people appear to love it but its not something im likely to watch willingly. _maybe_ if im on an international flight or something.

Not quite a TV thing but has anyone watched NOPE yet? Getting tired waiting for it to come to streaming but can't justify paying 25 bucks to rent it.

i think we all need to take a biiiig step back and remember that this show is made for 12 year olds.

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and not for nothing but ian mckellen​ could do a walk-on during a mentos commercial and immediately turn it into an arch and sophisticated drama with one subtle glance. rop has no such talent. i mean anywhere.

also this show is using relentless exposition to try to make it understandable to the kids and parents of the LOTR nerds because if you cant somehow present something that a 50 year age range cant digest easily, you dont recoup your billion with a b investment. which is ironic considering it also puts us in this position where nothing actually happens, we just have endless conversations about all the things that happened, and will or wont happen and why.

30mins of background noise if you're not familiar with Sauron before the 3rd age...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZSc...lkienUntangled

...Amazon doesn't have rights to about 99% of this. Some things they can negotiate with WB, assert bits to other characters, refer to things in dialogue and show about 3s on screen anything lore accurate at a time. The lack of rights isn't a very good excuse at this point when they're still using large parts of the story. It was less of an issue with Sandman because they owned about 95% of the source material and I'd say majority of the stuff with IP issues was going to be cut anyways, because it wasn't relevant. All that is completely reversed with RoP.

I understand the financial motivation for working off 20 pages, but who was going to enjoy watching that? You can just use world of the second age for smaller stories and still be fine with lore. There's no need to scorch existing characters. The Hobbit was a small story. For the most part there was nothing epic in that book. Now obv that tied to something bigger in the past and the future, but it wasn't what made it work.

Ps. About the previous post, The Fellowship of the Ring started out insanely strong. The first few minutes were the trailer for the Rings of Power. And how great that start was allowed for more peaceful/whimsical/boringasfuck 15 minutes that followed. I did liked the Bilbo scenes with Gandalf. Attention to detail in Bilbo's house and natural dialogue that still keeps the story moving forward. Fuck every other hobbit in that village, but it still felt like a real place. Also Nazgul were terrifying. I didn't need anyone to tell me that. Later on I admit when hobbits got more screen time I might have started to root for the Nazgul.

I think the 3rd EP of HoD was a significant improvement. 3rd EP of RoP was less boring, but that still didn't do much to make me hopeful of the series. Third EP of HoD made me feel like I could enjoy the show. Never would I compare it to GoT S1 or S2. HoD has a distinct advantage in that there's less need to spend time in worldbuilding related things like the rules of the world. GoT did all that work regarding the broad strokes, had the time to create a compelling characters, start several story arcs and most of the early stuff worked as standalone episodes.

What HoD is doing better than RoP is that it doesn't treat their audience as children (tbh retard is likely a better characterization). There's less redundant and nonsensical dialogue. They are fine just showing things without several characters telling what's on the screen multiple times. People have motives and a lot of their actions are understandable. They're aware that people have seen GoT and they can use that to their benefit. And when I say to their benefit, I mean the world and tone of the show. Not random name dropping, nostalgia baiting, ripping entire scenes from previous works, using bit's of previous lines in new context and half a dozen things I've forgotten that were used constantly in RoP.

I still don't have any idea why they made Galadriel so unlikeable in RoP. Cersei Lannister was a more sympathetic character at this point.

ps. I had 2 of the first Peter Jackson films running in the background and it appears I still hate every hobbit besides Bilbo. I had forgotten how much of a comedic relief character Gimli was in those and how early every Legolas action scene became retarded. I associated those more with the Hobbit trilogy.

im having a difficult time finding an opinion on HoD. its certainly better than rings overall. but im also as a rule unenthusiastic about shows where a central protagonist who means well makes terrible decisions and that drives (drags?) the entire series forward.

ive seen a few people trotting out 'this is better than GoT' opinions and while its certainly better than the last season, is that really saying anything?

i fuck with it but its unclear what it would need to do to make me actually interested and enthusiastic. GoT built this vast sweeping mosaic of cultures and societies interwoven with magic and violence and dragons and politics and shit.

HoD seems very homogenous by comparison so far. but hey, we got a long way to go hopefully and there may be a lot of interesting shit coming down the pipes. its just disconcerting that we have really seen zero expansion beyond the iron throne politics and infighting so far. are we seriously still going to give a shit after a few more eps?

also very related note... house of stark is coming soon apparently? so we are basically silo'd into these universes without a lot of significant interaction between them. and again that was a huge part of GoT's charm.

and also lol @ hbo becoming the GRRM channel jesus christ..

i owe HoD a more disciplined watch, i keep stopping/starting. i think im like 10m into ep 2.

Caught up with Industry and it's great. Likely need to watch both seasons again once SE2 ends. Third EP of HoD was promising. Maybe i needed the 2 EPs of ringie thingie as a palate cleanser of sorts to appreciate hitting a threshold where things start to work. I was worried that HoD would play it safe by recreating GoT characters/scenes/elements, but after the 3rd episode it starts to shape into it's own entity that was just written by the same author and you get a pass for a good amount of similarities. Obv no issue with having a preference for various writing decisions, since that's just unavoidable and not even desired. Now I'm not saying that the first EP wasn't guilty of maybe too many GoT things, but compared to Rings that was subtle.

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gaiman is absolutely harvesting souls this morning.

i saw that quinn review too but havent watched it yet.

thing to remember; quinn is one of a handful of people on earth who have read every single written word GRRM has printed and holy shit there are a lot of them.

so im going to assume that quinn is creaming jeans because of the fidelity of the plot arcs or something and also probably just glad to get a palette cleanser after GoT finale.

im 2 weeks behind on HoD and in no rush to do anything about it.

btw Industry 2nd season has been an absolute fucking barn burner. i dont know what writers they hooked up with to get shit done this season but they were worth every cent, im in fucking heaven with this show. i dont think theres been a single weak moment.