3 ms·

They don't have rights to the source material so they literally cannot get it right.

by parkingrift 4y ago

2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
Oh seriously? But they are allowed to use the characters? How does that work?
- cygx 4y ago
  Not a lawyer, but I'm assuming anyone who's mentioned in the Hobbit, the trilogy and the annexes (ie the stuff Amazon bought the rights to) even in passing can make an appearance. However, if these people do things exclusively described elsewhere in the way they are described in those other works, there's an issue...
- mcphage 4y ago
  Remember recently when a Netflix got sued by Arthur Conan Doyle's estate, because they showed Sherlock Holmes being emotional? The argument was that while the early Sherlock stories were in the public domain, it wasn't until the later stories that Sherlock showed more emotion, and those later stories are not yet in the public domain.
- parkingrift 4y ago
  They have access to: Fellowship of the ring, the two towers, return of the king, appendices, and the hobbit. They cannot even accidentally make a Tolkien-accurate story in the universe unless it’s directly depicted in one of the sources I listed above. My assumption here is that they chose to intentionally make a unique story to avoid a lawsuit. However, this is also the equivalent to rewriting the backstory for Jesus and telling Catholics to just give it a chance because the cinematography is so good.
mcv 4y ago
From what I understand, they have the rights to the Appendix of LotR, and while that's not remotely a complete story, there's a lot of events described there, and they're getting all of them wrong. If they didn't have the rights at all, maybe they shouldn't have pretended it was Tolkien and not used his names. I would have loved an original big fantasy show, but I think it's pretty clear that would never have gotten this kind of budget. They're entirely trading on Tolkien's name and not fulfilling that promise.
- parkingrift 4y ago
  The problem is the Tolkien estate. Amazon cannot depict something in the appendices unless it was exhaustively depicted. They cannot accidentally get bits of backstory correct.

They don't have rights to the source material so they literally cannot get it right.

2muchcoffeeman 4y ago

Oh seriously? But they are allowed to use the characters? How does that work?

cygx 4y ago
Not a lawyer, but I'm assuming anyone who's mentioned in the Hobbit, the trilogy and the annexes (ie the stuff Amazon bought the rights to) even in passing can make an appearance. However, if these people do things exclusively described elsewhere in the way they are described in those other works, there's an issue...
mcphage 4y ago
Remember recently when a Netflix got sued by Arthur Conan Doyle's estate, because they showed Sherlock Holmes being emotional? The argument was that while the early Sherlock stories were in the public domain, it wasn't until the later stories that Sherlock showed more emotion, and those later stories are not yet in the public domain.
parkingrift 4y ago
They have access to: Fellowship of the ring, the two towers, return of the king, appendices, and the hobbit. They cannot even accidentally make a Tolkien-accurate story in the universe unless it’s directly depicted in one of the sources I listed above. My assumption here is that they chose to intentionally make a unique story to avoid a lawsuit. However, this is also the equivalent to rewriting the backstory for Jesus and telling Catholics to just give it a chance because the cinematography is so good.

mcv 4y ago

From what I understand, they have the rights to the Appendix of LotR, and while that's not remotely a complete story, there's a lot of events described there, and they're getting all of them wrong. If they didn't have the rights at all, maybe they shouldn't have pretended it was Tolkien and not used his names. I would have loved an original big fantasy show, but I think it's pretty clear that would never have gotten this kind of budget. They're entirely trading on Tolkien's name and not fulfilling that promise.

parkingrift 4y ago
The problem is the Tolkien estate. Amazon cannot depict something in the appendices unless it was exhaustively depicted. They cannot accidentally get bits of backstory correct.