Lord of the Rings TV Series Purchased by Amazon

[Xath]

Can we get a thread for people who actually want to discuss the show without a bunch of people getting offended about their head canon?

This show is pure head canon seeing as there are numerous sweeping changes to set in stone things such as the numenorean line of succession.

[Syegfryed]

If you think "post something that supports your point" is desperate its quite telling.

Just imagined i post the episode here, done.

Do you think your average boxer is putting out more force then a sea storm?

Sea storm? i just imagined it was the lightning bolt that struck the boat and one debris went to her head, but guess it was zeus himself that throw with so much strength that knock out the strongest of the elves.

Im not gonna even enter in the part here the lightning should have hit her or something in a higher place, but sure, everything makes sense and its fine

[Xath]

It's almost as if it's an adaptation... and they have to move things around to fit a story spanning a millennia.

Give it a rest, if it bothers you so much, stop watching it, holy hell.

Take it for what it is, a tv show adaptation.

It's trash it's not an adaptation it's loosely inspired bad fanfiction

[InfiniteCharger]

He sold the exclusive rights to his work prior to his death. That sale didn't include provisions that it has to adhere to a strict adaption of his work so yes any future work that has the rights can do whatever they want with that work. It is why we have had dozens of things that have changed his work and created their own things inside that fictional world. Yet it is only a problem now when you don't like something.

It matters if the Jackson work was 100% faithful or not because it was celebrated by a lot of fans yet it has the same qualities that you say should be looked down upon by everyone because Tolkien didn't want "multiverses". Isn't it strange how things are only a problem when it comes to Rings of Power but magically are not when applied to other works?

As it stands the rights to the film the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit have nothing to do with Amazon, who only purchased the rights to the appendices.
This series does not have the rights to the Simarillion and anything else they would need to even do an adaption of the 2nd age properly. So what is the point? Just to do 'something' just to say it is somewhat remotely in a very flimsy way related to Tolkien? That doesn't even make sense.

Through Tolkien Enterprises, now Middle-earth Enterprises, Saul Zaentz owned the worldwide film, stage, and merchandise rights to J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.[15] It also includes "matching rights" should Tolkien's estate film The Silmarillion or The Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-Earth.[16] What it did not include was the rights for televisions shows (for any show longer than eight episodes).[16]

In 1976, Zaentz acquired certain rights as regards The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit from United Artists, who had in turn purchased them directly from Tolkien eight years prior. In 1978, Zaentz produced an animated version of The Lord of the Rings, written chiefly by Peter S. Beagle and directed by animator Ralph Bakshi.

Tolkien Enterprises granted an exclusive tabletop game license to company Iron Crown Enterprises in 1982, which was the largest such license in the industry up to that time.[17]

Eight years after his death, Zaentz Co. decided to sell The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings rights.[16]

On 18th August 2022, Embracer Group announced that it had entered into an agreement to purchase Middle-earth Enterprises from The Saul Zaentz Company. [18]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Zaentz

Basically the only thing that technically Amazon has the rights to is a television series based on the appendices to LOTR. Thats it. Which is basically a very narrow loophole that allows them to use the name "Lord of the Rings" even though this series isn't canonical to Lord of the Rings and is only very loosely related to it in spirit because it is only based on the appendices So the argument you are making is that this narrow loophole justifies this shows existence because of Tolkien selling those rights long ago. Which technically isn't the case at all because these specific rights had to be purchased directly from the Tolkien estate not Saul Zaentz and it was the Tolkien Estate that was looking for a studio to make a television series based on these limited rights. So yes, in this case it is the Tolkien Estate that is looking to cash in on the legacy of Tolkien and not even Tolkien himself as he never sold any rights for television series in general. And in that case it is the Estate itself who is promoting this watered down version of Tolkien in order to make some money for themselves. And a lot of this goes back to the fact that it took so long to get a movie made years after Tolkien sold those rights originally.

Amazon, Netflix and HBO had been approached by the Tolkien estate, who had been shopping the project. It came with an upfront rights payment said to be in the $200 million-$250 million range, and I hear Amazon landed the rights by paying close to $250 million. That is just for the rights, before any costs for development, talent and production, in proposition whose finances industry observers called “insane.” It is a payment that is made sight unseen as there is no concept, and there are no creative auspices attached to the possible series. On top of that, the budget for a fantasy series of that magnitude is likely to be $100 million-$150 million a season.

Set in Middle Earth, the television adaptation will explore new storylines preceding Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring. I hear that there are some creative restrictions imposed by the rights holders on what can be done and what can’t be done in a LOTR TV series.

“We are delighted that Amazon, with its longstanding commitment to literature, is the home of the first-ever multi-season television series for The Lord of the Rings,” said Matt Galsor, a representative for the Tolkien Estate and Trust and HarperCollins. “Sharon and the team at Amazon Studios have exceptional ideas to bring to the screen previously unexplored stories based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s original writings.”

https://deadline.com/2017/11/amazon-...nt-1202207065/

So, like I said, this is more about money more than anything specifically that Tolkien wanted/did not want.

[Xath]

Rings of Power must be the biggest proof yet Ragebait campagns on YouTube and Facebook is solid gold for content creators.

They literally made a bunch of people pretend to be fans of Tolkien and defend Tolkiens "honor" and review bomb the shit out of it.

Hilarious.

Its no way near perfect. But it is quite beautiful and it will be a fun adaptation. I do think they would have gone of better with dropping the entire season, or maybe in 2 parts like they did stranger things. So far I love everything except Galadriel, feel like they made her a bit Gen Z-ish. Hopefully she will grow. Still decent.


Hopefully the show is successful to the point Tolkien Estate reconcider their tight grip on Silmarillion and the Lost tales rights.

A 1st age trilogy is the dream.

Nobody is review bombing it, it's just bad. People watch a few episodes and leave a bad review so others don't waste their time. Also Galadriel being described as being gen zish nutshells everything wrong with this trash.

[Syegfryed]

It's trash it's not an adaptation it's loosely inspired bad fanfiction

Its funny that one his points is how they have to move things to fit a millennia, and yet nothing happens in this fucking show in three hours

I understand you have eight episodes, but come on

[Xath]

Erm, no? Because he expressed a desire to create a mythos with gaps for others to fill it's okay to fill those gaps, and as much of that mythos was in flux it isn't bad to interpret it in other ways.



We're also not seeing the origin of that, not getting involved is already part of their ethos and it matches what little we do know of the ancestral Hobbits. An origin would be showing them before they started avoiding other peoples and the events that made them change.



No, that's the very clear impression you get if you read the whole letter instead of cherry-picking a few quotes from it.



It's a pretty common consensus that he was nowhere near perfecting the broader history of Arda. His notes show that vast swathes of what was released as the Silmarillion would have to be rewritten, not least because he wanted Arda to be round from the beginning with the Sun and Moon always existing.



Well it is so it is.

It's not. It's bad fanfiction that is largely ignoring established events without even talking about timelines.

- - - Updated - - -

Not everyone follows whatever garbage amazon puts forth in some press conference or article, so just because they say that doesn't mean it isn't shocking to a bunch of people who are just watching the show and only paying attention that much.

Also, that's fucking weaksauce on their part. "We want people to have longevity with characters (and more so we probably don't want to have to constantly find new talent as their characters die and new ones come on-board)"

No. Fuck u. Game of thrones proved it was fine to have characters enter and drop like flies on a dime.



I don't really care what's inconvenient for the largest budget show ever made. They can find more humans to be more authentic, or they can just stick to telling a story within the confines of the timeframe that won't necessitate that type of enormous change. OR they can do what they did and catch shit about it as more people watch it without any context of what amazon already admitted they were bastardizing. Doesn't make all those people wrong for feeling like something was out of place compared to what they know.

It's not even like they have superstar actors to justify compressing the timeline. Just use more randos for other characters not like the casting is amazing as is.

[Triceron]

You mean besides the first significant stuff pushed about the show being the "super fan" trailer that they had to pull down because they were rightfully getting blasted?

Yes, besides that because that was just marketting and not the actual show. I'm not usually one who gets fussed over marketting, even the stuff people would consider 'significant'.

[Xath]

Yes, besides that because that was just marketting and not the actual show. I'm not usually one who gets fussed over marketting, even the stuff people would consider 'significant'.

The things that are prioritized in marketing usually give a good idea of what the showrunners deem most important. It's a giant neon warning sign if the first things you are hearing about is diversity and inclusion rather than an excited showrunner barely able to stop themselves from spilling details yeah it's a bad sign.

[Triceron]

The things that are prioritized in marketing usually give a good idea of what the showrunners deem most important. It's a giant neon warning sign if the first things you are hearing about is diversity and inclusion rather than an excited showrunner barely able to stop themselves from spilling details yeah it's a bad sign.

Who gives a fuck what a corporation prioritizes?

[s_bushido]

Nobody is review bombing it, it's just bad.

lol

Living in your own alternate reality even more fantastical than Middle Earth.

You can think it's bad all you want. I just can't for the life of me see any reason to pretend it hasn't been review/vote bombed.

[hulkgor]

It's trash it's not an adaptation it's loosely inspired bad fanfiction

Well, agree to disagree. If you hate it so much, i would recommend you stop watching it. No reason to get yourself worked up over a tv show.

[Heathy]

the great thing about tv shows you don't like is that you aren't compelled to watch them. we can pick apart a lot of these stories for inconsistencies. why didn't they just fly the eagles to Erebor or closer to mordor, why were the undead ghosts able to kill living beings? what was stopping them from just going on a rampage (they didn't even know aragorn was alive). would anyone have been able to stop them? do they just choose to be corporeal when they feel like it? on that note how does a sword or piece of armor become a ghost did it have a soul? why do ppl think sauron is a human, when hes portrayed as being at least twice as tall as either an elf or a man, is he wearing stilts? the mace hes swinging in elronds 2nd war flash back in fellowship is the size of a man. and on and on and on and on, we could pick the entire thing apart endlessly. or you can put aside the thinking cap and lean into the suspension of disbelief. because in the end it doesn't really work otherwise. trying to imagine that this has to play out as realistic as possible. its like cinema sins in here. most of what happens in these stories happens purely to make it a more interesting story, not because of any sort of logical consistency. the moment you bring deductive reasoning into this is the same moment it falls apart.

ppl care that much about the written works, they aren't going to change. so you still have what you had to begin with. some one at the tolkien estate had to OK this show. they've always been touchy about what can and cannot be in these adaptations. ppl imagine that its just a bunch of who evers throwing darts at a dart board with zero oversight. yeah, no. I don't think this show would have happened, had it not met some level of standard to those whom the IP belongs. how many ppl have tried to make adaptations out of this IP and how many of them were given the OK.

[Biomega]

the great thing about tv shows you don't like is that you aren't compelled to watch them.

I think the problem people have isn't so much "woe is me, someone is forcing me to watch this!" but more the prospect that something they at least in principle would have WANTED to watch now turns out to be something they very much don't want to watch.

The particulars of that process are up for debate of course (and often subjective), but it's not about having to watch a show you don't like; it's missing out on a show you might have liked.

I'd LOVE to see a new great fantasy show. But LotR or WoT ain't that. Just ain't. I won't continue to watch either of them, but that leaves me without a great fantasy show to watch. And that makes me sad.

[Heathy]

I'm willing to bet the better parts of the actual story are to happen. these first few episodes have consisted of mostly exposition at least thats what I got from it so far. barely anything has actually happened yet. the rings haven't been made yet, there are a lot of kingdoms that haven't fallen. mordor is still green. to me it just feels like it has barely started. at some point in this show I would expect some level of pandemonium as various places are obviously going to collapse. not totally sure how well it'll be portrayed but, you'd think multiple kingdoms falling would be at least some spectacle.

[Xath]

lol

Living in your own alternate reality even more fantastical than Middle Earth.

You can think it's bad all you want. I just can't for the life of me see any reason to pretend it hasn't been review/vote bombed.

I can't see any reason to pretend it has been. Any attempted review bombing has been more than offset by both removing negative ratings and a large number of very questionable reviews namely a suspicious number of 10/10s.

- - - Updated - - -

Who gives a fuck what a corporation prioritizes?

Because when certain things are prioritized early in marketing they are usually used as a shield against criticism. When that is already in the mind of of a company before the show/movie has even released it's usually a bad sign.

- - - Updated - - -

Well, agree to disagree. If you hate it so much, i would recommend you stop watching it. No reason to get yourself worked up over a tv show.

I get annoyed because of the massive oppurtunity cost. Because of this drek we aren't getting something that could be interesting and wouldn't require stomping all over tolkien's legacy. There are huge swaths of middle earth's history that are unexplored but instead they choose a segment with a relatively known timeline and then compressed it and stomped all over it.

[loppy88]

So, I've only lightly skimmed this thread to catch up since the last banning, because who the heck has time for this utter nonsense, but it still seems to be the same people arguing about the exact same stuff. What baffles me the most is how people that claim to be such big Tolkien fans complain like they've never actually read a book before. Who in their right mind expects every answer within the first 2/3 parts of a story? People like this do not read books like LotR.

How can people not understand the (actually quite simple) basis for how Galadriel behaves? Shouldn't someone so versed in Tolkien know the why she does? Hell, she's actually acted quite well when you have the capacity to understand her behaviour. Though there was one guy that seemed to understand that behaviour, but was still somehow unable to see the effect in the acting lol Why do people expect her to already be what we know she needs a long, looong fucking time to become? Without trying to really put people down, I genuinely think some people just don't have the ability to actually understand basic things like a character's motivation.

People bitch and moan about how poorly written this all is, and how poorly acted it all is, but they still seem to simply not get basic things. How long was wasted talking about the first 15 or so minutes (because that's all one guy has actually seen, but still...) when it was all incredibly blatant in what it was portraying and what the character's motivations were? Or taking Galadriel starting to swim and just assuming she knew she could swim however many miles it would have been, no thought given to the simple answer of "she's swimming because its better for her to move and hope to be rescued or reach any small bit of land than just stay there floating and doing fuck all, waiting to get eaten." Seriously, have some of you never read anything, or even watched anything, before? Instead, we get people that clearly should have moved on from this series they hate so much waffling on about "agenda," "tokenism," "intersectional feminism," and critical race theory of all things, as if these things are actual arguments. As for "woke," which even the folks that like to be overly verbose in attempts to appear intelligent and reasoned use incorrectly (I'm sure this line will be used to try attack me since this post is long and calls people out ), literally everyone should be woke. Do you guys even know what it actually means?

Does RoP have issues? Absolutely. But they, mostly, don't actually seem to be what a lot of the complaining has been about. The dialogue, to me, is pretentious enough to be Tolkienesque. The acting is actually good (yes, even Galadriel), not including some accents, perhaps. The overall writing has also been ok, so far. It could be edited together a little better. And while I had no issue with it, I don't think we need shots like the Galadriel on horseback one. Though I do understand what it was there to show. Again, something quite obvious that so many seem to have not understood.

Episode 3 gave us a beautiful Númenor and some of its population that we'd expect to see. I'm glad Elendil was given to a good British actor. Halbrand is absolutely Sauron and you should expect to see that reveal at the end of the season, imo. Episode 3 made it far too obvious lol I look forward to seeing what they do with the new bad guy they introduced at the end of the episode.

It just seems to me that you have no standards.

[Biomega]

I'm willing to bet the better parts of the actual story are to happen.

But it's not so much about that. 3 episodes demonstrate a lot about how a show is put together, and some of the things we've seen so far are so egregiously problematic that they're very unlikely to miraculously disappear as the story progresses. Story is just one problem among many in this show, and to expect the direction and production to just do a massive turn after 3 episodes seems more like wishful thinking than a realistic prospect at this point.

If a showrunner can't make a compelling case to viewers to keep watching after the first 3 episodes, something has gone very wrong. At least for those viewers who stop watching. There may well be enough others who will continue, but at least some of the audience has been alienated.

[Heathy]

I can't say i've been put off by anything, i'm still interested to see how exactly this age played out, how did sauron corrupt so many leaders, what happened to these kingdoms that were destroyed before the second war. I've barely seen anything, we saw the elven king was a bit of a dick, numenor, mordor or the southlands becoming mordor, there really hasn't been that much beyond setting the scene of the world. we saw the stage the 'hobbits' are in. I can't say that what i've seen so far bothered me at all. i'm curious to see how it plays out. i'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, I have nothing to lose, I have prime anyway. whether I like the show or not, ill be able to come to a conclusion when it ends. its meant to be 5 seasons long, it might not even get interesting until the latter half. by interesting I mean, move more toward the conflict. heat up etc.

[s_bushido]

I can't say that what i've seen so far bothered me at all. i'm curious to see how it plays out.

My biggest concern is that they're setting up too many story threads that they won't have time to resolve.