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Warner Brothers Plans Revamp of LotR
- stuaxo 4y agoIs this going to be in the modern style, with lots of "Epic" shots, slow motion and explosions ?
- ekianjo 4y ago> Is this going to be in the modern style, with lots of "Epic" shots, slow motion and explosions ? The first trilogy had a lot of moments like that already (except slow motion)
- optimalsolver 4y agoThere were slow motion moments in that trilogy, like Aragorn's dramatic reappearance at Helm's Deep after they thought he was dead.
- uhtred 4y agoYes, and don't forget the non-stop epic music so you don't forget you are watching something epic
- Wildgoose 4y agoPeter Jackson's offering is beloved because it (largely) respected the books. I watched the Amazon offering. I won't criticise the visual spectacle of settings like Numenor, nor much of the acting, but the writing was just uniformly terrible. What a disappointment. Is this likely to be any better?
- unity1001 4y agoThe Ring was better than the later trilogy in my opinion. It was written good enough. Produced pretty fine. Way too good for a series.
- ProAm 4y agoAnd better than The Hobbit. That should have been one 3 hour movie or maybe two 2 hour movies. But it was greed and slop when they made it three.
- jeffwask 4y agoThe also tried to make The Hobbit the Lord of the Rings when they are complete different in tone and style. I wish we got to see Guillermo's version. The Hobbit also had the fingers of 4 or 5 studios in it.
- WalterBright 4y agoThe Hobbit had too many endless Disney theme park rides in it.
- jeffwask 4y agoAnd sexy dwarfs, too many sexy dwarfs.
- seper8 4y agoNot only did it largely respect the books, they invested an astronomical amount of effort into things other filmmakers call minute details, such as making real chainmail instead of the 3d printed garbage used in the Amazon series. Or sending gardeners to the Shire years before shooting even started, to plant the hedges... End result is that everything looks convincing and most scenes in the movies aged very well.
- stuckinhell 4y agoWe have really reached "peak content".
- Longlius 4y agoI don't think we really need more LotR. I'd prefer studios pick up other fantasy properties. The lack of a good Earthsea adaptation is kind of depressing and it makes more sense than ever to take another crack at it given Hollywood's newfound commitment to racial diversity in media.
- Loughla 4y agoIt's the same for sci-fi. We have a million Star Wars series and movies, a billion Star Trek series and movies. But we can't get anything else that is out there that could be so much better. Dune was a good start, but really, each of those books is a series on its own. The Culture series by Iain Banks would be amazing, especially considering that the world is way more accepting of race/ethnicity, sexuality, and gender issues than it has been historically (not even to mention that we could use some hope for the future in our media instead of dystopia constantly). But instead we get baby yoda series 3. (for reference, I do like The Mandalorian, I just felt like being snarky).
- autophagian 4y agoI would give up my neural lace for a well made Culture adaptation, but I do worry that any adaption wouldn't do much justice to the politics in the book except in the most shallow way possible. Still, though, a dose of utopianism would be nice.
- 908B64B197 4y ago> We have a million Star Wars series and movies Star Wars is an interesting case. It went from a franchise making money on every movie to a mix of ok movies and flops. I know a lot of people (including me) just tuned out with the latest trilogy.
- tomohawk 4y agoCorrelated with Kathleen Kennedy being put in charge of the property. The franchise has flopped so badly that they have not only had to cancel movies, they've had many big name directors pull out because they don't want to be associated with the ongoing carnage. The only bright spot left is what Filoni or Favreau are doing.
- pleb_nz 4y agoMy guess, this has been thrashed to death already and work with this content will result in capturing only the die hard enthusiasts and not be a wide ranging success. Movie Studios, imo are failing, even my kids have started saying there's nothing new. Time to stop thrashing ideas and start creating new ones again. But then again, I'm probably wrong...
- IanKerr 4y agoFeels similar to me as well. Everything is a reboot of a reboot, nostalgia for the sake of a cash grab, very few big studios are taking chances on new franchises anymore.
- HeckFeck 4y agoMeanwhile, the books sit on my bookcase safe from the hands of studio executives and tell the same story every time.
- Aardwolf 4y agoYou can also keep the 2001-2003 LotR trilogy DVDs in your bookcase and they won't change either
- Freak_NL 4y agoI have them in my bookcase, the extended editions, but I will probably just grab a well-regarded unaltered copy from some torrent site when I introduce them to my son in a few years. Of course, should that prove impossible by that time, I do indeed have the DVD's.
- GenerocUsername 4y agoMiddle earth about to have the demographic makeup projected for America in 2050
- Aardwolf 4y agoThe LotR movies are now over 20 years old. When I watched LotR, I was around 20 myself, and a then 20 year old movie (which would be an early 80s movie) would seem like a movie from a completely different era to me. Today, LotR still seems somewhat fresh to me, and this article and HN comments here seem to agree given that new LotR movies from today are still being linked to this 20 year old one. What gives? Is it just my age and similar age of the HN crowd? Or is there truly more difference between 1983 and 2003, than between 2003 and 2023?
- guessbest 4y agoProbably non-linear video editing and the ability to add somewhat believable CGI gave it much longer shelf life than what would be expected.
- fullshark 4y agoCultural stagnation + technological advances. Home theaters and special effects haven't really improved in 20 years, at least they have not at the rate seen from 1980 to 2000.
- erellsworth 4y agoI think that we just reached a point of diminishing returns on special effects in the early 2000s. The improvements since then have mostly been in reducing the cost to produce convincing CGI, with very little gain in the maximum quality that can be achieved.
- Retric 4y agoWe can push the envelope vastly farther today than in the early 2000s. The difference is movies now have so much CGI that they can’t afford to spend much time on any of it. Consider the LOTR orc army shots. Now days we can simply simulate various AI characters walking on uneven surfaces and it looks fine. The regimented look on flat ground worked, but it was based in large part on limitations at the time and just felt off. But conversely this means the army could and therefore would show up in the background in several shots which then means more vastly more CGI is needed. Unfortunately, more seconds of CGI means less me only you can spend on each of those seconds.
- ProAm 4y agoAnd now Hollywood moves to kill the greatest story of them all. We've ruined superhero movies, destroyed Starwars.... onto Middle Earth.
- OscarCunningham 4y agoPeople go around daydreaming about what book/movie/TV show they'd make if they got the chance, and writing it all in their head. Then some of them do get the chance, and it turns out to be a big hit. People start thinking of them as a good writer/director, and ask them to make something else. But they had twenty years to write their first thing, and only one year for the second. So it flops. This makes it hard to turn valuable intellectual property into a hit. Previously succesful showrunners won't necessarily be able to pull off the same trick twice. There's a person out there with a perfect LotR spinoff in their head, but WB can't find them. There are people who can churn out multiple hits, but they all know how much they're worth.
- runlaszlorun 4y agoReminds me of a quote I heard regarding a rapper with a disappointing second album- “he had 19 years to put into that first album”.
- ben7799 4y agoMy take away is that article says Warner Brothers has a killer lineup this year of blockbusters. Then when I look at the list in the article there are zero new movies in that list that aren't: - Sequels - Remakes - Adaptation of Existing IP I mean that's horrible, not one new original story film. Wrecking LotR is just an example or symptom of the terminal disease the studios have right now.
- ploppyploppy 4y agoWow yeah please give me more woke nonsense reboots to perpetuate the demoralisation