[bob1029]

ROP is clearly just using the Tolkien universe as wrapping paper. No one seems very serious about the lore anymore (or much of anything, really). The barest of efforts will still drive massive revenue so why bother trying very hard?

You will find those that trip over themselves to defend ROP (and new Star Trek, et. al.). This is the target audience. I am not sure what convinced this audience that the new content is good - Part of me suspects it's mostly Stockholm syndrome. Those without the courage to adopt a more stoic attitude towards life.

I feel like if more people would quit consuming pointless shit all the time, we might wind up with better pointless shit. As it stands, anything will generate some amount of revenue when you launch it on Netflix. This is really bad game theory for high quality content producers and the risk/reward tradeoff they have to negotiate with publishers.

"We need 2 years to run the traps on lore" and "casting will be an on-going and convoluted process" == you are kicked out of the Netflix green light meeting without any additional courtesy.

[ssabev]

Dude, if you think the ROP is bad... don't know if you've seen the Foundation from Apple TV, but holy hell. Kinda follows the plot, also completely demolishes it in other ways. Mad times

[gambiting]

I love the Foundation series(the books) and I actually really enjoyed the TV show - I just don't think they are very related other than some surface level connection.

[tekla]

It's like the Witcher, which barely has resemblance to the original material. Who are these shows for?

[ssabev]

Everyone else but the people who read the books it seems

[ssabev]

With this priming it definitely is an enjoyable show. I think I just had high expectations

[kjs3]

I don't think it's too bad either. It's very pretty, I like the cast (the Emperor is just the perfect amount of 'regal' and 'ewww'), and the plot is actually pretty interesting so far. It just isn't the plot of "Foundation" beyond the thinnest veneer of "math predicts future and bad things are gonna happen but if we do this right we shorten bad stuff...cue drama happening". If it wasn't called "Issac Asimov's Foundation" and constantly screwing with my expectations from the books (which are a favorite), I'd give it a solid B+. I gotta get better at shutting down the "expectations from book" part of my brain.

[cm2012]

ROP is very very true to Tolkien themes, less so true to details, and I enjoy it very much.

The opening theme alone represents the music of the ainur so well, I never skip it.

[ffhhttt]

> ROP is very very true to Tolkien themes,

That’s the silliest thing I read today.

For instance attention to detail was a pretty important theme in Tolkien’s works. He was pretty strict about timeframes, military planning etc. in Amazon’s show everyone seems to have a teleportation device, boat hulls breaks the law of physics considering how much stuff you can fit into them and “Galadriel” is the best swimmer in history multiplied by 100…

It pretty much a cheap 90s fantasy tv show with an inflated budget that takes itself way to seriously than it has any right to.

[lizardking]

Whether or not RoP is true to the themes of Tolkien or not or not is in the eye of the beholder I suppose, but it certainly has dispensed with the existing lore. I've read more than my fair share of Tolkien, and the show just doesn't feel like Tolkien to me. It's a serviceable Tolkien flavored generic fantasy show, if you are looking for that sort of thing.

The tragedy is that the source material for the second age is so great yet they chose to take the show in a baffling and arbitrary direction, almost completely decoupled from the existing lore.

[tomr_stargazer]

I found a lot to think about in Ostadan's take on RoP: https://www.theonering.net/torwp/2022/09/26/115304-from-the-...