Lord of the Rings TV Series Purchased by Amazon

[Shadowferal]

‘The Rings Of Power’ Has Inexplicably Terrible Writing

Everything Rings Of Power Gets Wrong

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power review: Amazon's prequel is kind of a catastrophe

Give this appendix an appendectomy.

There are ways to do a prequel, and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power does them all wrong. It takes six or seven things everyone remembers from the famous movie trilogy, adds a water tank, makes nobody fun, teases mysteries that aren't mysteries, and sends the best character on a pointless detour. The latter is uber-elf Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) who spends the premiere telling people to worry about Sauron. In response, people tell her not to worry about Sauron. That's one hour down, seven to go this season. Sound like a billion dollars yet?

Tolkien's saga was anti-industrialization, which makes it hilarious that Rings of Power is an Amazon product. (Imagine Saruman throwing an Arbor Day party.) Much press has swirled around the production cost, but if a huge budget made great TV, we'd be on Terra Nova season 12. Showrunners J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay show no instinct for pacing. Some characters seem to teleport far distances, while others walk slowly between villages (despite horses, like, existing). A big sea attack looks unfinished, introducing a massive threat that's quickly forgotten. Director J. A. Bayona finds isolated moments of grandeur, but the helicopter shots get repetitive fast. The fights aren't quite up to the Walking Dead level, and the battles won't make any Crab Feeders nervous. Frequent cuts to an explanatory map are more funny than informative.

[Syegfryed]

Galadriel when one of her three brother dies: Im gonna take my fucking rage
Galadriel when her husband dissapear: Who fucking care, maybe he died, did you see Hallbland though

They had the thing right there, Galadriel quest could be to find her husband, maybe captived by the forces of evil, instead of revenge for ONE brother, that it was not even supposed to be dead by Sauron.

[downnola]

People and me included have explained what's wrong with the acting.

Stiff acting, stone faced stares with no emotion, poor delivery on lines. "Tempest in me comment" for example sounds like when someone does a mocking voice trying to sound powerful.

People have also given praise where it's due. To Elendil, Durin, Disa and Elrond specifically.

People have also given lots of examples of bad writing.

Harfoots changing their position of values is one.
The fact no one checked the package that was so important to get from Adar. Not even Arondir who said it.
Ice troll scene at the start have been thoroughly discussed.
Explanations of why scenes fall flat, you name it.
Etc etc. Reasons are there in most posts.. if you read it.

My post is more a commentary on the level of discourse in this thread than it is an attempt to debate the quality of writing and acting in Rings of Power. I'll give you a perfect example of what I was referring to:

the writing style is amateur in nature as critiqued by multiple best selling authors and other writers who have written their own works, the entire script is so badly written that the whole premise of the show is something a school student would come up with, it's also reinforced that the writers for this project are amateurs because they had been writing scripts and other things for over a decade, none of their work was published or made into a show/movie, meaning that in the eyes of EVERYONE involved with hollywood during that period of time, they didn't see them as worthwhile writers to back in any capacity but somehow magically they are good enough to helm the most expensive TV show in history? i think not.

the acting in various ways has been critiqued to be bad for the same reason the writing is bad, the actors chosen for the majority of the main roles are amateurs or semi-professional actors who have little to no back catalogue of major acting credit to their name but are somehow magically meant to be believed to be good at their craft?, all of the fight choreography has been shown to be amateur in nature by the very fact that it shows how bad the actors are in those scenes, the direction and filming crew are shown as amateurish by the fact that the angles they shoot scenes from is all wrong, and has been shown by professionals in the space showing how they did it in the show versus how it should be done and how it has been done historically on big budget productions in other areas, and the contrast is night and day in terms of competency.

based on your asinine comment it seems none of these genuine and legitimate criticisms mean anything because it doesn't align with your world view, therefore they can't be correct at all, and as an aside, the actress who plays the main lead role has 2 facial expressions, angry, and holding in a shit, there's no other alternatives and it's comical that this amateur stage actor with 1 previous named role to her name is in your eyes considered a credible lead character, it speaks volumes really that you're so dense to enjoy this dross that you think it actually reflects the established lore in any way despite the myriad plot holes and outright bastardisations of the lore evident to anyone with an ounce of knowledge of the original works, which clearly you do not based on your comment, so unless you have some compelling evidence to support your stance that this show is good, i wouldn't bother coming back to the thread because all you're doing is wasting everyone's time by defending the indefensible.

Here's an example of disingenuous and lazy criticism of the series written by a poster who has spent months in this thread trashing the show before he even watched a minute of the first episode. This thread has been around for a long time and it's not difficult to go back and see what people were saying prior to the first episode airing. This poster is exactly the kind of person I was mocking in my original post. His mind was already made up that it wasn't going to be good all the way back in June:

Based on past experience, and with the MANY examples of wokeness causing the downfall of franchises over the last 8-10 years now, it's not exactly hard to call out how badly this mess will perform regardless of how pretty and sparkly they try to dress it up as, a turd is a turd even if it's wrapped in gold, and blindly arguing with people to 'hey just wait and see, it might be good' is futile because based on past experience, the conclusion being made here is more likely than not the outcome that will come to pass, and yet you're still trying to peddle some hopium/copium levels of 'it won't be that bad surely'.

Nobody with this much hostility towards a show months before its release can be trusted to give a "genuine and legitimate" critique of the final product, especially when it's fueled by culture war mind-rot they likely heard from some moron on Youtube. It's not difficult to see through the post hoc rationalization of why the show is bad when there's an obvious agenda behind it. Jonnysensible pointed out the appeals to authority and made up childish nonsense immediately because that's all that's behind the critique in the first place. People who are hellbent on not liking a thing will come up with all sorts of reasons to explain not liking the thing. It doesn't automatically follow that there's any validity to their reasons.

But this doesn't apply to everyone who takes issue with some or all aspects of the show. I don't mind reading critique made in good faith with actual substance to it. However, a significant portion of what's said here after every episode in this thread is anything but that.

And since I'm going to continue to be accused of defending the show, I'll just put it out there that I don't actually have strong feelings one way or the other about Rings of Power. They've obviously just started telling the story of Middle Earth's second age so there isn't going to be a string of immediate payoffs that people clearly want from it. Up until the past couple of episodes, they've mostly been establishing characters and locations for the larger story they want to tell. It's not nearly as bad as some people make it out to be, but I wouldn't say it's good either. It's honestly pretty mid. It has potential though, time will tell if they get there or not.

[Fortress of Arrogance]

Nobody with this much hostility towards a show months before its release can be trusted to give a "genuine and legitimate" critique of the final product

Can the yeasayers be trusted?
What's the treshold, the right amount of hostility, the line that, till it is reached, allows for opinion to be considered viable, even if hostile?
Do we have a hold of that one pristine example of totally objective, non-biased and viable critique, a or THE standard to measure to?

[Ihavewaffles]

I don't understand why people are confused about Galadriel not being scorched by the pyroclastic cloud,
she clearly said she is a Tempest,
which is a powerful cold storm.

Elves do magic n stuff, remember?

./some bs

[bledgor]

I don't understand why people are confused about Galadriel not being scorched by the pyroclastic cloud,
she clearly said she is a Tempest,
which is a powerful cold storm.

Elves do magic n stuff, remember?

./some bs

This was more amusing than 95% of the show.

[Ihavewaffles]

This was more amusing than 95% of the show.

stop laughing, we need to cut your moment n shift to singing about snailing

[bledgor]

stop laughing, we need to cut your moment n shift to singing about snailing

No one gets left behind! Unless you cost me a meal then I'm stealing your wheels and breaking your legs!

[Ihavewaffles]

No one gets left behind! Unless you cost me a meal then I'm stealing your wheels and breaking your legs!

We are not un-civilized, before we let u fuck off into the wilderness to fend for yourself, here's an apple, u will feel alright now, you must.

[Fortress of Arrogance]

I don't understand why people are confused about Galadriel not being scorched by the pyroclastic cloud,
she clearly said she is a Tempest,
which is a powerful cold storm.

Elves do magic n stuff, remember?

./some bs

There is some magic going on alright

[Shadowferal]

I legit LOL’d at the text changing from ‘The Southlands’ to ‘Mordor’,” one fan wrote, adding: “Like come on, its as if they’re intentionally being cheesy and dumb now. “

Another viewer added: “The Mordor text reveal was one of the worst pieces of television I’ve ever seen. We all knew. No one needed it spelling out. Phenomenally s***.”

Hopefully this show will be quietly forgotten in a month.

[Triceron]

Yeah the text change is very indicative of the intelligence level they expect the audience to be at.

But the good thing is it made me enjoy and appreciate Andor that much more.

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No one gets left behind! Unless you cost me a meal then I'm stealing your wheels and breaking your legs!

I really don't get that ... Their entire culture is about leaving people behind. How did it suddenly become no one gets left behind?

Rhorle will probably have the answers, he always does.

[Trumpcat]

Every second scene is nonsensical, there is so much nonsense in this show that you don't know where to begin pointing it out. It doesn't give you a moment to collect yourself, it just keeps taking you out of the story with how strikingly oblivious to logic it is. Whether it is characters' actions, decisions, lines or just the general pacing, inconsistency, lack of understanding of time flow or distance. The creators haven't read many books, nor watched many movies, they generally make it obvious their broad culture is depressingly narrow. I've seen terrible shows before, but this one is at the forefront for its colossal budget and criminal mishandling of source material.

The worst part is that it is so bad that it makes me curious to see how bad every next episode is and thus I contribute to the viewership. In the end, who cares how I feel about it if I watch it and my Prime subscription is running? Unfortunately it is not the streaming I was subscribed for but the prime delivery. I "was" because I cancelled it, it's just insulting my intelligence and I rather know my meager few bucks aren't going to that company.

[Syegfryed]

Every second scene is nonsensical, there is so much nonsense in this show that you don't know where to begin pointing it out. It doesn't give you a moment to collect yourself, it just keeps taking you out of the story with how strikingly oblivious to logic it is. Whether it is characters' actions, decisions, lines or just the general pacing, inconsistency, lack of understanding of time flow or distance. The creators haven't read many books, nor watched many movies, they generally make it obvious their broad culture is depressingly narrow. I've seen terrible shows before, but this one is at the forefront for its colossal budget and criminal mishandling of source material..

From many sources, the showrunners are people who spent ten years getting their script from movies cut out, then they went to series, and out of the gate they take this job.

Not only that, they said they came up with the entire thing in one day, no rehash, no refine, no re-reading and changing things, just one day and done. Sadly, this seems to be the truth, as this have the looks of something unfinished, a plot without sense or logic.

I just feel pity from some actors, who were dragged down by this show.

[Trumpcat]

...
I just feel pity from some actors, who were dragged down by this show.

Indeed, I thought the same. Seeing the spending on the show they probably thought they scored a jackpot entering a super production and also the Peter Jackson's movies had set the bar of expectation up to instant classics.

I like Disa's performance, though and all the Dwarves, I think they really get into character and have fun. (Even here the creators have managed to smear a good thing with their lack of understanding of genotype, but that aside, the acting itself I find enjoyable.)

[downnola]

Can the yeasayers be trusted?

Can you point out the people who blindly love this show as much as some of the people who blindly hate it? Have people claimed this show deserves academy awards prior to watching a single episode? I don't know who these "yeasayers" are so you're going to have to elaborate.

What's the treshold, the right amount of hostility, the line that, till it is reached, allows for opinion to be considered viable, even if hostile?
Do we have a hold of that one pristine example of totally objective, non-biased and viable critique, a or THE standard to measure to?

Why should anyone take a person's opinion of a show seriously when they made their mind up it months prior to actually seeing it? If they never intended to give the show a fair hearing then what is the point of discussing the show with them? The quality of the acting and writing is irrelevant when it's being approached in such an openly bad-faith manner. Just look into the guy's post history and you'll see he usually responds to disagreement by telling people they're too stupid to understand the finer arts of cinema. That's usually the level of discourse you can expect to see from people who make claims like "the woke brigade" is ruining their favorite turbo-nerd fandom. Gargling broken glass would be a more pleasant use of one's time.

[rhorle]

you mean the kingdom of Gondor and the region of ithilien to the east where these so called human tribes are living

Gondor and Ithilien were not founded yet. The Southlands, that the show is covering, is also further east. As Ithilien was between the river and the border mountains of Mordor. So no I mean Mordor or "Southlands". The show also hasn't made clear if Gondor exist as the only reference we have is Pelargir which predates it. There will have to be a time skip somewhere to get the later parts of the SA compressed.

It is a compressed timeline of events. So yes people are alive that were not in Tolkien Canon. I'm not sure why you are still using that as a sticking point when it is as dead of an issue. No need to keep bringing up the compression just to whine. Why should I open another race based discussion with you? It doesn't matter that Asian, Black, or any other ethnicity or skin tone exist in Rings of Power. It doesn't matter that Tolkien didn't have those things. It changes zero about the story and just shows that you are being racist just to be racist. A black, asian, or another non-white Frodo would change nothing about Lord of the Rings. Skin color is not important to anything.

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Hopefully this show will be quietly forgotten in a month.

The people that hate the show can't even stop talking about it. Why do you think any one will forget it?

[rogoth]

My post is more a commentary on the level of discourse in this thread than it is an attempt to debate the quality of writing and acting in Rings of Power. I'll give you a perfect example of what I was referring to:



Here's an example of disingenuous and lazy criticism of the series written by a poster who has spent months in this thread trashing the show before he even watched a minute of the first episode. This thread has been around for a long time and it's not difficult to go back and see what people were saying prior to the first episode airing. This poster is exactly the kind of person I was mocking in my original post. His mind was already made up that it wasn't going to be good all the way back in June:



Nobody with this much hostility towards a show months before its release can be trusted to give a "genuine and legitimate" critique of the final product, especially when it's fueled by culture war mind-rot they likely heard from some moron on Youtube. It's not difficult to see through the post hoc rationalization of why the show is bad when there's an obvious agenda behind it. Jonnysensible pointed out the appeals to authority and made up childish nonsense immediately because that's all that's behind the critique in the first place. People who are hellbent on not liking a thing will come up with all sorts of reasons to explain not liking the thing. It doesn't automatically follow that there's any validity to their reasons.

But this doesn't apply to everyone who takes issue with some or all aspects of the show. I don't mind reading critique made in good faith with actual substance to it. However, a significant portion of what's said here after every episode in this thread is anything but that.

And since I'm going to continue to be accused of defending the show, I'll just put it out there that I don't actually have strong feelings one way or the other about Rings of Power. They've obviously just started telling the story of Middle Earth's second age so there isn't going to be a string of immediate payoffs that people clearly want from it. Up until the past couple of episodes, they've mostly been establishing characters and locations for the larger story they want to tell. It's not nearly as bad as some people make it out to be, but I wouldn't say it's good either. It's honestly pretty mid. It has potential though, time will tell if they get there or not.

so let me get this straight, you make an asinine comment trying to defend this shit and trying (failing epically mind you) to be sarcastic with your wording, i then call you out on that, i also provide you with plenty of food for thought and give examples that you are clearly ignoring because they don't agree with your stance, and i give you plenty of jumping off points to go and search for yourself about the legitimate criticisms this show has received by people far more qualified than i am, hence my wording choice and repeating what i have seen from those individuals.

furthermore, i stated along with many others that this show was going to be DOA and a total flop based on everything that had been shown prior to release, lo and behold! it's a massive flop of titanic proportions all because of the reasoning provided prior to any actual footage being seen, it's almost like this sort of thing has happened before, and based on past experience it's possible to make an educated guess at how much of a clusterfuck the shit coming out of america these days os going to be long before any actual footage is seen, if that's not a damning statement on the entire industry then i don't know what is.

finally, if you're not actually liking the show too much as you seem to want to claim, why would you word things in such a way as to defend this shit and seemingly berate and attack people who are rightly calling out everything wrong with the show, it seems very counterproductive to be lumped in with the sycophantic muppets in this thread who can't seem to get the amazon shaped phallus out of their mouth long enough to string together a cohesive sentence, and yet somehow i'm the bad guy here?, honestly you have lost me with your train of thought and how you arrive at your obviously wrong conclusions, i'm also not entirely sure what quoting something i said a while back (which turned out to be factually true after the fact), has to do with the point you're trying to make, other than as a hail mary to try and make me seem less credible than someone else here.

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Gondor and Ithilien were not founded yet. The Southlands, that the show is covering, is also further east. As Ithilien was between the river and the border mountains of Mordor. So no I mean Mordor or "Southlands". The show also hasn't made clear if Gondor exist as the only reference we have is Pelargir which predates it. There will have to be a time skip somewhere to get the later parts of the SA compressed.

It is a compressed timeline of events. So yes people are alive that were not in Tolkien Canon. I'm not sure why you are still using that as a sticking point when it is as dead of an issue. No need to keep bringing up the compression just to whine. Why should I open another race based discussion with you? It doesn't matter that Asian, Black, or any other ethnicity or skin tone exist in Rings of Power. It doesn't matter that Tolkien didn't have those things. It changes zero about the story and just shows that you are being racist just to be racist. A black, asian, or another non-white Frodo would change nothing about Lord of the Rings. Skin color is not important to anything.

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The people that hate the show can't even stop talking about it. Why do you think any one will forget it?

the fact these clowns who wrote this garbage have got isildur and anarion alive during this, means that the realm of Gondor already exists in my mind because of how badly they have bastardised all the other lore they are supposed to be referencing, the kingdom of Gondor was founded in the later years of the second age shortly before the mustering of the last alliance and it was this kingdom that was drafted to help the elves at the behest of gil-galad, and so because of that reason the 'southlands' as they seem to want to call it are just Gondor and ithillien, and prior to the destruction of Nurn and the founding of Mordor the region of ithillien stretched from the morranon to the region that would later become known as the morgul vale.

[rhorle]

the fact these clowns who wrote this garbage have got isildur and anarion alive during this, means that the realm of Gondor already exists in my mind

So you admit you are discussing the show in bad faith. As you are creating your own version of the show just to further complain. The Southlands on the show are not Gondor and Ithillien. It is Mordor, Nurn, and other surrounding parts. What could be called "Gondor and Ithillien" on the show is Pelargir. The Ephel Duath mountains seperate Mordor and Gondor. Minas Ithil (Minas Morgul) is on the western edge of those mountains and was the eastern most part of Gondor (and Ithillien). The Southlands thus doesn't contain anything of Gondor on the show as it was to the east of the Ephel Duath.

Did you even watch the show? Because all of this would be clear if you did. There is no reason to ignore Tolkien's own lore and invent your own head canon in order to criticize this show. There are plenty of real things to complain about so delusion and lies have no place.

[Trumpcat]

... It changes zero about the story and just shows that you are being racist just to be racist. A black, asian, or another non-white Frodo would change nothing about Lord of the Rings. Skin color is not important to anything...

But it is, it's called genotype. Skin color is a physical trait of hereditary information and has been developed through evolution under certain environmental factors. Native populations in the tropical and tropical to temperate equatorial zones have darker or "black" skin tones as a natural means to protect from the sun rays. Whereas native populations in the temperate and temperate to polar equatorial regions have lighter or "white" skin tones which tend to produce vitamin D at a much higher rate than "black" skin under less intense sunlight, again, this is nature's way for providing for these populations, so to speak.

The "skin color that doesn't matter" means there are equatorial dwarves, elves, humans and... harfoots, who have moved out of their arid/desert/jungle equatorial regions to Middle Earth and have established themselves to become part of the societies there. As we can see, however, they are rare in between largely "white" populations, yet have retained very distinctly darker skin colors, aka their genotype is largely unchanged. The only way for this to occur is if over however long they've spent in Middle Earth they have reproduced only exclusively with each other, however, the show presents to us the fact that they have not reproduced with each other and have "mixed" parentage, for example the queen's white father and others. This would change the backgrounds of numerous characters and societies, the entire world in fact.

So we reach three roadblocks:
1. The above population thing never happened in Tolkien's work.
2. It is genetically impossible to retain strongly expressed physical traits of a minor genotype over thousands of generations
3. Even if we know nothing about how life works, we should have a minimal reasoning to deduct that different race individuals don't just randomly materialize here and there among a population.

Therefore the only conclusion is to assume the showrunners expect their nonsensical world to be believable only if the viewers are stupid.