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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.
As a pretty strong conservative, I loved the show, fight me. There were tons of great moments, lines, special effects, music, and overall ideas. The one thing it didn't have much of was character development--while the side characters did seem to grow, the main characters mostly stayed pretty static.
But seriously, there were plenty of scenes that just amazed me. I find myself confused at the very tepid audience response--it did tons of cool things that to me make up for its relatively small issues.
Oh, there were scenes that amazed me, too. Like having Galadriel walking face-first into a pyroclastic flow and then waking up none the worse except for a coating of Cheeto dust. Or Galadriel jumping overboard and deciding to swim a couple of thousand miles back to Middle-earth. Most scenes with Galadriel, to be honest.
Sure, those were pretty unrealistic, but it also avoided plenty of modern script cliches that show up everywhere else. For example, I don't remember any characters ever having a long heartfelt scene where they explain to the audience all of their character motivations in order to make sure we understand them.
Who explained their character motivations? Galadriel? "My brother died and I am out to avenge him" - so why are you a bitch to everyone? You don't care about the men under your command, you don't use diplomacy and persuasion, you demand demand demand, and in the final episode it is shown how your manipulation of others has come around to bite you in the backside, and you still get away with it!
This thing is packed full of modern script clichés, that's the problem. They can't write the characters any other way than appealing to the clichés.
Galadriel was definitely pretty bad. Honestly the characters in general were pretty bad--none of the main ones had flaws per se, at least as far as I can tell. I mean, Galadriel was very pushy, but the show didn't present that as a flaw.
IDK if you get the situation I'm referencing exactly, where characters just come out and tell another character all of their thoughts and motivations. It's just not the sort of dialogue that happens in real life. I didn't see it in Rings of Power, and I do see it in virtually every show I watch nowadays. Much better to have passing references at motivations and otherwise watch people's actions speak for themselves. I do wish characters had made more in the way of mistakes though because there's no better way to watch character growth than to see how they handle their mistakes.
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