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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34991 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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Tbh after reading your other comments, this just reads to me like "Why is [thing I like] so much better than [thing I don't like]?". I hate the new LotR series just as much as anyone else, but I've never heard about the Dune video nor board games and even the current movie, while certainly not bad, is not even near the LotR film trilogy. Looking at review aggregators, wikipedia, etc., both the public and critics seem to agree with that as well. The board game has a small fandom with no larger impact. The Dune 2 RTS seems to be the only objectively culturally impactful piece of media following the Dune books themselves.

I don't dislike Lord of the Rings at all. I have read it four times. I'm rather disappointed by the trilogy next to Villeneuve's Dune, but only because I have high expectations for it. In fact, most Lord of the Rings media is underwhelming and forgettable. I tried a lot of Lord of the Rings media in the 90s and 2000s and most of it fell in that 3.5-6.5 range. It is so forgettable that (some) people disagreeing with me here didn't even know that Lord of the Rings branded media was being produced long before the movies. Compare that to most Dune media, which I have been very impressed by. Not because I prefer Dune, which I enjoy but have read half as many times, but because the media that is based on it is so consistently impressive by comparison to what Lord of the Rings has put out.

And while the board game is undoubtedly niche (as games that have been out of print since '84 tend to be), its impact upon board games is still huge. Unique, balanced faction powers are now common in board/strategy games.

Agree completely. The original LoTR movie trilogy alone trumps anything Dune has done.

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