The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

[Tamas]

A guy on Twitter has gathered a bunch of public reactions to the first images and trailers for The Fellowship of the Ring back from 2001, History repeats itself. 

https://twitter.com/CMA_Hudson/status/1493611059822931969

I was going to say: this new series may very well suck but I am having a hard time blaming them for taking liberties with the story, if they do. Jackson's trilogy only made changes which were necessary and an improvement in translating the material from book to cinema. Yet he got flak for it from the LOTR nerds, despite the movies being absolutely great (and a huge success despite the nerd rage, even with fans of the books). So why would these guys worry about alienating the hardcore? They'll do that no matter what they try.

[celedhring]

To be frank, my recollection is a bit different. I used to check this large Spanish LOTR forum when the movies came out, and most fans were pretty excited and supportive.

EDIT: Damn, it still exists and it still has the same layout  http://www.elfenomeno.com/

[The Brain]

The LOTR movies had big problems, but overall were better than could have been feared.

[The Larch]

I very clearly remember an anecdote from when I went to watch The Fellowship at the cinema. They did an intermission when Aragorn and the Hobbits arrived at the Weathertop, before their first battle with the Nazgul, and this guy 4 or 5 seats away from me, as soon as the lights went on, started bitching to his pals about how the scene in which Aragorn gave swords to the hobbits was a travesty because originally they found them in the Barrowlands and so on and so forth. It completely amazed me how, instead of being fascinated and marvelled for the aprox. 1 hour of film we had watched so far (which was my reaction), his first reaction was bitching about something ultimately inconsequential. There's no pleasing a certain fraction of the fandom, so they're best ignored.

[Threviel]

Excellent points. I might be overnerding. 

I remember being blown away by the fellowship and then less and less impressed with TT and RotK.

[Sheilbh]

My big issue is - and this may just be because it came out the day after the latest Jurassic World trailer - is the CGI. There were scenes in there that look like very cool and expensive video game cutscenes. It's not that I don't believe the world in the background is really there but, increasingly it looks like the actors aren't really there.

I'm sure it's just the stage we're at with CGI and there'll be a big leap to something better and mind-blowing soon but there's been a few big trailers lately that have had me wondering about that.

[The Brain]

Is any of us really here?

[Josquius]

Looking like a video game is where the hobbit lost me. The barrel scene.

[Sheilbh]

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.

[The Larch]

I remember seeing a production picture of The Hobbit that in retrospect was a big red flag. Ian McKellen, in full Gandalf gear, sitting in a fully green screen set pretending to be Bag's End, all by himself. He looked absolutely miserable in it.

Edit: I see it got memefied:

[grumbler]

So it appears that, when the showrunners said that they were going to "compress the timeline," what they meant was that they were going to make the fall of Numenor contemporaneous with the fall of Eregion and the loss of Moria.  These disasters are all apparently going to be the consequences of the possession of the Three, the Seven, and the Nine.

So it's going to be more a story "based on" Tolkien than Tolkien's own story.

[Threviel]

It actually sounds quite good and showcases why the rings were dangerous.

[celedhring]

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.

[Legbiter]

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.

Yeah it's being produced by absolute noobs. The teaser trailer is very unimpressive, looks like generic fantasy with mediocre CGI and hilariously miscast characters. Money can't fix creative bankruptcy.

[Sheilbh]

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.

That's a really good point and makes a lot of sense.