The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power | Prime Video

[tripplej]

September 2
Amazon Prime

[SRW1000]

September 2
Amazon Prime

The YouTube comments are absolutely amazing!

For those of you that have read the books and are familiar with the source material, brace yourselves.  This is another example of Hollywood paying for a property, keeping the names, places, and other superficial aspects of the material, and then tossing aside the meat of the story, while grafting their own unrelated tales onto those bones for their own purposes.

For those of you not familiar with the original written works, it might be an entertaining story. 

But it's not Tolkien.

Scott

[tripplej]

It looks like the Tolkien family did not allow Amazon the story rights, so they had to generate their own storyline..

from theguardian,

"A JRR Tolkien expert working on Amazon’s forthcoming multi-series adaptation of The Lord of the Rings has claimed that the retail and streaming giant has been refused permission by the estate to use the bulk of the book’s plot."

[Paul Heroy]

Well, that Guardian article concerns rights to specifically the main trilogy, and that they had to use the Second Age timeframe. There's less material as the article points out but I'm not sure that means they couldn't adhere to Tolkien's existing writing there. I'm certainly not a Tolkien scholar and haven't read anything outside the main trilogy. (I.e. The Silmarillion much less other material/notes that have been collected over time.)

I haven't watched Apple's Foundation series either b/c of how little it seems to have in common with the books that were a huge favorite of mine as a teen. There will always be some necessary changes due to different mediums but a complete alteration is what we see too often now, as Scott mentioned.

[tripplej]

Books are obviously better but for now, anyways, I just hope what Amazon is making is entertaining.

[Barry]

You know, we used to have “sequels” now many studios are giving us “prequels.” It started with Star Wars when the second set of trilogies came out.  The Minion movies, Casino Royale for James Bond, Harry Potter (Fantastic Beasts), Indiana Jones (second movie), Cruella, X-Men First Class, The Hobbit, Fast and Furious, Bumblebee, Wonder Woman, and even the Sopranos.

It even got to TV, Big Bang Theory’s prequel, “Young Sheldon.”

[tripplej]

If it makes tons of money, the studio's will make whatever is required to ensure they continue to squeeze more money out of us poor consumers!

[SRW1000]

You know, we used to have “sequels” now many studios are giving us “prequels.” It started with Star Wars when the second set of trilogies came out.  The Minion movies, Casino Royale for James Bond, Harry Potter (Fantastic Beasts), Indiana Jones (second movie), Cruella, X-Men First Class, The Hobbit, Fast and Furious, Bumblebee, Wonder Woman, and even the Sopranos.

It even got to TV, Big Bang Theory’s prequel, “Young Sheldon.”

There isn't inherently anything good or bad about prequels.  It's all about the story.

However, when the later works intentionally violate or ignore the original works in either word or spirit, I have to draw the line.  If you want to make a disconnected story, then why spend money on buying the rights?  Other than to try and pull a bait and switch on the audience?  It's a form of dishonest deception.

If the story was that good, it should be able to stand on its own and be its own thing, and not have to prop itself up on the work done by others.

Scott

[bmoney]

I’m looking forward to it. More story is always fun.