The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power | Amazon Prime Video - September 2, 2022

[chrisstbh]

Don't really have much to say on it but I'm still enjoying it .

 

[jye4ever]

Don't really have much to say on it but I'm still enjoying it .

I think once season 49 roles around it will start picking up some steam i’m in it for the long haul afterall.

Amazon Prime annual subscription should be $720 by then but at least i’ll get free 5 week shipping with my toilet paper!

 

[Wor-Gar]

I have come to feel it is a chore to sit through another 72 minutes. I was enjoying it at first, but now.... as with Gandalf still wandering around like a mute Chewbacca.... I grow tired of the drag.

Pick up the pace or be done with you, foul creature!

 

[The Buffinator]

I have come to feel it is a chore to sit through another 72 minutes. I was enjoying it at first, but now.... as with Gandalf still wandering around like a mute Chewbacca.... I grow tired of the drag.

Pick up the pace or be done with you, foul creature!

Are you seriously complaining about the pace of this latest episode?

 

[user 67922]

So you’re saying the role should have gone to a British actress?

Ouch. We're proud of our rotting wonky teeth thank you very much. When you have to wait 6+ months for a routine dental check-up you'd understand

 

[Wor-Gar]

Are you seriously complaining about the pace of this latest episode?

I haven't seen today's episode yet. Does it actually move?

 

[The Buffinator]

Ouch. We're proud of our rotting wonky teeth thank you very much. When you have to wait 6+ months for a routine dental check-up you'd understand

Sorry, I couldn't resist. And full disclosure I lived in the UK for 3 years back in the 90s, so I while my experience is outdated I have been exposed to English "Dentistry". Back then it seemed closer to Medieval Barber lol...

 

[The Buffinator]

I haven't seen today's episode yet. Does it actually move?

Yes, I'd say they took your "pick up the pace" exhortation to heart lol...

 

[karamazov80]

I started out enjoying this show, but less and less each week. I couldn't get through the episode before last and never finished it. It had me dozing off. Game of Thrones is more of my jam than this, I have to say. Even She-Hulk, though that show isn't blowing me away. And for me, I think it's more than pacing and story, but also the directorial approach. The acting is melodramatic and sentimental at times, in particular the human chick, the Hobbit woman, and the elves. I get that they are trying to emulate what Peter Jackson did, but it worked better in those films for me. Part of it may have to do with the fact that he had some world class actors like Viggo, Sean Bean, and Ian McKellen, and. . .I'm not so sure about the folks on this show, though they are serviceable.

 

[ZE_501]

Spoiler

Wow, that’s a pretty harsh assessment of Arondir considering (a) how well conceived & executed his tower plan was and (b) how no one else besides him had any battle experience.

Spoiler

I'll absolutely give him the tower plan but no passes on the rest, especially given he's an Elf and individuals of his race as written by Tolkien, are generally superior and far more experienced than humans. He failed to properly lead or control his ragtag army despite his experience. Yeah he almost died but he didn't and still presumably had his wits about him as the first battle ended.

Seems to me he did OK for his first time in a command role given the circumstances lol.

I'm not military and even I know you don't stand around congratulating yourself after just one wave from an unknown number of assailants.

Plus it’s not as if he had a fortress like Helm’s Deep to help keep the enemy at bay.

Hence he should have been even more vigilant.

As for his handing off the powerful evil artifact, I agree he should have realized it had been swapped out, but despite hiding it and briefly trying to destroy it he was far less familiar with it than Theo.

He (and the other higher ups) let it get stolen by an old man who was able to walk through a group of humans he had spent years with. He flippantly handed it off to a kid and walked away. It's just bad writing, man.

BUT let's say the old man is a cagey old Level 43 Rogue with all his XP sunk into Sneaking and Thieving, I can let that pass ... but they should have cut the bit where Super Duper Elf is handling the decoy and being flippant about it to boot.

And given his exertions in the battle, nearly dying, the arrival of Galadriel & company, etc., I’m willing to cut him some slack, especially when it was handed to him by the Commander Of The Northern Armies.

The Commander of the Norther Armies hands you a super important thing and you give it to a (questionable) human kid and walk off?

 

[The Buffinator]

Spoiler

He (and the other higher ups) let it get stolen by an old man who was able to walk through a group of humans he had spent years with. He flippantly handed it off to a kid and walked away. It's just bad writing, man.

BUT let's say the old man is a cagey old Level 43 Rogue with all his XP sunk into Sneaking and Thieving, I can let that pass ... but they should have cut the bit where Super Duper Elf is handling the decoy and being flippant about it to boot.

Spoiler

Maybe we watched two different versions of this episode but in the one I watched Adar was in possession of the artifact when Galadriel and the Numenoreans rode in to save the day, so it seems obvious that during the ensuing chaos he tasked Waldreg with secreting it out of there while he took his attention diverting horseback ride. Given the mayhem and that a good portion of Waldreg's former neighbors were slaughtered prior to the Numenoreans arrival, that's not especially hard to believe.

Spoiler

The Commander of the Norther Armies hands you a super important thing and you give it to a (questionable) human kid and walk off?

Spoiler

Well, at that point in time the battle was over and he wanted to give Theo the opportunity to do the right thing. But I have no doubt that Arondir would have made sure the thing did indeed end up at the bottom of the sea had it been the actual artifact lol.

IDK, we get an action packed episode that culminates in the creation of Mount Doom and there's more whining here than ever before. I just don't get it....

 

[ZE_501]

IDK, we get an action packed episode that culminates in the creation of Mount Doom and there's more whining here than ever before. I just don't get it....

We've been on this board together a long time. You know I have strong opinions on entertainment and I generally back them up with reasons as to how I draw my conclusions. You don't have to agree but just because I don't see it the way you do doesn't mean I'm "whining". Good day, sir.

 

[The Buffinator]

We've been on this board together a long time. You know I have strong opinions on entertainment and I generally back them up with reasons as to how I draw my conclusions. You don't have to agree but just because I don't see it the way you do doesn't mean I'm "whining". Good day, sir.

A poor choice of words - my apologies. I guess it's just that given the relative entertainment value of this episode I naively expected less dissection of the characters and their every action. It's still LoTR (or at least LoTR adjacent) - I should have known better.

 

[ZE_501]

A poor choice of words - my apologies. I guess it's just that given the relative entertainment value of this episode I naively expected less dissection of the characters and their every action. It's still LoTR (or at least LoTR adjacent) - I should have known better.

No worries.

While not perfect (what is?) ... Jackson's work set a really high bar. I'm sticking around for the RoP story but hoping the writing and directing (as I see it) improves.

This is a series I personally expect some gravitas and tighter scripting from; hence being far less forgiving then I would be of say ... She Hulk or Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Within the context of Star Wars I'd say Andor over-delivers, even though some people find it boring, so at least I don't hate everything.

 

[MeatHookGekko]

I started out enjoying this show, but less and less each week. I couldn't get through the episode before last and never finished it. It had me dozing off. Game of Thrones is more of my jam than this, I have to say. Even She-Hulk, though that show isn't blowing me away. And for me, I think it's more than pacing and story, but also the directorial approach. The acting is melodramatic and sentimental at times, in particular the human chick, the Hobbit woman, and the elves. I get that they are trying to emulate what Peter Jackson did, but it worked better in those films for me. Part of it may have to do with the fact that he had some world class actors like Viggo, Sean Bean, and Ian McKellen, and. . .I'm not so sure about the folks on this show, though they are serviceable.

We don't know the stakes in ROP.

The LOTR trilogy had a very clear mission and goal. Get the ring up the mountain and toss it in. The kind of threat that Sauron presented was kind of nebulous.

In ROP, we don't know what's on the table. What does Sauron want? (OK, except for death and destruction, you need to give the audience something specific) What will it take to stop him? And does it matter if he will just show up in the future in the LOTR timeline trilogy anyway?

I can't believe I'm saying this, but when Z Nation, a fringe super low budget zombie show was on the SyFy channel, it was running concurrently with the middle seasons of The Walking Dead. Z Nation, for all it's flaws, had a very cohesive story in the first two seasons. Get a specific person across the country to see if his body/blood/makeup could be used for a cure to save the rest of the world. And TWD? It was still aimless but turning into more and more sadness porn. I mean those dips at Asylum Films came up with something more cohesive from a narrative standpoint, at 1/50th of the cost. You cannot outspend poor storytelling.

Sean Penn tried this with a super expensive show, The First, about space and astronauts. He didn't get into space at all in the first season. It was just endless politics and family melodrama. There's "slow burn" and then there's "no burn"

Apple TV had Invasion about an alien invasion. There was maybe 2 minutes total of aliens in the whole damn first season. But more melodrama, family angst, relationship angst and ham fisted politics.

You can't make the most expensive show ever in all of recorded human history and dawdle.

Enough of the "shrouded in mystery" angle. Severance had a phenomenal first season and each episode gave you more and more. Yes, it was a mystery box show, but the payoffs were there.

If a movie or TV show is incoherent, then give spectacle. Interstellar is a very flawed story. The writing makes zero sense in multiple major sections. However it was visually stunning, it had good actors and Hans Zimmer carried that film on his back with that incredible score and soundtrack. How do you spend 60-70 million an episode and not give at least spectacle.

If you adjust for inflation, Guillermo Del Toro filmed Blade 2 for the cost of one ROP episode. That's staggering to consider. A movie that came out 20 years ago looks better than a TV show made today with essentially no budget restrictions. The first season of ROP should, at minimum, be 8 separate hour long feature films and at that level of care, craft and quality.

 

[ZE_501]

What does Sauron want?

The myth Tolkien created around LOTR was rooted in religion. I'm trying hard to remember the details but basically Iluvatar (God) had the Valar sing Creation into being; Morgoth introduced dissonance ('evil'?) but that was *also* part of His mysterious plan?

Sauron being a servant of Morgoth what does he generally want? To dominate, to hurt, to twist and control. Our Uruk friend (non-canon though he is) starts throwing the word "Order" around (Ordnung muss sein!!) ... shades of, well ... fascism and then goes all Postmodern with a speech about the Orcs' right to the 'breath of life' and their claim to a rightful existence.

Galadriel is rightly having none of it because she's old school good vs. evil and sees Orcs as Tolkien wrote them to be: an evil to be exterminated.

So this is already kind of muddy, isn't it? The political and I suppose industrial angle can be gleaned from Tolkien's war experiences and love of the pastoral, but now we're already getting into whether or not Orcs have a right to exist, marking this show as quite contemporary in its concerns if it continues down that path.

As far as I know, Sauron is evil and wants to snuff out light and goodness. He's a Really Bad Guy and that's all there is to it. Almost quaint by today's standards.

 

[MeatHookGekko]

A poor choice of words - my apologies.

According to my little nephew, apologies don't count unless they are paired with Rice Krispies Treats.



A month before last Xmas, he found one of those ads in the newspapers that had the games, toys or whatever he deeply desired. He got a Sharpie and circled the things he wanted me to buy for him. And then he slipped the ad under my bedroom door in the middle of the night.

I couldn't stop laughing.

 

[Sassafras]

Don't really have much to say on it but I'm still enjoying it .

I guess I'm enjoying it, or I wouldn't keep watching. IMO goofy is the right description for this last episode. At times felt like rolling around the floor laughing at the sheer corn which reminds me a lot of watching Transformers level writing. But at least that was supposed to be - Transformers.

This show has nothing to do with Tolkien at this point. I think the writers sat around in a circle, used some illicit substances, and then said "let's do this with that Mcguffin, and then everyone runs here, and then back again, have the elf do some capoeira, stuff in a sentimental moment, talk about how awesome Galadriel is and btw will she or won't she with the faux Aragorn, and we don't need to explain how anything leads to anything else, and make sure we get some CGI in there even if it looks like it's a video game. it's gonna be AWESOME and pass me the baggie and that super size bag of Doritos....."

 

[jye4ever]

I am so conflicted this show is all over the place.

It’s equally bad and good lol

Sets look super cheap then super epic.

Fights look super cheap then super epic.

The narrative transitions are inconsistent.

The rescue calvary was super telegraphed.

At least it was super gory and even overboard with the lady bleeding out and with the orc’s eye lol

The armor is just horrible.

The horse chase was epic.

See what i’m saying all over the place!

Music was great!

I would be lying if I said that I didn’t have fun with this episode though.

I haven’t been this conflicted since my wedding day 20 years ago.

 

[chrisstbh]

I guess I'm enjoying it, or I wouldn't keep watching. IMO goofy is the right description for this last episode. At times felt like rolling around the floor laughing at the sheer corn which reminds me a lot of watching Transformers level writing. But at least that was supposed to be - Transformers.

This show has nothing to do with Tolkien at this point. I think the writers sat around in a circle, used some illicit substances, and then said "let's do this with that Mcguffin, and then everyone runs here, and then back again, have the elf do some capoeira, stuff in a sentimental moment, talk about how awesome Galadriel is and btw will she or won't she with the faux Aragorn, and we don't need to explain how anything leads to anything else, and make sure we get some CGI in there even if it looks like it's a video game. it's gonna be AWESOME and pass me the baggie and that super size bag of Doritos....."

Yeah I don’t understand the sword key thing. Why not just destroy the dam?