Lord of the Rings TV Series Purchased by Amazon

[rogoth]

Which law are you actually citing? The only one I know of that deals with this is the content creators must disclose if they were sponsored on a video they created.
Otherwise hired actors are breaking laws in every commercial.

i would need to go and look it up, it's been a while since i studied A-Level Law, it's related to contract law and the disclosure of payments.

as to your second point, not only are these not 'hired actors' they are 'paid social media personalities' and i use that with so much looseness it might as well not be attached at all, as stated the only reason they are there is because 1) they fit within the tickbox framework set up by Amazon for how many of a certain minority they need to have present, and 2) they are small enough 'content creators' to be considered 'unknowns' but large enough to have an audience that Amazon felt was worth interacting with.

also as stated, they didn't disclose that they were paid (through hospitality and other things as detailed previously) which for the service they provided is illegal here in the UK, it was only due to the 'negligence' of one of the attendees of the event that people found out the extent of what was given in order to get these clowns to provide a positive review of hwhat they were shown.

[Dhrizzle]

You are again missunderstanding me. What I am talking about is that a narrative only works if the author can pull the reader into the fanatasy world they created. Tolkien is a human and was socialized in 19th/20th century times with a christian background. That will always be part of his writing, but he still managed to establish a world that functions on it's own without needing to be a direct reflection of ours.
You speak of heavy Christian themes. I would say I can barely notice them, despite having studied religion in university. They are there, but not in a way that would affect the story negatively. Conversely, with all the obvious political messaging in Rings of Power it is a wonder the series had time for plot because it is...in ...every... scene...so overdone that it suffocates the narrative.

You don't see the Christian themes in a world made by an all powerful Creator who sends angelic beings to aid the earthly people he considers his Children and allows Evil to exist for ineffable purposes while intervening with small enough nudges to allow Good souls to act through Free Will?

I mainly linked the video because it was the easiest way to find the lines. Otherwise I would have had to go through the podcast and that was just a bit too much effort for this discussion (besides I did not want amazon to think I liked that drivel). The point however is my own conclusion, built on what the series shows me, combined with what the showrunners are saying. I do not require a youtuber for that.
It is a fact that current hollywood is spending more time catering to poltics then to the quality of it's media, the examples for that are numerous. The same has happened here and it is the root of the problem. A fantasy world just does not lend itself to spoon-feed people a political idea unless you twist it so much that it is nigh unrecognizable.

No-one has established what these scary political ideas are though, whatever you think you are seeing is wholly imagined. Certainly to the extent the series is a direct reflection of our world with real-life politics stifling every scene. That is ridiculous hyperbole.

[Surfd]

You don't see the Christian themes in a world made by an all powerful Creator who sends angelic beings to aid the earthly people he considers his Children and allows Evil to exist for ineffable purposes while intervening with small enough nudges to allow Good souls to act through Free Will?

Sure, there are Christian themes / parallels in Tolkien's work, but they are comparatively simple and not super in your face most of the time, unless you really dig into the background lore. Most of it is very broad strokes, big picture stuff.

Contrast that with his contemporary C.S. Lewis and the Narnia works. Narnia practically beat you over the head with the religious allegory, to the point where Tolkien himself actually criticized it for how heavy handed it was.

Reading Tolkien never, EVER felt like an attempt to hide a sermon in a fantasy work. Narnia practically stuffed the sermon down your throat.

Therein lies the difference.

It's the difference between building the frame and foundation of your house with quality workmanship due to respect of Jesus's father as a carpenter VS decorating every room with gaudy Jesus statues and crucifix ornaments and framed bible verses because you want everybody to know how devoutly Christian you are.

[Syegfryed]

I have at numerous points asked people like Rhole, keen and unified to provide receipts for the things that are so amazing/they love/they enjoy about the show. Instead they continue to attack people that didn't like/didn't enjoy the show. That is why I call such people drones.

They don't have thoughts about what they enjoyed (things like they enjoyed the music, the CGI, certain scenes, etc), no instead they just attack the people who didn't enjoy it. No thoughts only attack, attack, attack, like good like robots.

Like not once have they responded to one of the several people engaging them about what they enjoyed. For instance the scene where Durin conned Gil-Galad out of the table for his wife. While I don't think the scene fits as well into a Tolkien story (I feel if they wanted something of this nature it should have been the Elves conning the dwarfs) the scene was close enough it worked for me so I didn't mind it (minus the fuck awful dialogue that occurred afterwards of "give me the meat and give it to me raw"). That however would require them to have independent thought, so alas, no thinking.

Indeed, is the same behaviour you see in other threads as well, no engagement outside of coming randomly to attack someone, acting like they are above all else, pretending to be superiors because they do better than us who just "spread hate".


Doesn't help cause no one seems to like to talk good at it anyway, you only see the same "well, i like the hobbits bits" and they gone forever.

Similar to the willow thread, no one was saying a thing(because almost no one watched that shit), but some were quickly to bitch about the critics., Too bad i dropped in episode 4 of how bad it was, but i plan to finish just to maim the show later.

[rhorle]

It doesn't contradict the lore is an incredibly low standard.

Yet it is the only standard we have. The fact you need to come up with such a ridiculous example shows that you know that his character doesn't go against lore because there is no real character in lore. And yes your example does contradict lore because we know that machine guns didn't exist in Tolkien's world. It is strange how much you care about Tolkien yet can't actually apply a well reasoned discussion of his lore and characters.

All you look for is the shock value and an echo chamber of hate. The moment you are met with someone that doesn't support your hate you can't handle it.

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I hear very clearly that they consider anyone that would take the rings as foolish.

The elves were foolish and Tolkien established this. It is why not every elf was trusting of Annatar and his gifts. Your zeal to attack the show blinds you to Tolkien's own writing.

Yes it is. Because with that argument you can defend anything. Frodo could have had pink hair and cyberpunk upgrades, maybe Tolkien would have written that if he had the choice. Maybes and potential changes are not good arguments.

Taking it to the absurd doesn't actually give you an argument. Most of Tolkien's work is filled with maybes and potential as that is what anything he didn't publish while alive is. Maybes and Potentials that were finished by his son or the estate. We have examples of things he wanted to change and since the seeds for doubt already existed with the Elves he easily could have embellished those feelings more in the context of his other changes. We even have examples of his son saying changes he made to his fathers work was a mistake (the parentage of Gil-Galad for example).

I would not be surprised in the least if the billion dollar contract they signed with amazon also included a few lines that binds the Tolkiens to "like" the show at least in public.

The Tolkien Estate had a seat at the "creative table" and could veto things. The Elves taking the rings from a random stranger is foolish. It is amusing you bring up "not in accordance with Tolkien's ideals" when that is exactly what the estate thought of Jackson's work. It is strange how often people use that phrase to disparrage the show while also praising the Jackson work.

What I am talking about is that a narrative only works if the author can pull the reader into the fanatasy world they created. Tolkien is a human and was socialized in 19th/20th century times with a christian background. That will always be part of his writing, but he still managed to establish a world that functions on it's own without needing to be a direct reflection of ours.

It is amusing how you defeat your own argument because none of what you just said applies to the show. It doesn't require the real world in order to function at all and can stand on its own. Also if you are a Tolkien fan you would know that his world functions based on Christian ideals. His god is a reflection of the Christian god. It really is core to the rules and laws of his world.

Then there were lines like Sauron "will be similar to Walter White". What the actual frag... There is modernizing things and then there is shoving succesful ideas into your project, because they worked somewhere else.

I didn't write what you quoted but you really think they wanted to make Sauron into a meth dealer? Because that is the only thing "modern" about Walter White. A relatable bad guy isn't anything new to our world. It is them saying what they used as inspiration for the character. It is crazy how much you, and others, use these quotes to attack the show when you display ignorance of what they are really saying. It shows how shallow you all search for insults.

[rhorle]

How do you know there weren’t machine guns? Sauron was a subtle craftsman skilled in metallurgy, having learned from Aule, the guy who created the dwarves. With countless years spent building his army, it actually seems more logical that he would have developed guns.

We know there are no guns because Tolkien revised them out of his story. He originally had Numenor have iron ships, guns, and other similar things. How is it that you are a tolkien-lore fan but didn't know this?

Your point doesn't even apply to anything you originally stated. You said that the depiction of Gil-Galad has zero to do with Tolkien when he has barely any character development in lore. To defend your claim you went absurd. His character isn't defined by lore so to have it appear in an adaptation you would need to make things up. Are you saying the show would be better to not have Gil-Galad as King of the Elves to avoid the show "making things up"?

[Orange Joe]

i would need to go and look it up, it's been a while since i studied A-Level Law, it's related to contract law and the disclosure of payments.

as to your second point, not only are these not 'hired actors' they are 'paid social media personalities' and i use that with so much looseness it might as well not be attached at all, as stated the only reason they are there is because 1) they fit within the tickbox framework set up by Amazon for how many of a certain minority they need to have present, and 2) they are small enough 'content creators' to be considered 'unknowns' but large enough to have an audience that Amazon felt was worth interacting with.

also as stated, they didn't disclose that they were paid (through hospitality and other things as detailed previously) which for the service they provided is illegal here in the UK, it was only due to the 'negligence' of one of the attendees of the event that people found out the extent of what was given in order to get these clowns to provide a positive review of hwhat they were shown.

Well until you actually cite the law I call bulshit.

[rogoth]

Well until you actually cite the law I call bulshit.

it falls under the jurisdiction of the fraud act 2006, and the equality act 2010, so no, not 'bullshit' as you want to believe, but then again why am i not surprised that ignorance is the common thread that binds many of the defenders of this trash together.

[Orange Joe]

it falls under the jurisdiction of the fraud act 2006, and the equality act 2010, so no, not 'bullshit' as you want to believe, but then again why am i not surprised that ignorance is the common thread that binds many of the defenders of this trash together.

So you can't cite it? Cause looking at the fraud act I don't see this falling under it. Not to mention it's funny you think UK law applies everywhere. Hint it doesnt.

[Rennadrel]

Well that's just daft. It's more like someone made a diorama based on the Mona Lisa and you're constantly crying about how much you miss the painting despite it still hanging in the Louvre and millions of prints existing all around the world.

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The thing is that only works if it's utterly irredeemably rubbish and that's not how it turned out, hence we've had pages of people desperately trying to ignore the fact that it was considered successful and plenty of people enjoyed it.

Amazon Studios management thinking it was successful considering it didn't even come close to having enough viewers to cover the 300 million dollar budget for the first season, just shows that their management are as incompetent as their writing team for the show was. Because no one drops a billion dollars on an IP license and can call a show that didn't even crack the top 10 for minutes viewed across all streaming platforms successful. It lost money, maybe not a ton considering Prime Studios might as well be a tax write-off at this point, but it wasn't profitable.

[rhorle]

Amazon Studios management thinking it was successful considering it didn't even come close to having enough viewers to cover the 300 million dollar budget for the first season, just shows that their management are as incompetent as their writing team for the show was. Because no one drops a billion dollars on an IP license and can call a show that didn't even crack the top 10 for minutes viewed across all streaming platforms successful. It lost money, maybe not a ton considering Prime Studios might as well be a tax write-off at this point, but it wasn't profitable.

It is strange that you under state the season budget and over state the IP license cost. The license cost Amazon $250 million or less. Reports have stated that the 250 offer was from Netflix but the estate went with Amazon that was slightly lower. The season 1 budget was $450 million. Seeing as how you can't even use accurate numbers it seems clear you are manufacturing outrage.

The show was a success for Amazon. It wasn't in the top 10 for the year but it was in the top 15 which is still impressive. To say otherwise is just your bias showing.

[Triceron]

Amazon Studios management thinking it was successful considering it didn't even come close to having enough viewers to cover the 300 million dollar budget for the first season, just shows that their management are as incompetent as their writing team for the show was. Because no one drops a billion dollars on an IP license and can call a show that didn't even crack the top 10 for minutes viewed across all streaming platforms successful. It lost money, maybe not a ton considering Prime Studios might as well be a tax write-off at this point, but it wasn't profitable.

It didn't lose money overall, because their business model doesn't operate off making a majority of its profit directly from viewers or minutes watched (advertisement). Hitting any 'top 10' rank doesn't affect it making money whatsoever.

Their business is all about the online goods and shipping service. Their shows are just incentives to get people subbed to Prime as an incentive to buy more stuff because they have an active prime sub.

So yes, the show was profitable for Amazon, even if the fans or award shows or top 10 lists don't put the show on a pedestal.

[rhorle]

I think the argument has to be that they’ve been dropping hundreds of millions/billions for years and barely made a dent, so this show actually getting a bit of attention was successful relative to everything else they do.

So now the goal posts have moved to Prime Video has been a failure because only two shows have reached the top 15 for a year? It is amazing how first it was Nielsen numbers are wrong/bad and now they are accurate and proof that Amazon has been failing for years. It is quite clear that your knowledge of Prime Video doesn't extend past Rings of Power.

They have had several successful shows and several award winning and critically acclaimed shows. They have even cancelled shows popular with the critics for presumably not drawing enough first-time subscribers in. The service has grown exponentially over the last 6 years. In 2017 leaked documents show Amazon estimated total Prime Video viewership was only 26 million. They are consistently hitting more than that now with The Boys and Rings of Power being the leaders.

[rogoth]

So you can't cite it? Cause looking at the fraud act I don't see this falling under it. Not to mention it's funny you think UK law applies everywhere. Hint it doesnt.

three things:

1) i cited the relevant acts that this 'promo' falls under, backed up by someone who i'm friends with who is a practicing barrister who pointed me in the right direction.

2) because you're incapable of reading and comprehending something doesn't mean it doesn't exist, if you're incapable of seeing where it would fall under, then that's a you issue so stop projecting.

3) if you had read my comment properly, you would have noticed the very key line i stated that this 'promo' was conducted on the Spanish island of Majorca, which means that despite this entire thing breaching UK law in regards to disclosure of payments for services rendered, Amazon are able to get away with it because it A) wasn't hosted on British soil, and B) nobody who would challenge this has the financial resources necessary to get a satisfactory judgement in court thereby making it a moot point; but once again your severe lack of reading comprehension has let you down again because if you had bothered reading and taking a moment to process what was actually written, you would have come to the conclusion i was educating people on why this 'promo' aside from promoting a raging inferno of a dumpster fire of a product, should be disregarded for another reason one borne in fact based on legalities, meaning by extension that this 'promo' is even worse than it first appears which is a real feat if i do say so myself considering just how godawful this shit actually is to begin with.

all in all, your failed reading ability has let you down massively and if you have any further questions i hope i can enlighten you further on the topic because it's blatantly apparent you need it.

[Orange Joe]

three things:

1) i cited the relevant acts that this 'promo' falls under, backed up by someone who i'm friends with who is a practicing barrister who pointed me in the right direction.

2) because you're incapable of reading and comprehending something doesn't mean it doesn't exist, if you're incapable of seeing where it would fall under, then that's a you issue so stop projecting.

3) if you had read my comment properly, you would have noticed the very key line i stated that this 'promo' was conducted on the Spanish island of Majorca, which means that despite this entire thing breaching UK law in regards to disclosure of payments for services rendered, Amazon are able to get away with it because it A) wasn't hosted on British soil, and B) nobody who would challenge this has the financial resources necessary to get a satisfactory judgement in court thereby making it a moot point; but once again your severe lack of reading comprehension has let you down again because if you had bothered reading and taking a moment to process what was actually written, you would have come to the conclusion i was educating people on why this 'promo' aside from promoting a raging inferno of a dumpster fire of a product, should be disregarded for another reason one borne in fact based on legalities, meaning by extension that this 'promo' is even worse than it first appears which is a real feat if i do say so myself considering just how godawful this shit actually is to begin with.

all in all, your failed reading ability has let you down massively and if you have any further questions i hope i can enlighten you further on the topic because it's blatantly apparent you need it.

Still unable to cite the actual law they broke.....

Just can't stop lying can you......

Here are you exact words.

these 'superfans' broke the law by not disclosing they were payed to give their review and provided false and misleading information based on the understanding that they would receive further preferential treatment and further gifts if they provided a positive review, if they had disclosed these things it wouldn't be an issue, but because they purposefully hid them, and were later shamed into admitting they were given these things that's where the line is drawn, they knowingly and wilfully accepted payment to provide false and misleading information which could lead to financial gain for the person/persons that the review was designed to help, and that's where the breach occurs, but because the event wasn't held on the mainland UK, and because nobody has the financial means to contest such a thing in court against Amazon (who for all intents and purposes have unlimited funds) nobody has actually filed anything against them.

You didn't say UK law didn't apply. You said no one would go after them. 2 very different statements

[Xath]

So you can't cite it? Cause looking at the fraud act I don't see this falling under it. Not to mention it's funny you think UK law applies everywhere. Hint it doesnt.

Uh didn't they literally just cite what it falls under?

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It didn't lose money overall, because their business model doesn't operate off making a majority of its profit directly from viewers or minutes watched (advertisement). Hitting any 'top 10' rank doesn't affect it making money whatsoever.

Their business is all about the online goods and shipping service. Their shows are just incentives to get people subbed to Prime as an incentive to buy more stuff because they have an active prime sub.

So yes, the show was profitable for Amazon, even if the fans or award shows or top 10 lists don't put the show on a pedestal.

That's actually very hard to prove the time when the show was released is a natural spike in subscriptions due to holiday shopping.

[rhorle]

That's actually very hard to prove the time when the show was released is a natural spike in subscriptions due to holiday shopping.

October 11th is really when the holiday shopping started in 2022 for Amazon. As that is when they extended the date for returns to January 31st 2023. There was only one episode left for the show at that point. The goal posts will be moved endlessly though when you, and others, think of the next reason for why the show wasn't a success.

[Triceron]

That's actually very hard to prove the time when the show was released is a natural spike in subscriptions due to holiday shopping.

They gave a statement saying so. Whatever the case, there's no 1:1 relationship between show viewership and profit in any traditional sense, only what they consider to be successful using their own internal metrics. And their execs outright stated it to be internally successful and profitable, saying themselves it made back their money.

https://collider.com/rings-of-power-...ders-comments/

"As big of an investment as it's been, it has more than paid off for us."

This would be the proof. If there is any skepticism, there would need to be proof to show this to be a lie.

[bledgor]

They gave a statement saying so. Whatever the case, there's no 1:1 relationship between show viewership and profit in any traditional sense, only what they consider to be successful using their own internal metrics. And their execs outright stated it to be internally successful and profitable, saying themselves it made back their money.

https://collider.com/rings-of-power-...ders-comments/

"As big of an investment as it's been, it has more than paid off for us."

Yea and I don't believe that for a fraction of a second that the show made profit, they said it paid off not that it made them money. To have made money it would have had to bring in at least 40 million subscribers (for just the season cost, not including the $250 million for the rights).

[Triceron]

Yea and I don't believe that for a fraction of a second that the show made profit, they said it paid off not that it made them money. To have made money it would have had to bring in at least 40 million subscribers (for just the season cost, not including the $250 million for the rights).

Don't have to believe it, not asking anyone to. But it is still an answer to the question of whether this show made its money back or not.

And if they said it more than paid off, then that means it made money. How they calculate that is uncertain, but I would imagine it'd be in a loss-leading way, like door-crasher sales or something like Gaming Consoles being sold at a loss with their software sales making up a majority of their profit.