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Most expensive show ever :D
- Thread starter Nimos
- Start date
All that money spent on CGI. Amazing what you can do with good computers and 3D software
Exaltist Ethan
Bridging the Gap Between Believers and Skeptics
This reminds me of Skyrim.
$100,000,000 to create and market, and half of the NPCs use the same voice actor and say the exact same things to you.
$100,000,000 to create and market, and half of the NPCs use the same voice actor and say the exact same things to you.
That's always been a problem with Bethesda games lol. It's a way to reduce costs, imagine if they had to hire 700 voice actors, as opposed to the 15 or so they used. Way more than $100,000,000 would have to be spent.
Whilst indeed very humorous, that’s sort of par for the course for tv in general.Found this on Reddit and couldn't help but find it funny. Given they have spent a billion dollars on this show and they could manage to get more extras, no wonder why it doing as poorly as it is
TV in general usually has far less of a budget for anything in comparison to movies, never mind extras and the cgi so far has been pretty good for a TV show.
Somewhat unrelated. As a huge fan of the books, I’m loving the show so far. Very accurate to the spirit of Tolkien, imo.
And any changes I find are just par for the course in adaptations in general.
I mean Jackson left out huge swaths of the books and changed quite a few things in his trilogy. So meh
Remember 'Water World' at the time most expensive movie.
Twenty-five years after its release on July 28, 1995, “Waterworld” is still one of the most expensive movies ever made. With a budget of nearly $300 million, the Kevin Costner post-apocalyptic movie was considered to be a box office bomb despite making $264 million worldwide and eventually breaking even with home video sales.
The Most Expensive Movies Ever Made | ETCanada.com
Twenty-five years after its release on July 28, 1995, “Waterworld” is still one of the most expensive movies ever made. With a budget of nearly $300 million, the Kevin Costner post-apocalyptic movie was considered to be a box office bomb despite making $264 million worldwide and eventually breaking even with home video sales.
The Most Expensive Movies Ever Made | ETCanada.com
Nimos
Well-Known Member
Each episode has a budget of 58 million dollars and they plan to have 50 in total, and this doesn't take into account the money spent on getting the rights, which would make it even higher.Whilst indeed very humorous, that’s sort of par for the course for tv in general.
TV in general usually has far less of a budget for anything in comparison to movies, never mind extras and the cgi so far has been pretty good for a TV show.
Somewhat unrelated. As a huge fan of the books, I’m loving the show so far. Very accurate to the spirit of Tolkien, imo.
And any changes I find are just par for the course in adaptations in general.
I mean Jackson left out huge swaths of the books and changed quite a few things in his trilogy. So meh
To put that in comparison, GOT the first 5 seasons had a budget of 6 million per episode and later on when it became very popular an episode got up to around 15 million per episode. We are talking 58 million here!!
With such a budget and it being LOTR you would assume that they could somehow manage to get extras for the show and not have to CGI them in
House of the dragon has a budget of 20 million per episode and it looks 1000 times better.
What the hell is this ****?
Each episode has a budget of 58 million dollars and they plan to have 50 in total, and this doesn't take into account the money spent on getting the rights, which would make it even higher.
To put that in comparison, GOT the first 5 seasons had a budget of 6 million per episode and later on when it became very popular an episode got up to around 15 million per episode. We are talking 58 million here!!
With such a budget and it being LOTR you would assume that they could somehow manage to get extras for the show and not have to CGI them in
House of the dragon has a budget of 20 million per episode and it looks 1000 times better.
What the hell is this ****?
I think that the extras in Rings of Power vs House of Dragon (or indeed Game of Thrones) may have more to do with them just being products of differing companies.
Whilst both shows do have to spend a lot on cgi for their respective worlds, remember that each company also has differing contracts with actors/extras. HBO might just have more extras to play with than Amazon prime. And considering that Amazon is fairly recent to the movie/TV game whereas HBO has a very long history in television, that honesty wouldn’t surprise me.
Again, tv budgets are very different from movie budgets in a lot of ways. Sometimes tv shows just has to make cuts. Sometimes those cuts are more to do with the company limits (or rather what limits the boss of said company says) than any legitimate need. Sometimes cgi can look garbage in one and not another, regardless of what they each spend. HBO has been doing this a lot longer, they might just have better more talented artists on their payroll. Or rather they have people that understand tv cgi better than Amazon. I dunno.
RoP cgi looks fairly decent to me. I would like it to be better in many aspects but eh, what are ya gonna do?
Though I do certainly agree it could be a hell of a lot better, based on what they’re spending.
I also think people want Rings of Power to fail. Like there are folks who just want it to fall flat because it dared to have people of colour and women in their precious white male Anglo Saxon “world”
For the record I am absolutely NOT accusing you of having such thinking. I do not think you would be so malicious.
Merely commenting on the reaction to RoP I’ve seen in general online. There is unfortunately that toxic element of geek culture in general and ironically such toxic folks might not be all too familiar with the source material. Just an observation.
Like have you seen the utter racist reaction to the new Little Mermaid just for example?
It’s disgraceful!!! Smh!!
These days I’m quite wary of geek critiques, so to speak. Not all of them are in good faith.
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Nimos
Well-Known Member
But Amazon can hire people just as HBO does.
A big difference between these companies is that I think Amazon is more into the political agenda in regards to the stuff they make whereas HBO is more interested in good entertainment.
I don't think Amazon is forced to use specific extras etc. Most of these people are not even paid for it besides the experience itself. Any person which has a line to say is an actor of some sort, whereas the rest told to yell or appear busy in the background are just random people.
The problem with the CGI in ROP is that all of it is far-away shots, but you never really see anything, because they instantly switch into some "small" scene. Which for the most part is fairly poor as well.
Remember LOTR when Gandalf ride into Minas Tirith that looks freaking awesome.
You will have nothing like that in ROP, even in Numenor they reuse the same location, where Halbrand gets attacked and later when Isildur and his friends meet, that is the same set, which is fairly cheap as well.
For some reason, hardly anything seems huge or epic in my opinion, because we don't really get to explore anything, when they travel around it is almost always instantly, with just a camera cut. When we go through the scenes, its always done very close up in a set scene.
Whereas in comparison in HOD they build the whole castle which is why they can make those amazing shots, where they walk around it and it looks real.
Sure there are people that will hate it based on that, but even if that was the case, then HOD should be performing equally bad, because it has even more people of colour in it, yet people are very excited about it.
Personally, I don't have an issue with it, also I don't think it is racism to think elves should be white, because that is what the lore says. Just as I think the elves should have long hair and the Hobbits shouldn't be small demons.
The problem with all these issues is that it only seems to go one way, do you think people would accept a white Malcom X? or white Black Panther? What about some black and white samurais in a Japanese movie?
How would people react if someone did that? Because for me personally, I would have the same opinion, as I have with ROP, if Tolkien wrote they were white then they should be white. If Black Panther is black then he should be black, just as Samurais should be of Japanese origin, unless there is some very specific reason for why one of them would be of another colour.
The problem as I see it is that this is a manufactured problem in most cases, most people, including myself have no issue relating to a character that Morgan Freeman plays, or Will smith or whoever. Just as if I watch a movie Asian movie, like Kingdom (the zombie movie) which doesn't have any white or black people in it. How come no one complains about that?
Whilst I agree. I think having established connections in media does help. HBO has established connections. Whereas Amazon has to rely on money moreso.
Also COVID restrictions may play a part, right? Maybe the company were allowed to have only a certain amount of extras in accordance with restrictions. Indeed that many extras wouldn’t be allowed on any Australian sets for many years to come. Granted I don’t know what the US restrictions are, I’m just saying. Maybe the studio had other obligations that meant that not many extras were simply a consequence of following the law. We are living in times of a pandemic after all. Maybe Amazon took that much more seriously than HBO did. I dunno.
HBO has always been political. I may agree that the CEOs might not have cared for politics of any kind, but HBO has produced some of the most politically charged dramas of our lifetimes. Ever see The Wire?
Thousands of essays (and video essays) to be found on the politics of that show alone. Like come on. HBO was literally used as examples of politically charged media in my freaking English class and I’m not even American!
That may well be. Contracts be contracts after all.
I agree wholeheartedly
Whilst that scene is indeed epic, like I said, TV budgets. I do not expect such grand things in a television show, regardless of budget. That’s just how the mediums work
Budget. TV is different to movies. A movie can allow for such shots. Not always in television, for a variety of reasons. Even if some studios do it better. All that means is that they have staff who are used to working around such restraints based on experience. Not every studio has such employees with that experience.
Time constraints, budget constraints. Just because one company allows that doesn’t mean every company does
I doubt it, tbh.
It doesn’t have the “controversial” elements that toxic so called “fans” (ha!) like to whine about. So they can’t push their agenda as easily.
Personally, I don't have an issue with it, also I don't think it is racism to think elves should be white, because that is what the lore says. Just as I think the elves should have long hair and the Hobbits shouldn't be small demons.
I agree actually. I was talking more about people whining about the dwarves, claiming that their issue was the lack of beards for women. That’s not established in the lore, the women dwarves having beards was a gag for the films. But the text doesn’t make it clear either way. Only that women dwarves try to look like their male counterparts in coupling rituals. And I think the women dwarves have facial hair anyway so eh.
Those characters you mention have race as a distinctive part of their identity to begin with. Or do you honestly think that Martin Luther King would work as a fictional character if he were a white man, standing for civil rights based on his experiences as an individual? His race plays a vital part in his overall characteristics to begin with.
The problem with this criticism (and I used to use it too, for a time) is that the characters you mention have their race as a specific identifiable aspect of their innate characteristics. Meaning that their race plays a vital role in their identity. Black Panther doesn’t work as a white man because of his specific identity in the comics. That racial identity plays a key role in his character. Whereas Aragorn can be black and not change a single thing about any of his core characteristics. He does not know racism first hand, so his understanding of prejudice if different from ours, is still different to begin with, his heritage is still important to him, fine. But even if you change the identity of it, he can still uphold values such as loyalty, chivalry and honour. Since those characteristics, whilst seemingly “white” can apply to all races and creeds, in all honesty. Since we can find evidence for cultures venerating such values across the world.
Because like in all things, there is nuance to consider
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Nimos
Well-Known Member
Personally, I would leave them the races they are.
But if one had to follow the logic of those people so eager to change races around, then I don't see why it should matter, Martin Luther King, could simply be played by a white guy who sympathizes with people of colour that steps up and fight for them.
You have to remember that these people using these arguments, do it because they don't feel they can identify with certain people if they don't have the same skin color as themselves, which are people that we commonly refer to as racists, nonetheless that is their very argument.
It would be like a white guy, saying that they couldn't identify with Martin Luther King, if he weren't white. Now how do you think people would react to someone saying that? Yet, when it goes the other way it is no issue.
And you might think that this is stupid, but there is a new thriller coming out soon. Which follows King Henrik VIII and his wife Anne Boleyn.
So if this is no issue, why should it be to make Martin Luther King a white guy?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that they should do any of it. But simply to highlight the stupidy with all these things going on. There is so much focus on diversity and gender in today's entertainment, that it ruins things and turns things into problems with ought not to be in the first place. If they want to fight racism and gender issues etc. then that is perfectly fine, but you don't do that by trying to change history or make movies where things don't add up, that is the number 1 way to **** off people.
Also, you have lots of tv and movies with black people in them which are very popular.
Cosby (before he went mental) was popular.
Fresh prince of bel-air is popular.
Boys in the hood
Morgan Freeman and lots of movies he has been in.
Will Smith
Eddie Murphy used to be big.
And the list goes on, the problem is not people's skin colour, if the stuff they are in is good, people will like it. But people don't like when this is used as an excuse to defend against something being bad.
The first thing Disney did when people didn't like Kenobi was to call anyone that was negative about it racist and it is the exact same thing we are seeing with ROP, the moment the bad reviews came, all focus was on a handful of people making racist comments. But if you actually read the reviews, 99% of them have nothing to do with people's skin color.
I think Galadriel is probably the least-liked character ever in a TV show, and that is a huge problem when she is the main character.
I personally hate her as a character, I find her annoying, childish, rude and selfish. She is as unlikeable in every possible way possible. In fact, I would probably say that Disa and Arondir are some of the most likeable ones. Disa doesn't have a huge role and Arondir is as stiff as a wooden board, but still, they are better than 95% of the other characters. Despite I don't think elves should be black, because it is against the lore, and it doesn't make sense for there to be a black dwarf, but it is a minor issue, that I personally wouldn't care to spend much time on. My biggest issue with it is not that they are there, but that they do nothing to explain it. In any other movie, where there is a mixed cast we don't need to be explained this because everyone knows how it works. But we are talking about a fantasy world here with a lot of lore about why people look the way they do.
Likewise, you don't see 6-foot people complaining about them not being represented by the Hobbits, which is exactly the same when it comes to it. And no one, regardless of whether one is white or black looks like an elf because they are basically angels in this universe and far beyond any humans.
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Personally, I would leave them the races they are.
But if one had to follow the logic of those people so eager to change races around, then I don't see why it should matter, Martin Luther King, could simply be played by a white guy who sympathizes with people of colour that steps up and fight for them.
You have to remember that these people using these arguments, do it because they don't feel they can identify with certain people if they don't have the same skin color as themselves, which are people that we commonly refer to as racists, nonetheless that is their very argument.
It would be like a white guy, saying that they couldn't identify with Martin Luther King, if he weren't white. Now how do you think people would react to someone saying that? Yet, when it goes the other way it is no issue.
2 things.
First, MLK was a real bloke. Might be a tad disrespectful to have him be played by a white man. At least in this century. On stage that might happen though.
Second, the reason why people object to the changed race of a minority character is specifically because that character literally is a minority in terms of representation. So unlike actual racists being racist jerks, folks don’t want to lose what little representation they have now.
It’s like giving half a box of chocolates to one sector of the population and everyone else has a full box to themselves. Then instead of sharing, the population with the full box takes even more chocolate from the others.
Would you not object to such an awful distribution of resources?
That’s what makes the difference, that’s why we don’t automatically cry racist whenever someone objects to a character swapping from black to white. Not saying there aren’t racists using such an argument, but it’s not going to be the automatic assumption regardless. And it really comes down to an uneven distribution, to stretch a metaphor.
Historical figures in dramas don’t necessarily need to be accurate. If there’s enough of a gap after the person has died then the person can be used to portray anything a director wants.
Again it’s not really the same argument. To take a black character and turn them white is not just changing their race, it’s taking away from an already uneven distribution of representation. If it goes in the opposite direction then the concern of representation is not really grounded in reality. It becomes more about “the white man” throwing a temper tantrum because they have to share their toys, if you get me?
Again I’m not saying that there is nothing to criticise in such instances. I’m just saying, that’s kind of where we’re at.
There are popular black actors. What is this supposed to argue against exactly? Sorry I’m a bit confused about this particular point.
Whilst I don’t disagree, I’m unfortunately quite familiar with the so called “fandom menace.” I’ve read the reviews and their “dog whistles.” A lot of it was about race. Not all, certainly but a lot nonetheless.
I think the overt racist rants have since been deleted though. Or moved to whatever site the racists gather on now.
And that’s perfectly fine if that’s your opinion.
I’m not saying that every critique of the show is necessarily racist or sexist or whatever ist.
Nothing is flawless, there are plenty of legitimate criticisms to be found. I’m not saying that every person who dislikes the show is some bigot. I don’t think that to be the case at all.
In fact, I can agree that people who genuinely just don’t like RoP or even Disney’s Star Wars or whatever, are often very unfairly accused of being prejudiced. I think such an accusation is often unwarranted and causes more harm than good.
So please don’t think I'm trying to accuse you of any of that. You and I likely agree more than we disagree on this issue.
You know ironically enough, in the book, Pippin and Merry are given a special substance from Treebeard and they grow unusually tall for hobbits. Technically in the Return of the King and for about half of the Two Towers both should be at least the size of an average man, if not taller. Iirc. Perhaps a bit smaller, but still
As for Elves in Tolkiens world, I mean I suppose angels would be applicable. Wizards are probably archangels.
Okay now I’m going to be distracted all day trying to remember the exact hierarchy in Lord of the Rings lol
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Nimos
Well-Known Member
But is there an uneven distribution of resources?
This is from the US:
The most common ethnicity of actors is White (59.5%), followed by Hispanic or Latino (15.6%) and Black or African American (13.9%). In 2021, women earned 91% of what men earned. 23% of all actors are LGBT. Actors are more likely to work at private companies in comparison to public companies.
If we go by the number of actors and we assume that each should have an equal chance of landing a role, then clearly the distribution is not equal but is in favour of the minority.
But to me, this shouldn't even be an issue in the first place, people shouldn't be hired based on their skin colour, but based on their skills and what set entertainment requires. I would hate to see MLK being played by a white guy, for the same reason as you, it would be disrespectful and outright silly because the man was black.
This I would disagree with. Time doesn't matter in this regard if it is historical. I would hate to see a show about ancient Rome and Caesar played by some Asian guy, because enough time has passed now. Same as I would hate to see Samurais being played by black and white guys or Vikings being played by Asian and black guys. That to me is just as disrespectful as that of making a white guy play MLK.
It must be possible in today's society to make movies and shows based on accurate source material, whether that is historical accounts or made-up stuff, without it ending up in a debate about race. Tolkien is loved around the world by all people and races long before PJ made the movies and ROP existed and it was never an issue for anyone.
That is not the same. I would agree with you if this were people complaining about Will Smith being the lead in Independence day or Men in Black etc. But when we have a story that was written in a certain way, which in no way is racist at all, then that is the source for it and that should be respected. Because that is what the author wrote. Compare that to HOD, where GRRM is actively involved then you can change whatever you want because he is the author and if he wants to change some races around then that is perfectly fine.
My point is, that for some reason there seems to be a great need to race swap a lot of people in modern media for no particular reason, besides living up to some diversity policies. It has nothing to do with whether that makes sense in regard to the story being told or not.
And when these shows then fail, which has nothing to do with the races of actors. ROP doesn't fail because of some race swapping, it fails because it is awful TV on pretty much all levels. Yet, the companies when they get this backlash from viewers, instantly throw the black people in front of the train as if the reason these shows fails is that people are racists and therefore hate these shows.
But this is utter nonsense, which was what I tried to explain with that comment because people love these movies with black actors whenever the movies are good, it doesn't matter what skin colour they have. So there is no excuse for all this race swapping when it is not needed if you end up increasing the chance of ruining movies and shows due to it, just because you need some diversity in them.
The main issue here is that very little effort is put into analyzing why these shows are bad. In regards to Kenobi, I could explain exactly why it is a piece of ****, without ever mentioning race. And the same with ROP, in some episodes you can go scene by scene and point out why it is trash because there is something wrong with it in almost all of them. But these complaints never see the light of day because the media instantly throws the racism or sexism card on the table, the moment someone complains about them.
They become the highest Hobbits, but still only around 4.5 feet. But then again, they drank magic stuff. So it is perfectly explained in that context.
The Wizards are more like demigods known as Maiar's, but are losing a lot of their powers when they get to middle earth, so they are far beyond even Elves in that regard. In fact, they could have made the wizard black, because they can shapeshift and do what they want in that regard.
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