- Youtube removes the down thumb.
- Someone snitches.
lol.
- Someone snitches.
lol.
LOTR: Rings of Power (Amazon)
- Thread starter Count Delinard
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It's this extension 
returnyoutubedislike.com
Return YouTube Dislike
An extension that returns dislike statistics to YouTube using a combination of scraped dislike stats and estimates extrapolated from extension user data.
Oh. Didn't know that. How reliable is it?
Not sure. Probably not a lot, but with that ridiculous ratio we can assume that regardless of statistical variance the dislikes outweigh the likes by a lot.
Ok the latest trailer didn’t look bad at all, it certainly feels more middle-earthey than previous things we’ve seen..
Lusitani 5th Empire
With such a big budget, you'd expect a great setting, but that wasn't the main complaint.
Let's wait and see, what's left is a good story and good acting, I don't even care if it's in the books or not but everything needs to connect.
Let's wait and see, what's left is a good story and good acting, I don't even care if it's in the books or not but everything needs to connect.
Seen 2 episodes. I think the writing/storytelling is excellent and it's visually nice.
Sadly most of the acting is mediocre. Some well written scenes almost fall flat. I'm beginning to appreciate the brilliance of Peter Jackson's work more and more.
The human/elf romance is a little silly. Tolkien could have done that better.
Galadriel as "action hero" takes some getting used to...
I think it could be a very decent show - but a far cry from Jackson's Lord of the Rings.
Sadly most of the acting is mediocre. Some well written scenes almost fall flat. I'm beginning to appreciate the brilliance of Peter Jackson's work more and more.
The human/elf romance is a little silly. Tolkien could have done that better.
Galadriel as "action hero" takes some getting used to...
I think it could be a very decent show - but a far cry from Jackson's Lord of the Rings.
I thought the script poor, which didn't give the actors much scope. Sets were nice but there was a lack of engaging dialogue. They came across as cardboard stereotypes, more because that's how their parts were written. Why there had to be hobbits and why they had to have irish accents is beyond me. I'll stick with it hoping it will improve. My wife was bored after 15 minutes of Episode 1 and I can't blame her.
To be fair I found the Silmarillion tedious. Tolkien's collection of lore notes lacked narrative drive IMO. Fran Walsh and Phillipa Bowens had better dramatic source material to turn into film scripts.
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Okay. The first episode is like an introduction to the world/lore, the elves, humans are harfoots and lacks storytelling flow.
But that improves in episode 2. I just think the actors are stiff and don't fultil the potential their characters have.
There is an epic story here that could be really good later on.
But that improves in episode 2. I just think the actors are stiff and don't fultil the potential their characters have.
There is an epic story here that could be really good later on.
We'll see what episode 3 brings.
Hopefully, a less smug Elrond and more than a single dimension to Galadriel. Elves are supposed to be far older and wiser than teenagers. BTW I quite liked the black elf, he fleshed out a part without being given any dialogue to help him. Alien Gandalf needs to get his wits back soon, they've massively overplayed his reliance on hobbit aftercare. He's supposed to be a Maiar who walked unseen (formless) amongst the elves before materialising. Not that I care about Ainur or Tolkien's silly obsession to create an Anglo-Saxon/Norse mythology for the English - who needs demi-gods? Maybe only survivors of the Somme.
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Watched both episodes. The introduction, at least, got me prepared for the fact that the production would be far more loosely-based on anything Tolkein wrote than I assumed, so I could leave lore critiques at the door and view and judge it as its own thing, more or less (despite the harried desperation to resemble the Peter Jackson movies).
Taken on its own merits, there's nothing here really worth watching. Disregarding everything about the setting (which I have to do for my own sanity), we're left with a predictable story told by uninteresting characters filling a void nobody really asked for. The show juggles too many flat plotlines with too little vitality and too little depth to any of them. I was caught in a paradox of simultaneously wanting more screen time for each plot to flesh out the barely-there characters, and wanting less because I couldn't care less about what happens to these people or what they do.
Overall, not worth a watch right now, and likely it never will be.
Taken on its own merits, there's nothing here really worth watching. Disregarding everything about the setting (which I have to do for my own sanity), we're left with a predictable story told by uninteresting characters filling a void nobody really asked for. The show juggles too many flat plotlines with too little vitality and too little depth to any of them. I was caught in a paradox of simultaneously wanting more screen time for each plot to flesh out the barely-there characters, and wanting less because I couldn't care less about what happens to these people or what they do.
Everything about the show is obvious, rote and tired. The "main" plot is gesturing to our modern political era in a similar manner to other recent works (the evil was from WITHIN all along!), and while that actually works with the part of the story they're telling/going to tell, the hamfisted way they're doing it so far is like using the Iliad to sell McDonald's. It's awful and the source material deserves better.
The plots they're setting up are all devoid of life in their own particular ways, but Galadriel's stands out due to the weight of history they foist on her while being almost completely unable to adapt that history. So we get some paper-thin motivations of a dead brother and a spectacularly lame speech about moral ambiguity that leads her to endanger her men and jump off a ship into the middle of the ocean for drama. I was incredibly uninterested in this plot thread and characters like Galadriel are thrown onto the screen with the expectation that we'll care about them purely because of that branding. The sea monster "attack" in the second episode is one of the low points of the two episodes for me purely because it comes out of nowhere and leaves, having changed absolutely nothing about where the plot was going other than eating a few mooks. She ends up going with "Halbrand" (Elendil? Wouldn't put it past the showrunners given how they hand out lore-significant characters like candy) anyways.
The proto-Hobbit plot was also awful. Nobody really asked for a plotline about filthy hippy versions of Hobbits crossed with Ewoks interacting with a brain-damaged Gandalf, and all the stuff about a diminutive character answering the call to adventure to escape their torpid society has been done better elsewhere. Like in Lord of the Rings.
The two somewhat-salvageable plotlines here concern Elf Ranger and Lady, and Elrond and Celebrimbor. Elf Ranger and Lady is the plotline I was kind of expecting and honestly hoping for from this series - divorced from the larger world-shattering events but carried along by them, a small-scale story of a few original characters caught up in a believable struggle on the peripheries of the main conflict. This part could have actually worked if they had just focused on it more, but I suspect the lure of recognizable licensed characters was too great. Unfortunately the filmmakers conveniently forgot that recasting those roles and changing their characterizations and motivations completely won't win any favours with a legacy audience. I admit to being somewhat interested in where Elf Ranger and Lady end up (the kid is very obviously going to turn out being their bastard child, etc.), but the show spent far too little time on them to make me truly care.
Elrond had the plotline I probably liked the most on its own merits over these two episodes, and this is partly due to his interactions with the Dwarves, the only subset of this adaptation's population that actually feel like they were designed with some of the wonder that went into the Peter Jackson adaptations. Durin (III? IV?) and his wife were the only characters I actually liked, and I realized this was because they were the only ones portrayed as interacting with each other and with other characters in even a semi-realistic manner. Things got boring again as soon as Elrond left Khazad-Dum, and Celebrimbor is likely going to prove to be as dull as the rest of the show - an artist and artisan seeking to outdo his more-famous forebears with all the charisma and panache of a block of wood.
On that particular note, there is the typical aversion to melodrama common to works in the last decade on display here. Sincerity, here, means dour, unhappy people saying pseudo-profound things to one another, ignoring that the films made similar moments impactful by actually giving the characters room to breathe and time to be established. I suppose it's better than having Galadriel and Elrond do Marvel-style quips.
The plots they're setting up are all devoid of life in their own particular ways, but Galadriel's stands out due to the weight of history they foist on her while being almost completely unable to adapt that history. So we get some paper-thin motivations of a dead brother and a spectacularly lame speech about moral ambiguity that leads her to endanger her men and jump off a ship into the middle of the ocean for drama. I was incredibly uninterested in this plot thread and characters like Galadriel are thrown onto the screen with the expectation that we'll care about them purely because of that branding. The sea monster "attack" in the second episode is one of the low points of the two episodes for me purely because it comes out of nowhere and leaves, having changed absolutely nothing about where the plot was going other than eating a few mooks. She ends up going with "Halbrand" (Elendil? Wouldn't put it past the showrunners given how they hand out lore-significant characters like candy) anyways.
The proto-Hobbit plot was also awful. Nobody really asked for a plotline about filthy hippy versions of Hobbits crossed with Ewoks interacting with a brain-damaged Gandalf, and all the stuff about a diminutive character answering the call to adventure to escape their torpid society has been done better elsewhere. Like in Lord of the Rings.
The two somewhat-salvageable plotlines here concern Elf Ranger and Lady, and Elrond and Celebrimbor. Elf Ranger and Lady is the plotline I was kind of expecting and honestly hoping for from this series - divorced from the larger world-shattering events but carried along by them, a small-scale story of a few original characters caught up in a believable struggle on the peripheries of the main conflict. This part could have actually worked if they had just focused on it more, but I suspect the lure of recognizable licensed characters was too great. Unfortunately the filmmakers conveniently forgot that recasting those roles and changing their characterizations and motivations completely won't win any favours with a legacy audience. I admit to being somewhat interested in where Elf Ranger and Lady end up (the kid is very obviously going to turn out being their bastard child, etc.), but the show spent far too little time on them to make me truly care.
Elrond had the plotline I probably liked the most on its own merits over these two episodes, and this is partly due to his interactions with the Dwarves, the only subset of this adaptation's population that actually feel like they were designed with some of the wonder that went into the Peter Jackson adaptations. Durin (III? IV?) and his wife were the only characters I actually liked, and I realized this was because they were the only ones portrayed as interacting with each other and with other characters in even a semi-realistic manner. Things got boring again as soon as Elrond left Khazad-Dum, and Celebrimbor is likely going to prove to be as dull as the rest of the show - an artist and artisan seeking to outdo his more-famous forebears with all the charisma and panache of a block of wood.
On that particular note, there is the typical aversion to melodrama common to works in the last decade on display here. Sincerity, here, means dour, unhappy people saying pseudo-profound things to one another, ignoring that the films made similar moments impactful by actually giving the characters room to breathe and time to be established. I suppose it's better than having Galadriel and Elrond do Marvel-style quips.
Overall, not worth a watch right now, and likely it never will be.
I feel that it is very difficult to deliver something good when the main motivation behind it is money. And by that I am not saying that the previous movies were not motivated by financial gain, but I get the feeling that that was pretty much the only motivation behind this series. I get a similar vibe from the new star wars movies. When all you're doing is trying to milk the cash cow people can tell, and it's not a good look.
I haven't watched this yet but everything I hear about it makes me think of the Shannara series, and that was the worst thing I have ever watched in my life (admittedly made worse by the fact that I enjoyed the books).
I haven't watched this yet but everything I hear about it makes me think of the Shannara series, and that was the worst thing I have ever watched in my life (admittedly made worse by the fact that I enjoyed the books).
I feel that it is very difficult to deliver something good with that universe when the two main stories already got adapted. What else from Tolkien's universe can be turned into a movie or live action series except perhaps Beren and Luthien's story?
there's like a dozen different stories you could do if you had full access to the writings (eg also children of húrin as the other big one), including two separate ones being used for this show that could each be easily fleshed out into their own thing (the making of the rings, and the fall of númenor).
speaking of which, the show is fine, if not great. pure fanfic of course, but it'll be reasonably entertaining to watch.
speaking of which, the show is fine, if not great. pure fanfic of course, but it'll be reasonably entertaining to watch.
I don't what standard you're measuring it up against if that's "reasonably entertaining". I couldn't even finish the second episode, and it wasn't because of anything other than the fact that I caught myself going to sleep and decided I probably shouldn't bother finishing it. It would almost be better if it were truly awful because then it would be so much easier to discount it, but it's not actually "bad" or entirely unwatchable. It's just another milquetoast, made-by-committee, middle-of-the-road, big-budget snorefest that happens to be traipsing through one of the most beloved intellectual properties worldwide. What part of it is even reasonably entertaining?
I honestly didn't expect much after The Wheel of Time disaster, but honestly, I really liked it. Pacing in EP1 was pretty quick and some actors feel like they're still getting comfortable in their roles, but by EP2 I was sold. I don't know if the rest of the season will be good, but hopefully. It pulled something like 25m viewers too, so a lot of people seem to really enjoy it. Probably definitely getting more than 4 seasons at the very least.
Beyond that, I think it's hilarious how much the non-white actors are upsetting people.
Beyond that, I think it's hilarious how much the non-white actors are upsetting people.
The sets and costumes are interesting. I'm still hoping the script might improve enough to allow some emotional engagement with a couple of the protagonists, but it's not been well-written IMO so far. Galadriel's obsessional personal vendetta with Sauron breaks immersion with her aloof character portrayal in LOTR where she was the last elf you'd expect to venture into Mordor for a personal confrontation with the Enemy. We know she didn't fulfil her promise (in this series to pursue her brother's quest), so where's the scope for her character to back off and become someone entirely different? Expecting an audience to brainwash themselves before watching anything is unreasonable.
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From what I've seen, it's only a very small minority of the negative criticism that was blown out of proportions. Understandbly, reactions like yours by more famous people have spurred anger and criticisms of their own for delegitimizing any criticism the show receives. Personally, I don't care that much, but I think this kind of simplification of people's reactions to Rings of Power is kind of mean and insincere.Beyond that, I think it's hilarious how much the non-white actors are upsetting people.
I don't think those stories are easily adaptable into live actions or movies because they lack either enough content or pacing for a movie. The adaptations would and should suck. I feel only Beren and Luthien and, as you say, Children of Húrin have enough content and pacing to be reasonably adapted. Most second age stuff especially occurs over hundreds of years. They are very interesting stories in a book, but I fear they wouldn't be that good on the silver screen.
I didn't simplify criticisms to Rings of Power and I think it is quite hilarious that you would make this accusation given the context of what was said. I only poked fun at the moronic losers that dislike the show simply because there are darker skinned people in it and despite whatever you might believe, that is not a valid criticism to make. Especially when you consider the fact that the Hobbits are described as having skin tones ranging from brown to white. So yes; if anyone's complaint about the show stems from racial casting, it isn't a valid criticism and I will always laugh at those idiots. If you want to believe that is "mean" and "insincere" and "disregards" criticism, I honestly cannot help you.
And what do you mean "reactions like mine"? You mean not caring that non-white people were put into the show or was it me liking the show that made that you believe I have "spurred" and "delegitimized" criticisms? Because I haven't said anything else beyond those two things. It's not like I said, "no other complaint has merit" yadda yadda. Quite frankly, I find it rather ridiculous that you would construe any of what I said as a dismissal of valid criticism. Now I would give you the benefit of the doubt here and say that you just didn't read all of my post before reacting, but given how you reacted to a specific portion of my post, I honestly have no idea how to respond further to you about this.
Although I never even implied that the vast majority of people have those invalid criticisms or that it was a wide spread problem—only poked fun at those who do—you go ahead and believe whatever you want I guess?
I concur with the script. It's definitely not terrible or superb, but I like it enough so far, but I do feel like it's missing something at times. Heart, maybe? Feelings? I think Galadriel, Halbrand and Arondir suffer from it the most, because Nori, Elrond, and Durin are a lot better in that sense. Perhaps this is the character arc that leads Galadriel to become what she becomes in LOTR? I wouldn't say it breaks immersion concerning her character just yet at least, because this is set a long time before LOTRs and there's plenty of time for her to evolve as a character. It also seems to me that her meeting Elendil and Halbrand is what will probably coax her out of that, but that's probably just me hoping rather than seeing actual evidence of it.
most of it. i signed up for fanfiction and "pretty good for fanfiction" is what i got so far.
it's far from great, but it's just... fine. i enjoy the harfoots. it's silly, it's fun. i enjoy elrond and durin and disa. i enjoy arondir's extremely serious dnd game. i outright laughed out loud at halbrand as good as quoting aragorn this episode.
that's not to say i don't have issues with it, of course, there's plenty of dodgy writing or odd shooting decisions. could it have been better? sure. especially with that budget. but taken for itself, it's just... fine. bit slow in parts. very silly.
