The Rings of Power started off decent...but I eventually had to stop watching. This is my in-depth critique of the specific scene where I gave up, and the events leading up to it. Music from pixabay.com
I learned after editing that this conflict is brought back up later in the show. While I'm glad to hear it, my points about how this scene feels during episode 04 still stand.
"Brought back up" does not mean "developed." And it wasn't just this conflict. One of the most maddening things about the show was the *multiple* occasions where someone suddenly stumbled across a problem, the cameras cut away to a different storyline, and come back later just in time to hear someone announce, "Hey! We fixed that problem!" Gaarrgh! 🤬 Do these writers have no notion of context or problem solving?!
So in episode 2 when celebrinbor and elrond walk 400miles in one scene, with no horse or packs, food or water, and are in the same cloths as when they left, that bit you were fine with.... OK...
Yes, but nearly 99% of the potential viewers don't care about the lore. How many people on this planet have read the Silmarillion? 50 million out of 8 billion? If the show was good the lore-fan-group wouldn't matter.
@@theamorphousflatsch2699 Like in most of the films, the people who Care about or even know about the lore are a small Splinter group of all potential viewers. How many of the viewers of the Star Wars-Movies know the books and the Comics? How many people the watched The Amazing Spiderman have read all or even a fifth of the comics? The vast majority of the viewers just wants an interesting and exciting movie. They don't care that the female dwarf should have a beard or that Galadriel was not a fighter. They want to be entertained by a good story. And THAT is the real problem of Rings of Power. The dialogs where the protagonists contradict themselves in the same scene. The plot that only works because of sheer luck - again and again. It's mit the break with the logic of the lore that makes the series bad - it is the break with the logic inside the series. The scenes where you say:"Why is he/she now exactly there?" And the only answer is:"Because she/he read the script." The Lord of the Rings was sold 150 million times (of this 50 million times after the movies), The Hobbit 100 Million times, The Silmarillion since 1977 less than 10 million times. Maybe it was read completely by 6 million people. That is less than 0,1% of the worlds population. And Amazon only had the rights to use the annexes of Lords of the Rings. They have been read by ... 0.001% of the viewers? How many of the viewers of the Peter Jackson trilogy of Lord of the Rings have read the books? 3%? Perhaps?
@@pelle7771 you are both right buddy 🤝 I believe he ment the lore in general as you don’t need need to have read the passages you mentioned for the lore to seem glaringly odd at best, you make many a good point 👍
But elves could be petty, just like humans. Hell Thingol was killed by Dwarves over his greed for a necklace and his rude treatment of them. Elves were not all elegant and noble.
@@bkbstone nobody said that Elves couldn't be petty, the entire Silmarillion showed their dirty deeds. But Elves have an aesthetics, even the lowest of them shows ethereal beauty which distinguish them from humans. ROP Galadriel just needed to hide her ears to pass as a human
I cannot get over how Galadriel has constantly got the crazy eyes like she's a psychotic serial killer. It's never in reaction to anything, she's just constantly looking around like she just caught her arch rival telling vicious lies about her.
She looks so psychotic that if they had revealed that “Galadriel” was actually Sauron in disguise all along, people would have said it was too obvious.
The best comparison is how badly they botched the ending of Game of Thrones. These are characters you recognise - Galadriel? Yeah, I know her. That calm, wise, ancient Elf lady who seldom shows any emotion other than calmness and a pleasant smile. Oh, you're making a show about her? Lets see then.... and then you're met with RoP's Galadriel. Its the same thing that happened to us GoT fans with the last seasons of that show. You recognise Jaime Lannister, you recognise Daenerys, you recognise Littlefinger - but they're not the actual character. They're just wearing a costume that looks like the character. They could have just made a new elf character, or picked one with not much known about her - and have her be the cold-blooded warrior with a quick temper and no patience. Instead, they picked Galadriel... an avatar of calmness and wisdom, and decided "yep, this is the character we want to make into a teen-girl with a rage comparable to Kratos." Galadriel is 3,500 years old in this show, by the way. 3,500. By comparison, Eowyn is 24 years of age in LoTR when she stabs the Witch King in the face - and she was a calmer and more reasonable and wise character than the 3,500 year old Galadriel in RoP.
Yeah, that’s because the dopey show runners wanted her to be girl-boss “fierce”, so the actress just goes around with crazy face. What’s so amusing about the show is every critic who came into this show claiming it was going to be terrible has had every single criticism perfectly validated by TRoP. It’s as if the show runners read a Nerdrotic bad tropes list and said “That’s the show we should make!”. I can’t recall another show as perfectly and predictably terrible as TRoP.
@@smakfu1375 the thing that impresses the most is that they put actor of colour in random roles because of "diversity" (without feeling the need to expand it a little further: a Black Elf? Ok, I am fine with that, but just tell me what his background is and how he ended up there, that's how you make a character out of him instead of randomly putting him there just because you need to fill some quota) but then every character, no matter if an Elf, a Dwarf, a Man, no matter their culture or age or background, acts the same way: as a stereotypised character of a dumb American film. So much for representing "diversity".
This show achieved the improbable: it infuriated true Tolkien fans, and made casual viewers apathetic. I’ve never seen a show where it was so expensive, yet many people have stated they “dozed off” or “walked away” during an episode.
Better blame the pushback on racism and misogyny. That’ll save the show, surely. /s The disingenuous behavior I witnessed on the r/Lotr_On_Prime subreddit made me sick. The way they treated anyone who had issues with the show was unbelievable. Any criticism was met with a “wrongthink”, echo-chamber type of response. The sad thing is, there are a lot of subs like that nowadays. Subs where debates involving sources and critical thinking are few and far between, and if you say anything that the mods don’t like, you’re permanently banned. Recently saw an African guy say he got banned from the Assassin’s Creed’s page for saying he wanted a game set in Africa. Like…wtf?
I really hate gatekeepers who think that every "true fan" rages at this series, as opposed to just watching it as its own thing quite unrelated to the books. I hated everything about it before I watched it, and when I did I actually enjoyed most of it, and ignored the rest.
@Tasorius sorry but true fans actually have respect for Tolkien's vision and wouldn't just tolerate a disgusting perversion to his legacy. You can't have an appreciation for the author if you dont care about preserving their literary vision.
@@Klodhvig Like I said. I had elitist scum that think they get to decide who is or isn't a "true fan". It's an understatement to say that it's stupid to think that all "true fans" must despise. "You can't have an appreciation for the author if you dont care about preserving their literary vision." Are you even listening to yourself? That's an insane statement to make. Not only are you deciding who is or isn't a "true fan", but you are saying that they are not even appreciating Tolkien's work if they don't hate one adaptation of it. This series doesn't change anything about the books. They are still there, and you have no right to claim that I don't care about the books or Tolkien. I have been reading these books for too long for a bastard like you to come here and call me a "fake fan". That's extremely toxic and unforgivable.
Sauron, Aragorn, Morgoth, Gandolf and anyone who knows even small amounts of fantasy history are all on the same side with wanting Amazons Rings of Power to be destroyed.
For once I want to see the villain side of the story or even the villain winning for once, like I’d love to see more of Sith in Star Wars rather than Jedi but that’s just me 😅
The elves "terk ore jerbs!" doesn't work even by the logic of the show. According to the show, Numenor was practically an isolated nation who hadn't had any dealings with Elves for several generations so none of those people would have seen an Elf and likely not immediately think Elves would show up and take their jobs. Sure it was political theater for Pharazon but it's stupid to think isolationists would suddenly be worried of untiring Elf workers showing up to fall for Pharazon's ruse. It was just there to shoehorn in a socio-political allegory about immigration.
They’re own logic and consistency collapses because their priority is using story to tell propaganda. Their focus is indoctrination, and everything they’ve weaved together that can be laughably called a story narrative is stitched together with whatever mood they’re in for that particular episode and what their bosses want as a checklist like tackling different “right wing” talking points and paint it in a negative light so gullible viewers will side with Hollywood’s political leanings. These people are insufferable and that’s putting it lightly. None of this is supposed to be entertainment. That’s the mistake people keep making when they tune in hoping to like a show like this. Understand who these people are and what they’re intentions are. Telling a story ain’t it, which is why it’s always a mess no matter what show or genre they ruin next.
That scene is simply a jab at real world politics and really has nothing to do with the plot of show. The writers are just mocking anti-immigrant sentiment in America and making the concept look moronic.
I gave up on the show on the moment when Elrond and Celebrimbor leave their city to go to Moria, in their perfectly fine dresses, no horses, no entourage, just like they were going to the next corner Starbucks for a pumpkin latte or whatever Elves like to sip, and arrive the very next scene to the doors of Moria, wearing the same clothes, on foot, seemingly not having crossed half of middle earth go from point A to point B. The funniest part of it all is that Celebrimbor goes all that way, only to turn back alone, and Elrond stays there for a rock crushing competition with Durin.
@@andydudley1775 That is what happens when you hire incompetent writers and director. It is like hiring the Marx brothers to run a producton of Hamlet.
It's all such garbage, shitty modern writers wanting to impose modern allegory upon Tolkien's mythology. The Numenoreans envied Elves for their immortality, it wasn't some nonsense about being replaced.
@@RightfootWestHam Well even at this point, Galadriel is one of the oldest elves around. And yet every other elf we see is more mature. It's frustating.
@@johannanish9749 Wow okey ... One can only assume you dont have much life experience... cause there are lots of adults and elderly people that are really immature. Take AOC as an example, she is immature to a level where she cant handle any criticism or facts that doesnt fit her narrative. And she is a fully grown adult at the age of 33 with a degree and is a person of EXTREME POWERS to change other peoples lives. Physical age and level of maturity are related to eachother, but not absolute correlation. Now... Messi, the best footballer that ever lived, he played football for ~25 years and he is that good... Now imagine someone having the body of 22 year old messi and playing football for 3000+ years... yeah that player would score about 20+ goals each and every game.
@@RightfootWestHam There are more subtle ways of making Galadriel hotheaded, Thorin is a similar character that was done much better. The reason miniseries are so popular nowadays is because it gives writers the time to really flesh out multiple characters, yet Galadriel acts like an anime character were the writers only have 20 minutes an episode so the character has to announce their feelings and overreact so the audience can quickly understand their character without thinking too much.
Watching the Lotr trilogy felt like a completely different fantasy world that takes you away from real life, but this show, the "they will take our jobs" rhetoric felt soo weird and unbelievable, you explained it perfectly how i felt
Surprisingly this part was believable to me. Reason being people that hate and don't know why usually find any reason to hate even if its something as foolish as "they took er jerrbs."
Taking the Akallabêth's description of the men of Númenor growing to resent the elves for their immortality and their right to sail to Valinor, and turning it into some redneck "they're gonna take our jobs" racism is certainly a strange writing choice.
@@lizflaherty1374 Not so strange if you look at it this way: laziness. The directors and producers could not be bothered to explain in full why the Numenoreans eventually resented the Elves. Why take ten minutes or so of film flashback or dialogue when it could be done in less than three minutes of "Elves are after our jobs," which is basically a nod to a right-wing talking point.
@@williamking3301 Idk, maybe. But it wouldn't have taken much longer I think. They already have a plot point about the elves returning to Valinor. I think the main point is that they wanted to make a contemporary political point about modern racism in a Middle Earth show. Because its popular to call political analogies deep and thoughtful. Even when it just comes across as strange and out of place in a high fantasy medieval setting.
@@lizflaherty1374 It's not so much that as how it stands out in stark contrast to Tolkien's work. The man loathed allegory, any any use of political allegory in an interpretation of Tolkien's legendarium was always going to have to be judicious and carefully planned. This... wasn't.
Straying from the lore is, especially this much, probably one of the biggest slaps in the face you could give to Tolkien, a man who spent so much time refining it until his dying days.
This exactly. And that's because the stories are literally written to support the lore. It was always the lore for Tolkien, which is exactly why the world is so compelling that Amazon was willing to pay that much for it. They should have spent the money on credible writers instead of plastic armor.
Galadriel in her very youth, even before the creation of the silmarils was a very wise person. So wise that she could understand the dark side of Feanor's heart. And here is Amazon's Cringe-ladriel from the Second Age.
Right out of the gate they butchered Galadriel and Elrond. That's when I knew it was going to be crap. I got a little farther than Caleb, but in the end I had the same reaction: I don't care about any of this. They thought they were better than Tolkien, and it couldn't be farther from the truth.
*Spoiler* A lot of people seem to think Galadriel was the worst part of the show but for me, it was Sauron. Instead of Sauron disguising himself as the cunning and beautiful Annatar, we get scruffy Halbrand who is floating aimlessly on a raft and introduces himself by saying "looks can be deceiving." We keep hearing about how evil Sauron is but we never see him do anything evil. We are told he killed Finrod, but we never see anything but his sigil carved in his body. A flashback or something could have established this but nope, we only get a far off shot of him in his armor surrounded by orcs and that's it. And, by the final episode, Not-My-Sauron asks Galadriel to become his queen. This is Lord of the Rings not Lords of the Rings. You could say he was trying to deceive her but in the show, he seemed genuinely interested in her: he became upset when the Numenor guards taunted him about Galadriel not being interested in him, he (indirectly) apologized for supposedly killing her brother, and was furious when she rejected his offer to rule beside him and blamed her for being the reason he broke bad. I just can't believe they made Sauron, THE DARK LORD HIMSELF, into a scruffy incel. Don't even get me started on how they sidelined Celebrimbor, the greatest elven blacksmith, and made him a silly old man who didn't know how to mix an alloys together until Sauron convinced him otherwise.
Good point, here is an interresting factoid from the background: They didnt even tell the actor who played halbrand that his character is really sauron, until the first 2 (or 3, not quite sure) episodes were already filmed. Apparently they wanted to avoid spoilers, so they kept even their own actors in the dark. And, to quote tolkien on the (very nice) point you made: "There is only ONE lord of the ring, only one who can bend it to his will. And he does NOT share his power."
There are so many things about this show that enrage me. I've spent so many years waiting for it with such high hopes, and to get this thing in the end... You're right, Amazon really didn't give us anything to care about. But I think the reason for that is that they didn't care themselves.They cared for numbers and scales and promotion, but not for the story or the characters or at least the map. And what killed it for me beyond repair was Elrond and Celebrimbor casually walking up to Khazad-dum in the same attire they had in Eregion as if they're just going to get a coffee around the corner. That's episode two.
It's just so sad, really. So much wasted potential here. I used to dream about watching a Silmarillion series. And now I'm honestly afraid of modern Hollywood ruining it.
The most comical thing about this is the fact that in interviews the Producers are hailing the show as a "success" because of the number of viewers for the show. I would love to see a graph of the number of viewers from episode 1 to 8 and just see the decline. The show has an audience score of 39% on rotten tomatoes and yet it's a "success".
Because they pull their viewer numbers from the first two episodes, which were released simultaneously, and they flaunt that as a success. If you look at the numbers from episodes 3-8 you’ll see they drop off a cliff. It’s also funny that they taunt these numbers as some sort of success, when it’s essentially a free show that everyone can watch since it comes with Amazon Prime which nearly everyone living in a first world country has by default. Yet it barely beat out House of the Dragon in viewership, which was only on HBO’s premium subscription service.
I think an insane part of the viewership is simply because having an amazon prime is extremely common. With that, probably one of the lowest bars of entry, riding on the extremely popular LotR name that the Peter Jackson movie trilogy popularized to a huge audience. This was probably one of the easiest shows to promote ever in the history of film and tv. The word that it was bad got out quickly though. It spread like wildfire because the disparity between expectation and endresult was so extreme. I truly believe a large part of the viewers already went in knowing it wouldn't be good. I know I was aware, I just was resolved to see for myself. Also being interested greatly in the world that Tolkien created, having anything that is made in that setting is enough to at least "try" it. Even though putting the name of Tolkiens work on there is laughable (or sad, depending on how much you care), if you disregard that part and see it as an original piece of fantasy work, it still isn't much better than a somewhat passable, low quality budget flick.
The bad writing that did it for me was the fact that she somehow thought she could swim across what amounted to the entire Pacific or Atlantic ocean. As soon as I saw that, I knew that the show was a non-starter. Any writer that wrote that deserves to be fired and any director that greenlit that deserves the same.
I really don't get it - there are literally hundreds of people among writers, production crew, and actors, who must have seen this and other garbage in the show, but nobody has pointed it out?
@@mondkalb9813is all about the message and social engineering … they want to normalize bad writing that way the can mass produce entertainment full of woke crap .
@@mondkalb9813 probably some do but they're not being paid to correct it, it's not their job, the writers are probably too full of themselves to notice it and no one else its interested enough to point it out
@@mondkalb9813 Most of the worker bees are just trying to collect a paycheck and arent willing to risk getting fired to save a dumpster fire show anyways. And even if you wanted to save the show, during filming it probably seemed great. Its like if you cook a meal and its mid to everyone else, but its hits different for you because you made it.
As I watch the show, some scenes were so bad, I started watching it less and less. I tried watching again, and the scene that absolutely killed it for me, was when the volcano exploded. Everyone else was killed or seriously injured, but galadriel walked right into the blast wave like it was nothing, and was completely uninjured.
The explosion of mt doom and the lead up with the destruction of the dam is my favorite scene. But I always have to skip the stupid cringy diaolog between isildur and his father.
between this and The Witcher, I am astounded that these writers have jobs. Both shows felt like a series of weightless scenes stitched together with very little thought put into ANY type of meaningful story arc.
@@apolloisnotashirt Actually if your have ChatGPT Pro / 4.0 and provide it with a bad script it really delivers improvements... makes one wonder how writers made a living in the past being so bad.
I wanted to like this show so badly. I kept getting lost in the first few episodes and felt like, "oh, if only I'd read the Silmarillion first, that would clear things up for me." I turned to my husband, who has read the Silmarillion at least twice, and his response was, "I don't know what's going on either." I continued watching the show, he didn't. The more it went on, the more annoyed it got because the pacing and writing are all over the place. I wanted to like these characters. I tried so hard to care about them. And, to be honest, I cannot remember anyone's name (aside from those who show up in LOTR).
It's always a problem when people want to exploit an established "brand " to make more money. The Hobbit trilogy is one of the examples. Blowing up a 300 page children's book to nine hours of over the top video game SFX was a mistake. Avatar 2 is another example American middle class family drama set on Pandora. With all kinds of unexplained pop up characters serving future plot lines. Sometimes it's better to just stop after a success.
@@j.calvert3361 I completely agree. I want a piece of media that is self contained, if that makes sense. I understand having sequels or trilogies if that's how the story is written. What I cannot stand is watching, "Exposition: the Movie." (Also why i'm getting so sick of Marvel)
You should read "The Silmarillion." Believe me, you will be much better off for it, and understand the breadth and depth, the soul, if you will, of Arda, and of Middle-earth.
I read the Silmarillion and I got angry just watching excerpts from the series. I used to say the series is feänorian propaganda. Just in terms of the lore it's infuriating.
Frodo: "Do you like (elves) still, now you have had a closer view?" Sam: "They seem a bit above my likes and dislike, so to speak. It don't seem to matter what I think about them. They are quite different from what I expected -- so old and young, and so gay and sad, as it were." -Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter 4: a Shortcut to Mushrooms In this passage, Sam recollects upon his first meeting with the elves what his impression of them was. He hits the mark so close on them that he leaves Frodo momentarily speechless. The elves delight in the beauty of the world and are inherently prone toward mirth. At the same time, the elves they met have lived hundreds, possibly thousands of years and in that time seen much good in the world fade. They miss home. The elves don't belong in Middle Earth. They are meant to live in the world which preceded it, a time which has passed except in the undying lands where they will someday return when they have been forgiven. The audience doesn't need to be told any of this to enjoy the elves in the films, videogames, and shows based in Middle Earth. And yet, it alienates people who have familiarity with the setting when an adaptation deviates from the source material in significant ways. The humans, elves, dwarves, and the short people the show is pretending are hobbits only vaguely resemble what shows up in Tolkien's works. And then, only some of the time for some characteristics.
So true! I'm currently rewatching the extended editions of PJ's LOTR trilogy, and the difference is so stark. PJ's introduction of elves--whether in the extended edition where the hobbits see them passing through the Shire toward the Grey Havens, or in the mainstream release where Arwen is the first--is terrific: beings of light and power and song, beings who are somehow beyond this world even while living in it. In R.o.P., they look and act like randos who put a little extra effort into their cosplay for the Ren Fest.
Well said! After reading the Silmarillion years ago it quickly became my favorite due to the characters and history that went with it. I felt cheated by RoP because they could have created something truly wonderful.
This is where ROP critics lose me completely. There are SO many crass deviations from Tolkien in the Jackson films people like you just ignore. It seems like you are more interested in protecting films you saw when you were a child that you have a sentimental attachment to, than you really give a damn about Tolkien's writings and his legacy.
What really drives me crazy is how they casually and seemingly randomly throw in a relationship between that lady and the elf. Like, what? This has happened TWICE. In thousands of years. And I can't even remember their names, which goes to show just how unmemorable these characters are.
The swashbuckling, mercurial, maiden we saw in TROP belonged in a Pirates of the Caribbean movie, not an adaptation of Tolkien’s material. The entire thing was an abomination.
Watching the show until the last episode, when Galadriel goes back to Lindon, I realized that I'd completely forgot Galadriel was an elf. As it seems show runners don't really understand what an elf is supposed to be in Tolkien's world. They think of them just like humans with slightly pointy ears, acting like any other human being you would expect.
Fun fact, Galadriel's hair was Feanor's inspiration for creating the Silmaril, the most precious gems in all Middle Earth. Her hair was golden with a touch of silver, and shone as it said to have took in the light of the Two Trees of Valinor which was the source of light in the realm of Gods. RoP Galadriel's hair looked like she don't wash it often.
They don't understand Tolkien's world period. They took it and treated it like some low tier generic fantasy fan fiction based on D&D. To them it meant nothing at all. It was "Oh Dwarfs, Pointy ear people, bad humans, evil over lord and dragons. Got it. Let's put a twist on it, and make the evil overlord a gray area likeable villain that just wants to do the right thing for his people. And obviously we need a girl boss warrior. and humans are kind douche bags."
Have you read the Silmarilion or other writings from the early ages? What is wrong with how Galadriel acts? How should elves act? How is Galadriel worse than Legolas, for example, in Jackson's LotR?
@@mdoerkse you saying that just proves that you didn't read a single one of his books. nor do you understand the difference between an Archer trained for war, and Galadriel a demi god being that never not once for a second was a "warrior."
@@sam-psonsmith9951 I have read the Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings, the Silmarilion, the Children of Hurin, and some of the Unfinished Tales and History of Middle Earth books. Tolkien was one of my biggest influences when I was young. And Tolkien did describe Galadriel as a warrior. She was a powerful elf, but not a demi-god.
The bit for me that killed it is when the warriors of Numinor, the greatest civilization of humans, lead by their queen, or whatever she is, are persuaded by Galadriel to travel all the way to middle earth to go and liberate a village of 5 huts. It seemed so stupid and small scale. Felt like the entire US army going to liberate the village of Taddington
Not to mention it's an army of like a hundred riders. The queen left a *nation* to lead a couple guys into a raid. To be "fair", the idea is supposedly that there's a threat to an entire region (which makes the size of the army all the more egregious), but then again, they ride at a gallop when they don't even know that particular village is in trouble right at that very momeent. It's all unbelievably silly.
the whole series is so horribly written. This youtuber points out the stupidity of the "elves are going to take our jobs" which is clearly based on modern politics- when the lore establishes the real reason why they grew to hate the elves- the jealously of the immortality of the elves which is far more universal and palatable and won't be dated years from now. The underlying theme of Rings of Power should have been about mortality and change and how fighting against these things is folly- The elves first made the rings of power to try to prevent middle earth from changing from how it was in the Elder Days to how it will be in the future. The men of West fell due to jealousy toward the immortality of elves and how they grew to dread death and mortality. Both these themes, fear of death and fear of change are universal and won't date the story.
@@MrChickennugget360 you'd be surprised at how often in history a variation of "the elves are coming to take our jobs" has been repeated. It does lack that trascending quality that any adaptation of or "work inspired by" Tolkien's writings sorely needs though. *Not to mention* it's still a kick in the... tone.
@@MrChickennugget360 I meant it as in "it's not necessarily going to be dated", unless read by some punk who cannot extrapolate concepts. It's still terrible for a Tolkien adaptation, and far from being as trascendental as what Tolkien's writings dealt with, on that we agree.
"Amazon didn't give us a reason to care." From the casual perspective, yeah, that's true. From the hardcore Tolkien fan perspective, they gave people a lot of reason to care, but in the worst way possible. Hate, after all, is a form of caring. But whichever side you fall on, the most important part is people stopped watching and Amazon is more interested in trying to deflect blame than understand why, which is why the second season - if indeed they even make one - will also fail. We have somehow reached a point where all of our big content producers have the same level of professionalism and dedication to the craft of writing as E.L. James. And that's so terribly tragic.
This is what I wrote in another comment on another video, but I believe the reason for this is these companies that make these things are simply too big. Instead of a normal creative endeavor, which uses imagination, dedication, love for the source material and a bit of quirky intelligence, they look at spreadsheets, profit margins and return of investment. Because of all the bureaucracy involved in these companies and the insane disparity between corruption and greed at the top level and near slavery at the bottom, there is a huge exodus from the creative and intelligent employees out of these companies, leaving it only able to create bad to mediocre products.
There is another vector of destruction of these classes stories: The use of these classic stories, purposeful or not, to project a certain political angle. Let’s face it, over the course of the last 40 years education has become more far left leaning and anti traditional then it was 40 or 50 years ago. When you have generations of people being inculcated by a certain perspective what do you think the outcome to be? Take a great story like Tolkien’s from over 70 years ago, and then have a group of modern people raised on woke education and patriarchy bad, F-ingism (not the kind that promotes equality), and white people bad and what do you think will be the outcome. Look at most, but not all, Fantasy and sci-fi and the argument is obvious. Heck, look at Disney, especially Disney Lucas Films, and the facts are plan to see. This trend will not fade until Hollyweird is out of money, and the politician don’t subsidize their propaganda of victimization or whatever woke leftist value they wish to project.
@@ml5955 Great points, though I do think a lot of this propaganda is directly believed and promoted in Hollywood itself, regardless of what politicians want or do. I'm not entirely sure what their intent with it is, but it certainly has a very negative effect on society as a whole, if only for the divisiveness it causes between normal people. Maybe you can give them the benefit of the doubt that it is meant to be a good thing, but the outcome is certainly negative overall.
@@ml5955I think it’s both better and worse than that. Scifi and Fantasy have pretty much always been “woke” in terms of being advocates of more progressive thought and change (Tolkien’s women, after all, are typically badass, and he was far from the only one to write truly strong female characters in fantasy), and a lot of the people in charge of production nowadays were raised on these stories. So “woke” politics isn’t necessarily the issue here. HOWEVER, the difference between the classics and the modern “woke” media is the relation between the story and the message, and therefore the characters and the message. In the classics, the story is a part of the message, whereas modern “woke” media has the message be a part of the story. In the classics, therefore, the characters are still able to be made to fit the story, telling the message indirectly and allowing them to remain strong characters. On the other hand, the modern “woke” media model results in the characters having to fit the mold of both the story and the message at the same time, resulting in problematic conflicts in character development, plot development, and even the basics of character, which in turn leads to a badly written story. For example, TRoP could have stuck to a single time period surrounding the forging of the Rings, the Fall of Eregion, and the first intervention of Númenór. This would have allowed the writers ample room to write new stories while connecting to well known plot points, as well as advocating for progressive ideas. Race relations could be explored through the relations between the Elves, Men, and Dwarves in Middle Earth, or even through the relations between the Númenóreans and their colonies in Middle Earth. Númenór could be used to tackle economic issues and challenges, as well as religious conflicts as the Númenóreans have an influx of people from the colonies and they begin to distrust and envy the Valar more and more. These scenarios provide endless possibilities for strong characters and good story. But instead the writers tried to play maximum nostalgia AND modify the lore to try to suit certain audiences and messages. The result was getting neither from the fans. The problem, as I see it, is that “woke” writers nowadays try to to go “harder, not smarter,” and end up shooting themselves in the femoral artery.
In lore numenorian we're jealous of elves being immortal despite being a civilization of 7 to 8 foot tall superhuman captain America+ people who could live for up to 500 years beacause it wasn't enough for them it's story of how human greed and human fear of death destroying a society turned into a fucking south park joke
Thanks for the insight! I didn't realize that's why Numenor fell. It took a lot of self control not to use the "They took our jobs" audio from South Park 😅
That's exactly why they shouldn't had compresed the timeline. Numenor's downfall was the result of a cultural change that happened over centuries. Such a shame.
@@caleb.a.robinson The worst thing is this is properly laid out in the Appendices, while you dont have all the details this main thread is described clearly enough in the material they have rights to that there is no excuse for this ... and as another comment said its why the extreme compression of the timeline causes so much issues here ... this was a slow process taking centuries which is again properly explained in the material they have the rights to ...
@@sgtmarcusharris4260 tbf, the lifespan of the numenorian was decreasing over the generations. Making their jealously more understandable but still wrong.
The worst part of this, for me, is the fact that the writers reduced the race of Men's envy of the Eldar *because* of their immortality to "hurr durr they're gonna take our jerbs!". Man's struggle to accept his mortality-- the inevitability of his death and the impermanence of his world-- is one of, if not the *central* theme of Tolkien's mythos. Along with this idea of the "The Fall" (in the Biblical/Christian sense)-- whereby Man rebels against his Creator as he becomes restless and complacent with his corporeal existence and the gifts of his world, and as he strives for ever greater knowledge and power-- these themes underpin Tolkien's writings about Men in the Second Age and the fall of Numenor. The writers just don't understand Tolkien-- they've read his words yet they clearly haven't actually *felt* and absorbed his themes. What particularly angers me about this, is that Tolkien's writing on the Edain's struggle with their mortality is among the most heartbreakingly beautiful themes of his mythos: how Men once viewed their mortality as a gift-- the Gift of Illúvatar, whereupon the souls of Men exclusively would leave the circles of the world forever, and thus they were not tied to the fate of Middle Earth or Arda as the souls of the Elves were-- but then the marring of Arda by Morgoth corrupted their gratitude and wonder at this gift and twisted it into fear and resentment; they began to no longer trust in their fate as gifted by Illúvatar, or to trust that He had some greater plan and purpose in store for Men which they could not yet see-- they lost their faith. This would have also lent itself to all sorts of interesting content and material from a writer's perspective. For instance: when Númenor was gifted to the Edain, they were also gifted especially long life compared to other Men (Elros, the first King of Númenor, lived to be 500). Also, when they reached a certain point in their age, these Men possessed a grace which allowed them to make the conscious choice to let go and to move on according to their own readiness-- but they always did inevitably move on. However, as the centuries passed the Númenorean society decayed and became increasingly stagnant and decadent-- and increasingly removed from its faith in Illúvatar the Creator-- and, as such, their lifespans began to shorten; they ever turned their thoughts to the inevitability of their demise-- spending increasingly more time on building elaborate tombs for fallen Kings/Queens and kin-- and their ability to consciously let go and willingness to move on was increasingly diminished until they were desperately clinging onto life in their decrepitude; and Kings and Queens held onto the crown until the day they died, rather than willingly passing it onto their heirs. All of this is to say that these are extremely moving and *universal* themes, imo-- what could be more universal than the struggle of mortality?-- which the writers of the show seemed to have either missed or entirely ignored in favor of lazy and cliche one-to-one allegories of 21st century American politics-- yanno, just what we all want to see in a Tolkien adaptation!!
Exactly. There are so many things, big and small, that demonstrate that the writers just didn’t take the time to reflect on what they were adapting. Big plot changes are fine as long as they still reflect the overall themes. I’d say a majority of the changes in the LOTR movies, while they change the plot, keep the spirit of the story and Tolkien’s values. RoP fails so utterly there. It just looks like the writers didn’t *think* before they threw things together
Well, it was clearly more important to the writers to deliver a lecture about how opponents of immigration are dumb and evil. In a show with many cringe worthy moments, that was the low point for me.
Well put. Contrast the "Gift of Man" to the fate of the Elves. They live forever but that also means that they will see all the things in the world change and pass on without any means to stop it. The rings helped them to conserve their splendor in a few very small places but they knew that that would also not last forever and they'd ultimately have to leave Middle Earth.
@@kaltaron1284 yes!! Galadriel's Lament to Lorien (I think that's what it's called, but I don't recall exactly), which she sings as the Fellowship is leaving down the Anduin, is one of my favorite moments of the first book; you get a real sense of the endless grief, and the immense longing for the beauty and innocence of the elder days, which is the fate of the Eldar to suffer and bear. It's interesting to me how there are several mentions in Tolkien's writings of the Elves looking on the fate of Men with pity and confusion (as even the Valar could not fathom all of Illúvatar's designs where it concerned his ultimate purpose for Men), but their own lot is just as, if not more, worthy of pity. I think, in many ways, their's is the fate which comes with a deeper sorrow than that of Man's-- though, perhaps a less present and immediate sorrow. The fate of ME is the ultimately the fate of Men to rule: the Elves are destined to move on and fade into the West, leaving ME to the designs of Man. Which, btw, is part of this really elegant shift in Tolkien's universe from the mythological to theological: from the beginning of time to the First Age where it was a world shaped and molded for the Eldar and governed by the Valar-- to the Third/Fourth Age and beyond where it transitions to a world shaped and molded by Men and governed only, and indirectly, by Illúvatar: a world of Man under God.
You *could* handle the insufferable Galadriel? You have more tolerance than me, friend. She alone made me want to cast this whole damned series into the fires of Mordor
I haven't watched it but I am so mad that they took her "as beautiful and terrible as the dawn" speech and made it so that she got it from Sauron. But it's Amazon so of course they'd do that and take away her agency so go off
The scene that made me quit was during a promotional interview with the cast where they talked more about including a female dwarf of color and expanding the LoTR audience and nothing about respecting the story and honoring Tolkien’s world.
the scene that made me quit was right at the beginning when Galadriel narrates how the Elves crossed the sea to wage war on Morgoth, and it shows them sailing to Middle Earth instead of Beleriand
I can actually understand that one from the point of view of making it accessible to those who have not read the silmarilion. Honestly....even after reading the silmarilion, there is no good concept of how the 1st / 2nd age world looks.
@@Katya_Lastochka The total irony of this show somewhat mocking the men afraid of losing their jobs.. to have the writers strike kick off months later so that writers can avoid losing their jobs to AI
It's a consensus that woke writers are awful, but it's not immediately obvious why. I think it's because they do not see people as people. They see people as representatives of a group, and vanguards for that group's motives. So instead of *telling a story* ABOUT a father and son, they *deliver a message* USING a father and son. Characters are merely tools and tools have no life to them.
It's not woke writers that are awful, it's bad writers period. You can deliver a message and tell a good story at the same time. Consider Parasite, Squid Game, Arcane, V for Vendetta, etc. These are all very politically charged media that are well regarded by both audience and critics.
@@maknirak 4 examples out of the majority of media. If the writing is taking a back seat for a message to take centre stage, the wokeness is the issue.
It is true woke writers are awful but its not because they're woke. That's a symptom or...a curtain. The real issue is they just aren't alerted, creative nor passionate about what they do. Considering most of college is built around taking someone else's work and copy/pasting citations it really isn't a surprise. So the woke curtain gets tossed up as a shield for criticism. It is a crutch they use to side line any form of criticism. That's the big issue folks who just aren't any good at their jobs. Partly because they don't know how to be and partly because they're so trained to function like a robot, hitting checked boxes or following some scam book or class on "how to write a story" 101 guide... Which makes content boring, bland, redundant, uninspired. To the point they take a woke stance and think (just as an example) lotr but...black is some sort of creative endeavor. It isn't. Pallete swapping or remaking something but swapping a man with a woman (or woman with a man) does not make something new, imaginative, different or good in any meaningful way.
My main objection to that line was that it was a clear attempt to insert modern political allegory. That guy was meant to represent supposed anti-migrant sentiment in modern European states. Tolkien stated, numerous times that he hated allegory and in his lifetime he refused to relate any of this stories or characters to politics or current affairs in the real world. Lore inaccuracies might be ignored, but trying to insert something that Tolkien expressly hated into an adaptation of his work is beyond insulting. It really amounts to hijacking his work for Amazon's own agenda.
Great point. It was such an unnatural allegory too, which makes it that much worse. This scene could have probably been entirely removed without affecting the plot much
Well their agenda has always been to make quick cash for minimal effort. Let's hope that in this instance they failed hard enough to learn their lesson.
You nailed it. Rings of Powers biggest weakness is the writing. Not straying from the lore necessarily but just overall weak writing. It feels a lot more like Game of Thrones Season 5-8 writing (where things just kind of happen and it’s all very quick and convenient) than GoT 1-4 where the story works much better.
Not to mention the fact that the Numenorians got along just fine with the elves in almost all of Tolkien's writings. Numenor was literally created as a reward for them by the Valor because of their steadfast support of the elves in the 1st Age. Not to mention granting them long lives, etc.
Not really true. Númenor was destroyed because the Númenorians, egged on by Annatar, became jealous of the elves for their immortality, and decided to go to the Undying Lands to try getting it for themselves. In its final days Númenor was indeed in conflict with Valinor and the elves.
@@jamesheartney9546 Yes in its final days after years of Sauron's corrupting influence. In the show he hasn't even gotten there yet. There is no reason for them to be worried about elves at that stage.
@@savethefantasticfour292 The Númenóreans started being jealous and desiring immortality a few hundred years before the days of Âr-Pharazon. Sauron didn't just show up and turn them evil one day, they did that themselves. He just fooled them into actually thinking they *could* seize immortality for themselves.
Even then though there was one whole Province that did not succumb to Sauron's Lie. Irrelevalent coz this is set long before he even set foot on the Isle Of The Star.
@@alanywalany6460 They fucked up the timeline big time, so while yes, in the book, Sauron had already taught them of Morgoth worship and sowed the seeds of blasphemy among them loooong before Ar-Pharazon stole the throne, in the show he doesn't seem to have, so they shouldn't hate elves yet. They got the elf hating king right, they just completely failed at portraying the huge amount of backstory that leads up to where we are in the show.
This particular episode was an overall dealbreaker for the majority of the audience. Quite honestly I do not recall any previous times when so many people have abandoned a tv show in mid-season no less.
Yea but people you know isn't a direct representation of viewership, other than the first two episodes which were released together viewership declined at a steady rate which is normal. There were tons of problems with the show and the video points out set up and payoff as a huge problem, regardless of personal opinion it was Amazon's most "successful " show (which it should have been. Hopefully it gets better in season 2.
This show rocks me to my core. It somehow manages to take everything good with the original LoTR trilogy and make it bland, take all of the unwatchable aspects of The Hobbit trilogy and amplify it, and take everything from the appendixes and use it to wipe their asses. If their goal was to make the worst screen adaptation of a rich source material then they most certainly accomplished that.
Not only is there a deficit in creativity these days, to the point where they have to recycle every storyline ad nauseum... they can't come up with compelling story telling, using some of the richest material available.
I didn't know how much LOTRs meant to the fan base until my gf legit broke down and started crying the night Rings Of Power aired. She was so upset at what they did to Tolkien's work.
@@wspencerwatkins nah... she's a beautiful girl and she was upset that they destroyed Tolkien's world...when Tolkien wrote it to give a mythology to his and her people... she's of Anglo-Saxon descent so the Rohirrim are based on her ancestors and she took great pride in her race and culture...she was upset that they were trying to steal something unique and beautiful that represented her people's culture and mythology. I thought it was cute tbh.
@@Donnybrook831 Actually, yes she does like Mein Kampf David...and also David...perhaps you should actually read a history book before ever trying to make a comment related to history...to say most Western Europeans are of Anglo-Saxon descent is absolutely ridiculous because Angles, Saxons, Jutes, were Germanic tribes from Northern Germany and Denmark who are mostly known for settling in England. They by no means settled across western Europe. Also...Tolkien was motivated by European mythology, especially Germanic mythology in his writing and as I had said above...wanted to write a new mythology for his people. And Pinocchio was not based on Germanic mythology, nor was it made with the intention of having enormous mythological and cultural motivations behind it...she was upset that they took something that was supposed to be unique and special for a particular folk and was made to celebrate her ancestors which she has traced back to the 10th century and turned it into a cosmopolitan shit show...thus forever warping and perverting what it was meant to be. You can laugh at it all you want...but don't ever try to make it sound like you're a Tolkien fan because you obviously don't appreciate what Tolkien was inspired by and what he was trying to achieve with his writing. The show is made for people like you...and that's an insult. Tolkien's work is Germanic in origin, think a bit before responding David cause you just made yourself sound really stupid and like you're grasping at straws.....This has absolutely nothing to do with being "unique" on an individual level David, you're just reaching for anything from my comments to respond too because you're trying to kiss ass right now and show everyone "huh huh look how non-racist I am everyone"...and having passion for something isn't cringe, standing up for a people who laugh at you behind your back is cringe...black people don't like you dude 😂...i'm sure the black people who will ever see these comments will thank you...I'm sure they really appreciate your efforts 👏😂👏
@@Nopeasaurus He only wanted to live peacefully on Númenor working in a forge, but no! She dragged him back to Middle-earth! And then she cruelly rejected him and broke his heart!
that scene problem is deeply rooted in the fact that the lore is pretty much ignored. for most of its history, Numenor maintained a good relationship with the Elves. After all, Numenor was founded by Elronds brother, who contrary to Elrond, chose mortal life, instead of immortality. Thus, Numenoreans were pretty much super-humans, gathering the best traits of Elves and Men, with extremely long life spans. It is not until the arrival of Sauron to the kingdom, that this good relationship starts to deteriorate. Sauron presents himself under the guise of Anatar, The Lord of Gifts, and for centuries, starts to corrupt Numenorean nobility and society from within, and turning them against the Elves and ultimately, against the Valar, wanting eternal lives for themselves. From Sauron, they learn witchcraft and blood magic, who helps the kings unnaturally expand their life spans. In the end, after centuries of poisoning from the influence of Sauron, Numenor builds a huge fleet to invade Valinor, and the Valar end up destroying the kingdom in result. The only survivors are the Faithful, the family and people of Elendil and Isildur, who flee to Middle Earth. In the show, the whole crap narrative of Halbrand is not only silly and lazy... It completely kills the original source of the corruption of Numenor and the reason for the hatred towards Elves. The same way the arrival of the Ishtari is not via asteroids... That was a completely stupid plot device, and the whole state of idiocy the Stranger displays along the show is just insulting. Gandalf is a Maiar, a being which, like the Valar is pretty much divine, like an angel of sorts. So, having an angel in human form having amnesia for a whole season is simply imbecile. This is why lore matters. If you are going to deviate from the lore, at least make a decent replacement narrative, and they also failed at it.
The decline of Numenor took centuries but Sauron's stay and corruption there only took some years, decades at most. They were already pretty far gone during the reign of Ar-Pharazon and easy pickings for Sauron. The rest is correct and esp. Gandalf arriving via meteor was... strange.
@@DaddyDoom Certainly. Might have taken them a few more generations to get the idea into their heads on their own and maybe they would have declined so much by that time that they wouldn't have dared.
Not to mention the Istari aren't even supposed to be in Middle-Earth yet, and Gandalf arrives last to the Grey Havens. He arrives last because he was chosen by Manwë and Varda because Olorin(Gandalf) was known as the wisest of the Maia. Cìrdan even gives him Narya to help aid him in his travels. The show made a complete mockery of him.
It's not clear whether Sauron had beatiful or scary form on Numenor. Tolkien often contradicts himself, even in the case of Sauron's name or details of elven nature, how powerful are immortal beings compared to each other etc.
One of the moments that confirmed to me the writing in this show was going to be utter hot garbage was when I saw Galadriel jump off the boat heading to Valinor in episode one. So let me get this straight, I know the elves are "superhuman", but you mean to have me believe that someone is is supposed to be wise was stupid enough to jump off a boat into an open ocean, with nothing to support her, and then swim 300 - 1000 miles from that portal to Valinor to Middle Earth, without dying of exhaustion, hypothermia or just being pulled under by a current and drowning? On top of that, she doesn't even actually make it and gets attacked by a sea monster and rescued by chance, only reinforcing the stupidity of the decision. Utter hot garbage writing, while a lot of the show looked beautiful it was just a polished turd and I didn't care to continue watching it.
Also there was no portal leading to Valinor in the most duration on the second age. That was a shock for me to watch in the show!! The portal was created after the destruction of Numenor when the Numenoreans with Ar-Pharazon invaded Valinor. The Undying Lands were removed from the Earth and the planet became round from flat.
The jumping ship scene wasn’t the greatest idea in a show full up with bad ideas. Let face it, even having her in the boat heading back in the first place feels very wrong. But, and I have said this to a bunch of people, there would have been a simple way to fix %95 of the problems with that scene, and one that is %100 in line with Tolkien’s style in other stories, and that would have been for her to receive a private message/sign/vision, possibly from a “supernatural” source to the effect that she was tasked with something greater. If I was writing it maybe I would have had one of those Valinorian birds that were flying around just then land on her shoulder. Birds appear in a lot of places in Tolkien as messengers and signs from the divine powers. Let’s say Manwe himself tells her though the bird to jump. They wouldn’t have to be too explicit, but then her actions make more sense because her faith is based on a sign, and a leap of faith, and everything that came after was not really just an accident - she knew she would be saved, etc. So she becomes like Tuor on the path that was set for him by Ulmo in the Silmarillion. They could have at least patched up the bad writing quite a bit if they had the faintest whiff of how Tolkien’s stories work. But they show pretty clearly throughout the show that they do not - that is why there are so many “f**k this shit” moments for many different people to reach their breaking point. For me it was above all else the trivializing silliness of the making of the three rings of power. There was no supernatural intervention I could ever dream up to patch that up.
No. That scene is the problem. I got a vision of Tolkien rolling over in his grave ass up when I saw it, but I still watched 5 eps, may Tolkien forgive me... @@markmillonas1896
@@caleb.a.robinson Hahaha, this video made me recall the sheer screenwriting genius of the original trilogy, especially in contrast to the shitshow that is the Rings of Power. Bolstered my decision!
I agree. That scene with Durin and his father wasn't the first or the only scene in which there was no setup, explanation or payoff either. In Episode II as I recall they played sad music when the Elves were killed and tried to give one of them a death reminiscent of Boromir in Fellowship of the Ring to make us feel the emotional resonance, but it didn't work. It didn't work because they had not even tried to make us care about those guys, we'd barely even seen them for more than a few seconds and I could not remember their names. Whereas Boromir has an entire character arc and considerable growth in 25 minutes, those guys had nothing. I think the real failure of this series is that they wanted to make a grand epic like the movies, but they weren't willing to put in any of the hard work or effort in terms of the writing. They thought they could just make things seem epic or emotionally poignant by basically stealing lines or scenes from the movies and reworking them, or with manufactured conflict. Once again, that's now how these things work.
I think I'm going to try to finish the show so I can make a video contrasting character arcs from the movies and the show. It's weird how little growth I saw in half a season, and I'm curious if that's true through the whole thing
Well put! Many of the attempted arcs and epic moments seemed like cheap knock-offs of the movies. That scene when the two harfoots say goodbye seemed like a wannabe sam and frodo moment but I felt NOTHING watching that scene. They even had whole wannabe Aragorn's horse sequence 🤦🏻♀️ if you're going to stray from the source material at least throw in a smidge of originality ffs. The later episodes have so much plot armor as well, I never care when people survive because after everyone survives Pompeii there are absolutely no stakes left.
@@caleb.a.robinson Episode seven, Galadriel suddenly remembers she's married. Or was married, maybe she's a widow, we don't know because while she was running around Middle-earth for years looking for vengeance on Sauron, she never tried finding if her husband was alive or dead. Episode seven is pretty special, because we get Galadriel who in episode six was "if you don't talk I'm going to torture your Orcs" and "I intend to exterminate every last one of your children and keep you alive until I can tell you they are all dead, then kill you" is now all "don't harbour hatred" preaching to Theo.
Yup. Hollywood is getting worse and worse at making things that connect with us because the people who write these shows are moving further and further from reality. They think they have it all figured out, they've abandoned God, they've solved all the problems of bigoted greed, racism, and sexism in their heads. Yet they can't write for shit, because all of it is rubbish, and they have no continuity or sense of value. They can never rework and recreate Tolkien because they aren't as good as him, but they for some reason think they're better. Laughable.
You know what, ROP looks like if an IA made a LOTR movie by disney with the talent of Netflix. And tbh I think an idea would have done a better job... Nothing beats human stupidity
The most diverse thing about the show is also the most unifying.. LotR fans all hate different things about it. It wasn't just one single thing (like amazon wants you to think), they managed to destroy it from every angle.
The one scene I did enjoy Was the Jeff Bezos cameo in the Orc Slave tunnels. Apparently the scene of the Orc whipping slaves wasn't even scripted. Bezos was just doing his morale management routine and the director just went with it.
I love how you have a complicated, intricate reason why you stopped watching the show. Lol I stopped watching When they let Galadriel out of prison and she’s surrounded by four armed guards and they tell her she’s gonna be escorted off the island and then she pulled some kind of funny move & the camera half pans away for a second and then when it pans back, she’s pushing all three guards into the cell and she has their weapons and then she’s just standing there with a smirk looking at “Not-Sauron” .My wife and I looked at each other like are they serious????We never revisited the show again.
"Lol I stopped watching When they let Galadriel out of prison and she’s surrounded by four armed guards" Yes it is ridiculous, but I wonder why it was OK for Peter Jackson to have one elf woman destroy NINE Nazgul with a single spell and no one ever mentions that. There does seem to be a double-standard there.
@@archvaldor Because Galadriel was a powerful enough sorcerer to do that to the Nine. With the Ring she would've become greater than Sauron. Without the Ring she was strong enough to resist him. It's not a double standard, it's in-keeping with the original lore. And is another mark against the Rings of Power that she's reduced to an insecure lady swinging a sword around as opposed to a self-assured force of nature capable of bending the world to her will. The irony is that Tolkien's Galadriel is a greater, stronger female character than a thousand Amazon Galadriels put together.
Have you tried watching Frieren: Beyond Journey's End or Delicious Dungeon? Both are good fantasy story. One is about moving on and another is about monster cuisine (like how adventurers cook and eat monsters)
Diverse elves and dwarves CAN be plausible IF it is established that these people come from different lands far away and have different cultures. Their cultural and appearances would be treated as noteworthy, exotic, within the universe. But no. There are black and other races within popualtion groups that have been established to be white, and based European culture. With the hobbits, there are multiple races and accents within the same family that is supposedly isolationist. That literally makes no sense.
I remember Amazon bragging about having "diversity" but not bothering to build a history for these people and how they have dark skin in a setting that resembles medieval Europe. Like wow, you deserve so much praise for just tossing black characters and other ethnicities with absolutely no effort. Missed opportunity to utilize the Haradrims and Easterlings in Tolkien's works.
@@darkhighwayman1757 And Khamul - a good man ensnared by Sauron and becoming Nazgul number 2. Seriously, there were plenty of opportunities to introduce non-white characters plausibly - Númenor was a huge naval power, with explorers, traders and soldiers travelling the whole world, so we could meet merchants, ambassadors, mercenaries, sailors etc. But, nah, they toss in ONE darker-skinned person in an otherwise white setting, and call that diversity.
I think the writers wanted to present the intendant as a modern populist. They wanted the basic viewer to feel, this man is bad because he uses far right rethoric.
I think the only characters I wanted to see what happened to them were Halbrand, who I thought was Sauron as soon as they were told they were going back to Numenor, and the Meteor Man. The rest of them I just didn't care... Like you said. They didn't give enough reason to actually care.
There are two scenes in the show that broke my brain, both stem from statements by Tolkien in his writings that make this show incompatible with Tolkien's lore (and also help turn the show into hot garbage). The first is the fact that we have Durin III on the throne of Khazad-Dum while his son Durin IV is the crown prince. This doesn't work for one reason, according to Tolkien, the fathers of the dwarves (their most ancient forebears) would reincarnate from time to time (no one was 100% sure why) and rule their peoples again under their ancient names. What that means is that Durin III and Durin IV aren't different kings in the annals of the kingdoms, like the Henry's in England or the Louie's in France. Rather, it's the same person who has come back at different times to rule his kingdom again. Which I actually think is cooler because it helps make the dwarves more mystical but also more distinct. Because Elves who reincarnate (with very, very few exceptions like Glorfindel or Luthien) rarely return among the living in Valinor while Arda lasts (it is said that neither Finwe or Feanor will come among their people until the last battle and the day of doom) much less return to Middle Earth to take an active hand in the doings of their peoples. So they had the chance to do something really cool and weird with the dwarves (like have Durin start talking about the time before the sun and the moon like it was last week, or mention Doriath and Nargothrond, projects the dwarves actually worked on in the first age) but instead they couldn't wrap their heads around that. The second is the Numenorean navy. Now, according to Tolkien, the Numenoreans were the finest mariners in all the history of the world, and were referred to as the kings of the seas. On top of that, the show is set around the year 1000 of the Second Age, this is long before the darkening of Numenor and the estrangement of the Dunedain and the Elves. This is also before the Numenoreans turn against the Valar and fall from grace. Now according to the professors writings, the Numenoreans at this time were still on a first name basis with Ulmo, the Valar who was in charge of all the waters of the earth, and Osse and Uinen, his Maiar servants who basically ran the oceans for Ulmo as his vassals. Tolkien said that the Numenoreans were on such good terms with Osse and Uinen that for a long time (approximately 2200 years) they sailed under their protection and would call to them (especially Uinen) when there was a storm or they were in danger. This is why the scene with the naval recruits saying "The Sea is always right" doesn't make any sense. At this point in their history they're literally on a first name basis with the supernatural beings in charge of the ocean, so why are they talking like the sea is the hostile, impersonal thing? They know they people who run it, and it would honestly make sense that one of the first things they'd teach greenhorn Numenorean sailors to do is to call to Ulmo, Osse and Uinen when they are in trouble. This would be a chance to see them use Sindarin or even Quenya for the prayers they utter when asking for help (which I always love to hear spoken and spoken well). Anyways, those are the two scenes that turned me against the show. There was no reason to change those bits of the lore, other than to suit the ideologies and preferences of the people making it, and I don't have to support that. Thanks for your analysis of why this show doesn't work. Cheers and G-d bless.
Hahaha imagine being this naive and expecting an Amazon mainstream show would ever use these lore elements. This show was clearly made for those who watched the movies, not Tolkien nerds(me). Amazon doesn't even own the rights of the Silmarillion or other posthumously published works. I expected nothing and was therefore only moderately disappointed.
@@yairrojas5750 I knew they were in trouble when it came out they couldn't get the rights to the Akallebeth, Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age and Unfinished Tales, because those were the books that had the critical elements of the stories of the second age. I gave it a chance, because people said I should, but the whole thing was just a train wreck from start to finish. Also, the 'harfoots" are a bunch of bloody psychopaths and definitively not Hobbits.
I was out at: "“We felt it was very important that season one be about reintroducing Middle Earth in this new era,” says McKay." I read Tolkien for the world building and descriptions. This statement from McKay shows he was no clue what fantasy and escapism are about
The whole diverse thing is what killed it for me, those people were completely out of place there, they would have been assimilated and mixed in with the normal population of middle earth ages ago. However the hadn't, which made the show feel like it wasn't actually in middle earth, but instead some larping event in the middle of new york or something.
I "conscripted" a group of friends to watch it. Now, we had all seen LOTR and Hobbit and very decently versed in Tolkien's world. We weren't hardcore fans, but we knew the basics. We felt nothing but hatred as we watched it. The most fun we had during it was watching that big Orc beat the shit out of bootleg Legolas in the last few episodes and the short scene with Sauron trying to use his super manipulation, before it ended with a scene exactly like two 5 year olds screaming at each other. Also, three of us are students of military history and tactics. We immediately pointed out how batshit insane it is for the show to transport 500 men, 500 horses (plus extras for camp work), all the required equipment, food and drink on 5 ships, then they did it with 3. I know LOTR is set in a fantasy setting, but I don't recall there being a spell to counteract logistics. They would need, at minimum, 20+ ships.
Tolkien himself wrote that the Numenoreans never used horses, so that right there is a fact they got wrong. Add it to the other 10,000 lore facts they got wrong and you get this pile..
And of course they crossed an ocean and a considerable portion of middle earth within hours to come to the southlander village in the nick of time to (not) rescue them
@@j.calvert3361 This was probably the scene which freaked me out most. Half a minute ago they were somehwere in the Bay of Belfalas and then within a second, they are next to future Mordor, instantly knowing where this rather small village lies. It was like theres only a single village and all roads lead to it >_
@@raxfox2394 Yep, they completely destroyed the whole epic history of Middle-earth, which spans continents and millenia in Tolkien's work. It's unbearable.
I made it 1/2 way through episode 5. Wife wanted to sleep early, so I shut it off. Like 3 weeks later while scrolling through Amazon she says "Oh yeah, we were in the middle of a LOTR episode, do you wanna finish it?" I said "No. Do you?" "Not really" she replied, & that was that. I didn't quit with anger, didn't rush to social media to declare my hatred, didn't really even think about why. We just quit a show bearing the name of something I love with apathy...
"I could handle the diverse elves, the strong {x} lead nonsense and the "elves are gonna take our jobs" Bro at this point you've already given it more of a shot than 99% of anyone who watched it and i'm astonished at the sheer patience on display, Tolkien is a big deal to a lot of people and fans tend to just drop their whole amazon subscription at the first of these violations, let alone so many lol
Haven't watched the show so maybe im missing some context, but weren't the numenoreans supposed to be the "best among men?" (Atleast until the influence of morgoth corrupted some)
After having read Tolkien's actual lore for the first and second age in the foundational book of modern fantasy, The Silmarillion, this show enrages me like no other. It deserves to thrown into Orodruin/Mount Doom itself, or banished from this world like Morgoth, wretched and accursed, never to plague us or Tolkien's legacy ever again! Btw, I would strongly recommend The Silmarillion and The Fall Of Gondolin- They are the core lore books of Tolkien's magnificent world and much better, imo, than even the Lotr and The Hobbit! They encompass the creation of the world and the incredible struggles of the newborn races of Elves, Men and Dwarves against the most powerful and most evil dark lord of them all- Morgoth, who makes Sauron look like an angry breadstick in comparison! The battles they contain are of a scale that would never be seen again in the later ages of Middle-Earth, with Balrogs, collossal dragons 10x the size of Smaug and legions of Orcs and other wretched monsters laying waste to beautiful, timeless cities and the magical lands of the ancient past! (Not to mention, a leviathan-sized fortress of hell and a spider that grew to be the size of a mountain from devouring all the light from the world!). A mythology so beautiful and lyrical, it transcends all that have come before it!
Higher Power Levels don't make for a better story. This comment honestly feels more like someone bragging that you've read the Silmarillion or know the Lore of Tolkien's World to some extent rather than actually trying to convince someone to read something. Also, minor nitpick I know, but Sauron was actually a lot more Cunning than Morgoth despite being much less Powerful. Gothmog and Ancalagon the Black were a Lot Stronger than Sauron yet Sauron was still Morgoth's most Valued Servant. If anything Morgoth was the angry one who made Rash decisions which caused him to make bad decisions and lose power which ultimately led to his Downfall. I feel like Sauron's Superior Intelligence to his Master actually gets Overlooked by many folks. However, Morgoth put so much of his power into Corrupting Middle Earth that Evil would always exist until the Final Battle of Dagor Dagorath and set the foundations for not only Sauron but also all Future Dark Lords as well. So I'm not going to argue with Morgoth being the Greater Dark Lord of the Two.
@@ultraexcalibur1728 Sauron was banished from the world and his power was boken. Morgoth was banished from the world and his power still influences everything in the world. Sauron was but a Servant of Morgoth, and Sauron was not destroyed by a dog, only because Luthien kept her word. There is no comparison between lekor and Sauron when actual poweris compared. In late writing Tolkien said that Melkor was as powerful as all the other Ainur COMBINED.
The Silmarillion is my favourite book. The stories in there are magnificent. And Beren & Luthien and The Children of Hurin just add to those amazing narratives. Perfection.
The screenwriters/developers Payne and McKay had no provenance doing anything of note before Bezos burned half a billion dollars to create this epic mess. Similar to the the disaster that was the British ITV series 'Beowulf' - just a lot less money.
I thought it was just me with the “elves are taking over our lands” *the literally ONLY elf far and beyond: “I wanna get tf out of here.”* bc no one talked about it and it’s such a GINORMOUS logical gap, not even 13 year olds on wattpad would make this mistake
Oh but you see they really needed to "educate" the audience, not just about diversity and strong women, but also about how evil and dumb people who oppose immigration are.
At the end, writing is king. Give me a good story, tell it well, that is all I need. That is why the last seasons of GOT felt like an empty shell of their former selves, because the original source material of Martin was missing, and to be fair, those are some big shoes for any other writer to fill. This show injected money everywhere, but forgot along the way to write a good, credible story. Something that goes beyond the special effects and the action scenes, something that makes us feel things
everyone i know thought the end of game of thrones was great. people just didnt like how it ended. but it certainly all made sense and was awesome to watch. you just didnt get your way.
@@markheinle6319 for me was the other way around. After the source material everything started to feel rushed, some characters (Tyrion, Varis, Littlefinger) became increasingly dummer (that spark in their dialogues wasn't there). Some build ups were abandoned (Dany's huge army wasn't used at all, just the dragons. There was no tension in the battle. Aryas training beyond swordfighting etc). For me is not only about the ending (I've read every George Martin book, most are SciFi, and you rarely get a Hollywood ending. It os fine, I don't want something satisfactory, I want something that makes sense and feels real). But hey! We had different experiences and so did our groups of friends as it seems. Better for you, I would have loved to enjoy GOT without source material as much as you did
@@cristobalheiss5349 they kept the cast together for 9 seasons. look up friends, seinfeld, anything. its just not sustainable. they had to end it. its easy to look back now in hindsight and say 'oh they should have known they could only keep it together for 9 seasons' but think about yourself starting something you have no idea how its going to go and you already predict the end. its just not realistic. they were pitching the show and had to reshoot the pilot. people werent guaranteed to be the actors, or directors, or for it to be a box office hit. the end came. im sad about it too. martin was supposed to finish the books during it, he didnt. theres just nothing you can do about it. the internet is just the internet. is what it is. theyll complain water doesnt have three oxygen molecules even though then it wouldnt be water.
Well done video. I have separate reasons for disliking a couple things, but you've brought up a good point about most movies and series nowadays. Don't get me started on the Star Wars sequels, will be here all month, and it's the 2nd 😁
Other than it taking place in Middle Earth and featuring the word “Elves” The Rings of Power has as much in common with Tolkien’s work as The Godfather or Die Hard 2.
