Board 8 > The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Topic [Amazon Prime]

(+) Yeah! (+)

Premiere is tonight, with the first two of this season's eight episodes set to go live at 9PM Eastern.

Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8UAUAuKNcU

good stuff! i don't have high expectations, but i do think a lot of people will watch it and it'll be a fun show to discuss together. wish HBO hadn't put HOTD right at the same time of year though.

Going to be watching this closely, pretty excited!

For some God forsaken reason it seems there a large subset of people who are actively antagonistic towards this shows existence, not necessarily because they think it will be bad but because they didn't want them to make it in the first place, so I think there's going to be a lot of hot takes and a lot of fuming youtubers. A stark contrast to the super low discussion buildup to the HOTD premier.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

A stark contrast

Well-played

I try.

Can't wait for the Legolas cameo

Episodes 1 and 2 are live now.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/0/6/0/AADcu0AADoMU.jpg

it's not a fantasy show without someone breaking a community's most deeply-held rule

1st episode down, only one I'm watching tonight. Exceeded my expectations, felt very cinematic. The scale and feel are completely different from HotD, I feel like these shows shouldn't even be compared, they're not going for remotely the same thing.

Watched both episodes, better than I was expecting. Very pretty show, loved the dwarves

Watched the 1st episode, I liked it. Definitely felt like a movie, but still had that plot-too-slow feel of a TV show. I don't know anything about this story other than obviously Sauron comes back, so ending the episode was "omg Sauron is coming back" seems like a waste. I wonder what the real drama will be and how long it will be drawn out.

Graphics are impressive though, and the costumes & sets are great. The CG is cartoony in a fun way that I think more shows should aim for.

I know about Kelloggs Booberry from the games.

watched the first episode and i mostly cringed through it

that said the visuals are great so i am optimistic about its potential. i like the actor they have for elrond and i enjoy the harfoots.

Did my crawl through social as I planned.

Most of the negative Twitter takes seem to be people trying to say they're upset the show has black people in it in as obscure a way as possible.

Although some just straight up say it.

Watched the first episode and really enjoyed it. Beautiful show and good casting.

The ending was...weird. I have never succeeded in reading all the Silmarrilion but that definitely doesn't fit with what I know of the story.

OK Bezos I liked your show, but how about not giving me an unskipable 5 second ad for it every time I open my Amazon app to check my order.

I saw both episodes in theaters on Wednesday and enjoyed them quite a bit. Few minor nitpicks (Elves with modern style haircuts, Galadriel soloing a troll and being obsessed with revenge) but besides those small things I thought it was great. Amazing visuals, probably the best ever in a TV show. Interested to see where it goes from here.

https://www.cbr.com/lotr-rings-of-power-amazon-suspend-ratings-combat-review-bombing/

Makes sense.

Really though it's just more proof that aggregate reviews on the whole are worthless.

that's rough - i kind of want the show to be able to be bad on its own without having campaigns against it and especially racist brigading

Sometimes you're shit outta luck.

I still have trouble talking about how terrible that 2016 Ghostbusters was!

You'll always have bad "allies" regardless of whether you like or dislike something

It's a similar problem to Ms. Marvel and the inherent racist/sexist backlash that makes it almost difficult to dislike a show simply on it own merits.

SeabassDebeste posted...

that's rough - i kind of want the show to be able to be bad on its own without having campaigns against it and especially racist brigading

There are black elves and a strong female lead.

This show was always going to be review bombed.

Post to scare a Tolkein nerd

https://youtu.be/2elqogqt0pI

From the beginning, you'd see these bizarre copypastas of Tolkien quotes on Youtube trailers that read like white supremacist manifestos.

Leonhart4 posted...

You'll always have bad "allies" regardless of whether you like or dislike something

true, though with dislike it seems more specifically problematic in many cases!

SeabassDebeste posted...

true, though with dislike it seems more specifically problematic in many cases!

it's only problematic if you can't defend your reasons for disliking it!

for example Ms. Marvel has the worst villains in any MCU thing ever (or maybe any anything ever)

I havent watched Ms Marvel yet but can it really be worse than Mr "Mind controll female assassins with my pheromones"?

UshiromiyaEva posted...

I havent watched Ms Marvel yet but can it really be worse than Mr "Mind controll female assassins with my pheromones"?

it has not one but two absolutely abysmal villain ensembles so yes

Yeah, Ms. Marvel definitely reached new depths that Black Widow could only dream of.

The villains in Ms. Marvel were totally passable and served their purpose, nothing more, nothing less. They werent the point. The show was great overall, and one of the few Disney+ premium shows that looks its budget.

On topic, looking forward to getting the chance yo watch this. Its funny that this is the show to get Amazon to take review bombing seriously though, since they own it.

It began with the forging of the great films.

Threads were given by JRR Tolkien, immortal, wisest and fairest of all beings. Rights were granted to Jackson, great miner and craftsman of the mountain of lore. And nine, nine hours were gifted to the race of men, who above all else, desire 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.

LightningStrikes posted...

The villains in Ms. Marvel were totally passable

yikes absolutely not, terrible in every way, I can't think of a single redeeming or vaguely likable quality any of them had

you can say they weren't the point but they sure didn't know how to get out of the way and let the show do more of what it was actually good at

it's no surprise the best episode was the one in which none of them were involved

Eh, I just didnt really feel anything towards them, they served their narrative purpose and that was it.

-_Saint_Boot_- posted...

It began with the forging of the great films.

Threads were given by JRR Tolkien, immortal, wisest and fairest of all beings. Rights were granted to Jackson, great miner and craftsman of the mountain of lore. And nine, nine hours were gifted to the race of men, who above all else, desire 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.

My guy, nothings getting ruined. If its good, great, if its bad, ignore it the films and books are still there. A lot of bad LotR content has been made yet the books and the Jackson trilogy did not disappear.

I dont get people who go into something wanting to hate it. You can hate it of course, but why would you not approach it in good faith?

Not a fan so far, but see if it is just a slow start.

The pure, respectable legacy should not be tarnished.

https://youtu.be/BC35cQKHwzg

-_Saint_Boot_- posted...

It began with the forging of the great films.

Threads were given by JRR Tolkien, immortal, wisest and fairest of all beings. Rights were granted to Jackson, great miner and craftsman of the mountain of lore. And nine, nine hours were gifted to the race of men, who above all else, desire 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.

Christ, this copypasta is so worn out.

Just finished the first episode. A bit slow, but that was to be expected. I'm not as familiar with the Tolkien lore as some fans are, so I'm not sure if they've ruined the canon forever yet or not, but I'm intrigued so far.

Positive review bombing exists, but is much, much smaller, especially for things that have just released. You cant get fans together to vote a certain way for something that is still building its fanbase. The correct thing to do would be to remove all votes from new accounts or accounts that have been inactive for a certain period of time and so on.

That doesnt stop the dumb fandom war style of review bombing (eg the people giving Ozymandias from Breaking Bad or Hero from Attack on Titan 1s in an attempt to get the other to the top of the best episodes list) but it should significantly thwart the racists and the brigaders, including the small minority of positive ones.

UltimaterializerX posted...

People always point this out while ignoring positive review bombing. There is no chance all the 10/10 scores are coming from people that actually watched the show either.

Because positive review bombing is much less impactful. A 1/10 hurts more than a 10/10 helps.

-_Saint_Boot_- posted...

It began with the forging of the great films.

Threads were given by JRR Tolkien, immortal, wisest and fairest of all beings. Rights were granted to Jackson, great miner and craftsman of the mountain of lore. And nine, nine hours were gifted to the race of men, who above all else, desire 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.

This post is awesome even though I don't agree with it. The sentiment sadly seems to be the consensus amongst the hardcore Tolkien fans.

Like I have never seen this much backlash for a product before the product was even out. Has there ever been anything in any media that has gotten this much backlash from fans before it even came out? As a huge fan of the movie trilogy, I liked the first two episodes (no problem with the slow pace). But the fans are like nope, this shit should not have aired, despite great reviews everywhere.

Leonhart4 posted...

Because positive review bombing is much less impactful. A 1/10 hurts more than a 10/10 helps.

Uhhh no it does not. Unless we use video game review scale where average starts at like 7.5. Positive review bombing or whatever the hell it is called, has never been done on the scale of a (negative) review bombing. The biggest example of arguable stuffed positive scores I can recall are for Astral Chain and Ghost of Tsushima on metacritic. There are countless examples of review bombed games that I can think at the top off my head though. I'm using video game examples because I don't know nearly as much about Movies and TV Show reviews.

'Positive review bombing' isn't less impactful, it is just far less common or isn't done on the scale of negative ones.

Axl_Rose_85 posted...

Uhhh no it does not. Unless we use video game review scale where average starts at like 7.5.

Literally every type of entertainment media uses this standard.

There are many things that people hate before they even come out. This is not a new phenomenon.

No they don't. Movies always use 5 as an average. A 7.5 on IMDB is considered a great movie. A game getting 7.5 on IGN or Gamespot is considered average. This is not an opinion. This is literally a fact.

I don't know the scale for TV Shows. It seems far more lenient than Movies at least.

Leonhart4 posted...

There are many things that people hate before they even come out. This is not a new phenomenon.

No shit it's not a new phenomenon but nothing on this scale unless we count The Last of Us Part II which was because of the leak. Not because the fans didn't want the original content to be 'tainted'.

I mean there aren't too many things on the internet with the combination of "really popular" and "fanbase has a stick up their butt if you change anything the author said or wrote" like Lord of the Rings

No one goes to IMDB to check for movie scores. Rottentomaotes is by far the most popular aggregator, and 60% is the bare minimum a movie needs there to be considered passable.

Well film reviewers often use 3/5 to be average which score aggregators translate into a 6, because they most commonly use a 5 point scale.

The thing is, when people say 5/10 is average, they are using it qualitatively. Like I had an entirely average experience with this movie, 5/10. However, when you look at the actual distributions of scores, things tend to score higher than that because most people seek out things they think would be good, so the mathematical average when you compare scores to each other tends to be more like 7. So therefore Leon is right, a 1 pushes you below the average compared to other series more than a 10 pushes you up.

Of course, for prestige TV, the average will be even higher, more like an 8. So that shows it even further. If you want an illustration that the 1s are having more impact though, you just need to compare the medians to the means: both episodes have a median score of an 8 but a mean (without weighting) of 6.9 and 6.7. That shows that the 1s are pushing the means down. In fact just the fact that IMDBs own weighting is already pushing the scores up to 7.3 and 7 shows that theres negative brigading going on, either from bots or a demographically identical group.