Rings of Power Season 2 Review: Even Worse Than Season 1 Somehow
Вставка
- Опубліковано 5 лис 2024
- I'm traveling and internet has been spotty and I don't have my usual setup so apologies for the audio-only video this time and the various subpar quality issues. It's fitting for a show like Amazon's big fantasy Lord Of The Rings parody, though, I suppose. The intro song is an AI song I made which you can find here: www.udio.com/s...
The Rings Of Power is even more muddled, confusing and dull than it was in Season 1. The show's creators have tried to make it more action-packed and dark, but mostly they've just made it less interesting. I don't care about anything or anyone in this show. It's laughably bad. The only thing funnier than how bad the show is, is the fact that it has over 90% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Written review: www.forbes.com...
"A boat only floats because of the emptiness inside." There, can I have a million dollar scriptwriting fee?
a turd floats because it looks up
It doesn't take an eagle to see that even the showrunners can drop crap on us every week.
Let's see the script you wrote?
@@teknix314 actually I had an outline written down after season 1, it involved Galadriel chasing Mithrandir to Rhun after mistaking him for Sauron, while he was already being followed by Isildur, some survivors of mordor and the Pale Witch from season 1. Despite using the survivors at first, she learns the common tongue and one of them falls in love with her, and in Rhun it's revealed she is Sauron's daughter (one of many children he abandoned after deciding the rings were more useful to him). She ends up betraying her siblings and settles down with him, and they start the line of skinchangers ultimately leading to Beorn. Meanwhile numenor threatens war on the elves and the 7 rings are created to buy weapons from the dwarves.
The smugness of the showrunners shines through in every scene. Like a toddler proud that they 💩 themselves.
The fact that Sauron is sneaking into Eregion and tricking Celebrimbor into making rings for the second time is so incredibly frustrating. Firstly it makes Celebrimbor look like a moron because how do you fall for the same con twice, in such a short time period no less. I know Celebrimbor is supposed to be blinded by hubris but if the enemy just tricked you into making these rings, then surely you’d vow to wait until it’s safe before trying it again. Secondly, this narrative plot is just retreading old ground from the first season, only this time we are getting the time and detail it should have gotten in the first season. They might as well have admitted to screwing up the first season and start again, if they’re just going to rehash story beats from the previous season. The forging of the 3 rings is redundant. Finally, the forging of the rings was supposed to be the core of the War of the Rings and seeing them mess up what should have been easy fills me with dread for what is to come
GOOD! Dread is nourishment for the DARK LORD, that is behind this mess!!!
Agreed that back and forth with the construction of the Rings is stupid. It's almost like they were intending to replace Charlie Vickers as Sauron with a different actor, but liked his performance and kept him on.
@@sdco7487 I'm sticking to my conviction that the show runners are idiots. They've only ever worked on movie scripts, not TV shows, so they're in the mindset of "make the movie, then change things up in the sequel". They decided for first season they didn't want Annatar, then discovered that in fact they did, so then they had to write him into the second season. But they're still thinking like these are two separate movies, not seasons of a TV show where you have to maintain continuity. "Oh, in the first movie we said Villain McEVil wasn't able to create the magic doohickey? Well now we're writing a twist for the second movie where McEvil disguises himself as Goody Gumdrops and does it *that* way".
@@maryokeeffe3528even in movies there are continuity errors that wreck the story altogether esp sequels
Yes! It just makes it so hard to watch bc rather than the forging of the elven rings being a stealthy, semi-redemptive act by Celebrimbor - they've just made him a stooge. He's become a patsy for bad writing...
Poppy catching up to them was so predictable I don't understand why they bothered having her stay behind to begin with...
except that she either (1) should have caught up way sooner, or (2) starved to death
Hehehe true, but the writers left themselves an out for that by having her say "you didn't get very far".
Cause they needed Scamdalf and Not Frodo to be in danger for drama and pad out an entire episode. If only the show would give us the meat and give it to us raw.
Literally for that moment, because they didn't think it was predictable. Hence the whole being followed bit
The main problem still is that - with so many things going on - the show is still boring. Or, to put it another way: it doesn't respect my time. Scenes are too long, dialogue is convoluted and takes a long time to get to the point, or keeps going when the point was already made. My personal metric is "minutes watched before I start checking my mobile device" which is, for each of the 3 first episodes respectively: 45 min, 30 min, 15 min. That's NOT a good trend at all.
Attention span is a killer
This isn't fanfic. Not one person involved with this abomination is a fan of Tolkien's lore. It's criminal desecration of a great man's work.
This is deliberate cultural vandalism
How? Please tell me. Tolkien was silent on the details of this era and the battles.
Tolkien's grandson is literally a Producer lmao
You sound so angry about a tv show dude. Like it's not great but don't let it ruin your day
@@daisukeds85 Simon
Tolkien wrote little on this period of Middle Earth. What little there was, TRoP writers just ignored. They plucked a few places and character names, a few events, and then just picked up their crayons and started mashing it all together. The show has no Tolkien and it has no heart. Good and fair review Erik, thanks.
They're not allowed to use The Silmarillion technically. Amazon does not have the rights for that. But the Tolkien estate likes the money from the show so they let them use certain things. The whole set up is weird. They should have just ditched the dumb mystery box JJ Abrams style of storytelling and focused the entire show on Sauron in the 2nd age.
@@sdco7487 just the stuff in the appendices is still a 2000 year period of conflict, treachery and tragedy that Tolkien left a detailed timeline for.... and it's honestly quite a baller story
Sauron is locked in a stalemate with the Elves of Eregion as he consolidates his power over the Men of Middle Earth. The Elves themselves are faced with the deep existential question of whether staying in Middle Earth is even worth it. The Numenoreans are just coming out of a millennia long period of isolation to return to the shores of Middle Earth again.... imagine what a functional adult could write about a period like that?
Instead we get a man sticks a sword hilt into the ground to drop a damn to flood a bunch of canals to make a volcano explode.....
It’s like game of thrones without GR Martin…oh wait we got season 8 😂
@@alexarjona1692 Yep ... exactly, lol. And even there GRR Martin gave the show runners an outline of how the show should end, in this case they don't even really have that if they're not allowed to use the Silmarillion directly, they're kinda stuck just having to entirely invent things.
The similirion is not even a full story. It's a rough outline text book that is boring as ever to read. To make a show based on that would be difficult. It's near impossible with the level of writing here
As someone who has read nearly everything Tolkien ever wrote (outside of his more obscure letters), I only need to watch half a minute of any footage with dialogue to know that I'll never watch this show. It takes no time at all to realise this is NOTHING like the created mythos and everyone involved are utterly out of their depth. I'll follow the review beats but we all know whats coming haha
Sure that’s your opinion. But it seems that most who complain haven’t even read the hobbit and still complain as if they were scholars.
@@poppi510 Because the show messes up even obvious things that even normies should know. Also it's a bad show even if you don't take in account that it's supposed to adapt an already existing story.
@@poppi510not accurate. Those shows have poor writing. Those are being judged on those standards, not on whether or not it's "lore accurate"
Personally, I couldn't care less about Tolkien's lore. They could make Gandalf and Saruman a gay couple if it made a good story. But these people were given so much money and they don't seem to know basic character development, story arcs or anything that makes a good TV show.
@@bluehope42 same here. I love Tolkien but I don't expect film to accurately track literature. The problem with ROP is the writing is sophomoric.
Thank you Erik, again, for telling it like it is. It makes me viscerally angry seeing these gaslighty and likely-paid reviews floating around saying that this season is worth a watch when the first was ludicrously bad. Glad some critics are still honest.
Amazon, don't you dare spoil Warhammer 40K
oh they will and Henry cavill will think he made a mistake leaving the witcher.
Spoiler: they will.
@@thelilyfarrell Battle buddy, it's a waste of time trying to reason with Amazon, they don't understand any lore and we see it in Rings of Power, in my opinion because its staff is mediocre and hired through nepotism. Cavill has nothing to do with this current entertainment situation.
@@nhand42 and we know it.
There may be hope there.... not because Amazon will suddenly grow a brain, but because of the contract language
Basically the contract guaranteed final creative say to Games Workshop and Henry Cavill, with Amazon basically having right of refusal after 1 year. If Amazon is, at that point, unwilling to bankroll the project, the contract is void.
From what i'm hearing, Amazon is sticking to it's guns about it's DEI requirements.... because everyone needs to 'see themselves' is the most laughably fascistic fictional universe possibly ever created, obviously... but GW doesn't want the brand damage that would do. Rumor has is the mention of female Custodes earlier this year was done at Amazon's urging to see just how the fan base would react and.... heh, yeah. So at this point GW and Cavill are more than happy to let the 1 year window expire and take the IP someplace else when the contract voids.
I am here only for the AI tunes
Yesssss goooood
@@ErikKain is this an AI tune? I've been scouring the internet trying to find it 😂
@@truezealot1 try Suno or Udio, anyone can do it (unlike actual music 🤣)
The hard rolling R’s are killing me 😂 they didn’t hit them that hard in the movies
That was the nice comment. The rest is, in no particular order: why are they continuing with their anti-beard agenda? Cirdan shows up and has a beard, as is canon. But then in the next episode they make him shave it off! Why? The Halbrand backstory is something we did not need and wasted the opening section of the first episode. They messed that up every way they could, and then some. That Sauron came across as a sleazy low-level politician, the guy running for election on the town council that you know is a bit dodgy. Sauron is *not* like that, he wouldn't make a speech before the Orcs pitching for the leadership after Morgoth regrettably had to resign to spend more time with his family. The coronation scene is nonsense. No way Sauron is kneeling in front of anyone; he'd do like Napoleon, take the crown, and crown himself. The Julius Caesar assassination bit after that had me screaming NO NO NO, because how the *hell* do you get from "As a Maia, Sauron is a spirit who, by the force of his will, can take material from the physical environment to form a body" to "That means he turns into black ooze Venom symbiote, eats rats and bugs, and slides down the snowy mountainside with a "flump" to eat a human"? No. I think Miriel is good this season, but that's about all I can say. They keep throwing in lore references as nudges to the fans (look, Elrond is throwing himself into the sea just like his mother Elwing did!) but then they screw around with canon so that offends the lore nerds like me (black ooze Sauron, Cirdan saying mean things about lore characters, etc.) The only good bit with Halbrand and the Warg was that it did reference Sauron as "Lord of Werewolves", but again - another lore reference that is lost on those who haven't read the books, so why put it in? I could say a lot more, but this comment is too long already.
sauron would certainly NOT be crowned by orcs the idea is preposterous
That whole scene was ludicrous. Sauron would never be standing there like a politician at a convention looking for votes, and he wouldn't refer to himself as "Sauron" - that's like imagining Trump saying "Vote for me, Orange Man Bad". The show just has no imagination, so it had to fall back on some kind of 'Sauron for President' notion. He was already Morgoth's second-in-command, he didn't have to *ask* for their support, he would just assume it.
The failed coronation of Sauron is actually a rejection of absolute monarchies in favour of democratic meritocracy and thus the Orcs are the real heroes of Rings of Power and not the Elves, Dwarves or Numenoreans with their kings. Queens are better of course, that's why Miriel will be usurped by a Bad Man.
I've always hated the concept of a "guilty pleasure". Never had anything I felt remotely guilty about watching. It's a backhanded compliment and an arrogant proclamation of superiority wrapped into one. But now I get it. I just watch this because it's pretty to look at, and it makes me feel stupid for doing so.
i watch to laugh at how goofy it is.
CGI in season 2 already goes from near perfect to absolutely trash tier
costumes looked like larping (those golden elf armors in lindon... looks like plastic)
and the dialog is pure undiluted cringe. At some points in the episode it feels like every other line is:
"a dog is steadfast but quicker on a leash"
Frankly, l don't even think that this is pretty to look at! Most of the elves are an abomination with their blow-dry haircuts and pouchy stomachs. And exept for the orcs who actually look great, everything is too new and shiny. It feels like theater props. It doesn't feel real!
I don't want to criticize you for watching it, though. We all have our guilty pleasures 😊
Took me two days to watch the first episode as I had to keep stopping and go off and distract myself before returning. Only when I finally made it to the end of the first did I realise that THREE episodes were released. Please carrry on doing these revjews for us Erik. I... am... not... strong enough to watch anymore.
I don't care honestly if it follows the books or not, I like the show. And I hate how the book purists always get good shows killed. Yes, I understand that It's not the same as the book, but that doesn't make it a bad show or movie on its own. Personally I love the series and I really hope that it continues. One of the best shows I've seen Amazon make. Don't think by any means that I'm trying to say that Tolkien didn't do amazing work with his writing, because the books really are amazing, but regardless of that, I think the show is well done with its cinematics and has a pretty good storyline
The show will be cancelled because its bad
You remember how people used to laugh at telenovelas with their cheap emotional tricks and convoluted dialogues and how totally unrealistic everything was? These were (still are, most likely) crazy popular.
Now fantasy has gone mainstream and as a result we get this faux-Tolkien telenovela.
La Usurpadora > the acolyte
Most novelas are better than this shows. Atbleast they are entertaining..
I giggled at the intro song and the random pics from other shows/movies. I'm not watching this show, just here for the LOTR roast. Thanks for the video!
Keep in mind too that Rotten Tomatoes gives a 'fresh' rating to any review without it's own score, regardless of what the review actually said.
Unless the critic manually enters it, RT selects
But but, critics say it’s a 92!
They don't. 92% rate it 5/10 or more. Their actual average rating is 6.8/10.
@@Lothirilthat's above average. In a show like this, it needs to be higher. That average is going to go down even more so as the show goes on and more people see it
@@yurikendal4868 ROP might be better than average. the average is unwatchable
@@yurikendal4868 The average won't go down, because critics are deeply corrupt. No honest person would give this show more than 2.5 or something, so that 6.8 rating is as damning for the critics as it is for this show.
The teleportation of characters back and forth really bothers me, especially in the context of Tolkien who went out of his way to show travel and the time it takes. That's what you need to do to make a world feel alive and real, to escape into it. This show refuses to take itself seriously.
On a positive note I can't wait to see what Charlie Hopkinson will make out of this new material Amazon so kindly provided him.
I am also so there, lol! It's how I found out what happened in S1 ep 7 &8, after I gave up after ep 6, lol!
Exactly. It’s not middle earth. It’s not lord of the rings. It’s not Tolkien. It’s an insult.
It's not anything
You get Orcs like becoming family oriented, good guys, only misunderstood. That is a huge betrayal to Tolkien. Gigantic. The guys think they can invent better than Tolkien. Well, the cannot.
Those Ai songs are always so hilarious. You should post them all together in a medley or something.
Putting together some albums!
I think they’re making this up as they go along
Thank you for being honest. In today’s world finding an honest critic is a rare occurrence.
There are plenty. Just have to look
There are some. But they are rare enough to be praised when encountered. If you disagree just check Rotten Tomatoes. The first season was praised by 84% of professional critics and the second season by 86%. QED only 15 percent of all the professional critics can be called honest.
What is so weird to me that this series is objectively bad. Nothing to do with black dwarfs or elves or a female lead character. BUT on twitter so many pop up accounts claim that this series is amazing & brilliant.
That intro, though! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Lol that stupid way they pronounced words was so annoying in the first season, but I good laughs how you kept doing it 😂
Lmao at the cheeky Neverending Story reference. RIP Artax.
Berek! Fight the sadness!
Ar-Amazon is so convinced of his own greatness, he doesn’t even realize he’s walking around naked.
Hi, Erik, I was waiting for your opinion! I saw the first three episodes, and as you say, "there's a lot happening but it doesn't really matter". So I skipped a lot. I'll say the nice things first: the Celebrimbor/Annatar storyline isn't the worst. They did make some sense out of how Halbrand could turn up and be permitted back in to Eregion. Celebrimbor was only warned by Galadriel not to have anything to do with Halbrand but she didn't tell him he was Sauron. The messengers Gil-galad sent out with this IMPORTANT INFORMATION were killed so Celebrimbor doesn't know. And after the transformation into Annatar (which was done reasonably well), he now thinks that Annatar is legit. And at least Celebrimbor is getting to do things this season, like invent ithildin, all on his own.
I really like this review, thank you so much for an honest and accurate assessment. I can’t reconcile the RT reviews either - really makes you wonder.
Thank you for your service, Erik! It was a slog to get through the first three episodes so what made it somewhat bearable was reading your review and watching your video afterwards and finding that we agree that this show is stuffed to the Gil-galad with pointless plot. Though I will say that my favorite part was seeing Jack Lowden...because it reminded me that we're getting Slow Horses season 4 this month.
A DOA shit show. The damage of the first season destroyed the series.
Season 2 sounds like a 4 year old trying to tell his day at the daycare but failing because he can't differentiate between what truly happen and what he imagined happen. If these people were asked to paint a new Monalisa, I bet we get a Picasso type of painting that was supposed to be the "prequel" of Monalisa. This would be a headache to watch and I would wager the viewership will tank even more because of that! 🤦♂️
Orc: "What news from Mordor, milord?"
Saruman: "We have families to build".
The comedy writes itself.
Imagine if, when Gorbag makes this offer to Shagrat - "But anyway, if it does go well, there should be a lot more room. What d'you say? - if we get a chance, you and me'll slip off and set up somewhere on our own with a few trusty lads, somewhere where there's good loot nice and handy, and no big bosses.' - Shagrat turns him down with "Nah, I just wanna get back home to the missus and our farm, grow some crops, raise some kids, live in peace and quiet". That's what they're doing here.
@@maryokeeffe3528 "where are the rabbits, george?"
Your intro actually makes it sound good😂
Hahaha
You know the saying about opinions and assholes. S1 was good, S2 is good so far. But you do you.
Tolkien himself trilled the 'r's in names like Mordor. E.g. search for
J.R.R Tolkien Reads The One Ring Poem
Timestamp 0:10
But yeah it's a little overdone.
The biggest waste of money I've ever witnessed in my whole entire life
Disney and amazon are neck and neck at the worst use of money ever
It's better than season 1, I liked season 1. Season two Annatar is how I imagined it should be.
When I see youtubers and instagramers that are known to post Tolkien content talk about The Rings of Power like its a serious Middle Earth adaptation, it warms my heart so much that I can come here to this channel where you denounce this show's blasphemous mutilation of Prof. Tolkien's world. Thank-you for reminding me that I'm still sane.
Though I did have to laugh about the big Forbidden Love Elf-Human romance going nowhere, despite all the talk about it in season one, so they had to kill off Bronwyn (due to the actress leaving). Ah yes, those Orc arrows to the back *did* kill her off after all, but it was because they were poisoned, not because you can't just pull 'em out, cauterise the wound, and the day after she's fine and up and walking around like normal.🤣
I was watching this and I felt it was better than the 1st Season. This is mostly because Galadriel has less screen time than the previous season. However, it is utterly boring. It's one of the most boring things I have ever watched. I was going to stop after the 2nd episode but decided to continue in order to form my own uninfluenced opinion of the show.
Interesting. The Sauron - Celebrimbor stuff specifically (more specifically if you try to forget about the 3 elven rings already having been made in s1) kinda works for me and if you squint is somewhat lore accurate. I’m actually interested when I see those two actors together and find it much more compelling than anything in s1. However, the various tertiary plot lines really don’t work for me and the Rhun stuff in particular feels completely unneeded. The stranger’s line about ‘no one can give you a name’ and ‘you’ll know it when you hear it’ is up there for one of the most pretentious things I’ve ever heard.
Edit: also when Sauron goes full Annatar to Celebrimbor it totally looks like the Columbia Pictures logo
I agree with your take if you started the entire show with sauron season two and pretend all the filler not there and certainly the harfoots story is poorly delivered
The issue with the Celebrimbor & Sauron scenes comes from the dumb setup in s1. Basically, the plot can only happen because Galadriel was dumb enough not to tell Celebrimbor about Halbrand being Sauron. In addition to that, Sauron returning as Halbrand can only happen because Sauron assumes that Galadriel a) is no longer at Eregion and b) didn't tell Celebrimbor about him being Sauron, and that's a big stretch. Together with the killed messanger it's implied that Sauron has lots of servants that kill and spy for him so that he even knows what people said and didn't say. But s2e1 implies that he's pretty much on his own, so that doesn't hold either...
These writers don't bother with the consequences of their characters' actions, and it's so frustrating. In the end, Celebrimbor's downfall could have been avoided if Galadriel had come clean right away. Good job, girl...
@@michaelfitzpatrick9556I just don’t understand why season 2 can’t be season 1 and season 1 doesn’t exist at all.
I was trying to think what it reminded me of! Yes, exactly, Columbia Pictures! The Annatar-Celebrimbor parts are okay, they're actually making sense and running at least in parallel to the canon plot. Celebrimbor's actor is finally getting a chance to act and he gives signs of being able to turn in a good performance once he doesn't have to behave like a total fool. If they stuck with that instead of Halbrand's backstory including how he picked up the Southlands royal sigil, I'd be happier with these episodes than I am. There's still a lot that's bad, but it's not quite as bad as season one (yet). Though the pacing is still terrible - too many sub-plots introduced at once and yet they take up time to go nowhere. They should just ditch the 'Stranger goes to Rhun' plot, or at least give it one episode on its own later on to wrap it all up.
@@Lothiril Why didn't Galadriel go after Sauron? She was hunting him for 1000 years. He was right there. Weakest badass ever.
These idiot writers think that a sure sign of nobility is that they roll their R's
Yo man! Why you tryin to soil the good name of Never Ending Story by slippin that frame in there!? Didnt think anyone would catch that didja! :D
Fight the sadness Berek!
I fell asleep twice during the show. 30 minutes before the end of the 3rd episode I turned it off. I could't take anymore drama and deep dialogues scene after scene. Its all soo tiresome.
Why do we get so many side arcs that don’t matter and aren’t in the books anyway? Like Hobbits, Adar, Arondir, Gandalf, Tom Bombadil, Saruman, Rhun and so on…
They make middle earth look small by trying to show to much and by doing that its kind of empty.
like Numenor, Isildur, Elves and Sauron aren’t interesting enough
Hey Erik. Is this the worst show you've ever watched? Is it worse than the Acolyte?
In some ways definitely worse. But FTWD is worse!
The events leading up to LOTR make sense as a kind of history book for nerds to pore over. If you want to tell a compelling tv show, then you're setting yourself a challenge. Presenting the events as happening seemingly concurrently is limiting. Each plot thread should be something that occurs over months or years. Having them all coincide and seems overly convenient. The witcher made more sense because you gleaned that the storytelling was non-linear. A complex series of events building over a 40 years time frame has a scale. Sauron lurching out of a cave coinciding with Galadriel's intercontinental swim coinciding with an earthquake messing up the dwarves coinciding with.... (edit: if the earthquake was tied to mount doom, then they have an inworld explanation for that detail. It's a (convenient, inadvertent) consequence of Sauron. But the arrival of Gandalf is something that requires divine intervention. Arriving years earlier would seem more organic.)
When you write a tv show, you should have a sense of what you need to write. Then you try to work out HOW to tell the story. If you can't work elegant solutions, then you can narrow your focus or whatever. If you can't work out an elegant solution, then you have the option of not writing the show. My best defence for this, is that a decision was made and then the writers can to do something actually complex - while maintaining popular appeal. They might have been better off developing the story threads in isolation. It's a more complex pitch to the audience, but it avoids the problem of 15 seconds with Gandalf, then a gap, then back to Gandalf treading water if he's not required by the main plot yet.
I'm not a writer. But I am supremely arrogant and I'm not sure I could come up with a good solution for dozens of characters with various threads jumping over the place while trying to maintain a unified theme. Being a genius I do have one solution. Spend more money on it. The first LOTR film cost about 100 million (at the time) for 3 hours. If the billion dollar figure cited is accurate, then Amazon has a billion dollars spread across a 5 year project. Unless they spent hundreds of millions on the rights, they may have 2x the budget of the first LOTR film to produce 8 hours. They have advantages that Jackson didn't have. Jackson probably pioneered effects, which are probably cheaper now that they aren't cutting edge. But the dude was probably talented enough to get a lot better value out of his budget. The Rings of Power lacks scale. You have claustrophobic sets and then CGI attempts to increase the scale. If they had stupid money, they could at least increase the sense of scale.
Being writing is going to be subjective and a bit of a role of the dice. Claustrophic sets is something you could do something about - whether it's throw money at the project or hire someone who is a genius at getting more out of the orange. If the production is poorly designed, you could be pissing away 20% of the budget.
As a writer myself i can only say that from the first, i had the impression that there is no clear, working dramatic shape in this story. While in Theory it sounds good to have Sauron act like Tony Soprano or Walter White, in practice it just does not work, because the character of Sauron is just different. But in effect it is not about "elegant solutions" but about the BASICS. THere is no real danger for anyone in the story, really. There is no real antagonist, real villain, that is a credible threat. You neeed this, even if it sounds corny and "unelegant", cliché or whatever. If you have multiple story threads then each one of those threads needs a sub-villain. If you do not do this, you are immediately in big trouble. BASICS. Before you get lost in clever dialogue, the basics must be in place. I agree with the concurrently-Argument. It is a big trap, many beginning writers fall into.
We have Tusk riders of Tatooine in a Tolkien story. The whole Southland and haarfoot storyline could be scrapped without the plot suffering from it.
I'm confused. I thought at the end of season 1 they said they were going east to Rhun? The Easterlings are more akin to oriental Asian. So uh...why are the people Fake Gandalf and Nori meeting with Arab looking people and sub Saharan African people???
When Sauron was in Mordor land, let my people gooooo......
I'm loving this new season. Much better start than the 1st. Not perfect but I'm enjoying it.
The rolling of the Rs... 🤣🤣🤣
Elrond is like his mother Elwing who hopped into the sea with Luthiens Silmaril
Why would an Eagle show up? They don't do that.
I wonder if Erik thinks that after watching all this bad fan fiction that it will taint or poison the joy that one gets from Tolkien's beautiful source material. That would be this show's greatest disservice to art and humanity.
Never.
The opening song is a banger! It's disco time!
(I started thinking, maybe I'm here actually for the songs...)
Haha good! There are many more to come!
@@ErikKain And I'll be there for it!
Annatars Jesus shot in the furnace and multiple biblical references by Sauron like: let my people go! DO not make Sauron Moses
They are going for that approach aren't they?
Super lucky for Scamdalf to fall from the sky and land near a tribe of perpetual nomads and be found/befriended by the only Harfoot who would have helped him and her berry stained buddy who just happened to have access to the very map and song they would need much later in the series to solve the riddle of getting to Rhun where his staff and the constellation would just happen to be located.
the timeline condensing is really the fundamental problem. They are literally trying to hit every significant major event in the second age. just pick one. even one is ambitious. have fun in dc, so many cool places to visit
*grabs 🍿 * oooh this gun be gud!!
I don't know where that song at the beginning is from, but it would honestly make the show 10 times better if it was actually in the credits.
I made it with AI.
@@ErikKain Just like how they wrote the show
So the actors and actresses have quit the show is that sh__? That's gonna show very poorly on Amazon
I don't think Tolkien liked the idea of blood magic. It's a foreign concept to his works. The idea of Saurauman using it is bizarre.
no its not worse. Season 2 is much better, but what do i know, i watched it to enjoy it. Id also say youre wrong, the stories arent disjointed - theyre clearly meant to converge, just like the southlands story converged with numenorians and sauron.
You forgot how we now know that Orcs have families that they care about and they aren't that bad after all. 😐
Damn!!! Erik that disco track was fire....maybe that is where we cast this abomination of a show. I appreciate you doing the hard yards watching this because I won't. There is no redemption after season 1..! To say you liked that better than season 2 is a huge statement. Ultimately we need to draw a line and show these big production companies that destroying Tolkien's work won't be tolerated. I want a Lord of the Rings show in the style of Andor...go into characters we don't know, use the lack of structure in the IP they bought to actually create something new and interesting. The critics and reviewers who know are all saying the same thing...this show is terrible....Amazon pls stop it!! Pls let this go the way of the Acoloyte and be forgotten.
The sea told me Rings of Power is a steaming pile of shit 💩
THE SEA IS NEVER WRONG!
92% crticic rating just means 92% gave it better than 5/10. The actual rating is only 6.8/10 though.
In the beginning of the first episode Sauron is negotiating with the orcs like some kind of Union head then they murder him. How long was a slime creature? So who was Galadriel hunting for a 1,000 years?
thanks for bringing some reason to the otherwise incomprehensible critic reception of this insult to tolkien and Lotr fans
This series made me deeply sad. I was open minded and didn’t care for the internet discussions but this series is bad at every aspect.
Get with the program Erik. If over 90% of critics like the show, you must go along with the herd. Otherwise much like a hairfoot you will be put in the back of the line and we know what happens next.
i am shocked by how incompetent this season has been so far. Yeah, i know, none of us had any real expectations for this season.... but still, the sheer laziness of it is beyond what i expected even from Amazon.
The writing can only be described as moronic. You can have 3 characters on screen and they're all having their own conversation with themselves because nothing that say to one another is remotely connected. And they talk way, way to much to the point where it becomes literal filler. The plot does not exist, things may happen, but there is no cause and effect, no through line connecting these events together. Characters then openly ignore these events immediately as we then move on to the next event. The world building does nothing but add confusion.
The acting is universally atrocious. Either completely phoned in or laughably overly dramatic. The direction is terrible, with bog standard camera work and an over reliance on long panning shots over dodgy CGI with such regularity that it, again, feels like literal filler. And jesus christ the pacing.... that in and of itself is a crime against cinema. Characters take forever to say the simplest of things, not just because the dialogue is so bloated but there's so many pointless pauses to give the impression of intelligence. The scenes just drag on and on because there's so much exposition that needs to be dumped. And then there's literally everything with the discount hobbits which is a complete waste of your time and braincells.
Note how i didn't even bring up how much of the source material they butchered. At this point that doesn't actually even matter, because there's nothing of substance left in this show worth comparing it too
This season is already one of the worst TV shows i think i've ever seen just from a technical level. Even the soundtrack is universally bland and forgettable, and it's from people we know are capable of so much better. Amazon should be, and i'm pretty sure already is, just embarrassed by this right now.
loved the picture from the never ending story ^^
The only thing that became clear to me watching the first three episodes is that Daniel Weyman (as The Stranger) is the only one who can actually act. And the continuity errors are so frustrating. If Círdan is so wise, respected, and all-knowing, and Elrond seeks him out for advice about the three rings (which should have been the last three rings made, as you noted), why didn't anyone seek him out for advice when the elves' tree was dying in season one? (I guess because he hadn't been cast yet.) And Sauron flattering and manipulating Celebrimbor so easily was right out of Star Wars, quicker than Palpatine "turning" Anakin. (Perhaps Elrond will eventually say, "It's a Trap!")
Needs moar flaming horses.
I can't stand what they've done with Sauron.
And they don't care. Laughing all the way to the bank. Another 3 seasons of insult, smugness, gleeful incompetence. Whee.
I'm bewildered when I hear you say "I like season 1"
I think you must be the only person on earth that has uttered those words
I didn't say that. Lol
If you watch his videos from season 1 they go from optimistic-ish but are all downhill from there.
Hey Erik, in your Forbes review, you state there's only one Durin. Actually there were seven kings of the Dwarves called Durin that we know of
Thorin II Oakenshield (a character in _The Hobbit_ ) is a tenth generation descendant of Durin VI
@@splinterbyrd there was only ever one Durin at a time. The dwarves consider him a reincarnation of the same dwarf. Hence, only one Durin.
@@ErikKain Ok🙂
@@ErikKain And you're right, _Rings of Power_ is a bit limp. Visually it's better than Jackson's films, although that's not saying much, and it was I think a tad arrogant of the scriptwriters to airily assume they can write as well as JRR Tolkien.
It's a bit like thinking they can write prequels to Shakespeare if they just drop in a few kings, 'thee's' and 'thou's.'
I watched his show less han 24 hours ago and can not remember anything of note about it, apart from it being easily forgetable.
So many hateful people in one place lol. I've been reading The Hobbit in Lord of the rings since I was six I'm now in my forties. I love the show.
First season I loved to make fun of. This season I just don’t care.
100% agree with you! Very messy and terrible character arcs. This is full of boring storylines and doesn’t capture any of the essence that makes lord of the rings great! It’s sooo bad!
Watch Terminator Zero to help get that nasty taste of ROP out your mouth.
It has nothing to do with Tolkien. Its a bad copy .
A- I've quit after a few minutes of s1
B- Rotten tomatoes score makes no sense.....most "positive" reviews are 6-7/10 but the site treats them as "fresh". There should be the average score next to their "fresh" score.
C- That show should've been about sauron in numenor....just like kenobi should've been a character study of HIMSELF. Not a corporate quest for synergy and demographic pie charts. I've quit the second i saw little Leia.
Let's keep it real, it's poor, but it's nowhere near as bad as S1. Cast your mind back to S1 E1-3,.. wibbly-woo,wibbly-woo,wibbly-woo,..
Rocks look down, boats up, bully elf kids, girlboss Guyladriel abusing subordinates and one-hiting an ice troll, swimming an ocean, disrespecting everyone in Numenor, that horsegasm!, Orcs digging a giant-ass trench right under elven eyes, Racist humans covered in perma-filth. Harfoots,.. everything harfoot! Plus a million other atrocities!
Above all, in S2, we get waaay less of the atrocious characters and actors (Guyladriel, Harfoots, All Numenorians except Elendil, Bronwyn,Theo)
The only way S2 E1-3 is worse than S1 is that it doesn't provide as much opportunity to roast it online. It's meh, boring, forgettable. The roast was the ONLY saving grace of S1.
Spot on. 🎯
i mean, i kind of disagree, but not because i'm defending season 1.
This season is, on literally every level, atrocious. Season 1 may have hit harder just based on shock value, because i don't think anyone expected that much, what's the word.... stupid? But they put a lot of money into the sets and special effects
This season? somehow, some way, the writing just got worse. The dialogue is nonsense. The plot doesn't really exist because there is no cause and effect, things happen but then characters don't even react to it, they just immediately jump into the next scene. Every attempt at world building just adds more confusion because nothing lines up. Nothing with the discount hobbits is of remote value even within the show... and the pacing, dear god the pacing. This is an 8 episode season, and half the first three episodes are already either filler or just scenes that go on far too long. People just prattle on with big words because the writer wants you to remember that this is an epic fantasy, doncha' know....
Then there's the almost universally bad acting, piss poor production values, lifeless cinematography, cartoonish special effects and whole scenes where you literally can't see what's going on because apparently this billion dollar production can't afford stage lights...
it's almost a shame season 1 set such a low standard because it kind of robs this statement of value, but what the actual fuck is Amazon doing here? nothing here works, nothing even even looks competent. Even the soundtrack is completely phoned in. This show is a complete clusterfuck at the most basic levels. Forget the fact that there is no Tolkien left in this 'lord of rings' show, this is a sleep-inducing slog of epic-length nothingness.
this will be dismissed as hyperbolic, but it's not : This season is one of the worst made TV shows i think i have ever seen
@@petriew2018 I can't get over how Galadriel has NO REACTION to the fact that she let Sauron get away after hunting him for 1000 years for killing her brother, and then making a fool out of her. NO REACTION other than "he deceived me". Why didn't she go after him? He was right there! weakest badass ever.
@@petriew2018This. I can’t believe what I’m hearing online. This season is so much worse. Even the semblance of logical plot is gone, the dialogue is - as awkward as it was in S1 - ten times worse now. I thought S1 was clumsy mostly, untill the final episode which made clear they have zero intention of doing Tolkiens story justice. S2 shows from the start Tolkiens work is just a trope box to pick from, with not just no skill but no intention to tell a story. They make everything up as they go and the fact people generally seem to think this season is better and much more enjoyable is the truly shocking part.
10:44 😂😂😂
Haha this is unfiltered my brain lol😊
the rolling Rs are physically cringey
Yeah that shit is supposed to be subtle but these fuckers don't know the meaning of the word.
@@ErikKaini showed the conversation between elrRrond and GaladrrRriel to my girlfriend who has never seen the show
she almost flinched when she heard galadrrRriel, ElrrRond, CelebrrRimborrrr, errregion, saourrrron
Dude, you sound tipsy. I LOVE it!
I may have taken a toke off someone's vape before making this video...
@@ErikKain , good for you. Have fun in Washington.
Ar-Pharazôn looks a lot like Jack Black. I keep expecting singing!
Omg 😲
Honestly, go by individual reviews from major sources rather then the RT score... Variety, Washington Post, Hollywood Reporter, USA Today all hated it (just to pick three) plus Telegraph, Independent and a bunch of others from US and UK... and others were mostly average, even people who hyped it last time. Yes some above average scores but not many. Not so many shouting about racism either. You're not alone
Very very true.
Thank you for watching this so I don't have to.
You are a living Principal Skinner meme
What drives me insane about this show is that by its own internal logic Sauron has now saved both the elves and the dwarves. Thereby making his own path to power harder. The elves would have literally left middle-earth if not for Sauron. Khazad-Dum would have been abandoned in darkness if not for Sauron. So stupid.
Haha yeah, Sauron is a deceiver who will soften his enemies up with internal corruption before he uses a military option. What he's doing here makes zero sense.
It has begun. On the plus side, by releasing three episodes for its S2 premiere, the season is now almost half over.
they also reduce the negative backlash