You might think that the world of fantasy television is not worth getting too invested in for those of us who are at best “fantasy curious” or at worst completely indifferent, but fantasy-based content remains one of the biggest areas of television production.
Since the end of Game of Thrones, HBO has continued to mine the works of creator George RR Martin for as much fantasy gold as it can extract. Amazon, which spent an astronomical sum to acquire the rights to JRR Tolkien’s archive of the writings from before Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit has poured millions of dollars into its prequel series The Rings of Power. The show began its second season with surprising little fanfare or publicity in August. Amazon has also spent a small fortune on its other fantasy epic, The Wheel of Time, adapted from the best-selling series of books by Robert Jordan.
The dedicated legion of fantasy fans is not, however, pleased with the choices that have been made when it comes to television adaptations of their holy texts. In the case of HBO’s House of the Dragon, even the source material’s author has been unable to hold his tongue about changes that have been made for the series adaptation, which he feels have altered and devalued his work.
The battle between diehard fantasy fans, television execs and showrunners is reflected in the increasingly large discrepancies between critic scores and audience ratings on aggregate sites like Rotten Tomatoes and in recent comments made in a blog written by Martin about what the House of the Dragon showrunners have done in the show’s second season.
Rings of Power, which faced loud cries of disapproval long before it even launched its first season two years ago, is Amazon’s biggest budget streaming bet, with a reported budget of $715m. Initial fan reactions and critic reviews were not as favourable as the studio might have liked, but the first four episodes of its second season have been better received by critics, though are not quite to the liking of Tolkien-heads.
According to a report in The Hollywood Reporter (THR), the second season of the blockbuster fantasy prequel enjoys a decent 83% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but a less-than-warm 58% from audiences, many of whom appear to be Tolkien fans hate-watching every episode to give rotten ratings.
Showrunners JD Payne and Patrick McKay have put on a brave face, with Payne telling THR: “When we see that millions of people are watching this and responding so positively to it — that’s who we’re fighting for. And those who watch every episode and [negatively] write about it on social media and make YouTube videos, we’re happy to have you guys, too. It wouldn’t be a journey through Middle-earth without some trolls along the way.”
The viewing numbers for the second season of the prequel show don’t match the success of the first, but Amazon seems unworried and believes that it will still earn a place in Prime’s top-five most watched shows of the year. A third season is in development but is yet to be greenlit even if sources have told THR that execs are happy enough with its performance to honour the studio’s original five-season commitment.
Whether the planned reboot of The Lord of the Rings film series will have any effect on the show remains to be seen. It will always live in the shadow of Peter Jackson’s Oscar-winning trilogy that has defined the world of Middle-earth on screen for generations of fans.
HBO has a different problem to deal with when it comes to House of the Dragon, its first major play for the continued love of fans of Game of Thrones and the dragon-fuelled power-plays of Westeros. Though the first season of the show seemed to reward the channel’s investment and keep fans happy, season two, which has just finished its run has left fans and Martin hot and bothered.
Martin was diplomatic and even complimentary about the first season of the show adapted from his book, but he’s now decided that the changes that showrunner Ryan Condal has made in season two are too much. Determined not to take it any more, he took to his blog last week to outline all the ways in which the second season has failed his work and his army of fans.
Unlike Rings of Power, where the author of the source material has been dead for half a century and so the fight for fidelity to his work is left to his fans, Martin is very much alive and his fans have the divine word of their king to help spur and justify their outrage. HBO was not impressed with Martin’s decision to spill his guts online and, though the blog post disappeared within a few hours, the damage had already been done.
At least Martin can placate HBO with his comments about its other Westeros universe adaptation, the soon-to-be-released A Knight of Seven Kingdoms. He has had only praise for it, assuring fans that he loved what he saw when he visited the set in Northern Ireland this year and they are “going to love” the lead characters when the show debuts in 2025.
All this nitpicking and finger-pointing may seem trivial to non-fantasy fans, but it demonstrates how much fans, creators and showrunners are invested in the realms of fantasy fiction and its adaptations, and that making screen versions is unlikely to please everyone but should please enough people to keep them on TV for a little longer.
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