Lord of the Rings - [Amazon] *Spoilers*

I have to say I don't get the hate for the Southlands/Mordor title card thing. I didn't really think anything of it at the time, but in a show packed full of cringe moments, particularly any scene with the Harfoot, I really struggle to see how that could stand out as cringe-inducing.

The show is entertaining but I'm surprised Amazon got so much about it wrong. It looks fantastic but the cast are mostly awful, total charisma voids.

The only dynamic that actually works on some level is Elrond and Durin. Also, Peter Mullan as the Dwarf King and the guy playing Adar are excellent, but outside of that virtually everyone is so perplexingly wooden.

The only thing that really saves it - in the sense of making it watchable - are the strong visuals and scale.

So Celeborn is supposedly dead too but obviously he is still alive. If he and Finrod both died then they'd be walking around Valinor anyway so why would Galadriel jump off her ship that was going there? I can't help but think that the mentioning of Celeborn was filmed after the series was otherwise completed and someone (possibly Bezos himself as he was supposed to have ordered changes after visiting the set) said "so what about Celeborn?"

I reckon Celeborn is being held by Sauron somewhere and being turned into an orc like Adar. If only there was some heroic female character that could bust in and save him just in time.

:-)🙃

It's interesting how effectively they managed to gaslight actual fans of the source material. I feel kind of bad for some of them as I think they genuinely believed that this show was being "attacked" by this weird army of internet trolls and some of them came out to honestly try and defend people in their community who were being targeted.

They even managed to get all four of the original hobbits to wear those silly t-shirts and managed to even get the official Star Wars Twitter account to retweet them about it. On one hand it's very admirable to stand up to racism. On the other hand I am deeply, deeply, suspicious about the motivations here.

The Hollywood Reporter released this fluff piece for the show: The Rings of Power Showrunners Break Silence on Fandom Backlash and Season 2 – The Hollywood Reporter

Obviously, nothing we haven't seen before for an entertainment product. A lot of these outlets exist for this kind of thing. However, there is one quote that just feels a bit sinister to me "Tolkien’s world has a long, unfortunate history of attracting fascist-adjacent admirers". For me there is a deliberate agenda being set there. If you are maybe just a little bit too vocal about not enjoying this then maybe you could be one of those people. Even worse if you object to the show as a Tolkien fan because don't you know that "Italy’s newly elected far-right nationalist leader, Giorgia Meloni, for example, has been an outspoken Tolkien fan, unhelpfully"?

Yet, if we are being honest about it, the show barely attempts to follow Tolkien's lore. They introduce a pretty expansive list of their own original characters and when we do see a named character from Tolkien there is always some kind of undermining of the source material. If Halbrand is indeed Sauron, then even something as simple as the text stating that Galadriel is the only one to not trust Sauron in his fair form is completely reversed, for some reason.

The writers can claim whatever they want but the proof is right there in the final product. They have NO intention of sticking to the source material outside of place names and character names. I mean in season one alone they've managed to somehow invent a fourth Silmaril out of nowhere AND have it be responsible for the creation of Mithril AND make it that the elves need Mithril for their race to survive. Oh but they are all about the books and respect for the source material.

We already know what ends the second age.

War of the Last Alliance

Isildur cuts the One Ring from Sauron's hand in the Last Combat on Orodruin

And not what we saw in PJ movies, there wasn't an outstretched hand.

Yea i agree with you. Frankly i dont care about this show. Or at least i wont after the 'big reveal' next week - assuming it happens, and they dont just have Halbrand pretend to be nice for another few seasons. Morbid curiosity has me continue to watch, just to see what daft idea they come out with next. But im out after this season

The attack on the Fandom is what angers me, and yes, i consider myself a fan. I have read the Hobbit, LOTR, and watched the movies. Granted i have yet to conquer the Silmarillion, but i am a fan of Tolkien. Conflating dislike of the show, with racism, and or bigotry - labeling us all 'toxic fans' - its absurd, and uncalled for. What truly angers me is the Main Stream Media's acquiescence to this spin. Very few journalists have properly attacked the show, and cited the valid criticisms we all have. Instead they just toe the line. While the other side belittles those offering valid criticism (see below)

What infuriates me further are this shows place within the culture war. There is a 'with us or against us' tone to the whole sorry saga now. As a left wing person, i am finding some of my peers defending the show against my criticism. None of these are ACTUAL TOLKIEN FANS, yet thanks to ROP's publicity, many feel you must like this show. OR ELSE you are [insert ism of choice]. I no longer discuss it with all but two of my friends (coincidentally they are Tolkien fans)

This has nothing to do with any particular "wing" of politics. There are people of all political shades that don't care for this TV show. Don't be suckered by cheap American culture war nonsense generated by a multi billion dollar business concern and divisive US media, both of which are interested only in their bottom line.

Never ceases to amaze me how easily people are roped into this Team A/Team B bullshit all the time. If you don't like this crap, just back out and leave it to the folk who think they actually get something out of this. You're losing nothing at the end of the day.

This show, like the vast majority of TV today, is simply "content". It's designed for people who just want to sit down and fill an hour of their life. It's not designed for anyone who's interested in more or, actual, Tolkien fans. It's an unfortunate circumstance of an extremely minor nature that the show didn't turn out as good as people hoped it would. But beyond that, it's all just noise that's undeserving of getting worked up about.

Galadriel ends up with One of The Rings . She is too important to be ditched . And I think while we can't empathise with her there is a good reason .

She IS a cold heartless character , who believes herself superior to all the other elves even and was almost corrupted herself by the Ring. Cate Blanchett played this well only softening for Gandalf and Frodo because they have something ( the Ring ) in common.

We don't have to like all the characters , but I agree a lot are not well formed and too much action happens off camera and we the viewer are catching up or being rushed into catching up .

Storyrunners should be sacked .

I'm a little hazy on the exact details but although she gets one of the three rings for the Elves she doesn't actually use it as she distrusts them. I always remember her character as being aloof to the plight of man in particular but was very active in protecting her realm.

I never got the feeling she was a cold heartless, borderline psycho that this show has made her out to be. They had an easy winner on their hands by just sticking even remotely to her arc in LOTR lore.

Fir me, she's a symptom, not a cause for what ails this show. It's writers are somewhat incompetent, directors and editors are all over the place. In fact, this show has all the hallmarks of the studio execs having their fingerprints all over this with how disjointed the entire storyline is.

She was distrustful of Annatar, the "Lord of Gifts".

@liamtech

A show becomes the "greatest TV series ever" by targeting the average audience, a group that makes up the largest viewership of the four quadrants that media companies are interested in. But, in any case, I wouldn't be putting any stock whatsoever in the empty blurbs of a billion dollar conglomerate. It is, however, very clear that Amazon had no real intention of remaining anywhere near to being true to Tolkien's worlds and therefore weren't interested in the wants of Tolkien's fans. Instead they're after a much, much, wider audience indeed.

I know relatively little about 'Star Trek' beyond the original series and a smattering of the Next Generation. Nothing has interested me since. But frankly, I always considered the Federation to be a bit on the fascist side. But that's another story.

In any case, with regards to 'The Rings of Power', all we are seeing here is a corporate business concern using "ists" and "isms" to pre-empt criticism of their "property". That's merely a damage control limitation and certainly not anything that can be attributed to a political stance. But once again, I see people getting suckered into the support of a Team A and a Team B, largely irrespective of their actual political allegiances, assuming they have any in the first place and it is, sadly, an all too common trend these days, when all that a movie company or other business entity gives a crap about is their profit.

However, the viewer's bottom line should always be this...is it good? Yes, I'll keep watching. Is it bad, I'll tune out.

While this show has some good moments, scenery and cgi.

I have to say, overall its a bit sh1te.

Not interested in all the politics behind peoples viewpoints. I Just like good TV and I dont think this is it. Which is a pity.

I don't think it's the worst show ever and there are parts that have been entertaining with the Stranger, Adar, Elrond and the dwarves etc. And most of the settings and landscapes look great too but most of that is undone with the show's flaws.

People here have mentioned the scale of the show as a positive but I'd say the opposite and it's detracted from the show and it's one of its big weaknesses.

The vast area of the Shadowlands has taken place in one small village and outpost. Numenor with all their might set out to battle the evil of middle earth with just 3 ships and 300 men. Large distances are travelled in what appears to be a matter of days. All of this leads to middle earth appearing like a small inconsequential landmass, with the battle in episode 6 being more akin to a tavern brawl than an epic battle. Halbrand then becomes King of this mighty region of 50 people.

There are also so many inconsistencies that it makes it really difficult to suspend disbelief and get immersed in the show. The most memorable of these was when Galadriel, the Elven Lord and commander of the northern armies tells Halbrand not to kill Adar, they need him alive. Literally 5 minutes later she lunges at his throat with a knife, just seconds after telling him she'll keep him alive until she kills every orc, and she's only stopped when Halbrand appears at the door.

And then Mt. Doom suddenly appears in the distance because why not, everything is just a stone's throw away.

I'm not even going to get into the plot, dialogue and the number of unlikeable characters. It's difficult to like characters when they mostly just bicker.

I really wanted to like the show and I've stuck with it in the diminishing hope of it improving but it's been bland at best and thoroughly unenjoyable at worst.

I'm curious as to what people actually enjoy about it.

wokeness is real though and if affects how they setup the characters and story line or how scenes are setup, overall the show has nerfed the male characters (unless they are "evil") so that they dont overshadow the female ones, every other scene with Galadriel for example seems to be with teenage boys, why? because teenage boys have no gravitas so she "shines" in all her scenes. It just sets up a show that cant be great cos it either encourages bad writing or forces it. So independently indeed the show is badly written out of lazyness etc but its also systemically badly written cos they set it up

The best one can do is mock these shows into oblivion and demonstrate to their money people that they are leaving too much money on the table, especially as their businesses are declining recently so they must be hurting. Anyway just a week or 2 to go and can put a lid on it and let it go down a memory hole.

I like it , like it a lot , hence I continue to watch it , along with wheels of time its not exactly how I would have gone if I was the showrunner but I look forward to it each week and I respect the filmmakers right to make the changes they think will improve the show.

As a fan of the genre , this is the golden age of Fantasy on tv , Big books are getting big treatments with real investments behind them.

There is always a vocal crowd on here who put down every Fantasy show , see even early GOT seasons had some of the folks shouting down how crap they think it was.

I really think you should just stop watching and find a show you like and enjoy that instead of winding yourself up every week .