Lord of the Rings TV Series Purchased by Amazon

[molliewoof]

I've stopped watching, just finding it a bit boring and it isn't keeping my attention.

I've watched 1 ,2 3 but I couldn't tell you what happened in the last two and I'm not remembering things that I've seen in the first series

I didn't know who the elf was burning on a pyre and now I do I don't remember her dieing for example

[Kumorii]

I didn't know who the elf was burning on a pyre and now I do I don't remember her dieing for example

That's Bronwyn, she didn't want to come back in season 2. So even though they hinted on her surviving the poison dagger or arrow or whatever it was, apparently she didn't.

So far the most enjoyment comes from Elrond shutting down Galadriel. Who I can't understand is a character we are supposed to root for. At this point she should be placed in a corner of shame and just not interact with anything, yet she still is.

[molliewoof]

That's Bronwyn, she didn't want to come back in season 2. So even though they hinted on her surviving the poison dagger or arrow or whatever it was, apparently she didn't.

So far the most enjoyment comes from Elrond shutting down Galadriel. Who I can't understand is a character we are supposed to root for. At this point she should be placed in a corner of shame and just not interact with anything, yet she still is.

agreed ' galadrial last time we trusted you , you fell in love with our greatest enemy and endangered our race, we know you are still in love with him'.

' no I'm not, we need to do this'

'good point but you're not in charge and we're not doing it because you told us to, were doing it because we want to '

' course you are mwahahahaha'

[Syegfryed]

Just a small data about the massive drop in viewership the show had from season 1 to season 2:




Thats rough

[molliewoof]

I wonder how they allocate prime subscriptions against views, prime is £9 here. If I order two items then that is my sub.

If 1.8 m people watch lotr, how much of that sub is allocated to that show.

I've never understood how these sub models make money

[Biomega]

I wonder how they allocate prime subscriptions against views, prime is £9 here. If I order two items then that is my sub.

If 1.8 m people watch lotr, how much of that sub is allocated to that show.

I've never understood how these sub models make money

It's very complicated. A lot of the money in entertainment products is in talent and IP packaging, and those are complex deals on many levels that go beyond mere end-consumer sales. Unless you're deeply in the know, it can be very difficult to assess just how much money something made, exactly. Even movie box-office takes are only a VERY rough metric that do not account for any of the hidden revenue streams and ancillary deals (or indeed the notoriously "creative" Hollywood accounting that saw even blockbuster hits like the Lord of the Rings movie make no profit... on paper).

It's doubly complicated for something like Prime, which is itself an ancillary. With Netflix, at least the model is somewhat straightforward: people pay to watch videos. Whereas with Prime, people could pay to get groceries and watch movies as a bonus; or could pay to watch movies and get deliveries as a bonus; or any mix between the two. Making it extremely difficult to tell from the outside whether Prime is "worth it" for Amazon - and even from the inside, I'm sure it's only marginally more clear. They probably have entire floors of buildings working on nothing but puzzling this stuff out as best they can.

As a consumer, that shouldn't really be too much of a concern of course (interesting though it may be). The only concern should be the value proposition: are you getting enough of what you want for the money you're paying? For me personally, Prime is largely worth it even without Video, because I do almost all my shopping on Amazon. So I'm just getting the streaming for free, basically.

Which means I'm not watching this show even though it's free :P

[exochaft]

As a consumer, that shouldn't really be too much of a concern of course (interesting though it may be). The only concern should be the value proposition: are you getting enough of what you want for the money you're paying? For me personally, Prime is largely worth it even without Video, because I do almost all my shopping on Amazon. So I'm just getting the streaming for free, basically.

Which means I'm not watching this show even though it's free :P

And that's the crux of the issue: the purpose of many streaming services is to get subscriptions, but Prime is the odd service out because the streaming service is almost an afterthought... especially since it doesn't cost extra. Normally, you add on services/products to increase your sub count, but is Amazon Prime streaming actually doing that? As you mentioned, Prime is largely worth it even without the streaming service, and I have a sneaking suspicion the vast amount of Prime subscribers are not there for the streaming service.

Which begs the question of whether the streaming service is actually making money or even worth it. Putting the rest of Prime aside, most streaming services do not operate on a profit; I think Netflix is the only one now that does reliably? Disney+ streaming has notoriously never made a profit since its start, being offset by other sources of income from Disney (mainly the theme parks); since it's combined with Hulu now by force (you basically have to jump through a bunch of hoops to remove D+ from your sub to save yourself one penny a month), its individual value is likely even less now. The primetime network streaming services don't make money either, despite some that try to rebrand. All of them try to offset the costs with advertising, but even that doesn't put them in the black often. However, the main point is that you need shows/movies to draw in enough people to subscribe and stay subscribed... but with everything split up it's just like the cable days of the past: you'd have to pay for a bunch of bundles and services to get everything you want (along with a TON of stuff you don't want or care about), and the money isn't worth it.

What makes matters worse is when a streaming service spends waaaaaaay too much money for little return. To put it bluntly, Amazon is probably losing massive amounts of money because of RoP considering how much they've paid for the show and IP rights. They probably were already reaching saturation point with subscribers to Prime before adding the streaming service because they were already offering something very useful for many people, so adding the streaming service probably doesn't move the needle much if at all considering all the competition already out there. Putting aside my opinions about RoP, the show would have to be amazing on all levels to likely even see an increase in Prime subs due to the show; on the plus side, Amazon probably won't lose subs over a subpar show either. Basically, they set themselves up for failure as the bar was already extremely high for making returns before they even started assembling a team to make the show given the price tag they paid.

To be fair, Amazon isn't the only one that does this... Disney is also a habitual thriftspend when it comes to making movies/shows as of late. Leaving my personal views of the quality of the movies/shows out of this equation, Disney spends massive amounts of money on movies and show to where their products need to be really good by everyone's standards to make the streaming service worth it or to make enough box office profits. Obviously that hasn't been happening, and even the untrained or uneducated eyes of the layperson can intuitively notice that these companies are spending way too much money on products that present as being a fraction of their actual price tag. The irony is that the solution to such problems has been known and practiced for decades: scale back and stop offering blank checks for your shows and movies. The horror movie industry thrives because their films tend to operate on shoestring budgets so financial success only requires minimal results. Even outside horror movies, you can make solid movies that can generate triple-digit millions of gross revenue for $15-20mil, which is insane returns. Unfortunately, these big companies seem to feel like they can pump out billion dollar revenue generating content while being lazy and resting on their laurels... which is the height of hubris if we're being generous.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if we go back to the licensing/syndication models of the past, versus the streaming services making their own content. It's expensive to make your own content, and it's easier to have someone else risk all the money while you pay licensing fees, allowing you to more easily obtain a profit for your service.

[molliewoof]

It's very complicated. A lot of the money in entertainment products is in talent and IP packaging, and those are complex deals on many levels that go beyond mere end-consumer sales. Unless you're deeply in the know, it can be very difficult to assess just how much money something made, exactly. Even movie box-office takes are only a VERY rough metric that do not account for any of the hidden revenue streams and ancillary deals (or indeed the notoriously "creative" Hollywood accounting that saw even blockbuster hits like the Lord of the Rings movie make no profit... on paper).

It's doubly complicated for something like Prime, which is itself an ancillary. With Netflix, at least the model is somewhat straightforward: people pay to watch videos. Whereas with Prime, people could pay to get groceries and watch movies as a bonus; or could pay to watch movies and get deliveries as a bonus; or any mix between the two. Making it extremely difficult to tell from the outside whether Prime is "worth it" for Amazon - and even from the inside, I'm sure it's only marginally more clear. They probably have entire floors of buildings working on nothing but puzzling this stuff out as best they can.

As a consumer, that shouldn't really be too much of a concern of course (interesting though it may be). The only concern should be the value proposition: are you getting enough of what you want for the money you're paying? For me personally, Prime is largely worth it even without Video, because I do almost all my shopping on Amazon. So I'm just getting the streaming for free, basically.

Which means I'm not watching this show even though it's free :P

Yeah I ordered about five books off Amazon last (pay) month. Including one 5 book set. So it's free for me to watch the series too, I suppose I'm actually in profit lol


I understand what you're saying about it being a value decision for me I just like to know ha .

I honestly think a load of these will crash in a few years and take a couple of big companies with them but that is probably me just not understanding

[Biomega]

Normally, you add on services/products to increase your sub count, but is Amazon Prime streaming actually doing that?

I suspect that there's a good number of cases where people are going "I'm already paying for Prime Video, so I might as well order something off Amazon if it comes with free delivery" - i.e. kind of the reverse of people going for the free delivery and just watching videos.

And do remember that Prime now has ads, too - that is additional revenue purely from streaming. Not to mention all the other complex monetization schemes like IP packaging that are largely invisible to consumers but are still carried by their consumer behavior.

But is Prime Video "worth it" for Amazon? Only Amazon can tell.

most streaming services do not operate on a profit; I think Netflix is the only one now that does reliably? Disney+ streaming has notoriously never made a profit since its start

That is no longer true. Disney's streaming has now turned a profit. But as I keep mentioning: there's a lot of very complicated monetization going on, which is why services like Netflix could afford to operate at a loss for years, going billions into debt. It's more complex than just sub money. Much, much more.

To put it bluntly, Amazon is probably losing massive amounts of money because of RoP considering how much they've paid for the show and IP rights.

It's important to distinguish between two things here.

One is investment losses. You usually need to pump money into new tech products for quite a while before you start milking them for the big bucks. That's how tech operates. It's why even giants like Uber and whatnot ran on billions of deficit for a long time - that's how you start. You juggernaut the market, until you've got it by the balls. Then you squeeze. That's where you get the returns. A simplified way of putting it, obviously, but in general, tech losing billions for years is neither uncommon nor necessarily worrying. Often it's simply how the mechanics operate, by design.

Two, however, is losses from failures. While a lot of tech drinks in massive amounts of investment before it starts spitting out profits, often it doesn't end up doing that; for a variety of reasons. Bad product or poor choices are some of those reasons. It could well be that Amazon simply bungled the IP. The writing is shit, the acting is bad, budgets aren't utilized effectively, all that - the whole catalog of reasons why an entertainment project founders. That doesn't mean it was a bad idea to buy the IP and make a big-budget show - it only means that they didn't execute it well enough. You could leverage a similar criticism at e.g. New World and Amazon Gaming. It wasn't that the idea of a new MMO was bad, it's just that they didn't execute it well enough.

Time will tell where this falls. Certainly for me, personally, this has been a colossal waste of creative time and money as the show is practically irredeemably terrible in my book. But I'm just one rando. I don't find anything redeemable about Fast & Furious movies either and they made billions of dollars. The market is going to cast its judgement one way or another. I wouldn't be in the least surprised if this whole LotR thing ends up a giant financial disaster that costs Amazon hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. I also wouldn't be shocked if they turn it around into profit, despite critical mediocrity. I can't tell one way or the other, but I can decide whether I want to contribute to any possible success by watching the show. And I don't.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if we go back to the licensing/syndication models of the past, versus the streaming services making their own content. It's expensive to make your own content, and it's easier to have someone else risk all the money while you pay licensing fees, allowing you to more easily obtain a profit for your service.

That's not where the problem lies. The problem lies with the fact that any VoD content is structurally different as a product from scheduled programming. Old, program television forced people to watch dreck or nothing at all, if nothing else was on; they decided when you get to watch the stuff you're most interested in, and when you'll have to make due with whatever they give you. With VoD, consumers get to decide, and they get to eliminate all the low-quality stuff. No one chooses to watch filler content - by definition (that's what makes it filler). It's like people voluntarily watching ads - they don't. They only do it because it's a trade-off for what they actually want. But that dynamic is usurped by the concept of VoD.

Why is this a problem? Well, because we still operate on a legacy of content designed with the old model in mind. Our entertainment has evolved under certain conditions - now those conditions are no longer there. We've seen some of it crumble over the past few years. A prominent example are episode lengths and structures. TV shows used to be designed around time slots and ad breaks. Directors were forced to squeeze into a pre-set mold: that's why every Star Trek episode is 45 minutes or whatever and has cleanly segmented acts and scenes that fit with ad breaks. But with VoD that makes no sense. So now directors have started to change things up, and we get one episode that's 20 minutes, then one that's 40, then one that's 35, whatever they want. And scenes and acts can be wild and unpredictable.

The same goes for the larger meta level of production. Shows and movies were designed around specific forms of monetization. The hundreds-of-millions summer blockbuster spectacle movie evolved out of a market that allowed for this model to be profitable. But now where people may not want to go to the theater and watch things at home, say, they may not value these big-screen spectacles so much because they're less impressive on a home screen. They also pay less money by watching it on stream rather than at the theater. Which cuts into profits, and therefore budgets. So things may be changing, and we may be moving away from spending $200m on a movie that won't be profitable unless it takes a cool billion at the BO. Those will still exist - but they may not be as common. And alternatives may become more attractive. And that's segmented all the way down.

Anyway, TL;DR: streaming is different, and the products will be different, too. We're still in the figuring-it-out phase of this transition.

[rhorle]

And that's the crux of the issue: the purpose of many streaming services is to get subscriptions, but Prime is the odd service out because the streaming service is almost an afterthought... especially since it doesn't cost extra. Normally, you add on services/products to increase your sub count, but is Amazon Prime streaming actually doing that? As you mentioned, Prime is largely worth it even without the streaming service, and I have a sneaking suspicion the vast amount of Prime subscribers are not there for the streaming service.

Prime Video is a standalone service as well as bundled with Prime. It's entire purpose is to get subscriptions and people into the Amazon ecosystem. We've been over this in this thread before so you might have already been told this but their old CEO Jeff Bezos once stated that golden globe wins sold shoes. Because people would come for the shows and stay to buy stuff.

D+ is currently profitable and the combined Disney stream services are expected to be profitable by the end of this year. Amazon isn't spending to much for little return. They haven't lost money on Rings of Power. Amazon has also put out lower budget works and had hits. Amazon, and other streaming services, do still license content. Wheel of Time is an Amazon Original but is a Sony Pictures production. A lot of you seem to think you have things all figured out without really knowing anything.

[DarkAmbient]

Managed to make it to the credits on episode 4, to see if there's any hint of this series redeeming itself. An awful episode all round. Bad casting, bad acting, bad writing. The forced attempts at Tolkienesque solemnity. The lack of any real sense of depth or emotion. And despite the visuals looking expensive, everything has a clinical sheen to it that robs it of authenticity. Nothing feels lived in or eroded by weather and time. You can never ignore the fact that you're just watching actors wearing wigs and fake beards.

[molliewoof]

I get the feeling ill end up watching it over a few weeks just because it's Tolkien and the hobbit and lotr were my first fantasy books and I definitely have nostalgia for them

Unlike something like the WOT series where I just quit

[Snowfunk]

I felt the first episode of the second season showed promise somehow, but the second and third episode reintroduced some of the awful parts...

After suffering through the fourth episode, I don't think I can stomach this absolute clown show any more.

[Magistrate]

Managed to make it to the credits on episode 4, to see if there's any hint of this series redeeming itself. An awful episode all round. Bad casting, bad acting, bad writing. The forced attempts at Tolkienesque solemnity. The lack of any real sense of depth or emotion. And despite the visuals looking expensive, everything has a clinical sheen to it that robs it of authenticity. Nothing feels lived in or eroded by weather and time. You can never ignore the fact that you're just watching actors wearing wigs and fake beards.

This perfectly sums it up for me, as well.

I was really willing to give S1 the benefit of doubt in case they just really didn't know what they were doing and would figure it out after feedback/reviews, doubling down on what works to make S2 better. All of that, I now realize, was foolish. They had the ability to research these metrics with material as they produced it, and had pletny of existing material (LOTR and otherwise) to draw inspiration from. There's been many good epic narratives told in episodic format. They failed to put together a team that has the basic skills to execute the genre, let alone one that really understands anything of the spirit of Tolkien.

You can spend all the money in the world on record-breaking practical sets, but if you miss the point, you miss the picture.

Casting failed to cast most roles with anyone that understood what they were doing or had the skill or expertise to do it. So many scenes go by where it feels like the actors don't understand they're in a physical environment with props they can touch, with a place to observe and move through with purpose. That could be a lack of experience, lack of direction, or a mix of both, I don't know. It all just felt flat.

Nothing felt sacred or elevated. The most dangerous things sometimes felt like a joke.

I continue to re-read the books and extended materials, and I enjoy lore podcasts and the Jackson trilogy. He may have fudged some things for one reason or another, but what he created felt in my bones like what I was often times reading. ROP feels like something less than bad. Nothing. Unremarkable, unexceptional, aimless, uninspired nothingness. To feel disappointed by it almost doesn't even make sense, there's so little there.

[Pozz]

I was really willing to give S1 the benefit of doubt in case they just really didn't know what they were doing and would figure it out after feedback/reviews, doubling down on what works to make S2 better. All of that, I now realize, was foolish. They had the ability to research these metrics with material as they produced it, and had pletny of existing material (LOTR and otherwise) to draw inspiration from. There's been many good epic narratives told in episodic format. They failed to put together a team that has the basic skills to execute the genre, let alone one that really understands anything of the spirit of Tolkien.

I think they were already so far in production of S1 that this was just never gonna happen, even if they did/do want to work with some of the feedback given. From a quick google search(and I realise this is not always right) filming started while season 1 was still running and about halfway through. This would in turn mean the overall script was done, actors had their schedules so they can make arrangement in regards to other roles etc.
Realistically at that point, S3 would be the place you would see any major changes to their vision in response to feedback.

[Shadowferal]

An acquaintance of mine said that you know it's bad when even the acting comes across as fake.

[Triceron]

I continue to re-read the books and extended materials, and I enjoy lore podcasts and the Jackson trilogy. He may have fudged some things for one reason or another, but what he created felt in my bones like what I was often times reading.

Been watching some youtubers analyze the Jackson's trilogy, and there's some pretty good ones out there. There's a few things that really stand out to me on why Jackson's adaptation works while these new series don't.

Jackson's trilogy isn't a faithful adaptation of the book, but it manages to capture the spirit of the books through the use of Tolkien's language. Jackson would often omit important characters or swap their dialogue with another character, or even change the entire meaning of certain scenes, just to build up dramatic value. And it works, because the story itself is still true to itself. Even if there are subtle dialogue changes here and there, he still manages to keep in a lot of the poetry that Tolkien used (or would have used) in the film adaptation.

The problem here is that the Appendices, and even the Silmarillion, doesn't really contain that same poetry. It's purely a guideline of 'stuff that happens', and there's no flowery description or language to draw from. So it's really down to the writers to create that for a completely new series, and... we know it just doesn't work. It either comes off way too shallow, or way too derivative of the already-existing Jackson trilogy.

In some sense, any type of side story adaptation like this just might never work, because it's always lacking the dialogue that only exists in Tolkien's published works, the dialogue that makes LOTR feel like LOTR.

We'll have to wait and see how things go for future productions, like the Hunt for Gollum film, but I will say the writers really have their work cut out for them.

[Jotaux]

I'm two episodes into the new season. I just get so bored with the halfling storyline. I also don't understand why Sauron bothered to get captured. It had no bearing on the rest of his plan, unless there's some big reveal later.

[Ophenia]

I'm two episodes into the new season. I just get so bored with the halfling storyline. I also don't understand why Sauron bothered to get captured. It had no bearing on the rest of his plan, unless there's some big reveal later.

I only watched the first 3, and I guess the goal was to play with Adar's fears. Probably to push him doing something stupid in the future episodes. Basically what he did/does with Galadriel and Celebrimbor so far

[Stoic Pete]

Critical Drinker nailed it with his review of this garbage IMO, a woke insult to Tolkiens original work.