I have warmed to the series. Visuals are great. The story is good. Characters are developing.
I have read all of the Hobbit and LOTR books more than once. I have watched all 6 movies in the extended form multiple times. I have read about a dozen of Tolkien’s other books. If I was looking for pure Tolkien, maybe I would hate the series, but I am watching it as a standalone series. After all it was written by people who weren’t even alive when Tolkien died.
Maybe you should give it a chance on that basis.
BTW Rotten Tomatoes gives it an audience rating of 80%. which is pretty good. The majority that pan it are Tolkien purists. Thing is, they don’t understand the contractual limitations that Amazon had in this production. They simply could not just do a continuation of the LOTR series.
So, I think if you go into it with an open mind (I mean “hate” viewing starts off in a no win scenario, Yes?), divorce it from previous Tolkien shows, and watch 2 or 3 episodes, you may even like it. I have.
Gotta confess, I struggled to stay awake for the first one. Figured a lot of it would be “boring exposition”, but it didn’t get any better.
Guyladriel just bugged me right from the start. I even quipped she seemed like a Karen In Training, and she Could Do No Wrong, and right after, people were saying she was “a Karen and a Mary Sue”. Didn’t know what a MS was, goggled it, and died laffing when I saw.
Then quips like the whole rock vs ship thing… wtf?? What were they smoking when they came up with that? That didn’t even make any sense. Like, are they trying to make that rubbish “sound deep” or something? I woke up and was all like, “Wait… what? What was that? Did they actually say that?”. Urg…
And Hobo Baggins and the rest of the unwashed Hobbits Harfeet? I was expecting to see some tent-city for bums.
Don’t get me started on the fight scenes. Impressive to an 8yo, maybe, but they just made me cringe.
The visuals were pretty impressive, but everything else was/is a slow-burning dumpster fire.
Naw, sorry. I don’t even consider myself a JRR Tolkien (or even JK Tolkien, if you’re Sunny Hostin :person_facepalming: ) fan, never read any of the books, so I’m not a “purist” in any sense, nor really had any ax to grind. But ROP to me is just, objectively, pure trash. Lousy unlikeable characters, atrocious dialogue, boring to the point of being sleep-inducing, and not even “bad fan-fiction” as others claim, as to be a fan, you wouldn’t go well out of your way to murder the source material. So it’s just bad fiction.
Even normies who were looking forward to ROP were disappointed.
This is not a standalone series though. It’s based on an existing property. They advertised it as a Lord of the Rings series so of course it is being judged against the written source material
Rotten Tomatoes’ critic score is bought and paid for. Much like the so-called “Super Fan” video about the trailer was a sponsored farce. Look it up, the “influencers” who took part in that video do not make content about this series. One of them even admitted they haven’t watched it but are currently watching Game of Thrones. (what a LOTR superfan!) The highest audience score for this show is coincidentally on IMDB, a site that Amazon owns.
You’ve seen the contract personally? Otherwise you understand their contractual limitations as well as other fans. People are well-aware that the show-runners only have rights to the appendices.
You don’t need to be a purist to see the glaring differences in how this show was “adapted” compared to Peter Jackson’s trilogy. They didn’t just adapt the source material, they attempted to “revise” it and have said as much. They wanted to “update” Middle Earth to better reflect today’s world. Middle Earth is not an allegory, Tolkien hated allegory. It is not meant to mirror today’s world. Galadriel was already powerful and respected in the lore and one of the eldest of her race. In the show she acts like an angry teen and gets treated like one by a lot of other characters. Why? The showrunners didn’t care about portraying the actual character Galadriel. It appears that they wanted to portray sexism and fighting back against the “patriarchy.” That is probably why they also made some of the elves appear old which is completely against the lore as they maintain an ageless appearance after reaching maturity.
We shouldn’t have to divorce a show called Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power from all other things Lord of the Rings to watch it. The writers should have made an attempt not to contradict what came before instead of deliberately contradicting it.
Same backlash about making The Little Mermaid black. They could’ve called it “A Little Mermaid”, or had it about the actual black mermaid Gabriella with the pet octopus and called the movie…. wait for it… wait for iiiiiiiiiiiit… “Gabriella”.
I got nothing against a mermaid who’s black, or oriental, or half-squid, or whatever, but they’re deliberately tearing down established IP, Just Because.
Lookit what they did to “Halo”. The Master Chef would, like never ever take off his helmet, and was it the very first episode he takes it off, then later gets completely nekkid? People said the same about Judge Dredd and his helmet (never followed, so no idea).
Rather than coming out with something original, they’ll buy some IP, and instead of going with established lore, the established universe, etc., they just put their own stank on it and turn it into something completely different.
And now I hear we’re supposed to get a Kinder Gentler James Bond, too. :person_facepalming:
And they were caught in the act! Screencaps that would show the exact same numeric distribution only all the 1s were deleted! Total counts dropped, score was raised by the now-lack-of-any-1s, and they got totally pwned by everyone who was watching and quite publicly calling them out on it! It was beautiful! (And they finally put ’em back, citing a “technical glitch”, no doubt. Yuh-huh, sure.)
Yeah, that chick on the far right of the “superfans” was watching HOD instead of ROP, but she’s a ROP superfan!! :laughing:
Or the clown who thought Sauron was hot and “want[ed] to fix him”. :person_facepalming:
Kinda like Jar Jar Abrams “rebooting” Star Trek. So like EVERY bit of what happened in all the serieses and movies up to that point was… gone.
Nope. Haven’t watched a single ST movie since then.
Regarding the casting of the Little Mermaid: In the past, movies like Gettysburg (1993) were painstakingly cast with an eye for getting as close as possible to photos of the actual historical figures. Good casting will always enhance a movie. It’s true, Ariel is not General Longstreet and is not a historical figure. But it’s also true that Ariel’s red hair and fair complexion have become iconic, in no small part due to Disney’s own trademarking efforts. Ariel has looked a very specific way for 33 years now.
I don’t believe for a second that they had a lineup of talented redheaded actresses and ended up choosing Halle Bailey as the most Ariel-like performance. I would bet money that they had the idea that a black Ariel would be “revolutionary” so they went into casting looking specifically for a person of color in the music industry.
Disney is basically saying, “Race doesn’t matter, why do you care that she is a different race now, racists!” But at the same time they are intentionally miscasting established characters by selecting actors for their race. This is hypocritical and dishonest.
Regarding Amazon reviews: Yea I saw the reviews disappear and then reappear. Was looking at the 1-star reviews while they were at 3% and realized right away that some had been deleted. There is no way that a technical error just coincidentally made the 1-star reviews disappear. It’s been clear for a while now that Amazon manipulates reviews. I think Amazon deletes reviews all the time for companies that claim they have improved their products but really didn’t (I’m sure other false pretenses exist). Movies on Amazon also rarely dip below a 4 star rating. I would be shocked if large studios don’t have some tools for cleaning out “unfair” reviews as that would explain why the truly niche b-movies have low scores but that garbage movies from major studios have 4 stars.
For anyone who doesn’t know, Fakespot can tell you whether a product has had it’s reviews manipulated. It isn’t perfect but it helps.
Regarding “Fixing” Sauron: That would be the definition of bad fanfic.
Regarding modern Star Trek movies: Alternate timelines actually play a big part in some Trek storylines so establishing the new movies as a separate timeline actually made sense to me. It also gives them the option to directly adapt the original versions of the characters later on without having to ret-con the new movies. The new Trek movies are more Star Wars than Star Trek, but I find them fun at least.
Yap, absolutely. That’s why when I saw Lane Smith case as RM Nixon ages ago, I couldn’t help but think they got the perfect goy for the role. It gives it an authenticity that immerses you in the movie and you don’t have to keep mental notes, “Oh, right, the tall blonde guy is supposta be Nixon…”.
That’s the problem. They want to virtue-signal, and then have an excuse (like for ROP, “Woman King”, etc.) if or when it flops on its face, “It’s those -ist and -phobe trolls out there! And if you don’t go see it, you’re an -ist and a -phobe!”. Pretty convenient.
“House of Dragon” was getting beat up on initially because, “Oh, here we go again… more race-swapping, more woke trash.”, but it’s GOOD. Has good dialogue, acting, story, etc. I was never into GOT so haven’t seen any HOD yet (Hell, I can’t even catch up on serieses I was watching), but everything I’m hearing is that it’s quite good, and is picking up audience share with each week, while ROP is losing more and more.
Like, you don’t cast Jason George as George Washington. George Washington Carver, maybe, but…
(Actually, that’d be a pretty fascinating movie, as GWC was an inventing Chad.)
And doesn’t even make sense. Imagine “recasting” a movie like “Bambi” with a dog instead of a deer. Like, whut?
Plus they’re changing the storylines, both “Snow White” and “Little Mermaid”, rewritten so that they’re both not just looking for a man, because that would be, like, demeaning or something. “Yasss! Slay, kweeen!” Ugh. (And never mind that Prince Charming is tearing up the countryside trying to find his boo.)
But now… no more planet Vulcan? We’re not talking the Gorn or Bolians or any less prominent species, but freaking Vulcan! Gone. Pouf.
I loved “The Terminator” because everything was nicely wrapped up with a bow and self-contained, just T2 coming out with the concept that The Machines can try, try, try again, snips and starts yanking out thread after thread after thread, that there’s now no resolution in sight. Like, why not go back to The Connor Family Clan back in whatever and wipe out one of SC’s or JC’s ancestors? It’s “revising” the timeline as it goes along, pushing Judgment Day forward or backward as appropriate.
But Jar Jar wiping out Vulcan completely obliterated everything that happened in existing- and post ST:TOS, so Every Single Series (sans “Enterprise”) simply no longer existed!
Well, this is certainly educational for me. I wasn’t aware that the fairy tales upon which the Disney fantasy movies for children are based had characters with “established” races.
Maybe it isn’t about virtue-signaling. Maybe it’s about little kids finally seeing a main character, or even just a decent character, in a major movie that looks like them. Maybe it’s about acknowledging that these kids exist.
Disney “borrowed” those fairy tales and each has a country of origin. The Little Mermaid is a Danish tale so even if it is not explicitly stated, it can easily be assumed that the mermaid should look like the average person from that geographical location during the period the story was written. I wouldn’t agree with taking a folk tale from Africa and then casting a caucasian lead either. It wouldn’t reflect the culture that birthed the tale.
And are we just going to ignore the fact that a character has looked a specific way for over 30 years in Disney’s own IP?
I consider the idea that characters are unrelatable unless they share the same skin tone and sex as me ridiculous. I never once watched a movie with a black character and thought, “Gee, this would be a great movie but I just can’t relate to this guy because he is black.” I don’t think teaching kids that they need fictional characters to look like them in order to enjoy a work of fiction is healthy.
That being said, there’s already a princess of color who hasn’t gotten the live-action treatment. Tiana from The Princess and the Frog was sitting right there waiting for her live action moment. But instead Disney opted to change an established character. I can reach no other conclusion than that Disney did this to signal something.
Imagine if you were a red-headed actress who dreamed of playing Ariel your whole life. How would you feel about that casting decision?
If the message is that black people lost roles they should have won in the past and now it is the caucasian people’s turn, I think that’s an idiotic idea. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Seems like a way to foster resentment rather than improve race relations.
If the message is that Disney doesn’t see race, I call BS on that.
Edit: Forgot to ask, what about the kids with red hair? What are they, chopped liver?
And yes, the Fairy Tales do have established types. Just look at any of the illustrated books of fairy tales. Look at the last 40 plus years of movies and cartoons based on them. I think this would definitely establish a baseline.
But what many object to (including me) is the blatant social manipulation that is being attempted, at the expense of the storyline for well established series/movies/franchises.
So if “like faces” is really the goal, just start a new franchise… If you can sell it. It is disingenuous to play on previous successes, only to warp them almost beyond recognition in order to jam a specific world view down people’s throats. Disney has had some recent flops, so I would think that if they are hit in their bottom line, maybe they will rethink this approach.
So, while I agree with most of what Lightbringer says above, and as this started in discussion of ROP, I am trying to let that series stand on its own.
Honestly though, after 5 episodes, I am struggling to really like it. As my brother told me though, “it is not great, but it is lots better than many other options available right now”.
I wish I could love ROP. Good fantasy is so hard to come by. I kind of lost faith in GoT after the last series ended. I’m loath to pick up another. ROP would have been the ticket if they hadn’t wasted the potential so badly. Even though they have access to just the appendices they have still managed to leave out some great material that fans like myself would have loved.
The country of origin doesn’t determine the race or appearance of any human character in a fairy tale. And this has nothing to do with white characters taking roles written by Africans about Africans. It’s just about being decent and acknowledging that the audience for these movies isn’t all white.
The strident concern about sticking strictly to the racial makeup of the actors in past movie versions of these fairy tales is unsupported by any aspect of the basic stories upon which the movies are based. And such fairy tales, and the movie versions of them, have always changed to reflect the values and the factual realities of the times. If they didn’t, few people would pay to see them.
…I’m rewatching Warehouse 13 (watched it when it aired. Finding I don’t remember much of it that well…) because SyFy (never did like the name change) decided to re-air it, but I got my own er…“set”. Probably watch Eureka next
I am enjoying RoP and HoD. I just remind myself its a TV show and get over it.
Give HOD a shot. Again, I never watched GOT so can’t comment personally, but everything I’m hearing is that the last season or at least last few eps pretty much sucked. But HOD is killer.
That’s the one with Saul Rubinek? He’s wonderfully annoying in everything he’s in. :laughing:
I got all of W13 on actual dvds, but only watched a handful of eps. Again, time time time…
More convenient at this point to just purloin the online versions (coff!) vs dusting off the physical media.
I might even have “Eureka” on dvd somewhere, from back when Target, Worst Buy, Circus Shiity, etc., had blowout sales for like 15bux/season of assloads of shows.
What was that series with the Max Headroom guy, Frewer? They go around exploring different “sightings” and “phenomena” and such. That was on teevee late-nights and was pretty good.
Oh yeh, we always called it “the Skiffy channel”. :laughing:
Evidence shows otherwise. There is a clear trend in the art related to these characters over time.
Nice underhanded insult. And again, why not just adapt The Princess and the Frog? Why not write a story about an new mermaid character? And what about red-headed kids? They are a minority too. If they are reduced to the color of their skin as “just more white people”, what does that say?
That was an example. It’s the reverse of what is being done in this instance. I could cast a white person for a role in an African folk tale and argue that the tale didn’t explicitly state the color of the characters skin and that it was all imaginary. I could also point out that technically a white person could have been there for some reason and that white people are born in Africa today. And I would be wrong to make that casting choice on those assertions. There is no good reason to do what I have proposed with an African folk tale just as there is no good reason to cast Ariel against her established design of 30+ years.
Except for the aspect of those fairy tales being the product of different countries with their own cultures. Some of them definitely take place in settings that are clearly inspired by the customs of the regions where they were written.
What value are we enshrining by making Ariel black? Why must this character be changed rather than adapting an existing poc character or writing a new one?
What reality is this change depicting? That black people live in the US where the movie was made? The African folk tale with a caucasian lead could be justified by saying that white people born natively in Africa today. But what would be the point?
Although representation is important overall, I don't personally care very much about a character's gender, race, or sexual orientation.
What I care about is if the piece of media has good acting and writing, a good script, good music, and if the piece of media is entertaining--y'know, is it any good?
Did anyone see the play Hamilton?
Many real-life white characters were played by black and brown people, and that play is amazingly entertaining.
