Fantasy tv is dying. Here's why. 

Your videos were too effective, people just read books now

actually, the success of fantasy is directly connected to how many Sean Bean deaths there are, and so far they all score 0

I'm not here for long form, good content. Unsubscribed.

I mean GOT didn’t reach the highs of M.A.S.H. ratings so I blame M.A.S.H.still to this day.

man carrying my tv please give it back

JJ Abrams "mystery box" and its consequences have been an unmitigated disaster for storytelling and I really wish this concept would go away forever.

Thanks again Man. Our parasocial relationship will continue going steady until I am ready to take it to the next level.

Can we go back to Merlin please? I mean it is nice to have realistic cgi but in the end what makes a fantasy book a great thing is characters ,storylines and worldbuilding. You can do more with less

Pay 100 million for the rights to established IP. Pay my nephew $2,000 to change everything. Spend another 100 million on ads. Why is this not working?

It's the old "Let's kill the Golden Goose and then we'll have ALL the golden eggs" way of thinking.

Plankton is farting and dying. Heres why

it's fine though because the minecraft movie will make warner bros 300 trillion dollars and they can use that to make one extra episode of dragons cooing at each other

Man carrying long video

this is like if hbomberguy made a 24-hour long video.

I watched this video for 5 minutes waiting for the punchline only to realize it was an actual video

Are we going to bring up that the Rings of Power had hired a Tolkien scholar (not just fanboy, but a guy who was literally paid to be in the know about everything Tolkien) and then fired him shortly after because he said that their story didn't work with Middle Earth's lore and history? Because I find it really funny.

My dude literally said "the sex or failure of a project" and didn't even pause, the absolute legend.

I always enjoy these long form videos. I sincerely believe you make great short and long form videos; tis a rare ability. Keep up the great work mr. man :)

"Fantasy TV is dead, but I'll see what I can do." - Kaladin "Bridgeboy" Stormblessed

Wheel of time is hilariously terrible I love it The Witcher had that classic tv fantasy feel with a big budget. Season 1 had mainstream audiences interested but they lost that with season 2. Rings of Power is boring and they clearly have no idea what they are doing. HOTD…IS NOT DEAD YET! I STILL BELIEVE

Everything is over, apparently. Movies, TV shows, games, careers, jobs, rent, owning property, even the damn food is over and sucks.

If you don't have couple of strong creatives that have the freedom to bring their vision out like they wanted. It's gonna be meh. All those post GOT fantasy series were cookie cutter commitee created slop. I understand how networks are terrified when it comes to fantasy productions, because they cost so much to make. So they have the urge to micromanage, and try to put in things that make it appeal to broader audience etc.. but it just makes generic slop in the end. Also nepotism. Some of those series have people writing/producing etc.. that have NEVER made anything that hasn't flopped or been poorly received. Why would you ever let such people go anywhere near a project you are banking on being a megahit?

If moist critical made this video the title would just be: "This is sad"

Witcher was such a let down. Perfect example of the showrunners wanting to do their own thing, thinking they had better ideas and my god was that not the case. Also, there is a show that I think rises to the level of awesome that was Game of Thrones but in sci-fi and that is Foundation on Apple+. I would say it's the best show on television that people don't know/not watching

I think people forget the first season of GOT was super small scale, basically just a political drama with lots of scenes of characters talking with a little bit of fantasy sprinkled in. When the show got to the one big battle scene in the first book Tyrion gets knocked out and misses the whole thing cause the show just did not have the budget for it. Maybe if these shows took more time to build the characters and not spend hundreds of millions right out the gate they’d have more chance at success

I blame the 8 episode formula. Demanding that EVERY..SINGLE. SHOW. run 8 episodes seasons isn't okay. It's literally ruining almost every new show that has the potential to get "big". Idk why studios suddentky started doing this but I would happily take a 12 episode season, let alone the old standard of 24 - 26 episodes when cable television was at its peak! We don't have those constrictions anymore thanks to streaming! So please, stop forcing shows into random formulas such as the 8 episode one for zero reason!

It's so frustrating because it almost seems as if success is the downfall of a fantasy show nowadays. You can really feel when a show is shaped by people who want to make lots of money and when by people who want to tell a story. Rings of Power felt like dragged out attempted fanservice without an actual effort to give something meaningfull to the fans because big viewership was pretty much guaranteed. Andor on the other hand didn't have these expactations placed on it and wasn’t written to please fans but to tell a story, and it was great. And then there are shows like Shadow and Bone which was successfull, mostly loved by the fans, and then got cancelled because reasons I guess, probably because it wasn’t GOT-successfull and the second season didn't match the success of the first, so it wasn’t worth continuing. It feels like the companies just assume what the fans want and then completely miss the mark almost every time. I didn't like LOTR because it had Hobbits in it but because of the impactful story, so I didn't need the Halfling-storyline in ROP. The results of these fanservice-attempts are often almost insultingly superficial. I don't like fantasy because of fantastic elements but the way they can enhance a good story.

Man carrying original purpose of the channel

The Witcher had a great start, unlike Rings of Power or Wheel of Time. Then it veered off into complete fan fiction to the point where Cavill washed his hands of it, but he only put the final nail in the coffin. Why adapt an IP if you aren't going to actually adapt it and just use it as a brand name for your courageous and brave adventures of someone else?

This meme has too much talking. 10/10

I fundamentally disagree with the conclusion. The modern fantasy landscape is dying because writing as a discipline is pretty well dead in the mainstream. People aren't avoiding fantasy because it's expensive... They aren't watching it because it's trash.

The closest thing to a GoT successor was Succession.

Remember Once Upon a Time? Remember how it had 7 seasons of 22 episodes? Remember how the visual effects looked crap, but it didn't matter because people were more invested in the character arcs and relationships and stories? I don't need photo-realistic dragons, I just need more time to get to know characters so I can care about them when something bad happens.

“The sex or failure”… this an observation about GOT?

4:06 I will hear no Merlin slander. Merlin the only fantasy show in the last decade that was good to great from beginning to end.

Man carrying the Fantasy genre

Sorry Man I have it on good authority that all of these shows failed because they're WOKE. I will provide no evidence for this.

Fantasy will come back if people learn to tell a good story

Please save us hypothetical animated Stormlight Archive show

I just want my Sanderson adaptations man

I can't recommend Dungeon Meshi and Frieren enough. If these two shows set a precedent, we can wave the reign of boring Isekai good buy and say hello to the new savior of Fantasy: Anime.

Man carrying frodo up mount doom

You touched on this but I want to stress it: the Lord of the Rings copyright is WEIRD! You basically have two versions of it: the New Line Cinema version (aka the Peter Jackson movies) and the Tolkien estate version. The New Line version allows you to use the general look of the Jackson films but you are only allowed to adapt the Lord of the Rings/Hobbit books + their appendices, while the Tolkien estate one bars you from looking like the recognizable Jackson films but you can use books like the Silmarillion. (This is why there LOTR video games that were movie adaptations and then weird cartoony looking ones within a year of each other) Rings of Power uses the New Line version of the copyright and they make do with some Lord of Rings book appendices but legally have to change a lot of things cus they can't adapt Silmarillion exclusive stories.

Was fantasy TV was ever really "alive" if Game of Thrones was the only highly popular fantasy show? And there are a lot of other shows that tried to capitalize off the popularity of Game of Thrones besides the big four in this video. Like Shannara, Black Sails, Reign, Marco Polo, Last Kingdom, etc. Granted, some of those were historical fiction and not fantasy but they tried to do the same kind of storytelling and scale of GoT. Even the ones that were good failed to be that successful.

I see everybody just forgot the Willow show existed. Probably just like Disney wants.

Maybe making movies will become so cheap in the future, that we get a bunch of great "indie" series that revive the genre. In the past it would have taken a whole studio to create a masterpiece like "Plankton farts and dies"

Can someone tell me what this video is about? I'm incapable of watching anything above the length of 0:59

I enjoy fantasy stories the way they were intended: around a kitchen table with dice and a bunch of socially maladjusted nerds

I think you’re too quick to blame corporate offices. We can see the writers thoughts in the after the episodes and in other interviews, they clearly show a lack of skill, forward thinking, and logical writing and it’s apparent in the show.

We have gotten to a point where there isn't just one cultural event or media that everyone tunes into. There is so much content and people like finding smaller communities. I think people are realizing that the huge communities have too much toxicity and don't like being involved with that. This is just in addition to what you already mentioned.

I couldn't finish season 3 of the Witcher. I still think that there were some good performances outside of Henry Cavill, but it became clear that the writers simply didn't have an interest in faithfully adapting the series. Which is a shame because I loved the world-building of the books and games.

I feel like Rings of Power exists just so they can say the name "Celebrimbor" and make that sound really cool.

It certainly didn't help that every single one of these shows made each and every location within their Medieval-esque settings into mirror images of downtown Toronto.

Wait... Something is wrong. Why are more numbers after 00:20???

11 minute skit? Damn that's long

I don't think it's necessarily fantasy TV that's dying. I mean sure, we finally seem to have a lot of it, but there was always a little fantasy here, it just became mainstream. However Hollywood as a whole is just crumbling.

hell yeah a serious video streaming media is a nightmare and i'm not even sure who's dreaming it

There isnt a mystery, they are just all trash. Amateur hour writers taking over projects and trying to improve a real author's work.

I watch a ton of fantasy TV, it's just mostly animated, which I prefer.

Agreed about Game of Thrones raising the bar too high, but the signs that fantasy tv was doomed came much earlier than Wheel of time. In the immediate aftermath of Game of Thrones other networks chased it by trying to recreate the "house of cards, but swords" political intrigue. Season 1 of Thrones didn't have much magic in it, and in a way that's what a lot of people liked. So the initial wave of networks trying to recreate that success instead looked to history. Reign, Vikings, The Last Kingdom, Marco Polo, and a whole bunch of others. I think there were some YA fantasy adaptations whose names I can't remember too. All of these shows to one degree or another were terrible (I do have a soft spot for parts of Vikings though) too. It just seems like there is a huge disconnect between what people want and what writers are creating on tv. We can talk about executive meddling and budgetary issues, but 8-10 episode seasons are clearly not the problem when most of the season feels like filler anyway. HotD season 2 in a 22 episode format would have been unwatchable at the pace the writers were adapting the story. They had time, they just used it poorly. Imagine how many Tolkien fans would be on the verge of protesting outside of the various Tolkien family homes if Rings of Power dragged for 20 episodes of painful nonsense every season. It just seems like there are so so so many shows being produced by so many networks, and a historical shortage of good tv writers to make them. Amazon could throw another 2 billion dollars at Rings of Power but with a writing staff determined to not write what Tolkien fans want to see, determined to subvert expectations or rewrite the lore, it will *never* work. This happened to the historical fiction wave of GoT wannabes, and it's happened to all the fantasy ones too, and it even happened to GoT itself from season 5 on. We need like 90% less shows being made every year, and bigger writers rooms on the shows that are made so more writers can learn from the best firsthand. Also JJ Abrams should be imprisoned for what his mystery box bullshit has done to this industry.

I didnt expect this to be an actual video lmao

I fucking love Merlin

It’s almost like people don’t want to watch bad shows

I genuinely don't know how they spend so much on each episode, they look barely any better than stuff from a decade ago and often worse. It feels like they get given such a big budget that they don't know what to do with it. So instead of doing their best with the budget they've got. They overpay for stuff, leading to rushed work as they crunch at the end, it feels like they George Lucas so much by asking for stufd to be added in and just small changes that mean nothing but then cause the scenes to look more artificial as everythings had to be adjusted. Bit like how Furiosa looks significantly worse than Mad Max Fury Road.

The War of the Rohirrim animated movie coming out this December will be miles and miles AND MILES better than whatever rings of power is

God the first season of HOTD was fantastic. The second was not. I hope the third is better

Meanwhile in Japan, especially in manga and amine, seeing a resurgence of high fantasy series and adaptations. Such as Frieren: Beyond Journey's End and Delicious in Dungeon

Man carrying a good take? Impossible

I think GoT fumbling at the finish line, combined with The Witcher's bizzare narrative changes and creative direction, and Rings of Power just being trash, led to a crash of the big fantasy genre. Too many nails for the coffin.

Wheel of time show could’ve been so good 😭

"Sauron All Along", coming to Disney+

Plankton farts and cries

I really liked the first season of The Witcher. It felt like it captured the feeling of the world it was placed in, and almost every episode had both beautiful and incredibly tragic moments. It was the second season that, for me, completely dropped the ball and didn't seem to know what it wanted to do with its main characters.

I just want a Black Company TV show. And for Shadow and Bone to be renewed.

Pretty sure half the viewership of Rings of Power are RU-vid critics mining the show for their next video.

Fantasy TV needs to be done in the animated medium. It will still be expensive but not as much as live action and with cgi of living creatures like dragons. You see it done well with shows like arcane, and Frieren Beyond Journeys end etc. It helps to suspend disbelief as well as looking stunning visually. It's not perfect but that's where Fantasy needs to go visually

I think theres a bigger argument to be made that a lot of companies were trying to make "their game of thrones" with other genres too, probably most notably Star Trek, which took a darker tone, more political intrigue, and more vulgar dialogue. Not be a square, but theres a obvious contrast between TOS and TNG in their general audience technocolor world, and Discovery or Picard.

Stormlight would only work animated. Look at how rarely we saw the daemons in the His Dark Materials adaptation. If they did Stormlight live action the spren would barely be in it.

Step 1: buy popular and successful fantasy book series. Step 2: throw ungodly amounts of money on it. Step 3: hire inexperienced people with no interest or respect for the series and allow them to change it so much its only the series in name. Step 4: ??? Step 5: cancel the show, fantasy tv is dead, start again with video game series.

I think one important factor to consider here is that Game of Thrones’ early seasons were incredibly low fantasy. You got to see the dragons and whitewalkers for maybe one or two scenes per season, but for the most part it was just people with swords discussing politics. This not only made people keep watching to see if more fantastical elements would show up (I still remember it being a big moment when the manticore appeared in S2), but it also meant studios didn’t need to rely on a ton of expensive cgi to tell the story, so they could also afford to commission more episodes. Compare this with the Rings of Power. You have a very high fantasy world straight out the gate, so you can’t really surprise audiences with any new elements you introduce later on. Most of the budget also has to go towards cgi for rendering lots of explicit fantasy elements which, due to the sheer amount of them, probably won’t look great anyway, and you’ll probably only be able to afford six episodes because of them. The result is an extremely rushed and underwhelming viewing experience.

imo frankly the last bastion was the Peter Jackson LOTR movies. I don't think a studio will ever be as convinced to give such a huge amount of freedom and money to such artists

It's a shame because people genunely forget there is no "the next Big Thing". There will be a different Big Thing. At most they'll share a medium and perhaps a vague genre, but it'll be the next cultural event because of good writing, a risk taken, and lucky timing, not because it's a clone

Giving someone nearly a billion dollars just for them to call it a huge learning experience has got to be a kick in the nuts

I can’t believe Fantasy TV was the bay harbor butcher all along 😢

'budgets are going to effects, actors, locations.' not in the case of Wheel of Time, I'm sure they just set fire to that money.

At this point what can't Man carry?

The only thing I can say about Rings of Power is this: each episode *looks* like a movie. They're getting every ounce of juice they can out of that budget.

In My humble opinion, part of why shows spend big amounts of money for making them is because of dump management, not real value. Like you described: Buy known IP, throw money at it and hope for the best.

I love your longer content bro.

First, main problem is that executives never understood that what made GoT successful was great writing (in the first seasons ofc). Witcher and RoP die mainly due to bad writing (in case of RoP it is terribly bad). I watched fully all of them except for the Witcher which I stopped watching in the middle of the 2nd season due to huge changes in the story comparing with source material. It was also visually the worst of those 4. I had most fun watching Wheels of Time, but prolly because I do not know the books, so I am not pissed off by changes, while the world feels fresh to me :D. Though some parts were annoying :). Writing is the best in HotD, but the pace became glacial, though it looks great in terms of cinematography, costumes and effects, has great dialogs and awesome acting. Alas it feeled more and more stretched. RoP is absolutely terrrible. It feels like written by 12 year old and has lot of copy pasted scenes, characters, plots and even shots. It also doesn't care about lore at all. Best are special effects and cinematography, but still not on HotD level IMO.

I had to check up the HotD Vs GoT viewership (in millions) HotD S1 (10) S2 (~8) GoT S1 (9.3) S2 (11.5) I mean it's not that bad. GoT just grew and grew, year on year (S8 had a whopping 46M! A worldwide phenomenon). Asking ANY show to be comparable to the landmark GoT is a bit mean. It's like asking an album to be as big as Thriller. Enjoyed the vid! Cheers

They’re all failing because they don’t seem to understand what the audience wants. If you make a show that is faithful to the source material, an already successful franchise, then you’re set. Instead, these shows spend millions of dollars to make a show more focused on political agendas rather than being faithful to the source material. This is not difficult, and the failures of many new shows are a testament to that. Lord of the rings trilogy and dune movies were major successes, lord of the rings tv show and Witcher were not, so obvious it’s painful.

Hello Man, nice video. Please make your long videos at least 8 hours long in the future. I have a long attention span and found myself unable to focus on something so short. Thank you.

rings of power looks cheap af but you bet you'll catch my ass at the LOTR anime premiere

Buuuuttttt, have you heard of fantasy anime? It's actually booming with Frieren and the upcoming Witch Hat Atelier.

I worked as a scriptwriter for a small period of my life, sometimes it' s just that...making fantasy with such big budgets is so fucking hard man. For example, Martin complained in his original blog post about the fact that the showrunner did not want to have 3 child actors, and opted only for one at the end...and he really wanted that third child actor. The issue is that having child actor in UK to work on set are a NIGHTMARE and a massive money sink. Like, the entire production needs to almost halt, because they need to have a tutor, special permits, and need to be protected, on top of all of the paperwork necessary for them. God forbid having reshoots too. On its own, it' s a small issue, but when you need to handle 300+ persons and need to shot for several months...it' s really a nightmare. A lot of people shitted on the GoT showrunners for cutting the show short, but a bunch of actors and even crew members and directors revelead that they wanted to get out, and many main actors, like Kit Harrington, said how he felt like shit working on the show and wanted it to end. Having a show being in production for 10 years and released over 70 hours of content, produced at a basicaly yearly release, it' s soul consuming. Well-paid, of course, but money does not buy a certain kind of happyness. It' s just very very hard to make a show... (Copied the message from an anwer)

as an og subscriber, i love the long form videos. you make a really good point here and maybe when the transition to everyone getting adverts on their streaming services is complete we will get higher budget tv shows and something like GoT will come along.

With all these "they should do X as animation" takes going around lately, I feel like maybe Arcane is doing the same for animation as GoT did for fantasy. Every time I try a new show (mostly anime, because biggest offering) it looks like it has nigh unwatchable 1fps animation, and some lame ass looking 3D models in it. Almost like we went backwards in quality from the 90's. (And yes Blue Eyed Samurai is pretty ok)

Turns out if you make people who are not fans of the original source material things dont go well.

moral of the story: don't hire talentless writers to helm your multi million dollar IP.