Lord of the Rings - [Amazon] *Spoilers*

PhiloCypher

What I find hilarious and sad about the uproar around these things is that I guarantee half the people raging wouldn't have had a clue that Galadriel never swung a sword in anger , or in fact given a ****, if their favourite woke obsessed youtuber wasn't telling them to be furious over it.

pjohnson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118631090#Comment_118631090

Yep. Amongst all the "triggered" drivel theres actually perfectly valid reasons why this thing is just an awful concept.

Like if they wanted to an original story in Middle Earth then sure give it a shot. A bit weird not to try and adapt one of the many many stories yet unadapted but ok I'd give it a shot and see.

But WTF is the point of dragging Galadriel and other existing characters into it? Thats just a strange pointless bástardised story.

And I have to correct @TheIrishGrover this "Warrior Galadriel" is an incredibly nerfed and insulting version of the actual Galadriel rather than "possibly strong female character". Galadriel was probably the strongest female by a distance in Middle Earth in Tolkiens actual work.

TheIrishGrover

Well, I was just commenting on the "Uproar" online (feverish Youtubers) about woke this and agenda-pushing that. People claiming "I'LL NEVER WATCH THIS WOKE CATASTROPHY!!!!!!EXCALAMATIONMARK!!!"and then bemoan the lack of Fantasy on TV.

As for the inclusion of Elrond and Galadriel, while it may be inconsistent with the books, one must remember that these are adaptations and they need to have as much crossover appeal as possible to gather as big an audience as possible. This may be distasteful for some but it is purely a business decision. You must remember, as popular as the books are, they are trying to reach a MUCH bigger audience. Hence the inclusion of "Oh cool, it's a younger version of yer man from the movie". They need a way to lure people in. The movies were MASSIVELY popular of course, and Game of Thrones was also hugely popular. But they can't go down the Thrones hardcore sex and violence avenue and, let's ne honest, LoTR would be pretty damn high on the "nerrrrrrrrrd" scale.

They will also want the ability to tap into the lore. It may not be as deep as one would like but again, business. Ask yourself, if it was a choice of having Galadriel nd Elrond in and actually have a series or have to abandon the series if they had to stick too slavishly to the lore, which would you prefer? (And I'm not saying you want them to stick slavishly to Lore).

So, in my opinion, it is a forgivable inclusion. (Unlike Legolas' inclusion in The Hobbit trilogy or.... y'know, the Hobbit trilogy in general)

pjohnson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118631558#Comment_118631558

If they wanted to use Elrond and Galadriel they needed to respect the actual characters.

Like I'm not sure how much crossover appeal that those characters can offer at this point. Its not like Weaving or Blanchett or even any footage of them from the first trilogy is even going to be used. And more importantly, whatever about Elrond and his characterisation this Galadriel is from an utterly different universe to the version fans of the Trilogy would know.

They'd have got the crossover effect by simply being a work of Tolkiens. If they wanted an original story then just use original characters.

This is exactly the same as using Legolas as a "crossover" to link the trilogies. (And I dont think that pleased anyone be they readers or not as he just stuck out badly). Tauriel wasn't as problematic as she had no lore so wasnt badly out of place as a character (although there wasnt a need for so many hours of Elves in the movies).

While the length of the Hobbit trilogy was questionable overall it managed not to break any lore or have any daft retcons (Legolas aside). Like the Dol Goldur parts had no reason to happen in a Hobbit movie BUT those events were true at least.

I wouldn't have minded an original tale and them ignoring lore if thats what they went for but its not, it can't be original and then use actual characters that have decades of lore attached......its moronic. They failed to decide if they wanted original or lore and have done neither.

MisterAnarchy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118629745#Comment_118629745

Spot on analysis by the Critical Drinker.

Another Mary Sue female lead, no thanks.

The showrunners for this don't seem to have had many previous scripts developed, they wrote Jungle Cruise, and their script for Star Trek Beyond was ditched inplace of that heap of dung by Simon Pegg.

The trailer looks visually cheap, with poor cgi and ungraded video. Its not using grit and sepia'd tones to convoy a realistic world. Everything looks artificial.

Bear Mc Creary seems to be one of the few positives.

TheIrishGrover

Guess it's good to have an open mind and give something a chance. At LEAST more than one minute. I'll give it a fair chance.

Just out of curiosity, what WOULD people want?

Do people want one similar in tone and look of Peter Jackson's Rings trilogy?

Do people want a gritty and grimy "reasism" of Game of Thrones?

Do people want it to focus on a established storyline and stick closely to that?

Or do they want a 100% isolated storyline just set in this world?

I'm genuinely curious because I believe that people will want different things.

pjohnson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118633148#Comment_118633148

Well the biggest thing would be either original story OR canon story for a start.

After that I'd give either a go as I love Tolkiens world. Just not this bâstardised middle of nowhere gack.

cannonballTaffyOjones

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118629915#Comment_118629915

You can add chrome extensions to show downvotes ...

not surprisingly this is getting ratiod .. ...

Nody

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118633148#Comment_118633148

I'll go with their stated goal to make it a modern day story with inclusion and trying to represent a wide background I'd go with something not explored previously. Go into the south lands; do multi season arch of why they are pissed at Gondor and why they join Sauron and how they march to the war (yes that's not second age I'm well aware). Explore the background to how they got involved in the war, why they aligned "with the bad guy" so to speak and flesh them out from the current generic "evil people who ride elephants" as well as why they are pissed off at Gondor / West in general. You can even run parallels with Gondor being USA importing slaves from Africa or the opium war with China if you really want to meta it up from a story perspective set up.

That would be a fresh area without running into massive lore issues while giving both book and non book readers something to dive into and discuss, speculate etc. without having the "Well on page 47 it said ..." etc. It would give a common theme to speculate around without the book readers having the plot outlines already but allows the book readers to fill in gaps that might not come over to a non book reader. You can have the season 5 be all about the march over and have it basically end right before the battles; you can do tie over to the lord of the ring movies with the scene when their forces are seen marching and comment about "Well they are only children" when they spot the hobbits and decide to ignore them kind of thing. That would be something new, it would run into very limited lore issues AND it would allow a fresh set of hands to actually build something new and unique into the franchise. You can easily spot in famous characters coming to a meeting etc. but they are not the focus of the story here and throw in the (apparently) mandatory love story line there as well without it feeling out of place and you end season 5 with a charge representing the charge in the movie basically. For me that would be something new, they would have a relatively blank slate to work with (they have the milestones of joining the war and Sauron etc.) as well as being something unique and capture the interest of both book and non book readers. You can easily mix in dwarfs, elves etc. as well but the main meta story will be about the humans down there.

Terence Rattigan

Hoping against hope that this will be good, but signs aren`t promising.

National Lampoon brought out a parody of LOTR many moons ago, Bored of the Rings, very funny, its up in the attic somewhere!

pjohnson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118633303#Comment_118633303

This is exactly how an original story should be done. It respects the wider universe and can have nods to certain events in that wider universe without breaking anything.

That would have been a perfect (and well worth watching) way to go about an original story.

TheIrishGrover

And of course there is this...

https://gizmodo.com/the-lord-of-the-rings-war-of-the-rohirrim-anime-rides-1848536439

Beechwoodspark

I mean just on the black elves thing. Is that canon or just made up for the series?

cannonballTaffyOjones

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118630309#Comment_118630309

Hmm I don't think anyone is complaining about "Strong Female Characters" - Do you remember the uproar over Arwen, Galadriel, and Eowyn in the Jackson trilogy ?? No me neither ... there was none.

The problem here is the lore is being messed with, Galadriel as a warrior makes no sense, read the apendices from Return of The King ...

Black elves ... well like it or not JRR Tolkien was very specific about elves in his books, blonde, fair skinned .... It was the world he knew, if Amazon want to make a new fantasy epic with a diverse range of characters ... fair enough, but don't change the canon lore of LOTR.

seraphimvc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118633303#Comment_118633303

excellent post! and honestly it is obvious - because it requires a lot of (hard) work if the production team really strives to produce an epic work - following source material is hard enough - let alone creating new lore.

So ya, it is easier to do the tick boxes and jammed the woke/PC/whatever sh!te in the shows nowadays. Rather than producing meaningful story/plot development/fleshing out the characters etc. The team helms the project is critical and also passion and a huge amount of luck with the right writers behind the project (e.g. like The Expanse's team).

seraphimvc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118631308#Comment_118631308

On "Warrior Galadriel" - I only know the original book+trilogy lotr so I have no idea what she does outside of that. So ya to me it is definitely hilarious to see her in a shiny armour in mud "ma strong woman worriorr"😂. The elf queen is supposed to be the most powerful (among or the oldest?) mage and I thought she is about 'wisdom' etc. I wouldn't even call myself a lotr fan but it is just too obvious the team just decided to grab a (known) female character and plaster her to be the "ma strong woman". Funny because exactly like you said that the team somehow made her a weaker female character ahaha.

keane2097

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118639449#Comment_118639449

Blonde was definitely not a requirement to be a Tolkien elf

Stephen_Maturin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118630309#Comment_118630309

Think this response is a bit disingenuous tbh Grover - there is no popular aversion to strong female characters in film/TV. There are so many examples that immediately spring to mind - Sarah Connor, Ripley from Alien, Trinity from Maxtrix trilogy, Clarice Starling from Silence of the Lambs, Uma Thurman’a character in Kill Bill (and the rest of Fox Force 5), Lara Croft, Eowyn and Arwen from LotR, Scully from X Files etc etc etc

Nobody has a problem with strong female characters and the hugely popular examples above attest to that.

What sets these characters apart from the hamfisted #StrongWomen characters we see shoehorned into all media today for diversity’s sake is that they were proper three dimensional characters with depth and interesting facets - their sex was mostly incidental to the character.

What we get nowadays instead is characters that actually embody the worst characteristics of male chauvinism but hey it’s a female character so it must be positive right?! Nah it’s just boring - you get paper thin characters that can be expected to behave and act exactly the same way. And the fact that it is such transparent executive input makes it all the more tiresome. It’s not about producing faithful reproductions of source material or improving the plot. It’s about covering their asses pandering to the twitter mob. That’s the problem I have with it.

silverharp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118640714#Comment_118640714

totally agree, one quibble I have though is that in some of the cases and especially Galadriel, femininity is an integral element of their character not incidental. The major criticism of hollywood today is that female characters are just cheap copies of male characters , then generally as a consequence the males around them have to be nerfed so yass queen can shine. Its an easy tell if a show/film is going to for the ages or just some forgetable tosh or as someone said you might not notice but your brain will.

cannonballTaffyOjones

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118640714#Comment_118640714

^^ This 100%

sekiro

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118633148#Comment_118633148

There is almost no chance at all that this will actually be good. Even Jackson's movies came close to going a bit too far in some places and then came The Hobbit movies.

What I would want is for them to just come up with their own stuff. Forget about trying to do anything with Middle Earth at all and just come up with their own fantasy show and let it stand on it's own merits.

If they've looked at LOTR and fancied making a show from it and then been like "actually I don't quite think Galadriel and Elrond in the books is what we'd want to base a show around so let's change their characters and lets add in a good few of our own characters" then why even bother? They should just make their own original show.

There comes a point where what they are doing is making the show they want to make that has nothing really to do with Tolkien's works and then slapping a "Lord of the Rings" sticker on it just to make a bit of cash.

It's the reason why fanfiction writers do what they do. They generally aren't going to end up being successful writers so they make a wee daft story with existing characters in some weird different context and get interest from others because it's a bit of fun to speculate on what would happen if Gandalf and Saruman were transported to 19th Century London and had a whimsical love triangle with Sherlock Holmes.

At the end of the day this is multi-million dollar fan-fiction. I think it would be better if they just didn't do this kind of stuff at all. It's kind of horrible to watch a cultural touchstone like this being vandalized by people who are only in it for the money.

Is there some reason they couldn't just write their own fantasy story and world with elves and all that?

I'd almost have more respect for them if they were just honest. Just admit they don't really know what to do with the character of Galadriel and probably don't even want to write a story for the character portrayed in Tolkien's work but they definitely do want the money that'll come in from using the name.

MisterAnarchy

Good article on why the new series looks so cheap and the overuse of cgi in modern films and tv.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/lord-of-the-rings-amazon-trailer-b2015466.html

cannonballTaffyOjones

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118641948#Comment_118641948

Good post , and the Hobbit trilogy is a great example of how messing too much with canon lore can lead to terrible films.

The 1st was decent enough, 2nd ok ... but the 3rd was just pure garbage, I could not believe what I was watching ..

And the really annoying thing is with the Hobbit, they could have made it into ONE great film, but they got so greedy.

breezy1985

I agree that the promo clip doesn't look great but people are jumping to some mad conclusions about Galadriel cause we saw her in a bit of armour.

It could turn out to be true given the CW look of the ad but no point getting all worked up till we have actually seen it.

BruteStock

The two guys behind this production have just one credit to their name which is ST Beyond. That should be cause for concern as that movie was a genuine zero out of 10.

The expressionless face of Galadriel as she scales an ice mountain with a dagger stood out too. Looked fake af

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118653047#Comment_118653047

Star Trek Beyond was by very far the best of those new movies. That doesn't make it amazing but certainly better than the real 0/10 that came before it.

The CGI is disappointing but I have come to expect that. It's still not at the place where it can do humans and it looked awful in the otherwise excellent Expanse too.

BruteStock

Benedict stole scenes left and right in Darkness so you can't grade it a zero when it features such a great performance . And it's generally a very underrated film that gets better on second and third viewings. 8/10 in my book

MisterAnarchy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118653047#Comment_118653047

They dont even have one credit as their script for Star Trek Beyond was discarded , Simon Pegg wrote a new script which was atrocious.

Star Trek Beyond was by very far the best of those new movies. That doesn't make it amazing but certainly better than the real 0/10 that came before it.

😁, its the worst Star Trek movie ever made, Beyond awful.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118653296#Comment_118653296

Whether he acted it well or not the whole idea of that character was the worst thing about that awful movie. It's premise and execution are both absolute crap.

Very much like the criticism of this new Amazon LotR its essentially taking well established characters and trying to make them cool, hip and young and throw in loads of flashing lights and CGI for the OMGs.

BruteStock

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/feb/18/the-guide-lord-of-the-rings-amazon

In terms of attracting eyeballs, Amazon’s gambit was a success: 257m people around the world watched the teaser in the first 24 hours after its release.

Fact check- the teaser drew 27m views. Obviously a very large number but consider the Dr Strange trailer which released at the time(24 hr difference) has 38m views.

Imo a Marvel movie shouldn't be attracting more views than a LOTR trailer. . Anyway, false reporting from the Guardian that shouldn't really be a surprise to anyone.