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What TV SHOWS are you watching?
In a nutshell you can have any rules you want for a fantasy world and the reader/viewer will still immerse themselves and enjoy it. In Star Trek all worlds could have breathable atmosphere and Earth gravity, the earth could be hollow and filled with dinosaurs, you could have laser swords, air pressure on an asteroid, precog monks, whatever.
However when you break the rules you established you break the immersion. Remember the scene in Star Wars episode eight where they are fleeing the First Order and are running out of fuel? Everyone abandons the ship and drops to the planet, leaving one person behind who then initiates a light speed jump through the FO ship? Yes it's a dramatic moment and great use of negative sound. But it leaves me asking, "wait, was this always an option???" Why didn't every Wookie with a light speed capable ship suicide star destroyers? Why didn't the Rebellion at Yavin IV do this to the DeathStar? Starkiller? Why isn't every light speed jump a roll of the dice if you survive or not?
In Game of Thrones for six seasons army logistics matter, so much so that Rob Stark is going to marry someone he doesn't love because their castle is at some river crossing. Dothraki don't cross water on boats. We establish Arya's special powers are to face change. Then in the last two seasons army's teleport, Arya can teleport to stab the lead WhiteWalker, oh and the WhiteWalker general can throw a spear in the air and hit the heart of a dragon flying two football fields away and up breaking all laws of physics.
Well, to me it's the same thing with Rings of Power. The show is just constantly breaking both the rules it establishes in earlier scenes AND MORE IMPORTANTLY the rules established by JRR Tolkien. Elven high command tells the watch to disband. The elf in love with a human immediately goes to her house and then directly to the site of the uruk army. He is captured and made to dig tunnels, not underground, but above (where the orcs will not go out in the sun and somehow manage the slaves from a distance) and finds himself next to his commander and fellow soldiers who seem to have been captured days ago??? When the villagers relocate to the watchtower they pull a home alone and hide in the forest while the elf traps the uruk army inside with a shot of a single arrow that closes the front gate, and collapses the tower with another arrow. The army that the villagers fight turns out not to be orcs, but by magic after the battle turns out to have been humans all along. Guess Adar cast greater mass illusion since he is a eleventh level sorcerer. Halbrand teleports to the other side of a rapidly fleeing Adar. Numenorians, the Atlanteans of the world, are a completely isolationist society, but agree to send any army to help Halbrand reclaim his throne because a tree shed it's leaves. Sauron built a rube goldberg machine half completed to fulfill his plan. Adar's army built the tunnels that channeled the water AND STARTED AT A VOLCANO THAT COULD BLOW AT ANY TIME and the end of the tunnels is not where they ended (at the village where Arondir was captured) but somehow at the dam. Harfoots migrate across the continent twice a year over open terrain and somehow no one knows they exist.
I could accept a show where these things were possible. Princess Bride was over the top, but it was a fantasy/romance/comedy. Middle Earth is not such a place, it has established rules.
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House of the Dragon - not sure what I think of the latest episode. Slightly on the 'lame' side of the HotD quality scale for me I guess, although Daemon did cheer me up. I think him and One-Eyed Aegon have a "like minds think alike" vibe going on, but that just might be because for both of them their natural expression is a smirk.
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- hotseatgames
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I remember a quote from one of the Battlestar Galactica writers who was on some Comic-Con panel. A nerd asked something stupid about how fast a certain ship traveled, due to there being inconsistencies across episodes. The writer replied "They move at the speed of plot."
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- Jackwraith
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- fightcitymayor
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And I've never seen a show quite so determined to make e-v-e-r-y scene THE MOST EPIC SCENE EVER FILMED and to absolutely beat you, the viewer, over the head with that fact. Everything every character does is framed as THE MOST IMPORTANT THING EVER ACCOMPLISHED and drenched in CGI and accompanied by a swelling soundtrack that drives home this point. What I wouldn't give for just a casual, medieval scene, where two people just walk through a village and have a normal conversation. Everything is played BIG, everything is telegraphed almost to ensure you understand just how much money & time went into every second of this production.mtagge wrote: Well, to me it's the same thing with Rings of Power. The show is just constantly breaking both the rules it establishes in earlier scenes..
It's somehow both utterly exhausting & utterly boring at the same time.
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Was he a writer before or after new Caprica? The only awful episode before NC was the boxing episode, because of course everyone loves boxing. After NC the writing went to garbage. I could buy everything in that universe until Starbuck turned into Jesus at the end.hotseatgames wrote: I suspect there are very few works out there that are always "true to their own world" all the time.
I remember a quote from one of the Battlestar Galactica writers who was on some Comic-Con panel. A nerd asked something stupid about how fast a certain ship traveled, due to there being inconsistencies across episodes. The writer replied "They move at the speed of plot."
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mtagge wrote:
Was he a writer before or after new Caprica? The only awful episode before NC was the boxing episode, because of course everyone loves boxing. After NC the writing went to garbage. I could buy everything in that universe until Starbuck turned into Jesus at the end.hotseatgames wrote: I suspect there are very few works out there that are always "true to their own world" all the time.
I remember a quote from one of the Battlestar Galactica writers who was on some Comic-Con panel. A nerd asked something stupid about how fast a certain ship traveled, due to there being inconsistencies across episodes. The writer replied "They move at the speed of plot."
Just my opinion, but I felt that BSG steadily got worse with each new season. The pilot season was great. The first full season was very good. The second season was okay. Third season, including the boxing episode, was when the show went bad, and I heard enough from friends about fourth season to just skip it.
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The problem with Rings of Power is that it was crafted by J.J. Abrams acolytes and they loooooooooove mystery boxes.
We have:
1. meteor man, who is he?
2. the symbol on Galadriels brothers body, what does it mean?
3. the strange tunnels/trenches, what are they for?
4. the eldritch sword hilt, what does it do?
5. Halbrand and his neck baggie, what does it mean?
6. The forge that MUST be built, why?
7. The dwarves have a LITERAL mystery box, why so secretive?
8. The white monk ladies, who are they?
9. Meteor Man wants to see a constellation, to what purpose?
ANY of these could be the entire focus of a show, but to throw ALL of them into 1 season to create "fantasy LOST" was a YUGE mistake. Add to it the horribly chunky purple prose and nonsensical similes, ZERO sense of space and distance, and the most empty feeling grand world imaginable and this show is a catastrophy.
And this isn't even judging it as a TOLKIEN show, which, well, there are a million youtube videos on that.
I would drop amazon just out of spite, but their "man-bro" shows like Reacher, Terminal List, and Jack Ryan might keep me around if they can crank them out fast enough.
If this is the level of show they wanted, they could have saved like 200 MILLION dollars just in rights by buying Dennis McKiernans Mithgar series which is close enough to Middle-Earth. Plus we could have gotten C. J. Cherryh's awesome Morgaine books for some sword swinging female action, maybe some Paksenarrion if a warrior woman show was the priority. SO MANY IPs just laying out there ready to rise up.
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mtagge wrote:
Was he a writer before or after new Caprica? The only awful episode before NC was the boxing episode, because of course everyone loves boxing. After NC the writing went to garbage. I could buy everything in that universe until Starbuck turned into Jesus at the end.hotseatgames wrote: I suspect there are very few works out there that are always "true to their own world" all the time.
I remember a quote from one of the Battlestar Galactica writers who was on some Comic-Con panel. A nerd asked something stupid about how fast a certain ship traveled, due to there being inconsistencies across episodes. The writer replied "They move at the speed of plot."
You've obviously forgotten about the Black Market episode.
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If you're looking for non stop action this isn't it. But its still well paced and well worth watching IMO. And the physical production is well done, with lots of nice location shooting vs the virtual reality set up of MANDO. And to follow up on what was said upthread about every scene needing to be EPIC MAN ! this show takes it time - without dragging - and lets the characters breathe .
Its planned as a two season run but whoever is running this needs to be handed more stuff to do once it wraps up.
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jason10mm wrote: It's called "internal consistency" and yes, it is very much a lost art these days.
The problem with Rings of Power is that it was crafted by J.J. Abrams acolytes and they loooooooooove mystery boxes.
We have:
1. meteor man, who is he?
2. the symbol on Galadriels brothers body, what does it mean?
3. the strange tunnels/trenches, what are they for?
4. the eldritch sword hilt, what does it do?
5. Halbrand and his neck baggie, what does it mean?
6. The forge that MUST be built, why?
7. The dwarves have a LITERAL mystery box, why so secretive?
8. The white monk ladies, who are they?
9. Meteor Man wants to see a constellation, to what purpose?
ANY of these could be the entire focus of a show, but to throw ALL of them into 1 season to create "fantasy LOST" was a YUGE mistake. Add to it the horribly chunky purple prose and nonsensical similes, ZERO sense of space and distance, and the most empty feeling grand world imaginable and this show is a catastrophy.
And this isn't even judging it as a TOLKIEN show, which, well, there are a million youtube videos on that.
I would drop amazon just out of spite, but their "man-bro" shows like Reacher, Terminal List, and Jack Ryan might keep me around if they can crank them out fast enough.
If this is the level of show they wanted, they could have saved like 200 MILLION dollars just in rights by buying Dennis McKiernans Mithgar series which is close enough to Middle-Earth. Plus we could have gotten C. J. Cherryh's awesome Morgaine books for some sword swinging female action, maybe some Paksenarrion if a warrior woman show was the priority. SO MANY IPs just laying out there ready to rise up.
You aren't lying about that mystery box horseshit. But to be fair to Amazon, I think they've resolved a good bit of that list. I think 1, 7, and 9 are still out there.
As for other, less-known series' being brought to the screen, there are some out there, but they don't have a billion-dollar budget. Producers can't resist the siren song of well-known IP; they're working on a Thundercats movie FFS. You can sell a show or movie based on the contents of Tolkien's trashcan easier than you can sell Glenn Cook's Black Company series.
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mtagge wrote:
Was he a writer before or after new Caprica? The only awful episode before NC was the boxing episode, because of course everyone loves boxing. After NC the writing went to garbage. I could buy everything in that universe until Starbuck turned into Jesus at the end.hotseatgames wrote: I suspect there are very few works out there that are always "true to their own world" all the time.
I remember a quote from one of the Battlestar Galactica writers who was on some Comic-Con panel. A nerd asked something stupid about how fast a certain ship traveled, due to there being inconsistencies across episodes. The writer replied "They move at the speed of plot."
<ackshully>
It was a J. Michael Straczynski (sp) quote about Babylon 5 and/or its spin-off series:
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TravelingAtTheSpeedOfPlot
So nothing to do with BSG at all, and predates it.
</ackshully>
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- hotseatgames
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