Rings of Power -- all opinions and spoilers welcome thread.

[Garthanos]

The Numenoreans having the blood of elves and maia in their veins are of a like stature to the men of old and would have been individually very close to Galadriel as warriors and in numbers would have been able to handle her easily. This is why Sauron surrendered when their army landed and headed his way.

Numenoreans need other humans around to show both are pretty awesome

 

[trappedslider]

Maybe @Maxperson should see if the Tolkien Estate is hiring since it's clear they have no clue how to handle their IP.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

D&D translated the arrow as a magical bane ie Dragon slaying concept ... ie one might show a close up of the heirloom ancient arrow burrowing actively into the beast while throbbing with magic perhaps (I think that buffs and visualizes it in a way more consistent with the books that mentioned the dwarves using magic when setting up camp and which has been ignored in screen adaptions) .... The transfer of the knowledge of the vulnerable spot via talking thrush was also supposed to be significant (a sense that superb skill was involved too)

I never had a problem with Achilles being insta-killed by an arrow to the foot. As you say, once magic is involved...

 

[Ryujin]

I never had a problem with Achilles being insta-killed by an arrow to the foot. As you say, once magic is involved...

Nor I.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Sure, people have differing opinions, but one of my opinions is that 1 star reviews for this show are merely trolls. I've spent some time here jawing with you about it, and your take I'm gauging at about 3 stars. I can respect that. 1 star is ludicrous. And notably, viewers review numbers match with critic review aggregates when you discount the 1 star trolls: it's a coordinated campaign by trolls to make a 84% Rotten Tomatoes show seem to have a more mixed reception among viewers than it really has received.

Average press critics in France (courtesy of allocine) gave the show 3-stars, nothing stellar. Reference daily newspaper Le Monde (=roughly, The Guardian) rated it two stars, finding it having uninteresting characters and barely saved by visual candy. It's difficult to think they are "just a notch above trolling". Le Nouvel Observateur (generally considered politically to the left) described it as "a piece of entertainment without any risk taking, childish manicheism, cardboard writing and characters, where the visual scenes overtake story and actor's play, with a tendancy toward evoking visual style of videogames such as Elden Ring". They add that the show is "fitting for pre-teen". I am not overtranslating, really. There is no mention of unfaithfulness to the original works or problem with the cast's skin color. While I won't dispute that some bad reviews were from trolls because of the polarization of certain people in a certain country around a certain problem, it's unfair to say that all bad, even scalding reviews were from trolls, especially organized trolls. Some just thought it was not worth watching at all for 8 hours. At the end the reviewer advises to spend time watching other shows instead, which is an excellent basis for giving it the lowest rating. Lowest rating doesn't necessarily mean "so bad that you should divorce if you significant other express interest in watching it."

 

[Maxperson]

Maybe @Maxperson should see if the Tolkien Estate is hiring since it's clear they have no clue how to handle their IP.

It is pretty clear. They've greenlit some really bad stuff, while protecting other things which really don't make sense given what they greenlit.

 

[Parmandur]

Meaning, their opinion of the show differs greatly from your own.

Oh, and just to be clear: I wouldn't give it 1 stars. I found it entertaining enough, and there's always the "at least its fantasy!" boost, for me to rank it so. Even though I think it widely misses the mark on adapting Tolkien and is poorly constructed, my overall ranking would probably be 2 or 2.5 stars. Similar to Wheel of Time.

In the case of the 1 star reviews for this? Soimply dismissed trolls. An ideological agenda is clearly in play.

 

[Parmandur]

Average press critics in France (courtesy of allocine) gave the show 3-stars, nothing stellar. Reference daily newspaper Le Monde (=roughly, The Guardian) rated it two stars, finding it having uninteresting characters and barely saved by visual candy. It's difficult to think they are "just a notch above trolling". Le Nouvel Observateur (generally considered politically to the left) described it as "a piece of entertainment without any risk taking, childish manicheism, cardboard writing and characters, where the visual scenes overtake story and actor's play, with a tendancy toward evoking visual style of videogames such as Elden Ring". They add that the show is "fitting for pre-teen". I am not overtranslating, really. There is no mention of unfaithfulness to the original works or problem with the cast's skin color. While I won't dispute that some bad reviews were from trolls because of the polarization of certain people in a certain country around a certain problem, it's unfair to say that all bad, even scalding reviews were from trolls, especially organized trolls. Some just thought it was not worth watching at all for 8 hours. At the end the reviewer advises to spend time watching other shows instead, which is an excellent basis for giving it the lowest rating. Lowest rating doesn't necessarily mean "so bad that you should divorce if you significant other express interest in watching it."

I'm going off of the aggregator numbers, which seem balanced. With individual critical reviews like those, I view them more as a test of the critic, if theybare someone to pay attention to in the future or not.

 

[RuinousPowers]

I think it's probably a good thing to keep in mind that many, if not most viewers don't rate shows on technical skill and creativity. They rate it on how much they like or dislike the show. So while you may give those things 3 stars because of technical skill and creativity, someone who doesn't rate on those things would rightly give them 1 star, because they hate those shows.

If I had to guess, I'd say that 50%-75% of 1 star reviews are just haters, rather than genuine reviews. That still leaves a lot of genuine 1 star reviewes.

They don't need to spell it out. If they felt that way, they felt that way. If you don't, you don't.

This is true. As a fantasy series it's pretty decent. @Parmandur said he thought I would give it 3 stars. I'd probably give it 3.5 stars. Likely I'd give it 4 stars out of 5 if it didn't have ridiculousness like an elf jumping off a boat in the middle of the ocean and then having a shipwrecked group of humans "wander by" within minutes, followed by a sea monster at the same time, followed by a chance meeting with a ship soon after. Some things just reaaaaaally stretched believability for me. Those would be fantasy series ratings.

As a Tolkien show I'd give it 1.5-2 stars, because only the Harfoots and dwarves were well done. It really failed me on the Tolkien front.

That's fair.

Oh, whatever. Its no more unlikely than being eaten up by Old Man Willow and immediately having a forest god show up who can deal with it. Characters running into people who can help them in unlikely places (like Faramir and Frodo) are a common occurrence in Tolkien.

 

[trappedslider]

It is pretty clear. They've greenlit some really bad stuff, while protecting other things which really don't make sense given what they greenlit.

indeed it's clear the hierarchy in knowledge goes: Tolkien himself> Christopher> you>then everyone else.