BeijingPalmer: anyway the fullness of the language, especially when they take it straight from Tolkien, also shows up how very, very bad the rings of power was

watching the lord of the rings movies again, and I really admire the way they just straight up give characters monologues.

while being very big movies they are also very willing to do scenes that could happily belong on stage. this is one of the distinguishing features as against their successors, especially the marvelclones

anyway the fullness of the language, especially when they take it straight from Tolkien, also shows up how very, very bad the rings of power was

I’d thought people had to be exaggerating, but I didn’t make it through the first episode when I tried it the other week. Not a single redeeming feature, as far as I could see.

it was strikingly bad, like required quite a high degree of illiteracy by the creators about multiple topics to be that bad.

also lots of bits where you could tell they *thought* they were clever

oh man, that’s the worst. Like being lied to by a 4 year-old who’s sure you’re going to buy it.

I quite liked Lenny Henry as a hobbit

just wait until they get their other four seasons, i'm sure

I assume the whole thing was some kind of PRODUCERS scenario, whereby two con artists got over their head.

Truly an insane project to give to two first time show runners on the basis of nothing more than a JJ Abrams vouch. Although in fairness they did deliver a completed project, which is more than I could have done. It was just bad

I was holding out hope through the series and then when the Rings are conceived of and forged in the last 20 minutes and then Sauron reveals himself and you see his dumbass plan which included almost getting eaten by a sea monster laid out, I had to throw in the towel

Ridley Scott’s talked abt how* the decline of mid-budget movies for adults has led to studios burning out greenhorn directors on huge projects bc they aren’t quite ready for organizing what amounts to a town’s worth of ppl on a daily basis. I imagine there’s something similar here but like… x8

At least, uh, they made it melodramatic where it didn't need to be.

I had the same reaction I did to characters saying “OK” in The Gilded Age — the laziness felt like a deliberate expression of contempt for the project and anybody who’d watch it.

wait, isn't the gilded age set in the 1880s? OK was well established by then!

I mean it's Julian Fellowes so I would still assume it was bad

The costumes are great, Carrie Coon and her husband are extremely easy on the eyes, and I do love seeing historical cities onscreen, but I wouldn’t mind watching a version with everything else cut out, especially the plot.

Lots of historically accurate things break immersion. David Drake said he couldn't write about Roman soldiers having plywood shields even though they did.

the funniest name for this is the "Tiffany problem" - a common medieval name, but the reader isn't going to buy it.

IIRC they axed a scene in Gladiator where a gladiator did a shout-out to his sponsors, because modern audiences wouldn't find it credible, despite it being a thing that did in fact happen

But I like historical things like this that make historical people more relatable, jar us by reducing our distance from them

It’s attested, sure, but In the speech of New Amsterdam blue-bloods engaging in what is supposed to be icy high-politesse? I’m skeptical — though as usual the problem isn’t so much modern words as modern brains.

It goes back to the Jackson administration so - yes indeed

Confusingly awful, made worse by genuinely good actors gamely trying to make a turd sandwich into something edible instead of just going full send into the ridiculousness of it all.

Watching the first episode, I really noticed how much less alien the show is than the movie. Galadriel has the backstory of a modern special forces operative, instead of being a terrifying and ethereal being as in the movies

It actually gets worse as it goes on. The penultimate episode consists almost entirely of characters giving unearned and lengthy emotional speeches. After the first few it sort of feels like the writers are doing a bit

It is very boring. Some of the costumes and sets are pretty I kinda liked the halflings But I got bored

It probably didn’t help that I never much enjoyed Tolkien in the first place, but yeah — I dunno, maybe the show came up with a reason to exist in the second episode; I’ll never know.

I love Tolkien and couldn’t finish the first episode.

I think it started to get somewhat tolerably interesting-ish about 5 episodes in? Anyway I wouldn’t urge anyone to watch it

Elrond durin and his wife are the only good parts tbh and theres also lots of nerdy details that are nice but beyond that its so bad they apparently could’ve used galadriel and celeborn chapters but they didn’t bother spending the season setting up the coup of eregion and omg the dialouge is awful

Bringing Khazad-dûm to life in its peak was wonderful; Joseph Mawle (aka Benjen Stark) as an ancient evil-ish 'lost' high elf was fantastic. I stuck with it to the end bc of those & Numenor etc. But when they scrambled the Three Rings out in a rush like that I lost it WHAT IS THE NAME OF THIS SHOW!?

I made it 15 (20 tops) minutes before I bailed.

There’s a lot of potential explanations but, coming from a tech background, it *looked* an awful lot like a particular kind of tech illiteracy to me. Like, the thing was GORGEOUS but it appears they did not pay a single decent writer because “looking good” is the same as being good? 🥴

Some of the actors are good, and visual elements.

there is ONE song. and it actually makes me angry it's in such a bad vehicle:(

jackson/writers excelled at rearranging dialogue, like toms lines to treebeard, Gandalfs speech to pippin from Frodos dreams etc and actors gave excellent delivery vs what RoP did to “…light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach” theres nitpicky stuff here but this is the best review I’ve found

Collections: Why Rings of Power’s Middle Earth Feels Flatacoup.blog This week we’re going to take a look at the worldbuilding of Amazon Studio’s Rings of Power from a historical realism perspective. I think it is no great secret that Rings of Power broa…

😭 take that back

sometimes you just gotta let them cook

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