i mean

it looks cheap and 60% of it seems superfluous at best?

ep3 in particular had maybe 6 minutes of interesting, compelling content.

its like game of thrones for 11 year olds.

I might have just lowered my standards, but the first 3 episodes of s2 felt like, not as bad as their s1 equivalents.

It helps that there was less Galadriel, only 2 hobbits and I now knew the show is retarded in advance. For a random scoring s1 was maybe 2/10, s2 2,5/10, Rebel Moon 1,5/10 and Snyder cut 1/10.

Anyways Rings of Power is now it's own thing that has nothing to do with the source material. S1 pushed it so far from canon and I don't think the rest can ever even connect with the Jackson films, so there's really no concern for accuracy. The show is still retarded in mostly the same ways that S1 was. There's no consistency with the characters, they mostly don't exist offscreen and teleportation is still their preferred method of transport from one scene to another.

I don't really care anymore about the plot, world, characterization, etc. since I just assume the writers are working with a handful of "cool" scenes that are then patched together with the laziest possible way. I don't really know how else you can come up with such consistent inconsistency. The only reason why I prefer Rings of Power over Rebel Moon is that at least there's no backstory time, slow motion grain montages or failure to properly steal from better writers. It's fine to steal from 7 Samurai, but it doesn't make sense that the villains motive is still fucking grain when you swapped 30ish bandits with a scuffed version of Warhammer 40k's The Imperium of Man.

Oh and I'm mostly comparing the two, because both have abysmal writing and massive budgets without any star power. No idea what went down with showrunners and the writing room with Rings. Rebel Moon kinda makes sense. It was a bad Star Wars script around 2012. Star Wars wasn't interested, so they scrapped some Star Wars thingies and swapped those with more 40k. It was originally supposed to be a 3 hour movie, but Netflix thought is was too long, so it became two movies with a combined running time of 4h and then Snyder cut added two more hours of filler. The script was still mostly in some pre first draft version when it was shot. It's enough to storyboard a film and if that's all you care then you get shit like Rebel Moon. Dunno why it was greenlit tbh with non existing supervision. Snyder is too retarded to fix his own mistakes, but there's at least some plausible deniability. But yea both IP's are rough equivalents of giving car keys to a toddler.

For other shows Industry is still great and I started rewatching it from beginning. I'm liking s3 more than I remember liking s1/s2 and I don't know do I just like the writing better or something else.

For some random background regarding the acquisition of the rights from the Tolkien estate, all that started when Roy Price was the head of Amazon Studios and I'm assuming the showrunners got locked into the project from that point on because it would have just cost too much to get rid of them after that.

Roy Price was from the Weinstein school of execs, who was ousted before he became a problem. Everyone was payed off and Price is running a random art business in Hong Kong. Salke then inherited the shitshow about 3 months later and was mostly interested in sprinkling her own brand of retardation to most Amazon related IP's.

Because of the timing it's possible that some positions were filled as compensation and/or slipped through the cracks because of an unusually chaotic time period. That would be on top of traditional nepotism and casual incompetence.

industry is freaking me out tbh. i didnt need/want it to get so fucking dark.

so im actually starting to enjoy this now that the rings are fucking everyone up.

the one consistent low point is the human stuff. everything else is getting a little spicy.

Yea ep 5-6 was kinda weak after the Rishi ep. Also way too bleak and Eric is my favorite character so not too fond of the character assassination bits.

It's always a mystery how writing works out with just looking at the credits. I'm guessing the showrunners still do most of the writing, but no idea how big the room is or what their responsibility is. The runners themselves worked for a few years in investment banking around 2010 and I'm guessing some of the background info also came from their colleagues.

The 1st season is 2020ish from refences (like mentions of 8 years of Trump), but some of the trading stuff felt dated. There's some stuff that's heightened for the sake of drama, but they're so off that their origin would have to have been early 2000 or late 90s. The 1st season is by far the worst offender. They got a consultant for the second season who likely had worked in a bank in 2020s. Things like Harper getting in without proper vetting or trading on her second week and trying to "fix" her fuckup by herself. The entire ep 4 is just a chain of things that're just not happening. Basically anything except escalating (make it your bosses problem) will get you fired, assuming she would ever be in a position to fuckup the way she did.

The drug stuff was also from early 2000 in s1. That's roughly the last time when 2C-B would be represented as a novel drug. 2020 it was mostly used to counterfeit MDMA, LSD and random concoctions. It's a decent designer drug, but it's been illegal about 20 years and it doesn't really do anything better than the stuff it's used to mimic. Also these days Ketamine is mostly used by people that can't afford anything else or as a random component of fake ecstasy pills. Running theme of both drugs are that they're fairly cheap. The price of MDMA has also dropped ever since the Chinese started selling formulations made from synthetic safrole. 2C-B is still cheaper, but its height was when organic safrole became really hard to get around 2010. Thailand and few other SE Asian countries went after sassafras oil production in late 00s, likely because someone payed for the effort and the end result was fairly typical win for the war on drugs. First replaced by something far more dangerous and then by a cheaper synthetic formulation.

quick update... *clears throat*... I LOVE THIS FUCKIN SHOW SO MUCH

pretty sure season finale of industry is tomorrow night. im actually nervous that eric, harper, and yasmin all need money at the same time because it opens the door to a Really Fuckin Stupid oceans 11 team up vibe but this show hasnt really let me down yet so im going to continue to assume im in good hands.

read a great essay about how the showrunners turned Celebrimbor into Jar Jar Binks and honestly 10/10 take