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I'm still wondering what got Amazon hooked to a billion dollar disaster. After all initial (imo misplaced) optimism, analysts are finally coming out and saying the quiet part out loud: it is not the ground breaking masterpiece they need it to be. Even HoD is performing better and is better received. Both are prequels to very popular IPs, but Rings of Power should be pulling enormous numbers given how expensive it is, and how extensive its marketing was. Despite worsening performance with every episode, they just renewed it for season 2. This wasn't a small and calculated risk, they literally staked the future of their whole studio on this show. What made them think hiring subpar writers, rewriting lore, rewriting characters of one of the most popular fantasy IPs while simultaneously drafting off of the brand was a good idea? It feels like the motive isn't even to make money but solely to push an agenda, but who would do that? Given the sheer scale of the project, I just cannot believe any studio would be so careless as to commit such a serious misfire.
I've been catching bits and pieces, don't follow pop culture that closely, and here's the sort of "memory headlines" I recall.
1: New LOTR property coming to Amazon! - awesome if they don't fuck it up
2: Black Dorves! - oh jesus they're gonna woke-fuck the godfather of fantasy, maybe I'll wait until a few shows are out to see if it sucks or not
3: Our audience are all racists! - Well that's always a good sign, especially when your show is months from release.
4: We have to delete reviews because we're being review-bombed by all the racists! - Hmmmmm
Then, last week Amazon put RoP in my "continue viewing" roster despite the fact that I have never opened the show once, nor watched even one second of it. Not in my "suggested for you", not in "TV we think you might like". "Continue Viewing".
Fuck you Amazon. If you had a good show, you wouldn't be slagging off your fans, removing reviews or trying to con people who hadn't watched the show. Those are all things you do when you have a turd on your hands and you're trying desperately to gin up culture war valence so at least some people will watch it.
Don't put shit in my queue
The main thing I've been waiting on is for there to be a release of some scene or sequence that actually manages to draw me in by showing that there are redeemable and indeed impressive elements that justify all the expense and hype by their very existence.
But so far I've seen nought but the very opposite, multiple scenes that are cringe-inducing, or poorly done, or otherwise quite off-putting. And I've been looking for good ones! The show is what, 6 episodes in? There should surely be some crazy set-pieces on offer by now!
I mean, if you were to show someone clips from the Battle of Helm's Deep, to say nothing of the Siege of Minas Tirith (there are like 10 "HOLY SHIT" moments in that 4 minute clip alone), or the Balrog, or Shelob, even without the broader cultural context they'd probably get very interested in watching the films.
For all the marketing dollars they spent, I haven't been exposed to any particular excerpt from the show that would make me ignore all the criticism and give it a chance because I want to see THAT scene and/or it's context. And no it doesn't have to be an epic action scene either. Even a well-delivered monologue can spark interest in the story and world!
Perhaps worst of all, there's no source material anyone can reference so as to reassure me that "just hold on, there's a scene coming up that is just crazy and makes everything pay off."
So I'm not going to commit to watching something when I can't even anticipate that it will get around to adapting really good material if I just give it a chance.
Just to make a point, here's a clip less than 90 seconds long from The Expanse, which was one of Amazon's other flagship shows (currently cancelled after Season 6) which I think would trigger most people who like SFF to want to watch the show:
Mild Spoilers:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=waG8YYTwpAQ
Does RoP have any equivalent moments?
Bret Devereaux has a series of posts about the Siege of Gondor (conclusion: the Witch-King knew what he was doing) and the Battle of Helm's Deep (conclusion: Saruman didn't) on his history blog, comparing the movie and book accounts (as well as ones about Game of Thrones).
I'd love to see him do one about the 'battle' we've seen so far, between the mighty NĂºmenoreans and the hordes of Orcs. I don't know if it would be good for his sanity, but it would be hugely entertaining.
There's a guy on Youtube who has analysed Galadriel's sword teaching session, and though at points he does go over the top, again it's very funny.
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There's at least one guy online doing reviews who is VERY DISAPPOINTED because he was waiting eagerly for the NĂºmenorean fleet to set sail to deliver the NĂºmenorean army to fight off the Orcs and save the Southlands because oh man oh boy oh golly gosh gumdrops this is gonna be epic, the NĂºmenoreans are all like these seven foot tall super-soldiers, they are the most kickass thing on the face of the entirety of Middle-earth, just wait for the battle scenes!
And they gave him three small ships and a bunch of teenage trainees getting their asses slapped by Galadriel đŸ¤£
I wonder if one can measure his disappointment.
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Expanse was a very good show, had everything that people who supposedly hate [insert woke-privileged minority] can't stand. But it got six seasons, good character development, a story that resolved in some sense etc. etc. Wasn't perfect by a long shot, but notable in just being competently written, mostly coherent, mostly realistic at the human level.
If you care about "representation" (which I don't), this is one example among many of how it can be done well, profitably and without having to rail about how shit your fans are.
Certainly helps that the source material had that representation built-in, not just because the authors wanted it but because the world they created completely justified it, and even then they were able to incorporate racial/cultural tensions by playing up the differences between people born on Earth, Mars, or the Belt.
Likewise, they didn't put in 'token' characters or limit their diverse casting in weird ways to avoid uncomfortable implications. The good-hearted captain protag is a cis white male (ignore that he's the result of intentional genetic engineering and shares DNA from multiple members of his queer poly family), the main antag from the first few seasons is an ethnically Chinese (I believe?) CEO, then the last season they give you Marco Inaros, who is basically Space Che Guevara and an utterly irredeemable monster by the end of the show despite coming from an unambiguous background of oppression. Like, the entire thesis of his character is "yes, there are indeed acts heinous enough that they cannot be justified by the fact that you and 'your people' have been oppressed for generations and have very few ways to strike back." Which is contra the normal SJW narrative that oppressed peoples should never be held morally accountable for their behavior, even violent and deadly behavior, so long as it only hurts their oppressors.
So the lines between good and evil are often blurry, the morality of the decisions made by various characters is often grey, so you get the sense that the writers have priorities that don't center around diversity for diversity's sake or singling out any given group for praise or criticism. Which is nice.
I'm actually very sad that we didn't (yet) get to their full take on the upstart fascist empire, which is actually pretty glowing at the outset, since the message "we're better than you, we know what's best for you, and we're going to make things better whether you want it or not" is backed up by the fact that they DO have the best and brightest citizens, they DO have the most advanced technology, and they DO, seemingly, want to advance the wellbeing of humanity as a whole.
But the inherent problems of balancing the interests of an entire interstellar empire on the back of a single megalomaniac with no qualms about sacrificing humans for the 'greater good' and a tendency towards aggressively upgrading himself with barely-tested technologies are explored in an entertaining way.
So basically, Laconia comes across as a nice place to live if you don't piss off the ruling class whilst still not desirable in the grand scheme of things.
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