The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

[Threviel]

I don't much mind changes, compressing the time and having the rings made and Moria and Numenore fall at the same time is an excellent idea for example.

If they want unbearded dwarves I can live with that. I don't care about race. Might be fun to discuss, but not really important.

What I don't want is the tone changed. Lotr is realistic fantasy, I want to see it get the GoT treatment, not the Xena treatment.

[Valmy]

I don't much mind changes, compressing the time and having the rings made and Moria and Numenore fall at the same time is an excellent idea for example.

If they want unbearded dwarves I can live with that. I don't care about race. Might be fun to discuss, but not really important.

What I don't want is the tone changed. Lotr is realistic fantasy, I want to see it get the GoT treatment, not the Xena treatment.

Well not even GoT. Lord of the Rings is not gritty. But yes no Marvel type jokes and shit.

The BBC made a bunch of GoT Tudor period pieces after GoT became big and man they were just horrid as either GoT rip offs or Tudor period pieces. Bandwagon jumping can get pretty cringy.

[Threviel]

Yeah, and what I see is Amazon rehashing the same old tropes that's been done to death... The mysterious stranger, the single mom living a strong life and so on. I would more like to see it in the style of The King or Maximilian. But I guess the future of TV are focus group selected themes and no-risk re-hashing of tired old crap.

Lotr is not gritty, but it is a brutal world. Elronds wife tortured by orcs til she went a bit mad and so on, the books are full of stuff that can be made into GoT style brutal violence. I'm quite sure they had sex too. But since Tolkien knew his shit it's not the stupid unrealistic violence of GoT.

[Legbiter]

Yeah, and what I see is Amazon rehashing the same old tropes that's been done to death... The mysterious stranger, the single mom living a strong life and so on. I would more like to see it in the style of The King or Maximilian. But I guess the future of TV are focus group selected themes and no-risk re-hashing of tired old crap.

It'll be a cringe, billion dollar fanfic with cancerous American culture war political inserts is my guess. You're basically torturing yourself holding out hope for this trash.

[Valmy]

Yeah, and what I see is Amazon rehashing the same old tropes that's been done to death... The mysterious stranger, the single mom living a strong life and so on. I would more like to see it in the style of The King or Maximilian. But I guess the future of TV are focus group selected themes and no-risk re-hashing of tired old crap.

Lotr is not gritty, but it is a brutal world. Elronds wife tortured by orcs til she went a bit mad and so on, the books are full of stuff that can be made into GoT style brutal violence. I'm quite sure they had sex too. But since Tolkien knew his shit it's not the stupid unrealistic violence of GoT.

Yes obviously brutal violence and epic destruction and tragedy occur in Tolkien's world but none of the cynicism of GoT. I mean I love GoT (well the books...I was not a huge fan of the show) but it is incredibly different from Tolkien. And trying use Tolkien to tell a GoT type story is doomed to failure and after the non-book scenes in the Hobbit trilogy I have a hard time expecting Tolkein-esque gold from modern show writers even without trying to be the next GoT.

Though I guess to be fair using GoT to tell a GoT type story when you don't have George RR Martin around is doomed to failure as we saw.

[Syt]

But one non bearded female dwarf, or even many of them, or the color of the skin of non descript characters: meh.

There was some (minor) outcry that for the adaptation of the Sandman comics a black actress was cast as Death. Granted, in the comics she's generally portrayed as a pale skinned goth girl, but the comics also establish that the Endless can take any form. Dream himself appears as black male in a story, or as a cat. So while I get that readers expect the "classic" look for the characters, the rules of that universe technically allow anyone to be cast.

[Valmy]

Yeah, and what I see is Amazon rehashing the same old tropes that's been done to death... The mysterious stranger, the single mom living a strong life and so on. I would more like to see it in the style of The King or Maximilian. But I guess the future of TV are focus group selected themes and no-risk re-hashing of tired old crap.

It'll be a cringe, billion dollar fanfic with cancerous American culture war political inserts is my guess. You're basically torturing yourself holding out hope for this trash.

I mean...I wish I could say that you are wrong.

I had very low expectations for Peter Jackson's original trilogy and thought LoTR was unfilmable. It was nice to be surprised. It seemed like a miracle then and it increasingly seems like lightning in a bottle as time goes on.

But if LoTR was perhaps difficult but not unfilmable the Silmarillion...oh boy. That's the final boss of Tolkien adaptations.

[Richard Hakluyt]

My main objection to the portrayal of the dwarves is that it is often comic; this people built Khazad-dûm, they are impressive.

[The Brain]

Brutal violence occurs in Tolkien's world, just like (straight) sex. But it's off camera (except combat between armed opponents).

[Richard Hakluyt]

Tolkien was born in 1892 and the sanitisation of violence and oblique to non-existent references to sex fit in with the late Victorian/Edwardian milieu in which he grew up. But....both sides practice genocide, there is cannibalism, Men are supplanting elves and dwarves because of all the sex and reproduction they get up to etc etc

If I was making this series I would be strongly tempted to go very dark, "the LOTR universe, but not as you have seen it before".

[Tamas]

How many people even complained about the dwarf woman? I bet it's like 5 guys and 20 other joining in to flame the controversy. Even if it was a 100 of them that's basically a statistical error in the sea of English-speaking people with access to the Internet. It's a non-issue.

[Threviel]

Tolkien was born in 1892 and the sanitisation of violence and oblique to non-existent references to sex fit in with the late Victorian/Edwardian milieu in which he grew up. But....both sides practice genocide, there is cannibalism, Men are supplanting elves and dwarves because of all the sex and reproduction they get up to etc etc

If I was making this series I would be strongly tempted to go very dark, "the LOTR universe, but not as you have seen it before".

Yeah. Tolkien had seen some very heavy shit also, being wounded at the Somme and all. But unlike Martin he had a deep understanding of history. So yes, violent, but not ridiculously so. His descriptions from Silmarillion make it very clear that the good guys were taken as slaves by orcs, so you could more or less make it as horrible as you would like.

I like your take. Dark, realistic, real. That's how I'd like it.

[garbon]

Practical magic?

[Sheilbh]

Practical magic?

The billion dollar TV adaptation we should have had.

[crazy canuck]

Yes. It was an issue in the Hobbit. I think it's possibly just where we are with the tech. But we'll see - from the trailer it looks like this has that problem.

Somehow, HBO does this so much better (GoT looked great and you bought the world) - and the Star Wars shows look great too. I guess it's because they can draw from Warner and Disney's resources/expertise, while Amazon and Netflix are still newcomers.

Does Netflix still count as newcomer? And it may be a wrong impression, but I feel they're much more decentralized and less hands on with their productions, plus farming out to many different producers from across the globe. All that combined may lead to a more uneven level of production quality in their library.

Yes, they're pretty hands off. IIRC The Witcher was done by Eastern European outfits, which are really great value for the buck (and it makes sense since the books are Polish) but it can't shake off the B-movie look.

But they are building their own infrastructure nowadays. The setup they have in Madrid is impressive. And they have huge facilities in New Mexico.

Netflix production is being done in Vancouver as well.