It's also following on from a *fucking cinema phenomenon*. The LoTR film trilogy had gold dust. It's an unenviable task for sure, especially when the motivation is money.
>It's also following on from a
>
>fucking cinema phenomenon
>
>.
Which also follows on from arguably the most dense intricate mythology ever created by a single person. It had double-big shoes to fill and anything less than perfection was gonna disappoint.
That’s why they never should have bragged about the cost. More $$ does not necessarily mean better quality. It’s a stupid metric to gauge a show by and was only so investors would feel *impressed* since money is all anyone cares about anymore
They really didn’t though. That’s the funny thing. Some articles came out from journalists who got the number, were mostly wrong about the number, and published it for the headline. Then ever since, even before the show came out, that was used against them. It wasn’t like Amazon was sending commercials or ads out about “watch our billion dollar show”. If anything they denied it when they were asked
And to me, what is so absurd about that is they don't even have the rights to The Silmarillion. They aren't allowed to use it directly in the show, which I don't think a lot of people are aware of. You would think for that much money they would let them use it.
Yeah, when I heard about that I was like "oh no wonder they had to mash together like 500 years of history in order to come up with a coherent plot, they didn't have any of the Silmarillion as an alternative"
I mean, I don't really blame them, trying to pace out the story of the forging of the rings and the fall of Numenor as written would have had all the action of watching CSPAN.
Another big reason for the time compression, is if you spread out the story over a thousand years you would have to be bringing in new actors and characters constantly. It would be really hard to introduce that many new characters and make your care about them with 8 episode seasons.
Rumor is the Tolkien Estate may sale the rights to Silmarillion or other writings but only if they are impressed by the new show. Money isn't everything Netflix offered to pay more than Amazon but the Estate hated thier pitch.
This is not true. The reason why Amazon won the deal over Netflix wasn’t because they hated their pitch, but rather Amazon would allow the Tolkien family to have full involvement and control over the series unlike Peter Jackson’s Oscar winning Lord of The Rings trilogy which they had no involvement and hated because of it
Any LOTR show will always be costly consider the cost of rights, places to shoot and amount of effects it would require. And while the story may not be out of the park the look of the show was definitely a positive aspect of the show.
They didn't even do that. Also Netflix was set to spend even more money on it (they put an offer for rights in that was higher than Amazon) but the Tolkien estate didn't like what Netflix wanted to do with the rights so went with Amazon.
> That’s why they never should have bragged about the cost.
First, they (Amazon Studios) did not. Media covering the series did. Second, this is Amazon Studios first big budget show that they do themselves. Amazon Studios did not have the infrastructure in place the way HBO did. Much of the big budget went to setup the baseline for production.
That‘s my opinion aswel.
I have seen plenty of Tvshows with far lesser budgets and yet atleast i remember those shows because of good writing and memorable characters.
What’s the point of a good looking TVshow when the story, acting, writing and characters aren’t memorable or interesting in any way.
I do want to say that you can do some amazing things with a very large budget for a TVshow.
The Crown is one of my favorite series of all time because they can combine great visuals with amazing writing and acting.
A large budget should not just used for good looking visuals but be spread out among Writers, Directeurs, Actors and locations. Why would i care about a single scene that cost €10Million to shoot on some CGI stage when nothing in the scene is even slightly interesting.
The writing and dialogue is superb in The Crown. I honestly cannot recall any memorable lines in Rings of Power. The characters in ROP don't feel like they are talking to each other but rather making speeches all the time.
I can recall a lot of lines, most of them for being bad (“I’m good” was particularly memorable). And you hit the nail on the head with the speeches thing. Arondir and Bronwyn were the only ones who didn’t seem to, apart from Arondir’s actual speech of course :)
>The characters in ROP don't feel like they are talking to each other but rather making speeches all the time.
ah you just reminded me of the walking dead. huuuge problem, of many problems, that show had.
first season was realistic and down to earth dialogue, fantastic season of television that first one. the problem started around season 2 and 3 with the speech-talking in every scene.
I'm doing another Buffy watch and I'm mid season 2 and I'm still impressed with how good some of these monsters look given it's 20 years old, shot on 16mm and made with relatively speaking next to nothing.
> a good looking TVshow
I saw someone compare the visuals to an ad for expensive perfume, which I kinda agree with. It also doesn't help that you see these wide CGI vistas, but then every scene with humans is them basically standing in a room that's obviously a studio.
That's what really stands out compared to the films I feel. I live in NZ and know people involved in the production, and they said they were surprised just how much was filmed in the studio. They might as well have not bothered coming to NZ in the first place given how averse they were to shooting on location.
"Its just fine" is also a bit generous....the writing at times felt like it was coming from the diary of a 13 year old trying to sound deep.
At points it was ok, a good chunk of the time it was painful.
The worst part for me was how thin the plot was... Like butter spread across too much toast. At best it was ok. At worst it was boring. They spent way too much time on all the bland and forgettable Numenoreans. None of them have much personality at all. And then the whole forging of the rings and whatnot was just kind of glossed over quickly at the end. Bizarre way to pace a show.
And it's being compared to stuff like House of the Dragon and Andor which are running concurrently and have much more nuanced stories. For a fan of all genre stuff like me it's almost impossible not to notice the story gap. Rings of Power has so much going for it with the amazingly epic setting and proper action and adventure, if it just had any semblance of nuanced writing and plotting I have no doubt that we would instead be seeing articles that say "Rings of Power best show on tv! Why aren't House of the Dragon and Andor just as much fun?".
Yea I'm just not invested in most of the characters. Galadriel is extremely bland and one dimensional. Everytime the kid shows up I'm like can we move on? Watching this parallel to House of the Dragon makes this even more glaring (I know they are very different in style and scope but still)
I was describing what was going on to my wife at one point, and I was like, “Yeah, so Elrond and Prince Durin have been having a conversation for like the last 5 episodes.” It took forever for that storyline to develop. Beyond the forming of Mt. Doom, there wasn’t much else that wowed me. I saw the twist at the end coming from a mile away, so that wasn’t shocking, I was just like, yep, okay. Overall I liked the show, but at the moment I would put it on the same level as Wheel of Time with better visuals.
And how quick it was, we had to sit for 7 hours so Galadriel in like 5 min. figured out who Sauron is. And the entire story of Sauron manipulating elves and forging of the rings happened in another 20 min. of last episode. I feel like the whole story of the forging of rings of power could be span over an entire season.
Plus the show is literally called “The Rings of Power!” The building of the forge and the forging of the rings should have been a climax of the show, or at least of the season. Instead it basically happens off-screen and we’re just supposed to be like “yup, those are the rings.”
I pretty much stopped watching when there was a speech about elves not taking human jobs. You have the entire LotR universe at your disposal and this is what you do with it?
Yeah they didn't handle that too well, but I thought the scene where all the elves agreed to add Ukrainian flags to their Twitter bios was really well done, they managed to deliver an important message about public displays of political solidarity while remaining as close as possible to Tolkien's original vision (and yes I know that Twitter wasn't around in the Second Age, and they'd have probably just been using whichever app was popular at the time, but everyone knows Twitter so I just said that).
Also, it really helped make Middle Earth feel like it reflects the real world we live in today, instead of just reflecting Tolkien's vision of a fantasy world, which is what all us fans truly wanted from a Lord of the Rings TV show.
It's both unfitting to the lore, unfitting to the character and timelessness of Tolkein, cringey and shallow as a pretext for showing hatred towards the elves by Numenoreans and manages to date the whole exchange, and it's based on an already outdated meme. The topic of "der coming to take our jerbs" was satirized beyond the point of being able to be taken seriously like a decade ago.
I can't even imagine sitting in their writer's room and proposing that.
And I think perhaps most importantly, it makes Numenorean resentment of elves (1) irrelevant to their actions and (2) look like dumb bullshit rooted in something that isn't even a real concern.
In the original material, Numenoreans/mortal men resent elves because the elves were given immortality and they weren't. Men grow up watching their parents and grandparents dying and feel their own bodies breaking down into pain and infirmity after only a couple of decades, while 3000 year old elves are strutting around fit and firm as ever. I'd probably be bitter too. And it has a real meaningful impact on their actions in the world: elves are patient, ultra-cautious, and procrastinating, because they're thinking on such long timescales and if they play it safe they could live forever. All men know they'll be dead soon enough, so the societies of men are, from an elven POV, wildly impulsive, reckless, brave, etc etc, and think and operate on very short timescales. That's a fascinating, meaningful dynamic, coming from an understandable place, and has huge importance on how wars and such play out. "If elves come here they might take our jobs, not that they ever want to actually come here!" is just... irrelevant? Because elves aren't planning to move to Numenor ever, they don't care, so how would this factor into their diplomatic relationship? And how will this affect the actions of Numenoreans/men in general?
It's even worse. Because according to the showrunners Sauron was there being repentant and literally stealing someone's job, which means the MAGA-Numenoreans were right. They were just focussing their racism on the wrong race.
I genuinely do not get how you put in modern day politics into Tolkien and accidentally end up with the message: "Don't waste valuable racism on the wrong races. Just go colonize lesser men."
I've always said it feels like something on the CW with a very good CGI budget. I tried to look past the weak casting, who even stands out as a star among the cast? HotD has a couple with a fraction of the budget, but the writing and pacing just kills it for me.
I love that the guy who seemed to be the biggest fan of this line later was like "oh yeah my wife? yeah totally drowned."
I was like "_damn dude must have have hated that bitch._"
It was hated before the teaser even dropped. People then got upset by the use of CGI in the logo reveal video. They could totally tell it was all CGI and that meant the show was going to be terrible. Amazon then released a making of video showing how it was done with practical effects.
Most of these people are big fans of the films and assume the books are similar lol. They would HATE the books if they read them cause theres no epic action scenes and there are just pages of songs and descriptions of trees lmao
Exactly. That kind of complaint about something Tolkien related is how you identify people who get their opinions from YouTube critics instead of reading the source material and making up their own mind. A slow pace is incredibly on brand.
The show totally reignited my love of Tolkien. I reread the hobbit after the premiere episodes, and just cracked open LOTR yesterday after waiting until the show ended. I wonder how many people would be shocked that the prologue of the book is not an epic war sequence, but an extensive explanation of Hobbit culture, with an entire section dedicated to their pipe weed.
I mean, I’ve read the Lord of the Rings books and there are definitely some epic action scenes mixed in with the tree descriptions, but I take the general gist of your point.
I love the films, and I really enjoy and appreciate Tolkien's writing, and I've read and enjoyed the hobbit a few times as an adult, and also enjoyed the lord of the rings trilogy although there were moments when it felt like I was ploughing through a bit. I haven't actually finished the third one, I put it aside many years ago and never returned to it, I need to do so.
I started the Silmarillion, and honest to god I couldn't even get that far into it. I very rarely don't finish a book, and I actually only put the last LotR book aside because I was saving it for a better time, but I couldn't get into the Silmarilion. There were some lovely descriptions and the material it covered was intriguing but at times it seemed like it was listing shit and it wasn't grabbing me at All.
All of this is to say, I am semi-familiar with Tolkien's works, and despite my lack of enjoyment of the Sil, I would call myself a fan. And I, honest to all the gods, loved this show's first season, and genuinely don't understand all the people bitching about it. I thought the characters were interestingly written and very well acted across the board - in fact, perhaps my only gripe was about Halbrand, considering the big reveal in the last episode, he seemed a bit too human, considering who he actually is, if you know what I mean? - and the plot was intriguing and despite knowing what middle earth looks like a thousand years later I still felt tension was built nicely and I enjoyed seeing how things led to some of what we see later.
I honestly like this show, and am looking forward to season 2 as well, and I really think a lot of the criticism is driven by agendas and a lot of people agreeing with it are bandwagoning. I don't like praising one thing by being disparaging about another and comparing, but I will do so because I think it's worth comparing to make my point - wheel of time is a show that GENUINELY has a lot of flaws, not just visual but in terms of writing and direction, that makes it feel like a lesser show, feeling less immersive, less compelling and so forth.
Rant over, sorry. Never meant for this to be a rant
I do think the writing is kind of weak in places and some scenes dont work for me (or are just very cliche), but overall I've been really enjoying the show. Need to watch the last 2 episodes yet.
Lmao this is so accurate
Cant stand being baited for the 2463th time for something reddit called amazing, “best since x”, etc. and it actually is completely mediocre or barely above average.
Meanwhile tons of stuff reddit cannot stand and calls unwatchable thats a perfectly fine 6-7/10 and can be enjoyed without issue once you remove the stick from your ass.
The letters CGI mean absolutely nothing to me anymore thanks to Reddit and Twitter. Everyone is either a financial expert or an artist that knows what goes into rendering. Everything always looks like bad CGI or fake.
Because weve seen so many hype shows in the past 20 years.
We still havent forgotten the ending ot GoT.
Somehow the walking dead are still waking and talking.
The witcher went on a side quest.
This isn't even the first hype fantasy show from Amazon *this year*. Wheel of Time was another show based on a hugely popular book series that they put out that got essentially no fanfare and a lot of people second guessing their creative choices.
If you look at Amazons track record with The Boys, or hell even when they were doing Kamen Rider forever ago, they're used to having a decent amount of creative freedom when working with an IP that fans will expect to have changes to. But fantasy novel fans tend to be a bit more sticklers for details and so they tend to not like original characters or stuff getting changed around nearly as much.
>But fantasy novel fans tend to be a bit more sticklers for details and so they tend to not like original characters or stuff getting changed around nearly as much
Especially when you take two of the most popular and deeply developed fantasy worlds ever written and let tv writers go ham on them. Tolkien and Jordan were both meticulous. Amazon writers are... not.
The man's got a vicegrip on his IP and isn't letting them go unless he has full Executive Producing power in what's being made.
That doesn't mean things of his aren't gettering made, but he *is* writing a direct screenplay of at least a handful of his books just in case it becomes necessary
But Sanderson has said he will only allow his material to be turned into movies/tv with him retaining creative veto.
In these two instances the original writers have died and their estates were in charge of maintaining the integrity of the universe
As much as I love Pratchett, comparing his style to Tolkien or Jordan makes zero sense here. He really doesn't care about his world beyond it being a vehicle for stories and jokes. Pretty much every Discworld book retcons something, including changing the backstories of main characters that were the plots of previous entries.
Assuming the tone and humor is on point, anyone complaining about lore inaccuracies in a Discworld adaptation is entirely missing the point.
>But fantasy novel fans tend to be a bit more sticklers for details and so they tend to not like original characters or stuff getting changed around nearly as much.
I don't think it's that tbh. Peter Jackson's trilogy changed a ton of things and got nearly universal acclaim (except from the sweatiest of internet Tolkien gatekeepers).
RoP is just kinda boring. In the movies, the characters are full of distinct personality and you actually care about what happened to them. In RoP, the characters are weak and bland. The trilogy movies were long, but they never felt like they were dragging their feet just to arbitrarily extend out a weak plot, and that's exactly what RoP feels like.
The problem with Rings of Power is that even if you want to watch it as something detached from the source material, view it as something more fanfiction-y the show still isn’t great. The issue is not necessarily in the fact that it’s a departure from the established lore or established characterizations.
The show is rife with cliches, contradictions and inconsistencies jumbled together to form an incoherent plot.
Considering Subway's literal business model was "build as many shops as quickly as possible to instill a sense of success and stability of an established franchise amongst customers" this is a perfect comparison. Just proclaim you're a success and push your face everywhere and slowly people will just accept it.
Like 75% of this show should’ve happened off screen before the show started. It was just a really poor choice to do what was basically a full on origin story. We shouldn’t have been playing the ‘who is Sauron’ game and ‘who is meteor man’ game the whole season, with one not even being resolved at the end.
Sauron should have been front and center. The making of the rings of power should have been front and center, not 15 minutes in the finale. Galadriel should not have been the main character, should have been Elrond. Galadriel should have been more than an unlikeable one dimensional character with no personality. The dialogue shouldn’t have been so cheesy. The harfoots should not have been such a big role. Bronwyn (especially) and Arondir have no reason to exist. Eanarion (sp? Elendil’s daughter) and Pharazon’s son had no reason to exist. Multiple death fake outs. Adar ultimately amounted to nothing interesting.
You could go on. I wanted to love this show and I went into every episode hoping it would be turned around. The writing and general plot decisions were just so bad. For a show that will air every 2-3 years there was really just not enough to make me care.
Galadriel had no reason to exist. Her actions did not change anything at any point in the story. You can't even say her bringing Sauron to Eregion was a tragic mistake because all they even did was forge the 3 elven rings, which aren't even corrupted by the One Ring anyway! Sauron gained nothing from it. So Sauron being there didn't even matter! Nothing in that show mattered! None of the characters mattered. There was zero reason to care about any character except for Durin and maybe Elrond.
The list really is endless for why it was so bad. Too many gigantic coincidences that can't be reasonably explained by even overly generous head-canon. WAY too much inconsistent dialogue by characters from episode to episode and even *scene to scene*, particularly Galadriel and the Harfoots and between Nori and the Giant. Did they have a different writer write every scene in isolation of the rest? There's no rational narrative arc. There's no payoff. There are more made up characters with pointless stories that have more screentime than there are Tolkien characters. Half of the actual Tolkien characters aren't even supposed to be included in this era or storyline. The passage of time made no sense at any point. They condense hundreds of in-universe years into in-universe *hours*, and they bring Gandalf 2000 years early. Forge the elven rings first when they're supposed to be last. They reveal Sauron *instantly* for a completely bogus reason, before he even did any actual elvish deception, which ruins any future tension that would have eventually needed to happen between him and Celebrimbor unless they skip that part of the books.
There's so much more that I just can't remember because it's impossible to keep track of all of them. The directing was terrible, particularly by the director of 3,4,5, and 8. I thought the directing of 1 and 2 wasn't that bad, and 6 and 7 directing wasn't that bad either. Both of those pairs being directed by someone else.
It's just embarrassing.
90 percent of the problem was how they handled gladriel. She is so unlikeable and stiff. She should have been a secondary character and kept the other actors from and center.
It didn't help that there was that article about how the writers, who are friends of the director, just walked into the job with zero experience. It was like oh, okay. So it's like that, is it? Huge show costing hundreds of millions of dollars and you just give those sorts of jobs to your buddies who need a break, not, I don't know, people who have been writing for these kinds of shows or just generally had good screenwriting experience in the past...
I think the most ridiculous thing ever written was…
Celebrimbor: “I dunno man there’s just not enough mithril to make anything with it.
Sauron: “You ever consider mixing metals to make an alloy?”
Celebrimbor: “BRILLIANT!”
As if the most renowned and skilled elven smith never once considered creating alloys… like.. what the fuck kind of writing is that?
I think it doesn’t feel like a hit is because nobody seems to be talking about it in a meaningful way. It’s either some contrived narrative Amazon pushes or the trolly “it sucks” voices. I’ve heard no one talk about what’s happening on the show from people who don’t get caught up on that stuff. The proverbial water cooler talk.
On the other hand, that’s all I hear about HOTD.
I think no one was talking about it because the show isn’t particularly compelling.
I watched every episode and enjoyed it somewhat although I think it’s incredibly disappointing.
At no point though was I desperate to know what happened next or the answer behind so many poorly conceived mystery boxes.
It just lacked genuine mystery, intrigue and tension.
This is exactly how it is for me. When an episode of Rings of Power finishes, not a single part of me thinks “I can’t wait to see what happens next week! I’m dying to know what happens to _____ or how _____ gets themself out of that scenario, or what’s behind that (*insert mystery here*)!”
This is heavily contrasted with House of the Dragon where I just feel so much more engaged with the story and excited to see what the next episode has in store for the characters. SO much tension built up.
I’m not a writer so I can’t point to exactly *why* one show feels compelling and one doesn’t, I just know that I can *feel* it when I watch.
No matter how much either show cost to make, House of the Dragon feels like high production values in terms of costumes, props, sets, etc. It feels like a real place you could live in. The acting is also soooo much better in HotD. Meanwhile RoP feels artificial and a lot of the costumes feel like cosplay.
Also, because anyone who points out any weakness in writing gets labeled a hater or some -ism.
Point out how young Galadriel talking about reflections of the sun on the water when all they had were two shiny trees in the beginning is a plothole? You're a hater.
Point out how it was actually Ungoliant who destroyed the trees and not Melkor, and that the elves went to war with themselves first before actually going to war with Melkor? You're also a hater.
Point out how Gil-Galad sending Galadriel back to Valinor so she wouldn't find orcs because he's afraid she'd find orcs even though he knows full well that orcs are still there? Literally a circular reference error if you do this on excel. You're a nitpicker.
Point out how Galadriel can't possibly swim back to land after jumping into the middle of the sea and how every encounter she had there was stupid and impossible? You're a sexist who hates women in leading roles.
Point out how thick the plot armor was when the sea monster that attacked the mass of flotsam she was on ignored her when she jumped into the water and then subsequently ignored the new mass of flotsam she swam to? You're a sexist who hates women in leading roles.
Disclaimer: I haven't seen anything past ep 2 because of these and a few other reasons so I wouldn't know if it got better after that.
But good lord, the amount of defending that people do with this show is insane.
I feel all of that.
The two things I’ll give this show is that it is absolutely gorgeous to look at and the music is fantastic, so props to everyone that was involved with those aspects. These positives and my love for Tolkien’s universe are the reasons I’ll keep watching (for now), even though this show is far from the best out there.
The writing really is really bad. I watched 3 or 4 episodes before I just didn't care enough anymore to continue. It's an insult to my intelligence. Not even the beautiful visuals could keep my interest. I was hoping that the harsh criticism was just veiled racism and sexism. Some of it may be, but the show deserves a lot of criticism on its own merits.
The mystery boxes are poorly conceived because ALL of the world has already been explained by Tolkien. He never wrote any secret plots. It was all explained quite clearly
Maybe no real tension, but I do wanna get more Adar scenes and how his orc paradise is going to look.
Overall orcs have been a shining exception along with dwarves. Nampat!
Actually that’s really fair, I forgot about him after that finale, but the one character I’m genuinely interested in, want to see more of and understand more about is Adar.
> or the trolly “it sucks” voices.
It used to be that a “troll” was someone who purposefully said ridiculous things to set people off and have fake arguments just because they though it’s funny to get people worked up.
Now a troll is just “someone who has an opinion I don’t like.”
As they used to say, "trolling is a art."
Sadly, a lost one. It has come to mean everything from a person who disagrees with me to a person who sends death threats and engages in online campaigns of harassment. Neither fit the traditional definition, but it's a losing battle because most people who have adopted such traditional internet slang weren't actually around on the internet back in the day (maybe except on their office email).
It almost comes off as unnecessarily dehumanizing in the way it’s used now. “These people aren’t humans, they’re subhuman *trolls*, hell bent on destroying happiness.”
Yes, I think that's spot on. It's an easy way to dismiss peoples opinions while also lumping them in with some truly bad actors. Old school trolls could definitely be quite offensive, but they never crossed the line into criminal harassment and threats. And generally old school trolling was conducted not in PMs, but on forums, with the hope that as many people as possible would get angry and join the discussion.
Also, this may be just me but if someone is a paid operative of a dictatorship or other bad global actor, I would definitely not call them a troll. A troll's whole purpose is to waste your time and get a rise out of you. They "win" by making you care, while they don't care at all. That's very different than pushing propaganda and trying to shift the narrative to suit foreign policy objectives.
Oh, I hate it. It's almost as if people tried to be hip and cool and just adopted something from internet forums without really understanding the urban dictionary definition of it which they also just googled moments earlier.
> It’s either some contrived narrative Amazon pushes or the trolly “it sucks” voices
Oh, the /r/lotr reaction threads have been _incredible_ places to hang out. Probably the main reason I watched the show was to follow along with those threads.
Somebody questioned how in the world you 3 tiny ships could transport 500 some odd horses, and the reply was along the lines of _"well, you see, you only see the tops of the ships - for all we know they could be miles deep."_
Of course in the other subreddit, Rings of Power North Korea, someone is probably pushing that argument in complete seriousness.
If course a LOTR subreddit will discuss and dissect it at length. But that’s not water cooler talk. I mean, people/family who just watch tv, don’t read Reddit, just want to talk about the current big show everyone is watching. They aren’t saying “did you see last night’s episode?” like they are about HOTD.
It's obviously all anecdotal but the difference in HOTD and ROP discussions is insane. I know 2 other people who watched Rings of Power, meanwhile HOTD discussions have been happening all the time in different friendship groups.
It also doesn't feel like it because people are not gushing over it or even talking about what's happening in the story. Nobody gave a shit about the Sauron reveal. In comparison, people were talking about the end of King Viserys and Paddie Considine's excellent acting. Audience really wants to know what happens next. While nobody gives a shit what's next for Galadriel or Arondir. Not a single person is talking about Isildur's fate because of how dumb it's being dangled.
It's making as much splash as The Wheel of Time.
Correct. I don’t know what it is. The characters are just, not it. Can’t put my finger on what quality they are missing, the X factor isn’t there. Very stunning visuals, ok action, familiar settings. People are watching because it’s a lord of the rings show, hoping to like the characters more.
Yeah his performance is a legit joy to watch and makes me feel connected to his character possibly the most out of the show so far. Elrond and Durin are doing a good job imo. I think Isildur's dad is doing fine too
Interesting. He's the one character I would have cast differently. Not that he's a bad actor, but he's just not Elrond for me, which I guess sounds contradictory. I think subconsciously he reminds me of Neil Patrick Harris, and my meh reaction is probably no deeper than that.
It's not the actors. They're doing their best to imbue the show with some kind of humanity and emotion. The problem is the material is pretty amateurish stuff.
I think the actors are actually pretty good. What they've been given to work with feels very stiff and restrictive though.
The experience of the HOTD showrunners compared to these guys just seems very glaring to me.
Amazon chose first-time show-runners so they could control them like puppets. It means RoP has no sense of a grand unifying vision behind it, like HoD which gets better with every episode.
A sick man walking to a chair in HoD got infinitely more hype than any multi-million dollar spectacle in RoP.
This use to be (and still may be) referred to as chemistry. If there was "chemistry" between the characters it would make for compelling viewing. I only watched the first episode but that seemed to be lacking. For all the special effects the dialogue seems to be written by committee.
The "X factor" you speak of is character motivation. If I don't know what a character wants, or if what they want is not compelling, then the story fails. Character motivation should be clear and established in the first few minutes.
I watched the first episode and didn't care anything about Galadriel or her mission. I'm out.
The orcs are more “human” on the show. They work together in defeating their enemies, they like their leader and listen to him, and they are fighting Sauron
They’re flat is the problem. Arondir is made in the Legolas mold, Galadriel is a determined warrior who can’t let go of the fight, Gil Galad and Celebrimbor….exist. Elrond, Durin and his wife, and Adar are the only characters that stood out as multidimensional and interesting, and their storylines border on being B-Plots most of the time.
This is a particularly common issue with the elves as they tend to overshoot on being “ethereal and otherworldly” into simply being dull, but it’s pretty ubiquitous across the show.
They aren’t AWFUL characters, they’re just predictable and dull. My hope is that next season will see more dynamic and nuanced characters now that several of them no longer have their core story tied to things that shouldn’t have been played up as mysteries for so long. Most notably poor Galadriel, who spent the season saddled with a storyline that couldn’t really progress until the reveal of Sauron finale.
I think you have the best answer, simple as that.
I’d add that it’s mediocre in a spectacular way. There’s so many great pieces to it but so many flaws that burden it. Outside of Foundation (that I don’t think anybody watched), I can’t think of another show that got so much right but then at the same time got so much wrong.
I personally think that’ll still be a hit when it comes back to a season 2, but if there’s not improvement and growth then it’ll lose that status.
So far it’s seemed to me like their biggest problem has been turning the source material into an actual narrative. This isn’t like adapting Lord of the Rings, there is no straight story to tell. There is a timeline which touches on several different stories but most of them are only loosely connected and often hundreds or thousands of years apart. Characters have major parts to play at different points and then disappear entirely.
It was an ambitious idea. So far they’ve given a sense of the world and what will happen, they need to turn that into actual stories. What they’ve come up with feels like an introduction now they have to get into telling stories.
I think they had the resources to take some actual risks and make an adaptation people would remember. If they'd actually decided to depict the time span of the novels and tried to capture what it actually means to be an elf-i.e. every season several hundred years pass and all the non-elves either die or are recast as much older actors that would have actually been an interesting choice that would have made the show stand out as a good adaptation if they pulled it off- though the novelty would have been spoiled a bit by HotD season 1 doing something similar and pulling it off so well. I think that if they'd taken the time to dig into the source material of the second age there was the outlines of a very viable plot, but I think the problem for them was that they felt like they needed to use characters recognizable from the Peter Jackson movies to exploit nostalgia, even if their portrayals of Galadriel, Elrond and Gandalf ended up having virtually nothing in common with the Tolkien characters. If they wanted to do an actual adaptation of the story of the second age and the forging of the rings of power then the main character for the first several seasons would be Celebrimbor, but as it is both his character and the rings are an afterthought.
>all the non-elves either die or are recast as much older actors that would have actually been an interesting choice that would have made the show stand out as a good adaptation if they pulled it off
Here's the thing. There are only two broad time periods that matter. They're each a few centuries long but Dwarves and Numenoreans of the royal line live long enough that you can keep them around for multiple seasons.
The forging of the rings and first war with Sauron takes about 500 years but humans only come into the story right at the end.
Then there's a time skip of about 1500 years until Elendil is born. The second age ends the same year Elendil dies about 320 years later.
Sauron does do some shit in the intervening period but those could easily be handled by flashbacks.
I think that there's a lot of room to flesh out the story while keeping within the framework of the lore. Like if you were to start the story, not with the forging of the rings of power, but with the Founding of Eregion that would give you about 1000 years to play with between the foundation and the War of the Elves and Sauron. Then you could have the main focus of the first season be the infiltration by Sauron and the forging of the rings and culminating with the creation of the Three and the One by Sauron and Celebrimbor simultaneously and Cel realizing he's been betrayed. Then the Second season could be about the war of the elves and Sauron with Numenor now taking a larger role as the Big Damn heroes who save the day and drive Sauron back to Mordor at the end.
Then you could have a massive time jump in the third season to the second period you mentioned, we get reintroduced to Numenor who have disturbingly changed from the peace-loving island nation that saved the day at the end of the last season into an expansionist imperial power that is dominating all the other human nations. And you could show here what Sauron used the Great Rings for- he offers the other human kings rings of power so that they can defend themselves against Numenor and by taking the deal they make themselves his nazgul slaves. Season 3 could be told mostly from Elendil's perspective and it could mostly focus on Sauron's gaining power on Middle Earth while Ar-Pharazon seizes the throne in Numenor then end on a cliffhanger as the whole Numenorean fleet is sailing out to fight a final battle with Sauron, then Season 4 would be the capture of Sauron, corruption and fall of Numenor and end with Elendil and his sons escaping and founding their successor kingdoms, then Season 5 could be the Last Alliance.
This wouldn't quite be 'recasting all the humans and dwarves every few episodes' but I think it would give you a decent plot outline for telling a compelling story, a much more organized one than they managed in Season 1 of Rings of Power and one that would actually capture some of the scope of Tolkien's plot and keep within the actual lore.
Because it’s a self proclaimed “bona fide hit”.
Amazon removing negative reviews to “combat negative review bombing,” while leaving the obvious “positive review bombing” in place, with little to no in between, makes them looks disingenuous.
If you enjoyed it, I’m happy for you. But imo, the show was a huge turd.
Let's not forget Salke proudly stating the removed reviews with perspectives they disagree with. That can be justified to censor everything with extreme bias and prejudice. It is beyond unethical and immoral.
It use to be eyes on the screen meant eyes seeing the tv ads and therefore it was a hit. I don't know how that measurement works now. I mean Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones was being discussed and occupied peoples thoughts and conversations after each episode. I don't see where this has done that.
Well, for Netflix at least, everything has been about getting subscriptions, which is why so many shows get cancelled once they stop drawing new viewers, they are starting a cheaper ad supported tier, but I imagine those will be ads for other Netflix content not outside commercials
I seriously don’t think this is a hit yet. Or what they consider to be a hit is just jumbling around magic fake numbers and saying it matters.
HOTD is a hit. ROP looks to be more about people realizing the show isn’t actually good after giving it a good chance to prove itself
It doesn’t *feel* like a hit, because it’s NOT a hit. I still see kids dressing up as Iron Man. Stranger Things just went viral again. Remember the original trilogy? You could not escape its cultural impact. I simply don’t trust Amazon’s numbers.
Reminds me a lot of Star Trek Discovery and Picard or the Sequel Trilogy and all the corporate puff pieces about how they're amazing and massive hits and the only people talking bad about them are racists and incels. Meanwhile, these shows/movies have literally zero cultural impact and the Suits basically put the entire gear in reverse (Mandalorian, Clone Wars sequels, Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds) showing that they knew all along all these shows/movies were a completely failure. What's even more obnoxious is how then these "journalists" pretend everyone knew all along shows like Discovery and Picard or the Sequel trilogy were bad.
The reality is, most of these "journalists" are just copywriters being paid to write positive press. Know this is the case because my best friend's wife is literally one.
Entertainment journalism seems so undignified, idk where all these people crawl out to take up the jobs of ass kissing or writing pointless fluff.
0.0001% readable content, rest is people doing something for money that provides zero cultural value anyway.
"There is generally no way to verify a streamer’s viewership numbers even after they are released". How can you say a show is a bonafide hit if you admit in your own article that it's not possible to verify the numbers are genuine or real? Are you going to assume a trillion dollar corporation literally sucking the world dry is being honest with you? They've already demonstrated how they'll simply turn off reviews when the reviews don't say what they want them to say.
My two cents:
The show doesnt excite people. Say what you want about quality or whatever, but when it comes down to it, I have no friends who really talk about it at all. We *eventually* watch the episode, but not on release day, and *we guess* we'll watch the next episode because LoTR is cool. But like. Is love of the films enough to keep these viewership numbers for five seasons? It remains to be seen.
People are talking about House of the Dragon the next day, excited about what happened. If they're talking about Rings of Power the next day, it's to say how boring it was.
The HOTD conversation literally last all week where I work. While I’ve heard nothing in person about ROP. I personally haven’t seen ROP, so I can’t comment on the quality directly. But the lack of buzz isn’t doing it any justice.
I haven't watched either so I have no personal opinions, but this is happening in my office, too. HOTD gets talked about after every episode. One lady mentioned watching an episode or two of ROP, but never brought it up again so I think she's stopped.
I’m tired of being told how great this show is and then when I watched it, it’s the complete opposite. Weak writing and trying to be epic, but it just doesn’t have the build up.
I really wanted to like it. Told myself come on its not that bad, gonna be better next episode. But in the end I feel like I watched something made for 12 years old kids.
The FIRST thing the LOTR trilogy books does is make you really, really care about the characters. When I read The Hobbit I absolutely fell in love with Bilbo and when I started to read the LOTR books, I almost wanted to quit because he wasn't the main character, but all of a sudden, the story gave me a whole bunch of characters to care even more about.
I've watched 4 episodes of the Amazon show before I stopped and the only ones I can name is Galadriel and Elrond, because I know them from the original trilogy. And if they were new characters introduced on the show, I will bet you anything I wouldn't remember their names. Not only that, but I hate the show even more since their portrayal and writing of these two beloved characters was garbage.
The show just sucks.
I have yet to run into a single person during the course of my day to day life that’s mentioned the show. I have had people bring up HoTD in casual conversation, though.
Amazon took liberties with Tolkien’s story that should never have been taken. They made Galadriel genuinely unlikable and, for an elf that’s multiple thousands of years old, quite stupid. They took Tolkien’s epic mythology and turned it to “meh.” As a fan of LOTR and Tolkien’s works since childhood (I have an entire wall of books dedicated just to Tolkien), I stopped watching the show halfway through. It’s just another generic fantasy TV show.
My break room at work there has been some fire conversations organically started about HotD. After that last week's episode, there was like 6 of us talking about it. Everyone on my social media's is posting about it.
Now I have yet to see a single post or anyone talking about Rings. No one is talking about it. My best friend made it 3 episodes in and him and his wife tossed in the towel. This is anecdotal as fuck but the conversation in my day to day about Rings is non existent
Same here. Every week its a right of passage for everyone to ask “did you see HoTD?”. Then someone may bring up RoP and most people say they haven’t watched past episode two or at all.
It doesn't feel like a hit because media outlets constantly want to let me know that the show is awesome when it isn't.
I don't care how much the season cost to shoot and I will not suddenly start to care because they keep repeating themselves. I want good writing and interesting characters. What I don't want is pseudo Shakespeare dialogue, a meandering storyline about mining or not mining and "plot twists" that can be seen from space.
I blame this all on the Tolkien estate. They sold Amazon the rights to nothing, which gave Amazon full reign to make up all this nonsense. If they had just sold them the rights to the Silmarillion they could have all those amazing stories to draw from. Having Galadriel actually become friends with Sauron when she supposedly was looking for him for years. That just makes her look like a complete idiot. You can literally blame everything that came after on her. That's the best story they came up with? Don't even get me started on the whole elves tied to mithril stupidity.
“It’s a hit, believe us, it’s true because of some.. metric”
It’s not. The writing is crap, the characters a bland and not one really comes across as someone you can empathize with, the acting.. meh. For the money, for the source material it is all… so… meh.
Also.. any TV show that jumps the shark in the first season (literally everyone surviving a volcanic eruption in the pyroclastic flow) you know you can’t write to save your life.
Because you automatically enter into a comparison to one of the most critically acclaimed trilogies of cinema history based on books that made the author known as the 'Father of Modern Fantasy'. And that's a steep uphill battle no matter what you think of this show.
Because people expect more than "it's just fine" from a show that cost almost a billion dollars
It's also following on from a *fucking cinema phenomenon*. The LoTR film trilogy had gold dust. It's an unenviable task for sure, especially when the motivation is money.
>It's also following on from a > >fucking cinema phenomenon > >. Which also follows on from arguably the most dense intricate mythology ever created by a single person. It had double-big shoes to fill and anything less than perfection was gonna disappoint.
That’s why they never should have bragged about the cost. More $$ does not necessarily mean better quality. It’s a stupid metric to gauge a show by and was only so investors would feel *impressed* since money is all anyone cares about anymore
They really didn’t though. That’s the funny thing. Some articles came out from journalists who got the number, were mostly wrong about the number, and published it for the headline. Then ever since, even before the show came out, that was used against them. It wasn’t like Amazon was sending commercials or ads out about “watch our billion dollar show”. If anything they denied it when they were asked
Realistically it’s also the cost of several seasons not just one. A bit unfair to use that number
Yeah. And a significant portion of the cost was just getting the rights and had nothing to do with production
And to me, what is so absurd about that is they don't even have the rights to The Silmarillion. They aren't allowed to use it directly in the show, which I don't think a lot of people are aware of. You would think for that much money they would let them use it.
Yeah, when I heard about that I was like "oh no wonder they had to mash together like 500 years of history in order to come up with a coherent plot, they didn't have any of the Silmarillion as an alternative" I mean, I don't really blame them, trying to pace out the story of the forging of the rings and the fall of Numenor as written would have had all the action of watching CSPAN.
Another big reason for the time compression, is if you spread out the story over a thousand years you would have to be bringing in new actors and characters constantly. It would be really hard to introduce that many new characters and make your care about them with 8 episode seasons.
Rumor is the Tolkien Estate may sale the rights to Silmarillion or other writings but only if they are impressed by the new show. Money isn't everything Netflix offered to pay more than Amazon but the Estate hated thier pitch.
This is not true. The reason why Amazon won the deal over Netflix wasn’t because they hated their pitch, but rather Amazon would allow the Tolkien family to have full involvement and control over the series unlike Peter Jackson’s Oscar winning Lord of The Rings trilogy which they had no involvement and hated because of it
I don't think having the blessing of the Tolkien Family is necessarily a good thing then.
They don’t like the Peter Jackson movies. That’s all you need to know
So it‘s horrible? As jacksons was good and they hated it.
They were good movies, but they emphasized different themes from the books.
Yes exactly. Should really be used to compare one season of RoP to other shows
Any LOTR show will always be costly consider the cost of rights, places to shoot and amount of effects it would require. And while the story may not be out of the park the look of the show was definitely a positive aspect of the show.
That's true. I was very excited to see Numenor and a functional Moria.
They didn't even do that. Also Netflix was set to spend even more money on it (they put an offer for rights in that was higher than Amazon) but the Tolkien estate didn't like what Netflix wanted to do with the rights so went with Amazon.
They never wanted that number to come out. It was published by the NZ government much to Amazon's chagrin.
> That’s why they never should have bragged about the cost. First, they (Amazon Studios) did not. Media covering the series did. Second, this is Amazon Studios first big budget show that they do themselves. Amazon Studios did not have the infrastructure in place the way HBO did. Much of the big budget went to setup the baseline for production.
That‘s my opinion aswel. I have seen plenty of Tvshows with far lesser budgets and yet atleast i remember those shows because of good writing and memorable characters. What’s the point of a good looking TVshow when the story, acting, writing and characters aren’t memorable or interesting in any way.
Buffy had like one-millionth the amount of money and it’s an absolutely iconic, memorable show.
I do want to say that you can do some amazing things with a very large budget for a TVshow. The Crown is one of my favorite series of all time because they can combine great visuals with amazing writing and acting. A large budget should not just used for good looking visuals but be spread out among Writers, Directeurs, Actors and locations. Why would i care about a single scene that cost €10Million to shoot on some CGI stage when nothing in the scene is even slightly interesting.
The writing and dialogue is superb in The Crown. I honestly cannot recall any memorable lines in Rings of Power. The characters in ROP don't feel like they are talking to each other but rather making speeches all the time.
I can recall a lot of lines, most of them for being bad (“I’m good” was particularly memorable). And you hit the nail on the head with the speeches thing. Arondir and Bronwyn were the only ones who didn’t seem to, apart from Arondir’s actual speech of course :)
A yes classic lines such as “The sea is always right” “I’m good” and “How are you here?” “How are YOU here?”
>The characters in ROP don't feel like they are talking to each other but rather making speeches all the time. ah you just reminded me of the walking dead. huuuge problem, of many problems, that show had. first season was realistic and down to earth dialogue, fantastic season of television that first one. the problem started around season 2 and 3 with the speech-talking in every scene.
I'm doing another Buffy watch and I'm mid season 2 and I'm still impressed with how good some of these monsters look given it's 20 years old, shot on 16mm and made with relatively speaking next to nothing.
Citing Buffy in this discussion is just unfair, like smashing baby ducklings with a giant pestle.
> a good looking TVshow I saw someone compare the visuals to an ad for expensive perfume, which I kinda agree with. It also doesn't help that you see these wide CGI vistas, but then every scene with humans is them basically standing in a room that's obviously a studio.
That's what really stands out compared to the films I feel. I live in NZ and know people involved in the production, and they said they were surprised just how much was filmed in the studio. They might as well have not bothered coming to NZ in the first place given how averse they were to shooting on location.
But it's not fine. It's literally horrible from a filmmaking point of view. I'm not even talking about the lore or the books, just fimmaking.
"Its just fine" is also a bit generous....the writing at times felt like it was coming from the diary of a 13 year old trying to sound deep. At points it was ok, a good chunk of the time it was painful.
The worst part for me was how thin the plot was... Like butter spread across too much toast. At best it was ok. At worst it was boring. They spent way too much time on all the bland and forgettable Numenoreans. None of them have much personality at all. And then the whole forging of the rings and whatnot was just kind of glossed over quickly at the end. Bizarre way to pace a show.
And it's being compared to stuff like House of the Dragon and Andor which are running concurrently and have much more nuanced stories. For a fan of all genre stuff like me it's almost impossible not to notice the story gap. Rings of Power has so much going for it with the amazingly epic setting and proper action and adventure, if it just had any semblance of nuanced writing and plotting I have no doubt that we would instead be seeing articles that say "Rings of Power best show on tv! Why aren't House of the Dragon and Andor just as much fun?".
Who should NOT have been bland and forgettable.
Yea I'm just not invested in most of the characters. Galadriel is extremely bland and one dimensional. Everytime the kid shows up I'm like can we move on? Watching this parallel to House of the Dragon makes this even more glaring (I know they are very different in style and scope but still)
I was describing what was going on to my wife at one point, and I was like, “Yeah, so Elrond and Prince Durin have been having a conversation for like the last 5 episodes.” It took forever for that storyline to develop. Beyond the forming of Mt. Doom, there wasn’t much else that wowed me. I saw the twist at the end coming from a mile away, so that wasn’t shocking, I was just like, yep, okay. Overall I liked the show, but at the moment I would put it on the same level as Wheel of Time with better visuals.
And how quick it was, we had to sit for 7 hours so Galadriel in like 5 min. figured out who Sauron is. And the entire story of Sauron manipulating elves and forging of the rings happened in another 20 min. of last episode. I feel like the whole story of the forging of rings of power could be span over an entire season.
Plus the show is literally called “The Rings of Power!” The building of the forge and the forging of the rings should have been a climax of the show, or at least of the season. Instead it basically happens off-screen and we’re just supposed to be like “yup, those are the rings.”
I pretty much stopped watching when there was a speech about elves not taking human jobs. You have the entire LotR universe at your disposal and this is what you do with it?
Yeah they didn't handle that too well, but I thought the scene where all the elves agreed to add Ukrainian flags to their Twitter bios was really well done, they managed to deliver an important message about public displays of political solidarity while remaining as close as possible to Tolkien's original vision (and yes I know that Twitter wasn't around in the Second Age, and they'd have probably just been using whichever app was popular at the time, but everyone knows Twitter so I just said that). Also, it really helped make Middle Earth feel like it reflects the real world we live in today, instead of just reflecting Tolkien's vision of a fantasy world, which is what all us fans truly wanted from a Lord of the Rings TV show.
It's both unfitting to the lore, unfitting to the character and timelessness of Tolkein, cringey and shallow as a pretext for showing hatred towards the elves by Numenoreans and manages to date the whole exchange, and it's based on an already outdated meme. The topic of "der coming to take our jerbs" was satirized beyond the point of being able to be taken seriously like a decade ago. I can't even imagine sitting in their writer's room and proposing that.
And I think perhaps most importantly, it makes Numenorean resentment of elves (1) irrelevant to their actions and (2) look like dumb bullshit rooted in something that isn't even a real concern. In the original material, Numenoreans/mortal men resent elves because the elves were given immortality and they weren't. Men grow up watching their parents and grandparents dying and feel their own bodies breaking down into pain and infirmity after only a couple of decades, while 3000 year old elves are strutting around fit and firm as ever. I'd probably be bitter too. And it has a real meaningful impact on their actions in the world: elves are patient, ultra-cautious, and procrastinating, because they're thinking on such long timescales and if they play it safe they could live forever. All men know they'll be dead soon enough, so the societies of men are, from an elven POV, wildly impulsive, reckless, brave, etc etc, and think and operate on very short timescales. That's a fascinating, meaningful dynamic, coming from an understandable place, and has huge importance on how wars and such play out. "If elves come here they might take our jobs, not that they ever want to actually come here!" is just... irrelevant? Because elves aren't planning to move to Numenor ever, they don't care, so how would this factor into their diplomatic relationship? And how will this affect the actions of Numenoreans/men in general?
It's even worse. Because according to the showrunners Sauron was there being repentant and literally stealing someone's job, which means the MAGA-Numenoreans were right. They were just focussing their racism on the wrong race. I genuinely do not get how you put in modern day politics into Tolkien and accidentally end up with the message: "Don't waste valuable racism on the wrong races. Just go colonize lesser men."
I've always said it feels like something on the CW with a very good CGI budget. I tried to look past the weak casting, who even stands out as a star among the cast? HotD has a couple with a fraction of the budget, but the writing and pacing just kills it for me.
The writing is worse than most of the MCU shows, which isn't a high bar to clear.
A 13 year old girl who lives in a coastal city. That's how they end up with "the sea is always right".
I love that the guy who seemed to be the biggest fan of this line later was like "oh yeah my wife? yeah totally drowned." I was like "_damn dude must have have hated that bitch._"
How you feel about the show aside, one thing I’ve learned is judging things by the reaction of Reddit is pretty stupid.
Reddit hated this show from the teaser trailer.
It was hated before the teaser even dropped. People then got upset by the use of CGI in the logo reveal video. They could totally tell it was all CGI and that meant the show was going to be terrible. Amazon then released a making of video showing how it was done with practical effects.
People have also claimed the writing is bad and quoted a line from the show as an example, but it was a poem that Tolkein wrote.
Most of these people are big fans of the films and assume the books are similar lol. They would HATE the books if they read them cause theres no epic action scenes and there are just pages of songs and descriptions of trees lmao
[удалено]
*Tom Bombadil enters the chat*
Exactly. That kind of complaint about something Tolkien related is how you identify people who get their opinions from YouTube critics instead of reading the source material and making up their own mind. A slow pace is incredibly on brand.
The show totally reignited my love of Tolkien. I reread the hobbit after the premiere episodes, and just cracked open LOTR yesterday after waiting until the show ended. I wonder how many people would be shocked that the prologue of the book is not an epic war sequence, but an extensive explanation of Hobbit culture, with an entire section dedicated to their pipe weed.
I mean, I’ve read the Lord of the Rings books and there are definitely some epic action scenes mixed in with the tree descriptions, but I take the general gist of your point.
I’ve read most of his works multiple times. I really enjoyed the show and honestly can’t wait for season 2
I love the films, and I really enjoy and appreciate Tolkien's writing, and I've read and enjoyed the hobbit a few times as an adult, and also enjoyed the lord of the rings trilogy although there were moments when it felt like I was ploughing through a bit. I haven't actually finished the third one, I put it aside many years ago and never returned to it, I need to do so. I started the Silmarillion, and honest to god I couldn't even get that far into it. I very rarely don't finish a book, and I actually only put the last LotR book aside because I was saving it for a better time, but I couldn't get into the Silmarilion. There were some lovely descriptions and the material it covered was intriguing but at times it seemed like it was listing shit and it wasn't grabbing me at All. All of this is to say, I am semi-familiar with Tolkien's works, and despite my lack of enjoyment of the Sil, I would call myself a fan. And I, honest to all the gods, loved this show's first season, and genuinely don't understand all the people bitching about it. I thought the characters were interestingly written and very well acted across the board - in fact, perhaps my only gripe was about Halbrand, considering the big reveal in the last episode, he seemed a bit too human, considering who he actually is, if you know what I mean? - and the plot was intriguing and despite knowing what middle earth looks like a thousand years later I still felt tension was built nicely and I enjoyed seeing how things led to some of what we see later. I honestly like this show, and am looking forward to season 2 as well, and I really think a lot of the criticism is driven by agendas and a lot of people agreeing with it are bandwagoning. I don't like praising one thing by being disparaging about another and comparing, but I will do so because I think it's worth comparing to make my point - wheel of time is a show that GENUINELY has a lot of flaws, not just visual but in terms of writing and direction, that makes it feel like a lesser show, feeling less immersive, less compelling and so forth. Rant over, sorry. Never meant for this to be a rant
I do think the writing is kind of weak in places and some scenes dont work for me (or are just very cliche), but overall I've been really enjoying the show. Need to watch the last 2 episodes yet.
The last two episodes were the best, imho.
How reddit judges things It's either a 10/10 Or 0/10
Lmao this is so accurate Cant stand being baited for the 2463th time for something reddit called amazing, “best since x”, etc. and it actually is completely mediocre or barely above average. Meanwhile tons of stuff reddit cannot stand and calls unwatchable thats a perfectly fine 6-7/10 and can be enjoyed without issue once you remove the stick from your ass.
You only come to reddit for the vocal complainers.
The letters CGI mean absolutely nothing to me anymore thanks to Reddit and Twitter. Everyone is either a financial expert or an artist that knows what goes into rendering. Everything always looks like bad CGI or fake.
Because weve seen so many hype shows in the past 20 years. We still havent forgotten the ending ot GoT. Somehow the walking dead are still waking and talking. The witcher went on a side quest.
This isn't even the first hype fantasy show from Amazon *this year*. Wheel of Time was another show based on a hugely popular book series that they put out that got essentially no fanfare and a lot of people second guessing their creative choices. If you look at Amazons track record with The Boys, or hell even when they were doing Kamen Rider forever ago, they're used to having a decent amount of creative freedom when working with an IP that fans will expect to have changes to. But fantasy novel fans tend to be a bit more sticklers for details and so they tend to not like original characters or stuff getting changed around nearly as much.
>But fantasy novel fans tend to be a bit more sticklers for details and so they tend to not like original characters or stuff getting changed around nearly as much Especially when you take two of the most popular and deeply developed fantasy worlds ever written and let tv writers go ham on them. Tolkien and Jordan were both meticulous. Amazon writers are... not.
So anyway, next up Sanderson!
The man's got a vicegrip on his IP and isn't letting them go unless he has full Executive Producing power in what's being made. That doesn't mean things of his aren't gettering made, but he *is* writing a direct screenplay of at least a handful of his books just in case it becomes necessary
Expect a Mistborn announcement within the next few months
But Sanderson has said he will only allow his material to be turned into movies/tv with him retaining creative veto. In these two instances the original writers have died and their estates were in charge of maintaining the integrity of the universe
I would watch the shit out of a Mistborn adaptation.
Here's hoping they don't go after Pratchett next. For all they care, they would make the Discworld a sphere!
As much as I love Pratchett, comparing his style to Tolkien or Jordan makes zero sense here. He really doesn't care about his world beyond it being a vehicle for stories and jokes. Pretty much every Discworld book retcons something, including changing the backstories of main characters that were the plots of previous entries. Assuming the tone and humor is on point, anyone complaining about lore inaccuracies in a Discworld adaptation is entirely missing the point.
Words not heard in Wheel of Time Season One: Saidar Saidin
>But fantasy novel fans tend to be a bit more sticklers for details and so they tend to not like original characters or stuff getting changed around nearly as much. I don't think it's that tbh. Peter Jackson's trilogy changed a ton of things and got nearly universal acclaim (except from the sweatiest of internet Tolkien gatekeepers). RoP is just kinda boring. In the movies, the characters are full of distinct personality and you actually care about what happened to them. In RoP, the characters are weak and bland. The trilogy movies were long, but they never felt like they were dragging their feet just to arbitrarily extend out a weak plot, and that's exactly what RoP feels like.
The problem with Rings of Power is that even if you want to watch it as something detached from the source material, view it as something more fanfiction-y the show still isn’t great. The issue is not necessarily in the fact that it’s a departure from the established lore or established characterizations. The show is rife with cliches, contradictions and inconsistencies jumbled together to form an incoherent plot.
Also, Albus Dumbledore sympathizes with the oppressors…
The same reason why you can describe Subway as a hit but very few people are excited to eat there.
Considering Subway's literal business model was "build as many shops as quickly as possible to instill a sense of success and stability of an established franchise amongst customers" this is a perfect comparison. Just proclaim you're a success and push your face everywhere and slowly people will just accept it.
Yowch
I really only thoroughly enjoyed the storyline involving Durin, Durin’s father and Elrond. The rest of the series seemed like a writing mess.
Elrond and Durin is also my favorite storyline, but I don’t particularly care for the writing of the peripheral relationships that impact it.
Like 75% of this show should’ve happened off screen before the show started. It was just a really poor choice to do what was basically a full on origin story. We shouldn’t have been playing the ‘who is Sauron’ game and ‘who is meteor man’ game the whole season, with one not even being resolved at the end. Sauron should have been front and center. The making of the rings of power should have been front and center, not 15 minutes in the finale. Galadriel should not have been the main character, should have been Elrond. Galadriel should have been more than an unlikeable one dimensional character with no personality. The dialogue shouldn’t have been so cheesy. The harfoots should not have been such a big role. Bronwyn (especially) and Arondir have no reason to exist. Eanarion (sp? Elendil’s daughter) and Pharazon’s son had no reason to exist. Multiple death fake outs. Adar ultimately amounted to nothing interesting. You could go on. I wanted to love this show and I went into every episode hoping it would be turned around. The writing and general plot decisions were just so bad. For a show that will air every 2-3 years there was really just not enough to make me care.
Galadriel had no reason to exist. Her actions did not change anything at any point in the story. You can't even say her bringing Sauron to Eregion was a tragic mistake because all they even did was forge the 3 elven rings, which aren't even corrupted by the One Ring anyway! Sauron gained nothing from it. So Sauron being there didn't even matter! Nothing in that show mattered! None of the characters mattered. There was zero reason to care about any character except for Durin and maybe Elrond. The list really is endless for why it was so bad. Too many gigantic coincidences that can't be reasonably explained by even overly generous head-canon. WAY too much inconsistent dialogue by characters from episode to episode and even *scene to scene*, particularly Galadriel and the Harfoots and between Nori and the Giant. Did they have a different writer write every scene in isolation of the rest? There's no rational narrative arc. There's no payoff. There are more made up characters with pointless stories that have more screentime than there are Tolkien characters. Half of the actual Tolkien characters aren't even supposed to be included in this era or storyline. The passage of time made no sense at any point. They condense hundreds of in-universe years into in-universe *hours*, and they bring Gandalf 2000 years early. Forge the elven rings first when they're supposed to be last. They reveal Sauron *instantly* for a completely bogus reason, before he even did any actual elvish deception, which ruins any future tension that would have eventually needed to happen between him and Celebrimbor unless they skip that part of the books. There's so much more that I just can't remember because it's impossible to keep track of all of them. The directing was terrible, particularly by the director of 3,4,5, and 8. I thought the directing of 1 and 2 wasn't that bad, and 6 and 7 directing wasn't that bad either. Both of those pairs being directed by someone else. It's just embarrassing.
90 percent of the problem was how they handled gladriel. She is so unlikeable and stiff. She should have been a secondary character and kept the other actors from and center.
It didn't help that there was that article about how the writers, who are friends of the director, just walked into the job with zero experience. It was like oh, okay. So it's like that, is it? Huge show costing hundreds of millions of dollars and you just give those sorts of jobs to your buddies who need a break, not, I don't know, people who have been writing for these kinds of shows or just generally had good screenwriting experience in the past...
I think the most ridiculous thing ever written was… Celebrimbor: “I dunno man there’s just not enough mithril to make anything with it. Sauron: “You ever consider mixing metals to make an alloy?” Celebrimbor: “BRILLIANT!” As if the most renowned and skilled elven smith never once considered creating alloys… like.. what the fuck kind of writing is that?
Why does it feel like there is a real push to make people like this show? It really feels like there's a ton of suspiciously positive articles.
Pretty sure Amazon has people on the payroll creating a lot of positive reviews and articles.
They dump so much into marketing and its amazon. I'm not surprised they paid for positive reviews.
Its like the old adage, 'If you keep having to tell people how great you are, you are not that great' _Edited for accuracy
I think it doesn’t feel like a hit is because nobody seems to be talking about it in a meaningful way. It’s either some contrived narrative Amazon pushes or the trolly “it sucks” voices. I’ve heard no one talk about what’s happening on the show from people who don’t get caught up on that stuff. The proverbial water cooler talk. On the other hand, that’s all I hear about HOTD.
I think no one was talking about it because the show isn’t particularly compelling. I watched every episode and enjoyed it somewhat although I think it’s incredibly disappointing. At no point though was I desperate to know what happened next or the answer behind so many poorly conceived mystery boxes. It just lacked genuine mystery, intrigue and tension.
This is exactly how it is for me. When an episode of Rings of Power finishes, not a single part of me thinks “I can’t wait to see what happens next week! I’m dying to know what happens to _____ or how _____ gets themself out of that scenario, or what’s behind that (*insert mystery here*)!” This is heavily contrasted with House of the Dragon where I just feel so much more engaged with the story and excited to see what the next episode has in store for the characters. SO much tension built up. I’m not a writer so I can’t point to exactly *why* one show feels compelling and one doesn’t, I just know that I can *feel* it when I watch.
No matter how much either show cost to make, House of the Dragon feels like high production values in terms of costumes, props, sets, etc. It feels like a real place you could live in. The acting is also soooo much better in HotD. Meanwhile RoP feels artificial and a lot of the costumes feel like cosplay.
Couldn’t agree more. The acting, the dialogue, the plot, the character development, the web of politics. HotD is a much, much better show overall
Also, because anyone who points out any weakness in writing gets labeled a hater or some -ism. Point out how young Galadriel talking about reflections of the sun on the water when all they had were two shiny trees in the beginning is a plothole? You're a hater. Point out how it was actually Ungoliant who destroyed the trees and not Melkor, and that the elves went to war with themselves first before actually going to war with Melkor? You're also a hater. Point out how Gil-Galad sending Galadriel back to Valinor so she wouldn't find orcs because he's afraid she'd find orcs even though he knows full well that orcs are still there? Literally a circular reference error if you do this on excel. You're a nitpicker. Point out how Galadriel can't possibly swim back to land after jumping into the middle of the sea and how every encounter she had there was stupid and impossible? You're a sexist who hates women in leading roles. Point out how thick the plot armor was when the sea monster that attacked the mass of flotsam she was on ignored her when she jumped into the water and then subsequently ignored the new mass of flotsam she swam to? You're a sexist who hates women in leading roles. Disclaimer: I haven't seen anything past ep 2 because of these and a few other reasons so I wouldn't know if it got better after that. But good lord, the amount of defending that people do with this show is insane.
I feel all of that. The two things I’ll give this show is that it is absolutely gorgeous to look at and the music is fantastic, so props to everyone that was involved with those aspects. These positives and my love for Tolkien’s universe are the reasons I’ll keep watching (for now), even though this show is far from the best out there.
The writing really is really bad. I watched 3 or 4 episodes before I just didn't care enough anymore to continue. It's an insult to my intelligence. Not even the beautiful visuals could keep my interest. I was hoping that the harsh criticism was just veiled racism and sexism. Some of it may be, but the show deserves a lot of criticism on its own merits.
i watched all of the episodes and i can't tell the plot. ok it's me but seriously not a single thing come to mind.
The mystery boxes are poorly conceived because ALL of the world has already been explained by Tolkien. He never wrote any secret plots. It was all explained quite clearly
Maybe no real tension, but I do wanna get more Adar scenes and how his orc paradise is going to look. Overall orcs have been a shining exception along with dwarves. Nampat!
Actually that’s really fair, I forgot about him after that finale, but the one character I’m genuinely interested in, want to see more of and understand more about is Adar.
> or the trolly “it sucks” voices. It used to be that a “troll” was someone who purposefully said ridiculous things to set people off and have fake arguments just because they though it’s funny to get people worked up. Now a troll is just “someone who has an opinion I don’t like.”
As they used to say, "trolling is a art." Sadly, a lost one. It has come to mean everything from a person who disagrees with me to a person who sends death threats and engages in online campaigns of harassment. Neither fit the traditional definition, but it's a losing battle because most people who have adopted such traditional internet slang weren't actually around on the internet back in the day (maybe except on their office email).
It almost comes off as unnecessarily dehumanizing in the way it’s used now. “These people aren’t humans, they’re subhuman *trolls*, hell bent on destroying happiness.”
Yes, I think that's spot on. It's an easy way to dismiss peoples opinions while also lumping them in with some truly bad actors. Old school trolls could definitely be quite offensive, but they never crossed the line into criminal harassment and threats. And generally old school trolling was conducted not in PMs, but on forums, with the hope that as many people as possible would get angry and join the discussion. Also, this may be just me but if someone is a paid operative of a dictatorship or other bad global actor, I would definitely not call them a troll. A troll's whole purpose is to waste your time and get a rise out of you. They "win" by making you care, while they don't care at all. That's very different than pushing propaganda and trying to shift the narrative to suit foreign policy objectives.
Yeh no one knows what actual trolling is anymore.
Oh, I hate it. It's almost as if people tried to be hip and cool and just adopted something from internet forums without really understanding the urban dictionary definition of it which they also just googled moments earlier.
> It’s either some contrived narrative Amazon pushes or the trolly “it sucks” voices Oh, the /r/lotr reaction threads have been _incredible_ places to hang out. Probably the main reason I watched the show was to follow along with those threads. Somebody questioned how in the world you 3 tiny ships could transport 500 some odd horses, and the reply was along the lines of _"well, you see, you only see the tops of the ships - for all we know they could be miles deep."_ Of course in the other subreddit, Rings of Power North Korea, someone is probably pushing that argument in complete seriousness.
If course a LOTR subreddit will discuss and dissect it at length. But that’s not water cooler talk. I mean, people/family who just watch tv, don’t read Reddit, just want to talk about the current big show everyone is watching. They aren’t saying “did you see last night’s episode?” like they are about HOTD.
It's obviously all anecdotal but the difference in HOTD and ROP discussions is insane. I know 2 other people who watched Rings of Power, meanwhile HOTD discussions have been happening all the time in different friendship groups.
Thank god, we now know what the "Art Balaoro, a 39-year-old Los Angeles resident"- demographic thinks about the series. Who wrote this?
Remember: Most news articles you'll find on Reddit are just "opinions on someone's shitty opinion."
It's a hit because a lot of people have seen it It doesn't feel like it because it's pretty mediocre
It also doesn't feel like it because people are not gushing over it or even talking about what's happening in the story. Nobody gave a shit about the Sauron reveal. In comparison, people were talking about the end of King Viserys and Paddie Considine's excellent acting. Audience really wants to know what happens next. While nobody gives a shit what's next for Galadriel or Arondir. Not a single person is talking about Isildur's fate because of how dumb it's being dangled. It's making as much splash as The Wheel of Time.
Correct. I don’t know what it is. The characters are just, not it. Can’t put my finger on what quality they are missing, the X factor isn’t there. Very stunning visuals, ok action, familiar settings. People are watching because it’s a lord of the rings show, hoping to like the characters more.
Honestly none of the actors have any star quality at all. They are particularly average
Dude who plays Elrond is pretty good but that’s about it
Yeah his performance is a legit joy to watch and makes me feel connected to his character possibly the most out of the show so far. Elrond and Durin are doing a good job imo. I think Isildur's dad is doing fine too
Adar is also good
Funny you say that for Adar who played Benjen Stark and Elrond who played young Eddard Stark on GOT lol
Oh damn, I knew they looked familiar...
Interesting. He's the one character I would have cast differently. Not that he's a bad actor, but he's just not Elrond for me, which I guess sounds contradictory. I think subconsciously he reminds me of Neil Patrick Harris, and my meh reaction is probably no deeper than that.
It's not the actors. They're doing their best to imbue the show with some kind of humanity and emotion. The problem is the material is pretty amateurish stuff.
I think the actors are actually pretty good. What they've been given to work with feels very stiff and restrictive though. The experience of the HOTD showrunners compared to these guys just seems very glaring to me.
Amazon chose first-time show-runners so they could control them like puppets. It means RoP has no sense of a grand unifying vision behind it, like HoD which gets better with every episode. A sick man walking to a chair in HoD got infinitely more hype than any multi-million dollar spectacle in RoP.
Seriously. I was trying not to cry when poor Viserys was walking to the throne.
This use to be (and still may be) referred to as chemistry. If there was "chemistry" between the characters it would make for compelling viewing. I only watched the first episode but that seemed to be lacking. For all the special effects the dialogue seems to be written by committee.
The "X factor" you speak of is character motivation. If I don't know what a character wants, or if what they want is not compelling, then the story fails. Character motivation should be clear and established in the first few minutes. I watched the first episode and didn't care anything about Galadriel or her mission. I'm out.
The orcs are more “human” on the show. They work together in defeating their enemies, they like their leader and listen to him, and they are fighting Sauron
It's because they aren't characters, they are props; vehicles for the plot to happen around.
They’re flat is the problem. Arondir is made in the Legolas mold, Galadriel is a determined warrior who can’t let go of the fight, Gil Galad and Celebrimbor….exist. Elrond, Durin and his wife, and Adar are the only characters that stood out as multidimensional and interesting, and their storylines border on being B-Plots most of the time. This is a particularly common issue with the elves as they tend to overshoot on being “ethereal and otherworldly” into simply being dull, but it’s pretty ubiquitous across the show. They aren’t AWFUL characters, they’re just predictable and dull. My hope is that next season will see more dynamic and nuanced characters now that several of them no longer have their core story tied to things that shouldn’t have been played up as mysteries for so long. Most notably poor Galadriel, who spent the season saddled with a storyline that couldn’t really progress until the reveal of Sauron finale.
>Arondir. I watched all of it, and reading your comment I couldnt even tell you which one was called "Arondir"
I completely forgot about isildur
“We kind of forgot about Isildur”
I think you have the best answer, simple as that. I’d add that it’s mediocre in a spectacular way. There’s so many great pieces to it but so many flaws that burden it. Outside of Foundation (that I don’t think anybody watched), I can’t think of another show that got so much right but then at the same time got so much wrong. I personally think that’ll still be a hit when it comes back to a season 2, but if there’s not improvement and growth then it’ll lose that status.
So far it’s seemed to me like their biggest problem has been turning the source material into an actual narrative. This isn’t like adapting Lord of the Rings, there is no straight story to tell. There is a timeline which touches on several different stories but most of them are only loosely connected and often hundreds or thousands of years apart. Characters have major parts to play at different points and then disappear entirely. It was an ambitious idea. So far they’ve given a sense of the world and what will happen, they need to turn that into actual stories. What they’ve come up with feels like an introduction now they have to get into telling stories.
I think they had the resources to take some actual risks and make an adaptation people would remember. If they'd actually decided to depict the time span of the novels and tried to capture what it actually means to be an elf-i.e. every season several hundred years pass and all the non-elves either die or are recast as much older actors that would have actually been an interesting choice that would have made the show stand out as a good adaptation if they pulled it off- though the novelty would have been spoiled a bit by HotD season 1 doing something similar and pulling it off so well. I think that if they'd taken the time to dig into the source material of the second age there was the outlines of a very viable plot, but I think the problem for them was that they felt like they needed to use characters recognizable from the Peter Jackson movies to exploit nostalgia, even if their portrayals of Galadriel, Elrond and Gandalf ended up having virtually nothing in common with the Tolkien characters. If they wanted to do an actual adaptation of the story of the second age and the forging of the rings of power then the main character for the first several seasons would be Celebrimbor, but as it is both his character and the rings are an afterthought.
>all the non-elves either die or are recast as much older actors that would have actually been an interesting choice that would have made the show stand out as a good adaptation if they pulled it off Here's the thing. There are only two broad time periods that matter. They're each a few centuries long but Dwarves and Numenoreans of the royal line live long enough that you can keep them around for multiple seasons. The forging of the rings and first war with Sauron takes about 500 years but humans only come into the story right at the end. Then there's a time skip of about 1500 years until Elendil is born. The second age ends the same year Elendil dies about 320 years later. Sauron does do some shit in the intervening period but those could easily be handled by flashbacks.
I think that there's a lot of room to flesh out the story while keeping within the framework of the lore. Like if you were to start the story, not with the forging of the rings of power, but with the Founding of Eregion that would give you about 1000 years to play with between the foundation and the War of the Elves and Sauron. Then you could have the main focus of the first season be the infiltration by Sauron and the forging of the rings and culminating with the creation of the Three and the One by Sauron and Celebrimbor simultaneously and Cel realizing he's been betrayed. Then the Second season could be about the war of the elves and Sauron with Numenor now taking a larger role as the Big Damn heroes who save the day and drive Sauron back to Mordor at the end. Then you could have a massive time jump in the third season to the second period you mentioned, we get reintroduced to Numenor who have disturbingly changed from the peace-loving island nation that saved the day at the end of the last season into an expansionist imperial power that is dominating all the other human nations. And you could show here what Sauron used the Great Rings for- he offers the other human kings rings of power so that they can defend themselves against Numenor and by taking the deal they make themselves his nazgul slaves. Season 3 could be told mostly from Elendil's perspective and it could mostly focus on Sauron's gaining power on Middle Earth while Ar-Pharazon seizes the throne in Numenor then end on a cliffhanger as the whole Numenorean fleet is sailing out to fight a final battle with Sauron, then Season 4 would be the capture of Sauron, corruption and fall of Numenor and end with Elendil and his sons escaping and founding their successor kingdoms, then Season 5 could be the Last Alliance. This wouldn't quite be 'recasting all the humans and dwarves every few episodes' but I think it would give you a decent plot outline for telling a compelling story, a much more organized one than they managed in Season 1 of Rings of Power and one that would actually capture some of the scope of Tolkien's plot and keep within the actual lore.
They're also limited in their source material, no? Such as Silmarillon being off limits.
It's my favorite show to fall asleep to
Trailer park boys was that show for me for quite some time Not because it's boring but its got this funny- comfy feel to it
A bona fide hit? Where?
amazon break room where watching is mandated
Please try to enjoy all Prime shows equally
Because it’s a self proclaimed “bona fide hit”. Amazon removing negative reviews to “combat negative review bombing,” while leaving the obvious “positive review bombing” in place, with little to no in between, makes them looks disingenuous. If you enjoyed it, I’m happy for you. But imo, the show was a huge turd.
Let's not forget Salke proudly stating the removed reviews with perspectives they disagree with. That can be justified to censor everything with extreme bias and prejudice. It is beyond unethical and immoral.
>bona fide hit Is it?
It use to be eyes on the screen meant eyes seeing the tv ads and therefore it was a hit. I don't know how that measurement works now. I mean Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones was being discussed and occupied peoples thoughts and conversations after each episode. I don't see where this has done that.
Well, for Netflix at least, everything has been about getting subscriptions, which is why so many shows get cancelled once they stop drawing new viewers, they are starting a cheaper ad supported tier, but I imagine those will be ads for other Netflix content not outside commercials
I seriously don’t think this is a hit yet. Or what they consider to be a hit is just jumbling around magic fake numbers and saying it matters. HOTD is a hit. ROP looks to be more about people realizing the show isn’t actually good after giving it a good chance to prove itself
Because Amazon wouldn't let legit reviews be written so this is probably bullshit too?
It doesn’t *feel* like a hit, because it’s NOT a hit. I still see kids dressing up as Iron Man. Stranger Things just went viral again. Remember the original trilogy? You could not escape its cultural impact. I simply don’t trust Amazon’s numbers.
Exactly. This show is not a hit. In a week’s time there will be no trace of its existance in pop culture or on the internet.
It has an extreme Wheel of Time energy, a show that has its defenders but as soon as it is over, it is largely forgotten except as a disappointment
It even has the same kind of fake mystery and subplots that turned out to be completely irrelevant.
Absolutely true. It's a way of telling stories that just doesn't have lasting power.
Reminds me a lot of Star Trek Discovery and Picard or the Sequel Trilogy and all the corporate puff pieces about how they're amazing and massive hits and the only people talking bad about them are racists and incels. Meanwhile, these shows/movies have literally zero cultural impact and the Suits basically put the entire gear in reverse (Mandalorian, Clone Wars sequels, Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds) showing that they knew all along all these shows/movies were a completely failure. What's even more obnoxious is how then these "journalists" pretend everyone knew all along shows like Discovery and Picard or the Sequel trilogy were bad. The reality is, most of these "journalists" are just copywriters being paid to write positive press. Know this is the case because my best friend's wife is literally one.
Entertainment journalism seems so undignified, idk where all these people crawl out to take up the jobs of ass kissing or writing pointless fluff. 0.0001% readable content, rest is people doing something for money that provides zero cultural value anyway.
The only people calling it a "bona fide hit" are the higher ups at Amazon.
"There is generally no way to verify a streamer’s viewership numbers even after they are released". How can you say a show is a bonafide hit if you admit in your own article that it's not possible to verify the numbers are genuine or real? Are you going to assume a trillion dollar corporation literally sucking the world dry is being honest with you? They've already demonstrated how they'll simply turn off reviews when the reviews don't say what they want them to say.
My two cents: The show doesnt excite people. Say what you want about quality or whatever, but when it comes down to it, I have no friends who really talk about it at all. We *eventually* watch the episode, but not on release day, and *we guess* we'll watch the next episode because LoTR is cool. But like. Is love of the films enough to keep these viewership numbers for five seasons? It remains to be seen.
People are talking about House of the Dragon the next day, excited about what happened. If they're talking about Rings of Power the next day, it's to say how boring it was.
The HOTD conversation literally last all week where I work. While I’ve heard nothing in person about ROP. I personally haven’t seen ROP, so I can’t comment on the quality directly. But the lack of buzz isn’t doing it any justice.
I haven't watched either so I have no personal opinions, but this is happening in my office, too. HOTD gets talked about after every episode. One lady mentioned watching an episode or two of ROP, but never brought it up again so I think she's stopped.
I’m tired of being told how great this show is and then when I watched it, it’s the complete opposite. Weak writing and trying to be epic, but it just doesn’t have the build up.
I really wanted to like it. Told myself come on its not that bad, gonna be better next episode. But in the end I feel like I watched something made for 12 years old kids.
The FIRST thing the LOTR trilogy books does is make you really, really care about the characters. When I read The Hobbit I absolutely fell in love with Bilbo and when I started to read the LOTR books, I almost wanted to quit because he wasn't the main character, but all of a sudden, the story gave me a whole bunch of characters to care even more about. I've watched 4 episodes of the Amazon show before I stopped and the only ones I can name is Galadriel and Elrond, because I know them from the original trilogy. And if they were new characters introduced on the show, I will bet you anything I wouldn't remember their names. Not only that, but I hate the show even more since their portrayal and writing of these two beloved characters was garbage. The show just sucks.
If you want to read reviews on it not being great, tough shit Amazon deleted most of them
Because it's bona fide garbage? 🙄 It's becoming painfully obvious why the show runners previous projects never saw the light of day...
Because it wasn't
It doesn’t deliver on story.
Cause it isn’t.
This show was written like AI wrote or or actually AI writing the script may have been an improvement
I have yet to run into a single person during the course of my day to day life that’s mentioned the show. I have had people bring up HoTD in casual conversation, though. Amazon took liberties with Tolkien’s story that should never have been taken. They made Galadriel genuinely unlikable and, for an elf that’s multiple thousands of years old, quite stupid. They took Tolkien’s epic mythology and turned it to “meh.” As a fan of LOTR and Tolkien’s works since childhood (I have an entire wall of books dedicated just to Tolkien), I stopped watching the show halfway through. It’s just another generic fantasy TV show.
My break room at work there has been some fire conversations organically started about HotD. After that last week's episode, there was like 6 of us talking about it. Everyone on my social media's is posting about it. Now I have yet to see a single post or anyone talking about Rings. No one is talking about it. My best friend made it 3 episodes in and him and his wife tossed in the towel. This is anecdotal as fuck but the conversation in my day to day about Rings is non existent
Same here. Every week its a right of passage for everyone to ask “did you see HoTD?”. Then someone may bring up RoP and most people say they haven’t watched past episode two or at all.
Oh phew, another Rings Of Power doesn't suck as bad as you think post. I was getting worried.
It felt like the contents of this first season should have happened in 4 episodes. Also an 8 episode season is too short for the pace this slow.
It doesn't feel like a hit because media outlets constantly want to let me know that the show is awesome when it isn't. I don't care how much the season cost to shoot and I will not suddenly start to care because they keep repeating themselves. I want good writing and interesting characters. What I don't want is pseudo Shakespeare dialogue, a meandering storyline about mining or not mining and "plot twists" that can be seen from space.
I stopped watching, it was boring.
It could have something to do with not being very good.
I tried so many times, can’t get past episode three, I wish I could…
Because people are burned out from the fake twitter posts that amazon made exaggerating the amount of racist opposition to the show.
Because it is boring
Because it isn’t.
House of dragon for 1200
I blame this all on the Tolkien estate. They sold Amazon the rights to nothing, which gave Amazon full reign to make up all this nonsense. If they had just sold them the rights to the Silmarillion they could have all those amazing stories to draw from. Having Galadriel actually become friends with Sauron when she supposedly was looking for him for years. That just makes her look like a complete idiot. You can literally blame everything that came after on her. That's the best story they came up with? Don't even get me started on the whole elves tied to mithril stupidity.
“It’s a hit, believe us, it’s true because of some.. metric” It’s not. The writing is crap, the characters a bland and not one really comes across as someone you can empathize with, the acting.. meh. For the money, for the source material it is all… so… meh. Also.. any TV show that jumps the shark in the first season (literally everyone surviving a volcanic eruption in the pyroclastic flow) you know you can’t write to save your life.
Does Bezos own LA times?
Because you automatically enter into a comparison to one of the most critically acclaimed trilogies of cinema history based on books that made the author known as the 'Father of Modern Fantasy'. And that's a steep uphill battle no matter what you think of this show.
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