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The Lord of the Rings Demonstrates Hollywood’s Franchise Problem | The Backdrop

A new episode of The Backdrop is now available from Darren Mooney!

The Lord of the Rings Demonstrates Hollywood’s Franchise Problem | The Backdrop

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Well, I personally, think it has to do more with the fact that this is a more recent trilogy. Star Wars had a solid 15 years after Jedi. Indiana Jones had a dozen years plus before Crystal Skull. LOTR spun almost immediately into the production of The Hobbit, which was, while bloated and arguably unnecessary (as a trilogy as opposed to a single film) was still Peter Jackson enough to be an entertaining watch (mostly). The Hobbit Trilogy showed us exactly why NOT to keep stuffing that taxidermied Mastodon with more filling. My point being: I’m not sure the Rings of power could have been good. If it had been? That would’ve been something special, and I think all us fans were hoping for that. However, legal rights, corporate shareholders, guys (and occasional women) in suits, and BEZOS playing it so safe these days he won’t even say “don’t vote for the guy who wants to destroy me.” ….It’s just so bleak for any creative idea in a corporate environment. But that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.

Catherine Stowell

Would you be making this video if Rings of Power had been good? It seems you draw a causal link between franchising and the deluge of poorly performing movies, but it seems to me that, if anything, the sequels are buffeting what are otherwise extraordinarily bland stories. As you say, there's almost no movies telling stories beyond the original works, and when they do they turn inwards instead of using this as a leaping off point. This isn't a problem with sequels, it's a problem with how Hollywood is making these sequels. When you say you don't need to see Freddy again, what stories do you need to see then? We feel the need to see the LOTR trilogy because it was good. But if it was as bad as the older animated version I suspect you would say the exact same thing about not needing another bad adaptation. If Futurama were bad it would be seen the same way we see a lot of these ass legacy sequels. The only thing it being a sequel does is make us pay more attention to what would be an otherwise unremarkable bad story.

Marshall Halleck

Great episode! It is sad that Freddy Kruger (7 movies, spin-off show, music videos, and lunchboxes) is now a model of restraint. Ugh even the one LOTR project I had hopes for (Rohan anime--no need for continuity, different genre) seems cursed. Instead of being a horse-based society the Rohirrim are people who have brave last stands and with an fiesty outspoken woman protagonist so they can redo what happened to them again in LOTR. How did Hollywood cut off their sustained business model with DVDs? My impression is that Netflix came in and disrupted their model (before the studios jumped in and decided to grab more money via their own streaming services).

William Alexander

Not to mention their problem of taking a massive dump on the source material

Christopher Hosking

We are in Hollywood's Scouring of the Shire era

jahr


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