The Rings of Power is drawing MASSIVE viewership

Not surprising. The production values are very good and the cast is terrific. I'm a casual Tolkien fan at most and even I find the plot really well-written and entertaining.

Episode 6 is astounding.

I'm not a Tolkien fan (I did read and enjoyed The Hobbit). I watched the first two episodes. Man, I just couldn't make myself care. And I really tried. But within minutes after turning it on, I found myself checking the DL.

99% of fantasy tales just bore me to tears. TRoP being just the latest.

Game ofThrones is the one glaring exception. I loved that series through and through.

Such weird data manipulation. Each episode of LOTR had approximately 7 million viewers. That would be impressive for network these days but hardly massive viewership.

Amazon is really doing everything they can to make this look like a hit.

Well, 7 million viewers isn't a flop.

Prime has 200 million subscribers. Only 3% of their users watched the first two episodes.

Flop is relative.

Prime has 200 million subscribers, overwhelmingly for the free shipping. How many of those 200 million ever watch any of their original content? Probably not much more than 3%.

So, yes, it is relative, but not in the way you're framing it.

female ghostbusters was great, too.

Lord of the Rings does not have mass appeal. It's still for nerds. The Peter Jackson trilogy was the last time LOTR will ever have MASSIVE viewership

found the star wars r10 fan

I keep getting it mixed up with with Game of Thrones.

When will the elves reach Westeros??

Can you read, r10? If so, read the link in the OP.

I'm loving it. I'm a massive Tolkien nerd and genuinely can't understand why people are bitching so much about it.

I don't understand. I prefer HOT DICK over Disney schmaltz. That's what HotD means, right?

This last episode was a slow moving bore

I had no idea Tolkien even wrote prequels to LofR?

[quote] I had no idea Tolkien even wrote prequels to LofR?

He did though they weren't complete. The Rings of Power is not based on an actual books but rather on an appendix to LotR. Nobody has the rights to make film versions of the "prequel" books, so they majorly had to flesh out the appendix. Thus a lot of the Rings of Power is conjecture.

Only the dwarf and orc plots are decent. Everything else sucks. Majority of main characters are assholes and the actors suck. Poorly rehashed scenes from the trilogy and terrible writing/dialogue with bad alterations to the book lore. It’s a very mediocre series that’s not equivalent to the budget they had. Fire the damn nobody showrunners.

It's very much like Avatar. Fantastic production design, but is that all there is? Sadly, yes.

They thought it would be a fight between rings and house of the dragons for a massive hit. It turns out that both have significantly lower viewers than amazon and hbo anticipated.

I'm not really a fantasy person or an action person. Game of Thrones cracked through that but then of course the ending made me very dubious again.

I'm watching Rings of Power and House of thr Dragon. With each passing week, Dragon is getting harder to watch because it is so disjointed and uninterested in its own characters, and Rings of Power has been getting progressively better. Last week's episode was thrilling, and even after having watched all of Game of Thrones, the action that took place in episode six of Rings of Power felt inventive and important to the drama while also making me feel like George R.R. Martin's writing is extremely derivative of Tolkien's to a shocking degree.

It's clear to me now that Martin mashed up Tolkien's inventions with European history for the most part. Tolkien's characters feel more authentic to the mythologies and languages they are based on, and they seem to be much better thought through.

For example, I've now learned that the Orcs/Uruk are monstrous to others, and they appear like snarling undead zombie villains, but they are some kind of "genetically engineered" species of elves bred and brought up as slaves dedicated to their leader. And the ring of power puts Sauron magically in charge, like one of those funguses that gets inside the brain of an ant and controls it like a car.

At least that is coherent logic, if wild.

By contrast, the White Walkers seem to be icy versions of Orcs in the role they play in Game of Thrones, except that they seem to have no origin other than having been somehow made by 'the children of the forest,' and they're really nothing but mindless drone zombies who turned out to be projections of the one big bag guy. He was poked in the belly and his whole army vaporized instantly. There's some kind of lore and a lot of thought behind Tolkien's armies of villains who exist on their own as living beings in their own rights, whereas Martin's villains are nothing but video game type villains who vanish if the one bad guy is discovered and poked in the right place.

The whole 'Hordor' thing seemed like it was going to be very important because it was such a focus of the show and it all turned out to be a kind of punchline of sorts, that Hodor got his name because he said 'hold the door' while being traumatized. The show touched on a fascinating metaphysical reality with Hodor having been traumatized by a *future* event and I thought the series would explore that but it never mentioned it again. Just the 'Hodor' name origin. Sigh.

Martin seems really dumbed down to me now.

And House of the Dragon is no better than the last/worst two seasons of Game of Thrones. I've noticed in the post-show commentary that the directors have said several times 'We thought of this scene as a short film...' and it seems like they've made a show out of stitching together scenes with different moods and without trying to make them coherent, with no concern for the viewer being able to follow. The episode with the fire had so many messy random events whose contexts were never explained and people had to go here and elsewhere for an explanation from a Martin fan who read the book. It feels like this show is just some kind of supplemental audio-visual companion to a book of genealogies of fantasy dragon-riding characters. All the PR has focused on the dragons, who've been incidental set decoration on the show at best, and on the midseason recasting of two characters who not only changed actors but personalities with the actors. The feisty young Targaryen became a victim and the naive girl in over her head got a lookalike older actor who is a straight-up villain. It all feels cartoony and stunty to me.

R19 I like the elves' stories, too.

I don't get the Harfoots' storyline yet. Their characters are well sketched out but so far all they do is squabble and hide and the one bold girl has her interactions with Mysterious Starman and that's it. It is starting to remind me of the season when Arya was stuck with the Faceless Men cult and every scene was just her being beat up for an entire season. I got the point then and I get who the Harfoots are and that the one girl is bold and will go off on her own and have some meaningful event with Starman, but I wish they'd get on with it. I do feel like I am watching humanized squirrels squabbling over acorns and hiding from foxes at this point.

I think the Starman is one of the wizards who ultimate show up in Lord of the Rings

He's a star who fell from 'the heavens,' and in reading background on Tolkien's lore, wizards are 'angelic beings,' so that would track.

They're called Istari, and Aster = star in Latin.

[quote] I think the Starman is one of the wizards who ultimate show up in Lord of the Rings

One of the Blueses?

R25, in the books, Gandalf (who is obviously “Starman”) sailed to Middle-Earth from the Undying Lands aka Valinor in the west where he was given Narya, the elven ring of fire, by Cirdan at the shores. The show convoluted so much of the lore that it’s an entirely new (and infinitely worse) universe. The show’s fan fiction at this point.

Neither are water cooler shows, or social media shows. This can change though.

Adar is very fuckable in a gross way.

I doubt I’ll watch the next season of this or Dragons

Honestly both this and house of the dragons have been boring as shit, yeah hotd is being hailed by the internet as the clear winner but it's still boring as shit with shitty writing just like rop. Both are lifeless carcasses that are trying to recreate the originals lighting in a bottle success.

Ooooooh! It doesn't follow the "canon"!

Mostly booooooring and full of pretentious lines. But I watched it.

I'm watching the first movie. Maybe someone knows and can give an explanation...why do the elves glow when the hobbits first see the elves walking solemnly through the woods, and then glow again when we first see Rivendell, but then when Legolas joins Frodo et al on the journey, he doesn't glow? I just paused the movie while they're all in a dark cave and it occurred to me if the elf were of any use, he should be glowing, now just bowing and arrowing.

And why don't the elves glow in the new show? They seem very plain by comparison to the movie elves, who were prettier and glowier.

This then is what DL poster will think it a good film- it sells.

R35 Please try Google Translate again. I can't quite figure this one out.

[...]

I put the ring on my empowerment

R7, I don't think the Stranger is Gandalf, but rather one of the blue wizards who wandered East.

This gives more room to the writers of the show if the show continues to follow his and Nori's progress there since not much is known about the blue wizards and their actions in that part of Middle-Earth.

Sorry, I meant r27.

This show is to slooooooooooow. There are great elements but much is so tedious, too stretched out, like the Hobbit movies.

I've noticed they're really downplaying that black female character in their promotion now.

And they're re-positioning the blonde female lead in a more feminine manner in their artwork.

They seem to be regrouping after all the backlash.

R42 Who are the characters you're referencing? The queen of Numenor? The elf wife? The harfoot wife/mother?

Who is the blonde? Galadriel? Who is the 'they,' and where is the marketing that is "repositioning her as more feminine"? I don't see that anywhere.

However, that said, regarding Galadriel, she was hyperfeminine in the Lord of the Rings, all glowy etherial gauzy fabrics. She has been a warrior in Rings of Power since it began, but the clear narrative arc being telegraphed is that she has been addicted to war and seeking vengeance, and that is bad for her and everyone else, and in the finale (HERE COMES A SPOILER; YOU ARE WARNED) she melted her primary killing weapon to melt into the rings. I took that as a clear suggestion that she was transforming alchemically herself from a person whose power was violent physicality and will be changing into the softer Galadriel we know whose power is spiritual by virtue of her ring and the wisdom ahe has acquired through time and mistakes.

The fat black chick with the freaky hair.

And the bony white blonde piece who can't fight, but always beats about a dozen men at a time in battle.

R45 Dude. She's a elf. She's a magical make-believe fantasy character. Legolas was a bony blond guy who fired sixteen arrows at a time while leaping eight stories upward and backward with nary a blond hair ever out of place. Galdalf was played by a 70-something bony old man who battled demons and trolls 30 feet high and rode giant eagles. F-a-n-t-a-s-y. Cmon. Your sexism is getting to be a bit much here.

Amazon is not changing anything, galadriel was meant to be the main character of season 1. And Dessa and the dwarf prince will have bigger roles in season 2. Which sauron will be the main character of. So there will be less galadriel and more sauron. If the writing improves and they fix the pacing issue it could be a huge hit for them.

It's been watched by almost 100 million people so it's definitely a success.

R48 It's only made that much because of HOMOPHOBIA. Where are the LGBTs, huh? Wearing INVISIBILITY CLOAKS? Is THAT what we're supposed to think? If the show had LGBT characters, it would have 10,000 viewers, tops—like OTHER GREAT WORKS OF ART AND STORYTELLING that have been REJECTED and NEGLECTED.

The two girl harfoot besties are clearly harfoot lezzies.

And Sauron's bi.

It's not enjoyed audiences, though--it's only drawing 39% with them on rottentomatoes.

^^That CGI rendering of a giant statue looming over the town completely defies the laws of physics. The outraised hand would not be able to support itself because of the weight of the stone.

It’s far better than what social media says. My only complaint is there’s too many characters.

I'm not into Tolkien's fanfiction personally.

This is probably about the same viewer plus kids

[quote] why do the elves glow when the hobbits first see the elves walking solemnly through the woods, and then glow again when we first see Rivendell, but then when Legolas joins Frodo et al on the journey, he doesn't glow?

This is such a funny question! I think the glow is meant to convey to the audience how truly magical the elves are perceived to be by the hobbits.

It's just make-believe crap.

I love the elegant elves but it bugs me a little that I can't pinpoint how to define them. Are they magical? Are they just more in touch with nature with more acute senses and more adept physical features? Galadriel's name is an angelic name formation (Uriel, Gabriel, Abdiel) and she seems angelic in the Lord of the Rings, as does the Liv Tyler elf, but not so much the guys. Galadriel does all kinds of magic, she can see the future, she blesses everyone with magic gifts, Liv Tyler can visit people in their dreams, etc. They seem maybe mess powerful physically but otherwise as magical as Galdalf is. But I read Gandalf is a Maia, which is Tolkien's version of angelic beings. So what are elves? Lesser angels or heightened human beings?

They can walk on snow R57. That's kinda like walking on water, so maybe they're going for a on-par-with-Jesus thing?

I would love to see the first age stuff but I don't think there's a way where they can show eru and his angels sing the universe into existence without it being hokey.

R52 That island was built with magic by the God of the lotr universe and his angels, as gratitude by humans that helped with the war against the devil of that universe morgoth.

The Guardian:

"Now it’s over, let’s come out and say it: The Rings of Power was a stinker"

The world’s most expensive show – which looked like an episode of Hollyoaks, only with woeful acting – was so inept that every episode left you sniggering

No surprise, the guardian hates everything.

I liked it more than I thought I would. The lack of graphic fucking also felt strangely refreshing.

RoP sucked. The writing and dialogue was horrendous. No amounts of money thrown at this show and no amounts of the fancy CGI in the world could fix terrible writers.

Also The Guardian:

"The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power review – so astounding it makes House of the Dragon look amateur

"The visual splendour of this rich, gorgeous Tolkien drama will make you gawp throughout. Watch it on the largest TV you can

"This makes it difficult to judge The Rings of Power as an ordinary series, because so much about it is extraordinary. It is Tolkien, which means this world is already venerated and beloved by so many, whether in the form of the books, Peter Jackson’s films or both. There is an extraordinary weight of expectation before any viewer presses play. Add to that the fact that this is reportedly the most expensive TV series ever made – $465m for eight episodes – and it is tough to view this as just another show. It is an event, a spectacle, but if it isn’t entirely perfect, does that make it a failure?"

Too much fantasy shit on TV.

The strange thin is how did the witcher that looks like a sify channel show from the early 2000s get so much praise? It's awful, terrible acting, terrible cgi, terrible cinematography, God awful writing etc. Seems audiences were so desperate for a got like show they gave it a pass. Well season 2 flopped and was pretty hated so I guess the got replacement high wore off by then.

Witcher was great.

People want a male-led show.