Lord of the Rings TV Series in Development - How could this POSSIBLY go wrong...

I fairly dislike the Jackson films and firmly believe that no film adaptation could do Tolkien justice. It is a written work that uses the fact that it is a written work to its fullest advantage. I can respect them but as a book purist I won't accept them.
The real reason I hate the Jackson films is because they have become the 'default' version of the story in terms of audience. Comparatively the movies have become mainstream but the books are still fairly niche, leading to a large portion of not the majority of the fanbase having never read the book seriously or even at all. This makes a lot of people have surface-level or very distorted conceptualizations when it comes to Tolkien.
EDIT: Denethor, Faramir and Aragorn are also characters whose character were fundamentally altered by the movies.
 
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PenguinSuitAlice said:
I fairly dislike the Jackson films and firmly believe that no film adaptation could do Tolkien justice. It is a written work that uses the fact that it is a written work to its fullest advantage. I can respect them but as a book purist I won't accept them.
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The films are juvenile trash. A dumbing down of Tolkien to be more palatable for mongrel hollywood audiences. Removing of key scenes and entire storylines. The scouring of the Shire being absent is extremely jarring and changes the entire narrative. Making characters behave childish and imbecilic. Dwarf tossing. Shield surfing. Casting a known pedophile rapist to play Gandalf. Dwarf-Elf romances. Go-Pro commercials. Niggers in Laketown. Tolkien packed in Christian themes into his work. Peter Jackson is basically an open devil worshiper who helped twice convinced child rapists walk free back into society.

I used to believe that no adaptation of LOTR was possible as well. But HBO has shown that someone will pay for a huge budget fantasy show with high production values, sets, and good actors. Yes the writing was some of the worst of all time in Game of Thrones. But the sets and designs were top notch. And LOTR is fully written down to the last sentence. A straight adaptation with the production values of today is possible technically. Instead we get the new Amazon show and other garbage. And churned out Star Wars, Halo, Star Trek, Witcher, mediocrity which are just riding the licenses. But the audiences for longer adaptations of fantasy works are clearly there. Unfortunately the people who own every production company are mogrel kikes.

But a true 1:1 adaptation of LOTR is possible with the best technology today. Not dated CGI or Go-Pro cameras of course. But the absolute cutting edge practical effects and costumes and sets could bring the world to life.
PenguinSuitAlice said:
The real reason I hate the Jackson films is because they have become the 'default' version of the story in terms of audience. Comparatively the movies have become mainstream but the books are still fairly niche, leading to a large portion of not the majority of the fanbase having never read the book seriously or even at all. This makes a lot of people have surface-level or very distorted conceptualizations when it comes to Tolkien.
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The movies ARE now the canon version of LOTR. You ask just about anyone if they are a fan of LOTR and they will only reference the movies. Part of this was likely by design. De-Christianize the story. Make the characters idiotic and appealing to low IQ morons. Remove any references of race or WWI from the story. Remove Tolkien from LOTR essentially and make it generic fantasy. Especially because the people who own LOTR now hate Tolkien for his war service, racism, selling issues of Candour out of his home, Anglo culture. LOTR is now generic fantasy on purpose. Because the things that made it unique either came from Christian or Saxon background, and are now removed intentionally Or are things that have been copied into so many works like orcs and whatnot and modern audiences do not know where those fantasy concepts originated. And with the Hobbit films and the upcoming Amazon dumpster fire it will further descend into mediocrity.

But the LOTR fans even on this site eat everything up. They are like the sycophants and hardcore consumers out of Star Wars fandom. Most of the posters in this thread defend the LOTR movie adaptations still. Likely some have not even read the books. For them the only LOTR they know are the incredibly dumb movies made for people like them.
 
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Newman's Lovechild said:
You're not wrong. I legit never expected to see as many as three opinions in a row trashing the films, here.

It's fantastic. Keep going, keep going.
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I think people like the films as they are probably as close as we will ever get to a good adaptation. Especially these days. They have their flaws, but nobody could really adapt Tolkien to film perfectly.
 
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Sinner's Sandwich said:
I want to see bearded elves. And yes, they are a thing but only extremly old elves have beards.
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Presumably Círdan will be in this, since he is one of the original elven Ringbearers and is physically described as having a beard in LotR, sothere is a good chance there will be a bearded elf. Though they can't use Círdan's extensive backstory though. He's just bearded ship elf who gave up his ring to Gandalf.
 
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Shamash said:
It’s implied in the book-Gandalf mentions his name was “Olorin” in the west. Though in all fairness, Gandalf’s role as odinic wanderer and guide to men is what readers need to know about him.

But the fact remains-Gandalf is an Angel, even if one operating under restraints.
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Have they talked about including him in the series, despite him very clearly being in Arda during the Second Age? This shitting on a major plot point, more so than even the forced diversity, is imo more unforgivable and why I'm glad I'm not watching this trainwreck.
 
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soy_king said:
Have they talked about including him in the series, despite him very clearly being in Arda during the Second Age? This shitting on a major plot point, more so than even the forced diversity, is imo more unforgivable and why I'm glad I'm not watching this trainwreck.
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Yes; they have. Well, there's a visual hint in the teaser trailer.
 
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I like the Jackson Lord of the Rings films and I will defend them as good films and good adaptations of Tolkein's work.
This obviously excludes the Hobbit ones.

They are not as good as the books though and while enjoyable I think a lot of what I enjoy required reading the books too. There's depth to the performances that gets strengthened by knowledge of what is left out.

I do roll my eyes at the comic and overly action-oriented stuff even if I can guiltily admit to enjoying it. But they are only adaptations and I honestly do not think you could do a proper adaptation of Lord of the Rings as a performance. Some things are perfect in the medium they are created in and attempts to transform them lose something.
 
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Morethanabitfoolish said:
I like the Jackson Lord of the Rings films and I will defend them as good films and good adaptations of Tolkein's work.
This obviously excludes the Hobbit ones.

They are not as good as the books though and while enjoyable I think a lot of what I enjoy required reading the books too. There's depth to the performances that gets strengthened by knowledge of what is left out.
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I agree. I don't think you can really appreciate the movies unless you have read the books, which usually grinds my gears when other franchises (like Star Wars or certain anime series ) do it. The problem is that Tolkien's work is just so expansive and rich, that trying to distill it to a self-contained work of media diminishes the final product. You hear one section of Tolkien's story in one of Tolkien's works, and you can't help but think about how it ties together with all of his other works.
 
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Its amusing to think the tv series might be able to make the fucking hobbit movies look good. With big productions autistic need for a jarring comic scenes I'm expecting a few dwarves in a barrel tier scenes or just mind numbingly boring modern politics shoved down our throats like halo was.

Its amazing that with the absolute barrel scraping trash these production companies have shit out like halo with no respect for source material and you will still have apologists argue that any new content is a good thing tm
 
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Moths said:
Its amusing to think the tv series might be able to make the fucking hobbit movies look good. With big productions autistic need for a jarring comic scenes I'm expecting a few dwarves in a barrel tier scenes or just mind numbingly boring modern politics shoved down our throats like halo was.

Its amazing that with the absolute barrel scraping trash these production companies have shit out like halo with no respect for source material and you will still have apologists argue that any new content is a good thing tm
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The Hobbit movies were soulless cashgrabs, but their failure was to go for a tone that didn't fit the material and stretching the material over three movies. It worked with the lore, but it did so poorly.

The show, on the other hand, will go out of its way to break the lore as a vile, petulent, ignorrant attempt to take Tolkien away from its fans. I expect the words "this franchise is no longer for you" to be uttered, like with Star Wars, Star Trek, Ghostbusters, Marvel and so many more.
 
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I think the most scathing thing I can say about the rings of power is it has no reasons to exist outside profit, it's not really art. You can make it as a white as snow and it still doesnt really have anything going on, if anything I wouldn't be surprised if one of amazons motivations in deliberately casting black actors was to obfuscate how desolate it actually is as a show outside of cynical attempts to draw black viewers. The whole things funded by amazon blood money anyway.
 
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Emperor Julian said:
I think the most scathing thing I can say about the rings of power is it has no reasons to exist outside profit, it's not really art. You can make it as a white as snow and it still doesnt really have anything going on, if anything I wouldn't be surprised if one of amazons motivations in deliberatly casting black actors was to obfuscate how desolate it actually is as a show outside of cynical attempts to draw black viewers.
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The budget of this is massively bloated, almost half a billion dollars (nigh twice the amount spent on the Jackson trilogy). The only way Amazon could profit from this is if it is a tax write-off, which it may in all likelihood be.
 
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I actually liked the hobbit movies. Though disclaimer would be that I liked them more for the world building, visuals, and sense of adventure. The story wasn't superb and I imagine the books do that way better
 
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Moths said:
Its amusing to think the tv series might be able to make the fucking hobbit movies look good. With big productions autistic need for a jarring comic scenes I'm expecting a few dwarves in a barrel tier scenes or just mind numbingly boring modern politics shoved down our throats like halo was.

Its amazing that with the absolute barrel scraping trash these production companies have shit out like halo with no respect for source material and you will still have apologists argue that any new content is a good thing tm
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The problem for Amazon is that this time they are going after a religious text. The Hobbit movies were terrible, but they were terrible in execution, not substance. Peter Jackson didn't take huge steaming dumps on the overall mythology of Tolkien, or his themes.

The Appendixes, and the Silmarillion are not just works of art. They are works of faith. Tolkien had the brash arrogance to say he wanted to recreate the lost mythology of the English People, and he actually succeeded. For so many people, the story of the Song of the Ainur at the dawn of the world is "Real". Not real in the sense that they actually believed Manwe and Eru engaged in a duet to create the world. But real in the sense that it's a foundational mythos that defines a people and culture.

What Amazon is doing is akin to woke writers taking the foundation stories of Islam in the Koran, making Muhammad a bitch boy to his trader wife, the Angel Gabriel a Jewish woman, and then telling 1.2 billion Muslims they need to update their origin story for modern audiences.
 
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