• UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      I tried watching Rings of Power. All of that budget, all of those resources, and it was so bland. I drifted out before the “prestige TV” torture focus really kicked in, at least.

      • sammer510 [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        3 months ago

        RoP has many flaws that could probably be forgiven if it wasn’t just such a slog to get through. Screwing up the canon and characters and everything is one thing but at least make it good. Jackson’s films mess with the canon too but the original trilogy is still timeless because it was so well done

        • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          3 months ago

          The whole (I’m not spoiler alerting this because this is such a garbage story that I don’t mind spoiling the surprise) “Sauron was just some dude that Galadriel randomly ran into after she jumped off the boat” thing was an amazing shark jump.

          lord-bezos-amused , like a lot of creativity-deprived techbros, is a very firm absolutist in Joseph Campell-like story cliches, so he had to have a “friend that becomes a traitor” moment because his own mandates said so.

          • sammer510 [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            3 months ago

            That’s about when I stopped watching. So much wrong with that entire sequence. Lore wise, logic wise, story wise it was just so fuckin dumb. Galadriel is like Gil Galads great aunt she’s like 1000 years older than him and here he is like banishing her to Valinor which isn’t even a thing? “Auntie Galadriel, you’ve been bad, get on this boat and go to heaven and don’t come back”. Scolding her like a child when she is in fact older and more powerful? Canonically she would have a husband and CHILD at this point (both are absent from the show completely so I guess who cares) and Gil Galads like, get the fuck outta here, fuck your family I guess. And she meets Sauron in human form guy RANDOMLY FLOATING ON THE OCEAN because of course. Ugh.

            • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              3 months ago

              lord-bezos-amused had an ironclad set of rules established for the writers that dogmatically obeyed what he called the recipe for an “epic” story, so Sauron had to be just some guy that Galadriel makes friends with and that friend betraaaaaays her.

          • Leon_Grotsky [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            3 months ago

            Amazon ONLY has the rights to The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King, and The Hobbit. They cannot use anything from The Silmarillion, The Unfinished Tales, The History of Middle Earth, etc. That’s why they had to take liberties with the canon.

            E) I saw somewhere Amazon acquired the rights to use some of the Silmarillion in April, dunno how exactly that shakes out, though.

              • Leon_Grotsky [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                3 months ago

                I don’t know the whole story, but from what I understand the Tolkien estate signed an agreement with another party in the 60’s that had a clause (Matching Right) where if any further Tolkein IP film rights were available for purchase they would essentially have first dibs. The Tolkien estate are I guess piece-mealing stuff from those extended sources so Amazon can use it without opening up the properties for full rights purchasing.

                I’d love it if someone else had more or better info on this.

      • foxontherocks [undecided, undecided]@hexbear.net
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        3 months ago

        I wanted to like RoP because the costumers really put in work. The characters all look amazing. But yeah too boring. I wanted a lot more stinky hobbits and the big man and they kept jumping to storylines that had no gas.