The writing is bad. The plot is nonsense. I don't care, because it's entertaining and it looks neat. I don't take it seriously as Tolkien canon, but I will always queue up to watch.
this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2024
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Tolkien, Lord of the Rings (LotR), etc.
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It aired against House of the Dragon which really shower it's mediocre writing. I'm a huge Tolkien fan and generally sceptical of most franchises but honestly I think in a vacuum, the show is fine.
Compare it to Witcher, even season 1 which is fine is probably on par or worse than Rings of Power, it's just that LotR is a strong franchise and it was easier to compare to multiple better competitors.
I think the biggest crime of the show is choosing to use established characters like Galadrial, Elrond, etc. We know these characters and know how they turn out - stakes are very low for the viewer. The plots literally don't matter. I got bored and we stopped watching about halfway through. We didn't hate it, we just stopped caring.
The one plot that has all original characters was my favorite, but
::: Spoiler It ends up being about one of the established characters in the end too. :::
It is just more of Hollywood being cowards and not having the guts to write stories of their own. Tolkien built such a vast world with well-defined lore and rules and they choose to do almost nothing with that. They choose to play the safe route and use marketable names.
This is the current crime of most every show these days. I feel as if it was normalized with the Star Wars prequels, and even a bit in the original trilogy, where an entire universe of people is crammed into an incestuous clique of the same dozen characters. Bad enough that Lucas didn't have the balls or imagination to introduce new characters that didn't orbit the same old group, but in the prequels it was especially bad. I almost vomitted when it turns out baby Annakin built C3PO.
The Hobbit was nauseating, where they were compelled to retcon in characters and arcs that simply didn't exist in the novels; it went well beyond artistic licence into blatant crass pimping, because they had these big name actors lined up and had to use them.
Another example is Strange New Worlds. I like the show; I really do. Sure, it's got a lot of flaws, but they're doing ok. What bugw me the most is - again - the (again) incestuous need to cram every character from TOS in as fast as they can, as if they're somehow going to appeal to the fan base by dragging in beloved characters. Especially since they're only those characters in name only, with no resemblance to the personalities or abilities of the originals.
It's a particular crime in the industry of pimping characters, and I hate it, and by extenion, the people perpetrating it.
While I agree with you, you have to keep in mind that they were legally bound to use only stuff mentioned in the LotR books. So the alternative was to use existing characters or don't use any at all. I think it would have been awkward as well if there was hardly any connection to the books.
Courage doesn't play into it. It's a business, and people don't watch original material without a miracle of good timing and circumstances. An established property is always a safer bet, and thus generally a better investment.
With a prequel like this, I find it helpful to think of it as historical fiction, set within a fictional universe. I can enjoy a story about Robert Oppenheimer even though I know he succeeds in making the bomb, or find Apollo 13 riveting even though I know they all made it back. Tension over whether a character dies or not isn't and shouldn't be the only factor in whether a story is entertaining.
I liked it enough that I'd watch the 2nd season. One thing about the first season is that it starts out slow and really doesn't pick up until mid/late season.
So yeah I totally get it, if you only watched the first episode you're going to be thinking this thing is just barely watchable, LOL.
It's entertaining, looks gorgeous, is well-acted, and uses Tolkien as a primary inspiration.
Go in without expectations that it's going to be just like when you read the Silmarillion at 16 years old and you might just have an enjoyable 45 minutes once a week.
I like it 🤷♂️, and I'm looking forward to the second season. It's not based on any book but just the lore and ideas. I don't know if that's what all the hate is about or what. If you take it for what it is, I think you'll enjoy it. If you go in with expectations of a pure adaptation, you'll probably joylessly nitpick it to death (those are basically the two sides of all the reviews I've seen for it).
YMMV, I guess is the TLDR of it. lol
I really liked the stranger and Harfoot story line and I'm really looking forward to their adventures
The fact that black Hobbits used to exist but didn't any longer during the time of Bilbo raises some questions
Harfoots are literally described as "browner of skin" by Tolkien so I have no idea what you are talking about.
No it doesn't. It really doesn't.
The first episode was good because it was setting things up and stuff was happening. Then nothing much happened until the last 15-20 minutes of the last episode. Most everything in between should have been done in 30-45 minutes. Visually, they did well but it'd so poorly written nothing was memorable and there's nothing there to pull you into the story.
The whole thing feels like a slow crawl until they get to the actual story and just when you think you'll get a payout for watching hours of character introduction, it's over in 5 minutes. It's the most underwhelming thing I've watched. Imagine if LOTR was just the Fellowship walking the trail, watching them set up and tear down camp, hunting, and other minutia for hours until they get to Moria and then you get 5 minutes split between entering moria, the room with Balin's tomb, and see the flames of the Balrog before the Fellowship makes it out. You don't actually get to see the Balrog, just get to know that it's there and that it's gone.
I was skeptical of it and I'm a diehard fan of the books and the films because I grew up with them. I found the show to not be as good as the movies. However, my wife loves the show, and is lukewarm on the movies, and she's not typically into fantasy things.
I think the reason is because the movies and books are about 9 cis white men saving the world. There are a few pretty women who pop up to kiss them, tell them they're handsome, and send them on their way with nice gifts every so often.
The shows center on a strong woman doing what she thinks is best despite the naysaying of men.
In that view, it's no wonder my wife likes the new show so much more than the movies. It was an interesting look into how inclusivity matters. Not every story needs to be about a band of white guys saving the world. It's nice to have some stories from the Tolkien universe about other people.
So in that sense I'm a big fan. It provided an avenue for my wife to connect with this world of fantasy that I really love. The books and the movies are not very accessible or relatable if you are not a white man. This gave her a connection point, after we watched the show she asked all about the lore and the background, then she wanted to watch the movies again.
I understand people appreciating the ring of power for being inclusive but boy is that just a super dishonest representation of LoTR.
Literally the fellowship is a multiracial group, two of which being bitter rivals. Both of which probably having not much regard for humans due to the ring not being destroyed. The fellowship forming and succeeding occurs only because multiple different races put their prejudices aside and work together.
One of the “pretty women who pop up to kiss them” resists probably the greatest temptation in the story in which her power would make her “a dark queen” and provided the fellowship with multiple life saving items.
Eowyn literally kills the witch king and had the famous “I am no man” moment. A woman who was ignored and dismissed turned the tide of that battle.
Saying that lotr is multiracial because different characters are different races in universe is missing the point. No black kid is gonna look up to Aragorn and think "he's just like me". Also claiming gender diversity because of one character (and another that had one moment of significance that still could have been cut without much impact on the story resolution) is wild.
I love LOTR as much as the next guy but I can admit it does have somewhat of a diversity issue.
No black kid is gonna look up to Aragorn and think “he’s just like me”.
That's interesting, because by this logic Asian kids (and I mean Asian from the Middle-East to South Asia to East Asia) can't watch the first season of that show and identify with the characters.
Researching the topic, there was actually some backlash about it a few years ago (https://nextshark.com/ludi-lin-amazon-lord-of-the-rings) which led to the addition of Asian look actors for season 2: https://news.yahoo.com/amazon-ring-powers-announces-cast-215130312.html?guccounter=1
Well it was written nearly a century ago, so it's not too surprising that diversity of representation was not great. Many countries got women's suffrage much later than that point in history.
Yes it has a diversity issue, I don’t dispute that of the other comment for a reason. However I take issue with solely characterising it by those issues. I personally feel only referring to it by it’s problematic elements, a good portion of which are because of Hollywood at the time and the era in which it was written, is disingenuous at best.
I would think that said “black kid” to use your term who while they may not be able to self insert as a particular character could still appreciate them and certainly appreciate the underlying message of the movie, which isn’t “a bunch of white guys do the thing”.
The lack of PoC in the story and the casting for the movies doesn’t change the message and overt themes of the book that I mentioned. Frankly I think if someone only took “white people rule” and “the woman show up to be pretty and kissed” from the story then the bigotry may lie with that person.
Saying that LOTR has racial diversity because there is an elf and a dwarf and hobbits is fucking hilarious. If you pull off the prosthetic ears, what color is the skin of the guy underneath... Can you imagine if that was how racial representation actually works? Like an Asian person seeing Gimli and Legolas and being like wow, racial minority people just like me! I can really relate to this! That white guy has different ears, he's just like me!
Why bother making Black Panther or Shang Chi? What a waste of money! You could have just put pointy ears on Hawkeye and completely fulfilled the racial diversity need.
LOTR fans are really on another level with their cognitive dissonance. I love Tolkien but I can also appreciate that he is a product of a culture and time when racial and sexual equality were not doing great.
Given your entire comment is based off of your first sentence, something which I never said, I was going to just ignore you. Pretty interesting your use of the term cognitive dissonance when your entire reply is attempting to jam a bunch of words in my mouth for it to even work.
Cool you found it hilarious though, I myself find it pretty funny when people claim to be about understanding and inclusion before making generalised claims about an entire fan base based on their misinterpretation of someone's comment. More so given you’ve stated to part of said fan base, diehard even. Maybe read my reply again and the others I’ve made in this thread because clearly you missed my point.
Edit: I also saw that deleted comment, good on you for having the decency to remove it but I’d point out my remark about the bigotry being within seems to have been more accurate than I initially expected.
That’s cool. I get it. And I get your take. Even if LOTR does have definite strong female characters… it is still very much a series about a group of guys being dudes.
That doesn’t matter to a lot of people, but if it matters to your girlfriend or maybe a newer generation of fans that’s a-ok
I watched the first season. I’ve never been a huge LOTR fan (watched and enjoyed the movie trilogy but never read the books) so I didn’t really mind that they were taking liberties with the source material. The only criteria I had was they had to tell a good story. And the just… didn’t. I was bored out of my mind the whole time. Not planning on watching the second season. I feel like I wasted enough time already with the first one.
Meh. Yeah, I'll watch it but not because I was overly impressed by season 1. Writing a bit poor, the whole storyline didn't make too much sense. Furthermore, on the one hand they put a lot of Easter eggs for the deep lore fans, but on the other hand they had lots of elements that didn't make sense in canon. I take it as a parallel and weird Tolkienian universe, it's watchable like that.
Tried to watch season 1. I didn't make it through episode 2. Too much was just made up and it sort of lost me. I do think I'm a relatively traditional Tolkien fan (in that I prefer his work to adaptations), but I really wanted to like it.
I may try again before season 2 premiers, but I haven't decided yet.
I'm really excited for S2. Any time spent in Arda is worth it at least once.