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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

#591
post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See my edit. Equity means your outcome is determined by relevant metrics, and not by irrelevant metrics.

You’ve described meritocracy. Equity is pretty explicitly anti-meritocratic. E.g. a woman should be hired over a man, or a black should be accepted to university instead of an Asian, not because they’re more skilled or have greater potential, but to address historical grievances and/or ensure proportional percentage-wise representation.

Meritocracy is about determining who has ruling power. The hint is in the suffix -cracy, like in democracy or autocracy.

Equity has much lower stakes. It’s about the ability (opportunity) for each person to live the best life they can, free from oppression. It’s not necessary to rule over other people to do that.

Equity and meritocracy share similar challenges in that a social order already exists, and therefore the determination of merit is currently being determined by specific people. So it’s not objective.

Equity is a goal that is very hard to reach. What you’re complaining about are some admittedly blunt tactics to try to get there. But they’re not in themselves the goal.

Even if you don’t like those tactics, it’s a bad look to say that the goal of equity is “deeply evil.” It’s like saying “everyone getting a fair chance is deeply evil.”

Edit to add: an example of a relatively uncontroversial tactic to improve equity is accessibility engineering for websites. Being visually impaired doesn’t stop a person from thinking, so we have made social rules that websites should be constructed in a certain way so that visually impaired people can interact with them.

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

#592
post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ve described meritocracy. Equity is pretty explicitly anti-meritocratic. E.g. a woman should be hired over a man, or a black should be accepted to university instead of an Asian, not because they’re more skilled or have greater potential, but to address historical grievances and/or ensure proportional percentage-wise representation.

Meritocracy is about determining who has ruling power. The hint is in the suffix -cracy, like in democracy or autocracy. Equity has much lower stakes. It’s about the ability (opportunity) for each person to live the best life they can, free from oppression. It’s not necessary to rule over other people to do that. Equity and meritocracy share similar challenges in that a social order already exists, and therefore the…

Well, you can also do meritocracy in organisations/companies (e.g. GitHub used to do that), and by extension, most of education system (which is preparing people for careers).

Which isn't what's happening lately. Asians and whites are discriminated in university admissions in preference to latinos/blacks. Men are discriminated against when hiring and doling out scholarships to the benefit of women. Openly racist policies are being proposed ("reparations") or even legislated [0] in the name of "anti-racism". Non-extreme-left viewpoints are being suppressed. People are being cancelled for making jokes, or for supporting biology (e.g. biological sex).

This isn't happening in the name of "meritocracy", or in the name of "equality". It's happening in the name of "equity". It's bullying, it's repression, it's discrimination, it's evil. You might mean good (hell, even Hitler just wanted to improve the world!), but if your way to justice requires massive injustice along the way, well, I hate to break it to you, you're just evil.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/03/us/oregon-cares-fund-laws...

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

#593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It matters if it's a key plot point. If it's got no impact on the plot, there's no harm in changing it a little. Plenty of other things described in the books get tweaked for TV/film; it's a little sus if only skin color changes get you upset. If you did a find/replace on LOTR for "ivory" with "ebony", zero elements of the story would be impacted.

It's also sus if the only thing that gets changed is the skin colour for no apparent reason, other than to appease twitter. Like I said, the setting is important. The world was designed in this way for a reason, by the author. It's the same thing the other way around: changing every character from black or 'asian' to white, if the story is otherwise unaffected, would be ridiculous.

> It's also sus if the only thing that gets changed is the skin colour for no apparent reason, other than to appease twitter.

"It must be to appease Twitter, can't possibly be because the actor had a good audition" seems pretty racist. If Amazon was afraid of Twitter, they'd be pro-union.

> It's the same thing the other way around: changing every character from black or 'asian' to white

That's not the same thing, though. The new LOTR series hasn't changed every character to Black or Asian. Nowhere near it.

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

#594
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seinfeld Is not just watch r for nostalgia, its still in syndication, and also has a massive overseas fan base. Mad Men is timeless in its lessons, novel in its execution, and holds a unique place in TV history. It’ll be watched for decades.

Seinfeld is the exception. Heres the top TV shows of 1993: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-rated_United_States_tele... Seinfeld is the only one that people still watch.

Gobsmacked, How can you look at that list and say "seinfeld is the only one that people still watch"?

One....that's a subjective thing, two..several shows on that list are currently in syndication, three....several are still running.

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

#595
post #17

Evil is not able to create anything new, it can only distort and destroy what has been invented or made by the forces of good. bezzzos bezzosn my bezzzos

Please no YouTube tier comments.

This is a reference to LOTR creationism/lore.

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

#596
post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

Sure - the MCU uses a lot of TV directors for example - since it functions more like a TV show than a auteur-driven series of films.

The creative elements in MCU films are (mostly) not director-driven, they are franchise-driven. You need a 'good' director and a 'good' script, with 'good' and 'famous' actors, from there, so long as the creative leads are professional and the budget is there, you're good.

I believe that DC suffers from bad creative direction and bad scripts. Most of the rest is workable.

Star Wars suffers from bad stories/scripts and Kathleen Kennedy interference politics.

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

#597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't read the books either. Just such a badly written show with horrible actors.

Yeah, I’ll disagree there, it’s decently written with good actors. Far worse shows out there, like everything from MCU.

We clearly have different tastes. I really liked Loki, for example. And I even enjoy Miss Marvel!

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

#598

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…

While Tolkien certainly has plenty of material that could be filmed, most of it seems to be in short story format where each story would be an hour or two. Amazon is assuredly looking for another Game of Thrones and I don't think they can get that from Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales or Children of Hurin.

[deleted]

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

#599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spoiler! Maybe edit

It's been over for three years now, one of those years where everyone was inside for a long time, and was very hotly debated on social media. I think it meets the criteria for not needing a spoiler warning

I'll never forget the day someone on the subway shouted "I can't believe character X dies!"

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

#600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but Expanse also ended on a weak season.

But not on a bad one, which is more than you can say of GoT. Also, The Expanse has now "ended" the second time, so there's still hope.

I presume that The Expanse will return in a decade or so, which would help in depicting the last three books.
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