Rings Of Power (spoilers)

When Galadriel comes on the boat at the end is proper cheesy cringe. Have to say I won’t be watching anymore.

I think It’s great so far.

I think the stranger has to be Sauron, with him killing the fireflies by accident and the when the hobbits Half foots go into the forrest and comment that thrers no growth, it’s like death is following him.

Also the Weird white cultists that appear to be trying to track him down.

There’s a fair bit of fluff with the story and plot, and some poor acting, but overall i’m enjoying it for what it is, i think the next episode could be the start of the battles, so will start getting more interesting.

I still use the harfoot storyline as a time to make a coffee, honestly they seem pointless, bar the whole stranger thing, it’s just a waste of minutes in the episode when so much else is happening.

If it’s to improve though, the glaring thing for me, more than the issues with the script, is the level of acting across the piece, you can get away with a few wooden performances, but this show has quite a few, probably because there are so many young actors in it, who are all pretty new to acting as well, maybe if it’s getting a second season, bring in a few better actors to even out the poorer ones.

you can get away with a few wooden performances, but this show has quite a few,

Especially with the Harfoots, its like watching a high school play.

When Galadriel comes on the boat at the end is proper cheesy cringe. Have to say I won’t be watching anymore

not just me then

For me the casting and tone are well off.

If Bromwyn the outrageously, distractingly attractive healer dies, I’m out

I’m glad I stuck with it; lots of very cool action in this episode

not watched it yet. shush

Lots of good stuff, but also lots of stuff that suffered a bit from poor writing, plot or tempo, it can be forgiven as it did quite a lot in the space of one episode!

I do see it’s getting slaughtered online though, lots want to see this series fail, not sure why, guessing ‘wokeness’ or whatever, have to say i’ve seen a lot less issues around this than was being stated, it’s not exactly ramming politics or causes down our throats, it’s definitely not doing a disney either, and i struggle to see the standard folk complaining are holding this series, the films weren’t exactly hugely different in their setup and output.

If there is something you could be petty about, it’s the breakaway from Tolkiens history of events, but again, they’re not exactly being shy about breaking away from the Tolkien timelines and events, which i have to say i’m not that bothered about.

I enjoyed that one:

A no score draw this week in the Galadriel vs Halbrand “who can be the more damaged and brooding” stakes.

A big shout out to Arondir. A bit like Legolas only much more badass and a lot less annoying (someone will be along shortly to argue that one I’m sure, but in my opinion all the sterling work he did in the LOTR films was undone in the Hobbit)

Another candidate emerges in the “Guess who”s Saruman?” contest.

Oh and spoiler alert: Oooh doesn’t that mountain look a bit like Mount D…

‘If Bromwyn the outrageously, distractingly attractive healer dies, I’m out’

Do we really need this?

That was a good episode and yeah, that was Mt D. It’s finally starting to come together a bit.

I do see it’s getting slaughtered online though, lots want to see this series fail, not sure why, guessing ‘wokeness’

Not sure of its “woke” credentials as surely casting the Harfoots as simple minded Irish bogtrotters is the epitome of anti-woke or is that OK as long as one of them is Lenny Henry. Maybe woke doesn’t include Irish…or Scots as apparently all us Scots are Dwarfs and our women have sideburns. Actually I don’t have a big problem with that (except the sideburns) becuase like the Scots the dwarfs don’t give a sh!t who you are they’ll kick your @rse.

Hmmm… We’re losing the love for it here. Just quite weak and wandering. Adar is our favourite character 😂

My wife just sent me a link to this review. Pretty much sums it up for me. https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2022/09/30/the-rings-of-power-episode-6-review-not-even-a-battle-can-save-this-dumpster-fire/

I do see it’s getting slaughtered online though, lots want to see this series fail, not sure why, guessing ‘wokeness’ or whatever,

Apparently, it’s is historically and scientifically inaccurate that Hobbits were dark skinned.

If it was scientifically accurate wouldn’t all the elves be dark skinned as they come from the land of light.

If it was scientifically accurate someone in middle earth would have invented pot noodle by now…

…actually following on from that, as LOTR is set 4000 years later, surely all the humans should be walking around in jeans and trainers, the Elves would have invented the Internet, The Dwarves would have electric lighting and pneumatic drills, and the Orcs would have at least invented soap and deodorant or possibly a dating agency so they can find some girlfriends.

I might be over-thinking it all a bit.

Not sure of its “woke” credentials as surely casting the Harfoots as simple minded Irish bogtrotters is the epitome of anti-woke or is that OK as long as one of them is Lenny Henry. Maybe woke doesn’t include Irish…or Scots as apparently all us Scots are Dwarfs and our women have sideburns. Actually I don’t have a big problem with that (except the sideburns) becuase like the Scots the dwarfs don’t give a sh!t who you are they’ll kick your @rse

Yeah, it’s why it makes me laugh a bit, as someone said, the Elves are posh, Dwarves are angry scots, the Harfoots are irish travellers and the Orcs act and sound like they’re filming a Danny Dyer footy film 😂

As for this weeks episode, i thought it was fine, i get the feeling people are expecting this to be as good as Game of Thrones, but it’s a completely different setup and show, out of this and House of Dragons i prefer this, as it’s just easier to watch and enjoy, there’s actual intrigue in some of the stuff we don’t understand, like who/what is Halbrand, who is the stranger going to be, what reason are we even interested in Harfoots and so on.

I’m loving this series, so much better than the house of dragons tosh.

I’m loving this series, so much better than the house of dragons tosh.

Yep.

If it was scientifically accurate wouldn’t all the elves be dark skinned as they come from the land of light.

Eru Ilúvatar provided them with some pretty strong sunblock.

I though we’d have a waterfall free episode! The designers of the program seem to think that fantasy landscapes must have epic waterfalls, and lots of them 🤷‍♂️. But no they couldn’t resist it could they 😂😵‍💫

I thought the stranger was Gandalf?

The online slating is quite intriguing, I think the ‘woke’ aspect was picked up by some righty Americans and that led to an onslaught online. Then what I’ve noticed more, being a bit of a fantasy fan, is that the Tolkien(ites?) are in a tizz about accuracy and deviations from canon. I’m sure the expense and Bezos aspect also riles people too. Wooden dialogue is often cited, but I remember watching the original trilogy and loving it then rewatching after GoT and found it a bit cringy, I don’t think this is any worse.

Anyway I’m still enjoying it.

If it was scientifically accurate wouldn’t all the elves be dark skinned as they come from the land of light.

Im going to have to search for this now, as Im sure the Elves “awoke” under starlight in Middle Earth?

It’s not perfect, but I’m enjoying it (especially the subplot about ‘orcs having rights too’).
(I think some folk on the interweb take this stuff far too seriously.)

As above, there’s lots of issues with it, simple one this week was how many ships and their size that the Numenoreans had and how many horses they then seemed to have later on 😂

But it’s season 1 of what could be a massive series, it’ll grow, i’m not bothered about canon either, they’ve pretty much nailed their colours on this one, which is a good thing for me, makes it more open to surprises, which House of the Dragon suffers from. Have to say it is starting to break away so much i’m starting to doubt if the stranger might well be an earlier Gandalf, i still think he isn’t, it’s just too much of a jump away, but Galadriel is completely different, Elrond as well, and we’re seeing events happening in weeks that happened in decades or hundreds of years in the canon!

If they followed canon nothing would happens as all the important events are way too spread out. I still hope the stranger is one of the two blue wizards and the constellation is showing him where the other landed. I reckon Halbrand will become the Witch King at some point.

I’m sure I read somewhere that five series have been planned, but not sure if that means 5 series each dealing with a specific part of the Second Age or just one long story arc spread over all five. The pacing of this series would suggest the latter.

I think the end point of the series could be the ending of the second age, so the battle, then some aftermath and so on.

If that’s the case, then there can’t really be any time jumps, we have the main protagonists in the cast already, we are awaiting the antagonist though, and of course some seriously big events, if they are to be kept, reality is there is a ton of stuff they’d need to do in such a short time, i’m not sure they’ll manage it all, i can’t even fathom how they can do the big events and the slow burner things in another 4 seasons!

This does not bode well.

Uh… yikes. From Insider: pic.twitter.com/tGTKCTb1lX

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) October 1, 2022

I must admit I haven’t quite made it through the first episode yet myself! Love to know what Amazon were smoking when they decided to drop so much money on this 😂 It’s like they have no idea a) what makes a great TV show or b) why the LOTR films were so successful. This has absolutely no mainstream appeal whatsoever, the target audience is literally just nerds!

This has absolutely no mainstream appeal whatsoever, the target audience is literally just nerds!

No mainstream appeal whatsoever? 😉
https://www.benzinga.com/general/entertainment/22/09/29098574/game-of-thrones-vs-lord-of-rings-heres-who-nielsen-said-came-out-on-top

Amazon says the first two episodes of “The Rings of Power” were watched by 25 million people worldwide in their fist day of availability. That set an Amazon Prime Video record.

The first two episodes of “The Rings of Power” had 1.25 billion minutes of streaming for the week of Aug. 29 through Sept. 4, ranking the show from Amazon.com Inc. as the most streamed program for the week.

“House of the Dragon” ranked fifth on the Nielsen list with 781 million minutes viewed for the week. The show comes from Warner Bros.
. The original “Game of Thrones” show also ranked fourth on the list with 812 million minutes of viewership for the week.

or Scots as apparently all us Scots are Dwarfs and our women have sideburns.

Sounds like they modeled them on Dundee folk.

The audience figures for RoP sound impressive, until you actually think about them. Amazon haven’t said how they arrived at their figure – it could well include people who only watched it for 2 minutes (Netflix had backlash for doing exactly that). They also, notably, don’t mention figures beyond the initial 2 episodes, so I suspect they’ve peaked, whereas HotD (not that that is amazing, either!) is snowballing and now pulling in over 30m per episode, according to variety.

1.25bn minutes sounds incredible too, although over 2 hours my bag-of-fag-paper maths makes that the equivalent of just over 10 million people actually sitting through the whole of both episodes. Doubt the Amazon accountants are particularly happy given they’ve apparently spent £400m on just season 1!

Sounds like they modeled them on Dundee folk.

Not really, the Dwarves tend to have jobs and there weren’t any grannies in their late 20s on the show, but they do seem to enjoy a nice peh 😂

Half way through Ep6, and I think it’s my last one. The director’s need to have endless 5 min sections of instantly forgettable non plot sub-Tolkien-esque derivative dialogue over “rousing” music is getting on my tits just too much. There’s just far far too much filler in between the story being driven forwards in a coherent way. I get that TV series aren’t films and they can spend time “world building” but this is just an excuse for flabbiness.

TL:DR. It’s too boring, and I don’t care about any of the characters

Well I like it and think it’s way more gripping than HotD.

The old switcharoo with the broken sword at the end of the last episode, the bastard!

I’m finding, much like 95% of everything I watch these days, that it seems to be written for, and acted in the style, of petulant teenagers and young adults.

Characters are either moronic, overly emotional for their circumstances or make inexplicable decisions that appear delusional.

Are we really expected to believe that Galadriel, who at the time of RoP is over 3000yo, really hasn’t yet mastered herself so that she has a temper tantrum at the queen of Numenor and gets imprisoned? There are loads of little moments like this from the first episode.

It erodes the gravitas and epic fantasy of the source material and its own credibility.

But, I suspect TV has always been like this and its my advancing years making me curmudgeonly.

At least its better than Shannara. That was a complete travesty for all the same reasons.