Most people seem to agree that Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy remains one of the most enjoyable and impressive adaptations of all time. It was a massive media franchise before it became a series of tremendous blockbuster series, but the immediate aftermath cemented Tolkien’s work as a titan of another medium. Unfortunately, nothing in the intervening 22 years has reached anywhere near those early peaks. The unfortunate knock-on effect of this decline is that fans become increasingly distrustful of new material. Nostalgia can be a black hole that sucks up everything good about a franchise, as the Star Wars universe can attest.
There is rarely a consistent positive relationship between financial success, critical acclaim, and fan acceptance. A few works accomplish all three, and some manage to score poorly across the board, but those metrics tend to go in violently different directions. Much has been made of the gap between critics and audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes, but the added element of box-office earnings rarely breaks that tie. This guarantees that just about anything can appear to be a failure or a success, if one checks the right numbers.
Related
‘It Destroyed the Original’ Lord of the Rings Star Named the One Movie He’d Remove From Cinema History
Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood would eliminate one particular movie from existence if he had the chance.
New LOTR Material Isn’t Doing Great
The two most recent LOTR projects to hit the screen are Rings of Power and War of the Rohirrim. The live-action show proved to be one of the most expensive TV series of all time, while the animated film was a much more reasonable take on relatively obscure material from the deep lore. In both cases, the projects earned tepid reactions from critics, extremely divided responses from fans, and uninspiring numbers from the box-office/streaming numbers. Rings of Power suffered a nearly 50% drop in viewership between its first and second seasons, a reduction that proved disastrous given Amazon’s massive investment. War of the Rohirrim barely fared better, bringing in only $20 million on a $30 million budget. While neither project comes anywhere near the quality of the original trilogy, they’re far from terrible. Quality is not the only issue that plagues these entries. Nor is the vocal chunk of the fanbase that loses their mind whenever they see a woman or a person of color, who negatively affect the Rotten Tomatoes score but makes up only part of the poor viewership numbers. The real issue impacts a far higher percentage of the fandom.
Fans Flock to Familiar Concepts
As the general perceived quality of a franchise like LOTR drops, fans become increasingly wary of anything new. Going to the movies or even committing time to streaming shows is an increasingly difficult proposition as content becomes more saturated and a trip to the theater becomes more costly. This makes the fanbase as risk-averse as the studio, withholding their money and attention until they feel 100% sure they see something they like. Unfortunately, good word-of-mouth is rarely enough these days. Fans need to see a familiar actor, character, or set of concepts to believe that what they’re looking at belongs in the franchise.
Both Rings of Power and War of the Rohirrim tried their hardest to pander to fans with tons of callbacks and mountains of straightforward references in the marketing. The early War of the Rohirrim trailer literally featured a minute or so of clips from the Peter Jackson movies as if to say, “Remember? It’s just like these, right?” Unfortunately, even that wasn’t enough to create this apparently necessary association in the minds of fans. This leads to these franchises circling the drain, relying entirely on callbacks to draw attention rather than exploring new material to keep things fresh. Nostalgia becomes the only thing they can deliver, slowly suffocating the franchise in its own iconography.
Star Wars Has the Same Issue
The Star Wars franchise is the best example of this issue. While its history isn’t quite as long, it’s another media empire built on some of the most influential material in the history of fiction. Unlike LOTR, Star Wars took some big, bold steps in later entries, many of which didn’t pay off. The prequels encouraged the franchise’s new owners to play with nostalgia in Episode VII, but they got experimental again with the following entry. The divisive reaction, much of which was powered by overwhelming and massively impactful bigotry, pushed the franchise back into the cowardly world of nostalgic pandering. Now, Disney seems terrified of making a movie, relying entirely on their straight-to-streaming series. Even those suffer from the massive gap between nostalgia pandering and new horizons. Andor, almost unquestionably the best thing to happen to the franchise since Return of the Jedi, suffered poor viewership numbers while boring retreads like Obi-Wan Kenobi pulled in millions of eyes. This fan reaction reinforces the studio’s dominant impulse to fixate on returning actors and familiar stories over anything new or interesting. Ditto The Acolyte and Skeleton Crew, shows with various issues that also suffered rough numbers as a penalty for daring to try something new. This could easily become the grim fate of The Lord of the Rings.
The Lord of the Rings hasn’t tried anything quite as pandering as Rogue One or The Book of Boba Fett just yet. War of the Rohirrim was an attempt to boldly step into new territory, but its terrible box-office results will give the studio the wrong message. It’s a self-replicating cycle that only makes the franchise worse. Creators need to keep taking risks with big names like LOTR, and fans need to give those swings a chance. The long-term health of Middle-earth rests on the fans as much as it does the creators.
Related
Lord of the Rings’ Sauron Actually Has a Terrifying Form Under the Iconic Movie Armor
Lord of the Rings’ Sauron, the Dark Lord, has a frightening shape under his armor that many fans have yet to see.
Source link