The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power on Prime

Just been on an odyssey to London and the girl pointed out that the only characters on the copious amounts of advertising for this are the barlog that’s in it for literally three seconds and the witches, who are probably the most visually striking things in the series but also absolutely useless fuckwits with about three minutes of screen time.

If you say so

I’m not one for sticking fastidiously to the lore or objecting to breaking canon in service of making a good adaptation. A books a book and a tv show is a big tv show. That really doesn’t bother me.

What bothered me is that it’s just not very good. I don’t care if Gandalf arrived in the wrong timeline, I care that one of the central plots was ‘is this person who is very obviously Gandalf actually Gandalf?’ and it took eight episodes to resolve.

I mean, it's cool if you liked it. I sort of did, in places.

But the "negativity" is just people expressing their real opinions about a bit of art, it doesn't (or shouldn't) affect you either way. I like all kinds of things that other people don't!

Started watching this last night.

It's fine. Bit slow moving, but I don't think it's the shit show some folks are claiming.

It's also not a classic or must see. 7/10 kind of stuff.

I suppose it also suffered from hype backlash. Being the most expensive series ever made, based on one of the most famous stories of this era, people obviously expected more than a "decent if you don't think too much about it" show.

I'd a lot of goodwill for it at the beginning, but after the third or fourth episode I found it just wasn't very entertaining or engaging, I didn't find any of the characters compelling (aside from the dwarf/elf bromance) and it was aping a lot of themes and dynamics we've seen already, but in a less enjoyable way.

I really, really wanted it to be good. Which is part of the problem in terms of my own enjoyment, expectations being too high almost guaranteeing it would be a disappointment in comparison.

Oh well, I'll still watch the next season. It might suddenly correct a lot of things it did badly. Game of Thrones took a little while to really get going.

I wouldn't call it shit. It just seemed mostly very dull to me. I liked the lighter moments, which is why I probably enjoyed the Harfoots more than many and I quite enjoyed the elfboy and the dwarf (future band name) pairing. I didn't really care much about what was going on the whole time though.

It likely didn't help that I watched the first episode very jetlagged and could barely keep my eyes open during it. It took me a few episodes to really get up to speed with what was going on after that and I did start enjoying it more after that. I also expect I would have enjoyed it much more if I had of waited until all the episodes were out and watched it over a week or two instead of only 1 episode a week.

Besides being a bit dull, my only real complaint was just how small everything felt.

I did find the final episode fairly enjoyable, although didn't care much about the actual ring making. Found myself not really apying any attention to that.

I will probably try and watch it again before season 2. I've been meaning to do the same with The Witcher though and never got around to it.

One of its problems, and I think gremmi touched on it, is that it’s a prequel to the movies, not the book, so they tilted it towards ‘what would fans of the movies like?’.

It gives it a very LOTREU vibe and means lots of ‘how Han Solo got his chance cubes’ moments which nobody really gives a shit about. It’s trying to tell the origin story of everything we saw in the films rather than be it’s own thing.

Watched the entire thing.

I really don't think it was bad. It was flawed, too slow and a bit designed-by-committee, but I really can't say it was bad. It was fine, and I think some of the characters were quite well realised.

I stand by my 7/10 rating.

I say that a somebody who is more of a fan of the films than the actual original novels.

I mean, on balance I probably enjoyed it about as much the Witcher show, and more than the last few Game of Thrones seasons. Haven't watched House of the Dragon yet but it's not substantially worse than most TV fantasy. Nor is it substantially better.

Yeah last season of GOT was pretty damn crap, but it was must watch TV just because it was the end and everyone needed to see how it ended (badly).

This was just too boring. I could feel myself falling asleep during the 3 episodes I watched, so binned it off after 3.

I also didn't mind the end of Game of Thrones as much as most, as I'd accepted the decline in quality at least a few seasons prior so I really wasn't surprised. I'd rate the last season of GoT a 5/10 overall.

‘It’s been twenty years since Peter Jackson took us to Middle Earth, and ten years since we all asked to leave’ 😂

youtu.be/g3DuMiplGHU

I'm up to Episode 3 and it's ok.
I'm enjoying it well enough, and it's nice to be back in middle earth, but it feels strangely paced and disjointed, and I can't say I really care about any of the main characters yet.

I love the movies, so I don't mind long slower paced LotR, but they really could have cut about 10 minutes off of each episode without any hassle.
I don't find myself finishing one episode and immediately wanting to start the next one like I do with a lot of shows.

Has some beautiful shots (and a few cheesy ones).

It feels like we're 3 episodes in and there isn't really any clear goal or momentum or any real link between the 3/4 main threads. Maybe things will get moving now Adar is around.