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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Benjamin Olson" data-source="post: 9068771" data-attributes="member: 6988941">My experience of the experiment in hack adaptation that was Wheel of Time is one of the principal reasons I haven't watched Rings of Power. I actually kind of enjoyed the series, and then I read the first book and realized that all the weak points of the series were places where the people making the show had diverged from the book, caused the many carefully woven threads of the story to unravel, and just let there be massive holes in the narrative or patched them with random crap.And the main reason I haven't watched RoP, in a similar vein, is that rather than adapt the Silmarillion or some other substantial bit of Tolkien's writing they optioned Lord of the Rings and decided to pad out the appendices. And hours upon hours of padding out Tolkien with crap made-up by some Hollywood writers on a deadline just holds no appeal for me, even dressed up with Peter Jackson-esque production design. And the reason it holds no appeal is that I already got burned by the cash-in that was the Hobbit trilogy, and those were from a proven team and only about 50% crap-padding made-up-in-a-hurry (though, at least Rings of Power presumably doesn't have the insult of there being all the necessary pieces for an excellent one or two movie adaptation of the Hobbit buried amongst all the bloat).It's not that I think Hollywood writers are bad at their jobs, its that I think epic high fantasy is just something that requires a strong vision (easiest with one person, but possible with more) and a lot of time to carefully work and rework until all the moving pieces move together, especially when working within an already carefully crafted fantasy setting. That's just not the sort of environment TV shows are written in; they're usually to some degree done by committee and what they produce is whatever they can get done before it needs to shoot. Ironically more money being spent on the show often means less flexible deadlines for scripts, and less flexibility in general when something isn't really working. And TV writers are up against a lot of other crap as well, which is why they're striking right now. It's just not fertile ground for a good Middle Earth project to be born in.I should be prime audience for any Tolkien adaptation. I've read all the major Tolkien works a couple of times, seen the Peter Jackson trilogy a dozen times, and grew up with the Rankin-Bass animated versions in regular rotation. WotC was able to lure me back to Magic cards with their Lord of the Rings tie-in set. I own Amazon stock and would like to see it succeed. I've watched all the competing medieval fantasy shows. But that doesn't mean I'm interested in every bit of Middle Earth fanfic, even when Amazon throws a billion dollars at it. Had I heard lots of positive buzz I probably would have given it a go by now, but given that my prediction was that it would probably have terrible plotting and writing and what I've heard is a bunch of complaints about the plotting and writing, I'll probably continue to give it a pass at least until I start hearing that season two is a vast improvement or what not.</blockquote>

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