Tolkien Fans React to Amazon's $465M Series 'The Rings of Power' (cinemablend.com) 302
Amazon's new $465 million series — a prequel to the Lord of the Rings — drew more than 25 million viewers on just its first day, according to Reuters, "a record debut for a Prime Video series."
The Independent shared reactions from J. R. R. Tolkein fans, including one who said "it looks like they put absolutely all that Amazon money to use for scenes." First up, the praise. Many are agreeing that the show's costly budget, which positions it as one of the most expensive shows of all time, has paid off, with the series boasting impressive visuals.... @marklee3d added: Rings of Power has done a great job of capturing the feel of Tolkien's world. The challenge is creating a compelling story where one didn't exist before. The show's success lies in pulling that off."
Agreeing that the "spirit" of Tokkien has been captured, @suzannahtweets wrote: "I'm far less concerned about little lore details than I am about the spirit. And while I thought that Peter Jackson fundamentally misunderstood the spirit of Tolkien in ALL his movies, so far the spirit of THE RINGS OF POWER feels remarkably authentic to Tolkien...." However, others argued the show felt "goofy" and featured "terrible" dialogue, with some suggesting that "Tolkien himself" would be "ashamed" of the series.
But "by releasing the first two episodes instead of just the more predictable first, Amazon gave The Rings of Power a strong start," argues Cinemablend. Collider's senior TV editor praises the show's "stunning visuals, compelling characters, and magnetic lead," while one podcaster even called the show "a cinematic masterpiece... masterfully orchestrating a mythology that fans have been waiting for."
Deadline reports that "Critics reviews, save a scathing piece in the UK Daily Mail, have generally been positive for The Rings of Power, as measured by aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic.... As of Friday evening, the IMDb rating stood at a respectable 7.1 out of 10." And Variety adds that Amazon had already taken steps to thwart review bombers three weeks ago: Starting around the time of the launch of the distaff baseball dramedy "A League of Their Own," which premiered its full first season on Aug. 12, Amazon Prime Video quietly introduced a new 72-hour delay for all user reviews posted to Prime Video, a representative for the streamer confirmed to Variety. Each critique is then evaluated to determine whether it's genuine or a forgery created by a bot, troll or other breed of digital goblin.
The practice caught notice after the premiere of the first two episodes of "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power"... The series appears to have been review bombed — when trolls flood intentionally negative reviews for a show or film — on other sites like Rotten Tomatoes, where it has an 84% rating from professional critics, but a 37% from user-submitted reviews. "The Rings of Power" has been fending off trolls for months, especially ones who take issue with the decision to cast actors of color as elves, dwarves, harfoots and other folk of Tolkien's fictional Middle-earth. Amazon's new initiative to review its reviews, however, is designed to weed out ones that are posted in bad faith, deadening their impact.... Whether Amazon successfully beat back the tide of internet trolls for "The Rings of Power" will likely be revealed on Sunday.
Reuters reports that future episodes of the series will be released weekly until the October 14 season finale.
"Amazon plans to let the full story unfold in 50 hours over five seasons."
The Independent shared reactions from J. R. R. Tolkein fans, including one who said "it looks like they put absolutely all that Amazon money to use for scenes." First up, the praise. Many are agreeing that the show's costly budget, which positions it as one of the most expensive shows of all time, has paid off, with the series boasting impressive visuals.... @marklee3d added: Rings of Power has done a great job of capturing the feel of Tolkien's world. The challenge is creating a compelling story where one didn't exist before. The show's success lies in pulling that off."
Agreeing that the "spirit" of Tokkien has been captured, @suzannahtweets wrote: "I'm far less concerned about little lore details than I am about the spirit. And while I thought that Peter Jackson fundamentally misunderstood the spirit of Tolkien in ALL his movies, so far the spirit of THE RINGS OF POWER feels remarkably authentic to Tolkien...." However, others argued the show felt "goofy" and featured "terrible" dialogue, with some suggesting that "Tolkien himself" would be "ashamed" of the series.
But "by releasing the first two episodes instead of just the more predictable first, Amazon gave The Rings of Power a strong start," argues Cinemablend. Collider's senior TV editor praises the show's "stunning visuals, compelling characters, and magnetic lead," while one podcaster even called the show "a cinematic masterpiece... masterfully orchestrating a mythology that fans have been waiting for."
Deadline reports that "Critics reviews, save a scathing piece in the UK Daily Mail, have generally been positive for The Rings of Power, as measured by aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic.... As of Friday evening, the IMDb rating stood at a respectable 7.1 out of 10." And Variety adds that Amazon had already taken steps to thwart review bombers three weeks ago: Starting around the time of the launch of the distaff baseball dramedy "A League of Their Own," which premiered its full first season on Aug. 12, Amazon Prime Video quietly introduced a new 72-hour delay for all user reviews posted to Prime Video, a representative for the streamer confirmed to Variety. Each critique is then evaluated to determine whether it's genuine or a forgery created by a bot, troll or other breed of digital goblin.
The practice caught notice after the premiere of the first two episodes of "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power"... The series appears to have been review bombed — when trolls flood intentionally negative reviews for a show or film — on other sites like Rotten Tomatoes, where it has an 84% rating from professional critics, but a 37% from user-submitted reviews. "The Rings of Power" has been fending off trolls for months, especially ones who take issue with the decision to cast actors of color as elves, dwarves, harfoots and other folk of Tolkien's fictional Middle-earth. Amazon's new initiative to review its reviews, however, is designed to weed out ones that are posted in bad faith, deadening their impact.... Whether Amazon successfully beat back the tide of internet trolls for "The Rings of Power" will likely be revealed on Sunday.
Reuters reports that future episodes of the series will be released weekly until the October 14 season finale.
"Amazon plans to let the full story unfold in 50 hours over five seasons."
Best show ever (Score:5, Funny)
Check it out!
https://www.amazon.com/amazonprime [amazon.com]
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10 Points! Reason: I like chicks with dicks!
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Well worth an Amazon Prime subscription all by itself!
Ya, but $465M could make Prime more worthwhile by using that money to include more top-tier films/shows with the subscription (opposed to just available to buy/rent) ... instead of making one film/series that many people won't watch or even care about.
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$465M
I quite liked it but I'm not seeing where all the money went.
Maybe it's in episode 2...
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These are desolate piece of crap loss leaders. Give people what they expect so you have a base, and hopefully you have the cash to create content that will take you to the future.
Re:Best show ever (Score:4, Interesting)
Amazon is depending on becoming a streaming service, and such services needs a franchise.
What?! Why ?!?
A single franchise can be watched within a month, not to mention it can be pirated.
What a streaming service needs is an extensive catalog, that doesn't get boring quickly. This is what made Netflix great back in the day. An extensive catalog, that is convenient to watch at any time instead of pirating, is what keeps the subscribers.
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No, having exclusive franchises just encourages more balkanization of streaming.
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As of the time I am posting this, metacritic has the critic reviews for this at 71 out of 100, and user reviews at 1.9 out of 10. Quite a gap.
Is this because Metacritic reviews have been flooded by fake accounts created by trolls?
Or maybe it is because the popular audience really hates this show, despite the professional critics loving it?
How would I be able to tell? Amazon claims it can detect troll accounts and remove their posts. How does it do that exactly? Is it simply: negative mod with not much t
Re:Best show ever (Score:4, Informative)
If you read user reviews the negative ones are mostly complaining about "wokeness" issues. Too many black actors, they are unfaithful to the source material, they are unrealistic (in a world full of wizards and immortal elves)... It's often phrased as being poor casting or bad acting.
There have been complaints about Galadriel too, again she is unrealistic, they made her too powerful, bad acting etc.
It's a very familiar pattern.
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they are unfaithful to the source material,
The source material is so difficult to read, I can't imagine more than a small percentage of reviewers have actually read it.
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They could just read the books...
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I have read the Silmarillion, more than once. It's a slog. It's very disjointed, as it's a bunch of stories and poems that can be viewed as the remnants of archaeological discoveries of the various ages prior to the Third Age-- and that's 5500 years give or take. There's a great deal of room for "untold" stories, so as long as nothing in the Rings of Power contradicts what's in the existing canon, I'm not going to get too bothered. Unless Gandalf's half-human, half-dwarven dark-skinned lesbian adopted s
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I thought Rings of Power was based on the appendices, because no one gets access to Silmarillion rights, movies or games.
Re:Best show ever (Score:5, Insightful)
I am aware that there are racists in this country, but I have believed them to be in the minority. If the majority of these posts are complaining about black actors, that inclines me to believe that many of them are fake accounts under the control of a few extremists. Though that remains speculation.
Personally I think there is a difference between something like casting black actors as a handful of dwarves (especially if they are not established characters who were established as white in source material). That's just variety if nothing else. I do have a problem with replacing prominently white characters with black ones (as in the case with the character "Death" in The Sandman, since her white image was so famous and iconic in the source material). Sometimes, a race swap feels like rude culture appropriation or even racial hatred against whites. Other times it just feels like variety. It depends on the details. I have been accused of being racist just for that belief, despite the fact that I know quite well I am not motivated by racial hatred in any form.
I am not surprised by complaints of deviation from the source material, that seems to be standard. But again for me it depends on the details. Alita Battle Angel deviated significantly from the source material, and I think it was all-around significantly improved. On the other hand, Ghost in the Shell deviated from the source material in ways that were downright insulting (taking an elite hacker and cybercop and giving her a ridiculous backstory of being a luddite that wrote manifestos against the dangers of technology until she was forcibly converted...ugh). So I can see that going either way.
Be that as it may, I am going to assume that most user reviews, positive or negative, are bots, until I have a believable reason to presume otherwise.
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You should read the history of the author [wikipedia.org]and the effect that race wars (between British settlers and native Africans) played in his development
There are multiple references to followers of Sauron, the far harad, being from the South and Dark
Sometimes you need to advance a story beyond the authors vision and black characters among the good guys of Middle Earth are not really a problem for me
Just plain flat character development on the other hand, along with rushing the story to create set pieces will hurt t
Re:Best show ever (Score:5, Interesting)
Sometimes, a race swap feels like rude culture appropriation or even racial hatred against whites.
Maybe it feels that way, but in most cases neither accusation is justified. Consider that a lot of "white culture" was appropriated in the first place, the classic example being Rock & Roll. Tolkien's world borrows from several other cultures too. He was inspired by old British legends and stories, which are a mixture of mostly imported culture from all the many many times these isles have been invaded.
As for racial hatred, that's a narrative that some people like to push, but it has no basis in reality. It's derived from white replacement theory, and a general fear that while white people hold most of the power now, they are in fact a minority overall in the world. Those ideas get repackaged to be more palatable to "normies", i.e. it's a gateway. I strongly suggest not going down that rabbit hole.
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I watched the first episode and it looks beautiful
Beyond that, the drama plays out like cardboard cutouts (beautiful beautiful cardboard cutouts) with the trip back West looking more like a still shot being held up in front of the camera on an old Monty Python skit
I read the Hobbit and Rings as an adolescent and doting mother bought every single bit of Tolkien that came out afterwards for me to read. I love the stories, but the imagination that has been put into portraying these stories (Silmarillion, Unfin
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Well, there's certainly some extra bits in her life story that weren't present in the Silmarillion, but let's face it-- she was born in Valinor, was the grand-daughter of the kings of the Noldor and the Teleri, and a leader during the rebellion of the Noldor, and the eventual wearer of Nenya. By the time of the Rings of Power, she's right around 2,230 years old. She is, quite frankly, a badass Elf during the age of the Elves.
There are some other problems with the Rings of Power-- She was banished from Val
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Too many black actors, they are unfaithful to the source material
Ever hear of "dark elves"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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>professional critics loving it?
I've always found that professional critics usually have contempt for works of popular entertainment. People who are paid to write movie and TV reviews are usually wannabe creatives who never got to work in the writers room and are jealous and/or contemptuous of Hollywood productions. Which is why you find that big budget productions, blockbusters, etc. get tepid reviews, but an outre French film that might be seen by a few thousand people in NYC/LA will get stellar review
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Knowing Amazon, they'll make the series really good. And when people are hooked and really want to see the next season, they'll cancel it.
I'm still mad that they cancelled "Patriot".. that show is thusfar the best thing on Amazon Prime.
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The did let The Expanse play out, and I do appreciate that
Delete all bad reviews (Score:2)
After all, if we don't need a dislike count on youtube, why would anyone want a bad review for anything?
Can't we all just put a little more positivity in the world?
Re: Delete all bad reviews (Score:2)
Because the Venn diagram showing Tolkien nerds, technically savvy folks, and threatened majority demographics has too large a common subset.
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Gee, as long as you're not being unnecessarily stereotypical.
Re: Delete all bad reviews (Score:3)
You have to employ Intersectionality's Uncertainty Principle to determine the oppression status, particularly where Asians are concerned. You now their oppression status only after running the numbers.
For example, if Asians facing racially motivated assaults are attacked by whitey then it's very clear: they are oppressed, and them crackers is the devil. If however the attacker is, as is more commonly the case, not white: don't speak about this, and them crackers is the devil.
It's not that they become white.
$465 million!? (Score:2)
It's hard to see how that could make any sort of financial sense, no matter how much people like it (and that's assuming they do).
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Amazon reportedly paid $250 million just for access to Tolkien's NOTES & scribblings!!!
That's a bigger WTF than Galadriel's genius move of diving overboard in a long flowing dress to SWIM back to Middle Earth
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Re:$465 million!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are they actually so determined to make another derived work they would rather do this than, say, pay a thousand authors to write synopsis for potential new stories for six months, saving 225 million dollars to pick out and fully develop one?
Let us consider the depressing possibility that a mediocre show associated with a well-known brand is nevertheless a much better business proposition than even an excellent freshly-created show that has no pre-existing audience. :^/
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Yeah why are we suddenly acting like Hollywood producers are not lazy and willing to take the easiest route they think will make a profit. We have 100 years of this happening in cinema, even in the silent film era there was no shortage of cheap cash grabs.
Re: $465 million!? (Score:2)
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where is Alita sequel
Agree! The first one was a little off but I think they were onto something and knowing where the comic story goes I really want to see the rest of it developed. Like you're gonna give Ed Norton as Desty Nova at the end and just leave it at that? Not cool guys.
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It seems an odd choice. The movies worked because they were blockbuster events. For TV you really want something like Game of Thrones where people are talking about it every week. RoP just doesn't seem to have that. Maybe the characters will develop, but I can't really see it.
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They also paid for new stories, and even produced them. Here's a list [wikipedia.org]. You can see them on Amazon prime.
Re:$465 million!? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is just as braindead a take as Amazon is for not banking on original properties. Amazon has the money to pay for an established property which is easier to grab mindshare and hype with than an original property. The Tolkien estate knew this and was able to squeeze Amazon for a big fat payday which they were looking for since the LOTR movie rights were sold long ago before the Peter Jackson trilogy so they while they made money there they didn't get the payday in relation to what those movies made at the box office.
From Amazon's POV the previous trilogy of films made literally billions so the idea that spending $225m on what could be a 6-8 year series run to anchor their streaming service for the next decade is a pretty reasonable payout. Will it pay off? Well that's the question.
Many times the simplest explanation s the one that makes sense, Amazon is just lazy and expects viewers to just lap up existing properties without question and after a decade of comic books movies dominating the box office who can blame them? Stop tying your brain into knots to fit everything to your political worldview. Plain old greed and lack of vision can explain everything about this.
Re:$465 million!? (Score:4, Insightful)
From Amazon's POV the previous trilogy of films made literally billions so the idea that spending $225m on what could be a 6-8 year series run to anchor their streaming service for the next decade is a pretty reasonable payout.
Yes, and then they allowed this IP to get turned into a culture war battlefield that has a potential to spectacularly blow back on them.
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That's just bad producing which picks bad showrunners who use bad scripts, etc etc.
To say they "allowed" it means that maybe Amazon should have some sort of "anti-woke" team making sure things don't get turned into a culture war battlefield?
At this point I would believe they wanted it to go that, look at how many stories Slashdot has had on it, how much it is in the media. Good or bad being at the center of that gets your expensive show in everyones minds.
The downside is now we can't actually know if peopl
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You can't avoid the culture war. If you make it blend and generic enough to stratify one group, the other will complain about lack of diversity. And vice versa.
The whole point of the culture war is that you can't avoid it, can't satisfy everyone. One side has to lose, and you have to pick which one you want to go with.
Re:$465 million!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that your counter-argument? That badly written and directed movies are bad?
Ghostbusters 2016 let actors improv and a director who no business making a ghostbuster movie make it. Keep the script and director and put 4 dudes in it and it's still terrible.
Same for Batwoman, She-Hulk. Has Pinnochio even come out yet, and are you talking the Disney one or the GDT version?
JJ Abrams is a terrible writer who never had a complete plan for a new SW trilogy, news at 11.
Turns out anyone making a Terminator who isn't James Cameron can't do a good job at it. Was T3 good becuase it wasn't "woke"? No it was still pretty bad. T2. is probably the best action/scifi movie ever made and it is very feminist with a great female lead. If it was released today your chuds would be calling it "woke"
I notice you don't actually make the case that these things were bad because they are woke becuase really they are bad because they are terribly made.
Absolute brain rot takes here. If this is how you approach all media maybe just stop interacting with it at all. Stick to books that confirm your worldview and never challenge yourself ever becuase clearly you can't interact with things on anything other that surface political levels.
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Re:$465 million!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, this is a real Poe's Law example. In any case...
T2 is a movie with definite feminist themes. Hell T1 is as well, maybe more so, being more of a horror movie with a woman being stalked by a much stronger male figure who the main character has to overcome.
The difference between it and all the Terminator sequels is it is well written, well directed with clear narrative themes and not navel gazing into it's own world building too much.
Much like Star Wars the Terminator universe isn't actually that deep, there's only so many stories you can compellingly tell in it.
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Yeah absolutely, more than one way to make a movie or show with a female lead or feminist themes. Undercutting trpopes is absolutely a valid way of developing a character, it doesn't change the things at it's core though, that's an example of good storytelling. "Fury Road" undercuts certian elements as well while staying true to certain themes as well. It's the skill of weaving the message into the narrative and not the other way around.
I think what's ironically lost with a lot for screenwriting for fem
Re: $465 million!? (Score:5, Informative)
It didn't have a monologue about how women are better than men,
Really? I liked T2 but disagree with your statement. There is a scene where Sarah lectures Dyson about how it was men who made the atom bomb and don't know what it is like to grow life inside them. How men only know how to destroy. And the scene before that where she talks about how much better a robot is than a man. OTOH T2 shows everyone, even Sarah, as flawed humans (except the terminator). Again, I like T2 and I consider these examples pertinent to the character.
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I notice you don't actually make the case that these things were bad because they are woke becuase really they are bad because they are terribly made.
However their defenders tend to play the woke card when called out on their terrible writing. That's the real issue here - lazy writers and directors that confuse having strong female characters with having a central flawless female Mary Sue.
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> If it was released today your chuds would be calling it "woke"
Lol, they did release a woke T2 today, it was called Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) and the hero of the story is a literal illegal immigrant and one of the subplots is the threat of her getting deported, and the hero is an androgynous (presumably non-binary) woman named 'Dani'. So no, I don't think 1991's T2 would be considered "woke" when we have a real example of what that movie would be like today.
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Is it bad because the character is an illegal immigrant or the heroine is androgynous or is perhaps that the movie was a bloated overstuffed mess with forgettable action sequences, a boring villain and an underuse of bringing Linda Hamilton back into the role.
Almost like the movie has all the hallmarks of a production mess by the fact that it has a bunch of screenwriters including David S Goyer who has like 4 good movies to his name (and I bet the Batman trilogy out of the hands of Nolan would also be a mes
Re:$465 million!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Every example you brought up is a BAD MOVIE. If you could bring up an otherwise good movie that was made bad because of wokeness you might have a point but you didn't, you just trotted out the same tired examples. NPC shit.
You know a bunch of words strung together does not make a cohesive sentence. Nothing in there proved your point and actually it proves mine; companies are willing to be lazy and use existing properties than try to make something original and good.
I might even agree with you that throwing social justice narratives in things in a hamhanded way is bad and appealing to the lowest common denominator but you have made "wokeness" such a nebulous thing that it is meaningless. I have seen serious statement that black people=wokeness. It's ridiculous and the anti-woke people have become a parody of the very things they purport to dislike.
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The problem is that most woke movies are bad movies, there is nothing wrong with having black, gay, or women's rights in movies the problem lies where it takes over the story for no good reason. Like the first episode She-Hulk, when she tells Bruce that who's hole thing is rage, that she knows how to deal with rage better than him because she has been mansplained to all here career. Then it progresses into a pointless battle in which Bruce in smart Hulk form tries to keep her from leaving there by fighting
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Look man... no one can provide you an example of an otherwise good movie ruined by wokeness for the same reason I can't provide you with an example of a round square or a circle with corners.
The most rudimentary AAA movie is comparable in effort and scale to ten thousand oil paintings or a small-scale war. A thousand million decisions go into what becomes 120 minutes on screen.
You're basically attacking the OP for being unable to fully articulate his intuition, when your own intuition is the same.
Our socie
Re: $465 million!? (Score:4, Insightful)
Explain why "Us" and "Black Panther" are woke and why they are good and those other things re bad.
DO NOT use any of the actual filmmaking as the reasons becuase you've essentially discarded that point. It has to be just the wokeness/anti-wokeness aspect.
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sure thing buddy ;)
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A mere mortal would not think of doing so, but an elf?
Elves are construed by Tolkien having a very long lifespan of more than 1000 years. Which will make the experience of time passing by very different, compared to us mere mortals who have to do a whole lifetime in an average of 70 to 73 years.
Tolkien also wrote elves to be much stronger and capable as well. Swimming back would be a very big nono decision for us, mere mortals. But if you have the time and stamina of Tolkien elves, it might be just a 'meh'
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3 words: Tolkien Cinematic Universe
Rebuttal: Please Don’t Make a Tolkien Cinematic Universe [almendron.com] (Orig: NYT [nytimes.com])
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Amazon owns IMDB (Score:2, Interesting)
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I just went there for the first time in memory, and it looks like a video streaming site or something, not a database at all.
Re:Amazon owns IMDB (Score:4, Interesting)
IMDb in "expert" mode is still a good source of technical information about movies. They do tend to make their "standard" interface less usable with every 'upgrade' (like many websites do). And the reviews are worthless of course.
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The little secret is Amazon owns IMDB. IMDB is now hiding all reviews lower than 6/10 for Rings of Power (you can check it yourself - there are no user reviews allowed under 6/10) and is also scrubbing reviews. Unfortunately for Amazon, the "get woke go broke" lesson was learned too late to stop the production at this point. But all the media companies are now shifting their focus back to normal material and quietly shutting down the woke productions. Amazon got hit the worst with a $500 million investment into a semi-failed endeavor. My review is 4/10. They spent a lot of money, but the acting and dialogue is poor and it is terribly boring. Music is good though.
Interesting, I didn't know that
To be honest, so far I haven't seen any "woke". The actors are certainly more diverse, but it doesn't feel awkward. If it had gone feminist, I doubt that we would have seen an important female character saved by a man.
Verified reviews (Score:2)
I'm sure we cannot trust the IMDB statistics once the Internet goes on a crusade, but I don't much trust the 'official' sources either, seeing as how they're just part of marketing these days, with early access in return for a positive review.
For those who didn't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazon owns IMDB.
Re:For those who didn't get it (Score:4, Interesting)
They seem to also own a lot of "fans."
Hopefully not spoilers (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not a "bad" show per se. I think there could be a bit better pacing. Clearly we're in for the "How Sauron fooled everyone" story.
From what I've heard the biggest issue a lot of the lore fans have is the glossing over the first age and pretty much 80% of the second age. Which, I mean yeah, there's a lot between the two trees and when we finally get to Celebrimbor in terms of history, it's like 15,000 years being skipped between the first scene and when we "get to the story".
As far as character development. I mean, we're two episodes in, really difficult to flesh out a fifteen thousand year old Galadriel in just two hours. But I get somewhat the criticism that she's being made a bit one dimensional by the whole "to avenge Finrod" shtick. I don't know though, still early I would say in the show. But I'll give it till we get to episode five and really determine on the development part.
But for what we've gotten in the two episodes, it's a decent show. I don't know about $465M decent, but watching it isn't going to be a complete waste of time. IMHO
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"Setting a series in the second age" does not equal "telling the entirety of the second age storyline".
Putting 15.000 years worth of story would mean changing cast every 10 minutes (ok, apart from the elves). It's not something that would make sense, or would even be enjoyable to watch.
So far, if I got it right we should be around the time Ar-Pharazôn rules in Númenor. Let's see where this goes.
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Putting 15.000 years worth of story
Sounds like they could use a montage. [youtube.com]
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The series already starts with a montage...
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Which, I mean yeah, there's a lot between the two trees and when we finally get to Celebrimbor in terms of history, it's like 15,000 years being skipped between the first scene and when we "get to the story".
So, yeah, like, I mean, you're like, I mean, completely off there. It isn't like 15,000 years being skipped. Like, I mean, yeah, it couldn't be, like, more than like 3600 years. But whatever, or, like, yeah.
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Which, I mean yeah, there's a lot between the two trees and when we finally get to Celebrimbor in terms of history, it's like 15,000 years being skipped between the first scene and when we "get to the story".
Presumably there will be another series that covers the events of the first age.
This criticism is kind of like complaining that LOTR didn't cover the events of the Hobbit. The events of the Hobbit were crucial to the LOTR story.
Actually good! (Score:4, Interesting)
A respectable 7/10? (Score:2)
Personally I'm willing to give it a chance. Pretend it's not really Tolkien but
Re: A respectable 7/10? (Score:2)
The dialogue could be less theatrical but all in all I am entertained, and it looks magnificent and not out if tune with the movies either.
My $.02: slow start (Score:2, Interesting)
We watched the first 2 episodes last night. What bothered me most of all was the lack of narrative flow, it's really hard to understand what's going on. We get these set-ups (harfoots, elves, dwarves, men, a bit of orcs), but so far it's really hard to figure out what's happening. Some of the casting decisions feel 'woke', like dark skinned 'fair folk.' Others are a bit less disconcerting (skin tones across harfoots - or is it harfeet?) The Irish accented harfoots and the Scottish accented dwarves take
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It's funny you should say that and the accents. As a Brit I always imagined them with regional British accents. Possibly influenced by the BBC adaptations.
Any elf that isn't a Brummie is jarring to my ears.
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The use of accents is OK, probably better than needing to make something up for all the different groups.
But I DO object very strongly to the "boat scene" and
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Some of the casting decisions feel 'woke', like dark skinned 'fair folk.'
Tolkien was kinda 'woke' for his time [wikipedia.org], but that time was 1892.
Back in the day the heroes were whiter than white and villainous monsters were dark. And men did all the fighting while women stayed largely out of the action at home (and that certainly would have been the personal experience of a WWI vet).
Attempts to add gender diversity to LOTR by shoving secondary female characters into the action were awkward at best. But adding gender and racial diversity to the foundations of new stories in the same univer
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It's been a while since I read the Silmarillion and other Tolkein pre-LOTR narratives. Are there citations in that canon for Galadriel as an active combatant?
According to the older account of her story, sketched by Tolkien in The Road Goes Ever On and used in The Silmarillion, Galadriel was an eager participant and leader in the rebellion of the Noldor and their flight from Valinor; she was the "only female to stand tall in those days".
Re:My $.02: slow start (Score:4, Interesting)
The Tolkien elves lived in a place without a sun for most of their existence. And are extremely long lived with a fertility to match their lifespan. And an advanced healing factor that allows them to pretty much ignore anything but the most extreme temperatures which would thus remove the need for melanin, let alone any evolutionary inclination towards it. It's almost as if they were called the fair folk for a reason.
Re:My $.02: slow start (Score:4, Interesting)
Ah yes, we can't have mixed casting because then LoTR wouldn't be accurate from an evolutionary biology perspective. What about magic? How the ever living actual fuck is that reasonable from a biological perspective?
It's almost as if they were called the fair folk for a reason.
Fair as in nice looking.
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so you're advocating done incredibly heavy handed, clanging storytelling to explain away why all theblack people just happen to be bad.
Or you know they could simply mix up the casting because (and not that it matters) there is literally nothing in the stories precluding dark skinned elves.
The Shadow... (Score:2)
that created this show can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own.
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Morgoth has a new name; it's name is not Sauron, it's Amazon.
The Babylon Bee covers it best (Score:2)
where has an 84% rating from professional critics (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't have an opinion on RoP.
But I haven't trust Rotten Tomatoes for close to a decade. It's a bought and paid part of the marketing engine for the studios.
I've seen it delete hundreds of long, well thought out critical reviews while leaving literally over 100 duplicate 1 line positive reviews untouched.
As for "professional" critics- I don't trust them either. If they don't play ball, they know they will get cut off. No access to stars, no invitations to special events at comicon, no free dinner and early access to the shows or movies so they can release reviews early.
I trust critics who
a) see the product the same time as the rest of us.
b) *pay* full price for the product.
c) don't have special access to the stars and events.
Still no opinion on rings of power- but just be aware how corrupt the review process has become over the last 25 years. It's not really a review process-- it's a marketing process.
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It's a shame we lost Roger Ebert. He genuinely loved movies and was honest even if he loved a "bad" movie. Take Congo for example, it was a terrible flop but he enjoyed it for what it was.
Re:where has an 84% rating from professional criti (Score:4, Insightful)
I haven't trust Rotten Tomatoes for close to a decade. It's a bought and paid part of the marketing engine for the studios.
I think the lesson is that you actually can't trust IMDB because Amazon not only owns IMDB but is willing to scrub and outright hide reviews (as of now, the lowest and most critical review comes with 6 stars. Anything with 5 stars or less is still hidden 100%).
At least Rotten Tomatoes does not do THAT.
House of the Dragon had 84% professional critic and 84% viewers on RT. I would trust that, especially when critics and viewer happen to agree.
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Some have proven to be honest and match my own tastes
There's some confirmation bias right there. They are honest if they have the same opinion as you. Hmm.
I'd say a critic is honest if their views are their own and not influenced by studios and other commercial interests regardless of whether they agree with me or not.
Why is it so hard to write a good plot. (Score:5, Interesting)
A dangerous ice climb, where we find out that there is no strong reason to believe the object of the climb was ever here, or if it was, it might have been centuries ago?
A group of warriors trying to find what may be the most powerful / dangerous entity in all of Middle Earth - almost get trashed by a troll? What was their plan if they did find their quary?
An ancient (>1000 years old) and wise character - and the boat scene? What exactly was the plan there? I mean its dramatic and all, but even though elves look young, this was not an impetuous teenager.
"there seems to be a mysterious tunnel with signs of EVIL. I can #1: call the nearby heavily armed military organization. or #2 go myself into a dark tunnel where I can get ambushed."
If these were random people from with no combat experience, then sure. But these are ancient Elven warriors. Remember in LOTR when the Orces fled at the glow of Sam's elven sword thinking an elf lord was there? A fortress full of orcs fled - because an elven lord is an awesome and terrible thing. In Rings of Power, these ARE elf Lords, veterans of the Great War against Morgoth, they've battled Balrogs. They have a thousand years of combat experience.
The show is hot garbage (Score:5, Insightful)
The costumes look cheap, the cinematography is ruined during post-production, the lighting is flat and boring and very obviously done to offset green-screens. The dialogue is unnatural and too often used to advance the story. Galadriel is unlikable. The elves are difficult to distinguish from humans, and are poorly portrayed. Pulp Fiction did the mystery box better with the briefcase. The whole thing feels amateurish. I have no idea where all that money went. Maybe they had really good catering and other behind the camera amenities? They certainly spent money paying off reviewers for glowing coverage.
People are talking about the music being good? Bear is very talented, and I bought all of the Battlestar Galactica soundtrack CDs, but his music just isn't working here. The show isn't up to the challenge of meeting the feelings that the soundtrack is conveying.
Every positive review seems like a carbon copy, as all they can blather about is the special effects, which actually aren't very good. AI can create equally compelling graphics, for far less money.
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Maybe your TV is on the fritz, but if there's one thing they did get right it's that this show looks spectacular. Better than the movies in many ways.
If it looks flat to you then check your media player. Sometimes happens with HDR content on a non HDR display.
The costumes looked good to me. None of that fake metal that is actually painted plastic or rubber. All custom made with realistic techniques and materials, although elven clothing is somewhat magical.
I found my attention wondering a bit with the pacin
Re:The show is hot garbage (Score:4, Informative)
"none of the fake metal" -- did you not see the armor that was being worn by the elves in the boat? Or how about the clothes worn by the elves in general? Uninspired costuming seemingly made with cost-cutting in mind.
The problems that I have with how it looks aren't from technical playback problems on my end. As a photographer, I can see where the light is coming from and how it is being used, and I find it all rather amateurish.
The comical inexperience of the showrunners is on full display.
Even the editing has errors. In episode 1, go to about the 51:49 mark. Dude is reading a book, and two kids come up. He slams the book shut, but then in the next edit, the book is open, and stays open as they talk, until he shuts it again at 52:05. Yeah, this is a nitpick, but it was glaringly obvious to me when I first saw it, so I don't see how it could have slipped past a billion dollars worth of effort.
The whole effort is sloppy and soulless and a great example of factory generated content for the sake of content, and not for the sake of telling a good story. It is shitting on the shoulders of giants.
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It seems very unlikely that they would be cost cutting, considering the budget of this movie.
In any case, reviews of the armour have been quite positive. It not only looks good, but it's functional and realistic too. Often armour is more about how it looks than about providing protection, especially on women.
Selective Hearing (Score:2)
Just because someone doesn't agree with your expectations of the show doesn't mean that they are a troll. Modern companies like to misinterpret this decades-old internet word to their benefit, to easily discard and discredit any unfavourable voices, and it is no different this time.
I've watched it and I agree - it's garbage.
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Does it really matter (Score:2)
...what other people think about a piece of entertainment? I get that it matters to the money people, but honestly, why would any of us care what some random slashdotter thinks? It's too woke! No, not woke enough! Yeah, OK. So what?
Maybe there's a psychological explanation for this. There's a group dynamic at play. We want to feel like we belong, so we all spend our precious minutes sitting around on the Internet tellng each other just how much we hated or liked something. The fact that the something we're
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It even says in the opening credits "Based on Lord of the Rings and the appendices". What exactly did Amazon pay for when they are using only the same source material as Peter Jackson? It certainly wasn't anything that gives greater detail into events of the Second Age than the snippets available provide.
Looks great, but having to recreate a coherent history of an entire Age (taking care not to copy anything they haven't been licensed to use) is far beyond their capability. Tolkien himself had difficulties
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Not sure about the pirate bay but yeah it's available in 4k and close to 9gb in size.
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Look at mister edge lord over here. You could always watch it yourself and form your own opinions.
I don't have time for that, I'm busy writing reviews.
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The Irish times (may be paywalled, I'm a subscriber) [irishtimes.com]. Some choice excerpts
The Rings of Power, ... features a race of simpleton proto-hobbits, rosy of cheek, slathered in muck, wearing twigs in their hair and speaking in stage-Irish accents ... Twenty minutes in, I’m having flashbacks to that 1997 EastEnders episode with the fightin’ villagers and donkeys walking the streets.
the Harfoots are ancestors of the hobbits. If they don’t quite keep livestock in the livingroom, they are otherwise a laundry list of 19th-century Hibernophobic caricatures.
There’s an early scene in which we see the Harfoots, wearing filthy rags, scrabble in the ground for food. What is this, Famine cosplay?
The Scots get it ... Stand-ins for the dwarfs, they are portrayed as aggressive and argumentative... I expect Durin, prince of Khazad-dûm, to whip out a deep-fried Mars bar. Every other “mad Jock” cliche has already been ticked off.
This all tracks with JRR Tolkien’s disdain for Celtic culture. “They have bright colours,” he said of Irish and Welsh mythology, “but are like a broken stained glass window reassembled without design”.
Perhaps he protested too much. Many scholars today draw a line between Tolkien’s elves – willowy immortals from across the sea – and the Irish Tuatha Dé Danann, a semidivine race immune to sickness or age. The parallels between the Irish mythological figure Balor of the Evil Eye and Sauron, the flaming-red iris of Barad-dûr, are similarly obvious. And Tolkien’s great romantic tragedy, Beren and Lúthien (which was inspired in part by the author’s own romance with his wife, Edith Bratt), carries echoes of the old Gaelic epic The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne.
So if anyone should sound “Irish” it is the elves. They even have a high king. Instead, and of course, these noble sophisticates have upper-class English accents. The grubbier humans sound like Lancashire mill workers – not as cultured as the elves but a long way ahead of the O’Harfoots in the pecking order. Somehow the Victorian caste system has been smuggled into a 21st-century American fantasy series.