Hidden Gems of Amazon Prime instant videos

ranalin wrote:

That looks interesting.

I'm astounded how good The Peripheral looks. In particular, because from what I recall of the book, its the least suited to video adaptation of anything Gibson has written.

It's no "The Game", but I guess I'll watch it.

Spoiler:

IMAGE(https://www.geekgirlauthority.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/tng_s5_thegame-1000x640.jpg)

Watching the third episode of RoP. Very pretty but darn it goes slow. Foreshadowing and more foreshadowing makes for a boring show

Foreshadowing is supposed to be something you catch on a second viewing instead of something pushed at viewers

MikeSands wrote:

I'm astounded how good The Peripheral looks. In particular, because from what I recall of the book, its the least suited to video adaptation of anything Gibson has written.

Maybe, but they're also the most interesting of his recent books I think. If done well it could be an amazing show!

Speaking of amazing shows I just finished Fleabag S2. What a wild and crazy thing to be tucked away in Prime video of all places!

I've watched the first two episodes of Rings of Power and love it. Is it a little slow? Sure, but so was Tolkien a lot of the time. It would have been much, much worse as a nonstop action/sex/violence blockbuster.

Fleabag was great. Awesome mix of funny and dramatic and surreal

Watched Tenet last night as it has cropped up on Prime here in the UK. I quite enjoyed it to be honest - Kenneth Branagh’s ‘Russian’ accent aside - found it all relatively straightforward given the talk about it at release and actually thought that played into it’s favour. Sure it doesn’t stand up to a lot of scrutiny but then it’s a rare film that does.

Yeah I enjoyed Tenet when I caught it on HBO at a hotel last year.

Nolan’s films are strange for me. Their stories are interesting, the cinematography is always gorgeous, and they have solid actors. But there’s something about them that always seems to leave me a bit cold. I’m always glad I’ve seen them, but I never have the desire to watch them a second time. They’re always just solidly “good.”

PaladinTom wrote:

They’re always just solidly “good.”

Apart from Interstellar.

ComfortZone wrote:
MikeSands wrote:

I'm astounded how good The Peripheral looks. In particular, because from what I recall of the book, its the least suited to video adaptation of anything Gibson has written.

Maybe, but they're also the most interesting of his recent books I think. If done well it could be an amazing show!

Speaking of amazing shows I just finished Fleabag S2. What a wild and crazy thing to be tucked away in Prime video of all places!

I didn't realize this was based on the Gibson book! I really enjoyed that one. Now I'm psyched for this show.

Also looked up the book again and he's going to turn it into a trilogy? Had no idea.

ccoates wrote:

Also looked up the book again and he's going to turn it into a trilogy? Had no idea.

The second, Agency, was also very good.

MikeSands wrote:
ccoates wrote:

Also looked up the book again and he's going to turn it into a trilogy? Had no idea.

The second, Agency, was also very good.

He said in an interview that Agency was originally going to be a standalone, but then Covid came along and screwed up the original plot, so he linked it to Peripheral to give him an excuse to make it an alternate timeline.

CaptainCrowbar wrote:
MikeSands wrote:
ccoates wrote:

Also looked up the book again and he's going to turn it into a trilogy? Had no idea.

The second, Agency, was also very good.

He said in an interview that Agency was originally going to be a standalone, but then Covid came along and screwed up the original plot, so he linked it to Peripheral to give him an excuse to make it an alternate timeline.

Wasn't just COVID, but Trump getting elected made him restart what he had.

I'm still greatly enjoying Rings of Power after 4 episodes. I think it's imitating Tolkien's tone quite well on a number of fronts and the cinematography is beautiful.

Spoiler:

Meeting Elendil and Isildur in Episode 3 puts us closer to the end of the Second Age than I had initially expected. Granted, the Numenoreans canonically live 200+ years so there's still plenty of time.

I thought the first episode was a decent table setter but the second was a stinker. Third and fourth are back to form. Cool to see Numenor realized visually. The cast is fabulous. I enjoyed that we could take weeks off certain character’s stories in 3 and 4. My remaining criticisms are the CG warg looking pretty terrible and some of the action scene music sounding out of a B-grade movie rather than a Tolkien epic and certainly not in keeping with the quality of the rest of the soundtrack.

I watched the first 90 minutes of Fellowship today and it’s fun to compare the two.

Yeah, loved the latest LOTR episode.

O God, call me a zealot, but I bounced off Rings of Power pretty bad.

Morgoth destroyed the tree without any mention of Ungoliant, Elrond and Galadriel spoke to each other like dumbed down GI Joe's as Commander and Heraut...

Inbetween a strange story was tossed what I thought to be some ancestors of Ghan-Buri-Ghan - but it turned out to be Hobbits. The flat cardboard acting did the rest ('I want to discover the rivers were the birds learn their new songs.. barreugh).

Seems I am the only on Earth that though Game of Thrones was a dud, but this seems even worse.

Then again, I am happy that lots of folks enjoy these series.

Apparently part of it is how FUBAR the rights to Tolkien's work is. For instance, Ungoliant is in Silmarilion which Amazon doesn't have the rights to, and can't legally mention. They have to work between some weird lines. That said, I hated the first episode but started to get on board after, at least as some high fantasy popcorn.

This channel is my deepest exposure to Tolkien and had an interesting breakdown of the first episode that helped illuminate what they can and can't say.

I watched one episode of Rings of Power and bounced off hard. Even given the copyright restrictions they're working under, the writing was just bad.

Galadriel sails across a major ocean, changes her mind at the last minute, and jumps ship like a lemming, planning to... what, exactly? Swim back? Drown and die? Climb back on board and say "j/k, can I have a ride back to Middle-earth plz?"

The real reason, of course, is that writers needed to contrive a reason to move their Galadriel Action Figure(tm) to their Numenor Action Playset(tm), and to hell with how little sense it makes.

That's some Game of Thrones season 8 level sh*t writing right there.

polypusher wrote:

Apparently part of it is how FUBAR the rights to Tolkien's work is. For instance, Ungoliant is in Silmarilion which Amazon doesn't have the rights to, and can't legally mention. They have to work between some weird lines. That said, I hated the first episode but started to get on board after, at least as some high fantasy popcorn.

This channel is my deepest exposure to Tolkien and had an interesting breakdown of the first episode that helped illuminate what they can and can't say.

Yeah, they only have the rights to The Hobbit, the LOTR trilogy itself, and the appendices included in Return of the King. They're working almost entirely off of the appendices for this series, so if it's in both the appendices and the Silmarillion it's fair game, but if it's only in the Silmarillion and not the appendices they can't mention it. My understanding is that they also can't do anything that outright contradicts anything in any of the works they don't have the rights to, either. They can't alter the events Tolkein already wrote, but they can create new stories and explore what else happened around the established ones.

I look at it like this: If the writings of Tolkein are a history book of Middle Earth, then the Rings of Power show is a work of historical fiction.

hbi2k wrote:

Galadriel sails across a major ocean, changes her mind at the last minute, and jumps ship like a lemming, planning to... what, exactly? Swim back? Drown and die? Climb back on board and say "j/k, can I have a ride back to Middle-earth plz?"
.

I took that as leaning in to the whole idea that Elves are not Human and have considerable more strength and endurance than humans, even those from Numenor. Consequently, it was nothing to Galadriel to think of swimming back to Middle Earth.

My issue with Numenor is that most of the humans there - outside of the Nobility and Pharazon, aren't haughty or arrogant enough to be Numenoreans. Plus I thought Sauron was meant to actually be there stirring the plot.

They more or less get it right with the sailors I think, but that's about it.

Stengah wrote:

My understanding is that they also can't do anything that outright contradicts anything in any of the works they don't have the rights to, either. They can't alter the events Tolkein already wrote....

I don't believe that's the case. At least, they're being pretty liberal about changing the timeline, condensing events that took place thousands of years apart in Tolkien's writing into (probably) a few decades, to avoid having to introduce a whole new cast of humans every season.

Sorbicol wrote:

I took that as leaning in to the whole idea that Elves are not Human and have considerable more strength and endurance than humans, even those from Numenor. Consequently, it was nothing to Galadriel to think of swimming back to Middle Earth.

That raises a whole host of other problems. That's Kryptonian level superheroics. Tolkien elves have never been that OP, even if you count some of the BS Legolas got up to in the Jackson movies. Why would they build boats at all if it's that easy for them?

Like, you can headcanon it that way I guess, but the fact that you have to headcanon that hard to explain away the poor writing is not, like, great.

Sorbicol wrote:

My issue with Numenor is that most of the humans there - outside of the Nobility and Pharazon, aren't haughty or arrogant enough to be Numenoreans. Plus I thought Sauron was meant to actually be there stirring the plot.

I also assumed that and had to reread some material. Spoiler for Silmarillion stuff as I understood it:

Spoiler:

The Numenorean's war against Sauron (which I assume we saw launched in Ep 4) will be successful. They capture him and bring him back to Numenor as a prisoner. He then starts corrupting everyone but Pharazon in particular.

And to the "she can't swim back" part: it's never really clear exactly how far out they have to sail before leaving Middle Earth proper and embarking on the "straight road" or whatever it's called.

Math wrote:

And to the "she can't swim back" part: it's never really clear exactly how far out they have to sail before leaving Middle Earth proper and embarking on the "straight road" or whatever it's called.

Spoilers assuming that they follow the books on this, which AFAIK there are no rights reasons why they can't:

Spoiler:

There is no Straight Road yet. Right now Valinor (the Blessed Realm, the place where Elves go when they get tired of M-E) is protected by a screen of fog and storms, which parts when someone who's allowed to go there shows up. Which is exactly what we see happen in RoP, which would place them MUCH closer to Valinor than to Middle-Earth, basically just off the coast of Valinor.

Right now the world (Arda) is flat, which is how it was originally created. When the Numenoreans decide to invade Valinor under the corruption of Sauron, the Valar (technically the highest choir of angels, but functionally lower-case-g gods) appeal to Eru, who is the big-G creator God, to handle it, presumably because things went really bad the last time they intervened directly in mortal affairs and they don't want to risk screwing things up.

Eru sinks the invading fleet and the island of Numenor and changes the shape of the entire world to be round, removing Valinor from the physical plane of existence and making it literally unreachable to anyone who doesn't get carried there by direct divine intervention. That's the Straight Road you're thinking of.

Well.. for those of you who have been under a rock the last 20 years...

I will happily link to the brilliant DM of the Rings, which is as true to the books as one can get in a D&D setting.

I laughed out loud so many times reading it, I woke up my kids and had to restrain myself from reading it in the evening.

hbi2k wrote:
Stengah wrote:

My understanding is that they also can't do anything that outright contradicts anything in any of the works they don't have the rights to, either. They can't alter the events Tolkein already wrote....

I don't believe that's the case. At least, they're being pretty liberal about changing the timeline, condensing events that took place thousands of years apart in Tolkien's writing into (probably) a few decades, to avoid having to introduce a whole new cast of humans every season.

They can be quite liberal with things, they just can't change them entirely, or come up with their own bit of the story that overwrites the canon story. One of the Tolkein scholars who was working with them on the show said in an interview that this was the case.

Re: Galadriel swimming. It's worth noting that just because she was attempting it doesn't mean she could have made it. She would either have become a snack for a sea monster or just given out physically long before she reached shore. But much like the opening scenes of her hunt for any trace of Sauron, her choice to jump and then swim to shore are meant to show that her determination crosses well over into stubbornness & recklessness. We just happen to know that she's also right about it.

I'm a big Tolkien fan. I've read the Silmarillion, The Hobbit 4 or 5 times, and LotR at least a dozen. I agree with a lot of the complaints made. The compressed timeline is throwing me off a bit. The dialogue isn't up to the standards of Tolkien (Peter Jackson's movies had this issue as well, it was especially noticeable when they'd switch back and forth from lines taken directly from the books). The omission of details from the Silmarillion confused me a few times, and then I learned about the licensing.

I'm really enjoying it anyways. There's a difference between "not how I would have done it" and "not good". I think the Scouring of the Shire is one of the most important chapters of LotR, and would not have removed it from the movies, but I still think they're pretty good.