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So, after all these weeks, Amazon's Rings of Power wraps up its first season. A section of mainstream media is still defending the show while others are somewhat calling it, we have a 2nd season coming, several retcons to the lore, and a very predictable Sauron reveal. Now we're supposed to expect a certain special someone from Galadriel's past that I'm shocked even exists in this canon. If there's one bit of character development in this whole debacle, it would be Erik Kain's diminishing confidence in the show.
I'm gonna nitpick a line from this piece:
I don't know if Amazon Studios will face a crisis as was reported earlier, or if they intend to trot out a slightly less expensive season 2 before axing it altogether, or drag it all the way. But it seems, as several others had stated in last week's thread when I brought it up, this is really just a billion dollar gig for Bezos' ticket to the ultra-woke Hollywood clique to maximise his elite status after all. To that end, he likely has succeeded many times over.
I know the article doesn't bother but: has the mainstream come up with a coherent theory for why HoD - which was coming off a controversial Game of Thrones finale and it's own "woke" PR problem - is doing vastly better than RoP in audience ratings?
Sexists are more motivated than racists?
Did you watch HoD? It's genuinely amazing. Not sure how to put it exactly but its treatment of power and tragedy makes GoT look one-dimensional. And there are some scenes that took my "#1 Tv/movie writing" spot. For example king Viserys' ruminating on the nature of his rule and what it means to be King to his Hand, if you've seen it.
This show deserves more cultural spotlight than GoT had, imo. And I love GoT.
The problem with HoD is honestly not the show itself, it's GoT. GoT had an amazing first season too! But after how abysmal the ending was, I'm not going to watch HoD until after it's over and we know if it wound up going to shit the way GoT did.
I think it's still worth watching, more than anything I've watched over the last few years. It dethroned Better Call Saul as my favorite. It would suck if they cock it up but the writing, acting, and aesthetics are still so good that they stand on their own.
You're genuinely depriving yourself of something Great.
Besides, why would they cock it up again? Are the conditions for that happening even there? It's a finished story of a smaller scope. They know they fucked up. I'm not worried.
"Unsatisfying scriptwriting" is the default scriptwriting. Ask not are the conditions sufficient to create a cockup; ask are the conditions sufficient to maintain a very unusually high level of quality?
That's true in general but not here I think. Other 'good' series usually manage to maintain great scriptwriting, for example Sopranos, Breaking Bad, etc. Bad scriptwriting is the default starting position, but series that start good and are intended to be good really do require special circumstances to go down the drain.
We know what caused the GoT fiasco (lack of source material, producers wanted out, extremely long and built careers which caused pressure to move on). Those are the conditions.
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