Memo from an Analyst, Evaluating Amazon's Investment Risk in Rings of Power: We Fell Asleep During Three of the Four Episodes We Watched.
Update, ICYMI: The Must-See "MAGA Racist Anti-Elf Migrant Worker Rally" Scene

But apart from that -- how did you enjoy the Vistas?

Note this is not an analyst at Amazon, but an analyst of Amazon, working for a firm that analyzes companies and issues investment reports.

Still, it's amuzzzing.

Amazon analyst Tom Forte was already concerned about the performance of the company's Lord of the Rings TV show "The Rings of Power." But after he watched several episodes, he became even more worried about the $1 billion project.

"We fell asleep during our first viewings of episodes one, three, and four and have not watched episode five yet due to a combination of not enjoying the first four episodes and a busy schedule," Forte, an analyst at D.A. Davidson, wrote in a recent note to investors.

...

Forte said that he was originally hopeful ahead of the show's launch, but has gotten more bearish as the weeks progress.

You mean he's hibernating?

As of September 28, according to Rotten Tomatoes, the show's average critic's score was an impressive 84% but its audience score was a lackluster 38%, the analyst wrote. Going into the launch, he expected the audience score to start low, as hardcore Tolkien fans were likely to be the first to watch it and likely to be most critical, then improve over time as more casual fans got involved. But that hasn't happened.

"Nearly one month after its September 1 launch and five episodes in on an eight-episode season, the audience response (as measured by Rotten Tomatoes) is far worse than we initially expected (as suggested by the critics' warm reception) and is not improving (as we had, initially, anticipated)," Forte explained to investors.

In case you missed it: the woke Rings of Power, aka We Had Rangz, featured a MAGA Rally, in which a racist Trumpian rabble rouser stirred the racist passions of Men against the Elf Immigrant Laborers (do elves really migrate from place to place to do day-labor?), shouting that "elves come on ships" "to take your trades" (they took our jerbs!) and that their queen is an "elf-lover."

Nice touch.

Make Angmar Great Again!!!

A few updates on Bros, the $23 million base budget (prints, advertising, financing will double that) gay rom com that bombed this past weekend:

John Sexton quotes this hair-raising interview from the film-makers from the New Yorker.

As a bit of context, I've heard a debate before whether depictions of "the gay experience" should represent the real gay experience, which can be extremely raunchy and gross, or if it should be bowdlerized to make it safe and acceptable for straights.

I've mostly heard that debate from garrett.

This movie apparently decided to go mostly for The Full Gay.

And yet the filmmakers are surprised that "straight people" from "certain areas of the country" didn't show up to throw money at it.

Early in the new movie "Bros," our cranky hero, Bobby (Billy Eichner), a podcaster suffering from chronic relationship phobia, sits at his microphone and rants. "So, these big movie producers came to me and said, 'We want you to write a rom-com about a gay couple,' " he says. A producer, in a flashback, asks Bobby for something a straight guy would go see, a movie that "shows the world that gay relationships and straight relationships are the same. Love is love is love!" "Love is love is love?" Bobby retorts, wincing at the regurgitation of Lin-Manuel Miranda's Tony speech. "No, it's not. That's bullshit! . . . Our friendships are different. Our sex lives are different. Our relationships are different." Minutes later, as if to prove the point, we see Bobby shaving his rear end for a guy on a hookup app who demands an "ass pic."...

That early scene with the fictitious producer points to the question that animates much of what follows: To what extent can you map a gay love story onto the classic rom-com formula, or vice versa? The film, co-written by Eichner and its director, Nicholas Stoller, references--and wrestles with--rom-com tropes. Bobby watches "You've Got Mail" on the couch, but instead of AOL, he's got Grindr. On his first date with Aaron (Luke Macfarlane), his studly love interest, they go see a movie--and then wind up having a foursome at a "gender-reveal orgy."...

Even as Eichner has positioned the movie as a breakthrough pop-culture event--one that might show "all the homophobes on the Supreme Court that we want gay love stories," as he yelled at the MTV Video Music Awards, in August--the movie itself seems to be questioning the value of entering the mainstream. As Bobby laments to a weirdly supportive heterosexual couple, "Gay sex was more fun when straight people were uncomfortable with it."

Oh, no problems there, we still are, we still are.

I mean, I get that they're trying for the "raunchy wild sex comedy, but for gays" angle, but that's obviously not going to play with the straights, so... why are you, as they say, up my ass about not wanting to see it?

I have to correct: in the sidebar and in a post, I said that this guy did a show called Akshually... with Billy the Asshole where he "read Wikipedia articles with leftwing political talking points at people."

I had that wrong.

I was actually merging in my head two different obnoxious, effeminate leftwing jagoffs.

For the "Akshually" part of it, I was thinking of this guy, who does a leftwing talking points show called "Adam Ruins Everything:"

I thought he was the same dude as this obnoxious caricature from a Will and Grace road show, who is the " " " star " " " of Bros:

Yes, they took that feller there and made him the " " " star " " " -- the " " " romantic lead " " " in fact -- of a romcom.

And then it failed. Huh! Who could have guessed.

By the way, the first guy above, Adam Conover, isn't gay, apparently. Mind. Blown.

But you can see how I conflated these two Huge Internet-Based Talents in my head. You can see that, right? I'm looking at them right now and I'm still not entirely sure they're different assholes.

And you can also see how this movie bombed -- who the hell looked at this obnoxious femmy Charisma Vacuum prick and thought, oh yeah, there's Leading Man material for you right there?

I think I'm going to produce a swashbuckling Latinx romance picture starring David French and Bill Kristol called Los Piratos Del Corazon.

Especially for a... dare I say this...? gay romcom. You know, gays are kind of... unforgiving in the looks department.

Garrett's always complaining about that.

Matt Walsh made a point that I failed to close the deal on: The biggest audience for romcoms is straight women. And every audience for a movie connects to the main character through a little bit of projection and identification. If any of you men -- and women, too -- tell me you don't think "What if...?" when you're watching Raiders of the Lost Ark, then I name thee liar. I Name Thee Liar, Sirrah!

So, Matt Walsh wonders -- what is there for the primary audience of romcoms, straight women, to identify with or project themselves onto in this movie? This annoying, nasty, condescending gay twerp? Are female viewers supposed to think, "Yeah, I bet it would be great to get my d*** s***** by that cute guy" ?

It's a hard lift. Not that you can't empathize with someone different than you -- you can -- but the primary draw of the movie, the "What if that were me?" factor, isn't present.

This is the same ask SJW "entertainments" keep demanding of their would-be audiences -- that you not treat them as actual entertainment, but that you treat them as Homework Assignments and charitable donations of your time and money.

And it doesn't help that the movie has gone hard into the paint into the raunchier, nastier, more recherché side of gay sexuality. Probably best to offer newbies the bunny slopes and not the black diamonds, first time on the slopes.

And, from the sidebar, Chris Gore's take-no-prisoners review:

He's annoyed by several parts. One part he's annoyed by is the trailer, in which, at the end, Billy Eichner says "Straight people are over, they had a good run." Eh, I don't care about that. Typical crap.

The thing he's really annoyed by is that a running "debate" in the movie is whether it's too young to start sermonizing about homosexuality to children at age seven, and of course, at the end of the movie, the "debate" is resolved when some couple Billy has been arguing with takes their seven year old to the "LGBT History Museum" that Billy is (of course) some kind of doyen or director at.

The message. You're soaking in it!

posted by Ace at 05:02 PM

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