This same thing could be said about most of the reboots and re-imaginings that have come out in the last 25 years. The lure of a preexisting fan base is too great to ignore.
If the people involved are also fans of the original then the projects usually work well. But I guess that also works for those that build their own IP that resembles others, good example of that is The Orville.
I’m not that invested in Middle Earth so I will watch the new series, but I can understand the people that won’t want to watch it. I will never watch JJ Trek.
For me personally, I’m always willing to give a new interpretation of favorite fandoms a go. I mean, why not? At worst, it’s a few hours of my time and something new to debate about with my fandom friends. At best, I find something I absolutely adore and that expands my love of something already beloved.
I love Star Trek with every fiber of my being, and I ran to the Kelvin movies on the first day in theaters. Are they my favorites? Nah. But they gave me Karl Urban’s Bones - who is fantastic -, the character of Jaylah, some absolutely stunning visuals, and gave life to my favorite franchise. So I like them just fine.
And I watched the Abrams Trek movies and enjoyed them immensely.
As for Rings of Power, so many of the complaints I’ve seen about this series mirror the complaints and whinging that happened before Fellowship was released. I’m eager to see what they did for this one. If the biggest issue with the series is the dwarf queen doesn’t have a beard, I’d call that a win.
Kind of funny how JJ ruined 2 franchises for different groups of people. I had probably watched every episode of Trek 25 times and read lots of books by the time Star Wars came out, and I never read many Star Wars books. So I guess I’d say I’m a mega old Star Trek fan and a regular Star Wars fan, so what he did to Star Trek is unforgivable but I can watch what he did to Star Wars and enjoy most of it.
Before I was old enough to read, my father was showing me the endpaper maps from his 1st edition replica of The Hobbit, and telling me what the words said. I had a storybook compendium with “An Unexpected Party” in it, fully illustrated in color. When the Bakshi movie came out, I sat in front of the TV for hours just hoping for the commercial to come on. I got the Tolkien calendar every year since the mid-70’s. My father had the full-sized wall posters of the Barbara Remington book covers, and the map of Middle-Earth.
Tolkien’s world has been the most significant literary experience of my life.
I liked the Peter Jackson LotR trilogy because it stayed mostly true to Tolkien’s story, making a few changes necessitated by the times and the medium. But it was still Tolkien’s story.
That all changed with the abominable Hobbit trilogy.
This show may be better than those movies. But given that it is apparently carrying the very future of filmed entertainment on its back, you can bet fidelity to the source material will not be the primary motivating factor.
For me, there is no Tolkien without Tolkien and never will be.
Yeah - the issue being that the show runners are two guys with very little directoral pedigree. Their only known credits are as contributors (somehow appropriately) to Star Trek: Into Darkness. The interviews and comments they and others attached to the show have made do not indicate that they respect the source material. In fact they went out of their way to fire Tom Shippey … who is the preeminent Tolkien scholar purist … and instead took their guidance from people who have frequently described Tolkien as “problematic” with an attitude that LotR and ME are in need of “fixing”.
All the indications from the trailers indicate very little about the show that is faithful to ME and Tolkien. Rather, it seems very much like the work of a bunch of neophytes who were more interested in getting away from Tolkien as much as possible while (somewhat reluctantly) using an established mythos as a vehicle. Jackson was honored and strove to respect Tolkien’s story. These guys … not so much.
I had already read the books and was disappointed. Peeved, even, what a wreck. So I’m fine with whatever, gimme some, and if it sucks I’ll just wander off for a sammich.
I was 12 when that movie came out and had already read the books. The animation quality was a disappointment based on the hype it received, because Bakshi didn’t have the funds. It ended up being a muddle of a few impressive rotoscoped scenes, some Saturday-morning level crapimation and even some live action crowd scenes with a filter to make them look animated. (They were supposed to have been rotoscoped but, no $$.) And then, of course, ending the story halfway through.
I remember being happy when I heard Rankin-Bass were going to make a TV special telling the Return of the King story… I’d liked (and still like) their adaptation of The Hobbit, but of course that was intended as a children’s story and was filmed as one. The RotK was done in the same style, and… oooofff.
My devotion to Tolkien around that time, though, was probably the most obsessed I’ve ever been about anything.
lol Remember when our rulers pretended to care about curtailing monopolies and not letting one vapid, unfeeling [redacted] own every damn thing there is?
Be right back. It’s time to go yell at some clouds.
The whole thing was a wreck. I remember a lot of squinting at the same 6 orc silhouettes and treebeard looked like a tuber, and then it ended at Helm’s Deep and I was all “welp thanks Ralph FU.” I was 13 and I was working on a bad attitude.
I had already felt conned by DeLaurentis after the 76 Kong (I devoured that hype), and I wasn’t yet over how amazing Star Wars was out of fricking nowhere, which all just goes toward saying that I don’t get too emotionally invested in this stuff. I’ll try it, might not suck.
I was discussing this earlier today with a coworker who’s super into Game of Thrones and was talking about adaptations and such.
It isn’t the source material. Some works can get very close, but inevitably everything that is adapted for the screen has to be altered to function in that medium. I reread the original trilogy last year and the films are an annual watch, and it was easy to see most of why things are better in the books but work better on film as written specifically for the screen.
Media is also a product of its moment in culture, so it is inevitable that a work will represent its contemporary values, both socially and with regard to media trends, even if made as close to the original author’s text as possible. Marvel is The Thing™ right now, so that is what is frequently being imitated for the look and feel of a lot of productions aiming for as widespread an appeal as possible. I don’t love how action-y this series looks either, but we’ve only seen trailers thus far highlighting what would have the highest appeal to the broadest audience.
Ultimately no adaptation is its source material and expecting it to be true to such is pointless. Skipping a piece of media solely because of this, or because of changes that do not significantly impact anything outside of adherence to one’s mental image of that material (for example, the dwarven beards or short elf hair) is absurd and most often demonstrates someone who is trying to find something wrong with a piece of media they have decided to hate ahead of time and without engaging with it in any way.
This is not to say that those complaints are invalid- I’ve had plenty of such about adaptations I’ve seen of written works I love- and I have no issue with the voicing of them. It’s using these complaints from the first glimpses to justify one’s dislike of a piece of media that has not been released.
I don’t know that it’ll be good. I have fears that it’s going to suck. But I am willing to watch and judge it on its own merits and demerits within the context of the series itself and not strictly limited by what I want it to be.
