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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34984 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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But this is just vague handwaving. I'm not arguing the popularity of Lord of the Rings or its cultural impact. I'm talking about the impact, in turn, of the licensed media that followed.

Lord of the Rings, as a book series, is hugely impactful on the culture. Lord of the Rings the multimedia franchise is, on average, middling and most of it will be forgotten. Dune, on the other hand, has been less impactful overall. Yet, despite having far less adaptations and licensed media (before the most recent movie. I'm not young and free enough to keep up with everything that is coming out now), what exists is both of a much higher average quality and often hugely impactful on their own mediums.

Just shrugging that off is simply being obtuse and ignoring the actual subject.

I think there's two different things being claimed.

Is the tie-in media for the Dune franchise better than the stuff produced for LOTR? Possibly. If you mean Rings of Power oh hell yeah.

Is the tie-in media for the Dune franchise more influential? Again, maybe, but I think it's more in the "niche sphere where people really really care about the RTS genre" and not "general game-playing public". I haven't played any of the LOTR games and I remember back when they were issuing board games under the licence, but I've heard about them and seen them advertised. I honestly don't remember seeing anything for Dune media.

What you said at the end there - that there’s Dune related media that’s “hugely” impactful isnt clear at all. I can’t think of any.

Dune has produced one bad movie and one good movie.

LOTR has hugely influenced fantasy, music, video games and mich more. Dune has nothing much

I'd say Dune's resulted in some bangin' music.

Before clicking the link, my guess was this.

Then maybe that is where I'm misunderstanding what you're asking. I was thinking of the two works in terms of their broad cultural impact, not of just the impact of their licensed multimedia. In that case I think there is a case to be made for the original Lord of the Rings trilogy of films but that's about it innovation wise. I have enjoyed a lot of the Lord of the Rings games but I don't think they did anything particularly innovative, certainly not compared to what Dune seems to have done (I haven't played it myself).

On the one hand, I'd say this actually must be my fault in writing clearly because almost everyone is responding with a focus on the books themselves rather than the larger multimedia franchises.

On the other hand, I am mostly getting a lot of tears about how the Lord of the Rings trilogy is better and posters didn't even know that the board game existed so how impactful could it be? All without even engaging the question. High decouplers? Yeah, okay.

Are we forgetting Peter Jackson's LotR movies? They were far more impactful and frankly better than any Dune movie.

Also, LotR basically spawned the fantasy genre. Even within the LotR franchise, there are countless books that spun off from the main series.

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