Rings of Power series on Amazon in Sept
- Thread starter gamecockcat
- Start date
Can't really explain why but this just feels soulless to me. It's ok but just lacking something.
If you don't mind the writers conflating a few thousand years of Tolkien's storyline into a small timeline; fabricating boring characters and events and introducing them as pivotal to the plotline; turning the main star of the show into a dull Mary Sue; paralleling modern politics with a fantasy story for the sake of "representation"; and rebuking the most loyal, imbedded fan base of all time with false accusations of racism; then yes, Rings of Power is pretty solid so far.
Most notably, it totally departs from Tolkien's work. It's 95% fabricated characters and storylines for the sake of invoking modernity.
There's a reason Tolkien fans think this series is trash.
Galadriel poops on a horse and then blames the horse.
Rings of Power = terrible so far.
House of the Dragon = good so far.
The same people are watching both, and both shows have minority characters; yet the same fans who dislike Rings of Power like House of the Dragon.
So how can they be racist is all they're really doing is attacking the assault on Tolkien's actual story? It has nothing to do with race.
House of the Dragon = good so far.
The same people are watching both, and both shows have minority characters; yet the same fans who dislike Rings of Power like House of the Dragon.
So how can they be racist is all they're really doing is attacking the assault on Tolkien's actual story? It has nothing to do with race.
I agree that the decision by the writers to have her go back was a bit eyebrow-raising, and I’m not sure I agree with that decision. Although to be clear, she wasn’t actually forced to go. She could’ve stayed and chose to leave only after Elrond talked her into it (though maybe that’s why you put quotation marks around the word “forced” in your post).
Regardless of whether she was technically forced, I disagree with you when you say that such an act by Gil-Galad would be “preposterous” based on Galadriel’s status. She may have had noble birth, but there was also a long history of other Elven lords not showing deference to her. And unlike the other major Elven lords, she was largely nomadic and didn’t fully and truly gain a realm of her own until the Third Age.
In First Age, she was tolerated in Doriath by King Thingol simply because she was a relative and also spent time in Nargothrond with her brother, but she wouldn’t have been received warmly in any of the areas ruled by the sons of Feanor. This dynamic was one of the contributing factors why she and Celeborn abandoned Beleriand in the First Age and headed east.
In the Second Age, she went from Lindon to Lake Evendim to Eregion, and then spent the rest of the age bouncing around between Lorien, Rivendell and Belfalas. While in Eregion, the elven smiths led a revolt against her and Celeborn, installing Celebrimbor as Lord of Eregion in their place. It’s also noteworthy that Gil-Galad did not intervene on Galadriel’s behalf to prevent this despite them being part of the same family. And when Galadriel departed for Lorien after the revolt, her husband Celeborn refused to go with her and chose to stay in Eregion. They were separated for about 300 years or so before being reunited in Rivendell.
Point being, Galadriel may have been royalty but that often didn’t buy her any loyalty or deference from the other Elves until much later in the Third Age.
I think it’s totally fair to debate whether Amazon’s decision to send Galadriel to Valinor was bad writing and you won’t get much argument from me on that point. I think it was a questionable decision.
But even if it’s bad writing, I don’t think that means that you can also call it preposterous when Tolkien himself wrote of times when Galadriel was disregarded or even cast aside by some of the Elves despite her being “royalty.”
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I agree. Hasn’t been perfect, but I’ve enjoyed much of it thus far.
Hopefully the show can continue to pick up momentum and stay close to the spirit of Tolkien’s writings.
I’m not sure if this is what you’re getting at, but I do wonder if the whole multiple storylines within each episode was maybe not the best way to start the series.
The problem with this approach is that we’re three episodes in and it still feels a little bit like they’re getting things set up. I’m willing to put up with that, but I’ve also been a huge Tolkien fan since I was a little kid so I’m probably a bit more invested.
I also feel like the jumping between storylines has led to some inconsistency in terms of establishing characters. Some characters feel more fully fleshed out and authentic to me (e.g., really enjoyed the dwarves), while other characters have seemed a bit more one dimensional or even borderline cliche (e.g., Halbrand as the mysterious, brooding man who may or may not be a reluctant king). I also feel that in some respect, Galadriel has been utilized more as a plot device than as a character up to this point. Hopefully these things change as we get into the plot more, but we’ll see.
I do wonder if it might have been a better approach to have each of these early episodes focus solely on one group of characters per episode. Maybe this would have allowed the show to more fully develop them and their respective storylines, and then you could start weaving together the storylines later on the series.
But I’m also not a writer, so who knows.
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I have to admit, not having immersed myself into the mythology created by Tolkien, other than that which was provided in LOTR and the Hobbit, keeps me from analyzing in light of that created history. I can see where diehard fans might be disappointed. And, it is not perfect, regardless. But, when the episode ends, I am ready for the next.
Maybe. Not sure what's it's missing but it's missing something. I don't think it helped that they had a mediocre casting for galadriel, which is the main character (or at least the most screen time) this far. Contrast that with Matt smith making hod very compelling despite in one episode not even having a voice line.
Maybe it's the attempt to say so many things they can't legally say? Maybe that requires too much heavy lifting on all but the most involved in Tolkien canon. I see things covered in these recaps I never noticed during viewing. Of course they point out the obvious flaws too but it is what it is
Whatever it is - I'm not alone. Saw somewhere it lost like 60% of it's audience from episode 2 to 3. That's massive. So of it doesn't turn soon...they might not get enough time to redeem it.
Maybe it's the attempt to say so many things they can't legally say? Maybe that requires too much heavy lifting on all but the most involved in Tolkien canon. I see things covered in these recaps I never noticed during viewing. Of course they point out the obvious flaws too but it is what it is
Whatever it is - I'm not alone. Saw somewhere it lost like 60% of it's audience from episode 2 to 3. That's massive. So of it doesn't turn soon...they might not get enough time to redeem it.
Whomever the stranger turns out to be could literally save the show
In terms of whether Amazon will continue to give the show time, the bigger question is how many new Amazon Prime members were created.
Amazon is still just an e-Commerce company at its core, so they aren’t going to be as concerned about ratings as say a Netflix or HBO Max would be.
What Amazon cares about is enticing people to join Prime because they know that Prime members end up spending about $800 more on Amazon each year than non-Prime members (~$930 per year of you include the monthly Prime membership fee).
As long as there were a little over one million people globally who joined Prime to be able to watch this show, then Amazon will break even on a $1 billion investment after just one year. And once they’ve signed up for Prime, Amazon doesn’t really care if these new members keep watching the show beyond the first couple of episodes as long as they don’t end up cancelling their Prime membership within the next year or so.
Amazon’s revenue model gives them a lot more flexibility to support shows that have ratings that someone like a Netflix or Disney+ might consider to be too low. But if Rings of Power doesn’t drive new Prime accounts, then you might see Amazon pull the plug pretty quickly.
It’ll be interesting to see if Amazon makes any public statements about how many new Prime accounts were created that they attribute largely to people joining so that they could watch the show.
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The show is fine for what it is. They hamstrung themselves by not getting the similarion rights. The first few seasons should have been the 1st age war with morgoth. It could have been really awesome. They are filling in a lot of blanks they aren't allowed to touch on with new characters or reworked characters. I don't care about the black elves and all the stupid anti woke uproar. From what i understand amazon also planned it as fairly long slow burn 5 to 6 season adventure across the 2nd age. The numenor stuff would be pretty good but i think they have limited rights to that storyline. The success of the show will hinge on how much leeway the tolkein estate gives amazon to storyline that Tolkein himself never sold off. Its also really hard for them to cover such a long period of time. the 2nd age is 3500 years, humans have a hard time wrapping their brains around that kind of time scale. They will have to really change a lot of the timelines to avoid constant massive 100+ year time jumps. I think there are just a bunch of really vocal hardcore fans that can't accept the limitations of transitioning such a massive unfinished universe into a tv show. The movies focused on a tiny timescale in comparison and were also fully fleshed out by Tolkein.
YT channel I listen to some. He did this video before the show came out because he thought the time compression would ruin any chance of it being truly great. He came up with like 17 pages of needed rights to do a story like this and make it flow.
His beginning is definitely better.
The time compression makes it a better tv show but makes the fan nerds rage on reddit
I thought the most recent episode was really good. Of course the galadriel stuff is still awful but everything else is good/really good. Also helped there weren't harfoots.
Elrond/dwarf storyline is the best imo. Numenor and the newly created elf story is next but also good.
Definitely think random guy on raft is sauron based on how he manipulated people
Elrond/dwarf storyline is the best imo. Numenor and the newly created elf story is next but also good.
Definitely think random guy on raft is sauron based on how he manipulated people
I thought the latest episode was good. The beginning street scene reminded me of a Star Trek episode. I kept thinking the away team was about to beam down. It has its flaws. But, I am still in.
Just a backstory on the people in charge of the show. One of the highest ranking executives at Amazon fired Ryan Condal from a development deal for Conan the Barbarian series. She said it was too masculine and too violent... for Conan... Condal went to HBO and is currently beating ROP head to head with HOTD.
Christopher Tolkien was the son of JRR Tolkien. He was working with Amazon to develop their show but he kept reigning them in to not change the lore or conflict with events. He died and Amazon fired Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey and brought a bunch of people from Bad Robot productions... JJ Abrams baby. They fired a bunch of the writers and brought in a more diverse writing staff.... sure, most had never read Tolkien or knew the stories but they were the right gender and race. But ROP has 23 executive producers.
The 2 showrunners in charge of writing and producing the show do not have a single writing credit to their name before this show. They were brought in to do what they were told by higher ups. They are yes men that are cashing a check. They did decide to move from New Zealand and end their relationship with WETA who did all the visual stuff for the series.
Word is also out the Bezos is pissed. Everyone in the background is getting popcorn to see how this unfolds. Lindsey Weber is mentioned a lot as being responsible for getting the "team" together for this show. But she's a woman and very political so would Bezos risk firing her? $1 billion already invested by contract and people are saying they'll be over $1.5 to do all 5 seasons.... with no more changes. If they do fire people that just adds to the total.
There are talks at Amazon of just scrapping their studio altogether. It'd be ashame if we don't get any more Terminal List shows because a few women hate strong men.
Christopher Tolkien was the son of JRR Tolkien. He was working with Amazon to develop their show but he kept reigning them in to not change the lore or conflict with events. He died and Amazon fired Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey and brought a bunch of people from Bad Robot productions... JJ Abrams baby. They fired a bunch of the writers and brought in a more diverse writing staff.... sure, most had never read Tolkien or knew the stories but they were the right gender and race. But ROP has 23 executive producers.
The 2 showrunners in charge of writing and producing the show do not have a single writing credit to their name before this show. They were brought in to do what they were told by higher ups. They are yes men that are cashing a check. They did decide to move from New Zealand and end their relationship with WETA who did all the visual stuff for the series.
Word is also out the Bezos is pissed. Everyone in the background is getting popcorn to see how this unfolds. Lindsey Weber is mentioned a lot as being responsible for getting the "team" together for this show. But she's a woman and very political so would Bezos risk firing her? $1 billion already invested by contract and people are saying they'll be over $1.5 to do all 5 seasons.... with no more changes. If they do fire people that just adds to the total.
There are talks at Amazon of just scrapping their studio altogether. It'd be ashame if we don't get any more Terminal List shows because a few women hate strong men.
Would suck. Terminal list turned out way better then I was expecting…. Which wasn’t much to be honest. Just another modern war story… boy was I wrong. But all this other shit they’re doing, league of their own, LotR… taking great IPs and ruining them. These angry feminists should never be in charge of shit. Sorry, not sorry.
For something called the Rings of Power, they aren't even close to making the rings. (Which should have been made by now.)
The southlands story is the only real enjoyable part right now. It would have been way better if they made a show just about those people and their struggles with opposing or joining Sauron. That is some fairly uncharted waters as far as Tolkien lore.
The southlands story is the only real enjoyable part right now. It would have been way better if they made a show just about those people and their struggles with opposing or joining Sauron. That is some fairly uncharted waters as far as Tolkien lore.
Reacher and the Terminal List were very good series. I hope they don’t scree those up.
As a suggestion, you might want to be a bit more careful about what you read online and the extent to which you believe it.
For example, you said Bezos “is pissed” and then asked if he’d risk firing the person involved. If you are reading something that says Bezos is involved in firing decisions, then that should be a gigantic red flag to you that the person stating that doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
I’ll help you out on why that’s the case. The head of Amazon Studios is Jennifer Salke. She reports to Mike Hopkins, Mike reports to Doug Herrington and Doug reports to Andy Jassy. Andy Jassy is the President and CEO of Amazon and the highest ranking executive at the company.
Notice who’s missing from that chain of command? Jeff Bezos. Bezos stepped down as President and CEO over a year ago and transitioned to a Board role. And those who are familiar with Amazon know that Bezos had pulled himself away from operational decisions for quite some time before stepping down last year. So even when Bezos was still in the chain of command before last year, he wasn’t really making any operational decisions (e.g., hiring/firing decisions) and left those to executives.
Whether or not Amazon moves forward with the full 5 seasons remains to be seen, as does whether they’ll remain committed to Amazon Studios over the long term. However, what seems clear is that you’re reading a lot of information from sources that don’t appear to know what they’re talking about and you’re taking what you read at face value.
You might want to consider being more careful than that.
Fair enough. But it was Salke who fired Condal and decided to go with a female run show. Weber is over the 2 show runners. The whole point is that Bezos still has the most shares and the most pull at Amazon. He was the one that got this thing going because he wanted his "Game Of Thrones" for Amazon studios. He is a very vain man by all accounts. All I was pointing out is that HE is not happy and people in upper management are saying heads will roll. The only question is do they pin it all on the 2 young men showrunning this or do they go up to get Weber who was responsible for most of the talent decisions and direction? Or do they go even higher than that and get Salke? Those were all questions I was asking not trying to act like anyone has said who it will be yet.
The sources I got this from had the details of the whole season and an outline of all 5 seasons. I'm not going to spoil it for anyone enjoying the show but he is very accurate so far. He also reported that ROP production would leave NZ before it was announced publicly.... He obviously knows somebody fairly high up that is feeding him info. Predicting ROP would leave NZ and weta alone seemed like a "WTF?" type of prediction.
It doesn’t matter how many shares someone has, they are never involved with firing any employee at the N-1 level, much less someone at the N-3 level like Salke. Anyone who suggests that Bezos’ would be involved here has no clue what they’re talking about. This is like 101 level corporate governance we’re talking about.
Likewise, anyone who thinks Amazon is concerned about the ratings and how this show is received by audiences doesn’t understand how Amazon’s business works. Ultimately, Amazon doesn’t care if a ton of people keep watching this. They only care if it convinced a few more people to sign up for Amazon Prime AND that those new users also started purchasing more product through Amazon.
Put it this way, let’s say that this show consistently had an audience of 50 million people. Those numbers would be huge. But if those 50 million viewers consisted solely of people who had been Prime members for many years, then Amazon would view this show as a failure because it didn’t drive any incremental revenue.
Regardless, your source is highlighting things like Bezos’ opinion, which even if it were true he was disappointed, is something that’s totally irrelevant given his role. When someone highlights something that’s totally irrelevant like that, it’s usually a tip off that they don’t know what they’re talking about.
I thought was alright but personally I feel like the Galadriel storyline is a bit of a chore to watch at times.
I’ve been enjoying the other storylines/characters much more and sometimes it feels to me like they have separate writing teams working on the different storylines. Just feels like the quality of the writing is inconsistent when I watch the Galadriel scenes versus the others.
I just learned that co's will throw a billion dollars at a product and they don't care if it succeeds. Good to know. I guess nfl owners aren't concerned with wins just revenue. Lets say that a show had 24 million viewers for the first show and the 2nd episode played automatically right after the first and only 16 million watched the second. I get the business model. I disagree that it doesn't matter if people watch stuff you spend billions on. Disney is losing viewers because they thought people would just watch anything they put out.
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Disney plus is hemorrhaging because Disney is morons. Pumping out boring, shitty looking remakes and woke content. Have they not gotten the hint? They need another 100mil subs to become profitable and I just don’t see it happening with garbage like Ms Marvel, She-hulk, all these classic live action remakes, and some questionable Star Wars content. They want to shit on the people who helped make Disney and these IPs what they are today in order to get the younger audience, but they don’t want it either.
Look at HoD for example. Instead of relying 100% on GoT success, they’re telling a new story that’s intriguing in its own right and it’s doing great. And for the people saying, “oh you’re just sexist…” HoD’s main protagonist is a woman and I think everyone is rooting for her. She’s just a well done character that is being fleshed out the right way.
Why does the galadriel actress so intent on massive rbf?
She is by good measure the least likable character and performance of the series. Way worse than even the insufferable harfoots.
Although to be fair, she doesn't get much help from the content. The overbearing insistence on displaying her physical prowess is just a major unnecessary distraction
She is by good measure the least likable character and performance of the series. Way worse than even the insufferable harfoots.
Although to be fair, she doesn't get much help from the content. The overbearing insistence on displaying her physical prowess is just a major unnecessary distraction
I don’t need to watch it. They come out with trailers and the synopsis, which is more then enough. I looked at those and said nope. Plus the whole “Days of our lives” intro… c’mon, do I need to waste my time to know it’s garbage?
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