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

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

#451

Post by snowwrestler »

tomp wrote: post #193
workingon wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never thought I’d live to see the day where people would unironically call equity dogma. But here we are. What a sad state of affairs.

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...

You’re just really confused about what equity is. It’s not “equality of outcome.” The whole point of seeking equity is to free the out-performers from the chains holding them down.

Edit to add:

Seeking equity is about surfacing relevant merit, and fighting irrelevant demerits. For example if someone has the skill to be a great engineer they should not be given the job of taking notes in meetings just because they are a woman. Gender is irrelevant to engineering. But many people who aren’t male find their engineering career progression slowed because of their gender. That is not an equitable outcome.

But obviously it’s impossible to create an equal outcome: you can’t magically make everyone on Earth a great engineer.

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

#452

Post by smsm42 »

titzer wrote: post #147
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…

> And not to involve Jackson seems off Personally, the more I reflect on the Jackson series, the less I'm a fan. He borrowed heavily from the pacing, framing, and selectiveness of Bakshi's animated film, which didn't finish the trilogy. But worse, though inevitable when you have billions of $$ in your eyeballs, Jackson over-printed a lot of kids' imaginations with his depictions. I can't remember what I thought thing…

I think Jackson did a fine job. That doesn't mean, however, everybody past him should copy what he did forever or ask him for his permission or opinion. One great production of Hamlet doesn't mean Hamlet has now look like that from now on forever and whoever did it owns the story. One of the things that makes the story great is that there are many angles possible and many creative approaches available. So no Jackson involvement is no problem for me.

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

#453

Post by notahacker »

rglullis wrote: post #167
AlexandrB wrote: post #131

Earlier 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.

Oh, please... no one is complaining about having minorities. The point is retconning a different type of "diversity" into a story just for the purpose of marketing for the current consumer base and its cultural sensitivities . Taking a cultural landmark and just repackaging it (new version with 20% more "minorities"!) where the race of the actors does not change anything for the story being told is just cheap tokenis…

Oh please... a subthread which the GP started by retconning Tolkien as "what passes for white supremacy these days" to argue it was being ruined by casting (with digressions into Marxism spoiling beauty) now itself gets retconned as "nobody complaining about having minorities"

Every film makes hundreds of decisions to appeal to different sections of movie audiences and live up to expectations of modern movies from casting unusually attractive people to typecasting English accents in a non-English world to cutting half the original scenes in a book and shoehorning an implied love interest in there, yet somehow all this pandering to consumers' cultural sensitivities that actually change established storylines get less hostility than the decision to cast a black woman in a fantasy series whose entirely new [for licensing and lack of material reasons] plot lines aren't even known yet. If people consider Tolkien's world not having segregated casting to being "crap Hollywood wants to shove down our throats", it's hard to believe they're doing so more out of concern diverse issues aren't being represented properly and less out of hostility to the idea that white people might not always be the default.

the irony is of course that whilst being far from woke, Tolkien thought white supremacist ethnography utterly risible, included a Legolas/Gimli subplot as heavy-handed as any Hollywood antiracism parable, wasn't especially bothered about describing skin tones or appearance, and to the extent he did, made it clear that Middle Earth as a precursor to the modern world included darker skinned people.

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

#454

Post by karmasimida »

cgeier wrote: post #29
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…

While I'm not particularly looking forward to this series, having rather unknown actors isn't putting me off at all. And why shouldn't they go with directors they are happy with? TV series often have a lot of different directors, often directing just a single episode of a season or even a series.

It is easier to have unknown actors/actress to sign up for longer contract I believe.

Such high-profile show is unlikely to use super expensive and well known actors/actress for big roles, due to budget and commitment issue.

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

#455

Post by tptacek »

Sebb767 wrote: post #236
Freak_NL wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why strange? Others have pointed out plenty of benefits that going with good but lesser known actors brings, so why take on more risk with more famous actors? They don't need them for their brand value in this case. Amazon would probably like to have the next Orlando Bloom, but doesn't need or want the current Orlando Bloom (or any other famous actor).

Let me formulate it like this: The most expensive series so far was The Pacific, with a budget of $22 million per episode [0]. You'd expect a high budget series to spend a lot on actors and directors - let's just go with 50%. This would put this series on a budget equivalent of $800 million to $1 billion with a "normal" cast (depending on how much you calculate as budget for lesser known actors). Given 20 episodes [1…

The Pacific was definitely not expensive because of its cast (none of the leads, Sledge, Leckie, or Basilone, were well-known). You can just watch the show and see where the money went.

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

#456

Post by newsclues »

Sebb767 wrote: post #145
newsclues wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Hollywood you don’t always hire people for talent but branding and audience awareness. If you have a brand like the Hobbit you don’t need brand name actors or directors to attract an audience.

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…

Oh sorry. CGI is why, it isn’t strange if you watch the credits and see armies of animators at multiple studios.

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

#457

Post by tomp »

snowwrestler wrote: post #451
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...

You’re just really confused about what equity is. It’s not “equality of outcome.” The whole point of seeking equity is to free the out-performers from the chains holding them down. Edit to add: Seeking equity is about surfacing relevant merit, and fighting irrelevant demerits. For example if someone has the skill to be a great engineer they should not be given the job of taking notes in meetings just because they are…

Can you define what “equity” is then, according to your understanding?

To me, “freeing the outperformers” sounds like “meritocracy” which I wholeheartedly support!

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

#458

Post by dragonwriter »

danso wrote: post #419
subsubzero wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Besides Sean Bean — who was far from A-list — how many of the Games of Thrones cast were well-known? Jason Momoa and Pedro Pascal, who’ve probably had the most post-GoT success so far (and who were two of the most popular/memorable characters on GoT), didn’t have widespread recognition before GoT.

> Besides Sean Bean — who was far from A-list — how many of the Games of Thrones cast were well-known?

None A-list, obviously, but (in no particular order) Lena Headey, Iain Glenn, Natalie Dormer, Peter Dinklage, Nicolaj Coster-Waldau, & Charles Dance, arguably.

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

#459

Post by xdennis »

asdff wrote: post #418
AlwaysRock wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Quality matters if you care about having a cash cow and not just a one off. Paramount+ is big on telling us halo TV's first episode set records on their service, but I haven't seen any data from other episodes which is telling. I don't think that a series scoring 6 on rotten tomatoes can continually smash records and continue to look like a sound investment for media buyers.

> Quality matters if you care about having a cash cow and not just a one off.

I'm not trying to be provocative, but how do you explain superhero movies then? They all seem to be the same and are a huge cash cow.

IMHO, if you throw hundreds of millions of dollars at something and the same in marketing, they will come because the majority of people will just watch what's on.

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