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Yeah the tone of LOTR is oppressive, reserved, alien, post apocalyptic. I read the novel many times as a kid and loved it, so I hated the 2001 film. Imo visually it was perfect, it literally looked like the books did in my imagination. But in every other respect it was completely off, especially the overall tone. The 2nd biggest issue for me was the music, they had a great opportunity to do something interesting and alien with the music, but nah its just generic hollywood rousing adventure music that never stops playing.

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As a New Zealander the movies always felt off. I'd read the books cover to cover multiple times by that point, and they'd transported me to a strange, beautiful and foreign world.

Then I see it on the big screen and the landscapes and flora were all familiar to me. If I hadn't seen similar stuff in person, I'd seen them on local TV advertisements for beer, butter and toyotas.

So I try and ignore them these days, and cling on to the LOTR that I first saw in my head that looks nothing like home.

I always wonder how Americans feel about their entertainment largely being set in American with Americans speaking American accents. How can you imagine a different world?

Even within the United States, different regions can feel like different worlds.

The most stark contrast I’ve seen is in the indie film Lady Bird where (SPOILERS) there is a setting change from a very small rural American town for most of the plot to New York City at the end of the film, with it’s subways, density, and architecture that felt familiar to any watcher from an urban area.

Similarly, the suburban Texas setting of the King of the Hill deliberately contrasts itself with New York-based shows (referring to Seinfeld as, “I'll tell you what, man, them dang ol' New York boys. Just a show about nothin,’” with other joked about the disdain of many Texans of New Yorkers).

Lady Bird was set in Sacramento, not a small town.

I agree that in real life, Sacramento is no small town, and it was inaccurate to describe it as very small and rural.

However, I remember the depiction of Sacramento in the movie was intended to stand in contrast with a bigger city (which is why a major conflict is about the protagonist wanting to move away).

Reviews by several critics also described that setting as a small town, and I remember reading discussions around the release about how other perspectives of Sacramento could view the place as much larger and diverse.

The film’s writer and director Greta Gerwig more precisely described her view in an SF Chronicle article (https://www.sfchronicle.com/movies/article/On-location-How-L...): “It’s not rural, but it is not like a New York or a San Francisco either. It is somewhere in the middle.”

Just guessing, but I think that those more curious also have plenty of less US-centrist material available at hand, and if you are not, you don’t mind.

Sadly California media has crushed the world - even the US used to have very distinct regional accents but now most everyone speaks “American TV announcer”.

America is big, you only get the “this movie was made in my home” vibe if it was filmed quite close and there’s a lot of “not close” in America.

There is a lot of regional variation, but the difference is quite a lot smaller than in other places in the world.

It is indeed harder to imagine a different world because we are culturally isolated, but our isolated world is quite a bit larger than I would bet would be easily imagined coming from somewhere else.

There are also things that I think people just tend to take for granted regardless of where they live, even outside of America.

"The Book of General Ignorance" talks about an example of this with frogs:

> There are 4,360 known species of frog, but only one of them goes "ribbit." Each species has its own unique call. The reason everyone thinks all frogs go "ribbit" is that "ribbit" is the distinctive call of the Pacific tree frog (Hyla regilla). This is the frog that lives in Hollywood.

> Recorded locally, it has been plastered all over the movies for decades to enhance the atmosphere of anywhere from the Everglades to Vietnamese jungles.

Frogs don't sound like that here but that's not something that ever seemed incongruous to me until it was pointed out in a book.

That's a choice people make, not an inevitable situation. Babylon Berlin for example, that's popular among people who aren't interested in a Hollywood-only diet. So is a lot of Japanese anime.

As a non-American, do you feel like you get an honest depiction of what America is like when you consume American media?

America as shown by Hollywood is a different world.

Meanwhile every time I visit New Zealand, especially the south island, I keep pointing at the scenery and excitedly proclaiming: "Look! It's like the Lord of the Rings movies!"

My European relatives get equally excited when they visit Australia, but for me it's like... meh... I just work here.

> they had a great opportunity to do something interesting and alien with the music

In their defense, as a film score alone, disregarding the source material, at least they had a score—unlike most subsequent action/adventure movies, e.g. 21st century DC and Marvel movies with some incidental mood sounds in the background but never a melody to be heard.

But yes, I've only read Hobbit and the first few chapters of Fellowship, but to me Bo Hansson's 1970 album better evokes Middle-earth than Shore's score.

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