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The last thing I am ever going to say about "The Rings of Power", I solemnly promise. Even if later episodes drive me into a fit of apoplexy, or even more unlikely, they manage to pull off at least one that is good.
So I was ranting to myself, as I watched another review video, about the poverty of imagination that Payne and McKay show, the way they imagine they have to dumb down the message of Tolkien for a modern-day audience, how the expectation seems to be that the median viewer will be tuning in just for fancy visuals and action scenes, and then it hit me:
Of course they think this. They got this job via J.J. Abrams, they are jobbing scriptwriters who worked on stuff for Bad Robot amongst others, and that hit me. J.J. Abrams is the guy who said Star Trek was too philosophical for him, so when making the reboot, "So we tried to make it work for people like me ... and people like you. The goal was to make a movie for moviegoers, not just for 'Star Trek' fans. So if you've never seen 'Star Trek' before, you can still see it."
So of course they share a mindset with Abrams. Tolkien is 'too philosophical' so they have to dumb it down for the casual viewer (I don't mean 'normie', a term I hate) who doesn't know or particularly care about the work or the lore, who is only watching for pretty visuals and flashy action scenes. Or so they imagine, because ordinary people who might respond to something that speaks of beauty and eternal themes and the line that runs through the human heart? Nah, ordinary people are only fit to eat junk food and watch junk TV.
I don't get the latter part. If I watch something and it's bad, I stop watching. Sure, it was a bad show for the first few episodes so I tuned out. Lotta cringe moments and honestly painful to watch stuff. Lot of money spent on the visuals to be sure, but that video game jump-off-the-sword thing is still so bad it's actually funny.
Being mad that a big corporation is milking a beloved franchise of every dollar it can get seems pretty naive, though. Disney was doing awful direct-to-VHS sequels to beloved kids movies before half of us here were born. I didn't watch the Lion King 2: Lion Boogaloo, despite loving the original as a kid. When a corporation does a big shitty sequel, it's not anything new under the sun, it's just a sign to stop watching and go do something else.
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I never really got into Star Trek, but I did enjoy the film JJ Abrams made. Don't think I watched any of the sequels, since it was just enjoyable, but not something that really connected. I only watched it because I was on a Heroes binge at the time, and enjoyed Zachary Quinto. This would have been a few years after it came out.
The reboot, in theory, was not a bad idea. But Abrams (1) was using it as a showreel for the real job he wanted, to direct Star Wars, hence he set up a lot of shots (even down to the costuming and making phasers more like blasters) that were direct references to, if not copies of, shots from the original SW trilogy and (2) they didn't give a damn about scriptwriting or the established ST universe, so (for instance) the Klingon home planet had to be really close to Earth since you could travel there in a day, etc. Just bad fucking writing, excuse the swearing, but I see the stamp of it on the two muppets that do Rings of Power.
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Into Darkness is a sleeper hit, but the one with Khan was real bad.
It was SO easy to get right, too! Every deposed tyrant on that ship was capable of the physical feats of Khan Noonian Singh. Just have Cumberbatch play John Harrison, Augment Supremacist, straight.
“At least I’m not Khan Singh, you’re telling yourself right now, Kirk? I took over Europe with a handful of strategic coups and crashed economies, and I beat twenty-nine assassins with my bare hands. You sit on your throne pushing buttons and you smile that your underlings follow your orders, your underlings in the same organization that hired you to give them orders. I carved together an army of supermen with my vast raw talent, and used them. Under my leadership, we commanded a continent. No, Kirk, I’m not Khan. I am his equal, and you, blind evolution’s pride and joy, are dirt beneath my feet.”
And then toward the end, Spock can scream to the Heavens, “JOOOHN!!!”
And at the very end, the other hibernation tubes can be shown in a Section 31 warehouse. The camera pans over and circles around one, and there’s Montelban’s Khan in the prime of his 1960’s youth, meticulously digitally recreated, the perfect sequel hook.
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This sounds unhealthy. I wonder if this kind of negative engagement isn't some sort of feedback loop that makes it hard to enjoy things you actually want to like.
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