Yeah, that's something crazy. They're acting like Galadriel is young because it's the Second Age. They refuse to acknowledge she's already thousands and thousands of years old and studied under Melian in the First Age. She was born under the Trees, and so is probably much more than 3,000 years old by the Second Age, since a 'year' under the trees was much, much longer than it is in Middle Earth after the fall of the Trees.
@@ghrosenb I find it so odd that the writers of the show would look at the character and think: We need to get rid of all that wisdom BS and get some more human adolascence in there. Yeah, that would be so much better.
thank you for pointing this out; there is so much bad writing and forced acting polluting the mind of the viewer, plunging him in such a bottomless abyss of suspension of disbelief, that what should be an obvious paradoxical character trait gets forgotten..
That is what baffles me. I can´t understand how critics defend this as a good show, when it´s just not. Forget the Tolkien disrespect, on its own it is just not a good show.
They are all(creators and critics) in the same club and if the show promotes the clubs endorsed politics it is automatically good. It is an industry infested with nepotism, toxic positivity and upwards failing. If you are in the club it doesn't matter how bad your actual work is, you will be rewarded and promoted.
Follow the money - then you understand :-) There is also no possible way that the show could ever get a 6.9 on Imdb and whats more: it is still sitting on 6.9... Follow the money -> Imdb was baought by Amazon in 1998...
I think in another video she described it as Harlequin Romance in Tolkien skin. I'm quite into the history of print fiction, particularly the pulps era. I wanted to laugh, it's so far beyond trash tv and well into the realm of trash pulp fiction. And at least there was some gold in amongst the print pulp. Theres nothing at all in pulp tv. It really is history repeating, an industry where quantity and return are the only considerations. It killed print fiction, it killed broadcast tv, and it will kill these "intellectual property farms" pretending to be film studios. Oh, that quote may have been about the Acolyte. Harlequin in Star Wars Skin. But the point stands so l leave it there.
In 1980 I was a teen and loved The Hobbit and TLOTR books. Then I was excited to sit by the radio at lunchtime in the UK for 26 straight weeks to listen to the TLOTR radio play. Then the animated movie had a rerelease in cinemas and I went to see that and loved it. Then the Jackson movies came out 20 years later and I loved them. I love TLOTR. But this show oozes hatred for the IP and it oozes hatred for the audience. I actually feel icky after watching even a few minutes of it.
@@NR-rv8rz that's cool you got it to evolve with the different ways they told the story..until Amazon got there smiley hands on it..for what reason I can not figure out. It was not for money they didn't need money it must have been for control and division of Tolkien's true fan base..at least you know enough that you only have to take on board what you want to..we don't have to call this garbage. LORD OF THE RINGS.. and no one can force us to do so
@@aboutafew On a corporate level, Amazon wanted a great IP and to make a great show. But the Woke mind rot is set into many large companies and enforced by the likes of Black Rock who control the purse strings. All it takes is a few poisonous minds to occupy HR, produce, director, writer and casting positions and even a diamond can be turned into a turd. These people do not love TLOTR. They just love power and they resent the love fans have for it and so want to infect it with their own sick minded vision. They don't even see it as TLOTR, they just see it as 'a beloved property that has cloud' and they want to invade and occupy.
I love the movies but I wouldn't mind and I kind of hope that we will get some sort of animated version one day that tells the story from the books. Maybe it wouldnt work but I feel it would at least work for me.
Do you remember the old animated movie of The Hobbit? I think i listened to the play. I had something audio recording wise but it was in the 80s and i was a kid, i can’t quite remember which one i had… Edit: Reread your comment, lol… you saw it
OMFG thank you!! I felt like that was the biggest snub ever!! I feel like they took every bit of his work and just said “ let’s do it like that , but wait “opposite “.
The very moment they started to ship Galadriel with Sauron was when I stopped watching this show entirely. Amazon wants me to feel sorry for the literal devil, and "shipping" him with Galadriel, the whole Haladriel thing is disgusting and extremely hateful towards Tolkien who we all know was a devout Christian. I heard of a story that Tolkien once got a silver cup from a fan with the black speech of the One Ring on it and he refused to drink out of it because to him his characters were literal day and night, shipping a good character with an evil one, well that would rightfully piss me off if I was The Professor as well.
Exactly. I can understand a Sauron attracted to the elves, but Galadriel attracted to a shape-shifted Sauron is awkward and out of character. Tolkien did not finish the biography of Galadriel and the sketch of her role in the War of the Silmarilli, however he left guidelines about her character: Galadriel was not like her cousins Aredhel or the sons of Fëanor. Galadriel was proud but not reckless. She was athletic and brave, but preferred to play with caution on a chess board before taking a sword. Unfortunately, I have argued with some people who like RoP and think that Tolkien's version of Galadriel is boring. They want a Reylo shipping.
Your side would by far 99% of the time, make money attacking their side, rather than bring up your own side. No one exists to support original things. They only make their stuff. Your side only critiques their stuff. In a real way, they did win. You still only talk about them; even if it is negatively.
The whole premise of the series itself was coming from Tolkien's estate. Tolkien's estate were offering rights to several outlets (HBO,Netflix etc..) for a potential tv series. So, all these networks pitched their "crazy" ideas to the estate. Amazon didn't pitch any specific stories but (Bezos and his team) promised to work closely with the Tolkien's estate to ensure the Tolkien's legacy is protected. So yeah, that's what happened. A lot of these critiques are coming from the lack of that understanding or research about "production timeline". The ones who refused to review knew it already. It's like harry potter's bookfan criticizing Warner Bros movie version for working with JK Rowling, nobody does that. Its their right and the creative decision was agreed upon by the owners themselves(Tolkien's estate).
The answer is yes, but they get lost in the flood of submissions. Things have exploded ever since the word processor, internet, ease of publishing and public social platforms. Franchises like Harry Potter, The Expanse etc are now mixed in with inexperienced writers and AI-generated droll. For me the '3-Body Problem' was the only uniquely pleasant thing that has come out in the last 5-6 years.
@@naz6james570the Tolkien estate was wrong. Maybe they were duped by Amazon into thinking it would be something else. I expect the estate has seller's remorse.
The writers and show runners are creating the story for themselves, not the audience. They want to take Tolkien's basic framework for fantasy and use it to flesh out their own ideas. They're riding his coat tails, so to speak, while trying to redesign the coat itself. I still feel this could have been a popular show if they had just stayed true to the lore, since that is what people want to see: the real Middle Earth. Not a politically corrected version. Both the fans and those that haven't read the books.
This has been an issue for a while esp around the various California and Washington creative studios producing flop after flop. and we are now seeing the consequence several years later. Disney for example had so much trouble with the main Burbank division now, they shifted to doing Moana 2 in Canada. Boss got demoted. Sony game division, headquarter in California just had made one of biggest bombs 200-400m invested with barely a few thousand people playing their game for their newly acquired WA studio, amount paid was undisclosed. Boss got demoted as well.
@@blaxpoitation8528 I liked legend of the seeker and shannara chronicles! probably because i knew nothing of where they came from. I learned later that shanna was a book series no? And i dont really like RoP, some scenes are kinda good, rest is meh. To me, i thought those series were just a random dude wanting to make a fantasy series, thought it was fine
@@blaxpoitation8528 nice. I like both - Austin Butler in elf ears is... special. But they ain't epic fantasy done a la Peter Jackson, more like Xena but without the sass.
I'm a little surprised at Grace Randolph... She's usually a champion of anything with even a remote hint of DEI about it. Perhaps Amazon's cheque got lost in the post?
TBH she's facing lashback from more and more of her viewers and subscribers. The blind-championing got so bad it affected even those followers of hers with an IQ of less than 70 - thus she had to pull back for a while on her narrative, and even she can't set the bar below the bottom of the barrel.
TRue but Grace, annoying as she might be, seems actually honest. Praises things she likes, it just happens she likes DEI, there are people like that. I don't like her but I've heard her criticizing things for "too much feminism". I think it was about She Hulk.
One of the best things about Sauron was that he was basically an enigmatic character. But modern day writers want to explore (poorly) characters to the point the interest is diluted.
it's also that in a lot of ways he's not actually the protagonist. He's technically the main villain, but none of the characters ever interact with him directly. He's more of a symbol than he is an actual character. Evil in Tolkien's universe was never something you beat by sticking it with a sword Which is why Tolkien's work is so timeless, because it's a very adult way to look at the internal struggle everyone goes through. The good guys are the good guys because they choose to do the good thing even when it's really damn hard. Sauron's role in the story is to put pressure on the heroes so they can have their heroic moments, he's not the final boss at the end of a video game. Sauron in Rings of Power is a mustache twirling villain with poorly defined motives who only succeeds because his opponents are idiots.... that's a far, far less mature way to write a villain. And ultimately far more boring.
Yeah good point..we did know a lot about him when you look at what Tolkien left us..the whole lord of gifts thing and a lot of his past was told to us.. there was a heap of stuff to critique we didn't need new law that was not Canon
Sauron was remote in the Third Age as presented in LotR, but the appendix makes clear that he was personally involved in subverting well-meaning people and societies in the Second Age. That's a big, difficult theme with all sorts of political analogies today, and it would have been fascinating to see even a half-decent writer tackle it. Instead the hack duo simply ignored it.
Zero respect for the source material and the lore. They have just treated JRRT’s works like generic “IP”. Basically a brand to be milked. They assumed that as long as they could slap Tolkien on a pile of crap the nerds would buy it. EFF these guys!
I think they've tried to create a show to rival the size and popularity of Got. Now, apart from the obvious differences in writing ability, world-building and general respect for source material, they've forgotten one fundamental difference, everyone already knows how THIS story ends!
I think the most frustrating part is that it would've taken very little effort for them to just do it right. They have everything in place and it takes just as much effort to do it incorrect and deviate that it would to do it correctly.
The show is a wank-stained selfie, full of preening self-regard of the bloated writers, cast, and most of all, the show-runners. Turgid writing, meandering directionless plots, girl bosses galore, men downgraded and made to look like supine fools. Self-regarding junk; it looks like Tolkien but has nothing to do with Tolkien and everything to do with the social politics of millionaires who feel themselves to be oppressed.
It's amazing that it's called Rings of Power, but the people that will be wearing them are generally not introduced and characterized. The one elf should've been in season one instead of the whole Harfoot nonsense and 6 of the dwarves should've been introduced somewhere as well. They're all just set dressing...
its the Anti fargo - Fargo is a well written drama with strange twists and turns that actually make sense because of the developed characters and the only thing they have changed from the source is the names. RoP is a non sensical mystery box /drama with inane twists and events that happen solely for plot and against all reason, and the only thing not changed from the source is the names.
You normally can't resell the rights to a franchise, unless the agreement states that it is possible. I'd wager both Amazon and the Tolkien estate didn't see a need, or think that it wouldn't be wise, to insert a rights-transfer (which is not reselling per se) clause.
@@thiefofa1073 I'd like to know how the Tolkien estate really feels about this. I'm sure they love the money but JRR's corpse must be fine powder by now from turning over so much.
They’re not just making up bad fan fiction, they are actively taking the piss! Look at Cirdan…not a lot of coverage in the books, but a fair bit is made about him being the only bearded elf and being one of the oldest. But it was exactly that bare description that added so much to the imagination. So when he first appeared I thought great! They got that bit right. Next scene they show him shaving his beard. Completely unnecessary to the story, and serves only to give fans another reason to switch off.
I am black and i read all Tolkiens work growing up including the silmarilion and this show is straight trash they have completed re-wrote Tolkiens work for modern audience's, we just want faithful adaptations not just throw LGBT and black people in it for no apparently reason make this show make sense 😂😂😂😂 worse show ever it actually makes the acolyte look good 😮 no one likes the rings of power absolute 0 out of 10 😢
There is a reason they don't follow Tolkien's work. The Second Age is best described in The Silmarillion and that is what people expected. But Amazon doesn't own the rights to it. They own the rights to The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings and the Appendices at the end of Lord of the Rings. The Second Age is described in the Appendices in about 20 lines. So they had to concoct their story from those few lines. Had they straight up filmed it as written in The Silmarillion, they'd open themselves up to a huge lawsuit. They should have seen this coming and named it something else entirely. And yes, the three Elven Rings were made last before Sauran created the one ring, not first.
They really cornered themselves with this one. But since they insisted on going through with it they should have at least written a believable tolkenian world. There's no depth... No otherworldly lure nor allure...It just feels so bland it's painful.
@@andrewverrett568 He is a 'part of' simply for onboarding reasons. The same how James Cameron was 'part of' both Terminator Genisys and Dark Fate. The Tolkien estate would never release or sell rights to the core parts of their franchise for whatever price, and now they will double down due to the failure of ROP.
Amazon chose what they would buy and what they would make a show out of. Their choice to not buy the rights to the text that describes the 2nd age more comprehensively, seems to be what allows them to ignore the lore and write their own 'fan fiction' (I agree with the poor quality implied by 'fan fiction', but I find it hard to believe that the writers are actually fans). Not buying the source text so that you can make up your own rubbish is disingenuous at best. I don't just blame Amazon though. The Tolkien estate must have sold out in a huge way and its a shame. I guess that when Christopher Tolkien passed away, so did the last of the Tolkien's who really understood, loved, and respected JRR Tolkien's work.
I only watch the show so i can critique it and make fun of it. However by S2E3 i just can’t anymore. It’s just so unwatchable, so unbearable. It’s so infuriating
I tell you... it's all AI generated writing. They fed it with marketing keywords, with generic successful plots and with Tolkien characters and that's what the AI made of it. And they simply printed this stuff and handed it over on set.
This is what I don't understand. The competition for viewing eye balls etc, is so fierce why produce something that is repelling viewership at such a high cost? There is zero sense producing a product that instead of changing to be "bought" by an audience, you blame the consumer. It's bonkers.
Well Galadriel, a bad show is like a rock, when it does not listen to the fans and looks down upon them, it sinks to the bottom, where it stays to wallow in its forced inclusivity
They didn't or couldn't buy the material they needed. So they're STUCK with inventing things, because that's all they have. And they don't know the material, they can't take time to read it if they don't own it, so they can't even come close. I have no doubt in my mind that the Elven Rings were made first because all the showrunners knew was the famous poem "Three rings for the Elven-Kings under the sky..." and chose the order from that. The end result is beyond irritating to Tolkien fans. That said, as you say, it's not even good fantasy, or good TV. It's amazing that they could be handed such a possibility and squander it so completely. That said, how much do you want to wager that Ar-Pharazon is going to be the Witch-King of Angmar by the end of this thing?
I knew this project was doomed when it came out that they were condensing events that took place over millenia into less than a Numenorean lifetime. People wouldn't be as mad if this wasn't called part of the "Lord of the Rings", it wouldn't be doing any better, but there wouldn't be the vitriol. It's because of Rings of Power that I don't have any faith in the upcoming "War of the Rohirrim".
Between the two seasons we have reached about the 14 hour mark, which is comparable to the running time of the Peter Jackson trilogy, and in comparison so very little has happened despite condensing a much longer time span. I'm honestly not sure if anyone there knows what they're doing.
The best part of this show is the great vids making fun of its utter failure! The Woke Critic, Let’s Review Crap Writing, and Silver Screen Psychopathy are killing it with their hilariously brilliant parodies. Random Film Talk is great too with meticulous breakdowns of its tremendous flaws😂
this show is absolutely horrible written and acted, it's a borefest. I'm into Sci-fi ad Fantasy, and I love even some worse than average shows, but this one? I tuned out after 20 minutes in the second season. I feel like they fail at almost every basic thing in cinema. I'm currently rewatching Star Trek Deep space Nine (for the 6th or 7th time), and even I know almost all scenes by heart, the actors' performance is good, in some cases outstanding. There is a particular episode ("Duet," S01 E19), where someone is falsely accused of war crimes and by the end of the episode his innocence is established, only to fall victim to prejudice and killed. Almost all episode consists of some people talking in a room, and yet, is one of the most powerful episodes of that show. The acting is top notch, the story is well-written, the motivations are sound, and the characters actions are consistent with their motives. It's so good, even if I know all the lines, it still keeps me engaged and feeling everything they wanted to portray.
When NC mentioned fighting not to sleep while watching ROP, I had the scene from "Tom & Jerry" in my head immediately, when Tom keeps his eyelids open with matchsticks.
I think it Ep 4 or 5 where I was thinking the ep was nearly over - but I clocked it at 22 minutes. 22 minutes felt like an hour. And not for breadth and depth but how booooooring it was. Re: Rotten Tomatoes. I had a squiz the other day and it was curious that there were lots of 4/5 🌟 reviews and lots 1/2 🌟 but less middle zone ones.
What baffles me is, how do you pay THAT much money and get so few rights that basically handcuffs your creativity. That being said, they still could have done a much (understatement) better job of just adapting what Tolkien actually wrote.
37% of viewers finished season 1, season 2 is following the trend and is looking to only have 37% of the 37% from season 1 finish season 2. this is not LotR, it's a terribly written tween fanfic and should be treated as such.
They don’t have any talent or desire to understand and write complex characters that are 300-3000 yo. So they just simplify everything into school drama of a teenagers stupid behaviour)) when you realise it - the entire show becomes very funny buffonery. Almost enjoyable to watch 😂
It boggles my mind that a company would buy an IP, for the built-in fan base. Proceed to deviate so severely from the source material as to be unreasonable. And then be shocked as to why nobody likes it. Why buy the rights when you did your own thing?!
Take one of the most powerful women in Middle Earth and turn her into a toxic, one-dimensional comic book action hero named Guyladriel: Warrior Princess who has all the emotional maturity of a petulant 6 yr old. Yay feminism?
Even my Wife who knows nothing of the Lore of LoTR hates this show and has stopped watching. The Acting, the Script...all of it is horrible. She especially HATES Galadriel, she thinks she acts like a immature little girl. Thanks and Sorry you have to watch this for us. Love the reviews!
Comes down to Jeff and his ego on if they will cancel this money pit disaster. If he renews this, it is on the same delusional level of Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard coming down the stairs, " I am ready for my close up Mr. Deville."
honestly, given how bad the ratings are and how poorly the actual critical reception, i'd put money on the show not actually getting a third season as currently constructed. This has become a personal embarrassment to Bezos, the show that was supposed to evoke the glory of Peter Jackson's trilogy and compete with Game of Thrones as far as fan interest..... and instead it's just a meme factory Because of Jeff's ego i really believe this show won't exactly be cancelled, but it'll just go dark for a few years and then come back with an entirely new creative team and a story that starts from scratch, because this current show is frankly beyond salvaging at this point.
While I'd love to eat some nerd cookies, you make such good points to where I'll refrain from devouring you~ Also to note : Writers of 'shows' meowdays dramatically alter the universe that's already fleshed out...and very rarely if ever for the better...The Witcher is another great example of terrible writing. So many easy homeruns being ruined by egotistical dipsticks...and these are novels that deserve to be top tier adapted...not what these people do to them.
They made an origin story for Mount doom…. a volcano…and the super boss Guyladrial took a volcano eruption blast full on to the face and didn’t even get her hair messed up
The comment about struggling to remember parts and characters I kinda feel the same. The previously part of the new episode helps a lot as I'm not torturing myself going back to watch an episode to remind myself. Its torture to watch and they throw in remember moments as if it will bring nostalgia but all it is, is cringe. They even try to hype up those that know the lore with things like sauron controlling the wolf which doesn't work as well as they hoped since the rest of the lore is trashed
They made such a mistake not asking Gwyndolin Christie to play Galadriel. It's such an obvious choice. Tall, beautiful, a deeper voice and imposing and powerful looking. I mean, they also made a blunder not getting better writers, but hey, what can you do.
I really want to like this, I’m a huge LOTR fan, and I keep forcing myself to power through… but I swear, I always fall asleep during every episode. It is literally not exciting enough to keep me awake.
My plan was to review every episode of ROP. I managed to get out 1 video for the first episode. It was so hard to get through, that I stopped watching 1/2 way through episode 2. I’m not a big channel, so I don’t have the time to waste, unfortunately.
8:36 "A mishmash of peoples and places instead of telling an actual story." That's the best description of this series. The producers thought they were writing a Game of Thrones, that it was simple matter of showing a bit of characters here, a bit there. They failed terribly.
It's just not an entertaining show. Take Lord of the Rings out of it and the acting is poor, the writing is poor, there's no character arc or development, and the fight scenes are pitiful. Compare this to House of the Dragon which performed far better with far less money and was really well received by viewers. Or look at Shogun, which was brilliant and swept the Emmys, again for far less money. Amazon made this to promote their ideology and now nobody is watching.
Why is everybody scared of Sauron ? Sauron is a lone (were)wolf who is dangerous for nobody - he has no allies, no servants, no armies. The Orcs have already killed him, hate him and want to live peaceful lives in Mordor. The Elves , especially Galadriel hate him too. So why would anybody want to attack Eregion ? Galadriel goes there , arrests Sauron and kills him. End of show !
This show is quite literally designed to make people waste the upwards of 10 hours of their lives that they will never get back. such a shame for something i've loved since i could first read.
This chick has a cool voice..its like she has had a cold her whole life and never tried to treat it lol . But still dose have great points..i was definitely with her on the struggling to stay awake statement..i had exactly the same problem!
Something I find interesting is for the first few seasons of GoT it's mostly people just talking. People loved it. But RoP people find boring. I think a big part of the problem is the wording and the constant cuts. They almost always cut away right before interesting things are said. Then the time line is all screwy, so there is no urgency. If people just teleport it makes it hard to care if someone makes it on time. The messages are an example. Why did Celebrimbor's make it seemingly instantly but Gil-galad's didn't? How long did Gil-galad wait before deciding his message didn't make it? A day? A month? Six months? So after some amount of time he decides his message didn't make it. So he sends 5 people on foot 520 miles (150 leagues) with an urgent message? Logically it has been a long time. Mordor is like 800ish miles from Eregion (and they have to cross a huge river). It should take a considerable amount of time to move a army that far. But we get no sense it has been months. The not Gandalf/not hobbit story line doesn't feel like it has been more than a few days. Same with the Numenorian plot line. The people doing this show clearly can not handle doing a story like this.
For the first season of GoT they had no budget for large battles. It's why Tyrion gets smacked in the head and wakes up after the battle is over. or why robert Baratheons fatal hunting only had 4 people. in HoTD they had the budget for an actual hunting party with pavillions and hundreds of people.
This is part and parcel of 'padding' and 'fake tension-building' and shows that the writers both have no idea how to weave (not so blatantly) drama and motivations and that they had no story to tell in the first place. Compare this to shows like The Expanse or GOT (first 3 seasons), they didn't have to resort to this pandering that we've seen both here and in The Acolyte. It's really sad.
I think in some respects this show has exactly the same issue as The Acolyte, in that it is not only badly written but it has also sucked all of the joy out of the story. Even bad Star Wars usually has a sense of fun to it. It usually has some comradery and banter between characters. It usually has some action and spectacle and typically a decent soundtrack. Even bad Star Wars often allows you to turn your brain off and enjoy it on a superficial level. Even The Hobbit trilogy had this, despite being far weaker than Jackson's LoTR movies. The Hobbit was not especially good but it was kind of senseless fun at times. And whilst it shamelessly padded out the run time, it did also manage to keep most of the familiar events relatively intact. But these shows have characters who's relationships mostly range from indifference to hatred. Elrond goes surprisingly easy on Galadriel during the first season, even though her character flaws are on full display and she shows no respect for him or their alleged friendship. In season 2 it looks like this has blown up into open war, with constant sniping and bickering since he is finally done with her bs and she is unrepentant for very real and serious errors in judgement. Few other characters have any real relationships at all. Elrond and Durin's in the first season was mostly nonsensical but at least it had heart. At least you had two characters who appeared to give a damn about each other. But I gather that they don't interact in this season? To a possibly lesser extent the same can be said about faux-Gandalf and the not-hobbits. He has no business being there and him being so cheapens the character with just about every scene. But a few aspects of his interactions with the not-hobbits are superficially quite nice. There is not even that much action, though season 2 wants us to believe that it is building to something. Season 1 took a long, long time working up to a poor attempt to recreate the charge of the Rohirrim and sprinkled in a few bits of Gladriel's physics defying nonsense along the way. I can barely remember the soundtrack.
Acolyte and RoP: Turns out that crapping all over the fans of some source material is not, in fact, a good strategy for a successful show! (That in addition to all the critiques you make, with which I agree 100%.) A
What sucks is this honestly could have been so bad. The issue with adaptation isn't necessarily bastardization. That's independent of it and a product of conceited and bad writing. But yea, imagine if instead of the story they told, they chose to show the decline and fall of Numenor. A political drama in the setting of middle earth with a fleshed out pharazon as the main character who goes from glory to madness. Could have been an excellent show with good writing. Trying to write elf focal point stories as is just doesn't work because the timelines across which things happen are just too long
It's almost like ... the people they are targeting with this show ... never wanted to watch this type of show in the first place? Nobody is going to rewrite Greys Anatomy or Bridget Jones' Diary for boys who like warhammer 40k ... like ... they wouldn't watch it anyway?
Same criticism for Jackson films BTW…….some of the changes to those movies turned key themes on their head. Difference being I suppose it was on a lesser level (though the result no less subversive of the original works key themes) and it helped them work as a movie? And at least it was done …….ignorantly, while trying to respect the source…….which is a lot different to dumping it on the source gleefully. But yep, this one is next level of trash. What a shame. But…….the books exist. Let’s read those.
Google trends is very telling as well. It debuted barely above the Acolyte, but abysmally below HOTD. Also, whenever a new episode airs there is a usually spike in Google trends. Even the Acolyte had spikes. There are none to be seen in RoP.
When audiences watched LOTR, they emotionally connected with the story and its characters. RoP is detached and incohesive. Every other scene seems to involve Galadriel sulking and lecturing clunky characters.
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Nobody relates to Galadriels 3000 yr old teenage angst? Thats odd
Yeah, that's something crazy. They're acting like Galadriel is young because it's the Second Age. They refuse to acknowledge she's already thousands and thousands of years old and studied under Melian in the First Age. She was born under the Trees, and so is probably much more than 3,000 years old by the Second Age, since a 'year' under the trees was much, much longer than it is in Middle Earth after the fall of the Trees.
@@ghrosenb At the point and time of this show she is the second eldest elf in Middle Earth
@@ghrosenb I find it so odd that the writers of the show would look at the character and think: We need to get rid of all that wisdom BS and get some more human adolascence in there. Yeah, that would be so much better.
thank you for pointing this out; there is so much bad writing and forced acting polluting the mind of the viewer, plunging him in such a bottomless abyss of suspension of disbelief, that what should be an obvious paradoxical character trait gets forgotten..
She is not a good fit to play Galadriel, imo
That is what baffles me. I can´t understand how critics defend this as a good show, when it´s just not. Forget the Tolkien disrespect, on its own it is just not a good show.
They are all(creators and critics) in the same club and if the show promotes the clubs endorsed politics it is automatically good. It is an industry infested with nepotism, toxic positivity and upwards failing. If you are in the club it doesn't matter how bad your actual work is, you will be rewarded and promoted.
Activists
Follow the money - then you understand :-)
There is also no possible way that the show could ever get a 6.9 on Imdb and whats more: it is still sitting on 6.9... Follow the money -> Imdb was baought by Amazon in 1998...
Money
Money, they’re being paid off
“Fake soap opera fan fiction with a middle earth spin.” That’s great!
That is very accurate
Thought she said "skin" and not "spin"
I think in another video she described it as Harlequin Romance in Tolkien skin.
I'm quite into the history of print fiction, particularly the pulps era. I wanted to laugh, it's so far beyond trash tv and well into the realm of trash pulp fiction. And at least there was some gold in amongst the print pulp. Theres nothing at all in pulp tv. It really is history repeating, an industry where quantity and return are the only considerations. It killed print fiction, it killed broadcast tv, and it will kill these "intellectual property farms" pretending to be film studios.
Oh, that quote may have been about the Acolyte. Harlequin in Star Wars Skin. But the point stands so l leave it there.
In 1980 I was a teen and loved The Hobbit and TLOTR books. Then I was excited to sit by the radio at lunchtime in the UK for 26 straight weeks to listen to the TLOTR radio play.
Then the animated movie had a rerelease in cinemas and I went to see that and loved it.
Then the Jackson movies came out 20 years later and I loved them.
I love TLOTR.
But this show oozes hatred for the IP and it oozes hatred for the audience.
I actually feel icky after watching even a few minutes of it.
@@NR-rv8rz that's cool you got it to evolve with the different ways they told the story..until Amazon got there smiley hands on it..for what reason I can not figure out. It was not for money they didn't need money it must have been for control and division of Tolkien's true fan base..at least you know enough that you only have to take on board what you want to..we don't have to call this garbage. LORD OF THE RINGS.. and no one can force us to do so
@@aboutafew On a corporate level, Amazon wanted a great IP and to make a great show.
But the Woke mind rot is set into many large companies and enforced by the likes of Black Rock who control the purse strings.
All it takes is a few poisonous minds to occupy HR, produce, director, writer and casting positions and even a diamond can be turned into a turd.
These people do not love TLOTR. They just love power and they resent the love fans have for it and so want to infect it with their own sick minded vision.
They don't even see it as TLOTR, they just see it as 'a beloved property that has cloud' and they want to invade and occupy.
I love the movies but I wouldn't mind and I kind of hope that we will get some sort of animated version one day that tells the story from the books. Maybe it wouldnt work but I feel it would at least work for me.
Well said. My sentiments exactly
Do you remember the old animated movie of The Hobbit? I think i listened to the play. I had something audio recording wise but it was in the 80s and i was a kid, i can’t quite remember which one i had… Edit: Reread your comment, lol… you saw it
Do you know why the ship floats, but the Rings of Power's Ratings sink like a stone?
Tolkien has one elf with a beard, Cirdan the Shipwright. Rangs of Prime had to have him shave on screen. They hate Tolkien and his lore.
OMFG thank you!! I felt like that was the biggest snub ever!! I feel like they took every bit of his work and just said “ let’s do it like that , but wait “opposite “.
And dwarf wives were NEVER seen; much less being boss babes
@@toolegittoquit_001 Don’t forget the loving ork wives that Morgoth threw into breeding pits.
Recipe for disaster: 1. Offend readers of Tolkien's works. 2. Fail to engage casual viewers. 3. Repeat.
The very moment they started to ship Galadriel with Sauron was when I stopped watching this show entirely. Amazon wants me to feel sorry for the literal devil, and "shipping" him with Galadriel, the whole Haladriel thing is disgusting and extremely hateful towards Tolkien who we all know was a devout Christian. I heard of a story that Tolkien once got a silver cup from a fan with the black speech of the One Ring on it and he refused to drink out of it because to him his characters were literal day and night, shipping a good character with an evil one, well that would rightfully piss me off if I was The Professor as well.
Exactly. I can understand a Sauron attracted to the elves, but Galadriel attracted to a shape-shifted Sauron is awkward and out of character.
Tolkien did not finish the biography of Galadriel and the sketch of her role in the War of the Silmarilli, however he left guidelines about her character: Galadriel was not like her cousins Aredhel or the sons of Fëanor.
Galadriel was proud but not reckless.
She was athletic and brave, but preferred to play with caution on a chess board before taking a sword.
Unfortunately, I have argued with some people who like RoP and think that Tolkien's version of Galadriel is boring. They want a Reylo shipping.
@@gabrielcruz6752 those people are not "fans"
Tolkien used the "One Ring" inscribed cup as an ashtray. The old man had a sense of humour.
He used it as an ashtray 😂
Are there not any writers these days talented enough to come up with their own original IPs?
Your side would by far 99% of the time, make money attacking their side, rather than bring up your own side. No one exists to support original things. They only make their stuff. Your side only critiques their stuff. In a real way, they did win. You still only talk about them; even if it is negatively.
@@gravewalkerswhat are the “side”? Which “side” is yours?
The whole premise of the series itself was coming from Tolkien's estate. Tolkien's estate were offering rights to several outlets (HBO,Netflix etc..) for a potential tv series. So, all these networks pitched their "crazy" ideas to the estate. Amazon didn't pitch any specific stories but (Bezos and his team) promised to work closely with the Tolkien's estate to ensure the Tolkien's legacy is protected. So yeah, that's what happened.
A lot of these critiques are coming from the lack of that understanding or research about "production timeline". The ones who refused to review knew it already. It's like harry potter's bookfan criticizing Warner Bros movie version for working with JK Rowling, nobody does that. Its their right and the creative decision was agreed upon by the owners themselves(Tolkien's estate).
The answer is yes, but they get lost in the flood of submissions. Things have exploded ever since the word processor, internet, ease of publishing and public social platforms. Franchises like Harry Potter, The Expanse etc are now mixed in with inexperienced writers and AI-generated droll. For me the '3-Body Problem' was the only uniquely pleasant thing that has come out in the last 5-6 years.
@@naz6james570the Tolkien estate was wrong. Maybe they were duped by Amazon into thinking it would be something else. I expect the estate has seller's remorse.
The writers keep writing an insufferable disgusting villain and calling it Galadriel.
Rings of Power is what would happen of LOTR aired on CW.
What's CW?
And war of the rohirrim is the same but animated
The writers and show runners are creating the story for themselves, not the audience. They want to take Tolkien's basic framework for fantasy and use it to flesh out their own ideas. They're riding his coat tails, so to speak, while trying to redesign the coat itself. I still feel this could have been a popular show if they had just stayed true to the lore, since that is what people want to see: the real Middle Earth. Not a politically corrected version. Both the fans and those that haven't read the books.
This has been an issue for a while esp around the various California and Washington creative studios producing flop after flop. and we are now seeing the consequence several years later.
Disney for example had so much trouble with the main Burbank division now, they shifted to doing Moana 2 in Canada. Boss got demoted.
Sony game division, headquarter in California just had made one of biggest bombs 200-400m invested with barely a few thousand people playing their game for their newly acquired WA studio, amount paid was undisclosed. Boss got demoted as well.
I can imagine a bunch of nose-ringed, purple-hair types in the writers' room spouting their postmodernism.
It makes the Shannara Chronicles look like Citizen Kane.
It makes Legend of the Seeker look like Lawrence of Arabia
@@blaxpoitation8528 I liked legend of the seeker and shannara chronicles! probably because i knew nothing of where they came from. I learned later that shanna was a book series no? And i dont really like RoP, some scenes are kinda good, rest is meh. To me, i thought those series were just a random dude wanting to make a fantasy series, thought it was fine
@@blaxpoitation8528 Legend of the Seeker was campy fun at its best. And the actresses were 99% hot as hell. It's a guilty pleasure of mine.
@@blaxpoitation8528 nice. I like both - Austin Butler in elf ears is... special. But they ain't epic fantasy done a la Peter Jackson, more like Xena but without the sass.
@@ΕρνέστοςΣμίθ The actresses were hot, I can’t even lie lol.
I'm a little surprised at Grace Randolph... She's usually a champion of anything with even a remote hint of DEI about it. Perhaps Amazon's cheque got lost in the post?
She's an insufferable and vapid shill.
TBH she's facing lashback from more and more of her viewers and subscribers. The blind-championing got so bad it affected even those followers of hers with an IQ of less than 70 - thus she had to pull back for a while on her narrative, and even she can't set the bar below the bottom of the barrel.
She can't defend this.
TRue but Grace, annoying as she might be, seems actually honest. Praises things she likes, it just happens she likes DEI, there are people like that. I don't like her but I've heard her criticizing things for "too much feminism". I think it was about She Hulk.
250 million dollar, they cannot say "Hobbit, Gandalf." omg what bull shit.
"At every moment it repels immersion," so true.
One of the best things about Sauron was that he was basically an enigmatic character. But modern day writers want to explore (poorly) characters to the point the interest is diluted.
it's also that in a lot of ways he's not actually the protagonist. He's technically the main villain, but none of the characters ever interact with him directly. He's more of a symbol than he is an actual character. Evil in Tolkien's universe was never something you beat by sticking it with a sword
Which is why Tolkien's work is so timeless, because it's a very adult way to look at the internal struggle everyone goes through. The good guys are the good guys because they choose to do the good thing even when it's really damn hard. Sauron's role in the story is to put pressure on the heroes so they can have their heroic moments, he's not the final boss at the end of a video game.
Sauron in Rings of Power is a mustache twirling villain with poorly defined motives who only succeeds because his opponents are idiots.... that's a far, far less mature way to write a villain. And ultimately far more boring.
Yeah good point..we did know a lot about him when you look at what Tolkien left us..the whole lord of gifts thing and a lot of his past was told to us.. there was a heap of stuff to critique we didn't need new law that was not Canon
They'd rather dismantle a true mystery and replace it with a hastily constructed mystery box of their own.
Sauron was remote in the Third Age as presented in LotR, but the appendix makes clear that he was personally involved in subverting well-meaning people and societies in the Second Age. That's a big, difficult theme with all sorts of political analogies today, and it would have been fascinating to see even a half-decent writer tackle it. Instead the hack duo simply ignored it.
Like what was done to Dr Who.
Zero respect for the source material and the lore. They have just treated JRRT’s works like generic “IP”. Basically a brand to be milked. They assumed that as long as they could slap Tolkien on a pile of crap the nerds would buy it. EFF these guys!
THE AUDIENCE IS ALWAYS RIGHT !!!
The audience is always right!
The audience is always right!!!!
I'm currently watching Shogun and am astonished by how well it's written and it makes me wish we had that level of writing for Rings of Power.
I think they've tried to create a show to rival the size and popularity of Got. Now, apart from the obvious differences in writing ability, world-building and general respect for source material, they've forgotten one fundamental difference, everyone already knows how THIS story ends!
I think the most frustrating part is that it would've taken very little effort for them to just do it right. They have everything in place and it takes just as much effort to do it incorrect and deviate that it would to do it correctly.
The show is a wank-stained selfie, full of preening self-regard of the bloated writers, cast, and most of all, the show-runners. Turgid writing, meandering directionless plots, girl bosses galore, men downgraded and made to look like supine fools. Self-regarding junk; it looks like Tolkien but has nothing to do with Tolkien and everything to do with the social politics of millionaires who feel themselves to be oppressed.
I feel like I'm watching the middle earth version of Days of Our Lives
It's amazing that it's called Rings of Power, but the people that will be wearing them are generally not introduced and characterized. The one elf should've been in season one instead of the whole Harfoot nonsense and 6 of the dwarves should've been introduced somewhere as well. They're all just set dressing...
its the Anti fargo - Fargo is a well written drama with strange twists and turns that actually make sense because of the developed characters and the only thing they have changed from the source is the names.
RoP is a non sensical mystery box /drama with inane twists and events that happen solely for plot and against all reason, and the only thing not changed from the source is the names.
Amazon should take the L and sell the IP. It's pretty garbage.
You normally can't resell the rights to a franchise, unless the agreement states that it is possible. I'd wager both Amazon and the Tolkien estate didn't see a need, or think that it wouldn't be wise, to insert a rights-transfer (which is not reselling per se) clause.
@@thiefofa1073 I'd like to know how the Tolkien estate really feels about this. I'm sure they love the money but JRR's corpse must be fine powder by now from turning over so much.
They’re not just making up bad fan fiction, they are actively taking the piss!
Look at Cirdan…not a lot of coverage in the books, but a fair bit is made about him being the only bearded elf and being one of the oldest. But it was exactly that bare description that added so much to the imagination. So when he first appeared I thought great! They got that bit right. Next scene they show him shaving his beard.
Completely unnecessary to the story, and serves only to give fans another reason to switch off.
I am black and i read all Tolkiens work growing up including the silmarilion and this show is straight trash they have completed re-wrote Tolkiens work for modern audience's, we just want faithful adaptations not just throw LGBT and black people in it for no apparently reason make this show make sense 😂😂😂😂 worse show ever it actually makes the acolyte look good 😮 no one likes the rings of power absolute 0 out of 10 😢
I totally agree that it's almost impossible to watch unless you like watching paint dry. Very disappointing and definitely not Tolkien.
Alas. Girl Boss Feminism is the reason we have to have a sister for Isildur. Sigh. (I was for many years a fervent self-identified feminist.)
You were a feminist until TV shows began writing too much gurl boss garbage? My friend, you were never a feminist.
Oh yes some characters were definitely added for modernity sake, and not quality.
At this point the Argontath will be statues of Isildur and Earien
There is a reason they don't follow Tolkien's work. The Second Age is best described in The Silmarillion and that is what people expected. But Amazon doesn't own the rights to it. They own the rights to The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings and the Appendices at the end of Lord of the Rings. The Second Age is described in the Appendices in about 20 lines. So they had to concoct their story from those few lines. Had they straight up filmed it as written in The Silmarillion, they'd open themselves up to a huge lawsuit. They should have seen this coming and named it something else entirely. And yes, the three Elven Rings were made last before Sauran created the one ring, not first.
They really cornered themselves with this one. But since they insisted on going through with it they should have at least written a believable tolkenian world. There's no depth... No otherworldly lure nor allure...It just feels so bland it's painful.
Who has the rights to the 2nd age? If Simon Tolkien is a part of the production of thus why wouldn't he sell them the rights to the silmarilion
Agreed. This show should never have been made.
@@andrewverrett568 He is a 'part of' simply for onboarding reasons. The same how James Cameron was 'part of' both Terminator Genisys and Dark Fate. The Tolkien estate would never release or sell rights to the core parts of their franchise for whatever price, and now they will double down due to the failure of ROP.
Amazon chose what they would buy and what they would make a show out of. Their choice to not buy the rights to the text that describes the 2nd age more comprehensively, seems to be what allows them to ignore the lore and write their own 'fan fiction' (I agree with the poor quality implied by 'fan fiction', but I find it hard to believe that the writers are actually fans). Not buying the source text so that you can make up your own rubbish is disingenuous at best. I don't just blame Amazon though. The Tolkien estate must have sold out in a huge way and its a shame. I guess that when Christopher Tolkien passed away, so did the last of the Tolkien's who really understood, loved, and respected JRR Tolkien's work.
I only watch the show so i can critique it and make fun of it. However by S2E3 i just can’t anymore. It’s just so unwatchable, so unbearable. It’s so infuriating
I tell you... it's all AI generated writing. They fed it with marketing keywords, with generic successful plots and with Tolkien characters and that's what the AI made of it. And they simply printed this stuff and handed it over on set.
It isn't fan fiction. It is a hate crime against Tolkien.
Hate fiction
This is what I don't understand. The competition for viewing eye balls etc, is so fierce why produce something that is repelling viewership at such a high cost?
There is zero sense producing a product that instead of changing to be "bought" by an audience, you blame the consumer.
It's bonkers.
Well Galadriel, a bad show is like a rock, when it does not listen to the fans and looks down upon them, it sinks to the bottom, where it stays to wallow in its forced inclusivity
After episode 3 I just refuse to even hate watch it
They didn't or couldn't buy the material they needed. So they're STUCK with inventing things, because that's all they have. And they don't know the material, they can't take time to read it if they don't own it, so they can't even come close. I have no doubt in my mind that the Elven Rings were made first because all the showrunners knew was the famous poem "Three rings for the Elven-Kings under the sky..." and chose the order from that. The end result is beyond irritating to Tolkien fans. That said, as you say, it's not even good fantasy, or good TV. It's amazing that they could be handed such a possibility and squander it so completely.
That said, how much do you want to wager that Ar-Pharazon is going to be the Witch-King of Angmar by the end of this thing?
I knew this project was doomed when it came out that they were condensing events that took place over millenia into less than a Numenorean lifetime. People wouldn't be as mad if this wasn't called part of the "Lord of the Rings", it wouldn't be doing any better, but there wouldn't be the vitriol. It's because of Rings of Power that I don't have any faith in the upcoming "War of the Rohirrim".
Between the two seasons we have reached about the 14 hour mark, which is comparable to the running time of the Peter Jackson trilogy, and in comparison so very little has happened despite condensing a much longer time span. I'm honestly not sure if anyone there knows what they're doing.
The best part of this show is the great vids making fun of its utter failure! The Woke Critic, Let’s Review Crap Writing, and Silver Screen Psychopathy are killing it with their hilariously brilliant parodies. Random Film Talk is great too with meticulous breakdowns of its tremendous flaws😂
this show is absolutely horrible written and acted, it's a borefest.
I'm into Sci-fi ad Fantasy, and I love even some worse than average shows, but this one? I tuned out after 20 minutes in the second season. I feel like they fail at almost every basic thing in cinema.
I'm currently rewatching Star Trek Deep space Nine (for the 6th or 7th time), and even I know almost all scenes by heart, the actors' performance is good, in some cases outstanding.
There is a particular episode ("Duet," S01 E19), where someone is falsely accused of war crimes and by the end of the episode his innocence is established, only to fall victim to prejudice and killed. Almost all episode consists of some people talking in a room, and yet, is one of the most powerful episodes of that show. The acting is top notch, the story is well-written, the motivations are sound, and the characters actions are consistent with their motives. It's so good, even if I know all the lines, it still keeps me engaged and feeling everything they wanted to portray.
When NC mentioned fighting not to sleep while watching ROP, I had the scene from "Tom & Jerry" in my head immediately, when Tom keeps his eyelids open with matchsticks.
I think it Ep 4 or 5 where I was thinking the ep was nearly over - but I clocked it at 22 minutes. 22 minutes felt like an hour. And not for breadth and depth but how booooooring it was.
Re: Rotten Tomatoes. I had a squiz the other day and it was curious that there were lots of 4/5 🌟 reviews and lots 1/2 🌟 but less middle zone ones.
Compare that to me watching an ep of House of the Dragon and not wanting it to end, savoring every minute. ROP is a slog.
What baffles me is, how do you pay THAT much money and get so few rights that basically handcuffs your creativity.
That being said, they still could have done a much (understatement) better job of just adapting what Tolkien actually wrote.
When the biggest shill refuses to watch and review your garbage you know you messed up.
Anytime you dislike it or criticize it, someone says "You're just overthinking it." Ugh
37% of viewers finished season 1, season 2 is following the trend and is looking to only have 37% of the 37% from season 1 finish season 2. this is not LotR, it's a terribly written tween fanfic and should be treated as such.
At least they don’t have the actual rights lol….. RIP Star Wars and GOT
They don’t have any talent or desire to understand and write complex characters that are 300-3000 yo. So they just simplify everything into school drama of a teenagers stupid behaviour)) when you realise it - the entire show becomes very funny buffonery. Almost enjoyable to watch 😂
Cultural vandalism. They ruined Star Wars as well.
It boggles my mind that a company would buy an IP, for the built-in fan base. Proceed to deviate so severely from the source material as to be unreasonable. And then be shocked as to why nobody likes it. Why buy the rights when you did your own thing?!
That’s crazy to think about. The most expensive TV show ever, is it worth someone’s time to even review.
What a failure
Take one of the most powerful women in Middle Earth and turn her into a toxic, one-dimensional comic book action hero named Guyladriel: Warrior Princess who has all the emotional maturity of a petulant 6 yr old. Yay feminism?
It's like a CW Show.
ChatGPT could write a better series. The Screenwriters Guild was right to fear AI given the talentless hacks who pervade Hollywood at present.
The Rings of Power...A Barbara Cartland Terry Brooks fever dream.
New show title: rings of boring everybody.
Even my Wife who knows nothing of the Lore of LoTR hates this show and has stopped watching. The Acting, the Script...all of it is horrible. She especially HATES Galadriel, she thinks she acts like a immature little girl.
Thanks and Sorry you have to watch this for us.
Love the reviews!
Comes down to Jeff and his ego on if they will cancel this money pit disaster. If he renews this, it is on the same delusional level of Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard coming down the stairs, " I am ready for my close up Mr. Deville."
honestly, given how bad the ratings are and how poorly the actual critical reception, i'd put money on the show not actually getting a third season as currently constructed. This has become a personal embarrassment to Bezos, the show that was supposed to evoke the glory of Peter Jackson's trilogy and compete with Game of Thrones as far as fan interest..... and instead it's just a meme factory
Because of Jeff's ego i really believe this show won't exactly be cancelled, but it'll just go dark for a few years and then come back with an entirely new creative team and a story that starts from scratch, because this current show is frankly beyond salvaging at this point.
Perhaps Amazon will pull a Concord, $400 million will be enough. It can't fail then.
I refuse to watch this mockery.
Thanks Elaine
While I'd love to eat some nerd cookies, you make such good points to where I'll refrain from devouring you~
Also to note : Writers of 'shows' meowdays dramatically alter the universe that's already fleshed out...and very rarely if ever for the better...The Witcher is another great example of terrible writing. So many easy homeruns being ruined by egotistical dipsticks...and these are novels that deserve to be top tier adapted...not what these people do to them.
They made an origin story for Mount doom…. a volcano…and the super boss Guyladrial took a volcano eruption blast full on to the face and didn’t even get her hair messed up
My too. I have too fight to see it. Maybe it’s because it’s Tolkien’s world that keeps me hopping for more that will never come.
The multiracial elves are hilarious on their own.
Exactly. Ewch. What a disaster for this ip. The Tolkien Estate should be ashamed.
The comment about struggling to remember parts and characters I kinda feel the same. The previously part of the new episode helps a lot as I'm not torturing myself going back to watch an episode to remind myself. Its torture to watch and they throw in remember moments as if it will bring nostalgia but all it is, is cringe. They even try to hype up those that know the lore with things like sauron controlling the wolf which doesn't work as well as they hoped since the rest of the lore is trashed
I definitely need to hear more Rants from you, Nerd Cookies
forget about the butchering of the lore. the show in and of itself is one of the worst television shows I have EVER seen.
I hope they make all 5 seasons. Will not watch a single episode but will watch these reviews.
Im just glad that they created the acolyte
And rings of power
The youtube reviews is very much entertaining 😂
You just verbalized how I felt about the series. I made it to the orc-family scene ... then went back to playing BG3.
I completely forgot that they gave Mithril an origin. Hilarious.
They made such a mistake not asking Gwyndolin Christie to play Galadriel. It's such an obvious choice. Tall, beautiful, a deeper voice and imposing and powerful looking. I mean, they also made a blunder not getting better writers, but hey, what can you do.
I really want to like this, I’m a huge LOTR fan, and I keep forcing myself to power through… but I swear, I always fall asleep during every episode. It is literally not exciting enough to keep me awake.
Me and my brother could defend it up to two weeks ago now we're lost it's just ridiculously bad
My plan was to review every episode of ROP. I managed to get out 1 video for the first episode. It was so hard to get through, that I stopped watching 1/2 way through episode 2. I’m not a big channel, so I don’t have the time to waste, unfortunately.
8:36 "A mishmash of peoples and places instead of telling an actual story." That's the best description of this series. The producers thought they were writing a Game of Thrones, that it was simple matter of showing a bit of characters here, a bit there. They failed terribly.
I don’t mind the way it’s presented actually. I just don’t think the characters are good
One season is enough of this crap.
Art needs money to reach its audience. But money only needs money to get more money...
It's just not an entertaining show. Take Lord of the Rings out of it and the acting is poor, the writing is poor, there's no character arc or development, and the fight scenes are pitiful. Compare this to House of the Dragon which performed far better with far less money and was really well received by viewers. Or look at Shogun, which was brilliant and swept the Emmys, again for far less money. Amazon made this to promote their ideology and now nobody is watching.
Why is everybody scared of Sauron ?
Sauron is a lone (were)wolf who is dangerous for nobody - he has no allies, no servants, no armies.
The Orcs have already killed him, hate him and want to live peaceful lives in Mordor.
The Elves , especially Galadriel hate him too. So why would anybody want to attack Eregion ? Galadriel goes there , arrests Sauron and kills him. End of show !
This show is quite literally designed to make people waste the upwards of 10 hours of their lives that they will never get back. such a shame for something i've loved since i could first read.
The best we can hope for from this show is that inspires someone else to do it right.
This chick has a cool voice..its like she has had a cold her whole life and never tried to treat it lol . But still dose have great points..i was definitely with her on the struggling to stay awake statement..i had exactly the same problem!
Something I find interesting is for the first few seasons of GoT it's mostly people just talking. People loved it. But RoP people find boring.
I think a big part of the problem is the wording and the constant cuts. They almost always cut away right before interesting things are said. Then the time line is all screwy, so there is no urgency. If people just teleport it makes it hard to care if someone makes it on time. The messages are an example. Why did Celebrimbor's make it seemingly instantly but Gil-galad's didn't? How long did Gil-galad wait before deciding his message didn't make it? A day? A month? Six months? So after some amount of time he decides his message didn't make it. So he sends 5 people on foot 520 miles (150 leagues) with an urgent message? Logically it has been a long time. Mordor is like 800ish miles from Eregion (and they have to cross a huge river). It should take a considerable amount of time to move a army that far. But we get no sense it has been months. The not Gandalf/not hobbit story line doesn't feel like it has been more than a few days. Same with the Numenorian plot line.
The people doing this show clearly can not handle doing a story like this.
For the first season of GoT they had no budget for large battles. It's why Tyrion gets smacked in the head and wakes up after the battle is over. or why robert Baratheons fatal hunting only had 4 people. in HoTD they had the budget for an actual hunting party with pavillions and hundreds of people.
This is part and parcel of 'padding' and 'fake tension-building' and shows that the writers both have no idea how to weave (not so blatantly) drama and motivations and that they had no story to tell in the first place.
Compare this to shows like The Expanse or GOT (first 3 seasons), they didn't have to resort to this pandering that we've seen both here and in The Acolyte. It's really sad.
GoT had intelligent dialogue written by people with triple digit IQ. RoP is written by halfwits.
Also a cheap way to world build, I.e, exposition
The pages that amazon bought contain as much story as the winds of winter 😂. They’re making things up from a few pages.
I think in some respects this show has exactly the same issue as The Acolyte, in that it is not only badly written but it has also sucked all of the joy out of the story.
Even bad Star Wars usually has a sense of fun to it. It usually has some comradery and banter between characters. It usually has some action and spectacle and typically a decent soundtrack. Even bad Star Wars often allows you to turn your brain off and enjoy it on a superficial level. Even The Hobbit trilogy had this, despite being far weaker than Jackson's LoTR movies. The Hobbit was not especially good but it was kind of senseless fun at times. And whilst it shamelessly padded out the run time, it did also manage to keep most of the familiar events relatively intact.
But these shows have characters who's relationships mostly range from indifference to hatred. Elrond goes surprisingly easy on Galadriel during the first season, even though her character flaws are on full display and she shows no respect for him or their alleged friendship. In season 2 it looks like this has blown up into open war, with constant sniping and bickering since he is finally done with her bs and she is unrepentant for very real and serious errors in judgement. Few other characters have any real relationships at all. Elrond and Durin's in the first season was mostly nonsensical but at least it had heart. At least you had two characters who appeared to give a damn about each other. But I gather that they don't interact in this season?
To a possibly lesser extent the same can be said about faux-Gandalf and the not-hobbits. He has no business being there and him being so cheapens the character with just about every scene. But a few aspects of his interactions with the not-hobbits are superficially quite nice.
There is not even that much action, though season 2 wants us to believe that it is building to something. Season 1 took a long, long time working up to a poor attempt to recreate the charge of the Rohirrim and sprinkled in a few bits of Gladriel's physics defying nonsense along the way.
I can barely remember the soundtrack.
Acolyte and RoP: Turns out that crapping all over the fans of some source material is not, in fact, a good strategy for a successful show! (That in addition to all the critiques you make, with which I agree 100%.) A
What sucks is this honestly could have been so bad. The issue with adaptation isn't necessarily bastardization. That's independent of it and a product of conceited and bad writing. But yea, imagine if instead of the story they told, they chose to show the decline and fall of Numenor. A political drama in the setting of middle earth with a fleshed out pharazon as the main character who goes from glory to madness. Could have been an excellent show with good writing. Trying to write elf focal point stories as is just doesn't work because the timelines across which things happen are just too long
Excellent review
It's almost like ... the people they are targeting with this show ... never wanted to watch this type of show in the first place?
Nobody is going to rewrite Greys Anatomy or Bridget Jones' Diary for boys who like warhammer 40k ... like ... they wouldn't watch it anyway?
More like they don't exist
PREACH it SISTER NERD COOKIE!
Same criticism for Jackson films BTW…….some of the changes to those movies turned key themes on their head. Difference being I suppose it was on a lesser level (though the result no less subversive of the original works key themes) and it helped them work as a movie? And at least it was done …….ignorantly, while trying to respect the source…….which is a lot different to dumping it on the source gleefully. But yep, this one is next level of trash. What a shame. But…….the books exist. Let’s read those.
Google trends is very telling as well. It debuted barely above the Acolyte, but abysmally below HOTD.
Also, whenever a new episode airs there is a usually spike in Google trends. Even the Acolyte had spikes. There are none to be seen in RoP.
Thanks for watching it for us. So we don't have to.
When audiences watched LOTR, they emotionally connected with the story and its characters. RoP is detached and incohesive. Every other scene seems to involve Galadriel sulking and lecturing clunky characters.