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Comment by algorias | Hacker News Reader

> but given that every LOTR fan is going to want to watch this series even if it sucks

Citation needed. I'm a big fan of LOTR, but I didn't even bother with the last Hobbit movie. And I expect this series to be even worse than that.

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Consider that many fans watch things they routinely disparage online. For example, many Star Wars fans routinely disparage "Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace," and yet it's still one of the most-watched, highest-grossing movies in the history of cinema.

Also, keep in mind there are people who are really fanatical about LOTR. At the end of the spectrum, some of them enjoy this stuff so much that they regularly attend LOTR conventions dressed up as wizards, knights, hobbits, orcs, etc. Those people will watch the new series even if it's only to criticize all the things it got wrong!

> Consider that many fans watch things they routinely disparage online.

they might not bother to subscribe to Prime for that and instead just get a copy off the high seas

I am one of those people (roughly speaking). Do with that as you will.

I stopped after the first Hobbit movie and I'm very unlikely to watch this unless it gets rave reviews.

Come on, it's really unlikely this show will be worse than the Hobbit movie.

I am not so sure that your statement is obviously true. One of the issues with The Hobbit films is that they stretched one relatively short book into three movies...this time around, it looks like they're stretching some apocrypha from the appendix of a book into an 8-episode TV show. Feels like a fairly similar effort to wring blood from a stone.

Not that I am interested in defending Amazon's series, which I think will be a disaster, but I don't think the comparison with the Hobbit movies holds.

True, the material they have rights to is from the appendixes of The Lord of the Rings. The difference, though, is that in this case they are going to create a completely new story. So, they can fill as many episodes they want.

With the Hobbit, instead, they had the story already and they had to stretch it to create a trilogy.

My opinion on this matter has less to do with stretching and more to do with creating. It feels like the further we get from what the author actually wrote- in terms of dialogue, characterization, etc.- the worse the final output is. LOTR isn't just good because hobbits, it's good because Tolkien's writing is good. The Jackson trilogy was close-ish to Tolkien's writing, the Hobbit films further, and this even more so. I'm of the opinion that this was a major issue with the last few seasons of Game of Thrones as well.

Exactly this. there's nothing about an existing universe that prevents bad writing for new stories in that universe. And big studio creative talent is at a historical low right now.

I don’t get the “stretched explanation”, there was plenty of material. To me the problem was that the action sequences lacked the emotional gravitas of the LOTR trilogy. It was like watching a video game.

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