...And it is not a pretty sight.
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/02/amazon-the-rings-of-power-series-first-look
This is the unbelievable direct quote from the show's creators:
"Can we come up with the novel Tolkien never wrote and do it as the mega-event series that could only happen now?"
Well... yes, you can: just don't call it "The Lord of the Rings" and set it in a world of your own creation. Because, make no mistake: I would be happy to check out a show within these characters. I have nothing against a Elven Joan of Arc - she has the potential to be as cool as fuck, just don't call her Galadriel.
Elrond is simply not Elrond, and I'm not talking only about the actor: the very description of the character has nothing to do with the original character.
Black elves, black dwarves women without beard... the whole enchilada.
They knew so well how Tolkien's fans would have reacted that they trotted out the usual mantras ("Toxic fans, misogynistic viewers, literally the Hitlerjugend...") before the readers could even overcome the shock and comment.
At the end it is always the same story: they want to do the "show for contemporary sensibilities" but they are scared by the idea of letting go of the BIG NAME and come up with their own franchise. Lovecraft, Star Wars, Foundation... Every time the fiasco has been hard. Be ready for "The small percentage of toxic fans that in the millions guaranteed the sinking of this dreck" too.
Quote from: Reckall on February 11, 2022, 05:25:19 PMAt the end it is always the same story: they want to do the "show for contemporary sensibilities" but they are scared by the idea of letting go of the BIG NAME and come up with their own franchise.
This comes from a profound misunderstanding of SJW principles. SJWs have a 'we wuz robbed' view of the world and history. In their mind, Tolkien being loved came at the expense of a rightful love of a black ladies series of books, that should have existed. LotR's is a USERPER from the rightful way history should have been.
They see it as righting a historical wrong. Adding all the black ladies that SHOULD have been there. They are in fact the rightful owners of that property, and are fixing it.
The wrong will not have been fixed until LotR is forgotten and 'Trans of the Shlongs' is #1. Either LoTRs is tarnished, and thats a win, or LotR becomes TotS, another win.
I had a zen moment during one of the Hobbit movies where they were talking about fish politics, and my brain broke. I suddenly let go of caring about these adaptations and said to myself "Why not?"
Genderswap and race swap* all the characters. I don't care. Put robots and cybernetics and a few motorcycles in there for good measure.
Why not?
*Gender and race swapping doesn't bother me. The woke mania about race and gender does.
Spending that kind of money on something that out of gate snubs millions and millions of fans lets me know agenda first, business a distant second. I get that JJ Abrams clones really want to "make their mark", but maybe, just maybe...start with lots of lower budget projects and PRODUCE SOMETHING GOOD OF YOUR OWN first?
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on February 11, 2022, 06:03:35 PM
Quote from: Reckall on February 11, 2022, 05:25:19 PMAt the end it is always the same story: they want to do the "show for contemporary sensibilities" but they are scared by the idea of letting go of the BIG NAME and come up with their own franchise.
This comes from a profound misunderstanding of SJW principles. SJWs have a 'we wuz robbed' view of the world and history. In their mind, Tolkien being loved came at the expense of a rightful love of a black ladies series of books, that should have existed. LotR's is a USERPER from the rightful way history should have been.
They see it as righting a historical wrong. Adding all the black ladies that SHOULD have been there. They are in fact the rightful owners of that property, and are fixing it.
The wrong will not have been fixed until LotR is forgotten and 'Trans of the Shlongs' is #1. Either LoTRs is tarnished, and thats a win, or LotR becomes TotS, another win.
Pretty much. Not to mention that actually creating a new property, as opposed to
stealing taking an existing one "back" for the people and "sUbVeRtInG" it, takes creative talent and dedication.
The fact that people are even discussing this is already a "win" for them, because causing "discomfort" in presumed "white people" is primarily what this is all about, and taking delight in that discomfort is all the pleasure they really want to get out of this series. This isn't about creating a "show for contemporary sensibilities", but destroying an existing franchise in order to push a political agenda NO ONE enjoys, themselves included (they just enjoy pissing in other people's cereal).
Quote from: oggsmash on February 12, 2022, 11:49:45 AM
Spending that kind of money on something that out of gate snubs millions and millions of fans lets me know agenda first, business a distant second. I get that JJ Abrams clones really want to "make their mark", but maybe, just maybe...start with lots of lower budget projects and PRODUCE SOMETHING GOOD OF YOUR OWN first?
Sometimes doing things "business first" still produces shit, even if that shit sells. They want to try a new take on it, and I'll give then the benefit of the doubt until I actually see it. Once I see it though, I won't be giving it praise just for diversity...it will need to be entertaining.
Quote from: HappyDaze on February 12, 2022, 02:07:54 PM
Quote from: oggsmash on February 12, 2022, 11:49:45 AM
Spending that kind of money on something that out of gate snubs millions and millions of fans lets me know agenda first, business a distant second. I get that JJ Abrams clones really want to "make their mark", but maybe, just maybe...start with lots of lower budget projects and PRODUCE SOMETHING GOOD OF YOUR OWN first?
Sometimes doing things "business first" still produces shit, even if that shit sells. They want to try a new take on it, and I'll give then the benefit of the doubt until I actually see it. Once I see it though, I won't be giving it praise just for diversity...it will need to be entertaining.
I hope you enjoy it.
Quote from: oggsmash on February 12, 2022, 02:48:08 PM
Quote from: HappyDaze on February 12, 2022, 02:07:54 PM
Quote from: oggsmash on February 12, 2022, 11:49:45 AM
Spending that kind of money on something that out of gate snubs millions and millions of fans lets me know agenda first, business a distant second. I get that JJ Abrams clones really want to "make their mark", but maybe, just maybe...start with lots of lower budget projects and PRODUCE SOMETHING GOOD OF YOUR OWN first?
Sometimes doing things "business first" still produces shit, even if that shit sells. They want to try a new take on it, and I'll give then the benefit of the doubt until I actually see it. Once I see it though, I won't be giving it praise just for diversity...it will need to be entertaining.
I hope you enjoy it.
We can all hope, but I don't have high expectations for it, especially after seeing their Wheel of Time.
They seriously couldn't make a television show about Khamûl (http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Kham%C3%BBl)? I know Khamul was a villain, but you could've made him a super sympathetic misunderstood hero who just happened to have been seduced by Sauron and turned into an undead monstrosity. We know absolutely nothing about him in canon besides his name and general region of origin, so writers would have basically free reign to describe his character however they wanted. Want to make him a homosexual in a homophobic society who joined Sauron because Sauron promised to legalize gay marriage? You could write that and Tolkien fans couldn't argue it wasn't true to the canon because Tolkien never wrote about his backstory.
Or the Blue Wizards (http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Blue_Wizards), who actually ventured into the South and East and convinced the Southrons and Easterlings to revolt against Sauron? If they hadn't done that, then the Southrons and Easterlings would have conquered Middle Earth all by themselves even after Sauron lost. You could make a series about their adventures and cast an entirely non-white cast. The Blue Wizards could easily be played by non-white actors, because it makes sense they would assume the forms of the people of the regions they're visiting. You could even cast them as women of color and I think most Tolkien fans would just accept the gender change with only a minimum of complaining. They were supposedly male, but it's not like that matters given the general lack of info on them.
And fans would probably rejoice.
You could have black Eastern dwarves by casting black albino actors, which would also provide albino representation and jobs for black albinos. And honestly I doubt people would complain if there were Asian and African featured elves living in the South and East. Maybe they always looked like that, maybe they're half-elves who inherited the looks of their human ancestors. You could even have anti-white racism coming from these non-white elves who use the whole "white elves were a beta test, non-white humans are God's final plan" as a rationale for their racism.
See? It's not really hard to show the diversity that could already exist in Arda without spiting the canon.
Quote from: HappyDaze on February 12, 2022, 02:07:54 PMThey want to try a new take on it.
The take is just disrespectful to the source material. If the Ghost of Tolkien manifested and said 'This is not how I want it done' that producers would disown the man and his work in turn, not apologize. The new take is informed by agenda and bais.
Otherwise I agree that wokeness sells to some idiots sometimes.
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on February 12, 2022, 04:04:20 PM
Quote from: HappyDaze on February 12, 2022, 02:07:54 PMThey want to try a new take on it.
The take is just disrespectful to the source material. If the Ghost of Tolkien manifested and said 'This is not how I want it done' that producers would disown the man and his work in turn, not apologize. The new take is informed by agenda and bais.
Otherwise I agree that wokeness sells to some idiots sometimes.
Neither the source material nor Tolkien's ghost have voiced any complaints. However, you seem to be getting quite outraged on their behalf...you Woke, bro?
I for one I'm glad that they're raping this IP, cuz 1) This isn't my first rodeo and I already knew that it was gonna happen years ago when they first announced this series, so it's not like it caught me by surprise, 2) people are pissed enough about this kind of crap by this point that it could actually work against them and lose Amazon money in the long run. And as a former left-winger who used to be "left-wing" for REAL left-wing reasons, such I hating corporations, the prospect of corporations wasting money on failed productions is music to my ears.
Plus this is an added reminder to regular people how this is a pointless ideology with nothing to offer but empty political propaganda and death to everything they love. So I rest easy with the knowledge that these are (could be?) the death throes of a dying movement, desperately trying to assert their cultural dominance, even as the masses mock and reject them with dumbfound amusement.
Quote from: HappyDaze on February 12, 2022, 04:19:58 PM
Neither the source material nor Tolkien's ghost have voiced any complaints. However, you seem to be getting quite outraged on their behalf...you Woke, bro?
Oh right, you like to argue in bad faith. Carry on.
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on February 12, 2022, 06:45:56 PM
Quote from: HappyDaze on February 12, 2022, 04:19:58 PM
Neither the source material nor Tolkien's ghost have voiced any complaints. However, you seem to be getting quite outraged on their behalf...you Woke, bro?
Oh right, you like to argue in bad faith. Carry on.
You think I'm arguing? Nope. I'm just making the observation that your response here is the same as those you despise. If you're OK with that, carry on with your Woke self.
You would have to work very hard and very deliberately to make images and text as FUCKING IMBECILIC as what they're presenting.
Good.
I believe the phrase is...ACCELERATE.
Quote from: HappyDaze on February 12, 2022, 03:44:47 PM
Quote from: oggsmash on February 12, 2022, 02:48:08 PM
Quote from: HappyDaze on February 12, 2022, 02:07:54 PM
Quote from: oggsmash on February 12, 2022, 11:49:45 AM
Spending that kind of money on something that out of gate snubs millions and millions of fans lets me know agenda first, business a distant second. I get that JJ Abrams clones really want to "make their mark", but maybe, just maybe...start with lots of lower budget projects and PRODUCE SOMETHING GOOD OF YOUR OWN first?
Sometimes doing things "business first" still produces shit, even if that shit sells. They want to try a new take on it, and I'll give then the benefit of the doubt until I actually see it. Once I see it though, I won't be giving it praise just for diversity...it will need to be entertaining.
I hope you enjoy it.
We can all hope, but I don't have high expectations for it, especially after seeing their Wheel of Time.
Yeah, Wheel of time is why I feel I can make an early call that is likely to be dead on, especially when the creators are telling me as fast as they can talk that is the case.
Quote from: HappyDaze on February 12, 2022, 07:32:09 PMYou think I'm arguing?
Nope, just bellittling. You don't believe my position is worth anything, and engaging in discussion with somebody who's viewpoint is 'Ur Dum - end of story' isn't worth it. Defending myself wouldn't be worth it if you don't believe that 'Woke' is even a category.
Quote from: oggsmash on February 12, 2022, 08:02:42 PM
Quote from: HappyDaze on February 12, 2022, 03:44:47 PM
Quote from: oggsmash on February 12, 2022, 02:48:08 PM
Quote from: HappyDaze on February 12, 2022, 02:07:54 PM
Quote from: oggsmash on February 12, 2022, 11:49:45 AM
Spending that kind of money on something that out of gate snubs millions and millions of fans lets me know agenda first, business a distant second. I get that JJ Abrams clones really want to "make their mark", but maybe, just maybe...start with lots of lower budget projects and PRODUCE SOMETHING GOOD OF YOUR OWN first?
Sometimes doing things "business first" still produces shit, even if that shit sells. They want to try a new take on it, and I'll give then the benefit of the doubt until I actually see it. Once I see it though, I won't be giving it praise just for diversity...it will need to be entertaining.
I hope you enjoy it.
We can all hope, but I don't have high expectations for it, especially after seeing their Wheel of Time.
Yeah, Wheel of time is why I feel I can make an early call that is likely to be dead on, especially when the creators are telling me as fast as they can talk that is the case.
Since I'm already paying for Amazon Prime, I have very little to lose by sampling it. If I'm already flipping channels, I've accepted I'm not likely to be doing anything productive with that time beyond entertaining myself. If it fails at that, at worst I've burnt some downtime.
QuoteThis comes from a profound misunderstanding of SJW principles. SJWs have a 'we wuz robbed' view of the world and history. In their mind, Tolkien being loved came at the expense of a rightful love of a black ladies series of books, that should have existed. LotR's is a USERPER from the rightful way history should have been.
But this is Bezos' project, he wanted his GoT for Amazon.
And I sincerely doubt he is SJW. Sure progressive and cult of Mammon, but that's it. And it was in his power to choose directors, screenwriters, veto actors, and so on.
QuoteSpending that kind of money on something that out of gate snubs millions and millions of fans lets me know agenda first, business a distant second.
It's about Bezos vanity, and last years show that streaming consoomers gonna consoom just anything.
QuoteYou could have black Eastern dwarves by casting black albino actors, which would also provide albino representation and jobs for black albinos. And honestly I doubt people would complain if there were Asian and African featured elves living in the South and East. Maybe they always looked like that, maybe they're half-elves who inherited the looks of their human ancestors. You could even have anti-white racism coming from these non-white elves who use the whole "white elves were a beta test, non-white humans are God's final plan" as a rationale for their racism.
I'd say it that way - elves as race are clearly described in general description as having light skin. Avari and Sylvan elves are different cultures but not subraces - they came from the same original three race - First, Second and Third as Eldars. The darkest any elf is described is probably Caranthir the Dark, who is described as ruddy faced. Now Avari could possible mix with Men in other parts of Middle Earth, but the point is - in average situation half-elves are Men. Sure elvish ancestry can do something - Imrahil of Dol Amroth was noted as having elven look many generations after his elven ancestress but his fate was Mannish. So was with Dior Half-Elf, son of Luthien and Beren, he would live as mortal if not slain young. Earendil and Elwinga and their children get choice as very very special ocassion that in no way touched other half-elves who are truly mortal.
So elf failed right away. If anything considering action happens in Southlands it would have more sense to cast this Persian chick as Elven, and him as man.
About dwarves - I'd say they are basically earth elementals forged by God-Smith in his forge. Them having qualities of stone and metal, could be cool. But still a) dwarven women are for men and elves almost identical with men. So best pick would be to hire men to play dwarves of any gender really. That also means Disa should get at least big big beard, and manly clothes. b) ok I can get dwarves with skin like bronze and brass. But there need to be some sense of common look, not each dwarf for his own.
Now of course Dwarves were also tragically visualised in Jackson movies - with Gimli being straight from Warhammer Fantasy, and Hobbit dwarves being bunch of average lankyy handsome actors that you had to blink to notice they are dwarves, and those made to look more dwarvish look like Warhammer Fantasy but even less serious - bearded caricatures of fairy tales dwarfs mixed with chavs. So I'm gonna say - of course casting like that is bad, and her characterisation is bad. But if they gonna play Khazad Dum as this svartalfar magical kingdom mixed with Phoenician, HYebrew and Akkadian vibe rather than Warhammer/D&D funny drunken dwarves - I'm gonna forgive them multiracial dwarves. Really. Fingers to my heart.
So people seems to center on black dwarvess, but really it's elves that worrying me. Black silvan elf in some ridiculous wooden armour for one.
For other - Galadriel as warrior princess who took role of Gil-Galad and Elrond as those who first sniffed Sauron's evil plans, and Elrond as effeminated "politician" rather than herold and marshall of Gil-Galad, and general of northern armies.
I see HappyDerp's posts but all they say is 'just consoom product and get excited for next product', lol.
But yeah. They're going to crowbar in a shitload of wokeist trash and cry 'rayciss' if people turn their noses up at it.
What a fucking waste. The First and Second Ages were sketched out in broad strokes, but there were stories to tell. So of course these incompetent fucks have to shit it up so they can feel good about their lack of creativity and vision.
Quote from: Ghostmaker on February 14, 2022, 07:51:32 AM
I see HappyDerp's posts but all they say is 'just consoom product and get excited for next product', lol.
My posts said "I'll wait and see" rather than the bullshit you wrote, but your reading comprehension has always been poor when you don't like the poster.
QuoteNeither the source material nor Tolkien's ghost have voiced any complaints. However, you seem to be getting quite outraged on their behalf...you Woke, bro?
Consoom! Consoom!
Try not to be so contradictory next time.
Quote from: Ghostmaker on February 14, 2022, 08:59:10 AM
QuoteNeither the source material nor Tolkien's ghost have voiced any complaints. However, you seem to be getting quite outraged on their behalf...you Woke, bro?
Consoom! Consoom!
Try not to be so contradictory next time.
Do you have evidence that the source material or Tolkien's ghost have voiced complaints or are you just shitting out of your mouth again?
It occurred to me that they're extending, if not outright creating a new genre, "Woke Trash Fantasy," easily and properly abbreviated as WTF.
Quote from: Persimmon on February 14, 2022, 10:03:01 AM
It occurred to me that they're extending, if not outright creating a new genre, "Woke Trash Fantasy," easily and properly abbreviated as WTF.
"The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own".
I think if Amazon was sincere in their desire for diversity, and smart in its execution, they would have made the story less about elves, dwarves, and hobbits, and more about men — who are diverse in reality and in the stories — and are after all the focus of most of the stories from the 2nd Age. Leave the other races as they are described in the books... elusive in their contacts with men, and inscrutable in their behavior... perhaps even sinister and menacing at times.
This obsession with diversity, only when it comes to traditionally Northern European and British stories — not when it involves Asian, African, or other stories — is only going to look dishonest and unnecessarily irritate fans who have certain reasonable expectations from reading the books.
It is not 'racist' to expect a story written by a British writer focusing upon British and Northern European myths and legends, attempting to create an English mythos to be 'white' any more than it is should be a surprise that a story set in Africa, written by an African writer, with a focus upon creating an African mythos will be rather more 'black'.
Tolkien's tales are not like Shakespeare; you meddle with the components at your peril.
Well, the first trailer arrived and the comments... Let's say that they are a fine example of international cooperation ;D
[video]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v7v1hIkYH24[/youtube]
Quote from: VisionStorm on February 12, 2022, 01:18:51 PMThe fact that people are even discussing this is already a "win" for them, because causing "discomfort" in presumed "white people" is primarily what this is all about, and taking delight in that discomfort is all the pleasure they really want to get out of this series.
If so, they fail at failing. Right now the internet is full of PoC who are roasting Amazon, because of course they are the very first to understand that this has nothing to do with their (alleged) cause and a lot to do with checking boxes.
Quote from: squirewaldo on February 14, 2022, 10:58:15 AM
I think if Amazon was sincere in their desire for diversity, and smart in its execution, they would have made the story less about elves, dwarves, and hobbits, and more about men — who are diverse in reality and in the stories — and are after all the focus of most of the stories from the 2nd Age. Leave the other races as they are described in the books... elusive in their contacts with men, and inscrutable in their behavior... perhaps even sinister and menacing at times.
This obsession with diversity, only when it comes to traditionally Northern European and British stories — not when it involves Asian, African, or other stories — is only going to look dishonest and unnecessarily irritate fans who have certain reasonable expectations from reading the books.
It is not 'racist' to expect a story written by a British writer focusing upon British and Northern European myths and legends, attempting to create an English mythos to be 'white' any more than it is should be a surprise that a story set in Africa, written by an African writer, with a focus upon creating an African mythos will be rather more 'black'.
Tolkien's tales are not like Shakespeare; you meddle with the components at your peril.
Imagine a series/movie where Shaka Zulu or T'challa was white. It seems to signal creative bankruptcy when people who appear so obsessed with diversity seem to be unable to simply create a story about non white characters they are so desperate for. Instead they must hijack intellectual properties by people a shitload harder working and more talented than they are and wipe their asses with it. That part I do not get. Buy an IP that is written from that perspective and that setting (non white heroes doing hero stuff), and since they are so concerned with diversity, put some non white people in charge of making and directing it, and BAM, a nice diverse production that did not have to be tokenized.
Quote from: oggsmash on February 14, 2022, 02:58:28 PM
Quote from: squirewaldo on February 14, 2022, 10:58:15 AM
I think if Amazon was sincere in their desire for diversity, and smart in its execution, they would have made the story less about elves, dwarves, and hobbits, and more about men — who are diverse in reality and in the stories — and are after all the focus of most of the stories from the 2nd Age. Leave the other races as they are described in the books... elusive in their contacts with men, and inscrutable in their behavior... perhaps even sinister and menacing at times.
This obsession with diversity, only when it comes to traditionally Northern European and British stories — not when it involves Asian, African, or other stories — is only going to look dishonest and unnecessarily irritate fans who have certain reasonable expectations from reading the books.
It is not 'racist' to expect a story written by a British writer focusing upon British and Northern European myths and legends, attempting to create an English mythos to be 'white' any more than it is should be a surprise that a story set in Africa, written by an African writer, with a focus upon creating an African mythos will be rather more 'black'.
Tolkien's tales are not like Shakespeare; you meddle with the components at your peril.
Imagine a series/movie where Shaka Zulu or T'challa was white. It seems to signal creative bankruptcy when people who appear so obsessed with diversity seem to be unable to simply create a story about non white characters they are so desperate for. Instead they must hijack intellectual properties by people a shitload harder working and more talented than they are and wipe their asses with it. That part I do not get. Buy an IP that is written from that perspective and that setting (non white heroes doing hero stuff), and since they are so concerned with diversity, put some non white people in charge of making and directing it, and BAM, a nice diverse production that did not have to be tokenized.
Because it's not enough to create a new IP (which would take talent and effort), they have to "smash" the existing hegemony.
Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 14, 2022, 03:41:24 PMBecause it's not enough to create a new IP (which would take talent and effort), they have to "smash" the existing hegemony.
To qoute myself: SJW's see the existing order illegitimate:
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on February 11, 2022, 06:03:35 PM
Quote from: Reckall on February 11, 2022, 05:25:19 PMAt the end it is always the same story: they want to do the "show for contemporary sensibilities" but they are scared by the idea of letting go of the BIG NAME and come up with their own franchise.
This comes from a profound misunderstanding of SJW principles. SJWs have a 'we wuz robbed' view of the world and history. In their mind, Tolkien being loved came at the expense of a rightful love of a black ladies series of books, that should have existed. LotR's is a USERPER from the rightful way history should have been.
They see it as righting a historical wrong. Adding all the black ladies that SHOULD have been there. They are in fact the rightful owners of that property, and are fixing it.
The wrong will not have been fixed until LotR is forgotten and 'Trans of the Shlongs' is #1. Either LoTRs is tarnished, and thats a win, or LotR becomes TotS, another win.
Quote from: Reckall on February 14, 2022, 12:46:42 PM
Quote from: VisionStorm on February 12, 2022, 01:18:51 PMThe fact that people are even discussing this is already a "win" for them, because causing "discomfort" in presumed "white people" is primarily what this is all about, and taking delight in that discomfort is all the pleasure they really want to get out of this series.
If so, they fail at failing. Right now the internet is full of PoC who are roasting Amazon, because of course they are the very first to understand that this has nothing to do with their (alleged) cause and a lot to do with checking boxes.
They've been failing at failing for a while now. Hence, the expression "Get Woke, Go Broke!" But they always comfort themselves with the
baseless assertion certain knowledge that anyone who criticizes them is a bigot and that "PoC" who don't agree with them are Uncle Toms who've made white supremacy "work" for them.
Hopefully, this constant state of failing forward will stop working for them soon, cuz it can't be sustainable in the long run.
Quote from: VisionStorm on February 14, 2022, 06:05:14 PMHopefully, this constant state of failing forward will stop working for them soon, cuz it can't be sustainable in the long run.
Once all media is woke, customers will have no choice but to support woke media. At least that looks like the plan, which is why you see the activists trying to force companies and organizations (like the Oscars) to implement mandatory diversity policies.
Quote from: hedgehobbit on February 14, 2022, 10:32:09 PM
Quote from: VisionStorm on February 14, 2022, 06:05:14 PMHopefully, this constant state of failing forward will stop working for them soon, cuz it can't be sustainable in the long run.
Once all media is woke, customers will have no choice but to support woke media.
I don't think that all the media will become woke. First, there will always be smart people who seek the alternatives and smart people who provide them. These alternatives will be sunk by MSM but, at the end, thrive via word of mouth (see Dave Chappelle).
Second, Hollywood and the like are losing
billions chasing the barely existent woke-crowd. To be honest, I'm baffled by current Hollywood behaviour. I remember when "Mars Needs Mom" flopped and immediately "John Carter of Mars" was renamed simply "John Carter" because "obviously Mars leads to a flop". Today, woke-production after woke-production just sinks with everybody and no one is learning a thing.
Actually, some noticed how the shill-media articles about "diverse LotR angers toxic trolls" appeared only a couple of hours after the first pics dropped (with a thud). The only possible explanation is that these articles were already written and thus that these negative reactions were expected. While nothing can satisfy everyone, no creator for money (nothing wrong in this: Leonardo da Vinci got paid) produces something starting with the idea of angering his own public - exp. Something with the price-tag of nu-LotR. That mega-fiascos like nu-Star Wars failed to teach some basics about the reality of our World vs. the delusional woke-vision of it is truly baffling.
Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 11, 2022, 06:27:22 PM
*Gender and race swapping doesn't bother me. The woke mania about race and gender does.
There was a push to make one of the hobbits female for the movie so its nothing new. Hollywoods always doing this. Either swap an existing character, or just insert a new one. Ive seen now at least 3 adaptions of 20000 Leagues that added in a female character or in one case replaced the main narrator with a woman.
Looking at this 'thing' they are making I just come back to the same question as had with the Rocketeer remake.
"Why didn't they just set it forward and have characters be the sons and daughters of the ones from the books?"
But we all know why.
Quote from: Omega on February 15, 2022, 07:29:42 AM
Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 11, 2022, 06:27:22 PM
*Gender and race swapping doesn't bother me. The woke mania about race and gender does.
There was a push to make one of the hobbits female for the movie so its nothing new. Hollywoods always doing this. Either swap an existing character, or just insert a new one. Ive seen now at least 3 adaptions of 20000 Leagues that added in a female character or in one case replaced the main narrator with a woman.
Looking at this 'thing' they are making I just come back to the same question as had with the Rocketeer remake.
"Why didn't they just set it forward and have characters be the sons and daughters of the ones from the books?"
But we all know why.
The most they were able to do in Jackson's original trilogy was swap Glorfindel out with Arwen. Which really didn't bug me that much, since Glorfindel is practically in the dictionary under 'throwaway character' and Tolkien kind of strained a bit to justify NOT sending him along with the Fellowship.
(Hilariously, in the animated version Glorfindel got swapped out with Legolas. So it's not like there wasn't precedent.)
But yeah. This looks like a dumpster fire just like the BBCA's Watch adaptation.
One idiot on youtube used the ridiculous argument that there were more black people than orcs and dragons in Medieval Europe so people criticizing the show are ignorant racists. Except that this is supposed to be Middle Earth, sparky, not Medieval Europe.
With respect to Galadriel, who was one of the most powerful women in the history of Middle Earth, making her an Elven Joan of Arc not only shits on the lore, it disrespects women. Basically, they're saying you can only be a strong, important woman if you assume masculine traits. Talk about misogyny.
And then they take the Herald of Gil-Galad and make him a "canny architect & politician?" Talk about a Master Beta job on Elrond....
Quote from: Ghostmaker on February 15, 2022, 08:11:39 AM
Quote from: Omega on February 15, 2022, 07:29:42 AM
Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 11, 2022, 06:27:22 PM
*Gender and race swapping doesn't bother me. The woke mania about race and gender does.
There was a push to make one of the hobbits female for the movie so its nothing new. Hollywoods always doing this. Either swap an existing character, or just insert a new one. Ive seen now at least 3 adaptions of 20000 Leagues that added in a female character or in one case replaced the main narrator with a woman.
Looking at this 'thing' they are making I just come back to the same question as had with the Rocketeer remake.
"Why didn't they just set it forward and have characters be the sons and daughters of the ones from the books?"
But we all know why.
The most they were able to do in Jackson's original trilogy was swap Glorfindel out with Arwen. Which really didn't bug me that much, since Glorfindel is practically in the dictionary under 'throwaway character' and Tolkien kind of strained a bit to justify NOT sending him along with the Fellowship.
It bugged me a bit because shoehorning Arwen into the "stronk womyn" didn't work for me. It didn't help that Liv Tyler has all the acting talent of a turnip.
Despite the forced diversity in casting, the actual production looks cheap. It looks like something from the 80's, like "Hawk the Slayer" only blacker. There's also a trend in casting mediocre looking actors and making them look even more mediocre. It was very noticeable in Rian Johnson's "The Last Jedi" where they stuffed Kelly Marie Tran in a potato sack and messy up her hair. Both Galadriel and Elrond look like they were just stocking groceries before dressing up in cosplay.
I'm very happy the Peter Jackson made The Lord of the Rings 20 years ago, before the Dark Times.
Quote from: AtomicPope on February 16, 2022, 10:01:06 PM
It looks like something from the 80's, like "Hawk the Slayer" only blacker.
I have no doubt rewatching Hawk the Slayer and Krull would be x100 more fun that whatever this shitshow will turn out to be.
Quote from: AtomicPope on February 16, 2022, 10:01:06 PMI'm very happy the Peter Jackson made The Lord of the Rings 20 years ago, before the Dark Times.
We'll never get a better version.
Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 16, 2022, 08:03:33 PM
Quote from: Ghostmaker on February 15, 2022, 08:11:39 AM
Quote from: Omega on February 15, 2022, 07:29:42 AM
Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 11, 2022, 06:27:22 PM
*Gender and race swapping doesn't bother me. The woke mania about race and gender does.
There was a push to make one of the hobbits female for the movie so its nothing new. Hollywoods always doing this. Either swap an existing character, or just insert a new one. Ive seen now at least 3 adaptions of 20000 Leagues that added in a female character or in one case replaced the main narrator with a woman.
Looking at this 'thing' they are making I just come back to the same question as had with the Rocketeer remake.
"Why didn't they just set it forward and have characters be the sons and daughters of the ones from the books?"
But we all know why.
The most they were able to do in Jackson's original trilogy was swap Glorfindel out with Arwen. Which really didn't bug me that much, since Glorfindel is practically in the dictionary under 'throwaway character' and Tolkien kind of strained a bit to justify NOT sending him along with the Fellowship.
It bugged me a bit because shoehorning Arwen into the "stronk womyn" didn't work for me. It didn't help that Liv Tyler has all the acting talent of a turnip.
I think that putting Arwen in that scene was a good choice. It showed her importance as a character in the story - something that Tolkien never properly developed (come on: let's not pretend that everything he did was perfect; Tolkien even admitted that Tom Bombadil could have been cut from the book).
When it was rumbled that Arwen was at the battle of Helm's Deep, however, the reaction was fierce. Interestingly enough, Peter Jackson didn't attack the fans but cut her from the battle (there are stills that show her, blurred, in the background).
To me the real error was to write Eowyn as a "love alternative" for Aragorn. It never worked and it totally missed the real meaning of Eowyn's "love" for Aragorn in the book - something that Tolkien, later, spells very clearly so there can't be doubts about it. And of course Jackson totally fumbled the ball with Faramir. It was the biggest mistake he made in his adaptation.
Quote from: Reckall on February 17, 2022, 03:29:54 AM
Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 16, 2022, 08:03:33 PM
Quote from: Ghostmaker on February 15, 2022, 08:11:39 AM
Quote from: Omega on February 15, 2022, 07:29:42 AM
Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 11, 2022, 06:27:22 PM
*Gender and race swapping doesn't bother me. The woke mania about race and gender does.
There was a push to make one of the hobbits female for the movie so its nothing new. Hollywoods always doing this. Either swap an existing character, or just insert a new one. Ive seen now at least 3 adaptions of 20000 Leagues that added in a female character or in one case replaced the main narrator with a woman.
Looking at this 'thing' they are making I just come back to the same question as had with the Rocketeer remake.
"Why didn't they just set it forward and have characters be the sons and daughters of the ones from the books?"
But we all know why.
The most they were able to do in Jackson's original trilogy was swap Glorfindel out with Arwen. Which really didn't bug me that much, since Glorfindel is practically in the dictionary under 'throwaway character' and Tolkien kind of strained a bit to justify NOT sending him along with the Fellowship.
It bugged me a bit because shoehorning Arwen into the "stronk womyn" didn't work for me. It didn't help that Liv Tyler has all the acting talent of a turnip.
I think that putting Arwen in that scene was a good choice. It showed her importance as a character in the story - something that Tolkien never properly developed (come on: let's not pretend that everything he did was perfect; Tolkien even admitted that Tom Bombadil could have been cut from the book).
When it was rumbled that Arwen was at the battle of Helm's Deep, however, the reaction was fierce. Interestingly enough, Peter Jackson didn't attack the fans but cut her from the battle (there are stills that show her, blurred, in the background).
To me the real error was to write Eowyn as a "love alternative" for Aragorn. It never worked and it totally missed the real meaning of Eowyn's "love" for Aragorn in the book - something that Tolkien, later, spells very clearly so there can't be doubts about it. And of course Jackson totally fumbled the ball with Faramir. It was the biggest mistake he made in his adaptation.
I didn't read the book until after the first (maybe second) movie, so it never had the impact on me as it seems to have had on the people who love it, and I actually liked the films better than the book. The book was perhaps the most tedious fiction book I ever read. It was like 80%+ about the characters WALKING on their way to Mordor, and going into excruciating detail about every blade of grass and flower that they saw along the way. Then every time there was an action scene or some type of meaningful interaction it lasted for like two or three paragraphs tops, then it was back to more WALKING.
And the relationships were DULL--specially the one between Aragorn and Arwen, which was barely even touched on and we basically had to be TOLD that the relationship was there. I always felt that Aragorn and Eowyn worked better precisely because she got orders of magnitude more pages in the book--with actual interactions with Aragorn--than Arwen ever did. Hell, she was the ONLY female character with any meaningful role or significant involvement in the book, as far as I recall (it's been like two decades by now). Aragorn's involvement with Arwen felt predetermined, like Tolkien chose that it was going to happen before hand no matter what actually transpired in the actual pages.
Quote from: Reckall on February 17, 2022, 03:29:54 AM
Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 16, 2022, 08:03:33 PM
Quote from: Ghostmaker on February 15, 2022, 08:11:39 AM
Quote from: Omega on February 15, 2022, 07:29:42 AM
Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 11, 2022, 06:27:22 PM
*Gender and race swapping doesn't bother me. The woke mania about race and gender does.
There was a push to make one of the hobbits female for the movie so its nothing new. Hollywoods always doing this. Either swap an existing character, or just insert a new one. Ive seen now at least 3 adaptions of 20000 Leagues that added in a female character or in one case replaced the main narrator with a woman.
Looking at this 'thing' they are making I just come back to the same question as had with the Rocketeer remake.
"Why didn't they just set it forward and have characters be the sons and daughters of the ones from the books?"
But we all know why.
The most they were able to do in Jackson's original trilogy was swap Glorfindel out with Arwen. Which really didn't bug me that much, since Glorfindel is practically in the dictionary under 'throwaway character' and Tolkien kind of strained a bit to justify NOT sending him along with the Fellowship.
It bugged me a bit because shoehorning Arwen into the "stronk womyn" didn't work for me. It didn't help that Liv Tyler has all the acting talent of a turnip.
I think that putting Arwen in that scene was a good choice. It showed her importance as a character in the story - something that Tolkien never properly developed (come on: let's not pretend that everything he did was perfect; Tolkien even admitted that Tom Bombadil could have been cut from the book).
When it was rumbled that Arwen was at the battle of Helm's Deep, however, the reaction was fierce. Interestingly enough, Peter Jackson didn't attack the fans but cut her from the battle (there are stills that show her, blurred, in the background).
To me the real error was to write Eowyn as a "love alternative" for Aragorn. It never worked and it totally missed the real meaning of Eowyn's "love" for Aragorn in the book - something that Tolkien, later, spells very clearly so there can't be doubts about it. And of course Jackson totally fumbled the ball with Faramir. It was the biggest mistake he made in his adaptation.
It could be worse. Did you ever see the John Boorman and Rospo Palienberg script?
But yeah. Denethor and Faramir got done dirty by the LOTR movies. It's the most glaring unforced error in the films, IMO.
Quote from: Reckall on February 17, 2022, 03:29:54 AM
Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 16, 2022, 08:03:33 PM
Quote from: Ghostmaker on February 15, 2022, 08:11:39 AM
Quote from: Omega on February 15, 2022, 07:29:42 AM
Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 11, 2022, 06:27:22 PM
*Gender and race swapping doesn't bother me. The woke mania about race and gender does.
There was a push to make one of the hobbits female for the movie so its nothing new. Hollywoods always doing this. Either swap an existing character, or just insert a new one. Ive seen now at least 3 adaptions of 20000 Leagues that added in a female character or in one case replaced the main narrator with a woman.
Looking at this 'thing' they are making I just come back to the same question as had with the Rocketeer remake.
"Why didn't they just set it forward and have characters be the sons and daughters of the ones from the books?"
But we all know why.
The most they were able to do in Jackson's original trilogy was swap Glorfindel out with Arwen. Which really didn't bug me that much, since Glorfindel is practically in the dictionary under 'throwaway character' and Tolkien kind of strained a bit to justify NOT sending him along with the Fellowship.
It bugged me a bit because shoehorning Arwen into the "stronk womyn" didn't work for me. It didn't help that Liv Tyler has all the acting talent of a turnip.
I think that putting Arwen in that scene was a good choice. It showed her importance as a character in the story - something that Tolkien never properly developed (come on: let's not pretend that everything he did was perfect; Tolkien even admitted that Tom Bombadil could have been cut from the book).
When it was rumbled that Arwen was at the battle of Helm's Deep, however, the reaction was fierce. Interestingly enough, Peter Jackson didn't attack the fans but cut her from the battle (there are stills that show her, blurred, in the background).
To me the real error was to write Eowyn as a "love alternative" for Aragorn. It never worked and it totally missed the real meaning of Eowyn's "love" for Aragorn in the book - something that Tolkien, later, spells very clearly so there can't be doubts about it. And of course Jackson totally fumbled the ball with Faramir. It was the biggest mistake he made in his adaptation.
The Jackson LOTR movies are fine, but I don't think any of the changes he made to the books are an improvement, though I can understand a couple, like compressing the time frame and cutting out Bombadil, as much as I love him. Even there, it's rather important in that Frodo gets tested in the barrow mound. And I was really bummed they cut the Scouring of the Shire because that reinforced the transformation of the hobbits into heroes and stewards of the Shire.
There was zero reason to bring elves to Helm's Deep. What alliance did the elves have with the Rohirrim? If he was so desperate to show cool elves in battle just put in a scene of the fighting that was going on in Mirkwood. Hell, they could have used that to create tension for Legolas.
But at least you can't say Jackson outright spit on the lore, with a couple minor exceptions in The Hobbit films. And even in those movies, a lot, albeit not all, of the stuff Jackson added (looking at you, interspecies love triangle) had some basis in the writings of Tolkien, if not the actual Hobbit book.
Quote from: VisionStorm on February 17, 2022, 06:34:27 AM
Quote from: Reckall on February 17, 2022, 03:29:54 AM
Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 16, 2022, 08:03:33 PM
Quote from: Ghostmaker on February 15, 2022, 08:11:39 AM
Quote from: Omega on February 15, 2022, 07:29:42 AM
Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 11, 2022, 06:27:22 PM
*Gender and race swapping doesn't bother me. The woke mania about race and gender does.
There was a push to make one of the hobbits female for the movie so its nothing new. Hollywoods always doing this. Either swap an existing character, or just insert a new one. Ive seen now at least 3 adaptions of 20000 Leagues that added in a female character or in one case replaced the main narrator with a woman.
Looking at this 'thing' they are making I just come back to the same question as had with the Rocketeer remake.
"Why didn't they just set it forward and have characters be the sons and daughters of the ones from the books?"
But we all know why.
The most they were able to do in Jackson's original trilogy was swap Glorfindel out with Arwen. Which really didn't bug me that much, since Glorfindel is practically in the dictionary under 'throwaway character' and Tolkien kind of strained a bit to justify NOT sending him along with the Fellowship.
It bugged me a bit because shoehorning Arwen into the "stronk womyn" didn't work for me. It didn't help that Liv Tyler has all the acting talent of a turnip.
I think that putting Arwen in that scene was a good choice. It showed her importance as a character in the story - something that Tolkien never properly developed (come on: let's not pretend that everything he did was perfect; Tolkien even admitted that Tom Bombadil could have been cut from the book).
When it was rumbled that Arwen was at the battle of Helm's Deep, however, the reaction was fierce. Interestingly enough, Peter Jackson didn't attack the fans but cut her from the battle (there are stills that show her, blurred, in the background).
To me the real error was to write Eowyn as a "love alternative" for Aragorn. It never worked and it totally missed the real meaning of Eowyn's "love" for Aragorn in the book - something that Tolkien, later, spells very clearly so there can't be doubts about it. And of course Jackson totally fumbled the ball with Faramir. It was the biggest mistake he made in his adaptation.
I didn't read the book until after the first (maybe second) movie, so it never had the impact on me as it seems to have had on the people who love it, and I actually liked the films better than the book. The book was perhaps the most tedious fiction book I ever read. It was like 80%+ about the characters WALKING on their way to Mordor, and going into excruciating detail about every blade of grass and flower that they saw along the way. Then every time there was an action scene or some type of meaningful interaction it lasted for like two or three paragraphs tops, then it was back to more WALKING.
And the relationships were DULL--specially the one between Aragorn and Arwen, which was barely even touched on and we basically had to be TOLD that the relationship was there. I always felt that Aragorn and Eowyn worked better precisely because she got orders of magnitude more pages in the book--with actual interactions with Aragorn--than Arwen ever did. Hell, she was the ONLY female character with any meaningful role or significant involvement in the book, as far as I recall (it's been like two decades by now). Aragorn's involvement with Arwen felt predetermined, like Tolkien chose that it was going to happen before hand no matter what actually transpired in the actual pages.
If you think LOTR is slow and dull and overly detailed, I presume you haven't read the snooze fest that is Wheel of Time? Or A Song of Ice and Fire? Talk about overkill.
Quote from: Persimmon on February 17, 2022, 08:47:05 AM
Quote from: Reckall on February 17, 2022, 03:29:54 AM
Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 16, 2022, 08:03:33 PM
Quote from: Ghostmaker on February 15, 2022, 08:11:39 AM
Quote from: Omega on February 15, 2022, 07:29:42 AM
Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 11, 2022, 06:27:22 PM
*Gender and race swapping doesn't bother me. The woke mania about race and gender does.
There was a push to make one of the hobbits female for the movie so its nothing new. Hollywoods always doing this. Either swap an existing character, or just insert a new one. Ive seen now at least 3 adaptions of 20000 Leagues that added in a female character or in one case replaced the main narrator with a woman.
Looking at this 'thing' they are making I just come back to the same question as had with the Rocketeer remake.
"Why didn't they just set it forward and have characters be the sons and daughters of the ones from the books?"
But we all know why.
The most they were able to do in Jackson's original trilogy was swap Glorfindel out with Arwen. Which really didn't bug me that much, since Glorfindel is practically in the dictionary under 'throwaway character' and Tolkien kind of strained a bit to justify NOT sending him along with the Fellowship.
It bugged me a bit because shoehorning Arwen into the "stronk womyn" didn't work for me. It didn't help that Liv Tyler has all the acting talent of a turnip.
I think that putting Arwen in that scene was a good choice. It showed her importance as a character in the story - something that Tolkien never properly developed (come on: let's not pretend that everything he did was perfect; Tolkien even admitted that Tom Bombadil could have been cut from the book).
When it was rumbled that Arwen was at the battle of Helm's Deep, however, the reaction was fierce. Interestingly enough, Peter Jackson didn't attack the fans but cut her from the battle (there are stills that show her, blurred, in the background).
To me the real error was to write Eowyn as a "love alternative" for Aragorn. It never worked and it totally missed the real meaning of Eowyn's "love" for Aragorn in the book - something that Tolkien, later, spells very clearly so there can't be doubts about it. And of course Jackson totally fumbled the ball with Faramir. It was the biggest mistake he made in his adaptation.
The Jackson LOTR movies are fine, but I don't think any of the changes he made to the books are an improvement, though I can understand a couple, like compressing the time frame and cutting out Bombadil, as much as I love him. Even there, it's rather important in that Frodo gets tested in the barrow mound. And I was really bummed they cut the Scouring of the Shire because that reinforced the transformation of the hobbits into heroes and stewards of the Shire.
There was zero reason to bring elves to Helm's Deep. What alliance did the elves have with the Rohirrim? If he was so desperate to show cool elves in battle just put in a scene of the fighting that was going on in Mirkwood. Hell, they could have used that to create tension for Legolas.
But at least you can't say Jackson outright spit on the lore, with a couple minor exceptions in The Hobbit films. And even in those movies, a lot, albeit not all, of the stuff Jackson added (looking at you, interspecies love triangle) had some basis in the writings of Tolkien, if not the actual Hobbit book.
What's funny is that Jackson even lampshades some of those changes. When Frodo and Sam are in Osgiliath, Sam comments, 'I don't think we're supposed to be here.'
Anyway, the show runners just admitted that they don't have the rights to The Silmarillion or The Unfinished Tales, so...
:o :o :o
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.
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...
:o :o :o
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.
I saw that. My reaction was pretty much 'You have got to be fucking kidding me.'
Why. WHY. Why the fuck would you not secure the rights to Unfinished Tales and the Silmarillion if you're making a tale about the Second Age?
A part of me is wondering if this is some kind of Producers-esque scam being perpetrated.
Quote from: Ghostmaker on February 17, 2022, 12:00:13 PM
Why. WHY. Why the fuck would you not secure the rights to Unfinished Tales and the Silmarillion if you're making a tale about the Second Age?
No opinion on the series, as I haven't seen anything of it. As why, I'm pretty sure that the company had some consultants estimate:
(1) How much profit they expect to make if they paid extra to secure rights to the Silmarillion, and made a series using that,
vs
(2) How much profit they expect to make if they used only their existing LOTR licensed rights,
This would have happened before anyone was assigned to write a script or direct. And I'm pretty sure that their conclusion was that the additional material wouldn't make the company any extra money - because the vast majority of the audience doesn't care.
I'd love to see some big-budget adaptations of the Silmarillion and other material. Unfortunately, it seems like the Tolkien estate is trying to get extra money for the Silmarillion rights.
My worst frustration of this sort was from the film _Selma_, when I found out that they had to *fake* the words that Martin Luther King Jr used in his speeches, because Steven Spielberg had bought the movie rights for his movie. That infuriated me.
Quote from: Reckall on February 17, 2022, 03:29:54 AM
To me the real error was to write Eowyn as a "love alternative" for Aragorn. It never worked and it totally missed the real meaning of Eowyn's "love" for Aragorn in the book - something that Tolkien, later, spells very clearly so there can't be doubts about it. And of course Jackson totally fumbled the ball with Faramir. It was the biggest mistake he made in his adaptation.
Mmmm. I'm tempted to say that Denethor wasa worse job. In the books, he's a tragic leader who fell to despair, but was strong enough so that it broke his mind and made him do some crazy shit.
In the films, he starts out as an asshole with barely(?) any redeeming qualities who then does some dumb shit and dies by lighting himself on fire and
jumping off a tall building. :o
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...
I would love to see a stylized, animated version of the 1st Age Silmarillion stories. Like in the format of Fantasia. Maybe an anthology because there's so many stories from that part of the book, the history and lore are linked, but the stories are mostly self-contained bits of that.
The Silmarillion Project is a neat site that planted that idea in my head.
https://silmarillionproject.tumblr.com/image/72447234149
Quote from: jhkim on February 17, 2022, 01:40:22 PM
Quote from: Ghostmaker on February 17, 2022, 12:00:13 PM
Why. WHY. Why the fuck would you not secure the rights to Unfinished Tales and the Silmarillion if you're making a tale about the Second Age?
No opinion on the series, as I haven't seen anything of it. As why, I'm pretty sure that the company had some consultants estimate:
(1) How much profit they expect to make if they paid extra to secure rights to the Silmarillion, and made a series using that,
vs
(2) How much profit they expect to make if they used only their existing LOTR licensed rights,
This would have happened before anyone was assigned to write a script or direct. And I'm pretty sure that their conclusion was that the additional material wouldn't make the company any extra money - because the vast majority of the audience doesn't care.
The vast majority of the audience can still smell suckage. When they made up the last two seasons of GoT because they had finished the original material everybody was incredulous by how bad they were (the very actors included it seems). And it was not a matter of "they are making things up" because if there is a thing that GoT proved is how few people actually read books. All the major twists were in the books - starting with the death of Ned Stark - and still they weren't ruined to the average viewers.
"Foundation" is a crime against Isaac Asimov, the basic rules of storytelling and even the attempt at wokeness (with all the race'n'gender'n'age'n'even profession swapped characters who end up firmly in the stupid camp). But you don't need to have read the books to see this: the IMDB comments section is full of people who say "I can't compare the show with the books because I haven't read them, but this show sucks".
These two bozos, in a way, are even in a worse position, because few people have read the LotR but a lot of people have seen the movies. They have the rights to a bunch of ideas and must hope to do better than Tolkien (good luck) or Jackson (who had Tolkien). Because if successful things were written in a certain way you must understand why that way is important before making changes - or you will break the whole narrative mechanism for everybody, fan or no fan.
At the end of the day, when Michael Moorcock decided that he didn't like either Tolkien or Conan, he sat down and wrote Elric. When Ursula K. Le Guin decided that it was time for "diversity and inclusion" she sat down and wrote Earthsea (with a black wizard as the lead) and The Left Hand of Darkness (about a society of "ambisexual" beings). These authors didn't "took back the Mythos from Lovecraft" or some other moronery: they whipped out their typewriters and created the kind of literature they felt being important. And their stories are one hell of a read because they were created from the ground up with their specific poetics in mind - which, obviously, will never be the case in productions like this one.
Quote from: Reckall on February 17, 2022, 02:35:10 PM
The vast majority of the audience can still smell suckage. When they made up the last two seasons of GoT because they had finished the original material everybody was incredulous by how bad they were (the very actors included it seems). And it was not a matter of "they are making things up" because if there is a thing that GoT proved is how few people actually read books. All the major twists were in the books - starting with the death of Ned Stark - and still they weren't ruined to the average viewers.
"Foundation" is a crime against Isaac Asimov, the basic rules of storytelling and even the attempt at wokeness (with all the race'n'gender'n'age'n'even profession swapped characters who end up firmly in the stupid camp). But you don't need to have read the books to see this: the IMDB comments section is full of people who say "I can't compare the show with the books because I haven't read them, but this show sucks".
These two bozos, in a way, are even in a worse position, because few people have read the LotR but a lot of people have seen the movies. They have the rights to a bunch of ideas and must hope to do better than Tolkien (good luck) or Jackson (who had Tolkien). Because if successful things were written in a certain way you must understand why that way is important before making changes - or you will break the whole narrative mechanism for everybody, fan or no fan.
At the end of the day, when Michael Moorcock decided that he didn't like either Tolkien or Conan, he sat down and wrote Elric. When Ursula K. Le Guin decided that it was time for "diversity and inclusion" she sat down and wrote Earthsea (with a black wizard as the lead) and The Left Hand of Darkness (about a society of "ambisexual" beings). These authors didn't "took back the Mythos from Lovecraft" or some other moronery: they whipped out their typewriters and created the kind of literature they felt being important. And their stories are one hell of a read because they were created from the ground up with their specific poetics in mind - which, obviously, will never be the case in productions like this one.
Indeed. I think the real problem with all this woke bullshit is not that they are woke, but that they are incompetent. Hollyweird has been full of woke before woke was a word. The reason why people put up with their commie pinko bullshit was because they made good TV shows and movies. Now everything they touch turns to shit. I think most of these incompetent buffoons are hiding their incompetence behind woke.
Quote from: Reckall on February 17, 2022, 02:35:10 PM
Quote from: jhkim on February 17, 2022, 01:40:22 PM
Quote from: Ghostmaker on February 17, 2022, 12:00:13 PM
Why. WHY. Why the fuck would you not secure the rights to Unfinished Tales and the Silmarillion if you're making a tale about the Second Age?
No opinion on the series, as I haven't seen anything of it. As why, I'm pretty sure that the company had some consultants estimate:
(1) How much profit they expect to make if they paid extra to secure rights to the Silmarillion, and made a series using that,
vs
(2) How much profit they expect to make if they used only their existing LOTR licensed rights,
This would have happened before anyone was assigned to write a script or direct. And I'm pretty sure that their conclusion was that the additional material wouldn't make the company any extra money - because the vast majority of the audience doesn't care.
The vast majority of the audience can still smell suckage. When they made up the last two seasons of GoT because they had finished the original material everybody was incredulous by how bad they were (the very actors included it seems). And it was not a matter of "they are making things up" because if there is a thing that GoT proved is how few people actually read books. All the major twists were in the books - starting with the death of Ned Stark - and still they weren't ruined to the average viewers.
"Foundation" is a crime against Isaac Asimov, the basic rules of storytelling and even the attempt at wokeness (with all the race'n'gender'n'age'n'even profession swapped characters who end up firmly in the stupid camp). But you don't need to have read the books to see this: the IMDB comments section is full of people who say "I can't compare the show with the books because I haven't read them, but this show sucks".
These two bozos, in a way, are even in a worse position, because few people have read the LotR but a lot of people have seen the movies. They have the rights to a bunch of ideas and must hope to do better than Tolkien (good luck) or Jackson (who had Tolkien). Because if successful things were written in a certain way you must understand why that way is important before making changes - or you will break the whole narrative mechanism for everybody, fan or no fan.
At the end of the day, when Michael Moorcock decided that he didn't like either Tolkien or Conan, he sat down and wrote Elric. When Ursula K. Le Guin decided that it was time for "diversity and inclusion" she sat down and wrote Earthsea (with a black wizard as the lead) and The Left Hand of Darkness (about a society of "ambisexual" beings). These authors didn't "took back the Mythos from Lovecraft" or some other moronery: they whipped out their typewriters and created the kind of literature they felt being important. And their stories are one hell of a read because they were created from the ground up with their specific poetics in mind - which, obviously, will never be the case in productions like this one.
I think you have summed up the problems with lacking creativity and then trying to create on top of someone with loads of it astoundingly well. I miss why these people do not just create something that lines up with their "current year" point of view and stop with their sabotage. I guess there is the fact that it is not that easy, and they are not very talented....
Quote from: Ghostmaker on February 17, 2022, 12:00:13 PM
Why. WHY. Why the fuck would you not secure the rights to Unfinished Tales and the Silmarillion if you're making a tale about the Second Age?
A part of me is wondering if this is some kind of Producers-esque scam being perpetrated.
Easy. So they can "write the LOTR that Tolkein never did. You know. Woke Trash.
Oh and also so they can make this as cheap as possible and pocket the wokebucks.
Quote from: squirewaldo on February 17, 2022, 02:48:47 PM
Quote from: Reckall on February 17, 2022, 02:35:10 PM
At the end of the day, when Michael Moorcock decided that he didn't like either Tolkien or Conan, he sat down and wrote Elric. When Ursula K. Le Guin decided that it was time for "diversity and inclusion" she sat down and wrote Earthsea (with a black wizard as the lead) and The Left Hand of Darkness (about a society of "ambisexual" beings). These authors didn't "took back the Mythos from Lovecraft" or some other moronery: they whipped out their typewriters and created the kind of literature they felt being important. And their stories are one hell of a read because they were created from the ground up with their specific poetics in mind - which, obviously, will never be the case in productions like this one.
Indeed. I think the real problem with all this woke bullshit is not that they are woke, but that they are incompetent. Hollyweird has been full of woke before woke was a word. The reason why people put up with their commie pinko bullshit was because they made good TV shows and movies. Now everything they touch turns to shit. I think most of these incompetent buffoons are hiding their incompetence behind woke.
I'd agree with squirewaldo about incompetence. I think there has always been a ton of terrible movies and television, including bad adaptations from books. Good TV shows have always been rare. For example, Reckall mentions Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea, when this was the TV adaptation of it:
(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMjAzNzk2NzI5OF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwNjE1MTc3._V1_.jpg)
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.
Quote from: squirewaldo on February 17, 2022, 02:48:47 PM
Indeed. I think the real problem with all this woke bullshit is not that they are woke, but that they are incompetent. Hollyweird has been full of woke before woke was a word. The reason why people put up with their commie pinko bullshit was because they made good TV shows and movies. Now everything they touch turns to shit. I think most of these incompetent buffoons are hiding their incompetence behind woke.
With every iteration of this cult theres been resistance to the SJW insertions, race-swapping and whatever.
People put up with it, to a point. Everyone who isnt a cultist knows why its being done. And the pointlessness, or hatefullness, of it rankles in the background. But they put up with it anyhow on the off chance the movie isnt bad. And then the movie or series IS bad, or at best mediocre.
This is just the first time we've had this practically forced on people at gunpoint. And this 2010 iteration uses fear tactics to try and bully everyone into kowtowing to their demands. Resistance now = Wacist.
As long as marketing keeps backing and pushing this cult hard on media and industry theres likely going to be no relief before the 2030 iteration hits its peak. Not even huge money losses seem to be phasing them this time. Billions are being thrown at this cults agendas.
Before all this started snowballing in the 90s you could more often just account some swap or insertion to marketing telling someone doing so will draw in X viewers which equals $$$. Or just someone adding X because thats what they personally wanted. Right or more often wrong.
Like the very old trend to insert a female character so a love interest plot can be added in because otherwise women wont go see the movie.
At this point nothing is going to stop this until alot of companies lose alot of money. Or better yet. crash and burn as they deserve.
Quote from: jhkim on February 17, 2022, 06:05:57 PM
I'd agree with squirewaldo about incompetence. I think there has always been a ton of terrible movies and television, including bad adaptations from books. Good TV shows have always been rare. For example, Reckall mentions Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea, when this was the TV adaptation of it:
(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMjAzNzk2NzI5OF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwNjE1MTc3._V1_.jpg)
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.
Ouch! That last one is going to leave a scar. And what a pity. EarthSea was a great set of books.
Quote from: Omega on February 17, 2022, 06:17:45 PM
With every iteration of this cult theres been resistance to the SJW insertions, race-swapping and whatever.
People put up with it, to a point. Everyone who isnt a cultist knows why its being done. And the pointlessness, or hatefullness, of it rankles in the background. But they put up with it anyhow on the off chance the movie isnt bad. And then the movie or series IS bad, or at best mediocre.
This is just the first time we've had this practically forced on people at gunpoint. And this 2010 iteration uses fear tactics to try and bully everyone into kowtowing to their demands. Resistance now = Wacist.
As long as marketing keeps backing and pushing this cult hard on media and industry theres likely going to be no relief before the 2030 iteration hits its peak. Not even huge money losses seem to be phasing them this time. Billions are being thrown at this cults agendas.
Before all this started snowballing in the 90s you could more often just account some swap or insertion to marketing telling someone doing so will draw in X viewers which equals $$$. Or just someone adding X because thats what they personally wanted. Right or more often wrong.
Like the very old trend to insert a female character so a love interest plot can be added in because otherwise women wont go see the movie.
At this point nothing is going to stop this until alot of companies lose alot of money. Or better yet. crash and burn as they deserve.
[/quote]
Well ViacomCBS is going down in flames. Disney is doing a better job of concealing the losses but they are profound. Warner is a trash fire. Sony seems to be the only major studio showing some signs of a survival instinct.
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.
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...
:o :o :o
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.
Quote from: Persimmon on February 22, 2022, 08:18:04 PM
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."
Did you see the latest insane blow up?
https://boundingintocomics.com/2022/02/18/mcu-fans-claim-casting-of-xochitl-gomez-as-america-chavez-is-colorist-harass-actress-for-being-too-light-skinned-wrong-ethnicity/
A woman with the name
Xochitl Gomez was cast as a hispanic hero, and they're claiming she's too light skinned.
To be fair, they might have a point that Puerto Rican != Mexican. But the whole skin tone policing thing is absurd. Have they ever met a real hispanic person, not a tokenized stereotype on TV? Go to San Juan. You'll see fair skinned blue-eyed blondes, and people that look black. And they're all hispanic.
Quote from: Pat on February 22, 2022, 08:52:42 PM
Quote from: Persimmon on February 22, 2022, 08:18:04 PM
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."
Did you see the latest insane blow up?
https://boundingintocomics.com/2022/02/18/mcu-fans-claim-casting-of-xochitl-gomez-as-america-chavez-is-colorist-harass-actress-for-being-too-light-skinned-wrong-ethnicity/
A woman with the name Xochitl Gomez was cast as a hispanic hero, and they're claiming she's too light skinned.
To be fair, they might have a point that Puerto Rican != Mexican. But the whole skin tone policing thing is absurd. Have they ever met a real hispanic person, not a tokenized stereotype on TV? Go to San Juan. You'll see fair skinned blue-eyed blondes, and people that look black. And they're all hispanic.
No, but this is not surprising. Was she actually a better actress than the other people considered? Or is that irrelevant here?
Quote from: Pat on February 22, 2022, 08:52:42 PM
Quote from: Persimmon on February 22, 2022, 08:18:04 PM
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."
Did you see the latest insane blow up?
https://boundingintocomics.com/2022/02/18/mcu-fans-claim-casting-of-xochitl-gomez-as-america-chavez-is-colorist-harass-actress-for-being-too-light-skinned-wrong-ethnicity/
A woman with the name Xochitl Gomez was cast as a hispanic hero, and they're claiming she's too light skinned.
To be fair, they might have a point that Puerto Rican != Mexican. But the whole skin tone policing thing is absurd. Have they ever met a real hispanic person, not a tokenized stereotype on TV? Go to San Juan. You'll see fair skinned blue-eyed blondes, and people that look black. And they're all hispanic.
Their problem is (oh the irony) that the character has darker skin in the comics...
But I'm a racist for pointing out that there's exactly ZERO black dwarves, elves, hobbits...
The American obsession with skin colour which has infected much of the West seems to me a bizarre leftover from the days of slavery and "one drop" discriminatory laws. It really fails to understand how genetics give us enormous variation even within families, like these Scottish-Jamaican twins (https://nypost.com/2015/03/02/meet-the-bi-racial-twins-no-one-believes-are-sisters/).
Human variation is a wonderful thing. So long as you're not doing a historical epic or something where the race of the person is a key part of the plot (like say Othello), I've no problem with tossing in whoever you think will be interesting. So yes, Tom Cruise as a samurai is fucking stupid - but Bridgerton wasn't pretending to be real history, so that works for me.
Quote from: Kyle Aaron on February 23, 2022, 01:01:15 AM
The American obsession with skin colour which has infected much of the West seems to me a bizarre leftover from the days of slavery and "one drop" discriminatory laws. It really fails to understand how genetics give us enormous variation even within families, like these Scottish-Jamaican twins (https://nypost.com/2015/03/02/meet-the-bi-racial-twins-no-one-believes-are-sisters/).
Human variation is a wonderful thing. So long as you're not doing a historical epic or something where the race of the person is a key part of the plot (like say Othello), I've no problem with tossing in whoever you think will be interesting. So yes, Tom Cruise as a samurai is fucking stupid - but Bridgerton wasn't pretending to be real history, so that works for me.
The one drop of Langston Hughes or the obsession with passing as in Mosley's
Devil in a Blue Dress, is very specific to the US, too. Most instances of slavery weren't strictly race-based, and I can't think of another example that was so binary. Just compare it with something like all the subtle gradations that were recognized in Brazil. The US's experience with slavery is a very unique outlier, which is why it's so hard for people from the US to grasp historical slavery.
I think you could do a great
Othello with a Japanese/Chinese cast.
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? Because that idea is just totally alien to me.
Alien and absurd. Like all people of the same race or ethnicity are interchangeable with each other, and totally agree, behave and like the same things, and are incapable of relating to another being unless it looks just like them, which is the complete polar opposite of what "empathy" is like, and sorta explains why these people are such insufferable monsters*--they lack the capacity to relate with others, as can be easily demonstrated by ANY interaction with them.
One of my favorite shows as a teen was Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I'm not a blonde white woman. My favorite Star Trek show was Deep Space 9, and I'm not a bald black guy. A bunch of cartoons I saw as a kid had talking animals in them. According to these people no one could watch Lady & the Tramp and relate to these dogs. They're fucking lunatics.
The few times I ever saw a Hispanic guy in a film or something I didn't like the character and the guy still didn't look like me, cuz guess what: we don't all look a like even if we belong to the same ethnic group. And even if we did, that still doesn't mean that we're gonna like each other. It's absurd.
*and I mean this 100%. They're fucking MONSTERS.
Quote from: Pat on February 22, 2022, 07:12:58 PMThat said, I think it's cool that Hollywood is breaking their old stereotypes about who can be a lead.
Thing is that, while its true that at some point in history Hollywood had genuine issues when it came to representation in the sense that they used to cast white people for obvious non-white roles, like Asians or Egyptians, a lot of these issues where addressed in the 90s, when we started to see more non-white people in prominent roles as actual characters with real character development that weren't just some race swap or token. But we have to pretend that we're still living in blackface era, when that was so long ago I didn't even know WTF "blackface" was till the internet CHOSE to be offended years ago when a white actress (can't remember who) decided to dress as "Crazy Eyes" from Orange is the New Black and people started to loose their minds.
But I'm sure that pretending that Sisko from DS9 didn't exist and race swapping a bunch of characters instead of creating real ones will somehow fix the perceived problem.
Quote from: Pat on February 22, 2022, 08:52:42 PM
Quote from: Persimmon on February 22, 2022, 08:18:04 PM
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."
Did you see the latest insane blow up?
https://boundingintocomics.com/2022/02/18/mcu-fans-claim-casting-of-xochitl-gomez-as-america-chavez-is-colorist-harass-actress-for-being-too-light-skinned-wrong-ethnicity/
A woman with the name Xochitl Gomez was cast as a hispanic hero, and they're claiming she's too light skinned.
To be fair, they might have a point that Puerto Rican != Mexican. But the whole skin tone policing thing is absurd. Have they ever met a real hispanic person, not a tokenized stereotype on TV? Go to San Juan. You'll see fair skinned blue-eyed blondes, and people that look black. And they're all hispanic.
I saw this coming a mile away years ago when this shit started kicking into high gear. I'm mostly of Spanish descent (might need a DNA test to determine specifics), so I might as well have sailed with Columbus to the New World and slaughtered the indigenous population as far as these people are concerned. It was only a matter of time before they started complaining that Hispanics casted into these roles were not stereotypically brown skinned enough (which means that they're probably mixed race, BTW, not that Hispanics are inherently brown skinned) to be "Hispanic".
I had a friend who had blue eyes and blonde hair, and people would often speak to her in English, assuming that she was a gringa, then she'd reply to them in strongly accented Spanish. And those were other Puerto Ricans speaking to her. If one of these cretins saw her, they would assume she was some privileged Karen invading the island, when in reality she's a natural born, pro-Independence proud Puerto Rican hippie surfer chick.
Quote from: Pat on February 23, 2022, 02:14:03 AM
I think you could do a great Othello with a Japanese/Chinese cast.
Shakespeare is for everybody and he wrote his play specifically with this aim. While there are some indications about places and characters' origins (we know that Romeo and Juliet takes place in Verona) the rest is sheer dialogue. A friend of mine (who is a Shakespearian actor by trade) once told me that the friendship between Romeo and Mercutio can be interpreted as simply virile, as Mercutio hiding homosexual feels for Romeo and everything in between - and the text supports all of these interpretations.
I loved Baz Luhrmann's "Romeo+Juliet" and I can't wait to see Denzel Washington (hardly a Scottish noble) as Macbeth. These are only two examples.
However, I still remember when, as a young boy in 1985, I saw Akira Kurosawa's "Ran" in a theatre, with the original Japanese dialogue and Italian subtitles. I was stunned and I actually thought "If only they were able to do a LotR movie shot like this one..."
Of course in "Ran" you only have Japanese characters in a movie drenched in Japanese medieval culture and legends (even if it was partially inspired by "King Lear"). But that was the whole point for an European: to appreciate a visit in a wonderful country during a wonderful period of its history. I never, ever thought "but there are no Europeans here!" Even as a young boy I would have been offended by any attempt to "diversify" it.
And that's the whole point. Try to remake "Ran" but "more inclusive for the modern world" and the Japanese will re-enact Pearl Harbor right on your head. So will do other cultures with their beloved tales. Only in the West we are selling our ass out and call it "progress".
Quote from: Reckall on February 23, 2022, 09:36:42 AM
And that's the whole point. Try to remake "Ran" but "more inclusive for the modern world" and the Japanese will re-enact Pearl Harbor right on your head. So will do other cultures with their beloved tales. Only in the West we are selling our ass out and call it "progress".
I'm not sure what you're advocating here. Should other cultures not be bothered by adaptations? Or should the West be more thoroughly against others taking its culture? Ran itself takes a lot from Shakespeare's King Lear, while in turn Western movies adapted Kurosawa - like The Seven Samurai.
I feel like there's a tendency to be inconsistent on both sides. Some left-leaning people are outraged at casting white actors in non-white parts, but OK with casting non-white actors in white parts. Conversely, there are right-leaning people who don't care about casting white actors in non-white parts, but are outraged at the inverse.
Broadly, I lean towards less outrage. I think skin color is just one trait among many, and it's not all that important. It can be a signal for other themes in the story, but by itself it isn't the most important.
I'm also good with adaptations of stories from other cultures - though I find that most Hollywood adaptations of foreign films tend to be pointless rehashing that lack all the power of the original.
Quote from: VisionStorm on February 23, 2022, 07:25:48 AM
Quote from: Pat on February 22, 2022, 07:12:58 PMThat said, I think it's cool that Hollywood is breaking their old stereotypes about who can be a lead.
Thing is that, while its true that at some point in history Hollywood had genuine issues when it came to representation in the sense that they used to cast white people for obvious non-white roles, like Asians or Egyptians, a lot of these issues where addressed in the 90s, when we started to see more non-white people in prominent roles as actual characters with real character development that weren't just some race swap or token. But we have to pretend that we're still living in blackface era, when that was so long ago I didn't even know WTF "blackface" was till the internet CHOSE to be offended years ago when a white actress (can't remember who) decided to dress as "Crazy Eyes" from Orange is the New Black and people started to loose their minds.
But I'm sure that pretending that Sisko from DS9 didn't exist and race swapping a bunch of characters instead of creating real ones will somehow fix the perceived problem.
You'll notice my example was Will Smith, who became a blockbuster movie star in Independence Day (1996). Which is an interesting movie, from this perspective. They were blatantly and explicitly going for diversity, with drunk pilot's mixed kids and all that stuff. And nobody really cared, because they weren't horribly racist or sexist about it.
But while the 1990s were good for breaking some of those old stereotypes, others persisted. Asian men as romantic leads for instance, has been a slow sell.
Of course, that explains why the new breed of racists and sexists have to erase history. In order to proclaim their virtue, they need to pretend things are horrible and they're revolutionary heroes breaking new ground. Which means the achievements of the past become inconvenient.
Quote from: VisionStorm on February 23, 2022, 07:25:48 AM
I saw this coming a mile away years ago when this shit started kicking into high gear. I'm mostly of Spanish descent (might need a DNA test to determine specifics), so I might as well have sailed with Columbus to the New World and slaughtered the indigenous population as far as these people are concerned. It was only a matter of time before they started complaining that Hispanics casted into these roles were not stereotypically brown skinned enough (which means that they're probably mixed race, BTW, not that Hispanics are inherently brown skinned) to be "Hispanic".
I had a friend who had blue eyes and blonde hair, and people would often speak to her in English, assuming that she was a gringa, then she'd reply to them in strongly accented Spanish. And those were other Puerto Ricans speaking to her. If one of these cretins saw her, they would assume she was some privileged Karen invading the island, when in reality she's a natural born, pro-Independence proud Puerto Rican hippie surfer chick.
I have similar stories. We'd take a mixed group of native Puerto Ricans and visitors out to lunch in a small town, and the person the locals would always address in Spanish was this guy with no hispanic ancestry whatsoever. He was literally the only person in the group who didn't speak a word of the language, but because he was a bit darker skinned they'd always assume he was the native.
I'd avoid the DNA tests. They're basically garbage, and there are real concerns some of them are being used for DNA harvesting.
Quote from: Pat on February 23, 2022, 01:01:50 PM
I'd avoid the DNA tests. They're basically garbage, and there are real concerns some of them are being used for DNA harvesting.
I would agree, avoid the DNA tests. I dunno about DNA harvesting, I wouldn't be surprised, but also, if your test reveals some congenital risk (that may or may not be real, and that you can't do anything about) then you can no longer truthfully tell an insurer that you haven't been told about having it. Supposedly we have a legal protection that prevents the tests being used that way by insurers but....I would say stay away.
That said, I may be straying into Pundits own forum territory, this isn't about rpgs or media so if there's follow up on that topic, maybe move it over there
Some of it goes back to the highly-charged nature of miscegenation accusations. Regardless of who was what color.
Hell, that's what caused Preston Brooks to beat the shit out of Charles Sumner with a cane. I'm not excusing it in the slightest, but buddy, when you say something like:
"The senator from South Carolina has read many books of chivalry, and believes himself a chivalrous knight with sentiments of honor and courage. Of course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight—I mean the harlot, Slavery. For her, his tongue is always profuse in words. Let her be impeached in character, or any proposition made to shut her out from the extension of her wantonness, and no extravagance of manner or hardihood of assertion is then too great for this senator. The frenzy of Don Quixote, in behalf of his wench, Dulcinea del Toboso, is all surpassed."
Holy shit, pal, you better have a gun and a knife 'cause those are fighting words. Even if you're right. Especially if you're right.
Quote from: jhkim on February 23, 2022, 12:45:53 PM
Quote from: Reckall on February 23, 2022, 09:36:42 AM
And that's the whole point. Try to remake "Ran" but "more inclusive for the modern world" and the Japanese will re-enact Pearl Harbor right on your head. So will do other cultures with their beloved tales. Only in the West we are selling our ass out and call it "progress".
I'm not sure what you're advocating here. Should other cultures not be bothered by adaptations? Or should the West be more thoroughly against others taking its culture? Ran itself takes a lot from Shakespeare's King Lear, while in turn Western movies adapted Kurosawa - like The Seven Samurai.
The answer, here, is two-fold. First: what was the intent of the original author? And, second, what do intend with "adaptation"?
We could say that Shakespeare was, for the lack of a better work, very "open" to interpretations. In his plays we get the bare minimum - usually a place, the initial relationship between characters and little else (some scholars think that Shakespeare put the name of places in his plays as a recognition to from where the tale who inspired him came). He was able to write about universal values that resonate with everybody - and I guess that people from, let's say, a Bantu tribe in Africa would be able to connect with the idea of love that we find in "Romeo and Juliet".
"Ran", on the opposite, is a very "closed" tale. While it is a partial adaptation from "King Lear" (and the earlier "Throne of Blood" is a more direct adaptation from "Macbeth") it is also inspired by Japanese feudal legends - a hint to the universality of some themes. It is set in a specific place and time; the movie characters, the landscapes, the weapons and the attitudes reflect this. Kurosawa worked for ten years to get it right. You can't insert "diverse and inclusive characters" in a "more modern adaptation" of "Ran". It would be both stupid and almost sacrilegious towards Kurosawa.
"The Magnificent Seven" isn't a "westernised" version of "The Seven Samurai". True, the basic plot points are the same so they bought the rights (so not to be sued like when Kurosawa successfully sued Sergio Leone for having based "A Fistful of Dollars" on "Yojimbo"). "The Magnificent Seven", however, is an original western built from ground up to be its own story set on the American frontier. It isn't "The Seven Samurais but with some cowboys so that the American audiences can identify!" And once you discover Kurosawa's movie you can enjoy it too even if it has no cowboys.
Tolkien's world, like Kurosawa's movies, is very "closed". Everything is detailed and explained. Everything has a reason to exist in a certain way according to the specific time period a specific event is set. Sauron in the Second Age is not Sauron in the Third Age. Dwarves aren't black. One can't barge in, put their contemporary identity politics in it and hope to get away with it. What you get is the reactions that you are seeing.
Quote
Broadly, I lean towards less outrage. I think skin color is just one trait among many, and it's not all that important. It can be a signal for other themes in the story, but by itself it isn't the most important.
The easiest answer is "If skin color is not important, why change it from the lore? And if it is important, why don't use the many PoC that, we know, inhabit Tolkien's world? Or, if you really want black dwarves, why do not create your own story?
But even if we already talked about the answer to this (Amazon is so unsure about its own ability to create that
never in the life they would ditch elves, dwarves and hobbits) "arbitrary skin color" is only one of the problems that this show has - and not even the most important. The list goes on and on, from the baffling admission that they want to set five seasons in the Second Age while not having the rights to the books, to a stunningly "meh" teaser (this is what Peter Jackson produced as a "teaser" to wet our mouths: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-XoEGlvlp0; pro tip: the shot of the Fellowship at the end buries anything that Amazon has shown), to their new "Tolkien Expert" who labels Tolkien as an "anti-semite whose work is problematic" (???!?), to, now, these "superfans". It is indefensible.
Quote from: Reckall on February 23, 2022, 02:44:19 PM
Quote from: jhkim on February 23, 2022, 12:45:53 PM
Quote from: Reckall on February 23, 2022, 09:36:42 AM
And that's the whole point. Try to remake "Ran" but "more inclusive for the modern world" and the Japanese will re-enact Pearl Harbor right on your head. So will do other cultures with their beloved tales. Only in the West we are selling our ass out and call it "progress".
I'm not sure what you're advocating here. Should other cultures not be bothered by adaptations? Or should the West be more thoroughly against others taking its culture? Ran itself takes a lot from Shakespeare's King Lear, while in turn Western movies adapted Kurosawa - like The Seven Samurai.
The answer, here, is two-fold. First: what was the intent of the original author? And, second, what do intend with "adaptation"?
We could say that Shakespeare was, for the lack of a better work, very "open" to interpretations. In his plays we get the bare minimum - usually a place, the initial relationship between characters and little else (some scholars think that Shakespeare put the name of places in his plays as a recognition to from where the tale who inspired him came). He was able to write about universal values that resonate with everybody - and I guess that people from, let's say, a Bantu tribe in Africa would be able to connect with the idea of love that we find in "Romeo and Juliet".
"Ran", on the opposite, is a very "closed" tale. While it is a partial adaptation from "King Lear" (and the earlier "Throne of Blood" is a more direct adaptation from "Macbeth") it is also inspired by Japanese feudal legends - a hint to the universality of some themes. It is set in a specific place and time; the movie characters, the landscapes, the weapons and the attitudes reflect this. Kurosawa worked for ten years to get it right. You can't insert "diverse and inclusive characters" in a "more modern adaptation" of "Ran". It would be both stupid and almost sacrilegious towards Kurosawa.
"The Magnificent Seven" isn't a "westernised" version of "The Seven Samurai". True, the basic plot points are the same so they bought the rights (so not to be sued like when Kurosawa successfully sued Sergio Leone for having based "A Fistful of Dollars" on "Yojimbo"). "The Magnificent Seven", however, is an original western built from ground up to be its own story set on the American frontier. It isn't "The Seven Samurais but with some cowboys so that the American audiences can identify!" And once you discover Kurosawa's movie you can enjoy it too even if it has no cowboys.
Tolkien's world, like Kurosawa's movies, is very "closed". Everything is detailed and explained. Everything has a reason to exist in a certain way according to the specific time period a specific event is set. Sauron in the Second Age is not Sauron in the Third Age. Dwarves aren't black. One can't barge in, put their contemporary identity politics in it and hope to get away with it. What you get is the reactions that you are seeing.
Quote
Broadly, I lean towards less outrage. I think skin color is just one trait among many, and it's not all that important. It can be a signal for other themes in the story, but by itself it isn't the most important.
The easiest answer is "If skin color is not important, why change it from the lore? And if it is important, why don't use the many PoC that, we know, inhabit Tolkien's world? Or, if you really want black dwarves, why do not create your own story?
But even if we already talked about the answer to this (Amazon is so unsure about its own ability to create that never in the life they would ditch elves, dwarves and hobbits) "arbitrary skin color" is only one of the problems that this show has - and not even the most important. The list goes on and on, from the baffling admission that they want to set five seasons in the Second Age while not having the rights to the books, to a stunningly "meh" teaser (this is what Peter Jackson produced as a "teaser" to wet our mouths: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-XoEGlvlp0; pro tip: the shot of the Fellowship at the end buries anything that Amazon has shown), to their new "Tolkien Expert" who labels Tolkien as an "anti-semite whose work is problematic" (???!?), to, now, these "superfans". It is indefensible.
I would add, given Tolkien set out to create a "Mythology for Northern Europe", skin color sort of absolutely matters. It also matters that it has been muddled with SOLELY for the intent of attracting outrage, along with the hint at having sex scenes and sodomy as a norm. Those are things that the author never, ever intended, of that we can all be 100 percent sure.
Quote from: jhkim on February 23, 2022, 12:45:53 PMI feel like there's a tendency to be inconsistent on both sides. Some left-leaning people are outraged at casting white actors in non-white parts, but OK with casting non-white actors in white parts. Conversely, there are right-leaning people who don't care about casting white actors in non-white parts, but are outraged at the inverse.
First off: When/where has it been established that people outraged about castings in these fantasy/sci-fi franchises are specifically/primarily "right-wing", or outraged for political reasons, as opposed to being outraged because they're part of the fandom invested on these franchises?
Secondly: Even if we were to take the above assumption as a given (we're not, but just for the sake of argument), the difference is that when primarily "left" identifying people are outraged at some non-white character being cast by a white actor, absolutely NO ONE who fails to display outrage disagrees with them AFAIK, unless they (the outrage mob) mistakenly believe that a character should be non-white, when that's not necessarily the case (don't recall examples right now, but I know this happened at least once or twice).
NOBODY genuinely advocates casting white people for playing Egyptian gods, for example, even if they don't explicitly come out in droves to social media to say so. Everybody knows casting a white guy to play an Egyptian god is ridiculous. People just didn't show the same amount of outrage when they did it with Gods of Egypt, for example, cuz it's not like that was a beloved franchise. It was just some random film supposedly about Egyptian gods...played by white people, because reasons nobody disagrees are absurd.
The same is NOT true in the reverse. People on the other side of this discussion DO advocate casting non-white, women, etc. actors to play white or male roles just because "fuck white people and men", for political reasons. It isn't only that they rage when someone of the wrong non-white race/ethnicity gets cast, but that even if someone of the correct race/ethnicity gets cast they still nitpick about they not being arbitrarily "dark" enough, cuz that's the level of racists that they are. And if you criticize them you get mainstream media articles written about you and your presumed ideological and moral failings.
So this is not really a case of both sides being equally inconsistent are outraged because "reasons". But more about ONE side being AGGRESSIVELY ideologically motivated and backed up by the media, while the other side is motivated strictly by fandom and subject to intense media scrutiny. And the politically motivated ("left") side pushes both, FOR race/gender swapping of their preferred variety (to opposition of the ACTUAL fandom of those franchises), as well as AGAINST race swappings they don't like (to the opposition of NO ONE, cuz NO ONE likes it, even if they say nothing), while the fandom side pushes ONLY against race swappings (or similar insertions).
Quote from: Zirunel on February 23, 2022, 01:14:57 PM
Quote from: Pat on February 23, 2022, 01:01:50 PM
I'd avoid the DNA tests. They're basically garbage, and there are real concerns some of them are being used for DNA harvesting.
I would agree, avoid the DNA tests. I dunno about DNA harvesting, I wouldn't be surprised, but also, if your test reveals some congenital risk (that may or may not be real, and that you can't do anything about) then you can no longer truthfully tell an insurer that you haven't been told about having it. Supposedly we have a legal protection that prevents the tests being used that way by insurers but....I would say stay away.
That said, I may be straying into Pundits own forum territory, this isn't about rpgs or media so if there's follow up on that topic, maybe move it over there
Yeah, I'm not taking a DNA test. I was just saying. But yeah, they totally do DNA harvesting. Don't have a link to any article about it right now, but this has been going on for a while. I even heard they used Covid testing to harvest people's DNA too. It's out of control. Don't know how the "no non-gaming politics" works in this section, though. But we've kept it to at least related to the sub-forum's topic category.
Quote from: oggsmash on February 23, 2022, 03:43:26 PM
Quote from: Reckall on February 23, 2022, 02:44:19 PM
Quote from: jhkim on February 23, 2022, 12:45:53 PM
Quote from: Reckall on February 23, 2022, 09:36:42 AM
And that's the whole point. Try to remake "Ran" but "more inclusive for the modern world" and the Japanese will re-enact Pearl Harbor right on your head. So will do other cultures with their beloved tales. Only in the West we are selling our ass out and call it "progress".
I'm not sure what you're advocating here. Should other cultures not be bothered by adaptations? Or should the West be more thoroughly against others taking its culture? Ran itself takes a lot from Shakespeare's King Lear, while in turn Western movies adapted Kurosawa - like The Seven Samurai.
The answer, here, is two-fold. First: what was the intent of the original author? And, second, what do intend with "adaptation"?
We could say that Shakespeare was, for the lack of a better work, very "open" to interpretations. In his plays we get the bare minimum - usually a place, the initial relationship between characters and little else (some scholars think that Shakespeare put the name of places in his plays as a recognition to from where the tale who inspired him came). He was able to write about universal values that resonate with everybody - and I guess that people from, let's say, a Bantu tribe in Africa would be able to connect with the idea of love that we find in "Romeo and Juliet".
"Ran", on the opposite, is a very "closed" tale. While it is a partial adaptation from "King Lear" (and the earlier "Throne of Blood" is a more direct adaptation from "Macbeth") it is also inspired by Japanese feudal legends - a hint to the universality of some themes. It is set in a specific place and time; the movie characters, the landscapes, the weapons and the attitudes reflect this. Kurosawa worked for ten years to get it right. You can't insert "diverse and inclusive characters" in a "more modern adaptation" of "Ran". It would be both stupid and almost sacrilegious towards Kurosawa.
"The Magnificent Seven" isn't a "westernised" version of "The Seven Samurai". True, the basic plot points are the same so they bought the rights (so not to be sued like when Kurosawa successfully sued Sergio Leone for having based "A Fistful of Dollars" on "Yojimbo"). "The Magnificent Seven", however, is an original western built from ground up to be its own story set on the American frontier. It isn't "The Seven Samurais but with some cowboys so that the American audiences can identify!" And once you discover Kurosawa's movie you can enjoy it too even if it has no cowboys.
Tolkien's world, like Kurosawa's movies, is very "closed". Everything is detailed and explained. Everything has a reason to exist in a certain way according to the specific time period a specific event is set. Sauron in the Second Age is not Sauron in the Third Age. Dwarves aren't black. One can't barge in, put their contemporary identity politics in it and hope to get away with it. What you get is the reactions that you are seeing.
Quote
Broadly, I lean towards less outrage. I think skin color is just one trait among many, and it's not all that important. It can be a signal for other themes in the story, but by itself it isn't the most important.
The easiest answer is "If skin color is not important, why change it from the lore? And if it is important, why don't use the many PoC that, we know, inhabit Tolkien's world? Or, if you really want black dwarves, why do not create your own story?
But even if we already talked about the answer to this (Amazon is so unsure about its own ability to create that never in the life they would ditch elves, dwarves and hobbits) "arbitrary skin color" is only one of the problems that this show has - and not even the most important. The list goes on and on, from the baffling admission that they want to set five seasons in the Second Age while not having the rights to the books, to a stunningly "meh" teaser (this is what Peter Jackson produced as a "teaser" to wet our mouths: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-XoEGlvlp0; pro tip: the shot of the Fellowship at the end buries anything that Amazon has shown), to their new "Tolkien Expert" who labels Tolkien as an "anti-semite whose work is problematic" (???!?), to, now, these "superfans". It is indefensible.
I would add, given Tolkien set out to create a "Mythology for Northern Europe", skin color sort of absolutely matters. It also matters that it has been muddled with SOLELY for the intent of attracting outrage, along with the hint at having sex scenes and sodomy as a norm. Those are things that the author never, ever intended, of that we can all be 100 percent sure.
Where was "the hint at having sex scenes and sodomy as a norm" found?
Quote from: VisionStorm on February 23, 2022, 04:08:02 PM
Quote from: jhkim on February 23, 2022, 12:45:53 PMI feel like there's a tendency to be inconsistent on both sides. Some left-leaning people are outraged at casting white actors in non-white parts, but OK with casting non-white actors in white parts. Conversely, there are right-leaning people who don't care about casting white actors in non-white parts, but are outraged at the inverse.
First off: When/where has it been established that people outraged about castings in these fantasy/sci-fi franchises are specifically/primarily "right-wing", or outraged for political reasons, as opposed to being outraged because they're part of the fandom invested on these franchises?
Secondly: Even if we were to take the above assumption as a given (we're not, but just for the sake of argument), the difference is that when primarily "left" identifying people are outraged at some non-white character being cast by a white actor, absolutely NO ONE who fails to display outrage disagrees with them AFAIK, unless they (the outrage mob) mistakenly believe that a character should be non-white, when that's not necessarily the case (don't recall examples right now, but I know this happened at least once or twice).
NOBODY genuinely advocates casting white people for playing Egyptian gods, for example, even if they don't explicitly come out in droves to social media to say so. Everybody knows casting a white guy to play an Egyptian god is ridiculous. People just didn't show the same amount of outrage when they did it with Gods of Egypt, for example, cuz it's not like that was a beloved franchise. It was just some random film supposedly about Egyptian gods...played by white people, because reasons nobody disagrees are absurd.
The same is NOT true in the reverse. People on the other side of this discussion DO advocate casting non-white, women, etc. actors to play white or male roles just because "fuck white people and men", for political reasons. It isn't only that they rage when someone of the wrong non-white race/ethnicity gets cast, but that even if someone of the correct race/ethnicity gets cast they still nitpick about they not being arbitrarily "dark" enough, cuz that's the level of racists that they are. And if you criticize them you get mainstream media articles written about you and your presumed ideological and moral failings.
So this is not really a case of both sides being equally inconsistent are outraged because "reasons". But more about ONE side being AGGRESSIVELY ideologically motivated and backed up by the media, while the other side is motivated strictly by fandom and subject to intense media scrutiny. And the politically motivated ("left") side pushes both, FOR race/gender swapping of their preferred variety (to opposition of the ACTUAL fandom of those franchises), as well as AGAINST race swappings they don't like (to the opposition of NO ONE, cuz NO ONE likes it, even if they say nothing), while the fandom side pushes ONLY against race swappings (or similar insertions).
Your Gods of Egypt bit got me thinking of all of the movies with a northern European-looking Jesus or Moses...and of 21 Jump Street and Korean Jesus too.
Quote from: HappyDaze on February 23, 2022, 04:17:09 PM
Quote from: oggsmash on February 23, 2022, 03:43:26 PM
Quote from: Reckall on February 23, 2022, 02:44:19 PM
Quote from: jhkim on February 23, 2022, 12:45:53 PM
Quote from: Reckall on February 23, 2022, 09:36:42 AM
And that's the whole point. Try to remake "Ran" but "more inclusive for the modern world" and the Japanese will re-enact Pearl Harbor right on your head. So will do other cultures with their beloved tales. Only in the West we are selling our ass out and call it "progress".
I'm not sure what you're advocating here. Should other cultures not be bothered by adaptations? Or should the West be more thoroughly against others taking its culture? Ran itself takes a lot from Shakespeare's King Lear, while in turn Western movies adapted Kurosawa - like The Seven Samurai.
The answer, here, is two-fold. First: what was the intent of the original author? And, second, what do intend with "adaptation"?
We could say that Shakespeare was, for the lack of a better work, very "open" to interpretations. In his plays we get the bare minimum - usually a place, the initial relationship between characters and little else (some scholars think that Shakespeare put the name of places in his plays as a recognition to from where the tale who inspired him came). He was able to write about universal values that resonate with everybody - and I guess that people from, let's say, a Bantu tribe in Africa would be able to connect with the idea of love that we find in "Romeo and Juliet".
"Ran", on the opposite, is a very "closed" tale. While it is a partial adaptation from "King Lear" (and the earlier "Throne of Blood" is a more direct adaptation from "Macbeth") it is also inspired by Japanese feudal legends - a hint to the universality of some themes. It is set in a specific place and time; the movie characters, the landscapes, the weapons and the attitudes reflect this. Kurosawa worked for ten years to get it right. You can't insert "diverse and inclusive characters" in a "more modern adaptation" of "Ran". It would be both stupid and almost sacrilegious towards Kurosawa.
"The Magnificent Seven" isn't a "westernised" version of "The Seven Samurai". True, the basic plot points are the same so they bought the rights (so not to be sued like when Kurosawa successfully sued Sergio Leone for having based "A Fistful of Dollars" on "Yojimbo"). "The Magnificent Seven", however, is an original western built from ground up to be its own story set on the American frontier. It isn't "The Seven Samurais but with some cowboys so that the American audiences can identify!" And once you discover Kurosawa's movie you can enjoy it too even if it has no cowboys.
Tolkien's world, like Kurosawa's movies, is very "closed". Everything is detailed and explained. Everything has a reason to exist in a certain way according to the specific time period a specific event is set. Sauron in the Second Age is not Sauron in the Third Age. Dwarves aren't black. One can't barge in, put their contemporary identity politics in it and hope to get away with it. What you get is the reactions that you are seeing.
Quote
Broadly, I lean towards less outrage. I think skin color is just one trait among many, and it's not all that important. It can be a signal for other themes in the story, but by itself it isn't the most important.
The easiest answer is "If skin color is not important, why change it from the lore? And if it is important, why don't use the many PoC that, we know, inhabit Tolkien's world? Or, if you really want black dwarves, why do not create your own story?
But even if we already talked about the answer to this (Amazon is so unsure about its own ability to create that never in the life they would ditch elves, dwarves and hobbits) "arbitrary skin color" is only one of the problems that this show has - and not even the most important. The list goes on and on, from the baffling admission that they want to set five seasons in the Second Age while not having the rights to the books, to a stunningly "meh" teaser (this is what Peter Jackson produced as a "teaser" to wet our mouths: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-XoEGlvlp0; pro tip: the shot of the Fellowship at the end buries anything that Amazon has shown), to their new "Tolkien Expert" who labels Tolkien as an "anti-semite whose work is problematic" (???!?), to, now, these "superfans". It is indefensible.
I would add, given Tolkien set out to create a "Mythology for Northern Europe", skin color sort of absolutely matters. It also matters that it has been muddled with SOLELY for the intent of attracting outrage, along with the hint at having sex scenes and sodomy as a norm. Those are things that the author never, ever intended, of that we can all be 100 percent sure.
Where was "the hint at having sex scenes and sodomy as a norm" found?
When they hired an intimacy coach and constantly harped they want a "game of thrones" like series with similar sex and violence as well as representation. Which usually translates to naked people banging it out, and if it is going to be like GOT/every HBO series that means we will have to have at least one gay male couple.
Quote from: VisionStorm on February 23, 2022, 04:08:02 PM
Secondly: Even if we were to take the above assumption as a given (we're not, but just for the sake of argument), the difference is that when primarily "left" identifying people are outraged at some non-white character being cast by a white actor, absolutely NO ONE who fails to display outrage disagrees with them AFAIK, unless they (the outrage mob) mistakenly believe that a character should be non-white, when that's not necessarily the case (don't recall examples right now, but I know this happened at least once or twice).
When there were rumbles of Gal Gadot playing Cleopatra some stray SJWs screeched that "the role belonged to an Egyptian actress!!!111" Cleopatra was Greek.
The SJW skin-game is based on hate, not a desire for love. Its much more internally consistent in hating white people (they will hate everybody else as well when its convenient), then they are 'respecting the source material'.
The Queen of England can be black because 'We found the best actress for the job', but Martin Luther King can NEVER be white because 'It must be faithful to the source'. Egypt MUST be historically accurate in representation, but when they adapt a story of WWII we can of course replace a team of men with a singlewoman.
Social Justice rejects the very notion of reality, and once you understand that, then the rest of their behavior becomes clear and internally consistent.
Quote from: VisionStorm on February 23, 2022, 04:08:02 PM
NOBODY genuinely advocates casting white people for playing Egyptian gods, for example, even if they don't explicitly come out in droves to social media to say so. Everybody knows casting a white guy to play an Egyptian god is ridiculous. People just didn't show the same amount of outrage when they did it with Gods of Egypt, for example, cuz it's not like that was a beloved franchise. It was just some random film supposedly about Egyptian gods...played by white people, because reasons nobody disagrees are absurd.
People flipped out over Gods of Egypt.
Personally, I'm 100% fine with it. Though I'm also one of the small number of people who thought Gods of Egypt was very entertaining. The scene with Ra on the barge circling the planet, by itself, would make the movie for me.
Quote from: HappyDaze on February 23, 2022, 04:19:00 PM
Quote from: VisionStorm on February 23, 2022, 04:08:02 PM
Quote from: jhkim on February 23, 2022, 12:45:53 PMI feel like there's a tendency to be inconsistent on both sides. Some left-leaning people are outraged at casting white actors in non-white parts, but OK with casting non-white actors in white parts. Conversely, there are right-leaning people who don't care about casting white actors in non-white parts, but are outraged at the inverse.
First off: When/where has it been established that people outraged about castings in these fantasy/sci-fi franchises are specifically/primarily "right-wing", or outraged for political reasons, as opposed to being outraged because they're part of the fandom invested on these franchises?
Secondly: Even if we were to take the above assumption as a given (we're not, but just for the sake of argument), the difference is that when primarily "left" identifying people are outraged at some non-white character being cast by a white actor, absolutely NO ONE who fails to display outrage disagrees with them AFAIK, unless they (the outrage mob) mistakenly believe that a character should be non-white, when that's not necessarily the case (don't recall examples right now, but I know this happened at least once or twice).
NOBODY genuinely advocates casting white people for playing Egyptian gods, for example, even if they don't explicitly come out in droves to social media to say so. Everybody knows casting a white guy to play an Egyptian god is ridiculous. People just didn't show the same amount of outrage when they did it with Gods of Egypt, for example, cuz it's not like that was a beloved franchise. It was just some random film supposedly about Egyptian gods...played by white people, because reasons nobody disagrees are absurd.
The same is NOT true in the reverse. People on the other side of this discussion DO advocate casting non-white, women, etc. actors to play white or male roles just because "fuck white people and men", for political reasons. It isn't only that they rage when someone of the wrong non-white race/ethnicity gets cast, but that even if someone of the correct race/ethnicity gets cast they still nitpick about they not being arbitrarily "dark" enough, cuz that's the level of racists that they are. And if you criticize them you get mainstream media articles written about you and your presumed ideological and moral failings.
So this is not really a case of both sides being equally inconsistent are outraged because "reasons". But more about ONE side being AGGRESSIVELY ideologically motivated and backed up by the media, while the other side is motivated strictly by fandom and subject to intense media scrutiny. And the politically motivated ("left") side pushes both, FOR race/gender swapping of their preferred variety (to opposition of the ACTUAL fandom of those franchises), as well as AGAINST race swappings they don't like (to the opposition of NO ONE, cuz NO ONE likes it, even if they say nothing), while the fandom side pushes ONLY against race swappings (or similar insertions).
Your Gods of Egypt bit got me thinking of all of the movies with a northern European-looking Jesus or Moses...and of 21 Jump Street and Korean Jesus too.
Now I'm reminded of the multi-racial/ethnic Jesuses of American Gods: one Jesus for every ethnic group and race. They even had a Mexican Jesus getting killed while crossing the border, and a flood of Jesuses at Ostara's party.
Quote from: Reckall on February 23, 2022, 04:28:46 PM
Quote from: VisionStorm on February 23, 2022, 04:08:02 PM
Secondly: Even if we were to take the above assumption as a given (we're not, but just for the sake of argument), the difference is that when primarily "left" identifying people are outraged at some non-white character being cast by a white actor, absolutely NO ONE who fails to display outrage disagrees with them AFAIK, unless they (the outrage mob) mistakenly believe that a character should be non-white, when that's not necessarily the case (don't recall examples right now, but I know this happened at least once or twice).
When there were rumbles of Gal Gadot playing Cleopatra some stray SJWs screeched that "the role belonged to an Egyptian actress!!!111" Cleopatra was Greek.
Yeah, that was one of them. Another one (I think) was Ghost in the Shell, which I believe the character was supposed to have an android body or something. But people assumed "Anime, therefore Japanese woman". Not sure about the details, since I'm not exactly an Anime fan, so I might be wrong about that one, though.
Quote from: Pat on February 23, 2022, 04:47:06 PM
Quote from: VisionStorm on February 23, 2022, 04:08:02 PM
NOBODY genuinely advocates casting white people for playing Egyptian gods, for example, even if they don't explicitly come out in droves to social media to say so. Everybody knows casting a white guy to play an Egyptian god is ridiculous. People just didn't show the same amount of outrage when they did it with Gods of Egypt, for example, cuz it's not like that was a beloved franchise. It was just some random film supposedly about Egyptian gods...played by white people, because reasons nobody disagrees are absurd.
People flipped out over Gods of Egypt.
Personally, I'm 100% fine with it. Though I'm also one of the small number of people who thought Gods of Egypt was very entertaining. The scene with Ra on the barge circling the planet, by itself, would make the movie for me.
I barely remember it, TBH, and wasn't terribly impressed by it. I can see people complaining about the casting, but don't think it was supposed to be a serious film to begin with. Just some actiony quasi-superhero film using Egyptian gods as an excuse to have characters with superpowers fighting with special effects, IIRC.
Quote from: VisionStorm on February 23, 2022, 05:03:19 PM
Quote from: Pat on February 23, 2022, 04:47:06 PM
People flipped out over Gods of Egypt.
Personally, I'm 100% fine with it. Though I'm also one of the small number of people who thought Gods of Egypt was very entertaining. The scene with Ra on the barge circling the planet, by itself, would make the movie for me.
I barely remember it, TBH, and wasn't terribly impressed by it. I can see people complaining about the casting, but don't think it was supposed to be a serious film to begin with. Just some actiony quasi-superhero film using Egyptian gods as an excuse to have characters with superpowers fighting with special effects, IIRC.
It's pure cheese. But glorious cheese. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3INF-6jq_Q)
Quote from: VisionStorm on February 23, 2022, 05:03:19 PM
Another one (I think) was Ghost in the Shell, which I believe the character was supposed to have an android body or something. But people assumed "Anime, therefore Japanese woman". Not sure about the details, since I'm not exactly an Anime fan, so I might be wrong about that one, though.
No, you are not. GitS (the anime) used a realistic or semi-realistic style for the characters, so you can clearly see that the Major has caucasian features. More so, when Oshii cast
Polish actress Malgorzata Foremniak as the lead for his live-action movie "Avalon" he admitted that one reason was how she strongly reminded him of the Major.
(https://64.media.tumblr.com/0d8890bfa7d1d874aa0523d46eb80803/tumblr_n7j2xb6r2o1tpuvbxo1_1280.png)
Quote from: oggsmash on February 23, 2022, 03:43:26 PM
Quote from: Reckall on February 23, 2022, 02:44:19 PM
Tolkien's world, like Kurosawa's movies, is very "closed". Everything is detailed and explained. Everything has a reason to exist in a certain way according to the specific time period a specific event is set. Sauron in the Second Age is not Sauron in the Third Age. Dwarves aren't black. One can't barge in, put their contemporary identity politics in it and hope to get away with it. What you get is the reactions that you are seeing.
I would add, given Tolkien set out to create a "Mythology for Northern Europe", skin color sort of absolutely matters. It also matters that it has been muddled with SOLELY for the intent of attracting outrage, along with the hint at having sex scenes and sodomy as a norm. Those are things that the author never, ever intended, of that we can all be 100 percent sure.
Tolkien was hugely *opposed* to the Germanic attempts at creating a mythology for Northern Europe based on racial traits. His mythology was based on *language*. Tolkien described vast tracts of detail in his world, but as far as I can tell, he never mentions the skin color of dwarves. He did liken them to Jewish people in an interview, which would fit with some being dark-skinned and some being light-skinned.
The new series is clearly not going to be true to Tolkien because they don't have the rights to the Silmarillion. However, I'm not clear that Tolkien would have a problem with black-skinned dwarves. He does, for example, describe the Harfoots as being "browner of skin" than other hobbits, though he did generally describe elves as being fair-skinned. So black-skinned elves isn't canon while black-skinned dwarves is fine. He described orcs as having "Mongol-type" features, which often isn't reflected.
But then, he also described Frodo as being a stout, red-cheeked 51-year-old when he went off on his adventure -- which is vastly different than how Peter Jackson cast his Frodo.
I think changes in adaptation are to be expected. I'm not opposed to purism per se, but I was fine with Jackson's Lord of the Rings films despite blatant changes like these (though I disliked the Hobbit movies).
Quote from: jhkim on February 23, 2022, 07:25:23 PM
Quote from: oggsmash on February 23, 2022, 03:43:26 PM
Quote from: Reckall on February 23, 2022, 02:44:19 PM
Tolkien's world, like Kurosawa's movies, is very "closed". Everything is detailed and explained. Everything has a reason to exist in a certain way according to the specific time period a specific event is set. Sauron in the Second Age is not Sauron in the Third Age. Dwarves aren't black. One can't barge in, put their contemporary identity politics in it and hope to get away with it. What you get is the reactions that you are seeing.
I would add, given Tolkien set out to create a "Mythology for Northern Europe", skin color sort of absolutely matters. It also matters that it has been muddled with SOLELY for the intent of attracting outrage, along with the hint at having sex scenes and sodomy as a norm. Those are things that the author never, ever intended, of that we can all be 100 percent sure.
Tolkien was hugely *opposed* to the Germanic attempts at creating a mythology for Northern Europe based on racial traits. His mythology was based on *language*. Tolkien described vast tracts of detail in his world, but as far as I can tell, he never mentions the skin color of dwarves. He did liken them to Jewish people in an interview, which would fit with some being dark-skinned and some being light-skinned.
The new series is clearly not going to be true to Tolkien because they don't have the rights to the Silmarillion. However, I'm not clear that Tolkien would have a problem with black-skinned dwarves. He does, for example, describe the Harfoots as being "browner of skin" than other hobbits, though he did generally describe elves as being fair-skinned. So black-skinned elves isn't canon while black-skinned dwarves is fine. He described orcs as having "Mongol-type" features, which often isn't reflected.
But then, he also described Frodo as being a stout, red-cheeked 51-year-old when he went off on his adventure -- which is vastly different than how Peter Jackson cast his Frodo.
I think changes in adaptation are to be expected. I'm not opposed to purism per se, but I was fine with Jackson's Lord of the Rings films despite blatant changes like these (though I disliked the Hobbit movies).
The black skinned dwarves that lived underground? You think they are alright, but I do not remember any references to black dwarves. Browner of skin implied a tan. They were all white, and that is all right. I think everyone disliked the hobbit movies. We should all keep pretending they make changes like this based on finding the best actors and such, and not because they are sociopaths determined to rewrite characters out of pure racial animus.
The thing with the Hobbit films is that if you pared away the extra stuff that wasn't in the book you could have had two decent films. And even with all their problems, you never get the impression that Jackson disrespected the lore. He just got caught up in cramming everything he could in there, embellishing some stuff, getting enamored with CGI and chase scenes, and unnecessary "fan service." So yeah, when you add all that up it got pretty bad, but most of the changes had at least some basis in the lore rather than being based on virtue signalling and tokenism.
Quote from: jhkim on February 23, 2022, 07:25:23 PM
Quote from: oggsmash on February 23, 2022, 03:43:26 PM
Quote from: Reckall on February 23, 2022, 02:44:19 PM
Tolkien's world, like Kurosawa's movies, is very "closed". Everything is detailed and explained. Everything has a reason to exist in a certain way according to the specific time period a specific event is set. Sauron in the Second Age is not Sauron in the Third Age. Dwarves aren't black. One can't barge in, put their contemporary identity politics in it and hope to get away with it. What you get is the reactions that you are seeing.
I would add, given Tolkien set out to create a "Mythology for Northern Europe", skin color sort of absolutely matters. It also matters that it has been muddled with SOLELY for the intent of attracting outrage, along with the hint at having sex scenes and sodomy as a norm. Those are things that the author never, ever intended, of that we can all be 100 percent sure.
Tolkien was hugely *opposed* to the Germanic attempts at creating a mythology for Northern Europe based on racial traits. His mythology was based on *language*. Tolkien described vast tracts of detail in his world, but as far as I can tell, he never mentions the skin color of dwarves. He did liken them to Jewish people in an interview, which would fit with some being dark-skinned and some being light-skinned.
The new series is clearly not going to be true to Tolkien because they don't have the rights to the Silmarillion. However, I'm not clear that Tolkien would have a problem with black-skinned dwarves. He does, for example, describe the Harfoots as being "browner of skin" than other hobbits, though he did generally describe elves as being fair-skinned. So black-skinned elves isn't canon while black-skinned dwarves is fine. He described orcs as having "Mongol-type" features, which often isn't reflected.
But then, he also described Frodo as being a stout, red-cheeked 51-year-old when he went off on his adventure -- which is vastly different than how Peter Jackson cast his Frodo.
I think changes in adaptation are to be expected. I'm not opposed to purism per se, but I was fine with Jackson's Lord of the Rings films despite blatant changes like these (though I disliked the Hobbit movies).
You're aware of how much ignorance about LotR are you displaying?
The Harfoots were browner of skin than other hobbits... Which doesn't mean black, unless you think Italians are black.
Also Harfoots aren't Dwarves.
https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Harfoots
Tolkien was creating a mythology for england, something that would have taken place way in the past. He did describe men of different ethnicities and where did they live, his dwarfs are inspired by norse dwarfs, why would anyone think that means there can be dwarfs that aren't white beats me.
But please do carry on explaining to us why Shaka Zulu or Anansi can be portrayed by a white man.
Quote from: oggsmash on February 23, 2022, 07:36:45 PM
Quote from: jhkim on February 23, 2022, 07:25:23 PM
Quote from: oggsmash on February 23, 2022, 03:43:26 PM
Quote from: Reckall on February 23, 2022, 02:44:19 PM
Tolkien's world, like Kurosawa's movies, is very "closed". Everything is detailed and explained. Everything has a reason to exist in a certain way according to the specific time period a specific event is set. Sauron in the Second Age is not Sauron in the Third Age. Dwarves aren't black. One can't barge in, put their contemporary identity politics in it and hope to get away with it. What you get is the reactions that you are seeing.
I would add, given Tolkien set out to create a "Mythology for Northern Europe", skin color sort of absolutely matters. It also matters that it has been muddled with SOLELY for the intent of attracting outrage, along with the hint at having sex scenes and sodomy as a norm. Those are things that the author never, ever intended, of that we can all be 100 percent sure.
Tolkien was hugely *opposed* to the Germanic attempts at creating a mythology for Northern Europe based on racial traits. His mythology was based on *language*. Tolkien described vast tracts of detail in his world, but as far as I can tell, he never mentions the skin color of dwarves. He did liken them to Jewish people in an interview, which would fit with some being dark-skinned and some being light-skinned.
The new series is clearly not going to be true to Tolkien because they don't have the rights to the Silmarillion. However, I'm not clear that Tolkien would have a problem with black-skinned dwarves. He does, for example, describe the Harfoots as being "browner of skin" than other hobbits, though he did generally describe elves as being fair-skinned. So black-skinned elves isn't canon while black-skinned dwarves is fine. He described orcs as having "Mongol-type" features, which often isn't reflected.
But then, he also described Frodo as being a stout, red-cheeked 51-year-old when he went off on his adventure -- which is vastly different than how Peter Jackson cast his Frodo.
I think changes in adaptation are to be expected. I'm not opposed to purism per se, but I was fine with Jackson's Lord of the Rings films despite blatant changes like these (though I disliked the Hobbit movies).
The black skinned dwarves that lived underground? You think they are alright, but I do not remember any references to black dwarves. Browner of skin implied a tan. They were all white, and that is all right. I think everyone disliked the hobbit movies. We should all keep pretending they make changes like this based on finding the best actors and such, and not because they are sociopaths determined to rewrite characters out of pure racial animus.
Dude his justification for black dwarves is the Harfoots, which are:
1 Hobbits
And 2 not black.
Quote from: Persimmon on February 23, 2022, 07:43:34 PM
The thing with the Hobbit films is that if you pared away the extra stuff that wasn't in the book you could have had two decent films. And even with all their problems, you never get the impression that Jackson disrespected the lore. He just got caught up in cramming everything he could in there, embellishing some stuff, getting enamored with CGI and chase scenes, and unnecessary "fan service." So yeah, when you add all that up it got pretty bad, but most of the changes had at least some basis in the lore rather than being based on virtue signalling and tokenism.
I dunno. I can't argue with you because I've never seen any of the Hobbit films. I kinda refused to, on principle.
I was sort of looking forward to the Hobbit movie, since the original book that I first read in, what, 1968, seemed purpose-written for a neat self-contained 2 hour movie. Perfect to pace, nice beginning, middle and end, something that, now, I could see with my daughter, knowing she wouldn't be drenched in a bunch of tedious pointless friggin "lore."
But no, friggin Peter Jackson and his friggin bucks demanded that it be a multi-movie epic drenched in irrelevant crap. So, never went. Don't plan to.
This isn't even limited to non-political fiction. It's happening to progressive (for the time) fiction too. We're seeing a similar issue with the AMC Interview with the Vampire tv show adaptation. The plot has been largely rewritten aside from a couple of plot points. Why even buy the rights if the IP isn't actually being used?!
Louis was made black and changed to a 1900s brothel owner, because somehow keeping women in sex slavery is more palatable to modern audiences than a 1700s plantation owner. It's still human trafficking, fuck you misogynistic liberals!
Anyway, Louis being racebent to a child of the plantation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_the_plantation) actually sounds like a nifty way to add a minority POV without overturning the original story. Considering Rice's progressive political views before her death, I wouldn't be surprised if that would be one of the few changes she'd accept. Sympathetic white slave owners just won't fly in today's media environment.
But all the other changes are just arbitrary and unnecessary. Who is this for? It's definitely not for the fans.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on February 23, 2022, 08:13:24 PM
This isn't even limited to non-political fiction. It's happening to progressive (for the time) fiction too. We're seeing a similar issue with the AMC Interview with the Vampire tv show adaptation. The plot has been largely rewritten aside from a couple of plot points. Why even buy the rights if the IP isn't actually being used?!
Louis was made black and changed to a 1900s brothel owner, because somehow keeping women in sex slavery is more palatable to modern audiences than a 1700s plantation owner. It's still human trafficking, fuck you misogynistic liberals!
Anyway, Louis being racebent to a child of the plantation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_the_plantation) actually sounds like a nifty way to add a minority POV without overturning the original story. Considering Rice's progressive political views before her death, I wouldn't be surprised if that would be one of the few changes she'd accept. Sympathetic white slave owners just won't fly in today's media environment.
But all the other changes are just arbitrary and unnecessary. Who is this for? It's definitely not for the fans.
Wait a minute....Sympathetic white slave owners are out, but literal monsters that murder people and drain their blood are ok as sympathetic characters? Don't get me wrong, I have no desire to rehab a slaver, but I just never got the whole vampire-hero fiction. They are murdering blood suckers. But the red flag is being a slave owner in the 1700's? I should add, I do not care if they make Louis a child from the plantation, but he will still be a murderous blood sucker....right?
Quote from: Zirunel on February 23, 2022, 08:08:50 PM
Quote from: Persimmon on February 23, 2022, 07:43:34 PM
The thing with the Hobbit films is that if you pared away the extra stuff that wasn't in the book you could have had two decent films. And even with all their problems, you never get the impression that Jackson disrespected the lore. He just got caught up in cramming everything he could in there, embellishing some stuff, getting enamored with CGI and chase scenes, and unnecessary "fan service." So yeah, when you add all that up it got pretty bad, but most of the changes had at least some basis in the lore rather than being based on virtue signalling and tokenism.
I dunno. I can't argue with you because I've never seen any of the Hobbit films. I kinda refused to, on principle.
I was sort of looking forward to the Hobbit movie, since the original book that I first read in, what, 1968, seemed purpose-written for a neat self-contained 2 hour movie. Perfect to pace, nice beginning, middle and end, something I could see with my daughter, knowing she wouldn't be drenched in a bunch of tedious pointless friggin "lore."
But no, friggin Peter Jackson and his friggin bucks demanded that it be a multi-movie epic drenched in irrelevant crap. So, never went. Don't plan to.
Remember, he wasn't originally supposed to direct. It was supposed to be Guillermo del Toro, who was just going to do two movies. But, for various reasons, del Toro quit and Jackson took over and they decided to stretch it into three movies. It's also reported that the third movie was originally going to be a "bridge" to LOTR with all the extra stuff from the appendices, but then Jackson changed his mind and they put that stuff back into the other movies as well.
So, alas, we might have had something much better. But I still think it will prove to be light years ahead of what Amazon does.
Quote from: Persimmon on February 23, 2022, 08:22:37 PM
Quote from: Zirunel on February 23, 2022, 08:08:50 PM
Quote from: Persimmon on February 23, 2022, 07:43:34 PM
The thing with the Hobbit films is that if you pared away the extra stuff that wasn't in the book you could have had two decent films. And even with all their problems, you never get the impression that Jackson disrespected the lore. He just got caught up in cramming everything he could in there, embellishing some stuff, getting enamored with CGI and chase scenes, and unnecessary "fan service." So yeah, when you add all that up it got pretty bad, but most of the changes had at least some basis in the lore rather than being based on virtue signalling and tokenism.
I dunno. I can't argue with you because I've never seen any of the Hobbit films. I kinda refused to, on principle.
I was sort of looking forward to the Hobbit movie, since the original book that I first read in, what, 1968, seemed purpose-written for a neat self-contained 2 hour movie. Perfect to pace, nice beginning, middle and end, something I could see with my daughter, knowing she wouldn't be drenched in a bunch of tedious pointless friggin "lore."
But no, friggin Peter Jackson and his friggin bucks demanded that it be a multi-movie epic drenched in irrelevant crap. So, never went. Don't plan to.
Remember, he wasn't originally supposed to direct. It was supposed to be Guillermo del Toro, who was just going to do two movies. But, for various reasons, del Toro quit and Jackson took over and they decided to stretch it into three movies. It's also reported that the third movie was originally going to be a "bridge" to LOTR with all the extra stuff from the appendices, but then Jackson changed his mind and they put that stuff back into the other movies as well.
So, alas, we might have had something much better. But I still think it will prove to be light years ahead of what Amazon does.
Two movies? Would that have been better? It's still one movie too many. The book stood on its own, for what 15 years before even LOTR was published, let alone the later hooh-ha. No "lore" needed. Alluded to, sure, but not needed. In fact, better for only being alluded to. In my opinion, a missed opportunity to make one great movie instead of three (or two) tedious ones.
Quote from: Zirunel on February 23, 2022, 08:35:20 PM
Quote from: Persimmon on February 23, 2022, 08:22:37 PM
Quote from: Zirunel on February 23, 2022, 08:08:50 PM
Quote from: Persimmon on February 23, 2022, 07:43:34 PM
The thing with the Hobbit films is that if you pared away the extra stuff that wasn't in the book you could have had two decent films. And even with all their problems, you never get the impression that Jackson disrespected the lore. He just got caught up in cramming everything he could in there, embellishing some stuff, getting enamored with CGI and chase scenes, and unnecessary "fan service." So yeah, when you add all that up it got pretty bad, but most of the changes had at least some basis in the lore rather than being based on virtue signalling and tokenism.
I dunno. I can't argue with you because I've never seen any of the Hobbit films. I kinda refused to, on principle.
I was sort of looking forward to the Hobbit movie, since the original book that I first read in, what, 1968, seemed purpose-written for a neat self-contained 2 hour movie. Perfect to pace, nice beginning, middle and end, something I could see with my daughter, knowing she wouldn't be drenched in a bunch of tedious pointless friggin "lore."
But no, friggin Peter Jackson and his friggin bucks demanded that it be a multi-movie epic drenched in irrelevant crap. So, never went. Don't plan to.
Remember, he wasn't originally supposed to direct. It was supposed to be Guillermo del Toro, who was just going to do two movies. But, for various reasons, del Toro quit and Jackson took over and they decided to stretch it into three movies. It's also reported that the third movie was originally going to be a "bridge" to LOTR with all the extra stuff from the appendices, but then Jackson changed his mind and they put that stuff back into the other movies as well.
So, alas, we might have had something much better. But I still think it will prove to be light years ahead of what Amazon does.
Two movies? Would that have been better? It's still one movie too many. The book stood on its own, for what 15 years before even LOTR was published, let alone the later hooh-ha. No "lore" needed. Alluded to, sure, but not needed. In fact, better for only being alluded to. In my opinion, a missed opportunity to make one great movie instead of three (or two) tedious ones.
I agree, but I also think Amazon is about to do for those hobbit movies what JJ Abrams did for the lucas prequels, make them look better than they were by comparing them to hot trash.
Quote from: oggsmash on February 23, 2022, 08:19:24 PM
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on February 23, 2022, 08:13:24 PM
This isn't even limited to non-political fiction. It's happening to progressive (for the time) fiction too. We're seeing a similar issue with the AMC Interview with the Vampire tv show adaptation. The plot has been largely rewritten aside from a couple of plot points. Why even buy the rights if the IP isn't actually being used?!
Louis was made black and changed to a 1900s brothel owner, because somehow keeping women in sex slavery is more palatable to modern audiences than a 1700s plantation owner. It's still human trafficking, fuck you misogynistic liberals!
Anyway, Louis being racebent to a child of the plantation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_the_plantation) actually sounds like a nifty way to add a minority POV without overturning the original story. Considering Rice's progressive political views before her death, I wouldn't be surprised if that would be one of the few changes she'd accept. Sympathetic white slave owners just won't fly in today's media environment.
But all the other changes are just arbitrary and unnecessary. Who is this for? It's definitely not for the fans.
Wait a minute....Sympathetic white slave owners are out, but literal monsters that murder people and drain their blood are ok as sympathetic characters? Don't get me wrong, I have no desire to rehab a slaver, but I just never got the whole vampire-hero fiction. They are murdering blood suckers. But the red flag is being a slave owner in the 1700's? I should add, I do not care if they make Louis a child from the plantation, but he will still be a murderous blood sucker....right?
The alphabet community loves to identify with vampires for some reason. I think it has to do with society demonizing them for so long that they've internalized it and identify with literal cannibalistic supernatural monsters. Meanwhile, loads of straight women fantasize about being victimized by vampires, with the vampire bite being a psychosexual metaphor for sexual penetration. (The genre also attracts people who are just sick in the head and fantasize about being predators.)
One of the key points of the novel is that vampires
were monsters. Louis hates his existence but is too cowardly to commit suicide. He admonishes the writer for wanting to be a vampire. The sequels forgot this part and really glamorized vampirism.
I don't pretend to understand why liberals think cannibals are more palatable than slavers
I think The Hobbit would have been hard to squeeze into one film because a lot does happen in it. But possibly it could have worked as a 3 hour epic. But I'm also in the group of people who thinks they cut way too much out of LOTR in the movies and added nothing of value. Elves at Helm's Deep? Ahhh, no. I'd much prefer Bombadil or the Scouring of the Shire to that.
Quote from: Persimmon on February 23, 2022, 07:43:34 PM
The thing with the Hobbit films is that if you pared away the extra stuff that wasn't in the book you could have had two decent films. And even with all their problems, you never get the impression that Jackson disrespected the lore. He just got caught up in cramming everything he could in there, embellishing some stuff, getting enamored with CGI and chase scenes, and unnecessary "fan service." So yeah, when you add all that up it got pretty bad, but most of the changes had at least some basis in the lore rather than being based on virtue signalling and tokenism.
I recently rewatched the Hobbit movies. My impression is that when considered on their own, they're occasionally inconsistent and goofy, but overall are decent B-grade fantasy movies. The problem is people had higher expectations based on the previous movies, and wanted greater fidelity to the source material.
I'm glad they skipped the Scouring of the Shire. The denouement in Return of the King was already way too long.
Quote from: Pat on February 23, 2022, 09:14:57 PM
Quote from: Persimmon on February 23, 2022, 07:43:34 PM
The thing with the Hobbit films is that if you pared away the extra stuff that wasn't in the book you could have had two decent films. And even with all their problems, you never get the impression that Jackson disrespected the lore. He just got caught up in cramming everything he could in there, embellishing some stuff, getting enamored with CGI and chase scenes, and unnecessary "fan service." So yeah, when you add all that up it got pretty bad, but most of the changes had at least some basis in the lore rather than being based on virtue signalling and tokenism.
I recently rewatched the Hobbit movies. My impression is that when considered on their own, they're occasionally inconsistent and goofy, but overall are decent B-grade fantasy movies. The problem is people had higher expectations based on the previous movies, and wanted greater fidelity to the source material.
Jackson's female Dwarves on those movies are easily distinguished from the males. But they do have beards.
Quote from: Persimmon on February 23, 2022, 09:02:53 PM
I think The Hobbit would have been hard to squeeze into one film because a lot does happen in it. But possibly it could have worked as a 3 hour epic. But I'm also in the group of people who thinks they cut way too much out of LOTR in the movies and added nothing of value. Elves at Helm's Deep? Ahhh, no. I'd much prefer Bombadil or the Scouring of the Shire to that.
Well, I have to admit I'm not a movie-maker. I imagine much comes down to cutting a lot but cutting it right. Maybe you end up with something more than 2 hours, sure. But I still think you can come close, and in any case, a self-contained piece, not a bloated multiple-episode lore-fest.
As for LOTR, unlike the Hobbit, I have seen it...or parts of it. Years ago we watched it as El Señor de los Anillos, and it was great for helping my daughter get some confidence in her Spanish comprehension but I can't say it really kept my attention (or hers to be honest). It was okay, but not great, and it seemed to...drag. I've seen one or more episodes since in English, and...same impression.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on February 23, 2022, 08:55:57 PMI don't pretend to understand why liberals think cannibals are more palatable than slavers
Because racism/ sexism is the ultimate sin. Or just towing the party line (whatever it is at that moment) is the ultimate virtue, so even disagreeing with its assertions is the ultimate sin.
Captain Superchad could save the world every tuesday (for no reward), but say women can't drive and be treated with derision. But Lady Abortioneta could induce miscairages for fun, but have a gay friend and support him 'coming out' would be a quirky side character.
As for why they like monsters: Because much of their identity is based on making others feel uncofmrtable. Its entirely sadistic and desctructive, not-self validating.
If much of your identity is based on pissing people off, you will find yourself allying with monsters (because you are one).
Quote from: Persimmon on February 23, 2022, 09:02:53 PM
I think The Hobbit would have been hard to squeeze into one film because a lot does happen in it. But possibly it could have worked as a 3 hour epic. But I'm also in the group of people who thinks they cut way too much out of LOTR in the movies and added nothing of value. Elves at Helm's Deep? Ahhh, no. I'd much prefer Bombadil or the Scouring of the Shire to that.
Rankin Bass did it with the animated Hobbit. It was a charming adaptation that felt like it was in the ballpark of Tolkien's writing.
Trying to turn The Hobbit into a LOTR prequel is where Jackson and whatever corporate suits were making the big decisions fell down.
It's not an epic prequel to LOTR, and trying to shoehorn it into one... well we all saw how that turned out.
Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 23, 2022, 10:33:13 PM
Quote from: Persimmon on February 23, 2022, 09:02:53 PM
I think The Hobbit would have been hard to squeeze into one film because a lot does happen in it. But possibly it could have worked as a 3 hour epic. But I'm also in the group of people who thinks they cut way too much out of LOTR in the movies and added nothing of value. Elves at Helm's Deep? Ahhh, no. I'd much prefer Bombadil or the Scouring of the Shire to that.
Rankin Bass did it with the animated Hobbit. It was a charming adaptation that felt like it was in the ballpark of Tolkien's writing.
Trying to turn The Hobbit into a LOTR prequel is where Jackson and whatever corporate suits were making the big decisions fell down.
It's not an epic prequel to LOTR, and trying to shoehorn it into one... well we all saw how that turned out.
The cartoon is fine and I still own it, but I would still love a real adaptation of Tolkien that is totally faithful to the writing, even if it's just a story from The Silmarillion. But I can't see that ever happening. I can just read the stories again. No way I'll tune in to Amazon's dumpster fire.
And for what it's worth, I prefer The Return of the King cartoon with those great songs like "Where there's a whip, there's a way...."
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on February 23, 2022, 08:13:24 PM
This isn't even limited to non-political fiction. It's happening to progressive (for the time) fiction too. We're seeing a similar issue with the AMC Interview with the Vampire tv show adaptation. The plot has been largely rewritten aside from a couple of plot points. Why even buy the rights if the IP isn't actually being used?!
Louis was made black and changed to a 1900s brothel owner, because somehow keeping women in sex slavery is more palatable to modern audiences than a 1700s plantation owner. It's still human trafficking, fuck you misogynistic liberals!
Anyway, Louis being racebent to a child of the plantation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_the_plantation) actually sounds like a nifty way to add a minority POV without overturning the original story. Considering Rice's progressive political views before her death, I wouldn't be surprised if that would be one of the few changes she'd accept. Sympathetic white slave owners just won't fly in today's media environment.
But all the other changes are just arbitrary and unnecessary. Who is this for? It's definitely not for the fans.
Creating a new brand is hard, takes lots of money and time to advertise and build, and could fail. Stealing an old brand and wearing it like a mask is a lot cheaper. Or at least that's how they see it.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on February 23, 2022, 08:55:57 PM
Quote from: oggsmash on February 23, 2022, 08:19:24 PM
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on February 23, 2022, 08:13:24 PM
This isn't even limited to non-political fiction. It's happening to progressive (for the time) fiction too. We're seeing a similar issue with the AMC Interview with the Vampire tv show adaptation. The plot has been largely rewritten aside from a couple of plot points. Why even buy the rights if the IP isn't actually being used?!
Louis was made black and changed to a 1900s brothel owner, because somehow keeping women in sex slavery is more palatable to modern audiences than a 1700s plantation owner. It's still human trafficking, fuck you misogynistic liberals!
Anyway, Louis being racebent to a child of the plantation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_the_plantation) actually sounds like a nifty way to add a minority POV without overturning the original story. Considering Rice's progressive political views before her death, I wouldn't be surprised if that would be one of the few changes she'd accept. Sympathetic white slave owners just won't fly in today's media environment.
But all the other changes are just arbitrary and unnecessary. Who is this for? It's definitely not for the fans.
Wait a minute....Sympathetic white slave owners are out, but literal monsters that murder people and drain their blood are ok as sympathetic characters? Don't get me wrong, I have no desire to rehab a slaver, but I just never got the whole vampire-hero fiction. They are murdering blood suckers. But the red flag is being a slave owner in the 1700's? I should add, I do not care if they make Louis a child from the plantation, but he will still be a murderous blood sucker....right?
The alphabet community loves to identify with vampires for some reason. I think it has to do with society demonizing them for so long that they've internalized it and identify with literal cannibalistic supernatural monsters. Meanwhile, loads of straight women fantasize about being victimized by vampires, with the vampire bite being a psychosexual metaphor for sexual penetration. (The genre also attracts people who are just sick in the head and fantasize about being predators.)
This was already true when "Dracula" came out: a reaction to Victorian England "values". The stranger that during the night enters the chamber of the beautiful damsel and "sucks her neck". Only when Count Dracula was turned into Nosferatu the tale became all around horrific.
I always found "Carmilla" by Sheridan Le Fanu more interesting. It came out more that 25 years before "Dracula". This novel, too, opposed the traditional Victorian view of women as useful possessions of men. It has a bold lesbian undertone that, I guess, the readers of the era weren't prepared to catch. It is a more complex and ambiguous tale than "Dracula" and I guess this is the reason why it never gained a wider recognition.
The whole 'we wanna make Game of Thrones' keeps bugging the shit out of me, because it betrays a deep flaw in the show and its developers.
Tolkien's legendarium -- LOTR, Silmarillion, the Hobbit, etc -- is high fantasy. A mythos, if you will. Down-to-earth details are generally glossed over or ignored unless they are serious plot points.
But Game of Thrones is very much low fantasy, even when the dragons show up, until things kick off against the White Walkers.
The two are very different types of stories, and trying to cram one into the shoes of the other doesn't really work well.
If they'd licensed Asprin's Thieves World and used GoT as a guide, it probably would work quite well. This? Not so much.
Quote from: Ghostmaker on February 24, 2022, 08:02:40 AM
The whole 'we wanna make Game of Thrones' keeps bugging the shit out of me, because it betrays a deep flaw in the show and its developers.
Tolkien's legendarium -- LOTR, Silmarillion, the Hobbit, etc -- is high fantasy. A mythos, if you will. Down-to-earth details are generally glossed over or ignored unless they are serious plot points.
But Game of Thrones is very much low fantasy, even when the dragons show up, until things kick off against the White Walkers.
The two are very different types of stories, and trying to cram one into the shoes of the other doesn't really work well.
If they'd licensed Asprin's Thieves World and used GoT as a guide, it probably would work quite well. This? Not so much.
Well the thing is...I thought I read somewhere that GRR Martin was inspired by Lord of the Rings to write a book that was a "Dark reflection" of that saga. Meaning more in the blood and mud and bad parts of human nature and division, but with the over arching evil threat to everyone. It read more to me like a allegory of George's likely high school experience where he is "getting even" with all the people he did not like in High school. So if they make a "GOT clone" from what was essentially already a clone (from the dark alternate universe), does that mean we end up with a copy of a copy of a copy (since to me the HBO series was in many ways a copy of the novel and had things that simply did not exist, were never written-yet in the books)? Seems these people may not even know what GOT was past the series that was "HBO-ified".
Quote from: AtomicPope on February 24, 2022, 02:00:22 AM
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on February 23, 2022, 08:13:24 PM
This isn't even limited to non-political fiction. It's happening to progressive (for the time) fiction too. We're seeing a similar issue with the AMC Interview with the Vampire tv show adaptation. The plot has been largely rewritten aside from a couple of plot points. Why even buy the rights if the IP isn't actually being used?!
Louis was made black and changed to a 1900s brothel owner, because somehow keeping women in sex slavery is more palatable to modern audiences than a 1700s plantation owner. It's still human trafficking, fuck you misogynistic liberals!
Anyway, Louis being racebent to a child of the plantation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_the_plantation) actually sounds like a nifty way to add a minority POV without overturning the original story. Considering Rice's progressive political views before her death, I wouldn't be surprised if that would be one of the few changes she'd accept. Sympathetic white slave owners just won't fly in today's media environment.
But all the other changes are just arbitrary and unnecessary. Who is this for? It's definitely not for the fans.
Creating a new brand is hard, takes lots of money and time to advertise and build, and could fail. Stealing an old brand and wearing it like a mask is a lot cheaper. Or at least that's how they see it.
"Skinsuit". Not mask.
Quote from: RandyB on February 24, 2022, 08:50:46 AM
Quote from: AtomicPope on February 24, 2022, 02:00:22 AM
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on February 23, 2022, 08:13:24 PM
This isn't even limited to non-political fiction. It's happening to progressive (for the time) fiction too. We're seeing a similar issue with the AMC Interview with the Vampire tv show adaptation. The plot has been largely rewritten aside from a couple of plot points. Why even buy the rights if the IP isn't actually being used?!
Louis was made black and changed to a 1900s brothel owner, because somehow keeping women in sex slavery is more palatable to modern audiences than a 1700s plantation owner. It's still human trafficking, fuck you misogynistic liberals!
Anyway, Louis being racebent to a child of the plantation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_the_plantation) actually sounds like a nifty way to add a minority POV without overturning the original story. Considering Rice's progressive political views before her death, I wouldn't be surprised if that would be one of the few changes she'd accept. Sympathetic white slave owners just won't fly in today's media environment.
But all the other changes are just arbitrary and unnecessary. Who is this for? It's definitely not for the fans.
Creating a new brand is hard, takes lots of money and time to advertise and build, and could fail. Stealing an old brand and wearing it like a mask is a lot cheaper. Or at least that's how they see it.
"Skinsuit". Not mask.
No IP is safe. I can't wait to see woke fans get butthurt over their fav woke IP being butchered by Hollyweird.
Quote from: Pat on February 23, 2022, 02:14:03 AM
I think you could do a great Othello with a Japanese/Chinese cast.
Pretty sure been done. Theres been a few adaptions out of Malaysia in the 80s or 90s.
Kurosawa did "Ran" which draws heavily from King Lear for example. And apparently another based loosely on Hamlet and another on Macbeth? Must have been a fan of Shakespeare.
Quote from: Omega on February 25, 2022, 05:05:35 AM
Quote from: Pat on February 23, 2022, 02:14:03 AM
I think you could do a great Othello with a Japanese/Chinese cast.
Pretty sure been done. Theres been a few adaptions out of Malaysia in the 80s or 90s.
Kurosawa did "Ran" which draws heavily from King Lear for example. And apparently another based loosely on Hamlet and another on Macbeth? Must have been a fan of Shakespeare.
Don't know about the Hamlet, but the Macbeth is titled
Throne of Blood.
Quote from: oggsmash on February 23, 2022, 07:36:45 PM
The black skinned dwarves that lived underground? You think they are alright, but I do not remember any references to black dwarves. Browner of skin implied a tan. They were all white, and that is all right.
Tolkien's dwarves are not described as any of white-skinned or dark-skinned. They are *not* supposed to be cave-like creatures like trolls. (Cave creatures tend to be hairless, pallid, and sometimes blind.) Also, they are not intended to be Norwegian. Their language is intentionally Semitic, according to Tolkien himself. He wrote in great detail about their Semitic language Khuzdul, but never mentions the color of their skin. To me, that indicates what is important to him.
As a Semitic people, I'd say they could be light-skinned or dark-skinned in different varieties. I wouldn't have a problem if Tolkien had described the dwarves as being fair-skinned like the elves or Numenoreans, but he didn't.
As I said, I think skin color is just one of many little details - like hair color or eye color. Having Frodo be a blue-eyed waif when he is a stout, red-cheeked 50-year-old in the books is a much bigger departure from the books. That was a change made clearly for marketing reasons, in my opinion. I still enjoyed Peter Jackson's LOTR trilogy, but there were a bunch of intentional changes like this.
Quote from: jhkim on February 25, 2022, 02:33:09 PM
Quote from: oggsmash on February 23, 2022, 07:36:45 PM
The black skinned dwarves that lived underground? You think they are alright, but I do not remember any references to black dwarves. Browner of skin implied a tan. They were all white, and that is all right.
Tolkien's dwarves are not described as any of white-skinned or dark-skinned. They are *not* supposed to be cave-like creatures like trolls. (Cave creatures tend to be hairless, pallid, and sometimes blind.) Also, they are not intended to be Norwegian. Their language is intentionally Semitic, according to Tolkien himself. He wrote in great detail about their Semitic language Khuzdul, but never mentions the color of their skin. To me, that indicates what is important to him.
As a Semitic people, I'd say they could be light-skinned or dark-skinned in different varieties. I wouldn't have a problem if Tolkien had described the dwarves as being fair-skinned like the elves or Numenoreans, but he didn't.
As I said, I think skin color is just one of many little details - like hair color or eye color. Having Frodo be a blue-eyed waif when he is a stout, red-cheeked 50-year-old in the books is a much bigger departure from the books. That was a change made clearly for marketing reasons, in my opinion. I still enjoyed Peter Jackson's LOTR trilogy, but there were a bunch of intentional changes like this.
I'd be fine with making dwarves black. But do you think anyone in Hollywood would be fine with that? Because if you're making dwarves black, then that suggests you're restricting races to certain ethnic profiles. And your humans and elves would be white.
The issue isn't anyone's skin color. It's this insane need to make all historical and fictional worlds identical to the fictional cosmopolitan America we see in TV commercials.
Quote from: Pat on February 25, 2022, 02:36:39 PM
Quote from: jhkim on February 25, 2022, 02:33:09 PM
As I said, I think skin color is just one of many little details - like hair color or eye color. Having Frodo be a blue-eyed waif when he is a stout, red-cheeked 50-year-old in the books is a much bigger departure from the books. That was a change made clearly for marketing reasons, in my opinion. I still enjoyed Peter Jackson's LOTR trilogy, but there were a bunch of intentional changes like this.
I'd be fine with making dwarves black. But do you think anyone in Hollywood would be fine with that? Because if you're making dwarves black, then that suggests you're restricting races to certain ethnic profiles. And your humans and elves would be white.
The issue isn't anyone's skin color. It's this insane need to make all historical and fictional worlds identical to the fictional cosmopolitan America we see in TV commercials.
It's inauthentic and it sometimes bugs me, but I wouldn't call it insane. It's basic marketing. It's the same thing that movies in just about every time period and every country have done - make the subject more like the target audience. A 1950s Italian movie - even if it's fantasy - will tend to have people who look Italian in it. Historical and fantasy movies generally reflect the country and period that they are made in, rather than the true history and/or original fantasy source.
Personally, I'd prefer to have more authentic movies - but it's no different than watching old Errol Flynn movies or Hong Kong movies. No, they aren't authentic, and I'd prefer otherwise, but I can still enjoy them for what they are.
Quote from: Pat on February 25, 2022, 02:36:39 PM
Quote from: jhkim on February 25, 2022, 02:33:09 PM
Quote from: oggsmash on February 23, 2022, 07:36:45 PM
The black skinned dwarves that lived underground? You think they are alright, but I do not remember any references to black dwarves. Browner of skin implied a tan. They were all white, and that is all right.
Tolkien's dwarves are not described as any of white-skinned or dark-skinned. They are *not* supposed to be cave-like creatures like trolls. (Cave creatures tend to be hairless, pallid, and sometimes blind.) Also, they are not intended to be Norwegian. Their language is intentionally Semitic, according to Tolkien himself. He wrote in great detail about their Semitic language Khuzdul, but never mentions the color of their skin. To me, that indicates what is important to him.
As a Semitic people, I'd say they could be light-skinned or dark-skinned in different varieties. I wouldn't have a problem if Tolkien had described the dwarves as being fair-skinned like the elves or Numenoreans, but he didn't.
As I said, I think skin color is just one of many little details - like hair color or eye color. Having Frodo be a blue-eyed waif when he is a stout, red-cheeked 50-year-old in the books is a much bigger departure from the books. That was a change made clearly for marketing reasons, in my opinion. I still enjoyed Peter Jackson's LOTR trilogy, but there were a bunch of intentional changes like this.
I'd be fine with making dwarves black. But do you think anyone in Hollywood would be fine with that? Because if you're making dwarves black, then that suggests you're restricting races to certain ethnic profiles. And your humans and elves would be white.
The issue isn't anyone's skin color. It's this insane need to make all historical and fictional worlds identical to the fictional cosmopolitan America we see in TV commercials.
It's a mythology for England, yes the skin color is an issue.
Quote from: jhkim on February 25, 2022, 03:09:02 PM
Quote from: Pat on February 25, 2022, 02:36:39 PM
Quote from: jhkim on February 25, 2022, 02:33:09 PM
As I said, I think skin color is just one of many little details - like hair color or eye color. Having Frodo be a blue-eyed waif when he is a stout, red-cheeked 50-year-old in the books is a much bigger departure from the books. That was a change made clearly for marketing reasons, in my opinion. I still enjoyed Peter Jackson's LOTR trilogy, but there were a bunch of intentional changes like this.
I'd be fine with making dwarves black. But do you think anyone in Hollywood would be fine with that? Because if you're making dwarves black, then that suggests you're restricting races to certain ethnic profiles. And your humans and elves would be white.
The issue isn't anyone's skin color. It's this insane need to make all historical and fictional worlds identical to the fictional cosmopolitan America we see in TV commercials.
It's inauthentic and it sometimes bugs me, but I wouldn't call it insane. It's basic marketing. It's the same thing that movies in just about every time period and every country have done - make the subject more like the target audience. A 1950s Italian movie - even if it's fantasy - will tend to have people who look Italian in it. Historical and fantasy movies generally reflect the country and period that they are made in, rather than the true history and/or original fantasy source.
Personally, I'd prefer to have more authentic movies - but it's no different than watching old Errol Flynn movies or Hong Kong movies. No, they aren't authentic, and I'd prefer otherwise, but I can still enjoy them for what they are.
Except my entire point is they're doing the exact opposite. They're
not making it more like the target audience. The depictions are a tokenized fiction, and it's completely inauthentic. And it's not marketing, because marketing generally involves
not pissing off your audience.
I'd be perfectly fine with adapting Journey to the West with a North American cast that was picked using purely race blind methods. But Hollywood and the other nu-racists online would would throw a fit, and demand the cast match a specific racial profile. Which is cultural and racial segregation, and more than that, a form of cultural terrorism.
Personally, I'd prefer to only have inauthentic movies. One of the greatest things is when someone from one culture finds something from another so inspirational, that they adopt and adapt from a new perspective. That's how cultures live and grow, how they spread, and how we as individuals in a particular cultural context learn about all the wonder and variety of the human experience. But they're imposing gatekeepers and walls, and denying us the basic ability to get to know each other by taking the fruits of another culture, wrestling with it, and making it part of our personal culture, as well.
I'm not sure I'm expressing how utterly evil it is to put people in these little racial and cultural boxes.
Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 25, 2022, 04:50:10 PM
It's a mythology for England, yes the skin color is an issue.
Don't care.
Quote from: Pat on February 25, 2022, 05:29:06 PM
Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 25, 2022, 04:50:10 PM
It's a mythology for England, yes the skin color is an issue.
Don't care.
1 That doesn't mean it's not an issue
2 Then you're part of the problem
Quote from: Pat on February 25, 2022, 05:28:34 PM
Except my entire point is they're doing the exact opposite. They're not making it more like the target audience. The depictions are a tokenized fiction, and it's completely inauthentic. And it's not marketing, because marketing generally involves not pissing off your audience.
Um... Outrage marketing has been a thing for at least a decade plus now. Remake product specifically designed to piss off the fans of the original. Or adaptions changed in some way to garner hate from the fans. You get people to scream and that attracts attention. Free advertising.
Pundit is the woke RPG biz's best advertiser for them because they know they can manipulate him like a puppet to raise hell. Which according to marketing = profit.
This whole Woke of the Ring is betting on outrage marketing to rake in the viewers.
And whould it fail. They have the perfect scapegoat to place all the blame on.
Quote from: Omega on February 26, 2022, 10:36:05 AM
Quote from: Pat on February 25, 2022, 05:28:34 PM
Except my entire point is they're doing the exact opposite. They're not making it more like the target audience. The depictions are a tokenized fiction, and it's completely inauthentic. And it's not marketing, because marketing generally involves not pissing off your audience.
Um... Outrage marketing has been a thing for at least a decade plus now. Remake product specifically designed to piss off the fans of the original. Or adaptions changed in some way to garner hate from the fans. You get people to scream and that attracts attention. Free advertising.
Pundit is the woke RPG biz's best advertiser for them because they know they can manipulate him like a puppet to raise hell. Which according to marketing = profit.
Er... no. The number of franchises that ended up with broken bones thanks to this delusion is endless.
Quote from: Omega on February 26, 2022, 10:36:05 AMUm... Outrage marketing has been a thing for at least a decade plus now. Remake product specifically designed to piss off the fans of the original. Or adaptions changed in some way to garner hate from the fans. You get people to scream and that attracts attention. Free advertising.
And while they are pissing off Tolkien fans, they aren't really pissing off their target audience, which are people whose only knowledge of Tolkien comes from watching the movies. That's a much, much bigger audience than people who have read the Silmarillion.
But I think there's something else going on in the background. When Sony was making Spider-man: Homecoming, their contract with Disney specified that any new characters would be considered MCU characters and couldn't be used in future Sony-only movies. Thus we ended up with fake MJ, fake Flash Thompson, and a MILF Aunt May. A similar thing happened with Star Trek and the "25% different" rule.
It came out a few months ago that the contract that Amazon has specifies that Amazon cannot contradict anything written by Tolkien. From Amazon's perspective, the best way to satisfy that term is to create a show with all-new characters, all-new locations, and all-new story elements. That way there is no possible way they can violate their contract. [an added benefit with using all-new characters is that it's easier to fire actors that aren't working out or that demand more money.]
I guess the real tragedy of this show is that the clause in the contract that was meant to protect Tolkien's writings will only end up making Tolkien's writings less relevant to his world.
The show is going to flop due to bad production, not because of the wokeness. That's just symptomatic of deeper issues. The showrunners were hired solely due to nepotism, not because they demonstrated any skill.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on February 27, 2022, 11:08:15 AM
The show is going to flop due to bad production, not because of the wokeness. That's just symptomatic of deeper issues. The showrunners were hired solely due to nepotism, not because they demonstrated any skill.
I couldn't agree more. I think about 90% of the woke garbage coming out of Hollyweird and other cesspools has more to do with incompetence than wokeness. These guys are hiding behind wokeness in the desperate hope that their ideological comrades will support their work even though it sucks.
Quote from: squirewaldo on February 27, 2022, 12:45:03 PMThese guys are hiding behind wokeness in the desperate hope that their ideological comrades will support their work even though it sucks.
Knowing the corporate work structure thats not exactly true. Lots of places have sacrificed profitability or compitence to meet philosophical qoutas.
Quote from: squirewaldo on February 27, 2022, 12:45:03 PMI think about 90% of the woke garbage coming out of Hollyweird and other cesspools has more to do with incompetence than wokeness.
Considering that a rejection of meritocracy is one of the foundational principles of wokeness, it isn't surprising that wokenss and incompetence go hand in hand.
Quote from: hedgehobbit on February 28, 2022, 07:39:06 PM
Quote from: squirewaldo on February 27, 2022, 12:45:03 PMI think about 90% of the woke garbage coming out of Hollyweird and other cesspools has more to do with incompetence than wokeness.
Considering that a rejection of meritocracy is one of the foundational principles of wokeness, it isn't surprising that wokenss and incompetence go hand in hand.
Also: "Experience = Defending the White Patriarchy, Old Wood etc."
Maybe. But paying two experienced showrunner $250,000/y makes a strong case for paying two bozos $40,000/y instead.
Quote from: Reckall on March 01, 2022, 05:48:32 AM
Quote from: hedgehobbit on February 28, 2022, 07:39:06 PM
Quote from: squirewaldo on February 27, 2022, 12:45:03 PMI think about 90% of the woke garbage coming out of Hollyweird and other cesspools has more to do with incompetence than wokeness.
Considering that a rejection of meritocracy is one of the foundational principles of wokeness, it isn't surprising that wokenss and incompetence go hand in hand.
Also: "Experience = Defending the White Patriarchy, Old Wood etc."
Maybe. But paying two experienced showrunner $250,000/y makes a strong case for paying two bozos $40,000/y instead.
Not if your show tanks hard and doesn't make back the expenses and money you invested in it.
Quote from: Ghostmaker on March 01, 2022, 08:29:06 AM
Quote from: Reckall on March 01, 2022, 05:48:32 AM
Quote from: hedgehobbit on February 28, 2022, 07:39:06 PM
Quote from: squirewaldo on February 27, 2022, 12:45:03 PMI think about 90% of the woke garbage coming out of Hollyweird and other cesspools has more to do with incompetence than wokeness.
Considering that a rejection of meritocracy is one of the foundational principles of wokeness, it isn't surprising that wokenss and incompetence go hand in hand.
Also: "Experience = Defending the White Patriarchy, Old Wood etc."
Maybe. But paying two experienced showrunner $250,000/y makes a strong case for paying two bozos $40,000/y instead.
Not if your show tanks hard and doesn't make back the expenses and money you invested in it.
That is making the assumption that the money spent was done so to make a profit. I am not convinced that is the case here and in many other similar projects. I think the folks funding it are getting what they want out of it.
Quote from: oggsmash on March 01, 2022, 08:48:08 AMThat is making the assumption that the money spent was done so to make a profit. I am not convinced that is the case here and in many other similar projects. I think the folks funding it are getting what they want out of it.
Its a psychological mix of both elements. Humans can believe contradictory things. A person can want money and how this will make a ton of it (dismissing evidence to the contrary) and also believe this will do great social change.
People cannot engage in a system of beliefs without coming away affected. If a guy just provides services for a dictatorial regime, eventually they will start playing defense for said regieme even if they came in this with a counter-bais before.
Yeah, pretty much everything we've heard from Bezos and the Amazon camp suggests that this has nothing to do with love and respect for Toklien's works. He wants to make a splash and stroke his ego and the ridiculous statements about making "the novel Tolkien never wrote that could only be done now" underscore this. I don't think he cares about the money itself, but they are clearly getting stung by the backlash from real fans which seems to be much more than they expected. But, assuming that many of us tune out and avoid the series, it may get lost when the show airs and the general populace watches it as just another fantasy show.
We've seen already how they've eviscerated "The Witcher," and "Wheel of Time," which are both lesser IPs with less established fan bases with their SJW bullshit. At least it's nice to see real fans speaking out against this trash.
Quote from: Persimmon on March 01, 2022, 10:23:21 AM
Yeah, pretty much everything we've heard from Bezos and the Amazon camp suggests that this has nothing to do with love and respect for Toklien's works. He wants to make a splash and stroke his ego and the ridiculous statements about making "the novel Tolkien never wrote that could only be done now" underscore this. I don't think he cares about the money itself, but they are clearly getting stung by the backlash from real fans which seems to be much more than they expected. But, assuming that many of us tune out and avoid the series, it may get lost when the show airs and the general populace watches it as just another fantasy show.
Has Bezos made any real statements about this, or is just people attributing marketingese to the chief?
Quote from: Reckall on March 01, 2022, 05:48:32 AM
Quote from: hedgehobbit on February 28, 2022, 07:39:06 PM
Quote from: squirewaldo on February 27, 2022, 12:45:03 PMI think about 90% of the woke garbage coming out of Hollyweird and other cesspools has more to do with incompetence than wokeness.
Considering that a rejection of meritocracy is one of the foundational principles of wokeness, it isn't surprising that wokenss and incompetence go hand in hand.
Also: "Experience = Defending the White Patriarchy, Old Wood etc."
Maybe. But paying two experienced showrunner $250,000/y makes a strong case for paying two bozos $40,000/y instead.
Someone saw Call me Chato's videos about Woke of the cRings.
Quote from: Pat on March 01, 2022, 11:47:47 AM
Quote from: Persimmon on March 01, 2022, 10:23:21 AM
Yeah, pretty much everything we've heard from Bezos and the Amazon camp suggests that this has nothing to do with love and respect for Toklien's works. He wants to make a splash and stroke his ego and the ridiculous statements about making "the novel Tolkien never wrote that could only be done now" underscore this. I don't think he cares about the money itself, but they are clearly getting stung by the backlash from real fans which seems to be much more than they expected. But, assuming that many of us tune out and avoid the series, it may get lost when the show airs and the general populace watches it as just another fantasy show.
Has Bezos made any real statements about this, or is just people attributing marketingese to the chief?
Yes; Bezos formerly said that he wanted his Game of Thrones. It was framed as wanting that mega-show that everyone talks about, though people at the time feared he wanted to make it full of sex and nudity. Of course what they seem to be doing is far worse than slapping an "R" rating on Tolkien. He also professed a passion/obsession with Lord of the Rings, though it's hard to see how this reflects that beyond him thinking he can make it "better," which is certainly the message we're getting from the show runners.
Quote from: Persimmon on March 01, 2022, 10:33:23 PM
Quote from: Pat on March 01, 2022, 11:47:47 AM
Quote from: Persimmon on March 01, 2022, 10:23:21 AM
Yeah, pretty much everything we've heard from Bezos and the Amazon camp suggests that this has nothing to do with love and respect for Toklien's works. He wants to make a splash and stroke his ego and the ridiculous statements about making "the novel Tolkien never wrote that could only be done now" underscore this. I don't think he cares about the money itself, but they are clearly getting stung by the backlash from real fans which seems to be much more than they expected. But, assuming that many of us tune out and avoid the series, it may get lost when the show airs and the general populace watches it as just another fantasy show.
Has Bezos made any real statements about this, or is just people attributing marketingese to the chief?
Yes; Bezos formerly said that he wanted his Game of Thrones. It was framed as wanting that mega-show that everyone talks about, though people at the time feared he wanted to make it full of sex and nudity. Of course what they seem to be doing is far worse than slapping an "R" rating on Tolkien. He also professed a passion/obsession with Lord of the Rings, though it's hard to see how this reflects that beyond him thinking he can make it "better," which is certainly the message we're getting from the show runners.
Maybe because they hired an intimacy coordinator? Add to that he wants his own GoT and you get justified fears they'll make it as pornographic as they can.
Yeah, there was a lot of buzz about the intimacy coordinator. And that definitely doesn't seem to fit the Tolkien vibe. But I'd take that over Galadriel of Arc and the Questioning Architect Elrond...
Quote from: Persimmon on March 01, 2022, 10:41:53 PM
Yeah, there was a lot of buzz about the intimacy coordinator. And that definitely doesn't seem to fit the Tolkien vibe. But I'd take that over Galadriel of Arc and the Questioning Architect Elrond...
Don't worry, you'll get both. With heavy doses of gay porn on top.
Quote from: Persimmon on March 01, 2022, 10:41:53 PM
Yeah, there was a lot of buzz about the intimacy coordinator.
It should be a piece of paper that says 'No'.
Quote from: Persimmon on March 01, 2022, 10:33:23 PM
Quote from: Pat on March 01, 2022, 11:47:47 AM
Quote from: Persimmon on March 01, 2022, 10:23:21 AM
Yeah, pretty much everything we've heard from Bezos and the Amazon camp suggests that this has nothing to do with love and respect for Toklien's works. He wants to make a splash and stroke his ego and the ridiculous statements about making "the novel Tolkien never wrote that could only be done now" underscore this. I don't think he cares about the money itself, but they are clearly getting stung by the backlash from real fans which seems to be much more than they expected. But, assuming that many of us tune out and avoid the series, it may get lost when the show airs and the general populace watches it as just another fantasy show.
Has Bezos made any real statements about this, or is just people attributing marketingese to the chief?
Yes; Bezos formerly said that he wanted his Game of Thrones. It was framed as wanting that mega-show that everyone talks about, though people at the time feared he wanted to make it full of sex and nudity. Of course what they seem to be doing is far worse than slapping an "R" rating on Tolkien. He also professed a passion/obsession with Lord of the Rings, though it's hard to see how this reflects that beyond him thinking he can make it "better," which is certainly the message we're getting from the show runners.
Thanks for the summary. Had no interest in digging up the trainwreck myself.
I have to admit, the thought that this is solely to shit on Tolkien refuses to leave my mind. Because there's plenty of books that could be adapted for a low-fantasy series. Why try to shoehorn LOTR into that genre?
Is it about name recognition? Could be. But that just means the Tolkien fans are going to be eyeballing it with the autistic focus of a goddamn Trekkie. And then they're going to get pissed off.
Heaping money into a pile and burning it, a la Ledger's Joker, may look cool and edgy, but shareholders tend to get really grumpy about that sort of thing. Even Larry Fink can't fund duh-versity and shitty wokeness forever.
It kinda pisses me off, seeing all this money and time wasted like this. How about an adaptation of the Black Company novels? Or Thieves' World? Heck, if I didn't think they'd fuck it up I'd go for an adaptation of the Belgariad. But no, we get a shitty LOTR Second Age story that's about on a par with a slash fic written by some starry-eyed teenager with a hobbit fetish.
Quote from: Ghostmaker on March 02, 2022, 08:06:22 AM
I have to admit, the thought that this is solely to shit on Tolkien refuses to leave my mind. Because there's plenty of books that could be adapted for a low-fantasy series. Why try to shoehorn LOTR into that genre?
Is it about name recognition? Could be. But that just means the Tolkien fans are going to be eyeballing it with the autistic focus of a goddamn Trekkie. And then they're going to get pissed off.
Heaping money into a pile and burning it, a la Ledger's Joker, may look cool and edgy, but shareholders tend to get really grumpy about that sort of thing. Even Larry Fink can't fund duh-versity and shitty wokeness forever.
It kinda pisses me off, seeing all this money and time wasted like this. How about an adaptation of the Black Company novels? Or Thieves' World? Heck, if I didn't think they'd fuck it up I'd go for an adaptation of the Belgariad. But no, we get a shitty LOTR Second Age story that's about on a par with a slash fic written by some starry-eyed teenager with a hobbit fetish.
Hell, even Lankhmar. So yeah, I definitely think it's name recognition. Because they've got both the movie fans who haven't read the books and the book fans, who may or may not like the films to varying degrees. No other fantasy IP has that kind of potential. But any of those you mentioned would warrant a series but since they're older and far less known, hard to see it happening. With Tolkien, no matter when they're setting the story, they just slap LOTR in the title and get buzz.
Quote from: Persimmon on March 02, 2022, 08:17:04 AM
Quote from: Ghostmaker on March 02, 2022, 08:06:22 AM
I have to admit, the thought that this is solely to shit on Tolkien refuses to leave my mind. Because there's plenty of books that could be adapted for a low-fantasy series. Why try to shoehorn LOTR into that genre?
Is it about name recognition? Could be. But that just means the Tolkien fans are going to be eyeballing it with the autistic focus of a goddamn Trekkie. And then they're going to get pissed off.
Heaping money into a pile and burning it, a la Ledger's Joker, may look cool and edgy, but shareholders tend to get really grumpy about that sort of thing. Even Larry Fink can't fund duh-versity and shitty wokeness forever.
It kinda pisses me off, seeing all this money and time wasted like this. How about an adaptation of the Black Company novels? Or Thieves' World? Heck, if I didn't think they'd fuck it up I'd go for an adaptation of the Belgariad. But no, we get a shitty LOTR Second Age story that's about on a par with a slash fic written by some starry-eyed teenager with a hobbit fetish.
Hell, even Lankhmar. So yeah, I definitely think it's name recognition. Because they've got both the movie fans who haven't read the books and the book fans, who may or may not like the films to varying degrees. No other fantasy IP has that kind of potential. But any of those you mentioned would warrant a series but since they're older and far less known, hard to see it happening. With Tolkien, no matter when they're setting the story, they just slap LOTR in the title and get buzz.
Good call. I forgot Lankhmar.
What puzzles me is that even Jackson's LOTR films got pored over by Tolkien fans who pointed out the flaws and rough spots. And they were kind for the most part.
They're not going to be kind to the Rings of Power. It's going to be Last Jedi all over again.
Cui bono? Who profits? Or is it just for spite and the chance to humiliate another fandom? Maybe even my capacity for contempt has limits, because I can't imagine burning that much cash just to rub my dick on Tolkien's face (metaphorically speaking).
Name recognition is so stupid. There are countless great fantasy series that languish in obscurity because they're not Tolkien. This includes actual mythology.
Quote from: Ghostmaker on March 02, 2022, 08:30:48 AM
What puzzles me is that even Jackson's LOTR films got pored over by Tolkien fans who pointed out the flaws and rough spots. And they were kind for the most part.
Jackson's LotR films got a pass when the changes made sense. For example, having Arwen saving Frodo helped with two problems: that Arwen is a very opaque character in the book (when her importance should instead be front and center) and how Tolkien himself stumbled when he tried to explain why Glorfindel wasn't part of the Nine. So, Jackson solved a potential problem without betraying the lore (even the animated adaptation had Legolas meeting the hobbits instead of Glorfindel).
However Jackson was roasted every time he went astray: Faramir, Denethor, Eowyn (partially), surfing Legolas etc. And he had the time to cut Arwen from Helm's Deep battle (there are stills that still show Liv Tyler in the background) because
that one had the fans with the flamethrowers ready. In a way, studying when and why Jackson was grilled should have been a map to what not to do in TroP.
Quote
Cui bono? Who profits?
A scary theory is that Amazon/Jeff Bezos are playing the long game. Redo the Second Age (who cares if they lose money?) buy the rights to all-Tolkien and redo woke-LotR but now in canon - because the nu-canon is TRoP. The paradox, here, is that Amazon has the rights to the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings right now - but they know that if they go against the Jackson's movies now they will be obliterated. Expect LotR in 2030 with a black gay hobbit, a trans hobbit, Frodo+Sam and Legolas+Gimli (one of the two PoC) and so on.
And if the madness of our times is, by 2030, a pale remembrance, Amazon can even try to do a proper adaptation - D&D Satanic Panic vs. 3E way.
It's an interesting theory, Reckall, but wokeists tend to be all about the immediate gratification. Some are decent at playing the long game, but I don't think these showrunners are nearly so patient.
Peter Jackson's going to look like a pillar of canon at this rate, though. There's been some leaks (posted on Bounding into Comics) that Tar-Miriel is the one ruling Numenor, not Ar-Pharazon.
Hahahaha what? Talk about spitting in the eye of the lore here. From Tolkien:
Quote"And it came to pass that Tar-Palantir grew weary of grief and died. He had no son, but a daughter only, whom he named Míriel in the Elven-tongue; and to her now by right and the laws of the Númenóreans came the sceptre."
"But Pharazôn took her to wife against her will, doing evil in this and evil also in that the laws of Númenor did not permit the marriage, even in the royal house, of those more nearly akin than cousins in the second degree," he continued.
"And when they were wedded, he seized the sceptre into his own hand, taking the title of Ar-Pharazôn (Tar-Calion in the Elven-tongue); and the name of his queen he changed to Ar-Zimraphel,"
Holy fuckballs. They do realize Numenor fell during the reign of Ar-Pharazon? As in, sank into the sea? Are they going to hang the responsibility for that on Miriel? Seriously?
I have to give these dumb fuckers credit. They're making Legend of Vox Machina look like a goddamn fantasy masterpiece at this rate.
Quote from: Ghostmaker on March 03, 2022, 09:02:14 AM
It's an interesting theory, Reckall, but wokeists tend to be all about the immediate gratification. Some are decent at playing the long game, but I don't think these showrunners are nearly so patient.
Peter Jackson's going to look like a pillar of canon at this rate, though. There's been some leaks (posted on Bounding into Comics) that Tar-Miriel is the one ruling Numenor, not Ar-Pharazon.
Hahahaha what? Talk about spitting in the eye of the lore here. From Tolkien:
Quote"And it came to pass that Tar-Palantir grew weary of grief and died. He had no son, but a daughter only, whom he named Míriel in the Elven-tongue; and to her now by right and the laws of the Númenóreans came the sceptre."
"But Pharazôn took her to wife against her will, doing evil in this and evil also in that the laws of Númenor did not permit the marriage, even in the royal house, of those more nearly akin than cousins in the second degree," he continued.
"And when they were wedded, he seized the sceptre into his own hand, taking the title of Ar-Pharazôn (Tar-Calion in the Elven-tongue); and the name of his queen he changed to Ar-Zimraphel,"
Holy fuckballs. They do realize Numenor fell during the reign of Ar-Pharazon? As in, sank into the sea? Are they going to hang the responsibility for that on Miriel? Seriously?
I have to give these dumb fuckers credit. They're making Legend of Vox Machina look like a goddamn fantasy masterpiece at this rate.
Not if they totally rewrite the history of Numenor so that Ar-Zimraphel sees through Sauron's tricks and kicks him in the nads and saves everybody.
I would have thought they'd keep Ar-Pharazôn the Golden. He's the embodiment of hubris and entitlement, so combined with his gender and presumed skin color, he'd make the perfect villain for SJWs.
Quote from: Pat on March 03, 2022, 10:21:46 AM
I would have thought they'd keep Ar-Pharazôn the Golden. He's the embodiment of hubris and entitlement, so combined with his gender and presumed skin color, he'd make the perfect villain for SJWs.
That's kind of my point. It's like they read to the point where Tar-Miriel takes the throne (briefly) and missed how Ar-Pharazon usurped it, and how he eventually screwed everything up.
There's a sad irony too. Before Ar-Pharazon decided to try and invade Valinor, he rolled into Middle Earth and basically pwned Sauron's forces so badly they
deserted. The Numenoreans brought Sauron back home
in chains. Yes, it was a very, very bad decision, but holy shit the brass balls that would take.
What's bizarre is one of the showrunners (McKay) states they can't contradict works they don't have the rights to, and then they turn around and do this? Huh?
Quote from: Ghostmaker on March 02, 2022, 08:06:22 AM
I have to admit, the thought that this is solely to shit on Tolkien refuses to leave my mind. Because there's plenty of books that could be adapted for a low-fantasy series. Why try to shoehorn LOTR into that genre?
Is it about name recognition? Could be. But that just means the Tolkien fans are going to be eyeballing it with the autistic focus of a goddamn Trekkie. And then they're going to get pissed off.
Heaping money into a pile and burning it, a la Ledger's Joker, may look cool and edgy, but shareholders tend to get really grumpy about that sort of thing. Even Larry Fink can't fund duh-versity and shitty wokeness forever.
It kinda pisses me off, seeing all this money and time wasted like this. How about an adaptation of the Black Company novels? Or Thieves' World? Heck, if I didn't think they'd fuck it up I'd go for an adaptation of the Belgariad. But no, we get a shitty LOTR Second Age story that's about on a par with a slash fic written by some starry-eyed teenager with a hobbit fetish.
Yeah it seems if people want to have a fantasy show with "THE MESSAGE" and "PROGRESSIVE" undertones they would just take thieves world. It already has some of the things these people try to force on other ip and honestly it is presented in an engaging and entertaining way. Why not just use something that is already the thing you want to present?
Quote from: Ghostmaker on March 03, 2022, 11:09:54 AM
Quote from: Pat on March 03, 2022, 10:21:46 AM
I would have thought they'd keep Ar-Pharazôn the Golden. He's the embodiment of hubris and entitlement, so combined with his gender and presumed skin color, he'd make the perfect villain for SJWs.
That's kind of my point. It's like they read to the point where Tar-Miriel takes the throne (briefly) and missed how Ar-Pharazon usurped it, and how he eventually screwed everything up.
There's a sad irony too. Before Ar-Pharazon decided to try and invade Valinor, he rolled into Middle Earth and basically pwned Sauron's forces so badly they deserted. The Numenoreans brought Sauron back home in chains. Yes, it was a very, very bad decision, but holy shit the brass balls that would take.
What's bizarre is one of the showrunners (McKay) states they can't contradict works they don't have the rights to, and then they turn around and do this? Huh?
And then Ar-Pharazôn attacked the gods, and they got so pissed they changed the shape of the entire world so nobody could sail to the divine realms anymore. He's basically the 2nd Age's answer to Feanor.
I suppose without more information, it's plausible they're starting with Tar-Miriel, and Ar-Pharazôn will be introduced as a villain who usurps the throne
Quote from: Pat on March 03, 2022, 11:35:55 AM
Quote from: Ghostmaker on March 03, 2022, 11:09:54 AM
Quote from: Pat on March 03, 2022, 10:21:46 AM
I would have thought they'd keep Ar-Pharazôn the Golden. He's the embodiment of hubris and entitlement, so combined with his gender and presumed skin color, he'd make the perfect villain for SJWs.
That's kind of my point. It's like they read to the point where Tar-Miriel takes the throne (briefly) and missed how Ar-Pharazon usurped it, and how he eventually screwed everything up.
There's a sad irony too. Before Ar-Pharazon decided to try and invade Valinor, he rolled into Middle Earth and basically pwned Sauron's forces so badly they deserted. The Numenoreans brought Sauron back home in chains. Yes, it was a very, very bad decision, but holy shit the brass balls that would take.
What's bizarre is one of the showrunners (McKay) states they can't contradict works they don't have the rights to, and then they turn around and do this? Huh?
And then Ar-Pharazôn attacked the gods, and they got so pissed they changed the shape of the entire world so nobody could sail to the divine realms anymore. He's basically the 2nd Age's answer to Feanor.
I suppose without more information, it's plausible they're starting with Tar-Miriel, and Ar-Pharazôn will be introduced as a villain who usurps the throne
Perhaps, but I suspect they'll have a problem with dueling narratives: evil white guy (Ar-Pharazon) versus strong independent womyn (Tar-Miriel). Can't have the evil white guy getting the upper hand even temporarily, let alone have a moment of triumph.
Social Justice is flexible. Evil white guy can triumph if the woman gets some sort of last laugh or some other woman avenges her.
Quote from: Ghostmaker on March 03, 2022, 02:00:37 PM
Quote from: Pat on March 03, 2022, 11:35:55 AM
Quote from: Ghostmaker on March 03, 2022, 11:09:54 AM
Quote from: Pat on March 03, 2022, 10:21:46 AM
I would have thought they'd keep Ar-Pharazôn the Golden. He's the embodiment of hubris and entitlement, so combined with his gender and presumed skin color, he'd make the perfect villain for SJWs.
That's kind of my point. It's like they read to the point where Tar-Miriel takes the throne (briefly) and missed how Ar-Pharazon usurped it, and how he eventually screwed everything up.
There's a sad irony too. Before Ar-Pharazon decided to try and invade Valinor, he rolled into Middle Earth and basically pwned Sauron's forces so badly they deserted. The Numenoreans brought Sauron back home in chains. Yes, it was a very, very bad decision, but holy shit the brass balls that would take.
What's bizarre is one of the showrunners (McKay) states they can't contradict works they don't have the rights to, and then they turn around and do this? Huh?
And then Ar-Pharazôn attacked the gods, and they got so pissed they changed the shape of the entire world so nobody could sail to the divine realms anymore. He's basically the 2nd Age's answer to Feanor.
I suppose without more information, it's plausible they're starting with Tar-Miriel, and Ar-Pharazôn will be introduced as a villain who usurps the throne
Perhaps, but I suspect they'll have a problem with dueling narratives: evil white guy (Ar-Pharazon) versus strong independent womyn (Tar-Miriel). Can't have the evil white guy getting the upper hand even temporarily, let alone have a moment of triumph.
One of these days they might realize that a victory over a laughably incompetent villain feels empty compared to a victory against a competent and capable villain. Or that winning at everything isn't as interesting as a story where the hero faces challenges and setbacks.
They've actually said somewhere what they're doing with Tar-Miriel, but I forget in what interview. But it has something to do with her being the heroine who sees through Sauron's lies and emerges as leader of the faithful IIRC.
Quote from: Persimmon on March 03, 2022, 07:00:02 PM
They've actually said somewhere what they're doing with Tar-Miriel, but I forget in what interview. But it has something to do with her being the heroine who sees through Sauron's lies and emerges as leader of the faithful IIRC.
Actually, they are making Miriel the ruler & making Ar-Pharazon just her adviser.
QuoteAnd the relationships were DULL--specially the one between Aragorn and Arwen, which was barely even touched on and we basically had to be TOLD that the relationship was there. I always felt that Aragorn and Eowyn worked better precisely because she got orders of magnitude more pages in the book--with actual interactions with Aragorn--than Arwen ever did. Hell, she was the ONLY female character with any meaningful role or significant involvement in the book, as far as I recall (it's been like two decades by now). Aragorn's involvement with Arwen felt predetermined, like Tolkien chose that it was going to happen before hand no matter what actually transpired in the actual pages.
But that's perfectly fine. Because it is not a book about Aragorn and Arwen. If there was such book then whole LOTR would be like third book of such trilogy or smth.
Whole point is - this is not book about their romance, but it exists as part of Aragorn history. Aragorn had his character arc before LOTR basically. And that's what's structurally awesome and more subvertive compared to modern novels than any GoT shit.
QuoteTwo movies? Would that have been better? It's still one movie too many. The book stood on its own, for what 15 years before even LOTR was published, let alone the later hooh-ha. No "lore" needed. Alluded to, sure, but not needed. In fact, better for only being alluded to. In my opinion, a missed opportunity to make one great movie instead of three (or two) tedious ones.
I doubt it would work. "Hobbit" as a book is recollection of actual dangerous adventure of quite epic scope, including major battle, death of one of last wyrms, restoration of Erebor and Dale kingdoms (that will later stop invasion of Easterlings during War of Ring.) told in-verse by Bilbo Baggins to hobbit children basically. Simplified and colored vision of events. Could work that way if Hobbit was filmed before LOTR. Would not after. The problem is - where they could delve deeper into lore and mood, they delved into pointless overblown action scenes instead - which TBH was also sin of LOTR 2 and 3, too much time spend on batalistic.
QuoteJackson's female Dwarves on those movies are easily distinguished from the males. But they do have beards.
You call that a beard? Amigo, maybe what Richard Armitage wore would count as female beard, but even that's very doubtful. Yeah, Jackson was also a hack, but this mistake was thankfully blink and you miss it, not within starring cast.
QuoteIt's not an epic prequel to LOTR, and trying to shoehorn it into one... well we all saw how that turned out.
If you strop it of Bilbo jokes clearly ment for children, it is kinda epic prequel, and with LOTR appendixes one could relatively easily make it as such.
Problem is Hobbits action is terribly overblown, it's drunk over CGI epicness, not to mention utterly uncessary side scenes.
QuoteIt's a mythology for England, yes the skin color is an issue.
It started as such, but evolved into quite something different. Good example will be - in any mythos ancient heroes are meant to be ancestors of people telling myths. Greek heroes were Greek, and they lived in Greece, Nordic berserkers from sagas lived in Scandinavia generally, Ilya Muromets in Russia. They were relatively little removed.
Tolkien evolved past it. Let's note - while hobbits speak English and Rohirrim Old English it's presented by Tolkien himself as translation from language spoken pre-Ice Age, language that's not even remotely simmilar to German or English (see original names of hobbits, or names of Numenorean kings). There is no even clear connection like in Conan books, it's mere translation of some archaic myth of different time and culture. If he wanted it to be English mythology (bit a folly considering English are simply speaking West Germans and they participate in Germanic mythos) well that's place where it fails.
But more importantly for a case - even if it was meant to be truly English - it means nothing for dwarves, because dwarves, like ents, orcs and dragons are not even human. I mean hobbits are ok, but not the rest of group. And Tolkien purposefuly modeled dwarves after Jews both in terms of language and using certain positive and negative stereotypes about Jewishness.
So I think we can clearly say - even if this world is meant to be English - the dwarves they are well Not-English element in this fantasy.
Honestly problem is more that they do not give dwarves any specific look. They gonna be Seatlle random bag. If they looked coherently as race, then let's say casting Ethiopians to play them would be fine. But instead by have other than black princess, random Jackson film like dwarves (Jackson dwarves design was also terribly and taken from D&D and Warhammer more than Tolkien) so it's diversity for diversity sake. And for that fuck those people.
Quote from: GeekyBugle on March 01, 2022, 10:39:32 PM
Maybe because they hired an intimacy coordinator? Add to that he wants his own GoT and you get justified fears they'll make it as pornographic as they can.
Well the script for the unmade LOTR movie has a bit in it where Frodo is banging Galadriel. So not an unfounded fear at all.
Quote from: Omega on March 23, 2022, 07:06:34 PM
Quote from: GeekyBugle on March 01, 2022, 10:39:32 PM
Maybe because they hired an intimacy coordinator? Add to that he wants his own GoT and you get justified fears they'll make it as pornographic as they can.
Well the script for the unmade LOTR movie has a bit in it where Frodo is banging Galadriel. So not an unfounded fear at all.
Is that where he shows her The One Cock Ring to Rule Them All?
Sorry, I couldn't resist. But even a porn version of LOTR would be better than what Amazon is doing.
QuoteWell the script for the unmade LOTR movie has a bit in it where Frodo is banging Galadriel. So not an unfounded fear at all.
I mean is that so much shocking - that halfling is shagging a gnome? Seems kinda normal.
Quote from: Persimmon on March 23, 2022, 07:35:28 PM
Quote from: Omega on March 23, 2022, 07:06:34 PM
Quote from: GeekyBugle on March 01, 2022, 10:39:32 PM
Maybe because they hired an intimacy coordinator? Add to that he wants his own GoT and you get justified fears they'll make it as pornographic as they can.
Well the script for the unmade LOTR movie has a bit in it where Frodo is banging Galadriel. So not an unfounded fear at all.
Is that where he shows her The One Cock Ring to Rule Them All?
Sorry, I couldn't resist. But even a porn version of LOTR would be better than what Amazon is doing.
If I wanted to consume such I bet there's already some in the market, rule 34 exists for a reason.
Quote from: Wrath of God on March 23, 2022, 07:37:31 PM
QuoteWell the script for the unmade LOTR movie has a bit in it where Frodo is banging Galadriel. So not an unfounded fear at all.
I mean is that so much shocking - that halfling is shagging a gnome? Seems kinda normal.
Only if the halfling is a Bard. Also Galadriel is an Elf but who cares at this point.
QuoteOnly if the halfling is a Bard. Also Galadriel is an Elf but who cares at this point.
Yes. An Elf. Specifically - a Noldo. Ergo a Gnome.