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TV: The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power - Amazon Prime Series

Watched the first episode, it was hard to stay awake. Found it dull and not at all interesting
 
It often looked impressive, but it didn't really feel like LotR to me and the storytelling is nothing like Tolkien's. Two hours into Peter Jackson's movie trilogy (which was the same length as this season), you had a clear idea of what the story was and the characters were already quite along in their journey. So far, this story is less defined, less interesting and less cohesive. I found the characters mostly unlikable or uninteresting and the modern hairstyles on several characters distracting. I, too, found it hard to stay awake and actually went to bed early without finishing the first episode. I did wake up early and make it through both, but found my attention wandering. I wouldn't have thought that LotR could be boring.
 
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Osprey said:
It often looked impressive, but it didn't really feel like LotR to me and the storytelling is nothing like Tolkien's. Two hours into Peter Jackson's movie trilogy (which was the same length as this season), you had a clear idea of what the story was and the characters were already quite along in their journey. So far, this story is less defined, less interesting and less cohesive. I found the characters mostly unlikable or uninteresting and the modern hairstyles on several characters distracting. I, too, found it hard to stay awake and actually went to bed early without finishing the first episode. I did wake up early and make it through both, but found my attention wandering. I wouldn't have thought that LotR could be boring.
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I will agree that 2 hours into the LotR trilogy you had a good idea of most characters (obviously many you don't even see until the next movie), but 2 hours is just after the Council of Elrond when they are trying to head south or cross over a mountain pass unsuccessfully. The plot has not actually advanced much at this point. Since this is intending to be a multi-season show (5 seasons?), they definitely seem to be pacing things a bit slower with more world building and exposition than we even got at the start of the Fellowship of the Ring.

Overall though I struggle to take any book fans seriously if they complain about pacing here. The LotR is terribly paced, it's packed with world building and descriptions while the plot does not actually progress very quickly except in spurts. A lot of the changes Jackson made to the series was "fixing" pacing so the 3 movies would be quicker paced overall in a ~9 hour period than just straight adapting the books would have been.
 
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Episode 1 was exactly as slow as e.g. John Campea said it was. And dull. Episode 2 was better. But this is definitely taking it's time building the world/characters. Wheel Of Time didn't find the gear in my opinion until episode 4 so maybe this will get going around episode 4 as well?
 
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Blender said:
I will agree that 2 hours into the LotR trilogy you had a good idea of most characters (obviously many you don't even see until the next movie), but 2 hours is just after the Council of Elrond when they are trying to head south or cross over a mountain pass unsuccessfully. The plot has not actually advanced much at this point. Since this is intending to be a multi-season show (5 seasons?), they definitely seem to be pacing things a bit slower with more world building and exposition than we even got at the start of the Fellowship of the Ring.
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At the Council of Elrond, Elves, Men, Dwarves and Hobbits came together and decided that the Ring should be destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom, Frodo volunteered for the task, representatives of the rest of the races volunteered to accompany him and the party set out. That established the general "story" of LotR: an alliance of races on a trek to a distant land to destroy a powerful item so that it doesn't fall into enemy hands. It doesn't matter to what I'm saying that they haven't made much progress on that trek by the 2-hour mark. What matters is that we understand what's going on and can easily summarize it if asked. I don't think that we can say that about this show so far, and I agree that it's probably deliberate to pace things out for many seasons. I think that that's a mistake and putting the cart before the horse, though. I think that they should've started with a simple story to ease people back into the world and "hook" them and then gradually introduced complexity, as Tolkien did. After all, if you don't grab and retain viewers in the first season, it may not matter much what you have planned for later seasons.
 
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Jussi said:
Episode 1 was exactly as slow as e.g. John Campea said it was. And dull. Episode 2 was better. But this is definitely taking it's time. Wheel Of Time didn't find the gear in my opinion until episode 4 so maybe this will get going around episode 4 as well?
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I just hope we're past the exposition dumps that episode 1 had so much of. Galadriel, Eldron and Galadriel, Elrond and Gil-Galad, etc. it was just constant talking at each other about what is going on right now. I enjoyed episode 2 quite a bit even if it was "slow" or whatever.
 
Osprey said:
At the Council of Elrond, Elves, Men, Dwarves and Hobbits came together and decided that the Ring should be destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom, Frodo volunteered for the task, representatives of the rest of the races volunteered to accompany him and the party set out. That established the general "story" of LotR: an alliance of races on a trek to a distant land to destroy a powerful item so that it doesn't fall into enemy hands. It doesn't matter to what I'm saying that they haven't made much progress on that trek by the 2-hour mark. What matters is that we understand what's going on and can easily summarize it if asked. I don't think that we can say that about this show so far, and I agree that it's probably deliberate to pace things out for many seasons. I think that that's a mistake and putting the cart before the horse, though. I think that they should've started with a simple story to ease people back into the world and "hook" them and then gradually introduced complexity, as Tolkien did. After all, if you don't grab and retain viewers in the first season, it may not matter much what you have planned for later seasons.
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The story is no where near as world changing as the LotR so far (will likely get there since we know where this is headed), but I mostly know what is going on from the first 2 episodes:

- Galadriel is determined to hunt down Sauron and believes he is secretly rebuilding his forces. She has now linked up with a man from The Southlands where Arondir is currently investigating.
- Gil-galad is convinced the threat is gone and is devoting resources to new building projects.
- Elrond has been assigned to help Celebrimbor with a massive building project, but needs Dwarven resources to do it so he is trying to negotiate an alliance.
- Arondir is investigating growing evil in The Southlands. If you caught the map they showed on the screen, The Southlands consists of future Gondor and Mordor.
- Not sure what Nori is up to besides that she will play some role with the mystery meteor man.

6FFOQQN.png
 
Blender said:
The story is no where near as world changing as the LotR so far (will likely get there since we know where this is headed), but I mostly know what is going on from the first 2 episodes:

- Galadriel is determined to hunt down Sauron and believes he is secretly rebuilding his forces. She has now linked up with a man from The Southlands where Arondir is currently investigating.
- Gil-galad is convinced the threat is gone and is devoting resources to new building projects.
- Elrond has been assigned to help Celebrimbor with a massive building project, but needs Dwarven resources to do it so he is trying to negotiate an alliance.
- Arondir is investigating growing evil in The Southlands. If you caught the map they showed on the screen, The Southlands consists of future Gondor and Mordor.
- Not sure what Nori is up to besides that she will play some role with the mystery meteor man.

6FFOQQN.png
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That matches my point that one can't easily summarize the story so far, because there isn't just one. There are four or five.
 
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Osprey said:
That matches my point that one can't easily summarize the story so far, because there isn't just one. There are four or five.
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I don't see that as a negative though? Perhaps you do. I was expecting an expansive story with a lot of world building and a massive cast.
 
Osprey said:
It often looked impressive, but it didn't really feel like LotR to me and the storytelling is nothing like Tolkien's. Two hours into Peter Jackson's movie trilogy (which was the same length as this season), you had a clear idea of what the story was and the characters were already quite along in their journey. So far, this story is less defined, less interesting and less cohesive. I found the characters mostly unlikable or uninteresting and the modern hairstyles on several characters distracting. I, too, found it hard to stay awake and actually went to bed early without finishing the first episode. I did wake up early and make it through both, but found my attention wandering. I wouldn't have thought that LotR could be boring.
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I’ve only seen the first episode, but I suspect it will get much better.

LOTR had a lot of boring parts IMHO and with movies, you have to push the pace along faster in general.

I think the weight of the LOTR name and “most expensive series ever made” will have everyone’s expectations out of whack.

I searched on Google earlier today for reviews and two results next to each other had me laughing… basically were to the effect of:

“House of the Dragon blows Power of the Rings out of the water!”

“Power of the Rings puts House of the Dragon to shame!”

I’ll eventually watch both and enjoy them I’m sure. I’m not looking for masterpieces, but apparently I’m easily entertained since I liked Wheel of Time.
 
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Blender said:
I don't see that as a negative though? Perhaps you do. I was expecting an expansive story with a lot of world building and a massive cast.
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I don't see it as a negative, generally speaking. GoT started out the same way, with 4 or 5 stories that slowly converged over the seasons. It seems to me as though these writers are trying to emulate that. I just think that they should've tried to emulate Tolkien, whose world they're playing in and whose stories were simple on the surface and appealed to all ages.
 
Osprey said:
I don't see it as a negative, generally speaking. GoT started out the same way, with 4 or 5 stories that slowly converged over the seasons. It seems to me as though these writers are trying to emulate that. I just think that they should've tried to emulate Tolkien, whose world they're playing in and whose stories were simple on the surface and appealed to all ages.
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May be a difference in expectations here, because this is what I expected. Most of their promotional material and interviews were focused on how big and expansive the world is and that they would be deep diving into cultures in the world previous live action depictions had not.
 
Horrible dialogue very boring start. Looked good I guess but so did Lotr 20 years earlier...
 
The Waffler said:
Mostly speculation here, but I’ll put spoiler tags anyways.

The Stranger has to be young Gandalf, right?
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That would be a huge retcon but it's possible. I was leaning more towards a wizard created for the show that departs at the end of the series, or Sauron pretending to be a wizard.
 
Found the following on reddit:

"The focus is on the diversity in media coverage of it, but a lot of Tolkien fans who generally support and defend diverse casting hate it because there are some complicated rights issues (Amazon has to base all of this on minimal scraps of info in the LotR appendices as they aren’t allowed to use the actual lore book the Silmarillion) that mean it pretty much portrays entirely original content. It’s more like a fanfic than an adaptation in that sense (ie most of the characters are original to the show and the ones that aren’t differ drastically from their canon counterparts.)"


"Embracer Group bought all of the rights to LOTR and Middle Earth Ent. so Amazon only has access to what they specifically requested the rights too.

Amazon got shafted for not buying the rights outright when they had a chance, especially when you consider that Embracer bought them for about 1/3 less than Amazon was offered."



So none of the lore is going to be shown? I'm not sure what this means. Not like I actually know the lore anyways. I like the show regardless but it explains the bad reviews.
 
I have never hear of the Embracer Group before. I wonder why Amazon didn't just buy the rights to the Silmarillion as well? This would have given them the extra source material with less reliance on fan fiction.
 
Hammettf2b said:
Found the following on reddit:

"The focus is on the diversity in media coverage of it, but a lot of Tolkien fans who generally support and defend diverse casting hate it because there are some complicated rights issues (Amazon has to base all of this on minimal scraps of info in the LotR appendices as they aren’t allowed to use the actual lore book the Silmarillion) that mean it pretty much portrays entirely original content. It’s more like a fanfic than an adaptation in that sense (ie most of the characters are original to the show and the ones that aren’t differ drastically from their canon counterparts.)"


"Embracer Group bought all of the rights to LOTR and Middle Earth Ent. so Amazon only has access to what they specifically requested the rights too.

Amazon got shafted for not buying the rights outright when they had a chance, especially when you consider that Embracer bought them for about 1/3 less than Amazon was offered."



So none of the lore is going to be shown? I'm not sure what this means. Not like I actually know the lore anyways. I like the show regardless but it explains the bad reviews.
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There have already been things shown or referenced outside of the LOTR books. I don't know what their rights extend to, but it clearly is more expensive than the text of the book.
blueandgoldguy said:
I have never hear of the Embracer Group before. I wonder why Amazon didn't just buy the rights to the Silmarillion as well? This would have given them the extra source material with less reliance on fan fiction.
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The simple answer is likely that those rights have never been for sale.
 
The Crypto Guy said:
www.theverge.com

Amazon’s putting a three-day pause on reviews for The Rings of Power

Amazon is fighting back against review bombing.
www.theverge.com www.theverge.com

Yikes. Amazon trying to stave off the mass of bad reviews. Why not just fake the reviews like they do for most of their products. Nobody would know.
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Makes sense why they are doing it… a lot of people are angry this show is “woke” and are review bombing the show on purpose with bad reviews.

This is a massive investment for Amazon and I can’t exactly blame them for trying to stop the fake hate reviews based on some perceived political silliness.
 
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