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

[Argonath Diver]

I am not strongly beholden to the Silmarillion whatsoever. Despite my Tolkien-themed avatar, the complete departure from his work was not the reason I disliked the show so much. It was the absolutely ludicrous plot in every storyline they presented that threw me.

Watching Galadriel jump off that damn ship 3000 miles away from Middle-Earth had to have been one of the most absurdly ridiculous moments I've ever seen in a production attempting some kind of gravitas to the scene presented. Dios mio. Then, immediately after, the imbicilic notion that the second most evil being in all creation made this big plan to shipwreck himself just beyond the mystical edge of the Undying Lands, shapeshift himself into human form, and be ready on a raft just in case a thousand-year old battle-tested elf who acts like a teenager might just jump off her trip to Valhalla?

I will not apologize, that five minutes of the show completely threw me for the entirety of its run. The two most important characters of the saga, reduced to incomprehensible idiocy within minutes. At least Durin was compelling. I seriously enjoyed the damn Wheel of Time series more than Rings of Power. At least it was just silly and went with it.

No apologies for the late Friday night salt - I had very high hopes for this series, and I thought the first episode was stunningly beautiful.

[Raja]

On 12/17/2022 at 8:03 PM, Darryk said:

 

 Critics are mostly in Disney and Amazon's pockets.

You're drinking some kool aid and have really gone off the deep end with comments like this one. And by that I mean you're stating a bunch of nonsense, really.

As an aside, I find it very odd to post about which awards the show was not nominated for whilst highlighting that hotd did get those nominations - like what are we trying to do here? Are we all 8 year olds?

[Rippounet]

11 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Compressing the events of 3000+ years into a few months or years.  Pretending any living being could swim thousands of miles of ocean.  Creating some mystical malady for Elves that can be healed by magic silver.  Having Galadriel’s love interest… turn out to be… Sauron.  And then having Galadriel do nothing when she discovers who Sauron actually is.

Fully agree with the first bolded sentences. Galadriel jumping in the sea was ridiculous, either she should have jumped much sooner or they should have found another way to have her refuse going to Valinor.
The mystical malady was also grating, but I wasn't expecting much better in terms of writing.

The last bolded point is a bit unfair. Galadriel does try to fight Sauron, both physically and psychically - it's just that she loses, badly. And then she shuts up because she understands the implications.
I didn't dislike that. It shows the lure of power and how difficult it is to resist, even for elves. Though Galadriel already has one such moment in LotR of course... But at least they were honest enough to echo that. Point is, this is the kind of stuff I would kind of defend: at least it's a theme of Tolkien's work. If that kind of shit wasn't there, there truly wouldn't be anything left to save from the show.

[Darryk]

3 hours ago, Raja said:

You're drinking some kool aid and have really gone off the deep end with comments like this one. And by that I mean you're stating a bunch of nonsense, really.

As an aside, I find it very odd to post about which awards the show was not nominated for whilst highlighting that hotd did get those nominations - like what are we trying to do here? Are we all 8 year olds?

Maybe, I've always been told I have a wild imagination.

I was being hyperbolic. But the fact is a lot of critics do like their freebies. It's also just inexplicable how something like She-Hulk gets good ratings from critics.

I think it's quite significant that a show costing 60 million per episode got no nominations, and I compared it to HOTD cause those are the two big fantasy shows that come out. IMO one highlighted how to do things right and the other how to do things wrong.

[Raja]

3 hours ago, Darryk said:

Maybe, I've always been told I have a wild imagination.

But the fact is a lot of critics do like their freebies.

There are plenty of critics that weren't fans, plenty that were. People have different tastes, crtics included. Also, 'critics' aren't a monolith - I just find it very odd that you're pushing this nonsense conspiracy stuff.

[Zorral]

As somebody somewhere sometime observed, "What fools these mortals be." 

[Argonath Diver]

I know nothing about British royalty or celebrity gossip. I did, though, go into this show with great hopes, and did enjoy the splendor of the first ep, while wondering at the baffling plot decisions. My distaste for the show is just as permittable as fans' embracing of it. Yes, it's a bummer that my most-excited-for show in years was such a mess (in my opinion). 

I adore 3D movies (well not the post converted Marvel schlock) but I'm not offended when most say it's a dead tech, etc.

[Raja]

12 minutes ago, Argonath Diver said:

My distaste for the show is just as permittable as fans' embracing of it.

Totally agree with that, which is why Darryk's insistence that critics liking the show is somehow 'dishonest' is very odd & weird. There are so many critics that weren't fans!

[Zorral]

It's not people disliking RoP that is condemned, but the utter irrationality of so many about it, to the point of, yes, there have been cases, threatening with physical violence those who don't hate it. Not to mention threatening violence and directing truly hateful, disgusted, irrational threats and abuse on various actors who played several of the primary characters  Figure out who those people are.

[Werthead]

8 hours ago, Raja said:

You're drinking some kool aid and have really gone off the deep end with comments like this one. And by that I mean you're stating a bunch of nonsense, really.

As an aside, I find it very odd to post about which awards the show was not nominated for whilst highlighting that hotd did get those nominations - like what are we trying to do here? Are we all 8 year olds?

As someone working in Amazon-adjacent areas several times in the last few years, I can confirm that Amazon are very happy to engage with "superfans" and, to some extent, critics, with lavish premieres and goody bags and free books and somesuch, but they have never actually given money directly to anyone in those circles. To anybody who's been to more than a couple of these premiere events, the appeal of those is also quite jaded and the goody bags and usually of negligible interest (though I still have a Game of Thrones-branded water bottle on my shelf from a HBO event a few years ago, since it seemed a fairly weird object of interest). In fact, the premieres can be misleading, since watching the premiere of a TV episode on an IMAX screen with a pitch-perfect sound mix can be dramatically different to sitting at home with a shitty mix made for streaming.

Amazon do seem to have taken umbrage with people that have given them poor reviews though, as Daniel Greene's YouTube channel can attest after his (relatively mild) criticism of WoT.

[Darryk]

3 minutes ago, Werthead said:

As someone working in Amazon-adjacent areas several times in the last few years, I can confirm that Amazon are very happy to engage with "superfans" and, to some extent, critics, with lavish premieres and goody bags and free books and somesuch, but they have never actually given money directly to anyone in those circles.

It was this kind of thing, the freebies and stuff that I was referring to, that I suspect in many cases makes critics reluctant to give bad reviews. I wasn't suggesting any of them are bribed. I also acknowledge that it's probably a small percentage of critics that are influenced by this stuff.

[Raja]

1 minute ago, Werthead said:

 I can confirm that Amazon are very happy to engage with "superfans" and, to some extent, critics, with lavish premieres and goody bags and free books and somesuch, but they have never actually given money directly to anyone in those circles.

This isn't just an Amazon thing, HBO does this too. Lots of studios do. It's part of the industry, as you say. None of that means critics are giving it an easy pass. A lot of the big reviews have been middling to average ( NYT, Indiewire, Atlantic), so again, the weird conspiracy angle that critics are in the pocket of Amazon makes zero sense and isn't backed up by anything I've seen in this thread.

[DaveSumm]

8 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Fully agree with the first bolded sentences. Galadriel jumping in the sea was ridiculous, either she should have jumped much sooner or they should have found another way to have her refuse going to Valinor.

The thing is, in another show, you could at least forgive these things as plot devices. Things that get characters from A to B, things that solve other inconsistencies, that kind of thing. But here, you try and track it back/forward in your head and put yourself in the writers shoes and you realise … wait, why was she even there? Why did we need to follow her that far? Why does she need to get on a boat at all? Why does Sauron need to meet her in the sea? It’s a ridiculous amount of swimming that gets the plot precisely nowhere. 

And the whole season feels like this to me, a tapestry of plot leftovers that don’t seem to serve any purpose at all. Other than Amazon wanted a series, and so I guess we’re following these people as they traipse around like tour guides of Middle Earth, never quite getting to the meat of the story. Because ultimately there is no meat to the story, it’s an empty husk. 

[Slurktan]

2 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

The thing is, in another show, you could at least forgive these things as plot devices. Things that get characters from A to B, things that solve other inconsistencies, that kind of thing. But here, you try and track it back/forward in your head and put yourself in the writers shoes and you realise … wait, why was she even there? Why did we need to follow her that far? Why does she need to get on a boat at all? Why does Sauron need to meet her in the sea? It’s a ridiculous amount of swimming that gets the plot precisely nowhere. 

She and Sauron need to get to Numenor together for their story.  The writers chose that route to get them there.

[Werthead]

Tolkien could have probably made a situation where Galadriel is urged to go to Valinor but at the last minute has another call to remain behind and it's a spiritual thing, possibly a warning from the Valar etc, so as an act of faith she surrenders herself to the ocean etc. There's far weirder and more random shit in the legendarium. However, it would be supported by good writing and Tolkien would go back and forth in the mythology to set it up better. Or you could do it mundanely, maybe they see Halbrand's ship off in the distance before getting to the, er, wormhole entrance to Valinor and she jumps out knowing at least there's another ship in the area.

[Rippounet]

2 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

The thing is, in another show, you could at least forgive these things as plot devices. Things that get characters from A to B, things that solve other inconsistencies, that kind of thing. But here, you try and track it back/forward in your head and put yourself in the writers shoes and you realise … wait, why was she even there? Why did we need to follow her that far? Why does she need to get on a boat at all? Why does Sauron need to meet her in the sea? It’s a ridiculous amount of swimming that gets the plot precisely nowhere.

Yeah, I've seen this in some other big budget shows or movies: it's as if the writers had ideas for "cool scenes/images" but didn't quite know how to justify them, i.e. write the story that makes them happen. Can't quite remember where, but I've seen the exact same problem somewhere else... and I feel it's getting increasingly common too.
Throughout Rings of Power, it felt to me as if they were trying to give a sort of "epic feel" to the story distinct from other fictions, i.e. very unlikely stories, but that somehow happen because there are gods watching and it feels poetic. To be fair, there is something like that in Tolkien's writings IIRC, and I kind of decided to ignore it if the scenes or images were interesting enough, if they produced "moments" with a decent atmosphere and the right themes. Because honestly, if you dwell on it, nothing in the show really makes sense: the entire "elvish politics" arc is crap, Galadriel is batshit crazy, the elves watching over the Southlings (and failing miserably at their job) is stupid, Harfoot culture is moronic... etc, etc.
In this specific case though, not even the scenes and images can redeem this choice. Sauron meeting Galadriel and using her through her thirst for revenge isn't a bad idea. But why have this happen at sea? Why on a raft? It's almost as if there's a reference there I'm missing.
I did see an interesting theory saying that the whole raft episode is really an illusion, with Sauron finding Galadriel while he himself is headed for Numenor and taking the opportunity to get inside her head. I would add that Sauron's influence on her might explain why she behaves like an utter lunatic for days. The reveal in the final episode would thus work on several levels by establishing that Sauron's manipulation of Galadriel was much deeper than we thought. But all that's a bit of a stretch and I don't like it when writers leave viewers to fill plotholes... I think this is another case where fans came up with a better ideas than the writers themselves (I'm reminded of Game of Thrones here).
 

[Veltigar]

On 1/8/2023 at 3:12 AM, Werthead said:

Tolkien could have probably made a situation where Galadriel is urged to go to Valinor but at the last minute has another call to remain behind and it's a spiritual thing, possibly a warning from the Valar etc, so as an act of faith she surrenders herself to the ocean etc. There's far weirder and more random shit in the legendarium. However, it would be supported by good writing and Tolkien would go back and forth in the mythology to set it up better. Or you could do it mundanely, maybe they see Halbrand's ship off in the distance before getting to the, er, wormhole entrance to Valinor and she jumps out knowing at least there's another ship in the area.

They could have done something like the Elves on their way to Valinar passing the shipwrecked crew. Instead of picking up the refugees, the other Elves wish to continue onwards to Valinor. Galadriel refuses and jumps overboard to help.

In one fell swoop, Galadriel stays in Middle-Earth instead of going to Valinor, she's also established as special seeing how she chose to come to the aid of the humans and Sauron's plan seems more deliberate.

Not sure whether you could square it even in the vaguest manner with canon, but at least it's more elegant than what we got.

[baxus]

On 1/7/2023 at 8:07 PM, Raja said:

There are plenty of critics that weren't fans, plenty that were. People have different tastes, crtics included. Also, 'critics' aren't a monolith - I just find it very odd that you're pushing this nonsense conspiracy stuff.

To be honest, I am yet to read a good review on RoP coming from a critic that explains what they really liked in the show that made sense. I've only seen two episodes and I must say I didn't see many (if any) redeeming qualities. At this point, that "Lord of the Rings" tagline is probably the only reason why anyone watched the show throughout the season. If this was some generic fantasy series, I doubt anyone would have stuck until episode 3 or 4, let alone the season.

Of course, that is just my opinion, anyone may disagree.

On 1/7/2023 at 9:46 PM, Werthead said:

As someone working in Amazon-adjacent areas several times in the last few years, I can confirm that Amazon are very happy to engage with "superfans" and, to some extent, critics, with lavish premieres and goody bags and free books and somesuch, but they have never actually given money directly to anyone in those circles.

Money doesn't need to change hands, there's other incentives for "superfans" to praise this show despite its obvious shortcomings. It is in "superfans" best interest to keep attending this type of events from Amazon and have early access so they can keep their Youtube channels or whatever they are doing one step ahead.

[mormont]

On the one hand, it's true that access, freebies etc. do influence reviewers, even subconsciously, to be nice about the products they review. There's solid pyschological research to prove that.

On the other hand, as noted above, every media company does it. So you can't cite this selectively to rubbish the reception of a particular series that you think is bad. That makes no sense. At minimum, you need to explain why it applied particularly strongly in that case. Nobody has been able to do this in the case of RoP. It's not like RoP was granting unprecedented access.

 

[Heartofice]

I'm just guessing here, but I suspect a lot of reviewers are keen to stay on the good side of major producers of tv and movies, because that gives them the inside track on new stuff, early access and it really helps their channel / site. So there are almost certainly a number of reviewers who are careful to not be critical of major releases from big studios, whereas others might actually improve their views by being overly critical.

Most of these reviewer and critics are playing some sort of game here. I don't think should be very surprised by that.