> Amazon introduced the policy earlier this summer, starting with its reboot of A League of Their Own, which contended with review bombers who opposed the show’s political stance.
Turns out people don't like it when you take something not about being woke, and make it about being woke. Amazon should hurry up and learn their lesson. If they want a show about being gay they should just make one, don't rewrite an existing story to shoehorn it, and if you want black and brown fantasy characters, don't appropriate something cobbled out of anglo-saxon mythology to do it.
Streisand here would mean more people watch it, since the negative backlash from censorship creates more publicity.
Just like awful superhero movies these things don't die for simply for being bad. Even I watched it just to see how much they messed it up (I thought it was merely okay, not awful). The test will be whether it maintains momentum with the 4th and 5th episode. That's usually where big shows die.
Rather than blocking reviews, how hard would it be for a company like Amazon to release some anonymized data about these alleged review bombing incidents and allow independent researchers to make their own analysis on whether or not these are genuine reviews or not?
There's a big moral hazard here in that it's trivial for a big corporation to make claims that cannot be verified. Are we supposed to just trust them?
but then they would not be able to manipulate the results their own way which is exactly what is happening. make a crapfest look better than it should by cherry picking reviews.
Based on the kinds of things I've heard in the past about supposedly "anonymized" data being reassembled, I have to imagine that Amazon's lawyers would unequivocally decline that idea before the soundwaves finished reverberating off the conference room walls.
Not if they also control a marketplace where they have the opportunity to favor their own products over competitors. That is a perversion of capitalism. The marketplace should be run by an independent firm without a conflict of interest.
>”For example there was quite a vocal group when the first trailers came out and they found out that (shock) not everyone in the show is white.”
These people exist, but I am extremely skeptical that this is the primary motivator for the droves of negative reviews. What major media production isn’t diverse?
This reminds me of the controversy around Ghostbusters 2016 where people claimed review bombers hated the movie because of the female cast.
I would say it is much more likely that these well-loved properties had botched adaptations and that is why so many people are raking it over the coals.
Millions of people watch shows like this but only an extremely small fraction write reviews. This is why it only takes a small but vocal # of review bombers— emotionally motivated in a way the average viewer isn’t— to have a huge impact on review scores.
Yeah but part of what happens is that there are tons of people who just don't like the show and then pretty quickly everybody that doesn't like the show is a racist by implication.
And of course that is the typical company response. Negative reviews, well its all political and racism.
But the reality is that there are also people who don't like some of the race choice in 'House of the Dragon' and that property is as big as Lord of the Rings, and yet those racist don't manage to motivate lots and lots of people to write reviews.
So when you make a good show racists are a small minority, when you have a bad show then all of a sudden all the criticism is because of racism.
House of Dragons doesn’t give reviewers with racist motivations any rhetorical leverage. They can’t hide behind arguments that it doesn’t conform to source or canon or anything like that because the original author is leading the creative process.
the original text clearly states that some of the people that are black in the show are white. It doesn't matter that the author is involved, if you are a racist why do you care that the author has been bought to conform to 'the message'.
The only issue I have with reviews are the ones given by people who haven't watched the show. Everyone who watches is entitled to their opinion, but simply smearing or promoting a show that you haven't even seen based on some sort of culture war position is not useful to anyone.
I've read LOTR many times as well the Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, Tolkien's letters, etc. I really recommend trying out this show. It gets the heart of Tolkien if not the exact details.
Too many people that should be fans will not watch it or will dismiss it immediately because they have a fixed idea of what it might be and cannot abide a show that deviates one iota.
The people that are claiming it is a mess because some elves have short hair are one example.
In my opinion, it gets anything but the heart of Tolkien. Some details are attempted to be kept similar to LOTR movies, but much of the themes and ideas of the legendarium are not here.
It was going to be a flop from the start, proclaimed by many that such a huge budget would not lead to success. The executives signing off on this will claim this as a huge project they led as usual, meetings will be had brushing losses under the rug, tweaking metrics. The world will move on. Cannot help thinking that these execs are king makers, choosing which few individuals to crown with their follies.
I have a hard time believing the authenticity of the critics' reviews.
The Rings of Power is a complete snoozefest. Stuff is happening, but it's a confusing mess and there are no stakes to make anything interesting. The dialogue is stilted and cringeworthy.
It's the same as in every other mediocre fantasy with poor writing: the "Good" people against "Great Evil", which is usually manifested as some kind of deformed monsters, deep voices, nefarious deeds and ominous music.
Meanwhile, this conflict is padded with needlessly elaborate, yet meaningless side storylines and fake drama appealing to the 18-25 demographic.
Say what you want about mediocre fantasy shows, but I thought The Wheel of Time, another Amazon show, was much more interesting than The Rings of Power after a mere two episodes.
I managed to read all 11,898 page across 14 books of Wheel of Time but thought the Rings of Power was much more interesting than the first couple of episodes of Wheel of Time I made it through.
Well yeah sure. But I often just jump in in random places and I don't might skipping over stuff.
I listen to the audiobooks to fall asleep or if I don't want to start something new. When you have like 10 books you want to listen to in theory but can't decide, listen to some Wheel of Time.
Well-written, picturesque, excellent acting, and a number of fresh faces. The visuals for Gault's suit found to be better than anything I've seen thus far in the Marvel universe, which are themselves no slouches.
I think it is turning out rather excellent, and would be a great source for spin-offs too.
> I’m going to really ruin things for you: eventually, in the end, the ring dies.
Well, obviously. I mean, the goodies have access to giant eagles and all they have to do is to give the ring to one of them and drop it in Mount Doom and the whole thing is solved, right?
The eagles could be corrupted, yeah. They're sentient and (some at least) are ancient. One of the central themes of The Lord of the Rings is that the Powers of Middle Earth are very, very tempted by the ring and must overcome the test of the ring at cost to themselves: Galadriel is doomed to travel to the West, Boromir loses his mind temporarily, Saruman becomes a tyrant and eventually his staff broken etc. The eagles are themselves a Power and if they picked a Ring Bearer up they'd be tempted to drop said bearer on the ground and fetch the ring from their dead hand, become some type of eagle tyrant.
Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn't. Big risk either way.
Anyway, this theme is why the most meek people of Middle Earth -- the Hobbits, who desire basically nothing more than a quiet life -- are the only ones in Middle Earth that could actually cart the ring into Mordor. Even then it's not a sure bet, considering Gollum.
Even the hobbits fail - Frodo claims the ring at the last minute and it is only the intervention of Providence (in the guise of Gollum) that saves the day.
Ah yes, fair point. I think it’s Gandalf that says the Hobbits are stouter than even the Wise know or something to that effect but, like you say, they aren’t impervious to the charm of the ring. Except perhaps Sam, with his abundance of hobbit-sense and love for Frodo.
Its actually because the eagles are not just a straight up ally. Eaglea are the servants of the highest god, and that god doesn't really care about the concerns of elfes and men. Just like the ents also don't really care unless you fuck with them directly.
The eagles showing up at the end is more like an 'Oh we were so awesome and heroic that even the high god sees considers this a worthy cause'.
The eagles help Gandalf because of a personal relationship
Don't be ridiculous. The video narrator specifies that the gold on the basalt must have been present locally at the eruption, but as anyone can tell you who has read the Silmarillion seventeen times and memorized every single historical fact therein (while being unable to, for example, name their legislative representatives), Mount Doom is canonically in New Zealand, thus the gold in Iceland can't be from the One Ring. I give this post a 1/10, it would be a 0/10 but Jeff Bezos is censoring me.
I mean, while we're waltzing around the absurd, how meaningful do you really think the continents remain at magmatic depths? We're literally talking about the space where the bedrock melts and flows in the unknowable oceans of Sauron's marmalade, after all. I think the ring spent eons swishing around before reassembling like a blended up sea sponge before making its way back to the surface in the modern-day land of the elves (Iceland). It's only a matter of time before the trolls in the forests of Norway begin amassing their forces. As for that video's narrator, I think his name is Dave Sméagol, so I'd take his misdirections with a pinch of salt.
As a non-geologist, it seems plausible to me that gold that was somehow subsumed into the mantle in New Zealand could migrate to Iceland in the span of thousands of years. As Sméagol pointed out, though, gold coming up in the magma would be more diffuse and not create an identifiable layer on the surface of the lava rock. You're right, though, he's hardly a reliable narrator when it comes to His Precious, so that could be a misdirect. And perhaps there's some attribute of magically endowed gold that causes it to behave in unexpected ways. I searched Google Scholar, but couldn't find any peer-reviewed studies on the physical properties of magic rings.
Antipode of Iceland is not too far (relatively speaking) from New Zealand. Going the other way around it's really Spain, so if The Ring was slowly traveling through Earth's core, one could imagine that it made "wrong turn at Albuquerque" and instead surfacing in Spain it hit Iceland. QED
Unknown to all in LOTR, while the volcano is hot, it has cooled in the thousands of years since the ring's forging. It does not completely dissolve the ring, instead, it melts yet remains together.
Fast forward 10000s of years, the area is mined, and the precious metal is used for fillings in teeth.
Surprise! It's Bezos! And he now has part of the ring of power in his lower right molar.
Now he is understood.
One sales platform to rule them all, indeed!
And Galadriel’s troop fought a snow troll. We have Gil-Galad sending a troublesome commander to Valinor. Elrond used a contest with a dwarf prince as a start on an alliance between elves and dwarves. Orcs are tunneling below human villages to kidnap the inhabitants and Proto-hobbits are helping a man who fell from the sky.
Galadriel is searching for Sauron, whom she believes is still hiding and plotting. Her entire plot is about everyone telling her the threat is gone but she (and the viewers) clearly see that’s not the case.
Elrond is trying to recruit the dwarves to help build the forge to create the rings.
The comet guy I’ll grant you is the show’s one mystery, granted, but I have a feeling he’s going to have something to do with the reemergence of Sauron and the creation of the rings.
Breaks continuity with the official timeline, as Gandalf doesn't come to middle earth until thousands of years later. But with the hints they dropped (e.g. the names he mutters and the speaking to insects), I don't see who else it could be. And bringing Gandalf in early for this series would be a good change imho. It would balance out the cast of characters and be an interesting plot development.
Per Tolkien's later writing, the blue wizards arrived during the 2nd age to oppose Sauron in the East, but as far as I know they aren't mentioned directly in the material Amazon has the rights to. Having that role filled by Gandalf might be an acceptable compromise...
Yeah, I interpreted most of the symbolism as being pretty ominous too. I know Gandalf is something of a fire wizard, but crashing to earth in a red comet as signs of evil are popping up everywhere? Controlling and then killing a bunch of fireflies?
His fire power comes from his great ring, but it’s not a stretch for the writers to say he had some nascent fire powers which the later ring just enhanced. They are already breaking from canon if this is Gandalf. The death of the fireflies could be an accident. He doesn’t control his power well yet.
I don’t want to over analyze though as they are obviously trying to be ambiguous for suspense.
Galadriel dispatches a snow troll isnt story, its just a random 1min action scene that has no impact on anything.
Also that was a really dumb scene in so many ways.
Gil-Galad shouldnt really have the power to just send people away. The just invented some lore to get characters where they want them.
Even outside that, a character that shows up for 2 scenes and make one vagly interedting incredibly cryptic remark isn't exactly a barn burner.
Ok, Orcs still exists, amazing who would have thought. And a random person fell from the sky that is a total mystery and unconnected to anything so far.
So yeah its not much for 2h+ of runtime. Not sure wht you added ' /s'.
That seems like plenty for 2 episodes in spite of your dismissal of each event. This is a series not a movie. I wouldn’t want it to follow the frantic pacing of a movie where they have to compact and discard so much to fit into a short runtime.
Compare it to the first to episodes of Game of Thrones, House of Dragon, Breaking Bad, Firefly or any number other good shows.
Its also not really a good slow burn either. If you want to see that done expertly check out True Detective Season 1. That story draws you in.
And this episodes were very long and all the story lines are slow.
- A Story: Galadriel wanders around without doing much in the first episodes and swims around not doing much in the second episode. She has basically 1 expression, her motivation is the most basic revenge story plot ever and its totally clear that she is right and everybody else is dumb. The scene of going to Valinor standing on boat in full armor looked dumb and it was totally clear she would not go, but I guess show runners wanted to drop a couple million on special effect.
- B Story: Hartfoots mostly slice of life and some interaction with a mysterious wizard that amount to nothing so far. Kind of cute but not interesting and totally different tone then everything else. Including with slap stick humor.
- C Story: Basic Elf-Human love story with neither of the characters being very interesting and they have little chemistry. Also evil is rising, but I don't really care about those characters so I don't really care, for now its just random orcs. Nothing to connect to, no large conflict or the other characters. This is even worse then the love-story the added to the hobbit.
- D Story: Elron goes to the dwarfs and we get lots of exposition about (mostly nonsensical) backstory that is required for the current plot to make sense and some character setups for the dwarfs. Honestly maybe the most interesting part of the first 2 episodes, but not actually that interesting.
The tournament/birth sequence in the first episode of House of Dragon had more interesting character moments, character development, story progression then all of the Rings of Power had in the first 2h.
Or compare it with the story that happen in the first 2h of Lord of the Rings (~10h) total vs Rings of Power (10h).
In hindsight, it is amazing how much happens in the first episode of Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad. I recently rewatched both, and it felt like watching half a season.
To be fair, some series just start off like that. The Expanse felt like a slow start too, but after episode 4, everything starts paying off and the first 3 seasons were (imo) some of the best Scifi on television.
That begin said, I haven't watched any RoP, the "nothing" could be complete fluff because the story is too thin.
I love the expanse but the first few episodes were slow and a little confusing. This is more a problem with the story writing. However, the acting, visuals, and physics were fantastic and the show quickly corrected the story telling.
Amazon seems like it would rather hide reviews than fix the story telling. I couldn’t finish episode 1 without falling asleep
The Expanse is different. Different premise, rules, and stakes compared to other sci-fi on screen. It’s complex. Easing us into the story could have taken a whole season.
Instead, they dumped as much of the setting as possible into those first few episodes. We learn so much about the players, cultures, technologies, physics, histories, economies, even languages, etc. It’s exhausting. So much detail! Go back and watch. But then when the Donnager battle hits, you get it, and the payoff is huge.
I don’t think the writing is bad. I think they had to rush the setting-onboarding to get to the good parts of the story, to create excitement, to better their chances of justifying additional seasons, all within the constraints of their budget. I think the writing is excellent in hindsight.
Exactly. It was a lot to take in in the first few episodes. The alternative would have been an extra season or two, and probably would have been boring.
I always have to advise people, when I recommend The Expanse to them, to make sure to sit through the first 3-4 episodes even if they don't feel like they're really getting hooked. By the time they get to episode 4, they're hooked.
I found the Expanse great from the start. I don't think I'll be watching this series at all based on what I've read in the comments here. I've already read the books and I just don't think they'll be able to do it better.
I think you have to get to episode 4 (the attack on the Donniger) before The Expanse really starts taking off. I was hooked on the first episode, but that's because I'm a sucker for hard sci-fi and I like Noir (Miller's storyline). Most people don't get the show until episode 4.
Rings of Power is so far turning into an interesting show. I would say give it a shot. The second episode is definitely better than the first. Hopefully it will improve from here.
Well for a thing that is supposed to last a whole season (and maybe more) it’s fine to spend one or two episodes setting the scene and introducing characters
They’ve established the backstory.
There is already a conflict within the elves.
Galadriel meets a human who seems like he will be important.
Elrond has a contest with a dwarf as a negotiation tactic.
Orcs are now tunneling under villages to steal the human inhabitants.
We meet proto-hobbits and a man who fell from the sky.
That would be my main worry that it starts splintering off too much. Maybe they’ll merge or kill off some of the storylines. The hobbit and the elf outpost seem like plot devices that might go away to keep it a bit more focused.
My biggest problem with it so far is the overall stylistic look and feel. It's like someone is trying to recreate Ted Nasmith's epic paintings with living people and CGI, and the result just looks awkward rather than epic.
Same thing about the dialogs: the "epic prose" style would work on paper, but not so much in a live action movie.
Yes. I think they doubled down too much on certain aspects of the Peter Jackson aesthetic, which was already a departure from The Hobbit / Lord of the Rings.
Confusing? We get introduced to the main villain, we learn how the elves came to middle-earth, and we setup the story for how Galadriel will get a second chance for vengeance while Elrond is setup to unite the Elves and Dwarves in a common goal. I'm enjoying it so far, and it's certainly not confusing.
I was confused why the antagonist was the same as LotR, why there were hobbits (they were an obscure race in The Hobbit), and whether this story was supposed to be continuous with the existing Lord of the Rings. These are just a few examples, but while I was watching many details didn't add up to me.
Those don't seem confusing to me considering LotR shows Elrond facing off against Sauron in the Second Age and Hobbits were never indicated to not exist in the Second Age (why would you think that?). They tell you right off the bat that this is well before LotR, so I don't know why you're making these strange assumptions.
That “sink or float” metaphor was clumsily written and reminded me of someone wanting to convey something important, but didn’t know how or what to say. I’ve only watched one episode, but that episode was not good.
In contrast House of the Dragon is better written, equally gorgeous, and is far more interesting. At least it is 3 episodes in compared to the 1 RoP I’ve seen.
I watched the first episode of House of Dragons passively in the background while doing work, but it kept catching my attention. I watched it again in the background, and other parts of it kept catching my attention.
By episode three, it had my devoted attention. This is definitely a great show.
fwiw, to convey that not everyone on either side is a bot, i can barely get through an episode of HOTD despite it's visual appeal while i wasn't even tempted to look at my phone during ROP.
HOTD, to me, lacks even one compelling, relatable, or likable character and has a boring story that feels as though is lacks any weight.
maybe it's because i just rewatched all of GOT thrones though and it's been a few years since i watched any of the Peter Jackson films. (and even longer since i read the books from both authors)
I would suggest watching the second episode. It gets better. I think the first two episodes should have just been one long episode. The first felt like it didn't go anywhere, and then the second pulled it together.
Distribution of grades is rarely even, and I'd guess that if you looked at the median grade on Rotten Tomatoes is would be much closer to 70 than 50. Things less than 50 are usually "very horrible".
> I have a hard time believing the authenticity of the critics' reviews.
It's sitting in the 70s in other review aggregators, so I think it's okay.
It's worth also considering that many critics are not reviewing this with Peter Jackson's LotR trilogy in mind, but rather with the exceedingly mediocre The Hobbit trilogy.
What this whole stupid controversy is emphasizing to me is how many people are living in a post-subjectivity world.
I've enjoyed this show more than any other I've watched recently. I like basically every actor. I've really appreciated the attention to detail in the world. The dialog was awkward at first but after I acclimatized to the style I actually kinda like it—it's quirky, but consistently so.
It turns out, people like and dislike different things! But both sides of this ragefest are in all seriousness accusing the other of not existing because no one could possibly have a different opinion. It's weird.
Elves are supposed to be a different species of humanoid, so making them more human-like by thinking they're supposed to be a certain way that humans are doesn't feel like the source material. It's important to adhere to that source because they are using the name for recognition. They could have just made a new fantasy story with short hair elves, and I think that would have been judged on its own.
In the source material they look pretty much just like Men. The most consistent difference seems to be their height (they’re taller than Men) and the fact that their bodies don’t really age at the same rate. There’s never any mention of them having pointy ears, or any other obvious physical characteristic.
I think there are several places across the Silmarillion and other books where it’s mentioned that some Men are mistaken for Elves. If I recall correctly, this happened with Túrin, who was given the name Adanedhel (“Man-Elf”), which he got because he was so alike to them.
The Wizards are given the appearance of old men, but the Men think that they’re elves. Gandalf’s name comes from the Old Norse for “wand/staff elf”. In-universe, in the north he was known as “The Elf of the Wand”, because Men mistook him for an Elf.
Also, I’m not sure that calling them a “different species” is accurate. They certainly can produce offspring with Men just fine.
Then i guess don't give them pointy ears. I remember reading they had long hair, regardless they are called something different and have completely different lives.
> They certainly can produce offspring with Men just fine.
While true, in fantasy all kinds of mixes are possible that result in creatures like minotaurs, half-orcs, half-demons, half-dragons, etc., and those are obviously not human.
I mean if I had glorious elven hair, I would probably not cut it. Also short is one thing, but in RoP the elf Arondir has a military buzz cut, which raises more questions.
Not giving them some distinguishing physical characteristic sounds like a great way to make the work more difficult to understand. Personally I don’t mind the change.
> I remember reading they had long hair, regardless they are called something different and have completely different lives.
Some of them had long hair, but presumably others don’t. I’m not aware of any part of the Legendarium which suggests all elves had long hair. That would seem like an uncharacteristic thing for Tolkien to write about them.
> While true, in fantasy all kinds of mixes are possible that result in creatures like minotaurs, half-orcs, half-demons, half-dragons, etc., and those are obviously not human.
This is not D&D. As far as I know, there’s nothing in the Legendarium suggesting there can be unions of anything other than Men and Elves, Men and Orcs, and Elves and Maiar.
A union of an Elf and Maia happened exactly once, and is a bit of an odd becuse Maiar choose the physical form they take. Melian presumably clothed herself in the body of an Elf, at least as far as mattered.
The Men and Orcs thing is unusual in two ways. One is that it’s not explicit how they were combined. Saruman did it… somehow, but the implication is that it was through his art (magic). yhe other is that, depending on the day, Tolkien considered Orcs to be anywhere between corrupted Elves/Men, fallen Maiar, or something like animals. He wasn’t ever comfortable with the ramifications of any of these different origins had, but I think that at the time of writing Lord of the Rings, the idea was that they were corrupted Elves. I’m not super sure on that though. Either way though, I can see a lot more philosophical justification for Men and Orcs being crossed than Men and dragons, balrogs, or anything else that isn’t an Elvish/Mannish being.
Anyway, this is a long way to say that just because it happens in other fantasy settings doesn’t mean it applies here. Tolkien thought about this kind of stuff a lot, and wrote extensively on it. If you’re interested in reading more about this kinda thing, I highly recommend the History of Middle Earth series of books, especially Morgoth’s Ring, which deals a lot with the nature of existence (both physical matter and things like souls) in the Legendarium.
> ...there’s nothing in the Legendarium suggesting there can be unions of anything other than Men and Elves, Men and Orcs, and Elves and Maiar.
Tolkien, Race, and Racism in Middle-earth[1] has a long section discussing this. Tolkien regarded elves, men, hobbits, dwarves, and orcs all as races of one species, who thus could interbreed.
Thanks! That was the impression I had, but as I was writing the comment I realized I couldn’t recall any specific line that made me think that all the children were basically the same species (though I did know that Hobbits were counted among Men).
Fair points. Sure, pointy ears I guess is expected, although I think they could definitely make it work otherwise. Regarding the races, it seems there is a vagueness to the lore which means an opportunity to stay within Tolkien and still expand it with these types of questions (what it means to be human, etc). This is one way they could work with what already exists while adding something new.
The situation is more complicated than that though. The apparent vagueness is not a sign that there is wiggle room, but rather that there are existing contradictions the author didn’t manage to resolve. The reason the origins of the Orcs changed so often is because Tolkien laid down some pretty hard boundaries in his world as to what it meant to be an Elf/Man/Dwarf, what Melkor was able to do (not capable of independent creation), free will existing, Orcs always being evil, and his desire to maintain consistency with his Catholic faith regarding salvation.
But because of a vague memory about something you read sometime (which looks like it was wrong), the presence of short-haired elves breaks your immersion and damages your enjoyment of the show?
Ok, well I'm just alluding that there's probably source material around certain differences. I wouldn't mind short-haired elves, but personally I'd want some justification that makes sense within the story since it deviates from what is previously established.
> They could have just made a new fantasy story with short hair elves, and I think that would have been judged on its own.
And all of 10 people would have watched it. IP is for name recognition more than anything else. What percentage of people who watched the Peter Jackson trilogy actually read a book from the trilogy? I'd bet way less than 50%.
Jackson didn't adhere 100% to the source material either. There are length lists, including many substantial non-narrative related changes, for[1] each[2] film[3].
> What percentage of people who watched the Peter Jackson trilogy actually read a book from the trilogy?
The trilogy was great because of the writings of Tolkien. Peter Jackson did his best respecting that and telling Tolkien's story, not his own. I think that's why they were successful.
What's the point of adapting a source material if you think it should be changed to begin with? Just don't adapt it... but of course they want the massive fanbase even though they're not acknowledging why it's big in the first place.
Do you really think they won't get a massive fanbase just because of the outrage of a couple thousand anonymous strangers on the internet?
As far as I can tell, outrage over controversial changes to the IP (e.g. Game of Thrones, The Last of Us 2, Star Wars 7-9) is _positively_ correlated with popularity.
I think it's not as big as it could have been. They might still be successful in terms of views (although that's yet to be seen), but I think that might be because a lot of people are giving it a chance. We'll see how it does towards the end of the season.
I'm not saying it will or won't be popular. I'm saying the quality of the writing according to "proc0" is not going to have any impact on the situation.
> The trilogy was great because of the writings of Tolkien. Peter Jackson did his best respecting that and telling Tolkien's story, not his own. I think that's why they were successful.
Laughable statement.
Where did Gandalf hit Pippin when they talked to Denethor in the books? That was in complete contradiction with the Gandalf from the books so please dont tell me this was faithful in any way.
Sauron became a floating eyeball and characters were made into caricatures of themselves (Denethor) or forced to undergo 'character growth' not present in the books (Aragorn, Faramir).
The movies are great, but by no means some sort of gold standard of faithful adaption of the source material.
I find it ridiculous to refer to "source material" as if it was gospel. Amazon owns the rights for this tv show, and therefore anything they make is new source material.
Just like how in the Marvel cinematic universe Spiderman's MJ is mixed race and not a redhead, Thanos in the comics doesn't care about halving the universe's population, he wants to kill as many as he can to court the embodiment of Death, or most of the Eternals are gender and race swapped from their comic versions.
Elves are now closer to humans, and they can be black, but the old material with white, tall, long haired elves is still there for you to enjoy... is it really a big deal?
The source material is subject to criticism as well, but it should also be given credit. The reason we're even talking about it is because the books were really good and had a huge impact around the world. It's no coincidence that movies based on books tend to be great. Authors think through their world in detail which serves as a foundation for the screen adaptation. Deviating from this is risky, as directors have different skills, and more than likely they won't write a better world and dialogue than a renown author.
This was very clear with Game of Thrones with George RR not being able to finish his saga, and this being so obvious after season 4 (or 5). The quality dropped dramatically and it all crashed and burned by the last season. Had they planned it more carefully, so that George was in charge of the story until the end, I think we would have seen the most successful fantasy show of the century.
Reviews ultimately don’t matter. What matters is whether people love the show and whether Amazon is able to attract new customers to sign up to Prime (or increase likelihood that Prime customers stay subscribed, or buys stuff, whether LOTR merch or other stuff).
I believe these reviews are targeted. How the hell you are going to review a series based on just first 2 episodes? The first few episodes of breaking bad were extremely sedate, and no way in hell the series or even the first season was reflective of the pace set in those episodes
>How the hell you are going to review a series based on just first 2 episodes?
The series may turn out to be worthwhile, but the first 2 episodes are objectively not good. The writing is poor, the dialogue isn't good, the characters are not compelling and the episodes themselves aren't well put together. I don't see how anyone can watch the first 2 episodes of this series and then watch the first 2 episodes of breaking bad and see any comparison. The vibes I got while watching this show reminded me of the last season of Game of Thrones after it had gone off the rails. The difference here is we haven't spent years getting invested in the story line and the characters, which kept us watching even as the quality was poor. I won't be tuning in for episode 3 and certainly won't feel like I've missed anything.
I'm enjoying the show so far. I can totally see where you're coming from, too, but I think it's pretty disingeous to give a bunch of opinions and then slap the word "objectively" on them.
> I can totally see where you're coming from, too, but I think it's pretty disingeous to give a bunch of opinions and then slap the word "objectively" on them.
Whether something is entertaining or not is purely subjective. However, speaking in my capacity as someone who has worked in the film industry for the last 30 years, the writing of the first two episodes was objectively "not good". I think Hesh Rabkin put it better than I can, on Season 1, Episode 10 of the Sopranos when he said, "There’s one constant in the music business...A hit is a hit...and this, my friend, is NOT a hit." The same holds for tv shows.
> speaking in my capacity as someone who has worked in the film industry for the last 30 years, the writing of the first two episodes was objectively "not good".
You keep using the word objectively but it doesn't mean what you think it means. You did not like the writing, that's fine. I don't think it's fair to call it "objectively" not good. There were some awkward parts and some awkward scenes, but I personally found a lot of the dialogues to feel quite natural and compelling. The elves are a bit of a stiffer but that's part of the characters. It is plagued by some of what I call the modern "marvel" adventure quirky speech (especially some exchanges with Galadriel) where a lot of exchanges turn into funny quips back and forth but that's par of the course in the current movie industry.
On the other hand the cinematography, environments, special effects, sound stage (sauron's whispers in a 3D home theater system were just SO GOOD), and a lot of other stuff is absolutely amazing.
True but without a solid story and good writing no amount of special effects can make it good. At the end of the day the most important factor is a compelling good story IMO
Art has many different dimensions that people evaluate when they experience it, and many of them are subjective, but many of them are not. The objective ones are ones I will call "craft," and relate to the demonstrated skill of the artist. I will ascribe the rest of the dimensions to "vision." Craft is about how well the artist can convey the vision.
I am not in the film industry, but I am a musician, so here are a few examples from classical music: A performer who tends to rush the slow sections of music will often give bad performances: the vision of the piece is for that section to be slow, and a weakness in the performer's skill compromises the vision. A composer who writes music that is impossible to play has bad craft. A conductor who gives unclear cues and doesn't keep an orchestra together has bad craft.
I can still enjoy a performance where the slow sections are a little rushed if I like the piece, but that doesn't make it a good performance.
You are totally allowed to subjectively enjoy something that is objectively bad.
As surprising as it may seem, the art of writing has rules. Setting up character arcs, payoffs, hero journey, etc. These have been around for literally thousands of years. These 2 episodes are objectively poorly written.
We have no idea if character arcs and payoffs are well set up in the first two episodes because we haven't seen if anything is paid off or resolved later. It's been a while but I remember the first season of Game of Thrones being similarly slow and ponderous to start with. I enjoy the slower pace, it suits the scale of the conflict and it suits the source material which never felt like it needed to hurry along.
It's an episodic tv show with full season story arc. I think there's still some time before you can really judge the narrative structure in this case.
As far as aristotelian narrative "rules" go the first episode seem to follow a classic aristotelian tragedy. A high born hero, set on a course of her own destruction.
Anyway these rules are not really set in stone, over these past few thousands of years we aquired a multitude of narrative structures and plot devices.
Of course Hollywood is obsessed with money and risk aversion so we tend to mostly see the most formulaic "classic" narratives.
BTW, I'd also claim that original tolkin narratives are not very good if you strictly judge them by these rules. The generous use of Deus ex machina to solve the plot climactic moments is just cringy.
> In the New Mexico desert, a man wearing nothing but his underwear and a gas mask erratically drives an RV down a desolate dirt road. In the passenger seat, another man is passed out, also wearing a gas mask. In the back of the RV are two bodies. After crashing the RV in a ditch, the driver climbs out, dons a shirt hanging from the side view mirror, and retrieves a video camera and gun from the vehicle. Recording a message on the camera, the man identifies himself as Walter White and bids a cryptic farewell to his wife and son. Sirens are heard in the distance. Walt walks onto the road and awaits the apparent approach of police, gun in hand.
Thats your personal opinion and not very objective. If you look at the metacritic scores for bb, it has the LEAST favorable reviews for season 1, and then it takes off. That is the point I am trying to make.
In the not to distant past, movie studios were not allowed to own movie theatres. The FTC was very wary of large companies using vertical integration to take over the market and keep movies from smaller companies from being shown.
What you're seeing here is the future. Amazon produces the movies, finances the movies, distributes the movies, controls how they're reviewed (they also own IMDB).
I didn't know the Paramount decree was ended, but I guess it was put in a two year sunset period two years ago so it is indeed gone. That's a shame, it's hilarious that the FTC doesn't think the studios could bring back the old studio system. Doing that might be the only thing that'll save mainstream theatres from Blockbuster's fate tbh.
We really desperately need a similar ruling for streaming services though.
In other news, IMDB (which Amazon owns it seems) has a strange bug (certainly an accident and coincidence /s) that you can't see any of the written reviews of Rings of Power that are under 6 stars. And yet, House of the Dragon works just fine in that department. How very odd.
I haven't trusted IMDB for years. Reviews certainly aren't everything; "bad" art can still be loveable to some, but I'm at the point where I just avoid anything attached to a preexisting franchise; lest I become enveloped by cynicism.
HBO (Discovery+?) should sue and claim damages for trust-related preferential treatment.
This is clearly an instance of a multi-industry-spanning giant preferring its own content. They're giving it away for free / as a loss leader, and yet they were able to spend enormous institutional capital on it.
This doesn't change anyone's mind, and is also evidence that they're not interested in listening to feedback. They have this opportunity to make the show because of the success of the source material and movies they think is so problematic.
This is no more Tolkien than the various incarnations of “Star Trek” pushed by Paramount+ are Star Trek. The names and locations may be similar, but once they have diverged from the original creator’s vision and mythology, it’s simply exploitation for financial gain.
Strange New Worlds is very good. The story arc about the medical officer who kept his daughter in the transporter buffer was awesome and reminded me of TnG while Gene Roddenberry was still around.
The problem is, what typically happens is an author writes an original story and then it's "extended" by filming a completely unrelated off the shelf plot with some of the names changed and lore added. If something isn't a Hollywood hero's journey it's going to be one now. Scouring of the Shire would've been a lot more original than any new material we're getting here.
Though American TV has improved a lot since the time they had directors of making sure none of the protagonists were women.
I sense the displeasure is due to a perception, which may well be correct, that certain cultural artifacts are recycled as a platform for propagating socio-political agendas. Emasculation and milk toast male characters, for example, seem to be de rigueur these days.
One of my all time favorite European works is Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival. He wasn't the original author of the legend of Percival, and there were other versions after him. It evolved, but that process took centuries and imo was an organic development.
So I think the generally unspoken issue is who is doing the 'growing and evolving' (here: Corporations) and how are they evolving dearly beloved cultural works. Wolfram for example changed some bits and even inserted a short (rather amusing) interlude to vent his frustrations with women, but we can be certain there wasn't a committee with a social agenda sponsoring him to write that.
So, genuine development is definitely OK. At least in my book.
> ...Can't some popular stories grow and evolve beyond one, albeit original, author's imagination?
Of course they can, but it's also the case that Tolkien was extremely defensive against divergent interpretations of his work, and he has a large fan-base with the same attitude.
> if I sell my startup to Google I can't then berate them for deviating from my vision and making it too corporate.
I'm pretty sure can. Maybe they could gag you with a contract during the sale, but I am certain that fans of your original business are well within their rights to criticize what Google later does with it. Your decision to sell something doesn't oblige others to respect what the new owner does with it.
Unfortunately, with most new productions it’s clear that the new folks don’t understand the story or characters they’re supposed to be extending. Or rather, they don’t care to and want to tell their own. That would be fine if they just chose a new name.
> Can't some popular stories grow and evolve beyond one, albeit original, author's imagination?
Sure, it's simple. Name it differently when you already plan to stray from the author's vision and as a bonus people will rate it more independently from the original (though that also means no free marketing by riding on a known brand).
They can, but then change the name and any implication that it is somehow more of what we got before (Lord of the Rings). Or clearly state it is only based on it, but has actually nothing to do with the original work, only draws inspiration from it.
This is not the case.
Here the directors / whoever just think they can do better than Tolkien (and that's fine) but then they appropriate themselves with everything he did, including claiming it's his work, but that they "improved" or "modernized".
Speaking of star trek, I'd highly recommend "lower decks" to anyone who is repulsed by the latest live action horror show. It's kind of funny that a lower budget cartoon has managed to be more authentic, original and well written all at the same time - it manages to pull off making fun of the old franchise while also being nostalgic about it. For any true star trek fans, the only real new star trek show is lower decks imo.
I would say the reverse, while agreeing with most of what you wrote.
It pulls off making fun of the old franchise while also being nostalgic about it.
But it’s simplistic with characters who are so dumb and childish that there’s no Star Trek in Lower Decks either.
Not a single character on the show is an adult. They’re all edgy and nerdy tweens vying for influence in the middle school yearbook club… in adult bodies. This includes the captain and bridge crew.
Lower Decks would be a phenomenal Star Trek if they would mentally age all the characters by 10 ~ 20 years, especially the captain, XO, security officer and every alien.
> But it’s simplistic with characters who are so dumb and childish that there’s no Star Trek in Lower Decks either.
Well... i wouldn't completely disagree, but it's a cartoon comedy so it seems fitting, the characters might be dumb and simplistic but they make fun of themselves; unlike Discovery where the characters are also dumb and simplistic yet pretentious and serious with terrible acting making it unbearable.
Lower Decks might be an excellent cartoon comedy by some measures, but it's not very good Star Trek for the same reasons.
The whole thing with Star Trek is competent "culturally evolved" professionals exploring the universe and representing the best of us.
There's no way any Starfleet character from Lower Decks could have made it through the academy entrance exam or psych eval from TNG. They're not competent and they're driven by childishness, which is what makes the show a comedy and not good Star Trek.
> Speaking of star trek, I'd highly recommend "lower decks" to anyone who is repulsed by the latest live action horror show.
I wouldn't. I tried, not once, not twice, but three times to watch it. The speech from all characters is just way to fast for me to understand.
I actually reinstalled Far Cry 2 (which was widely lambasted for speech being too fast) to compare, and the speech in lower decks is a lot faster than Far Cry 2.
As a Star Trek fan I found Lower Decks to be one of the worst of the bunch. It seemed targeted at kids/teenagers though so I reserved judgement. To each his own.
Lower decks is okayish in the sense that it can only be watched if you enjoy (or tolerate, for that matter) high school humor. I'm regularly meeting with friends, we currently watch Voyager and sometimes shove in an episode of lower decks here and there when it's getting late. It's alienating everyone enough to take a long break afterwards. The characters are all hyperactive and constantly screaming, including the senior officers, most episodes feature or are about shit, piss or sex in some way. It's good in the sense that it doesn't throw away everything you like about the older series and try to ruin them retroacticely like Picard did. That doesn't make it a good series though.
And that's "fine", right? I mean it's not for me, because I really like The Lord of the Rings, but then nobody's holding a gun to my head to watch it.
As I've gotten older, I've gotten more and more okay with shrugging and accepting that most things are not made for me anymore. What I think is only going to result in fruitless frustration, is thinking "this _should_ be made for me, because I do like X".
There's an argument to be made that quality in the arts has been declining as a result of — in part — dumbing down, or trying to appeal to the most people, based on current social norms, but I feel that's unrelated and not behind why people get so worked up with these things.
I'm unsure what distinction you make here. Are you saying it would be totally fine if Amazon used Middle Earth, Elrond, Galadriel, Sauron etc. for a story as long as they didn't call it a prequel to Lord of the Rings?
There is no Thor, Odin nor any other character in lotr, there is no direct referencing to any other works (ie talking wholesale of anything) afaik.
Tolkien used a some of lesser character from norse mythology and completely rewrote its origin, purpose and made him central player in his story.
I think that's completely comparable to lets say: making movie about evil galactic empire, i mean dictatorship with its leader in black costume that has telepathic powers and laser sword... /s
Yes nobody will notice.
There is difference between inspiration, homage, and just ripping off a setting with minimal effort.
> Amazon used Middle Earth, Elrond, Galadriel, Sauron etc. for a story as long as they didn't call it a prequel to Lord of the Rings?
If Amazon writers want to tell their story about their issues the way they want it go ahead. There are plenty of original shows, and plenty more would be even better.
It’s absolutely dreadful and I think this behavior is shameful on the part of Amazon. What’s the point of a review system if you’re going to game it. Reviews mean nothing anymore
Reviews havent been meaningful for as long as I've been alive (90's). Watch trailers, watch the show, make your own assessment, keep it to yourself, move on.
Trailers are not suitable replacements for reviews. They are edited and packaged to deliver hyped expectation via self-congratulatory endorsement.
Reviews are better than trailers. You could stick to reviews from news publishers if you don't trust user reviews. Here's a snippet of the Washington Post's review of Rings of Power:
"The performances are serviceable but unremarkable, while the dialogue is particularly corny and inartful... Rarely has danger felt so dull."
How could you possibly trust that statement without watching the show yourself first? The subjective nature of entertainment means that one reviewer's opinions are not universal. This means you basically have to go find a reviewer who agrees with your opinions on average - effectively telling you what you want to hear.
"Corny dialog" is rarely a subjective observation. It's either corny or it isn't.
The rare exception might be when the dialog is deliberately corny for stylistic reasons or some kind of self-referencing theatrics. Corny dialog is easily identified... "I've got a baaad feeling about this".
> How could you possibly trust that statement
Because the statement doesn't sit in isolation. It's from a longer professional review where the show is deconstructed and analyzed. The statements are qualified, unlike user reviews.
Of course there are subjective aspects too, but there are also strongly bonded criticisms across reviews that can't be dismissed with "subjective" counter-claims. If not universal, then near-universal qualities can be found.
Take the recent James Bond movie. Even the good reviews were noting the "woke" themes. They specifically hired a writer to help inject those themes into the movie, such as anti-toxic masculinity etc. It turns out many people don't have much love for injected woke themes forced into their fictional movies. Many people wanted escapism from 007, not a social re-education lecture or some awkward comment about current world events.
My wife and I do check IMDB ratings before watching a show, but we apply some adjustments based on the genera. If its a super hero show you can subtract 2-3. If its scary film or indie sci-fi you can add 2-3. That kind of thing.
The best "review" system I've ever come across was Netflix's DVD plan. You would rate a bunch of movies and then it would give rating estimations of other movies based on how people with similar taste to you rated them, which is exactly what I want from a review system.
The general population, groups of trolls, review bombers, people who just didn't like the same kinds of movies as you, etc. would all be irrelevant.
have you looked at amazon product reviews recently ? while this particular approach (locking reviews at the outset) may not be the best approach, i would LOVE to see companies put some more effort into combating review "fraud" either by verifying watch time or restricting reviews per ip including captcha etc etc the exact same stuff that any social media platform needs to do to combat spam because for me personally reviews on the internet have lost almost all value as they no longer represent a collection of human opinions where each person gets only one review
I love this show so much. I'm reading some criticisms from tolkien purists on rings of power. My thought is: the details are changed from the silmarillion but there is so much love for the work in this show. A lot of respect for the feeling and themes of the source material Ex. How some things are meant to be by a higher power in Arda.
If you havnt read the books - believe me, this plot is going exciting places.
I agree. Really enjoyed watching the first two episodes. Was a little frustrated that the next episode wasn’t ready to watch. Most shows, I’m fine waiting.
Yes, there are changes from the Silmarillion. How could there not be. That is a massive book written more as a reference for Tolkien than as a single cohesive narrative. It’s not the kind of writing that would translate directly to video. It needs some translation. I got out my 1977 edition to peruse after the shows, but am not surprised if there are differences.
Also, yes, there are some dark skinned people in this new work. Big deal. If that kind of thing “takes you out of the story” then perhaps you should ask yourself why that is.
FWIW The show is based on the appendices of Lord of the Rings and not the Silmarillion, which they don’t have the rights for and have to avoid infringing upon.
> Also, yes, there are some dark skinned people in this new work.
I’ve never understood why people get so worked up about stuff like this.
Nothing changes within the narrative itself. In-show characters don’t acknowledge the character’s newfound darker skin tone. The character stays true to the original vision - except that their skin is darker.
I would be outraged if Dev Patel played an English knight and then was shown eating Indian food or wearing Indian clothes. That’s breaking the consistency of the narrative and the authenticity of its world.
But Dev Patel simply plays an Englishman - with English habits and speech. Nothing within the world is changed to match the actor’s skin color or heritage. Rather, the actor’s skin color blends into the narrative’s world.
People will say that its for “diversity”, but as a brown person, including black/brown actors really does nothing for me. As I said, these are not “brown” people - they’re brown actors playing white characters. Except for their skin color, they have nothing in common with me.
I find it mildly offensive when they reduce my identity to the color my skin. My identity is far richer and includes everything from food and clothing to customs and traditions.
An Indian actor playing an Egnlishman with English customs and traditions does nothing for me. It would take an Indian actor playing an Indian man for me to take this “diversity” seriously. Of course, that would mean creating entirely new narratives and stories, which, of course, Hollywood can’t and won’t do.
So we get brown and black actors shoehorned into pretending to be white - the lowest common denominator of “diversity”.
>Also, yes, there are some dark skinned people in this new work. Big deal. If that kind of thing “takes you out of the story” then perhaps you should ask yourself why that is.
The dark skinned people are fine. I especially like the diverse proto-hobbits.
The thing I really, really hate, that takes me out of the story, is the lens flares.
> The thing I really, really hate, that takes me out of the story, is the lens flares.
What, have you forgotten the tale of the ancient cinematographers of the elves preferring it for its authenticity, even going so far as to commission elven spell-smiths to add it in their visions?
Yeah, changing the details is fine. Tolkien wrote in his letters, "I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama." We're getting work from other minds and hands now. It's normal for a tale to change in the retelling. Given Tolkien never stopped revising and retconning his own work—the Lord of the Rings itself starts with a major retcon to the Hobbit—there's no single source of truth anyway. Points of difference are often interesting to discuss, but their mere existence is not automatically a bad thing.
This is not a bad Tolkien show, it's just a bad show. Terrible writing, as in seriously, show this thing in schools to illustrate how to not tell a story and write dialogues.
Nobody would care about this thing if it didn't have the LOTR name.
This is not a Tolkien show. This is a show by Amazon wearing Tolkien's world as a skinsuit. The same thing happened to Star Wars. The viewership of this show is still riding on the name recognition, but as soon as it flops, people will stop watching more. Give it 5 years, and the original Peter Jackson trilogy videos will no longer be culturally relevant because nobody wants LoTR content any more, while record amounts of it continue to get produced.
> Give it 5 years, and the original Peter Jackson trilogy videos will no longer be culturally relevant because nobody wants LoTR content any more, while record amounts of it continue to get produced.
hehe this reminded me how after matrix 2 and 3 I had forgotten how good the original matrix was. Took me 10 years to rediscover it.
So you have this entity Sauron trying to forge a tool to control and dominate all life. I think the people at Amazon are well positioned to write this narrative.
> “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.
This article feels a bit quick to write off the negative reviews as being from racist “trolls”. A quick look of reviews on Rotten Tomatoes [1] shows a lot of negative reviews that seem legitimate to me.
I personally enjoyed the first two episodes, but the show is far from perfect.
Fair point. But that’s the only justification given in the article for the negative reviews, which I think gives the impression that the bulk of negative reviews are coming from said trolls. I think it would have been worthwhile to at least mention some of the legitimate criticism the show has received (pacing, dialogue, straying from Tolkien in other ways, one-dimensional characters, etc.)
fwiw i found that a large proportion of the metacritic user reviews i looked at the night it come out appeared to be fake, not all containing racist/sexist content, and more seemed to take a "tolkein would be rolling in his grave" slant
it was a fun problem to consider though, how to evaluate whether a review is fake or not. obviously the most powerful tools would be ip logging or browser fingerprinting or requiring other user verification but absent that i wonder what approaches review verification services take based on the content alone. i use some plugin for amazon reviews that i think looks for similar terms but it seems like it can sometimes be overzealous when products are very simple so many reviews seem similar when they might be from unique people
1. Hur hur, rubbish. 1 star (There are seriously reviews like that)
2. This isn't Lord of the Rings. 1 star
3. I really loved how they took that piece from the Silmarillion and explored the concept. 5 star
The people giving it low ratings don't appear to know the source materials. Disclaimer - I have not yet seen it so I am witholding judgement, but the reviews are embarrassing.
Most reviews I read noted the terrible writing and at best mediocre acting from several of the main characters.
On a personal level i don't care much if it's true to the source material, I haven't read it. Nor do I care that there are PoC in it. I do care that it's just at best a 6/10 (maybe a charitable 7?), which hurts based on the potential it had.
I'm not sure who it was, the director, producer, somebody, who gave an interview fairly recently in which they stated one of the central themes was "how far into evil will you go to do good?" Given that that is diametrically opposed to the central theme of Tolkien's work, which is that it is worth not using/doing evil in order to fight evil even though it is much harder and requires greater sacrifice, I elected not to view this show.
Perhaps after it is done someone will say to me "oh it wasn't like that at all" and I will enjoy it then.
> You can make the Ring into an allegory of our own time, if you like: an allegory of the inevitable fate that waits for all attempts to defeat evil power by power.
If these writers are using Tolkien's name without respecting his beliefs, even Tolkien might have given the show a bad review.
Of course that's just speculation, but only a rare storyteller can tell an epic tale that isn't ultimately resolved by superior force. If this show can remain faithful to Tolkien's vision, I'll be very impressed.
What do you see as not respecting Tolkien’s name? The quote was "how far into evil will you go to do good?". that is a question, not an admonition. It sounds like they may explore that. If so, it would not be unreasonable to end up with the same “do no evil” answer as Tolkien.
Why should we give a bad review based on insufficient evidence?
A also think they are not directly related. I would think Tolkien is talking about Authoritarian Power of governments. i.e. don't vote Fascists into power.
When I hear how far into evil will somebody go, I think of an individuals choices to do evil for a perceived the greater good.
I don't agree, I think Tolkien was also talking about individual choices. Remember this bit?
> “What a pity Bilbo did not stab the vile creature, when he had a chance!
> Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need.
> I do not feel any pity for Gollum. He deserves death.
> Deserves death! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give that to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends.”
And it was that small individual mercy that ultimately saved the world.
and I think that Galadriel could make some choices that she later regrets and has to learn the lesson the hard way about doing evil. This is why I don't see that quote as being against any of Tolkien's principles.
It’s also possible to just make a neat show with good production values, solid acting talent, and lots of intrigue and spectacle. You can enjoy stuff so much more when you don’t convince yourself that you have some ownership of the fictional material or the material owes you something.
So far, the closest we have seen something like that is Galadriel’s obsession with finding Sauron in a very Captain Ahab way. It may become a test for her to see if she is willing to do evil in this quest and whether she can pull herself out of that. I doubt that they are actively promoting doing evil as justified. That quote did contain a question.
That reminds me of the scene where Denethor told Faramir he should have taken the ring back so it can be used for good. Had Faramir done that Sauron would probably win.
Well, compared to that time, Sauron didn't have his Ring and his Ring contained a lot of his former power.
If Aragorn took the Ring, he would be able to challenge Sauron. Denethor was somewhat of a lesser rank, but still an almost pure Numenorean. The Ring would have turned both of them to Evil, for sure, but not necessarily into servants of Sauron himself. They might just become the new Evil overlords of the world after defeating Sauron.
The main character flaw of Denethor is that he sacrificed his life to the cause of Gondor and Gondor only. Existence and might of Gondor were his main motivations, not preservation of Freedom or Good in the world in general. He was based on a stereotype of a proud medieval or Roman noble, though (untypically) a highly educated one.
The subject matter of the Simarillion is that we are all flawed and those flaws lead to suffering and ultimately the repeated triumph of evil over good. And that every once in a while flawed beings shine with such a brilliance that it redeems all the rest of it.
Honest question... I recall attempting to read the Simarillion and finding that it was a simple recitation of facts about middle earth. I abandoned this after some 150 pages.
This was many years ago, is my recollection flawed?
I mean, you could view any story as a "recitation of facts" if you're really determined to take that point of view, but I don't think it's at all fair to dismiss the Silmarillion that way.
It's true that the first 50 pages or so are pretty much just worldbuilding, mainly focusing on the mythology behind the creation of the world (Arda) by Iluvatar and the various demigods. After that, you start getting into the details of what the elves did upon waking up as the first quasi-"mortal" inhabitants of Arda, and the subsequent eras of history. Some of it is painted in broad strokes, but there are plenty of chapters that zoom in on specific characters and their heroic and evil deeds, personal conflicts, betrayals, hubris and other tragic flaws, etc.
Sure, the style of the prose is a bit dry, but there's plenty of drama to be had in the story.
It's best to treat the Silmarillion as you would read the Bible. The styles are intentionally similar and both evolve throughout the works. There are narrative diversions throughout Tolkien's work, but it's ultimately a history of Middle Earth rather than a narrative story.
I think it's great, but it's pretty dense and it's one of those things that you get more out of it by reading it several times. First read through it's just a barrage of names and places, and you don't know who's going to be important later. The second time through you at least know who the main characters are and what decisions are important.
Some parts are more like a traditional narrative: the story of Beren and Luthien, and Turin Turumbar.
If you didn't find it enjoyable to read before you might not change your mind at a second reading, but if it really was a long time ago it's possible your perspective may be different.
No, not flawed, it took me a few tries. The beginning has a lot of mythology that closely parallels the bible in broad strokes. Eru is God, the Valar are arch angels, Morgoth being Lucifer. Maiar as other angels like Gandalf and Sauron. With a few twists like Ungoliant that seem more like something out of India's pantheon.
Then you get into the elf family trees and their migrations. Its really dry. But it really helps understand the motivations of individuals in the rest of the book and the other books. There are some diagrams in the back to help you plow through it.
Then there are the accounts of both individuals and nations/races. They are more like greek tragedy than anything else. Though sometimes it doesn't even seem like there needs to be a flaw to bring down the fall. It is like binging all of Breaking Bad at once. Not going to leave you smiling, but that doesn't mean it isn't art.
That’s poetic but it’s a poor way to characterize the First Age described by Tolkien in The Silmarillion, in which redemption comes literally in the form of a Deus Ex Machina.
It’s also not a great way to characterize the Second Age, since both a portion of the good and a vital portion of the evil sides in the conflict survive and both are very greatly diminished, but I don’t think the writings about the Second Age were really central to that work. That’s why the show (which I haven’t seen yet) seemed like perhaps not a terrible idea to me. There’s not much legacy there to tarnish.
Does The Silmarillion include a monopolistic antagonist that can spend hundreds of millions of dollars on something to simply give away for free (or as a loss leader)?
Amazon is going full Sauron here. They're a multi-industry-spanning conglomerate that preferentially ranks its own show and discards negative reviews, while leaving House of the Dragon and competitors out in the cold.
They have whole other business units to recoup the costs. This doesn't even matter to them other than as a means to grow even bigger and capture/kill more industries. Talk about power.
Why are our legislators asleep at the wheel? We need to give smaller companies and startups a way to fight this. It's madness that Amazon can be bigger than Walmart, have its own shipping fleet, serve the whole Internet, run homes autonomously, own the e-reader/book market, own game streaming, and now apparently throw Hollywood around and make their productions look cheap.
> ..Tolkien's vision of the greatest evil in the universe was something he referred to as "The Machine", which was his way of talking about accelerated industrialism and mass surveillance.
> He wrote multiple books where the main villains were a dragon who sits on a huge pile of treasure that he never intends to use but incinerates anyone who comes near it; a man in a giant tower who's wrecking the environment with his factories; and an evil being who uses what's essentially a listening device to control the citizens of Middle Earth.
What exactly is the problem here? If Amazon keeps cavalierly losing money on endeavors they will drag everything else down.
They aren’t going to hide the fact that the show sucks and they certainly just made that much harder by doing this.
In order for them to actually maintain their power this show would need to somehow help them create a moat (it doesn’t) or just make money on its own by driving subscriptions.
As far as abuses of power go, this is absolutely not one of them.
People make these shows and I don’t think anyone wants to make a shitty show.
The issue is that this was a high dollar show and it likely had to have a lot of sign off. Unfortunately, great art and vast pre-approval don’t tend to go hand in hand.
I’m afraid we’re turning a corner in our golden age of television into a dark world of corporate overreach.
I haven't noticed this trend, I know some streamers have moved but Twitch has been dominating the market for around a decade and YouTube is finally somewhat worth mentioning.
> Does The Silmarillion include a monopolistic antagonist that can spend hundreds of millions of dollars on something to simply give away for free (or as a loss leader)?
That was included in one of the paperbacks published by Christopher Tolkien as “Unfinished Tales.”
I stopped watching after they butchered a snow troll for no reason.
According to the books, a gentle creature, that gets easily scared. The right way to calm it down involves tickling.
But Galadriel chopped up every single part of its body. Twirling around unnecessarily while doing so, after having shot it up with 6 arrow. For this reason I have elected to cancel my prime membership.
For those who aren’t aware this is either satire or confusion on the OP’s part. There are no “gentle snow trolls” in the source material.
And there was nothing unnecessary about the fight scene. It’s unrealistic in the way that Legolas is unrealistic in Peter Jackson’s movies, but no worse.
Isn't that exactly what you would expect from one of the oldest elves, clad in some of the finest armor created by the ancient elf smiths? Tolkien's elves are superhuman entities, magical and supernaturally agile, strong, tireless and so on.
They are not elite fighters in the sense of, say, just being a Navy SEAL.
If you're looking at Rings of Power and expecting a being such as Galadriel to break a sweat fighting something like a troll, you have a strange set of expectations.
Notice that there were no dead elves at the end of that scene, just some mad elves that refused to follow their leader any more. They got kicked around by the troll, but afterwards they were ok. Elves are tough.
No, I would expect risk and effort minimization through perfection of strategy and technique. When 1 v 1 combat looks more dangerous than a farmer killing a goat it breaks my suspension of disbelief.
>I would expect risk and effort minimization through perfection of strategy and technique
I don't think that's consistent with the fights in the books.
I mean Fingolfin physically fought a 40+ foot tall Morgoth in the Silmarillion. He was jumping around between huge pits that Morgoth's mace made when Morgoth tried to hit him. Fingolfin had a sword, while Morgoth held a mace that was bigger than Fingolfin, and yet Fingolfin was able to survive being beaten to the ground by said mace.
I don't think there's anyway to depict fights on screen like that without looking a bit silly.
If you start trying to realistically depict what it would look like to fight giant humanoids, you'd end up with something that is probably very interesting to people like you and myself, but that the majority of people would find boring. Plus that's not how the source material approached combat scenes.
Americans should, I think, not be allowed to write fantasy because none of them know fairy tales well enough, and worse, none of them are capable of dry humor. I assume if I watch this Rings of Power show it'll turn out to be written by Joss Whedon and everyone will constantly be quipping at each other and looking at the camera like on The Office.
I'll watch it if the writers room turns out to be staffed by weird old British Catholics though.
If we are talking individual jokes sure. He is the closest of the three and keeps the dead face unlike Nick Offerman who’s brow is integral to the comedy.
However he regularly expresses emotions through gestures and subtle body language, so yes it’s close but not there over a full routine.
There were two seasons of the British version of the Office, and a Christmas special.
I don't think you should take the longevity of each as a mark of popularity or quality. The British version wasn't cancelled - Gervais and Marchant ended it deliberately with a proper conclusion. I don't think anyone doubts more
British series would have been commissioned if they'd wanted to carry on.
When Gervais was asked if he likes the American version his response was "Yes of course. It's made me very rich." That's his dry sense of humor, but I suspect it also hints at why they stopped doing the UK version and started on the US version instead.
And it has been said multiple times by people working on the American version that besides the inital setup, Gervais and Merchant had very little if any input and everything was done by the American wtiters/show runners.
The case of gentle snow-trolls susceptible to tickling existing in Tolkien's universe made me quite curious. The following turned up after a brief research session:
> Snow-trolls are mentioned only once in Tolkien's works, in reference to Helm Hammerhand stalking his enemies "like a snow-troll" during his sorties against the Dunlendings in the Long Winter. The trolls who lived in the Coldfells in western Eriador may have been similar to these. [1]
And the actual passage, from The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A, "The House of Eorl":
> Helm [Hammerhand] held the fortress during the Long Winter. He blew his great war-horn, and broke through the Dunlending ranks, clad in white, stalking men like a snow-troll slaying them with his bare hands. However, his sons Haleth and Háma were slain and Helm grew gaunt because of grief and famine; still his horn would fill the Dunlendings with fear each time it was heard. During one of his night sorties Helm died, possibly from famine and cold; his body was discovered frozen in the snow still standing. [2]
I would say the "stalking" and the subsequent "slaying" similitudes rule out the gentle qualities of the snow-troll.
For the record I haven't watched RoP yet; something feels wrong about this interpretation of Tolkien's work and I think I'll save myself the disappointment.
Amazingly she didn’t even run out of breath while running over swords of her compadres.
Do elves posses superhuman stamina as in they can sprint a marathon and some such?
>He [Legolas] was tall as a young tree, lithe, immensely strong, able swiftly to draw a great war-bow and shoot down a Nazgûl, endowed with the tremendous vitality of Elvish bodies, so hard and resistant to hurt that he went only in light shoes over rock or through snow, the most tireless of all the Fellowship.
Yes. Legolas is shown in The Lord of the Rings to be capable of stalking his foes day and night, and he only has to stop because Gimli and Aragorn can't keep up.
In general, the elves, especially the older ones like Galadriel, are shown to possess super-human characteristics in all physical feats, including agility, stamina and strength (though the Men of the First Age apparently were stronger though less agile).
I guess I understand that if one is a big Tolkien fan and takes the source material very seriously. But it sounds like a viewpoint that is almost certainly of little importance to the showrunners and the vast majority of potential viewers.
Personally I couldn’t care less about Tolkien’s legacy or anything like that, and it seems like a cool show with lots of very expensive spectacle on screen and I think that should be enough. I guess I’m just not big into the whole proprietorial fandom thing.
That was certainly a theme of much of Tolkien’s writing. Many characters fell out a desire to do good, and many others were confronted with the choice to do evil in the service of good.
Nothing about what the person being interviewed said implies that the moral of the story is “you should go really really far into evil to do good.” I’d say the implication of that question is the opposite.
This type of development is unfortunately par for the course with modern Hollywood remakes of older media and probably will only get worse over time. I am not familiar at all with the LoTR stuff that's going on, but it seems somewhat similar to what they've done with Star Trek. Discovery and (especially) Picard make a mockery of Old Trek in terms of vision and values. I saw a recent parody video that described the TNG Federation as "Vegetarian Space Socialists" that everyone finds annoying but it seems like the writers of Picard have taken it literally. I won't argue that Old Trek is the epitome of subtlety, but the basic premise was that the Federation represents a utopian society that has mostly put aside material concerns in order to promote peace and prosperity in the galaxy. Star Trek was a series of stories about what would happen when you take people from this utopian society and put them in uncomfortable and challenging situations. This worked amazingly well.
Picard and Discovery throws this out the window. It seems like the rough outline of the show was to shoehorn as much heavy handed modern political controversy in between the big budget space battles. The characters seem to be raring to fight at every juncture which is pretty much the opposite of the Federation's MO.
This has also happened with Star Wars but I feel less bad. I think Star Wars was always a bit less "high brow" than some of the other media being discussed here, but Disney seems to have scoured the entire script of the original trilogy for any lines they could stretch out into scenes for a spinoff film ("Kessel Run" for Solo, "Many Bothans Died" for Rogue One). To me this stuff is straight up cringe - at the same level as bad fan fiction.
Ultimately I have started to regard most of these films as products in the same sense as breakfast cereal at the grocery store. When they put out a new neon green version of lucky charms I don't get mad - I don't pay attention at all. Luckily, it seems like there are some filmmakers who are making interesting films even post-COVID (Robert Eggers, David Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) so I have some hope for the future. But these mega-budget reboots? I do my best to ignore their existence at this point.
The people who write these believe that the old hero myths stories are based on the wrong values, and they are on a mission to correct it.
Responsibility, sacrifice, being torn between good and bad, these are not what modern stories should be made of.
But for some masochistic reason these same people can’t write their own stories, they actually want to destroy existing stories, kill off the previous characters and storylines, and insert their own philosophy into the old worlds.
It’s ridiculous, and narcissistic, and I sincerely hope something that makes these companies go bust. I sincerely hope in the long run there isn’t a market for this behaviour. Star Wars certainly seems to have collapsed.
Star Wars hasn't collapsed, but it isn't cool among the kids anymore. There is much better stuff out there for kids and young teenagers. Take the Star wars Battlefield games as an example - those games were contentless, badly designed crap and quickly went to available-for-free. Even for free I could barely play it for an hour. Another example, when the new movies came H&M had star wars t-shirts in their stores, I never saw a single person with that new storm trooper helmet on their chest in my city.
Star Wars huge size and market came from all the toys it sold, now that is pretty much over.
Why is star wars not cool among the kids any more, when being a geek is very cool, sci fi is cool, much more than in the 80s and 90s.
Why is it that almost every generation had star wars fans yet kids don't find it cool any more NOW?
Perhaps it's because this new type of storytelling has no market appeal. It appeals to narcissistic preachy writers in hollywood, but not to anyone else.
Yea, I find the people who complain about Star Trek and its 'wokeness' who also state they are diehard fans confusing. TOS was very heavy handed in its progressiveness at the time. Uhara and Sulu were considered groundbreaking characters from a diversity perspective.
I'd say the bigger difference is old Trek showed and talked about how they are better, while new Trek talks about how not being like them makes you horrible.
In the books, the dichotomy between them is pretty significant. Boromir gave in to temptation to use it to defeat his enemies and was killed because of it. Faramir did not, suffered a bit for not having that weapon, but survived and was rewarded in the end. They were extremely clearly intended as a moral lesson.
Also the book has a extra chapter at the end where the shire turns into a police state, Fordo leads a horse back revolution to kick out the corrupt hobbits who inslaved their own people with the new tools from the people with the machines.
I was surprised as an adult when I first watched the movie that it didn't have this ending to the character arch, missing the final stage of the hero's journey.
I'm surprised they haven't turned it into a movie over the past twenty years. I suppose they'd have wanted Elijah Wood back and I get the feeling he wouldn't be keen to reprise the role.
Hardly, talking about how some narrative is hollow and what would have actually happened is a fruitful source of lit papers. The source material is merely the beginning of that conversation, as you and I are literally demonstrating in this thread.
You would actually like the show, the main moral is exactly the tolkien one you mention. The interview person is not saying it's good to do evil to do good, just that it is a theme in the show as it is in lord of the rings.
Tolkien several said he wanted see what other people with their own creative vision “with other minds and hands” could do set in Middle Earth. It doesn’t seem like he expected them to slavishly follow his own style.
> "I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama.”
> Tolkien several said he wanted see what other people with their own creative vision could do set in Middle Earth.
That would explain why the Tolkien state sued "Dungeons and Dragons", and Warner Bross, and anybody trying to clone middle earth in their own shows...
This explains also why the Witcher would need to find a way to have elves depicted as much different as possible from Tolkien's elves. Tolkien's elves are extremely advanced technologically and the "de facto" standard now for the term, Witcher's elves are a tribe of poor forest people, closer to the (copyright free) traditional goblins, but that went extinct with Tolkien's work.
Why are you even trying to make an argument like that? The point, as I'm sure you very well know, is Tolkien wanted other people to contribute original material to Middle Earth on their own terms. He was all for it. The opinion of his estate since his death is different of course, but that's got nothing to do with his own opinion.
co-creator J.D. Payne teases. "The question the first season asks is, 'How far into the darkness would you go to protect the things that matter the most?'"
I have no opinion on this show, but the cynical side of me says that the majority of watch time comes from the first few days and Amazon doesn't wanna put potential viewers off by negative reviews. If you combine this with the aggressive marketing they do then it's basically a ploy to get people to watch. I get it, they sunk gobs of money into this and want returns, but it does seem like they're trying to trick people into watching.
The moderation of reviews is an obvious conflict of interest but is also a massively hard problem to solve (just look at Steam reviews).
This is a good time to plug a practice I started a while back of only watching things a year or so after they release, it really lets all the positive and negative hype die down so you can get good reviews and opinions. Plus you don't need to wait for episodes to premiere each week.
It’s the Ghostbusters 2016 strategy: blame negative reactions on bigots until everyone gets the chance to see for themselves that your product is trash.
I enjoyed the 2016 ghostbusters, in particular McKinnon and Hemsworth. I can see someone involved trying to justify the lackluster economic performance.
i can't speak to what happened with Ghostbusters 2016 but before watching I checked the metacritic user reviews for LOTR:ROP and there was blatant "review bombing" if that's the right term, where it was so blatantly obvious that a large proportion of the 0/10 reviews were manufactured by one person. (they made the exact same points, and had ~100 users supporting that review, whereas genuine appearing reviews rating 2-8 had at most ~5 users supporting a review)
yeah that's fair. i should have said "a large proportion of the 0/10 reviews i looked at" and even then i admit that there is no perfect way to determine what is and isn't a fake review.
i guess i have very little faith that any platform does any work to combat review bombing so i take a very skeptical look at anything i see. i'd also wish for more powerful user tools to automate some of the things that looked suspicious to me such as filtering the score to exclude new accounts, accounts which have only reviewed one thing, reviews that are just the exact same sentence, reviews which have tons of "helpful" reactions the moment they are posted.
Oh comeon, Ghostbusters 2016 was genuinely bad. It had an incoherent plot that went nowhere.
The first episode of ROP was OK, amazing production value, a laying out of foundation, some nice fight scene. Nothing especially bad nor especially good.
The vitroil against this show is so obviously manufactured.
654 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 344 ms ] thread> Amazon introduced the policy earlier this summer, starting with its reboot of A League of Their Own, which contended with review bombers who opposed the show’s political stance.
Just like awful superhero movies these things don't die for simply for being bad. Even I watched it just to see how much they messed it up (I thought it was merely okay, not awful). The test will be whether it maintains momentum with the 4th and 5th episode. That's usually where big shows die.
I don’t think the show is incredible, but visually the show is pretty awesome, and I enjoy the story enough to continue watching so far.
There's a big moral hazard here in that it's trivial for a big corporation to make claims that cannot be verified. Are we supposed to just trust them?
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32700019
In what sense? Setting up a store to sell our own product seems to be pretty consistent with capitalism.
And which market place does Amazon control here? They made a show. They put it on Prime.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMDb
Amazon Prime Video should actually be run by an "independent firm"? Who? Who pays for that? Who ensures they are impartial? Why?
Ludicrous.
Here is the original ruling [0], while apparently that changed in 2020 [1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomnunan/2020/08/07/judge-decre...
zero sympathy here; Tolkien reader; not watching this media at all.. zero
For example there was quite a vocal group when the first trailers came out and they found out that (shock) not everyone in the show is white.
https://switch.com.mt/outrage-marketing-how-why-what/#:~:tex....
Ghostbusters was also promoted this way.
These people exist, but I am extremely skeptical that this is the primary motivator for the droves of negative reviews. What major media production isn’t diverse?
This reminds me of the controversy around Ghostbusters 2016 where people claimed review bombers hated the movie because of the female cast.
I would say it is much more likely that these well-loved properties had botched adaptations and that is why so many people are raking it over the coals.
It’s still pretty common, especially in sitcoms and romcoms.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MonochromeCastin...
...and every major media production has people complaining about that.
And of course that is the typical company response. Negative reviews, well its all political and racism.
But the reality is that there are also people who don't like some of the race choice in 'House of the Dragon' and that property is as big as Lord of the Rings, and yet those racist don't manage to motivate lots and lots of people to write reviews.
So when you make a good show racists are a small minority, when you have a bad show then all of a sudden all the criticism is because of racism.
What do you say about people who are very vocal about how they don’t like the show but admit that they have not and will not ever watch it?
Do you think it doesn't happen? Or just that it didn't happen in this specific case?
The people that are claiming it is a mess because some elves have short hair are one example.
The Rings of Power is a complete snoozefest. Stuff is happening, but it's a confusing mess and there are no stakes to make anything interesting. The dialogue is stilted and cringeworthy.
The show just isn't good, and Amazon knows it.
Meanwhile, this conflict is padded with needlessly elaborate, yet meaningless side storylines and fake drama appealing to the 18-25 demographic.
I listen to the audiobooks to fall asleep or if I don't want to start something new. When you have like 10 books you want to listen to in theory but can't decide, listen to some Wheel of Time.
In total Wheel of Time was terrible, and didn't look good. Rings at least has some good visuals.
Lets hope Rings gets better. Sadly for now it looks like both shows will end up rated button tier.
At least House of the Dragon and The Sandman didn't disappoint.
It looks good so far, except for one huge problem, which I think is by far the biggest problem with the whole show so far: the lens flares.
saw a few ads for it, and watched it.
Well-written, picturesque, excellent acting, and a number of fresh faces. The visuals for Gault's suit found to be better than anything I've seen thus far in the Marvel universe, which are themselves no slouches.
I think it is turning out rather excellent, and would be a great source for spin-offs too.
Well, obviously. I mean, the goodies have access to giant eagles and all they have to do is to give the ring to one of them and drop it in Mount Doom and the whole thing is solved, right?
Wait, it must be that eagles are easily corrupted? Or not fully sentient, and thus the ring can control them?
Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn't. Big risk either way.
Anyway, this theme is why the most meek people of Middle Earth -- the Hobbits, who desire basically nothing more than a quiet life -- are the only ones in Middle Earth that could actually cart the ring into Mordor. Even then it's not a sure bet, considering Gollum.
The eagles showing up at the end is more like an 'Oh we were so awesome and heroic that even the high god sees considers this a worthy cause'.
The eagles help Gandalf because of a personal relationship
Unknown to all in LOTR, while the volcano is hot, it has cooled in the thousands of years since the ring's forging. It does not completely dissolve the ring, instead, it melts yet remains together.
Fast forward 10000s of years, the area is mined, and the precious metal is used for fillings in teeth.
Surprise! It's Bezos! And he now has part of the ring of power in his lower right molar.
Now he is understood. One sales platform to rule them all, indeed!
Really nothing, I guess. /s
Elrond is trying to recruit the dwarves to help build the forge to create the rings.
The comet guy I’ll grant you is the show’s one mystery, granted, but I have a feeling he’s going to have something to do with the reemergence of Sauron and the creation of the rings.
Perhaps it's Saruman... it would be interesting to see some backstory on him.
I don’t want to over analyze though as they are obviously trying to be ambiguous for suspense.
Also that was a really dumb scene in so many ways.
Gil-Galad shouldnt really have the power to just send people away. The just invented some lore to get characters where they want them.
Even outside that, a character that shows up for 2 scenes and make one vagly interedting incredibly cryptic remark isn't exactly a barn burner.
Ok, Orcs still exists, amazing who would have thought. And a random person fell from the sky that is a total mystery and unconnected to anything so far.
So yeah its not much for 2h+ of runtime. Not sure wht you added ' /s'.
Its also not really a good slow burn either. If you want to see that done expertly check out True Detective Season 1. That story draws you in.
And this episodes were very long and all the story lines are slow.
- A Story: Galadriel wanders around without doing much in the first episodes and swims around not doing much in the second episode. She has basically 1 expression, her motivation is the most basic revenge story plot ever and its totally clear that she is right and everybody else is dumb. The scene of going to Valinor standing on boat in full armor looked dumb and it was totally clear she would not go, but I guess show runners wanted to drop a couple million on special effect.
- B Story: Hartfoots mostly slice of life and some interaction with a mysterious wizard that amount to nothing so far. Kind of cute but not interesting and totally different tone then everything else. Including with slap stick humor.
- C Story: Basic Elf-Human love story with neither of the characters being very interesting and they have little chemistry. Also evil is rising, but I don't really care about those characters so I don't really care, for now its just random orcs. Nothing to connect to, no large conflict or the other characters. This is even worse then the love-story the added to the hobbit.
- D Story: Elron goes to the dwarfs and we get lots of exposition about (mostly nonsensical) backstory that is required for the current plot to make sense and some character setups for the dwarfs. Honestly maybe the most interesting part of the first 2 episodes, but not actually that interesting.
The tournament/birth sequence in the first episode of House of Dragon had more interesting character moments, character development, story progression then all of the Rings of Power had in the first 2h.
Or compare it with the story that happen in the first 2h of Lord of the Rings (~10h) total vs Rings of Power (10h).
I really can’t understand how people can yet have good or bad opinions or how they can say it isn’t good.
That’s a pretty strong review itself.
That begin said, I haven't watched any RoP, the "nothing" could be complete fluff because the story is too thin.
Amazon seems like it would rather hide reviews than fix the story telling. I couldn’t finish episode 1 without falling asleep
Instead, they dumped as much of the setting as possible into those first few episodes. We learn so much about the players, cultures, technologies, physics, histories, economies, even languages, etc. It’s exhausting. So much detail! Go back and watch. But then when the Donnager battle hits, you get it, and the payoff is huge.
I don’t think the writing is bad. I think they had to rush the setting-onboarding to get to the good parts of the story, to create excitement, to better their chances of justifying additional seasons, all within the constraints of their budget. I think the writing is excellent in hindsight.
I always have to advise people, when I recommend The Expanse to them, to make sure to sit through the first 3-4 episodes even if they don't feel like they're really getting hooked. By the time they get to episode 4, they're hooked.
Rings of Power is so far turning into an interesting show. I would say give it a shot. The second episode is definitely better than the first. Hopefully it will improve from here.
Same thing about the dialogs: the "epic prose" style would work on paper, but not so much in a live action movie.
In contrast House of the Dragon is better written, equally gorgeous, and is far more interesting. At least it is 3 episodes in compared to the 1 RoP I’ve seen.
By episode three, it had my devoted attention. This is definitely a great show.
HOTD, to me, lacks even one compelling, relatable, or likable character and has a boring story that feels as though is lacks any weight.
maybe it's because i just rewatched all of GOT thrones though and it's been a few years since i watched any of the Peter Jackson films. (and even longer since i read the books from both authors)
That's in line with a mediocre Marvel movie.
Why is it so hard to believe the reviews?
For comparison, The Room got a 9. Maybe metacritic scores follow a bathtub curve with "worst possible" sitting somewhere in the middle?
It's sitting in the 70s in other review aggregators, so I think it's okay.
It's worth also considering that many critics are not reviewing this with Peter Jackson's LotR trilogy in mind, but rather with the exceedingly mediocre The Hobbit trilogy.
I've enjoyed this show more than any other I've watched recently. I like basically every actor. I've really appreciated the attention to detail in the world. The dialog was awkward at first but after I acclimatized to the style I actually kinda like it—it's quirky, but consistently so.
It turns out, people like and dislike different things! But both sides of this ragefest are in all seriousness accusing the other of not existing because no one could possibly have a different opinion. It's weird.
This review hazard will only make them not producing more seasons. The reviewers earn nothing by this and ruin it for those who like the new approach.
While some may have point, I believe it only became a sport to give bad reviews to personally annoy Jeff.
I think there are several places across the Silmarillion and other books where it’s mentioned that some Men are mistaken for Elves. If I recall correctly, this happened with Túrin, who was given the name Adanedhel (“Man-Elf”), which he got because he was so alike to them.
The Wizards are given the appearance of old men, but the Men think that they’re elves. Gandalf’s name comes from the Old Norse for “wand/staff elf”. In-universe, in the north he was known as “The Elf of the Wand”, because Men mistook him for an Elf.
Also, I’m not sure that calling them a “different species” is accurate. They certainly can produce offspring with Men just fine.
> They certainly can produce offspring with Men just fine.
While true, in fantasy all kinds of mixes are possible that result in creatures like minotaurs, half-orcs, half-demons, half-dragons, etc., and those are obviously not human.
Every single individual has long hair? What, not a single one of them cuts their hair? I call bs
Not giving them some distinguishing physical characteristic sounds like a great way to make the work more difficult to understand. Personally I don’t mind the change.
> I remember reading they had long hair, regardless they are called something different and have completely different lives.
Some of them had long hair, but presumably others don’t. I’m not aware of any part of the Legendarium which suggests all elves had long hair. That would seem like an uncharacteristic thing for Tolkien to write about them.
> While true, in fantasy all kinds of mixes are possible that result in creatures like minotaurs, half-orcs, half-demons, half-dragons, etc., and those are obviously not human.
This is not D&D. As far as I know, there’s nothing in the Legendarium suggesting there can be unions of anything other than Men and Elves, Men and Orcs, and Elves and Maiar.
A union of an Elf and Maia happened exactly once, and is a bit of an odd becuse Maiar choose the physical form they take. Melian presumably clothed herself in the body of an Elf, at least as far as mattered.
The Men and Orcs thing is unusual in two ways. One is that it’s not explicit how they were combined. Saruman did it… somehow, but the implication is that it was through his art (magic). yhe other is that, depending on the day, Tolkien considered Orcs to be anywhere between corrupted Elves/Men, fallen Maiar, or something like animals. He wasn’t ever comfortable with the ramifications of any of these different origins had, but I think that at the time of writing Lord of the Rings, the idea was that they were corrupted Elves. I’m not super sure on that though. Either way though, I can see a lot more philosophical justification for Men and Orcs being crossed than Men and dragons, balrogs, or anything else that isn’t an Elvish/Mannish being.
Anyway, this is a long way to say that just because it happens in other fantasy settings doesn’t mean it applies here. Tolkien thought about this kind of stuff a lot, and wrote extensively on it. If you’re interested in reading more about this kinda thing, I highly recommend the History of Middle Earth series of books, especially Morgoth’s Ring, which deals a lot with the nature of existence (both physical matter and things like souls) in the Legendarium.
Tolkien, Race, and Racism in Middle-earth[1] has a long section discussing this. Tolkien regarded elves, men, hobbits, dwarves, and orcs all as races of one species, who thus could interbreed.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Tolkien-Racism-Middle-earth-Robert-St...
And all of 10 people would have watched it. IP is for name recognition more than anything else. What percentage of people who watched the Peter Jackson trilogy actually read a book from the trilogy? I'd bet way less than 50%.
Jackson didn't adhere 100% to the source material either. There are length lists, including many substantial non-narrative related changes, for[1] each[2] film[3].
[1]: https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings:_The_F...
[2]: https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings:_The_T...
[3]: https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings:_The_R...
The trilogy was great because of the writings of Tolkien. Peter Jackson did his best respecting that and telling Tolkien's story, not his own. I think that's why they were successful.
What's the point of adapting a source material if you think it should be changed to begin with? Just don't adapt it... but of course they want the massive fanbase even though they're not acknowledging why it's big in the first place.
As far as I can tell, outrage over controversial changes to the IP (e.g. Game of Thrones, The Last of Us 2, Star Wars 7-9) is _positively_ correlated with popularity.
The Star Wars Trilogy critically flopped and only 5x their budget compared to +20x for the original trilogy.
The follow up Star Wars content didn't really work out besides the Mandalorian maybe.
The Foundation series is a complete flop as well.
Laughable statement. Where did Gandalf hit Pippin when they talked to Denethor in the books? That was in complete contradiction with the Gandalf from the books so please dont tell me this was faithful in any way.
The movies are great, but by no means some sort of gold standard of faithful adaption of the source material.
You optimist. Probably less than 5% :-)
Just like how in the Marvel cinematic universe Spiderman's MJ is mixed race and not a redhead, Thanos in the comics doesn't care about halving the universe's population, he wants to kill as many as he can to court the embodiment of Death, or most of the Eternals are gender and race swapped from their comic versions.
Elves are now closer to humans, and they can be black, but the old material with white, tall, long haired elves is still there for you to enjoy... is it really a big deal?
This was very clear with Game of Thrones with George RR not being able to finish his saga, and this being so obvious after season 4 (or 5). The quality dropped dramatically and it all crashed and burned by the last season. Had they planned it more carefully, so that George was in charge of the story until the end, I think we would have seen the most successful fantasy show of the century.
Amazon cancelled the expanse, a series with very good reviews and praise sadly it didn't create new prime members...
Also, this is a 1h show, so you have 2 hours, that is the length of a full movie. And people review movies all the time.
People also reviewed the first to episodes of House of the Dragon.
The series may turn out to be worthwhile, but the first 2 episodes are objectively not good. The writing is poor, the dialogue isn't good, the characters are not compelling and the episodes themselves aren't well put together. I don't see how anyone can watch the first 2 episodes of this series and then watch the first 2 episodes of breaking bad and see any comparison. The vibes I got while watching this show reminded me of the last season of Game of Thrones after it had gone off the rails. The difference here is we haven't spent years getting invested in the story line and the characters, which kept us watching even as the quality was poor. I won't be tuning in for episode 3 and certainly won't feel like I've missed anything.
Whether something is entertaining or not is purely subjective. However, speaking in my capacity as someone who has worked in the film industry for the last 30 years, the writing of the first two episodes was objectively "not good". I think Hesh Rabkin put it better than I can, on Season 1, Episode 10 of the Sopranos when he said, "There’s one constant in the music business...A hit is a hit...and this, my friend, is NOT a hit." The same holds for tv shows.
You keep using the word objectively but it doesn't mean what you think it means. You did not like the writing, that's fine. I don't think it's fair to call it "objectively" not good. There were some awkward parts and some awkward scenes, but I personally found a lot of the dialogues to feel quite natural and compelling. The elves are a bit of a stiffer but that's part of the characters. It is plagued by some of what I call the modern "marvel" adventure quirky speech (especially some exchanges with Galadriel) where a lot of exchanges turn into funny quips back and forth but that's par of the course in the current movie industry.
On the other hand the cinematography, environments, special effects, sound stage (sauron's whispers in a 3D home theater system were just SO GOOD), and a lot of other stuff is absolutely amazing.
I am not in the film industry, but I am a musician, so here are a few examples from classical music: A performer who tends to rush the slow sections of music will often give bad performances: the vision of the piece is for that section to be slow, and a weakness in the performer's skill compromises the vision. A composer who writes music that is impossible to play has bad craft. A conductor who gives unclear cues and doesn't keep an orchestra together has bad craft.
I can still enjoy a performance where the slow sections are a little rushed if I like the piece, but that doesn't make it a good performance.
As surprising as it may seem, the art of writing has rules. Setting up character arcs, payoffs, hero journey, etc. These have been around for literally thousands of years. These 2 episodes are objectively poorly written.
BTW, I'd also claim that original tolkin narratives are not very good if you strictly judge them by these rules. The generous use of Deus ex machina to solve the plot climactic moments is just cringy.
Just read to refresh everything that happened in episode 1, I pasted the first paragraph below, from here https://breakingbad.fandom.com/wiki/Pilot
> In the New Mexico desert, a man wearing nothing but his underwear and a gas mask erratically drives an RV down a desolate dirt road. In the passenger seat, another man is passed out, also wearing a gas mask. In the back of the RV are two bodies. After crashing the RV in a ditch, the driver climbs out, dons a shirt hanging from the side view mirror, and retrieves a video camera and gun from the vehicle. Recording a message on the camera, the man identifies himself as Walter White and bids a cryptic farewell to his wife and son. Sirens are heard in the distance. Walt walks onto the road and awaits the apparent approach of police, gun in hand.
What you're seeing here is the future. Amazon produces the movies, finances the movies, distributes the movies, controls how they're reviewed (they also own IMDB).
Oligarchs never trust what they don't own.
We really desperately need a similar ruling for streaming services though.
https://old.reddit.com/r/lotr/comments/x46870/imdb_have_dele...
It's a feature not a bug.
I haven't trusted IMDB for years. Reviews certainly aren't everything; "bad" art can still be loveable to some, but I'm at the point where I just avoid anything attached to a preexisting franchise; lest I become enveloped by cynicism.
This is clearly an instance of a multi-industry-spanning giant preferring its own content. They're giving it away for free / as a loss leader, and yet they were able to spend enormous institutional capital on it.
How can any production company compete?
This is overwhelmingly monopolistic.
Must things always stay the same? Can't some popular stories grow and evolve beyond one, albeit original, author's imagination?
As stories cross generations I think it's kind of awesome when each can add some flavor to the retelling or expansion of the tale.
I have a special adoration for Star Wars yet am happy to see it getting more production, even if it must be at the hand of Disney.
Though American TV has improved a lot since the time they had directors of making sure none of the protagonists were women.
> Can't some popular stories grow and evolve ..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfram_von_Eschenbach#Parziva...
One of my all time favorite European works is Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival. He wasn't the original author of the legend of Percival, and there were other versions after him. It evolved, but that process took centuries and imo was an organic development.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percival#Perceval
So I think the generally unspoken issue is who is doing the 'growing and evolving' (here: Corporations) and how are they evolving dearly beloved cultural works. Wolfram for example changed some bits and even inserted a short (rather amusing) interlude to vent his frustrations with women, but we can be certain there wasn't a committee with a social agenda sponsoring him to write that.
So, genuine development is definitely OK. At least in my book.
[pdf] https://ia800908.us.archive.org/24/items/Parzival/Parzival.p...
"If there is anyone who praises women better than I, I will surely not be the one to hold it against him..."
(See page 117 of the pdf to hear out this knight's complaints.)
Of course they can, but it's also the case that Tolkien was extremely defensive against divergent interpretations of his work, and he has a large fan-base with the same attitude.
You can't have it both ways, if I sell my startup to Google I can't then berate them for deviating from my vision and making it too corporate.
I'm pretty sure can. Maybe they could gag you with a contract during the sale, but I am certain that fans of your original business are well within their rights to criticize what Google later does with it. Your decision to sell something doesn't oblige others to respect what the new owner does with it.
Sure, it's simple. Name it differently when you already plan to stray from the author's vision and as a bonus people will rate it more independently from the original (though that also means no free marketing by riding on a known brand).
This is not the case.
Here the directors / whoever just think they can do better than Tolkien (and that's fine) but then they appropriate themselves with everything he did, including claiming it's his work, but that they "improved" or "modernized".
I think it was targeted at kids, but they had an all-star series of writers.
It pulls off making fun of the old franchise while also being nostalgic about it.
But it’s simplistic with characters who are so dumb and childish that there’s no Star Trek in Lower Decks either.
Not a single character on the show is an adult. They’re all edgy and nerdy tweens vying for influence in the middle school yearbook club… in adult bodies. This includes the captain and bridge crew.
Lower Decks would be a phenomenal Star Trek if they would mentally age all the characters by 10 ~ 20 years, especially the captain, XO, security officer and every alien.
Well... i wouldn't completely disagree, but it's a cartoon comedy so it seems fitting, the characters might be dumb and simplistic but they make fun of themselves; unlike Discovery where the characters are also dumb and simplistic yet pretentious and serious with terrible acting making it unbearable.
The whole thing with Star Trek is competent "culturally evolved" professionals exploring the universe and representing the best of us.
There's no way any Starfleet character from Lower Decks could have made it through the academy entrance exam or psych eval from TNG. They're not competent and they're driven by childishness, which is what makes the show a comedy and not good Star Trek.
I wouldn't. I tried, not once, not twice, but three times to watch it. The speech from all characters is just way to fast for me to understand.
I actually reinstalled Far Cry 2 (which was widely lambasted for speech being too fast) to compare, and the speech in lower decks is a lot faster than Far Cry 2.
As I've gotten older, I've gotten more and more okay with shrugging and accepting that most things are not made for me anymore. What I think is only going to result in fruitless frustration, is thinking "this _should_ be made for me, because I do like X".
There's an argument to be made that quality in the arts has been declining as a result of — in part — dumbing down, or trying to appeal to the most people, based on current social norms, but I feel that's unrelated and not behind why people get so worked up with these things.
I guess that would make Tolkien "exploitation for financial gain"?
He didn't write "Lord of Thor's Rings" trilogy
He used sources to create his OWN unique setting. He wasn't claiming his books to be Bible 2 or Koran prequels.
That's the difference.
Tolkien used a some of lesser character from norse mythology and completely rewrote its origin, purpose and made him central player in his story.
I think that's completely comparable to lets say: making movie about evil galactic empire, i mean dictatorship with its leader in black costume that has telepathic powers and laser sword... /s
Yes nobody will notice.
There is difference between inspiration, homage, and just ripping off a setting with minimal effort.
Here is an article on lotr influences
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien%27s_influence...
tell me how is that comparable to
> Amazon used Middle Earth, Elrond, Galadriel, Sauron etc. for a story as long as they didn't call it a prequel to Lord of the Rings?
If Amazon writers want to tell their story about their issues the way they want it go ahead. There are plenty of original shows, and plenty more would be even better.
so tolkien wrote something that is an expansion of a source text is your point that... what exactly are you implicating?
Trailers are not suitable replacements for reviews. They are edited and packaged to deliver hyped expectation via self-congratulatory endorsement.
Reviews are better than trailers. You could stick to reviews from news publishers if you don't trust user reviews. Here's a snippet of the Washington Post's review of Rings of Power:
"The performances are serviceable but unremarkable, while the dialogue is particularly corny and inartful... Rarely has danger felt so dull."
washingtonpost.com/tv/2022/08/31/lord-rings-tv-show-review/
Reviews are great!
How is that a useful system?
"Corny dialog" is rarely a subjective observation. It's either corny or it isn't.
The rare exception might be when the dialog is deliberately corny for stylistic reasons or some kind of self-referencing theatrics. Corny dialog is easily identified... "I've got a baaad feeling about this".
> How could you possibly trust that statement
Because the statement doesn't sit in isolation. It's from a longer professional review where the show is deconstructed and analyzed. The statements are qualified, unlike user reviews.
Of course there are subjective aspects too, but there are also strongly bonded criticisms across reviews that can't be dismissed with "subjective" counter-claims. If not universal, then near-universal qualities can be found.
Take the recent James Bond movie. Even the good reviews were noting the "woke" themes. They specifically hired a writer to help inject those themes into the movie, such as anti-toxic masculinity etc. It turns out many people don't have much love for injected woke themes forced into their fictional movies. Many people wanted escapism from 007, not a social re-education lecture or some awkward comment about current world events.
The general population, groups of trolls, review bombers, people who just didn't like the same kinds of movies as you, etc. would all be irrelevant.
If you havnt read the books - believe me, this plot is going exciting places.
Highly recommend!
Yes, there are changes from the Silmarillion. How could there not be. That is a massive book written more as a reference for Tolkien than as a single cohesive narrative. It’s not the kind of writing that would translate directly to video. It needs some translation. I got out my 1977 edition to peruse after the shows, but am not surprised if there are differences.
Also, yes, there are some dark skinned people in this new work. Big deal. If that kind of thing “takes you out of the story” then perhaps you should ask yourself why that is.
I’ve never understood why people get so worked up about stuff like this.
Nothing changes within the narrative itself. In-show characters don’t acknowledge the character’s newfound darker skin tone. The character stays true to the original vision - except that their skin is darker.
I would be outraged if Dev Patel played an English knight and then was shown eating Indian food or wearing Indian clothes. That’s breaking the consistency of the narrative and the authenticity of its world.
But Dev Patel simply plays an Englishman - with English habits and speech. Nothing within the world is changed to match the actor’s skin color or heritage. Rather, the actor’s skin color blends into the narrative’s world.
I find it mildly offensive when they reduce my identity to the color my skin. My identity is far richer and includes everything from food and clothing to customs and traditions.
An Indian actor playing an Egnlishman with English customs and traditions does nothing for me. It would take an Indian actor playing an Indian man for me to take this “diversity” seriously. Of course, that would mean creating entirely new narratives and stories, which, of course, Hollywood can’t and won’t do.
So we get brown and black actors shoehorned into pretending to be white - the lowest common denominator of “diversity”.
The dark skinned people are fine. I especially like the diverse proto-hobbits.
The thing I really, really hate, that takes me out of the story, is the lens flares.
What, have you forgotten the tale of the ancient cinematographers of the elves preferring it for its authenticity, even going so far as to commission elven spell-smiths to add it in their visions?
Nobody would care about this thing if it didn't have the LOTR name.
hehe this reminded me how after matrix 2 and 3 I had forgotten how good the original matrix was. Took me 10 years to rediscover it.
This article feels a bit quick to write off the negative reviews as being from racist “trolls”. A quick look of reviews on Rotten Tomatoes [1] shows a lot of negative reviews that seem legitimate to me.
I personally enjoyed the first two episodes, but the show is far from perfect.
[1] https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/the_lord_of_the_rings_the_...
it was a fun problem to consider though, how to evaluate whether a review is fake or not. obviously the most powerful tools would be ip logging or browser fingerprinting or requiring other user verification but absent that i wonder what approaches review verification services take based on the content alone. i use some plugin for amazon reviews that i think looks for similar terms but it seems like it can sometimes be overzealous when products are very simple so many reviews seem similar when they might be from unique people
1. Hur hur, rubbish. 1 star (There are seriously reviews like that)
2. This isn't Lord of the Rings. 1 star
3. I really loved how they took that piece from the Silmarillion and explored the concept. 5 star
The people giving it low ratings don't appear to know the source materials. Disclaimer - I have not yet seen it so I am witholding judgement, but the reviews are embarrassing.
On a personal level i don't care much if it's true to the source material, I haven't read it. Nor do I care that there are PoC in it. I do care that it's just at best a 6/10 (maybe a charitable 7?), which hurts based on the potential it had.
Perhaps after it is done someone will say to me "oh it wasn't like that at all" and I will enjoy it then.
> You can make the Ring into an allegory of our own time, if you like: an allegory of the inevitable fate that waits for all attempts to defeat evil power by power.
If these writers are using Tolkien's name without respecting his beliefs, even Tolkien might have given the show a bad review.
Of course that's just speculation, but only a rare storyteller can tell an epic tale that isn't ultimately resolved by superior force. If this show can remain faithful to Tolkien's vision, I'll be very impressed.
Why should we give a bad review based on insufficient evidence?
When I hear how far into evil will somebody go, I think of an individuals choices to do evil for a perceived the greater good.
Kind of related, but not quite the same.
> “What a pity Bilbo did not stab the vile creature, when he had a chance!
> Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need.
> I do not feel any pity for Gollum. He deserves death.
> Deserves death! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give that to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends.”
And it was that small individual mercy that ultimately saved the world.
(Shrug) It seemed to work pretty well. The important part, both morally and practically, is how you treat your former adversary after defeating them.
If Aragorn took the Ring, he would be able to challenge Sauron. Denethor was somewhat of a lesser rank, but still an almost pure Numenorean. The Ring would have turned both of them to Evil, for sure, but not necessarily into servants of Sauron himself. They might just become the new Evil overlords of the world after defeating Sauron.
The main character flaw of Denethor is that he sacrificed his life to the cause of Gondor and Gondor only. Existence and might of Gondor were his main motivations, not preservation of Freedom or Good in the world in general. He was based on a stereotype of a proud medieval or Roman noble, though (untypically) a highly educated one.
But this theme is pretty much in keeping with the darker subject matter of The Silmarillion.
This was many years ago, is my recollection flawed?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silmarillion#Development
It's true that the first 50 pages or so are pretty much just worldbuilding, mainly focusing on the mythology behind the creation of the world (Arda) by Iluvatar and the various demigods. After that, you start getting into the details of what the elves did upon waking up as the first quasi-"mortal" inhabitants of Arda, and the subsequent eras of history. Some of it is painted in broad strokes, but there are plenty of chapters that zoom in on specific characters and their heroic and evil deeds, personal conflicts, betrayals, hubris and other tragic flaws, etc.
Sure, the style of the prose is a bit dry, but there's plenty of drama to be had in the story.
Wikipedia has a pretty good summary of the overall plot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silmarillion#Synopsis
The Halo story bible is an exception which has seen parts released: https://www.halopedia.org/Halo_Story_Bible
A portion of the story bible for ATLA was leaked: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheLastAirbender/comments/aj0mfp/th...
You might as well leave it be.
Some parts are more like a traditional narrative: the story of Beren and Luthien, and Turin Turumbar.
If you didn't find it enjoyable to read before you might not change your mind at a second reading, but if it really was a long time ago it's possible your perspective may be different.
Then you get into the elf family trees and their migrations. Its really dry. But it really helps understand the motivations of individuals in the rest of the book and the other books. There are some diagrams in the back to help you plow through it.
Then there are the accounts of both individuals and nations/races. They are more like greek tragedy than anything else. Though sometimes it doesn't even seem like there needs to be a flaw to bring down the fall. It is like binging all of Breaking Bad at once. Not going to leave you smiling, but that doesn't mean it isn't art.
It’s also not a great way to characterize the Second Age, since both a portion of the good and a vital portion of the evil sides in the conflict survive and both are very greatly diminished, but I don’t think the writings about the Second Age were really central to that work. That’s why the show (which I haven’t seen yet) seemed like perhaps not a terrible idea to me. There’s not much legacy there to tarnish.
Amazon is going full Sauron here. They're a multi-industry-spanning conglomerate that preferentially ranks its own show and discards negative reviews, while leaving House of the Dragon and competitors out in the cold.
They have whole other business units to recoup the costs. This doesn't even matter to them other than as a means to grow even bigger and capture/kill more industries. Talk about power.
Why are our legislators asleep at the wheel? We need to give smaller companies and startups a way to fight this. It's madness that Amazon can be bigger than Walmart, have its own shipping fleet, serve the whole Internet, run homes autonomously, own the e-reader/book market, own game streaming, and now apparently throw Hollywood around and make their productions look cheap.
This reminds me of something I read recently.
> ..Tolkien's vision of the greatest evil in the universe was something he referred to as "The Machine", which was his way of talking about accelerated industrialism and mass surveillance.
> He wrote multiple books where the main villains were a dragon who sits on a huge pile of treasure that he never intends to use but incinerates anyone who comes near it; a man in a giant tower who's wrecking the environment with his factories; and an evil being who uses what's essentially a listening device to control the citizens of Middle Earth.
> And now Amazon is making a Tolkien show.
They aren’t going to hide the fact that the show sucks and they certainly just made that much harder by doing this.
In order for them to actually maintain their power this show would need to somehow help them create a moat (it doesn’t) or just make money on its own by driving subscriptions.
As far as abuses of power go, this is absolutely not one of them.
The issue is that this was a high dollar show and it likely had to have a lot of sign off. Unfortunately, great art and vast pre-approval don’t tend to go hand in hand.
I’m afraid we’re turning a corner in our golden age of television into a dark world of corporate overreach.
Xcloud and GeForce Now would like to a word with you. Does anyone actually use Luna?
Time will tell, but I am sensing a major fiasco for Amazon studios
That was included in one of the paperbacks published by Christopher Tolkien as “Unfinished Tales.”
According to the books, a gentle creature, that gets easily scared. The right way to calm it down involves tickling.
But Galadriel chopped up every single part of its body. Twirling around unnecessarily while doing so, after having shot it up with 6 arrow. For this reason I have elected to cancel my prime membership.
And there was nothing unnecessary about the fight scene. It’s unrealistic in the way that Legolas is unrealistic in Peter Jackson’s movies, but no worse.
The troll attack advanced the plot by serving as a catalyst for Galadriel’s troops deserting.
Unless you’re saying that just having a fight scene with a troll was gratuitous? But the books have plenty of battle scenes with trolls as well.
They are not elite fighters in the sense of, say, just being a Navy SEAL.
If you're looking at Rings of Power and expecting a being such as Galadriel to break a sweat fighting something like a troll, you have a strange set of expectations.
Which is why it's s suprising that a frost troll took out 3 of them in one lumpy throw of some packed ice
I don't think that's consistent with the fights in the books.
I mean Fingolfin physically fought a 40+ foot tall Morgoth in the Silmarillion. He was jumping around between huge pits that Morgoth's mace made when Morgoth tried to hit him. Fingolfin had a sword, while Morgoth held a mace that was bigger than Fingolfin, and yet Fingolfin was able to survive being beaten to the ground by said mace.
I don't think there's anyway to depict fights on screen like that without looking a bit silly.
If you start trying to realistically depict what it would look like to fight giant humanoids, you'd end up with something that is probably very interesting to people like you and myself, but that the majority of people would find boring. Plus that's not how the source material approached combat scenes.
I'll watch it if the writers room turns out to be staffed by weird old British Catholics though.
Bill Murray, Nick Offerman, and Steven Wright would all like a word.
However he regularly expresses emotions through gestures and subtle body language, so yes it’s close but not there over a full routine.
I don't think you should take the longevity of each as a mark of popularity or quality. The British version wasn't cancelled - Gervais and Marchant ended it deliberately with a proper conclusion. I don't think anyone doubts more British series would have been commissioned if they'd wanted to carry on.
When Gervais was asked if he likes the American version his response was "Yes of course. It's made me very rich." That's his dry sense of humor, but I suspect it also hints at why they stopped doing the UK version and started on the US version instead.
And it has been said multiple times by people working on the American version that besides the inital setup, Gervais and Merchant had very little if any input and everything was done by the American wtiters/show runners.
Aye! They write Fantasy like action movies.
> Snow-trolls are mentioned only once in Tolkien's works, in reference to Helm Hammerhand stalking his enemies "like a snow-troll" during his sorties against the Dunlendings in the Long Winter. The trolls who lived in the Coldfells in western Eriador may have been similar to these. [1]
And the actual passage, from The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A, "The House of Eorl":
> Helm [Hammerhand] held the fortress during the Long Winter. He blew his great war-horn, and broke through the Dunlending ranks, clad in white, stalking men like a snow-troll slaying them with his bare hands. However, his sons Haleth and Háma were slain and Helm grew gaunt because of grief and famine; still his horn would fill the Dunlendings with fear each time it was heard. During one of his night sorties Helm died, possibly from famine and cold; his body was discovered frozen in the snow still standing. [2]
I would say the "stalking" and the subsequent "slaying" similitudes rule out the gentle qualities of the snow-troll.
For the record I haven't watched RoP yet; something feels wrong about this interpretation of Tolkien's work and I think I'll save myself the disappointment.
[1] https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Snow-trolls [2] https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Helm#cite_note-Helm-5
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/513872-he-was-tall-as-a-you...
In general, the elves, especially the older ones like Galadriel, are shown to possess super-human characteristics in all physical feats, including agility, stamina and strength (though the Men of the First Age apparently were stronger though less agile).
Personally I couldn’t care less about Tolkien’s legacy or anything like that, and it seems like a cool show with lots of very expensive spectacle on screen and I think that should be enough. I guess I’m just not big into the whole proprietorial fandom thing.
Nothing about what the person being interviewed said implies that the moral of the story is “you should go really really far into evil to do good.” I’d say the implication of that question is the opposite.
Picard and Discovery throws this out the window. It seems like the rough outline of the show was to shoehorn as much heavy handed modern political controversy in between the big budget space battles. The characters seem to be raring to fight at every juncture which is pretty much the opposite of the Federation's MO.
This has also happened with Star Wars but I feel less bad. I think Star Wars was always a bit less "high brow" than some of the other media being discussed here, but Disney seems to have scoured the entire script of the original trilogy for any lines they could stretch out into scenes for a spinoff film ("Kessel Run" for Solo, "Many Bothans Died" for Rogue One). To me this stuff is straight up cringe - at the same level as bad fan fiction.
Ultimately I have started to regard most of these films as products in the same sense as breakfast cereal at the grocery store. When they put out a new neon green version of lucky charms I don't get mad - I don't pay attention at all. Luckily, it seems like there are some filmmakers who are making interesting films even post-COVID (Robert Eggers, David Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) so I have some hope for the future. But these mega-budget reboots? I do my best to ignore their existence at this point.
Responsibility, sacrifice, being torn between good and bad, these are not what modern stories should be made of.
But for some masochistic reason these same people can’t write their own stories, they actually want to destroy existing stories, kill off the previous characters and storylines, and insert their own philosophy into the old worlds.
It’s ridiculous, and narcissistic, and I sincerely hope something that makes these companies go bust. I sincerely hope in the long run there isn’t a market for this behaviour. Star Wars certainly seems to have collapsed.
Star Wars huge size and market came from all the toys it sold, now that is pretty much over.
Why is it that almost every generation had star wars fans yet kids don't find it cool any more NOW?
Perhaps it's because this new type of storytelling has no market appeal. It appeals to narcissistic preachy writers in hollywood, but not to anyone else.
Even TOS isn't without its preachy nonsense, like: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Let_That_Be_Your_Last_B..., a "subtle metaphor" of racism and ethnic conflict.
I also agree about the uneven quality.
Nonsense.
In the movies, yes, but not in the books.
The movies completely reversed Faramir.
I was surprised as an adult when I first watched the movie that it didn't have this ending to the character arch, missing the final stage of the hero's journey.
That would explain why the Tolkien state sued "Dungeons and Dragons", and Warner Bross, and anybody trying to clone middle earth in their own shows...
This explains also why the Witcher would need to find a way to have elves depicted as much different as possible from Tolkien's elves. Tolkien's elves are extremely advanced technologically and the "de facto" standard now for the term, Witcher's elves are a tribe of poor forest people, closer to the (copyright free) traditional goblins, but that went extinct with Tolkien's work.
co-creator J.D. Payne teases. "The question the first season asks is, 'How far into the darkness would you go to protect the things that matter the most?'"
The moderation of reviews is an obvious conflict of interest but is also a massively hard problem to solve (just look at Steam reviews).
This is a good time to plug a practice I started a while back of only watching things a year or so after they release, it really lets all the positive and negative hype die down so you can get good reviews and opinions. Plus you don't need to wait for episodes to premiere each week.
i guess i have very little faith that any platform does any work to combat review bombing so i take a very skeptical look at anything i see. i'd also wish for more powerful user tools to automate some of the things that looked suspicious to me such as filtering the score to exclude new accounts, accounts which have only reviewed one thing, reviews that are just the exact same sentence, reviews which have tons of "helpful" reactions the moment they are posted.
"Halflife 2 is a solid 8/10. I can't wait for the sequel!"