ChristopherTolkien tried to protect the timeless works, integrity and legacy of his father for many years. It's a shame his sons & relatives lack the same views and resolve.
Protect Tolkien's works? What has the show done to damage his books? They're all still available in the exact same condition they've been in since they were released. Not liking something is okay - making out that the thing you don't like is some how harming the original works is a retarded argument.
I used to complain about Christopher Tolkien editing some of his father's works before releasing them, but considering what we've gotten recently I feel a bit bad for ever feeling that way. At least Christopher clearly cared very deeply about the universe and wanted to protect the IP from being tainted by cynical cash grab products
Listening to your take on this i totally get this, had the exact feeling with star wars when disney took over. Amazing special effects but intellectually derelict and without the soul of the original
what a waste of money going to the cinema for those movies. i almost walk away half movie for the rise of shitwalker. at least this galatriel is not a mary sue
We're being fed shit, so that we will accept slightly less shit content as good content later on. Money spent is insane, to make it look good, but the story is al.ways platonic and outright stupid, again to dumb us down. Its poison to our minds.
Disney made some big misses with the sequel trilogy, but I think they've done considerably better with some of the TV series and spinoff films. They're very inconsistent to say the least.
@@Mutantcy1992 Cultural replacement of traditional values. Unfortunately the socialist (Marxist specifically) ideal of 'everything is political' has a lot of money behind it
It began with the forging of the great films. Threads were given by Tolkien, wisest and fairest of them all. The rights were then given to Jackson, a great miner and craftsman of the mountain of lore. And nine, nine hours were gifted to the race of men, who above all else, desired quality But they were all of them deceived, for another show was made. In the land of Amazon, in the fires of Mount Prime, the Dark Lord Bezos forged in secret a master flop And into this show he poured his money, his greed and his will to dominate all film One show to ruin them all
@@samgoff5289 Well, it's accurate enough so, I don't necessarily have as much a problem with it. Spamming gets annoying but, sometimes there's a point to why someone is spamming something. In this case, it's because people aren't happy with the show.
I watched episode 1 and half of 2. My biggest gripe was how demystified the Elves are. Its like an elf sitcom. Whenever we see them in Tolkien we get awe and mystery, which is good and right with an immortal race.
Agreed, they're always portrayed with a radiance that shines, they all had long flowing hair and fair skin, Amazon's characters are nothing like that, it would be like putting lobster claws on trolls and saying " well not all trolls look the same"
@@seeibe yeah it makes sense imo. They're far more numerous in ME during the second age, while most have left by the time LotR comes around, and they no longer have the means to forge the same quality magical artifacts they once did so their older weapons naturally took on a more mythical nature.
Frodo, we noticed your sword glows a different color when it's around a certain type of people. Now, we're not saying you've trained it to do that but you can see how that's problematic right?
If it's not relevant that the show is diverse, then why would it be relevant if it was not diverse? Nothing was stopping Amazon from creating a new diverse intellectual property that they owned outright. But they spent a billion dollars to ride on the coattails of established IP, while changing many aspects of that IP.
There was also nothing keeping them from making lore-friendly diversity if they were clever with it. Shadows of Mordor/Shadow of War is FAAR from the most lore-friendly of works but the possibility of Haradrim in the West like Baranor fits with what we know (though they’d be RARE) and realms in the South and East are largely barely marked canvases with a lot of potential. But that would require some adroit and sensitive handling.
@@vandeheyeric There really is a lot of gaps in Tolkien's lore that you can use diversity to fill. How about a civilisation of black elves from rainforests far to the south? Maybe some dwarves chose to leave the caves, and over time their exposure to the sun darkened their skin. Even if they want to still set it in Middle Earth, by explaining the origins of these groups, perhaps a mercantile class or refugees displaced from conflicts in the south, you establish a way to introduce lots of diversity while seeming realistic and grounded.
@@Croz89 The Elves I figure are a harder sell precisely because Tolkein laid out the Elves in such detail and their various tribes. It might not be utterly impossible to fit them in, but it'd be hard. The example I used for a Devil's Advocate would be Dwarf. Tolkien really did leave who and what the Dwarf Fathers were and what they were like vague outside of Durin's Folk, so if you put a pistol to my head and told me to come up with examples I'd suggest doing it there (outside of the realms of Men, who are already quite diverse if under-explored). It'd be a stretch to make some of the Dwarf Fathers and their people "Black" or "Asian" or the like, but I don't think it would be impossible if done WELL (for instance, a "Black" Dwarf lineage or two patterned off of the Beta Israel- and thus retaining the Semitic and Jewish undertones Tolkien intended with them and carefully mixed with the lore to fit). The issue I see is less "realistic" and "grounded" per se- since Middle Earth is at best only half-realistic and half-grounded- but faithful to the lore. If I wanted to make a group of-say- Black Elves or Black Dwarves I'd spend at least days if not months searching through the languages for names to make it all feel "right." I have no faith with this lot.
Spending one Billion dollars on a television series is outright ridiculous and unheard of. More money does not mean more watchability. At some point the effects are unnecessary if the writing is shit.
@@BleachDemon707 Such an original series like Amazon's The Lord of The Rings The Rings of Power by Jeff "Sauron" Bezos deserves this level of comment originality...
I have a feeling that Tolkien got the idea for this concept from the 1st law of thermodynamics. "Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be transferred to another form of energy."
@@ilikereasonThe notion that evil is unable to create and can only pervert whatever good forces have created is waaay older and actually comes from the teachings of St Augustine. Augustine popularised the idea that evil is the absence of God, and thus it can't create anything on it's own like He did, so instead it is perverting and mocking the creation to gain power and torment the humanity. Tolkien was a devout Christian and Christian influences are actually quite common in his works- for example in Silmarillion Melkor is seen doing exactly what evil was said to do according to St Augustine- being unable to create his own music Melkor mocks the notes of fellow Valars and tries to pervert their music 'creating' foul mockeries of their inventions- music that was supposed to create beautiful mountains Melkor perverted into volcanoes and chasms; notes that created rivers and seas he corrupted into bogs, swamps and deadly sea currents etc.
The race swaps are a factor though. You don’t cast a white guy in ancient Japan for example. And Elves has a clear aesthetic. It breaks immersion when you know the show runners put progressive politics over lore.
The thing is that most of the bad choices were made because the ppl making the decisions are all in for "the message". Like, why didn they believe in the woman when she says she saw the evil? Why they keep telling galadriel she is wrong? Why is she stronger than a full party of warriors (that have been fighting along her for years i think)? Why does she goes out all by herself in the ocean? Its the same that has been happening for a while now, its completely predictable at this point.
@@MrLutharr can you direct me to the source that says she was so powerful and at the same time, her male comrades were weak and cowards? Or where Elrod, was a metrosexual politician, just to elevate Galadriels raw strength. Also, you can’t cast for that role, a woman with height of 1.62m and weight of around 50 kilos. But they had to make her feminine and pretty(?) as well.
@@accountwontlastlong1 They basically ignored the books halfway through episode 1 and changed basic character motivations and plotlines with their own childish writing even worse than what we see in Rings of Power. They also comeplety gave up on wordbuilding and internal logic of WoT universe. Also the art direction, casting, costumes and sets did not feel like WoT but like some generic fantasy. Given the lower budget you did not even get nice shots you see in Rings of Power. So yeah, it was one big incoherent messy clusterfuck.
They destroyed the binary nature of the one power, Saidar and Saidin, and blamed the differences in its manifestation on the gender of the user. Which utterly removes the PRIMARY plot point...that the male side of the power was corrupted and needed to be cleansed. They also went way off canon with the power itself and its effects. They killed off characters which were supposed to appear later and were key to the story. And they removed the fact that Rand's people were ethnically homogenous, which is also important to the plot. They made it a travesty. It was awful. I stopped watching after it was obvious they had destroyed the story.
The contempt and disdain for Tolkien oozes through EVERY frame of this show. It is exactly as if a 14 year old possessed by a hollow modern ideology wrote this to spite his based neighbor who loves the Tolkien world. I ended up feeling as if I ate a styrofoam model of a chocolate eclair instead of the real thing.
This is the modern ideologues way of "deconstructing". They take established culture and then put a shallow hollow version of it in the name of "inclusivity" and "diversity'
Celebrimbor (a damn king!) travels to see another king - by foot, with no court, no escort, no equipment of any kind, and no appointment. At the gate, a mere guard tells him to piss off. Not only this is ridiculous and stupid - it also looks crazy poor for a show witch such a big budget. Like in the first 2 eposodes, we didn't see a SINGLE HORSE. This show is insanely bad, as if they did it on purpose 😂
Many people say this feels like hate-fiction, the opposite version of fanfiction, where the writer make the story bad on purpose because they hate the original story.
"A stone can't float because it only looks down" That is the perfect example for "I am 13 and this is deep!" "Everything not saved is lost" - Nintendo system message.
@@dcogs8856 not entirely there’s a whole website for the game where you can download it and tutorials to help, even some online stuff all because it’s abandonware, there’s also a group of people making remaking the bfme 2 entirely in unreal though they won’t be done for many years
it's not so easy, apparently there is no unified "African" mythology the way there is for the Greeks, Nords, etc. They would essentially be hacking something together or creating whole-cloth, which now that I say it makes it even more compelling that they should do so....
Yep, figured this would be the case Any time a major production pushes diversity as a major selling point, it’s because the writing is shit and they’re looking for a scapegoat to deflect to
@@mix1ro why is that racist? last time i checked he didn't say diversity is a bad thing, he said using it as a souless marketing ploy is bad and he's got a bit of shows and movies to stand on, ghostbusters 2016, high guardian spice, lightyear, etc. usually the writing or acting or whatever is bad ohh but we have a diverse cast or characters. you can't blame people for getting burned too many times and then call them racist if they were a bit skeptical about the show that's coming advertises as diverse, your free to call them that, but that doesn't harbor a good relationship with potential fans, which is why people stay away from toxic fandoms that fuckin wish you would die because you made a drawing a couple tones too light, its just in poor taste and it also waters down the term. and that's coming from the guy who likes KIPO and the age of wonderbeasts, actually, that's a good show, I think I'm gonna rematch it.
@@chucklesdeclown8819 Exactly, the way diversity is done best is by making it a natural part of the medium and not a focal point. Try and weave in a diverse cast around a good world and story without making the diversity itself the main feature. That way it doesn't feel like anything is being pushed directly but still slowly wears down any walls of prejudice people have, because now they are used to those diverse people just being there.
@@mix1ro Its almost like all those years of white people playing native Americans and Egyptians and east Asians in cinema was just fine right? Why does it matter that its not either historically accurate or accurate to the story being told. Say you have a movie about Ancient Mayans yet you want to put a white actor in your movie? Have him play some lost shipwrecked sailor. . You don't have him play say a head priest at the fucking Mayan temple. .
@@arkadious9320 like I saw a movie as I was a kid with a african folklore. I don't know which specific culture from africa. The story was about a boy who could run fast could talk as baby and so on. The antagonist is a eitch that got a poisoned dart in her back that she couldn't get out. The people of the village need to sacrifice some food for the witch etc And it feelt natural as it was a folklore from africa.
Whenever a studio pushes "diversity" as their show's selling point, you know it's not going to end well because that's their way of trying to compensate for bad writing and acting. It's a shame because diversity with great acting is possible, and easily within the reach of a multi-billion dollar corporation like Amazon. What do you get from such "diverse" shows as this one? You get a story that spits all over established lore, maddeningly horrible dialogue, artificially incompetent male characters, and "Mary-Sue" female characters that are impossibly powerful to the point of being insufferable.
You do realise that the movies did the exact same thing with Arwen completely taking over the role of Glorfindel for no apparent reason and Eowyn being much more outspoken about gender identity. So you are saying the movies are bad too because they didn't "respect the lore" in favour of "diversity"?
@@ageoflove1980 they did that with Arwen because they couldn't jam The Tale of Arwen and Aragorn into the films, so they needed a way to make their relationship have more screen time. But yeah, that is one of the most common complaints from purists about the movies. There's a huge difference between a few examples from the movies and wholesale changes to the lore and themes that RoP is doing.
@@Thor-Orion Well that's what they say perhaps but it's completely obvious they did it to create a strong female lead which was completely absent in the books. Pretty clear from the fact that she somehow manages to sneak up on Aragorn and put a sword on his throat... That would in the lore of course never happen to the greatest ranger alive. And I'm not saying there is no difference, just that changing the lore in favour of diversity happened in the movies too. I know that fact doesn't fit your narrative, so, sorry?
I appreciate watching the true LOTR fans continue to push back against this nonsense adaptation from Amazon. I wish more fandoms fought as hard when their shows got tainted by other studios like Netflix.
Well, the Tolkien fans had the examples of the earlier franchises, and many Tolkien fans were also fans of other franchises and learned lessons from them.
@Zoomer Stasi Not even close. The prequels had poor dialogue and some bad scene direction, but it fit perfectly within the Star Wars universe, didn't contradict established lore and brought with it the largest injection of worldbuilding the franchise has ever seen. Without the Prequels much of what is Star Wars wouldn't even exist. Meanwhile the Sequels are a poorly done soft reboot of A New Hope and the worst EU comic book (Dark Empire) merged together by terrible writing and non stop lore contradictions and utterly broke any sense of worldbuilding in the universe post Episode 6.
Netflix? What are you smoking? Netflix sure as hell doesn't exercise any control over shows that hit their service. They're the "freedom to the creator" service. It's how something so awful as cuties made it to the service, because they don't stick their noses in and tell the creators they need to change something. Even when they really should.
I wanted to bring up the race swapping you mentioned. This I learned from a friend who tried to watch the show and was echoed by a few others. The black elf they introduce, apparently the humans of land he is in are supposed to black and brown, lore wise. Inspired by African and Middle eastern. They were so set on including diversity, race swapping an elf and dwarf, they completely missed an actual ethic group and turned the entire ethic group white. This is why racing swapping is so negative, because more often than not, it comes at the expense of actual diversity that naturally exists in the story that is being told. If anything you could keep the black elf, make him a half elf and you can have a story beat of him being rejected by both groups due to his mixed heritage. The diversity was there but instead Amazon trampled it. It shows how much they truly care about their inclusion.
Well said. That said, as for "being rejected by both groups" that would've fit better for the First Age; at the time Human-Elf relations were still viewed as kind of taboo or at least unwise but not TERRIBLY. After all, Elrond Half-Elven is a thing. But the rest of your points are right on.
@@vandeheyeric they're still not common and we know from history that when things are unusual they are often treated with fear and apprehension. I agree that the elves would be more okay with it than the humans in all likelihood, so maybe don't give him the chance to be rejected by the elves, he was raised in the human lands and treated as an outcast, unable to return to the elvish lands for something his elven parent did.
The fact that they didn't even bother to include characters from other regions like Haradrim or the East, shows just how little any of these writers or actors know about Tolkien. Its the lowest of the low effort.
@@coltonowens2742 Exactly what I thought. They could have introduced black and hispanic actors as some Haradrim or half-Haradrim (refugees? merchants? errant ex-pows? diplomats? people who descend from the ones that oposed to Saurons influence in their land and had to flee?) and so achieved (human) ethnic diversity...... The same for asian actors, perhaps the loosers of some tribal struggle from Khand who had to seek refuge between their enemies to avoid their fate, or some families that were left behind when Saurons armies where defeated and the eastern tribes retreated in all haste........ It would have been a good oportunity to develop a story that could explain how people that are suposedly not corrupt or "bad" by definition, end up fighting for Sauron and their struggle to adapt to a world ruled by the "good guys"..... But no: better black dwarfs or elves........
The race diversity always kills shows for me if it's not based on any lore am black but I don't care for seeing a black person if he doesn't fit the lore all I want is good writing
We used to make fun of the token black characters in the 90's. Now these new woke shows are bringing back the random token diversity cast like it never went out of style.
They literally said, you as a black person can not enjoy shows or books if there isnt a character of the same skin colour as you. I am not kidding , that is the claim now. It is kinda insulting.
They spent so much money on this, Amazon can't afford for this to fail. What will probably happen is this series will finish the corporate puppets will say the usual "We are immensely proud of our accomplishments with our studio team." Or something like that. Then a month or so after that expect a lot of people to get fired. And the stock goes right back up and the media moves on to the next thing.
Amazon can easily afford for it to fail. Amazon Prime Studios (or whatever they call their in-house production team) may survive its failure. The people who signed on to these decisions, though... they're the ones who can't afford for it to fail. The folks in charge of _RoP_ are a bunch of Bad Robot alumni, and while they've earned the epithet 'Bad Reboot' they've also tended to earn the franchise owners money, at least on the current project.
The company can afford it, but if the show fails, this will be an enormous embarrassment for the executives that backed it and it will result in many people being fired to cover the higher ups asses.
"A dog can bark at the moon but he cannot bring it down" Is brought to you by "An artist respects the silence that serves as the foundation for creativity"
The first thing I thought when I learned about the existence of this show was "wow this does not need to exist". The first thing I thought when I was watched the first episode was "wow this does not need to exist".
Dude, it is ABSOLUTELY valid to criticize its wokeness, even though this show is not by any mean the worst offender in media nowadays. They will STILL dismiss your constructive and legitimate criticism as racist, phobic or whatever, even if you don't touch the subject. Thats how wokeness operates. They use it as a shield against valid criticism.
Even with the LoTR brand, I'm all set on more of the exact same fantasy show every studio keeps releasing. I also remember thinking, ESPECIALLY re-watching the original trilogy recently, "There is a reason nothing is this good anymore" and it simply feels like an era of movies and storytelling that is long-gone.
They have been focusing on ideology over quality for years now. The few people with talent and the ideology is small. The rest of the talent got purged. Also corpo bosses only want "safe" movies to come out. That is why they only sponsors excising franchises. Not realizing its been failing for a while now.
@@gerbo8018 it’s not safe they or spitting in the face of the majority of people and pushing there agenda down there throats . They aren’t worried about negative press or feedback because they control all media and large social forms of communication. The fact is there is very little money in making films anymore compared to the cost of actually making good movies the internet has killed the profitability of making films it used to be everyone went to the theaters to see every movie if it was a good movie you would go twice because it would be almost a year before you had the opportunity to buy the VHS or DVD home version and then they would have extended deluxe home releases with directors cuts or behind the scenes and this stuff sold like crazy everyone had to have a copy of that to. Then the merch sales with shirts or posters even people had to go to a mall to have the opportunity to pay for overpriced trinkets and merch and people did to Hot Topic was huge when I was younger and people would go buy a $35 tshirt that had Jurassic Park on it haha Nowdays with the internet and the amount of free streaming sites that everyone has a Amazon Fire stick with a free version of Netflix that is even better than Netflix or they just download any movie they can dream of even when they are in theaters you can almost always find a good copy online to watch at home. The amount of money that has been drained from owning the IP of a film has desegregated to the point that Amazon who has half the civilized world paying $10 a month to have free shipping on everything they ever need delivered the next day. They have to find something to spend all that money on so they or pushing there own social and political agenda by taking beloved IP and ruining it on purpose the same way Netflix doesn’t have a show that’s an original that isn’t a propaganda or subtle or not so subtle social agenda piece. They don’t make any money on this stuff this is there willing loss of money to fuck with the people politically that they despise.
@@JoeWayne84 god the wall of text. And clearly you missed the point of what i'm saying at all. Fist of, they still make money from making movies ... You are delusional if you think they don't.
Speaking as a black dude and fan of The Lord of the Rings, I care about the race swapping angle because the lore is based on mythology that is native to British culture. Race swapping characters, despite their acting skill and the level of writing, destroys immersion in that world. For example, an American who wants to experience Japanese culture doesn’t fly across the ocean to eat hamburgers, hot dogs, and seek out other Americans. They go there in order to experience a culture that is very different from their own and delight in the fact that once you break through that surface, the people that were once completely alien to you start to show universal human traits that make them relatable. Having competent actors and a well written script wouldn’t make the race swapping problem any better. One of the most powerful aspects of storytelling is allowing us to empathize with characters that, at a glance, we appear to have nothing in common with. While it is nice to have more diversity in storytelling, the people who want that diversity should be willing to put in the work and write those stories themselves, rather than standing on the shoulders of men who earned their place in literary history. If these people are so hot on the issue of diversity, then they need to pay their mission the respect it deserves, sit their asses down at the writing table, and pen a proper mythology for the people they claim to be advocating for. I want a good story. I don’t need the characters to look like me. That isn’t escapism. That’s narcissism. I’m not that interesting.
If you are a fan or at least care about the franchise of LOTR you should use your platform to voice your concerns and criticism of this awful adaptation. They hired people who are more interested in activism, self inserts and with 'modern day' storytelling in a fantasy world.
I'm still with the Tolkien fans on this despite not being a fan of LoTR. It's mostly because they decided to pull this same sort of denigration and destruction of a well loved franchise with Halo (in my case) and to this end, they've started it. Now they don't want to see fans demand the end of such BS being pulled. Given what they did to Halo with the Halo show in my case, I pretty much understand that what's happening with Rangs is the same thing but, on a much larger scale.
I think people's biggest problem here: expecting good quality writing and screenplay from modern Hollywood. This isn't the Hollywood who gave us 'Emperors New Groove' anymore.
The fact that Amazon through IMDB blocked all negative reviews makes me really mad, as it shows they have no ethics whatsoever. Will not use IMDB again.
I'm flabbergasted you said the Politics were irrelevant. They are completely relevant. They are the REASON for the creative choices, the dialogue, the script, and even the casting. I understand if you do not wish to get into the politics, that's perfectly fair. But the "Misogynist" arguments will happen regardless. If one side doesn't show up for the fight, it means they forfeit, not that the Fight didn't take place. The foundation of everything you find wrong with this series, is in politics. Do not disregard it because you find it tedious. Acknowledge it, that it's being argued elsewhere, and that you wish to concentrate on the actual End-Product as a Fantasy Series.
They simply buy the IP for the title, the investors know as long as it has a big name people will watch it. It has gotten to the point where I think it is all an international money laundering scheme; who knows how many people in Brazil and other smaller countries are really watching the show... it's a big bag of fertelizer with the IP's name on it, be it marvel or LotR.
My own theory is that this show is just the ground work for actually remaking LOTR as an episodic TV series. With this series they establish their versions of the characters with their actors. Amazon need to have a mega franchise, and this is it. LOTR and the appendices has all the characters and material they need. My understanding is that the Tolkien estate still owned the episodic TV rights to LOTR. This is what Amazon has bought. The film, merchandising and other rights is what Tolkien specifically sold, but it excluded episodic TV. Obviously back in the 60’s the idea of an episodic TV show based on LOTR that would actually do it justice, was simply laughable. If you look at Amazon’s history, they don’t give up and they are in it for the long haul. After 3 or 4 seasons of this, this will be what normies will think Tolkien is. The show only needs to be average to achieve this, hype and media coverage is easily bought. Even hardcore fans can be cultivated. The books will survive, but in 10 years time the Amazon franchise will be what people think of when you mention LOTR. It is sad and inevitable, but also weirdly poetic as this is all the things Tolkien was against.
"Why would you even care?" Because as a person who likes the universe having the basic respect to get things right about the characters and lore should be one of the most important things to care about? Just because the people defending it will come after the complaints with virtue signal nonsense doesn't make the complaints any less valid and basic accuracy to the world they are using is the least a show using that world should be doing. Also fun how another show like this is also making the grand majority of male characters idiots who are constantly frothing at the mouth due to terminal stupidity.
wHy Do YoU eVeN cArE is such a smoothbrain response, the proglodyte parroting this talking point clearly cares enough to hound random nobodies for their supposedly irrelevant opinions about this supposedly irrelevant topic
There are decades of movies and TV with women being complete morons for the men to save. Modern audiences (usually) consider these to be laughable. Yet for some reason, modern producers seem to think that doing the opposite, making men all idiots so a woman can save them, is a good idea. Making your characters stupid is almost never a good idea outside of comedy. It either turns your "serious" show _into_ a comedy, or it just pisses people off. It's the #1 sign of bad writing, and one of the few things that will _instantly_ make me drop a show.
You do realise that the movies did the exact same thing with Arwen completely taking over the role of Glorfindel for no apparent reason and Eowyn being much more outspoken about gender identity. So you are saying the movies are bad too because they didn't "respect the lore" in favour of "diversity"?
@@ageoflove1980 ...so your saying... that you are going to just ignore the point made and bring up two individual character decisions to critique a fundamental changing of world lore...
Any species swapping, such as the non-Black to Black in "Rings of Power", is no different than making Chewbacca an Ewok or Greedo Human. It's 100% stupid and breaks the whole story.
They could have included black acrtresses and actors by including some characters that were Haradrim, specifically from Far Harard. Monolith did exactly that so they could include a black character in Shadow of War.
I love the Movie Trilogy, but I don’t consider myself a fan of the series. To hear a legitimate fan LAMBAST this dumb pointless show, the type of fan that Amazon SHOULD HAVE BEEN WORKING ON TO WIN, not the Twitter nutcases that they believe are the “FANS”, is a true blessing.
The original stories were written by a master who took his time and crafted a story. This Amazon story was churned out by the modern entertainment Factory consisting of teams of writers most likely under immense pressure having to deal with all kinds of bullshit notes from people just trying to justify their existence. There is no way this would have turned out any differently
After this, halo, and recent marvel stuff, I feel like companies push the diversity angle just so they have an excuse when things fall apart. It's insulting. Make a good story or a faithful adaptation and people will come. Make a bad story and you can always call people who dislike it racist, sexist, or whatever.
they are destroying all aspect of society on purpose, financial system, food chain, transportation AND culture, its a control demolition of all aspect for the agenda
@Julian Watson the diversity is one of many examples where the writers go "well technically Tolkien didn't say this didn't happen", or "well why would anyone care, it's only a small change". In isolation you can get away with a bit of that but they've made up so much, including but not limited to the diversity, that those excuses don't hold up anymore. I guess that's what happens when you try to adapt a book series without rights to the actual books.
@@squaeman_2644 Because of two things. One: The idea of a business is to make as much money as you possibly can. Yes Amazon receive federal grants and their business is one of the best in the world but why not make more? Why not venture somewhere else and make more money? Expand your business? Get more people on board? That leads to reason two: Fans bring loyalty, which bring money. Look at FromSoftware. Their Souls games have attracted millions of fans, who will pay damn good money on anything souls related from games to shirts and other merch. Same thing with Tolkien. Fans loved his book, so fans made a trilogy off of it, which garnered more fans and later on video games were made based on it which attracted even more fans, etc. And those fans will pay to get more of all that because they enjoy it. And that money is what keeps a business running. Give the people what they want, what they enjoy and they'll keep coming back to you for it. Otherwise, why would they come to you at all?
I agree that good actors and writing would make diversity work, but since diversity is almost always a substitute for them, I have learned to pass up on shows as soon as they announce that they are diverse. It's almost like a code word for "we don't know what we are doing"
No no no, the diversity is not organic, it’s so forced. The Expanse did diversity right. Not many other shows, this one included seem to be able to build it in rather than just swap it out, if you know what I mean. But yeah the shitty writing just makes this sitch worse.
No, it would always be off-putting in Tolkien’s world. It never would’ve fit and looked right. Stop being so milquetoast these stories were made by and for Europeans.
It ought to be enough to buy basic competence, though. If you consider these episodes as an extended movie airing on television, then it's shocking how little Amazon is receiving for its money. It's as though they prioritized visual design over every other aspect, including (and especially) writing.
The problem with "diversity casting" is when it's done superficially, or cynically, and when its pandering to the "SJW" crowd who care about identity politics over absolute material improvement in the lives of the people they pretend to care about. I don't have a super problem with it, but when it is so contrary to the lore, it kinda breaks the immersion.
@@Remixersoloman black people do not belong in any European mythology or fantasy period. Go write your own mythos if you can. Promise you it will never be as good as Tolkien’s.
In the lands of Morwoke. In the fires of Mount Equity. The Dark Lord Amazaun forged in secret a television show. In it he poured his money, his hair, and his will to diversify all fun. One Woke to break them all.
Who would have guessed that hiring two showrunners with no writing credits on a recommendation from JJ Abrams would turn out badly? If only there'd been some clue...
My only point of contention with you is the race swapping bit. I think in other situations you're right, but in this instance it flies in the face of what Tolkien wanted, which I'm pretty sure someone's already pointed out. Figured I should comment on what was said rather than just gush over seeing Battle for Middle-earth, but damn does seeing that gameplay really bring back good memories!
It also makes zero sense from a biological perspective, why would dwarves need melanin. Human races developed specifically to adapt to their environment so why would elves a forest and mountain dwelling species need a pigment that helps protect the skin from the harsh suns of arid deserts.
Agree, tolkien based a lot of the races in the world on irl races, and it isn't inappropriate to assume he would've wanted the casting to be based on cultural context. I mean the elves are literally based on the Tuatha De Danann tall, pale, godlike beings from an ancient otherworld.
Imagine a "re-imagined" version of Roots or Shaka-Zulu with caucasian actors. Yeah, if that isn't a good idea then why is it okay to raceswap in other cases?
I mean, it wasn’t impossible to do it The problem I have is that it was such a focal point of the marketing for no reason, and it was such a meaningless change for how hard they pushed it It was always going to be a scapegoat to deflect away from the bad writing
By saying this you are basically giving Amazon ammunition for calling you a racist and a bigot which is exactly what they are doing to ignore all valid criticism. Personally I do not care about race swapping or gender swapping, etc. as long as you have respect for the source material and have good writing which this show doesn’t.
Good video and concise breakdown of the horrid writing. However I have to disagree that the race swapped elves and dwarves "do not matter." It's a matter of aesthetic and changing major features of elves and dwarves makes a different aesthetic. It's particular and unique of a English/Norse source. Elves have long, flowing hair and fair skin. I do not care of any malicious excusations of racism etc because you point out the deliberate subversion. Even if the black actors are great (like the dwarven princess) and story is good, the aesthetic is changed and can ruin immersion. Aesthetic does matter and it's more than the sum of its parts.
Also Tolkien created as a Mythos for the British Isles, so yes there are darker skinned people in the universe but they are not dwarves Elves hobbits or Numernorians.
@@yurioorlov177 there are dark skinned men Men and elves can have children There is an extended period of time where elves and dark skinned men live in close proximity. Long enough and close enough that children are plausible. These children could be the explanation for the dark skinned elves (though one cannot help but wonder where they all went come the 3rd Age) the hoarfoots are explicitly described as being “browner of skin” than othe hobbits. Black hobbits=hoarfoots, simple as that Black dwarves…I got nothing within the existing lore outside of it never being explicitly said it isn’t possible I’m not against the diversity, if you can explain it with existing lore. But Amazon isn’t even trying to is where my problem lies. They’re just shoehorning it in. They never planned on good writing. They planned on blaming all the criticism on people against the diversity.
@@dragonriderabens9761 Elves never bred with dark skinned men, there have only been three pairings of Elves and Men in the entire history of Tolkien's legendarium, he was explicitly clear on that because of how incredibly abnormal and noteworthy it was. "Browner of skin" means tan, not African. Most of the hobbits living in the Shire at the end of the Third Age, including all the main hobbit characters like Frodo and Sam, were Harfoots and none of them were black Africans. If "browner of skin" actually meant "African," Tolkien would have been explicitly clear on that. And if Harfoots were meant to be Africans, they would ALL be Africans rather than just one or two token black ones thrown in. As for dwarves, along with every race, if Tolkien intended them to be black/African he would have explicitly described him as such. There's zero reason why a race that lives almost entirely underground and away from the sun would have dark skin. The Haradrim and the Easterlings are explicitly described as being darker skinned, as their cultures are supposed to correspond to Northern Africa and the Middle East, respectively. The point is, none of the explanations you give make the slightest bit of sense in the lore whatsoever because Tolkien wasn't trying to create a mythology for the entire world, he was trying to create a mythology for his beloved England because he felt that Anglo Saxon mythology/folklore had been lost after the Norman invasion. If Tolkien had intended the Elves, dwarves, Numenoreans, hobbits, etc. to be black, he would have drawn upon African culture, language, history, and mythology instead of using entirely European culture, history, language, and mythology. If Amazon wanted lore accurate diversity, they could have EASILY done it in a lore-accurate way by having storylines set in Harad and Rhun where dark-skinned people could have resisted Sauron. The fact that they deliberately chose the worst possible option of forcing a few token black characters where they don't belong shows a shocking amount of contempt for Tolkien and the source material.
Amazon has deleted every single review under 6 stars from IMDB. Not single review has less than 6 stars. I cannot find any other high profile series of movie that does not have at least one such review. This is utterly transparent and embarrassing .
Got to disagree on the politics and agenda not being a valid criticism. Every show that pushes agenda first has had a terrible story that's poorly written, because they don't car about the story. If you base on an existing IP and then shit all over it to fit your agenda then that is in fact the issue. People using it as excuse when they receive valid criticism as racist or sexist should not prevent that criticism. If you are afraid to be truthful because you will be persecuted then eventually the truth dies.
@@squaeman_2644 that's the worst part, this has happened multiple times in history and it never, ever, ends well. Turning people into villains and monsters and destroying them if they aren't like you, exactly how far have we come since 1938? I am not being hyperbolic either how many lives were lost, how many women assaulted and livelihoods and neighbourhoods ruined by the BLM Riots? And who were the worst affected the very people they purport to be standing for. All whilst they buy yet another million dollar mansion with the donations! Saying "All lives matter" is now considered racist, let that sink in.
"Amazon may be amazon but they are not infallible." Their working conditions and New World shows that they might needa stick to just shopping and improve that aspect of them for the workers.
Yeah, UE says he doesn't care as long as the actors are good. The problem is, Amazon Studios has quotas for people of different backgrounds, which lowers the ability to find the best actors for roles by diminishing the pools they can select from. So the diversity push does hurt the show aside from being lore-breaking, and in the case of the black elf storyline, injects real life racial politics into the material. I don't need that stuff in a fantasy show, especially when it's so ham-handed like it is in TROP.
@@farmersneed8255 I don’t even think there’s a quota it’s just a very interesting case where an already diverse world with politics very different to the human equivalent was molded into so,etching that resembles our world. Sexism and racism are probably not thing Tolkien really wanted to include in his world and I’m sure he’d be fine with black elves, what I don’t like is them making the world hostile towards these people because they want to come across as progressive.
@@farmersneed8255 It's not that hard to find decent black actors. We got lots of black actors. If they couldn't find decent ones, maybe the casting department wasn't looking very hard. Or maybe the actors are fine but the director is bad at his job. Or maybe the project was just a shitshow all around. Even for other groups, still not that hard. You're not making a movie with 30 major characters, 200 minor characters, and an all-Fijian cast; you need a few major roles and some background actors.
@@user-lb1op2gn9d Nobody in the first two episodes were hostile towards anyone for their skin color or gender, only humans being hostile towards elves, and dwarves being hostile towards elves, both of which happen in the books. You're literally complaining about nothing right now.
@ 11:00 Oof. Way to miss the mark with that shot. The point is that you can't have a good story, or good acting, when the main goal is subversion. Judging from the video, you don't understand this, but the abysmal writing you complain about is a direct result of the writers caring about politics first, and storytelling second. By pretending that this isn't the case, you give further ammo to the people who are destroying valuable franchises, because "forced inclusion would be fine if done right." That's like saying that ingesting excrement is a fun activity, as long as it's cooked to the right temperature.
I watch the first episode and I could not suspend my disbelief of how bad it was. I kept muttering to myself, "that not in the book" or "that's wrong" or "that time line is wrong". I could not believe what they have done to the characters and the new characters are just plain weird. I will not be bothering with the rest of this Tolkien imposter.
A legitimate reaction after those poor attempts at deep sounding Tolkien-esque quotes would be "Did Jaden Smith write this? Nah, that would actually be an improvement."
@@seeibe Not as many as you'd think; Aragorn was eightyish during the War of the Ring. Although that longevity is more associated with his Numenorean blood than elvish. And, of course, Arwen's mother was an elf, too.
@@boobah5643 Yes the line of kings would typically marry other descendants of Elross to keep their longevity. What I mean is they would have to be a lot less than half elves for there to be enough genetic diversity for that to work. 😅
It's probably obvious that respect is by far the most important thing to have when doing an adaptation. Jackson respected Tolkien's work enough to try and bring it to cinema as best he could with LotR; Sonic's producers respected the fans enough to make them fix the CGI in their first movie; Tom Cruise respected the fans who wanted to see TG2 and made sure it was as good as he could (even thanking them in the cinemas before the movie started from what I hear). Even if you have to make some changes to the story, you need to respect what the fans what and what the writer wrote so you can make the best product possible and get the best results you can. It's so blatantly obvious but it doesn't really surprise me that the ones who consider ideology and penny-pinching above all else wouldn't get it. With how we've been getting bad adaptations for over a decade (with some rare good ones), I'm actually curious if anyone would even WANT to take a chance with adapting one's work after all of this is said and done. Fantastic writers who would love to see their work brought to the big screen might back out due to the fear it'll be caught up in the ideological nonsense; companies might not do go for it since they'll see how bad the recent string of adaptations have gone (and all the drama it caused) and might nope out of that; the ideologues themselves might either run out of work to tarnish or just get booted from the industry before they even get a chance to and fans might just reject it outright the second they smell something completely off because they've already been burned too many times already. Not saying there'll be no more adaptations but I can't help but feel there'll be massive trust issues between actual creatives and companies going forward.
I can confirm Tom Cruise thanking the fans before the movie thing happened as I saw it at my screening. As for the "fans might just reject it outright the second they smell something completely off because they've already been burned too many times already" part, I've coined a term for that. The TLJ Effect. Which is going to lead many companies to crash and burn unless a course correction is on the horizon.
Here's Jackson talking about his respect for the author and authenticity, and not superimposing his own 'message' on the work. ua-cam.com/video/-ggVDYcvNxg/v-deo.html
You do realise that the movies did the exact same thing with Arwen completely taking over the role of Glorfindel for no apparent reason and Eowyn being much more outspoken about gender identity. So you are saying the movies are bad too because they didn't "respect the lore" in favour of "diversity"?
@@ageoflove1980 More like they're far more focused on pushing their ideology than telling the story as best they can. I admit i never read LotR before watching the movies but even after learning it was changed from the book, I still didn't have a problem with it. No one else did either. Like I said earlier, even if you have to make some changes to make things work, you still have to put in the effort to make the adaptation as good as possible. To toss out a better example, Nick Fury was originally old and white but I loved Sam Jackson’s portrayal of the agent, especially since he still retained Fury's core traits.
@@cicada8981 Sure, just saying that rewriting the lore in favour of diversity is exactly what the movies did too. And most people do not mind it in RoP too. The median IMDB user review score is 8/10 so most people who bothered to write a serious critique seem to agree.
We were right. Again. Saw this coming from a hundred miles away. Since they love money so much, they could have spent that billion (!) on hiring good writers to create an original universe, and then milk it for decades to come. Alas.
11:20 - We would care because we care about Tolkien and the factual, codified intention of his work. Tolkien did nothing that wasn't deliberate, even if it were a thought or concept he hadn't fully fleshed out at a given point in time, a things inclusion or exclusion in his world is intentional. This is the fundamental argument purists like myself are making. If you just want generic high fantasy with elves and evil and wizards and battles with the Burger King Kidz Club as your cast because you're just so gosh darn progressive, okay, fine - just say that and be done with it. Tolkien is so much more than those base tropes. There's a reason he and his work are studied by scholars for decades and why one of the leading scholars, Tom Shippey, was fired from this abomination of a show.
@@albertocarrilho5839 I am not a purist, I have a similar stance on this to UE. But your point was an entirely emotional one. Without further elaboration, it stands on the same level as "Homosexuality? I would contemplate any position of tolerance on that idea long and hard*, I find it disgusting on multiple levels." *) Pun most definitely intender.
@@albertocarrilho5839 nah, he's on the money here. "Purist" might sound like a slur because we usually see it used as such, but it means the dude appreciates the works of Tolkien as they were done. No need to "spice it up" or add any "diversity" and "inclusion"
@@sparking023 Yeah, I'm 100% fine with them making a new show with all the checkbox regressive pandering they want, but Tolkien isn't that. It's a pattern of behavior from Hollywood and these perpetually online types in general - co-opt something that is predominantly anglo-saxon in origin yet culturally neutral and make a mockery of it with badly written Mary Sues and characters that should be more insulting to the minorities they're supposed to represent. Has anyone seen/read The Expanse? Or hell, anything Brandon Sanderson has done? You can have 'muh representation' without it being forced and lame.
@@simonbelmont0993 "Has anyone seen/read The Expanse? Or hell, anything Brandon Sanderson has done? You can have 'muh representation' without it being forced and lame." This. EXACTLY. Hell, I'd argue you can have "muh representation" even in the world of Arda, you'd just have to be REALLY careful with how you do it. But the realms of the South and East are entire parts of the world that Tolkien sketched out but left plenty of room for improvisation and addition. I have even played devil's advocate talking about a hypothetical, Beta-Israel-inspired lineage of Black-colored Dwarfs. And on a more conservative level, while the Shadows games seriously mangled lore in many ways (though I could appreciate how they stayed true to some of the fundamental morals, like the corrupting influence of power and the effects of seeking dominance), they did a half-decent way to explain the presence of Baranor in a lore-friendly way (given who ruled Gondor at the time). But that would require a delicate mixture of daringness and respect, and above all the kind of meticulousness to thread the line. And when are these clowns going to do that?
I wish you had plugged LotR War in the North in your intro. No one ever talks about that game and it was so fun. A lot of Tolkien fans have never even heard of it.
It really does seem that a lot of show/film writers these days lack even a rudimentary understanding of how to write, characterise, worldbuild, maintain continuity etc. it’s a shame 😢
I watched 20 mins, then came looking for reviews. As expected, they rightly hammer the painful writing. Unlike The Sandman, which looked to have great writing, then I saw Souad Faress was in it. A certain UK court case has made me wonder how she still gets work.
Man brushes by her on crowded train platform for 0.5 seconds. Claims sexual assault that lasted over 3 seconds, followed by being struck in the shoulder. Video evidence shows every claim is a blatant lie. The man went through a year of hell because of her blatant lie. Might not get his life back with how accusations work. Does she just wake up and decide to ruin the lives of "peasants"?
Funny thing, Neil Gaiman had insulted Tolkien fans and praised Rings of Power. I guess you have to kiss ass in the modern streaming age with so few potential landing places for your work.
I said this in another video related to ROP at geeks and gamers but it pisses me off that in spite of the ability and the quite frankly, unlimited resources they(Amazon and co.) have at its disposal, they always seem to need an existing ip , an existing world, an existing idea with solid rules and characters that flesh out those worlds, and they can't even make a Decent show or movie out of it, inevitably adding their own flavor of ideology and ultimately distorting the ips they control. It's almost like they don't know how to create anything that isn't ties to their worldview. It's tragic but infuriating to see that instead of asking themselves if it's their fault, they whine and complain and God forbid, REVIEWS. Ugh. Like a bunch of petulant, indecisive children running that studio.
I hated that from the first shot it had an scifi hdr aesthetic. Like the elves are actually advanced aliens from krypton. And their watchtowers are rocketships.
My criticism, coming at it from the race/ politics angle, is that they could have done all the things they want to do - non-white-centric plot lines, racially diverse characters - if they just took the time to attempt to follow the lore. Want Brown elves; focus on a group of elves who never followed Oromë west. Want Brown authority figures; have original Ainur characters. Some of them will be black/brown as the forms they took were inspired by their vision of the Children of Eru following the culmination of the Ainulindalë, when they followed the Valar into Arda, and took earthly forms. Want new stores - go east, go south. Tell a story of a Pirate queen from Umbar, or one of Persian-esk-mystic Easterlings! Tell a story about how the Rhevain and Hravani worship Morgoth as a god of liberation and ambition - a Prometheus fallen type. A God which promises ascension and immortality. Dwarf women have beards! This was such an easy win and it baffles me how they missed it! The non-binary sympathetic hipster normi types would have loved it, and the fans would have backed them up for the sole reason of it being *true to the lore*. Amazon deserves everything they have coming. I'm just sad that there was a chance to have good Tolkien legendarium content, and it was missed.
Honestly, just based on what they had the rights to adapt and the company doing it, this was always going to be a disaster. This could just as easily be a random original fantasy universe. The only reason why they've slapped the Lord of the Rings label on it is so they can get normies to recognise the IP and consume the content. No creative effort and no respect.
i disagree w/ your point about the race swapping and its not because I think its "woke" but otherwise I agree w/ pretty much everything you said. great video, thoughtful and humble as usual
Thank you for showing constructive articulate criticism for those of us who have issues with the show yet can't discuss it without being attacked as being "woke" or whatever. It has BAD WRITING and BAD ACTING... full stop. No need to go any further. Give me a smart, complex plot with great writing and acting and I'm all in and I'm all in for adding some diversity. But this show ain't it so to speak. Also AMAZON OWNS IMDB? I did not know that and felt I could trust IMDB a bit more than RT for reviews but that is saddening because even prior to watching this I too noticed a lot of bogus sounding 10/10 reviews that were extremely vague in describing the show. Like cookie-cutter positive "buzzword" filled reviews from bots. Also other good reviews ONLY mentioned the visuals and I thought "is the story and acting good though?"... well I checked it out and it's what I feared... hollow, uninspired poorly written fan fiction by mediocre writers and actors who (no disrespect) for the most part are wooden and stiff.
My wife and I tried to watch an episode of this as Lord of the rings fan's but we were board to tears. I kept asking my wife where are the characters to care about and the relationships that pull you in. I want to try it again but man I don't know if I have it in me haha, TV time is little and precious, I don't know if I want to waste it on this.
If you enjoy the videos please consider supporting on Patreon, or Locals. Thank you.
www.patreon.com/UEG
upperechelon.locals.com/support
My parents have The Third Age on the Wii
No stream tap to retry
By Stratego, do you mean the Knizia game?
0,1 or 2 star either.
I mean....I kind of like it so far. I am a guy who expects to hate it and almost anything new. I keep posting this. It isnt 5 star...but....it isnt
Apparently everyone saw this coming EXCEPT for Amazon
The Eye of Bezaun. Hairless. Wreathed in money.
Who would've thought
Doesn’t matter if people watch it and give it ratings.
Happens when your head is way up into your arse
It tells a lot about their motive. They knew all along.
ChristopherTolkien tried to protect the timeless works, integrity and legacy of his father for many years. It's a shame his sons & relatives lack the same views and resolve.
Simon was raised by his mother and seems to have nothing but disdain for his father. He's a failed writer himself.
Protect Tolkien's works? What has the show done to damage his books? They're all still available in the exact same condition they've been in since they were released. Not liking something is okay - making out that the thing you don't like is some how harming the original works is a retarded argument.
@@Thor-Orion I don't follow stragers family tree, but from what I guess, Simon is Christopher's son? Wow talk about biting the hand that fed you.
@@HueghMungus Simon is Christopher's son. Apple fell very far from that tree.
I used to complain about Christopher Tolkien editing some of his father's works before releasing them, but considering what we've gotten recently I feel a bit bad for ever feeling that way. At least Christopher clearly cared very deeply about the universe and wanted to protect the IP from being tainted by cynical cash grab products
When Sauron took off his helmet and told Galadriel "I am your Mother", I clapped
Stunning and brave
😆
I don't know if you're joking or not. And that's sad.
@@SolarisKane sounds like you wanted sauron to clap your cheeks. 😐😐😐
🤣
And then shield hero came up to them and it became a p*no. Atleast people would understand the shitty writing then..
The irony of the parallels between Sauron being known as the bringer of gifts but having evil ulterior motives and Amazon is just the cherry on top
Listening to your take on this i totally get this, had the exact feeling with star wars when disney took over. Amazing special effects but intellectually derelict and without the soul of the original
Except for rogue one and Rebels season 2 onwards , those were good
what a waste of money going to the cinema for those movies. i almost walk away half movie for the rise of shitwalker. at least this galatriel is not a mary sue
We're being fed shit, so that we will accept slightly less shit content as good content later on. Money spent is insane, to make it look good, but the story is al.ways platonic and outright stupid, again to dumb us down. Its poison to our minds.
Disney made some big misses with the sequel trilogy, but I think they've done considerably better with some of the TV series and spinoff films. They're very inconsistent to say the least.
It's just an empty shell of a franchise wrapped in a progressive skinsuit.
The show runners blatantly said, they wanted to undo what Tolkein did, and instead tell their own story
They didn’t have anything to say. Nothing we wanted to hear at least
What's with that lately. What's his face from the last jedi said the same
@@Mutantcy1992 Cultural replacement of traditional values. Unfortunately the socialist (Marxist specifically) ideal of 'everything is political' has a lot of money behind it
@@imperialphoenix1229 tbh my comment was bait to see if anyone in this comment section knew what was up. Glad to meet another anti-marxist
Cultural Marxism.
It began with the forging of the great films. Threads were given by Tolkien, wisest and fairest of them all. The rights were then given to Jackson, a great miner and craftsman of the mountain of lore. And nine, nine hours were gifted to the race of men, who above all else, desired quality
But they were all of them deceived, for another show was made. In the land of Amazon, in the fires of Mount Prime, the Dark Lord Bezos forged in secret a master flop
And into this show he poured his money, his greed and his will to dominate all film
One show to ruin them all
People just keep copy pasting this on every video about lord of the rings 🤦♂️
You should become scriptwriter
@@samgoff5289 Well, it's accurate enough so, I don't necessarily have as much a problem with it. Spamming gets annoying but, sometimes there's a point to why someone is spamming something. In this case, it's because people aren't happy with the show.
Bezos is gone right?
@@samgoff5289 Why not? It's funny and appropriate.
I watched episode 1 and half of 2. My biggest gripe was how demystified the Elves are. Its like an elf sitcom. Whenever we see them in Tolkien we get awe and mystery, which is good and right with an immortal race.
Elves were ethereal in LotR. In RoP they are just common people.
@@davidgkirk There's also far more of them present in Middle Earth than there are in the Third Age (LotR time).
Agreed, they're always portrayed with a radiance that shines, they all had long flowing hair and fair skin, Amazon's characters are nothing like that, it would be like putting lobster claws on trolls and saying " well not all trolls look the same"
Read the extended material. Tolkien himself demystified the elves a lot in his earlier writings.
@@seeibe yeah it makes sense imo. They're far more numerous in ME during the second age, while most have left by the time LotR comes around, and they no longer have the means to forge the same quality magical artifacts they once did so their older weapons naturally took on a more mythical nature.
Frodo, we noticed your sword glows a different color when it's around a certain type of people. Now, we're not saying you've trained it to do that but you can see how that's problematic right?
Orc lives matter
It glows around CIA agents.
This here is comedy gold
Goblin Lives Matter!
@@Sigurther I'm actually writing a fantasy story with a goblin as the protagonist.
If it's not relevant that the show is diverse, then why would it be relevant if it was not diverse? Nothing was stopping Amazon from creating a new diverse intellectual property that they owned outright. But they spent a billion dollars to ride on the coattails of established IP, while changing many aspects of that IP.
LOTR is intrinsically white and European, the lawd of the rangz is a post Jewish world government mockery
There was also nothing keeping them from making lore-friendly diversity if they were clever with it. Shadows of Mordor/Shadow of War is FAAR from the most lore-friendly of works but the possibility of Haradrim in the West like Baranor fits with what we know (though they’d be RARE) and realms in the South and East are largely barely marked canvases with a lot of potential. But that would require some adroit and sensitive handling.
@@vandeheyeric There really is a lot of gaps in Tolkien's lore that you can use diversity to fill. How about a civilisation of black elves from rainforests far to the south? Maybe some dwarves chose to leave the caves, and over time their exposure to the sun darkened their skin. Even if they want to still set it in Middle Earth, by explaining the origins of these groups, perhaps a mercantile class or refugees displaced from conflicts in the south, you establish a way to introduce lots of diversity while seeming realistic and grounded.
They bought it to destroy it.
@@Croz89 The Elves I figure are a harder sell precisely because Tolkein laid out the Elves in such detail and their various tribes. It might not be utterly impossible to fit them in, but it'd be hard.
The example I used for a Devil's Advocate would be Dwarf. Tolkien really did leave who and what the Dwarf Fathers were and what they were like vague outside of Durin's Folk, so if you put a pistol to my head and told me to come up with examples I'd suggest doing it there (outside of the realms of Men, who are already quite diverse if under-explored). It'd be a stretch to make some of the Dwarf Fathers and their people "Black" or "Asian" or the like, but I don't think it would be impossible if done WELL (for instance, a "Black" Dwarf lineage or two patterned off of the Beta Israel- and thus retaining the Semitic and Jewish undertones Tolkien intended with them and carefully mixed with the lore to fit).
The issue I see is less "realistic" and "grounded" per se- since Middle Earth is at best only half-realistic and half-grounded- but faithful to the lore. If I wanted to make a group of-say- Black Elves or Black Dwarves I'd spend at least days if not months searching through the languages for names to make it all feel "right." I have no faith with this lot.
Spending one Billion dollars on a television series is outright ridiculous and unheard of. More money does not mean more watchability.
At some point the effects are unnecessary if the writing is shit.
It's the only thing Bezos knows. He doesn't understand art, only money.
@@Thor-Orion One would think he'd know to hire the right people as a business owner.
When Galadriel yelled 'It's Tolkien time" I knew the property was in the right hands.
Okay "Morbin" slow your roll now.
Ugh.
What an original comment 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
@@BleachDemon707 truly reflects the quality of dialogue on the show...
@@BleachDemon707 Such an original series like Amazon's The Lord of The Rings The Rings of Power by Jeff "Sauron" Bezos deserves this level of comment originality...
The level of writing ability that went into this post is the exact same level of competency that went into writing Da Rangs of Powa.
“Evil cannot create anything new, they can only corrupt and ruin good forces have invented or made”
― JRR Tolkien
I have a feeling that Tolkien got the idea for this concept from the 1st law of thermodynamics.
"Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be transferred to another form of energy."
@@ilikereasonThe notion that evil is unable to create and can only pervert whatever good forces have created is waaay older and actually comes from the teachings of St Augustine. Augustine popularised the idea that evil is the absence of God, and thus it can't create anything on it's own like He did, so instead it is perverting and mocking the creation to gain power and torment the humanity.
Tolkien was a devout Christian and Christian influences are actually quite common in his works- for example in Silmarillion Melkor is seen doing exactly what evil was said to do according to St Augustine- being unable to create his own music Melkor mocks the notes of fellow Valars and tries to pervert their music 'creating' foul mockeries of their inventions- music that was supposed to create beautiful mountains Melkor perverted into volcanoes and chasms; notes that created rivers and seas he corrupted into bogs, swamps and deadly sea currents etc.
I like to paraphrase it as: "Evil cannot make, only mock."
The race swaps are a factor though. You don’t cast a white guy in ancient Japan for example. And Elves has a clear aesthetic.
It breaks immersion when you know the show runners put progressive politics over lore.
I can think of only one reason to have a white guy in ancient Japan that makes sense: time travel hijinks. Well, that, or a holodeck malfunction.
The thing is that most of the bad choices were made because the ppl making the decisions are all in for "the message".
Like, why didn they believe in the woman when she says she saw the evil? Why they keep telling galadriel she is wrong? Why is she stronger than a full party of warriors (that have been fighting along her for years i think)? Why does she goes out all by herself in the ocean?
Its the same that has been happening for a while now, its completely predictable at this point.
Not alongside her for years, my friend - for *centuries.*
Get woke Go broke
I read that "The Message" in the Critical Drinker's voice. Cheers.
they actually toned her down from the books because at this stage she was way more powerful. So maybe before acting all knowledgeable, actually be so.
@@MrLutharr can you direct me to the source that says she was so powerful and at the same time, her male comrades were weak and cowards? Or where Elrod, was a metrosexual politician, just to elevate Galadriels raw strength.
Also, you can’t cast for that role, a woman with height of 1.62m and weight of around 50 kilos.
But they had to make her feminine and pretty(?) as well.
If you are a Wheel of Time fan, you saw this coming. Hell, my expectations were so low from WOT I didnt think it was that bad.
What happened with Wheel of Time exactly? It got bad or something?
@@accountwontlastlong1 They basically ignored the books halfway through episode 1 and changed basic character motivations and plotlines with their own childish writing even worse than what we see in Rings of Power. They also comeplety gave up on wordbuilding and internal logic of WoT universe. Also the art direction, casting, costumes and sets did not feel like WoT but like some generic fantasy. Given the lower budget you did not even get nice shots you see in Rings of Power. So yeah, it was one big incoherent messy clusterfuck.
They destroyed the binary nature of the one power, Saidar and Saidin, and blamed the differences in its manifestation on the gender of the user. Which utterly removes the PRIMARY plot point...that the male side of the power was corrupted and needed to be cleansed.
They also went way off canon with the power itself and its effects. They killed off characters which were supposed to appear later and were key to the story.
And they removed the fact that Rand's people were ethnically homogenous, which is also important to the plot.
They made it a travesty. It was awful. I stopped watching after it was obvious they had destroyed the story.
The contempt and disdain for Tolkien oozes through EVERY frame of this show.
It is exactly as if a 14 year old possessed by a hollow modern ideology wrote this to spite his based neighbor who loves the Tolkien world.
I ended up feeling as if I ate a styrofoam model of a chocolate eclair instead of the real thing.
Ugh and they released it on the anniversary of his passing. This is what they get for bastardizing a centuries best author...
This is the modern ideologues way of "deconstructing". They take established culture and then put a shallow hollow version of it in the name of "inclusivity" and "diversity'
Celebrimbor (a damn king!) travels to see another king - by foot, with no court, no escort, no equipment of any kind, and no appointment. At the gate, a mere guard tells him to piss off. Not only this is ridiculous and stupid - it also looks crazy poor for a show witch such a big budget. Like in the first 2 eposodes, we didn't see a SINGLE HORSE. This show is insanely bad, as if they did it on purpose 😂
Many people say this feels like hate-fiction, the opposite version of fanfiction, where the writer make the story bad on purpose because they hate the original story.
@@r3dr4te963 Oh kinda like those weird twitter artists who go around "fixing" the art they dislike for whatever reason.
"A stone can't float because it only looks down" That is the perfect example for "I am 13 and this is deep!"
"Everything not saved is lost" - Nintendo system message.
Ahh, it was refreshing to see some Battle for Middle Earth gameplay while listening to your criticism of this stain of a show. Nice one :)
I wish they were still for sale. battle for middle earth 2 is especially hard to get working with the keys crackers.
@@dcogs8856 not entirely there’s a whole website for the game where you can download it and tutorials to help, even some online stuff all because it’s abandonware, there’s also a group of people making remaking the bfme 2 entirely in unreal though they won’t be done for many years
@@onwardsumo5189 ah I’ve only tried torrents. I’ll look for that site.
@@dcogs8856 took me a moment to remember what it was, it’s t3aonline
Best RTS series!
Let's hope that GoG finally gets the right to polish and rerelease them!
What if Amazon had used that 1 billion to make a new setting based on African mythology? That would have been so cool.
They don't care, its just about destroying Europeans
Lol yeah so cooooool
it's not so easy, apparently there is no unified "African" mythology the way there is for the Greeks, Nords, etc. They would essentially be hacking something together or creating whole-cloth, which now that I say it makes it even more compelling that they should do so....
It would’ve been cool because they wouldn’t have had to bastardize european mythology. And then no one would’ve watched it
Yep, figured this would be the case
Any time a major production pushes diversity as a major selling point, it’s because the writing is shit and they’re looking for a scapegoat to deflect to
thats a long way to type "im racist" lol
@@mix1ro why is that racist? last time i checked he didn't say diversity is a bad thing, he said using it as a souless marketing ploy is bad and he's got a bit of shows and movies to stand on, ghostbusters 2016, high guardian spice, lightyear, etc. usually the writing or acting or whatever is bad ohh but we have a diverse cast or characters.
you can't blame people for getting burned too many times and then call them racist if they were a bit skeptical about the show that's coming advertises as diverse, your free to call them that, but that doesn't harbor a good relationship with potential fans, which is why people stay away from toxic fandoms that fuckin wish you would die because you made a drawing a couple tones too light, its just in poor taste and it also waters down the term.
and that's coming from the guy who likes KIPO and the age of wonderbeasts, actually, that's a good show, I think I'm gonna rematch it.
@@chucklesdeclown8819 Exactly, the way diversity is done best is by making it a natural part of the medium and not a focal point. Try and weave in a diverse cast around a good world and story without making the diversity itself the main feature. That way it doesn't feel like anything is being pushed directly but still slowly wears down any walls of prejudice people have, because now they are used to those diverse people just being there.
@@mix1ro Its almost like all those years of white people playing native Americans and Egyptians and east Asians in cinema was just fine right? Why does it matter that its not either historically accurate or accurate to the story being told. Say you have a movie about Ancient Mayans yet you want to put a white actor in your movie? Have him play some lost shipwrecked sailor. . You don't have him play say a head priest at the fucking Mayan temple. .
@@arkadious9320 like I saw a movie as I was a kid with a african folklore. I don't know which specific culture from africa.
The story was about a boy who could run fast could talk as baby and so on. The antagonist is a eitch that got a poisoned dart in her back that she couldn't get out.
The people of the village need to sacrifice some food for the witch etc
And it feelt natural as it was a folklore from africa.
Whenever a studio pushes "diversity" as their show's selling point, you know it's not going to end well because that's their way of trying to compensate for bad writing and acting. It's a shame because diversity with great acting is possible, and easily within the reach of a multi-billion dollar corporation like Amazon.
What do you get from such "diverse" shows as this one? You get a story that spits all over established lore, maddeningly horrible dialogue, artificially incompetent male characters, and "Mary-Sue" female characters that are impossibly powerful to the point of being insufferable.
You do realise that the movies did the exact same thing with Arwen completely taking over the role of Glorfindel for no apparent reason and Eowyn being much more outspoken about gender identity. So you are saying the movies are bad too because they didn't "respect the lore" in favour of "diversity"?
@@ageoflove1980 they did that with Arwen because they couldn't jam The Tale of Arwen and Aragorn into the films, so they needed a way to make their relationship have more screen time. But yeah, that is one of the most common complaints from purists about the movies. There's a huge difference between a few examples from the movies and wholesale changes to the lore and themes that RoP is doing.
@@Thor-Orion Well that's what they say perhaps but it's completely obvious they did it to create a strong female lead which was completely absent in the books. Pretty clear from the fact that she somehow manages to sneak up on Aragorn and put a sword on his throat... That would in the lore of course never happen to the greatest ranger alive. And I'm not saying there is no difference, just that changing the lore in favour of diversity happened in the movies too. I know that fact doesn't fit your narrative, so, sorry?
I appreciate watching the true LOTR fans continue to push back against this nonsense adaptation from Amazon. I wish more fandoms fought as hard when their shows got tainted by other studios like Netflix.
Well, the Tolkien fans had the examples of the earlier franchises, and many Tolkien fans were also fans of other franchises and learned lessons from them.
Well they're messing with the nerd Bible itself...
@@boobah5643 Sadly the Star Wars fans had spent so long dropping on the Prequels they allowed thr Sequels to pass.
@Zoomer Stasi Not even close. The prequels had poor dialogue and some bad scene direction, but it fit perfectly within the Star Wars universe, didn't contradict established lore and brought with it the largest injection of worldbuilding the franchise has ever seen.
Without the Prequels much of what is Star Wars wouldn't even exist.
Meanwhile the Sequels are a poorly done soft reboot of A New Hope and the worst EU comic book (Dark Empire) merged together by terrible writing and non stop lore contradictions and utterly broke any sense of worldbuilding in the universe post Episode 6.
Netflix? What are you smoking? Netflix sure as hell doesn't exercise any control over shows that hit their service. They're the "freedom to the creator" service. It's how something so awful as cuties made it to the service, because they don't stick their noses in and tell the creators they need to change something. Even when they really should.
I wanted to bring up the race swapping you mentioned. This I learned from a friend who tried to watch the show and was echoed by a few others. The black elf they introduce, apparently the humans of land he is in are supposed to black and brown, lore wise. Inspired by African and Middle eastern. They were so set on including diversity, race swapping an elf and dwarf, they completely missed an actual ethic group and turned the entire ethic group white. This is why racing swapping is so negative, because more often than not, it comes at the expense of actual diversity that naturally exists in the story that is being told. If anything you could keep the black elf, make him a half elf and you can have a story beat of him being rejected by both groups due to his mixed heritage. The diversity was there but instead Amazon trampled it. It shows how much they truly care about their inclusion.
Well said. That said, as for "being rejected by both groups" that would've fit better for the First Age; at the time Human-Elf relations were still viewed as kind of taboo or at least unwise but not TERRIBLY. After all, Elrond Half-Elven is a thing. But the rest of your points are right on.
@@vandeheyeric they're still not common and we know from history that when things are unusual they are often treated with fear and apprehension. I agree that the elves would be more okay with it than the humans in all likelihood, so maybe don't give him the chance to be rejected by the elves, he was raised in the human lands and treated as an outcast, unable to return to the elvish lands for something his elven parent did.
The fact that they didn't even bother to include characters from other regions like Haradrim or the East, shows just how little any of these writers or actors know about Tolkien. Its the lowest of the low effort.
Arabs don't count as an ethnic group or a minority outside of airports.
@@coltonowens2742 Exactly what I thought. They could have introduced black and hispanic actors as some Haradrim or half-Haradrim (refugees? merchants? errant ex-pows? diplomats? people who descend from the ones that oposed to Saurons influence in their land and had to flee?) and so achieved (human) ethnic diversity......
The same for asian actors, perhaps the loosers of some tribal struggle from Khand who had to seek refuge between their enemies to avoid their fate, or some families that were left behind when Saurons armies where defeated and the eastern tribes retreated in all haste........
It would have been a good oportunity to develop a story that could explain how people that are suposedly not corrupt or "bad" by definition, end up fighting for Sauron and their struggle to adapt to a world ruled by the "good guys".....
But no: better black dwarfs or elves........
The race diversity always kills shows for me if it's not based on any lore am black but I don't care for seeing a black person if he doesn't fit the lore all I want is good writing
We used to make fun of the token black characters in the 90's. Now these new woke shows are bringing back the random token diversity cast like it never went out of style.
They literally said, you as a black person can not enjoy shows or books if there isnt a character of the same skin colour as you. I am not kidding , that is the claim now. It is kinda insulting.
Ha, if they read this mate, their heads will explode.
You want good writing from modern day Hollywood?. Good luck with that.
Amazon has for years denied my negative reviews to protect their products. I dont really trust their inhouse review systems.
They spent so much money on this, Amazon can't afford for this to fail. What will probably happen is this series will finish the corporate puppets will say the usual "We are immensely proud of our accomplishments with our studio team." Or something like that. Then a month or so after that expect a lot of people to get fired. And the stock goes right back up and the media moves on to the next thing.
Oh, they can afford it.
Oh they can afford it
Amazon can easily afford for it to fail. Amazon Prime Studios (or whatever they call their in-house production team) may survive its failure. The people who signed on to these decisions, though... they're the ones who can't afford for it to fail.
The folks in charge of _RoP_ are a bunch of Bad Robot alumni, and while they've earned the epithet 'Bad Reboot' they've also tended to earn the franchise owners money, at least on the current project.
The company can afford it, but if the show fails, this will be an enormous embarrassment for the executives that backed it and it will result in many people being fired to cover the higher ups asses.
@@orumonuldor1340 fire em lol
"A dog can bark at the moon but he cannot bring it down"
Is brought to you by
"An artist respects the silence that serves as the foundation for creativity"
Woo !!!
Amen!
The first thing I thought when I learned about the existence of this show was "wow this does not need to exist". The first thing I thought when I was watched the first episode was "wow this does not need to exist".
Dude, it is ABSOLUTELY valid to criticize its wokeness, even though this show is not by any mean the worst offender in media nowadays. They will STILL dismiss your constructive and legitimate criticism as racist, phobic or whatever, even if you don't touch the subject. Thats how wokeness operates. They use it as a shield against valid criticism.
"No stream tap to retry"
Same
It's the new "first"
Same
Same
"...with all the creativity of a half-blind painter, and all the finesse of a tone deaf conductor."
This is the content I subscribed for.
Even with the LoTR brand, I'm all set on more of the exact same fantasy show every studio keeps releasing.
I also remember thinking, ESPECIALLY re-watching the original trilogy recently, "There is a reason nothing is this good anymore" and it simply feels like an era of movies and storytelling that is long-gone.
They have been focusing on ideology over quality for years now. The few people with talent and the ideology is small. The rest of the talent got purged.
Also corpo bosses only want "safe" movies to come out. That is why they only sponsors excising franchises. Not realizing its been failing for a while now.
@@gerbo8018 it’s not safe they or spitting in the face of the majority of people and pushing there agenda down there throats . They aren’t worried about negative press or feedback because they control all media and large social forms of communication.
The fact is there is very little money in making films anymore compared to the cost of actually making good movies the internet has killed the profitability of making films it used to be everyone went to the theaters to see every movie if it was a good movie you would go twice because it would be almost a year before you had the opportunity to buy the VHS or DVD home version and then they would have extended deluxe home releases with directors cuts or behind the scenes and this stuff sold like crazy everyone had to have a copy of that to.
Then the merch sales with shirts or posters even people had to go to a mall to have the opportunity to pay for overpriced trinkets and merch and people did to Hot Topic was huge when I was younger and people would go buy a $35 tshirt that had Jurassic Park on it haha
Nowdays with the internet and the amount of free streaming sites that everyone has a Amazon Fire stick with a free version of Netflix that is even better than Netflix or they just download any movie they can dream of even when they are in theaters you can almost always find a good copy online to watch at home.
The amount of money that has been drained from owning the IP of a film has desegregated to the point that Amazon who has half the civilized world paying $10 a month to have free shipping on everything they ever need delivered the next day. They have to find something to spend all that money on so they or pushing there own social and political agenda by taking beloved IP and ruining it on purpose the same way Netflix doesn’t have a show that’s an original that isn’t a propaganda or subtle or not so subtle social agenda piece.
They don’t make any money on this stuff this is there willing loss of money to fuck with the people politically that they despise.
@@JoeWayne84 god the wall of text. And clearly you missed the point of what i'm saying at all.
Fist of, they still make money from making movies ... You are delusional if you think they don't.
Meanwhile animation has been getting better and better....
whenever something gets normified it gets destroyed
Nooooo I must defend poor billion dollar company from evil internet trolls!
Pro level satire, using your existance itself
Speaking as a black dude and fan of The Lord of the Rings, I care about the race swapping angle because the lore is based on mythology that is native to British culture. Race swapping characters, despite their acting skill and the level of writing, destroys immersion in that world.
For example, an American who wants to experience Japanese culture doesn’t fly across the ocean to eat hamburgers, hot dogs, and seek out other Americans. They go there in order to experience a culture that is very different from their own and delight in the fact that once you break through that surface, the people that were once completely alien to you start to show universal human traits that make them relatable.
Having competent actors and a well written script wouldn’t make the race swapping problem any better. One of the most powerful aspects of storytelling is allowing us to empathize with characters that, at a glance, we appear to have nothing in common with. While it is nice to have more diversity in storytelling, the people who want that diversity should be willing to put in the work and write those stories themselves, rather than standing on the shoulders of men who earned their place in literary history.
If these people are so hot on the issue of diversity, then they need to pay their mission the respect it deserves, sit their asses down at the writing table, and pen a proper mythology for the people they claim to be advocating for.
I want a good story. I don’t need the characters to look like me. That isn’t escapism. That’s narcissism. I’m not that interesting.
If you are a fan or at least care about the franchise of LOTR you should use your platform to voice your concerns and criticism of this awful adaptation.
They hired people who are more interested in activism, self inserts and with 'modern day' storytelling in a fantasy world.
I'm still with the Tolkien fans on this despite not being a fan of LoTR. It's mostly because they decided to pull this same sort of denigration and destruction of a well loved franchise with Halo (in my case) and to this end, they've started it. Now they don't want to see fans demand the end of such BS being pulled.
Given what they did to Halo with the Halo show in my case, I pretty much understand that what's happening with Rangs is the same thing but, on a much larger scale.
They messed with the nerd Bible, now prepare for our wrath...
What the fuck is up with you people 😄🙄
Who'd have thought that desecrating a legendary masterpiece would backfire big-time, Amazon, huh?
I think people's biggest problem here: expecting good quality writing and screenplay from modern Hollywood. This isn't the Hollywood who gave us 'Emperors New Groove' anymore.
Underrated comment. I will always like a comment that references the greatest movie of all time
Based reference, Pacha is the greatest deuteragonist of all time, change my mind.
The fact that Amazon through IMDB blocked all negative reviews makes me really mad, as it shows they have no ethics whatsoever.
Will not use IMDB again.
I don’t use Twitter, but just hearing the actors and writers on Twitter calling the fans racist, homophobic, and sexist, Is enough for me not to watch
So you use Twitter?
I'm flabbergasted you said the Politics were irrelevant. They are completely relevant. They are the REASON for the creative choices, the dialogue, the script, and even the casting. I understand if you do not wish to get into the politics, that's perfectly fair. But the "Misogynist" arguments will happen regardless. If one side doesn't show up for the fight, it means they forfeit, not that the Fight didn't take place.
The foundation of everything you find wrong with this series, is in politics. Do not disregard it because you find it tedious. Acknowledge it, that it's being argued elsewhere, and that you wish to concentrate on the actual End-Product as a Fantasy Series.
They simply buy the IP for the title, the investors know as long as it has a big name people will watch it. It has gotten to the point where I think it is all an international money laundering scheme; who knows how many people in Brazil and other smaller countries are really watching the show... it's a big bag of fertelizer with the IP's name on it, be it marvel or LotR.
It is a laundering scheme. Its also a propaganda scheme. They use these IPs to push political and social propaganda.
No fertilizer is useful
WOW that sure is a lot of amazon prime customers in Ukraine. $40.1 billion dollars worth in fact. Amazing. *Tumble dryer noises*
My own theory is that this show is just the ground work for actually remaking LOTR as an episodic TV series. With this series they establish their versions of the characters with their actors. Amazon need to have a mega franchise, and this is it. LOTR and the appendices has all the characters and material they need. My understanding is that the Tolkien estate still owned the episodic TV rights to LOTR. This is what Amazon has bought. The film, merchandising and other rights is what Tolkien specifically sold, but it excluded episodic TV. Obviously back in the 60’s the idea of an episodic TV show based on LOTR that would actually do it justice, was simply laughable. If you look at Amazon’s history, they don’t give up and they are in it for the long haul. After 3 or 4 seasons of this, this will be what normies will think Tolkien is. The show only needs to be average to achieve this, hype and media coverage is easily bought. Even hardcore fans can be cultivated. The books will survive, but in 10 years time the Amazon franchise will be what people think of when you mention LOTR. It is sad and inevitable, but also weirdly poetic as this is all the things Tolkien was against.
Amazon will pretty much obliterate Lotr with this show
"Why would you even care?" Because as a person who likes the universe having the basic respect to get things right about the characters and lore should be one of the most important things to care about?
Just because the people defending it will come after the complaints with virtue signal nonsense doesn't make the complaints any less valid and basic accuracy to the world they are using is the least a show using that world should be doing.
Also fun how another show like this is also making the grand majority of male characters idiots who are constantly frothing at the mouth due to terminal stupidity.
The whole video lossed credibility with that question for me.
wHy Do YoU eVeN cArE is such a smoothbrain response, the proglodyte parroting this talking point clearly cares enough to hound random nobodies for their supposedly irrelevant opinions about this supposedly irrelevant topic
There are decades of movies and TV with women being complete morons for the men to save. Modern audiences (usually) consider these to be laughable. Yet for some reason, modern producers seem to think that doing the opposite, making men all idiots so a woman can save them, is a good idea.
Making your characters stupid is almost never a good idea outside of comedy. It either turns your "serious" show _into_ a comedy, or it just pisses people off. It's the #1 sign of bad writing, and one of the few things that will _instantly_ make me drop a show.
You do realise that the movies did the exact same thing with Arwen completely taking over the role of Glorfindel for no apparent reason and Eowyn being much more outspoken about gender identity. So you are saying the movies are bad too because they didn't "respect the lore" in favour of "diversity"?
@@ageoflove1980
...so your saying... that you are going to just ignore the point made and bring up two individual character decisions to critique a fundamental changing of world lore...
Any species swapping, such as the non-Black to Black in "Rings of Power", is no different than making Chewbacca an Ewok or Greedo Human.
It's 100% stupid and breaks the whole story.
They could have included black acrtresses and actors by including some characters that were Haradrim, specifically from Far Harard. Monolith did exactly that so they could include a black character in Shadow of War.
@@geoffrogue3049
Exactly.
I love the Movie Trilogy, but I don’t consider myself a fan of the series. To hear a legitimate fan LAMBAST this dumb pointless show, the type of fan that Amazon SHOULD HAVE BEEN WORKING ON TO WIN, not the Twitter nutcases that they believe are the “FANS”, is a true blessing.
The original stories were written by a master who took his time and crafted a story. This Amazon story was churned out by the modern entertainment Factory consisting of teams of writers most likely under immense pressure having to deal with all kinds of bullshit notes from people just trying to justify their existence. There is no way this would have turned out any differently
After this, halo, and recent marvel stuff, I feel like companies push the diversity angle just so they have an excuse when things fall apart. It's insulting.
Make a good story or a faithful adaptation and people will come.
Make a bad story and you can always call people who dislike it racist, sexist, or whatever.
Yuri Bezmenov interview on demoralization of nations from 1984.
"Best" part? They are funded by you, whether you choose to pay or not.
they are destroying all aspect of society on purpose, financial system, food chain, transportation AND culture, its a control demolition of all aspect for the agenda
@@wrongthinker843 what incentive does Amazon have to give the fans what they want when they'll just recieve federal grants regardless?
@Julian Watson the diversity is one of many examples where the writers go "well technically Tolkien didn't say this didn't happen", or "well why would anyone care, it's only a small change".
In isolation you can get away with a bit of that but they've made up so much, including but not limited to the diversity, that those excuses don't hold up anymore.
I guess that's what happens when you try to adapt a book series without rights to the actual books.
@@squaeman_2644 Because of two things. One: The idea of a business is to make as much money as you possibly can. Yes Amazon receive federal grants and their business is one of the best in the world but why not make more? Why not venture somewhere else and make more money? Expand your business? Get more people on board? That leads to reason two: Fans bring loyalty, which bring money. Look at FromSoftware. Their Souls games have attracted millions of fans, who will pay damn good money on anything souls related from games to shirts and other merch. Same thing with Tolkien. Fans loved his book, so fans made a trilogy off of it, which garnered more fans and later on video games were made based on it which attracted even more fans, etc. And those fans will pay to get more of all that because they enjoy it. And that money is what keeps a business running. Give the people what they want, what they enjoy and they'll keep coming back to you for it. Otherwise, why would they come to you at all?
I agree that good actors and writing would make diversity work, but since diversity is almost always a substitute for them, I have learned to pass up on shows as soon as they announce that they are diverse. It's almost like a code word for "we don't know what we are doing"
No no no, the diversity is not organic, it’s so forced. The Expanse did diversity right. Not many other shows, this one included seem to be able to build it in rather than just swap it out, if you know what I mean. But yeah the shitty writing just makes this sitch worse.
No, it would always be off-putting in Tolkien’s world. It never would’ve fit and looked right. Stop being so milquetoast these stories were made by and for Europeans.
"All the money in the world can not buy inspiration". Enough said.
It ought to be enough to buy basic competence, though. If you consider these episodes as an extended movie airing on television, then it's shocking how little Amazon is receiving for its money. It's as though they prioritized visual design over every other aspect, including (and especially) writing.
@@Matt42MSG It's as though "they're out of touch" as they say.
The problem with "diversity casting" is when it's done superficially, or cynically, and when its pandering to the "SJW" crowd who care about identity politics over absolute material improvement in the lives of the people they pretend to care about. I don't have a super problem with it, but when it is so contrary to the lore, it kinda breaks the immersion.
How exactly do black people ruin the "immersion"?
@@Remixersoloman black people do not belong in any European mythology or fantasy period. Go write your own mythos if you can. Promise you it will never be as good as Tolkien’s.
In the lands of Morwoke. In the fires of Mount Equity. The Dark Lord Amazaun forged in secret a television show. In it he poured his money, his hair, and his will to diversify all fun. One Woke to break them all.
There's a Gollum and drain the Swamp joke in here somewhere
One Woke to Find them. One Woke to break them, and in the Darkness Bind Them.
To see a film trailer version of this idea, look at 'Rings Of Power One Minute Complete Review' in the channel 'Lack Of Entertainment'
Who would have guessed that hiring two showrunners with no writing credits on a recommendation from JJ Abrams would turn out badly? If only there'd been some clue...
Being recommended by JJ Abrams alone would be a (huge) red flag.
Don't watch this show, watch Invincible instead. Utterly amazing.
the duality of a company
"What's the difference between a ship.... and a rock?"
The ship floats!
My only point of contention with you is the race swapping bit. I think in other situations you're right, but in this instance it flies in the face of what Tolkien wanted, which I'm pretty sure someone's already pointed out. Figured I should comment on what was said rather than just gush over seeing Battle for Middle-earth, but damn does seeing that gameplay really bring back good memories!
It also makes zero sense from a biological perspective, why would dwarves need melanin. Human races developed specifically to adapt to their environment so why would elves a forest and mountain dwelling species need a pigment that helps protect the skin from the harsh suns of arid deserts.
Agree, tolkien based a lot of the races in the world on irl races, and it isn't inappropriate to assume he would've wanted the casting to be based on cultural context. I mean the elves are literally based on the Tuatha De Danann tall, pale, godlike beings from an ancient otherworld.
Imagine a "re-imagined" version of Roots or Shaka-Zulu with caucasian actors. Yeah, if that isn't a good idea then why is it okay to raceswap in other cases?
I mean, it wasn’t impossible to do it
The problem I have is that it was such a focal point of the marketing for no reason, and it was such a meaningless change for how hard they pushed it
It was always going to be a scapegoat to deflect away from the bad writing
By saying this you are basically giving Amazon ammunition for calling you a racist and a bigot which is exactly what they are doing to ignore all valid criticism. Personally I do not care about race swapping or gender swapping, etc. as long as you have respect for the source material and have good writing which this show doesn’t.
Amazon failed the MMO genre with New World and will fail the TV Show genre with Rings of Power.
Now you understand the pain of fans of The Wheel of Time. :)
Good video and concise breakdown of the horrid writing.
However I have to disagree that the race swapped elves and dwarves "do not matter." It's a matter of aesthetic and changing major features of elves and dwarves makes a different aesthetic. It's particular and unique of a English/Norse source. Elves have long, flowing hair and fair skin.
I do not care of any malicious excusations of racism etc because you point out the deliberate subversion. Even if the black actors are great (like the dwarven princess) and story is good, the aesthetic is changed and can ruin immersion. Aesthetic does matter and it's more than the sum of its parts.
Also Tolkien created as a Mythos for the British Isles, so yes there are darker skinned people in the universe but they are not dwarves Elves hobbits or Numernorians.
@@yurioorlov177 there are dark skinned men
Men and elves can have children
There is an extended period of time where elves and dark skinned men live in close proximity. Long enough and close enough that children are plausible.
These children could be the explanation for the dark skinned elves (though one cannot help but wonder where they all went come the 3rd Age)
the hoarfoots are explicitly described as being “browner of skin” than othe hobbits. Black hobbits=hoarfoots, simple as that
Black dwarves…I got nothing within the existing lore outside of it never being explicitly said it isn’t possible
I’m not against the diversity, if you can explain it with existing lore. But Amazon isn’t even trying to is where my problem lies. They’re just shoehorning it in.
They never planned on good writing. They planned on blaming all the criticism on people against the diversity.
what part of the story is good?
@@Dorahellmon I think that part was a hypothetical
@@dragonriderabens9761 Elves never bred with dark skinned men, there have only been three pairings of Elves and Men in the entire history of Tolkien's legendarium, he was explicitly clear on that because of how incredibly abnormal and noteworthy it was.
"Browner of skin" means tan, not African. Most of the hobbits living in the Shire at the end of the Third Age, including all the main hobbit characters like Frodo and Sam, were Harfoots and none of them were black Africans. If "browner of skin" actually meant "African," Tolkien would have been explicitly clear on that. And if Harfoots were meant to be Africans, they would ALL be Africans rather than just one or two token black ones thrown in.
As for dwarves, along with every race, if Tolkien intended them to be black/African he would have explicitly described him as such. There's zero reason why a race that lives almost entirely underground and away from the sun would have dark skin. The Haradrim and the Easterlings are explicitly described as being darker skinned, as their cultures are supposed to correspond to Northern Africa and the Middle East, respectively.
The point is, none of the explanations you give make the slightest bit of sense in the lore whatsoever because Tolkien wasn't trying to create a mythology for the entire world, he was trying to create a mythology for his beloved England because he felt that Anglo Saxon mythology/folklore had been lost after the Norman invasion.
If Tolkien had intended the Elves, dwarves, Numenoreans, hobbits, etc. to be black, he would have drawn upon African culture, language, history, and mythology instead of using entirely European culture, history, language, and mythology.
If Amazon wanted lore accurate diversity, they could have EASILY done it in a lore-accurate way by having storylines set in Harad and Rhun where dark-skinned people could have resisted Sauron. The fact that they deliberately chose the worst possible option of forcing a few token black characters where they don't belong shows a shocking amount of contempt for Tolkien and the source material.
"Racial intolerance" is a nice shield for them to hide every criticism of the show behind. Solves two problems at once!
Amazon has deleted every single review under 6 stars from IMDB. Not single review has less than 6 stars. I cannot find any other high profile series of movie that does not have at least one such review. This is utterly transparent and embarrassing .
Got to disagree on the politics and agenda not being a valid criticism. Every show that pushes agenda first has had a terrible story that's poorly written, because they don't car about the story. If you base on an existing IP and then shit all over it to fit your agenda then that is in fact the issue. People using it as excuse when they receive valid criticism as racist or sexist should not prevent that criticism. If you are afraid to be truthful because you will be persecuted then eventually the truth dies.
i agree.
Gotta save face when your income is dependent on what words you could say...
@@squaeman_2644 that's the worst part, this has happened multiple times in history and it never, ever, ends well. Turning people into villains and monsters and destroying them if they aren't like you, exactly how far have we come since 1938? I am not being hyperbolic either how many lives were lost, how many women assaulted and livelihoods and neighbourhoods ruined by the BLM Riots? And who were the worst affected the very people they purport to be standing for. All whilst they buy yet another million dollar mansion with the donations! Saying "All lives matter" is now considered racist, let that sink in.
@@ac1dflare937 Well get with the times "boomer"... people nowadays are judged on the color of their skins, rather than the content of their character.
"Amazon may be amazon but they are not infallible."
Their working conditions and New World shows that they might needa stick to just shopping and improve that aspect of them for the workers.
Amazon's problem is that they have an agenda to push, and sadly for them, all the good writers do not share their agenda!
Yeah, UE says he doesn't care as long as the actors are good. The problem is, Amazon Studios has quotas for people of different backgrounds, which lowers the ability to find the best actors for roles by diminishing the pools they can select from. So the diversity push does hurt the show aside from being lore-breaking, and in the case of the black elf storyline, injects real life racial politics into the material. I don't need that stuff in a fantasy show, especially when it's so ham-handed like it is in TROP.
@@farmersneed8255 I don’t even think there’s a quota it’s just a very interesting case where an already diverse world with politics very different to the human equivalent was molded into so,etching that resembles our world. Sexism and racism are probably not thing Tolkien really wanted to include in his world and I’m sure he’d be fine with black elves, what I don’t like is them making the world hostile towards these people because they want to come across as progressive.
@@farmersneed8255 It's not that hard to find decent black actors. We got lots of black actors. If they couldn't find decent ones, maybe the casting department wasn't looking very hard. Or maybe the actors are fine but the director is bad at his job. Or maybe the project was just a shitshow all around.
Even for other groups, still not that hard. You're not making a movie with 30 major characters, 200 minor characters, and an all-Fijian cast; you need a few major roles and some background actors.
@@user-lb1op2gn9d Nobody in the first two episodes were hostile towards anyone for their skin color or gender, only humans being hostile towards elves, and dwarves being hostile towards elves, both of which happen in the books. You're literally complaining about nothing right now.
"I'm certain this will cause debate in the comment section."
That's a strange way to say people have a common consensus.
@ 11:00 Oof. Way to miss the mark with that shot. The point is that you can't have a good story, or good acting, when the main goal is subversion. Judging from the video, you don't understand this, but the abysmal writing you complain about is a direct result of the writers caring about politics first, and storytelling second.
By pretending that this isn't the case, you give further ammo to the people who are destroying valuable franchises, because "forced inclusion would be fine if done right." That's like saying that ingesting excrement is a fun activity, as long as it's cooked to the right temperature.
So evil their torches didn't give any heat. But they still gave light. That's some pretty innefective evil.
I watch the first episode and I could not suspend my disbelief of how bad it was. I kept muttering to myself, "that not in the book" or "that's wrong" or "that time line is wrong". I could not believe what they have done to the characters and the new characters are just plain weird. I will not be bothering with the rest of this Tolkien imposter.
A legitimate reaction after those poor attempts at deep sounding Tolkien-esque quotes would be "Did Jaden Smith write this? Nah, that would actually be an improvement."
Litterally both arogorn and arwyn are half elves, her family chose to follow their elven roots, where as aragorns followed their human roots.
I think the line of Elross would have had to mingle with a few more humans down the line.
@@seeibe Not as many as you'd think; Aragorn was eightyish during the War of the Ring. Although that longevity is more associated with his Numenorean blood than elvish.
And, of course, Arwen's mother was an elf, too.
@@boobah5643 Yes the line of kings would typically marry other descendants of Elross to keep their longevity. What I mean is they would have to be a lot less than half elves for there to be enough genetic diversity for that to work. 😅
Rings of power skipped over an elf bare knuckle boxing a werewolf, that should be enough to show the wasted potential.
It's probably obvious that respect is by far the most important thing to have when doing an adaptation. Jackson respected Tolkien's work enough to try and bring it to cinema as best he could with LotR; Sonic's producers respected the fans enough to make them fix the CGI in their first movie; Tom Cruise respected the fans who wanted to see TG2 and made sure it was as good as he could (even thanking them in the cinemas before the movie started from what I hear). Even if you have to make some changes to the story, you need to respect what the fans what and what the writer wrote so you can make the best product possible and get the best results you can. It's so blatantly obvious but it doesn't really surprise me that the ones who consider ideology and penny-pinching above all else wouldn't get it.
With how we've been getting bad adaptations for over a decade (with some rare good ones), I'm actually curious if anyone would even WANT to take a chance with adapting one's work after all of this is said and done. Fantastic writers who would love to see their work brought to the big screen might back out due to the fear it'll be caught up in the ideological nonsense; companies might not do go for it since they'll see how bad the recent string of adaptations have gone (and all the drama it caused) and might nope out of that; the ideologues themselves might either run out of work to tarnish or just get booted from the industry before they even get a chance to and fans might just reject it outright the second they smell something completely off because they've already been burned too many times already. Not saying there'll be no more adaptations but I can't help but feel there'll be massive trust issues between actual creatives and companies going forward.
I can confirm Tom Cruise thanking the fans before the movie thing happened as I saw it at my screening. As for the "fans might just reject it outright the second they smell something completely off because they've already been burned too many times already" part, I've coined a term for that. The TLJ Effect. Which is going to lead many companies to crash and burn unless a course correction is on the horizon.
Here's Jackson talking about his respect for the author and authenticity, and not superimposing his own 'message' on the work. ua-cam.com/video/-ggVDYcvNxg/v-deo.html
You do realise that the movies did the exact same thing with Arwen completely taking over the role of Glorfindel for no apparent reason and Eowyn being much more outspoken about gender identity. So you are saying the movies are bad too because they didn't "respect the lore" in favour of "diversity"?
@@ageoflove1980 More like they're far more focused on pushing their ideology than telling the story as best they can. I admit i never read LotR before watching the movies but even after learning it was changed from the book, I still didn't have a problem with it. No one else did either. Like I said earlier, even if you have to make some changes to make things work, you still have to put in the effort to make the adaptation as good as possible.
To toss out a better example, Nick Fury was originally old and white but I loved Sam Jackson’s portrayal of the agent, especially since he still retained Fury's core traits.
@@cicada8981 Sure, just saying that rewriting the lore in favour of diversity is exactly what the movies did too. And most people do not mind it in RoP too. The median IMDB user review score is 8/10 so most people who bothered to write a serious critique seem to agree.
"Fierce amount of debate in the comment section"
I must be blind because it seems like everyone here is capable of critical thinking too.
We were right. Again. Saw this coming from a hundred miles away. Since they love money so much, they could have spent that billion (!) on hiring good writers to create an original universe, and then milk it for decades to come. Alas.
11:20 - We would care because we care about Tolkien and the factual, codified intention of his work. Tolkien did nothing that wasn't deliberate, even if it were a thought or concept he hadn't fully fleshed out at a given point in time, a things inclusion or exclusion in his world is intentional. This is the fundamental argument purists like myself are making. If you just want generic high fantasy with elves and evil and wizards and battles with the Burger King Kidz Club as your cast because you're just so gosh darn progressive, okay, fine - just say that and be done with it. Tolkien is so much more than those base tropes. There's a reason he and his work are studied by scholars for decades and why one of the leading scholars, Tom Shippey, was fired from this abomination of a show.
@@albertocarrilho5839 Well, Albert, the great thing about being me is that idgaf what you think about me.
@@albertocarrilho5839 I am not a purist, I have a similar stance on this to UE.
But your point was an entirely emotional one. Without further elaboration, it stands on the same level as "Homosexuality? I would contemplate any position of tolerance on that idea long and hard*, I find it disgusting on multiple levels."
*) Pun most definitely intender.
@@albertocarrilho5839 nah, he's on the money here. "Purist" might sound like a slur because we usually see it used as such, but it means the dude appreciates the works of Tolkien as they were done. No need to "spice it up" or add any "diversity" and "inclusion"
@@sparking023 Yeah, I'm 100% fine with them making a new show with all the checkbox regressive pandering they want, but Tolkien isn't that. It's a pattern of behavior from Hollywood and these perpetually online types in general - co-opt something that is predominantly anglo-saxon in origin yet culturally neutral and make a mockery of it with badly written Mary Sues and characters that should be more insulting to the minorities they're supposed to represent.
Has anyone seen/read The Expanse? Or hell, anything Brandon Sanderson has done? You can have 'muh representation' without it being forced and lame.
@@simonbelmont0993 "Has anyone seen/read The Expanse? Or hell, anything Brandon Sanderson has done? You can have 'muh representation' without it being forced and lame."
This. EXACTLY. Hell, I'd argue you can have "muh representation" even in the world of Arda, you'd just have to be REALLY careful with how you do it. But the realms of the South and East are entire parts of the world that Tolkien sketched out but left plenty of room for improvisation and addition. I have even played devil's advocate talking about a hypothetical, Beta-Israel-inspired lineage of Black-colored Dwarfs. And on a more conservative level, while the Shadows games seriously mangled lore in many ways (though I could appreciate how they stayed true to some of the fundamental morals, like the corrupting influence of power and the effects of seeking dominance), they did a half-decent way to explain the presence of Baranor in a lore-friendly way (given who ruled Gondor at the time).
But that would require a delicate mixture of daringness and respect, and above all the kind of meticulousness to thread the line. And when are these clowns going to do that?
It's become increasingly obvious that writing is getting worse because they're progressively focusing on the narratives of "the future is female"
Hell yeah, Battle for Middle Earth gameplay!
"Why would you even care"
Lore sir. Lore is the most valid reason to care.
I wish you had plugged LotR War in the North in your intro. No one ever talks about that game and it was so fun. A lot of Tolkien fans have never even heard of it.
It really does seem that a lot of show/film writers these days lack even a rudimentary understanding of how to write, characterise, worldbuild, maintain continuity etc. it’s a shame 😢
I watched 20 mins, then came looking for reviews. As expected, they rightly hammer the painful writing. Unlike The Sandman, which looked to have great writing, then I saw Souad Faress was in it. A certain UK court case has made me wonder how she still gets work.
Man brushes by her on crowded train platform for 0.5 seconds.
Claims sexual assault that lasted over 3 seconds, followed by being struck in the shoulder.
Video evidence shows every claim is a blatant lie.
The man went through a year of hell because of her blatant lie. Might not get his life back with how accusations work.
Does she just wake up and decide to ruin the lives of "peasants"?
Funny thing, Neil Gaiman had insulted Tolkien fans and praised Rings of Power. I guess you have to kiss ass in the modern streaming age with so few potential landing places for your work.
@@sinthariasinestra9777 Holy crap!!! They slowed down the footage to make it look like he had time. I did not know this.
I said this in another video related to ROP at geeks and gamers but it pisses me off that in spite of the ability and the quite frankly, unlimited resources they(Amazon and co.) have at its disposal, they always seem to need an existing ip , an existing world, an existing idea with solid rules and characters that flesh out those worlds, and they can't even make a Decent show or movie out of it, inevitably adding their own flavor of ideology and ultimately distorting the ips they control. It's almost like they don't know how to create anything that isn't ties to their worldview. It's tragic but infuriating to see that instead of asking themselves if it's their fault, they whine and complain and God forbid, REVIEWS. Ugh. Like a bunch of petulant, indecisive children running that studio.
It reflects the owner. You remember New World? Bezos thinks that money can buy anything. But it can't buy artistic inspiration.
I wouldn't be surprised if there's better written fanfiction out there. In fact, I'd be more surprised if there wasn't.
I'm going to be honest the fact that they don't have the rights to produce a TV show based on the literal book about this age is a bit of a surprise.
The show is so inclusive that they included everything except good writhers, because good writhing is not oppressed.
What is a 'writher'?
Good writing is an endangered species these days.
Well, they are writhing around on the floor because of how bad their own writing is so, I guess they do have good writhers, not good writers.
@@DarkstarArchangel Don't you love when someone criticizes someone for a lack of writing skill but they fuck up their own comment too? Good times.
Kekw
I hated that from the first shot it had an scifi hdr aesthetic. Like the elves are actually advanced aliens from krypton. And their watchtowers are rocketships.
I really love LOTRO and how faithful it is to the books and how it is still able to tell a meanigful story set during the War of the Ring.
Galadriel? More like GalMADriel... given how her entire plain of existence revolves around "She Mad".
"One show to -rule- ruin them all"
Jeff Bezos: 10-digit bank account, 2-digit IQ.
Video does not work
The commercials worked though :)
@@SardaukarX 😂
My criticism, coming at it from the race/ politics angle, is that they could have done all the things they want to do - non-white-centric plot lines, racially diverse characters - if they just took the time to attempt to follow the lore.
Want Brown elves; focus on a group of elves who never followed Oromë west.
Want Brown authority figures; have original Ainur characters. Some of them will be black/brown as the forms they took were inspired by their vision of the Children of Eru following the culmination of the Ainulindalë, when they followed the Valar into Arda, and took earthly forms.
Want new stores - go east, go south. Tell a story of a Pirate queen from Umbar, or one of Persian-esk-mystic Easterlings! Tell a story about how the Rhevain and Hravani worship Morgoth as a god of liberation and ambition - a Prometheus fallen type. A God which promises ascension and immortality.
Dwarf women have beards! This was such an easy win and it baffles me how they missed it! The non-binary sympathetic hipster normi types would have loved it, and the fans would have backed them up for the sole reason of it being *true to the lore*.
Amazon deserves everything they have coming. I'm just sad that there was a chance to have good Tolkien legendarium content, and it was missed.
Honestly, just based on what they had the rights to adapt and the company doing it, this was always going to be a disaster.
This could just as easily be a random original fantasy universe. The only reason why they've slapped the Lord of the Rings label on it is so they can get normies to recognise the IP and consume the content.
No creative effort and no respect.
"This place is so evil our torches do not give off heat..."
Cue Mordors volcano 😂😂😂
i disagree w/ your point about the race swapping and its not because I think its "woke" but otherwise I agree w/ pretty much everything you said. great video, thoughtful and humble as usual
Whats the point of it then?
It's feels very apathetic, like it didn't even want to be made
Thank you for covering this man, ngl it's kinda funny this whole thing.
The second I heard they were attempting a show my heart sank
Thank you for showing constructive articulate criticism for those of us who have issues with the show yet can't discuss it without being attacked as being "woke" or whatever. It has BAD WRITING and BAD ACTING... full stop. No need to go any further. Give me a smart, complex plot with great writing and acting and I'm all in and I'm all in for adding some diversity. But this show ain't it so to speak.
Also AMAZON OWNS IMDB? I did not know that and felt I could trust IMDB a bit more than RT for reviews but that is saddening because even prior to watching this I too noticed a lot of bogus sounding 10/10 reviews that were extremely vague in describing the show. Like cookie-cutter positive "buzzword" filled reviews from bots. Also other good reviews ONLY mentioned the visuals and I thought "is the story and acting good though?"... well I checked it out and it's what I feared... hollow, uninspired poorly written fan fiction by mediocre writers and actors who (no disrespect) for the most part are wooden and stiff.
My wife and I tried to watch an episode of this as Lord of the rings fan's but we were board to tears. I kept asking my wife where are the characters to care about and the relationships that pull you in. I want to try it again but man I don't know if I have it in me haha, TV time is little and precious, I don't know if I want to waste it on this.