Wednesday, August 13All That Matters

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power – Official Teaser Trailer | Prime Video

47 Comments

  • [“Amazon studios executives had to send Bezos regular updates on the projects in development that included spreadsheets describing how each show had each story element; and if one element was missing, they had to explain why.” ] (https://twitter.com/pkafka/status/1392111119511216132)

    [“After more debate, Bezos boiled it down: “Look, I know what it takes to make a great show. This should not be hard”] (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E1HA48QWQAEmcDA?format=jpg&name=large)

  • > The Rings of Power is set to take place after the defeat of the evil god Morgoth and the disappearance of his loyal general and apprentice, Sauron, who disappeared in the wake of a war that nearly destroyed everything.

  • Over time I have changed my view on things like this (creating content not based on a completed book/series) to the following:

    If it’s good I am glad they made it and if it’s not then it won’t take anything from what I enjoy about the “original” LOTR. So ya make the series and lets hope for the best

    EDIT:

    It would be unfair not to assume any large following of people did not have people like you talk about. In fact, even a part of myself feels the same way about things, the want to keep things the way they were for me when they made me feel in some way special. Whether that be a person or a thing like LOTR. But people change and so does the view of wanting to do something different with what is already there.

    A big part of being an adult is how do you handle change. At the end of the day, it’s going to happen and it may hurt sometimes but sometimes change needs to happen and sometimes it does not but things change anyway. I am quitting my job and traveling to Europe and maybe Asia for who knows how long because I have changed and I will continue to do so in some way till I die.

    Lets roll the dice and see what happens, no matter if the roll ends up good or bad don’t give up.

  • Well it certainly LOOKS like they spent literally hundreds of millions of dollars on it. Obviously will need to wait and see whether the show is good or not, but visually it looks pretty great.

  • One of the best parts of Jackson’s trilogy, to me at least, was just how *lived in* the world felt. I know it’s only a 60 second clip, and I want this to be good as much as anyone, but I’m getting massive Netflix original/sterile/filmed in a clean room vibes from this….

  • Looks like they seen the Hobbit and thought fuck it, we will copy that over CGI’d style. I don’t get why they use CGI on areas that don’t need CGI like that waterfall and mountains? you are filming in New Zealand for fuck sake just get a drone. It will look 10x more authentic. No wonder it cost a fortune if people make silly decisions like that. Not sure why there is an elf with a skinfade? or why Hobbits are now in the 2nd age. Just pissing off Tolkien fans for the sake of it.

  • Am I crazy? I don’t want to be negative but I disagree so much that this looks excellent visually. Maybe if it was an original it’d be great but I’m getting major Wheel of Fortune vibes from this (albeit obviously higher budget) and LOTR needs a grittier, more lived in look to work imo. Hope I’m wrong and obviously if the characters and storytelling are good this won’t matter as much but my hopes are lower than before after this..

  • There is something uncanny about the visuals in the trailer, everything looks sort of… plasticky? Digital? Not sure if that’s the right word. Too clean?

    The ice climbing segment looks like it was a videogame cutscene.

  • You’d think Amazon would be more willing to take risks given how much money they can throw at this thing with the only metric for success because how many people with Prime watch it…

    I mean there is no box office here yet this looks like a focus-tested mess. Why bother doing that when there is no direct cash flow from this like a film!?!

  • Look at those two guys with the hornwings. They are also in the promo shoots and they are in costume, so not CGI. Then you watch this trailer and they look like Project 36 in a Udemy Adobe After Effects Tutorial. Like wheel of Time main theme said:

    Aaaaahhhh ahhhh, ahh ahh ahhh ahhhhhh.

    All over again.

  • The more I see of this, the more I come to the conclusion that there is only one network that ever would have worked right for a show like this, and that’s HBO. No matter how much money all the other networks and services spend, they clearly don’t have whatever makes the HBO magic work.

    This show has what, four times the budget of Wheel of Time or something ridiculous like that, and it has the same cheap look and feel (maybe not *as* bad, but still). Things look fake. It all feels plastic-y and corporate in a way that is reminiscent of all the other wannabe prestige shows, though I think Amazon are particularly bad with this (The Boys also had the same issues visually, in my opinion, but relatively good writing and acting and such saved it from having the same fate as all the other Prime Originals).

    On the other end you have House of the Dragon, which even just in its teaser immediately looks so much better. The lighting is right, the props are lived-in, the shots are carefully planned to not stretch the VFX team’s budget and ability beyond what they can manage, the actors fit and don’t look like a YA adaptation.

    There are exceptions to this rule, other networks have managed to have great-looking shows, but none have gotten even close to matching HBO’s consistency. I don’t know what it is, if it is their history in prestige television, their connections to the best talent available, maybe just a cascading effect of their great reputation among creators, but nothing compares, not yet at least.

    And now I am very sad Amazon outbid them on the rights for this, because I worry instead of potentially having an incredible team behind a series in as beloved a world as Middle Earth, we will have, at best, yet another mediocre Prime product, run by people with no experience, no creativity, and no passion, picked not because they pitched a great idea, but because they were easy to control and were ready to cover all of Amazon’s requirements and build a show according to their formula that has so far lead to only mediocrity. ^(Cowabummer, dude.)

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