Amazon spending $465M on season 1 of The Lord of the Rings series • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon spending $465M on season 1 of The Lord of the Rings series

#351

Post by XorNot » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 5:04 PM UTC

subsubzero wrote: post #309

prepend wrote: post #18

Obviously, 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…

Huge LOTR/Tolkien fan ever since I was a kid, loved the Ralph Bakashi animated LOTR film from the 70's(great rotoscoping and creepy mood), absolutely loved the Peter Jackson trilogy, liked the hobbit animated films Rankin and Bass(good music!, weird animation?), even found enjoyment in the newer Hobbit trilogy(3 movies for 1 small book? Smaug was great though!). After seeing this amazon trailer though I am beyond dis…

Unheard of actors is generally a good thing when doing a new series: there isn't really a series where it's felt like a good thing that it was being initially run as "starring ". If they're any good at all (and most actors are absolutely fine) then they'll be good.

The CGI on the other hand I agree though I can put my finger on exactly the issue: the virtual sets "feel" small in the footage I've seen. There's a certainly quality to the limitations of CGI which generally constrains the camera because you can't actually pull out far enough to make it feel large (I suspect getting the lighting to cast onto the actors right is also a subtle challenge here).

Re: Amazon spending $465M on season 1 of The Lord of the Rings series

#352

Post by buscoquadnary » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 5:06 PM UTC

oneoff786 wrote: post #282

tlear wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Denethor and Faramir treatment hurt.. My number 1 gripe was the army of the dead being the deus ex machina making rest of the battle pointless joke. This is after making perfect entrance for Rohan I like the movies and enjoy watching them, some parts are masterpieces but some not so much.

What was the original army of the dead like? It always seemed like the weakest point of all the films and certainly the most glaring plot hole of why didn’t they keep using them.

In the original the army of the dead was used to capture the ships, and grab the army under a Prince in southern Gondor, (I think it was Imiril) and bring his army up from Osgiliath, to surround the armies of darkness on 3 sides, who then broke and ran.

Re: Amazon spending $465M on season 1 of The Lord of the Rings series

#353

Post by tomp » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 5:08 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #204

tomp wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Equity is a deeply evil ideology. The only way to achieve equality of outcome is to repress the out-performers. Promoters of this dogma of course deny that, but the result is inevitably always the same. [0] [0] Vancouver School Board cuts honours programs https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-sc...

They didn't really cut it, they renamed it. AP classes, independent study, and dedicated schools for high-performing students, rather than just individual classes in the main schools. https://vansd.org/highly-capable-services/

bad example, but there are tons of others

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/04/us/california-math-curric...

"The draft rejected the idea of naturally gifted children, recommended against shifting certain students into accelerated courses in middle school"

Re: Amazon spending $465M on season 1 of The Lord of the Rings series

#354

Post by seanwilson » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 5:08 PM UTC

nonameiguess wrote: post #256

oaiey wrote: post #22

They should have taken 100M of that and fund the remaining three seasons of The Expanse.

As has been hinted at here, the fact that they included Strange Dogs into season 6 is a pretty clear hint that more is coming. There is no reason to include that if they aren't going to adapt the Laconia storyline at some point, since the only purpose of that story is to introduce us to this new planet and what the Mars rebels discovered there. I suspect they're going for a film trilogy with a much bigger budget per…

Can they write around the time jump? Is it that critical to the story?

Re: Amazon spending $465M on season 1 of The Lord of the Rings series

#355

Post by b112 » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 5:08 PM UTC

runarberg wrote: post #348

b112 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different species, not races.

Sorry, I’m used to use the word race in a fantasy setting and species in a natural setting. A race in a fantasy world is any species a character of that story can belong to. This gets confusing e.g. in Star Trek where races exist in the fantasy sense and in a cultural sense (e.g. Being black (cultural race) is as much a part of Benjamin Sisko as being a human (biological race) is).

Yes, I agree. I just feel it important here, as the divides are huge, both culturally and especially physicallly, than what we used to think of as 'race' between humans.

Re: Amazon spending $465M on season 1 of The Lord of the Rings series

#356

Post by jollybean » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 5:08 PM UTC

jowday wrote: post #340

prepend wrote: post #18

Obviously, 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…

> 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 anything remarkable and seem to have just done other Amazon shows. With the exception of, say, the first season of True Detective, most TV shows use multiple directors. The director on a TV show is usually in charge of the technical execution of the writers scr…

In TV 'Mr. Big' is usually the 'Showrunner'. Basically the original creators. It's like a form of creative production and management.

For film, the Director is often kind of the version of 'Showrunner'.

If the director was the one doing the pitching, raising the money - they they are that.

If it's a big IP asset, like Star Treck, then it's different, sometimes a team effort.

Like Kathleen Kennedy is the 'Big Honcho' for Star Wars and will have absolutely the 'last word' on everything, directors may not. Directors may have to negotiate their degree of freedom and may really want to avoid those situations where they are 'not in control', and will be forced to 'take notes'.

So 'director', depending on the type of show, does not have to be the most critical thing, it really depends.

Something that's heavily dependent on the quality of the acting, probably the director will matter a lot.

A perfunctory serial, a bit less.

For something so fundamentally institutionalized, like 'The Big Bang Theory' I'll bet you could remove almost any single person, and the gap would be filled in by the others who are all professionals. Like literally a child could direct an episode, because everyone would know 'what to do'.

But yeah, it helps to have a 'core creative team' that has track record of resonance, this way, you have an idea of what you will get.

Cohen Brothers, Villeneuve, Tom Cruise Inc., they use a lot of the same people. So you have less risk.

Re: Amazon spending $465M on season 1 of The Lord of the Rings series

#357

Post by pluc » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 5:09 PM UTC

imwillofficial wrote: post #101

pluc wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm expecting a 465 million dollar joke about the ease of delivering products to Mordor using Amazon's infrastructure. If not in live action then at least as an advertising campaign based in supporting material.

Stop giving them ideas!

If the "ma" of the Amazon logo isn't modified with a pictogram of LOTR landmarks someone needs to get fired. "From A to Z through The Shire" should be their Superbowl campaign.

Re: Amazon spending $465M on season 1 of The Lord of the Rings series

#358

Post by jollybean » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 5:09 PM UTC

It's basically guaranteed, that even if it's bad, it will be a huge hit.

The material/fanbase is just to energetic. They and kids, at minimum, will watch it.

Re: Amazon spending $465M on season 1 of The Lord of the Rings series

#359

Post by rcpt » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 5:10 PM UTC

jpgvm wrote: post #37

oblio wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even with the rebate, how can they hope to recoup the investment? Merch? DVD Sales? Increasing sign ups to Prime? I have a doubt the profits from that will help them earn money to cover up the remaining 300 million or so they have still invested. Probably all of the above plus it's a long term move. Amazon needs to build up a strong catalog and marquee TV shows are long term attractions. As an example, Mad Men, esp…

Last 2 seasons of GoT still hurt to think about. It's not the ending that hurts it's how it got there. The last 2 seasons probably should have been 3 full seasons instead of the barely 1.5 we got and had a lot more build up/Dany descent into madness/Bran having some relevance that would justify his elevation to ruler, etc. The suddenness of everything, the exposition, everything was just poorly executed. Too much mon…

idk man that ending hurt pretty bad

edit: also the complete destruction of Jamie's character out of the blue in one scene jfc

Re: Amazon spending $465M on season 1 of The Lord of the Rings series

#360

Post by josteink » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 5:11 PM UTC

AlwaysRock wrote: post #315

snickerbockers wrote: post #299

This is going to be terrible. I can't imagine the SHEER FUCKING HUBRIS modern TV writers must have of they think they can write a fanfic that stands next to Tolkien's greatest work. These writers' only experience is working on a 4th film in JJ Abrams' Star Trek reboot universe which ended up getting cancelled too.

Quality doesnt matter anymore. It will get views because it has a brand attached to it and lots of people already have prime. I don't know what their break even number is but prime is fucking expensive. If this pushes 1% of people who are on the edge of buying prime and not buying prime into making that decision its a massive win for them. I don't think it will be any good. But 95% of film and tv is terrible and it k…

> But 95% of film and tv is terrible and it keeps getting made.

As the amount of things being made seemingly have increased tenfold, while the amount of watchable stuff seems at best to stay level, I say the figure is probably closer to 99% as we speak.

And the overzealous eagerness to retell already successful stories, but with the message[0] forcefully attached, is causing noticeable political fatigue in increasing portions of what could have been the mainstream demographic.

But the fact that they keep doing on it, implies they think it makes financially sense? Anyone got any more background on what’s going on behind the scenes here?

[0] https://youtu.be/G2CG1R7nVJg