I don't know if it qualifies as beating a dead horse, if you come up with "new" ways to do that because you kinda forgot 4/5 ways to do that because you spent your time with your personal favorites on the first go around?

With Sandman I think they could have done a better job and for the most part I think the worst decisions came from Netflix. For all it's flaws I think I came with 8/10 for the whole show. It wasn't a bad adaptation. For me most of the gender/race swaps seemed unnecessary/detrimental. In the scope of the first season there was an episode with nothing but black people that was cut of the show and to a degree you need it for the second season. WTF is up with that? And I just don't see the +EV of creating a wealthy black family in late 19th century Britain like it wasn't a big deal for the sake of representation. To me struggle has a meaning. Sanitizing history is erasing very literal blood that was shed for an even moderate economic/social standing a century later.

There was fuckery with the power balance of characters. That fucks with weight/gravitas of decisions related to the second season, And 20 odd random deviations that were not done for common reasons when adapting stuff. Maybe when we're talking about Netflix I don't have to care about problems down the line, because everything decent gets canceled. Something about streaming services losing the free pass to make 4 Waterworlds every year when corporations can't stay in the red forever.

Anyways we could say that rings of whatever can still have a redemption arc. I think a variation of that was used when the marketing started for the show. Well we've seen 2 episodes and nothing that was said before has been proven wrong. It's really really bad still. It's also bad in ways that are nearly impossible to fix later. Fixation on pilot episodes relates to how safe of a bet that is. Out of all the shows in the last 5 years I can remember I can only think of Peacemaker that grew on me and the latest season of Westworld. The 3rd season of Westworld was an abomination. I did not see way to save that. There's also Vikings and Expansion for older shows that I didn't instantly warm up to.

The problem with rings of whatever is that after 2 episodes I don't see any route to kinda decent and/or sorta ok. Writing is hideous, pacing is whatever, there's maybe 2 actors that are just not only clocking in and there's not a single character I care about. I'm awful at writing dialogue, but It would never cross my mind to keep repeating retarded banalities in 3 different ways in the same scene. There's nothing inherently wrong with more digital or soundstage oriented ways of doing things. The catch is that it takes a lot more work to do it right. Dune and Euphoria did it well. Depending on the scene, effects and dozen things that I can't think of now it's usually cheaper to just do things digitally. It's not really uncanny valley variation issue, but analog on site stuff you kinda get light/shadow and focus related things for free. Likely few other things I can't think of now, but bouncing light is a bitch and replicating how our visual perception functions is pretty hard to balance.

Ps. Quinn liked the first 2 EPs of HoD. Dunno if he was wasted enough and/or just enjoying the return to GoT related world that wasn't a complete abomination with some combination of being more familiar with the source material.

Pps. I'd still give 5/10 for the first 2 EPs for the ring thingie. It's still Tolkien adjacent and maybe the meteor dude is one of the blue wizards. Stoic elf dude is pretty decent depiction of certain lore appropriate elves. Most of the elves aren't going out of their way to outgay Legolas and so far there's only been one retarded elven action scene. Also a reasonable amount of comedic relief hobbit/dwarf hijinks or I've become better at instantly forgetting those.

Ah maybe 4/10. Say you get 3 points for being Tolkien adjacent and 1 point for not being a complete dumpster fire. I have reasonably high standards for dumpster fires.

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.

gaiman is absolutely harvesting souls this morning.

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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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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