! " people to gush about the teaser IN SPANISH AND GERMAN - which is terminally... I don't find the word 😂. Anyway...

Fragments (God wills) of the ENGLISH version on Geeks + Gamers; the faces by the channel owner are worth it.



SPANISH



GERMAN ("Downfall-like subtitles ready)



The chase is on for the French, Japanese and Italian version - at the very least. Now, however, you know how to say "OH MY GAWD SO DIVERSE!!" in three languages. No more excuses. 🤣

Edit: FRANCE pushed out "CaptainPopcorn".



ITALY is not safe either. 😞

Quote from: Reckall on February 21, 2022, 07:23:47 PM
Desperation is starting to run high at Amazon. Latest ploy was to put together a group of "diverse" youngsters, called "superfans", to gush about the show. You know the mantras: "OH MY GAWD! This is SO diverse and INCLUSIVE! My heart bursts at seeing PEOPLE LIKE ME playing elves - so REPRESENTATIVE!!"

The "superfan" video was nuked to hell so hard, so fast and so much that Amazon unlisted it, like, 40 minutes after they put it out. It survives only in the comments of those who saw it and were able to get a direct link.

I don't see it this way. This LotR show has a budget stated at $400 million, which means the marketing budget is in the tens of millions. This isn't a case of people quickly making a video over the weekend. These videos had to be filmed long in advance and were carefully edited. It shows that Amazon not only anticipated the reaction they got from the first Rings of Power trailer, but that they probably planned on getting such a reaction.

Call it "woke marketing" or whatever, but it looks to me that this is going exactly the way Amazon wants it to.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on February 22, 2022, 02:31:13 PM
I don't see it this way. This LotR show has a budget stated at $400 million, which means the marketing budget is in the tens of millions. This isn't a case of people quickly making a video over the weekend. These videos had to be filmed long in advance and were carefully edited. It shows that Amazon not only anticipated the reaction they got from the first Rings of Power trailer, but that they probably planned on getting such a reaction.

Meanwhile THE NETHERLANDS become the latest country to be hit.

Quote
Call it "woke marketing" or whatever, but it looks to me that this is going exactly the way Amazon wants it to.

You are possibly right. I wrote something similar about the MSM articles earlier in this thread. Still, you have to be very delusional to think that this kind of marketing will help you. It just reeks of desperation. Clearly staged reactions (*) will only baffle even those who just want to see how the show is. Were I Amazon I would have kept these videos in the pocket and used them only as the nuclear option - but what I know? What matters is how no one is watching them. The views on the international channels are so low that they don't even appear in most of them, and this considering the population of countries like Italy or Germany. The comments are torching.

BTW, I do speak Italian, French, English and I understand Spanish well enough. It is very clear that each group of people (and the lone Frenchman) got a list of talking points. They were "culturally tuned" a bit but the SO REPRESENTATIVE!! mantra appears everywhere.

(*) A YouTuber named Disparu made a video that shows how much these "reactions" are scripted. You just have to show them side by side, nothing more.

  Yeah I do not really get the woke marketing in the sense they had prepared videos and stories to run that seem as if they are hoping to draw in hate watchers.   I do not hate this, I think it is a bit sad to shit on a man's story, I am simply indifferent.   It will just never really exist to me, I am not watching it.

Does ANYBODY else on this forum think it's necessary to see "people who look like you" in a movie, TV show, book or anything else just in order to enjoy it?  Because that idea is just totally alien to me.  I'm interested in Japanese history and folklore and would love it if somebody would do a high-quality fantasy series along those lines (think the RPG "Bushido" but with a plot and recurring characters), preferably in Japanese with English subtitles.  I'd be friggin' ouraged if they shoehorned some white people in there on the theory that I wouldn't watch it otherwise.  I'd want 100% Japanese actors, or at least people who could pass for Japanese.  Yes, there was one white samurai and at least one black bushi in the feudal period, but it's not like it was common.  I wouldn't care if non-Japanese actors were buried under makeup as monsters or whatever, of course.

Another example:  Charles Saunders wrote some stories about Imaro, a warrior in a fantasy version of Africa.  They made a movie of one of his books, which normally I'd be happy to check out, but they changed all the characters to white.  So, I've never bothered to watch that movie, and it ain't because I hate my own race.  It's because the source material was disrespected.  I don't want Europeans in an Imaro movie, and I don't want Africans in Tolkien movie.

Quote from: I on February 22, 2022, 06:56:49 PM
Does ANYBODY else on this forum think it's necessary to see "people who look like you" in a movie, TV show, book or anything else just in order to enjoy it?

I grew up on the folklore of more than a dozen cultures that have nothing to do with my personal ethnicity, and with protagonists who didn't match my gender. Never had the slightest problem with it. In fact, it was part of the appeal. Wondrous alien worlds, and people who were different from me.

I see the need for representation as a deeply ingrained and very nasty strain of racism and sexism. This is the new Jim Crow.

That said, I think it's cool that Hollywood is breaking their old stereotypes about who can be a lead. But while that kind of thinking was always a bit racist and sexist, it's more about hidebound risk-aversion than anything. The Hollywood execs would have been perfectly happy making money off a black action hero, before Will Smith. But they wanted, and still want, to take the safe route to high box office receipts.

But the solution isn't to be far more racist and sexist.

And another problem with this box checking legislated diversity is of course that it suggests diversity is simply skin deep and/or based solely on gender, which is about as superficial as it gets.  And of course anyone of color who doesn't accept this narrative is a "sell-out."

As an academic, it's ridiculous seeing how conferences now often literally require a "diverse" panel of participants.  Yet, somehow, four black lesbians qualifies as "diverse" while four straight white men does not.  But I could easily argue that there may well be much greater diversity in background and viewpoints amongst the white guys than the black girls.  Doesn't matter.  Then the conference program is released and the "diverse" panels are 95% leftist trends of the moment, LBGTQ studies etc.  If the scholarship is good, that's what should matter.  But sadly, it's the identity politics & virtue signalling that rule the day.  Which is why I don't do many conferences anymore or just go to see old friends.

And the same is the case here.  The art and lore of Tolkien is deep and amazing.  There are plenty of diverse cultures, strong women, human, Elven, etc. frailties etc.  Just mine the source material and stick to the lore.  There's no need to inject faux diversity into this.  If they wanted to do that, just make their own show.  But hey, that would require creativity and wouldn't come with a preexisting name & audience.