The never-ending battle against woke Hollywood and SJW infused entertainment media [trigger warning]

If you can't name 10 major movies (which really isn't all that much of an ask if LOTR is not the faithful adaptation that I presented it to be), then your argument swirls down the drain. Just asking for a little bit of evidence to back up your claim. If you are not up to the task, simply admit as much. No point in dodging and dancing around it in vain hope that I won't notice or call you out on it.

I've addressed this. You seem to have an issue with the phrase "every way". It wasn't meant to be taken 100% literally (a little bit of reading between the lines was necessary). The LOTR trilogy of movies are not a word for word adaptation but they stay true to Tolkien's work. This is both widely known and accepted.

I thought the meaning was fairly clear, and everyone else seems to have understood it. However, for the sake of clarity, let me painstakingly spell it out. The meaning of the statement was simply meant to imply that the LOTR was an extremely faithful recreation.

In short, "faithful in every way" was not meant to be interpreted with absolute literal rigidity. It was figurative. Let's not play semantics, it gets boring fast. If this is still a source of confusion, simply replace "Faithful in every way to the source material" with anyone of the following...

• extremely faithful to the source material
• faithful in virtually every way to the source material
• meticulously faithful to the source material

And yet here you are interacting with the thread. If you don't like it, you are free to leave. Or stay... defend your arguments... if you can.

 

you're pretty funny dude. My point was never LOTR isn't a faithful adaption, and i've made that explicitly clear now several times. You don't even have to read between the lines to see. I've literally (and i do mean that in the truest sense of the word) said exactly my point several times now.

I pointed out there is one big, fat way that its not faithful. It doesnt ruin the story. I never expressed any opinion about modernizations of source materials. Again, something i've explicitly pointed out. I'm not exactly sure where you're getting this argument i'm not making from.

So once more for the people in the back. When you accept some modernizations (and changing the basic motivations behind the journey of one of the main characters is a pretty big change) but don't accept others, it BEGS THE QUESTION OF WHY YOU'RE DRAWING THE LINE WHERE YOU ARE DRAWING THE LINE.

So, if you'd like to at any point actually address the only point i've ever made (which has nothing to do with "finding more movies" like this is some kind of scavenger hunt), then please. I'm all ears.

I'm interacting with this thread because anytime someone uses the word "woke" my eyes roll into the back of my head so i had to see what kind of hilarity was going on in here. I wasn't disappointed.

There are SO SO SO SO SO many legitmate criticisms to almost every work referenced in this thread, that it does no one any favors to pin anything or everything on some woke agenda. Businesses (which entertainment is) have one agenda: making money. They think they can do that by taking the easy way out time and time again.

The problem isn't that these shows are woke, its that they are vapid, sad shells of a story with no passion or emotion because they're written by a committee of people more concerned with making money than making a good story.

edit: feel free to PM me if you'd like, no problem continuing this conversation between the two of us.

 

Don't make this out to be some kind of witch hunt on my part. Here are your own words:






You simply kept harping on about my inclusion of the phrase "in every way", which I have now repeatedly explained was meant to be taken figuratively. If you don't like me disproving that specific argument, then you shouldn't have presented it and doubled down on it.

This is what you are not getting. My viewpoint that the LOTR movie trilogy was faithful to the source material means that I clearly reject your premise that there exists significant amounts of story modernizations in the LOTR movies! The LOTR movie trilogy was faithful to the lore created by Tolkien, and from the looks of it (based on what little has been shown to us), the Amazon series will not be. That's why no one had an issue with the LOTR movie trilogy but this Amazon crap is facing a ton of backlash.

You have access to the three videos we have posted on the subject. They do a pretty good job discussing it. I'm sure you can afford the bandwidth and give them a watch. And if it isn't worth your time, then surely it isn't worth my time to summarize it for you here.

There is probably a reason for that.

And yet, everyone else one this thread (with minor subtle variances of viewpoints) can clearly see the common thread that binds all these separate works together. It's fine if you feel otherwise.

I'd say that we have collectively wasted just about enough time and effort on this. I'm not trying to convince you not to like the Amazon LOTR series. Go ahead and pick up your Amazon Prime membership and watch it. Watch it everyday if you feel like it and then re-watch it again if you deem it worthwhile. You can literally tattoo images of all the characters on your body... and while I would recommend not doing so, it wouldn't bother me one way or the other. Or watch it just once or not at all. It's up to you.

You have every right to love and support the kind of content that interests you. If this new Amazon series fits your fancy, then have at it. They spent over half a billion dollars on it, so at least it will be a pretty light show.

 

I don't think it's a witch hunt I think you're just assuming a more extreme stance then what I meant. I literally meant exactly what I said. To me it's a pretty drastic change, and one I thought was pretty lame Hollywood pandering. I still enjoyed them quite a bit.

You clearly felt differently. Feels like that was relatively easy to articulate even if it still doesn't necessarily articulate why but I'm over it.

I have no idea if this lotr show is gonna be good or not. I don't have high hopes because I think anything with this much money invested in it is going to play it way too safe to truly be interesting.

Either way, cheers. Sorry for the hostility.

 

Want me to edit?

 

Honestly, I leave this thread for five minutes and what do I find? A recreation of the Throne Room battle from Star Wars Episode I!


And this is at least the second time that I've said something like this in all my time here at Lustria Online, what is it with you lot?

Who looks like his long hair has been left in the wash

I don't remember there ever being any Dwarf kingdoms in Far Harad. Not to mention any Dwarf kingdoms that look so un-Dwarvish, apart from their architecture.

She's all right. Probably the most all-right thing to come out of this series I'd wager (unless she becomes another Rey). She's looking unusually relaxed given there's a massive fireball erupting behind her.

The Galadriel looks similar to Cate Blanchett, but they could have got a bloke who possessed a greater resemblance to Hugo Weaving to play Elrond. Did the lord of Rivendell have enchanted plastic surgery in later life to remove that Bruce Forsyth chin?

And the trademark mixed-race/black male-white female romance that's shoehorned into nearly every production these days to emasculate the white man, because the Left is racist toward whites, even though it claims to advocate against racism. That just about sums the whole thing up.


I've only just seen this post, which is the main reason why I was more optimistic in another thread yesterday, but it looks like my original prediction was right.

However you may feel about the Hobbit trilogy, nobody can deny it's still genuine Tolkien, it still fits in with Lord of the Rings in PJ's vision of Middle-Earth, just as the Prequel Trilogy fits in seamlessly with George Lucas' Star Wars. Elves have long hair and thin pointed faces and Dwarves are short and grumpy but loveable Vikings. This by contrast looks at best a cheap PC fanfiction, and at worst a generic fantasy story that borrows the occasional thing from Middle-Earth.



I certainly hope that GW doesn't expand the Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game to include anything from this. A shame, because it could have had such potential, but for as long as the vile Left-Wing maintains its stranglehold on modern society, we're not going to get anything different.

 

Statements like this just feel unnecessary. The idea that left leaning ideology has a stranglehold on society is (I think obviously) not a position I agree with for a ton of reasons im sure no one in this thread cares about. This has nothing to do with political ideology and conflating the two just causes issues.

Businesses don't make decisions based on political ideology. They make decisions based on profit. If you're upset at something be upset at that.

Regardless, statements like that are always going to inherently cause conflict. Feels like with as loaded as this thread already was from the get-go, there's no need to make it more charged.

 

I mean, there's the very real possibility it's not losing money to the extent you think it is. I don't think there's enough publicly available data to truly show the extent any of this is impacting their bottom line. Most businesses are seeing record profits and (until very recently) the stock market is consistently hitting record highs.

It's hard to look at that and then also say these companies are just throwing money into the bonfire. The overall strategy seems to be working even if individual products fail. I think, and will always think, It's a mixture of saving face and trying to appeal to the majority. These companies have entire divisions of their business dedicated to calculating risk and profits. I don't think they're making individual decisions based on the whim of any given CEO or what have you. At some point there was probably an overarching "we need to appeal to more demographics, do that" and then it gets filtered down into shallow cash grabs because most of what big businesses do is shallow cash grabs. I also think the desire for ever increasing profits does mean eventually profits level off. The "failure" of some of these individual products could at least partially be due to just content overload and the middle classes comparatively less spending power. Also, tons of projects fail all the time. I think pinpointing their collective failure on the "woke agenda" while also kind of ignoring the overall growth of almost all of these companies kinda misses the forest for the trees.

Also, i'm not super sure what you mean by CRT-infused media, but please PM me to discuss that further. CRT is a framework for legal arguments and scholarly study. I'm not sure how that fits into media consumption.

I didn't touch on the other part because, i honestly don't think politics should play a roll in these discussions and I think it always leads to a lot of presumptions and personal anecdotes that rarely go anywhere positive. It's just not a healthy topic for a forum not dedicated to that topic. Also, without seeing each other face to face, its just hard to keep those types of loaded conversations on the right track, at least IMO.

* as an example of company growth, WBs box office revenue in the 4 years pre pandemic were in line with some of its highest in the last 20 years. Certainly not suffering as it seems you're describing. Disney, another common target, as seen its stock price increase by nearly 50% in the last 5 years.

edit: Sorry for crashing the party a bit. I think its best if i scurry back to the aos chat. I said these topics can be contentious, but thats generally only if there's someone that disagrees. I disagree, and i guess I should just take the previous advice given and not be part of the conversation. Feels like that might be healthier for everyone

 

I don't even have any interest in the Middle-Earth games but I fully agree. It would be terrible to see the game marred by such a decision.

I guess it will come down to:

• how the show is eventually received by the audience
• how much money Amazon wants in return for allowing GW to use the IP from the show

I truly love how we disagree on just about everything, all the little stuff, but at the same time, we seem to be mostly inline with one another when it comes to politics!! What are the odds on that?

 

Unfortunately I think, like most things, it depends.

There's so many factors at play here I just don't feel comfortable saying "streaming has flattened cause of a woke agenda" or "mainstream media viewers are down because they are pandering to shallow representation." It could just as easily be because people are exhausted of the 24 hour news cycle and burnt out by the constant deluge of content. People could have less free time and less money to spend mindlessly in front of a television. Growth of streaming platforms could be down because there's forty thousand of them now and people just aren't gonna subscribe to everything.

I think there's enough partial data to fit a lot of narratives and I think most of the time, media and content has become segmented enough that you can find the narrative that supports your own personal bias.

I tend to believe these companies have a better lens into what is and isn't making money and why, then I do. I don't think theyre infallible, but if I had to choose a side I'm gonna choose the side that makes decisions backed by millions of dollars of r&d then a group of outraged individuals on YouTube referencing publicly available information filtered through their own heavy, heavy bias.

I guess that's a long way of saying, I think the assumption that this agenda is somehow hurting them isn't necessarily supported across the board in the way you are describing it. I have no doubt the pendulum will swing back towards a sane middle, but that's always the case. There's an extreme over correction and then things settle down.

/shrug.

Final edit: in the case of Amazon and ATT we also have to remember that both of those business have a big fat finger in the communications pie in general. Outrage causes chatter which causes people to flock to the internet sent to their house by att and to ultimately use sites on the Amazon cloud system. They are also involved with ad revenue and consumer tracking, all of which is helped by increased chatter online. These avenues of business have all become so interconnected I legitimately wouldn't be surprised if some companies aren't more than happy to eat the cost of a "failed" movie or show just to gain an advantage elsewhere. Same thing with the YouTube dislike in the other chat. YouTube makes a controversial call and people flock to, where else, but YouTube to make their voices heard. Videos are made, watched, reacted to and that's all money in their pocket. That, ultimately, is why I have such a hard time believing there's literally some liberal/left/woke agenda at play here. The only constant I see is businesses making money hand over fist off the backs of a working class that is perpetually taken advantage of and pitted against each other.

 

So apparently, tens of thousands of people have been posting the same Tolkien quote in the Amazon LOTR trailer comments section:

"Evil is not able to create anything new, it can only distort and destroy what has been invented or made by the forces of good.” -J.R.R. Tolkien

I think that fits nicely inline with your sentiments and is a perfect description of this new age in Hollywood. I wonder how long it takes until they close down the comments section... hahaha


God, I love the internet. The internet is undefeated.

 

meme for the win!

 

That is a marvellous quote, that perfectly describes not only the Amazon Middle-Earth series, but everything else that has emerged out of film's tainted Spawning Pool in the last 5-6 years, including the rightly-reviled Star Wars Sequel Trilogy.

The silent majority prevails... there is hope for humanity yet.

 

The YouTube comments section for the trailer is now completely filled with that quote. It is literally hard to find any other comment. All you see is that quote... in multiple languages.

The real question remains, what percentage of the fan base does this represent? How do the normies feel? The part that worries me is that even if it fails, Bezos can absorb the financial loss as it were nothing. Still, it's a start.