Good God can someone come up with a unique or at least mildly novel idea? I'm getting sick of seeing remakes and spinoffs of classic franchises or series that absolutely disrespect the originals by pumping out some garbage ass show that will somehow last longer than a season.
Amazon spending $465M on season 1 of The Lord of the Rings series
211–220 of 605 posts
Re: Amazon spending $465M on season 1 of The Lord of the Rings series
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're missing the point: We (GP and I) don't think you need known actors. There are great series with (then) unknown actors. It's just strange to have such a massive budget (which usually would go, in part, to known actors and directors) and then forgo them. Also, for directors, there's definitely a case to be made that you need someone who can handle such a large budget. That's why I made the example with the junio…
Yes, some of the best titles have none or just 1 top tier actor at the time: Star Wars (Alec Guinness), West World (Anthony Hopkins), Game of Thrones (Sean Bean), Breaking Bad, The Wire. I'm sure there's other's I can't remember. Some directors prefer fresh actors for some movies. It s not necessarily a red flag, but it could be. Time will tell.
But none of those had a budget this out of wack, that is the point being made here.
Re: Amazon spending $465M on season 1 of The Lord of the Rings series
#213Obviously, I’ll wait and see once it comes out. But it seems odd to spend so much and not have a single established creator that has put out great content. And not to involve Jackson seems off because even having him in a consulting role would be a good sign. Looking at the imdb page this seems like a corporate driven project rather than a creator driven project with lots of different directors that haven’t don’t any…
> And not to involve Jackson seems off because even having him in a consulting role would be a good sign
Not if The Hobbit is anything to go by.
Re: Amazon spending $465M on season 1 of The Lord of the Rings series
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because there's not wildly successful books with wildly successful movies about the amazing empires that ruled the African continent. And it's hardly rewriting parts of LOTR to have a black actor portray Legolas. Everything is still the same except the color of the guys skin. You'll be fine.
Back around 2015, it was that, switching out characters as black. Fine. 2022 it's something much more sinister. It's the entire postmodern philosophy mixed with equity forced into stories. LOTR is about good and evil and the triumph of good. It doesn't dismantle what good or evil is, it doesn't question everything, it's just a great story. Unfortunately modern writers cannot bring themselves to write stories like thi…
>Back around 2015, it was that, switching out characters as black. Fine.
That's what the GP is complaining about.
And I don't get why that rates a "Fine". What's wrong with race neutral casting?
> 2022 it's something much more sinister. It's the entire postmodern philosophy mixed with equity forced into stories. LOTR is about good and evil and the triumph of good. It doesn't dismantle what good or evil is, it doesn't question everything, it's just a great story.
You can't look at Tolkein's life and the LOTR and then just call it a great story. You can see the echoes of his personal experience in the work. It's no different than today.
Re: Amazon spending $465M on season 1 of The Lord of the Rings series
#215This will make last 2 seasons of GoT seem like War and Peace. That trailer.. Read books probably 5-6 times, read Silmarillion(!), watched the movies probably 10 times, even watched Hobbit twice(that was painful). Only tattoos I have are in Cirth.. I could have easily dumped thousands of bucks on merchandise and other crap together with my kids over the years if it looked even remotely decent.
I am not subscribing to prime or watching this garbage.
Re: Amazon spending $465M on season 1 of The Lord of the Rings series
#216Let's hope they won't turn it into a diversity thing checking all the boxes and loosing the plot
Whole thing is The Message and nothing more
Re: Amazon spending $465M on season 1 of The Lord of the Rings series
#217Considering there's not a single relevant main stream actor, director or writer on the team. I don't understand where they're spending the money on. Can't wait to see it, but my expectations cannot go lower
> Considering there's not a single relevant main stream actor, director or writer on the team. I don't understand where they're spending the money on. Honestly, I'd rather money spent on props, effects, etc. than brand-name actors. Look at Stranger Things; virtually no one famous in it.
Yeah, and look at Stranger Things, it started with a 6M per episode budget and now (due to massive success and fame the actors got their share) is at 30M per episode. That means season 1 was 48M and now season 4 is at 240M.
Re: Amazon spending $465M on season 1 of The Lord of the Rings series
#218It’s going to be interesting how badly this will fail _if_ they are focused on making an international success that also can be viewed in China…
Re: Amazon spending $465M on season 1 of The Lord of the Rings series
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love how it's fine for there to be dragons and magic in fantasy. But minorities ? That's a bridge too far.
Most of the characters in LoTR weren't even _humans_, were they? It's hard to see what issue people would have with minority actors playing an elf or whatever.
If I write a (non-human, not that that matters anyway) race and describe them as being of "ivory skin" vs "ebony skin" then it matters. If it's just regular people then it doesn't.
It depends on the setting.
Re: Amazon spending $465M on season 1 of The Lord of the Rings series
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
The last season of Game of Thrones is genuinely the worst possible ending to the show and genuinely takes the top spot for the most disappointing ending of all time. At least,HIMYM had its defenders but I've never seen a good thing spoken about the story in the final season.
It's amazing how they managed to go from beloved franchise to salted earth in one season. People used to rewatch the seasons, but not so much now that they know where it's all headed.
Yeah, it could have been a franchise for the ages, even maybe another Star Wars... maybe.
But that last season killed all that dead. Hell, there might have a way to rescue it until the last couple of episodes.
It was truly remarkable to watch potentially billions of dollars of future value evaporate in real time.