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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   35891 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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I don't think those are counterpoints. Peter Jackson's movies were actually good. They were appreciated even by people who'd never read Tolkien and didn't care about how faithful they were to the books. They would not have been so popular if the only audience was Tolkien fans. Peter Jackson was a good director who cared about the quality of his work, and that resulted in a good product. He was given the freedom to make that product because he convinced the money men that his attention to the work would pay off.

ROP, on the other hand, seems to be trying to cash in on the presumed profitability of woke casting, and failed because the product, independently of how white the cast isn't, just isn't very good. It was short-sighted, but I never claimed the money-men are actually good at predicting what will be profitable.

Good writers and good directing could have produced a good series even with woke casting and fans bitching about black elves. But bad writing and bad directing would not have made a series that was closer to Tolkien's vision good.

They were appreciated even by people who'd never read Tolkien and didn't care about how faithful they were to the books.

This misses the point. Yes, the existing fanbase will care about faithfulness to canon in ways that potential new audiences won't, but what every audience member cares about is some level of verisimilitude--does the story with all its components hang together in a mutually-reinforcing way that captures the imagination? Tolkien is an excellent example of a storyteller who had a clear vision and a craftsman's attention to detail. As Jackson found, if you stick to his vision, all the little pieces fit together better, making the overall narrative and supporting structures more satisfying to the audience. You can make changes, and Jackson did as noted above, but they need to be in service to the story.

It was short-sighted, but I never claimed the money-men are actually good at predicting what will be profitable.

"You had one job!"

I don't think those are counterpoints. Peter Jackson's movies were actually good. They were appreciated even by people who'd never read Tolkien and didn't care about how faithful they were to the books. They would not have been so popular if the only audience was Tolkien fans. Peter Jackson was a good director who cared about the quality of his work, and that resulted in a good product. He was given the freedom to make that product because he convinced the money men that his attention to the work would pay off.

I think you completely gloss over why Peter Jackson's original LotR movies were good. It's not that they were shot for shot adaptations of the books. They weren't, though they were close. It's not that they had stunning production values, though they did.

It's because Peter Jackson worked hard to give life to the themes of Lord of the Rings. He probably could have gotten away with the acting being worse, the production not as good, or the casting being bonkers, if he nailed the theme. Luckily for him it was the total package.

This Amazon series is attempting to build on that success, without understanding the themes of Tolkien one iota. It's a dead and hollow thing. And lay people might not be able to articulate that they want their culture to have themes. But they know when someone is putting a corpse in front of them and trying to pass it off as prime rib.

It's because Peter Jackson worked hard to give life to the themes of Lord of the Rings.

It's definitely not that. Peter Jackson wiped his ass with the themes of LOTR. Things like Faramir trying to take the Ring, or Frodo sending Sam away, are completely anathema to the center theme of the story. Tolkien wrote a story where the Ring was a strong temptation to evil, but there were stronger things still (friendship, or duty), which one could use to resist the temptation. Jackson got the first part, but whiffed hard on the second.

Regardless, though, the LOTR movies are great. They aren't particularly good adaptations of Tolkien, but they are great movies in their own right. That's what the clowns behind RoP (and WoT, and GoT, etc) don't get. You can get away with not being faithful to the original, but your product has to be good on its own merits. You can't just write a half assed TV show and figure it'll be well received because of the IP.

Tolkien wrote a story where the Ring was a strong temptation to evil, but there were stronger things still (friendship, or duty), which one could use to resist the temptation. Jackson got the first part, but whiffed hard on the second.

Tolkien wrote a story where literally everyone succumbed to the ring or knew they would except Sam, regardless of their thoughts on friendship, or duty, or... anything. The only form of resistance anyone truly offered was refusing to be exposed in the first place and take the ring. And in the end, what saved the world was not the rising of good, but the self-destruction of evil.

No, that's not the same thing. You're talking about using the Ring, which is definitely something which corrupts. But in Tolkien's world, it's possible to resist the temptation to pick it up at all. Faramir, even when he found out Frodo was carrying the Ring, said "not even if I found it laying by the highway would I take it". He is able to hold strong to his conviction that he must not take up the Ring.

Jackson, on the other hand, felt that it wouldn't be dramatic to have characters who weren't struggling with the temptation. So he destroyed the main theme of the story, all because he thought it would be more dramatic. This is not speculation either, this is directly from interviews on the extended edition DVDs. They felt it wouldn't be dramatic to have Faramir stay strong in the face of temptation, so they changed his character to give in for a time.

So yeah - the movies were good, but it's not at all true that they were good because they respected the themes of the story. They in fact deliberately disregarded the themes of the story because they thought it would be more dramatic.

Yes, the only people who can resist the Ring are people who never use it, and they make sure they can never use it by never allowing situations where they can use it; Gandalf and Galadriel both resist the Ring when offered it, because if they did take it, it would corrupt them.

It's the difference between not cheating on your wife after getting drunk at a company party and not getting drunk at a company party so you don't cheat on your wife.

I am aware of this. You seem to be talking entirely past my point.

That's the impression I got from you, since it's the same thing I said to begin with but you objected. If we're mutually unintelligible, consider this particular conversation closed.

I'm not sure we are disagreeing here. Good things are good, and bad things are bad, and why something is good or bad is an aesthetic judgment and the subject of many debates, but my argument is that ROP isn't bad because it "failed to respect the lore," it's bad because it's, as you say, a cash grab by people more interested in capitalizing on a hot IP than actually trying to understand what would make a good product.

I am saying that Amazon only cares about making money, like every other studio. Woke-casting is a means to an end, hiring a good director who makes a quality product is a means to an end. If they were 100% accurate at predicting what will be the best means to their ends, then everything they produce would be profitable. Obviously this is not the case.

Would a suitable middle ground be that “respecting the lore” makes a product much more likely to be also incidentally good due to various reasons?

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