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It seems kind of weird to characterize Tolkien fans being interested in a new, high-profile Lord of the Rings show as "brigading". Of course the people with the
by pseudo0 4y ago
It seems kind of weird to characterize Tolkien fans being interested in a new, high-profile Lord of the Rings show as "brigading". Of course the people with the biggest emotional connection and interest in a franchise will be the ones most active in reviewing, creating YouTube videos, and discussing it online. I think the better question is why so many established sci-fi and franchises seem to be alienating their core audience, for example Star Wars, Wheel of Time, Halo, etc.
- WastingMyTime89 4y agoBecause it’s not the core audience. People who care about the lore and source material are insignificant compared to the amount of people who just enjoy a lavish production in a medieval fantasy setting. Clearly Amazon is targeting the people who enjoyed the movies and want a similar experience in a TV show format. Most don’t really care that it conforms to what Tolkien wrote. Heck, I’m probably unusual compared to the average watcher in that I have actually read LotR and the Silmarillion as a teenager and I don’t care about fidelity to the source material.
- mysterydip 4y agoThen why spend the money to get the rights to a known series at all? Make up a new IP in Generic Medieval Fantasy Land with lavish production values. No licensing or contract renewal fees, and you don't upset any existing audience.
- WastingMyTime89 4y agoBecause the movie trilogy was extremely successful and is associated with great production value by a whole generation? Don’t get me wrong I wish Amazon had the courage to just put 500 millions of dollar on completely new IP but that’s just not how American entertainment companies work.
- smileysteve 4y agoFor Lord of the rings, it's also wise generational timing (akin to Star Wars episodes 1 and 7). The Fellowship of the Ring (film, 2001) is just over 20 years old, which creates, now, 25-45 year olds significant childhood nostalgia, just in time for them to be able to show their ~5-15 year old children (in their most formative years)
- matsemann 4y agoHave I watched this new LotR show and their WoT show? Yes. Because I've enjoyed the books. Would I watch a generic IP they invented? No. At least not until it got huge and I got it recommended by others.
- galangalalgol 4y agoIs that really true? If I saw any fantasy or sci-fi series that didn't derive from a book or comic series I'd take off work to binge it. I'm so tired of regurgitation. A known writer's name attached would me me run rather than walk to the remote.
- SpicyLemonZest 4y agoIt's really true. How often do you hear about Upload, an ongoing non-adaptation scifi series run by the guy who produced The Office and Parks and Rec? Or The Orville, a non-adaptation space exploration show from the Family Guy guy?
- galangalalgol 4y agoUpload is brilliant! I talk about it at work, but I confess no one has ever spoken to me about it. You may have a point. Is it a sunk cost thing, where having spent the money on IP they market it heavier? The Norwegian thor on netflix was really good too. But its low buget so I figured they just don't push it as hard? Why do people really care that much about name recognition?
- WastingMyTime89 4y agoUpload got good numbers. Stranger Things was extremely successful. I remember a period when everyone was talking about Dark a few years ago. Original stories can be extremely well received with the right marketing push.
- xiphias2 4y agoThe problem with changing the world that was created by a writer is that the world had become so popular for a good reason. I didn't read Dune nor Brave New World, but I loved the Dune movie and didn't enjoy Brave New World series, because it just didn't make sense. I love exact book adaptations even if I hadn't read the book.
- benpxu 4y agoAnother issue is that whoever they're hiring to write these adaptations either have no clue how to write, or are hamstrung by committee direction. You can make, quite effectively in fact, a story set in the same universe (cue all the Star Wars material that exists as books in the fandom) that has nothing to do with the original story. But it needs skill. Skill that they cannot seem to find.
- pseudo0 4y agoI hate to do the "pull out the dictionary" thing, but those people are precisely the core audience for LoTR media (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/core-audience https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/core-...): > the type of people who are most likely to buy a particular product, watch a particular TV programme, etc. The Tolkien fans don't need a dozen Amazon Prime adverts to watch a new LoTR show, they seek out new LoTR content on their own. To give my perspective, I also read LoTR as a teenager, but did not finish the Silmarillion, and enjoyed the Peter Jackson trilogy. It doesn't take a LoTR lore researcher fluent in Elvish to realize that Jackson set the bar high, and the new show appears to be falling significantly short. That's just the reality of trying to adapt a beloved franchise with excellent predecessors. The 1/10 reviews might be hyperbolic, but it's ridiculous for Amazon to be removing them while leaving the equally hyperbolic 10/10s.
- WastingMyTime89 4y agoI think that even by your definition the core audience is people who enjoyed the movies and watch prestige TV shows especially when you consider the marketing campaign. That’s the people Amazon is targeting. Fans of LotR as a universe are a very small subsection of that.
- LunaSea 4y agoIt does not look like prestige though.
- WastingMyTime89 4y agoCall it like you want. I meant that it’s a TV show with a production budget of 60 millions dollars an episode without counting the rights purchase. It can’t really be compared to a traditional show. This season is going to cost twice as much as the original three movies. That’s completely insane.
- LunaSea 4y agoIt's entertainment and the entertainment factor is what gets measured. Fargo had 10x less budget and was much more entertaining.
- stingraycharles 4y agoFrom that perspective, it’s a small step to start considering anyone who doesn’t enjoy the show as “not the target audience”. Best to just let all reviews stay, it opens up a massive can of worms if you don’t (never mind the conflict of interest in why LotT gets a different treatment than, say, HBO’s shows).
- lordlimecat 4y agoIf that were true then why buy the LotR franchise rights?
- notanormalnerd 4y agoBecause from a economical business point: * You're getting old and your not spending as much money. * Getting 5$ from 100.000.000 people is better than getting 50$ 1.000.000 people. Especially if you can do it at lower costs. * Getting in new audiences to keep the franchise alive and healthy * And last but not least the average consumer is not interested in it being "true" to some kind of book or whatever. It has to make sense, but not in a true to the original author kind of way.
- zmgsabst 4y agoPareto tells us that 0.1% of people account for 38% of the money. Intentionally aggravating your most passionate fans is a moronic business plan — like a mobile game that intentionally pisses off the “whales” to pursue casuals.
- Victerius 4y agoThe exact shape of a Pareto distribution depends on two or three algebraic parameters. And the Pareto principle isn't some universal law that applies everywhere.
- zmgsabst 4y agoSure — do you think it’s likely or unlikely to apply to things like profit per customer in media? …do you think the distribution will be significantly different than mobile games? Are you objecting to the general idea that highly engaged customers produce disproportionate impact — or just those specific numbers? If the latter, okay… but that doesn’t address my point that it’s a bad business plan, just quibble about it.
- bmn__ 4y agoLikening a passionate fan to a whale does not work for me. A whale spends thousands to ten thousands times as much as a casual, but a passionate fan does not spend orders of magnitude more than a casual. A business analyst can only see this first-order effect as money is easy to measure; the second order effect of the passionate fanbase having a larger-than-usual reach and being to organise mass gruntle/review bombing/boycotts and other forms of IP burning/resistance is invisible to him, or he does not care because the cost is already sunk, whereas whaling is always an ongoing business.
- BrainVirus 4y agoThis is a very astute comment. We are living in some kind of Twilight Zone environment right now. Corporations purchase IP for decades-long, popular franchises, then deliberately alienate their core audience. Then they act as if all these people they just deliberately pissed off aren't real people. Words like "brigading" are a clever way to dehumanize your critics.
- hunter-gatherer 4y agoI think it just comes down to a money making tactic of making the movie/show available to the widest audience available to increase revenue. In my view it is sad, and basically creates more dull and less interesting cinema. I've been wanting a good HALO movie since the game was released... but I doubt I'll ever get it.
- coffeeblack 4y agoDo these movies make money though? It seems to me that all these large corporations are more concerned with following ESG than with their own customers. What happens if you don’t follow “the message” we saw with Tesla some months ago.
- Beltalowda 4y agoThe new Star Wars films made $2 billion, $1.3 billion, and $1 billion in box office alone (this excludes streaming, DVD sales, merchandise, etc.) So yes, they're making money. (I have no opinion on these films btw; I haven't seen them, and only dimly remember the old ones – I never cared much for them.)
- scraptor 4y agoAnother way of looking at it is that they alienated half their audience in only three movies. They killed one of the most well known franchises for peanuts.
- 4y ago
- inopinatus 4y agoTolkien’s legendarium isn’t a “franchise”, brigading is the work of trolls not fans, and the degree to which it panders to an existing audience is the most tawdry, and least interesting, measure of any creative work.
- dnh44 4y agoReducing OP’s argument of “alienating fans” to “pandering to fans” is a logically false and intellectually dishonest argument.
- inopinatus 4y agoIt is simply the other side of the same coin. The actual intellectual dishonesty on display is the suggestion that an identifiable “core audience” exists, and can be alienated at all.
- dnh44 4y agoI don’t agree at all. Emotionally invested fans of these stories clearly exist and describing them as the core audience isn’t a dishonest claim. Neither is it dishonest to claim that some of these fans feel alienated by the new versions of these stories. You can debate both claims, and my views don’t align perfectly with OP’s either but there is no intellectually dishonesty on the the part of the OP in making the claims.
- inopinatus 4y agoIf someone self-appoints themselves as a “core audience” and then complain when the creative output doesn’t meet their self-appointed in-group demands, they are not fans, they are over-entitled whingers.
- webmobdev 4y agoThey are not alienating their "core" audience - they were never the major target audience. The reason why most of the Marvel TV shows, Star Wars, Wheel of Time, Rings of Power, Halo etc. all appear to be "dumbed" down is because the target audience are teens and young adults. It's the "catch them young" tactic - all these streaming services are competing to get teens hooked to their streaming services. The next gen spend more time hooked to their screens than our generation. And we "oldies", having seen tons of shows now can't be so easily thrilled with a new show. But even if a show is a damp squib, teens can still be excited by certain elements of it as it will be a new experience for them. Generate the right emotions, and you have them hooked ...
- benpxu 4y agoThis is like saying Wall-E or Inside Out are dumb movies because they need to hook young audiences. It's not an either or situation here. Shows can be written to target many, many groups of audiences. They can be "smart" while still appealing to the masses. Also, it's not so much dumbed down as just terrible acting and terrible writing. Cinematics are great, but cinematics are the only thing that's great.
- webmobdev 4y agoNot dumb but "dumbed" down to target a certain age group. And I agree that they can try to be "smart" but there's the practical aspect of it - they are competing hard with many streaming platform (and many will fail by the time this industry stabilises) and talent is at a premium, thus the obvious compromise to go for the easy and more assured targets.
- Evenjos 4y agoMajor studios are terrified of taking a risk on an unknown IP. That's why they keep snatching up IPs with established audiences. I can't wait until that attitude changes. There are plenty of small, unknown authors who wrote excellent series. And then the studios are approaching each adaptation as a committee instead of as a visionary. It's writing-by-committee instead of writing as an individual.
- lordlimecat 4y agoBecause many of the studios think that big budgets and flashy effects can cover for nonsensical plots, mediocre acting, and characters whose choices do not fit with who they are. And frequently these mediocre writers roll into established franchises and actively make editorial decisions as if they're the reason were watching e.g. LotR. Newsflash, Tolkien is a far better writer than whoever is on Amazon's payroll, probably best to just stick to his ideas whenever possible. If you want to innovate you'd piss less people off doing a mediocre job in a brand new universe.