Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ series will cost at least $465M for first season • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ series will cost at least $465M for first season

#91

Post by effingwewt » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 6:11 PM UTC

candiddevmike wrote: post #25

amelius wrote: post #2

Curious if I'm the only one here who thinks that LotR is overrated. Let them spend the money on a better story.

If anyone has ever read the Malazan Book of the Fallen books, adapting that into a series would be incredible, though it would be a serious undertaking. My dream adaptation would be an animated version in the style of the Castlevania and DOTA shows on Netflix--I don't think live-action with CGI could do it justice.

I don't think so at all. I read the entire series, I waited for every new boom with baited breath.

But without spoiling anything- by the end it had clearly gone the way of the Battlestar Galactica remake. They had no idea where to take the story and by the end it was painfully obvious. At least Moore admitted that by the end he was as lost as we were.

Same with GRRM, or even Stephen Kimg and the Gunslinger series. I absolutely adore a good story but much prefer ones with a general outline finished before writing a series. Disjointed stories with years between each never seem as good to me by their conclusions.

Castlevania started out great but meandered to 'WTAF how could you make me hate a Castlevania adult cartoon?!' in typical Netflix fashion.

Take the opposite example of Cowboy Bebop, had a pretty clear arc as well as an ending, and was perfect for it.

But I guess everyone just wants to be The Simpsons and drag things on forever.

Re: Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ series will cost at least $465M for first season

#92

Post by krapp » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 6:17 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #90

staticman2 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are religious themes in The Silmarilion but there are virtually none in Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit from what I recall. Whatever Tolkien may have said privately- virtually every character comes across as not having a religion. None of them prey to God when in danger. People are responding to the books Tolkien wrote, not what he said he wrote.

> None of them pr[a]y to God when in danger. The entire story of LotR is of people either obeying or defying a divine command, delivered through an angel, to sacrifice apparent immediate self interest to defeat a fallen angel and his followers. Plenty of stories in the Bible don’t deal so much with ritual religious observance by the characters was with following (or not) moral rules and/or response to divine emissari…

Minus the culturally specific terminology like 'angel', those motifs can be found in every mythology and every religion. There's nothing particularly Christian or Catholic about them, it's basically the Hero's Journey.

Re: Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ series will cost at least $465M for first season

#93

Post by olivierestsage » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 6:25 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #92

dragonwriter wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> None of them pr[a]y to God when in danger. The entire story of LotR is of people either obeying or defying a divine command, delivered through an angel, to sacrifice apparent immediate self interest to defeat a fallen angel and his followers. Plenty of stories in the Bible don’t deal so much with ritual religious observance by the characters was with following (or not) moral rules and/or response to divine emissari…

Minus the culturally specific terminology like 'angel', those motifs can be found in every mythology and every religion. There's nothing particularly Christian or Catholic about them, it's basically the Hero's Journey.

I guess there are two discussions to be had here. The first is whether, in light of the author's explicit statements that he means the work to be Christian, we are still authorized as readers to abstract his text into a general idea of "the Hero's Journey." The second is whether there is anything distinctively Christian at all about LotR, when considered on its own terms. I would say that LotR objectively differs from the Hero's Journey in that it insists on mercy and the principled refusal of worldly power as its most central ideas.

Re: Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ series will cost at least $465M for first season

#94

Post by greedo » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 6:55 PM UTC

olivierestsage wrote: post #88

staticman2 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are religious themes in The Silmarilion but there are virtually none in Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit from what I recall. Whatever Tolkien may have said privately- virtually every character comes across as not having a religion. None of them prey to God when in danger. People are responding to the books Tolkien wrote, not what he said he wrote.

I hope you won't mind my responding in detail with what I think about this; I am passionate about this topic. Tolkien deliberately removed references to prayer and religion in his fantasy world to avoid two potential traps: by showing a fictional religion, he would risk contradicting his faith; by explicitly loading scenes of Christian prayer into his fantasy, he would undermine the quality of the fiction with "alleg…

Sauron was never an elf; he was a Maier, just like Gandalf.

Re: Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ series will cost at least $465M for first season

#95

Post by olivierestsage » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 7:13 PM UTC

greedo wrote: post #94

olivierestsage wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you won't mind my responding in detail with what I think about this; I am passionate about this topic. Tolkien deliberately removed references to prayer and religion in his fantasy world to avoid two potential traps: by showing a fictional religion, he would risk contradicting his faith; by explicitly loading scenes of Christian prayer into his fantasy, he would undermine the quality of the fiction with "alleg…

Sauron was never an elf; he was a Maier, just like Gandalf.

Oops - many thanks for the correction.

Re: Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ series will cost at least $465M for first season

#96

Post by CyberDildonics » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 8:10 PM UTC

zo1 wrote: post #49

amelius wrote: post #2

Curious if I'm the only one here who thinks that LotR is overrated. Let them spend the money on a better story.

I would rather hollywood invested in "random" fantasy/sci-fi books. Probably each one of those books is a unique universe on its own that can be used as a setting for literally any kind of story. Yet here we are, still stuck with orcs, vampires, zombies and wizards (don't mean to demean it, I love all of it). Just wish they would use some new kind of universe with its own unique mechanics. They do drip out once in a…

Is amazon making a series in new zealand really hollywood?

Re: Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ series will cost at least $465M for first season

#97

Post by staticman2 » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 8:55 PM UTC

olivierestsage wrote: post #88

staticman2 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are religious themes in The Silmarilion but there are virtually none in Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit from what I recall. Whatever Tolkien may have said privately- virtually every character comes across as not having a religion. None of them prey to God when in danger. People are responding to the books Tolkien wrote, not what he said he wrote.

I hope you won't mind my responding in detail with what I think about this; I am passionate about this topic. Tolkien deliberately removed references to prayer and religion in his fantasy world to avoid two potential traps: by showing a fictional religion, he would risk contradicting his faith; by explicitly loading scenes of Christian prayer into his fantasy, he would undermine the quality of the fiction with "alleg…

I appreciate your response and I would expect the new series to have those sorts of themes- not because I expect the series to be good, necessarily, but because I would expect hollywood writers to try to tell a story which is "the same but a little different".

Re: Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ series will cost at least $465M for first season

#98

Post by staticman2 » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 8:59 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #90

staticman2 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are religious themes in The Silmarilion but there are virtually none in Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit from what I recall. Whatever Tolkien may have said privately- virtually every character comes across as not having a religion. None of them prey to God when in danger. People are responding to the books Tolkien wrote, not what he said he wrote.

> None of them pr[a]y to God when in danger. The entire story of LotR is of people either obeying or defying a divine command, delivered through an angel, to sacrifice apparent immediate self interest to defeat a fallen angel and his followers. Plenty of stories in the Bible don’t deal so much with ritual religious observance by the characters was with following (or not) moral rules and/or response to divine emissari…

I don't follow. Who is the angel in lord of the rings? Gandalf? He's a wizard not an angel.

There might be something in the Silmarilion that backs up your interpretation but I don't think it's in Lord of the Rings.

Re: Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ series will cost at least $465M for first season

#99

Post by SilasX » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

wmf wrote: post #74

lumost wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If more money is spent making a show about Apollo than the actual Apollo missions - why not film them on location?

Someone once joked that if Kubrick had been asked to fake the moon landings he would have insisted on filming on the moon for maximum realism. The main problem is probably cost disease; if you tried to recreate any Apollo missions today it would cost you more (adjusted for inflation even) that it originally did.

"Cost disease" generally refers to the phenomenon of things becoming (relatively) more expensive because of the unavoidable human-labor component, but the Apollo missions would be more expensive for other reasons, or other requirements that necessitate human labor where said requirements didn't exist before.

Re: Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ series will cost at least $465M for first season

#100

Post by Gibbon1 » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 9:21 PM UTC

wmf wrote: post #74

lumost wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If more money is spent making a show about Apollo than the actual Apollo missions - why not film them on location?

Someone once joked that if Kubrick had been asked to fake the moon landings he would have insisted on filming on the moon for maximum realism. The main problem is probably cost disease; if you tried to recreate any Apollo missions today it would cost you more (adjusted for inflation even) that it originally did.

My joke was the cost of faking the moon landing was too high. 100% of GDP from 1960 to 1970. And then the estimated cost for the 'Kubrick Plan B' was too high. So they sent two air force test pilots up with home movie cameras to film each other on the moon.

Lame!