The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (Page 2 of 5)

Speaking of twaddle...

Bahahahaha!    Hilarious.  The Outpost is such a crap show I just can't take you seriously.   Bring on the old fashioned and "high-art" lolz, if that's what this is?

The Rings of Power is so lore rich, with so many story lines, characters, and places to cue into, I can see the average viewer getting a bit lost trying to track everything, almost as though, this should've been 3 shows?  They might be trying to bite off more than they can chew, as I can see myself complaining about there not being enough episodes, very very quickly.

Superb production quality, but it does look a bit too digital for my tastes, with a very clean, clear, and crisp sharp digital look to everything, when I prefer the softer look of film, which in my mind creates a sense of fantasy.

Bear McCreary did a great job with the intro score, and speaking of the importance of music to Middle-Earth lore:

I dunno, a true nerd wouldn't need to look up where the crap Eregion was on a map, (it's just south of Rivendell) lolz, but I def love the Tolkien world, even if I don't think I qualify as a Tolkien nerd....I just don't speak elvish...yet. lolz.

Tolkeeners sound mean, I better get studying, don't want to get kicked out of all the conferences.

I had it wrong, Eregion is South of Rivendell.

Christopher Tolkien's views on Lord of the Rings:

https://gamerant.com/lotr-christopher-t … aptations/
https://screenrant.com/christopher-tolk … ord-rings/

highbrow trekkies. do you all dress up?

Like on the woke smell-o-meter?  There's mildly diverse choices in casting for the books, a Harfoot girl lead, Galadriel's somehow a trained weapon of destruction, the male elves are as effeminate as expected, one standard inter species and one inter-racial relationship, so....uhhh...smells like passing concealed garbage cans on your way home from work...like a 2 out of 10....ish.  I didn't find it woke, but it's definitely liberal in it's approach to the source material which Tolkien purists might dislike; I loved it.

My main complaints are how digital it looks, and how many story lines they decided to set up which feels rushed when they need to take their time to build the world and establish the history.

@merc Yes.

@Lighton Not even the snow trolls, or cave trolls, or stone trolls, or hill trolls, or mountain trolls, or half trolls..... ...what did the trolls ever do to you?  lolz.

Thank you for your reply. I think I prefer when shows/movies have such good source material that the directors stick to it as much as possible and not try to diversify with a specific agenda.

I dont have any problem with diversification whether by race, religion or sexual orientation etc, but it does bug me when source material is deliberately changed to fit a certain agenda.

For example, it would bother me if Tolkien/the source material describes all elves as tall, white, blond and blue eyed (which I am neither of those - save for the tall part) and then the producers/directors go and assign a short, gay, brown, dark haired chubby transsexual for the role.

I tried to avoid shows with a political agenda when they clearly/deliberately diverge from the source material.

Brothers! What we do in life...Echoes in Eternity!

In this case it's funny because these elves later in the timeline somehow became white, epic memes circling around with a rhetoric question what happened to them

But regarding that brainwashing, I don't see a problem of remixing some stories (like for example Watson was played by Lucy Liu in Elementary - wrong race and gender), when it fits and is not done for propaganda sheep force feeding. And that difference you can tell right away, American propagandons also are not the sharpest tools, all that garbage is obvious and pathetic.

yes considering the amount of money spent on it

Its 1 billion divided by 40. 250M was just for the filming rights.

The UK Spectator's view

I tapped out of the show but having read @merc's spoiler I'll be a buyer if they release a compendium of ridiculous aphorisms.

Oh boy, I dropped this nonsense somewhere during EP4.

Don't even know where to start. It is just an absolute awful show. I will not comment on the whole diversity thing anymore than: I do not need a black elf or dwarf woman, as much as I do not need an asian Mandela or white Martin Luther King. I think it breaks immersion and doesn't help. But I am not a super hater. So I accept their cast and judge them on their performance.

Visuals:
Yes, the landscapes and CGI is beautiful. The rendering and work put into e.g. Khazad-dûm is just awesome.

But like in the Wheel of Time, all looks much too clean. Much too synthetic. It is much too obvious all has been filmed before the Green Screen. It feels... artificial to a point where it is not enjoyable. Also, the armor and weapons look like plastic props (which they are). Also, same as in Wheel of Time... why break with the typical high fantasy style by having 20 century haircuts?

Still I wonder where the 400+ million in production cost for the first season went? I see nothing, which justifies this cost.

Story:
I am not a die hard Tolkin fan. To be honest, I never read Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit or The Silmarillion... started a few times, but never really managed to dig into it. I found it mostly boring. While I am a huge fantasy reader... read almost all of Dragon Lance, Legend of the Dark Elves, Icewind Dale Trilogy, everything I could find in the Witcher universe, The First Law series, A Song of Ice and Fire, etc... and loved every page of them. But LOTR? Never got me. So I could enjoy the PJ movies without thinking too much. They were nice if you don't have to discuss the "historical" accuracy and can accept the one or two bad casts (Yes,... Orlando Bloom... looking your way) and few goofy scenes.

So, for the Rings of Power.... well, boooooooring. I feel this is going nowhere. So much talk, so little story progression.

Acting:
Yuck! Just Yuck! Yeah, great actors can be made look stupid by having them perform cheesy dialogues or do stupid things. But in this abomination of a fantasy TV series... it is not just that the dialogues are cheesy or the characters do stupid stuff all the time.

Morfydd Clark, Robert Aramayo, Charles Edwards and Ismael Cruz Córdova are probably the most un-elvish Elves I ever seen on screen. Next to absolute no talent of acting. I saw some high school theaters which did a better job. If I have to pick the worst of all... probably Miss Clark. I hate every second with her on screen. Which is kind of a problem, when the main story heavily relies on Galadriel.

Other lows are Cynthia Addai-Robinson, which already ruined Spartacus with her absolute lack of acting talent... (btw... did I sport the mighty Barca in EP4?) and the Orcs.

While being fearsome enemies in the movies (well, yes,... with one or the other goofy scene), in the TV series I feel thrown back to 1994, having a tremendous hangover and switching on the TV on a Saturday morning to be tortured by the Power Rangers getting ambushed by the foot-soldiers.... you know? These guys in the pink catsuits.

The hobbits/hairfoots? Com'on. What a disgrace. All I have to say to about those scenes....

Score:
Quite nice.

Overall:
I will not spend another minute on this. I guess a lot of people will enjoy this show. But I just can't. And as said... not based on the diversity stuff but on these three things ranked:
1) Bad, bad, horrific actor performance
2) Too beautiful to be real, aka falls deep into the Uncanny Valley
3) Just a boring, not well paced story

I could accept one or maybe even two of these points if the other one outshines the issues, e.g. great acting can compensate for a lackluster story or bad visuals. But if all of those are meh...