Television The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

FInally watched it. Overall enjoyable but I didn't like the last episode. It had good pacing in the first couple of episodes but the last one felt definitely rushed, the Eminem/hobbit stuff was terrible and the forging of the rings was done waaaay too quickly. Like, I get why they didn't want to go the way of the Annatar storyline because everyone would've known right away who Sauron was but surely there could've been a way to have this essential development a bit more spread out over the season.
All in all, I was positively surprised about some aspects which i thought would be terrible like Elves (and dwarfes!, the Elrond/Durin stuff was fantastic), Numenor and additional things were the writers had freedom like Adar and the orcs. Some stuff was alright, like I didn't really give a shit about the Harfoots but I'm okay with them playing a role, Galadriels character seems way over the top from a Lore perspective but I actually don't mind it, creation of Mordor, eh why not. Some was proper bad, like the whole ocean stuff at the beginning or the rush of Celebrimbor and Sauron working together, which again, simply should've been bigger.
Some additional random thoughts:
- I really hope the wizard turns out to be a blue wizard and not Gandalf. It would fit time wise (arriving 1600 second age) and open up a lot of cool possibilities.
- Please don't give us a terrible "origin" story for Sauron. Despite going off lore they've nailed the "deceiver" part so far, don't ruin it by trying to paint him "human" or give him a good side to his actions blabla.
- Total random guess but I wonder if the boy who had Adars artifact/key for the dam becomes either the witch king or the oathbreakers king. He seems drawn to power in a bad way.
 
RacingClub said:
I thought it was shit alright but maybe it's not a bad if you binge it rather than spending 10 weeks enduring it.
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I thought it was pretty bad and I had the opportunity to binge it, just kept stopping it and watched something else. One of these where it's all about the packaging but whats inside isn't all that important. Just the polar opposite to Andor.
 
Bebe said:
I'd call it "meh" more than shit. Watchable, but neither remarkable nor memorable.
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Yeah Meh is the perfect way to describe it. Looks fantastic but the story and characters weren't very engaging to say the least, it felt rushed. I hope they go and take a 2-3 year break before the 2nd season and sort it out. Otherwise it will be a huge missed opportunity and a monumental waste of money.
 
Finished this today. It’s watchable but overall meh when you compare it to HBO’s GoT spin-off series HoD. Was tempted to patch it after 3 episodes but just persevered with it. With a big budget like that, they definitely did an Ed Woodward and blew it. Just hope S2 is a lot better but I guess we will just need to wait and see.

Had a feeling Hallbrand was going to be Sauron just after episode 6 (probably the best one of the series) when they captured Adar, that gives a big hint about Hallbrand’s true identity that he is hiding.
 
Just started with the first couple of episodes of this. It's decent enough so far, but my expectation was at Wheel of Time level, so anything beyond that is impressive. I like what they've shown of the Dwarves so far, and the visuals generally are pretty great. Definitely several levels above some of the shocking CGI in the Hobbit movies.

Re Halbrand: The first or second line out of his mouth is something like "Appearances can be deceiving". Seems like the sort of thing some kind of Deceiver might say. :wenger:
 
Finally managed to watch this over the last couple of weeks. It was extremely easy to avoid any spoilers for this because nobody I know seems to be remotely interested in it. Which brings me on to my main issue with this series - one that I REALLY wanted to like.

When you're making stuff like this, you have to decide early on whether you are making it for the fans or the masses. I always hoped for this show because the story of Annatar deceiving the elves is brilliant, and could easily have been a cracking first season of this show. Instead I got 15 minutes of it at the end of 8 hours of stuff that I didn't really want or need to see.

Ultimately its such a flawed decision. Why bother making it at all if you're going to annoy all of the people who actually wanted this show to be made? What about the writers? Are they even fans of this? Do they cherish it and take responsibility for it like Jackson clearly did, or are they hired guns? It has to be the latter here surely. No wonder the Tolkeins have been so reluctant to give up the rights.

What angers me is that we get one shot at this. Nobody else will ever try to put that story on screen now, and that is criminal. They've made a decision to murder this wonderful story to aim for the masses and for the most part they aren't interested. I'm not even a natural critic. I like most things, but I can't see this as anything other than a complete failure.
 
Bilbo said:
Finally managed to watch this over the last couple of weeks. It was extremely easy to avoid any spoilers for this because nobody I know seems to be remotely interested in it. Which brings me on to my main issue with this series - one that I REALLY wanted to like.

When you're making stuff like this, you have to decide early on whether you are making it for the fans or the masses. I always hoped for this show because the story of Annatar deceiving the elves is brilliant, and could easily have been a cracking first season of this show. Instead I got 15 minutes of it at the end of 8 hours of stuff that I didn't really want or need to see.

Ultimately its such a flawed decision. Why bother making it at all if you're going to annoy all of the people who actually wanted this show to be made? What about the writers? Are they even fans of this? Do they cherish it and take responsibility for it like Jackson clearly did, or are they hired guns? It has to be the latter here surely. No wonder the Tolkeins have been so reluctant to give up the rights.

What angers me is that we get one shot at this. Nobody else will ever try to put that story on screen now, and that is criminal. They've made a decision to murder this wonderful story to aim for the masses and for the most part they aren't interested. I'm not even a natural critic. I like most things, but I can't see this as anything other than a complete failure.
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The most annoying thing is that they brought in all these Tolkien scholars and experts to ensure it was a faithful adaptation but it felt like it was anything but.
 
Bilbo said:
Finally managed to watch this over the last couple of weeks. It was extremely easy to avoid any spoilers for this because nobody I know seems to be remotely interested in it. Which brings me on to my main issue with this series - one that I REALLY wanted to like.

When you're making stuff like this, you have to decide early on whether you are making it for the fans or the masses. I always hoped for this show because the story of Annatar deceiving the elves is brilliant, and could easily have been a cracking first season of this show. Instead I got 15 minutes of it at the end of 8 hours of stuff that I didn't really want or need to see.

Ultimately its such a flawed decision. Why bother making it at all if you're going to annoy all of the people who actually wanted this show to be made? What about the writers? Are they even fans of this? Do they cherish it and take responsibility for it like Jackson clearly did, or are they hired guns? It has to be the latter here surely. No wonder the Tolkeins have been so reluctant to give up the rights.

What angers me is that we get one shot at this. Nobody else will ever try to put that story on screen now, and that is criminal. They've made a decision to murder this wonderful story to aim for the masses and for the most part they aren't interested. I'm not even a natural critic. I like most things, but I can't see this as anything other than a complete failure.
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Whats worse, is that the scene where the hobbits say goodbye to Gandalf and whatsherface was about the same length as one of the most important events in Middle Earth history... I was trying to put a positive spin on the show, some of the things I did generally enjoy, but that decision angered me so much.
 
RedSky said:
Whats worse, is that the scene where the hobbits say goodbye to Gandalf and whatsherface was about the same length as one of the most important events in Middle Earth history... I was trying to put a positive spin on the show, some of the things I did generally enjoy, but that decision angered me so much.
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Honestly i wasnt hating the show for the most part. I can forgive the constant rousing speeches and the lack of any real peril around any of the characters - although there is surely only so many times you can go to the 'saved from certain death at the last second' well.

It was okay because i'd come to assume that season 1 was introducing characters and season 2 would focus on the rings and the reveal of Sauron. Then they whacked it in at the end and it ruined everything.
 
I quite enjoyed it tbh

I’m certainly a fan of the 3 Lord of the Rings films, and the Hobbit films for that matter too, they seem to get slated but I thought they we fantastic

so it was quite nice to delve back into this world once again

Visuals are excellent as someone mentioned, I think if your casual fan like myself, you’ll probably enjoy it, if your a book fan then of course there will be elements I’d imagine you’d have quite liked to be put in….that aren’t in, or scenes of importance done with more care, but if your not aware of these moments from the books like myself, you won’t care

Looking forward too the season 2
 
TheLiverBird said:
I quite enjoyed it tbh

I’m certainly a fan of the 3 Lord of the Rings films, and the Hobbit films for that matter too, they seem to get slated but I thought they we fantastic

so it was quite nice to delve back into this world once again

Visuals are excellent as someone mentioned, I think if your casual fan like myself, you’ll probably enjoy it, if your a book fan then of course there will be elements I’d imagine you’d have quite liked to be put in….that aren’t in, or scenes of importance done with more care, but if your not aware of these moments from the books like myself, you won’t care

Looking forward too the season 2
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I probably wouldn't limit the critics to people who have read and love the books. The storytelling itself is questionable, no matter on what kind of source material it is based.

But I guess if you are more the "visual type" and happy to be overwhelmed by how it looks, you really can enjoy it.
 
Finished it off now. It's fine, but just feels mostly like a massive missed opportunity given the IP and the budget.

Some of the dialogue, especially with the elves and Numenoreans was getting somewhere in the ballpark of latter seasons of Walking Dead bad. The constant overly-grandiose speeches and apparent need to have everything sound so fecking pseudo-philosophical grated on me very quickly. Some characters, especially Celebrimbor, just don't have an ounce of the gravitas I thought they probably should, either.

The Dwarf stuff was all pretty great, and easily the strong point of the show any time they were on screen. Possibly on account of it being a lot easier for them to write characters that are speaking more plainly with high falutin' Elrond to contrast with that, rather than just having groups of wankers all talk like wankers to each other as with most of the elf/Numenor scenes.

The gypsy hobbit lads can basically all feck off. "Nobody walks alone" but we will send the crippled fella to the back of the wagon train to be eaten by something. Detestable little fecking things. 90% of anything involving them was a waste of time and I hope apart from Nori they just disappear and are never seen again in later seasons.

I've only seen the first episode of House of the Dragon, and that already seems a lot more compelling than the whole season of this.
 
TheLiverBird said:
I think if your casual fan like myself, you’ll probably enjoy it, if your a book fan then of course there will be elements I’d imagine you’d have quite liked to be put in….that aren’t in, or scenes of importance done with more care, but if your not aware of these moments from the books like myself, you won’t care
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That's my biggest issue with this. If you aren't going to make it for the fans then why bother making it at all?
 
Bilbo said:
That's my biggest issue with this. If you aren't going to make it for the fans then why bother making it at all?
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It is a truth universally acknowledged that a sci-fi/fantasy fan in want of an adaptation can never be satisfied.
 
There are no books to base this on. Nerds being oversensitive about a bad adaptation isn't an explanation for it getting bad reviews. It being badly acted, scripted and the storyline being dumb is a much more obvious reason for the poor reception.
 
caid said:
Nerds being oversensitive about a bad adaptation isn't an explanation for it getting bad reviews. It being badly acted, scripted and the storyline being dumb is a much more obvious reason for the poor reception.
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Yeah to be honest it doesn't take a Tolkien historian to spot the issues that people have highlighted here.

I think the "Walking Dead" comparison is a good one , sure it's based on a comic but the fact that it diverged from the source material isnt why so many people think it's shit.

I actually think the LotR movie fans (not necessarily the same as the Tolkien nerds) are softer on it than they should be because they want it to be good and want to see more of middle earth regardless of the other stuff.
 
jackal&hyde said:
I am yet to watch it but the more I read and hear about the less excited I am. I will give it a fair go though as I know people can be overly negative at times.
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Not going to spoil anything by telling you it is a bit dull and has more packaging than ingredients.
 
arthurka said:
Not going to spoil anything by telling you it is a bit dull and has more packaging than ingredients.
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I already think that the LOTR is a story perfectly told and put to cinema that I don't understand why making a show about it even makes sense. Especially since it was told by a World Class writer and a show, no matter what it is, can not compete with that; I've seen that with the Game of Thrones debacle of the last season already.

That said, there are exeptions at times where shows can be fantastinc without source material, like Sopranos, Breaking Bad, etc, so the possibility is there. It just seems to me that making a show that carries the weight of some of the best ever fiction/fantasy writers ever is condemning itself to fail.

There are hundreds of incredible novels having thousands of characters and story lines from the 40k Universe. Just do that FFS. There is enough stuff there to make 20 films and 47 series. All on the back of proper writers. But no.
 
caid said:
There are no books to base this on. Nerds being oversensitive about a bad adaptation isn't an explanation for it getting bad reviews. It being badly acted, scripted and the storyline being dumb is a much more obvious reason for the poor reception.
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Exactly. It was written like a bad soap.
 
RacingClub said:
I thought it was shit alright but maybe it's not a bad if you binge it rather than spending 10 weeks enduring it.
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Watched the first 3 episodes then lost interest. I heard it picks up near the end so might catch up but not really invested in any of the characters or the story so will probably only do it on nights like tonight when I have a very early start to my schedule
 
TheLiverBird said:
I quite enjoyed it tbh

I’m certainly a fan of the 3 Lord of the Rings films, and the Hobbit films for that matter too, they seem to get slated but I thought they we fantastic

so it was quite nice to delve back into this world once again

Visuals are excellent as someone mentioned, I think if your casual fan like myself, you’ll probably enjoy it, if your a book fan then of course there will be elements I’d imagine you’d have quite liked to be put in….that aren’t in, or scenes of importance done with more care, but if your not aware of these moments from the books like myself, you won’t care

Looking forward too the season 2
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I'm like you loved the original movies and even liked the Hobbit, never read the books. But I thought this was crap, not because it wasn't faithful to the source material because I'm not familiar enough with that to know if it was or wasn't. It was crap because the story, dialogue and a lot of he acting was just awful. It looks amazing but it feels like this show was rushed and needed another 12-18 months for the story. The main character seems nothing like Galadriel from the movies, which would be ok if this character was in any way relatable or interesting but she's just meh, most of the rest follow that trend.

I've no idea how much material they're working from but in hindsight a sequel series about old Aragon, Gimli etc. probably would have been more interesting.
 
Rooney in Paris said:
Yet the other bad (worse) soap show, but featuring dragons, that was aired more or less at the same time, was positively received. Quite strange.
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Very strange indeed. Almost like it's not worse at all.
 
Rooney in Paris said:
Yet the other bad (worse) soap show, but featuring dragons, that was aired more or less at the same time, was positively received. Quite strange.
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I'm not biased to either universe, I enjoy them both. One was quite clearly better than the other though.
 
Spoony said:
Must have been the dragons.
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I guess. And the weirdly useless but graphic hard birth scenes?
V.O. said:
Very strange indeed. Almost like it's not worse at all.
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I mean, worse or better is very subjective, but it was pretty piss poor in terms of the writing and the overall acting, Considine apart, was terrible. I can also enjoy both for the entertainment value of them (though also arguable for the amount of filler), but I find it very strange how both shows have been received.
 
Rooney in Paris said:
I mean, worse or better is very subjective, but it was pretty piss poor in terms of the writing and the overall acting, Considine apart, was terrible. I can also enjoy both for the entertainment value of them (though also arguable for the amount of filler), but I find it very strange how both shows have been received.
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I find it very strange to rate this show on par with Hot D. It’s like placing Kenobi as the equal to Andor: there’s a stark increase in quality of the latter in each comparison respectively.

One insults the audience’s intelligence and the other respects it.
 
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