• Welcome to The Tolkien Forum! Connect with fellow Tolkien enthusiasts and join a community that is over two decades old, and still going strong. We look forward to meeting you.  Register

Lord of the Rings on Prime Updates (Thanks Varking!)

Say wha...???? Seriously? My expectations for this series has just dropped dramaticly. Why do they think that Galadriel has to look even close to Cate Blanchett?
Now I liked Cate, but she wasn't how I portrayed Galadriel looking in my book-reading mind. Now I like Ms Clark, but no...
I guess we book nerds just have to face the fact that we are definitely not the core target demographic for this Amazon series. That might have been the case for "Fellowship" back in 2001, but between then and 2015 (EE of BoFA released) there have been six films (twelve if you count the EEs separately) establishing their own "canon" for the films-only set - or the casual readers of the books. Ian McKellen is Gandalf, Christopher Lee is Saruman, Cate Blanchett is Galadriel, Sean Astin is Sam, Viggo Mortensen is Aragorn, Martin Freeman is the younger Bilbo, Orlando Bloom is Legolas (and a very special case), ...
Taking that as a starting point, I am not surprised that they are trying to hitchhike on any recognizability factor to give the audience their aha moments.

But then, this is the first canon character to be cast, apparently?
 
Which worries me, and the only one with an actual Tolkien name.
CL
After TH, you should be immune to worrying (and the reference to a "young Galadriel" above should have driven the final nail on the coffin of anyone's "canon" hopes).

I may have mentioned here on TTF in another thread that I saw "Fellowship" in the cinema twice with the space of less that half a week in January 2002 (none of this standing in endless lines for the chance of a "premiere" for me). After the first viewing I basically only had this huge list in my mind about thing where PJ had gotten things wrong. The second time around I viewed the film pretty much with the attitude "some names and places and events have been heisted from the book, but that's about it." Had I gone into "TTT" and "RoTK" with my attitude for the first viewing of "Fellowship", I would probably have left at the intermission at the latest.

I didn't know the term at the time, but they're "fanfics". With the usual Hollywood modus operandi of adding irrelevant filling to make them fit their brain-dead cookie cutter better.

With TH, especially after announcing that this would also become a "trilogy", it was clear to me that the fanfic plus Hollywood garbage aspect would increase immensely.
Interestingly, while with the LoTR series showed an increase in film length (in EEs at least) with a serious spike upwards in cinema and EE versions for the finale, TH showed exactly the opposite trend. In both versions the finale was the shortest.

So now we arrive at Amazon. From LoTR to TH, the amount of canon source material shrank dramatically. For the Second Age, the shrinkage is at least as dramatic. By some strict defenitions, there is nothing canon about it besides the relevant RoTK appendices. So … "let's do a GoT clone here, those junkies with massive withdrawal symptoms are just salivating for another fix!" could very well be the rallying cry for Amazon. Everything is becoming a soap opera / telenovela, it seems ...
 
After TH, you should be immune to worrying (and the reference to a "young Galadriel" above should have driven the final nail on the coffin of anyone's "canon" hopes).

I may have mentioned here on TTF in another thread that I saw "Fellowship" in the cinema twice with the space of less that half a week in January 2002 (none of this standing in endless lines for the chance of a "premiere" for me). After the first viewing I basically only had this huge list in my mind about thing where PJ had gotten things wrong. The second time around I viewed the film pretty much with the attitude "some names and places and events have been heisted from the book, but that's about it." Had I gone into "TTT" and "RoTK" with my attitude for the first viewing of "Fellowship", I would probably have left at the intermission at the latest.

I didn't know the term at the time, but they're "fanfics". With the usual Hollywood modus operandi of adding irrelevant filling to make them fit their brain-dead cookie cutter better.

With TH, especially after announcing that this would also become a "trilogy", it was clear to me that the fanfic plus Hollywood garbage aspect would increase immensely.
Interestingly, while with the LoTR series showed an increase in film length (in EEs at least) with a serious spike upwards in cinema and EE versions for the finale, TH showed exactly the opposite trend. In both versions the finale was the shortest.

So now we arrive at Amazon. From LoTR to TH, the amount of canon source material shrank dramatically. For the Second Age, the shrinkage is at least as dramatic. By some strict defenitions, there is nothing canon about it besides the relevant RoTK appendices. So … "let's do a GoT clone here, those junkies with massive withdrawal symptoms are just salivating for another fix!" could very well be the rallying cry for Amazon. Everything is becoming a soap opera / telenovela, it seems ...
Sadly true....



CL
 
I'm wondering if they're going with invented characters because it gives latitude for "new" stories, or because of some constraints from the estate on the use of canon. Anyone know?
 
Kahu said this was the biggest project he had ever worked on, far surpassing the demand and interest of movies such as Avatar.

Already, he said KAM talent had found people to play body doubles of key actors. He said the main focus of this first season would be Gandalf the Grey.

"It's about the Second Age, 2000 years before The Fellowship Of The Ring. You'll see orcs in different a light, and different styles of people. There might even some humans," he said.
 
"Kahu … said the main focus of this first season would be Gandalf the Grey."
"It's about the Second Age, 2000 years before The Fellowship Of The Ring. You'll see orcs in different a light, and different styles of people. There might even some humans,"
WHAT?!?!?!?
I guess Tom Shippey is too old to be going through the premises and swatting any people giving off such mindless drivel with (in his case) a cricket bat.
I mean if you have trouble distinguishing the terms "Second" and "Third", what are you qualified for that requires mental abilities above that of a door stopper?
"You'll see orcs in different a light ..." So PJ seems actually to be lurking in the background, and is finally fulfilling his sick little fantasy of having the baddies portrayed positively, something he could not do in LoTR, except in little scenes that still got rightfully shredded. That bit about being a specialist for slasher movies and the like earlier ...
 
1576784854008.png
 
If the situation for Prime is as tenuous as the article suggests, it could, on the one hand, push them to emphasize high-quality, original writing and production. On the other hand, they may feel the need to play it safe, and go with lowest-common-denominator clichés.
 

Similar threads

Back
Top