TLOTR: The Rings of Power

[troon_villan]

2 hours ago, villa4europe said:

yeah maybe interesting maybe not, they keep putting huge expensive TV shows out that are substandard and to compound it they do it on a weekly basis which most people don't want anymore

i reckon by about episode 6 of this I'll have forgotten its even on and drift away

Of course, the cynic in me knows fine well why the are doing certain shows one a week; to maintain subscriptions.

[CVByrne]

On 07/09/2024 at 21:34, Chindie said:

Episode 4 head a lot of the stuff I don't like and not much of the good. 

It's just dull and there's too much chick the IP at it and too much mystery box crap.

The hatred for it being 'woke' or whatever is completely misguided, it's bad because it's trying to build an epic event TV series out of bugger all material that doesn't lend itself to a modern event TV series, and a load of the stuff they've built to plug the hole is rubbish.

Nobody really cares about the woke stuff really. The issue is it's a complete reimagining of Tolkien in a JJ Abrams reboot way. So immediately alienating existing fanbase. So by doing that they needed to make their new characters interesting and engaging so people who don't have a clue about Tolkien or half remember the movies can just enjoy and engage with. 

They have failed spectacularly on both of those fronts. Tolkien fans detest the show with a passion. While they never managed to grab a new fanbase for the show. Viewership plummeted from start to end of Season 1. Season 2 started with less than half the viewers of Season 1 and dropping again. 

The show cost £1 billion to make the two seasons. An astronomical number. This is surely bigger financial loss than any movie or TV show has ever come.close to. 

 

[Chindie]

Episode 5 was better. Still not flawless, but better. 

We got back to the meaningful and compelling storylines and got them moving a bit. On the downside, it's a bit on the nose and it suffers, again, for chucking in LotR-y stuff, and it's a weirdly clunky episode that felt very... mechanical. But much, much better than the last episode.

Edited September 15 by Chindie

[ender4]

On 10/09/2024 at 18:20, CVByrne said:

Viewership plummeted from start to end of Season 1. Season 2 started with less than half the viewers of Season 1 and dropping again. 

Do Amazon release viewing figures? I assumed they would keep this information secret from the public?

[Chindie]

40 minutes ago, ender4 said:

Do Amazon release viewing figures? I assumed they would keep this information secret from the public?

Amazon releases fairly meaningless viewership figures - things like 'x million viewers in y million days', where the numbers don't really allow meaningful comparison between releases. 

What numbers they have released suggest viewership is down and is behind the lines of Fallout, but they've also said it's at number 5 in their list of releases by popularity, and they're apparently fairly happy with it. 

With this (and other) series, anything commented has to be taken with a degree of skepticism as there's a vocal population that is wishing with every fibre of their being for it to fail.

[CVByrne]

10 hours ago, Chindie said:

Amazon releases fairly meaningless viewership figures - things like 'x million viewers in y million days', where the numbers don't really allow meaningful comparison between releases. 

What numbers they have released suggest viewership is down and is behind the lines of Fallout, but they've also said it's at number 5 in their list of releases by popularity, and they're apparently fairly happy with it. 

With this (and other) series, anything commented has to be taken with a degree of skepticism as there's a vocal population that is wishing with every fibre of their being for it to fail.

It has failed. Nobody needs to wish anything anymore. But of course people want badly written, badly acted shows which treat source material with disdain to fail. This is because it will force companies to make good shows that people want to watch. It will also mean if they want to use a built in fanbase they need to be respectful and faithfully adapt something.  

I just watched Fargo Season 1 again having not seen it for years. The show was clearly faithful to the feeling and tone of the Movie as a sequel. Just a brilliantly written and acted TV show. Fargo Season 5 was pretty good too. 

Girlboss shows and movies with flawless protagonists who have no character arcs other than not believing in their own insane awesomeness are surely over now. Literally no money has been made from the tope but lots of high fives amongst a side in a culture war. 

Fallout has a female protagonist who has a character arc. Is capable of defending herself The show has diverse casting. Good writing, well written interesting characters and is entertaining. It is free of political messaging which is based on a "side" in said culture war. We need more shows like that. 

[Chindie]

Talk seems to be that it's been renewed for a third series.

[Rds1983]

4 hours ago, Chindie said:

Talk seems to be that it's been renewed for a third series.

The Third Age you might say.

[Chindie]

4 minutes ago, Rds1983 said:

The Third Age you might say.

Bit soon for a remake of the movies 

[Andy_10]

On 16/09/2024 at 09:15, CVByrne said:

It has failed. Nobody needs to wish anything anymore. But of course people want badly written, badly acted shows which treat source material with disdain to fail. This is because it will force companies to make good shows that people want to watch. It will also mean if they want to use a built in fanbase they need to be respectful and faithfully adapt something.  

I just watched Fargo Season 1 again having not seen it for years. The show was clearly faithful to the feeling and tone of the Movie as a sequel. Just a brilliantly written and acted TV show. Fargo Season 5 was pretty good too. 

Girlboss shows and movies with flawless protagonists who have no character arcs other than not believing in their own insane awesomeness are surely over now. Literally no money has been made from the tope but lots of high fives amongst a side in a culture war. 

Fallout has a female protagonist who has a character arc. Is capable of defending herself The show has diverse casting. Good writing, well written interesting characters and is entertaining. It is free of political messaging which is based on a "side" in said culture war. We need more shows like that. 

I agree with this 100%. From my own interests with the games, & having read all of the books, what they did with The Witcher source material was nothing short of plain stupidity.

They had an absolute open goal with that. Visuals from the game that would be recognisable to all, the plot with deep characters & all the political intrigue that one could want, sub plots, strong overlapping character arcs, war, fighting, monsters, magic, etc.

It was all written out with a road map for success.

But no, they decided to actively mock the source material, write an absolute pile of nonsense in its place, make secondary characters far more important than they were, introduce other characters too early, spread the diversity all over the place instead of placing it in areas that would give a specific area of the world a realistic feel, etc, etc, etc.

All to the point where the main character decided to quit half way through because he hated what they were doing to the source material & alienated the majority of the fans who knew the lore.

And at the same time, they didn't write anything in its place that appealed to new audiences.

Terrible TV & sadly, all part & parcel of the type of junk we are getting these days. 

[LakotaDakota]

On 16/09/2024 at 09:15, CVByrne said:

Fallout has a female protagonist who has a character arc. Is capable of defending herself The show has diverse casting. Good writing, well written interesting characters and is entertaining. It is free of political messaging which is based on a "side" in said culture war. We need more shows like that. 

If you think fallout was free of political messaging you must have watched a different show.

[sne]

17 minutes ago, Andy_10 said:

I agree with this 100%. From my own interests with the games, & having read all of the books, what they did with The Witcher source material was nothing short of plain stupidity.

They had an absolute open goal with that. Visuals from the game that would be recognisable to all, the plot with deep characters & all the political intrigue that one could want, sub plots, strong overlapping character arcs, war, fighting, monsters, magic, etc.

It was all written out with a road map for success.

But no, they decided to actively mock the source material, write an absolute pile of nonsense in its place, make secondary characters far more important than they were, introduce other characters too early, spread the diversity all over the place instead of placing it in areas that would give a specific area of the world a realistic feel, etc, etc, etc.

All to the point where the main character decided to quit half way through because he hated what they were doing to the source material & alienated the majority of the fans who knew the lore.

And at the same time, they didn't write anything in its place that appealed to new audiences.

Terrible TV & sadly, all part & parcel of the type of junk we are getting these days. 

The way Amazon handled the Wheel Of Times source material and the writing choices they made is just as bonkers. Just awful choices that turned into a unrecognizable mess. That show will likely get cancelled after s3. Could have been epic. 

[CVByrne]

7 hours ago, Chindie said:

Talk seems to be that it's been renewed for a third series.

However many seasons they want to make is irrelevant now though. The viewership nowhere near justifies the huge astronomical budget. It means it's lost Amazon Studios lots of money and is just a run of the mill show for their platform. So they could just cut their losses and cancel it. They could slash the budget for a season 3 and wrap it up with curtailed season. It's irrelevant. The failure is done and the hard lessons are being learned across the industry given failures of Star Wars, recent Marvel movies etc. 

[Rds1983]

3 hours ago, Chindie said:

Bit soon for a remake of the movies 

Yeah, they need to do the two Hunt for Gollum movies first.

[Andy_10]

1 hour ago, sne said:

The way Amazon handled the Wheel Of Times source material and the writing choices they made is just as bonkers. Just awful choices that turned into a unrecognizable mess. That show will likely get cancelled after s3. Could have been epic. 

Which again, should have been a slam dunk.

[Jareth]

Series 2 has got better, from a low bar to begin with. Incognito Sauron provides the narrative drive. I will say one thing, it lacks self awareness and humour (it's almost as though it's a wholly commercial exercise) That in the latest episode it was written in a script surviving from first draft to final draft, that an anvil is hoisted up to the ceiling in the forge, in the style of loony tunes, well what could possibly come of that? Sometimes feels like AI is writing this stuff.

[sne]

I get that they didn't want to hire a bunch of actors who were only in the story for a couple episodes and then replaced with new ones but their decision to compress the story from hundreds (if not thousands of years) into a couple weeks or whatever just so the human characters would be the same is just not working for me. It's grating more and more and it's ruining what could have been a mediocre series. 

Still looks expensive thou for the most parts so that's something. 

Spoiler

Wasn't enough with the Sauron/Venom-symbiote thing we got in a previous episode. This week we got a Disa/Morbius moment because apparently she can speak to bats now. Go Marvel.