Posted on 09/05/2022 12:32:35 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
Where’s a wizard to fight trolls when you need one?
The mega-budget fantasy series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is under fire from some of its viewers. A day after the first two episodes of Amazon’s billion-dollar baby debuted on Prime Video, the show’s average audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is a “rotten” 37 percent, and reviews on Amazon have been outright suspended.
Compare that score to TV critics giving the show a very fresh 83 percent average, and many of the reviews were highly enthusiastic (“It’s great: a gorgeously immersive and grandly ambitious spectacle, packed with stunning imagery and compelling plot threads,” wrote TV Line). The Hollywood Reporter dubbed the first two episodes a rather successful, promising start.
The scores come a couple weeks after Marvel’s She-Hulk was declared review bombed on the site, with 88 percent critics score and an initial 36 percent audience score.
How The Rings of Power is doing on Amazon’s own user review ecosystem is not yet clear because the company has taken the unusual step of suspending user ratings for the show. An Amazon source says reviews are being held 72 hours to help weed out trolls and to ensure each review is legitimate. The source later claimed Prime Video started the policy this summer on all its shows.
“Review bombing” is when a group of online users post numerous negative reviews for a product or service due to its perceived cultural or political issues rather than its actual quality. Perusing Rotten Tomatoes’ audience reviews for Rings of Power, there are some one-star entries that meet the definition. “They wanted to involve such an important work with current politics and they have succeeded,” reads an example.
(Excerpt) Read more at hollywoodreporter.com ...
There's nothing new to offer in terms of storytelling.
Peter Jackson had done it 20 years ago. So what is Amazon doing with the story right now?
You don’t have to be racist to notice that dwarves spend a lot of time deep underground where the sun don’t shine, so would derive no benefit from heavy melatonin.
On the other hand, I seem to remember something from the final battle in The Return of the King, where Tolkien mentions the Haradrim of the Southlands, dark and proud.
The true magic of Tolkien's world is that his stories begin literally with the creation of the world by God (and he's made it clear that his god is God), with massive things happening long before the events of LOTR. So there are plenty of stories to tell about what happened before the events of LOTR.
By the way, Tolkien's "creation" story is absolutely beautiful. It is basically God singing, and joined by his angels, and the shape of the world is made by the songs they sing. And of course, his Lucifer figure, Morgoth, doesn't like the song God is singing, and wants to sing his own discordant tune....
Anyway, the reason so many Tolkien fans are upset is because there was so much more that could have been done well.
What they’re doing makes perfect sense.
Ignoring Tolkien apparently. The aficionados are more on top of that than am I.
True. But they will have to determine the direction they are going in. Game of Thrones, it was clear. It was a giant chess match and everyone was fighting over the throne.
The whole thing about Gil-Galad essentially exiling Galadriel back to Valinor was bizarre.
It’s generic comic book fantasy borrowing a few Tolkien character and place names, otherwise it’s spun from used toilet tissue.
Blasphemous garbage
The melatonin of dwarves? What a weird thing to obsess on while watching a show about magic and dragons.
To me it was like someone wrote a bare script outline;
Some one else came a long and plugged in some more lines;
Then they picked a place where they could make some pretty CGI;
Some one else hired a bunch of daytime soap actors that insisted on looking the same so their fans would recognize them - except the whole idea of their ‘fans’ was a publicists idea to keep them happy;
Marketing came along and asked how they were going to sell that mess;
Some one said just say it an adaption of a work by a famous writer, after casting around a bit then came up with Tolkien;
And that’s how it was sold - a work by Tolkien. “You’ll love it, Jeff,” they said.
My wife, who did her college thesis on Tolkien was also impressed. We have both read the Silmarillion. This series has so many elements from that tome. I dare say...anyone who trashes this production has not read it nor do they really understand Tolkien.
Just my humble opinion. I'll watch as many as Amazon can give while I wait for Ringworld.
I been watching and it seems okay to me. I think it’s at least derived from the prequel to the LOTR trilogy, The Silmarillion. It’s the back story to Galadriel, Elrond, the Hobbits, probably Gollum and Sauron. I haven’t seen anything that really twists my shorts.
I made some fun of it and posted some 4Chan memes but I did wind up watching the first episode.
It was better than I expected, and a helluva lot better than "Wheel of Time" which was intended to be a major Amazon franchise.
It's no "Game of Thrones" but episode 1 didn't completely suck either.
And, yes, a multicultural cast is kinda to be expected in 2022 but it wasn't totally woke.
I'll probably give it a chance. And FWIW, other that "The Hobbit" I've not read any other Tolkien books and I still have yet to see the Peter Jackson films so I'm not really up on the lore.
I watched part of the first episode. It was all I could deal with.
The episode varies between being boring to the point of falling asleep, to being laugh-out-loud absurd; and throw in a dollop of not so great acting.
There’s a black elf who could be a stand-in for Don Lemon.
The Harfoots, which I guess are supposed to be proto-Hobbits, seem to have Irish accents, but they look like recycled Not from Stargate SG-1; or perhaps hair conditioner hasn’t been invented yet.
And the Galadriel character, who seems to be one of the major characters, is both a rather poor actress and she portrays a character who manages to be both a Karen and a Mary Sue. She has a permanent bitchy attitude and is portrayed as some flawless character, which makes her both boring and unlikable.
“LOL, nope.”
Speaking of “Nope”, don’t bother with that, either. Another one of Jordan Peele’s horrible diversity, inclusion and equity films. He’s the 21st century’s Spike Lee, except possibly worse.
I have watched She-Hulk (a comedy, but a waste of Tatiana Maslany’s talents) and the 1st 2 episodes of Rings of Power and have enjoyed both (although skin color does not appear heredity in Rings). Neither deserve the criticism I see folks giving them.
Gender confused Hobbits and Elfs?
I’ll pass.
Or "Little black Sambo"? Tee-hee.
Poncy Hairdressers?
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