Here's my written review of Episode 4. Thanks for watching, reading, subscribing, commenting and being excellent to each other. www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2024/09/05/the-rings-of-power-season-2-episode-4-review-the-lord-of-the-easter-eggs/
Your latest article "The real reason...." is brilliant and sums it up perfectly. I'd add that The Tolkien estate should have licenced everything though so the story is consistent and Amazon should have insisted they can use all information written by JRR so they can create the best show possible. The show runners are absolute grifters though and wrote S1 EP1 themselves which should have told everyone how utterly useless they are.
The show runners indeed use the names, the places, maybe tiny pieces of lore. Missing is the depth, the philosophy, the glorious language. Missing is all that matters.
Any adaptation of the 2nd age will be made with nowhere near as much story as the Lotr. Jackson literally changed hundreds of things, arwen for glorfindel in 2024 would cause such an unbelievable travesty nerdroric would simply have a cardiac arrest. Keep seeing the same criticisms from 'fans' about the lore and it's hilarious how little people know
@@TheLuketh1990 He actually didn't change hundreds of thing in LOTR but made a few tweaks but kept it thematically true for the most part. Now let's move to The Hobbit which fans had tons of problems with and it pretty much a failure and a reason Jackson wasn't used on this tv show.
@@TheLuketh1990 Well, while Jackson made a ton of changes, you show me where he had Sauron and Galadriel romance and then Sauron turns into a pool of black goo and comes back as a floomp-monster and then Gandalf arrived in a meteor and Saruman set up in Rhun. Show me all that, and then we can agree that this show is really faithful to the spirit of the story 😁
When Arondir said the "there are nameless things in deep places" line, I wanted to shout at my screen at that point, "you're not IN a deep place! You're in a forest under the open sky! The deep places referred to the chasms under Moria, not some random pool of mud in Gondor where a plot convenient mud monster happens to live!"
The problem with the repurposed book/film lines is that they don't carry the impact they had in the actual story and they end up cheapening both. The "go back to the shadow" line to the Balrog is first of all spoken in one of the most epic 1on1 duels in the history of Middle-Earth. Galadriel's line is spoken in a minor tussle with a small rabble of Orcs that she eventually loses. Downgrade. It is spoken to a Balrog, an actual demon, by an angel of light, a demon coming from the depths of hell hunting the Fellowship who's trying to flee to the light and safety, outside of the mines of Moria. He's also recently woken up from his slumber and trying to affect things in the outside world. There's so much symbolism and meaning into that line. Galadriel says this to a bunch of Orcs telling them to go back to their land where it's more cloudy. Downgrade. Definition of cheapening
My wife, who did not read the books but loved the LoTR movies, watched 20 minutes of this before getting up and walking away. She simply said, "It's not rich. It's fake." She would happily watch a movie of a typical day in the Shire as long as it was "rich", but she has no tolerance for processed garbage like Rings of Power--the Twinkie of Tolkien.
The turned Tom Bombadil into Yoda. In fact they seem to think the Sil is like extended Star Wars universe that they can just drop something in and the fans will go “omg it’s a Barrow Wight” or “omg the ent wives”. Badly misunderstanding why people love Tolkien’s work.
That was an excellent turn of phrase: "rotten Easter eggs". Exactly. And "Go back to the shadow" was perhaps the stinkiest egg so far. How long will it be before some character on this pathetic show says, "One does not simply walk into Mordor." This show is getting so bad now that it's hard for me even to Curmudgeon-watch it. What a slog!
I get the feeling that when the show runners said "s2 will be closer to cannon". What they went was they would be taking things from the books and forcing it into this so called "show". Just so they can say "see that was in the books!".
I understand your point Erik. I find myself angry about the deception about Tolkien that the show runners are presenting to audiences that don’t know Tolkien.
I honestly think that this show does not go two minutes without ripping off Dialog, scenes, whatever from the movies or books. The books I can kinda forgive, as long as they're appropriate. The movies I cannot, that's just theft and laziness. The list is almost endless, and I honestly can't be bothered to rewatch to compile one but,... The opening scene of E1 (Galadriel-Elrond horse chase) was a rip off of the Nazgul chasing Arwem (a bratty sibling spat version) E1 Elrond's company traipsing ON FOOT along NZ mountain ridges,.. a direct lift of the 360 aerial heli shots of TT's Rohan foot-chase to save Merry and Pippin. ... E4 mud-monster,.. a rip of of Jacksons Watcher in the Water (including Gandalfs "Fouler thngs in the deep places" quote.
Also an interesting detail to point out: according to the map that Rings of Power shows on screen, that destroyed bridge was the Brandywine Bridge in the Shire, and that huge canyon thousands of feet deep was the Brandywine River flowing through the Shire. They even got the landscape of the Shire completely wrong.
i'd love the chance to have a nice long sitdown conversation with these writers. Because for the life of my i do not understand what they think they're doing with this show Oh look, Tom Bombadil! we had to break literally all the lore to get him into the show and he does literally NOTHING to affect the plot in any way, just spouts some cryptic nonsense in a weird accent... but Tom Bombadil! All you Tolkien fans that hate our guts already are gonna love seeing us bastardize the source material to the extreme and the non Tolkien fans are just going to be confused as all hell.... but Tom Bombadil! like, how did their brains get from point A to point B? i cannot grasp this.
When "Grand-elf" (🙄) walked up to the tree, i had again this weird feeling and haunting thought:" oh no, they wont dare to do this", and then they did it. The writers have no shame at all and this episode really was the peak of the problems this series have. I dont understand what they were thinking. Not at all. I am so done
You're a brave man, Erik. Your reviews are more entertaining than the show itself and I always look forward to what you have to say. With that being said, how much psychic damage did you take when they called Not-Gandalf a "Grand Elf"?
@@ErikKain Can you help me out with who the Stranger might be? All I've got so far is that he's an Istar who needs a gand and he's a grand-elf. I can't figure out the deep mystery here of who this character is, those showrunners are way too smart for me! As to him not being the first wizard who ate honey by Tom's fire, well Tom I know you've been living alone for a long time but we don't need to know the fine details of your romantic life, okay? (I had to rewatch the Bathtub Scene to make sure I wasn't hallucinating the lyrics but no, Tom *is* singing a line about "groping" while we get a shot of naked from the waist up wet wizard in the bath. Ooookay....)
They're called 'member berries'. Little parts of the original work dropped in because they believe it lifts the show up from mediocrity. It's basically a huge insult. They're saying, you objected to the lore being left in the first season, but see? We fixed it, remember Tim Bombadil, the Barrow Wights, the Hobbits, remember Brego the horse rescuing Aragorn? Well we have Isildur's horse doing the same thing. Little snippets meant to keep the people who love Tolkien's lore and legendarium happy. 'remember berries' !!
First thing that shocked me immediately was why are the elves not riding horses, and instead walking hundreds of miles? Recall that Galadriel chased Elrond from Eregion to Linden on horses and messengers also rode horses. Just ridiculous. Any ideas?
@@triciacarr5019 Seeing as how the horses seem to be the only intelligent creatures in this entire show, they probably refused to go along into Certain Death. Though maybe if Gil-galad had sent the horses alone, they would have done better, given that Berek can apparently impale an Orc on a tree with one kick!
I think that by now most Tolkien fans know that T8m Bombadil was a so-called Dutch doll which belonged to Tolkien's children, and Tom was part of Tolkien's good-night stories his kids. That's why Tom was always there and older than everything else in Tolkien's universe, and that's also the reason why he often talks in kiddie language 😊 But there's something else. Tom helped the hobbits twice and took them home like a good dad, and Goldberry gave them food like a good mother! However, when the hobbits leave for the second time, they needed to grow up. They couldn't turn around anymore. And Tolkien's style which so far had not been so different from the style in which he had written "The Hobbit", became darker and more serious. Tom Bombadil is in many ways like Beorn from "The Hobbit", who also sheltered Gandalf, Bilbo and the dwarves, before they went into Mirkwood. Beorn and Tom Bombadil are much loved Tolkien characters. But it does make sense not to include them in a movie adaptation because their,characters are not important for the overall plot. I actually think that Peter Jackson should not have included Beorn in the theatrical cut at all - or he should have included the complete Beorn-footage! I found the very short Beorn-interlude of the theatrical disruptive and irritating. As to the decision of the show-runners to use Tom Bombadil's character in their abysmally bad tv-show - l don't think that Tolkien fans will appreciate this 😉
nice to have a pro on the media who isn't a sell out! The show is truly just shoddy. Reminds me of the old mid-budget Sky One sci-fi shows back in the 00s
At this point, I'm really questioning how did that these people especially the show runner get a job in Hollywood and especially got picked by Amazon Prime studio to make and run this show? What qualifications did they have to be given this monumental task of destroying Tolkien's magnum opus? I would doubt that they are even qualified to produce a dance recital for kindergarten kids!!!! HOW??? 😡🤦♂️
You might find that these people, like McKay and Payne were cheap to hire simply because they have no firm successful track record for writing or show running. If you just look at Amazon as a company, you can see that Jeff Besos has not made his money by being classy. He throws money at things and expects them to work. That's what he's done with this show. He think more money makes everything better.
@@annienglish4378 It seems to me the money was spent on those tolkien rights mostly. Amazon went cheap on everything else: showrunners, actors and costums as well as music...
It seems they got the gig because of J.J. Abrams, how I don't know. They never had any movie script that they worked on made, they only have partial writing credits on one of the reboot Trek movies, and they've never done any TV shows (and boy does it show). Either they were really cheap, or Abrams has some *amazing* kompromat on somebody in the Amazon studios!
Great video. A good way Rings of Power could have explored diversity was to bring in the Nandor elves, who split off from the Teleri and journeyed south. You could make them darker-skinned and then it would make sense.
You’ve outdone yourself with the intro/outro 🎶 song 🎶. R-r-r-rock on! 5 most annoying parts of E4: 1. What’s up with everyone being filthy? It’s disgusting. 2. What’s up with the continuing spouse erasure? First Celeborn, now Goldberry. 3. I always thought Tom Bombadil was a Green Man (archetype), specific to Britain. Why is he in the desert? 4. The way Galadriel pronounces words makes everything she says sound bizarre and dishonest. 5. The costumes are also awful. Especially for the Elves. Everything is dingy, ugly. Nothing looks like clothing you wear.
I fully agree! I don't understand why so many professional critics think that the show is actually rather good, and tbat it looks pretty! IMO it doesn't even look good. Everything looks cheap and too shiny, and the use of green screen is far too obvious! Nothing looks real. Ok, most orcs look very good - or they used to look good before they decided to give us a cozy nice orc family with mom, dad and baby orc - and this little family unit doesn't even look orcish anymore! I am all for the idea that orcs have a right to live just like any other creature in Middle Earth - but please let them be the bad guys!
10:00 This is where the racial subject gets very touchy, because fans of the show are quick to call people who question the diversity as racists, when that's not what people are upset at. We don't care that there are black elves or Asian hobbits or brown skinned men. What we care about is that none of it makes sense. When you cram so much ethnic diversity into one group like that, especially when the lore says that the group doesn't like outsiders, it will automatically make you question the ancestry of that person (not out of spite but out of genuine curiosity). A fantastic example of this is Netflix's Marco Polo. It's packed full of ethnic diversity, but it specifically addresses it. We learn how Hundred Eyes was captured, how Ahmad came to the Khan's service, and of course how Marco Polo travelled with the merchants from Italy to Mongolia. It's a collection of many different ethnicities that are all a part of a single society, but also addresses the audience's curiosity about their obviously different ancestry. It's not only a way to explain how it all comes together, but also gives the audience an opportunity to get to know and relate to the character. If you refuse to address it, and try to ram it down the audience's throat that "there's nothing weird here! This is all totally normal! You're the one who's crazy (and possibly racist)" then you're going to lose the trust of your audience as a storyteller, and people will inevitably lose interest.
it also raises a weird logical problem. If all the races of this world mix this freely, why do races even exist? if there were no cultural or geographical differences that keeps these different people separate, they'd rapidly lose any noticeable distinctions in culture or appearance as it all got homogenized within a few generations. The problem with having every backwater village as diverse as modern LA is that the audience now cannot believe this village is an isolated backwater, which completely undermines much of the plot because how are we supposed to believe the Elves are completely ignorant of orc activity in 'the southlands' when apparently you have the massive continuous migration to and from the area needed to keep the population that diverse? information comes and goes along with the people. Diversity in and of itself is not a bad thing, IF your story can support it. If it's done carelessly is not only can but WILL undermine the story you're trying to tell.
Then there's the question of the black elves. "Perhaps there were elves that evolved like that", some apologists have claimed. Well, either they developed dark skin in three generations or less, or they are just very deeply tanned... By trying to connect to the "world as it is", they remove the fantastical, the thing that makes this "once upon a time" to something reflecting the modern world as we know it, and thus not Middle Earth anymore.
@@bjornh4664no such thing as black Elves. The first Elves are called the Firstborn because they awoke at Lake Cuivinen and beheld the starry skies above before the creation of Anor and Isil.😊
The fact that the Harfoots descend from the Stoor but somehow still have this enormous degree of racial differences between its members, indicates the Harfoots must be enforcing some pretty strict laws against marrying outside of your race, to prevent the mixing you would expect to naturally occur.
It's disequilibrating when an adaptation does not follow the established lore. We love LOTR and Star Wars because we know and love these worlds and characters. We have a history with them that makes us feel good. Makes us feel comfortable. When an adaptation takes the lore and goes in a different direction, it requires significant skill of a great storyteller to, 1st, knock the audience off balance then, 2nd, provide an entertaining, enjoyable, and/or thought provoking payoff. The people who have been put in charge of Star Wars, LOTR, and recent Marvel projects have not demonstrated the requisite skill in storytelling to pull this off. They should stick to giving the audience what we want. The worlds and characters we love behaving the way we expect them to.
Tom Bombadil is where I draw the line. Everything in the lore is explained - between the books, the marginalia, the notes, the unfinished stories etc. - and carries both historical and metaphysical meaning. Tom is a deliberate enigma. Like you said Mr. Kain, there are plenty of theories about who he is (my favourite being that he's Aulë, the smith) but Tolkien never really explained it fully, opting instead to leave a trail of breadcrumbs for us to follow. And here's the thing: in order to put something/someone in your show, you need to have a deeper understanding of what it is you're presenting. Not just superficial resemblance to the character and scenes from the books. Which clearly the show runners don't. In the words of Admiral Kirsten Clancy: "sheer f-ing hubris".
Hey man - very nice review for episode 4. I agree about the elves there's no chemistry amongst the actors and the dialogue seems so contrived. When they shoehorned 4 lines from Lord of the Rings I completely lost the immersion and threw my hands up in the air. Not sure why I'm watching this show at this point thinking maybe the next episode will be better. It's just season 1 with more CGI and effects. I have never read Tolkien but the show by itself is just bad. Nothing makes sense... a tree ent that swipes a human woman back 20 feet and the woman regains consciousness pretty much unscathed. What even is this show?
Mike of RedLetterMedia made that point about current slop eventually diminishing classics while watching season 2 of Picard. As much as it may seem silly (like you say, the originals are still there, unaltered), over time, I have sort of come to see the sense in it. I think there’s a limit to compartmentalization, and the more the ratio of quality material skews negatively, it becomes difficult to not let it effect you eventually. Maybe it starts as a joke when you are watching the end of Return of the Jedi, remarking how the Emperor actually survived that fall into the core… or he didn’t, and he was cloned? With broken fingers? As that whiny loser Anakin dies from saving his son… who later tried to murder his grandson while he was sleeping… before long, your head is spinning (that’s a good trick!) The only way to completely avoid this is to probably not watch any of this trash, unless it’s thoroughly vetted. Erik , thank you for ruining (or at least complicating) your fondest entertainment memories, so we don’t have to! It’s a strange job that nobody really has to do, but I appreciate it ;)
Hi Erik! seeing you be so honest about it is incredibly refreshing I just wanted to express that the journalistic integrity in your reviews are great! I think they're a testament to the faults of our current access media and their inability to grasp what the people say pr expect...Thanks! :D
Albeit somewhat off - topic Erik, I wondered what your reaction was to the news that The Winter King has been axed after only one season? As someone who's personally been gagging for a half - decent onscreen depiction of Arthurian mythology (it's been a loooong time since Excalibur) I sensed that this adaptation had disappeared up its own agenda even before it hit screens in the UK, and your review of the trailer and the series itself pretty much confirmed my worst fears. What with this announcement and the underwhelming response to the last season of Doctor Who, it's not been a very good year for Bad Wolf Productions, has it?
I hate to say it but I'm thrilled that monstrosity was cancelled. It should have been at least a three season masterpiece, but they thought they knew better than Bernard Cornwall.
I agree with you. The story and history matter. The mythology and origins of nations and ancestry were a bigger passion to Tolkien than almost any other author. And those stories matter-it’s precisely what gives the ancient verisimilitude to his stories that other authors lack.
First if all - great music choice in the intro Now what's the problem with RoP is that the writers said "back to the books etc" which isn't true, it seems they just read the appendices and made a story up with names, events EVERYTHING they could get their hands on and then slapped on quotes from the movies. Then it looks they turned EVERYTHING upside down for the sake of being "fresh", elves have short hair, society isn't Northern mythology but a ridiculous mixup of cultures of the modern world, Tom Bombadil lives in a desert, wears one colored clothes and is just boring etc etc. Then production value should be HIGH but groups, crowds of people are like 10-15 people, orc armies are a handful of unequipped dudes, everything looks CHEAP as a 90s VHS fantasy ripoff of LOTR. It's just insane how any critic can even consider liking this rubbish.
They're not just lifting lines of dialogue from the trilogy. Probably-Saruman's "very foolish or very brave" line was also there. That’s almost a meme in the several variations it's appeared in over the years.
What has happened is an intern has cut up a copy of the LOTR appendices and thrown all the words into a cement mixer - the resulting word vomit became the plot. Join the campaign to get Glorfindel added for Season 3 - He may as well be thrown into the mixer.
The Bombadil storyline is infuriating. They literally call the tree "Old Man Ironwood" (another memberberry!) The Barrow-wights? Agh! The most pointless part, though, is the Isildur story because there is no tension. There can't be, we *know* his story and he has to live. So - bog monster? ambush by Wildmen? rampaging bands of Orcs? baby Shelob? back-stabbing love interest? Nah, he's gonna be fine, don't worry. What is the point of having him wandering around Pelargir? The one thing I liked this episode was the very last line by Adar, because that is genuine pure Quenya speech from canonical Tolkien. Yay!
This is an utter disaster and I’m so sorry it’s happened to you. (Sarcasm) It’s always been an imaginary story about orcs and magic. Cool your jets, enjoy the time, effort and funds that have been afforded to present a visual representation of a story you allegedly enjoy. “The Bombadil storyline is infuriating”… I couldn’t possibly imagine being so bereft of actual things to spend my time and energy on but such is the state of 2024 internet discourse.
@@sureimshore Well gee, that's me put in my rightful place, isn't it! Thing is, when I watch a show that is supposed to be based on Tolkien's work, I want a show that's based on Tolkien's work. Crazy and unreasonable of me, I know! But imagine if you went to a restaurant and ordered the salmon. Then you were served the vegan nut roast. You are the waiter telling me "Cool your jets, enjoy the meal, it's all food isn't it?" No, I'm going to be "so bereft of actual things" that I will ask for the dish I ordered, or else a refund.
It's like when a bad band plays a classic rock song. Some people who never heard the original song think it's good. The sucky band acts like they are really "rocking" . But real classic rock fans know what's missing! They don't have the talent or respect for the original artist.
i watched this episode and kept saying "what?"over and over. knowing what was coming i had my hat with a blue feather ready to be wipped out with a " " hey doll merry doll ring a dong dillo". ..all that came out was " WHAT?"
You do a good Gal impression. I'm not disposed to pick quite as many nits as critics pick. So long as they're not too egregiously in your face (as all too many of RoP's are). Many nits can be passed over by the viewer if a more fundamental condition is met: Make me forget I'm watching a TV show. Draw me into the story, involve me with the characters. This RoP does not do, except for brief moments here and there. It's a failure at that most basic level.
This show is written by high school kids in one afternoon after they watched some clips from the movies and thought, "Cool! Gandalf kicks ass! Galadriel is hot! Mordor rulllleeeezzzz!!!1!!"
I seriously think that when they said "we're gonna stick closer to the lore", they just meant putting in more lines and scenes they lifted from LOTR, and including more characters with names from LOTR. These people might genuinely believe that merely putting IN Tom Bombadil and Barrow Wights makes the show "closer to the lore", regardless of how accurate or consistent it is with the actual lore. Or making Galadriel say "Go back to the shadow!" These are the kind of people that could unironically reason "but those lines are in the book, so that means it's in the lore, right?"
The thing I really don’t get is the amount of people liking this piece of crap. I’ve had more than one acquaintance tell me they really like the show, even after showing to them how it all sucks, how the writing and acting fail at every point, and even for a TV show it is just overall bad. It’s like talking to walls.
Well, considering the Istari only arrive in Middle Earth in the THIRD age, they also istari a lot around. Hobbits all over the wrong places. People that lived hundreds of years apart, all in one ugly stew of fandom BS. I totally agree that the only true fans of Rings of Power are only waiting for one thing: For Galadriel and Sauron to finally get it done! Low and dirty.
Can we maybe enjoy an incredibly expensive, fun, detailed piece of art without nerding out about minor perceived slights or grievances? I couldn’t possibly care less if they got every word of the Simarillon nailed to the letter. We’re seeing the backstory of Lady Galadriel, Lord Elrond, King Isildur, and FINALLY Tom freaking Bombadill and the fan base needs to hem and haw that it’s not PERFECT and their minor character from a town I can barely pronounce isn’t prominently featured the way THEY alone decide is appropriate?!?! Unbelievable. Great episode in an amazing show and can’t wait for the next one. Bury your heads in the books and stop watching if it’s so upsetting for you.
Geez, I don't envy you having to watch and review these things. That takes more constitution than I possess. I have to admit, I kind of dig the AI song you made. LOL
This must have been the CHEAPEST episode of the most expensive show in the world. These callbacks and all the fanservice and memberberries were so cheap and populated the show so densely that I asked myself "wtf am I doing here" for the first time in my living room
They used the line "according to the lore" in a dialog this episode... which sounded very awkward (more like fans talking to each other than actual characters of middle earth) especially in a show where nothing is according to the lore. Somehow that did stick out to me...
Another point to your comment on it effecting the original work is that, for me at least! Seeing something brought to life that i have only ever imagined can change my imagined image! It just infiltrates! If you get what i mean.
Every problem, danger or disagreement in this show is what is technically called an ass-pull. It comes out of nowhere without any establishing work done until that exact moment. A mile deep chasm with a destroyed bridge, yep that’s the situation, what do we do now? Isildur and Arondir get sucked down into a bog, and then: giant worm monster! Elf Team 6 runs into a whole gang of floating liches with magic chain tentacles, and they’re invulnerable, oh no! And it’s like that with everything. And then almost everything gets resolved instantly, with no consequences. Or: the show returns after another scene to reveal that whatever was resolved off screen and everything is fine now. Hobbits who went off flying in a magical sandstorm twister are just waking up next to each other with some dusty clothes. Isildur whom we last saw trapped under debris in a collapsing burning house, just wakes up randomly captured by spiders, but completely un-bitten. People who had a completely irrevocable falling out, are suddenly just fine with each other again. That’s a large part of the reason it’s so hard to get invested in anything. The other reason, of course, is that we don’t care about anybody - they’re all so unlikeable. It’s fascinating. Some of the dialogue was even worse in season 1 though. Cheers
I saw one critic review on Rotten Tomatoes who said it feels like a story that its writers create backwards. Instead of having a story that unfolds from the perspective of the character's motivations and their knowledge and world views going forward to an unknown outcome (from the perspective of the characters), the writers know the audience knows this story eventually has to arrive at the events of the LOTR movies from 20 years ago, when Frodo throws the ring into Mt. Doom. How they get to that destination it doesn't matter. As long as rings are made and a villain named Sauron is opposed by elves, dwarves and men. The rest can be completely re-invented and filled in as poorly as they want. It's almost like they're trying to break the 4th wall with all the cherry picked easter eggs. It's garbage.
"this nameless thing is in a mudpuddle". ok, got to defend the show there. so was the monster outside the Dwarven "speak friend" door. also, Mordor just had that cataclysmic eruption. it having been unearthed or awoken is completely reasonable.
It’s actually pretty incredible that we have such slim pickings on shows to watch at this time that I can’t help but see the train wreck that this show each week. Granted it’s only been two weeks so far and I still might not make it to the end. One of the craziest things about this show is it does not properly convey a sense of time or place whatsoever. There is random shit happening all over the map. Does anyone remember where the Harfoots were supposed to be in season 1? Because when they rolled up on Rhun all I could think was how in the fuck are they that far out. Ugh.
Plus in this episode Scamdalf mentions the name Sauron to Bombadil.... has the Stranger even heard of him at this point other than the witches maybe saying his name once in front of him with zero context? Why would Scamdalf know who Sauron is and fear him at all?
The cheapest form of storytelling in a prequel is just "and here's how this thing you already know about came to be." That seems to be where they're going with this hobbits story- It's going to end with them founding The Shire. Big whoop. It has to be compelling on its own terms, and it isn't.
I told you the pale witch would be back. I still think it would be better if she had gone on an actual journey rather than just appearing back in Rhun, because no one besides the harfoots actually goes on journeys in this high fantasy adventure story.
When Bombadil has negative charisma... Reusing the PJ lotr lines is sooo desperate. You know one of the writers pitched this to the team with the Leo/Once upon a Time in Hollywood meme, thinking people would get a kick out of it. In reality all it does is stink of desperation and causes excessive eyerolling.
There is no meaning when the writers want their characters to face a challenge they will. Otherwise characters will nearly teleport to wherever they need to be at the most convenient time.
I watched 3 and 4 back to back.4. I hated the Numanor plot, but wasn't as angry as I had been during episode 1. But I think you got ents, tom bombadil, shelob, the barrow downs. It's like it was produced by Tourism Middle Earth to get all the highlights in.
RoP is to TLotR what the DC Universe is to the Marvel Universe of olden days - here's what Amazon could have done instead: Instead of chopping up the story into half a dozen of parallel lines, some of which are incredibly boring and uneventful, and switching between them every 10 minutes, RoP needs its own seasons of "Iron Man", "Captain America", "Hulk" etc. before going for one or two "Avengers" seasons. The Khazad Dum story is interesting - that should've been one season. The Numenor story could be interesting - another, separate season. The Elves, of course, also have their own season. That's 3 seasons of single, interesting and uninterrupted stories. Like Marvel, tie these seasons together - instead of Thanos, use Sauron, increasing in power, forcing Elves, Dwarves and Numenorians to act together. Season 4 could then be the "Infinity War" and the final season(s) "Endgame". Hell, throw in the "Stranger/Harfoot" story as the "Captain Marvel" of RoP, timing its release perfectly with the next writer's strike or pandemic as an excuse, and you have 5-6 seasons of coherent, connected storytelling. The final episode of every season could be the introduction of the main characters of the following season. What we got is the DC version: Throw everything and everyone together, minimize interest in the characters and use cliffhangers and mystery boxes to force drama.
This show is obsessed with making references to Tolkien lore, but beyond the surface level, it doesn't care at all what that mean or why they matter to people. Feels like they fed LOTR into an AI and it spit this out.
I do not understand how certain people in the media that I normally find reasonable, actually say they like the show. If you decide that you don´t care about the show not really being Tolkien, then I guess that is fine. But the show itself is just not a good show, the characters are theatrical, all the various plots are incoherent and some of the settings and costumes are.... not great. I mean, this show is to me literally what people who don´t like fantasy think fantasy is - a lot of melodrama, bad wigs and weird accents.
Whan a show over references another show like this then you know they do not have confidence in their own creative process. I understand your concern about iterations like this somehow watering down source and original material for new fans. Understand it but I don't share it. Tolkien has been passed down generation to generation through the literature by word of mouth; father to son, mother to son, sister to brother (as in my case haha). It did pretty damn well by that method and will continue to do so. Jacksons trilogy can also be added to the Tolkien word of mouth list. It's that good. The Rings of Power will barely leave a mark all said and done.
What irks me the most is when some of the critics are already making this crap canon. One of them was talking about how Galadriel and Sauron actually met before and speaking as if it's part of the same story.
I wanna talk about ep. 3...i thought it strange that they waited to the third episode to re-introduce all those characters i completely forgot about. Also i have no idea where anyone is. They gave no establishing shot of numenor and when they do show the map or flash a place name on screen, to me, most of it looks the same. And the zooming certainly doesn't help at all. And i don't think there have been this many characters i've disliked in a show for awhile...oh right, that Invasion show on Apple
Here's my written review of Episode 4. Thanks for watching, reading, subscribing, commenting and being excellent to each other. www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2024/09/05/the-rings-of-power-season-2-episode-4-review-the-lord-of-the-easter-eggs/
Sheep
Your latest article "The real reason...." is brilliant and sums it up perfectly. I'd add that The Tolkien estate should have licenced everything though so the story is consistent and Amazon should have insisted they can use all information written by JRR so they can create the best show possible. The show runners are absolute grifters though and wrote S1 EP1 themselves which should have told everyone how utterly useless they are.
The show runners indeed use the names, the places, maybe tiny pieces of lore. Missing is the depth, the philosophy, the glorious language. Missing is all that matters.
Any adaptation of the 2nd age will be made with nowhere near as much story as the Lotr. Jackson literally changed hundreds of things, arwen for glorfindel in 2024 would cause such an unbelievable travesty nerdroric would simply have a cardiac arrest. Keep seeing the same criticisms from 'fans' about the lore and it's hilarious how little people know
@@TheLuketh1990everyone but you who doesn't clarify anything. Gotcha.....
Well said.
@@TheLuketh1990
He actually didn't change hundreds of thing in LOTR but made a few tweaks but kept it thematically true for the most part. Now let's move to The Hobbit which fans had tons of problems with and it pretty much a failure and a reason Jackson wasn't used on this tv show.
@@TheLuketh1990 Well, while Jackson made a ton of changes, you show me where he had Sauron and Galadriel romance and then Sauron turns into a pool of black goo and comes back as a floomp-monster and then Gandalf arrived in a meteor and Saruman set up in Rhun. Show me all that, and then we can agree that this show is really faithful to the spirit of the story 😁
When Arondir said the "there are nameless things in deep places" line, I wanted to shout at my screen at that point, "you're not IN a deep place! You're in a forest under the open sky! The deep places referred to the chasms under Moria, not some random pool of mud in Gondor where a plot convenient mud monster happens to live!"
The problem with the repurposed book/film lines is that they don't carry the impact they had in the actual story and they end up cheapening both.
The "go back to the shadow" line to the Balrog is first of all spoken in one of the most epic 1on1 duels in the history of Middle-Earth. Galadriel's line is spoken in a minor tussle with a small rabble of Orcs that she eventually loses. Downgrade.
It is spoken to a Balrog, an actual demon, by an angel of light, a demon coming from the depths of hell hunting the Fellowship who's trying to flee to the light and safety, outside of the mines of Moria. He's also recently woken up from his slumber and trying to affect things in the outside world. There's so much symbolism and meaning into that line. Galadriel says this to a bunch of Orcs telling them to go back to their land where it's more cloudy. Downgrade.
Definition of cheapening
If this series has taught us anything, it's that big budget is not a measure of quality.
Sometimes the opposite?
My wife, who did not read the books but loved the LoTR movies, watched 20 minutes of this before getting up and walking away. She simply said, "It's not rich. It's fake." She would happily watch a movie of a typical day in the Shire as long as it was "rich", but she has no tolerance for processed garbage like Rings of Power--the Twinkie of Tolkien.
wise lady :)
My husband is the same, but he just falls asleep immediately until I wake him up laughing. The world feels so empty!
The turned Tom Bombadil into Yoda. In fact they seem to think the Sil is like extended Star Wars universe that they can just drop something in and the fans will go “omg it’s a Barrow Wight” or “omg the ent wives”. Badly misunderstanding why people love Tolkien’s work.
I can't bear to watch the second season. Thanks for taking one for the team.
Besides it not being worth my time to watch this horrible show, I don't want to give them any more views than they deserve!😂
That was an excellent turn of phrase: "rotten Easter eggs". Exactly. And "Go back to the shadow" was perhaps the stinkiest egg so far. How long will it be before some character on this pathetic show says, "One does not simply walk into Mordor." This show is getting so bad now that it's hard for me even to Curmudgeon-watch it. What a slog!
I get the feeling that when the show runners said "s2 will be closer to cannon". What they went was they would be taking things from the books and forcing it into this so called "show". Just so they can say "see that was in the books!".
I understand your point Erik. I find myself angry about the deception about Tolkien that the show runners are presenting to audiences that don’t know Tolkien.
“The Rings of Power ruins everything it touches.”
So it’s honoring the spirit of Morgoth.
I honestly think that this show does not go two minutes without ripping off Dialog, scenes, whatever from the movies or books. The books I can kinda forgive, as long as they're appropriate. The movies I cannot, that's just theft and laziness. The list is almost endless, and I honestly can't be bothered to rewatch to compile one but,...
The opening scene of E1 (Galadriel-Elrond horse chase) was a rip off of the Nazgul chasing Arwem (a bratty sibling spat version)
E1 Elrond's company traipsing ON FOOT along NZ mountain ridges,.. a direct lift of the 360 aerial heli shots of TT's Rohan foot-chase to save Merry and Pippin. ...
E4 mud-monster,.. a rip of of Jacksons Watcher in the Water (including Gandalfs "Fouler thngs in the deep places" quote.
Did anyone else catch it when the stoor lady said Grand-elf which sounds like Gandalf 😂
Everyone...... Super subtle, yet they won't just say his name
Also an interesting detail to point out: according to the map that Rings of Power shows on screen, that destroyed bridge was the Brandywine Bridge in the Shire, and that huge canyon thousands of feet deep was the Brandywine River flowing through the Shire.
They even got the landscape of the Shire completely wrong.
i'd love the chance to have a nice long sitdown conversation with these writers. Because for the life of my i do not understand what they think they're doing with this show
Oh look, Tom Bombadil! we had to break literally all the lore to get him into the show and he does literally NOTHING to affect the plot in any way, just spouts some cryptic nonsense in a weird accent... but Tom Bombadil! All you Tolkien fans that hate our guts already are gonna love seeing us bastardize the source material to the extreme and the non Tolkien fans are just going to be confused as all hell.... but Tom Bombadil!
like, how did their brains get from point A to point B? i cannot grasp this.
The Rings of Oz: "I've a feeling we're not in Middle Earth anymore".
"GO BACK TO THE SHADOWS"? How specist. It's "Go back to your wife and baby orcling and live in peace!"
Thank you, thank you, thank you for being the voice of sanity in talking about this show. You are always exactly on point.
When "Grand-elf" (🙄) walked up to the tree, i had again this weird feeling and haunting thought:" oh no, they wont dare to do this", and then they did it.
The writers have no shame at all and this episode really was the peak of the problems this series have.
I dont understand what they were thinking. Not at all.
I am so done
yeah ..thought the same..old man willow following TB around ME...gaaad..
You're a brave man, Erik. Your reviews are more entertaining than the show itself and I always look forward to what you have to say. With that being said, how much psychic damage did you take when they called Not-Gandalf a "Grand Elf"?
@@MrDe4dGuy34 well my eyes nearly rolled out of my skull...
@@ErikKain Can you help me out with who the Stranger might be? All I've got so far is that he's an Istar who needs a gand and he's a grand-elf. I can't figure out the deep mystery here of who this character is, those showrunners are way too smart for me! As to him not being the first wizard who ate honey by Tom's fire, well Tom I know you've been living alone for a long time but we don't need to know the fine details of your romantic life, okay? (I had to rewatch the Bathtub Scene to make sure I wasn't hallucinating the lyrics but no, Tom *is* singing a line about "groping" while we get a shot of naked from the waist up wet wizard in the bath. Ooookay....)
They're called 'member berries'. Little parts of the original work dropped in because they believe it lifts the show up from mediocrity.
It's basically a huge insult. They're saying, you objected to the lore being left in the first season, but see? We fixed it, remember Tim Bombadil, the Barrow Wights, the Hobbits, remember Brego the horse rescuing Aragorn? Well we have Isildur's horse doing the same thing. Little snippets meant to keep the people who love Tolkien's lore and legendarium happy.
'remember berries' !!
The "nameless thing in the deep places of the world " being a worm in a mud paddle in 0m depth. I cringed so hard my face hurt
The only "fan service" Amazon can give would be to cancel this abomination.
Erik: The nameless mud-puddle thing
Every Tolkien fan ever: 🤦🏻
First thing that shocked me immediately was why are the elves not riding horses, and instead walking hundreds of miles? Recall that Galadriel chased Elrond from Eregion to Linden on horses and messengers also rode horses. Just ridiculous.
Any ideas?
The horse budget ran out.
@@triciacarr5019 Seeing as how the horses seem to be the only intelligent creatures in this entire show, they probably refused to go along into Certain Death. Though maybe if Gil-galad had sent the horses alone, they would have done better, given that Berek can apparently impale an Orc on a tree with one kick!
@@maryokeeffe3528 (thinking…) I’d watch a show based entirely on the Mearas. As someone pointed out: no stupid dialog!
I think that by now most Tolkien fans know that T8m Bombadil was a so-called Dutch doll which belonged to Tolkien's children, and Tom was part of Tolkien's good-night stories his kids. That's why Tom was always there and older than everything else in Tolkien's universe, and that's also the reason why he often talks in kiddie language 😊 But there's something else. Tom helped the hobbits twice and took them home like a good dad, and Goldberry gave them food like a good mother! However, when the hobbits leave for the second time, they needed to grow up. They couldn't turn around anymore. And Tolkien's style which so far had not been so different from the style in which he had written "The Hobbit", became darker and more serious. Tom Bombadil is in many ways like Beorn from "The Hobbit", who also sheltered Gandalf, Bilbo and the dwarves, before they went into Mirkwood. Beorn and Tom Bombadil are much loved Tolkien characters. But it does make sense not to include them in a movie adaptation because their,characters are not important for the overall plot. I actually think that Peter Jackson should not have included Beorn in the theatrical cut at all - or he should have included the complete Beorn-footage! I found the very short Beorn-interlude of the theatrical disruptive and irritating.
As to the decision of the show-runners to use Tom Bombadil's character in their abysmally bad tv-show - l don't think that Tolkien fans will appreciate this 😉
nice to have a pro on the media who isn't a sell out! The show is truly just shoddy. Reminds me of the old mid-budget Sky One sci-fi shows back in the 00s
At this point, I'm really questioning how did that these people especially the show runner get a job in Hollywood and especially got picked by Amazon Prime studio to make and run this show? What qualifications did they have to be given this monumental task of destroying Tolkien's magnum opus? I would doubt that they are even qualified to produce a dance recital for kindergarten kids!!!! HOW??? 😡🤦♂️
You might find that these people, like McKay and Payne were cheap to hire simply because they have no firm successful track record for writing or show running.
If you just look at Amazon as a company, you can see that Jeff Besos has not made his money by being classy. He throws money at things and expects them to work. That's what he's done with this show. He think more money makes everything better.
@@annienglish4378 It seems to me the money was spent on those tolkien rights mostly. Amazon went cheap on everything else: showrunners, actors and costums as well as music...
It seems they got the gig because of J.J. Abrams, how I don't know. They never had any movie script that they worked on made, they only have partial writing credits on one of the reboot Trek movies, and they've never done any TV shows (and boy does it show). Either they were really cheap, or Abrams has some *amazing* kompromat on somebody in the Amazon studios!
@@manuelgabriel7907 you could very well be right about that. I bet that the rights were a pretty penny..
In GoT no character was safe from dying but in Rings of Power no Tolkien character is a safe from being demolished by the writers.
Great video. A good way Rings of Power could have explored diversity was to bring in the Nandor elves, who split off from the Teleri and journeyed south. You could make them darker-skinned and then it would make sense.
yeah ...great idea..but ..but...
You’ve outdone yourself with the intro/outro 🎶 song 🎶. R-r-r-rock on!
5 most annoying parts of E4:
1. What’s up with everyone being filthy? It’s disgusting.
2. What’s up with the continuing spouse erasure? First Celeborn, now Goldberry.
3. I always thought Tom Bombadil was a Green Man (archetype), specific to Britain. Why is he in the desert?
4. The way Galadriel pronounces words makes everything she says sound bizarre and dishonest.
5. The costumes are also awful. Especially for the Elves. Everything is dingy, ugly. Nothing looks like clothing you wear.
I fully agree! I don't understand why so many professional critics think that the show is actually rather good, and tbat it looks pretty! IMO it doesn't even look good. Everything looks cheap and too shiny, and the use of green screen is far too obvious! Nothing looks real. Ok, most orcs look very good - or they used to look good before they decided to give us a cozy nice orc family with mom, dad and baby orc - and this little family unit doesn't even look orcish anymore! I am all for the idea that orcs have a right to live just like any other creature in Middle Earth - but please let them be the bad guys!
10:00 This is where the racial subject gets very touchy, because fans of the show are quick to call people who question the diversity as racists, when that's not what people are upset at. We don't care that there are black elves or Asian hobbits or brown skinned men. What we care about is that none of it makes sense. When you cram so much ethnic diversity into one group like that, especially when the lore says that the group doesn't like outsiders, it will automatically make you question the ancestry of that person (not out of spite but out of genuine curiosity).
A fantastic example of this is Netflix's Marco Polo. It's packed full of ethnic diversity, but it specifically addresses it. We learn how Hundred Eyes was captured, how Ahmad came to the Khan's service, and of course how Marco Polo travelled with the merchants from Italy to Mongolia. It's a collection of many different ethnicities that are all a part of a single society, but also addresses the audience's curiosity about their obviously different ancestry. It's not only a way to explain how it all comes together, but also gives the audience an opportunity to get to know and relate to the character.
If you refuse to address it, and try to ram it down the audience's throat that "there's nothing weird here! This is all totally normal! You're the one who's crazy (and possibly racist)" then you're going to lose the trust of your audience as a storyteller, and people will inevitably lose interest.
it also raises a weird logical problem. If all the races of this world mix this freely, why do races even exist? if there were no cultural or geographical differences that keeps these different people separate, they'd rapidly lose any noticeable distinctions in culture or appearance as it all got homogenized within a few generations.
The problem with having every backwater village as diverse as modern LA is that the audience now cannot believe this village is an isolated backwater, which completely undermines much of the plot because how are we supposed to believe the Elves are completely ignorant of orc activity in 'the southlands' when apparently you have the massive continuous migration to and from the area needed to keep the population that diverse? information comes and goes along with the people.
Diversity in and of itself is not a bad thing, IF your story can support it. If it's done carelessly is not only can but WILL undermine the story you're trying to tell.
Then there's the question of the black elves. "Perhaps there were elves that evolved like that", some apologists have claimed. Well, either they developed dark skin in three generations or less, or they are just very deeply tanned... By trying to connect to the "world as it is", they remove the fantastical, the thing that makes this "once upon a time" to something reflecting the modern world as we know it, and thus not Middle Earth anymore.
DISAGREE. I MIND THAT THERE ARE BLACK AND ASIAN ELVES BECAUSE THAT'S NEVER HAPPENED IN THE BOOKS!!!
@@bjornh4664no such thing as black Elves. The first Elves are called the Firstborn because they awoke at Lake Cuivinen and beheld the starry skies above before the creation of Anor and Isil.😊
@@goodputin4324 That's what I'm implying.
Rotten Easter eggs 😂 So true!
Great work on that intro song! If you had said it was by some obscure Tolkien-loving viking metal band I totally would have believed you...
Best song so far!
@@stephengibbons4771 thanks!
I thought they only had the rights to the Appendices. So how can they weave a story like this?
@@muslimrevert9462 I'm really not sure.
This series is like an old Duran Duran song. The words rhyme, but they don't make any sense!
You mean "Hungry Like a Warg"?
The opening comments were why I’ve been avoiding deadpool 3. That seems to be wholly “points wildly at stuff you remember”.
The fact that the Harfoots descend from the Stoor but somehow still have this enormous degree of racial differences between its members, indicates the Harfoots must be enforcing some pretty strict laws against marrying outside of your race, to prevent the mixing you would expect to naturally occur.
It's disequilibrating when an adaptation does not follow the established lore. We love LOTR and Star Wars because we know and love these worlds and characters. We have a history with them that makes us feel good. Makes us feel comfortable.
When an adaptation takes the lore and goes in a different direction, it requires significant skill of a great storyteller to, 1st, knock the audience off balance then, 2nd, provide an entertaining, enjoyable, and/or thought provoking payoff.
The people who have been put in charge of Star Wars, LOTR, and recent Marvel projects have not demonstrated the requisite skill in storytelling to pull this off. They should stick to giving the audience what we want. The worlds and characters we love behaving the way we expect them to.
Tom Bombadil is where I draw the line.
Everything in the lore is explained - between the books, the marginalia, the notes, the unfinished stories etc. - and carries both historical and metaphysical meaning. Tom is a deliberate enigma. Like you said Mr. Kain, there are plenty of theories about who he is (my favourite being that he's Aulë, the smith) but Tolkien never really explained it fully, opting instead to leave a trail of breadcrumbs for us to follow.
And here's the thing: in order to put something/someone in your show, you need to have a deeper understanding of what it is you're presenting. Not just superficial resemblance to the character and scenes from the books. Which clearly the show runners don't.
In the words of Admiral Kirsten Clancy: "sheer f-ing hubris".
Hey man - very nice review for episode 4. I agree about the elves there's no chemistry amongst the actors and the dialogue seems so contrived. When they shoehorned 4 lines from Lord of the Rings I completely lost the immersion and threw my hands up in the air. Not sure why I'm watching this show at this point thinking maybe the next episode will be better. It's just season 1 with more CGI and effects. I have never read Tolkien but the show by itself is just bad. Nothing makes sense... a tree ent that swipes a human woman back 20 feet and the woman regains consciousness pretty much unscathed. What even is this show?
Mike of RedLetterMedia made that point about current slop eventually diminishing classics while watching season 2 of Picard. As much as it may seem silly (like you say, the originals are still there, unaltered), over time, I have sort of come to see the sense in it. I think there’s a limit to compartmentalization, and the more the ratio of quality material skews negatively, it becomes difficult to not let it effect you eventually. Maybe it starts as a joke when you are watching the end of Return of the Jedi, remarking how the Emperor actually survived that fall into the core… or he didn’t, and he was cloned? With broken fingers? As that whiny loser Anakin dies from saving his son… who later tried to murder his grandson while he was sleeping… before long, your head is spinning (that’s a good trick!)
The only way to completely avoid this is to probably not watch any of this trash, unless it’s thoroughly vetted. Erik , thank you for ruining (or at least complicating) your fondest entertainment memories, so we don’t have to! It’s a strange job that nobody really has to do, but I appreciate it ;)
@@terig5584 really well said, do you have a link to the Picard video?
And great example with RotJ. Ugh, now I'm even more upset.
Without sufficient volume on the tablet, I thought for 20 odd seconds, I thought you were presenting a metal music version review of the episode...
Can we change the title of the series to "Amazon Basics Fantasy Show"?
Hi Erik! seeing you be so honest about it is incredibly refreshing I just wanted to express that the journalistic integrity in your reviews are great! I think they're a testament to the faults of our current access media and their inability to grasp what the people say pr expect...Thanks! :D
@@vardamir0397 thank you!
Albeit somewhat off - topic Erik, I wondered what your reaction was to the news that The Winter King has been axed after only one season?
As someone who's personally been gagging for a half - decent onscreen depiction of Arthurian mythology (it's been a loooong time since Excalibur) I sensed that this adaptation had disappeared up its own agenda even before it hit screens in the UK, and your review of the trailer and the series itself pretty much confirmed my worst fears.
What with this announcement and the underwhelming response to the last season of Doctor Who, it's not been a very good year for Bad Wolf Productions, has it?
I hate to say it but I'm thrilled that monstrosity was cancelled. It should have been at least a three season masterpiece, but they thought they knew better than Bernard Cornwall.
I agree with you. The story and history matter. The mythology and origins of nations and ancestry were a bigger passion to Tolkien than almost any other author. And those stories matter-it’s precisely what gives the ancient verisimilitude to his stories that other authors lack.
First if all - great music choice in the intro
Now what's the problem with RoP is that the writers said "back to the books etc" which isn't true, it seems they just read the appendices and made a story up with names, events EVERYTHING they could get their hands on and then slapped on quotes from the movies.
Then it looks they turned EVERYTHING upside down for the sake of being "fresh", elves have short hair, society isn't Northern mythology but a ridiculous mixup of cultures of the modern world, Tom Bombadil lives in a desert, wears one colored clothes and is just boring etc etc.
Then production value should be HIGH but groups, crowds of people are like 10-15 people, orc armies are a handful of unequipped dudes, everything looks CHEAP as a 90s VHS fantasy ripoff of LOTR.
It's just insane how any critic can even consider liking this rubbish.
TROP is to Tolkein's world what flat earthers are to physics.
I nominate Erik to be the back-up Stewie voice actor.
@@Nighthawk-ex2ep I'm down!
They're not just lifting lines of dialogue from the trilogy. Probably-Saruman's "very foolish or very brave" line was also there. That’s almost a meme in the several variations it's appeared in over the years.
What has happened is an intern has cut up a copy of the LOTR appendices and thrown all the words into a cement mixer - the resulting word vomit became the plot.
Join the campaign to get Glorfindel added for Season 3 - He may as well be thrown into the mixer.
The Bombadil storyline is infuriating. They literally call the tree "Old Man Ironwood" (another memberberry!) The Barrow-wights? Agh! The most pointless part, though, is the Isildur story because there is no tension. There can't be, we *know* his story and he has to live. So - bog monster? ambush by Wildmen? rampaging bands of Orcs? baby Shelob? back-stabbing love interest? Nah, he's gonna be fine, don't worry. What is the point of having him wandering around Pelargir? The one thing I liked this episode was the very last line by Adar, because that is genuine pure Quenya speech from canonical Tolkien. Yay!
This is an utter disaster and I’m so sorry it’s happened to you. (Sarcasm)
It’s always been an imaginary story about orcs and magic.
Cool your jets, enjoy the time, effort and funds that have been afforded to present a visual representation of a story you allegedly enjoy.
“The Bombadil storyline is infuriating”… I couldn’t possibly imagine being so bereft of actual things to spend my time and energy on but such is the state of 2024 internet discourse.
@@sureimshore Well gee, that's me put in my rightful place, isn't it! Thing is, when I watch a show that is supposed to be based on Tolkien's work, I want a show that's based on Tolkien's work. Crazy and unreasonable of me, I know! But imagine if you went to a restaurant and ordered the salmon. Then you were served the vegan nut roast. You are the waiter telling me "Cool your jets, enjoy the meal, it's all food isn't it?" No, I'm going to be "so bereft of actual things" that I will ask for the dish I ordered, or else a refund.
Go back and watch Rowen Coleman's retrospective on Babylon 5 and you'll see just HOW long running stories work in episodic storytelling.
It's like when a bad band plays a classic rock song.
Some people who never heard the original song think it's good. The sucky band acts like they are really "rocking" .
But real classic rock fans know what's missing!
They don't have the talent or respect for the original artist.
That song is an anthem !
i watched this episode and kept saying "what?"over and over.
knowing what was coming i had my hat with a blue feather ready to be wipped out with a "
" hey doll merry doll ring a dong dillo".
..all that came out was " WHAT?"
You do a good Gal impression. I'm not disposed to pick quite as many nits as critics pick. So long as they're not too egregiously in your face (as all too many of RoP's are). Many nits can be passed over by the viewer if a more fundamental condition is met: Make me forget I'm watching a TV show. Draw me into the story, involve me with the characters.
This RoP does not do, except for brief moments here and there. It's a failure at that most basic level.
This show is written by high school kids in one afternoon after they watched some clips from the movies and thought, "Cool! Gandalf kicks ass! Galadriel is hot! Mordor rulllleeeezzzz!!!1!!"
I seriously think that when they said "we're gonna stick closer to the lore", they just meant putting in more lines and scenes they lifted from LOTR, and including more characters with names from LOTR.
These people might genuinely believe that merely putting IN Tom Bombadil and Barrow Wights makes the show "closer to the lore", regardless of how accurate or consistent it is with the actual lore.
Or making Galadriel say "Go back to the shadow!" These are the kind of people that could unironically reason "but those lines are in the book, so that means it's in the lore, right?"
I think the biggest shame about this show is that the fans have lost the rights to LOTR to Amazon for who knows how many years.
Thank you for saying this
The thing I really don’t get is the amount of people liking this piece of crap. I’ve had more than one acquaintance tell me they really like the show, even after showing to them how it all sucks, how the writing and acting fail at every point, and even for a TV show it is just overall bad. It’s like talking to walls.
Well, considering the Istari only arrive in Middle Earth in the THIRD age, they also istari a lot around. Hobbits all over the wrong places.
People that lived hundreds of years apart, all in one ugly stew of fandom BS.
I totally agree that the only true fans of Rings of Power are only waiting for one thing: For Galadriel and Sauron to finally get it done! Low and dirty.
Can we maybe enjoy an incredibly expensive, fun, detailed piece of art without nerding out about minor perceived slights or grievances?
I couldn’t possibly care less if they got every word of the Simarillon nailed to the letter.
We’re seeing the backstory of Lady Galadriel, Lord Elrond, King Isildur, and FINALLY Tom freaking Bombadill and the fan base needs to hem and haw that it’s not PERFECT and their minor character from a town I can barely pronounce isn’t prominently featured the way THEY alone decide is appropriate?!?!
Unbelievable. Great episode in an amazing show and can’t wait for the next one. Bury your heads in the books and stop watching if it’s so upsetting for you.
Geez, I don't envy you having to watch and review these things. That takes more constitution than I possess. I have to admit, I kind of dig the AI song you made. LOL
This must have been the CHEAPEST episode of the most expensive show in the world. These callbacks and all the fanservice and memberberries were so cheap and populated the show so densely that I asked myself "wtf am I doing here" for the first time in my living room
They used the line "according to the lore" in a dialog this episode... which sounded very awkward (more like fans talking to each other than actual characters of middle earth) especially in a show where nothing is according to the lore. Somehow that did stick out to me...
Another point to your comment on it effecting the original work is that, for me at least! Seeing something brought to life that i have only ever imagined can change my imagined image! It just infiltrates! If you get what i mean.
You’re doing Yeoman’s work my dude.
Elrond and the horse should just get their own show
Every problem, danger or disagreement in this show is what is technically called an ass-pull. It comes out of nowhere without any establishing work done until that exact moment.
A mile deep chasm with a destroyed bridge, yep that’s the situation, what do we do now?
Isildur and Arondir get sucked down into a bog, and then: giant worm monster!
Elf Team 6 runs into a whole gang of floating liches with magic chain tentacles, and they’re invulnerable, oh no!
And it’s like that with everything.
And then almost everything gets resolved instantly, with no consequences. Or: the show returns after another scene to reveal that whatever was resolved off screen and everything is fine now. Hobbits who went off flying in a magical sandstorm twister are just waking up next to each other with some dusty clothes. Isildur whom we last saw trapped under debris in a collapsing burning house, just wakes up randomly captured by spiders, but completely un-bitten. People who had a completely irrevocable falling out, are suddenly just fine with each other again.
That’s a large part of the reason it’s so hard to get invested in anything. The other reason, of course, is that we don’t care about anybody - they’re all so unlikeable.
It’s fascinating. Some of the dialogue was even worse in season 1 though.
Cheers
I saw one critic review on Rotten Tomatoes who said it feels like a story that its writers create backwards.
Instead of having a story that unfolds from the perspective of the character's motivations and their knowledge and world views going forward to an unknown outcome (from the perspective of the characters), the writers know the audience knows this story eventually has to arrive at the events of the LOTR movies from 20 years ago, when Frodo throws the ring into Mt. Doom.
How they get to that destination it doesn't matter. As long as rings are made and a villain named Sauron is opposed by elves, dwarves and men. The rest can be completely re-invented and filled in as poorly as they want. It's almost like they're trying to break the 4th wall with all the cherry picked easter eggs. It's garbage.
"this nameless thing is in a mudpuddle". ok, got to defend the show there. so was the monster outside the Dwarven "speak friend" door. also, Mordor just had that cataclysmic eruption. it having been unearthed or awoken is completely reasonable.
Best Writing rooms in TV: Rick and Morty & South Park.
Love the AI songs. A good use of AI is a rare enough thing!
This show is 100% crap. 100%. Not one redeeming quality.
Let's not disparage salt too badly.
It’s actually pretty incredible that we have such slim pickings on shows to watch at this time that I can’t help but see the train wreck that this show each week. Granted it’s only been two weeks so far and I still might not make it to the end. One of the craziest things about this show is it does not properly convey a sense of time or place whatsoever. There is random shit happening all over the map. Does anyone remember where the Harfoots were supposed to be in season 1? Because when they rolled up on Rhun all I could think was how in the fuck are they that far out. Ugh.
Plus in this episode Scamdalf mentions the name Sauron to Bombadil.... has the Stranger even heard of him at this point other than the witches maybe saying his name once in front of him with zero context? Why would Scamdalf know who Sauron is and fear him at all?
The cheapest form of storytelling in a prequel is just "and here's how this thing you already know about came to be." That seems to be where they're going with this hobbits story- It's going to end with them founding The Shire. Big whoop. It has to be compelling on its own terms, and it isn't.
I told you the pale witch would be back. I still think it would be better if she had gone on an actual journey rather than just appearing back in Rhun, because no one besides the harfoots actually goes on journeys in this high fantasy adventure story.
How bold of u to assume the pale witches gender
Another great song!!!
When Bombadil has negative charisma...
Reusing the PJ lotr lines is sooo desperate. You know one of the writers pitched this to the team with the Leo/Once upon a Time in Hollywood meme, thinking people would get a kick out of it. In reality all it does is stink of desperation and causes excessive eyerolling.
There is no meaning when the writers want their characters to face a challenge they will. Otherwise characters will nearly teleport to wherever they need to be at the most convenient time.
I watched 3 and 4 back to back.4. I hated the Numanor plot, but wasn't as angry as I had been during episode 1. But I think you got ents, tom bombadil, shelob, the barrow downs. It's like it was produced by Tourism Middle Earth to get all the highlights in.
Adar is Celeborn corrupted by Morgoth and Galadriel will heal him with Nenya after discovering his true identity.
he will be ..taaadaaa ..maglor...lol..
RoP is to TLotR what the DC Universe is to the Marvel Universe of olden days - here's what Amazon could have done instead:
Instead of chopping up the story into half a dozen of parallel lines, some of which are incredibly boring and uneventful, and switching between them every 10 minutes, RoP needs its own seasons of "Iron Man", "Captain America", "Hulk" etc. before going for one or two "Avengers" seasons.
The Khazad Dum story is interesting - that should've been one season. The Numenor story could be interesting - another, separate season. The Elves, of course, also have their own season. That's 3 seasons of single, interesting and uninterrupted stories. Like Marvel, tie these seasons together - instead of Thanos, use Sauron, increasing in power, forcing Elves, Dwarves and Numenorians to act together. Season 4 could then be the "Infinity War" and the final season(s) "Endgame". Hell, throw in the "Stranger/Harfoot" story as the "Captain Marvel" of RoP, timing its release perfectly with the next writer's strike or pandemic as an excuse, and you have 5-6 seasons of coherent, connected storytelling. The final episode of every season could be the introduction of the main characters of the following season.
What we got is the DC version: Throw everything and everyone together, minimize interest in the characters and use cliffhangers and mystery boxes to force drama.
"it's such a cheap form of story-telling"
This show is obsessed with making references to Tolkien lore, but beyond the surface level, it doesn't care at all what that mean or why they matter to people. Feels like they fed LOTR into an AI and it spit this out.
I do not understand how certain people in the media that I normally find reasonable, actually say they like the show. If you decide that you don´t care about the show not really being Tolkien, then I guess that is fine. But the show itself is just not a good show, the characters are theatrical, all the various plots are incoherent and some of the settings and costumes are.... not great. I mean, this show is to me literally what people who don´t like fantasy think fantasy is - a lot of melodrama, bad wigs and weird accents.
Whan a show over references another show like this then you know they do not have confidence in their own creative process. I understand your concern about iterations like this somehow watering down source and original material for new fans. Understand it but I don't share it. Tolkien has been passed down generation to generation through the literature by word of mouth; father to son, mother to son, sister to brother (as in my case haha). It did pretty damn well by that method and will continue to do so. Jacksons trilogy can also be added to the Tolkien word of mouth list. It's that good. The Rings of Power will barely leave a mark all said and done.
I'm 20 minutes in to episode 4 and had to pause it when, swear to god, Gandalf misgenders a tree and gets corrected on its pronouns.
What irks me the most is when some of the critics are already making this crap canon. One of them was talking about how Galadriel and Sauron actually met before and speaking as if it's part of the same story.
I honestly thought the only way was up. Why must mass entertainment continually prove it can do worse?
Likewise the member berries are wearing thin....reason I couldn't enjoy Alien Romulus.
Yup. It was awful!
I would be totally fine if this show had nothing to do with Tolkien. I still wouldn’t watch it… but at least I would hate it so much 😂
I wanna talk about ep. 3...i thought it strange that they waited to the third episode to re-introduce all those characters i completely forgot about. Also i have no idea where anyone is. They gave no establishing shot of numenor and when they do show the map or flash a place name on screen, to me, most of it looks the same. And the zooming certainly doesn't help at all. And i don't think there have been this many characters i've disliked in a show for awhile...oh right, that Invasion show on Apple