I think its pretty obvious myself, you'd have to be a fool not to see it. Steelbadger is clearly one of those 'Tolkien experts' consulted by the show runners, which is why he's so riled up about this whole thing, only he can't tell us because of an NDA. And I for one, have faith in his story-telling abilities.

 

I'll watch it. I'm primarily concerned though about whether I'll be able to identify with any of the main characters. I've never really identified with Elrond or Galadriel, they were always very distant mentor figures so it's difficult to find them as identifiable protagonists. I feel like the only thing that would be worse is if Gandalf was the protag of the show.

IDK, maybe it's just me. Like for example, when I was growing up, I closely identified with Dick Grayson/Tim Drake in the batman comics because they were closer to my age. As a result, I've never really identified with Batman as much as a protagonist. I've enjoyed the batman movies but never really connected with Bruce because in my mind he's always been more of a mentor figure.

Wheel of Time Left me burned in my hopes so I'm very cautious here that we'll actually get a coherent story.

 

That's your problem right there. Critical Drinker, Just Some Guy, Nerdrotic, etc etc are not Tolkien content creators. They are outrage peddlers who's sole job is to stoke the fires of the culture war. It's how they make their money.

The main lotr subreddit is the more impressive reaction guage. They've gone from shitting on all things ROP to "oh fine I guess I'll watch but it better be GOOD or I'll be #NerdAngry".

 

This is what will decide the success of this show. Not budget or its closeness to the source material, but if it has characters that people will care about.

 

I haven't watched much of Nerdrotic, and I've only seen a few things from Critical Drinker, but in fairness to Just Some Guy, he seems to be doing more videos about things he actually likes/approves of as time goes on. Most of his content is still pretty negative, but there does appear to be some effort on his part to start balancing things a little more. I've also noticed his newer negative videos are rarely 100% negative anymore.

Just as one example, I watched his take on the ROP trailer earlier today, and he actually had some fairly nice things to say about the visuals. He still panned the casting and characterization choices, along with plenty of other things, but there was at least a token attempt to give "pros" and "cons" rather than just the "cons", which is not something he used to do all that often.

Not sure if he's just tired of being relentlessly negative all the time, or if he's trying to be taken more seriously as a critic, but either way it's made his videos more watchable.

 

I'm cautiously optimistic. There's enough references I've spotted in there to appease the fanboy in me, and the character designs seem interesting and flavourful. I'll be watching this when it comes out, I think.

 

That trailer has me so pumped man. I cannot wait.

If the blonde guy/girl is Stupid Sexy Sauron, I'm going to be okay with that. That's just a beautiful person, gender be damned.

Probs a red herring though. There are like 5 possible Saurons at the moment.

Edit: Several panels are going on at SDCC with the full cast split up. I am really really impressed with their lore knowledge and pronunciations, and just everything coming out of these is super reassuring.

Group 1 with Patton Oswalt:


Group 2 with Felicia Day:
Facebook

Group 3 with some random host:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1539636712?tt_medium=mobile_web_share&tt_content=vod

 

We are 100% going to get to see the Darkening of Valinor.
https://twitter.com/ce_toca/status/1550576749725061122?t=op5bGfvntGaOA02e95fcQg&s=19

Loving that shadow of Morgoth on the clouds.

 

Hall H - megapanel hosted by Stephen Colbert. Y'all need to watch this one. Showrunners have Colbert's endorsement. And honestly, listening to these guys talk is just wholesome as fuck. They are meganerds. I'm beyond sold at this point.

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNwMXh0zjg8E71JBEapQCCXQRqWOPRKEO


Bit of unexpected, and perhaps bad news. Seems like Howard Shore is only doing the show's central theme and consulting. The rest will be composed by Bear McCreary. McCreary is an awesome composer, his God of War soundtrack is absolutely fucking epic... but he's just not Shore.

 

NotR and Corey Olsen sit down to talk about the new trailer, as well as all the SDCC exclusives not yet released to the public.

 

Feeling a lot better. That last trailer actually had me feeling hyped rather than just cautiously interested

 

I have to say, I am greatly enjoying watching all the trolls trying to quietly reverse their positions while pretending not to. "This trailer has really turned it around for me", "this trailer has put some of my fears to rest", etc.

Complete bullshit, of course. This trailer is the same in cinematography style, art style, quality of props, and quality of special effects to the earlier teasers. The trailer contains nothing new in the way of story details compared to what we already knew.

The trailer hasn't turned anything around. The qualities and potential downsides of the show are the same that they have always been. But since positive public sentiment is ramping up as we get closer to the launch of the show, all the trolls are realising that they may find themselves irrelevant if the show really takes off and people love it and their channel is just a hate factory. So they are now all changing their tune, despite nothing have changed in substance, while trying to pretend that the show has done something different.

 

Probably, but with each trailer and teaser you get more and more scenes and elements and it can convince people that maybe it won't be that bad. Additionally, all these panels on SDCC certainly helped too in case of people who actually wanted to learn more about the show to decide if it has a chance to be good.

 

I think it's as simple as the trailer containing a lot less Galadriel.

 

@Taure Disagree. Trailer gave much more insight into what the villains will be like, other more human protagonists, what ungoliant might look like etc.

The other trailers were pretty but after WoT there is reason for concern. This trailer showed more of the potential story.

 

The latest hilarity is all the dunking on "Eminem Sauron" apparently completely unaware that the "Eminem" character is a woman.

Actress is Bridie Sisson for those who want to check lol.

 

It's the hair. Change it to darker and they would call her Frodo Sauron because she can easily pass for Elijah Wood's sister too.

 

I'm just excited to see what a 500 million dollar tv show looks like. By all accounts this has been in the works for a lot longer than the WOT tv show was, and it's not being produced under the same Covidy conditions, so it, like most Amazon Prime originals should at the very least be highly watchable. I'm avoiding the trailers and all of the drama around them though, LOTR just isn't my biggest fandom so I don't really care how accurate it is to the source material (especially given that the movies heavily deviated from the books, and they're some of the best movies I've ever seen.). Either way though, it can't be worse than the Hobbit was.

 

I mean, the big name YouTube anti-wokers seem set on dying on their hill.

As for just general "this one turned it around for me" stuff, I can understand that point of view. With each trailer and content drop we've gotten more tidbits of better dialogue, as well as much better shots of practical effects / props. The chief complaints among casual fans so far has definitely just been mainly fear of CGI and bad writing.