Jump to content

[Spoilers]Rings of Power 3: Tolkien’s actual writing… who needs that?


Ser Scot A Ellison

Recommended Posts

6 minutes ago, Veltigar said:

but every critic or outlet I tend to follow has published intensely negative reviews of the entire season.

6 minutes ago, Veltigar said:

The best and most positive reactions I see from the people in my immediate surroundings is that it's not too bad if you do something like fold your laundry while watching.

Again, that's your bubble!  As I said earlier, I wouldn't be surprised if the budget is cut back to make it more commiserate with what it is - a hit but not a massive hit, particularly with younger viewers.  But they aren't going to rock the boat (e.g. replacing the showrunners which was posited earlier) for a show that consistently is in the top 5 of streaming ratings.  Plus, production on season 2 has already started, so...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

It’s easy to make fun of fangirls, but they usually do eat up all the source material they can find (which they then use to make graphics and write metas on tumblr lol). As a huge fan of the books, I appreciate that.

HotD isn't my cup of tea, but they did nice graphics for LOTR. The showrunners did a season long tease of Galadriel/Sauron, so that's on them.

I think most people would have loved to see the canon relationships instead, and it would have made for a better story, the author chose these for a reason.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, Le Cygne said:

 

I think most people would have loved to see the canon relationships instead, and it would have made for a better story, the author chose these for a reason.

The fuck did that guy know, he's not even on TikTok

Plus the guy like upheld through violence, and then wrote his books from within, the most expansive Empire in human history. #CancelTolkHine #HashtagActivism

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, DMC said:

More projecting.  There is no "critical backlash."  On Rotten Tomatoes it has an 85% rating overall.  Every episode except episode 5 (which prompted me to stop watching for three weeks) has at least an 85% rating - topping out with the finale at 90%.  On Metacritic, the score is considerably lower - a 71.  But compare this to other geekdom shows and it's perfectly fine.  Andor has a 74, HotD has a 69, and She-Hulk has a 67.

As for "fan backlash," the ratings remain solid.  In the most recent week reported by Nielsen (September 19-25), HotD did overtake ROP in streaming minutes - good for them!  But still, ROP ticked back up to 997 million minutes from the slight dip the previous week at 988 million minutes. 

The only "backlash" being seen is rather obvious review bombing and a marked lack of "online buzz."  I think this article makes a great analogy in that Amazon is the CBS of streaming and generally "dad" viewing.  It fits with the empirics that tell us 71% of its audience is over 35.  Anyway, the only way this show is receiving an "enormous amount of fan backlash" is if you're Very Online.

Look, I thought the show was middling at best myself.  I much prefer HotD and once I get to watch Andor I'm sure I'll much prefer that too.  But all measurements indicate the show is a success.  Perhaps a muted one - it's certainly not a home run - but it's at least a base hit and probably a double unless you really care about generating online buzz.  Again, I'd encourage people to get out of their own bubble (or the bubble of this thread) when considering the reception to this show.

Yeah, I agree with all of this. RoP may not be the supreme success Amazon was hoping for, but I very much doubt they would consider it a failure. It has a large audience and critically it's not doing too badly. A 69 on metacritic for a first season is good. Rome's first season scored a 70. The Wire scored a 79. Chernobyl has an 82. Breaking Bad has a 73.

I personally think this show is awful, but I doubt Amazon cares about my opinion.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The problem for Amazon is whether people are going to flock back for subsequent seasons. Numbers might be good for a first season, but it’s not like there is a ton of buzz that will attract new viewers. Game of Thrones grew in popularity and became a phenomenon, there is almost no chance of that happening with RoP. Having ok numbers is probably not what Amazon were hoping for, surely for a flagship show it’s intention was to draw people to its platform.. it’s not clear it’s doing that.

Either way, I think Amazon have front loaded their investment in the show so it’s very unlikely they are going to cancel it any time soon 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, IFR said:

Yeah, I agree with all of this. RoP may not be the supreme success Amazon was hoping for, but I very much doubt they would consider it a failure. It has a large audience and critically it's not doing too badly. A 69 on metacritic for a first season is good. Rome's first season scored a 70. The Wire scored a 79. Chernobyl has an 82. Breaking Bad has a 73.

I personally think this show is awful, but I doubt Amazon cares about my opinion.

I haven't seen the show, but the latter half of your paragraph explains that this grading system (metacritic) is fucking trash. 

Rome?

A 70!?! 

Get a new review aggregator, as a friend. Or better yet, stop listening to reviews. Put your ear to the web and let what vibrations may tickle your ears come your way in their own time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

The problem for Amazon is whether people are going to flock back for subsequent seasons. Numbers might be good for a first season, but it’s not like there is a ton of buzz that will attract new viewers. Game of Thrones grew in popularity and became a phenomenon, there is almost no chance of that happening with RoP.

No, it's almost certainly never going to become a cultural phenomenon, and unlikely to attract new viewers with both the lack on online "buzz" and decidedly older viewership.  (Although online buzz is a very fickle thing, and it's quite possible simply by the events of season 2 it captures the attention of the TikTok brigade.)  But the flip side of that is the viewers they have are unlikely to be affected by the online "backlash" and, generally, remain stable.  At this point it's a high floor/low ceiling show.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 minutes ago, Firebrand Jace said:

I haven't seen the show, but the latter half of your paragraph explains that this grading system (metacritic) is fucking trash. 

Rome?

A 70!?! 

Get a new review aggregator, as a friend. Or better yet, stop listening to reviews. Put your ear to the web and let what vibrations may tickle your ears come your way in their own time.

Sure, I don't give much credence to professional critics myself. The only kind of award or critical acclaim that I've found to be consistently reliable is the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. Or books that have been positively reviewed in science journals. I also like a lot of Hugo and Nebula award winners.

But while audience volume is something Amazon primarily cares about, I imagine that some acclaim by critics is not unwelcome.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

41 minutes ago, DMC said:

No, it's almost certainly never going to become a cultural phenomenon, and unlikely to attract new viewers with both the lack on online "buzz" and decidedly older viewership.  (Although online buzz is a very fickle thing, and it's quite possible simply by the events of season 2 it captures the attention of the TikTok brigade.)  But the flip side of that is the viewers they have are unlikely to be affected by the online "backlash" and, generally, remain stable.  At this point it's a high floor/low ceiling show.

I agree. I just am not sure that is the original ambition of the show.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

29 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

I just am not sure that is the original ambition of the show.

Well sure considering the investment I'm sure they were hoping for a massive hit/cultural phenomenon.  But we all have to settle sometimes, and any measured expectation should not have assumed that would be the case - no matter the prestige/popularity of the IP.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

Well Bezos decreed that the studio find the next GoT. Surely they believed this would be it. And to a lesser degree WoT.

I got the impression that they thought WoT would be a truck stop gloryhole in Vermont renowned for its stern anti-prophylactic policy.

I mean that's what I thought. Because the script was clearly written with a spoon shank into the wall of a prison bathroom stall 

(Avenue 5 is back, Armando makes my heart beat poetic)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Online buzz is very fickle, I agree. For instance, HOTD is currently at the top of Variety’s TV Twitter trending charts (after fluctuating for the past few months) but if you go on Twitter, all the discourse is people dumping on Sara Hess and complaining about leaked details from the finale. That’s probably still a good thing for marketing, but I imagine it’s very frustrating for the people making the show.

Dahmer is a huge show right now, but has barely registered on Google Trends. People haven’t been able to shut up about She-Hulk for months, but the Nielsen ratings haven’t been great. It all has to do with what demographics (particularly age and gender) a show is popular with. 

Weirdly enough, Andor having a smaller audience has coincided with it earning more praise. But I think it kind of hammers home the notion that a lot of people want spin-offs to have the same elements as the original, if not full-on soft reboots. I’m sure there’s some psychology there about familiarity, nostalgia, rewatches, etc. Hopefully someone does a thesis on it eventually haha.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Firebrand Jace said:

I got the impression that they thought WoT would be a truck stop gloryhole in Vermont renowned for its stern anti-prophylactic policy.

I mean that's what I thought. Because the script was clearly written with a spoon shank into the wall of a prison bathroom stall 

(Avenue 5 is back, Armando makes my heart beat poetic)

And if Bezos led his company like a Russian despot, writers and producers would start falling out of windows.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think there’s enough interest in Sauron that people will come back to watch S2 (if they bungle his story though, that could be a big problem). Enough people like the dwarves and Nori that if they emphasize them in the trailer, that will bring viewers back too.

A lot of it is marketing. They tried to pull in younger viewers by appealing to their interests in political activism, but that’s not why people watch shows about elves and dwarves. As the show went on, they focused more on the mystery box stuff and the set pieces. I think the best thing they could do is appeal to that sense of wonder that has become synonymous with LOTR. That’s what appealed to me the most during the first few episodes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/23/2022 at 1:29 PM, Veltigar said:

but every critic or outlet I tend to follow

 

Film critics are not to be trusted.

Take, for instance, Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian. He hates everything. He must really hate his job. I honestly don't know why he keeps doing it, subjecting himself to movies that are patently awful.

Oh, except Spectre. The crooked cunt gave that pile of dundershite 5 stars.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 minutes ago, AncalagonTheBlack said:

The Rings of Power’ Showrunners: Sauron Will Be Like Walter White in Season 2

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/rings-of-power-sauron-season-2-lotr-1235240809/

WTF :lol:

 

I read this quote:

Quote

We didn’t want to make a show that was about the hunt for Sauron, but we love the idea of Sauron as a deceiver who could, hopefully, deceive some of the audience.

Adds Payne: “There’s something that Milton does in Paradise Lost that we talked about a lot. Where he makes Satan a really compelling character. In some ways, he’s the first antihero where he’s compelling and you can’t take your eyes off of him. Milton did that on purpose because he wants you to fall along with Adam and Eve. He wants Satan to be so persuasive that he also seduces [the reader] and you’re unconsciously won over, so that you perceive your own fallenness and your need for redemption.”

I think that sounds good as a concept, but in reality they have already massively failed. They didn't really deceive anyone about who Sauron is. The only people who thought it wasn't Halbrand thought so because it was just too obvious, and surely the show wasn't that stupid. (It was)

Secondly, if they wanted Sauron to be such a core character that will partly win the audience over and have conflicting feelings for, why did they cast the guy they cast as Halbrand? No offence but they should have just tried harder to find someone better. It feels like they went with someone bland and good looking in a dull generic way just to distract the viewer. If they had just openly got someone who was incredibly charismatic and charming from the start, even if it made it obvious who he was, then the whole show would have been improved. 

The whole show feels like it's pulling in different directions some times.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...