IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of Power • Hacker News Board

Re: IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of Power

#411

Post by matsemann » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 2:33 PM UTC

vintermann wrote: post #322

matsemann wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Tolkien-lovers aren't the core audience. Every casual viewer that enjoyed or have heard of Lord of the Rings are. Because that groups is about a billion people, not tens of thousands. Like me, I enjoyed the trilogy. I don't care if this new show isn't in "the spirit" of Tolkien (judged by someone far after his death, how much does that even mean?), I'm gonna watch it because I've heard of the IP before and want t…

Do you really go around talking about "the IP"? Then you're in a far smaller, far weirder minority than Tolkien fans.

No, I used the same language as parent comments.

What a weird way to dismiss my points..?

Re: IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of Power

#412

Post by thrown_22 » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 2:33 PM UTC

thfuran wrote: post #359

thrown_22 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a business point of view having a fanatical core of fans who recommend your show to everyone is why you bought the IP. Today I saw physical adverts for House of the Dragon on the train ride home. The only thing I thought about was how shit the last season of Game of Thrones was and how I will never read any media about that world again. Even though I would have watched a new show set in a completely different wo…

>From a business point of view having a fanatical core of fans who recommend your show to everyone is why you bought the IP. There are probably more than 10x as many people who remember liking the lotr movies as a kid than who are close enough friends with a member of that fanatical core of Tolkien fans to have the show personally recommended to them and probably many times again as many people who are just generally…

How well is the Star Wars franchise doing these days?

Re: IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of Power

#413

Post by pvaldes » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 2:34 PM UTC

beepbooptheory wrote: post #344

pvaldes wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not about race, is about culture. You can have any black character in middle earth, --any--, as long as is Southern. Nobody would bat an eye. You can made this character as heroic and positive as you want. Having a black elf is a miscast, because most races in LOTR depict real groups of people or real cultures in Europe. Elves are tall and blonde and represent the Germanic and Scandinavian traditions that Tol…

Just really cannot fathom this if you are serious. There are literal tree people and talking eagles and giant evil wizards in this world for godsakes! It is a fantasy world! Like truly, how can you care about this? Do you not feel any dissonance in your logic here? It is just beyond parody.

There is much more in the book than cheap amusement. It works in several different planes and there is a lot of philosophical and metaphorical content.

To write a fantasy book is easy; to do it at the Tolkien's way is extremely hard. His search for consistency in the entire work is legendary. All tiny details fall in the correct place. LOTR set the mold and reference for every single book in the "sword and sorcery" category for a good reason.

Re: IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of Power

#414

Post by MarkPNeyer » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 2:35 PM UTC

pseudo0 wrote: post #130

thrown_22 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a business point of view having a fanatical core of fans who recommend your show to everyone is why you bought the IP. Today I saw physical adverts for House of the Dragon on the train ride home. The only thing I thought about was how shit the last season of Game of Thrones was and how I will never read any media about that world again. Even though I would have watched a new show set in a completely different wo…

It truly is bizarre to watch. It reminds me of the ethically questionable business strategy of buying a premium brand, slashing prediction quality and costs, and then raking in profits before people catch on. That strategy is viable because of cost-cutting though, while many of these franchises are setting records for production costs despite their mediocre quality.

All of these strategies make sense given the financial environment we live in, with a money supply that constantly increases via debt creation. There’s something like an arms race for attention. The combination of this arms race and unlimited financing means we have production costs for for one hour of entertainment in the tens of even hundreds of millions.

I think good art comes from individuals with fantastic visions; but since no individual can fund things at the scale to compete in the attentional arms race, we are left with endless bland re-hashes since these compete on existing brands and thus are lower risk.

Re: IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of Power

#415

Post by samatman » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 2:35 PM UTC

jeromegv wrote: post #369

samatman wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. An Italian was talking about an Italian story. They're Europeans. What did you intend this statement to contribute?

The reality is that at least as a North American, nobody even knows it is an Italian story. We all know Pinocchio from our childhood. Nobody knows it’s Italian. So watching a Disney movie, I’m not watching an Italian movie featuring an Italian story, just watching Disney. I’m watching a common fable. And in that case, I really don’t see why everyone HAS to be white. Not asking to change the original Italian book here…

Saying you didn't know that Pinocchio (!!) was set in Italy (!!!) is like saying you didn't know the first half of the Little Mermaid was set underwater.

Re: IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of Power

#416

Post by dktokyo » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 2:35 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #323

sirshmooey wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fairy is pale white not because she is white, but because she's pure. Curious equivocation there.

Unfortunately that's really how Tolkien's mythology tends to work. White skin is associated with purity, darker skin with corruption and evil (or at least, between the two, "civilized" and "uncivilized".) It's a trope that's carried on into sci-fi (particularly Star Trek, where the more animalistic or violent races also tend to be darker - see the Klingons who get portrayed as darker-skinned and more aggressive with…

Might have been true with Star Trek as of early TNG, but not sure it's been that way since. I imagine there was uproar around Tuvok being a black Vulcan, but would be hard to imagine Trek fans caring about that today.

Re: IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of Power

#417

Post by matsemann » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 2:36 PM UTC

vintermann wrote: post #330

matsemann wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People love Gandalf, Aragorn, Galadriel, Legolas etc. and want to see more of them. People don't give a crap if any new story is "faithful". And judging faithfulness is subjective anyways, who are you to say the adaption is wrong?

> People love Gandalf, Aragorn, Galadriel, Legolas etc. and want to see more of them. > People don't give a crap if any new story is "faithful". These two statements contradict. The net effect of it not being faithful, is that it doesn't feel like the Aragorn, Legolas, Galadriel etc. you knew. The casual fans will notice too, just a little later and maybe less consciously than the more dedicated fans.

No. People love an old wizard in grey clothing. They don't give a crap if some lore said he beat 1 Balrog but in the show it was 5 giant orcs or whatever. Casuals have never read the background material, I just want to be entertained.

Re: IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of Power

#418

Post by stiltzkin » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 2:37 PM UTC

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #20

pseudo0 wrote: post #6

Interesting to contrast the IMDB rating with Rotten Tomatoes, not owned by Amazon, which currently has an audience rating of 38%. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/the_lord_of_the_rings_the_... In my opinion, Steam does the best job of handling this tricky problem by leaving all reviews up and transparently letting the user pick whether or not to include periods of "unusual activity".

Quoted post unavailable.

The "blame the fans" trick coined by Disney. at least they are not calling them manbabies.

Re: IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of Power

#419

Post by auggierose » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 2:37 PM UTC

eternalban wrote: post #182

auggierose wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watched only the first episode of Dragons, but I am not convinced. What is the point of this show? We know that the real fight between dead and living is happening 200 years later. We know that all of the dragons will be dead at some point. The characters itself are pretty boring, compared to what Thrones had to offer. It is technically well made, but it is boring.

I recently binge watched a series (Irma Vep) that, very tongue in cheek, addressed the malaise of "platforms" affecting film/cinema. It's a very complex work (in terms of multiple layers of readings) spanning the director's closure over his lost love (see Irma Vep 1996), a hat tip to Truffaut's Day for Night , and a very explicitly expressed concern of characters of how "content platforms" have killed cinema and muta…

Have to check it out. Not sure about the 2022 show, but the 1996 movie sounds intriguing. Don't remember anything about Day for Night, just that I found it similarly confusing as Fellini's 8 1/2. I do remember that I really liked Jules et Jim by Truffaut, but then again, it has Jeanne Moreau. I can recommend her movie Bay of Angels. It's a simple but great movie: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056846/

Re: IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of Power

#420

Post by dktokyo » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 2:37 PM UTC

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #396

krapp wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately that's really how Tolkien's mythology tends to work. White skin is associated with purity, darker skin with corruption and evil (or at least, between the two, "civilized" and "uncivilized".) It's a trope that's carried on into sci-fi (particularly Star Trek, where the more animalistic or violent races also tend to be darker - see the Klingons who get portrayed as darker-skinned and more aggressive with…

> White skin is associated with purity, darker skin with corruption it's the oldest metaphor in the world it's light vs darkness, like white magic and black magic. Heaven is light, hell is darkness. Nobody sees "the dark at the end of the tunnel". The idea that black people mean evil and white people mean virtue is a stretch of the modern thinking, by the same people that believe that blacklist comes from black peopl…

The Borg are all races and Romulans, though majority portrayed as white, likely have multiple skin tones the same way the Vulcans do. Though the idea they purged different skin tones at some point fits with their overall narrative.

All the Dominion races were white, more or less. The Changelings have a whole meta commentary going for them.