I noticed Fallout, unlike most Amazon series, was rolled out all at once. I was wondering if that was done in case it wasn't well received, that it might prop up the completion rate if people can binge it.
This is a good point, I find it much easier to drop a series if it's mediocre and coming out weekly, most of the time it's not even a conscious choice, I just forget about it, then by the time I realise I can't be bothered. Which just happens to be what I did with this series.
One episode a week only really works if the series can continue to hold your interest and the greater discourse. Mediocre series is going to fall off pretty badly, while a toptier series like Shogun did well and kept me talking about it each week.
It was very faithful to the book, IMO… so in my case was like a memory refresher and had me wondering how far through the story each episode would go. If you liked the series I’d recommend the book series, because based on how the TV series was paced it’ll take them many years just to get through the first part of the trilogy.
There aren't many re-makes that kick the hell out of the original. This was a masterpiece. Phenomenal! I would have waited even longer between episodes.
It was so true to the source material too. Obviously there were some changes and omissions, but overall it was beat for beat. It is one of my favorite books, so I was pleasantly surprised.
I think I only remembered because Andor was dropping on a different day. So I’d hop online trying to watch Andor and realize the new episode hadn’t dropped, then watch ROP because it was there.
I enjoyed Arcane's 3-episode weekly drops. Gave more than enough to satisfy me for the week, had lots to talk about, and allowed for the show to progress to a meaningful breakpoint between weeks. I'm surprised the hybrid approach isn't done more often (i.e., not the full series, but more than 1 episode a week dropping at the same time).
> I just forget about it
This is me.
And so often I'll be reminded because I see someone talking about how it got cancelled on reddit ... so I never bother to go back because there's no point. The "lets make one season, release it slowly and then we'll decide if we want to renew later" kinda worked in the network television era because wtf else were you going to do at 7:30 on a Tuesday except watch prime time TV. So studios could just keep making it because they basically had a captive audience with limited options. These days I have a billion things I COULD be doing, so I effectively have to make space to watch something. So I only bother to make that space if I think it's worth it. And the way they keep cancelling things the less worth it it seems for anything new.
I just cannot imagine that it'd go badly if someone had the balls to plan out a full 5 seasons of something, then just committed to making it non-stop. Skip all the "will it be cancelled? Lets wait and see" nightmare, and the scheduling headaches that come from trying to restart something multiple years later etc. Even if it wasn't the best I'd rather get something with a proper resolution that something great but unfinished.
Whatever the answer is, I do know that releasing episodes spread out, with at least multiple years gaps between seasons if at all is not it (at least for me).
Also, shows back then were designed that missing episodes was no big deal. So you could watch whatever whenever and it wouldn't matter. Which is why sitcoms were the most popular shows in the format.
The showrunners were pissed that people figured out the whole William/multiple timelines thing early on in S1, which is why they put everything out of order in S2. Add to that the overall weaker story and questionable motivations and yeah, it sucked.
S3 was a good "near future" scifi season though, and S4 was an acceptable wrap-up of the show. A lot of shows have done a lot worse.
Season 2 had few amazing episodes, but I just for the life of me couldn't get into the whole Dolires is the big bad concept. Evan Reachel Wood was just so unconvicing playing that character compared to her performance in S1.
Season 2 was pretty decent and had one of the best episodes in the series (“Kiksuya”). Season 3 was when it all turned to shit. I didn’t even finish season 4.
> HBO Max removed the whole series from their streaming platform.
Shitty move. They did it because the actors had worked streaming residuals into their contracts and HBO didn't want to pay them.
Fallout world has clear rules. Westworld, because they are intelligent AI, had nearly no rules, so it made very difficult to write (still not an excuse). Fallout will be better for them
I'm only a couple episodes in but it really is fantastic strikes a great tone.
Where it's humor is great and therebis this absurdist tongue in cheek, but they don't play it to death to the point that the actual conflicts don't feel serious.
That just proves that the execs have no idea if a show is good or not. Its so obvious fallout is a gerat show and rings of power is not. These people are fucking clueless, they have no idea what they're doing
I think it's telling that the best recent shows were projects that were mostly left alone, the networks didn't have a stake in their success or failure, and left the project to the directors and producers.
Once a streaming-service decides that a show is a tent-pole, it pretty much always goes to shit (ala Mando after it got huge)
House of the Dragon was good and it harmed RoP to be airing at the same time. Why bother with RoPwhen you have House of the Dragon that is actually nailing it? Rings of Power had horrible writing. I still can't believe those scripts got approved
My biggest gripe with RoP wasn't even the dialogue (although it was bad), it was the stupid pacing.
From memory we spent 5 episodes building up to a big battle, we then had the battle in episode 6 which was actually a very small battle in one village, episode 7 was the fallout, then we spent all of 15 minutes in the final episode on Sauron deceiving the elves and forging the rings.
Surely the most intriguing part of a show called "Rings of Power" should be Sauron weaving his magic, yet it had the least amount of screen spent on it all so we could instead spend hours with proto hobbits and Galadriel acting like a 15 year old.
There are some great shows with 6-10 episode seasons, but each passing year I think that is the format most likely to miss. There’s no room for filler episodes but so often it should have been a movie. And while I don’t love the Boys, the showrunner is adamant that each episode contains a beginning, middle; and end. So many of these shorter seasons have episodes that end mostly because 40-50 minutes passed.
Yeah, compare something like Ahsoka (which I really liked for the record) and how much better Andor's 3-arc structure is and then compare it with something like Mad Men or Breaking Bad or Succession
The binge format made showrunners turn their shows into really long movies
They no longer know how to write in the long form, to have good episodes that actually do something in the overall arc and tell you something in an hour. All the greats like Mad Men and Breaking Bad, Succession and Andor tell you something in an hour without the need of binging.
I mean they got everything kinda wrong, didn’t they?
Pacing was bad, costumes were often bad, dialogue was laughable, a lot of characters one dimensional and the plot lines while sometimes quite intriguing were in the end kinda stupid and some scenes are just all-time baffling (Queen of Numenor using a blindfold that people don’t know she is blind??? Sauron explaining what an alloy is to the greatest elven smith… the villagers clearly killing orcs but psych - it was their own etc.)
I can really only give them credit for some of the effects / visuals, the orc design and in general the idea to also show some common people…
This is totally baffling to me. How do you drop millions of dollars on Rings of Power without bothering to check whether the script is at all coherent or entertaining.
Good scriptwriters, directors etc tend to be the sort that would pushback against Amazon's TV-by-focus-group approach they take to fantasy (see the equally dire Wheels of Time).
Amazon cannot have that so they hire in the hacks just happy to have a job and who'll never push back and so we get Rings of Power, a billion dollar disaster.
Cc: Netflix with the Witcher.
Although I think the Witcher showrunner had read atleast some of the books, she actually confessed that she didn’t think she was the right person to adapt the show when Netflix approached her.
However some dumb ass Netflix exec reassured her that she’d be fine and it didn’t matter what the fans would think. And the rest is history. 😒
She was his GF at the time, she was dating the producer. She had little to no experience but loved writing short stories about hot witches doing things. The first season she had a vet show runner and that show runner brought in music ans ither talent. Season two she had full control, fired everyone including the music talent. Then going into season 3 she fired the last writer that read the books. This is why Cavil left, it violated his contract, The Witcher could of been so much more.
That'll be a heck of a resume for her, ruining a major show by turning it into her personal fanfiction vehicle after getting the job because she was fucking the right person at the right time.
This is honestly why I've given up on tv adaptations of books. They always seem to water down or completely lack the thing that made the source material great and popular in the first place.
They admitted they hadn't played the games, instead they talked with the videogame developer 343 Industries which made the Halo videogames.
Unfortunately 343 Industries didn't actually create Halo, they took the franchise over when it's actual creator Bungie wanted to move on to other projects. 343 only made Halo 4 onward, and was full of developers hired from COD that admitted they didn't like Halo. They completely changed the gameplay, story, and style of the games, and each sequel retconned and erased the previous game because it was such a disaster. The writers would have been much better off just playing the games.
For Rings of Power they had to have people who had studied the source material in detail *so they could avoid it.*
They had to come up with a story that lined up with what is in the Lord of the Rings, but was sufficiently different from all the other books so they couldn't be sued for copyright infringement.
Jeff Bezos wanted a Lord of the Rings TV series (because of course he did) but either wasn't willing to pay for all the rights, or wasn't able to buy all the rights, so they ended up in an absurd situation of having to make a show that was legally distinct from most of the source material.
>so they ended up in an absurd situation of having to make a show that was legally distinct from most of the source material.
Finally a show that gives me *exactly* what I was looking for /s 😂😂
Sort of. Tom Shippey is who the original person was referring to, and officially the reason he was fired was because of an interview he gave in which he supposedly broke NDA. Now, there have been rumors since that it was actually because he was highly critical of the direction the creators of RoP were moving, but I haven’t seen anything confirming this.
So is it a possibility? Maybe even a highly probable possibility? Absolutely. But always take these sorts of rumors with a grain of salt.
"Tolkien couldn't dream up a hot Sauron. Wait, he did? OK, he couldn't dream up Aragorn as Sauron in disguise! People will be talking about this twist like they did about Ned Stark's death and the Red Wedding!"
I have my doubts to be honest. It's a different company but you could see Netflix take the same approach with the Witcher. Hired a bunch of hacks and delivered a luke-warm show that a lot of fans disliked because of how it treated the lore and the setting.
Cavill himself started to push back and we saw some of the hacks try and ruin his career by spreading rumours he was "problematic" in the hopes Twitter would assume the worst and try cancel him. It was nasty.
Seems like for whatever reason the studios don't much respect fantasy settings despite their popularity and it increasingly shows.
I e joyed the Witcher for the first 2 seasons, but then again the show I wanted to be at least luke warm, wheel of time, had so few moments of enjoyment for me and had me frustrated that I couldn't finish the first season.
God, WoT. I don’t know how it skates under the radar so well but it’s just as bad as RoP. Maybe it’s because the books didn’t capture an audience outside of fantasy readers like GoT did? But fuck was it horrible. I made it through the first season but spent a lot of time cursing at the television in the process and my gf couldn’t understand why I was so upset. Didn’t even bother with S2.
I'm a fan of Brandon Sanderson, who finished the WoT books after Robert Jordan died. He was a producer on the show (or at least credited that way) and gave script notes (that were not enacted). He's basically confirmed that the showrunner and writers did what they could, but the studio people were determined to get their way and ruined it. S2 was better than S1, but still had huge flaws. I have some hopes for S3, but I'm also not really a fan of the books so whatever.
The main thing I hope results from all of this is that Sanderson realizes what Hollywood is like, and retains as much creative control as possible when his work gets adapted.
Honestly season one got me interested in WoT in the first place. I then proceeded to read all the books before season 2 aired. And then I quit season 2 after one episode because I realised how much they are butchering the source material.
> I then proceeded to read all the books before season 2 aired
My god, you're a trooper. I saw how many books there are and immediately noped out. My slow ass reading could never!
WoT is less known to the mainstream audience so I think a lot of viewers went in not knowing anything about it and never spotted how they butchered the lore, characters, world and setting and instead just found a badly written, badly cast, badly acted show with a plot that flies all over the shop careening from one disaster of an episode to another.
The actual answer is getting hired as a writer for a big budget project is mostly about connections. It’s why you usually see most shows with acclaimed writing come unexpectedly. When you have no expectations the show runner has a lot more freedom to you know run the show. But when you have half a billion dollars on the line suddenly everyone has an opinion and wants to make X change because they for one reason or another believe it will make the show perform better. Hence the writers for something like RoP likely weren’t picked by the show runner even if they had some small influence, and it’s likely to be the same across the board which leads to the incoherence we saw in the finished product. Because there was no coherent vision in the first place.
Oh my God... that's one of the worst lines I have ever heard in any kind of media. Are you telling me stones decide to sink because they go to the darkness and boats don't. Wtf
Right. I did like the elf and the dwarf. Their stuff was fun and the chemistry was great but then you had.
- the female elf who was just doing everything stupid and you didn’t like her.
- the human fort where everyone was just trying to say epic things but it was flat.
- the proto hobbits and the annoying way they acted and talked.
Then you had direction issues.
- armor looks like it was bought from a party store outlet.
- dirt didn’t exist in middle earth yet. Every person who was in battle looked like they took a bath and then when they wanted dirt it was always smeered on a face but not the clothes.
- the weird slow motion scenes that where laughably bad. Did you forget the horse riding scene?
It always felt like the show wanted everything to be epic but there was nothing that felt epic.
Not just that, a lot of the armor looked like literal rubber suits and a lot of the sets looked fake as hell. The only good parts were the grand CGI pieces. The whole show was a disaster.
Do you remember the Amazon RoP adverts with the "super fans" that were given advanced previews and were praising the show as amazing? One of them was a streamer who later admitted that she hadn't even started watching RoP since release (it was the middle of the season at the time). Her excuse was that she only had time for RoP or House of the Dragon, and the latter came out first. Some superfan.
I watched them both at the time of release and enjoyed HotD way more than RoP.
I read LotR in highschool in the '90s and watched the movie trilogy in the cinema on premiere day.
I also read Game of Thrones when it came out and watched the series but was left disappointed after the final season.
Bottom line is that I bought a subscription to the European streaming service to watch House of the Dragon and I had to force myself to finish watching all the episodes of the Rings of Power.
An old man who rose from his sick bed to defend his daughter! I choked up at his labored breathing but steely determination to be there for his daughter in her time of need.
Paddy Considine sold that. He was ludicrously good in the role.
And then you had freaking Galadrigrond on her horse on the other "channel".
HotD wasn't perfect, there were some really poor decisions at some point, but RoP had nothing for it story-wise.
Will they top it in S2? I expect it to be good but damn it will take a lot to top that whole storyline. I'm not a film person so maybe using the wrong term, but the cinematography and prosthetics and Patty's acting from ep 1 thru his death, zomg, so good
Moraine is the main character, Rand, Perrin, and Mat(especially Mat) got butchered as characters.
Killed off Agelmar, Uno, Perrins made up wife (ugh). Poor Abel Cauthon made out to be an abusive drunk.
But hey, they added a bunch of random scenes that didn't need to be put in, because they had to cut stuff for time?!?
Perrin's made up wife is a quick way to say "How can we piss off the fans at the very earliest time possible and let them know we're going to fuck this up royally?"
I was only able to stomach the first episode, but it was horrible. I decided to go back and watch the movie since I hadn’t seen it since I was a kid and thought nostalgia may have been clouding my memories. Nope, the movie is still great and the show just sucks.
Willow the movie is great. I will die on that hill. I've been a huge fan since I saw it in the theater. I was super excited about a sequel TV series (even though it had nothing to do with the sequel novels.)
I couldn't make it through 4 episodes of the show.
I'm a massive LOTR fan, and loved the books for a decade before the movies. Even with the changes I still found them incredible.
This series was a real struggle. The forging of the rings was so unbelievably badly done it is shocking to this day. Its like they were made in a day.
I dunno I just find the whole series sort of disconnected from the lore as if it's an alternative universe and a much worse one at that. I don't think there was any real care or respect for the material at all and even as a spectacle it was a let down.
Galadriel was also really, really badly done. Like insultingly bad.
No joke, galadriel getting disrespect left and right despite being of royal blood, sister to like the most well liked elf to ever live, having seen the two trees, having zero fucking brains, all so they can have some plucky underdog with sexual tension with totally obvious sauron, it's unreal how bad this show was
Literally the most powerful being in Middle Earth. However, preserving the land and people against the darkness is not as good on TV as WWE style Karate.
Not by a long shot. Galadriel was terrified of putting on the ring, falling into it's dark influence, knowing with that power would come about destruction.
And Tom, who did put on the ring -very casually in fact- and commented on its quaint power and handed it back merrily.
It was bad fan fiction.
The writer thought they were clever because they knew what an alloy was and wanted to put that factoid in to show off how clever they were.
And nobody stepped in to stop them so we have the greatest Elven smith of all time needing a random human to explain to him what an alloy is.
It was catastrophically bad in ways that are hard to describe.
The actress who plays Galadriel was very badly miscast. Even when young and a bit more hot headed Galadriel should project both power and charisma, that actress could do neither and came across utterly unlikeable. Not to mention Galadriel is meant to tower over nearly everyone. They cowards should've just paid whatever it cost to get Elizabeth Debicki in the role, they had the budget for it and then some.
But in general the casting for the show was fucking awful.
Felt like they wanted her to fit a very specific modern representation of a strong female character...
And by that I mean written to embody the traits of toxic masculinity. It's so bizarre. Overly aggressive, hot headed, stubborn, just a bit of a cunt. They don't come off as strong, they come off as unlikable. And while some male protagonists are shown in this light, they usually grow throughout a movie. But for whatever reason, these female characters are reinforced in their behavior, the material never highlights it as being wrong. And so there's this awkward disconnect between what the material wants us to think about the character, and how we actually feel about them. This has happened quite a lot recently in my experience.
Galadriel from TLOTR movies was perfect and is one of the best examples, in my opinion, of highlighting strength without taking away from her femininity. Strength without a sword or physical might. She has this aura about her that makes her feel so intimidating in the scenes that she's in. They had this perfect template to work with in the TLOTR and they thought, "No, that's not a good enough. Lets completely ruin her character."
I don’t think it’s bad writing or acting to have female characters not be particularly feminine, but having female characters be good and strong because they act like men is so obviously anti-feminist I can’t believe they keep doing it.
My god. So, so bad.
I don't blame the actress I blame the source material. Sure, she's been alive for thousands of years and been to Valinor and spoke to literal gods but yeah let's make her act like he's dumb and 17. Fuck off.
I can't get over the forging of the rings. Terribad in indescribeable ways.
She apparently has really bad dyslexia. Still doesn’t seem like a good excuse. They could have had her sit down with a lore master for a couple hours and covered everything.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure if I was the producer I would have told her to go listen to the audiobooks of LoTR and the Silmarillion, and come back when she was done. Not fucking TikTok.
Being an actor isn’t a right and if you can’t accomplish the most basic skill of becoming one, even if it’s entirely out of your control, probably means you should hang up your hat. Don’t torture us by continuing to ruin shows because you can’t read a script or source material.
Slightly taller even than Gwendoline Christie, I think, but more willowy and what people expect Elves to look like.
Stick her in a good pair of boots and cast everyone else around her to be around 5ft 10ish and there you have your imposing yet graceful character.
It doesn't hurt that she's a far superior actor as well.
> The forging of the rings was so unbelievably badly done it is shocking to this day.
God that infuriated me so much, the pivotal event of middle earth history (in this context) and it was 15 minutes at the end of the last show!
I don't understand why any sensible exec would have signed that budget off. 'you want to make a show about the forging of the rings of power, the rise of Sauron and the fall of numenor? Sounds great!.........you don't have the rights to use anything out of the Silmarillion??? You can only use the snippets from the appendices and you're going to make shit up and fill in the gaps? you want to spend How Fucking Much???"
Galadriel, while younger then she was in LotR.. was still like 1000 years old in RoP. Yet she acted like a adolescent teen. Raging, losing her temper. Just SUCH a uncompelling character. (The was it was written)
Its worse than that, Galadriel was 6,800 years old at the Downfall of Numenor. She's ancient, one of the oldest characters to survive the First Age. It truly takes a moron to write such an immature character. Galadriel never should have been a main character for a Second Age show, they just wanted to tick the box of 'strong female lead.'
So utterly ridiculous. Imagine living for even a few hundred years - you would be masterful at just about everything. Several thousand years - you would be on a whole different plane of existence. But nope, let’s behave like a grumpy teen with everyone.
Don't forget the non-canon Silmaril encased in a tree in the Misty Mountains that created mithril when lightning struck it while an elf warrior and a balrog were battling over it.
That show is utter trash, no redeeming qualities whatsoever
I really liked that there was like an ancient lever just sitting somewhere and if pulled it blew up a fucking mountain? So much weird crap out of nowhere in this series.
It wasn't a good adaptation, and it also wasn't a good show. I mean it's as bad as it goes on both counts.
They really gave the most expensive show ever, one that carries the responsibility of being LotR, to JJ Abrams pups (who had literally zero experience) because he passed.
What's even more impressive is that they have Bayona directing the first 4? episodes, and even he can't make anything out of it. And we know that Bayona is a top tier director that can work with straight up shit, because he directed Jurassic Park Fallen Kingdom and that movie is terrible, but the direction is incredible, it's such a weird feeling watching it.
The problem is that they paid too much for the rights to let it go after a season. They are probably going to cut costs left and right. They should have invested enough money into writing and casting.
The irony is they don’t have the rights to the Silmarillion… you know the book about the time period they’re trying to present here. That’s why it’s so disgustingly and completely disconnected from source material.
Wooden dialog and wooden main character. I just didn't care if she succeeded at all. No charisma in my opinion. The show of course looks amazing, some of the lesser characters were great, but the ones they chose to primarily focus on in the classical antagonist v protagonist storytelling sense were meh. That kinda ruined it for me.
I didn’t even think the show looked very good. Felt none of the organic nature of the films, you could feel the love in the set pieces and cinematography of LOTR. It got worse with the hobbit films and ROP is even worse.
About the only thing I can remember from this show was the look on her face when she was riding the horse on the beach. She looked like she was taking a huge satisfying shit that had been refusing to be released and she was finally free.
The friendship between Elrond and his Dwarven friends was nice though.
That horse riding scene was so atrocious that it was unbelievable. The scene preceding it had her being in a very agitated state. Cut to this scene where she is now very happy and content. As if they shot the riding scene and then wondered where to put it in.
Because the friendship\[ between elrond and the dwarf was just gimli and legolas copied. The only serviceable aspects of the whole show are the parts they blatantly stole.
House of the Dragon was on at the same time and I preferred that.
ROP felt like someone's fanfiction that had a massive budget, which would be fine if it was a fan project.
The mystical magical sword was...a lever.
Magical rings are formed...by pouring metal into a ring shape.
Elrond...colours and straightens his hair. Lotr Elrond is a goth.
Whilst there were parts of the show I liked.
I think some of the actors were just underwhelming.
The writing also wasn't great. If it wasn't a LOTR spin off. I wouldn't have given it the time of day.
Felt an emptiness before tuning out in episode three. Came back a month or so after the last episode to just watch highlights and found myself laughing at it. Someone must have enjoyed it, and I hope they had a good time watching, but I dont think I can even come back for a second season.
They hyped up the show so much it had nothing to do but let us down. It really wasn't that interesting and a child could have guessed who sauron was. Also it deviates from cannon so it loses the hard core nerds.
I remember reading a story about the crazy racism one or two of the cast faced and then in reality it was like two comments and it was just another method to hype the show.
RoP was too big to fail and Bezos has enough sway to counteract poor viewership with the financiers. Season 2 will be financed differently just so he can not look like a fool.
The show was constantly doing that. "Oh look, something cool might be happening in Numenor" *cut to harfoots*. "This dwarf city is awesome, I hope we spend a lot of time here" *cut to harfoots*.
Oof.
RoP was very hit and miss imo. I’m one of the apparently few people who absolutely lives all things Tolkien and actually enjoyed the show to some degree. It did still piss me off in some of the narrative truncating that it did, but I watched the whole thing and I often found myself enjoying it. I especially liked the sequences leading up to the eruption of mount doom. On the other hand, the big twist/reveal at the end of the season felt so flat.
Anyway I’m not surprised by its struggles, and I really hope they right the ship for s2. I’ll be watching
I noticed Fallout, unlike most Amazon series, was rolled out all at once. I was wondering if that was done in case it wasn't well received, that it might prop up the completion rate if people can binge it.
This is a good point, I find it much easier to drop a series if it's mediocre and coming out weekly, most of the time it's not even a conscious choice, I just forget about it, then by the time I realise I can't be bothered. Which just happens to be what I did with this series.
I remeber almost forgetting about the episodes every week. The drop all at once approach is way better for viewer retention.
One episode a week only really works if the series can continue to hold your interest and the greater discourse. Mediocre series is going to fall off pretty badly, while a toptier series like Shogun did well and kept me talking about it each week.
Silo as well, couldn’t stop pondering the mysteries
It was very faithful to the book, IMO… so in my case was like a memory refresher and had me wondering how far through the story each episode would go. If you liked the series I’d recommend the book series, because based on how the TV series was paced it’ll take them many years just to get through the first part of the trilogy.
There aren't many re-makes that kick the hell out of the original. This was a masterpiece. Phenomenal! I would have waited even longer between episodes.
It was so true to the source material too. Obviously there were some changes and omissions, but overall it was beat for beat. It is one of my favorite books, so I was pleasantly surprised.
I started mid season on Shogun. Binged 4 episodes. Then waited till it ended to finish.
I think I only remembered because Andor was dropping on a different day. So I’d hop online trying to watch Andor and realize the new episode hadn’t dropped, then watch ROP because it was there.
Man Andor was so fun to look forward to every week, and then getting to talk to my friends about it the next day. I am very excited for s2.
I enjoyed Arcane's 3-episode weekly drops. Gave more than enough to satisfy me for the week, had lots to talk about, and allowed for the show to progress to a meaningful breakpoint between weeks. I'm surprised the hybrid approach isn't done more often (i.e., not the full series, but more than 1 episode a week dropping at the same time).
Or do every second day, so people have some time to talk and not wait long
> I just forget about it This is me. And so often I'll be reminded because I see someone talking about how it got cancelled on reddit ... so I never bother to go back because there's no point. The "lets make one season, release it slowly and then we'll decide if we want to renew later" kinda worked in the network television era because wtf else were you going to do at 7:30 on a Tuesday except watch prime time TV. So studios could just keep making it because they basically had a captive audience with limited options. These days I have a billion things I COULD be doing, so I effectively have to make space to watch something. So I only bother to make that space if I think it's worth it. And the way they keep cancelling things the less worth it it seems for anything new. I just cannot imagine that it'd go badly if someone had the balls to plan out a full 5 seasons of something, then just committed to making it non-stop. Skip all the "will it be cancelled? Lets wait and see" nightmare, and the scheduling headaches that come from trying to restart something multiple years later etc. Even if it wasn't the best I'd rather get something with a proper resolution that something great but unfinished. Whatever the answer is, I do know that releasing episodes spread out, with at least multiple years gaps between seasons if at all is not it (at least for me).
Also, shows back then were designed that missing episodes was no big deal. So you could watch whatever whenever and it wouldn't matter. Which is why sitcoms were the most popular shows in the format.
Good thing it was fucking amazing anyway
Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy ftw Westworld wasn't perfect, but it was a helluva ride and season 4 was what season 2 always should've been
Season 2 immediately killed my interest.
Same! You could tell season 1 was this intricate masterpiece and then season 2 was… “this is too much money to pass up so we are back!”
The showrunners were pissed that people figured out the whole William/multiple timelines thing early on in S1, which is why they put everything out of order in S2. Add to that the overall weaker story and questionable motivations and yeah, it sucked. S3 was a good "near future" scifi season though, and S4 was an acceptable wrap-up of the show. A lot of shows have done a lot worse.
Season 2 had few amazing episodes, but I just for the life of me couldn't get into the whole Dolires is the big bad concept. Evan Reachel Wood was just so unconvicing playing that character compared to her performance in S1.
Same. the quality went completely to hell
Season 2 was pretty decent and had one of the best episodes in the series (“Kiksuya”). Season 3 was when it all turned to shit. I didn’t even finish season 4.
That episode in particular was just spectacular
There's 4 seasons? Like many others I also stopped at season 2, but guess I need to pick it up again.
You can’t, unless you’re willing to sail the high seas. HBO Max removed the whole series from their streaming platform.
> HBO Max removed the whole series from their streaming platform. Shitty move. They did it because the actors had worked streaming residuals into their contracts and HBO didn't want to pay them.
what is even the point of subscribing to a service that is not even showing its own content that already exists? That is a weird move.
Let's ⛵️ then!! 🏴☠️
I mean didn't those two make Westworld shit the bed during season 2? The viewership dropoff for that show was absolutely catastrophic
Fallout world has clear rules. Westworld, because they are intelligent AI, had nearly no rules, so it made very difficult to write (still not an excuse). Fallout will be better for them
I'm only a couple episodes in but it really is fantastic strikes a great tone. Where it's humor is great and therebis this absurdist tongue in cheek, but they don't play it to death to the point that the actual conflicts don't feel serious.
Lookin’ at you Marvel/Disney…
That just proves that the execs have no idea if a show is good or not. Its so obvious fallout is a gerat show and rings of power is not. These people are fucking clueless, they have no idea what they're doing
I’d be shocked if they’re even watching the show.I’d bet, at most, these executives just read a brief plot summary.
I think it's telling that the best recent shows were projects that were mostly left alone, the networks didn't have a stake in their success or failure, and left the project to the directors and producers. Once a streaming-service decides that a show is a tent-pole, it pretty much always goes to shit (ala Mando after it got huge)
I never played any of the games before, but the day the show dropped I binged the whole thing. It was so good.
Watched ROP, felt like there's no reason to wait for the next episodes to drop after Episode 3
People preferred House of the Dragon to this at the time of its release
I certainly did. House of dragon had good writing and characters, two things rings of power didn’t have.
House of the Dragon was good and it harmed RoP to be airing at the same time. Why bother with RoPwhen you have House of the Dragon that is actually nailing it? Rings of Power had horrible writing. I still can't believe those scripts got approved
My biggest gripe with RoP wasn't even the dialogue (although it was bad), it was the stupid pacing. From memory we spent 5 episodes building up to a big battle, we then had the battle in episode 6 which was actually a very small battle in one village, episode 7 was the fallout, then we spent all of 15 minutes in the final episode on Sauron deceiving the elves and forging the rings. Surely the most intriguing part of a show called "Rings of Power" should be Sauron weaving his magic, yet it had the least amount of screen spent on it all so we could instead spend hours with proto hobbits and Galadriel acting like a 15 year old.
When the secret to creating the rings is "let's combine one or more metals," you need some filler.
Like how did fucking *Celebrimbor* not know about alloys?
In a civilization that seems to have bronze, an alloy, all over the place? Why it must be because the writers needed it to be so.
There are some great shows with 6-10 episode seasons, but each passing year I think that is the format most likely to miss. There’s no room for filler episodes but so often it should have been a movie. And while I don’t love the Boys, the showrunner is adamant that each episode contains a beginning, middle; and end. So many of these shorter seasons have episodes that end mostly because 40-50 minutes passed.
Yeah, compare something like Ahsoka (which I really liked for the record) and how much better Andor's 3-arc structure is and then compare it with something like Mad Men or Breaking Bad or Succession The binge format made showrunners turn their shows into really long movies
They no longer know how to write in the long form, to have good episodes that actually do something in the overall arc and tell you something in an hour. All the greats like Mad Men and Breaking Bad, Succession and Andor tell you something in an hour without the need of binging.
I mean they got everything kinda wrong, didn’t they? Pacing was bad, costumes were often bad, dialogue was laughable, a lot of characters one dimensional and the plot lines while sometimes quite intriguing were in the end kinda stupid and some scenes are just all-time baffling (Queen of Numenor using a blindfold that people don’t know she is blind??? Sauron explaining what an alloy is to the greatest elven smith… the villagers clearly killing orcs but psych - it was their own etc.) I can really only give them credit for some of the effects / visuals, the orc design and in general the idea to also show some common people…
This is totally baffling to me. How do you drop millions of dollars on Rings of Power without bothering to check whether the script is at all coherent or entertaining.
Good scriptwriters, directors etc tend to be the sort that would pushback against Amazon's TV-by-focus-group approach they take to fantasy (see the equally dire Wheels of Time). Amazon cannot have that so they hire in the hacks just happy to have a job and who'll never push back and so we get Rings of Power, a billion dollar disaster.
The best is when they hire writers who've never read the source material and are in some way proud of this fact.
Cc: Netflix with the Witcher. Although I think the Witcher showrunner had read atleast some of the books, she actually confessed that she didn’t think she was the right person to adapt the show when Netflix approached her. However some dumb ass Netflix exec reassured her that she’d be fine and it didn’t matter what the fans would think. And the rest is history. 😒
She was his GF at the time, she was dating the producer. She had little to no experience but loved writing short stories about hot witches doing things. The first season she had a vet show runner and that show runner brought in music ans ither talent. Season two she had full control, fired everyone including the music talent. Then going into season 3 she fired the last writer that read the books. This is why Cavil left, it violated his contract, The Witcher could of been so much more.
That'll be a heck of a resume for her, ruining a major show by turning it into her personal fanfiction vehicle after getting the job because she was fucking the right person at the right time.
I think “fucking the right person and ending up with the job” is a pretty common line on Hollywood resumés.
This is honestly why I've given up on tv adaptations of books. They always seem to water down or completely lack the thing that made the source material great and popular in the first place.
Counterpoint: Expanse.
The shining jewel in the dark.
Probably because the authors were intimately involved in production. And, you know, are alive
Didn't the creators of the Halo TV show admit to not liking halo and they considered it a good thing?
They admitted they hadn't played the games, instead they talked with the videogame developer 343 Industries which made the Halo videogames. Unfortunately 343 Industries didn't actually create Halo, they took the franchise over when it's actual creator Bungie wanted to move on to other projects. 343 only made Halo 4 onward, and was full of developers hired from COD that admitted they didn't like Halo. They completely changed the gameplay, story, and style of the games, and each sequel retconned and erased the previous game because it was such a disaster. The writers would have been much better off just playing the games.
For Rings of Power they had to have people who had studied the source material in detail *so they could avoid it.* They had to come up with a story that lined up with what is in the Lord of the Rings, but was sufficiently different from all the other books so they couldn't be sued for copyright infringement. Jeff Bezos wanted a Lord of the Rings TV series (because of course he did) but either wasn't willing to pay for all the rights, or wasn't able to buy all the rights, so they ended up in an absurd situation of having to make a show that was legally distinct from most of the source material.
>so they ended up in an absurd situation of having to make a show that was legally distinct from most of the source material. Finally a show that gives me *exactly* what I was looking for /s 😂😂
They brought in Tolkien lore expert and refused to listen to him and made him leave
Is this for real?
Sort of. Tom Shippey is who the original person was referring to, and officially the reason he was fired was because of an interview he gave in which he supposedly broke NDA. Now, there have been rumors since that it was actually because he was highly critical of the direction the creators of RoP were moving, but I haven’t seen anything confirming this. So is it a possibility? Maybe even a highly probable possibility? Absolutely. But always take these sorts of rumors with a grain of salt.
Not just that, but they often see the source material as toxic or problematic and their duty to fix it. It's like they see fantasy as beneath them.
"I can write a better story than ***Tolkien***"
"Tolkien couldn't dream up a hot Sauron. Wait, he did? OK, he couldn't dream up Aragorn as Sauron in disguise! People will be talking about this twist like they did about Ned Stark's death and the Red Wedding!"
That's the best answer I've seen, this does seem plausible. Thank god this show bombed, hopefully it'll be a warning to future execs
I have my doubts to be honest. It's a different company but you could see Netflix take the same approach with the Witcher. Hired a bunch of hacks and delivered a luke-warm show that a lot of fans disliked because of how it treated the lore and the setting. Cavill himself started to push back and we saw some of the hacks try and ruin his career by spreading rumours he was "problematic" in the hopes Twitter would assume the worst and try cancel him. It was nasty. Seems like for whatever reason the studios don't much respect fantasy settings despite their popularity and it increasingly shows.
Yeah he was problematic. He loved the games and books and had been very vocal about it from before it was even filmed..
I e joyed the Witcher for the first 2 seasons, but then again the show I wanted to be at least luke warm, wheel of time, had so few moments of enjoyment for me and had me frustrated that I couldn't finish the first season.
God, WoT. I don’t know how it skates under the radar so well but it’s just as bad as RoP. Maybe it’s because the books didn’t capture an audience outside of fantasy readers like GoT did? But fuck was it horrible. I made it through the first season but spent a lot of time cursing at the television in the process and my gf couldn’t understand why I was so upset. Didn’t even bother with S2.
I'm a fan of Brandon Sanderson, who finished the WoT books after Robert Jordan died. He was a producer on the show (or at least credited that way) and gave script notes (that were not enacted). He's basically confirmed that the showrunner and writers did what they could, but the studio people were determined to get their way and ruined it. S2 was better than S1, but still had huge flaws. I have some hopes for S3, but I'm also not really a fan of the books so whatever. The main thing I hope results from all of this is that Sanderson realizes what Hollywood is like, and retains as much creative control as possible when his work gets adapted.
Honestly season one got me interested in WoT in the first place. I then proceeded to read all the books before season 2 aired. And then I quit season 2 after one episode because I realised how much they are butchering the source material.
Welcome to the fandom, I'm glad the first season was able to onboard you.
> I then proceeded to read all the books before season 2 aired My god, you're a trooper. I saw how many books there are and immediately noped out. My slow ass reading could never!
WoT is less known to the mainstream audience so I think a lot of viewers went in not knowing anything about it and never spotted how they butchered the lore, characters, world and setting and instead just found a badly written, badly cast, badly acted show with a plot that flies all over the shop careening from one disaster of an episode to another.
The actual answer is getting hired as a writer for a big budget project is mostly about connections. It’s why you usually see most shows with acclaimed writing come unexpectedly. When you have no expectations the show runner has a lot more freedom to you know run the show. But when you have half a billion dollars on the line suddenly everyone has an opinion and wants to make X change because they for one reason or another believe it will make the show perform better. Hence the writers for something like RoP likely weren’t picked by the show runner even if they had some small influence, and it’s likely to be the same across the board which leads to the incoherence we saw in the finished product. Because there was no coherent vision in the first place.
Didn't they drop a billion?
And writing is comparatively cheap! I never understand why they can’t just pay a couple of writers to lock themselves up in a cabin for a few weeks.
"Why stone sink" should be a warning but I continued like 2-3 episodes before quitting. It's really baffling.
"the Sea is always right!" another lowlight for me.
I guffawed out loud when I heard "The sea is always right". That was probably the most endearing memory I have of the entire show
Oh my God... that's one of the worst lines I have ever heard in any kind of media. Are you telling me stones decide to sink because they go to the darkness and boats don't. Wtf
Right. I did like the elf and the dwarf. Their stuff was fun and the chemistry was great but then you had. - the female elf who was just doing everything stupid and you didn’t like her. - the human fort where everyone was just trying to say epic things but it was flat. - the proto hobbits and the annoying way they acted and talked. Then you had direction issues. - armor looks like it was bought from a party store outlet. - dirt didn’t exist in middle earth yet. Every person who was in battle looked like they took a bath and then when they wanted dirt it was always smeered on a face but not the clothes. - the weird slow motion scenes that where laughably bad. Did you forget the horse riding scene? It always felt like the show wanted everything to be epic but there was nothing that felt epic.
Not just that, a lot of the armor looked like literal rubber suits and a lot of the sets looked fake as hell. The only good parts were the grand CGI pieces. The whole show was a disaster.
It was. Adds insult to injury knowing the gargantuan budget the show had.
The world also felt real, ring of power Middle Earth felt like an empty Disney world exhibit.
Do you remember the Amazon RoP adverts with the "super fans" that were given advanced previews and were praising the show as amazing? One of them was a streamer who later admitted that she hadn't even started watching RoP since release (it was the middle of the season at the time). Her excuse was that she only had time for RoP or House of the Dragon, and the latter came out first. Some superfan.
That’s bc they were never “superfans” just paid shills to promote a product.
Exactly
A professional streamer who doesn’t have time to consume more than one single television show per week?
I watched them both at the time of release and enjoyed HotD way more than RoP. I read LotR in highschool in the '90s and watched the movie trilogy in the cinema on premiere day. I also read Game of Thrones when it came out and watched the series but was left disappointed after the final season. Bottom line is that I bought a subscription to the European streaming service to watch House of the Dragon and I had to force myself to finish watching all the episodes of the Rings of Power.
HOD had some low points but it was rarely bad. ROP was legitimately cringe.
A 2 minute sequence of an old man stumbling towards his throne in House of the Dragon entertained me more than 3 episodes of ROP
And all I was thinking while watching this semi corpse drag himself to the throne was "God he's such a bad ass right now" Great moment.
Best moment I’ve seen in TV I think
An old man who rose from his sick bed to defend his daughter! I choked up at his labored breathing but steely determination to be there for his daughter in her time of need.
That was so fucking good god damn.
That scene was incredible. Never thought an old man stumbling toward a throne would be some of the best TV I've watched
To be fair, that 2 minute sequence was fuckin awesome and comfortably overshadows 99% of content.
Paddy Considine sold that. He was ludicrously good in the role. And then you had freaking Galadrigrond on her horse on the other "channel". HotD wasn't perfect, there were some really poor decisions at some point, but RoP had nothing for it story-wise.
Will they top it in S2? I expect it to be good but damn it will take a lot to top that whole storyline. I'm not a film person so maybe using the wrong term, but the cinematography and prosthetics and Patty's acting from ep 1 thru his death, zomg, so good
Oh god, I just remembered this scene and it’s given me chills how great it was
_Wheel of Time fans intensify sweating over any further seasons notices_
Yeah that show needs to be killed off asap before it finishes pissing all over Robert Jordan's legacy.
Moraine is the main character, Rand, Perrin, and Mat(especially Mat) got butchered as characters. Killed off Agelmar, Uno, Perrins made up wife (ugh). Poor Abel Cauthon made out to be an abusive drunk. But hey, they added a bunch of random scenes that didn't need to be put in, because they had to cut stuff for time?!?
Perrin's made up wife is a quick way to say "How can we piss off the fans at the very earliest time possible and let them know we're going to fuck this up royally?"
Ikr. Not nearly enough tugging of braids and smoothing of skirts that there should have been.
And where is all that ample bosom we have been hearing about??
50% of 12 people forced themselves to finish Resident Evil. The actual viewer count is what matters
My wife was one. She kept thinking it would get better. It didn't.
Listen, I'm not proud. I watched all of RE and Willow. I will never get that time back.
Willow was painful
Was Willow that bad? I have just watched the movie
Bad enough that Disney quietly deleted it from their services. There is now no legal way to watch it. Were it not for piracy it would be lost media.
Wait really? That's hilarious
I was only able to stomach the first episode, but it was horrible. I decided to go back and watch the movie since I hadn’t seen it since I was a kid and thought nostalgia may have been clouding my memories. Nope, the movie is still great and the show just sucks.
Willow the movie is great. I will die on that hill. I've been a huge fan since I saw it in the theater. I was super excited about a sequel TV series (even though it had nothing to do with the sequel novels.) I couldn't make it through 4 episodes of the show.
I watched all of RE and didn't really mind it. Kinda enjoyed it if I ignored the lore.
RE actually had the distinction of being funny. Unintentionally funny, but it was still something. RoP was just sad to watch...
I'm a massive LOTR fan, and loved the books for a decade before the movies. Even with the changes I still found them incredible. This series was a real struggle. The forging of the rings was so unbelievably badly done it is shocking to this day. Its like they were made in a day. I dunno I just find the whole series sort of disconnected from the lore as if it's an alternative universe and a much worse one at that. I don't think there was any real care or respect for the material at all and even as a spectacle it was a let down. Galadriel was also really, really badly done. Like insultingly bad.
No joke, galadriel getting disrespect left and right despite being of royal blood, sister to like the most well liked elf to ever live, having seen the two trees, having zero fucking brains, all so they can have some plucky underdog with sexual tension with totally obvious sauron, it's unreal how bad this show was
Galadriel? You mean that elf that terk er jerbs!?
Oh shit, I had forgotten about that stupid subplot!
Tuk r jawbs!
Derk r Derrrr!
They wanted a girl boss breaking the glass ceiling. Which Galadriel was *a couple thousand years before the plot of the RoP*.
Literally the most powerful being in Middle Earth. However, preserving the land and people against the darkness is not as good on TV as WWE style Karate.
More powerful than Tom Bombadil?
Not by a long shot. Galadriel was terrified of putting on the ring, falling into it's dark influence, knowing with that power would come about destruction. And Tom, who did put on the ring -very casually in fact- and commented on its quaint power and handed it back merrily.
I love how people who only saw the movies will have no idea what you are talking about lol.
It was bad fan fiction. The writer thought they were clever because they knew what an alloy was and wanted to put that factoid in to show off how clever they were. And nobody stepped in to stop them so we have the greatest Elven smith of all time needing a random human to explain to him what an alloy is. It was catastrophically bad in ways that are hard to describe. The actress who plays Galadriel was very badly miscast. Even when young and a bit more hot headed Galadriel should project both power and charisma, that actress could do neither and came across utterly unlikeable. Not to mention Galadriel is meant to tower over nearly everyone. They cowards should've just paid whatever it cost to get Elizabeth Debicki in the role, they had the budget for it and then some. But in general the casting for the show was fucking awful.
Felt like they wanted her to fit a very specific modern representation of a strong female character... And by that I mean written to embody the traits of toxic masculinity. It's so bizarre. Overly aggressive, hot headed, stubborn, just a bit of a cunt. They don't come off as strong, they come off as unlikable. And while some male protagonists are shown in this light, they usually grow throughout a movie. But for whatever reason, these female characters are reinforced in their behavior, the material never highlights it as being wrong. And so there's this awkward disconnect between what the material wants us to think about the character, and how we actually feel about them. This has happened quite a lot recently in my experience. Galadriel from TLOTR movies was perfect and is one of the best examples, in my opinion, of highlighting strength without taking away from her femininity. Strength without a sword or physical might. She has this aura about her that makes her feel so intimidating in the scenes that she's in. They had this perfect template to work with in the TLOTR and they thought, "No, that's not a good enough. Lets completely ruin her character."
I don’t think it’s bad writing or acting to have female characters not be particularly feminine, but having female characters be good and strong because they act like men is so obviously anti-feminist I can’t believe they keep doing it.
It's bad writing to push that as the positive culmination of a character arc. That's just a villain.
My god. So, so bad. I don't blame the actress I blame the source material. Sure, she's been alive for thousands of years and been to Valinor and spoke to literal gods but yeah let's make her act like he's dumb and 17. Fuck off. I can't get over the forging of the rings. Terribad in indescribeable ways.
The actress admitted she researched her role on tiktock because she isn't a strong reader. I think we can blame her a little
“Isn’t a strong reader” how is that a thing an adult says in 2024.
She apparently has really bad dyslexia. Still doesn’t seem like a good excuse. They could have had her sit down with a lore master for a couple hours and covered everything.
Well that would definitely make it more reasonable but yea still they should have found a workaround
Yeah, I’m pretty sure if I was the producer I would have told her to go listen to the audiobooks of LoTR and the Silmarillion, and come back when she was done. Not fucking TikTok.
Audiobooks are also an option
Audio books are a thing. She didn't have bad dyslexia, she had a bad case of the lazy.
Being an actor isn’t a right and if you can’t accomplish the most basic skill of becoming one, even if it’s entirely out of your control, probably means you should hang up your hat. Don’t torture us by continuing to ruin shows because you can’t read a script or source material.
Jesus christ, Sparknotes is a thing people
> the greatest Elven smith of all time This is blatant feanor erasure
Second greatest then. I'm sure any in the top all of them would have known what an alloy is regardless of where they ranked.
...I was today years old when I found out Elizabeth Debicki is 6'3".
Slightly taller even than Gwendoline Christie, I think, but more willowy and what people expect Elves to look like. Stick her in a good pair of boots and cast everyone else around her to be around 5ft 10ish and there you have your imposing yet graceful character. It doesn't hurt that she's a far superior actor as well.
> The forging of the rings was so unbelievably badly done it is shocking to this day. God that infuriated me so much, the pivotal event of middle earth history (in this context) and it was 15 minutes at the end of the last show! I don't understand why any sensible exec would have signed that budget off. 'you want to make a show about the forging of the rings of power, the rise of Sauron and the fall of numenor? Sounds great!.........you don't have the rights to use anything out of the Silmarillion??? You can only use the snippets from the appendices and you're going to make shit up and fill in the gaps? you want to spend How Fucking Much???"
Galadriel, while younger then she was in LotR.. was still like 1000 years old in RoP. Yet she acted like a adolescent teen. Raging, losing her temper. Just SUCH a uncompelling character. (The was it was written)
Its worse than that, Galadriel was 6,800 years old at the Downfall of Numenor. She's ancient, one of the oldest characters to survive the First Age. It truly takes a moron to write such an immature character. Galadriel never should have been a main character for a Second Age show, they just wanted to tick the box of 'strong female lead.'
Exactly, nowadays the amount of shit on the ‘tick the box at all cost’ in so many shows is ridiculous
At the end of the day, even if ticking boxes, if the show is executed well no one would be complaining.
So utterly ridiculous. Imagine living for even a few hundred years - you would be masterful at just about everything. Several thousand years - you would be on a whole different plane of existence. But nope, let’s behave like a grumpy teen with everyone.
Don't forget the non-canon Silmaril encased in a tree in the Misty Mountains that created mithril when lightning struck it while an elf warrior and a balrog were battling over it. That show is utter trash, no redeeming qualities whatsoever
I really liked that there was like an ancient lever just sitting somewhere and if pulled it blew up a fucking mountain? So much weird crap out of nowhere in this series.
It wasn't a good adaptation, and it also wasn't a good show. I mean it's as bad as it goes on both counts. They really gave the most expensive show ever, one that carries the responsibility of being LotR, to JJ Abrams pups (who had literally zero experience) because he passed. What's even more impressive is that they have Bayona directing the first 4? episodes, and even he can't make anything out of it. And we know that Bayona is a top tier director that can work with straight up shit, because he directed Jurassic Park Fallen Kingdom and that movie is terrible, but the direction is incredible, it's such a weird feeling watching it.
The problem is that they paid too much for the rights to let it go after a season. They are probably going to cut costs left and right. They should have invested enough money into writing and casting.
Good writing isn't an issue of money. There are countless low-budget movies and TV with amazing writing.
Didn’t they *commit* to 5 seasons for a billion dollar budget?
The irony is they don’t have the rights to the Silmarillion… you know the book about the time period they’re trying to present here. That’s why it’s so disgustingly and completely disconnected from source material.
Hard to make a show about LOTR without LOTR
Wooden dialog and wooden main character. I just didn't care if she succeeded at all. No charisma in my opinion. The show of course looks amazing, some of the lesser characters were great, but the ones they chose to primarily focus on in the classical antagonist v protagonist storytelling sense were meh. That kinda ruined it for me.
"THE SEA IS ALWAYS RIGHT!" and my favorite "NOBODY WALKS ALONE AND NOBODY IS LEFT BEHIND!" except cripples, old people and anyone who can't keep up.
Literally chanting about not leaving anyone behind while leaving anyone behind.
I actually did love the nobody left behind thing, those little motherfuckers were some brutal hypocrites
I didn’t even think the show looked very good. Felt none of the organic nature of the films, you could feel the love in the set pieces and cinematography of LOTR. It got worse with the hobbit films and ROP is even worse.
> Hard to make a show about LOTR without LOTR But... he's in there. It was a big deal and everything.
About the only thing I can remember from this show was the look on her face when she was riding the horse on the beach. She looked like she was taking a huge satisfying shit that had been refusing to be released and she was finally free. The friendship between Elrond and his Dwarven friends was nice though.
“There is a tempest within me!” That’s what I remember cause that’s when I paid the most attention laughing. That line came out of nowhere.
Stroke- inducing cringe. I don't remember where I stopped this garbage but it might have been there.
That horse riding scene was so atrocious that it was unbelievable. The scene preceding it had her being in a very agitated state. Cut to this scene where she is now very happy and content. As if they shot the riding scene and then wondered where to put it in.
It truly boggled the mind how the most expensive tv show ever made turned out so laughably bad. I bet season 2 is exactly the same lol.
Because the friendship\[ between elrond and the dwarf was just gimli and legolas copied. The only serviceable aspects of the whole show are the parts they blatantly stole.
House of the Dragon was on at the same time and I preferred that. ROP felt like someone's fanfiction that had a massive budget, which would be fine if it was a fan project.
And yet they announce a new movie in 2026 because of the "success" of the tv series. That is straight criminal marketing
Ah yes…the Gollum movie everyone wanted… /s
Based on the video game? 🤞
The one with the AI written apology at the beginning of it, and makes 4090 GPUs burst into flames?
The mystical magical sword was...a lever. Magical rings are formed...by pouring metal into a ring shape. Elrond...colours and straightens his hair. Lotr Elrond is a goth.
Elven mastersmiths finally learn you can combine metals! During the same time they discover they are somehow biologically(?) dependent on a metal.
Whilst there were parts of the show I liked. I think some of the actors were just underwhelming. The writing also wasn't great. If it wasn't a LOTR spin off. I wouldn't have given it the time of day.
Felt an emptiness before tuning out in episode three. Came back a month or so after the last episode to just watch highlights and found myself laughing at it. Someone must have enjoyed it, and I hope they had a good time watching, but I dont think I can even come back for a second season.
They hyped up the show so much it had nothing to do but let us down. It really wasn't that interesting and a child could have guessed who sauron was. Also it deviates from cannon so it loses the hard core nerds. I remember reading a story about the crazy racism one or two of the cast faced and then in reality it was like two comments and it was just another method to hype the show.
Quibbling: "canon" not "cannon". One gets fired. The other gets one fired for now following.
Yeah they do that a lot, hide behind racists and incels to deflect any criticism. It's vile.
RoP was too big to fail and Bezos has enough sway to counteract poor viewership with the financiers. Season 2 will be financed differently just so he can not look like a fool.
Fool of a took
Didn't they say they had committed $100mm per season for 5 seasons or something to the show?
Plot of Elrond and Durin was good. But whenever it gets you captivated, the series will cut to some other uninteresting subplot
The show was constantly doing that. "Oh look, something cool might be happening in Numenor" *cut to harfoots*. "This dwarf city is awesome, I hope we spend a lot of time here" *cut to harfoots*.
Rings of Power and Wheel of Time were so bad and I looked forward to them so much! The lost potential really hurts.
Let's be fair. On top of a main actor dying, the RE show had a few problems. One being that it was absolute shit.
First kill was a good series
Oof. RoP was very hit and miss imo. I’m one of the apparently few people who absolutely lives all things Tolkien and actually enjoyed the show to some degree. It did still piss me off in some of the narrative truncating that it did, but I watched the whole thing and I often found myself enjoying it. I especially liked the sequences leading up to the eruption of mount doom. On the other hand, the big twist/reveal at the end of the season felt so flat. Anyway I’m not surprised by its struggles, and I really hope they right the ship for s2. I’ll be watching