Lord of the Rings TV Series Purchased by Amazon

[Koriani]

You can just not open the thread at all? Like, I'm not sure how that is anyone's problem here. The show's over. People are still talking shit. If I'm not the one doing it it'd be other people. Not sure why you need to open the thread at all.

Um, no - not cool.

This thread is about THIS effin Show. SOME of us, absolutely, click on the 'new post' link really wanting to READ ABOUT THE SHOW. Not another page of you ARGUING in "bad faith" with someone you already know and acknowledge it is pointless to argue with. (That's the bad faith on your part, bit.) That isn't even ABOUT THE SHOW but about lack of knowledge in basic stats.

There are no rules on this forum that say once a show is over everyone is free to turn it into a free-for-all of any topic they want. Um, no. "Anyone's problem here -" Its EVERYONE's problem here. Because of all the asshats in this forum who want to turn any and every thread into their own personal circle-jerk of obsessive arguing in circles. And YOU are feeding it and becoming one of the asshats! I don't want to consider you one of the asshats, man.

YOU can stop arguing - just like I did - with the person you continually acknowledge is trolling and 'arguing in bad faith' - but you're doing the same damn thing at this point.

At least when it was pages of show bitching it was related to the show. I clicked and read most of those. But you telling people to just ignore the thread because YOU want to stay OFFTOPIC just to fight with Rhorle in your own personal "who can bitch at the other more" contest is bullshit.

I was with you until that man - but since you seem to want to show yourself the better person to Rhorle, you really need to just STOP posting back. You know, like I did. In fact, you even encouraged me to not bother. But you keep going!

It's not like the topic of our conversation was even worth discussing.

So don't take the pointless-topic-bait! You're only entertaining the two of you. Please, stop. Take it elsewhere. Or you know, listen to your own advice and give it up. You're just arguing in circles.

But saying you're allowed to hijack the thread because the "show is over" is just wrong. No one but the two of you wants to see another page of this argument about stats.

[rhorle]

Having it be requested and immediately dismissed on grounds that it's 'incomparable to Rings of Power' isn't quite the worthy discussion you're looking for here.

It wasn't dismissed though. The information was incorporated into the discussion. I stated that Amazon released similar remarks about Rings of Power and pointed out the difference between a show that has its entire season released on 1 day and a show that has its season released over 7-weeks. Any comments will be after the show release for the former. You can try to re-write history in your weird battle to convince someone else how terrible I am but it won't actually change what was stated.

So similar to what they have done for Rings of Power. Season 1 of The Boys was released all at once so any comments about anything would happen post finale. We have got the same level of comments about Rings of Power.

...

Context is important. So while they did make a response after the shows finale episode was released it was impossible not to. The same statements they made about The Boys season 1 have been made about Rings of Power. A 1 day season versus a 7 week season. How does this make the Rings of Power "silence" deafening? They've already talked about the same stuff.

[Triceron]

So don't take the pointless-topic-bait! You're only entertaining the two of you. Please, stop. Take it elsewhere. Or you know, listen to your own advice and give it up. You're just arguing in circles.

But saying you're allowed to hijack the thread because the "show is over" is just wrong. No one but the two of you wants to see another page of this argument about stats.

Fair enough. I'll own up to this, it really is a result of my own hubris.

Done and done! Back to the depths I go

[rogoth]

Or just enjoy the books and dissociate yourself from the stuff you don’t like? There’s no ‘we have to win’. They don’t give a shit about you, the intellectual property is a commercial asset. Whining about it in an echo chamber is only adversely affecting you. I love the books too, but I’m losing sleep over any of this. Same for Star Wars or the next Indy film or the Dc/Marvel stuff. It’s all just commercial properties. Why let it hinder you.

actually there very much is, because while you obviously don't care about mega corporations coming along and bastardising well known and well loved franchises and products in an attempt to buy their way into history books, all the while pushing their own agenda and in so doing they destroy said franchises and products through purposeful and hateful division or through degrading to the point of making the franchise or product a poisoned chalice making it not worth supporting anymore, if that's something you want to see proliferate then by all means, stick your head in the sand and ignore everything that's been going on with woke hollywood for the past decade, but don't you dare have the audacity to complain when something you love is bought up and ruined because of greed and hubris, because your apathy leaves you zero room for complaint.

[jackofwind]

I read a lot of the hate about the show but you know what, once I got into it I just found myself enjoying it.

I feel like they're going to mess around with the Annatar reveal because they seem to be compressing the timeline a bit, but I don't think it's going to make me shit my pants.

I have really loved the Dwarf stuff so far, touching on the difference in the experience of time between dwarves and elves (though they are both long-lived species), and on the importance that personal grudges and perceived offences play in dwarven culture.

[Triceron]

actually there very much is, because while you obviously don't care about mega corporations coming along and bastardising well known and well loved franchises and products in an attempt to buy their way into history books, all the while pushing their own agenda and in so doing they destroy said franchises and products through purposeful and hateful division or through degrading to the point of making the franchise or product a poisoned chalice making it not worth supporting anymore, if that's something you want to see proliferate then by all means, stick your head in the sand and ignore everything that's been going on with woke hollywood for the past decade, but don't you dare have the audacity to complain when something you love is bought up and ruined because of greed and hubris, because your apathy leaves you zero room for complaint.

To be fair here, the mega corporations are blamed for failures and praised for successes with no real consistency from the fans.

I like to use Star Wars as an example. Fans dislike certain choices like High Republic or Gina Corano firing or Sequel Trilogy and blame Kathleen Kennedy/Disney for these shows. And when good ones appear like Mandalorian or now Andor, the fans praise a major win against the corporation - even though it would also be the same corporation/execs providing these shows. Everything else shifting the blame or praise is usually misattributed without considering these decisions all fall under the same umbrella, and are in some way and form managed by the same people at the end. It's the same people at the top greenlighting the shows you love and the shows you love to hate.

I think whatever comes out for S2 will be quite blurred, considering the extended amount of time being put into it and the lack of transparency we have into what they're doing behind the scenes. Like, if S2 happens to be really good, what would be attribute it to? They listened to the fans? But what if S2 was locked down a year prior and just happened to be good before any rewrites? We wouldn't really know, because anything could happen within the 2 years, and we have no idea what's happening behind the scenes. We can't exactly 'win' when most of the key things like scripts and screenplays are being locked down years in advanced. Those 'battles' are fought years before we see any results and comment on them. There isn't a fluid feedback loop to the show creators like traditional TV series, since these productions are 'too big to pivot' to audience feedback.

[DingDongKing]

To be fair here, the mega corporations are blamed for failures and praised for successes with no real consistency from the fans.

I like to use Star Wars as an example. Fans dislike certain choices like High Republic or Gina Corano firing or Sequel Trilogy and blame Kathleen Kennedy/Disney for these shows. And when good ones appear like Mandalorian or now Andor, the fans praise a major win against the corporation - even though it would also be the same corporation/execs providing these shows. Everything else shifting the blame or praise is usually misattributed without considering these decisions all fall under the same umbrella, and are in some way and form managed by the same people at the end. It's the same people at the top greenlighting the shows you love and the shows you love to hate.

I think whatever comes out for S2 will be quite blurred, considering the extended amount of time being put into it and the lack of transparency we have into what they're doing behind the scenes. Like, if S2 happens to be really good, what would be attribute it to? They listened to the fans? But what if S2 was locked down a year prior and just happened to be good before any rewrites? We wouldn't really know, because anything could happen within the 2 years, and we have no idea what's happening behind the scenes. We can't exactly 'win' when most of the key things like scripts and screenplays are being locked down years in advanced. Those 'battles' are fought years before we see any results and comment on them. There isn't a fluid feedback loop to the show creators like traditional TV series, since these productions are 'too big to pivot' to audience feedback.

That, and the reasons for not liking it vary from 'but you're bastardising the lore' to 'mrnnnngh woke Hollywood'.

In terms of the latter...I enjoyed Shadow of Mordor & Shadow of War. Bastardised the lore, but so fun.

[Triceron]

That, and the reasons for not liking it vary from 'but you're bastardising the lore' to 'mrnnnngh woke Hollywood'.

In terms of the latter...I enjoyed Shadow of Mordor & Shadow of War. Bastardised the lore, but so fun.

Which, also to be fair, aren't issues to dismiss either.

There can be a modern LOTR show without the bastardization and wokeness that we've gotten in the recent big movies. Rings of Power just happens not to be that, and the fans are right to be vocal as well since everyone is expressing their passion for the series, in their own way. Not all of it happens to be in the form of mouth frothing toxicity even if it happens to be lumped in the same category of complaint.

To continue the Star Wars example, we have Andor, which has been a nice change of pace from the bastardization or wokeness (to various extents) that we had in the sequel trilogy and some of the more recent shows like Book of Boba Fett or Obi-Wan. It's not like everything in modern Star Wars has to be all about retconning villains into anti-heroes, subverted expectations and gender diversity. For the most part, the fans voicing the criticism are pretty much saying the same here regarding the LOTR material, in wanting something that feels more true to 'the spirit of Tolkien'.

Of course, I don't think we should let it get in the way of enjoying things that aren't necessarily as canon, like Shadows of Mordor/War. I think in Rings of Power's case, it just wasn't as good as some people may have expected it to be. It wasn't particularly bad, just poorly planned and executed IMO.

[DingDongKing]

Which, also to be fair, aren't issues to dismiss either.

There can be a modern LOTR show without the bastardization and wokeness that we've gotten in the recent big movies. Rings of Power just happens not to be that, and the fans are right to be vocal as well since everyone is expressing their passion for the series, in their own way. Not all of it happens to be in the form of mouth frothing toxicity even if it happens to be lumped in the same category of complaint.

To continue the Star Wars example, we have Andor, which has been a nice change of pace from the bastardization or wokeness (to various extents) that we had in the sequel trilogy and some of the more recent shows like Book of Boba Fett or Obi-Wan. It's not like everything in modern Star Wars has to be all about light sabers and aliens and gender equality.

True. Re: the wokeness issue, it's more of an issue when the writing is just flat out lazy. I've not seen ROP yet, but in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, it's more that the characters are so poorly constructed which drives the problems.

If an actual effort is put in to write GOOD stories and characters, then it's fine.

Enola Holmes as a set of films is very woke, but it's so god damn fun and well done! It's the quality as opposed to the 'agenda'.

[Triceron]

Part of the reason I have so much vitriol towards Amazon is that specifically that company seems to have a major, major issue with respecting the ip they purchased. Wheel of Time and Rings of Power have a lot of similarities in how they destroyed the lore. And the actions of the studio - the “superfans” debacle, and then working hard to lump all the detractors of the series into a category with racists, sexists, and even fascists, have been really irksome.

I agree completely. But I mean, I don't know what part of that is to blame either, because there's plenty of other shows that they bang out that are pretty damn solid. Reacher, Jack Ryan, the Boys as just a few examples.

At some level, Amazon's Prime Video division is capable of making shows that aren't 'bastardizations' of existing properties. Maybe this problem is specific to their creators tackling genre films, I don't really know. But it's still questionable, since at one point they had one of the House of the Dragon's showrunners/co-creators working on their cancelled Conan project, so I do think they're capable of hiring competent talent.

I'm honestly unsure how this much money going into RoP ended up with what we got. Same with Wheel of Time. That being said, I'd probably say the same about some of the more questionable Star Wars or Marvel shows too.

[rhorle]

Part of the reason I have so much vitriol towards Amazon is that specifically that company seems to have a major, major issue with respecting the ip they purchased. Wheel of Time and Rings of Power have a lot of similarities in how they destroyed the lore. And the actions of the studio - the “superfans” debacle, and then working hard to lump all the detractors of the series into a category with racists, sexists, and even fascists, have been really irksome.

They didn't lump all detractors into that category. I don't understand why you and others have to keep claiming to be victims when it didn't actually occur. It doesn't invalidate your other criticisms. "Respecting the ip" is also meaningless. As the Tolkien Estate thought the Jackson films didn't respect the IP but it isn't dismissed because of that. Hiding behind things that only matter when you personally dislike something shows how shallow they are as issues.

[rogoth]

That, and the reasons for not liking it vary from 'but you're bastardising the lore' to 'mrnnnngh woke Hollywood'.

In terms of the latter...I enjoyed Shadow of Mordor & Shadow of War. Bastardised the lore, but so fun.

either you're being obtuse and dense to get a rise, or you're being purposefully ignorant because you genuinely don't care either way, which is a pretty bad way to look at things in my opinion but you're free to do that i suppose, as to your comment, and to try and be as concise as possible:

several months ago as soon as the main marketing rhetoric began to spin up for this show, it was noted that it would just be a woke fiasco filled with nothing but diversity hires to check the boxes to pander to the minorities, with a script/storyline that was purely fan fiction and with little to no substance shown in any of the early release videos or stills that would change that perception, fast forward to release and everything that was said in the months leading up to release has been proven true, not only that but the scale and scope of the butchering is beyond even what the most die hard critics feared it would end up being, it managed to exceed expectations with how bad it turned out to be.

the major difference between this shitshow of a project and the ones you mention or even some of the other media released for this franchise in the past 20 years, is that these clowns running the circus promised on multiple occasions in multiple interviews over multiple years prior to the ramp up to release that this show was going to be heavily reliant on the lore and the canon that existed and that everything we see would be based in the lore, fast forward to current day and not only is that a flagrant lie, it couldn't be any further from the truth if they tried, the only things representative to the lore are character names and place names, not a single piece of the 8 episode story is grounded in canon, making the entire first season of the show pure fan fiction in every aspect, to bring it back around to the other media, those who made it, made it perfectly clear what type of content it would be, and NOBODY went into it expecting a great story fleshed out from the lore, they went into it knowing full well it would be a load of made up bullshit with potentially decent gameplay mechanics that synergised with the story being told to culminate in a 'good game', which they turned out to be, but they made it clear from the outset that the games' basis was going to be completely made up nonesense loosely tied to the middle earth locale and the peoples therein.

as the season went on, the storyline became so transparent with self insertions from the clowns running the circus, along with real world allegories which do not exist in the established lore of the age being portrayed it's actually comical how badly they fucked this up, i could give a dozen specific examples of this but it's already been well covered in this thread ad nauseum and if you don't care about it then i don't see what repeating myself would do, overall this entire thing has proven beyond doubt that if a corporation regardless of how big or small they are piss off an established fanbase badly enough, it can and will ruin them, and that is precisely what is happening here, the generations old fanbase of Tolkien is fighting back against the sheer fucking hubris of Amazon and the clowns in charge, not only irreparably damaging the Amazon brand, but also showcasing that corporate greed will be tolerated only so far, and that there are some things you do not touch.

[Biomega]

True. Re: the wokeness issue, it's more of an issue when the writing is just flat out lazy. I've not seen ROP yet, but in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, it's more that the characters are so poorly constructed which drives the problems.

If an actual effort is put in to write GOOD stories and characters, then it's fine.

Enola Holmes as a set of films is very woke, but it's so god damn fun and well done! It's the quality as opposed to the 'agenda'.

Definitely true. ROP or the SW sequels have massive issues that have fuck all to do with diverse casting or social-issue topics - they're neither to blame for those problems, nor do they excuse them.

The whole premise of positioning "woke" (a term that should just go and die already anyway) as somehow opposed to or mutually exclusive with good writing is nonsense to begin with. And those errors are committed on all sides of the debate, be it people going "woke is ruining good writing" OR people going "you only hate the writing because it's woke" (or anything in between that presupposes that kind of oppositional binary).

It's not easy to write something well. But it's not impossible, either. There's tons of highly talented writers out there - so the problem isn't "we can't find the right people". It's entirely the fact that the money people want PRODUCTS, not works of art (not unless they're also products, of course), and products have a tendency to be hawked with reckless disregard for substance. That's how we got into this mess: all of a sudden the virtue-signaling value of "woke writing" became a silver bullet that allows hack writers to produce product you can tout on the basis of its inclusivity, without any need to actually, you know, make it good. Partly that's on us, the consumers: a lot of the time that WORKS, and people are happy to buy into the hoodwink. But a lot of it is also simply a push from above to streamline things across demographical agendas much more so than social ones; corporations don't REALLY care about minorities, they merely care that their customers care. And the tacit agreement is that we play along because "fake it 'till you make it" does kind of work in terms of establishing societal norms.

The crux lies in what I said initially: quality and "woke" are not mutually exclusive, and in fact have very little to do with each other. And we need to take a stand and make sure people aren't pulling one over on us as consumers by (implicitly or explicitly) pretending like they are. That's not only better for us because it increases the quality of the products we consume, it's also better for society because it makes social issues into more than mere virtue-signalling selling points.

[jackofwind]

either you're being obtuse and dense to get a rise, or you're being purposefully ignorant because you genuinely don't care either way, which is a pretty bad way to look at things in my opinion but you're free to do that i suppose, as to your comment, and to try and be as concise as possible:

several months ago as soon as the main marketing rhetoric began to spin up for this show, it was noted that it would just be a woke fiasco filled with nothing but diversity hires to check the boxes to pander to the minorities, with a script/storyline that was purely fan fiction and with little to no substance shown in any of the early release videos or stills that would change that perception, fast forward to release and everything that was said in the months leading up to release has been proven true, not only that but the scale and scope of the butchering is beyond even what the most die hard critics feared it would end up being, it managed to exceed expectations with how bad it turned out to be.

the major difference between this shitshow of a project and the ones you mention or even some of the other media released for this franchise in the past 20 years, is that these clowns running the circus promised on multiple occasions in multiple interviews over multiple years prior to the ramp up to release that this show was going to be heavily reliant on the lore and the canon that existed and that everything we see would be based in the lore, fast forward to current day and not only is that a flagrant lie, it couldn't be any further from the truth if they tried, the only things representative to the lore are character names and place names, not a single piece of the 8 episode story is grounded in canon, making the entire first season of the show pure fan fiction in every aspect, to bring it back around to the other media, those who made it, made it perfectly clear what type of content it would be, and NOBODY went into it expecting a great story fleshed out from the lore, they went into it knowing full well it would be a load of made up bullshit with potentially decent gameplay mechanics that synergised with the story being told to culminate in a 'good game', which they turned out to be, but they made it clear from the outset that the games' basis was going to be completely made up nonesense loosely tied to the middle earth locale and the peoples therein.

as the season went on, the storyline became so transparent with self insertions from the clowns running the circus, along with real world allegories which do not exist in the established lore of the age being portrayed it's actually comical how badly they fucked this up, i could give a dozen specific examples of this but it's already been well covered in this thread ad nauseum and if you don't care about it then i don't see what repeating myself would do, overall this entire thing has proven beyond doubt that if a corporation regardless of how big or small they are piss off an established fanbase badly enough, it can and will ruin them, and that is precisely what is happening here, the generations old fanbase of Tolkien is fighting back against the sheer fucking hubris of Amazon and the clowns in charge, not only irreparably damaging the Amazon brand, but also showcasing that corporate greed will be tolerated only so far, and that there are some things you do not touch.

615 words of drivel that can be wholly refuted by the fact that the Tolkien estate and a sect of "hardcore" fans also vehemently hated PJ's LotR trilogy, which is widely held up as one of the best book adaptations ever rendered on film.

The generations old fanbase of Tolkien's work is not unified in their opinions, and plenty of them hate everything but Bakshi's trash heap of an animated film because reasons. It's all just varying degrees of hipsterism.

[rogoth]

They didn't lump all detractors into that category. I don't understand why you and others have to keep claiming to be victims when it didn't actually occur. It doesn't invalidate your other criticisms. "Respecting the ip" is also meaningless. As the Tolkien Estate thought the Jackson films didn't respect the IP but it isn't dismissed because of that. Hiding behind things that only matter when you personally dislike something shows how shallow they are as issues.

this is the last time i will respond to your asinine bullshit, and i'm only doing so to highlight just how fucking pathetic and ignorant you are:

Amazon, and those representing them on this project branded EVERY SINGLE FUCKING PERSON WHO CRITICISED IT an istaphobe of some variety, they had twitter campaigns bribing the old movie cast members to wear clearly rushed and fucking hilariously bad quality T-shirts with the whole 'all are safe here' bullshit because of people rightfully complaining about the blackwashing of races in middle earth that should not and do not in any piece of established literature have them, because the only defence Amazon had against this valid criticism was to deflect and hide behind the racism shield they tried so very hard to put up, that failed so epically that they dropped it pretty fast, then you had the debacle of 'disabling reviews for 3 days to prevent trolls' when the reality was they disabled the service for a full week, and even when 1* reviews were posted AND VERIFIED BY A HUMAN BEING TO BE POSTED they deleted them hoping nobody would notice, sadly for them, everyone noticed and the backlash was so severe they were forced to roll back the deletion and reinstate the bad reviews, not content with that but their other owned property IMDB, they forced censorship so hard on that platform that if you wanted to leave a review that was 5* or less, it was auto deleted, you're only allowed to provide 6* or higher, they were that desperate to quell the overwhelming and vocal backlash against this steaming pile of garbage that they restricted free speech, not only illegally breaking the American 1st amendment to your stupid and outdated constitution (i digress that's a topic for another discussion), but also illegally restricting free speech laws in many countries around the world as a result of their desperate attempts as damage control to try and spin the narrative they wanted to spin which was a total and complete fabrication, much like the plotline to this show, but then you have the sycophantic fucks like you and the others who have mysteriously gone silent from this thread now that this complete and utter waste of bandwidth has been unleashed for all to see, they no longer have any comebacks to it, they no longer have any arguements that make any sense to defend it, except here you are, dying on little mound of self righteous goalpost shifting bullshit making up whatever you think will make your asinine and wrong assertions seem plausible, and every turn being shot down and proven wrong and yet still here you are, posting away with no understanding of anything that you're trying to argue and you still think your in the right, it's astounding really.

[Triceron]

I think consistency in world building is just way more important in fantasy, where so much of the focus in on building a detailed, coherent world that is different than our own, than in comic books like Marvel or shows like Jack Ryan. The only one close is Star Wars, and let’s face it, Star Wars’ lore is painfully thin and a lot of show like the Mandalorian are essentially working with a blank canvas.

Well considering the huge gaps in the 2nd Age, Rings of Power was game to be set in a blank canvas for the most part too. I think they managed to do some interesting things with the Dwarves and the aesthetic portrayal of the Harfoots (their lore and story, not so much). Adar added an interesting nuance to the world too. I honestly don't know where they were going with Arondir and the Watchtower Elves, I still think they could have omitted them completely and the show would not be any different. Nothing against his character or portrayal, I just think he was the Tauriel of the series; needless filler in a series with too many POV's to begin with.

[rogoth]

615 words of drivel that can be wholly refuted by the fact that the Tolkien estate and a sect of "hardcore" fans also vehemently hated PJ's LotR trilogy, which is widely held up as one of the best book adaptations ever rendered on film.

The generations old fanbase of Tolkien's work is not unified in their opinions, and plenty of them hate everything but Bakshi's trash heap of an animated film because reasons. It's all just varying degrees of hipsterism.

you're welcome to have that opinion, it's wrong but you're welcome to it nonetheless, furthermore, there's been issues with EVERY piece of media ever made based upon a source material, it's only through the lens of retrospection that we can see either how good or how bad that media was and whether the criticisms were justified or not, in the case of the bakshi animation, it was the first and only thing of its kind in relation to the lord of the rings, and is also a victim of its time as much as it is of its creator and the extremely stylised nature of other works by said creator, it took better part of 4 decades before another project would be given the green light to be produced and even then it was a monumental gamble, and while some of the criticisms of the day were warranted, they were nowhere near the issues being talked about when referencing this dumpster fire of a show, and i would even argue the vast majority of the main plotlines that needed to be made, were kept very accurate to the lore and made sense within the world and the scope of the films themselves, which is a huge amount of praise for something that was restricted to the 'FILM' medium, not only that but it's all thanks to said films that this show even has a platform to exist.

- - - Updated - - -

Definitely true. ROP or the SW sequels have massive issues that have fuck all to do with diverse casting or social-issue topics - they're neither to blame for those problems, nor do they excuse them.

The whole premise of positioning "woke" (a term that should just go and die already anyway) as somehow opposed to or mutually exclusive with good writing is nonsense to begin with. And those errors are committed on all sides of the debate, be it people going "woke is ruining good writing" OR people going "you only hate the writing because it's woke" (or anything in between that presupposes that kind of oppositional binary).

It's not easy to write something well. But it's not impossible, either. There's tons of highly talented writers out there - so the problem isn't "we can't find the right people". It's entirely the fact that the money people want PRODUCTS, not works of art (not unless they're also products, of course), and products have a tendency to be hawked with reckless disregard for substance. That's how we got into this mess: all of a sudden the virtue-signaling value of "woke writing" became a silver bullet that allows hack writers to produce product you can tout on the basis of its inclusivity, without any need to actually, you know, make it good. Partly that's on us, the consumers: a lot of the time that WORKS, and people are happy to buy into the hoodwink. But a lot of it is also simply a push from above to streamline things across demographical agendas much more so than social ones; corporations don't REALLY care about minorities, they merely care that their customers care. And the tacit agreement is that we play along because "fake it 'till you make it" does kind of work in terms of establishing societal norms.

The crux lies in what I said initially: quality and "woke" are not mutually exclusive, and in fact have very little to do with each other. And we need to take a stand and make sure people aren't pulling one over on us as consumers by (implicitly or explicitly) pretending like they are. That's not only better for us because it increases the quality of the products we consume, it's also better for society because it makes social issues into more than mere virtue-signalling selling points.

in the case of this trashpile, the 'wokeness' is amplifying the utter inadequacies' of the writing and putting a lens on just how bad it actually is, it's allowing people to see what would normally be covered up and is acting like a giant neon sign showcasing just how bad the writing on this show is, everything about this show compounds on itself for showcasing mediocrity and abject failure with the things that would normally be used as a crutch for blame being used ALONGSIDE the things that actually cause the problems to begin with, in this example the woke aspects are not actually the issue, they just compound and add to the already lengthy list of other problems that it's easy to point at the 'woke' aspects as a valid criticism alongside the myriad other issues.

[Triceron]

Definitely true. ROP or the SW sequels have massive issues that have fuck all to do with diverse casting or social-issue topics - they're neither to blame for those problems, nor do they excuse them.

The whole premise of positioning "woke" (a term that should just go and die already anyway) as somehow opposed to or mutually exclusive with good writing is nonsense to begin with. And those errors are committed on all sides of the debate, be it people going "woke is ruining good writing" OR people going "you only hate the writing because it's woke" (or anything in between that presupposes that kind of oppositional binary).

While I don't buy 'Woke = Broke' being the cause of bad writing, the agenda itself is quite apparant and is a symptom of the greater problem.

The way I see it, the problem is that diversity has become prioritized over verisimilitude. It has become a status quo, and diversity has become a badge of modern progression.

Cuz let's be honest, James Cameron has had strong female characters and leads in almost every one of his productions, and I don't see any of that being woke, because he builds them into his world. There is very strong verisimilitude, very strong sense of purpose for these characters. It's not just what they do and what they're capable of, it's who they are in the story. And the problem with the 'woke' issues in other productions sometimes stems from writers lacking that same verisimilitude, because they don't really know what purpose their characters fill to begin with. They're kind of just there for the sake of the status quo.

As long as verisimilitude is prioritized, I have no problems with 'meeting the status quo'.

[Triceron]

Agreed that in some ways it was a blank canvas, but there are just things they did totally wrong that are completely inconsistent with the lore - I keep coming back to telling the character who, in lore, has refused to return to Valinor for thousands of years "congratulations, you're going to Valinor!", and the morally grey orc storyline seems like next season's version of that.

The return to Valinor, the importance of Mithril to the salvation of the Elves, the emnity of the Numenoreans to Elves 'taking their jobs', the two Durins existing at the same time... There's some dubious changes to the lore that were quite needless and I don't think were very necessary to the story they chose to tell.

[Biomega]

The way I see it, the problem is that diversity has become prioritized over verisimilitude.

That's just another misdirect from a larger heading of quality. Verisimilitude is just one aspect, and it's often dreadfully overused in lay debates. Ever since postmodernism, that's not really how people do literary analysis anymore. Believability or internal logic are aspects of it that crop up, but aspirations of realism in general are pretty much out the window - doubly so in genres like fantasy or SF, where concepts like e.g. cognitive estrangement have long since redrawn the evaluation parameters (and even that is an old hat at this point).

ESPECIALLY when it comes to diversity, the classic view of cultural verisimilitude has definitely outlived its usefulness. Denying diverse castings a share of suspension of disbelief is just an artifact of historical heteronormativity, and any supposed contingencies for narrative quality are (largely) an illusion. There's specific contexts in which it makes sense for specific reasons and to specific degrees, but by and large, it's just a smokescreen for crusted thought structures and resistance to change.

That's not to say that it's an anything-goes world now, just that analyses have to be reframed. A simplistic view in the sense of classic understandings of verisimilitude is something that's at least 20-30 years out of date now in literary analysis, and is mostly found in philosophy of language at this point.

There's no one answer to what makes good writing; not anymore, and perhaps there never was. We've diversified too much for simple concepts, unless they're extremely broad - that's why I like to use 'quality', and just deal with things case-by-case instead of aspiring to grand generalizations that have so many exceptions they might as well be ditched to begin with. If there was an easy recipe or formula to follow, we wouldn't be having these issues now, would we