"Commodified fantasy takes no risks: it invents nothing, but imitates and trivializes. It proceeds by depriving the old stories of their intellectual and ethical complexity, turning their action to violence, their actors to dolls, and their truth-telling to sentimental platitude. Heroes brandish their swords, lasers, wands, as mechanically as combine harvesters, reaping profits. Profoundly disturbing moral choices are sanitized, made cute, made safe. The passionately conceived idea of the great storytellers are copied, stereotyped, reduced to toys, molded in bright-colored plastic, advertised, sold, broken, junked, replaceable, interchangeable." -Ursula K. LeGuin
I have more respect for a fan who writes an amateur and amateurish fan fiction out of love and passion for the material than I do for showrunners Tweedledee and Tweedledum. I'd trust the amateur writer's understanding of the source material over the Bad Robot flunkies too.
it is Corporate Fiction, some even say Activist Fiction, but nothing Fan to find anywhere... only in name it is remotely conected to Tolkien... in only his names for characters and places where used... everything else they got wrong, either deliberately or with spite... with the exeption of small things, the got right by chance.
Fan of something can create terrible fan fiction. Its because they dont know how to build a world with characters from scratch to fulfill their desired story, they have to corrupt the existing ones.
@@pseudonym9215 but for it to be called Fan Fiction it should be born out of the intention from a fan, that wanted to add something to whatever he/she is Fan of and not a multi-billionaire, that just wants some vanity project a la Game of Thromes for his streaming platform.
They did Galadriel's brother dirty. Finrod is responsible for preserving the line of Barahir by sacrificing himself to save Beren. If Beren died in his quest to steal the Silmaril(s) from Morgoth's crown, there's no Beren and Luthien, and therefore, no Aragorn. They did that because, while they insist "the books, the books, the books" they only read LOTR and the Hobbit. They're not fans, they just got a writing job.
All true, the point about Finrod and his heroism especially, but to get a writing job, you'd think they would have to be at least qualified as at least proven good writers. This group couldn't write themselves out of a wet paper bag with sharp pencils. Not even considering the shredding of the lore just to shoehorn in a bunch of loosely connected member berries from LOTR, the pacing, the timing, the attention to the distances of the locations in Middle Earth, the superficial, unlikeable characters all definitely prove that they are the worst hacks ever.
I think they could have avoided some of the lore problems if they had made Celebrian the main character of this show, instead of Galadriel, and give her Galadriel's arc. They wouldn't have needed to retcon almost everything about Galadriel's life and character then, and because Celebrian is a character we don't know much about, you have more freedom to develop her without breaking the lore. She was born in the Second Age, so she really would be a young elven princess at this time. She could be rash and hotheaded and wield a sword. And her interactions with Elrond would be all the more interesting. Of course, it still wouldn't work with this hopelessly untalented writing team who created one of the most unlikable protagonists ever written. But at least in concept, the character could work.
I give you credit for the Celebrian idea. That is a good one that I haven't heard anywhere else. However, as long as you were willing to let a male be the lead, then Elrond's perspective would have made the most sense. And you could have had Galadriel as an important side character. But, yes, if it had to be a female lead, then Celebrian would have been a great option, and much more sensible with this plotline.
@Strideo1 can't do that! He's a guy, so he can't be the main character! We need a lame girl boss to whine and pout her way thru the show! Get it right sexist. /obvious sarcasm.
I actually don't use the term of fanfiction in this case. Fan fiction denotes those who make it have actual passion or love for the setting to varying degrees of quality. I don't think so in this case, it feels like there's a lack of passion and care for the setting to the point where I'd call this anti-fan fiction, as it's their own story imposed on a setting without care or passion for TOLKIEN. A fan fiction CAN be good, and remain in the spirit and intent of Tolkien, not all have skill and is in good fun. As I would consider the PJ movies as non canon (obviously) and fan fiction, but it is a quality take in that case. As for definition of fan fiction imo, quality is not important in determining if it's fan fiction (unless it's obvious you're using 'fan fiction, as a pajoritive) Fan fiction as a definition imo, is non-canon/unofficial material made by a fan. Quality is a separate issue altogether unrelated to a thing being fan fiction, anymore than a pizza being good or bad determining whether it's pizza. You can say good pizza or bad pizza, but it's still pizza. To sum up, rings of power is a soulless corporate regurgitation slapped with a lotr label, made by in large by people I don't believe for a second is a real or legitimate fan of Tolkien and middle earth. So Anti-fan fiction, or tourist fiction if you prefer that terminology that is common parlens for people who come into fandoms as "tourists" they feign care for the setting but really don't and start demanding changes to their own whims.
"...prideful young warrior..." At this point in time Galadrial is one of the oldest elves in middle earth. Only Cirdan and maybe a handful of others are older. She's far from being some impetuous youth.
You can’t even make the argument “well their perception of time is different from ours” because by the second age Galadriel is *TENS OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS OLD!*
Great video, but I don't think you answered the question: why does it bother you (us) so much? After all, I don't really care when Disney makes a bad Marvel TV show, because to me it's just another IP. And I think that's what LotR is to a lot of people: just another corporate fantasy IP in a huge landscape of corporate fantasy IPs. But passionate Tolkien fans recognize that what JRR Tolkien created is truly special, arguably unique in all of fiction, a legendarium so rich that it is on par with many cultures' actual mythologies, created not purely as a revenue source to be monetized but rather as a gift to Western/Anglo culture (and in some sense, humanity as a whole). THAT'S why Rings of Power bothers us so much: this tyrannical, greedy, out-of-touch American corporation has put some random duo's horrible D&D campaign to film and asked all of us to love it because, legally, they are allowed to brand it as "The Lord of the Rings." Tolkien deserves WAY more respect than that.
True. We answer that in a ton of other videos, though. I've pointed out repeatedly that there is no vision or visionary behind this show--it's simply a corporate exercise because Bezos wants his own Game of Thrones. In this one, Michael just wanted to make clear that this can only be considered no more thanthird rate fan-fiction at best(whereas you might say Jackson's LOTR is first-rate fan fiction).
The word "fan fiction" is a vague/misleading term. In MY mind, A true "fan" would care more for the lore/canon of the world they're fanatical about. A true fantasy fan would care more for obsessively consistent worldbuilding and character building. The writers of this abomination are not "Fans" of these books, nor of fantasy. They're talentless hacks who see this world/fandom as a vehicle for expressing their real world concerns. And they have the intellects of dim witted children, which is very seldom the case for true fans of fantasy worlds. The kind of "Fans" we're talking of here are more obsessives, that latch onto some part of the material and without any ability or understanding, bastardize it to impose their desires onto it
I’d label it “drive by fiction.” It uses the names and the map Tolkien made but the actual story is their own. What they picked up is at the same level of accuracy as what you would get by driving by a car accident.
Yes, the same is how almost anything ever gets made, even Tolkein. He did not have a clear map nor was everything finished despite eventually being published. He rewrote and revised several times (as many writers, especially fantasy writers do) and left some things in the gray and others left to interpret by his family and editors and publishers. Tolkein had influences by other authors of other mthologies too and he could easily be critisized for recontexualizing them into his work and not being "true" to any, let alone perhaps being too black and white about the nature of war... I'm not saying the show is perfect, that it will be everyone's cup of tea, or that it remains to be seen how some things will line up, because of changes/limitations, or how it's often driven by platitudes of dialogue because of both the nature of the philosophy drives the plot with a huge story with a huge cast may cause occational pacing issues, but outside of that it is fine, even beautiful and is trying to get into the weeds on the nature of evil of the individual and the group, while asking: if there can ever be any sort of immediat redemption? How does one resist evil if the very nature of it forces one to be evil in order to fight it? That is what the show is actually about and the changes reflect that idea rather aptly.
Well, I've been reading fanfiction for years, and as with everything, there is an insane amount of variation, and there's the reader's subjectivity in what is "crappy, ok, good or impressive". I think there is a decent amount of fanfic writers that do the source material justice, and the funny thing is that I don't believe that the really good fanfic authors even pretend to be "reinventing" Tolkien (or any other universe), they just love the source material and they want to be part of it. What sets fanfic apart from ROP is that fan authors, unskilled or skilful, usually LOVE the source material enough to spend hours and hours writing stories for free, just for the sake of writing and enjoying Middle Earth (or whatever other fandom you can think of). These showrunners are just mercenaries looking to profit from the Professor without even understanding what he wrote about. Dump them in the "crappy fanfic authors" category if you must, but don't demean every fanficion author out there, I promise you they are foaming at the mouth about ROP too.
Of potential interest, Ross MacFarlane's video "Why in the World did The Rings of Power Cost a Billion Dollars?" gives one plausible explanation as to why ROP exists at all. The short version is that ROP is really just a massive advertisement to draw people into subscribing to Amazon Prime. The long version starts about 15 mininutes 45 seconds in and lasts about 7 minutes.
I cannot imagine the intellect of anyone that honestly says S1 was "Alright" or "Just a normal show". I'm into the books/movies and somewhat knowlegeable of the lore, but I'm 100% fine excusing plenty of lore violations in an adaptation. What boils my piss about this show is the astonishingly infantile writing (plots and characters) and the almost complete lack of critical thinking ability evident in the writers. It should insult the intelect of even a very dim witted 7 year old. There's not a single character of scene or plot arc that stands up to the slightest scrutiny for believability or consistency. Every single scene can be mercilessly roasted which frankly, in the end, was the show's one saving grace, the only source of value in the entire sorry endeavour.
i agree to every point. This show is so poorly written, that at the end of E3 we have the following plotlines, where they started and where they are at the moment: - Sauron left Eregion - now is back in Eregion ( why Celebrimbor did not wonder, why Halbrand reveiled the Annatar-Persona back when he was alone with him in S1, i do not know. - Not-Gandalf and Not-Frodo say good by to Not-Sam and go to the east - now they are reunited with Not-Sam and STILL on the way to the east - The elves have the 3 freshly forged Rings of Power - they still have them and when wearing all 3 of them, they magically heal the Tree (why Cirdan Ring alone did nothing? idk) - The Numenorians are caught in political infight - they still are ( even with Miriel being blind sometimes and sometimes walk like she is healed...) - the dwarfs are the only plotline, that goes somewhere at least, with the Durins reconciling and the sun-mirrors failing to create some "drama" ( why they did not install said mirrors outside the main entrance that is still useable to reflect the light on their gardens? idk, guess there are some engineering problems 🤔, btw in my mind the Balrog is doing some Irish stepdance to cause all those earthquakes, at least a more entertaining thought than this show itself ) and all of that plot advancement in 3h 27 min of screentime...
From the perspective of someone not familiar with the lore. IT stands up well to other "alright/just a normal show" shows on TV that people watch regularly. It just completely falls apart when set up against Tolkiens universe. I don't see why that rubs you wrong? Also, misspelling intellect when trying to sound superior... Are you so insecure that if others don't think the same as you you lose your shit? And before you go on a tirade. I find RoP a travesty.
@@cholst1 No, it completely falls apart when set up against any normal measure of quality, that's why this show gets roasted as well by people unfamiliar with the lore. You still have the completely inconsistent characters who will completely change their position on a dime just to push the plot forward. This ruins any chance of people empathizing with the characters, because the characters themselves constantly forget what they care about and what they want. Characters do things that make no sense in any way, like Galadriel not telling the others about Sauron, only because otherwise the rest of the plot couldn't happen. There are massive logical holes, like Numenoreans invading an entire country with just three ships worth of soldiers, and coincidentally arriving exactly where the village was we had been following. Only 37% of the people who started watching season 1 finished it. So no, it does not stand up well to normal shows. Due to the flat characters, illogical plot and sluggish pacing, regular viewers find the show INCREDIBLY boring.
@@frankvandorp2059 Have you seen any modern shows? It fits right in. Its terrible Tolkien, its not good TV, but it is completely in line with the stuff the undiscerning audience will watch and absorb without question. Its completely in line with the quality of show Disney is putting out for example. It may not be up with the good stuff, but if you talk to people about those shows its clear most miss why they are good anyway.
@@belegur8108 frankly, i don’t think the whole windows to the surface that catch and send light to crops feels plausible. crops need certain soil, certain conditions, open skies; sorry, but not believable. you want crops, go to the f-cking surface and grow them. otherwise, i don’t think you could grow enough to feed a whole city the size of moria. maybe you could grow a bit, but not for that manny people. these people act like growing crops in a rocky mine is as easy as growing potatoes on mars. easy, peasy. 2 years in, we’ll be living in another galaxy and growing potatoes and tomatoes on jupiter as well.
It always strikes me as inappropriate and bizarre when people insist on making things like literary or cultural appreciation about sex and gender. I'm a 35 year old woman, and I love Tolkien's work. I grew up with my father reading it to me. His voice is actually quite like the Professor's, and he was always very good at telling the stories. I have loved Tolkien's work for all my life. For me, the film adaptations made by Peter Jackson - poignant and beautifully done though they may be - are completely secondary to the literature. I see such a gentle, and beautiful communion with ancestry, with the earth, and essentially with the Divine, in Tolkien. And the understanding of his work has nothing to do with whether you're a man or a woman, although I'd also like to think perhaps as a woman I can see some things in the work that your average 'nerdy' man probably wouldn't see because he may be too busy getting excited about swords and horseback riding (which are objectively exciting things, don't get me wrong). So a lot of "Tolkien fans" are male, but so what? For me it depends on what you see. And I think sadly a lot of people just want to see a secular "swords and sorcery", whereas in my view there is more theology, mythology, language, lament, poetry, sensitivity towards 'God'/the Divine, and love for nature and the earth than that.
She [Galadriel] lived in Valinor and Valian years are much longer than our human years. So we don’t really know how old she really is as Tolkien never made it clear. Galadriel also, didn’t like Fëanor and refused to give him a lock of her hair, but then she gave a dwarf a lock because she saw in him humility, a thing Fëanor did not understand. Galadriel was wise in Valinor, but she thirsted to learn about the wider world, this is why she continued on with the Noldor, even though she had no time for Fëanor and abhorred the kinslaying at Alqualondë.
“The people who make fan fiction really, really are obsessed or love the source material” so who involved with “The Rings of Power” really, really love Tolkien and what proof do you have of this obsession?
I could tolerate a lot. But Galadriel smoozing with Sauron then hold his identity a secret, then fighting alone while castrated male elves walk the other way is enough to make your head explode. Her character development is abysmal. The orcs having tenders family feelings and wanting to settle made me extremely ill. I was actually enjoying the Bombadil interaction. He was tolerable (aside from his dull garb) . Head scratcher. He has a conversation in the other room with Goldberry. Then there’s no reference to it and she vanishes. WTF does this even mean? Then why even include it at all? The writing is just terrible.
The writers of fan fiction at least care about the original material and write their stories, inferior though they may be, for love and pleasure, not money.
Well... before s2 started I tried to rewatch s1 but could only endure a couple episodes, I had genuinely forgotten how bad it was. Waited for reviews on s2...glad I did lol. It sounds that not only it's not Tolkien (despite having well written in the title Lord of the rings: the rings of power) but it's written so badly and without any logic that makes it impossible to enjoy. Stunning cgi and sets can only go so far to save it.
What is fan fiction?? Fan fiction is, in particular, amateur writers who are fans of the material they write about. They aren't necessarily fans of the material as a whole or fans of the original writer but their Fandom can come from a single element of the material that shapes their enthusiasm for it. As such you can find fan fiction surrounding the shipping of characters from a story that were not originally together. So I would definately say Rings of Power fits the definition of fan fiction. The writers are clearly amateur in their craft and seem to be more interested in certain elements of the property and shipping characters than they are fans of the source material as a whole.
Those fine details in the motivations of the characters that you mentioned are a possible reason why Tolkien was so skeptical about the film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. Especially when it comes to elves. Tolkien is one of the few fantasy authors in whose works elves are a race profoundly different from humans. It is obvious that these showrunners do not understand this at all. Their elves are people with wigs and pointy ears. Even in Jackson's LOTR, an elf prince in the midst of a life-and-death struggle on which the fate of the whole world depends surfs on a shield down the stairs, but his LOTR was something we waited 50 years for and was the work of true fans, so we could forgive some Hollywood tricks. But now we were waiting for a series that cost a billion dollars and expected it to knock us off our feet. And we got Elrond flirting with his mother-in-law. The hearts of men are easily deceived indeed :)
Hannah Arendt wrote The Banality of Evil. And the evil represented by Amazon is a banal evil which flows from the top. It represents the idea that the Corporations can tell you what to think .
Galadriel had been mentioned to be Amazonian, sort of like Penthesilia. She was like a Captain of Gondolin, but this was not really a part of her that she exercised. There is a mention of her defending her Teleri kin at the Kinslaying (UT, The History of Galadriel and Celeborn), but really this was not her thing. She did learn from Melian and in a way mimicked her works in Doriath in Lothlórien. Even when the Elves of her realm were fighting against Sauron's forces from Dol Guldur and when they sacked it Celeborn led those forces. Galadriel had only come afterward to throw it down with her might, "Galdriel threw down its walls and laid bare its pits, and the forest was cleansed" (LotR, Appendix B).
Watching this, am about half way thru, so if you address this, cool, if not, cool... One of the aspects of fan fiction is self-insertion. Maybe not in a complete character form, but in thought and actions. The author adds their world view to the main character (usually the main character) so that idea permeates the story. When you hear the defenders of the RoP say things like "I want to see someone like me" - that's it in a nutshell. Guaranteed the writers room of RoP fits that bill to a T.
@@naoberlincarrabouxo6552 Celebrían was born early in the Second Age, likely in SA 300, after her mother refused to return to Tol Eressëa, and passed over the Mountains.[2] She lived with her mother Galadriel in Eregion,
Has there been even a mention of Celeborn or Celebrían at this point? (11 episodes so far). Absolutely ludicrous they are not pretty central characters. We all know why; because it will somehow detract from the "boss" agency of Galadriel in their eyes. In itself that demonstates an utter ignorance of Galadriel herself. I didn't watch a lick of this show after season 1 ep 2 and never will. An abomination.
I believe they only mention was when she said he looked like a "silver clam" or something like that. She was recounting seeing him off to war (and was with Theo after the not-so-dangerous Mordor volcano).
Morfydd Clark's Galadriel "has no shame" as she said. So it's probable that her version of Galadriel would belly dance in front of the Black Gate to distract Sauron
What about Galadriel’s daughter who marries Elrond then gives birth to Arwen who then marries Aragorn. Creating a fake romance between Sauron and Galadriel destroys the lore in so many ways. How shite is the ROP.
They have placed amateurs in charge of the adaptation of one of the most culturally important and beloved novels in English literature. I would not be surprised to discover that neither showrunners nor writers had read more than a synopsis.
Tolkien did not (except for Aldarion and Erendis) provide a narrative set in the Second Age, with continuous dialogue, scenes, etc. So _any_ Rings of Power, even if it were faithful to Tolkien and brilliantly written, would still be 'fan fiction'. The term is so overused and loaded nowadays that it is almost useless, except to distinguish it from wholly original work. The problem is not that it is 'fan fiction', it is that it is almost unrelated to Tolkien's work except for names and places and the broadest of events ("The Rings are forged"-and even that is in the wrong order). It is, as I have said elsewhere, like a historical novel set in the Revolutionary War, centering on an affair between Abigail Adams and Benedict Arnold, and with young Andrew Jackson as an action hero who saves George Washington's life. It is also a mess because of elementary writing failings-matters of time and distance and geography (where'd that 'Black Forest' come from? How can people walk in circles traveling due east?), physical implausibilities (dive off a cliff and survive without a bruise, and that volcano), inexplicable logic (the whole mithril plot), and characters we are supposed to root for but cannot.
I read an old article saying there's a legal reason why the show's not going to be faithful to the original lore, as they're "contractually bound to make up nearly everything seen on the show". And that's due to Amazon having rights only for the appendices. The characters on the show can also be only loosely based on the characters in the books, unless they're only mentioned in the appendices. Kinda makes sense why the show is what it is. Mind boggles why didn't they use only their own characters, only referencing the known characters or using as little as possible without distorting them. There could've been million other stories to be told in Second Age Middle Earth, as any RPG fan knows.
It's a creation in bad faith. Everything proceeds from that point. Including my interpretation that it's a series of hour-long b-roll, scenes, interactions, spectacle which are only good for advertising. That is: it's a series of clips, cuts, shots, and images for ads and tiktok. That's why it doesn't work as narrative or characterization - it doesn't try to do that. MGM acts as Amazon's corporate brand and Prime production house. It's just stock footage. You wouldn't expect Shutterstock to tell a good story, right?
I know a page that is a role play in Middle Earth and they have not changed the characters, they are as they should be. They have not desiccated the canon characters to fit their own agenda. Not every person that writes fan fiction destroys the lore of professor Tolkien, some love his world and they respect the basis of the books and the story. Amazon does not respect the characters that were created, they have changed them so much, if you gave them other names we could never compare them to the original ones of the books. The show runners do not care about the lore and they only want to write the book that professor Tolkien could not. Why did Amazon give the project to two stupid people who wanted to do their own spin? Why did they not wait and search for talented writers, talented show runners and why do you think they fired Tom Shippey. it was because he did not want to lower himself to their level. It would have been so much better if the rights had been bought by HBO.
There is a segment of the population that believes that “pride” in any respect is actually despicable conceitedness. Being proud of someone or someone’s accomplishments even of one’s own is a virtue.
3 месяца назад+1
ROP is a pop-culture parody of the Peter Jackson movies. It's silliness posing as epic fantasy. Not a good combo.
ROP is a really terrible Christopher Jackson fanfic .its so far from Tolkien it’s gross. I’ve read and seen some well written fanfics and this writing is just so bad. It’s trying to cheaply lift those moods in constant visual replication, character traits that might have been familiar to some of the original actors, and replication of those memorable phrasing by movie characters that are nowhere in Tolkien strictly movie, tho it’s completely wrong in the most bizarre nonsensical things ever…almost every but without any of the characters acting doing or saying anything that makes sense let alone honors them in any way. It’s cringey and dated and doesn’t retain any of the wholesome love that makes the individual struggles important and lacks class and sexualizes relationships that gives them the exact opposite of powerful graceful eternal… I am the only member of my family friends to read Tolkien and they were baffled at the very basics of the storytelling and turned off by all the strong woman and dei tropes. “They took our jobs!” Tropes…. There’s so much story they could have told why couldn’t they have gotten anyone who could write for them????
I'm not a huge fan of Tolkien, I liked the Peter Jackson movies, I read The Hobbit in my teens, read the first book of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. That's it. Don't know anything about the lore, not interested in learning it. But here's the thing, even without being a huge Tolkien fan, not having any knowledge of the lore, I can tell this is crap entertainment, the writing is bad, the story telling is worse, the acting for the most part is horrible, and the costumes look like rejects from a highschool drama production.
I personally can't stand the show. I'm okay with people that like it, but as it stands I can't get through an episode. I can't turn off my brain or my appreciation for tolkien's work.
I resent RoP being called fan fiction. Fan fiction is written by fans who love the source material. It can actually be pretty amazing, and sometimes hot garbage. People usually don’t make money off it. RoP is corporate poser fiction. McKay and Payne are corporate poser hacks using actors who aren’t heteronormative WASP men to shield themselves from criticism of their crappy writing. It’s the same trick every mediocre entry has done in the past 15 years. Other examples have been CBS Elementary and the 2016 Ghostbusters. The Jurassic World movies and the Frasier revival have been slightly different, but reactionary defenders still can’t say non generic reasons they like it. They’re motivated by the popularity of Peter Jackson’s movies and having shills and reactionary defenders shit of Peter Jackson and his group as well as the Tolkien estate. They praise RoP using previous critiques of Jackson and even Tolkien himself to claim that RoP did it well because it was different. As much as the so called female empowerment representation is praised, the only female friendship of the show is Nori and Poppy. They have to constantly say that they’re friends.
i still wait for the showrunners to name the books, they claim to always go back to, i yearn to read them, because Tolkien written they surely are not... also some quotes from a comment discussion i had with a defender of the show, claiming to be a Tolkien nerd: - Yes, I know there are a few deviations in the show. - I can overlook that to see a good character arc - she ( Galadriel ) was a little unlikeable in the first season, but she was supposed to be unlikeable, so that the viewers could see her crash and burn - and tbh, I would've been surprised if she ( still Galadriel ) WASN'T good at kicking ass, as an elf that has lived so long, especially in times of war and darkness and danger. and then that very nice lady ( no sarcasm here, she was very friendly and did not deny me my opinion as i do not hers, but i really do not know where her insights come from... and she then pointed ou the good things this show has with the following: - the way he ( Cirdan ) watches the sun set over the west, which lore fans should love, seeing the hint of his longing for Valinor. - all the beautiful mentions of Earendil. - The little nod to Maedhros when Adar speaks of being chained to the peak. - Sauron's control over the warg another nod to his past dealings with werewolves. She then finishes with : I get that some people can't look past the smallest deviation, but it saddens me that it closes their eyes to the really great parts. and the one point i finally could agree wholeheartly: These changes do nothing to the books though. The books are still the books, and a TV adaptation will never change them. but this is just one example of Show defenders, whose mind set i simply can't understand.
The worst part is that they don’t know what this “what if” story is about. And so don’t we! Is it about Galadriel Sauron shippering? So wtf is Notgandalf, numenoreans, hobbits and rings are doing here? Is it about Sauron and orcs being complicated and grey moraled characters? Why we need dwarves, hobbits etc? Is it about Rings of power?? Why don’t we see the powers of the rings?)) how elves discovering its powers? Are they any different from one ring to another? Summoning fish, healing and making an arrows disappear, foreshadowing? It looks more like a magic orb or the Aladdins lamp magic)) why making galadriel discovering Halbrands identity in the 1 season if she did nothing with it? Couldn’t Halbrand introduce himself as Annatar to all of the elves in Eregion in season 1 after revealing that he is not the lost king?) And make Galadriel to be the one who is still suspicious about him? Mb allying her with Elrond about it?) Add a bit of sense to all the Halbrand-Annatar/Sauron idea? His whole big plan of seducing Celebrimbor to create other rings based on way too many sudden stupidity of the elves))) its just sooo stupid))
Exactly, why in all its promotion it has above "The Lord of the Rings" when it is pre school level writing made up by a couple of show runners....do they have no shame...it's like me putting Shakespeare and then creating a woeful copy.
It's so bad that it's no longer funny-it's reached the point of being painfully bad. Watching these RUclips clips is physically uncomfortable. We all know it’s hemorrhaging viewers and more importantly - money! It needs to be taken out back and put down. Maybe intentionally miss on the first try just to reap some gratification in its pain as it dwindles away and crosses into the realm of cancellation.
I kinda get lost in the sauce when yall start talking about the dates n stuff. But your knowledge and understanding of Tolkeins work and the LoTR background is impressive. From a superficial standpoint the show is just downright bad but goes into egregious terrible mishandling of source material when yall break it down. It is so unfortunate that shows like this and Acolyte are so bad bc there seems to be such a yearning for good shows in these IPs and genres... anyway great vid.
I feel seen. I wrote fanfictions in the early 2010s, when I was precisely 15 or 16 😂. Mainly utilizing Conan Doyle’s source material as an executory for my own homosexual fantasies. I never once thought anything was gonna come out of it, though. I wasn’t that arrogant. And I certainly wasn’t granted a $1G budget. Do you know how many families that sum could have helped, instead? 🙄
It's not even fan fiction because the people who are riding it are not fans. It would be as if Melkor himself wrote this show. Or if a character from the New Shadow were rewriting the history of middle earth... hence sympathy for the orcs, etc..
Don’t like don’t watch. It really is that simple. Every single fandom is the same. I swear, EVERY SINGLE ONE. Is it the books? No. Can it ever capture the depth and complexity of Tolkiens world? No. (Nothing will ever be able to.) Is it an enjoyable watch? For me, yes. I’m a total Tolkien nerd and I have no problem taking this for what it is. It’s just TV. It really doesn’t matter. Any time spent in Tolkien’s sandbox is enjoyable. Who cares if the bucket and spade are different. 🤷🏽♀️
I would disagree. Doesn't fan fiction usually come from a place of respect for the lore that tries to build upon and emulate the original? This just craps on it.
For season 1 I went in with the mindset of completely divorcing the show from anything in the true LoTR universe/lore. Just take it as a fantasy show. But....I thought Wheel of Time was bad. This surpassed it by far. I only made it to episode 3 or 4 of RoP and couldn't do anymore. Point is... even as a show with a fantasy veneer, the plot and characters are badly written, badly executed, badly acted and is not compelling or interesting. I canceled Prime a while back, so I'm not viewing this season. It's not even fanfiction as others have pointed out. I used to write Fallout fanfiction but I was passionate about the lore and the world itself. Was it good? Not at all. But fanfiction means a passion and love and staying true to the source. RoP needs to die.
I don’t care about it enough to have an opinion. It is third rate rubbish and it has no reference to Tolkien’s Middle Earth. I have been a Tolkien scholar since I was 13. I am now 57. Rings of power has no relevance to Tolkien’s vision. So it is a waste of Bezo’s money. The screenwriters have no understanding of Galadriel, or Numenor. There were no references to harfoots in Tolkien’s legendarium at this time and Gandalf arrived with four other wizards at the beginning of the Third Age. But remember that Galadriel came under tutelage of Melian the Maia in Doriath. She learned great wisdom. But she was proud, but also wise and she was great in stature. ROP makes her into a petulent adolescent.
I wish it was fucking fan fiction, because I´ve actually read ff that respected Tolkien a lot more😖 they did Galadriel so bad in RoP, she would have enough story to tell in a good adaption of the Second Age, especially when there is conflict between her and Celebrimbor (when her and her very much alive husband get expelled from Eregion). The could produce SO MUCH GOOD STORY if they just stick to the source material of the SA, and ffs, viewers can follow a timeline where some characters die because they are mortal or killed. Amazon should have started with the Annatar story, then the Wars of the Elves and Sauron, then a bit of a pause, then the Numenor plot line, ending the series with the War of the Last Alliance...but no, they are stupid and arrogant.
I dont understand which fan would have this much hate for Tolkien's original work if this indeed qualifies as glorified expensive fanfic, what kind of fan has this sick perverted idea of shipping the lady of light with the lord of darkness while she is already a married woman, according to this fanfic she is already a cheater.
Galadriel was also under the tutelage of Melian the Maia. Melian had long sense left her long lasting effect on Galadriel long sense, by the time this stupid ass show takes place.
I do enjoy Whenever I listen to you guys , Jonathan and Michael, wish Amazon would have used people like you who really honor Tolkien instead of their dumb writers👍❤️
Thats a weird description of fan-fiction. Fan-fiction is just fiction written by fans. How good of a writer you are is irrelevent. Hence good or bad fan-fiction.
Obviously it's fanfiction. Whether it's good or bad is entirely subjective. If someone doesn't like it that's 100% fair. But I can't get behind basically shitting on people who enjoy it.
I agree with your latter point, but I disagree that writing is "entirely subjective." Of course, writing IS art, and so there is a lot of built in subjectivity. But there is also a real literary science to writing which has been duplicated for thousands of years. Not to press on the Hero's Journey too strongly, but it is AN example of certain things that make good stories good, though it isn't a complete science because one cannot just "plug in" those plot points and make a good story. That's where the art comes in. However, I do think its possible to say a bad story is objectively contains bad story telling techniques even if the execution is subjective. But I do concur, if people like this show, good for them. But it is also good to critique poor writing and poor execution. And in the end, if its a good story that is told well, those stories have universal appeal. I don't think this show has universal appeal.
@@rev.chuckshingledecker I am a person who will argue until they're blue in the face that the last book in particular of Harry Potter is utter trash in terms of actual writing. Objectively speaking, it contains many contradictions of things established in earlier books, plot holes, completely idiotic plot devices (goblins being randomly found in the middle of the Forest of Dean who happen to be talking about important plot points in carrying voices), and is like a poorly written mystery novel where it's impossible for the readers to put together the clues because they don't have all the information so an omnipotent narrator needs to come explain it in the penultimate chapter (even though he's literally dead). Do you know how much shit I caught for saying so on the forums? Even when I gave objective, clear examples with quotations and page numbers, peoples' reaction was that I wasn't a real fan, I was ruining the book by analyzing it instead of just enjoying it, etc. With Harry Potter, people wouldn't have cared over much if Rowling literally wrote a bullet point list of what happened instead of a novel, because they just wanted to know what happened to their favorite characters and the story. Because it isn't just about the writing. That isn't the only purpose. Like do you think the WWE is well written? No. But millions of people watch it. Because the writing isn't the point. Video games are similar--right now, a huge group of people are trashing Dragon Age Veilguard because the combat is different from the original games and therefore it can't possibly be good or fun, whereas other people are excited by it. It depends how you're measuring--DAV would be a terrible tactical rpg, but it may be a great action rpg. With ROP, "good" or "bad" ALSO depends on your starting point. If the most important thing to you is the science of writing, you'll be measuring differently than someone for whom the most important thing is being entertained. And if you're starting from the perspective that's it's supposed to be a faithful adaptation/what you wanted was a faithful adaptation, then you're already mad they're changing things, and you'll be more likely to nitpick the writing and find complaints you wouldn't have noticed in the first place if you hadn't been angry enough to pick it apart in the first place (like I was with Harry Potter).
@@TheOneRingcom I like some aspects and hate others. What I'm complaining about is the implication or outright statements by many that anyone who does like it must be a profound moron.
The show is conceptually flawed. Its trying to tell a story it doesn't have the complete rights to and therefore MUST change it. That's a bad start for any piece of media. This show just shouldn't have been made at this time . Its also being made in a time when diversity MUST be there, it has to be inserted because its the fashion. I dont hate diversity, I'm not a straight white male myself, but it should have a reason to be included. diversity by the way includes modern think about motivations and attitudes and its just not compatible with Tolkien they way they are trying to make it. The Jackson movies could not be made now, studio execs wouldn't allow it.
Nah, there’s some top tier fan fiction out there. I’ve read stuff that was a thousand leagues better than some of the shitty novels trending on book tock nowadays. Calling RoP fanfiction is an insult to fanfiction lmao. People have written much better stuff and all without financial motives.
I don't think there is anything wrong about feeling protective about works of fiction you love. Let's put Tolkien's world aside for a minute and see how a really bad adaptation of a mainstream literary classic author like Jane Austen is treated. Look at the reviews of 2022's 'Persuasion', which did many of the things Tolkien fans complain modern TV and film does to fantasy classics. Trying to rewrite a rather demure Regency young woman Anne Elliot as a smirking, modern fleabag clone. Critics absolutely hated it, but they seem to be the same sort of critics who give 'Rings of Power' a pass, and try and put down Tolkien fans who point out how crap it all is.
they are doing it to Wheel of Time, Star Wars, Willow, Marvel and so many other beloved franchises, everytime they claim to be fans of the source but target the work NOT to the fanbase that made those franchises as successful as they where, but to a "modern audience"... maybe they will someday realize, that this "modern audience" does NOT watch the new movies/shows multiple times, buy any merchandize or create groups to enjoy it together... and i bet, a not so small percentage of the vocal show defenders didn't even watch it, they just want to defend the strawman, the showrunners have built up to justify their work.
@@belegur8108i love star wars & tolkien, their trestment is especially awful considering all the written stories that exist or existed in case of the EU
Any adaptation of another's work is fanfiction. Peter Jackson's movies were indeed fanfiction. It's not the amount of money Amazon can through at a project that'll make it a respected adaptation but the love, passion, understanding and talent of the creators involved. This is why the people behind RoP fail, it's why they out right plagiarize the movies, it's why true fans of Tolkien reject this amateur attempt of poorly made fanfiction.
Literally dont care about that. The problem with diversity isnt in who plays who, its in how it changes the tone. Tolkien is a very white Anglo Saxon point of view, but by forcing diversity you change that. Changing a characters race isn't the problem, its changing the outlook they have at the same time that's the problem.
For me, it has nothing to do with Tolkien's work-absolutely nothing. It's not even a weird or twisted version of it. It's cringe-worthy neo-Marxist propaganda which they are trying to push onto Western countries. It's actually hard to watch, whether you're a fan of fantasy or not, and I feel really sorry for true fans who are looking for their beloved franchise in it. It must be painful to watch it all get butchered so much. It's incredibly cringe-worthy.
@@MatejZizanovic Since in my opinion nothing is like Tolkien's works, therefore I may say, everything seems like a deviation. It feels nothing like it should be.
@@AB-12345 well its a totally different medium first of all... Source text for this show is like, a 20 page segment from Silmarillion, wich Tolkien didnt even write, but his son put it together from letters and notes of his father. Hence its written like a bunch of tooltips and song lyrics, without a single line of dialogue - its inevitable that whoever is making a screen adaptation will have to invent alot of things. I agree they couls have did alot of things better, my biggest problem is actor casting. But i see now people are shitting on everything about it, even things that are actually canon like orc families and orcs not wanting to go to war - people expext orcs to be war zombies all of a sudden...
@@MatejZizanovic All right. You are trolling, or you are paid shill. Orcs having families are canon 🤣🤣🤣, yeah cool. And what else? They are refugees which are supposed to be accepted by humans, elves and dwarves, giving homes and welfare 🤣🤣🤣 yeah dude I got you, I understand from where you are coming.
"Commodified fantasy takes no risks: it invents nothing, but imitates and trivializes. It proceeds by depriving the old stories of their intellectual and ethical complexity, turning their action to violence, their actors to dolls, and their truth-telling to sentimental platitude. Heroes brandish their swords, lasers, wands, as mechanically as combine harvesters, reaping profits. Profoundly disturbing moral choices are sanitized, made cute, made safe. The passionately conceived idea of the great storytellers are copied, stereotyped, reduced to toys, molded in bright-colored plastic, advertised, sold, broken, junked, replaceable, interchangeable." -Ursula K. LeGuin
I have more respect for a fan who writes an amateur and amateurish fan fiction out of love and passion for the material than I do for showrunners Tweedledee and Tweedledum. I'd trust the amateur writer's understanding of the source material over the Bad Robot flunkies too.
"It's not fanfiction. Because it wasn't written by fans" I always thought that but saw this comment on another video.
😆
It's hatefiction.
it is Corporate Fiction, some even say Activist Fiction, but nothing Fan to find anywhere... only in name it is remotely conected to Tolkien... in only his names for characters and places where used... everything else they got wrong, either deliberately or with spite... with the exeption of small things, the got right by chance.
Fan of something can create terrible fan fiction. Its because they dont know how to build a world with characters from scratch to fulfill their desired story, they have to corrupt the existing ones.
@@pseudonym9215 but for it to be called Fan Fiction it should be born out of the intention from a fan, that wanted to add something to whatever he/she is Fan of and not a multi-billionaire, that just wants some vanity project a la Game of Thromes for his streaming platform.
the best part of the show so far was seeing the "not hobbits" getting sucked into a tornado
They did Galadriel's brother dirty. Finrod is responsible for preserving the line of Barahir by sacrificing himself to save Beren. If Beren died in his quest to steal the Silmaril(s) from Morgoth's crown, there's no Beren and Luthien, and therefore, no Aragorn. They did that because, while they insist "the books, the books, the books" they only read LOTR and the Hobbit. They're not fans, they just got a writing job.
All true, the point about Finrod and his heroism especially, but to get a writing job, you'd think they would have to be at least qualified as at least proven good writers. This group couldn't write themselves out of a wet paper bag with sharp pencils. Not even considering the shredding of the lore just to shoehorn in a bunch of loosely connected member berries from LOTR, the pacing, the timing, the attention to the distances of the locations in Middle Earth, the superficial, unlikeable characters all definitely prove that they are the worst hacks ever.
You know what, there are some really great fanfics out there. This is an insult to fanfiction.
This is EXCELLENT commentary. You guys nail it. Knowledgable of Tolkien’s art and stated intent.
Thanks!
It’s bad fiction but not by any fans.
I think they could have avoided some of the lore problems if they had made Celebrian the main character of this show, instead of Galadriel, and give her Galadriel's arc.
They wouldn't have needed to retcon almost everything about Galadriel's life and character then, and because Celebrian is a character we don't know much about, you have more freedom to develop her without breaking the lore.
She was born in the Second Age, so she really would be a young elven princess at this time. She could be rash and hotheaded and wield a sword. And her interactions with Elrond would be all the more interesting.
Of course, it still wouldn't work with this hopelessly untalented writing team who created one of the most unlikable protagonists ever written. But at least in concept, the character could work.
If they really wanted to tell the story of the forging of the Rings I think it should've been from Celebrimbor's perspective.
I give you credit for the Celebrian idea. That is a good one that I haven't heard anywhere else.
However, as long as you were willing to let a male be the lead, then Elrond's perspective would have made the most sense. And you could have had Galadriel as an important side character. But, yes, if it had to be a female lead, then Celebrian would have been a great option, and much more sensible with this plotline.
@Strideo1 can't do that! He's a guy, so he can't be the main character! We need a lame girl boss to whine and pout her way thru the show! Get it right sexist.
/obvious sarcasm.
I actually don't use the term of fanfiction in this case. Fan fiction denotes those who make it have actual passion or love for the setting to varying degrees of quality. I don't think so in this case, it feels like there's a lack of passion and care for the setting to the point where I'd call this anti-fan fiction, as it's their own story imposed on a setting without care or passion for TOLKIEN.
A fan fiction CAN be good, and remain in the spirit and intent of Tolkien, not all have skill and is in good fun. As I would consider the PJ movies as non canon (obviously) and fan fiction, but it is a quality take in that case.
As for definition of fan fiction imo, quality is not important in determining if it's fan fiction (unless it's obvious you're using 'fan fiction, as a pajoritive)
Fan fiction as a definition imo, is non-canon/unofficial material made by a fan.
Quality is a separate issue altogether unrelated to a thing being fan fiction, anymore than a pizza being good or bad determining whether it's pizza. You can say good pizza or bad pizza, but it's still pizza.
To sum up, rings of power is a soulless corporate regurgitation slapped with a lotr label, made by in large by people I don't believe for a second is a real or legitimate fan of Tolkien and middle earth. So Anti-fan fiction, or tourist fiction if you prefer that terminology that is common parlens for people who come into fandoms as "tourists" they feign care for the setting but really don't and start demanding changes to their own whims.
I like your term tourist fiction 😂
Really nails it.
A Fan can definitely do it better. This is not even a fan's doing.
Thank you for defending the Professor's work, Gentlemen!!
"...prideful young warrior..." At this point in time Galadrial is one of the oldest elves in middle earth. Only Cirdan and maybe a handful of others are older. She's far from being some impetuous youth.
You can’t even make the argument “well their perception of time is different from ours” because by the second age Galadriel is *TENS OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS OLD!*
and she has a very adult daughter as Celebrian was born ca 1500 years before Isildur was
Great video, but I don't think you answered the question: why does it bother you (us) so much? After all, I don't really care when Disney makes a bad Marvel TV show, because to me it's just another IP. And I think that's what LotR is to a lot of people: just another corporate fantasy IP in a huge landscape of corporate fantasy IPs. But passionate Tolkien fans recognize that what JRR Tolkien created is truly special, arguably unique in all of fiction, a legendarium so rich that it is on par with many cultures' actual mythologies, created not purely as a revenue source to be monetized but rather as a gift to Western/Anglo culture (and in some sense, humanity as a whole). THAT'S why Rings of Power bothers us so much: this tyrannical, greedy, out-of-touch American corporation has put some random duo's horrible D&D campaign to film and asked all of us to love it because, legally, they are allowed to brand it as "The Lord of the Rings." Tolkien deserves WAY more respect than that.
True. We answer that in a ton of other videos, though. I've pointed out repeatedly that there is no vision or visionary behind this show--it's simply a corporate exercise because Bezos wants his own Game of Thrones.
In this one, Michael just wanted to make clear that this can only be considered no more thanthird rate fan-fiction at best(whereas you might say Jackson's LOTR is first-rate fan fiction).
A fan would never write such crap. A fan would at least try to adhere to the lore.
The word "fan fiction" is a vague/misleading term. In MY mind, A true "fan" would care more for the lore/canon of the world they're fanatical about. A true fantasy fan would care more for obsessively consistent worldbuilding and character building. The writers of this abomination are not "Fans" of these books, nor of fantasy. They're talentless hacks who see this world/fandom as a vehicle for expressing their real world concerns. And they have the intellects of dim witted children, which is very seldom the case for true fans of fantasy worlds. The kind of "Fans" we're talking of here are more obsessives, that latch onto some part of the material and without any ability or understanding, bastardize it to impose their desires onto it
I’d label it “drive by fiction.” It uses the names and the map Tolkien made but the actual story is their own. What they picked up is at the same level of accuracy as what you would get by driving by a car accident.
Yes, the same is how almost anything ever gets made, even Tolkein. He did not have a clear map nor was everything finished despite eventually being published. He rewrote and revised several times (as many writers, especially fantasy writers do) and left some things in the gray and others left to interpret by his family and editors and publishers. Tolkein had influences by other authors of other mthologies too and he could easily be critisized for recontexualizing them into his work and not being "true" to any, let alone perhaps being too black and white about the nature of war...
I'm not saying the show is perfect, that it will be everyone's cup of tea, or that it remains to be seen how some things will line up, because of changes/limitations, or how it's often driven by platitudes of dialogue because of both the nature of the philosophy drives the plot with a huge story with a huge cast may cause occational pacing issues, but outside of that it is fine, even beautiful and is trying to get into the weeds on the nature of evil of the individual and the group, while asking: if there can ever be any sort of immediat redemption? How does one resist evil if the very nature of it forces one to be evil in order to fight it? That is what the show is actually about and the changes reflect that idea rather aptly.
Well, I've been reading fanfiction for years, and as with everything, there is an insane amount of variation, and there's the reader's subjectivity in what is "crappy, ok, good or impressive". I think there is a decent amount of fanfic writers that do the source material justice, and the funny thing is that I don't believe that the really good fanfic authors even pretend to be "reinventing" Tolkien (or any other universe), they just love the source material and they want to be part of it. What sets fanfic apart from ROP is that fan authors, unskilled or skilful, usually LOVE the source material enough to spend hours and hours writing stories for free, just for the sake of writing and enjoying Middle Earth (or whatever other fandom you can think of). These showrunners are just mercenaries looking to profit from the Professor without even understanding what he wrote about. Dump them in the "crappy fanfic authors" category if you must, but don't demean every fanficion author out there, I promise you they are foaming at the mouth about ROP too.
Of potential interest, Ross MacFarlane's video "Why in the World did The Rings of Power Cost a Billion Dollars?" gives one plausible explanation as to why ROP exists at all. The short version is that ROP is really just a massive advertisement to draw people into subscribing to Amazon Prime. The long version starts about 15 mininutes 45 seconds in and lasts about 7 minutes.
I believe it is straight money laundering.
So I'm on IMDb and have worked in the film industry... even as a fan fiction less Tolkien it is a poorly written and acted show, period.
💯
I cannot imagine the intellect of anyone that honestly says S1 was "Alright" or "Just a normal show". I'm into the books/movies and somewhat knowlegeable of the lore, but I'm 100% fine excusing plenty of lore violations in an adaptation. What boils my piss about this show is the astonishingly infantile writing (plots and characters) and the almost complete lack of critical thinking ability evident in the writers. It should insult the intelect of even a very dim witted 7 year old. There's not a single character of scene or plot arc that stands up to the slightest scrutiny for believability or consistency. Every single scene can be mercilessly roasted which frankly, in the end, was the show's one saving grace, the only source of value in the entire sorry endeavour.
i agree to every point.
This show is so poorly written, that at the end of E3 we have the following plotlines, where they started and where they are at the moment:
- Sauron left Eregion - now is back in Eregion ( why Celebrimbor did not wonder, why Halbrand reveiled the Annatar-Persona back when he was alone with him in S1, i do not know.
- Not-Gandalf and Not-Frodo say good by to Not-Sam and go to the east - now they are reunited with Not-Sam and STILL on the way to the east
- The elves have the 3 freshly forged Rings of Power - they still have them and when wearing all 3 of them, they magically heal the Tree (why Cirdan Ring alone did nothing? idk)
- The Numenorians are caught in political infight - they still are ( even with Miriel being blind sometimes and sometimes walk like she is healed...)
- the dwarfs are the only plotline, that goes somewhere at least, with the Durins reconciling and the sun-mirrors failing to create some "drama" ( why they did not install said mirrors outside the main entrance that is still useable to reflect the light on their gardens? idk, guess there are some engineering problems 🤔, btw in my mind the Balrog is doing some Irish stepdance to cause all those earthquakes, at least a more entertaining thought than this show itself )
and all of that plot advancement in 3h 27 min of screentime...
From the perspective of someone not familiar with the lore. IT stands up well to other "alright/just a normal show" shows on TV that people watch regularly. It just completely falls apart when set up against Tolkiens universe. I don't see why that rubs you wrong? Also, misspelling intellect when trying to sound superior... Are you so insecure that if others don't think the same as you you lose your shit?
And before you go on a tirade. I find RoP a travesty.
@@cholst1 No, it completely falls apart when set up against any normal measure of quality, that's why this show gets roasted as well by people unfamiliar with the lore.
You still have the completely inconsistent characters who will completely change their position on a dime just to push the plot forward. This ruins any chance of people empathizing with the characters, because the characters themselves constantly forget what they care about and what they want.
Characters do things that make no sense in any way, like Galadriel not telling the others about Sauron, only because otherwise the rest of the plot couldn't happen.
There are massive logical holes, like Numenoreans invading an entire country with just three ships worth of soldiers, and coincidentally arriving exactly where the village was we had been following.
Only 37% of the people who started watching season 1 finished it. So no, it does not stand up well to normal shows. Due to the flat characters, illogical plot and sluggish pacing, regular viewers find the show INCREDIBLY boring.
@@frankvandorp2059 Have you seen any modern shows? It fits right in. Its terrible Tolkien, its not good TV, but it is completely in line with the stuff the undiscerning audience will watch and absorb without question. Its completely in line with the quality of show Disney is putting out for example. It may not be up with the good stuff, but if you talk to people about those shows its clear most miss why they are good anyway.
@@belegur8108 frankly, i don’t think the whole windows to the surface that catch and send light to crops feels plausible. crops need certain soil, certain conditions, open skies; sorry, but not believable. you want crops, go to the f-cking surface and grow them. otherwise, i don’t think you could grow enough to feed a whole city the size of moria. maybe you could grow a bit, but not for that manny people. these people act like growing crops in a rocky mine is as easy as growing potatoes on mars. easy, peasy. 2 years in, we’ll be living in another galaxy and growing potatoes and tomatoes on jupiter as well.
It always strikes me as inappropriate and bizarre when people insist on making things like literary or cultural appreciation about sex and gender. I'm a 35 year old woman, and I love Tolkien's work. I grew up with my father reading it to me. His voice is actually quite like the Professor's, and he was always very good at telling the stories. I have loved Tolkien's work for all my life.
For me, the film adaptations made by Peter Jackson - poignant and beautifully done though they may be - are completely secondary to the literature.
I see such a gentle, and beautiful communion with ancestry, with the earth, and essentially with the Divine, in Tolkien. And the understanding of his work has nothing to do with whether you're a man or a woman, although I'd also like to think perhaps as a woman I can see some things in the work that your average 'nerdy' man probably wouldn't see because he may be too busy getting excited about swords and horseback riding (which are objectively exciting things, don't get me wrong). So a lot of "Tolkien fans" are male, but so what? For me it depends on what you see. And I think sadly a lot of people just want to see a secular "swords and sorcery", whereas in my view there is more theology, mythology, language, lament, poetry, sensitivity towards 'God'/the Divine, and love for nature and the earth than that.
She [Galadriel] lived in Valinor and Valian years are much longer than our human years. So we don’t really know how old she really is as Tolkien never made it clear. Galadriel also, didn’t like Fëanor and refused to give him a lock of her hair, but then she gave a dwarf a lock because she saw in him humility, a thing Fëanor did not understand. Galadriel was wise in Valinor, but she thirsted to learn about the wider world, this is why she continued on with the Noldor, even though she had no time for Fëanor and abhorred the kinslaying at Alqualondë.
“The people who make fan fiction really, really are obsessed or love the source material” so who involved with “The Rings of Power” really, really love Tolkien and what proof do you have of this obsession?
I could tolerate a lot. But Galadriel smoozing with Sauron then hold his identity a secret, then fighting alone while castrated male elves walk the other way is enough to make your head explode. Her character development is abysmal.
The orcs having tenders family feelings and wanting to settle made me extremely ill.
I was actually enjoying the Bombadil interaction. He was tolerable (aside from his dull garb) . Head scratcher. He has a conversation in the other room with Goldberry. Then there’s no reference to it and she vanishes. WTF does this even mean? Then why even include it at all? The writing is just terrible.
The writers of fan fiction at least care about the original material and write their stories, inferior though they may be, for love and pleasure, not money.
Well... before s2 started I tried to rewatch s1 but could only endure a couple episodes, I had genuinely forgotten how bad it was. Waited for reviews on s2...glad I did lol. It sounds that not only it's not Tolkien (despite having well written in the title Lord of the rings: the rings of power) but it's written so badly and without any logic that makes it impossible to enjoy. Stunning cgi and sets can only go so far to save it.
What is fan fiction?? Fan fiction is, in particular, amateur writers who are fans of the material they write about. They aren't necessarily fans of the material as a whole or fans of the original writer but their Fandom can come from a single element of the material that shapes their enthusiasm for it. As such you can find fan fiction surrounding the shipping of characters from a story that were not originally together. So I would definately say Rings of Power fits the definition of fan fiction. The writers are clearly amateur in their craft and seem to be more interested in certain elements of the property and shipping characters than they are fans of the source material as a whole.
Those fine details in the motivations of the characters that you mentioned are a possible reason why Tolkien was so skeptical about the film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. Especially when it comes to elves. Tolkien is one of the few fantasy authors in whose works elves are a race profoundly different from humans. It is obvious that these showrunners do not understand this at all. Their elves are people with wigs and pointy ears. Even in Jackson's LOTR, an elf prince in the midst of a life-and-death struggle on which the fate of the whole world depends surfs on a shield down the stairs, but his LOTR was something we waited 50 years for and was the work of true fans, so we could forgive some Hollywood tricks. But now we were waiting for a series that cost a billion dollars and expected it to knock us off our feet. And we got Elrond flirting with his mother-in-law. The hearts of men are easily deceived indeed :)
Hannah Arendt wrote The Banality of Evil. And the evil represented by Amazon is a banal evil which flows from the top. It represents the idea that the Corporations can tell you what to think .
Galadriel had been mentioned to be Amazonian, sort of like Penthesilia. She was like a Captain of Gondolin, but this was not really a part of her that she exercised. There is a mention of her defending her Teleri kin at the Kinslaying (UT, The History of Galadriel and Celeborn), but really this was not her thing.
She did learn from Melian and in a way mimicked her works in Doriath in Lothlórien. Even when the Elves of her realm were fighting against Sauron's forces from Dol Guldur and when they sacked it Celeborn led those forces. Galadriel had only come afterward to throw it down with her might, "Galdriel threw down its walls and laid bare its pits, and the forest was cleansed" (LotR, Appendix B).
Also one of the problems is, they insult the fans and Tolkien and call him racist 🙂
thank you
Watching this, am about half way thru, so if you address this, cool, if not, cool... One of the aspects of fan fiction is self-insertion. Maybe not in a complete character form, but in thought and actions. The author adds their world view to the main character (usually the main character) so that idea permeates the story. When you hear the defenders of the RoP say things like "I want to see someone like me" - that's it in a nutshell. Guaranteed the writers room of RoP fits that bill to a T.
The only pride Hollywood knows how to do any more is that of an adolescent brat. I blame nickelodeon.
I disagree. It is more properly Defined as an EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE and SHODDY Fan Fiction.
That quote from JRRT about Elves potentially being "embalmers" of ME is an interesting perspective I have never thought about.
I enjoyed this immensely. Very insightful. Thank you.
Rings of power is f not have celborn and celebrian in the show
Celebrian might show up later. The writers won't be able to resist making Galadriel into a single mother.
@@cklambo that was good. Made me chuckle. Scared you might be right👩👦
Celebrian, during the war of the ring? You don’t have a clue, mate…
@@naoberlincarrabouxo6552 Celebrían was born early in the Second Age, likely in SA 300, after her mother refused to return to Tol Eressëa, and passed over the Mountains.[2] She lived with her mother Galadriel in Eregion,
Has there been even a mention of Celeborn or Celebrían at this point? (11 episodes so far). Absolutely ludicrous they are not pretty central characters. We all know why; because it will somehow detract from the "boss" agency of Galadriel in their eyes. In itself that demonstates an utter ignorance of Galadriel herself. I didn't watch a lick of this show after season 1 ep 2 and never will. An abomination.
I believe they only mention was when she said he looked like a "silver clam" or something like that. She was recounting seeing him off to war (and was with Theo after the not-so-dangerous Mordor volcano).
Morfydd Clark's Galadriel "has no shame" as she said. So it's probable that her version of Galadriel would belly dance in front of the Black Gate to distract Sauron
What about Galadriel’s daughter who marries Elrond then gives birth to Arwen who then marries Aragorn. Creating a fake romance between Sauron and Galadriel destroys the lore in so many ways. How shite is the ROP.
Not to mention, writing her husband Celeborn completely out of the show for girl boss reasons.
They have placed amateurs in charge of the adaptation of one of the most culturally important and beloved novels in English literature. I would not be surprised to discover that neither showrunners nor writers had read more than a synopsis.
Tolkien did not (except for Aldarion and Erendis) provide a narrative set in the Second Age, with continuous dialogue, scenes, etc. So _any_ Rings of Power, even if it were faithful to Tolkien and brilliantly written, would still be 'fan fiction'. The term is so overused and loaded nowadays that it is almost useless, except to distinguish it from wholly original work.
The problem is not that it is 'fan fiction', it is that it is almost unrelated to Tolkien's work except for names and places and the broadest of events ("The Rings are forged"-and even that is in the wrong order). It is, as I have said elsewhere, like a historical novel set in the Revolutionary War, centering on an affair between Abigail Adams and Benedict Arnold, and with young Andrew Jackson as an action hero who saves George Washington's life. It is also a mess because of elementary writing failings-matters of time and distance and geography (where'd that 'Black Forest' come from? How can people walk in circles traveling due east?), physical implausibilities (dive off a cliff and survive without a bruise, and that volcano), inexplicable logic (the whole mithril plot), and characters we are supposed to root for but cannot.
I read an old article saying there's a legal reason why the show's not going to be faithful to the original lore, as they're "contractually bound to make up nearly everything seen on the show". And that's due to Amazon having rights only for the appendices. The characters on the show can also be only loosely based on the characters in the books, unless they're only mentioned in the appendices. Kinda makes sense why the show is what it is.
Mind boggles why didn't they use only their own characters, only referencing the known characters or using as little as possible without distorting them. There could've been million other stories to be told in Second Age Middle Earth, as any RPG fan knows.
It's a creation in bad faith.
Everything proceeds from that point. Including my interpretation that it's a series of hour-long b-roll, scenes, interactions, spectacle which are only good for advertising. That is: it's a series of clips, cuts, shots, and images for ads and tiktok.
That's why it doesn't work as narrative or characterization - it doesn't try to do that. MGM acts as Amazon's corporate brand and Prime production house. It's just stock footage. You wouldn't expect Shutterstock to tell a good story, right?
Shut up bot, you writing in bad faith
I know a page that is a role play in Middle Earth and they have not changed the characters, they are as they should be. They have not desiccated the canon characters to fit their own agenda. Not every person that writes fan fiction destroys the lore of professor Tolkien, some love his world and they respect the basis of the books and the story. Amazon does not respect the characters that were created, they have changed them so much, if you gave them other names we could never compare them to the original ones of the books. The show runners do not care about the lore and they only want to write the book that professor Tolkien could not. Why did Amazon give the project to two stupid people who wanted to do their own spin? Why did they not wait and search for talented writers, talented show runners and why do you think they fired Tom Shippey. it was because he did not want to lower himself to their level. It would have been so much better if the rights had been bought by HBO.
There is a segment of the population that believes that “pride” in any respect is actually despicable conceitedness. Being proud of someone or someone’s accomplishments even of one’s own is a virtue.
ROP is a pop-culture parody of the Peter Jackson movies. It's silliness posing as epic fantasy. Not a good combo.
ROP is a really terrible Christopher Jackson fanfic .its so far from Tolkien it’s gross. I’ve read and seen some well written fanfics and this writing is just so bad. It’s trying to cheaply lift those moods in constant visual replication, character traits that might have been familiar to some of the original actors, and replication of those memorable phrasing by movie characters that are nowhere in Tolkien strictly movie, tho it’s completely wrong in the most bizarre nonsensical things ever…almost every but without any of the characters acting doing or saying anything that makes sense let alone honors them in any way. It’s cringey and dated and doesn’t retain any of the wholesome love that makes the individual struggles important and lacks class and sexualizes relationships that gives them the exact opposite of powerful graceful eternal… I am the only member of my family friends to read Tolkien and they were baffled at the very basics of the storytelling and turned off by all the strong woman and dei tropes. “They took our jobs!” Tropes…. There’s so much story they could have told why couldn’t they have gotten anyone who could write for them????
The Acolyte and Rings of Power are both poorly written fan fic. At least The Acolyte got cancelled.
I'm not a huge fan of Tolkien, I liked the Peter Jackson movies, I read The Hobbit in my teens, read the first book of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. That's it. Don't know anything about the lore, not interested in learning it. But here's the thing, even without being a huge Tolkien fan, not having any knowledge of the lore, I can tell this is crap entertainment, the writing is bad, the story telling is worse, the acting for the most part is horrible, and the costumes look like rejects from a highschool drama production.
You forgot the third part of fan fiction: The self-insert.
I personally can't stand the show. I'm okay with people that like it, but as it stands I can't get through an episode. I can't turn off my brain or my appreciation for tolkien's work.
I resent RoP being called fan fiction. Fan fiction is written by fans who love the source material. It can actually be pretty amazing, and sometimes hot garbage. People usually don’t make money off it.
RoP is corporate poser fiction. McKay and Payne are corporate poser hacks using actors who aren’t heteronormative WASP men to shield themselves from criticism of their crappy writing. It’s the same trick every mediocre entry has done in the past 15 years. Other examples have been CBS Elementary and the 2016 Ghostbusters. The Jurassic World movies and the Frasier revival have been slightly different, but reactionary defenders still can’t say non generic reasons they like it.
They’re motivated by the popularity of Peter Jackson’s movies and having shills and reactionary defenders shit of Peter Jackson and his group as well as the Tolkien estate. They praise RoP using previous critiques of Jackson and even Tolkien himself to claim that RoP did it well because it was different.
As much as the so called female empowerment representation is praised, the only female friendship of the show is Nori and Poppy. They have to constantly say that they’re friends.
i still wait for the showrunners to name the books, they claim to always go back to, i yearn to read them, because Tolkien written they surely are not...
also some quotes from a comment discussion i had with a defender of the show, claiming to be a Tolkien nerd:
- Yes, I know there are a few deviations in the show.
- I can overlook that to see a good character arc
- she ( Galadriel ) was a little unlikeable in the first season, but she was supposed to be unlikeable, so that the viewers could see her crash and burn
- and tbh, I would've been surprised if she ( still Galadriel ) WASN'T good at kicking ass, as an elf that has lived so long, especially in times of war and darkness and danger.
and then that very nice lady ( no sarcasm here, she was very friendly and did not deny me my opinion as i do not hers, but i really do not know where her insights come from...
and she then pointed ou the good things this show has with the following:
- the way he ( Cirdan ) watches the sun set over the west, which lore fans should love, seeing the hint of his longing for Valinor.
- all the beautiful mentions of Earendil.
- The little nod to Maedhros when Adar speaks of being chained to the peak.
- Sauron's control over the warg another nod to his past dealings with werewolves.
She then finishes with : I get that some people can't look past the smallest deviation, but it saddens me that it closes their eyes to the really great parts.
and the one point i finally could agree wholeheartly: These changes do nothing to the books though. The books are still the books, and a TV adaptation will never change them.
but this is just one example of Show defenders, whose mind set i simply can't understand.
The worst part is that they don’t know what this “what if” story is about. And so don’t we! Is it about Galadriel Sauron shippering? So wtf is Notgandalf, numenoreans, hobbits and rings are doing here? Is it about Sauron and orcs being complicated and grey moraled characters? Why we need dwarves, hobbits etc? Is it about Rings of power?? Why don’t we see the powers of the rings?)) how elves discovering its powers? Are they any different from one ring to another? Summoning fish, healing and making an arrows disappear, foreshadowing? It looks more like a magic orb or the Aladdins lamp magic)) why making galadriel discovering Halbrands identity in the 1 season if she did nothing with it? Couldn’t Halbrand introduce himself as Annatar to all of the elves in Eregion in season 1 after revealing that he is not the lost king?) And make Galadriel to be the one who is still suspicious about him? Mb allying her with Elrond about it?) Add a bit of sense to all the Halbrand-Annatar/Sauron idea? His whole big plan of seducing Celebrimbor to create other rings based on way too many sudden stupidity of the elves))) its just sooo stupid))
Exactly, why in all its promotion it has above "The Lord of the Rings" when it is pre school level writing made up by a couple of show runners....do they have no shame...it's like me putting Shakespeare and then creating a woeful copy.
It's so bad that it's no longer funny-it's reached the point of being painfully bad. Watching these RUclips clips is physically uncomfortable. We all know it’s hemorrhaging viewers and more importantly - money! It needs to be taken out back and put down. Maybe intentionally miss on the first try just to reap some gratification in its pain as it dwindles away and crosses into the realm of cancellation.
I kinda get lost in the sauce when yall start talking about the dates n stuff. But your knowledge and understanding of Tolkeins work and the LoTR background is impressive. From a superficial standpoint the show is just downright bad but goes into egregious terrible mishandling of source material when yall break it down. It is so unfortunate that shows like this and Acolyte are so bad bc there seems to be such a yearning for good shows in these IPs and genres... anyway great vid.
I feel seen. I wrote fanfictions in the early 2010s, when I was precisely 15 or 16 😂. Mainly utilizing Conan Doyle’s source material as an executory for my own homosexual fantasies.
I never once thought anything was gonna come out of it, though. I wasn’t that arrogant. And I certainly wasn’t granted a $1G budget. Do you know how many families that sum could have helped, instead? 🙄
It's not even fan fiction because the people who are riding it are not fans.
It would be as if Melkor himself wrote this show. Or if a character from the New Shadow were rewriting the history of middle earth... hence sympathy for the orcs, etc..
Don’t like don’t watch. It really is that simple. Every single fandom is the same. I swear, EVERY SINGLE ONE. Is it the books? No. Can it ever capture the depth and complexity of Tolkiens world? No. (Nothing will ever be able to.) Is it an enjoyable watch? For me, yes. I’m a total Tolkien nerd and I have no problem taking this for what it is. It’s just TV. It really doesn’t matter. Any time spent in Tolkien’s sandbox is enjoyable. Who cares if the bucket and spade are different. 🤷🏽♀️
"shame built in", is this a metaphorical cross some actors choose to bear?
I would disagree. Doesn't fan fiction usually come from a place of respect for the lore that tries to build upon and emulate the original? This just craps on it.
For season 1 I went in with the mindset of completely divorcing the show from anything in the true LoTR universe/lore. Just take it as a fantasy show. But....I thought Wheel of Time was bad. This surpassed it by far. I only made it to episode 3 or 4 of RoP and couldn't do anymore. Point is... even as a show with a fantasy veneer, the plot and characters are badly written, badly executed, badly acted and is not compelling or interesting. I canceled Prime a while back, so I'm not viewing this season. It's not even fanfiction as others have pointed out. I used to write Fallout fanfiction but I was passionate about the lore and the world itself. Was it good? Not at all. But fanfiction means a passion and love and staying true to the source. RoP needs to die.
I don’t care about it enough to have an opinion. It is third rate rubbish and it has no reference to Tolkien’s Middle Earth. I have been a Tolkien scholar since I was 13. I am now 57. Rings of power has no relevance to Tolkien’s vision. So it is a waste of Bezo’s money. The screenwriters have no understanding of Galadriel, or Numenor. There were no references to harfoots in Tolkien’s legendarium at this time and Gandalf arrived with four other wizards at the beginning of the Third Age. But remember that Galadriel came under tutelage of Melian the Maia in Doriath. She learned great wisdom. But she was proud, but also wise and she was great in stature. ROP makes her into a petulent adolescent.
These writers are terrible. They are not capable of writing anything of note.
Series 2 shows how totally unnecessary series 1 was in terms of the story.
So many characters set up for absolutely no purpose .
I wish it was fucking fan fiction, because I´ve actually read ff that respected Tolkien a lot more😖 they did Galadriel so bad in RoP, she would have enough story to tell in a good adaption of the Second Age, especially when there is conflict between her and Celebrimbor (when her and her very much alive husband get expelled from Eregion). The could produce SO MUCH GOOD STORY if they just stick to the source material of the SA, and ffs, viewers can follow a timeline where some characters die because they are mortal or killed. Amazon should have started with the Annatar story, then the Wars of the Elves and Sauron, then a bit of a pause, then the Numenor plot line, ending the series with the War of the Last Alliance...but no, they are stupid and arrogant.
I dont understand which fan would have this much hate for Tolkien's original work if this indeed qualifies as glorified expensive fanfic, what kind of fan has this sick perverted idea of shipping the lady of light with the lord of darkness while she is already a married woman, according to this fanfic she is already a cheater.
Galadriel was also under the tutelage of Melian the Maia. Melian had long sense left her long lasting effect on Galadriel long sense, by the time this stupid ass show takes place.
I’m sorry but this show is just one big middle finger to Tolkien and his fans.
I do enjoy Whenever I listen to you guys , Jonathan and Michael, wish Amazon would have used people like you who really honor Tolkien instead of their dumb writers👍❤️
Thats a weird description of fan-fiction. Fan-fiction is just fiction written by fans. How good of a writer you are is irrelevent. Hence good or bad fan-fiction.
Spoiler alert. Everything released after 1973 is fan fiction of some sort.
Obviously it's fanfiction. Whether it's good or bad is entirely subjective. If someone doesn't like it that's 100% fair. But I can't get behind basically shitting on people who enjoy it.
I agree with your latter point, but I disagree that writing is "entirely subjective." Of course, writing IS art, and so there is a lot of built in subjectivity. But there is also a real literary science to writing which has been duplicated for thousands of years. Not to press on the Hero's Journey too strongly, but it is AN example of certain things that make good stories good, though it isn't a complete science because one cannot just "plug in" those plot points and make a good story. That's where the art comes in. However, I do think its possible to say a bad story is objectively contains bad story telling techniques even if the execution is subjective.
But I do concur, if people like this show, good for them. But it is also good to critique poor writing and poor execution. And in the end, if its a good story that is told well, those stories have universal appeal. I don't think this show has universal appeal.
@@rev.chuckshingledecker I am a person who will argue until they're blue in the face that the last book in particular of Harry Potter is utter trash in terms of actual writing. Objectively speaking, it contains many contradictions of things established in earlier books, plot holes, completely idiotic plot devices (goblins being randomly found in the middle of the Forest of Dean who happen to be talking about important plot points in carrying voices), and is like a poorly written mystery novel where it's impossible for the readers to put together the clues because they don't have all the information so an omnipotent narrator needs to come explain it in the penultimate chapter (even though he's literally dead). Do you know how much shit I caught for saying so on the forums? Even when I gave objective, clear examples with quotations and page numbers, peoples' reaction was that I wasn't a real fan, I was ruining the book by analyzing it instead of just enjoying it, etc. With Harry Potter, people wouldn't have cared over much if Rowling literally wrote a bullet point list of what happened instead of a novel, because they just wanted to know what happened to their favorite characters and the story.
Because it isn't just about the writing. That isn't the only purpose. Like do you think the WWE is well written? No. But millions of people watch it. Because the writing isn't the point. Video games are similar--right now, a huge group of people are trashing Dragon Age Veilguard because the combat is different from the original games and therefore it can't possibly be good or fun, whereas other people are excited by it. It depends how you're measuring--DAV would be a terrible tactical rpg, but it may be a great action rpg.
With ROP, "good" or "bad" ALSO depends on your starting point. If the most important thing to you is the science of writing, you'll be measuring differently than someone for whom the most important thing is being entertained. And if you're starting from the perspective that's it's supposed to be a faithful adaptation/what you wanted was a faithful adaptation, then you're already mad they're changing things, and you'll be more likely to nitpick the writing and find complaints you wouldn't have noticed in the first place if you hadn't been angry enough to pick it apart in the first place (like I was with Harry Potter).
If you like it, that's fine. I simply will never understand how it's possible to like it.
@@TheOneRingcom I like some aspects and hate others. What I'm complaining about is the implication or outright statements by many that anyone who does like it must be a profound moron.
The show is conceptually flawed. Its trying to tell a story it doesn't have the complete rights to and therefore MUST change it. That's a bad start for any piece of media. This show just shouldn't have been made at this time .
Its also being made in a time when diversity MUST be there, it has to be inserted because its the fashion. I dont hate diversity, I'm not a straight white male myself, but it should have a reason to be included. diversity by the way includes modern think about motivations and attitudes and its just not compatible with Tolkien they way they are trying to make it. The Jackson movies could not be made now, studio execs wouldn't allow it.
Nah, there’s some top tier fan fiction out there. I’ve read stuff that was a thousand leagues better than some of the shitty novels trending on book tock nowadays. Calling RoP fanfiction is an insult to fanfiction lmao. People have written much better stuff and all without financial motives.
Please stop calling it "fan" fiction. The show runners and writers are NOT fans of Tolkien.
Whether or not its lore acurate is not revelant. They cant write a good story lore accurate or not
"CHEAP and SHODDY Fan Fiction"?? Disgraceful take. This is EXPENSIVE and SHODDY Fan Fiction.
I don't think there is anything wrong about feeling protective about works of fiction you love. Let's put Tolkien's world aside for a minute and see how a really bad adaptation of a mainstream literary classic author like Jane Austen is treated. Look at the reviews of 2022's 'Persuasion', which did many of the things Tolkien fans complain modern TV and film does to fantasy classics. Trying to rewrite a rather demure Regency young woman Anne Elliot as a smirking, modern fleabag clone. Critics absolutely hated it, but they seem to be the same sort of critics who give 'Rings of Power' a pass, and try and put down Tolkien fans who point out how crap it all is.
There is everything wrong in defending a dream.
@@robertagren9360 What dream would that be?
👏
There is the option in this world to simply ignore what you don't like. Keep crying !
If they did this to LOTR then the upcoming destruction of narnia will be a sight to behold
they are doing it to Wheel of Time, Star Wars, Willow, Marvel and so many other beloved franchises, everytime they claim to be fans of the source but target the work NOT to the fanbase that made those franchises as successful as they where, but to a "modern audience"... maybe they will someday realize, that this "modern audience" does NOT watch the new movies/shows multiple times, buy any merchandize or create groups to enjoy it together... and i bet, a not so small percentage of the vocal show defenders didn't even watch it, they just want to defend the strawman, the showrunners have built up to justify their work.
@@belegur8108i love star wars & tolkien, their trestment is especially awful considering all the written stories that exist or existed in case of the EU
Any adaptation of another's work is fanfiction. Peter Jackson's movies were indeed fanfiction. It's not the amount of money Amazon can through at a project that'll make it a respected adaptation but the love, passion, understanding and talent of the creators involved. This is why the people behind RoP fail, it's why they out right plagiarize the movies, it's why true fans of Tolkien reject this amateur attempt of poorly made fanfiction.
WHY ARE THERE BLACK ELVES!!!!!!!!
Literally dont care about that. The problem with diversity isnt in who plays who, its in how it changes the tone. Tolkien is a very white Anglo Saxon point of view, but by forcing diversity you change that. Changing a characters race isn't the problem, its changing the outlook they have at the same time that's the problem.
You are mad
Because you’re thinking that you are still a 00’s teenager… Grow up.
What a ridiculous comment
Iiecan political propaganda.
Some of the episodes were enjoyable. I don't love it, but I don't outright hate it. I'm probably in the minority.
Fan fiction =TOOLS last album
For me, it has nothing to do with Tolkien's work-absolutely nothing. It's not even a weird or twisted version of it. It's cringe-worthy neo-Marxist propaganda which they are trying to push onto Western countries. It's actually hard to watch, whether you're a fan of fantasy or not, and I feel really sorry for true fans who are looking for their beloved franchise in it. It must be painful to watch it all get butchered so much. It's incredibly cringe-worthy.
i don't think Marx would look kindly to his name being brought up in connection to this show, but i get, what you want to say 😂
Whats ti biggest deviation from Tolkiens writings you think in RoP?
@@MatejZizanovic Since in my opinion nothing is like Tolkien's works, therefore I may say, everything seems like a deviation. It feels nothing like it should be.
@@AB-12345 well its a totally different medium first of all... Source text for this show is like, a 20 page segment from Silmarillion, wich Tolkien didnt even write, but his son put it together from letters and notes of his father. Hence its written like a bunch of tooltips and song lyrics, without a single line of dialogue - its inevitable that whoever is making a screen adaptation will have to invent alot of things.
I agree they couls have did alot of things better, my biggest problem is actor casting. But i see now people are shitting on everything about it, even things that are actually canon like orc families and orcs not wanting to go to war - people expext orcs to be war zombies all of a sudden...
@@MatejZizanovic All right. You are trolling, or you are paid shill. Orcs having families are canon 🤣🤣🤣, yeah cool. And what else? They are refugees which are supposed to be accepted by humans, elves and dwarves, giving homes and welfare 🤣🤣🤣 yeah dude I got you, I understand from where you are coming.