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Firstly, I'm laughing with Eric Kain. He started off rosy optimism, then when the show turned out to be every bit as shitty as we critical ones were saying, he still defended himself with a snide remark about 'he could have made more money with the haters' (where is all this free money, Eric? how do I turn my 'hate' into cash money?)
But now he is every bit as disillusioned as anyone else, and it's cold comfort for the likes to me to say "Well, where were you when we were complaining about the bad writing, pissing on the lore, and using 'anyone who doesn't like the show is a racist' as a general defence?"
I think Amazon are desperate to sell the narrative that the viewership figures are good enough, certainly a lot better than they really are. Because I noticed that, despite living in a region where previously I couldn't access Prime video content (Republic of Ireland, not UK, and lots of times it was 'oh sorry, you can't see this show, you're not in the correct region'), suddenly they are (a) offering me free trial of Prime including everything and (b) now I can watch Rings of Power even though I don't live in that region. How convenient to bump up viewing figures.
I availed myself of the free trial and watched the finale, since it cost me nothing but my sanity, and yikes. They had six weeks of nothing happening, then had to cram everything in at once.
What I liked: the opening, with rain falling on forest plants and Meteor Man silently holed up under a tree. Unfortunately, then the rest of the episode commenced. Celebrimbor and Halbrand-Sauron being forge buddies, once they remembered Celebrimbor was the guy who forged the rings, the rings of power after which this entire show is named, the forging of those rings being the reason for the plot, those rings. As little as could reasonably be expected of the Harfoots. Adar (though he wasn't in this episode). Galadriel getting her nose rubbed in how yes, this is all your fault because actions have consequences.
What I didn't like: everything else The Númenorean scenes continue to be pointless as Nothing. Ever. Happens. The weirdly slow pacing. The surprise revelations that were anything but, since they spent the entire previous seven episodes nudging us in the ribs with "guess who this guy really is, go on, guess, you'll never guess, could he possibly be....?" Yes, it turned out that Halbrand was Sauron, as everybody had been saying since the teaser trailers (dammit) and they're shoving hard to have it be that Meteor Man is Gandalf (dammit part deux). Galadriel only remembering her husband in the seventh episode, and not saying a word about how or even if she had been searching for him all this time. Elendil's invented daughter continuing to be useless; whatever the point of her bit with the palantir was, we're not going to see that pay off until season two (if then), and when is season two going to be broadcast? Whatever happened to the Southlanders, or don't we care about them anymore? The continuing terrible writing. The continuing having Galadriel being Mary Sue (now it's her idea to create three Rings). Rushing everything - we should have had Annatar and Celebrimbor over several episodes, the forging of the rings over a couple of episodes, the white cloak mystics and Meteor Man over several episodes. Instead, everything got wrapped up in fifteen minutes, with little to no explanation, because they needed to tidy up the plot threads for the finale and lead into the second season. That warbling end credit song (who is Fiona Apple and why should I care?)
Payne and McKay said in one recent interview that the second season would take a couple of years to make. A different interview after that had the studio contradicting this and that season two would be out as quickly as possible.
I think Amazon have a turkey on their hands, and calling fans who raised reasonable objections trolls, racists, and just plain durned bad think thought criminals pissed off the hardcore lore fanbase, but didn't do a thing to draw in casual viewers. And it serves them right.
I've seen exactly one episode of this show, and it was the second to last one. And it was...okay! We got character moments--the orc nationalist was really acting his heart out. Galadriel was a huge bitch, but it seemed intentional rather than tone-deaf, and I actually enjoyed having a Lawful paladin dropped into the setting. Costuming looked pretty good, reminiscent of Peter Jackson without being identical. There were plot revelations and set-piece battles, and all of it was absolutely dripping in dramatic (expensive) visuals.
It would be easy to pick out things I didn't like, too. That whiny child is a moron who only lowers anything resembling emotional stakes. It replicated one of the biggest failures of late Game of Thrones, teleporting armies, in spectacular fashion. The MacGuffin is not just a weapon but a spooky key for the local...public works project? Really? And I'm sure there were plenty of direct contradictions to the Sauron/Númenor timeline of Akallabêth.
From the sound of it, I watched the only decent episode, and most everything previous constituted about 1 episode worth of plot points. There are about 5 characters who make any actual decisions (Galadriel, Halbrand, Adar, Arondir, and Bronwyn; I guess technically Theo). Elendil and Isildur get a pass, as it looked like they were actually developing their own subplot, but everyone else exists to populate the setpieces. The Harfoots and Magic Meteor Man are nowhere to be seen.
In other words, if that's all the consequence of the first five (?) episodes...I'm not surprised they were incredibly dull.
Galadriel is not a Lawful paladin, so I don't get who you are referring to.
Adar is indeed the one sympathetic character in this mess so far.
The visuals are expensive, but the rest of the show doesn't live up to them. It is probably personal taste, but I think the costuming looks bad and the armour is terrible; they have Celebrimbor decked out in a bathrobe I used to have about fifteen years back (mine was blue not green) and the villagers all get to wear mud, except Bronwyn who gets a nice bright blue dress because she is the only person who matters.
They've gone far beyond contradicting established canon to making their own shit up. Now we have Sauron proposing marriage to Galadriel - so what, his motivation for ring-crafting was because he wanted to make engagement and wedding rings?
It's (bad) original fantasy, with the names from Tolkien pasted on. If they dumped any pretence at "faithful to the lore", it would be better, but they lie about that, too.
The most offensive part has been the use of "you're a racist white supremacist" as the general response to all criticism. The show has proven it is not faithful to the lore and they lied about everything, but criticism means you're a racist white supremacist:
So I am patently evil because I think Payne is a whiny little pissbaby liar who couldn't write his way out of a wet paper bag, has admitted to being a ten-year loser who couldn't get one script made and had to get J.J. Abrams to use his influence to get them hired, and has consistently lied about being faithful to the text and to canon. Well, boo-freakin'-hoo, you pasty-faced talentless hack.
(What? I'm just being Sauron, being complexly evil in my origin story as they invent a romance for him between him and Galadriel to explain why did Sauron go bad - he's an incel!)
In that single episode, Galadriel was totally a paladin.
Heavy armor and equestrian skills
Lots of followers despite actively pissing people off—must have a high charisma score
Generally a huge zealot
Pragmatismcode of conduct won’t let her allies kill prisonersCrusading to kill all orcs just because they’re Evil^TM
Not even worried about failing her saving throw vs. ash clouds.
A high Charisma score would be represented by not pissing people off. Charisma isn't a magical force that compels you to like the unlikeable. It's what makes people likeable. That said, yes, Galadriel would be a badly done D&D Paladin.
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there is absolutely a section of youtube which is just people pumping out long-winded rants about contemporary "woke" media. Which whether or not the criticisms are correct (and they often are because much of it is dire), it's nevertheless just an endless sea of performative negativity, at its heart not much different from the ones who are playing the reverse game with the algorithm by endlessly fêting the newest Disney/Marvel/whatever product. It can't be mentally healthy to just watch an endless stream of videos bitching about the casting of The Little Mermaid
Sure, there are Youtubers etc. who churn out that kind of stuff, just as there are Youtubers etc. who churn out the opposite (see the Amazon 'superfans' hired on to do that trainwreck event video to market the show; turns out none of them have posted a single comment about this show that they are all allegedly 'superfans' of).
But Kain was making that remark in the context of everyone who had been critical of the show, and it's unfair. A lot of us were going by the teaser trailers, the already obvious inventions ("we can't have Hobbits, so we're going to have Harfoots who are ancestors of the Hobbits", "the Harfoots can be black because Tolkien said they were brown-skinned" (ignoring what that means in an English context of being fairer or darker, not meaning oh yeah these are black Britons) and the publicity about how wonderfully diverse and egalitarian they were.
Then the show aired, and it was poor. And yet people like Eric Kain wrote glowing reviews for the first two episodes.
And then when they realised that hey, it was trash, somehow those of us who all along had been pointing this out and backing it up with more than 'I hate black people which is why I hate this show' are still the bad guys, even when Kain himself is talking about how he gets criticised and insulted for watching the show if he's not going to give it rave reviews.
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