re: How much of a joke is it that Star Wars was ever thought to be equal to Lord of the Rings?

Coming back to say absolutely stupid shite is a bold move.

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There’s no Iron Man/MCU without Lord of the Rings. Sorry, they wouldn’t have taken that gamble without its extreme levels of success.

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Bruh come on. Iron Man was was made b/c comic book movies like Spider Man, Fantastic Four, Blade, and X-Men were all successful at the box office. It had frick all to do w/LOTR. You dont need to make shite up.

The hobbit movies suck. Takes it down a peg.

The LOTR trilogy is about as good as it gets.

Still...ask a 7 year old boy if he'd rather play with laser swords and starfighters or some Wizard's staff, I'm betting Star Wars wins every time.

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also LOTR wasn’t even the highest grossing movies based on a fantasy novel when it came out.

That would be Harry Potter.

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I give Harry Potter some credit, but Harry Potter wasn’t a risk. It was seen as insane when they split up the Deathly Hallows into two films at the time, when quite frankly they should have taken it much further and filmed the last three films (HBP and DH Parts 1 and 2) simultaneously and given it to Alfonso Cuaron with complete creative freedom and not a corporate whore like Andrew Yates. Those last three films would have been incredible, but they fricked it up through corporate meddling. The fact that they were that safe with the final three Harry Potter films show that things like Lord of the Rings and MCU were exceptions and not rules.

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Bruh come on. Iron Man was was made b/c comic book movies like Spider Man, Fantastic Four, Blade, and X-Men were all successful at the box office. It had frick all to do w/LOTR. You dont need to make shite up.

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Well not the Fantastic Four, but I think yall are underselling how insane the MCU concept was at the time. Like Man of Steel, they did not plan for a DC Universe at that time and people were talking about Bale’s Batman possibly joining when they finally decided to make an expanded universe.

Cinematic universes are taken for granted now, and given how Lord of the Rings, again the second most read novel of the 20th century, struggled to get financing really says a lot. There’s no way they would have gambled the MCU given that Lord of the Rings only got off the ground by the skin of their teeth.

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I dont think that’s true.

Superhero movies were making money for decades before LOTR.


Not really. All there really was was Spider-Man and X-Men. Batman being a success in 1989 isn’t much of an argument. Batman Begins was a minor success in 2005.

Now maybe they would have done Iron-Man, but such a gamble of the entire MCU, no. Maybe ten years later, but Lord of the Rings is what made them take the gamble.

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Just NO

LOTR didn't have anything to do with the MCU. The MCU happened because Marvel was smart and lucky.

Smart- Iron Man was a lower tier character, but one that translates great to film. He's a dude in a suit, that can be done.
Lucky- they cast Robert Downey Jr, who hit it out of the park.
Tony Stark is the billionaire playboy superhero we can relate to, not Bruce Wayne. You have all the money and everything, why be brooding and emo? Tony's a player who had pole dancers on his private jet. He has classic sportscars in his garage. He's smarter than you, and he will frick your girlfriend after telling you he's smarter. And when he comes back to America after being stuck in the desert, he wants some Burger King. And then when he's asked, he says frick it, I'm Iron Man in the press conference.

That's knowing your target audience, every young male who goes to a superhero action movie will say frick YEAH to everything he does. Especially when Downey nails it as well as he did.
The MCU built on that, and nailed the All American (Steve Rogers) and Viking mildly smug "I'm better than you, because I'm a god" (Thor) mindsets as well.
And it took all three working together onscreen, with a Hulk cameo that we've all wanted, to nail Avengers. After Avengers, the blueprint was there and they rolled with it until they exhausted everything and the actors decided to move on.

As for LOTR, if not for the original Star Wars trilogy, if it ever got made it would have been condensed into 1 film, because you don't know if you get to make the others. Strip 6 and a half hours out, and you don't have nearly as compelling a story. It was greenlit because people were convinced it would be the Star Wars of the Fantasy genre.

I don't think LOTR was the reason for GoT, either. I think Rome had a lot more influence, that was great but got too expensive. HBO learned from Rome and found a suitable new candidate for their next sword series.

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Cinematic universes are taken for granted now, and given how Lord of the Rings, again the second most read novel of the 20th century, struggled to get financing really says a lot. There’s no way they would have gambled the MCU given that Lord of the Rings only got off the ground by the skin of their teeth.

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LOTR isn’t a cinematic universe. It is a book series.

and Marvel definitely cared
more about how other comic books franchises were doing than how LOTT did.

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Sharon? EDIT: Was that auto corrected from Sauron?

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Yes

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but Sauron would clearly be the #2 most instantly known as that at worst under Vader or Satan

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Doubtful. You give too much credit to the general population. They don’t all share your interests.

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Lord of the Rings is also a cultural phenomena. If you just say the movies, then obviously Star Wars is more influential, but when you add in the entire universe including novels, then it’s a debate. Led Zeppelin wrote a shite ton of songs referencing Lord of the Rings.

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definitely a different conversation when you talk about the impact of the books as well.

LOTR is the beginning of modern fantasy writing. Where we really see the transition from Folklore to new fiction.

Overall, this has been one of the better discussion on the MTV board lately.