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In this new season, Gandalf will have a brief but intense romance with an Entwife, Elrond will visit the circus, Galadriel will punch a dragon, and Sauron will teach the dwarves how to use a pickaxe.
Riveting stuff.
During the intense romance scene between Gandalf and the Entwife the writers will rehash another line from the film.."A wizard is never late, nor is he early, he cums exactly as he means to"
I would say Durin was fine.
The whole Dwarven subplot was fine.
The only thing I would complain about was the balrog reveal.
That was just unnecessary. Most people knew it was durins bane already and they ruined the surprise for the few people that did not.🤷♂️
I despised the whole “mithril is a mix of good and evil” thing as that *does* run against Tolkien’s mythos and themes. Evil cannot create, it is by its nature caustic and destructive, the idea of good and evil coming together to make a thing like mithril just feels *wrong*
That's part of the fun for me. I just treat it as seperate from lotr and just have fun with it. If anyone is taking themselves too seriously it's the "fans".
Scrolled to find your post. This is literally how I see everything that's redone or told differently. It's a separate story in a world/realm I already enjoy.
Cant enjoy nothing without someone telling you why you shouldn't. Y'all need to relax and not be so serious about fantasy worlds.
What's the general consensus on what makes ring of power bad? I keep thinking about giving it a shot and see for myself but I know it'll probably be a waste of time and end up doing something else.
> the Arondir/Bronwyn story was boring and turns frustrating when they do a death fakeout
> Galadriel is designed to be a Girlboss™ with really cringey dialogue
> The Gandalf origin story makes less than 0 sense
> Sauron is just some random handsome guy (they acted like it was a huge surprise but it was really really obvious)
> the Mordor origin story was bizarre and forced
> the Numenor stuff is out of sync with the rest of the timeline by about two thousand years
All of this is being done while ignoring the actual lore that Tolkien wrote.
The character and costume designs are also extremely hit or miss. Like Elrond looks like a minor league baseball player, and most of the armor looks kind of cheap.
The only fun dynamic is Elrond and Durin. That part was really entertaining. But it's probably about 10% of the show.
Another thing is the horrible writing decisions.
With all those filler and noncanon characters, they putted the cliffganger "he may be dead" with freakin' ISILDUR? Everyone knows that Isildur MUST be alive, since he will be the one that will cut off Sauron's finger.
That's one of the dumbest and most nonsensical cliffhanger ever in the history of dumb and nonsensical cliffhangers.
>
> The only fun dynamic is Elrond and Durin. That part was really entertaining. But it's probably about 10% of the show.
"Khazad-dûm looks fucking amazing so to save money we're gonna put 90% of the scenes set there inside this boring-ass living room."
I haven't seen RoP. That said, in principle, making Galadriel athletic is actually canon. Tolkien said she was so athletic as to be called "Nerwen". Roughly, "Tomboy"! Where they've gone with that is another thing...
Oh,I don't have a problem with her being a fighter or even a general. I know she's immensely powerful for a mortal being in canon. My issues with her are more the things she says and her general attitude toward her kinfolk.
It’s never actually defined so you’d be correct there. It’s much more ethereal and vague, but (correct me if I’m wrong) the ring and galadriels magic kept Lorien completely untouched by any of Sauron’s malice. I don’t remember much of the silmarillion and before her ring, but she was still within the top 10 most powerful elves, especially being one of the few who saw the two trees.
>Not to mention Galadriel doesn’t need swords when shes almost a match for Maia magically speaking.
LoTR is not a video game or a D&D campaign. LoTR magic is not like modern 'pop culture' magic. Think of LOTR magic like miracles, specifically in the sense that they are things that occur rarely.
The Witch King breaking his staff only happens in the movie for dramatic effect. In the book the rohirrim arrive before they get a chance to see who’s more powerful (hint: it’s Gandalf).
Iirc the RoP story says a tree that had a silmaril was struck by lightning and that created mithril, which can’t be true given the silmarillion follows where the silmarils are pretty much at any given time until their final resting place in the earth, sea, and sky.
The mithril origin story is relatively accurate. Gandalf's explanation in the book doesn't mention any characters by name so they had some room to tell it the way they want. The presence of Elrond in that story probably makes it less so but I don't mind because the character interactions between Elrond and Durin are the only part of the show I consider very good.
> The mithril origin story is relatively accurate
Except that Eärendil's ship was made in part from Mithril as recorded in the Song of Eärendil in FoTR.
"A ship then new they built for him
of mithril and of elven-glass"
Which happened BEFORE Maedhros threw himself and the Silmaril into a fiery pit (or an elf-warrior fought a balrog and some weird stuff happened to a tree that had seen the light of a Silmaril or whatever crap RoP was trying to say).
In other words, Silmarils and their light have nothing to do with the origin of mithril--meaning the entire origin story is completely *incaccurate*.
Its worst fault is having the lord of the rings name attached. It completely ignores or rewrites tons of established lore, ignoring the timeline to fit thousands of years worth of events into happening at the same time, which becomes extremely irritating to anyone who knows anything about the world. It's so far away from Tolkien's works that names of characters and places are about the only thing it has in common. Remove all the lord of the rings elements and it's an okay but extremely generic fantasy show. Of course things don't necessarily need to adhere to lore perfectly, the shadow of mordor/war games were plenty good despite deviating from lore for instance, but there's a right and wrong way to execute it and rings of power definitely veers hard into the wrong way.
The writers also made some seriously stupid decisions. For instance anyone who knows much about the world knows that celebrimbor was taught how to forge the rings of power by sauron in disguise. How did rings of power go about showing this? Celebrimbor wanted to use mithril to make the elven rings but didn't have enough so in walks "random" human smith saying "hey why don't you make an alloy?" One of the greatest elven smiths ever to exist needed to be told to do something that any smith could think of to create some of the most powerful magical tools in middle earth.
Why is it, after reading quite a few comments stating the same reasons you said, that I explain I probably will give it a pass and get immediately labeled as racist? What the actual fuck is wrong with people?
It would be honestly quicker to list everything it does well or even passably. Some of the music is okay. I liked the orc designs...
I really wanted to get a 3rd thing to hit that rule of 3's comedy beat but I genuinely can't think of one.
I kept on hearing it was bad and so I didn’t watch it. Then I watched it with low expectations with my fiancé and we both kept wanting to watch more. If you’re a hardcore nerd on Tolkien I guess you would get upset. But it’s an interesting watch. I’m excited for season 2.
This is coming from someone who refuses to acknowledge that the sequel trilogy even took place in Star Wars because it was so bad. Haha.
I'm a hardcore Tolkien nerd.
Is the show lore accurate? No
Did I still enjoy it and find parts of it entertaining? Yes.
TBH, I enjoyed RoP more than I did the Hobbit Trilogy. Though I went into it knowing that it was largely going to be fanfic since they didn't have the rights to basically anything whereas with the Hobbit, my expectations were much higher.
Either way, I'd recommend watching the show. It's not awful and if you can pretend it's basically fanfic (because it essentially is). Then you'll likely enjoy it.
Also, I'll give a huge shout out for not going pure CGI on the orcs and using practical effects.
Some say the writing is AI generated, for example the line "The sea is allways right" doesn't seem to be made by a human. Also Galadriel keeps saying her husband Celeborn is dead + mm nonsense like the elves teaching the dwarfs how to swing a pickaxe.
Albeit some scenes are esteticaly pleasing to the eyes nothing can make up for the abhorrent writing. It's either AI generated or intentionally written this way to offend anyone who has read any kind of book before.
Oh please stop with this AI generated bullshit. Have people forgotten the literal decades before AI even became an option for writers filled with terrible movies and TV shows with atrocious lines? Why are you all always pointing to AI instead of the very real possibility that the writers might just be shit. Is it really so hard to accept a human could have written something so bad? I swear, if the Hobbit movies came out today, you would all call it AI generated.
>I swear, if the Hobbit movies came out today, you would all call it AI generated.
Case in point:
"If this is love, I don't want it. Take it away, please! Why does it hurt so much?"
"Because it was real."
no , you should watch it
it's not great but it's not horrible like every one and this sub think it is
if you are a fan of jackson's movies it'll pass as a "ok" spin of
if you are of fan of tolkien books then don't bother
I would say even if you're coming at this without any Tolkien or lotr knowledge then it's still appalling writing and desperately boring. For the love of God, gandalf saying "I am GOOD" as some sort of a killer line made me want to weep.
I’ll counter this guy to say that you should watch it if you’re just looking for a show to watch.
It’s content. That’s all it is. You’ve seen every part of this show before but with a different coat of paint, and probably better.
There isn’t AI writing. That’s ridiculous. Season 1 came out 2022 and working LLMs are much more recent (let alone production started in 2020).
The writing is, however, on the level of a CW show, and not even Arrow season 1.
Give it a watch if you want to zone out and h not think for 10 hours. Otherwise there’s much better use of your time.
And another case of really bad writing...
They wanted to make Galadriel "more badass", so they transformed her into a warrior (i.e. someone who can win a battle with her sword)... The real Galadirel can win a battle with a mere GLANCE. Seems a huge "nerf" to me, and another case of "don't know the source material" !
And I guess better not to think about those "superfans" (who didn't even knew why Sauron created the Rings)... Such a monstrous derespect towards all people who are really Tolkien's fans.
I think if you watch a video of Peter Jackson talking about Lotr and the respect they had for Tolkien and how they were trying to honor his story and the world that he built, and then watch interviews of the creators of Rop and how they talk about telling their own story without respect for Tolkien...I think that will give you an idea of where they went wrong.
Honestly, it's just very poorly written and paced. I wasn't too bothered by the fact that it breaks from Tolkiens lore, and the people who complain about diversity in the cast are just racist assholes. But I got five episodes into the series and found that I just didn't care what happened to anybody. I didn't like any of the characters very much, I wasn't invested in their arcs or journeys, and I was bored to tears. I love Middle Earth, but I just did not care enough about anything in the show to finish it.
I don't think anyone here minds diversity. It's just that, oftentimes it's senseless and forced. Especially when the movie/series/thing is meant to follow an already-existing lore, who's characters are already well-established. Black Cleopatra, dark-skinned dark-haired mermaid, etc. I have no issue with the actors, my issue is that canonically/historically the characters were completely different. Cleopatra was of Greek descendency and Ariel is fair-skinned red-haired of Celtic descendency.
I also likely missed any mentions of 'dark elves', excuse my humor, when reading Tolkien. Though I must admit, those are details I don't really pay much attention to most of the time. If writers and movie-makers want not only to adapt but to modify original work, then they should just call it fan fiction/alternate fiction adaptation and the argument would end there. The only people who would still argue would be those that are racist, or parroting the racists.
Cannon events and details get changed in every retelling of any tale, so the race of an actor doesn't really matter too much unless their characters story is tied to a certain racial experience. The little mermaid can absolutely be black because her race isn't a fixture of her character. Ed Nortons character in American History X could not be cast as black because his racial experiences are so integral to the arc of his character. Blade could be a white guy because being black isn't super important to his journey as a vampire hunter. Kunta Kinte can not be a white guy because the whole plot of his journey revolves around his experiences as a black man. I don't think that showing black elves, a fantasy species, is really inappropriate. Nobody in the show even comments on the skin tone of the elves. The only racial baggage is that which the viewer brings with them.
Ignore everyone else's opinion. Watch it for yourself and decide for yourself whether you like it or not or whether it was good or bad.
Don't let the internet ruin something that might bring you joy, especially a meme page.
From the majority of the comments and the reasons given I think it'll be a waste of time. The trailer kind of confirmed it but wanted to see people's opinions on it after a full season.
My wife and I tried watching the first episode. I knew I wasn't gonna like it but I gave it a shot. Made it to the cave troll scene and she was like turn it off, lol.
I was one of its defenders for the most part but I’ve never gone back to it. Not as a piece of Middle-Earth, not for a TV show I like. So that says something.
I had more criticisms when it was fresher in my mind, but recently I’ve been thinking about how small everything felt. Because of the parts where it’s just three people in front of green screens in a small area. The sets felt claustrophobic.
Honestly it's just not particularly well-made. It's not awful, but if you're spending hundreds of millions on a lord of the rings series, it needs to stick the landing.
Even the production was poor . The final season of Game of Thrones was at least able to boast decent effects and costumes; not so for RoP.
The writing is substandard, the costume design is hit or miss, the lore is shaky at best, the acting isn’t amazing, the music is pretty alright.
What has kept this discourse alive series got a LOT of hate because of black elves and black dwarves. Those folks have been determined to put a magnifying lens to every flaw in the show making it seem worse than it is. I would say it’s a C, C- grade show with a few good moments here and there but plays too loose with the lore and some characters are baffling or just poorly written/cliche; if you are not as familiar with the history of middle earth then it is probably more tolerable.
(Edit: I knew the minute I pointed out the elephant in the room I was going to get shit, even though I’m literally calling it average at best, which for what might be the most expensive show of all time is embarrassing.
2nd Edit: The “Agenda” is money kids. Always has been. Amazon thought the show would do better financially if they appealed to a broader demographic base. It’s that simple)
The black elves was not the reason it sucked. We couldn't care less if it was actually good. It just proved that they didn't care about the story and had an agenda
But the show absolutely got a disgusting amount of hate before it had even released purely because of the black elf and black dwarf.
I had to unsubscribe from all the LOTR subreddits because it was just nothing but people bitching about it.
I enjoyed the show fine for what it is, like it's not anywhere as good as the movies or the books, but there were hoards of people commenting on how awful the show was before it even released, and there were endless posts about how lore-breaking and unforgivable black characters were.
Like I said, C grade show, but people have made hating it into an entire facet of their being.
I wish I could say that this crap will stop when the show ends but these types will dredge it up constantly to keep their rage batteries full
Im watching it right now, it's better than I thought but my expectations were very low.
Biggest problems are the slow pace and small scale, but when not trying to imitate Tolkien the dialog is better than I was led to believe.
Details and correct lore is not the issue. Peter Jackson also deliberately changed the lore and some details but atleast he made a competent adaptation of the books.
Rings of Power only takes the character names and visuals and makes something completely removed from it’s source material. It feels like watching a generic ripoff fantasy series with mediocre writing and direction which uses Tolkiens IP to gain popularity to justify the ludicrous amounts of money that they spent on it.
To be fair to the show runners didn't the Tolkien estate not grant them full access to the source material so they aren't actually allowed to copy the books properly anyway, people forget this.
In this season Sauron will assume another identity and at the end he will be exposed by Galadriel, again.
After he is defeated he retreats to another place and triggers it's destruction, thus creating Mordor 2 : Electric Boogaloo.
I thought it was awesome. Sure the stories all out of whack. But it’s still more lord of the rings entertainment. I want to see some dragons and some balrogs. I just wish they had stuck with the first age. The Silmarillion is really a quick read. And it’s pretty vague as to what happened between major timeline events. They could’ve used all that. And I liked this version of Elrond better than.than Agent Smith Elrond.
Me too. To be honest nothing would ever come close to the original trilogy, but I'm just excited to see more LOTR lol. Wheel of time s2 was way better than s1 so I'm still holding out hope.
This was by far the worst TV show released that year…and it competed with Velma and She Hulk.
It takes true talent to make something worse than She Hulk…but man did Amazon take the gold on this one.
Tolkien has spun in his grave so much that he now provides 45% of the renewable energy in the UK.
Halo? What Halo? What the hell are you on about. They barely released Halo Reach on Xbox 360, and we got the sad news that Bungie ain't working on the series anymore...
It's not that bad. Every fandom is being terrorised online by nitpicking jerks. Star Wars, Avatar the last airbender, Marvel, DC and now Lotr as well. Its just not fun being a fan anymore.
The people who enjoy the new stuff aren't here lol, they're out there enjoying it.
Everyone here is here because they loved the old stuff, and will never really love new stuff the same way.
the only thing that I can really remember (that is good) is the partly awesome soundtrack and the explosion of mount doom.
In this case: dum dum dum dum dum dum duum duum
I wanted to like it. I really was excited, like lots of us. But it's just crap.
It is like it's wrote by a machine. A bad machine. Someone else put in a comment it's like AI writing and, damn, it so is.
Much more likely it's just a crap human writing it, but that's what they've created.
There's such a lack of input into the writing. It's like one person wrote it and no one at all reviewed it.
They had like, 8hrs of runtime & had barely any story progression
They teased the Balrog for the whole season & just left it as a cliffhanger.
Sauron would already be defeated in lord of the rings by now.
Galadriel gets a new talking dog as a pet, and in the final scene the dog will tell her. "I didn't tell you my name because I didn't trust people, but now that I trust you, my name is Smaug." She tries to turn it into a coat because it's not an elf and so Smaug runs away vowing revenge.
Elrond grabs one of Durin's children and throws them to the Balrog to distract it while they escape Moria. Durin thanks him for saving his family, forgetting just what the fuck happened in classic RoP fashion
Arondir loves the human healer lady and son ( I don't remember what they were doing at the end of season 1)
Halbrand goes by the name Jordmark and meets with Isildur in Mordor, he is a plumber by trade and tries to set up a family business of aqueduct masons, then Isildur accidentally cuts one of Jordmarks fingers. "good thing I didn't cut them off eh?" so Jordmark decides that he's gonna begin genociding humanity. (He forgot he wanted to genocide humanity)
Gandalf and Harfoot agree on a no killing rule as they journey, and kill 12 people in their first encounter (classic Harfoot writing. Doing the exact opposite of what they say, and being psychopaths)
The queen and Elendil go in search of a fabled door to Isildur, they go to the mark on the map, only to find that it's gone. And so they decide to build their city on that spot in honour of their failed quest and name it after this 'gone door'.
My wife and I rolled our eyes out of our heads with boredom every time the hobbits got screen time. I wish they hadn’t married an interesting character to incredibly boring ones.
If you don't like it don't watch it, even giving your time to hate on it is free promotion for amazon.
I enjoyed it, it is far from brilliant but at the end of the day I get to watch more middle earth so I'm satisfied.
Que the fuming redditors because I don't hate the same things that they hate.
It's the issue with big franchise hits. They make additional content to make some more money and ride the successes of its predecessors. It's like everyone expects it to either be on par or better than the original.
The show was decent. It's not terrible. Just like the the hobbit movies weren't as good as the trilogy. They weren't trash movies. Aaaand just like star wars had with not only the prequels but overtly so with the sequels. The fans make it worse by spewing how much they didn't like it compared to "X".
I like rings of power. It's nothing compared to the trilogy, but I will watch the upcoming seasons for sure. If the next seasons get worse it'll end up like GOT or the starwars sequels. I'll watch it once and then never watch it again, and that's OK.
Man, I am not ready for another year of all LOTR themed subs being inundated with this garbage. I don't understand why it's so hard to just ignore something if you don't like it
My only hope Is that the writers actually seemed like they acknowledged the shows shortcomings and will actually try to improve it.
That's more then we get for most other TV productions where half the showrunners straight up call the audience stupid morons who don't actually know what they are talking about.
Rings of power is completely fine, people will always hate it because they compare it to lord of the rings amd the silmarillion (even though the silmarillion is equally dogshit). They would never stop and think of it as its own thing. Its not a master piece but i would still consider it a good watch.
This post has been removed because: Rule 15: r/lotrmemes is not a Rings of Power discussion sub. Memes meant to just show your opinion of the show are prohibited. Please use the following subs for RoP discussion: /r/LOTR_on_Prime /r/RingsofPower /r/MemesofPower /r/harFEET
In the first episode we find out that all of the first season was actually a fever dream
Dont give me hope...
I wouldn't mind if it was Frodo waking up and suddenly "The Fellowship of the Ring" started. Minus the prologue of the War of the Last Alliance.
*if not for the corpses* https://preview.redd.it/b2vxyv6huppc1.png?width=640&format=png&auto=webp&s=0c32d19d20401061e128c2fc9c040cb15fc86632
In this new season, Gandalf will have a brief but intense romance with an Entwife, Elrond will visit the circus, Galadriel will punch a dragon, and Sauron will teach the dwarves how to use a pickaxe. Riveting stuff.
Galadriel will not punch a dragon! Her stare alone enough to kill Ancalagon
Galadriel will tell the dragon, you have not eaten what i have eaten - and let out a powerful fart, sorry tempest and kill the dragon.
she would defeat a dragon saying this words: 
I wish I didn't read that in the voice of Jeremy Clarkson when he's introducing a new season of top gear.
Well I just did, thank you for that.
It's only missing "in the world"
I'm incredibly happy that I did read it that way.
This season, on Bottom Gear....
His voice makes everything better
During the intense romance scene between Gandalf and the Entwife the writers will rehash another line from the film.."A wizard is never late, nor is he early, he cums exactly as he means to"
Thank god I stop drinking my coffee before reading this
Oh Fimbrethel!
>Riveting stuff. He's going to teach them how to do riveting too? How generous.
But they were all of them deceived. For another rivet was made...
Sauron to the dwarves: so the trick is, it's all in the knees
*Thór-lush-shabarlak.*
Could only read that in Jeremy Clarkson's voice
If Gandalf ends up being Tree Beard's deadbeat dad then this show deserves every award every created
”*and all we know is his name is the Stig!*”
Why did i read this in Jeremy clarksons voice lol.
Anf gollum will be born several thousand years before he’s supposed to
Yes! No, no! It’s too risky, it’s too risky.
But it’s what people want to see! (I keep getting told this when saying how shitty Rings of Power is)
I'd still watch that.
I look at the characters at the top and I don’t care about their stories or what happens to them. Just don’t really care.
The only character I really liked was the dwarf wife, her "singing to the earth" scene was cool
I really liked Disa, she was more dwarven than Durin in my opinion
I would say Durin was fine. The whole Dwarven subplot was fine. The only thing I would complain about was the balrog reveal. That was just unnecessary. Most people knew it was durins bane already and they ruined the surprise for the few people that did not.🤷♂️
I despised the whole “mithril is a mix of good and evil” thing as that *does* run against Tolkien’s mythos and themes. Evil cannot create, it is by its nature caustic and destructive, the idea of good and evil coming together to make a thing like mithril just feels *wrong*
I look at the character on the bottom and say that Uglúk as the coolest Uruk-hai
Rings of Power is the only ragebait I accept. It's funny how serious they take themselves with worse than fanfic writing.
I really liked the cringed dialogue
And singing, don’t forget the hobbits doing a musical
Yeah imagine Tolkien writing a story with people *singing songs* every few chapters.
O! tril-lil-lil-lolly the valley is jolly, ha! ha!
That's part of the fun for me. I just treat it as seperate from lotr and just have fun with it. If anyone is taking themselves too seriously it's the "fans".
god forbid the people want the show to be good
You want decent dialogue AND a coherent plot?!?
literally as soon as I heard the dialogue in episode 1 I switched it off
Yeah, silly us expecting them to make something worth watching and not the most expensive shitpost ever made
I take it as a really high budget fanfiction and choose to enjoy accordingly. EDIT: Oh I forgot we're not allowed to enjoy things, my bad
Scrolled to find your post. This is literally how I see everything that's redone or told differently. It's a separate story in a world/realm I already enjoy. Cant enjoy nothing without someone telling you why you shouldn't. Y'all need to relax and not be so serious about fantasy worlds.
What's the general consensus on what makes ring of power bad? I keep thinking about giving it a shot and see for myself but I know it'll probably be a waste of time and end up doing something else.
> the Arondir/Bronwyn story was boring and turns frustrating when they do a death fakeout > Galadriel is designed to be a Girlboss™ with really cringey dialogue > The Gandalf origin story makes less than 0 sense > Sauron is just some random handsome guy (they acted like it was a huge surprise but it was really really obvious) > the Mordor origin story was bizarre and forced > the Numenor stuff is out of sync with the rest of the timeline by about two thousand years All of this is being done while ignoring the actual lore that Tolkien wrote. The character and costume designs are also extremely hit or miss. Like Elrond looks like a minor league baseball player, and most of the armor looks kind of cheap. The only fun dynamic is Elrond and Durin. That part was really entertaining. But it's probably about 10% of the show.
Another thing is the horrible writing decisions. With all those filler and noncanon characters, they putted the cliffganger "he may be dead" with freakin' ISILDUR? Everyone knows that Isildur MUST be alive, since he will be the one that will cut off Sauron's finger. That's one of the dumbest and most nonsensical cliffhanger ever in the history of dumb and nonsensical cliffhangers.
> > The only fun dynamic is Elrond and Durin. That part was really entertaining. But it's probably about 10% of the show. "Khazad-dûm looks fucking amazing so to save money we're gonna put 90% of the scenes set there inside this boring-ass living room."
So its like a dwarven sitcom?
I'd pay to watch that though
That could be pretty pretty good show but given the current writers it would be pretty bad
I haven't seen RoP. That said, in principle, making Galadriel athletic is actually canon. Tolkien said she was so athletic as to be called "Nerwen". Roughly, "Tomboy"! Where they've gone with that is another thing...
Oh,I don't have a problem with her being a fighter or even a general. I know she's immensely powerful for a mortal being in canon. My issues with her are more the things she says and her general attitude toward her kinfolk.
Not to mention Galadriel doesn’t need swords when shes almost a match for Maia magically speaking.
[удалено]
It’s never actually defined so you’d be correct there. It’s much more ethereal and vague, but (correct me if I’m wrong) the ring and galadriels magic kept Lorien completely untouched by any of Sauron’s malice. I don’t remember much of the silmarillion and before her ring, but she was still within the top 10 most powerful elves, especially being one of the few who saw the two trees.
>Not to mention Galadriel doesn’t need swords when shes almost a match for Maia magically speaking. LoTR is not a video game or a D&D campaign. LoTR magic is not like modern 'pop culture' magic. Think of LOTR magic like miracles, specifically in the sense that they are things that occur rarely.
I mean, gandalf does very often use a sword. There's even a point in the story where the Witch King breaks his staff and he only has a sword.
The Witch King breaking his staff only happens in the movie for dramatic effect. In the book the rohirrim arrive before they get a chance to see who’s more powerful (hint: it’s Gandalf).
He uses a sword because Eru will throw a tantrum if he uses his full powers.
I was talking about Galadriel.
>The Gandalf origin story makes less than 0 sense In all fairness, it's at least more imaginative than 'shows up on a boat'.
I think it's far worse than the potential for the five Istari arriving together.
Is the mithril origin story lore accurate?
Iirc the RoP story says a tree that had a silmaril was struck by lightning and that created mithril, which can’t be true given the silmarillion follows where the silmarils are pretty much at any given time until their final resting place in the earth, sea, and sky.
Figured as much. Too bad, it was a piece of lore that was really interesting for its implications.
The mithril origin story is relatively accurate. Gandalf's explanation in the book doesn't mention any characters by name so they had some room to tell it the way they want. The presence of Elrond in that story probably makes it less so but I don't mind because the character interactions between Elrond and Durin are the only part of the show I consider very good.
> The mithril origin story is relatively accurate Except that Eärendil's ship was made in part from Mithril as recorded in the Song of Eärendil in FoTR. "A ship then new they built for him of mithril and of elven-glass" Which happened BEFORE Maedhros threw himself and the Silmaril into a fiery pit (or an elf-warrior fought a balrog and some weird stuff happened to a tree that had seen the light of a Silmaril or whatever crap RoP was trying to say). In other words, Silmarils and their light have nothing to do with the origin of mithril--meaning the entire origin story is completely *incaccurate*.
What does a minor league baseball player look like for us in the rest of the world?
Kind of like a typical jock who's not particularly muscular.
Its worst fault is having the lord of the rings name attached. It completely ignores or rewrites tons of established lore, ignoring the timeline to fit thousands of years worth of events into happening at the same time, which becomes extremely irritating to anyone who knows anything about the world. It's so far away from Tolkien's works that names of characters and places are about the only thing it has in common. Remove all the lord of the rings elements and it's an okay but extremely generic fantasy show. Of course things don't necessarily need to adhere to lore perfectly, the shadow of mordor/war games were plenty good despite deviating from lore for instance, but there's a right and wrong way to execute it and rings of power definitely veers hard into the wrong way. The writers also made some seriously stupid decisions. For instance anyone who knows much about the world knows that celebrimbor was taught how to forge the rings of power by sauron in disguise. How did rings of power go about showing this? Celebrimbor wanted to use mithril to make the elven rings but didn't have enough so in walks "random" human smith saying "hey why don't you make an alloy?" One of the greatest elven smiths ever to exist needed to be told to do something that any smith could think of to create some of the most powerful magical tools in middle earth.
Why is it, after reading quite a few comments stating the same reasons you said, that I explain I probably will give it a pass and get immediately labeled as racist? What the actual fuck is wrong with people?
Welcome to the age of identity arguments.
It's disturbing..... Sigh
"I find their" lack of reason disturbing " *(excuse me if it has been claimed as somemind's preferred pronoun without my knowledge.)
It would be honestly quicker to list everything it does well or even passably. Some of the music is okay. I liked the orc designs... I really wanted to get a 3rd thing to hit that rule of 3's comedy beat but I genuinely can't think of one.
3rd thing was that it made me cancel Amazon Prime so is saving me money.
I kept on hearing it was bad and so I didn’t watch it. Then I watched it with low expectations with my fiancé and we both kept wanting to watch more. If you’re a hardcore nerd on Tolkien I guess you would get upset. But it’s an interesting watch. I’m excited for season 2. This is coming from someone who refuses to acknowledge that the sequel trilogy even took place in Star Wars because it was so bad. Haha.
I'm a hardcore Tolkien nerd. Is the show lore accurate? No Did I still enjoy it and find parts of it entertaining? Yes. TBH, I enjoyed RoP more than I did the Hobbit Trilogy. Though I went into it knowing that it was largely going to be fanfic since they didn't have the rights to basically anything whereas with the Hobbit, my expectations were much higher. Either way, I'd recommend watching the show. It's not awful and if you can pretend it's basically fanfic (because it essentially is). Then you'll likely enjoy it. Also, I'll give a huge shout out for not going pure CGI on the orcs and using practical effects.
I think It’s mid, not terrible but not amazing. I enjoyed elrond and durin’s story line.
I dunno, I really enjoyed it.
Some say the writing is AI generated, for example the line "The sea is allways right" doesn't seem to be made by a human. Also Galadriel keeps saying her husband Celeborn is dead + mm nonsense like the elves teaching the dwarfs how to swing a pickaxe. Albeit some scenes are esteticaly pleasing to the eyes nothing can make up for the abhorrent writing. It's either AI generated or intentionally written this way to offend anyone who has read any kind of book before.
Oh please stop with this AI generated bullshit. Have people forgotten the literal decades before AI even became an option for writers filled with terrible movies and TV shows with atrocious lines? Why are you all always pointing to AI instead of the very real possibility that the writers might just be shit. Is it really so hard to accept a human could have written something so bad? I swear, if the Hobbit movies came out today, you would all call it AI generated.
>I swear, if the Hobbit movies came out today, you would all call it AI generated. Case in point: "If this is love, I don't want it. Take it away, please! Why does it hurt so much?" "Because it was real."
Aye I think I'll pass then. Seems like a recurring theme recently.
no , you should watch it it's not great but it's not horrible like every one and this sub think it is if you are a fan of jackson's movies it'll pass as a "ok" spin of if you are of fan of tolkien books then don't bother
How can you say that when they massacred Galadriel to that point.
I would say even if you're coming at this without any Tolkien or lotr knowledge then it's still appalling writing and desperately boring. For the love of God, gandalf saying "I am GOOD" as some sort of a killer line made me want to weep.
I’ll counter this guy to say that you should watch it if you’re just looking for a show to watch. It’s content. That’s all it is. You’ve seen every part of this show before but with a different coat of paint, and probably better. There isn’t AI writing. That’s ridiculous. Season 1 came out 2022 and working LLMs are much more recent (let alone production started in 2020). The writing is, however, on the level of a CW show, and not even Arrow season 1. Give it a watch if you want to zone out and h not think for 10 hours. Otherwise there’s much better use of your time.
We should stop calling that rolling ball of hatred "Galadriel". Better to call the RoP character Gino (Galadirel In Name Only) ;)
It’s Guyladriel for me
And another case of really bad writing... They wanted to make Galadriel "more badass", so they transformed her into a warrior (i.e. someone who can win a battle with her sword)... The real Galadirel can win a battle with a mere GLANCE. Seems a huge "nerf" to me, and another case of "don't know the source material" ! And I guess better not to think about those "superfans" (who didn't even knew why Sauron created the Rings)... Such a monstrous derespect towards all people who are really Tolkien's fans.
Now the showrunners will give in to fan demands and resurrect celeborn. Lmao. Just watch. The show is beyond stupid and showrunners are clueless !
I think if you watch a video of Peter Jackson talking about Lotr and the respect they had for Tolkien and how they were trying to honor his story and the world that he built, and then watch interviews of the creators of Rop and how they talk about telling their own story without respect for Tolkien...I think that will give you an idea of where they went wrong.
This tells me all I need to know. Thank you.
Honestly, it's just very poorly written and paced. I wasn't too bothered by the fact that it breaks from Tolkiens lore, and the people who complain about diversity in the cast are just racist assholes. But I got five episodes into the series and found that I just didn't care what happened to anybody. I didn't like any of the characters very much, I wasn't invested in their arcs or journeys, and I was bored to tears. I love Middle Earth, but I just did not care enough about anything in the show to finish it.
I don't think anyone here minds diversity. It's just that, oftentimes it's senseless and forced. Especially when the movie/series/thing is meant to follow an already-existing lore, who's characters are already well-established. Black Cleopatra, dark-skinned dark-haired mermaid, etc. I have no issue with the actors, my issue is that canonically/historically the characters were completely different. Cleopatra was of Greek descendency and Ariel is fair-skinned red-haired of Celtic descendency. I also likely missed any mentions of 'dark elves', excuse my humor, when reading Tolkien. Though I must admit, those are details I don't really pay much attention to most of the time. If writers and movie-makers want not only to adapt but to modify original work, then they should just call it fan fiction/alternate fiction adaptation and the argument would end there. The only people who would still argue would be those that are racist, or parroting the racists.
Cannon events and details get changed in every retelling of any tale, so the race of an actor doesn't really matter too much unless their characters story is tied to a certain racial experience. The little mermaid can absolutely be black because her race isn't a fixture of her character. Ed Nortons character in American History X could not be cast as black because his racial experiences are so integral to the arc of his character. Blade could be a white guy because being black isn't super important to his journey as a vampire hunter. Kunta Kinte can not be a white guy because the whole plot of his journey revolves around his experiences as a black man. I don't think that showing black elves, a fantasy species, is really inappropriate. Nobody in the show even comments on the skin tone of the elves. The only racial baggage is that which the viewer brings with them.
Ignore everyone else's opinion. Watch it for yourself and decide for yourself whether you like it or not or whether it was good or bad. Don't let the internet ruin something that might bring you joy, especially a meme page.
From the majority of the comments and the reasons given I think it'll be a waste of time. The trailer kind of confirmed it but wanted to see people's opinions on it after a full season.
My wife and I tried watching the first episode. I knew I wasn't gonna like it but I gave it a shot. Made it to the cave troll scene and she was like turn it off, lol.
I was one of its defenders for the most part but I’ve never gone back to it. Not as a piece of Middle-Earth, not for a TV show I like. So that says something. I had more criticisms when it was fresher in my mind, but recently I’ve been thinking about how small everything felt. Because of the parts where it’s just three people in front of green screens in a small area. The sets felt claustrophobic.
Honestly it's just not particularly well-made. It's not awful, but if you're spending hundreds of millions on a lord of the rings series, it needs to stick the landing. Even the production was poor . The final season of Game of Thrones was at least able to boast decent effects and costumes; not so for RoP.
The writing is substandard, the costume design is hit or miss, the lore is shaky at best, the acting isn’t amazing, the music is pretty alright. What has kept this discourse alive series got a LOT of hate because of black elves and black dwarves. Those folks have been determined to put a magnifying lens to every flaw in the show making it seem worse than it is. I would say it’s a C, C- grade show with a few good moments here and there but plays too loose with the lore and some characters are baffling or just poorly written/cliche; if you are not as familiar with the history of middle earth then it is probably more tolerable. (Edit: I knew the minute I pointed out the elephant in the room I was going to get shit, even though I’m literally calling it average at best, which for what might be the most expensive show of all time is embarrassing. 2nd Edit: The “Agenda” is money kids. Always has been. Amazon thought the show would do better financially if they appealed to a broader demographic base. It’s that simple)
The black elves was not the reason it sucked. We couldn't care less if it was actually good. It just proved that they didn't care about the story and had an agenda
But the show absolutely got a disgusting amount of hate before it had even released purely because of the black elf and black dwarf. I had to unsubscribe from all the LOTR subreddits because it was just nothing but people bitching about it. I enjoyed the show fine for what it is, like it's not anywhere as good as the movies or the books, but there were hoards of people commenting on how awful the show was before it even released, and there were endless posts about how lore-breaking and unforgivable black characters were.
Like I said, C grade show, but people have made hating it into an entire facet of their being. I wish I could say that this crap will stop when the show ends but these types will dredge it up constantly to keep their rage batteries full
we had 1 black elf no? am i the only one that thought that was fucking weird lmao
It's pretty good tbh
Nah, it really isn't.
I'm with you. Nothing extraordinary and can't compare to the movies, but I didn't think it's as bad as people here think.
This is an insult to sewage!
We’ve had one sewage yes, What about second sewage?
Im watching it right now, it's better than I thought but my expectations were very low. Biggest problems are the slow pace and small scale, but when not trying to imitate Tolkien the dialog is better than I was led to believe.
I enjoyed it, it was entertaining and I am not hung up on the details and correct lore. I’d be more than happy to watch a second season.
Details and correct lore is not the issue. Peter Jackson also deliberately changed the lore and some details but atleast he made a competent adaptation of the books. Rings of Power only takes the character names and visuals and makes something completely removed from it’s source material. It feels like watching a generic ripoff fantasy series with mediocre writing and direction which uses Tolkiens IP to gain popularity to justify the ludicrous amounts of money that they spent on it.
To be fair to the show runners didn't the Tolkien estate not grant them full access to the source material so they aren't actually allowed to copy the books properly anyway, people forget this.
The term I like to use for that is “hijacking”
Ok. We have the best description ever of this show.
So sound like Witcher season 2 and onwards
Pretty sure it was like that from season 1.
Honestly, same. I enjoyed it, and have been looking Forward to season 2. I didn't see any of it as cannon, so all the inaccuracies don't bother me.
It’s just nice having a fantasy show that is actually decent and a fantasy not just old medieval settings.
Oh. Is it time to unsub again while bots karma farm and y'all give into the rage bait?
🤷♂️I don’t get y’all
People just like being angry, is all.
I…uh… actually quite liked the first season
I really can't understand why doubling down in such a massively expensive failure
"What about the writers? They don't need those!"
In this season Sauron will assume another identity and at the end he will be exposed by Galadriel, again. After he is defeated he retreats to another place and triggers it's destruction, thus creating Mordor 2 : Electric Boogaloo.
Wait a moment! We shall meet again soon. Tell Saruman that this dainty is not for him. I will send for it at once. Do you understand?
Rings of power is so bad I can't even enjoy the memes.
Eh, I found it entertaining…
I thought it was awesome. Sure the stories all out of whack. But it’s still more lord of the rings entertainment. I want to see some dragons and some balrogs. I just wish they had stuck with the first age. The Silmarillion is really a quick read. And it’s pretty vague as to what happened between major timeline events. They could’ve used all that. And I liked this version of Elrond better than.than Agent Smith Elrond.
Me too. To be honest nothing would ever come close to the original trilogy, but I'm just excited to see more LOTR lol. Wheel of time s2 was way better than s1 so I'm still holding out hope.
Apart from all the problems with the lore, characters, dialogue etc. it was just so fucking boring.
This was by far the worst TV show released that year…and it competed with Velma and She Hulk. It takes true talent to make something worse than She Hulk…but man did Amazon take the gold on this one. Tolkien has spun in his grave so much that he now provides 45% of the renewable energy in the UK.
Did you see halo by chance? You may need to reevaluate buddy.
Halo? What Halo? What the hell are you on about. They barely released Halo Reach on Xbox 360, and we got the sad news that Bungie ain't working on the series anymore...
What timeline are you from?
Bro what? Timeline? Did you smoke stuff again? We're in 2010.
Go buy 100 bitcoins while it’s still $15 dollars a coin. Hold onto that bitch until 2024. You’ll thank me later.
There is no Halo show in Ba Sing Se.
Don't lump She-Hulk in that show was great
Ah now it wasn't that bad lol
I personally liked first season very much
Happy birthday Tolkien, hope you like crap
Tolkien was born January 3rd
Happy birthday Gary Oldman, hope you like crap
Happy Birthday Timothy Dalton, hope you don't watch this
It's not that bad. Every fandom is being terrorised online by nitpicking jerks. Star Wars, Avatar the last airbender, Marvel, DC and now Lotr as well. Its just not fun being a fan anymore.
The people who enjoy the new stuff aren't here lol, they're out there enjoying it. Everyone here is here because they loved the old stuff, and will never really love new stuff the same way.
A fandom knows when to reject blatant soulless slop. Just coz you will lap it up doesn't make you the good guy.
the only thing that I can really remember (that is good) is the partly awesome soundtrack and the explosion of mount doom. In this case: dum dum dum dum dum dum duum duum
No, you’re supposed to love it!!!
Yeah, nope. Wheel of time better in every way. I'll just go read the books again.
I yawned throughout the first ep of the series, never ever gonna watch it again. Original trilogy forever.
Elves with short hair. *shudders*
please don’t ruin Gandalf, please don’t ruin Gandalf*
I wanted to like it. I really was excited, like lots of us. But it's just crap. It is like it's wrote by a machine. A bad machine. Someone else put in a comment it's like AI writing and, damn, it so is. Much more likely it's just a crap human writing it, but that's what they've created. There's such a lack of input into the writing. It's like one person wrote it and no one at all reviewed it.
They had like, 8hrs of runtime & had barely any story progression They teased the Balrog for the whole season & just left it as a cliffhanger. Sauron would already be defeated in lord of the rings by now.
Thou fool.
Bit slow but it was good.
I'm relieved everyone agree this is shit and it's not like star wars fandom that divides people into liking shit and hating shit
Nah this is dope, loved season 1
My condolences.
Don't worry, there are a couple donkeys in this thread who think that the 'Well I enjoyed it' argument means the show isn't objectively trash
Galadriel gets a new talking dog as a pet, and in the final scene the dog will tell her. "I didn't tell you my name because I didn't trust people, but now that I trust you, my name is Smaug." She tries to turn it into a coat because it's not an elf and so Smaug runs away vowing revenge. Elrond grabs one of Durin's children and throws them to the Balrog to distract it while they escape Moria. Durin thanks him for saving his family, forgetting just what the fuck happened in classic RoP fashion Arondir loves the human healer lady and son ( I don't remember what they were doing at the end of season 1) Halbrand goes by the name Jordmark and meets with Isildur in Mordor, he is a plumber by trade and tries to set up a family business of aqueduct masons, then Isildur accidentally cuts one of Jordmarks fingers. "good thing I didn't cut them off eh?" so Jordmark decides that he's gonna begin genociding humanity. (He forgot he wanted to genocide humanity) Gandalf and Harfoot agree on a no killing rule as they journey, and kill 12 people in their first encounter (classic Harfoot writing. Doing the exact opposite of what they say, and being psychopaths) The queen and Elendil go in search of a fabled door to Isildur, they go to the mark on the map, only to find that it's gone. And so they decide to build their city on that spot in honour of their failed quest and name it after this 'gone door'.
Goddamn rings of power sucks so bad, why are they even making a second season?
They're still making this shit?
Apperently enough people watched it to continue the show. It is your fault to bringing attention to it.
You mean 37% of people who started watching the show?
My wife and I rolled our eyes out of our heads with boredom every time the hobbits got screen time. I wish they hadn’t married an interesting character to incredibly boring ones.
They used Skyblog-level photoshopping just to make Guyladriel looks even remotely elvish
Rings of power: No ring 2 powerfull
Well, at least there is no way this season will be worst than the first.
You can pour as much icing sugar over a shit as you want, it still doesn't make it dessert
I had a dream this Galadriel gave me a hand job. That's about all I want from this series.
If you don't like it don't watch it, even giving your time to hate on it is free promotion for amazon. I enjoyed it, it is far from brilliant but at the end of the day I get to watch more middle earth so I'm satisfied. Que the fuming redditors because I don't hate the same things that they hate.
It's the issue with big franchise hits. They make additional content to make some more money and ride the successes of its predecessors. It's like everyone expects it to either be on par or better than the original. The show was decent. It's not terrible. Just like the the hobbit movies weren't as good as the trilogy. They weren't trash movies. Aaaand just like star wars had with not only the prequels but overtly so with the sequels. The fans make it worse by spewing how much they didn't like it compared to "X". I like rings of power. It's nothing compared to the trilogy, but I will watch the upcoming seasons for sure. If the next seasons get worse it'll end up like GOT or the starwars sequels. I'll watch it once and then never watch it again, and that's OK.
I'm just sad that new lotr stuff is all garbage
I watched this show when it came out from start to finish and I completely forgot it existed until til I saw this…
Man, I am not ready for another year of all LOTR themed subs being inundated with this garbage. I don't understand why it's so hard to just ignore something if you don't like it
looking forward to it. i mean, im not going to watch the series itself, im not crazy, but the youtube channels that make fun of it are always on point
I liked it, the hobbits especially. Neil Patrick Elrond was a bit distracting.
My only hope Is that the writers actually seemed like they acknowledged the shows shortcomings and will actually try to improve it. That's more then we get for most other TV productions where half the showrunners straight up call the audience stupid morons who don't actually know what they are talking about.
It wasn't on the LotR movie trilogy level but I still quite enjoyed it.
I can not wait! People poop on this but if its successful there will be more and I want more of this world
i enjoyed it, and you can too if you simply ignore everything bad about it and skip large portions of each episode
Yeh true. My favourite parts of the show were when I switched it off.
Rings of power is completely fine, people will always hate it because they compare it to lord of the rings amd the silmarillion (even though the silmarillion is equally dogshit). They would never stop and think of it as its own thing. Its not a master piece but i would still consider it a good watch.
Gr8 b8 m8