[asdfk-12]

Rings of power is equal parts boring, predictable, and positively ho-hum in every respect. Feels like it got focus-grouped to death. I am likely not the target audience, seeing as how Amazon provides ~14 languages for closed captioning - they may be seeking a more global audience with this content.

I read all the books and saw the Peter Jackson trilogy in theaters. This adaptation leaves a dull impression.

[xxs]

>14 languages for closed captioning

Look at "The Boys" with regards to 'closed captions' (hint 30+). It's good they translated the TV shows, and drawing conclusions about its target audience out of that is dumb.

[khazhoux]

I make good use of those captions, given that most of Billy Butcher's dialog is: "Roight, now we gonnagyabrngs frbitszlan in th righnylnggnsya!"

[tetris11]

As a brit, his accent makes me cringe hard. But his character more.than makes up for it.

[thiht]

Isn’t it an Australian accent?

[philliphaydon]

He means himself as a brit listening to the actor with an aussie accent.

[hoseja]

I thought I was the only one!

[tshaddox]

There’s nothing wrong with not being the target audience of a show, but I find the bit about subtitles in 14 languages a bit odd. How could that possibly be an indicator that you’re not the target audience?

[mazdayasna]

I believe the implication is that the priority is for a general international audience ala Disney

[tobr]

So is OP under the impression that the Jackson trilogy is not available in 14+ languages? Or that the Tolkien books aren’t, for that matter?

[red_trumpet]

Well, one could argue that Tolkien didn't plan on his books to be translated in that many languages. I'm not sure why this matters at all, though.

[tshaddox]

He was a philologist who oversaw translations during his lifetime and even wrote a guide for translators to use when translating fictional names. It sounds like he was picky and critical of translations, but not because he didn’t want them to exist.

[red_trumpet]

I didn't mean to imply that Tolkien opposed translations.

Maybe I'm being a bit naive, but intuitively I would think that most writers do not write a book with the explicit intention of the book being translated. The first intended audience is typically readers in the original language.

This is opposed by producing a series for Amazon, where it is mostly clear that the intended audience is world wide, talking many languages (in particular if it is about such a famous topic). And I wouldn't be surprised if this fact does impact the production of a work.

[tshaddox]

Or simply an audience targeted by something other than the language they speak. As others have mentioned, it’s very common for new original content from major streaming services to have subtitles in many languages. Even if that weren’t the case, it wouldn’t be surprising for a Lord of the Rings show, given that the book series has been widely translated and the author himself was a philologist who reportedly meticulously oversaw early translations of his works.

[Shorel]

A complete disregard for languages, and talking about a Tolkien adaptation! Preposterous!

Tolkien was so into languages he edited the Oxford dictionary.

And besides, this feels like English chauvinism.

[Veuxdo]

Nobody is the target audience when you're aiming for everybody...

[IshKebab]

But... they're aiming for every language not every person surely. Do you think that only English speakers want to watch good fantasy TV?

[Veuxdo]

I wouldn't be so sure. There's a reason why Big Dumb Action movies get cranked out while comedies have largely died: they do well in the foreign market. This is basic least-common-denominator thinking that leads to bland schlock.

[Vespasian]

Based solely on my anecdotal data it seems like many comedies where I live are local (aka not from the US).

Some of them do well others don't but they are certainly there.

Is there a similar set of movies in the US (aimed at the national/state level market) or is all the money sucked up by productions for the international market.

[mrits]

I don't know what Amazon pays for subtitles but I could probably get it done for around $50/language. Hardly a relevant metric

[dclowd9901]

I seriously doubt that.

[xxs]

for 50$, I mean they could use "google translate". Seriously though localizations and translations are a serious business and important. Not everyone speaks (or understand movie/tv show) English.

[tenpies]

I think that many of us are coming at this with Peter Jackson's trilogy in mind (and the extended editions at that), but we have - probably intentionally - forgotten the exceedingly mediocre The Hobbits trilogy.

If you use that more recent work as the baseline, then I can see how the episodes released so far place the series fairly in the "watchable, but forgettable" category.

I do hope Amazon releases some UHD stills of the cities though. The team who handled those did an exceptional job.

[rdtsc]

> forgotten the exceedingly mediocre The Hobbits trilogy.

True. That could have been a 2 hour movie or at most two episodes. However, one difference is that the characters there do not seem that much at odds with the book or the first three movies. Galadriel in the Amazon show, on the other hand, just doesn't feel like the book or the movie Galadriel so it's a bit jarring. For their large budget, the dialog and characters should have been done a bit better I thought.

[riffraff]

> the characters there do not seem that much at odds with the book or the first three movies

well, The Hobbit itself as a book is at odds with LoTR, being a children fairy tale rather than an epic.

Just compare the scene where they get away from trolls in The Hobbit with the the trolls attacking Gondor in the movie. The change of tone is insane.

OTOH, it's pretty silly to be angry about it :)

[midoridensha]

>True. That could have been a 2 hour movie or at most two episodes.

It was: check out the fan edits. So far, my favorite is the Maple Films Edit. It's about 4 hours long and it's pretty great. It cuts most of the crap and leaves all the good stuff in.

>Galadriel in the Amazon show, on the other hand, just doesn't feel like the book or the movie Galadriel so it's a bit jarring.

Galadriel here is thousands of years younger than the version you saw in Jackson's movies or the LotR books. Presumably she's matured.

[danaris]

From what I've heard in others' descriptions of her depiction, Galadriel in the Amazon show also doesn't much match her depiction in The Silmarillion.

[kixiQu]

> That could have been a 2 hour movie or at most two episodes.

https://hobbitfanedits.fandom.com/wiki/Hobbit_Fanedits_Wiki :)

[wardedVibe]

Watched one of these (forget which), and it was actually a decent movie.

[Fiahil]

> we have - probably intentionally - forgotten the exceedingly mediocre The Hobbits trilogy.

I consider myself a good Tolkien fan, and I really liked the Hobbit trilogy. There is no consensus on how it was universally accepted.

As to the Rings of Power, it tooks 90 years for the elves to forge their rings. Let's see how they're going to translate that in their story.

[TomSwirly]

The Hobbit trilogy wasn't mediocre - it was just astonishingly bad and worse, they added a huge amount of material that had nothing to do with the book.

The Hobbit is a single book that is shorter than any of the three LoTR books. There was no reason to make three movies out of it other than greed.

[midoridensha]

The Hobbit fan edits are actually quite enjoyable movies. Of course, they all remove that huge amount of extra material, so...

[ngold]

That is exactly what I was terrified of. I just watched the first episode a couple hours ago. It's pretty good. Not as good as the trilogy, but heaps better than the hobbit.

[adastra22]

I've been telling people to forget the Peter Jackson movies exist (LotR and Hobbit). This is a different vision of Tolkien's world, and trying to compare them is apples to oranges. If you go into it with just the expectation of it being high fantasy with high production values, I think your average viewer would enjoy it.

[zebracanevra]

Amazon/Netflix/Disney all provide 30+ subtitle tracks for every show, by the way. I don't think you should make any conclusions from the amount of subtitles. And besides, for all we know, they could be very bad.

[philliphaydon]

For every show they create. Subtitles are hit and miss for shows/movies they don’t make.

[philliphaydon]

Since people get upset and downvote for no reason.

10 subtitles Netflix: Little Woman - https://prnt.sc/6cmW9S-As8tF

5 subtitles Disney: Going to you at the speed of 493km - https://prnt.sc/bmz2a6tFtIsb

1 subtitle Amazon Prime: Meet the malhotras - https://prnt.sc/YnQjP7zHfwdY

[chaosbolt]

I am not the tatget audience for children's movies yet I can still review them and not expect my review to get deleted.

What Amazon is doing here is just another example of big tech censorship, and yet there are still people here who would argue that Twitter, Meta, Google and Amazon aren't censoring people, altough in Amazon's defense it's just for profits instead of politically motivated so it's at least understandable.

[freddealmeida]

I agree. They are now the publisher and the platform. We can not trust them.

[rdtsc]

> This adaptation leaves a dull impression.

I got the same impression as far as the story and dialog goes (-"You have not seen what I have seen.", -"Yes, I have!", - "No, you haven't!"). I am trying to like Galadriel but she's just too different than the movie or the book version, so it's a struggle for me.

However, I do like special effects and the costumes. I like how they did the ship sailing to Valinor. It's not how I imagined it when reading, but it's still interesting.

Khazad-dûm in the second episode looked pretty epic, I thought. The wife could have used a beard :-) but, oh well, not not a big deal.

[adastra22]

She is 6,000 years removed from the Lord of the Rings though, and this is before she acquired her great ring, and the responsibilities that went with it. I think it makes sense that we see her in a younger, more raw form.

[darthrupert]

Yea, if you look at elves in the books, they made a bunch of crazy mistakes all the time. In LOTR they are all calm, wise and peaceful, but that's after several millenia of massive screwups.

[x3iv130f]

The dialogue could have used a couple more passes to be more subtle and cleverly written.

It is important to remember that Tolkien was like a British gentleman: well-mannered with a sharp wit. All of his characters have that same coloring to them.

[krainboltgreene]

> I got the same impression as far as the story and dialog goes (-"You have not seen what I have seen.", -"Yes, I have!", - "No, you haven't!").

These lines are actually referencing things in the history of that universe, they aren't empty.

[dmix]

> However, I do like special effects

The trolls body movements in Ep1 took me out of the show, the CGI looked worse than most games. But agreed otherwise they did a good job production-wise. It didn't lean too heavily into the New Zealand Peter Jackson style while still keeping it on point.

[wyldfire]

> I am likely not the target audience, seeing as how Amazon provides ~14 languages for closed captioning - they may be seeking a more global audience with this content.

Yes -- instead of you they're focusing strictly on Earthlings.

[innocentoldguy]

> "Rings of power is equal parts boring, predictable, and positively ho-hum in every respect."

Unfortunately, this seems to be a common issue with our current, cookie-cutter style of storytelling. I think the root cause is the rate at which streaming services are trying to produce content. I know my work suffers when I take on too much. I assume the same is true for Netflix, Apple, Amazon, etc.

[prox]

Don’t forget end producers and the top brass who often cut content because they are scared as heck for some innovation.

These things work in cycles. New hit series breaks through, say “GoT” which is different enough, and everyone thinks they need make series X, but in the style of “GoT”, until everyone does it and it gets meh.

Or like every series doing a life flashback to build story. (I think Lost started that)

[yieldcrv]

Not HBO, but they are self immolating because it was too good to be true and not economically viable, fast enough

[racl101]

I read it was supposed to be losely based on the books. Is that true as a person who's read everything?

I'd read the Hobbit and found the Hobbit Trilogy to be kind of ... wack.

It's kind of enjoyable if you don't think about the book too much though.

[adastra22]

It's not really based on the books at all. Amazon has rights to the Lord of the Rings only, but not the stuff that was used to make the Peter Jackson films. Rather than remake The Lord of the Rings (can you imagine the outrage?), they decided to focus on the brief summary of the history of the rings of power given as an appendix to the last book of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Basically a couple of paragraphs in the epilogue where Tolkien says "btw, 6,000 years earlier such-and-such happened and that's how the rings were made." Amazon invented this entire show out of those couple of paragraphs.

There are larger bodies of work (The Silmarillion, The History of Middle Earth, etc.) which go into great detail about this era and the conflict which involved, incidentally, the crafting of the rings of power. But Amazon doesn't have the rights to those books. So they're creating a storyline out of what little scraps were provided in the appendices of Return of the King, while reusing some of the characters in the Lord of the Rings which would have been around back then--Elrond, Galadriel, etc.

And I agree. Forget about the books and watch it as high fantasy on TV, and you'll be enjoyed. It is well made, and so far is following a couple of interesting plot lines.

[uncletaco]

It's kind of enjoyable if you fast forward through the parts where they're doing mundane things in slow motion. Like picking up that key at the mountain.

[tomxor]

I feel like there is room for an underground torrent scene to re-cut awful films and tv shows - especially the ones that excessively interleave different stories, spreading out the meat with lots of bland filler. Maybe we can have our own personal ML models do this in future "Cut out all the scenes with this character + put the whole show on a linear timeline + max interleaved character timelines = 2 per show"

[youainti]

There are people who do that. The M4 recut of the hobbit is one I have heard of.

[racl101]

The most egregious part was the barrel scenes.

[Broken_Hippo]

"I am likely not the target audience, seeing as how Amazon provides ~14 languages for closed captioning - they may be seeking a more global audience with this content."

Because you have nothing in common with folks that aren't fluent in English? Even when they live in the same city and neighborhood as you? I really don't understand this. Lots of folks have common interests even though not all of them are fluent in English. Subtitles are so widespread and entertainment so international that even streaming sites tend to have decent subtitles. I truly don't understand how this says anything about the content of the show.

[sdwr]

That's the smell I got from glimpses of a trailer. Bland, middle-of-the-road, bleh. I'm guessing the behind-the-scenes social events were given much more attention than the actual show.

[TomSwirly]

> I am likely not the target audience, seeing as how Amazon provides ~14 languages for closed captioning

What an utterly weird concept.

Marvel movies are translated into 12-15 languages, like almost all blockbusters.

[smsm42]

Tons of languages is not that uncommon for big providers as I see - e.g. I just watched The Foundation on Apple TV and they have 8 languages for audio (sorry, I count all French variants as one, surely earning everlasting hate of every francophone) and about 40 languages as subtitles. If you've got money, I imagine that's not that expensive to translate a set of CCs.

[rgavuliak]

What is the implication of having a more global audience? In today's interconnected world we all watch the same tv shows and movies, would you expect a person in Europe to have lower standards for watching a series than a person in the US?

[nxpnsv]

How is providing translations or catering to a global audience a bad thing?

[awacs]

Any comparison to House of the Dragon? I'm liking it so far (as one who liked GOT, but hated the last season like most I know).

[pyinstallwoes]

Perhaps GPT-3 wrote it?

[caskstrength]

> I am likely not the target audience, seeing as how Amazon provides ~14 languages for closed captioning - they may be seeking a more global audience with this content.

It seems global audience is not thrilled with Amazon inserting US identity politics into the movie though, which I think was quite predictable from the begging. I don't know what were they thinking or what audience they were targeting with this.