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Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power – Episodes 1.1 & 1.2 Review: General Series Overview
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LOTR Rings of Power 1.1 & 1.2 Review: General Series Overview (Lord of the Rings)
HuntingBP
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I have to say that I really enjoyed watching the first three episodes. Everything looks amazing, some plot threads are pretty intruiging, and the acting is relatively good.
I found myself especially attracted to the Southlands plot with Arondir (which reminds me a bit of Grey Worm from GoT) – what is precisely going on there and how is everything going to change? (some is known/obvious but I am nonetheless curious how it all will play out exactly). It's all very ominous/mysterious. The Harfoots were pretty good as well; liked watching the adventures of Nori. This common complaint about the Elves (and the same holds for the Jedi in Star Wars) I (almost) never agree with – they are supposed to act/talk like that, and I like fantasy (and science fiction) partially because it includes all these different races/people and their unique societies/cultures.
I enjoy audio-visual side of the series. Bear McCreary is my favourite TV composer (ex aequo with Ramin Djawadi), so I expect that he will create for TLotR:TRoP something that stays with me for decades like BSG soundtrack. Unfortunately I am still not sure about plot and characters, maybe there will be payoff for every story line, but on this stage really hard to say. I like that I hear the difference between the way how elves, dwarves and man speaks, even as English is my second language. What I didn’t like almost at all are Elves with short hair, Galadriel’s brother looks really good in this haircut, but for me not the rest. The only memorable dialogue was this about what 20 years means for a dwarf and I see Khazad-dum as the strongest plot line so far.
It’s entertaining and I’m glad some of the negativity is just overblown. Most great series are always slow in the beginning episodes and truly get good over time. I hope Amazon has the patience to invest in this show
Considering your strong views on adherence to existing cannon and outright condemnation of D&D in their divergence from ASOIAF material, I am very surprised you are this positive about tROP.
This adaptation takes even greater liberties with "unexplored" parts of the lore and makes outright changes to characters for no specific appreciable reason (deleting Celeborn, making Galadriel a warrior, Miriel the queen-regent, Elendil no longer nobility are some examples), downright contradicting established cannon.
There was a story to be had even without the rights to the Silmarilion or Tales, this just isn't it, and I will admit to severe disappointment in the less than stringent standards you seem to be using to evaluate this.
I also disagree with your point: "There's no outright bad dialogue." Considering we have several nonsense speeches ("The stone looks down, but the ship looks up" or "The Sea cannot commit treason.") I would rate the dialogue as marginal at best.
I will admit the cinematography and imagery is very pretty, though there is some (extremely) dodgy CGI (see the Warg in ep.3), it all feels hollow due to very lackluster writing.
It IS very beautiful to look at. I was wowed by the scenery on show. Its not a 10/10 yet, but I'll be watching the rest of the season, maybe not weekly on drop night, but certainly in batches. And that's how I watched Thrones for the first time.
The Cricket Analogy to Home Run, would be "Hitting it for Six", but you can then also score a four. I can explain the scoring better, but I'm listening to an entertaining review.
Also: nearly finished that blasted Hibberd book. For such a simple light book, it was really not an enjoyable read.
I'll be bingeing the rest of your RotP reviews today, so perfect timing, as always.
Keep an eye out for Spambots too, they've hit the Harfoot episode review. I'll be disliking and reporting as I go, and encourage the rest of your viewers to do the same.
What sucks about them not having the Silmarillion rights is they can’t use the elven kinslayings.
I think that making the central mystery of the show "where is Sauron" is bad. It generates buzz as people theorize on the internet. But without anything else going on in any of the plots it cannot carry the show on its own.
The story changes are annoying but do not ruin it. The major misstep is to muddle the timeline. That is one clear beat that the second age does have – a lot of wars. Now all these different conflicts will be truncated into one and I think that is really bad.
3 hours in and nothing has happen.
Love your channel, but this show is GASH.
Right now I label RoP as entertaining enough that I'll stick with it through its five seasons, but not great. The characters aren't nearly as interesting in those on HotD, but I do understand that that's how you wrote characters in Tolkien's day and how his heavy Catholicism would contribute to his characters being more archetypes than fully fleshed out people. Like what most say, the visuals and music are absolutely stunning, I'd think even the Tolkien purists can appreciate that much. I'm curious to see where Galadriel's quest to avenge Finrod is going, I think the Harfoots are cute (well, I don't like their culture of leaving the slow behind) and the dwarves are absolutely precious imo. I can't get upset at the showrunners if the story isn't great – the Tolkien estate may have sealed their fate in that regard by refusing to grant them the Simarillion rights. 🤷 (Even if that book doesn't cover the 2nd age I think out of principle the estate should've thrown the rights to everything onto the showrunners to help them out.)
Amazon very obviously wants this to be a Game of Thrones level success. From what I've already seen it will not be so in the ratings department. I wish all this pressure wasn't put on the show – apparently Amazon will kill off their steaming service if this isn't a monster hit. And of course I wish it wasn't involved in this idiotic "culture war" every fantasy or superhero show is shoehorned into nowadays. I do want it to complete its run and introduce new people to Tolkien's world.
Many who have hated on this show are pushing an anti-woke agenda. There are quite a few who are using being a book purist has a cover for their racism. If you press them on it, it will become clear they don't know the lore. For example being, Hobbits are not black or there were no black elves. Those 2 statements are both false.
On a positive note, I was able to clear out some of my subscription lists.
The story isn't bad? 😃
The horrific Harfoots abandoning the weak and then virtue signalling about their deaths (stung to death by bees hahaha!) was the final straw. This is complete horseshit and I honestly don't know what you're watching. That and it took Galadriel hundreds of years to figure out to turn the sigil sideways was just hilariously bad, almost as bad as her insufferable characterisation, send her back swimming to Middle-Earth.
It's not bad, but it's a very "ok" show. The plot and the characters are not objective bad, but they are not interesting and sometimes boring. I think it will get better in the next episodes/seasons, it's very slow now.
Lol did we watch the same show?? It’s objectively terrible, even if you ignore it’s butchering of Tolkien’s lore. You can’t go five minutes without encountering a glaring plot hole, nonsensical character decision, or cringey exchange of dialogue. I don’t know what reviews you have been reading, but almost everyone I’ve talked to also thinks it’s awful so not sure why you think the public reception has been generally positive.
the rings of powerful was awful are you being paid to be a good word in by Amazon?