Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ series will cost at least $465M for first season | Hacker News Reader

Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ series will cost at least $465M for first season

cnbc.com

Although I suspect this will not be a popular comment, I hope the Amazon series will remain faithful to the Catholic/Christian sense that Tolkien deliberately infused into these novels. Peter Jackson did a notably good job with that, all things considered.

To be clear, I don't think that you should have to be a Christian to like Lord of the Rings -- quite the contrary. But given the lack of compelling Christian art in general the past 50 or 60 years, I sometimes find it a bit painful as a believer that such a notable counter-example is so often treated as if it can be separated from its author's profound religious convictions.

I’ve heard good things about Colm Toibins books, if you’re looking for good art with a Christian foundation.

Well, I have some bad news. It’s looking like they’re going to ape Game of Thrones, nudity and all.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/lor...

Let's click through to their source as all the Independent has to offer is oversimplification and some social media posts: https://www.theonering.net/torwp/2020/10/06/108573-sex-sensi...

So the intimacy coordinator who appears be working on the project, and might be working in that role or some other role, might be there for a sex scene, or perhaps only for some non-sexual nudity.

Oof that’s sad. They should have kept it PG13. You don’t need nudity to tell a story. I’ll have to pass up on this series.

I've read that Tolkien shunned allegory, but the books and movies do have strong undercurrents in my opinion at least in their overall plots though they're far less overt than your average CS Lewis work of fiction.

That's fair, although, if it could be said that Tolkien's book Lord of the Rings is a bit inspired by the heroism of Christ, the best analogy for the story of Numenor is it's the fall of man, Noah's Ark, and Atlantis combined, and it will inevitably be dark.

> the lack of compelling Christian art in general the past 50 or 60 years

What about all those Mel Gibson movies that you guys have?

I guess the key word is ”compelling”.

"you guys"?

I’m not sure we can ascribe religious purpose to works that borrow from popular stories that happen to be religious. The books/movies are also profoundly pagan, and lay out their own religious system for eg the elves which is not especially Christian. As I understand it there is a whole pantheon of god-like figures in the LOTR universe.

If the author says it’s not an allegory, and it doesn’t work as an allegory, maybe their identifying as Christian isn’t enough to make it an allegory?

I agree that LotR is not a straightforward allegory, but I'm also going off more than the author's religious identity. In Tolkien's words: "The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work, unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like "religion", to cults or practices, in the Imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism."

I think that's an interesting point, that a book can both be a religious work but at the same time not contain anything overtly religious.

As a non-believer, I quite enjoy the lack of anything overtly religious in his works.

The covert religiosity is perhaps more insidious. The books are drenched in his particular religious world-view: not just Catholic, but a medieval kind of Christianity. The world he's created is deliberately pre-Christian, but the characters and overarching story arc think about the trajectory of the world in a way familiar to medieval Christians.

That comes through in a fascinating sense of alien-ness. The books feel both realistic and unfamiliar because he's capturing a sense from the past as a very foreign country. That's a sense available to you as a non-believer because it's not gussied up in the specific trappings of any belief system you've been exposed to (and probably put off by).

The highest virtue in The Lord of the Rings is a very Christian kind of hope -- hope for the next world rather than this one. And the key virtue of humans, rather than Elves, is that they get to go there, while the immortals are trapped here. It's easy to miss all that in The Lord of the Rings because it does ultimately depend on hope in this world -- they win and evil loses.

But look at the sadness of the Elves, who know that they will ultimately lose and the world will decline. Think of that from the point of view of somebody living among Roman ruins that they cannot repair. And the only hope comes from a far-off entity promising a better afterlife.

It's not propaganda, but it's a very real demonstration of the virtues of his outlook.

I’m not sure even the author is authoritative over their own work. Ray Bradbury once famously ditched a guest lecture because his audience disagreed on the framing of his book.

JK Rowling is thought to go back and retrospectively reframe her book, a framing which she has trouble gathering consensus for despite being the author.

It's definitely an interesting question -- the "death of the author." Personally, as a reader, I draw the line at disagreeing with explicitly stated intentions of authors if I find those intentions are well-evidenced in their texts. In the case of LotR, I would be inclined to say that they are -- but an element of subjective judgment will always trouble these discussions.

"The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work, unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision."

The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien #142

It's not (famously) as on the nose as C. S. Lewis was about this, but it's pretty much there, at times rather explicitly (see Gandalf on judging others).

Well, you had Chagall and Vedova and a few great architects, but indeed after the Eighties it hasn't been ideal.

It's refreshing to hear this perspective. There have been a lot of authors and producers trying to capitalize on the success of the LOTR films and recreate the magic of middle earth with varying levels of success, but it's harder said than done. At the end of the day, Tolkien's philosophical and theological views do not get in the way of a really great story. I think that's at least in part what Tolkien's reservation with allegory was. There's a temptation to make a story to fit a narrative. History and narrative are crucial elements to making something compelling and this is where it's hard to compete with Tolkien.

Who’s the pope figure in the middle-earth context?

Tolkien was famously against the idea of allegory in fiction (in stark contrast with his friend C.S. Lewis). All parts of an author's life are going to influence his creative works - that's just inevitable - so I'm sure you could find some things that might be traced back to his religion. But you could say the same thing about his experience fighting in WWI, for example. I highly doubt there were any intentional references or parallels.

I recommend reading his essay On Fairy-stories to get a window into the role he sees fantasy as having. Interestingly he does tie it in with his faith at a meta-level: he sees it as a sub-creation within the larger creation; himself a sub-creator. But the hallmark of that sub-creation is for things to be different and separate in key ways. I don't think he would reduce his work to being a mere echo of his beliefs, even partially, beyond abstract themes like good and evil and hope.

I wouldn't want to think of LotR as a "mere echo of his beliefs." However, when Tolkien criticized allegory, he wasn't criticizing the idea that a work could be infused with deliberate meaning; the key difference is that he felt it should be "infused" -- digested, not a solid block of meaning that pounds readers over the head.

Regarding his intentionality in putting that kind of meaning in, other comments in this thread quote him explicitly discussing this aspect.

Sure, I just think it's overly narrow to call that meaning a "Catholic/Christian sense". When I left the church, in fact, The Lord of the Rings remained a source of great meaning for me specifically because it enshrined that meaning in a non-religious context. Obviously for Tolkien, personally, those themes would have been rooted in his religious life. But I think it's a strength, and not a weakness, that they can transcend it.

(Not that I expect Amazon to do a good job of preserving them either way, for the record :P)

Point taken, and in my original comment, I wasn't expressing the hope that hobbits would turn toward the camera and recite the Apostles' Creed or something. I was just hoping that the underlying spirit and values of Christian belief, which I believe suffuse the work, would not be contradicted or trampled on by the new treatment.

> Sure, I just think it's overly narrow to call that meaning a "Catholic/Christian sense".

Tolkien did; I think it is an error to ignore the fact that it very much is.

> When I left the church, in fact, The Lord of the Rings remained a source of great meaning for me specifically because it enshrined that meaning in a non-religious context.

That it is accessible to people outside of the inspiring religious framework, and has specific features which encourage that is also important to note, but doesn't in any way negate the specific religious grounding.

There are religious themes in The Silmarilion but there are virtually none in Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit from what I recall.

Whatever Tolkien may have said privately- virtually every character comes across as not having a religion. None of them prey to God when in danger.

People are responding to the books Tolkien wrote, not what he said he wrote.

I hope you won't mind my responding in detail with what I think about this; I am passionate about this topic.

Tolkien deliberately removed references to prayer and religion in his fantasy world to avoid two potential traps: by showing a fictional religion, he would risk contradicting his faith; by explicitly loading scenes of Christian prayer into his fantasy, he would undermine the quality of the fiction with "allegory," thus undermining his own message by making it unpalatable to audiences.

What I am referring to when I talk about the spirit of Christianity that infuses LotR is not any explicitly allegorical meaning, but -- following Tolkien's own quotes to this effect -- different pieces that are left here and there in the text.

For example, for Christian readers of Tolkien, different aspects of Christ are typically understood to be found spread across the figures of Frodo, Gandalf, and Aragorn. Other Christian elements in the text include Gandalf's advice to Frodo to spare Gollum, and the fact that his mercy is ultimately what saves the quest; Gandalf's return from the dead, reborn and cloaked in the kingly majesty of white; the lore of Sauron as a fallen elf, tying him to the devil, who is also referred to as "the enemy" in Christianity; the way the ring gives earthly power but drains the soul, whereas sacrifice and hardship seem hopeless at the time, but have true power in the end, etc.

If you want a pretty good idea of a believer's perspective on this, there's a fairly good article by Ignatius Insight [1], but I don't know how persuasive it will be to someone who rejects the underlying premises.

[1] http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2005/pkreeft_christlo...

Sauron was never an elf; he was a Maier, just like Gandalf.

Oops - many thanks for the correction.

I appreciate your response and I would expect the new series to have those sorts of themes- not because I expect the series to be good, necessarily, but because I would expect hollywood writers to try to tell a story which is "the same but a little different".

> None of them pr[a]y to God when in danger.

The entire story of LotR is of people either obeying or defying a divine command, delivered through an angel, to sacrifice apparent immediate self interest to defeat a fallen angel and his followers.

Plenty of stories in the Bible don’t deal so much with ritual religious observance by the characters was with following (or not) moral rules and/or response to divine emissaries (there are stories where religious observance in the more quotidien ritual sense is center-stage, but also plenty where it is entirely, or almost entirely, off-stage.)

Minus the culturally specific terminology like 'angel', those motifs can be found in every mythology and every religion. There's nothing particularly Christian or Catholic about them, it's basically the Hero's Journey.

I guess there are two discussions to be had here. The first is whether, in light of the author's explicit statements that he means the work to be Christian, we are still authorized as readers to abstract his text into a general idea of "the Hero's Journey." The second is whether there is anything distinctively Christian at all about LotR, when considered on its own terms. I would say that LotR objectively differs from the Hero's Journey in that it insists on mercy and the principled refusal of worldly power as its most central ideas.

I don't follow. Who is the angel in lord of the rings? Gandalf? He's a wizard not an angel.

There might be something in the Silmarilion that backs up your interpretation but I don't think it's in Lord of the Rings.

Gandalf is an angel, like Sauron and Saroumane. Well, rather: all wizards are Maiars, and Maiar are immortal spirits, brought down middle-earth by the gods to stop Sauron.

I suppose you could frame the Maiar as angels if you want, but it feels like a stretch. If they're angels, then every divine being that is not explicitly god is an angel.

There's definitely Christian morality at play in LOTR, but everything I've read from Tolkien's letters says that the works were not meant to be an allegory or based on Christianity. If you're going to apply Christian themes to LOTR, you might as well hit up Homer's works as well. It's a work by a Christian, not necessarily a work about Christianity.

I am very curious to see how strongly the amount of money spent will correlate with the quality of this series.

Pretty cool that they are doing a lot of work in New Zealand again. The LOTR really started a revolution in terms of movie production there. If you're really into LOTR or into movie making, I recommend watching (some of) the LOTR appendices. They go into great detail in as to how they produced the original trilogy.

Compare the Hobbit and Lotr movies. Simple things as having CGI orcs will mess up the feeling. It is not about money mainly.

I get the impression that LotR was a project Peter Jackson had a lot of passion for, and the Hobbit wasn't, really.

My understanding is that he directed the Hobbit movies after Guillermo del Toro was removed, and the studio wanted him to start filming immediately. Fellowship had tons of pre-production time, The Hobbit movies had virtually none.

Yes. When they started shooting Lord of the Rings they had already 3 years of preproduction done which means weapons and sets and buildings and all. The hobbit was a constant race against the clock. And they tried to make the goblins non CGI with animatronic heads. But it simply didn’t work and looked good enough. I still feel that the CGI heads in the end are also ugly but what gives.

Peter Jackson got in ONLY at the last moment as Guillermo del Toro bailed out. He simply didn't have the time he had when he did the original trilogy. Preproduction alone took years for that.

It's staggering to think that this TV show might cost well over $2 billion. We are approaching numbers typically used only of events like the Manhattan Project or Apollo.

Considering that movies and shows still get made about those and the apparently exponential growth of budgets, it seems likely that at some point, there will have been more money spent cumulatively on shows about the MP or Apollo than on the actual historical event. And at some point afterwards, there will be more spent on a single show about them than the actual event.

If more money is spent making a show about Apollo than the actual Apollo missions - why not film them on location?

Tom Cruise is going to space for a reason

Someone once joked that if Kubrick had been asked to fake the moon landings he would have insisted on filming on the moon for maximum realism.

The main problem is probably cost disease; if you tried to recreate any Apollo missions today it would cost you more (adjusted for inflation even) that it originally did.

"Cost disease" generally refers to the phenomenon of things becoming (relatively) more expensive because of the unavoidable human-labor component, but the Apollo missions would be more expensive for other reasons, or other requirements that necessitate human labor where said requirements didn't exist before.

yeah, the cost of human life is significantly higher than what it used to be.

My joke was the cost of faking the moon landing was too high. 100% of GDP from 1960 to 1970. And then the estimated cost for the 'Kubrick Plan B' was too high. So they sent two air force test pilots up with home movie cameras to film each other on the moon.

Lame!

Sadly, this puts in perspective where our priorities are.

Apollo program cost $200 billion. Still few orders of magnitdude to go. Manhattan $23 billion so closer. $2 billion is not that much in corporate world (sure, for me as an individual it is) - given a mediums sized mobile game studio can generate that amount of revenue in a year.

Apollo project was 20-something billion in 60s/70s dollars, equivalent to 150-200 billion now.

Reid Hoffman has talked about this quite a bit. So if this is a 13 hour season, at $500m, that is about $40M per hour. Big budget movies can be easily over $100M per hour.

Exactly this.

More companies are spending more money and making more shows than ever.

So much could be done, so many more innovation to be made. And here we are. Apple and Amazon. Sigh.

One of the very good thing about these media is that they consume "the" fundamental unit we cant earn; Time. Which means we can only watch as much as we have time for.

Edit: I mean if we could spend $2B making this, surely it isn't too much to ask for a re- film the last 2/3 season of Game of Thrones once the books is finished. Or even the last season would be good enough for me.

Theres hardly any red tape in our imaginations. Much easier to build up in there.

Is this what we do now? Remake things that are still in the majority of our living memories? Have the original LOTR movies stopped holding up?

Are we playing the long game and intending to have an Into The Smiegalverse?

Wait until Disney decides to do a re-launch of the original Star Wars trilogy (not the soft relaunch of Ep 7-9). As a huge fan of both LOTR and Star Wars, I think what we have already is great. Amazon should do something like the Silmarillion etc.

Edit: didn't realize that this is exactly what Amazon is doing! Fantastic!

My understanding was that they shoot a series about Aragorn or? The world of Middleearth spans multiple thousand years. Check out the Silmarillion which tells most of the creation story and more. The Story about the Ring which only spans about 80 years if you count the hobbit is a very small part of this world. There is a lot of untold parts that would be worth telling. I would like to see the story of Númenor and it’s aftermath up until the Ring gets lost.

The Amazon series is about Numenor

Perfect then :)

The old Hobbit and LotR cartoons were released in 1977 and 1978 respectively.

So Peter Jackson’s Fellowship of the Ring came out in 2001, 23 years after the cartoon, and this version is a further 21 years (assuming a 2022 release) after Jackson’s version, a similar time span.

And damn, this makes me feel old.

>and this version is a further 21 years (assuming a 2022 release) after Jackson’s version, a similar time span.

Wow

I thought Fellowship of the Ring was like 10 years ago. Wasn't that long. I had to Google to fact check this. And you were right.

Come to think about it my kid is close to 10. So yes, 20 years ago. Those under 25 might never have watched it.

>And damn, this makes me feel old.

Yes. For some strange reason I felt time moves slower as we age.

It’s not a remake, it’s a different story in the same universe. I believe it’ll be set in the Second Age, so it’ll be thousands of years before the events of LOTR.

I thought the Hobbit films sucked horribly but I'm still glad we have more LotR. It's funny how the biggest "fans" seem to strongly shun having more material.

I’m not a biggest fan, I’m not even much of a fan.

I’ve just been very skeptical of remakes ever since we now have something like 11 Spidermen from 3 reboots in like 20 years.

Edit: apparently it’s 8 movies, 3 remakes, 19 years, ignoring into the spider verse and including the one coming out in Dec 2021

Well, yes... that is the 21st century way so far. Spider-man has been done 3 times already in 20 years. You can bet they're already planning the reboot of the entire series of Marvel films. You have to look hard to find anything original these days. But there are some if you'd like some recommendations?

Ok, so with that amount of money it isn't going to be the Soviet Lord of the Rings. The question still remains as to whether it's going to be over-exploited garbage like the Hobbit trilogy.

The budget for the first three movies in total was 281 million. They filmed on location and had pretty good CGI, minus a few scenes that would look better today.

Why are costs going up here? Tech is commoditized easily (ease of use and availability of talent), so I expect CG work to have gotten better and cheaper.

There’s been a lot of inflation in the past 20 years.

That moment when you realize how long ago LoTR trilogy was....

According to the BLS inflation calculator $100 in January 200 is worth the same as $156 in March 2021, so in inflation-adjusted terms both projects cost roughly the same amount.

> The budget for the first three movies in total was 281 million ... Why are costs going up here?

Well for a start just the rights for this TV show cost about as much as all three movies did. Back then the Lord of the Rings was not something at the front of people's cultural minds. Now it is.

Prestige TV series cost way more money than average movies. Game of Thrones' last episodes cost $15 million each. https://variety.com/2017/tv/news/tv-series-budgets-costs-ris... I guess it was only a matter of time before they started rivaling prestige movie budgets too. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/559417/most-expensive-tv...

I hope they finally reintroduce Tom Bombadil, one of the most interesting and powerful characters in the trilogy, unfortunately completely removed from the movies.

Curious if I'm the only one here who thinks that LotR is overrated. Let them spend the money on a better story.

Lord of the Rings is a brilliant story, but I'd strongly prefer new material over another adaption.

Their series is a new series, it's based on stories from The Silmarillion and the large series published by Christopher Tolkien.

This series is supposed to be set during the time of Morgoth. So the story is going to be completely different from LotR. I think they are just using the name as a stop gap (and maybe for PR) until they officially name the series.

It's actually set after the war against Morgoth. It's after the sinking of Beleriand, at the time of the ascendency of the Island of Numenor. This is the era during which the Rings of Power are forged, so they may well stick with the Lord of the Rings banding as it is going to be part of the overall story of the rings, and Sauron will likely feature as a prominent character.

Thank you for correcting me!

The title is a bit misleading, as Amazon's series is based on different material. It's presumably called 'The Lord of the Rings' because its title character is the same as that of the book and original movies.

As others have already pointed out, the LotR universe is much bigger than the Peter Jackson adaptations covered, and this will be set in those other parts of that universe. So it should be fine on the new vs. rehash front.

But if any producers read HN and are looking for other well-developed fantasy or science fiction universes with plenty of existing written stories that could be turned into excellent TV series, miniseries, or movies, here are some that I'd definitely want to watch, and I don't think I'd be alone in this.

1. Fritz Leiber's "Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser" series [1].

2. Richard and Wendy Pini's "Elfquest" series [2].

3. Larry Niven's Known Space series [3].

4. Anne McCaffrey's Pern series [4].

As far as I know, no one has even ever started development on #1.

Warner Brothers announced they were going to do an "Elfquest" movie in 2008, but cancelled it because they thought it would compete with another fantasy movie they were doing, "The Hobbit".

One story from #3, "The Soft Weapon" got adapted to the Star Trek universe and became the episode "The Slaver Weapon" of the Star Trek animated series.

#4 almost got to the point of shooting a pilot for a TV series at Warner Broters. They had cast it and sets were being built. But WB requested so many changes in the final script that it was no longer really Pern (I've seen it described as a cross between Xena and Buffy). The showrunner, Ronald D. Moore [5], was a fan of the books and quit rather than going along with the changes, and the project died.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fafhrd_and_the_Gray_Mouser

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elfquest

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Known_Space

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonriders_of_Pern

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_D._Moore

I was never able to read all the way through the books myself; they were much too dry for my taste. I did quite enjoy The Hobbit though, and I think the LotR movies are fantastic. It's an excellent cinematic universe, IMO. There is so much there to build a story upon.

Why do you think it is overrated?

I agree the movies are overrated. The effects, which were ahead of their time, already look very dated. The battle scenes aren’t particularly well choreographed (compare to Ran or Lawrence of Arabia). The books are appropriately rated though.

Lord of the Rings is in many places unexceptional, but I think the parts that stand out, particularly the themes of duty and camaradarie, like Frodo's personal struggle to resist the ring's effects, and Sam's love for Frodo, make it a seminal work.

The moral fiber of Tolkien shines through in passages like this:

Frodo: 'What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature when he had a chance!'

'Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With Pity.'

'I am sorry,' said Frodo. 'But I am frightened; and I do not feel any pity for Gollum.'

'You have not seen him,' Gandalf broke in.

'No, and I don't want to,' said Frodo. 'I can't understand you. Do you mean to say that you, and the Elves, have let him live on after all those horrible deeds? Now at any rate he is as bad as an Orc, and just an enemy. He deserves death.'

'Deserves it? I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.'

So true. It is really a shame they are going down the sex and nudity route to make it more like Game of Thrones.

Well, it's set in the degeneration era of latter-day Numenor, with proud long lived mortals struggling against "divine" (at least the Ainur) ban on sailing west and their immortal favored children. That society should look a lot like Game of Thrones' Rhllorism at the end I'd say. Complete with human sacrifices, dark magics, etc. Should be fun.

If anyone has ever read the Malazan Book of the Fallen books, adapting that into a series would be incredible, though it would be a serious undertaking. My dream adaptation would be an animated version in the style of the Castlevania and DOTA shows on Netflix--I don't think live-action with CGI could do it justice.

I don't think so at all. I read the entire series, I waited for every new boom with baited breath.

But without spoiling anything- by the end it had clearly gone the way of the Battlestar Galactica remake. They had no idea where to take the story and by the end it was painfully obvious. At least Moore admitted that by the end he was as lost as we were.

Same with GRRM, or even Stephen Kimg and the Gunslinger series. I absolutely adore a good story but much prefer ones with a general outline finished before writing a series. Disjointed stories with years between each never seem as good to me by their conclusions.

Castlevania started out great but meandered to 'WTAF how could you make me hate a Castlevania adult cartoon?!' in typical Netflix fashion.

Take the opposite example of Cowboy Bebop, had a pretty clear arc as well as an ending, and was perfect for it.

But I guess everyone just wants to be The Simpsons and drag things on forever.

I would rather hollywood invested in "random" fantasy/sci-fi books. Probably each one of those books is a unique universe on its own that can be used as a setting for literally any kind of story.

Yet here we are, still stuck with orcs, vampires, zombies and wizards (don't mean to demean it, I love all of it). Just wish they would use some new kind of universe with its own unique mechanics. They do drip out once in a while, but they're mostly rare.

Is amazon making a series in new zealand really hollywood?

Milking existing familiar to everyone universes is just more profitable. MCU, as primitive as it is(my apologies to fans), has been best money maker of last decade for a reason.

Lord of the Rings is great for many reasons, but when it comes to story His Dark Materials is better. It's a real shame they messed up the movie for that one.

The HBO series has been fantastic so far.

For me, LotR hits a sweet-spot. Long enough to get your teeth into, fantastic world-building, amazing music that I still listen to, and it was made at the point in time before films over-used CGI. Don't get me wrong, I like computer graphics (I used to work in video games) but modern films are almost lazy in their use of CGI. Ridiculous camera angles that simply wouldn't be possible take me right out of the movie. Characters (CGI models) swinging and jumping all over the place that don't feel "grounded" (see the Marvel movies for example). LotR did have plenty of CGI but I get the feeling they were conservative with its use, and resorted to physical artefacts such as sand in-place of flowing/gushing water in scale-models (yes they still used scale-models!).

I can compare it to Jurassic Park - whereby the CGI looks great even today, but due to the high cost at the time was used conservatively.

The Mandalarian used physical models for a lot of the space sequences, so I think at least some people in the business are realising that CGI has to be used appropriately.

Anyway rant over :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com