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

just finished episode 3. I think there's potential for something fun coming up. The show is best when dealing with grand plans such as Sauron's schemes, the fate of the Dwarves or Numenor's politics. Whereas I simply can't bring myself to care about Isildur's adventures, Galadriel's inner turmoil and what have you. They seem so disconnected from the plot at large, much like Aragorn and Arwen's subplot in LOTR.

They can.
Seems they simply want to try and keep fans guessing or at least tell themselves the fans are.
But if they now make another character Gandalf it will just look like it's been done for shock value.

Question for the book wankers: is Celembrimbor considered the titular "Lord of the Rings", as Annatar less than sublty labeled him? I'd always assumed it referred to whomsoever was the bearer/wearer.

Afaik that title has always been in reference to Sauron. He's just saying it here as a very subtle wink to the audience about the title of the show.

It's always been just Sauron. At one point later in the book, after they manage to destroy the ring and everyone is celebrating, Merry calls Frodo "the Lord of the Ring" in jest, and Gandalf chews him out because that term was only ever used to refer to Sauron.

The fourth episode was pretty painful, really. At least there was some decent action too.

What nah, he might be Radagast at any moment

I hate it if that helps, I don’t think I’ve had such a visceral dislike of a piece of media since Ready Player Two. It’s the anti-Tolkien, determined to throw in mystery for the sake of mystery, alter lore for absolutely no real reason (even beyond the thin “only the appendices” excuse they have), make a world that is as close to binary good and evil as you’re likely to find into moralizing shades of grey (and not even good shades of grey, just intermittent “maybe Sauron has a point, maybe the orcs are the victims here” lazy bullshit), and make wildly weird explanations of things that don’t need to be explained. I’m hate watching it but even I have a limit.

Half expecting an episode this season be devoted to the backstory of Tom Bombadil, with a big twist that he’s Sauron’s brother or something stupid.

If the story they're trying to tell (assuming it doesn't get cancelled first) is basically leading up to the prologue for the LotR movies, then that could actually be a pretty cool story.
But they'll need to do some pretty massive time skips as it takes place over 100s of years and needs to cover the founding and construction of several empires and cities.

But also they seem to be focusing on the wrong characters. Elendil and Isildur need to be front and center. The entire wizard/hobbits thing is just a distraction. Infact half of the first series was distractions. Even Gladriel, despite the elves being tricked into making the 3 rings being a major plot point.

I feel like the first series would have worked much better if we'd known who the bad guy was much earlier, and been able to appreciate how he manipulated well-meaning but oblivious characters to achieve his ends.
It'd have given the first season some kind of direction, which it absolutely didn't have.
Instead they sacrificed that in the name of one cool twist moment.

Though I wonder if the story they're trying to tell is just too big to work as a show. Things that sound cool in an appendix "And then he founded the fortress of xxx and raised many armies" are going to be too long to depict in a show, but skipping them is going to make it feel very disjointed.

*shrug* not started Season 2 yet

Lukus Same. I keep putting it off. I even asked the boy the other night if he wanted to watch it and he just laughed. Even though my expectations will be at rock bottom I know somehow I'll still be disappointed.

The other thing is that I don't want to contribute to the ratings of something so obviously shite any more than I have done.

Apparently only about 35% of the initial audience saw it through to the end. I'm not sure how that drop off compares to other big budget shows, but it doesn't sound good.

I'm guessing their initial audience for season two has probably taken a dip as well.

If they killed the hobbit characters I'd be more interested.

I am honestly still amazed that fans of LOTR aren't loving (or at least semi-liking) all this extra Middle Earth visual spectacle and story. Id never suggest it's a classic TV series but anyone put off by the pervasive view in this thread, I'd recommend putting some popcorn in the microwave and giving it a watch.