Lord of the Rings TV Series Purchased by Amazon

[Venziir]

Guess we will see who's right next week ^^

Considering the general pacing of the show we won't know fuck all until 2032....

[Syegfryed]

Willing to bet the next episode is gonna show casualties and bodies from the volcanic cloud / ash. People are panicked and afraid.
Of course they can go the route and show that it's nothing dangerous, but that isn't exactly a better option because it actually do look fucking dangerous.

Which is why Galadriel just standing there taking it in the face is kind of silly. It's not about expecting realism, it's about expecting believability.

If it's not dangerous, it hurts the belief.
If Galadriel is unharmed, it hurts the belief.

She is unharmed because she is Galadriel, she is badass, she can swim miles without tiring, she can climb mountains without resting, of course she can take a eruption in the face and be fine.

And tht is in fact what happen, since we already saw pics of her covered in the ashes in a red landscape.

[Imbas Forosnai]

So I’m only two episodes in and so far it’s rather enjoyable. I like all the characters except Galadriel and Arondir — both are rather dull. The visuals are absolutely stunning.

[DarkAmbient]

If it was, that just highlights how dangerous it is... considering the speed of it to get that far in such a short time, with that density of debris and smoke.
Pretty sure everyone would've been blown away with severe injuries from that blast alone.

I'm assuming that everyone's survival depends on some unexpected twist. If they all just get up from under the ash and dust themselves off I'm going to facepalm so hard.

[Kumorii]

I'm assuming that everyone's survival depends on some unexpected twist. If they all just get up from under the ash and dust themselves off I'm going to facepalm so hard.

I think most will be unharmed or have small scratches, highyl doubt it'll be a twist.

[Venziir]

So I’m only two episodes in and so far it’s rather enjoyable. I like all the characters except Galadriel and Arondir — both are rather dull. The visuals are absolutely stunning.

What? The visuals are awful, it looks like a bloated adventure movie from the early 2000's - certainly doesn't look like something that cost a billion dollars to make.

[Rageonit]

So I’m only two episodes in and so far it’s rather enjoyable. I like all the characters except Galadriel and Arondir — both are rather dull. The visuals are absolutely stunning.

Agreed, the show looks amazing. And if you enjoyed the first two episodes, you should enjoy the rest even more.

[DarkAmbient]

I think the show clearly looks like it's had a lot of money spent on it. My criticism of the visuals is that sometimes it looks too clean and uncanny valley, like the characters are clearly in a studio wearing freshly laundered clothes with a CGI backdrop instead of looking like they're actually out in the world.

[InfiniteCharger]

Aren"t we on the aame regard that RoP isn't Tolkien?

It's an adaptation of his work, but by no means held to any standard set by his writings in terms of how cimvat is portrayed.

The show is literally Xena or Pro wrestling level of fantasy fighting. And I didn't mean all fantasy fighting is Xena level, I was making a point that RoP specifically is overdramatized, and not using any modern HEMA or historic fighting styles really. It's overdramatized action.

Whether the series is canon or not has nothing to do with the idea of taking the combat seriously for depiction on screen.
I would argue that Xena and Pro Wrestling actually are better because they took it more seriously than this series.
Meaning, the reason why the combat is lackluster in this series is purely due to the decisions of the people making it.
It is not because fantasy in general does not take combat seriously or that combat in fantasy is intended to be exaggerated slapstick comedy.
As I said earlier in the thread, high fantasy in video games like WOW has a well defined rule set around combat skills and abilities.
And that is the most common way people experience high fantasy today or outside of games we can also look at Game of Thrones.

- - - Updated - - -

I have never said they were published. His discussions to matter if he was using those works to support his world to fans and friends. Again he never saw a line between published and unpublished. It isn't clear at what point the "limited match rights" to Tolkien's other if ever brought to film was added to the deal. It doesn't matter if Tolkien did or did not finish something.

It doesn't matter if the Appendices were meant to be a story or not. They are published works. According to your own argument that means he was fine with them being used in adaptations.

Come on with your insane nonsense. You are wrong. Publishing and copyright are legal issues and it doesn't matter what he thought personally or wrote to friends about because those weren't published works or copyrighted. You cannot give rights to something which isn't published. That is the point. You keep trying to dance around the fact that before he died he only had published the two books set in Middle Earth and that is all he gave the film rights to. Anything else that was unpublished was still being worked on and not finished which therefore means he did not intend for it to be read let alone seen in live action because he was still changing his mind. The fact that he was changing his mind doesn't mean he was open to other people deciding the story for him or after his death, it means he hadn't finished it. Therefore, why he didn't publish those other works.

Again, lets leave this discussion, you aren't changing reality and just repeating falsehoods.
So stop repeating yourself and just agree to disagree.

[Syegfryed]

I think the show clearly looks like it's had a lot of money spent on it. My criticism of the visuals is that sometimes it looks too clean and uncanny valley, like the characters are clearly in a studio wearing freshly laundered clothes with a CGI backdrop instead of looking like they're actually out in the world.

You mean Arondir looking like he just left the barber with a perfect shade is not believable?

[Raelbo]

Tolkien never finished the story of the 2nd aqe and therefore never published it and therefore would not have been OK with someone getting the rights to something unfinished he never published.

That's a non sequitur. You have no basis for concluding what his feelings would have been about people getting the rights to his works.

I don't pretend to be an expert on Tolkien (just someone who was, and I guess still is, an avid fan of his work) but I would personally imagine that many artists would want others to pick up and complete works that they themselves never got to finish.

And a bit of searching around on the web revealed this:

"in the famous Letter 131 to Milton Waldman where he talked about his thinking behind his legendarium, Tolkien said, “I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama.”"

Seems to me he was more than happy to have others fill in some of the gaps.

And certainly he would have never been OK with the appendices being used as the basis for the rights to a story of the 2nd age in a TV series and not even the Silmarilion, Unfinished Tales and his notes. That doesn't even make sense.

I doubt that Tolkien could have, in his lifetime, envisaged what the visual medium of television would eventually become capable of.

Just like they should take the effort to show that Elves are normally very much taller than normal men and that the Numenoreans are larger than most normal men and epic warriors. None of that was done here and that is the reason why it falls so hard on its face. Galadriel is shorter than almost everybody on the set in most cases. That just shows how much they did not care about the lore of middle earth.

Or maybe this is just you nitpicking because you want to hate the show?

Honestly, I just don't think this is as important as you want to make it out to be. And I don't agree that it speaks to their commitment to the lore of Middle Earth. More likely it speaks to practical considerations and choosing how to prioritize their efforts in order to achieve the best overall outcome given their time and budget.

Watching the show myself, things that stood out as "different" from what I would have expected (not necessarily bad) included elves not having the same kind of long flowing hair that they all had in the Peter Jackson film; Dwarf females not having beards; The amount of racial diversity among the cast (and let me be clear, I think that's a good thing). Galadriel's height (or lack thereof) didn't even feature - until you pointed it out.

[Rageonit]

You mean Arondir looking like he just left the barber with a perfect shade is not believable?

If it's an elven barber, maybe it's the same Legolas was paying visits to in LotR, who knows.

[Raelbo]

Anything else that was unpublished was still being worked on and not finished which therefore means he did not intend for it to be read let alone seen in live action because he was still changing his mind. The fact that he was changing his mind doesn't mean he was open to other people deciding the story for him or after his death, it means he hadn't finished it. Therefore, why he didn't publish those other works.

No. You're speculating. And not even in a particularly rational manner I might add.

More likely is that he wanted to finish the work himself, but simply never got around to it. Or never got it to the point where he was personally satisfied that it was exactly as he wanted it. That has no bearing on whether or not he wanted it to be read or seen in live action after his death. It is entirely possible (even likely) that he would have been more than happy for others to complete his work given that he was no longer going to be around to do so himself

[InfiniteCharger]

That's a non sequitur. You have no basis for concluding what his feelings would have been about people getting the rights to his works.

I don't pretend to be an expert on Tolkien (just someone who was, and I guess still is, an avid fan of his work) but I would personally imagine that many artists would want others to pick up and complete works that they themselves never got to finish.

And a bit of searching around on the web revealed this:

"in the famous Letter 131 to Milton Waldman where he talked about his thinking behind his legendarium, Tolkien said, “I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama.”"

We are talking about the actual legal rights to produce a film or television series and that requires something to first be published because that assigns all rights to the author of said work. Once that happens they can then decide to assign those rights for films and other formats to other people. When he died, only 2 books were actually published. And nothing else. Therefore by that fact alone, this tells you his 2nd age story was not yet finished and therefore not intended to be read or seen by the public. And first and foremost, he indented that his work on the entire legendarium be considered a whole story but he was not able to finish it all. That one small sentence is taken completely out of context if you think that it means he wanted Amazon or anybody else to come along and completely contradict what he was doing and make up their own stories that go against what he actually spent his life writing. And if you are going to reference that one sentence then you should respect the entire letter and everything in it. Everything about this series contradicts the stated purpose of this series as revealed by the show runners and producers.

And also, as is stated here explicitly his story of the Hobbit and the sequel The Lord of the Rings were his completed work that was published and intended to be the whole story. Which means, at the time of his death was the only thing he was referring to when talking of adaptations, not the entire 2nd age or age of trees or anything else as those stories had not been finished nor published. Also, even more importantly, that he never published the Hobbit when he first wrote it and only published it later as a result of publishers asking him to. And beyond that, the sequel, the Lord of the Rings, only came about as a result of the publisher asking for it. So for him the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings represent that completed story that was published from a larger personal work of heroic fantasy that he never finished.

My dear Milton,

You asked for a brief sketch of my stuff that is connected with my imaginary world. It is difficult to say anything without saying too much: the attempt to say a few words opens a floodgate of excitement, the egoist and artist at once desires to say how the stuff has grown, what it is like, and what (he thinks) he means or is trying to represent by it all. I shall inflict some of this on you; but I will append a mere resume of its contents: which is (may be) all that you want or will have use or time for.

In order of time, growth and composition, this stuff began with me – though I do not suppose that that is of much interest to anyone but myself. I mean, I do not remember a time when I was not building it. Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write. But I have never stopped, and of course, as a professional philologist (especially interested in linguistic aesthetics), I have changed in taste, improved in theory, and probably in craft. Behind my stories is now a nexus of languages (mostly only structurally sketched). But to those creatures which in English I call misleadingly Elves* are assigned two related languages more nearly completed, whose history is written, and whose forms (representing two different sides of my own linguistic taste) are deduced scientifically from a common origin. Out of these languages are made nearly all the names that appear in my legends. This gives a certain character (a cohesion, a consistency of linguistic style, and an illusion of historicity) to the nomenclature, or so I believe, that is markedly lacking in other comparable things. Not all will feel this as important as I do, since I am cursed by acute sensibility in such matters.

But an equally basic passion of mine ab initio was for myth (not allegory!) and for fairy-story, and above all for heroic legend on the brink of fairy-tale and history, of which there is far too little in the world (accessible to me) for my appetite. I was an undergraduate before thought and experience revealed to me that these were not divergent interests – opposite poles of science and romance – but integrally related. I am not ‘learned’** in the matters of myth and fairy-story, however, for in such things (as far as known to me) I have always been seeking material, things of a certain tone and air, and not simple knowledge. Also – and here I hope I shall not sound absurd – I was from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of its own (bound up with its tongue and soil), not of the quality that I sought, and found (as an ingredient) in legends of other lands. There was Greek, and Celtic, and Romance, Germanic, Scandinavian, and Finnish (which greatly affected me); but nothing English, save impoverished chap-book stuff. Of course there was and is all the Arthurian world, but powerful as it is, it is imperfectly naturalized, associated with the soil of Britain but not with English; and does not replace what I felt to be missing. For one thing its ‘faerie’ is too lavish, and fantastical, incoherent and repetitive. For another and more important thing: it is involved in, and explicitly contains the Christian religion.

For reasons which I will not elaborate, that seems to me fatal. Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary ‘real’ world. (I am speaking, of course, of our present situation, not of ancient pagan, pre-Christian days. And I will not repeat what I tried to say in my essay, which you read.)

Do not laugh! But once upon a time (my crest has long since fallen) I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy-story-the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the vast backcloths – which I could dedicate simply to: to England; to my country. It should possess the tone and quality that I desired, somewhat cool and clear, be redolent of our ‘air’ (the clime and soil of the North West, meaning Britain and the hither parts of Europe: not Italy or the Aegean, still less the East), and, while possessing (if I could achieve it) the fair elusive beauty that some call Celtic (though it is rarely found in genuine ancient Celtic things), it should be ‘high’, purged of the gross, and fit for the more adult mind of a land long now steeped in poetry. I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama. Absurd.

(…)
I dislike Allegory – the conscious and intentional allegory – yet any attempt to explain the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical language. (And, of course, the more ‘life’ a story has the more readily will it be susceptible of allegorical interpretations: while the better a deliberate allegory is made the more nearly will it be acceptable just as a story.) Anyway all this stuff*** is mainly concerned with Fall, Mortality, and the Machine. With Fall inevitably, and that motive occurs in several modes. With Mortality, especially as it affects art and the creative (or as I should say, sub-creative) desire which seems to have no biological function, and to be apart from the satisfactions of plain ordinary biological life, with which, in our world, it is indeed usually at strife. This desire is at once wedded to a passionate love of the real primary world, and hence filled with the sense of mortality, and yet unsatisfied by it. It has various opportunities of ‘Fall’. It may become possessive, clinging to the things made as ‘its own’, the sub-creator wishes to be the Lord and God of his private creation. He will rebel against the laws of the Creator – especially against mortality. Both of these (alone or together) will lead to the desire for Power, for making the will more quickly effective, – and so to the Machine (or Magic). By the last I intend all use of external plans or devices (apparatus) instead of development of the inherent inner powers or talents — or even the use of these talents with the corrupted motive of dominating: bulldozing the real world, or coercing other wills. The Machine is our more obvious modern form though more closely related to Magic than is usually recognised.

(…)
In the middle of this Age the Hobbits appear. Their origin is unknown (even to themselves****) for they escaped the notice of the great, or the civilised peoples with records, and kept none themselves, save vague oral traditions, until they had migrated from the borders of Mirkwood, fleeing from the Shadow, and wandered westward, coming into contact with the last remnants of the Kingdom of Arnor.

Their chief settlement, where all the inhabitants are hobbits, and where an ordered, civilised, if simple and rural life is maintained, is the Shire, originally the farmlands and forests of the royal demesne of Arnor, granted as a fief: but the ‘King’, author of laws, has long vanished save in memory before we hear much of the Shire. It is in the year 1341 of the Shire (or 2941 of the Third Age: that is in its last century) that Bilbo – The Hobbit and hero of that tale – starts on his ‘adventure’.

In that story, which need not be resumed, hobbitry and the hobbit-situation are not explained, but taken for granted, and what little is told of their history is in the form of casual allusion as to something known. The whole of the ‘world-politics’, outlined above, is of course there in mind, and also alluded to occasionally as to things elsewhere recorded in full. Elrond is an important character, though his reverence, high powers, and lineage are toned down and not revealed in full. There are allusions to the history of the Elves, and to the fall of Gondolin and so on. The shadows and evil of Mirkwood provide, in diminished ‘fairy – story’ mode, one of the major pans of the adventure. Only in one point do these ‘world-polities’ act as pan of the mechanism of the story. Gandalf the Wizard***** is called away on high business, an attempt to deal with the menace of the Necromancer, and so leaves the Hobbit without help or advice in the midst of his ‘adventure’, forcing him to stand on his own legs, and become in his mode heroic. (Many readers have observed this point and guessed that the Necromancer must figure largely in any sequel or further tales of this time.)

The generally different tone and style of The Hobbit is due, in point of genesis, to it being taken by me as a matter from the great cycle susceptible of treatment as a ‘fairy-story’, for children. Some of the details of tone and treatment are, I now think, even on that basis, mistaken. But I should not wish to change much. For in effect this is a study of simple ordinary man, neither artistic nor noble and heroic (but not without the undeveloped seeds of these things) against a high setting — and in fact (as a critic has perceived) the tone and style change with the Hobbit’s development, passing from fairy-tale to the noble and high and relapsing with the return.

The Quest of the Dragon-gold, the main theme of the actual tale of The Hobbit, is to the general cycle quite peripheral and incidental – connected with it mainly through Dwarf-history, which is nowhere central to these tales, though often important.****** But in the course of the Quest, the Hobbit becomes possessed by seeming ‘accident’ of a ‘magic ring’, the chief and only immediately obvious power of which is to make its wearer invisible. Though for this tale an accident, unforeseen and having no place in any plan for the quest, it proves an essential to success. On return the Hobbit, enlarged in vision and wisdom, if unchanged in idiom, retains the ring as a personal secret.

The sequel, The Lord of the Rings, much the largest, and I hope also in proportion the best, of the entire cycle, concludes the whole business – an attempt is made to include in it, and wind up, all the elements and motives of what has preceded: elves, dwarves, the Kings of Men, heroic ‘Homeric’ horsemen, ores and demons, the terrors of the Ring-servants and Necromancy, and the vast horror of the Dark Throne, even in style it is to include the colloquialism and vulgarity of Hobbits, poetry and the highest style of prose. We are to see the overthrow of the last incarnation of Evil, the unmaking of the Ring, the final departure of the Elves, and the return in majesty of the true King, to take over the Dominion of Men, inheriting all that can be transmitted of Elfdom in his high marriage with Arwen daughter of Elrond, as well as the lineal royalty of Númenor. But as the earliest Tales are seen through Elvish eyes, as it were, this last great Tale, coming down from myth and legend to the earth, is seen mainly though the eyes of Hobbits: it thus becomes in fact anthropocentric. But through Hobbits, not Men so-called, because the last Tale is to exemplify most clearly a recurrent theme: the place in ‘world polities’ of the unforeseen and unforeseeable acts of will, and deeds of virtue of the apparently small, ungreat, forgotten in the places of the Wise and Great (good as well as evil). A moral of the whole (after the primary symbolism of the Ring, as the will to mere power, seeking to make itself objective by physical force and mechanism, and so also inevitably by lies) is the obvious one that without the high and noble the simple and vulgar is utterly mean; and without the simple and ordinary the noble and heroic is meaningless.

https://www.tolkienestate.com/letter...ublisher-1951/

[rhorle]

Come on with your insane nonsense. You are wrong. Publishing and copyright are legal issues and it doesn't matter what he thought personally or wrote to friends about because those weren't published works or copyrighted.

You can copyright things without publishing them at least after 1978. Official laws do not matter however as I am talking about what Tolkien thought of his work. Remember you are trying to say he thought of his published work as different then his unpublished work which has nothing to do with copyright. You can give a person rights over anything. It is why Authors can sell movie rights to sequels they have yet to write. Or you know how film studios own rights to the movies before "publishing" them.

Working on and not finished doesn't matter. As I've told you multiple times Tolkien didn't consider any of his work to be finished. He wanted to re-write The Hobbit to change it to better fit Lord of the Rings as late as the 1960's. That is way after it was published. Again. The only one drawing an arbitrary line of "finished" here is yourself. He was open to other people deciding his stories because he already worked on adaptations that made changes. He was even very critical of one adaptation but also didn't want to kill t he project because he liked the visual/picture aspect.

You can leave the discussion any time you want. I'm not repeating falsehoods or changing reality.

[InfiniteCharger]

You can copyright things without publishing them at least after 1978. Official laws do not matter however as I am talking about what Tolkien thought of his work. Remember you are trying to say he thought of his published work as different then his unpublished work which has nothing to do with copyright. You can give a person rights over anything. It is why Authors can sell movie rights to sequels they have yet to write. Or you know how film studios own rights to the movies before "publishing" them.

Working on and not finished doesn't matter. As I've told you multiple times Tolkien didn't consider any of his work to be finished. He wanted to re-write The Hobbit to change it to better fit Lord of the Rings as late as the 1960's. That is way after it was published. Again. The only one drawing an arbitrary line of "finished" here is yourself. He was open to other people deciding his stories because he already worked on adaptations that made changes. He was even very critical of one adaptation but also didn't want to kill t he project because he liked the visual/picture aspect.

You can leave the discussion any time you want. I'm not repeating falsehoods or changing reality.

Dude. You are still wrong and your own facts prove it. You think making up facts is somehow proving your point but those made up facts don't matter. Tolkien wrote and pubhlished two books before he died. And that is all that he gave rights to make films of and not TV series. This discussion is over. There is nothing can say to change that and your made up facts don't count. If what you are saying was true, then they wouldn't have needed a loophole to create the rights for this show. And that loophole is based on the appendices and not the entire legendarium. And all his notes, letters and other unpublished work are owned by the Tolkien estate and this series does not have the rights to them. Stop making up facts and just leave it. You are wrong and there is nothing else to it.

There is nothing else to say. I don't agree and you are wrong.

Do you not know what agree to disagree means?

[Triceron]

And that is the most common way people experience high fantasy today or outside of games we can also look at Game of Thrones.

The point is that combat exists purely in the realm of imagination, and is simply not applicable to real life logic or physics.

Trying to analyze the fight scenes is about as pointless as analyzing the combat effectiveness of a pro wrestling match. It misses the point of it literally being imaginary for the sake of entertainment.

[rhorle]

Dude. You are still wrong and your own facts prove it. You think making up facts is somehow proving your point but those made up facts don't matter. Tolkien wrote and pubhlished two books before he died. And that is all that he gave rights to make films of and not TV series.

Right. I haven't stated that wasn't the case. It isn't clear when the "limited match rights" to his unpublished works were added to the deal. The first reference I can find to it is prior to Christopher publishing some of his fathers stuff. Rings of Power is created because the rights sold didn't cover a TV series. It isn't really a loophole. The appendices were published work which shows that your argument, in regards to this show, doesn't work.

I have never said that Amazon has rights to all his other works. The "limited match rights" was what the SZC had. I'm not sure how you confused the two. The only one making things up here is yourself. You keep responding to arguments that exist only in your head. If there is nothing else for you to say then just leave the conversation. I know what agree to disagree means. So follow your own words and stop. Why do I have to stop when I'm not the one that wants to leave the conversation?

[Raelbo]

Therefore by that fact alone, this tells you his 2nd age story was not yet finished and therefore not intended to be read or seen by the public.

Again. This is non sequitur. You have no idea of what his intent was, or would have been.

Based on your argument, it's seems you are making the converse error. Just because publishing a work demonstrates a clear intent that it should be read or seen by the public, does not mean that the converse is true. This is because there are many possible reasons for which someone might choose not to publish something and unless you know those reasons, you cannot infer the intent.

That one small sentence is taken completely out of context if you think that it means he wanted Amazon or anybody else to come along and completely contradict what he was doing and make up their own stories that go against what he actually spent his life writing.

Where did I say that I think it means he wanted "Amazon or anybody else to come along and completely contradict what he was doing and make up their own stories that go against what he actually spent his life writing"?

That's right. I didn't. So stop trying to put words in my mouth. It's dishonest.

And if you are going to reference that one sentence then you should respect the entire letter and everything in it. Everything about this series contradicts the stated purpose of this series as revealed by the show runners and producers.

I don't see any contradictions. None at all. In fact I see pretty much nothing in his entire letter that even hints at what his attitude towards the idea of someone else creating a whole new story that fits into his universe using the medium of modern television might be...aside from that one line. Everything else basically speaks about the universe itself.

- - - Updated - - -

The point is that combat exists purely in the realm of imagination, and is simply not applicable to real life logic or physics.

Trying to analyze the fight scenes is about as pointless as analyzing the combat effectiveness of a pro wrestling match. It misses the point of it literally being imaginary for the sake of entertainment.

The thing about combat is that being realistic and looking good on screen are mutually exclusive. I did fencing for many years back in my youth. And it looks nothing like The Princess Bride or Game of Thrones. Hell even when actual fencing is shown on screen it looks completely off.

[Orby]

Idk, as I get older I don't care to see any of my favourite IPs on the big screen, would prefer a big/good game that I can immerse myself in instead. Loved some of the PS2 games for LotR, they were great.

I have actually distanced myself from a lot of 'adaptations' for the most part and I am not too offended if they fuck it up either. But it has driven me to reading fantasy. The last 3 years I been reading so much fantasy books that I missed out on :P