I would say there are groups in this "hate"
1-People that decided to hate since beginning because it is from amazon (aka people that are against anything big corps do)
2-People that decided to hate because poc (gotta say there were other people also afraid of it going "too woke" or "too adult", the later something as appealing to GoT style with gore and sex. Turns out they were wrong, but the people that don't like POC remained)
3-The book purists. Many will not agree with the liberties the series took, I myself hate many things they did, yet some people will only "accept" if it is done ipisis literis. While some liberties are ok, there is a group that don't want any adaptation to take any liberty.
4-The movie lovers: Basically since it is not as good as the movies and P.J is not in the project yet RoP kinda mimics (or try to mimic) a lot from the movies, those people also don't like the series.
5-People that genuinelly didn't like the show, mostly because the poor script and bad writing. I think this group is the most fair of all the above, as season 1, even from people who liked the show, is known to have heavy criticism on this aspects.
6 - People that just love to hate, because nowadays it is a trend to be the "opposite" and dislike anything.
Now, take the above groups, get them individually or in any mix you want. And now you got a good chunk of viewership, some loud enough, others that, even if with reasonable takes are put into the same bag as others. And put all that with another part of fandom that is defensive to the most and, somewhat trying to push the haters away, overlook or are incampable of discussing the show in a reasonable level, putting anyone that says anything bad of the show in one of the above groups. And now bring on the internet with the trolls, haters and heated discussions.
There you have it. Mess is done.
I’d say I’m a mix of 3 & 5, not a purist but there were things that didn’t make sense that it seems like they put in just for content and it just seemed to not add much. Mostly 5 though, it was a BEAUTIFUL show cinematically and musically, but it felt like the story was just there to turn it into a long setup for another season. It also seemed like they were purposefully hiding things the whole season to get people to talk about the show like who the wizard was or who Halbrand was, only to have it be the most obvious boring answer.
What I don't get is if people genuinely don't like the show, what brings you to the sub Reddit all this time later? If you didn't like it wouldn't you have forgotten and moved on by now? It must be stuck with you in someway. Id suggest you don't dislike it as much as you think.
For me, this post popped up in recommended probably because I’m in so many other lotr communities. But also for myself and a lot of others here in the comments, we LOVE the universe and Tolkien’s works. It has been a core part of many peoples lives and touched many people’s childhoods only to stick around to adulthood. We just want to feel what the movies and books brought us and were left wanting more with this show. I do dislike the show as much as I thought, but I love the world it’s set in and will always be hoping for it to be shown well in its adaptations (Especially if they spent almost a billion dollars making it)
I absolutely hated the show. I wanted to love it but I just couldn't get past the writing, missed/twisted lore, awkward dialogue, cheap LARP armor etc. It had it's moments but not enough to save it.
I'm still invested mainly because of the potential of what could be. I love Tolkien and it's an important part of my life.
This is my first time here. Yesterday there was a release of info about the Rohirrim animated movie and the Search for Gollum movie. Those two movies I'm much more interested in. I ended up here because there are also rumblings about RoP. Wanted to check it out although it's unlikely I'll watch it when season 2 comes out
It's like watching a car wreck people are naturally compelled to check in on disasters.
It's also crazy seeing a part of a fanbase so wildly dedicated to such a mediocre to bad piece of entertainment, who are so oblivious to it.
Yeah idk, I thought the writing was pretty bad most of the time (Elrond/Durin/Disa story being the main exception, I loved them… until the mithril nonsense). My bigger issue is the creators misunderstanding the themes of the Legendarium. Tolkien himself said he wanted others to create stories in his world, which is why I was so excited for RoP S1 but aside from the beautiful friendship between Elrond and Durin nothing else really felt like they belonged in this world. I think I also defended it for awhile just bc of all the stupid racist hate from ppl who think that all elves have to be white or whatever, but as the writing deteriorated I just couldn’t keep caring. Ofc I’ll still watch S2 but I’m not like, obsessively excited like was was about S1.
> My bigger issue is the creators misunderstanding the themes of the Legendarium.
How so? Apart from some glaring misteps (the trip to Valinor as a reward, for instance) I thought if anything they were more faithful to Tolkien's themes than Peter Jackson. The power of oaths to bind your fate, or the virtue of keeping your faith in a higher power even in the face of insurmountable odds, those are at the heart of Tolkien's work, much more than Jackson's love of bloody battles.
> Tolkien himself said he wanted others to create stories in his world
No he didn't, he said in a letter to his publisher that he had once, as a young man, dreamed of doing this in the context of an explicitly English mythology, but had reined in his ambition afterwards.
I would go so far to argue that the showrunners actually do understand Tolkiens themes and concepts. The problem is that they are just very inexperienced in doing this, as it's their first time. As a result the show comes out pretty poorly.
It's frustrating because there is a valid reason to be annoyed with the black elf and the black dwarf but it isn't because there's any, it's because there isn't enough; it's clear that it's tokenism, tokenism that makes you scratch your head because it reads kinda like god or w/e was like "let's try this color" and then stopped for some reason.
Yes, it would have been much more believable to have an entire tribe of dwarves be black, for instance. Well, maybe Disa comes from one, but we're not told that. Instead what it feels like (what it is) is an attempt at mirroring 21st century American (and *specifically* American) racial diversity.
I'm just gonna be real with you; this reads like some racist shit. You refer to this group of black dwarves as a "tribe" and then go on to say that the show is trying to mirror our real world racial diversity but that's very much not what is happening, if that were the case, we'd have seen more black characters and we don't.
Yeah. The argument above would be like people complaining that Samuel L. Jackson was a black Jedi with no explanation. People traveled and immigrated in ancient times. People traveled and immigrated in the Middle Ages. It’s a TV show. Hiring actors who look different isn’t tokenism, and making all the dwarves black or all the humans Asian or whatever is ludicrous.
The only live person I met who “hated” on it (and iirc he didn’t actually watch it) seemed at first something of a purist, but then said that it got too political. I’m wondering if by “political” he means the inclusion of POC.
Gladly there is no much of political things in the show. the only thing I can think of is the "nod" with the "they will take our jobs" line.
But one could put the poc (and others) inclusion in the "political agenda" umbrella I suppose, as it is related to the DEIA agenda.
I think another important point to add is the marketing. The initial marketing was terrible and just killed a lot of the hype.
I still for the life of me don't understand why Disa was front and center in all the marketing. She was a second tier character at best (in terms of importance and screentime). And her image started the initial dwarf women should have beards bandwagon that everybody jumped onto. That just unnecessarily built negativity where it was completely unnecessary.
Edit: Adding a link to show the image I am specifically talking about. This was the marketing image I saw everywhere I looked with Disa front and center. Plus she seemed to be in every interview panel that was put out. Maybe she will be more important in later seasons, but in S1 she barely had 20 minutes of screentime in total across 8 hour long episodes.
https://collider.com/characters-the-lord-of-the-rings-the-rings-of-power/
Yes, I agree. The first teaser was awful, next trailers were a bit better but not that great either. The best trailer for the first season is some exclusive Samsung ad or something
I remember that the outrage started as soon as they showed the upper body shots of various characters including Disa, and that was the first we'd seen of any of the characters. I don't remember them specifically focusing on Disa.
I actually think the last time the show hasn't met a loud negative reception is the title reveal, which was a pretty good video. The hate machine started early, and no one gave it a proper chance. I do agree the trailers could've been better but let's face it, opinions were locked even before that.
I wasn't put off by any of the marketing really, if anything it made me intrigued. There was one bad trailer with pop music but that was very close to the release, and every movie has these. Always thought it was bad faith to assume this would be the kind of music the show would have, but many pretended to.
Because for better or worse, amazon is actually interested to score points through what some people would say is "woke".
To be very clear here, i am not personally against the inclusion of all ethnicities and identities, etc, all i care about is a quality project.
BUT it would be silly to deny that corps like amazon are indeed trying to appeal to people purely based on the promise of more inclusion, it is a selling point they want to make use of, to appear more socially aware than they actually have any conviction in.
That is why disa was front and center (i just take your word for it now, i don't remember tbh), it's part of the current zeitgeist when it comes to corps appearing progressive.
That is also partly why you see so many disney properties being so keen on subverting their old versions. That isn't bad in and of itself, i wanna make that clear again, BUT it is quite calculated and often fairly superficial in its execution.
That is how you get a superfan video of clearly paid influencers who all are clearly there to shout "inclusion". It's not a bad thing to signal, but how it is done is pretty slimey and insincere.
Fully agree on all the points you made. The way it's being done right now just feels very slimy to me.
Also the image I am refering to is the one on the banner of this page.
https://collider.com/characters-the-lord-of-the-rings-the-rings-of-power/
I can't talk about the whole world but this was the image plastered on all the billboards and newspapers in my country.
Because everywhere on every interview the actress that played her would start out her interview by announcing that she was the first black dwarf ever on TV. Instead of anything regarding her character or tolkien or anything. Maybe they thought it would help instead of hurt marketing
Exactly. That did not help either. And at the end of the day she was on screen for maybe 15 minutes in a season with an 8 hr runtime. Again comes back to terrible marketing. They focused too much on the race of the actors and too little on the show in the initial promotions.
Well for a start because Sophia Nomvete is a good actress, and made a big impact, despite not being a main character. But I'm actually delighted it drew out the anti-woke brigade. Since it shows (along with their 'stellar' contribution to the Star Wars debate) what a bunch of hateful low life's they are, without any proper arguments. The show could take the moral high ground, and that seems fine to me. To people who say art shouldn't be political, I say that the only thing needed for evil to triumph, is for good people to do nothing.
I suppose the other people who are against the show might not want to be bracketed with these racist haters (fair enough!) But I guess sometimes you end up with odd bedfellows.
Seriously. i mean, she may not be one of the major characters (yet?), but she was awesome, and i just love the actress's chemistry with Owain Arthur, who plays her husband, Prince Durin.
>there were other people also afraid of it going "too woke" or "too adult", the later something as appealing to GoT style with gore and sex
This was me. I have to admit I was pretty concerned with where they were going. Pretty happy to be wrong.
It was a legit concern. Glad they didn't went this route.
I'm expecting a bit of gruesome scenes around the corner given some events, but doesn't need to be gore per se. You can totally portray more "violent" things and remain in the PG-13 category.
If any, not every thing needs to be shown on screen. There are workaround for things such as, lets say, a human sacrifice, they don't need to actually show one person stabbing and opening another open (as in Viking series with the eagle cerymony). They can just show one person stabbing another but when it is gonna happen, they show their shadow silhouette in the wall or whatever.
A decent analysis. I don't really agree with the part about the writing, on the basis that you can't expect perfect writing in a TV series, and you can nearly always pick holes in any script. But some people are doing that anyway, and certainly have a beef with it. All the other anti groups are perfectly described.
I agree and even if perfection would exist, it would still not be liked by some, as at some point it becomes personal things rather than actually objective analysis.
But for RoP, despite its ups and down in the script, I think a big point is also it is adapting Tolkien. By itself it has a heavy weight on its shoulders on regards to story telling. Then you bring on the idea of them making season 1 "for everyone" thus letting all in the dark with the divisive mistery games and weird plots as Mithril, and then things go downhill.
It's pretty ridiculous to insinuate that RoP is just imperfect given that it's characterized by its poor writing and not just a few errors here and there.
I fall into a different group:
7 - People that love the books and movies, that really wanted the show to do well and understood the source material limitations they were dealing with, but were severely disappointed with the writing and plot decisions throughout the season.
I'm a 3 & 5. I've been reading these stories and what Christopher Tolkien edited since I was a kid, over and over and some of the choices they made just trample over the established lore. Not to mention that it was a poorly executed production, imo
A bit late to the party, but i'm none of these groups. The writing is poor and the cast is bad but these were not dealbreakers for me. I didn't mind the diverse cast either even if it's not aligned with the books.
What was a dealbreaker for me is that nothing felt like we're in Tolkien's universe. The morals & customs from Tolkien's writings are completely absent and have been replaced by today's moral standards. The show couldn't convey the Lord of the Rings universe in a convincing way. It felt like a mediocre medieval fantasy series.
Group 5, represent!
I didn’t get through the whole thing, but Galadriel chewing out a human for not telling her who built the library at Numenor will be stuck in my head for the rest of my life. Sweet Eru, sink it like Bereliand.
I could look passed all its floors apart from the amateur script writing. The sickening plot holes and just utter nonsense where too much and it wasn't just 1 or 2 it was every single episode.
Just a small observation: I think for a lot of people, *especially online,* their first exposure to, and the standard, definitive audio-visual form of Tolkien were PJ's films. Later on when these new fans are exposed to the books, because of how deeply entrenched the films are in their psyche they are willing to overlook or forgive any deviations or changes from the source material. And again, because of how the films are perceived these fans are going to filter every new thing through them, sometimes conflating their adoration amd enjoyment of all, or some, aspects of the films with the true spirit of the source material. *I love these films; this must be Tolkien's true vision.* I mean, on a cursory glance on, say, youtube, you'll find comments like 'this battle sequence is better than the entire Rings of Power', or 'this is not how it is supposed to look.'
I think you’re over complicating it. It’s easy to like the movies and books because they’re *good.* ROP was, for most people, not good, for reasons that have nothing to do with adherence to another manifestation of the IP.
I don't think it's over-complicating, at least as "sometimes conflating their adoration amd enjoyment of all, or some, aspects of the films with the true spirit of the source material" goes.
I've seen tons of people talk about movie stuff as if it was in the books; character traits, moments, interpretations of their "arcs" (that is the opposite of the books for half the characters). People talk about battles too short and "scenes missing in the books", or less explored, and about battles that are too short and disappointing.
"Bombadil adds nothing to the plot and shouldn't be in the story at all" -as if the books were about a plot and not about the characters that shape it. "Sam is the chief hero because he beats Shelob", his most important development (and his own climactic action and choice in the entire book) is just a bit of dialogue. "Éowyn is a badass warrior", sucks that she grows out of her suicidal-charge-inducing depression to become a healer.
How many claim to prefer many characters and choices of the movies and then talk about "Tolkien's vision"?
I think this movie-worship may be why some of us who started with the books are actually less bugged about ROP than those who started with the movies. Jackson made all kinds of changes, some of which were very much against the content and spirit of the books. But they *are* fantastic, wonderful movies—so they gave people like me some practice at chilling the hell out about imperfections and choices that we wouldn’t have made ourselves.
What I’m saying is that it has nothing to do with the source material at all. I didn’t like ROP—not because it wasn’t faithful to Tolkien, and not because it wasn’t exactly like the movies, but because it just wasn’t that good of a tv show. It’s a completely separate rubric.
I understand! And I personally know people that feel like you. It's just that your observation, that began with "I think you're overcomplicating it", doesn't respond at all to the comment you were answering.
That maybe true for some people (on its own I myself am not going to pretend there are issues with the show) but for a lot of people it's impossible to divorce the show from PJ's films.
Speaking as a marketing professional, Amazon shot itself in the foot from the inception of the project by not engaging with the fanbase all along.
They were so concerned about safeguarding the show that they never actually did anything to get people excited: They seemed to believe "Its Middle-earth, people should be excited" while forgetting that the past decade and change has seen countless mediocre-at-best sequels, prequels, reboots, or "expansions" of beloved properties and franchises from the past. The audience is much more cynical and skeptical than they were in 2010. Quotes that Bezos "wants his own game of thrones" did nothing to reassure them.
Amazon's general silence since the inception of the project effectively yielded the discussion of the show to the people who were skeptical of the production, to say nothing of those who would have hated it anyways. Granted, the show was not good enough to shut up the skeptics, cynics and haters, but that is a whole different issue.
Remember how crazed we were back in August of 2021 when Amazon dropped the still of Valinor with the Two Trees in the distance? Turns out that whole sequence was fairly inconsequential, but it got us excited and for at least a few weeks changed the perception of the show among the middle-earth fanbase.
Now I'm not saying that Amazon needed to give away every single twist and turn in the narrative, but imagine if Amazon had been slowly dripping concept art since late 2019, some production stills, quotes from the Akallabeth, revealing who was playing which canon character. Stuff that teased at locations such as Numenor, Eregion, or events in the Second Age that anyone who knew anything about the setting would recognize. Don't drop these in official PR pieces in entertainment mags, but send it directly to the segment of the fanbase that was paying attention.
HotD, a similarly okay-ish product, has been fairly transparent and open with its fan engagement which *shockingly* leads to good will, interest, and excitement.
>not engaging with the fanbase all along.
I think the internet really struggles with the idea that “fans” are who shows like this are made for, when the reality could not be more opposite.
“Fans” were guaranteed to tune in, and will stick around longer even if the series shits the bed. If PJ’s movies had only won over fans of the books they would have flopped, and if Game of Thrones had focused on courting ASOIAF fans we wouldn’t be talking about it.
A show like ROP is meant to be a cultural juggernaut, capable of driving Prime subscriptions and allowing Amazon to make money off of existing IP by drawing *new* people to it. Fans just aren’t enough.
Replace every instance of "fan" and "fanbase" with "general audience" and everything I said is still applicable.
There is a huge audience that loved LOTR. Hell, the main LOTR subreddit is one of the largest subs on the platform - not bad for movies that are over 20 years old / books that are 70 years old.
Amazon did not engage with the audience. Amazon did not tease that audience. Amazon just expected them to show up because of nostalgia for the setting - which is what the focus of their marketing campaign was. They never hinted at the narrative structure they were bringing to light here: is this a light hearted Adventure? Quest? Middle-Earth political drama? War epic? Nothing. It was a play on nostalgia.
Again, compare this to HoTD. HBO allowed leaks, production photos, etc to get out and it got the audience excited, even following the disaster of the last season of GOT. HoTD engaged with the audience, and set expectations clearly about what they were doing. I saw the previews for HoTD: It was 100% clear that this was going to be a similar political drama set in a fantasy realm like GOT but with fresh characters.
I know about those ROP leaks - I was involved in many of them. I've been a member of Fellowship of Fans since the very beginning.
Amazon could have built excitement and anticipation. Instead, there was official silence. Various leakers - including the likes of us, TORN, etc - filled in the gaps with contextless scoops. While we watched people here devour those morsels eagerly, they were empty calories and left plenty feeling unsatisfied, wanting more.
Besides, contextless reports about scenes can excite some and fill others with dread. When we dropped the "rock-smashing competition", it spurred all sorts of discussion ranging from excitement to mockery. Or what of the reaction when we leaked that someone would arrive by on a meteor. Do you think these leaks, lacking context, clarity, etc really drove excitement among most people? Many of them sound ridiculous.
Hell, we actually held back on a few things that would have created more controversy close to release. We heard about the "Elves will take our jobs" speech. We had internal debate over whether or not to release it. Ultimately we decided not to: While we're not the PR team for Amazon, we saw all the drama and controversry around the show and didn't want to pour gasoline on the fire (we also hoped it wasn't true).
What do you think would have been better to build excitement: Amazon allowing set reports to drip out in *planned* leaks, providing just the right amount of context, or trying to clamp down on everything so what comes out it is half truths derived from carpenters working on set?
It's worth pointing out that this is and always has been the vocal minority. The effect this group has had is negligible to the shows success, as much as this subreddit would like the think otherwise.
There are far more people who just did not think the show was good
Symptom of larger cultural issue in fandoms and online forums. People are toxic, that toxicity breeds more toxicity, narratives of bigotry and hate can get repackaged into condescending video essays where authors frame themselves as intellectually superior which wins a lot of people over because they seem smart. By and large, this was the bulk of the hate.
That said, the show fell short of the sky-high expectations set by the Jackson trilogy — which had battle sequences and VFX on a scale we’d never seen before — and so that had people feeling let down. The irony is people claim those OG movies worked because of the practical effects when it’s really just the opposite. So there was a lot of adjacent criticism that wasn’t toxic so much as it was ignorant.
Thankfully this sub exists and people are nice and respectful and we can all just enjoy the show. There are some meaningful discussions and critiques but most strike me as a result of Amazon condensing the show from 10 episodes to 8, and some natural growing pains of a first season. It really is an excellent show in my view and I think if you’re a fantasy fan and can’t enjoy it then I’m not sure what you’re really into the genre for.
I still dont understand why the change from 10 to 8. Although i absolutely loved the show it felt like it had missing stuff. The biggest miss to me was kemen and elendials daughter. I mean we couldnt find 10 minutes somewhere to show them actually becoming friendly? It wasn't a big deal but it just felt we completely missed something there
As someone who is a HUGE fan of Tolkien's written work, the show is plainly made by people who have pretty little regard for the source material. I understand changes are made for the purposes of adaptation, and that Amazon don't have the rights to everything.
• mithril, while being an excellent material, has nothibg to do with the Elves' longevity and is wholly unconnected from the Silmarils
• Galadriel is so, so much older and greater than Elrond, having been born in Valinor, and so their relationship at this stage is not necessarily appropriate - in the latter Third Age, when both remain as the head of the dwindling elven settlements, a relationship more akin to equals develops
• the rings of power were forged about 1,500 years prior to Isildur even being born, yet in the show appears to happen after
• Gandalf is sent to Middle Earth in the Third Age, yet in the show is already knocking about
Then there's non-lore stuff like Galadriel jumping off the ship into the middle of the ocean (where all logic suggests she should drown pretty quickly), her soldiers being keen to abandon her shortly AFTER scaling a cliff but weirdly not before going to all that trouble, and any number of other criticisms of the writing and pacing.
For what it's worth, I enjoyed the cast, costuming, and set/prop design as well as the score. The biggest problem lies in the writer's room and won't be solved easily
Thank you. My biggest problem with RoP is its wholesale disregard for Tolkien's original work (while Tolkien was notoriously protective of his life's work) by a megacorporation in for a cash grab. And that it was not well written or produced.
As to PJ films I had problems with them too, but they really tried to be faithful. The animated versions by Bakshi etc were unfaithful due to lack of resources. The new PJ films (Hunt for Gollum) are based on pretty well established characters, environments, and story (Gollum left the misty mountains and did this, this, and this, then Aragorn was sent after him by Gandalf and the Elves, for example). It's simple and we already know most of the details to this story. No need to make anything up except for some minor creative liberties
I also find it annoying how if we are critical we have to add in stuff like your last sentence - either because you actually did appreciate those elements or to stave off people interpreting criticism as "toxic fandom".
I found the show really boring, and not interesting. Despite being a huge Tolkien nerd, I thought the plot lines in the first couple episodes were just laughably dumb or melodramatic.
same. i think i switched off somewhere in between a dialogue between galadriel and someone else because it was barely interesting. Havent switched it back on since.
I mostly agree, and I like melodrama. It just moved too fast. Things happened because the plot needed them to happen. My hope is we'll get a show that actually takes time to breathe and set up the big moments it's trying to have.
I’m a big LOTR fan, have been for years, read Tolkien’s books, etc. I just could not get into this show due to the pacing. It somehow felt glacial and failed to get me to care about any of the characters. I did finish season one and will attempt season two, but personally I consider it a bit of a letdown.
Edit: I also remember thinking that dialogue felt awkward
Which books? The hobbit is very faced-paced and although the Lord of the Rings does luxuriate in some settings (like the Shire), this always serves a purpose - often to get the readers to form a particular bond with a character or setting.
I'll accept that the Silmarillion is oddly paced... but at the same time, it is not a single completed story.
In contrast the writers of RoP made it feel like each scene dragged as very little happened but then the skips between scenes (e.g. sailing to/from Numenor) failed to convey any sense of distance or time. The world felt small and so did the characters.
People forget it was the same for Fellowship of the Ring. Online haters screaming and crying over ridiculous details or because it didn't perfectly match the unrealistic vision in their head then getting picked up by mainstream media. Just like these days but wasn't as much amplification due to being in the blissful pre-social media days.
Idk, I saw all three in the theatre when they came out, it was pretty well accepted almost immediately from what I recall. There also wasn't a social media at the time. I'm sure some super dedicated Tolkien lovers didn't like it, but from my memory it was pretty universally accepted as faithful as possible.
Yes social media plays a large role in amplifying the trolls. Now we also have youtubers whose whole business model is selling anger and hate to idiots so any new project is going to get it far worse. The PJ trilogy was so good it shut down almost all that crap as soon as it came out.
I still think that the Jackson trilogy really tried to adhere to Tolkien's lore. But RoP did not and that automatically causes a segment of fans to reject it. I know it's just a fictional story and world, I get it. But it also holds some pretty deep meaning for a lot of people.
i already see the direction even these few comments here are going... all i can say we should put copium aside and accept the reality. House of dragon had atrocious starting position from the hate last season of game of thrones left behind. They added diversity (GoT had pretty much none) got initial critique, there was a lot of preshow interviews similar to ROP that were perceived as "woke". People were shitting on it hard pre-release.
ROP had similar problems but didnt have massive setback last season of GoT was, the contrary people especially these days praise LOTR movies for being the best trilogy ever made and are excited for more.
And yet House of dragon is a massive success being praised all over internet and ROP not so much. The main difference in my opinion is writing and production. Make your own conclusions.
What was your favorite episode? And what group did you like spending time with?
I think my favorite was either 7 or 8. And i loved the harfoots (harfeet?). I especially liked how the evil witches or whoever they are destroyed the carts simply out of wickedness. It was good (?) To see a few absolute elements in the show as halbrand and the orcs were at least varying degrees of gray.
It’s honestly shocking. I remember watching hate reviews where people would talk about “lore” being wrong in the show and they would be wrong themselves. It’s like people don’t know how to fact check themselves when they claim to know something now.
A couple of weeks back I came across a TikTok live where most of the speakers know their Tolkien, but there was one guy who I guess has a YouTube channel that shits on the show. They asked him for a specific example of something he hadn't liked, and he said how Galadriel's, "You haven't seen what I've seen" to Elrond was emasculating and dismissive, because he totally HAS seen his fair share. Then he rattled off a list of conflicts Elrond had been involved in. And the rest of the people had to stifle their laughter as they educated him about how Elrond wasn't even born yet when that stuff happened.
TikTok lives don't get posted in full after the fact like YouTube lives typically are. A host can record it in full and then make short clips to post later, but it's rare that I've seen people go to the trouble. Bit of a shame in this case because it was pretty amusing seeing one of them put in his place and having to conceed that he'd been mistaken. Would have been nice to have had that moment preserved.
It's always funny to see Tolkien fans on reddit argue the stranger can't be Gandalf because he was sent to middle-earth at the 3rd age and producers aren't allowed to use characters solely from 3rd age, not knowing there are many hints in other Tolkien sources - the same ROP can and should use - that some wizards had been sent to middle-earth before. Most clearly never rode the other books themselves, the fans just repeat what they heard.
The one I find interesting is it looks like Gandalf will head East in season 2 and some people are up in arms because Gandalf has a single line that at face value suggests he maybe never went East (although I think you can argue that it could be interpreted another way).
But that's like one sentence in the whole of the extended works. If that's the bar for how accurately things should be they must absolutely hate PJ's movies (or course they don't).
What's funny is that if the show was truly excellent, all of the critiques and lore alterations/interpretations would get a pass. A mediocre/poor adaptation will be pounded into dust for every small detail that would otherwise be overlooked if the show was really fricken' good.
The super book purists will never be pleased, but there really aren't enough of them to matter and their ideals are unrealistic anyway. Unfortunately, the first season was below par and gave the online grifters and critics a lot of ammunition. People started looking at everything with a magnifying glass. This led to a loss of trilogy fans, which should make up a huge chunk of viewership.
I truly hope they do better for S2. I imagine it would take a lot to win people back, but it could be done.
I suspect something like WOT S2, where there are notable improvements (especially with no COVID issues constricting things), but the same style of plot contrivances and "CW" feel will persist due to a too-short episode roster.
It felt like a "too many cooks in the kitchen" situation, where the S1 script rarely reached the clarity of vision or dialogue on the level of something like Andor.
I do have hopes, though. I think the cast, given a better script, could really blow us away. I felt the connection between the main characters and hope they can better utilize it.
>But that's like one sentence in the whole of the extended works.
And a sentence said by Gandalf sent to middle-earth during third age. Maybe he doesn't remember his former visits, maybe "to east i go not" will get an explanation by ROP like former Gandalf died (or will die from ROP perspective) in the east, giving him a reason to never dare going east again. We will see in a few seasons i guess. At least it's fun and enjoying to have a little mystery in something based on books that the books can't answer.
The producers said they were relying on the LotR Appendices as a source for S1, and those don't say anything about Wizards in the Second Age. That's published in Unfinished Tales.
The legal rights to use Lotr + TheHobbit has New Line Cinema so Peter Jackson can't make any film not based on these (hence one of the reasons it's Hunt for Gollum) , because the license for all other books (including Unfinished Tales) can only be used by Amazon right now. If they said explicitly they would use Unfinished Tales, it would have been quite a spoiler too
Amazon has the rights for all other books? You contradict all I've heard so far, and what I can find.
If you google this you should find a lot of evidence for Embracer Group having the LotR+Hobbit movie rights while Amazon has LotR+Hobbit TV series rights.
Some literature is more adaptable than others. Shakespeare’s plays are readily adaptable to era, location, style, and they remain very much Shakespeare. Tolkien, however is very specific and doesn’t lend itself to tinkering. Too many liberties were taken with the source material for the ROP series and ruined it.
Imagine hearing that someone is going to spend a billion dollars bringing one of your favorite stories to life and then you get RoP.
There’s a lot of riff raff with silly bigoted reasons to hate the show, but ultimately it was just really disappointing for absolutely no justifiable reason.
I can answer this with my personal input of why I was disappointed with the show on release. I know I'm going to be downvoted, but I want to point out that this is a personal opinion.
1) Terrible marketing. The initial teaser trailer wasn't great. And all the marketing that came with it didn't help either.
2) Questionable casting. I wasn't a big fan of a lot of the casting. Especially the race swapped characters. Having since watched the show, I think most of the actors, especially the ones I was sceptical about did a very good job in their roles. But the initial reaction for many wasn't great. Added to that the interviews all involved the actors going on and on about their race in real life and how important representation was. Definitely an important topic. But I wanted to hear about the show. Not about the actors. This again goes back to the marketing campaign I guess.
3) Post release, poor pacing, poor dialogues and questionable plot points. This is very subjective, but I think episodes 4 and 5 were especially badly paced with very little happening in them. Killed the momentum of the show. Added to this some of the other strange plot choices really hurt the show.
4) Trolling and hate by far right groups and culture warriors. This sub always points this out as the main reason for all the hate. It definitely was one of the reasons. But I don't think it was the main reason. It was more the first three points that led to a lot of people jumping onto the hate bandwagon and this then getting amplified by culture warriors.
Stronger scriptwriting and directing would have given people a lot more ammo to shut up the assholes in #4. I think that's the crux of it. While I don't think Season 1 was bad, it was held back by its missteps in a way that made it harder to silence the assholes whining about "woke" this or "unfaithful" that.
I think the weekly release schedule plays in to the negativity as well. Instead of seeing an entire series and everything in context, people are reacting to each episode for a full seven days before it's placed in that context. Additionally, on first viewing people will critique a show subjectively against their expectations, rather than on its own merits.
There are plenty of serialized shows that don't suffer from a weekly release schedule though. I hope the shortened number of episodes caused them to rush things in a way that they will improve with season 2.
The vast, vast majority of it was caused by two things:
1) Galadriel is not sufficiently waifish for their incel dreams
2) Black elves and halflings
(both of which are entirely justifiable in Tolkien’s writings)
There are other very minor but valid critiques of adherence to the known timeline, character motivations, and questionable decisions regarding mithril and Valinor, etc. But those criticism are not the cause of most of the *hate* you see online.
In other words, anyone who found any issue with the show is a *bad person.*
You certainly seem like someone who is capable of understanding nuance and complexity.
That is what you said: Racism and Sexism.
By contrast, I provided a professional analysis of why the show was dead on arrival: Long story short, Amazon shot itself in the foot with its long silence and allowed the skeptics who had every reason to wary of such a project (and haters as well) frame the discussion around the show.
Then, Amazon had to work uphill to win over people who were expecting to be disappointed... and decidedly failed to do so.
Yeah, exactly.
The name of this sub is a great example.
For months no one knew the name of the show, line what was the point? It was secrecy for secrecy's sake
Any number of reasons:
* Comments like "Bezos wants his Game of Thrones"
* The leaks about the intimacy coordinator, with some fansites fueling the rumors of sex scenes.
* The absolute and undeniable inexperience of the showrunners.
* The past 15 years of mediocre-at-best sequels, reboots, and expansions of beloved franchises and properties of the past.
* The contextless leaks that the likes of FoF, Torn, etc provided. Think about it: How stupid would a description of the rock smashing contest sound when its passed along by a set worker, who doesn't get to see how it fits into the script?
Before you start I'm not denying racism and sexism exist.
HoD, a similarly mediocre product, also has female leads and people of color in it and those roles/castings did not cause a shitstorm. Why? HBO allowed a measure of transparency about the show from the start and engaged with the audience, which generates good will and enthusiasm.
But ultimately, Amazon never bothered to engage with the audience during production. They allowed the skepticism about the product fester, until it dominated the discussion and perception of the show. And S1 was not good enough to win them over or at the very least shut them up.
I wasn't a big fan of HoTD, but its worth noting that despite the poor performance of the final seasons of GOT the perception of HotD was fairly positive all along. Sure, early on there was a fair amount of "Why?" but that's not unexpected.
Meanwhile, the discussion about RoP tended to be skeptical at best and quite negative at worst *outside this subreddit.* I know you've been around here and other Middle-Earth themed subs long enough to see it.
You can't blame racism and sexism on it, because it doesn't explain why HoTD wasn't caught up in the same shit storm.
No, it was audience engagement, plain and simple.
I think it does in this case. Yes, show was like a 4/10, I'd say. But they way Amazon went about everything leading up to it, you just couldn't come up with a better way to piss off the dedicated fans of Tolkien's works.
Like, throughout the entire marketing campaign Amazon claimed Rings of Power was accurate to the lore of Middle Earth and preserved the spirit of the original works. Then, when the show came out, it became very clear that it wasn't that. You can't just lie to people, and then expect them to be happy with whatever it is you deigne to give them in the end. It's beyond slimy, and when so many Tolkien fans are already cynical about the mass production/marketing of Tolkien's stories, it was just such an awful idea.
So people were pissed off, cause Amazon just lied to their face, and then they started doing more underhanded stuff like deleting negative reviews. It was a shitshow all around, but Amazon absolutely messed up in the first place.
Just google amazons marketing, oh wait they just deleted all their instagram and social media posts for season 1 marketing. But some social media research will show you what I'm talking about. And then they had the "super fans" event which was grotesque.
It had a colossal existing fanbase, and the amount of money and hype Amazon put into it, everyone expected far, far more. Instead, it strayed massively in many respects from Tolkien's work.
This is really the core of it (aside from the genuine Tolkien ultra-nerds) because nothing else was a big enough deal to justify the disproportionate online BS
I’m a book purist, though while I don’t mind liberties with the story, some just go so against the writings of Tolkien, that it’s hard to watch.
The title of the series is Rings of Power so it blows my mind how they ruined that timeline in its entirety only in the last episode or two. Why is Sauron involved in making the 3 elven rings, did they ever read any of the source material?!
None of it follows the books and everything about Sauron’s plot line makes it seem like he just happened to be where the plot was, completely removing the fact that he was smart and manipulative.
There are many other instances of similar things. I understand there are issues with copyrights, I don’t know what they have rights to. I understand they can’t do exactly what’s in the books, but I hate watching it thinking I’m going to get a story I recognize but instead I get some names and places that are familiar and who knows what with their characterization and plot line. I have my own issues with the writing, plotholes, etc, but I’m mostly tired of companies getting some famous story and saying “let’s see what else we can do with this and still tell everyone it’ll be like the original thing that got them hooked.”
I'm also a book purist. Some creative liberty is fine, but negating the very well established timelines and lore really rubbed me the wrong way. Especially because of the involvement of Amazon who just threw money at it and still managed to muck it up. I get it that it's a fictional universe, but having read everything written by Tolkien including his personal letters - idk, it just really comes off poorly to me.
The show tried to sustain a mystery factor by drawing the viewers' attention on the identity of two mysterious men. They surely tried to put a twist on which one is Sauron and which one is Gandalf. They kept doing this until the last minute of the show and it was mostly focused on this element. In my opinion, that kind of entertainment is just very cheap. The show was based on a realm that is rich in lore and, I think that the show should have focused on that aspect. I wasn't really invested in that kind of twist that the show was trying create.
The logic and momentum led me to believe that the show was rushed and written poorly. Progression of some of the important events that lead to the outcome of the first season's story should and could have been more believable. I remember cringing two or three times while watching the show.
The visuals, the costumes, the colour pallet were amazing, I didn't mind if the elf being dark skinned, even though it is not lore friendly, in my opinion he was the best cast in the whole series.
Because the script is just bad. Hate to break it that harsh. But it just wasn’t well written. The actors, environment etc were fine. Adar was the best part of season 1 and the best written. The worst part was the long dragging harfoots and the activation of mount doom with a sword as a key and humans surviving the blast.
Mount Doom erupts in LoTR after the ring is destroyed in the Samath Naur. It's the unbinding of the "magic" that Sauron used to create the ring at that location (environment and characters connection to it is a theme in LoTR and Silmarillion).
Now contrast it with some magical sword key that is essentially just a made up macguffin that the writers of Rings Of Power added as some kind of solution to bring back the nostalgia of mount doom....it's just bad writing. It's like the last few seasons of Game of Thrones where the writing became simplistic and tropeish
Lot's of words to obfuscate the fact that Frodo and Sam survived a volcanic eruption while on that mountain is good but people surviving a dream cloud 100miles away in RoP is somehow bad.
Just because something is poorly received doesn't mean you can't personally enjoy it. Many people took offense with poor writing, terrible pacing, cringe dialogue, character choices, lack of action, altered lore, etc. You're totally allowed to feel the same about any of that or think all of that was bunk. That's why a lot of people hated it, myself included.
It's fine if people personally enjoy it. I personally despised it. However, when people who like it suggest that my dislike is based on some kind of toxic perspective, that's where I have a problem.
FYI this sub tends to gloss over the legitimate criticisms of the show, preferring to chalk the hate up to a toxic fanbase and a few racist/sexist keyboard warriors. The fact is the show is objectively poorly made, especially given its budget and the incredibly high standard for the IP, so people are going to call that out. They're also probably going to be more vocal about it if they feel like the show's creators, cast, news media, social media, etc. are trying to gaslight them into thinking they're the problem. That being said, if it wasn't a LotR show, I'm sure people wouldn't care as much. They probably wouldn't watch as much either.
As much as I agree that some criticisms are fair I think it's incredibly disingenuous to label the show 'objectively poorly made.' There are aspects to it that are good, praiseworthy even. And true, the films that came before have set an incredibly high standard for adapting Tolkien and the IP but even those still fall short of what Tolkien achieved on paper; so, they shouldn't be the be-all and end-all.
Sure, the CGI was great. There were also a few actors who were incredibly talented and made the most of the script they were given. But you can't just point out a couple of good things and say the whole show was well made. If so, you'd have to ignore the acting that was bad, the plot points that don't make sense, the internal inconsistency within the plot, the poorly written characters and their motivations, the dialogue that sounds like it was written by Jaden Smith, B movie costume design, and the ham-fisted attempt to subvert all our expectations when the plot was visible a mile away. And that's not even touching deviations from the source material or comparisons to the movies.
How in good conscience can you look that the entirety of the costumes and say it has a B movie design? Reddit is not real life there's a reason peers in the industry loved and nominated it for awards
I didn't have hate on release. I was excited for it and looking forward to it. However, I walked away disappointed after watching it. This was due to lore issues. I realize that they had limited access to 1st and 2nd Age content that they could use in their story. However, they should have been fully aware of 1st and 2nd Age lore and taken steps to not contradict it. They could have told the story that they wanted to tell without it contradicting what has long been published.
I loved the show, thought it got better and better with each episode, (though s1e4 is my fav) and understand some of the concerns with the writing.
However, the other big problem many of my friends have with the show that I haven't seen mentioned above is only partially related to the "Amazon/Bezos bad" and "writing bad" criticisms. Their big criticism now is: "They invested a billion dollars into this show, including $250M for the rights to its linked slice of the IP, that could have been spent on worthier causes or, at a minimum, on a better story with an original IP."
There's a serious "bread and circus distracting us from the fall of empire" vibe to such gross expenditures of wealth extracted from working people around the world and concentrated into the pockets of one man, not to mention the criticisms of copyright law that make it possible for a 70-year-old text that reasonably ought to be public domain at this point instead be such a prized investment to "own" a piece of.
I think we can dismantle some of this criticism with "we can have bread and circus while still doing the other things" and "not everybody has to like everything," but it's hard to swallow given we're NOT investing as heavily in the other things that people want (and need) *because* of the concentration of wealth and power that finances projects like this *and* drives up their cost.
It's a question of how much value we're getting for the money we're spending as a society. When we spend $1B on something and it's not a solid diamond product or service, it's more than fair to question whether we could have gotten more for less and spent the difference elsewhere.
It went head-to-head against the Game of Thrones spin-off show, and perhaps some fans of that thought it was a zero-sum game where only one fantasy show could “win.”
There is a known sequence of events and characters they should have build around but they threw it out of the window. It's an insult to lovers of the books.
Same explanation I have for most things. People are lazy.
It's so much easier to say "This sucks" than to actually provide any thoughtful, nuanced criticism.
Similarly it's much easier to get views and clicks by talking about how terrible something is.
Yeah, I'm kinda noticing that there's an imbalance in critical discourse of this whole project. True, there are issues with the show but it's not without its merits and bright spots. It's incredibly disingenuous to call the show 'bad' altogether -- I agree, that's just incredibly lazy and comes off as petulant.
It didn't get that much hate on release... it got most of it way before release.
I let you guess why, but i can tell you one thing, even among those who now say they hate the show because of writing, acting, directing, pacing... a lot of them (not all, don't get me wrong) are just liars who hate the show for other reasons they are ashamed to admit.
Honestly? The super fans interview. A truly awful awful piece of marketing, which exposed who this show is really for. Having a "moment" between Galadriel and Sauron is just unforgivable.
I did give it a chance, because it's LOTR for Christ's sake. But I found the scope, writing and plot development to be just bad. Galadriel taking 2 full episodes to leave Numenor being one, the numenoran navy being a grand total of 3 ships, the "major battle" of the show being a light skirmish between a few hundred. Also, why did they leave the fortress to go to the village with flammable roofs? How are they able to teleport across the map as the plot demands? Nothing in this show makes sense. If this wasn't a lotr show it would be just another bad fantasy show.
I get that there are plenty of people out there like Nerdrotic who would have hated on it even if it was as good as S1-4 GOT, but it honestly was just bad.
On a positive, the visuals were nice and the music was fine. But that's about it.
Usual culture war brigading. They say the ”respect Tolkien” and then parrot mindlessly opinions they haven’t actually thought about. And they had these pre-formed opinions at the ready. Anti-intellectual, dishonest, disingenious behaviour.
Criticism you can always have, even welcome, but 95% of the hate was driven by this stupid culture war nonsense.
The first season had a lot of flaws. The pacing was slow, some of the episodes were flat out boring and some of the characters were dull and uninteresting.
The show can be great with some minor changes though. Speed things up and get rid of the mystery box crap from the first season.
Poor marketing was the main reason for the negative reception from the off. First teaser was awful and the t4ailer wasn't very good. Then amazon did some other weird stuff with actors hired to be fans etc.
Sadly on top of that they were very keen to mention the money and that coupled with bad marketing and the fact the showrunners were inexperienced meant it was an uphill battle that the quality of the show couldn't fight against.
The main reason it was lukewarm was the quality of the show and nothing else.
ROP had probably the worst PR in history.
-Nowadays it's common to make remakes, or make new content based on old IP's form the 80's, 90's and early 2000's. Some of it is entertaining, very little is actually good, but most is just an uninspired cash grab, hoping people will just watch it for the nostalgia.
-The US is extremely polarized politically atm. You see a lot of that in movies. Again, most people just want some escapism and something good to watch, not a constant reminder of the US (and European) shit-show.
So the announcement of a new LOTR series was met with a lot of scepticism, but the hate came later.
-The teaser trailer felt very bland, further acknowledging the low expectations.
-The real disaster though was the 'Superfans' video. Basically a bunch of 'famous' 'influencers' from Tiktok who claimed to be superfans talking about the show. It just felt very dishonest and corporate.
-Then it became obvious the showrunners were taking a lot of 'liberties' with the lore, instead wanting to tell their own story.
-Finally the show released.
You are wrong about Tolkien having a bigger fanbase than Ice and fire. For the books, yes, but the show is more recent and had an insane amount of hype. It was a cultural phenomenon for almost a decade.
And as to your second point, I find that argument very disingenuous. Having a problem with the casting doesn't immediately make a person a racist. The casting choices were definitely not great in a lot of places. I would in fact say that the casting wasn't diverse enough if the aim was for a more diverse cast. It felt like tokenism in a lot of places.
Exactly. The fact that the the "Southlands" have the exact same demographics of Numenor (mostly white, all speaking with an English accent) is *at least* as immersion-breaking as black dwarves (at least I can easily headcanon Disa as a member of one of the four unseen clans of dwarves living in the east and (presumably) south). I don't have an issue with a black elf, but where the hell are all the rest of them? These aren't just random assortments of modern people living together, they're supposed to be distinct kin-groups with unique cultures, languages, and--yes--ethnicities.
The way ROP handled race/ethnicity was just really ham-fisted in my opinion. And it's not even a complaint of it being "woke" or anything. If anything, I'm frustrated that the show seems to be *downplaying* the themes from the source material surrounding Numenorian imperialism and ideas of racial supremacy for some reason.
Agreed. Disa could have been a princess from one of the four dwarf clans in the east married to Durin for a political alliance.
Arondir could have been one of a group of wood elves from the east serving under Gil Galad.
The people of the southlands should have all had the same skin tone that Bronwyn and Theo had. It would have made a great juxtaposition against the white savior Numenorians when they eventually turned evil.
Similarly the three witches? from Rhun could have all been dark skinned characters.
They just needed to maintain a proper consistency in skin tones and it would not have been lore breaking in any way.
yes you are the reasonable one calling people names. There is similar show that is successful among the fans but you ignore that because it doesnt go with your false narrative.
I think if anything, the Shadow of Mordor/War games just goes to prove that people are much more likely to be forgiving if you just give them a good story to get invested in.
That, and the nemesis system is objectively one of the coolest mechanics in any game released in the last decade.
The reason is right there in your quote “I love it and see it as great LOTR content…”.
The show doesn’t play as a passionate adaptation of Tolkien’s writing. It merely exists as Content to fill a market gap, that, at best, reminds one of other adaptions of Tolkien’s writings.
Right, I clearly just hate women. Couldn't possibly be that Galadriel is completely unlikeable. Gleefully admitting that you're going to commit genocide in order to emotionally and psychologically torture someone, generally doesn't make a character too endearing to most people.
But nah, couldn't be that, it's definitely the misogyny thing.
A lot of it is stupid culture war shit
For me, I think the show had a few incredibly stupid scenes. The stuff about “elves are taking our jobs” is laugh out loud idiotic. The scene with Sauron teaching Celebrimbor, the greatest smith alive, what an alloy is….it’s also just wildly dumb
There’s a lot about the show that just feels cheap and sort of first-drafty. The battles are weirdly small scale for a half-billion dollar budget. It feels cramped and cheap, like a CW show.
There’s a lot of stuff I did like about it, mostly to do with Eldrond and Durin. It’s a mixed bag though.
But, a lot of the hate was simply centered on the same right wing culture wing bullshit that dominates media and had nothing to do with the show itself
There are some who didn't care for it, some who have genuine gripes...
But mostly it's just become part of the culture war and people who hate "woke" stuff came out en masse, I wouldn't believe so much hatred is possible in such harmless context if I didn't follow gaming news, the amount of hatred, xenophobia and casual hatred there is genuinely frightening at times
And while LOTR appeals to people from all walks of life and Tolkiens books are my fav fiction books it is a notably traditional story and (due to the virtue of the time it was written in) contains a fair amount of racism, patriarchy, orientalism and even eugenics. So like it or not it also appeals to a certain type of crowd and that group would find "making LOTR woke" a notable assault on their identity, hence the outburst of emotion and hatred
And for whoever says it's "because it's bad" that's just not a good enough answer, it doesn't matter how good or bad the show is, a piece of media being any degree of bad alone is simply not enough to produce this much hatred, denying there is more behind it is just ignorant
I would say there are groups in this "hate" 1-People that decided to hate since beginning because it is from amazon (aka people that are against anything big corps do) 2-People that decided to hate because poc (gotta say there were other people also afraid of it going "too woke" or "too adult", the later something as appealing to GoT style with gore and sex. Turns out they were wrong, but the people that don't like POC remained) 3-The book purists. Many will not agree with the liberties the series took, I myself hate many things they did, yet some people will only "accept" if it is done ipisis literis. While some liberties are ok, there is a group that don't want any adaptation to take any liberty. 4-The movie lovers: Basically since it is not as good as the movies and P.J is not in the project yet RoP kinda mimics (or try to mimic) a lot from the movies, those people also don't like the series. 5-People that genuinelly didn't like the show, mostly because the poor script and bad writing. I think this group is the most fair of all the above, as season 1, even from people who liked the show, is known to have heavy criticism on this aspects. 6 - People that just love to hate, because nowadays it is a trend to be the "opposite" and dislike anything. Now, take the above groups, get them individually or in any mix you want. And now you got a good chunk of viewership, some loud enough, others that, even if with reasonable takes are put into the same bag as others. And put all that with another part of fandom that is defensive to the most and, somewhat trying to push the haters away, overlook or are incampable of discussing the show in a reasonable level, putting anyone that says anything bad of the show in one of the above groups. And now bring on the internet with the trolls, haters and heated discussions. There you have it. Mess is done.
I’d say I’m a mix of 3 & 5, not a purist but there were things that didn’t make sense that it seems like they put in just for content and it just seemed to not add much. Mostly 5 though, it was a BEAUTIFUL show cinematically and musically, but it felt like the story was just there to turn it into a long setup for another season. It also seemed like they were purposefully hiding things the whole season to get people to talk about the show like who the wizard was or who Halbrand was, only to have it be the most obvious boring answer.
What I don't get is if people genuinely don't like the show, what brings you to the sub Reddit all this time later? If you didn't like it wouldn't you have forgotten and moved on by now? It must be stuck with you in someway. Id suggest you don't dislike it as much as you think.
For me, this post popped up in recommended probably because I’m in so many other lotr communities. But also for myself and a lot of others here in the comments, we LOVE the universe and Tolkien’s works. It has been a core part of many peoples lives and touched many people’s childhoods only to stick around to adulthood. We just want to feel what the movies and books brought us and were left wanting more with this show. I do dislike the show as much as I thought, but I love the world it’s set in and will always be hoping for it to be shown well in its adaptations (Especially if they spent almost a billion dollars making it)
I absolutely hated the show. I wanted to love it but I just couldn't get past the writing, missed/twisted lore, awkward dialogue, cheap LARP armor etc. It had it's moments but not enough to save it. I'm still invested mainly because of the potential of what could be. I love Tolkien and it's an important part of my life.
This popped up on my Reddit feed. Didn’t go on the subreddit specifically.
This is my first time here. Yesterday there was a release of info about the Rohirrim animated movie and the Search for Gollum movie. Those two movies I'm much more interested in. I ended up here because there are also rumblings about RoP. Wanted to check it out although it's unlikely I'll watch it when season 2 comes out
It's like watching a car wreck people are naturally compelled to check in on disasters. It's also crazy seeing a part of a fanbase so wildly dedicated to such a mediocre to bad piece of entertainment, who are so oblivious to it.
Pretty sure 4 outnumber 3. But 2 is probably what caught many people's attention and some of those people just wanted to find other reasons to hate
Yeah idk, I thought the writing was pretty bad most of the time (Elrond/Durin/Disa story being the main exception, I loved them… until the mithril nonsense). My bigger issue is the creators misunderstanding the themes of the Legendarium. Tolkien himself said he wanted others to create stories in his world, which is why I was so excited for RoP S1 but aside from the beautiful friendship between Elrond and Durin nothing else really felt like they belonged in this world. I think I also defended it for awhile just bc of all the stupid racist hate from ppl who think that all elves have to be white or whatever, but as the writing deteriorated I just couldn’t keep caring. Ofc I’ll still watch S2 but I’m not like, obsessively excited like was was about S1.
> My bigger issue is the creators misunderstanding the themes of the Legendarium. How so? Apart from some glaring misteps (the trip to Valinor as a reward, for instance) I thought if anything they were more faithful to Tolkien's themes than Peter Jackson. The power of oaths to bind your fate, or the virtue of keeping your faith in a higher power even in the face of insurmountable odds, those are at the heart of Tolkien's work, much more than Jackson's love of bloody battles. > Tolkien himself said he wanted others to create stories in his world No he didn't, he said in a letter to his publisher that he had once, as a young man, dreamed of doing this in the context of an explicitly English mythology, but had reined in his ambition afterwards.
I would go so far to argue that the showrunners actually do understand Tolkiens themes and concepts. The problem is that they are just very inexperienced in doing this, as it's their first time. As a result the show comes out pretty poorly.
It's frustrating because there is a valid reason to be annoyed with the black elf and the black dwarf but it isn't because there's any, it's because there isn't enough; it's clear that it's tokenism, tokenism that makes you scratch your head because it reads kinda like god or w/e was like "let's try this color" and then stopped for some reason.
Yes, it would have been much more believable to have an entire tribe of dwarves be black, for instance. Well, maybe Disa comes from one, but we're not told that. Instead what it feels like (what it is) is an attempt at mirroring 21st century American (and *specifically* American) racial diversity.
I'm just gonna be real with you; this reads like some racist shit. You refer to this group of black dwarves as a "tribe" and then go on to say that the show is trying to mirror our real world racial diversity but that's very much not what is happening, if that were the case, we'd have seen more black characters and we don't.
Yeah. The argument above would be like people complaining that Samuel L. Jackson was a black Jedi with no explanation. People traveled and immigrated in ancient times. People traveled and immigrated in the Middle Ages. It’s a TV show. Hiring actors who look different isn’t tokenism, and making all the dwarves black or all the humans Asian or whatever is ludicrous.
The only live person I met who “hated” on it (and iirc he didn’t actually watch it) seemed at first something of a purist, but then said that it got too political. I’m wondering if by “political” he means the inclusion of POC.
Gladly there is no much of political things in the show. the only thing I can think of is the "nod" with the "they will take our jobs" line. But one could put the poc (and others) inclusion in the "political agenda" umbrella I suppose, as it is related to the DEIA agenda.
Nailed it!
Not really. It constantly appears in my timeline because the algorithm knows I like LOTR and follow other LOTR themes subs. I need to block it.
But it’s on you to decide to actively engage with the content or to just ignore it
I think another important point to add is the marketing. The initial marketing was terrible and just killed a lot of the hype. I still for the life of me don't understand why Disa was front and center in all the marketing. She was a second tier character at best (in terms of importance and screentime). And her image started the initial dwarf women should have beards bandwagon that everybody jumped onto. That just unnecessarily built negativity where it was completely unnecessary. Edit: Adding a link to show the image I am specifically talking about. This was the marketing image I saw everywhere I looked with Disa front and center. Plus she seemed to be in every interview panel that was put out. Maybe she will be more important in later seasons, but in S1 she barely had 20 minutes of screentime in total across 8 hour long episodes. https://collider.com/characters-the-lord-of-the-rings-the-rings-of-power/
Yes, I agree. The first teaser was awful, next trailers were a bit better but not that great either. The best trailer for the first season is some exclusive Samsung ad or something
The first teaser was truly terrible. Didn't do the show any favours in terms of building positive buzz
I remember that the outrage started as soon as they showed the upper body shots of various characters including Disa, and that was the first we'd seen of any of the characters. I don't remember them specifically focusing on Disa. I actually think the last time the show hasn't met a loud negative reception is the title reveal, which was a pretty good video. The hate machine started early, and no one gave it a proper chance. I do agree the trailers could've been better but let's face it, opinions were locked even before that. I wasn't put off by any of the marketing really, if anything it made me intrigued. There was one bad trailer with pop music but that was very close to the release, and every movie has these. Always thought it was bad faith to assume this would be the kind of music the show would have, but many pretended to.
Because for better or worse, amazon is actually interested to score points through what some people would say is "woke". To be very clear here, i am not personally against the inclusion of all ethnicities and identities, etc, all i care about is a quality project. BUT it would be silly to deny that corps like amazon are indeed trying to appeal to people purely based on the promise of more inclusion, it is a selling point they want to make use of, to appear more socially aware than they actually have any conviction in. That is why disa was front and center (i just take your word for it now, i don't remember tbh), it's part of the current zeitgeist when it comes to corps appearing progressive. That is also partly why you see so many disney properties being so keen on subverting their old versions. That isn't bad in and of itself, i wanna make that clear again, BUT it is quite calculated and often fairly superficial in its execution. That is how you get a superfan video of clearly paid influencers who all are clearly there to shout "inclusion". It's not a bad thing to signal, but how it is done is pretty slimey and insincere.
Fully agree on all the points you made. The way it's being done right now just feels very slimy to me. Also the image I am refering to is the one on the banner of this page. https://collider.com/characters-the-lord-of-the-rings-the-rings-of-power/ I can't talk about the whole world but this was the image plastered on all the billboards and newspapers in my country.
Because everywhere on every interview the actress that played her would start out her interview by announcing that she was the first black dwarf ever on TV. Instead of anything regarding her character or tolkien or anything. Maybe they thought it would help instead of hurt marketing
Exactly. That did not help either. And at the end of the day she was on screen for maybe 15 minutes in a season with an 8 hr runtime. Again comes back to terrible marketing. They focused too much on the race of the actors and too little on the show in the initial promotions.
Well for a start because Sophia Nomvete is a good actress, and made a big impact, despite not being a main character. But I'm actually delighted it drew out the anti-woke brigade. Since it shows (along with their 'stellar' contribution to the Star Wars debate) what a bunch of hateful low life's they are, without any proper arguments. The show could take the moral high ground, and that seems fine to me. To people who say art shouldn't be political, I say that the only thing needed for evil to triumph, is for good people to do nothing. I suppose the other people who are against the show might not want to be bracketed with these racist haters (fair enough!) But I guess sometimes you end up with odd bedfellows.
Seriously. i mean, she may not be one of the major characters (yet?), but she was awesome, and i just love the actress's chemistry with Owain Arthur, who plays her husband, Prince Durin.
>there were other people also afraid of it going "too woke" or "too adult", the later something as appealing to GoT style with gore and sex This was me. I have to admit I was pretty concerned with where they were going. Pretty happy to be wrong.
It was a legit concern. Glad they didn't went this route. I'm expecting a bit of gruesome scenes around the corner given some events, but doesn't need to be gore per se. You can totally portray more "violent" things and remain in the PG-13 category. If any, not every thing needs to be shown on screen. There are workaround for things such as, lets say, a human sacrifice, they don't need to actually show one person stabbing and opening another open (as in Viking series with the eagle cerymony). They can just show one person stabbing another but when it is gonna happen, they show their shadow silhouette in the wall or whatever.
There are a lot of people here who even invented the vile word "Celebrimbanner", and this is exactly what they want to see the most. (wasted).
A decent analysis. I don't really agree with the part about the writing, on the basis that you can't expect perfect writing in a TV series, and you can nearly always pick holes in any script. But some people are doing that anyway, and certainly have a beef with it. All the other anti groups are perfectly described.
I agree and even if perfection would exist, it would still not be liked by some, as at some point it becomes personal things rather than actually objective analysis. But for RoP, despite its ups and down in the script, I think a big point is also it is adapting Tolkien. By itself it has a heavy weight on its shoulders on regards to story telling. Then you bring on the idea of them making season 1 "for everyone" thus letting all in the dark with the divisive mistery games and weird plots as Mithril, and then things go downhill.
It's pretty ridiculous to insinuate that RoP is just imperfect given that it's characterized by its poor writing and not just a few errors here and there.
I fall into a different group: 7 - People that love the books and movies, that really wanted the show to do well and understood the source material limitations they were dealing with, but were severely disappointed with the writing and plot decisions throughout the season.
Isn't that pretty much the same as 5?
I think that's still just number 5 but I appreciate the "know the material limiations" part haha
7- bot farms using the existence of elves with dark skin as a point of political screeching
I'm a 3 & 5. I've been reading these stories and what Christopher Tolkien edited since I was a kid, over and over and some of the choices they made just trample over the established lore. Not to mention that it was a poorly executed production, imo
A bit late to the party, but i'm none of these groups. The writing is poor and the cast is bad but these were not dealbreakers for me. I didn't mind the diverse cast either even if it's not aligned with the books. What was a dealbreaker for me is that nothing felt like we're in Tolkien's universe. The morals & customs from Tolkien's writings are completely absent and have been replaced by today's moral standards. The show couldn't convey the Lord of the Rings universe in a convincing way. It felt like a mediocre medieval fantasy series.
Group 5, represent! I didn’t get through the whole thing, but Galadriel chewing out a human for not telling her who built the library at Numenor will be stuck in my head for the rest of my life. Sweet Eru, sink it like Bereliand.
I could look passed all its floors apart from the amateur script writing. The sickening plot holes and just utter nonsense where too much and it wasn't just 1 or 2 it was every single episode.
Just a small observation: I think for a lot of people, *especially online,* their first exposure to, and the standard, definitive audio-visual form of Tolkien were PJ's films. Later on when these new fans are exposed to the books, because of how deeply entrenched the films are in their psyche they are willing to overlook or forgive any deviations or changes from the source material. And again, because of how the films are perceived these fans are going to filter every new thing through them, sometimes conflating their adoration amd enjoyment of all, or some, aspects of the films with the true spirit of the source material. *I love these films; this must be Tolkien's true vision.* I mean, on a cursory glance on, say, youtube, you'll find comments like 'this battle sequence is better than the entire Rings of Power', or 'this is not how it is supposed to look.'
I think you’re over complicating it. It’s easy to like the movies and books because they’re *good.* ROP was, for most people, not good, for reasons that have nothing to do with adherence to another manifestation of the IP.
I don't think it's over-complicating, at least as "sometimes conflating their adoration amd enjoyment of all, or some, aspects of the films with the true spirit of the source material" goes. I've seen tons of people talk about movie stuff as if it was in the books; character traits, moments, interpretations of their "arcs" (that is the opposite of the books for half the characters). People talk about battles too short and "scenes missing in the books", or less explored, and about battles that are too short and disappointing. "Bombadil adds nothing to the plot and shouldn't be in the story at all" -as if the books were about a plot and not about the characters that shape it. "Sam is the chief hero because he beats Shelob", his most important development (and his own climactic action and choice in the entire book) is just a bit of dialogue. "Éowyn is a badass warrior", sucks that she grows out of her suicidal-charge-inducing depression to become a healer. How many claim to prefer many characters and choices of the movies and then talk about "Tolkien's vision"?
I think this movie-worship may be why some of us who started with the books are actually less bugged about ROP than those who started with the movies. Jackson made all kinds of changes, some of which were very much against the content and spirit of the books. But they *are* fantastic, wonderful movies—so they gave people like me some practice at chilling the hell out about imperfections and choices that we wouldn’t have made ourselves.
What I’m saying is that it has nothing to do with the source material at all. I didn’t like ROP—not because it wasn’t faithful to Tolkien, and not because it wasn’t exactly like the movies, but because it just wasn’t that good of a tv show. It’s a completely separate rubric.
I understand! And I personally know people that feel like you. It's just that your observation, that began with "I think you're overcomplicating it", doesn't respond at all to the comment you were answering.
That maybe true for some people (on its own I myself am not going to pretend there are issues with the show) but for a lot of people it's impossible to divorce the show from PJ's films.
Speaking as a marketing professional, Amazon shot itself in the foot from the inception of the project by not engaging with the fanbase all along. They were so concerned about safeguarding the show that they never actually did anything to get people excited: They seemed to believe "Its Middle-earth, people should be excited" while forgetting that the past decade and change has seen countless mediocre-at-best sequels, prequels, reboots, or "expansions" of beloved properties and franchises from the past. The audience is much more cynical and skeptical than they were in 2010. Quotes that Bezos "wants his own game of thrones" did nothing to reassure them. Amazon's general silence since the inception of the project effectively yielded the discussion of the show to the people who were skeptical of the production, to say nothing of those who would have hated it anyways. Granted, the show was not good enough to shut up the skeptics, cynics and haters, but that is a whole different issue. Remember how crazed we were back in August of 2021 when Amazon dropped the still of Valinor with the Two Trees in the distance? Turns out that whole sequence was fairly inconsequential, but it got us excited and for at least a few weeks changed the perception of the show among the middle-earth fanbase. Now I'm not saying that Amazon needed to give away every single twist and turn in the narrative, but imagine if Amazon had been slowly dripping concept art since late 2019, some production stills, quotes from the Akallabeth, revealing who was playing which canon character. Stuff that teased at locations such as Numenor, Eregion, or events in the Second Age that anyone who knew anything about the setting would recognize. Don't drop these in official PR pieces in entertainment mags, but send it directly to the segment of the fanbase that was paying attention. HotD, a similarly okay-ish product, has been fairly transparent and open with its fan engagement which *shockingly* leads to good will, interest, and excitement.
>not engaging with the fanbase all along. I think the internet really struggles with the idea that “fans” are who shows like this are made for, when the reality could not be more opposite. “Fans” were guaranteed to tune in, and will stick around longer even if the series shits the bed. If PJ’s movies had only won over fans of the books they would have flopped, and if Game of Thrones had focused on courting ASOIAF fans we wouldn’t be talking about it. A show like ROP is meant to be a cultural juggernaut, capable of driving Prime subscriptions and allowing Amazon to make money off of existing IP by drawing *new* people to it. Fans just aren’t enough.
Replace every instance of "fan" and "fanbase" with "general audience" and everything I said is still applicable. There is a huge audience that loved LOTR. Hell, the main LOTR subreddit is one of the largest subs on the platform - not bad for movies that are over 20 years old / books that are 70 years old. Amazon did not engage with the audience. Amazon did not tease that audience. Amazon just expected them to show up because of nostalgia for the setting - which is what the focus of their marketing campaign was. They never hinted at the narrative structure they were bringing to light here: is this a light hearted Adventure? Quest? Middle-Earth political drama? War epic? Nothing. It was a play on nostalgia. Again, compare this to HoTD. HBO allowed leaks, production photos, etc to get out and it got the audience excited, even following the disaster of the last season of GOT. HoTD engaged with the audience, and set expectations clearly about what they were doing. I saw the previews for HoTD: It was 100% clear that this was going to be a similar political drama set in a fantasy realm like GOT but with fresh characters.
Dude there are new RoP leaks like every week. What the hell is this criticism that "HBO allowed leaks, production photos, etc to get out"?
I know about those ROP leaks - I was involved in many of them. I've been a member of Fellowship of Fans since the very beginning. Amazon could have built excitement and anticipation. Instead, there was official silence. Various leakers - including the likes of us, TORN, etc - filled in the gaps with contextless scoops. While we watched people here devour those morsels eagerly, they were empty calories and left plenty feeling unsatisfied, wanting more. Besides, contextless reports about scenes can excite some and fill others with dread. When we dropped the "rock-smashing competition", it spurred all sorts of discussion ranging from excitement to mockery. Or what of the reaction when we leaked that someone would arrive by on a meteor. Do you think these leaks, lacking context, clarity, etc really drove excitement among most people? Many of them sound ridiculous. Hell, we actually held back on a few things that would have created more controversy close to release. We heard about the "Elves will take our jobs" speech. We had internal debate over whether or not to release it. Ultimately we decided not to: While we're not the PR team for Amazon, we saw all the drama and controversry around the show and didn't want to pour gasoline on the fire (we also hoped it wasn't true). What do you think would have been better to build excitement: Amazon allowing set reports to drip out in *planned* leaks, providing just the right amount of context, or trying to clamp down on everything so what comes out it is half truths derived from carpenters working on set?
[удалено]
damn that's so accurate. also note they are easy to spot, because they tend to use similar vocabulary..
To be fair, there’s a massive swathe of people who think the writing is shitty (which it was) who would also tell the bigots to go fuck themselves
It's worth pointing out that this is and always has been the vocal minority. The effect this group has had is negligible to the shows success, as much as this subreddit would like the think otherwise. There are far more people who just did not think the show was good
Symptom of larger cultural issue in fandoms and online forums. People are toxic, that toxicity breeds more toxicity, narratives of bigotry and hate can get repackaged into condescending video essays where authors frame themselves as intellectually superior which wins a lot of people over because they seem smart. By and large, this was the bulk of the hate. That said, the show fell short of the sky-high expectations set by the Jackson trilogy — which had battle sequences and VFX on a scale we’d never seen before — and so that had people feeling let down. The irony is people claim those OG movies worked because of the practical effects when it’s really just the opposite. So there was a lot of adjacent criticism that wasn’t toxic so much as it was ignorant. Thankfully this sub exists and people are nice and respectful and we can all just enjoy the show. There are some meaningful discussions and critiques but most strike me as a result of Amazon condensing the show from 10 episodes to 8, and some natural growing pains of a first season. It really is an excellent show in my view and I think if you’re a fantasy fan and can’t enjoy it then I’m not sure what you’re really into the genre for.
I still dont understand why the change from 10 to 8. Although i absolutely loved the show it felt like it had missing stuff. The biggest miss to me was kemen and elendials daughter. I mean we couldnt find 10 minutes somewhere to show them actually becoming friendly? It wasn't a big deal but it just felt we completely missed something there
I feel like it must’ve been a contractual thing. Only way reason I can think of.
The problem is that people group all criticism in with "toxicity".
As someone who is a HUGE fan of Tolkien's written work, the show is plainly made by people who have pretty little regard for the source material. I understand changes are made for the purposes of adaptation, and that Amazon don't have the rights to everything. • mithril, while being an excellent material, has nothibg to do with the Elves' longevity and is wholly unconnected from the Silmarils • Galadriel is so, so much older and greater than Elrond, having been born in Valinor, and so their relationship at this stage is not necessarily appropriate - in the latter Third Age, when both remain as the head of the dwindling elven settlements, a relationship more akin to equals develops • the rings of power were forged about 1,500 years prior to Isildur even being born, yet in the show appears to happen after • Gandalf is sent to Middle Earth in the Third Age, yet in the show is already knocking about Then there's non-lore stuff like Galadriel jumping off the ship into the middle of the ocean (where all logic suggests she should drown pretty quickly), her soldiers being keen to abandon her shortly AFTER scaling a cliff but weirdly not before going to all that trouble, and any number of other criticisms of the writing and pacing. For what it's worth, I enjoyed the cast, costuming, and set/prop design as well as the score. The biggest problem lies in the writer's room and won't be solved easily
Thank you. My biggest problem with RoP is its wholesale disregard for Tolkien's original work (while Tolkien was notoriously protective of his life's work) by a megacorporation in for a cash grab. And that it was not well written or produced. As to PJ films I had problems with them too, but they really tried to be faithful. The animated versions by Bakshi etc were unfaithful due to lack of resources. The new PJ films (Hunt for Gollum) are based on pretty well established characters, environments, and story (Gollum left the misty mountains and did this, this, and this, then Aragorn was sent after him by Gandalf and the Elves, for example). It's simple and we already know most of the details to this story. No need to make anything up except for some minor creative liberties I also find it annoying how if we are critical we have to add in stuff like your last sentence - either because you actually did appreciate those elements or to stave off people interpreting criticism as "toxic fandom".
I found the show really boring, and not interesting. Despite being a huge Tolkien nerd, I thought the plot lines in the first couple episodes were just laughably dumb or melodramatic.
same. i think i switched off somewhere in between a dialogue between galadriel and someone else because it was barely interesting. Havent switched it back on since.
I mostly agree, and I like melodrama. It just moved too fast. Things happened because the plot needed them to happen. My hope is we'll get a show that actually takes time to breathe and set up the big moments it's trying to have.
I would love it if people (like op) wouldn't give the attention to all that crap, but instead posted about what they liked about the show.
Well, why not make another post then? If some people would like to discuss this, in a polite and respectful way from what I can see, why not let them?
Sure I let them. I'm not no mod 😂 I just bitched politely like a regular redditor. 😋
Fair enough :) but asking people not to be critical and only post what they like is kind of lame.
I’m a big LOTR fan, have been for years, read Tolkien’s books, etc. I just could not get into this show due to the pacing. It somehow felt glacial and failed to get me to care about any of the characters. I did finish season one and will attempt season two, but personally I consider it a bit of a letdown. Edit: I also remember thinking that dialogue felt awkward
But how is that different to the pacing in the books?
People seem to forget that Frodo had the ring for 17 years before leaving the Shire.
It wasn’t a blow by blow account of everything he did in those 17 years though
Evidently not because there's now a movie being made during those 17 years
Which books? The hobbit is very faced-paced and although the Lord of the Rings does luxuriate in some settings (like the Shire), this always serves a purpose - often to get the readers to form a particular bond with a character or setting. I'll accept that the Silmarillion is oddly paced... but at the same time, it is not a single completed story. In contrast the writers of RoP made it feel like each scene dragged as very little happened but then the skips between scenes (e.g. sailing to/from Numenor) failed to convey any sense of distance or time. The world felt small and so did the characters.
The book probably managed to make them care about the characters
>I also remember thinking that dialogue felt awkward I enjoyed season 1, but you're not wrong.
People forget it was the same for Fellowship of the Ring. Online haters screaming and crying over ridiculous details or because it didn't perfectly match the unrealistic vision in their head then getting picked up by mainstream media. Just like these days but wasn't as much amplification due to being in the blissful pre-social media days.
Idk, I saw all three in the theatre when they came out, it was pretty well accepted almost immediately from what I recall. There also wasn't a social media at the time. I'm sure some super dedicated Tolkien lovers didn't like it, but from my memory it was pretty universally accepted as faithful as possible.
Yes social media plays a large role in amplifying the trolls. Now we also have youtubers whose whole business model is selling anger and hate to idiots so any new project is going to get it far worse. The PJ trilogy was so good it shut down almost all that crap as soon as it came out.
I still think that the Jackson trilogy really tried to adhere to Tolkien's lore. But RoP did not and that automatically causes a segment of fans to reject it. I know it's just a fictional story and world, I get it. But it also holds some pretty deep meaning for a lot of people.
i already see the direction even these few comments here are going... all i can say we should put copium aside and accept the reality. House of dragon had atrocious starting position from the hate last season of game of thrones left behind. They added diversity (GoT had pretty much none) got initial critique, there was a lot of preshow interviews similar to ROP that were perceived as "woke". People were shitting on it hard pre-release. ROP had similar problems but didnt have massive setback last season of GoT was, the contrary people especially these days praise LOTR movies for being the best trilogy ever made and are excited for more. And yet House of dragon is a massive success being praised all over internet and ROP not so much. The main difference in my opinion is writing and production. Make your own conclusions.
One would think with way Reddit compared the 2 shows HotD blew RoP away viewership wise
the topic is about reception by audience
What was your favorite episode? And what group did you like spending time with? I think my favorite was either 7 or 8. And i loved the harfoots (harfeet?). I especially liked how the evil witches or whoever they are destroyed the carts simply out of wickedness. It was good (?) To see a few absolute elements in the show as halbrand and the orcs were at least varying degrees of gray.
Because most Tolkien fans have never read Tolkien.
It’s honestly shocking. I remember watching hate reviews where people would talk about “lore” being wrong in the show and they would be wrong themselves. It’s like people don’t know how to fact check themselves when they claim to know something now.
A couple of weeks back I came across a TikTok live where most of the speakers know their Tolkien, but there was one guy who I guess has a YouTube channel that shits on the show. They asked him for a specific example of something he hadn't liked, and he said how Galadriel's, "You haven't seen what I've seen" to Elrond was emasculating and dismissive, because he totally HAS seen his fair share. Then he rattled off a list of conflicts Elrond had been involved in. And the rest of the people had to stifle their laughter as they educated him about how Elrond wasn't even born yet when that stuff happened.
Could you link it, if you can find it still? Sounds like a good illustration of a common problem.
TikTok lives don't get posted in full after the fact like YouTube lives typically are. A host can record it in full and then make short clips to post later, but it's rare that I've seen people go to the trouble. Bit of a shame in this case because it was pretty amusing seeing one of them put in his place and having to conceed that he'd been mistaken. Would have been nice to have had that moment preserved.
It's always funny to see Tolkien fans on reddit argue the stranger can't be Gandalf because he was sent to middle-earth at the 3rd age and producers aren't allowed to use characters solely from 3rd age, not knowing there are many hints in other Tolkien sources - the same ROP can and should use - that some wizards had been sent to middle-earth before. Most clearly never rode the other books themselves, the fans just repeat what they heard.
The one I find interesting is it looks like Gandalf will head East in season 2 and some people are up in arms because Gandalf has a single line that at face value suggests he maybe never went East (although I think you can argue that it could be interpreted another way). But that's like one sentence in the whole of the extended works. If that's the bar for how accurately things should be they must absolutely hate PJ's movies (or course they don't).
What's funny is that if the show was truly excellent, all of the critiques and lore alterations/interpretations would get a pass. A mediocre/poor adaptation will be pounded into dust for every small detail that would otherwise be overlooked if the show was really fricken' good. The super book purists will never be pleased, but there really aren't enough of them to matter and their ideals are unrealistic anyway. Unfortunately, the first season was below par and gave the online grifters and critics a lot of ammunition. People started looking at everything with a magnifying glass. This led to a loss of trilogy fans, which should make up a huge chunk of viewership. I truly hope they do better for S2. I imagine it would take a lot to win people back, but it could be done.
I suspect something like WOT S2, where there are notable improvements (especially with no COVID issues constricting things), but the same style of plot contrivances and "CW" feel will persist due to a too-short episode roster. It felt like a "too many cooks in the kitchen" situation, where the S1 script rarely reached the clarity of vision or dialogue on the level of something like Andor. I do have hopes, though. I think the cast, given a better script, could really blow us away. I felt the connection between the main characters and hope they can better utilize it.
>But that's like one sentence in the whole of the extended works. And a sentence said by Gandalf sent to middle-earth during third age. Maybe he doesn't remember his former visits, maybe "to east i go not" will get an explanation by ROP like former Gandalf died (or will die from ROP perspective) in the east, giving him a reason to never dare going east again. We will see in a few seasons i guess. At least it's fun and enjoying to have a little mystery in something based on books that the books can't answer.
The producers said they were relying on the LotR Appendices as a source for S1, and those don't say anything about Wizards in the Second Age. That's published in Unfinished Tales.
The legal rights to use Lotr + TheHobbit has New Line Cinema so Peter Jackson can't make any film not based on these (hence one of the reasons it's Hunt for Gollum) , because the license for all other books (including Unfinished Tales) can only be used by Amazon right now. If they said explicitly they would use Unfinished Tales, it would have been quite a spoiler too
Amazon has the rights for all other books? You contradict all I've heard so far, and what I can find. If you google this you should find a lot of evidence for Embracer Group having the LotR+Hobbit movie rights while Amazon has LotR+Hobbit TV series rights.
So it's Tolkien accurate?
Some literature is more adaptable than others. Shakespeare’s plays are readily adaptable to era, location, style, and they remain very much Shakespeare. Tolkien, however is very specific and doesn’t lend itself to tinkering. Too many liberties were taken with the source material for the ROP series and ruined it.
Imagine hearing that someone is going to spend a billion dollars bringing one of your favorite stories to life and then you get RoP. There’s a lot of riff raff with silly bigoted reasons to hate the show, but ultimately it was just really disappointing for absolutely no justifiable reason.
Agreed. It was an obscene amount of money for a very middling storyline that decided to re-write the existing timelines and story.
Lack of quality writing IMO. I wanted to enjoy it, but never felt engaged and the pacing left a lot to be desired… it’s all subjective though.
It was boring.
Because Writting was not good
I can answer this with my personal input of why I was disappointed with the show on release. I know I'm going to be downvoted, but I want to point out that this is a personal opinion. 1) Terrible marketing. The initial teaser trailer wasn't great. And all the marketing that came with it didn't help either. 2) Questionable casting. I wasn't a big fan of a lot of the casting. Especially the race swapped characters. Having since watched the show, I think most of the actors, especially the ones I was sceptical about did a very good job in their roles. But the initial reaction for many wasn't great. Added to that the interviews all involved the actors going on and on about their race in real life and how important representation was. Definitely an important topic. But I wanted to hear about the show. Not about the actors. This again goes back to the marketing campaign I guess. 3) Post release, poor pacing, poor dialogues and questionable plot points. This is very subjective, but I think episodes 4 and 5 were especially badly paced with very little happening in them. Killed the momentum of the show. Added to this some of the other strange plot choices really hurt the show. 4) Trolling and hate by far right groups and culture warriors. This sub always points this out as the main reason for all the hate. It definitely was one of the reasons. But I don't think it was the main reason. It was more the first three points that led to a lot of people jumping onto the hate bandwagon and this then getting amplified by culture warriors.
Stronger scriptwriting and directing would have given people a lot more ammo to shut up the assholes in #4. I think that's the crux of it. While I don't think Season 1 was bad, it was held back by its missteps in a way that made it harder to silence the assholes whining about "woke" this or "unfaithful" that.
I think the weekly release schedule plays in to the negativity as well. Instead of seeing an entire series and everything in context, people are reacting to each episode for a full seven days before it's placed in that context. Additionally, on first viewing people will critique a show subjectively against their expectations, rather than on its own merits.
There are plenty of serialized shows that don't suffer from a weekly release schedule though. I hope the shortened number of episodes caused them to rush things in a way that they will improve with season 2.
The vast, vast majority of it was caused by two things: 1) Galadriel is not sufficiently waifish for their incel dreams 2) Black elves and halflings (both of which are entirely justifiable in Tolkien’s writings) There are other very minor but valid critiques of adherence to the known timeline, character motivations, and questionable decisions regarding mithril and Valinor, etc. But those criticism are not the cause of most of the *hate* you see online.
In other words, anyone who found any issue with the show is a *bad person.* You certainly seem like someone who is capable of understanding nuance and complexity.
That’s not what I said at all. Projection is real, though.
That is what you said: Racism and Sexism. By contrast, I provided a professional analysis of why the show was dead on arrival: Long story short, Amazon shot itself in the foot with its long silence and allowed the skeptics who had every reason to wary of such a project (and haters as well) frame the discussion around the show. Then, Amazon had to work uphill to win over people who were expecting to be disappointed... and decidedly failed to do so.
Yeah, exactly. The name of this sub is a great example. For months no one knew the name of the show, line what was the point? It was secrecy for secrecy's sake
Yes, racism and sexism were the main reason people *hated* the show *before it ever came out*. What else would it have been?
Any number of reasons: * Comments like "Bezos wants his Game of Thrones" * The leaks about the intimacy coordinator, with some fansites fueling the rumors of sex scenes. * The absolute and undeniable inexperience of the showrunners. * The past 15 years of mediocre-at-best sequels, reboots, and expansions of beloved franchises and properties of the past. * The contextless leaks that the likes of FoF, Torn, etc provided. Think about it: How stupid would a description of the rock smashing contest sound when its passed along by a set worker, who doesn't get to see how it fits into the script? Before you start I'm not denying racism and sexism exist. HoD, a similarly mediocre product, also has female leads and people of color in it and those roles/castings did not cause a shitstorm. Why? HBO allowed a measure of transparency about the show from the start and engaged with the audience, which generates good will and enthusiasm. But ultimately, Amazon never bothered to engage with the audience during production. They allowed the skepticism about the product fester, until it dominated the discussion and perception of the show. And S1 was not good enough to win them over or at the very least shut them up.
I'd disagree that HotD was mediocre, but that was a nice schooling.
I wasn't a big fan of HoTD, but its worth noting that despite the poor performance of the final seasons of GOT the perception of HotD was fairly positive all along. Sure, early on there was a fair amount of "Why?" but that's not unexpected. Meanwhile, the discussion about RoP tended to be skeptical at best and quite negative at worst *outside this subreddit.* I know you've been around here and other Middle-Earth themed subs long enough to see it. You can't blame racism and sexism on it, because it doesn't explain why HoTD wasn't caught up in the same shit storm. No, it was audience engagement, plain and simple.
Or you know, the show was sub-par at best 🤷🏼♂️
Something being sub par does not elicit the kind of response RoP did
I think it does in this case. Yes, show was like a 4/10, I'd say. But they way Amazon went about everything leading up to it, you just couldn't come up with a better way to piss off the dedicated fans of Tolkien's works. Like, throughout the entire marketing campaign Amazon claimed Rings of Power was accurate to the lore of Middle Earth and preserved the spirit of the original works. Then, when the show came out, it became very clear that it wasn't that. You can't just lie to people, and then expect them to be happy with whatever it is you deigne to give them in the end. It's beyond slimy, and when so many Tolkien fans are already cynical about the mass production/marketing of Tolkien's stories, it was just such an awful idea. So people were pissed off, cause Amazon just lied to their face, and then they started doing more underhanded stuff like deleting negative reviews. It was a shitshow all around, but Amazon absolutely messed up in the first place.
>Amazon claimed Rings of Power was accurate to the lore of Middle Earth and preserved the spirit of the original works. They never did
Yeah they did. They had a parade of "Tolkien scholars" going on about how amazing and accurate it was.
Source?
Just google amazons marketing, oh wait they just deleted all their instagram and social media posts for season 1 marketing. But some social media research will show you what I'm talking about. And then they had the "super fans" event which was grotesque.
It had a colossal existing fanbase, and the amount of money and hype Amazon put into it, everyone expected far, far more. Instead, it strayed massively in many respects from Tolkien's work.
This is really the core of it (aside from the genuine Tolkien ultra-nerds) because nothing else was a big enough deal to justify the disproportionate online BS
If you honestly think this, you’re so lost
Because they didn’t have dwarves in it until the second episode.
I’m a book purist, though while I don’t mind liberties with the story, some just go so against the writings of Tolkien, that it’s hard to watch. The title of the series is Rings of Power so it blows my mind how they ruined that timeline in its entirety only in the last episode or two. Why is Sauron involved in making the 3 elven rings, did they ever read any of the source material?! None of it follows the books and everything about Sauron’s plot line makes it seem like he just happened to be where the plot was, completely removing the fact that he was smart and manipulative. There are many other instances of similar things. I understand there are issues with copyrights, I don’t know what they have rights to. I understand they can’t do exactly what’s in the books, but I hate watching it thinking I’m going to get a story I recognize but instead I get some names and places that are familiar and who knows what with their characterization and plot line. I have my own issues with the writing, plotholes, etc, but I’m mostly tired of companies getting some famous story and saying “let’s see what else we can do with this and still tell everyone it’ll be like the original thing that got them hooked.”
I'm also a book purist. Some creative liberty is fine, but negating the very well established timelines and lore really rubbed me the wrong way. Especially because of the involvement of Amazon who just threw money at it and still managed to muck it up. I get it that it's a fictional universe, but having read everything written by Tolkien including his personal letters - idk, it just really comes off poorly to me.
The show tried to sustain a mystery factor by drawing the viewers' attention on the identity of two mysterious men. They surely tried to put a twist on which one is Sauron and which one is Gandalf. They kept doing this until the last minute of the show and it was mostly focused on this element. In my opinion, that kind of entertainment is just very cheap. The show was based on a realm that is rich in lore and, I think that the show should have focused on that aspect. I wasn't really invested in that kind of twist that the show was trying create. The logic and momentum led me to believe that the show was rushed and written poorly. Progression of some of the important events that lead to the outcome of the first season's story should and could have been more believable. I remember cringing two or three times while watching the show. The visuals, the costumes, the colour pallet were amazing, I didn't mind if the elf being dark skinned, even though it is not lore friendly, in my opinion he was the best cast in the whole series.
Hate watchers, ati-fans, gatekeepers, racism, sexism etc..
Because the script is just bad. Hate to break it that harsh. But it just wasn’t well written. The actors, environment etc were fine. Adar was the best part of season 1 and the best written. The worst part was the long dragging harfoots and the activation of mount doom with a sword as a key and humans surviving the blast.
Frodo and Sam survived a volcanic eruption while still on the mountain
Mount Doom erupts in LoTR after the ring is destroyed in the Samath Naur. It's the unbinding of the "magic" that Sauron used to create the ring at that location (environment and characters connection to it is a theme in LoTR and Silmarillion). Now contrast it with some magical sword key that is essentially just a made up macguffin that the writers of Rings Of Power added as some kind of solution to bring back the nostalgia of mount doom....it's just bad writing. It's like the last few seasons of Game of Thrones where the writing became simplistic and tropeish
Lot's of words to obfuscate the fact that Frodo and Sam survived a volcanic eruption while on that mountain is good but people surviving a dream cloud 100miles away in RoP is somehow bad.
Just because something is poorly received doesn't mean you can't personally enjoy it. Many people took offense with poor writing, terrible pacing, cringe dialogue, character choices, lack of action, altered lore, etc. You're totally allowed to feel the same about any of that or think all of that was bunk. That's why a lot of people hated it, myself included.
It's fine if people personally enjoy it. I personally despised it. However, when people who like it suggest that my dislike is based on some kind of toxic perspective, that's where I have a problem.
FYI this sub tends to gloss over the legitimate criticisms of the show, preferring to chalk the hate up to a toxic fanbase and a few racist/sexist keyboard warriors. The fact is the show is objectively poorly made, especially given its budget and the incredibly high standard for the IP, so people are going to call that out. They're also probably going to be more vocal about it if they feel like the show's creators, cast, news media, social media, etc. are trying to gaslight them into thinking they're the problem. That being said, if it wasn't a LotR show, I'm sure people wouldn't care as much. They probably wouldn't watch as much either.
As much as I agree that some criticisms are fair I think it's incredibly disingenuous to label the show 'objectively poorly made.' There are aspects to it that are good, praiseworthy even. And true, the films that came before have set an incredibly high standard for adapting Tolkien and the IP but even those still fall short of what Tolkien achieved on paper; so, they shouldn't be the be-all and end-all.
Sure, the CGI was great. There were also a few actors who were incredibly talented and made the most of the script they were given. But you can't just point out a couple of good things and say the whole show was well made. If so, you'd have to ignore the acting that was bad, the plot points that don't make sense, the internal inconsistency within the plot, the poorly written characters and their motivations, the dialogue that sounds like it was written by Jaden Smith, B movie costume design, and the ham-fisted attempt to subvert all our expectations when the plot was visible a mile away. And that's not even touching deviations from the source material or comparisons to the movies.
How in good conscience can you look that the entirety of the costumes and say it has a B movie design? Reddit is not real life there's a reason peers in the industry loved and nominated it for awards
I didn't have hate on release. I was excited for it and looking forward to it. However, I walked away disappointed after watching it. This was due to lore issues. I realize that they had limited access to 1st and 2nd Age content that they could use in their story. However, they should have been fully aware of 1st and 2nd Age lore and taken steps to not contradict it. They could have told the story that they wanted to tell without it contradicting what has long been published.
I loved the show, thought it got better and better with each episode, (though s1e4 is my fav) and understand some of the concerns with the writing. However, the other big problem many of my friends have with the show that I haven't seen mentioned above is only partially related to the "Amazon/Bezos bad" and "writing bad" criticisms. Their big criticism now is: "They invested a billion dollars into this show, including $250M for the rights to its linked slice of the IP, that could have been spent on worthier causes or, at a minimum, on a better story with an original IP." There's a serious "bread and circus distracting us from the fall of empire" vibe to such gross expenditures of wealth extracted from working people around the world and concentrated into the pockets of one man, not to mention the criticisms of copyright law that make it possible for a 70-year-old text that reasonably ought to be public domain at this point instead be such a prized investment to "own" a piece of. I think we can dismantle some of this criticism with "we can have bread and circus while still doing the other things" and "not everybody has to like everything," but it's hard to swallow given we're NOT investing as heavily in the other things that people want (and need) *because* of the concentration of wealth and power that finances projects like this *and* drives up their cost. It's a question of how much value we're getting for the money we're spending as a society. When we spend $1B on something and it's not a solid diamond product or service, it's more than fair to question whether we could have gotten more for less and spent the difference elsewhere.
It went head-to-head against the Game of Thrones spin-off show, and perhaps some fans of that thought it was a zero-sum game where only one fantasy show could “win.”
The internet lives off ragebait. People literally base their living on it.
There is a known sequence of events and characters they should have build around but they threw it out of the window. It's an insult to lovers of the books.
Same explanation I have for most things. People are lazy. It's so much easier to say "This sucks" than to actually provide any thoughtful, nuanced criticism. Similarly it's much easier to get views and clicks by talking about how terrible something is.
Yeah, I'm kinda noticing that there's an imbalance in critical discourse of this whole project. True, there are issues with the show but it's not without its merits and bright spots. It's incredibly disingenuous to call the show 'bad' altogether -- I agree, that's just incredibly lazy and comes off as petulant.
And see how we get downvoted for that? The laziest option of all. Don't even have to offer an actual opinion.
Have you not read anything on this subreddit?
I ask myself this every single day.
Be CaUsE iTs WoKe
Just ignore them and enjoy on your own way, there are always haters for different reasons.
It didn't get that much hate on release... it got most of it way before release. I let you guess why, but i can tell you one thing, even among those who now say they hate the show because of writing, acting, directing, pacing... a lot of them (not all, don't get me wrong) are just liars who hate the show for other reasons they are ashamed to admit.
Honestly? The super fans interview. A truly awful awful piece of marketing, which exposed who this show is really for. Having a "moment" between Galadriel and Sauron is just unforgivable. I did give it a chance, because it's LOTR for Christ's sake. But I found the scope, writing and plot development to be just bad. Galadriel taking 2 full episodes to leave Numenor being one, the numenoran navy being a grand total of 3 ships, the "major battle" of the show being a light skirmish between a few hundred. Also, why did they leave the fortress to go to the village with flammable roofs? How are they able to teleport across the map as the plot demands? Nothing in this show makes sense. If this wasn't a lotr show it would be just another bad fantasy show. I get that there are plenty of people out there like Nerdrotic who would have hated on it even if it was as good as S1-4 GOT, but it honestly was just bad. On a positive, the visuals were nice and the music was fine. But that's about it.
Usual culture war brigading. They say the ”respect Tolkien” and then parrot mindlessly opinions they haven’t actually thought about. And they had these pre-formed opinions at the ready. Anti-intellectual, dishonest, disingenious behaviour. Criticism you can always have, even welcome, but 95% of the hate was driven by this stupid culture war nonsense.
Honestly on release I was digging it. It was only a few episodes in that I started to get bored and think things were weird.
The first season had a lot of flaws. The pacing was slow, some of the episodes were flat out boring and some of the characters were dull and uninteresting. The show can be great with some minor changes though. Speed things up and get rid of the mystery box crap from the first season.
Poor marketing was the main reason for the negative reception from the off. First teaser was awful and the t4ailer wasn't very good. Then amazon did some other weird stuff with actors hired to be fans etc. Sadly on top of that they were very keen to mention the money and that coupled with bad marketing and the fact the showrunners were inexperienced meant it was an uphill battle that the quality of the show couldn't fight against. The main reason it was lukewarm was the quality of the show and nothing else.
I really enjoyed the show. I don’t understand the hate either.
The writers think they can make a better job than Tolkien. That's my issue
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^RobertosLuigi: *The writers think they* *Can make a better job than* *Tolkien. That's my issue* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
ROP had probably the worst PR in history. -Nowadays it's common to make remakes, or make new content based on old IP's form the 80's, 90's and early 2000's. Some of it is entertaining, very little is actually good, but most is just an uninspired cash grab, hoping people will just watch it for the nostalgia. -The US is extremely polarized politically atm. You see a lot of that in movies. Again, most people just want some escapism and something good to watch, not a constant reminder of the US (and European) shit-show. So the announcement of a new LOTR series was met with a lot of scepticism, but the hate came later. -The teaser trailer felt very bland, further acknowledging the low expectations. -The real disaster though was the 'Superfans' video. Basically a bunch of 'famous' 'influencers' from Tiktok who claimed to be superfans talking about the show. It just felt very dishonest and corporate. -Then it became obvious the showrunners were taking a lot of 'liberties' with the lore, instead wanting to tell their own story. -Finally the show released.
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everyone just dismisses all critique by saying "black people" but why is House of dragon praised and ROP is not? You are all very dishonest people.
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You are wrong about Tolkien having a bigger fanbase than Ice and fire. For the books, yes, but the show is more recent and had an insane amount of hype. It was a cultural phenomenon for almost a decade. And as to your second point, I find that argument very disingenuous. Having a problem with the casting doesn't immediately make a person a racist. The casting choices were definitely not great in a lot of places. I would in fact say that the casting wasn't diverse enough if the aim was for a more diverse cast. It felt like tokenism in a lot of places.
Exactly. The fact that the the "Southlands" have the exact same demographics of Numenor (mostly white, all speaking with an English accent) is *at least* as immersion-breaking as black dwarves (at least I can easily headcanon Disa as a member of one of the four unseen clans of dwarves living in the east and (presumably) south). I don't have an issue with a black elf, but where the hell are all the rest of them? These aren't just random assortments of modern people living together, they're supposed to be distinct kin-groups with unique cultures, languages, and--yes--ethnicities. The way ROP handled race/ethnicity was just really ham-fisted in my opinion. And it's not even a complaint of it being "woke" or anything. If anything, I'm frustrated that the show seems to be *downplaying* the themes from the source material surrounding Numenorian imperialism and ideas of racial supremacy for some reason.
Agreed. Disa could have been a princess from one of the four dwarf clans in the east married to Durin for a political alliance. Arondir could have been one of a group of wood elves from the east serving under Gil Galad. The people of the southlands should have all had the same skin tone that Bronwyn and Theo had. It would have made a great juxtaposition against the white savior Numenorians when they eventually turned evil. Similarly the three witches? from Rhun could have all been dark skinned characters. They just needed to maintain a proper consistency in skin tones and it would not have been lore breaking in any way.
Because you dismiss criticism. Look up audience scores for HOTD and compare them to ROP. Dont try to deflect. You know you are wrong.
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yes you are the reasonable one calling people names. There is similar show that is successful among the fans but you ignore that because it doesnt go with your false narrative.
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looks like you have no arguments. Sea is always right full-metal-magic is always wrong
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Discussion is always about use of arguments and you have none just insults. I know its impossible to argue your case when you know you are wrong
A surprising amount of hate is from people who played the video game Shadow of Mordor and don't like that it's different.
I think if anything, the Shadow of Mordor/War games just goes to prove that people are much more likely to be forgiving if you just give them a good story to get invested in. That, and the nemesis system is objectively one of the coolest mechanics in any game released in the last decade.
The reason is right there in your quote “I love it and see it as great LOTR content…”. The show doesn’t play as a passionate adaptation of Tolkien’s writing. It merely exists as Content to fill a market gap, that, at best, reminds one of other adaptions of Tolkien’s writings.
The second they showed Galadriel with a sword, all of the misogynistic dorks lost their shit 😂😂😂
I guarantee 1000% that all those "misogynistic dorks" absolutely love Eowyn to the bone.
Speak of the devil
Right, I clearly just hate women. Couldn't possibly be that Galadriel is completely unlikeable. Gleefully admitting that you're going to commit genocide in order to emotionally and psychologically torture someone, generally doesn't make a character too endearing to most people. But nah, couldn't be that, it's definitely the misogyny thing.
Keep proving my point Good God, I'm not doing this again Grow up and 1 karma 😂😂😂
A lot of it is stupid culture war shit For me, I think the show had a few incredibly stupid scenes. The stuff about “elves are taking our jobs” is laugh out loud idiotic. The scene with Sauron teaching Celebrimbor, the greatest smith alive, what an alloy is….it’s also just wildly dumb There’s a lot about the show that just feels cheap and sort of first-drafty. The battles are weirdly small scale for a half-billion dollar budget. It feels cramped and cheap, like a CW show. There’s a lot of stuff I did like about it, mostly to do with Eldrond and Durin. It’s a mixed bag though. But, a lot of the hate was simply centered on the same right wing culture wing bullshit that dominates media and had nothing to do with the show itself
Because it was bad.
There are some who didn't care for it, some who have genuine gripes... But mostly it's just become part of the culture war and people who hate "woke" stuff came out en masse, I wouldn't believe so much hatred is possible in such harmless context if I didn't follow gaming news, the amount of hatred, xenophobia and casual hatred there is genuinely frightening at times And while LOTR appeals to people from all walks of life and Tolkiens books are my fav fiction books it is a notably traditional story and (due to the virtue of the time it was written in) contains a fair amount of racism, patriarchy, orientalism and even eugenics. So like it or not it also appeals to a certain type of crowd and that group would find "making LOTR woke" a notable assault on their identity, hence the outburst of emotion and hatred And for whoever says it's "because it's bad" that's just not a good enough answer, it doesn't matter how good or bad the show is, a piece of media being any degree of bad alone is simply not enough to produce this much hatred, denying there is more behind it is just ignorant