You mean three books, right?
The difference here is that Aragorn was written by Tolkien, this show wasn't and has completely betrayed the original material.
Race or gender swaps are not a big issue, but they become one if the purpose is the swap for the swap just for marketing purpose.
Elves are almost eugenetically born all the same, want to add some diversity? Go for humans.
Wanna piss off the audience so that the debate will create more engagement? do exactly what shouldn't be done, because it's out of character.
Another example is the new Disney's Pinocchio, were the Blue Fairy is portrait by a black woman. The problem is not that she is black of course. but that the original story is set in Italy, Tuscany, mid 1800, were no black woman was ever seen and she is also described as "il viso bianco come un'immagine di cera" that translates to "her face as white as a wax image".
It becomes clear that the black blue fairy was put there to check a box and not because she serves some need to modernize the story, which is exactly the same that Collodi wrote 140 years ago.
EDIT
it's the same reason why people cricized film directors that casted Scarlett Johansson for every role or the god awful Ghost in the shell live action where, not only the story was orribly mutilated, but the setup was very very far from the original Japanese one, completely ruining the experience.
It's not about the colour of the skin or the gender of the actors, of course, it's about expectations. I expect Black Panther to be black, Thor to be white and blonde, Ghost in the shell to be set in futuristic Japan etc.
And there's literally zero reason to insist that Collodi's description is the only way a fairy character can be portrayed in a staged version of his book.
The real problem is getting upset over the skin color of the actors and actresses playing fairies (or stormtroopers or elves or angels or for that matter any fantastical role, which is rooted in escapism and alternate realities.)
Elves are fictive and have a long literary history--mostly publicized by white Europeans. Originally, they were described as evil creatures who infected people with diseases. Tolkien stepped into the folklore at a particular time and place and offered his interpretation. Sticking to a tradition in which they're all genetically similar--and white--is also just an interpretation. My point is that there's no elf manual that everyone needs to stick to.
You point out a good detail with Pinocchio. But again, Collodi offered his interpretation of a folk tale. In Collodi's text [1], the fish that swallowed Pinocchio is described as "Pesce-cane grosso come una casa di cinque piani e con un treno della strada ferrata in bocca" -- "huge shark [technically 'dog-fish'] like a five-story house and train on a railroad in its mouth." It was subsequent interpretations, like Disney's first version, that portrayed the fish as a whale.
So I don't think it's woke, or too liberal or whatever, to portray elves as different skin colors. We shouldn't keep them white just to avoid pissing off certain audiences.
1: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/52484/52484-h/52484-h.htm
The movie is in English, using exclusively non-Italian actors , which in itself is checking a box. What difference does it make if they cast another non-Italian actor to play a role?
I hear people say things like this a lot, and it's always jarring to me to think where they get that impression, because it's quite ahistorical. Going back actually all the way to antiquity (Romans, Vikings), there was far more visible diversity across Europe than what you typically see in cinematic portrayals. The homogenous image people have is a product of Hollywood, not a reflection of what the time period was actually like.
Anyway, your statement is objectively incorrect, even beyond the obvious hyperbole. There were plenty of Black people in Italy in that time period, enough that it's really not shocking to imagine one as a magical character in a literal fairy tale.
Yeah, right. Clearly you've not heard about Othello, a Shakespearean play from the 1400s set in Italy with a black man as the titular character.
It’s quite clear that that is YOUR problem. It’s funny when people like yourself claim “I’m not X” while then clear laying the case.
And for the récord, i hope you open up a geography book. There’s been black people in Italy for pretty much all it’s history. You may want to also read a few history books. (Black moors, Alessandro de' Medici, etc )
Also, can people just chill with this racist crap. It’s freaking art, up to interpretation. An actor can be of any race or gender. Get over it.
Point taken. My goal was to contrast the unsuccessful show with another adaptation that was successful imo.
The more diverse you make your cast, the more immune you are to criticism when your product flops.
If the show was less diverse and flopped they couldn’t play the racism card to wipe reviews and churn up sympathetic media.
…nah.
Edit: lol, sorry for questioning the bad-faith 1-star reviews, keep down voting
This seems to be a recurring problem in a lot of media these days. Protagonists who are just self-righteous jerks who both lecture others about how they need to act and pretend they're above any rules themselves. If this was the start of a character arc, fine, but a lot of the times these shows act as if these characters are right and that others should appreciate their toxic personalities.
The actual quality of the show, on the other hand, almost ends up being irrelevant. Personally I usually wait about two seasons before judging a TV show.
A much better story is where smart, cunning characters vie against one another. There’s eb and flow, give and take, maybe a few pivotal movements that set the characters down a path they’ll resist but ultimately succumb too. Where when they reach the end despite their best efforts looking back they made the (mostly) same choices but still failed. Early Game of Thrones was a masterpiece in this regard.
It’s in this context that I believe every artist sends their creations out into the world. Having a vision of what it means to them and what it may mean to others. A world of the imagination is conveyed that can never be fully reproduced and for which we are left to fill the gaps. It is from these gaps, from our own imaginations, that the story continues. I appreciate that this is a story that will continue to be told, a universe that will continue to grow, through the imaginations of others.
I’ve enjoyed the storytelling and pacing so far, I believe there is time for the characters to become more developed and “likable”. Galadriel, however, was never a “hero”. She was an imperialist with a desire to rule her own realm. She was a self righteous dickhead who proudly refused forgiveness. So far the new series isn’t too far left field. Still, even if it was, I would watch it and judge it on its own merits. I want to see more of this type of content, just like I want to see more Star Wars content. I want to see the future continue to be inspired by, and inspire new additions to the story.
In the end we will collectively and individually determine what is and isn’t canon.
He told me today it’s not bad but the main characters are just kinda boring.
I’m still on sandman so I’ll do ring next. But it seems people do are actually watching it are not too bothered by it.
Sandman sucks. I liked the comics. Had high hopes for the show. But sucks.
Rings of Power. Haven't seen it. Probably sucks. Movies were gaudy but shallow.
True heroes as you describe them exist only in your imagination and in fairy tales.
> Galadriel, the only woman of the Noldor to stand that day tall and valiant among the contending princes, was eager to be gone. No oaths she swore, but the words of Fëanor concerning Middle-earth had kindled in her heart, for she yearned to see the wide unguarded lands and to rule there a realm at her own will.
Which doesn't say she was part in the kinslaying (though it doesn't say she wasn't, but its hard to interpret "Standing tall" as "participated in slaying her mother's kin").
In another version
> Even after the merciless assault upon the Teleri and the rape of their ships, though she fought fiercely against Fëanor in defence of her mother’s kin, she did not turn back. Her pride was unwilling to return, a defeated suppliant for pardon; but now she burned with desire to follow Fëanor with her anger to whatever lands he might come, and to thwart him in all ways that she could.
Which sounds like she participated _against Fëanor_, as in: she defended those being attacked.
In another unfinished version she left Valinor on her own separate from the rest of the Noldor.
In any case, she seems to be motivated by a desire to rule her own realm and a strong dislike of Fëanor.
Also, I am fairly certain that Tolkien was writing a fairy tale when we wrote about Galadriel and co. :)
It's not at all unreasonable for her portrayal in the movies based on the LotR books to be...based on her portrayal in the LotR books, and not attempting to incorporate largely irrelevant details of her backstory from Tolkien's other writings.
I'm afraid, this argument is both wrong (maybe you just haven't been lucky with people around you), and inapplicable (the talk is imaginarium).
The first two episodes of TRoP are 90 minutes each, for a total run time of three hours.
Three hours is about the run time of the first LoTR movie (Fellowship): how much story were they able to tell in those three hours?
Further, the other epic fantasy series, House of Dragons, also has released two episodes: how much story have they been able to tell? What are the reviews of that franchise?
The TRoP series may not end up sucking after the first eight episodes, but having the first two (allegedly: haven't seen it myself) suck seems to be a waste of everyone's time/effort/money.
If it's too early to review, then scrap all reviews including the good ones, and if reviews are expected, then selective deletion is just creating false advertising.
they compressed 3 thousands years in a ~10 years story "so the mortal characters didn't have to die" (writers' words)
So no, there's not much time to cover.
I am never going to watch the series because the movies were bad enough, and I find it cringe-inducing how people talk about "the lore" and act as though adaptation can occur 1:1 from books to video, but I have found people seem to be spreading and repeating a lot of misinformation apparently in an attempt to make the show look better, which will inevitably be repugnant to Tolkien regardless.
Which is the reason I'm not watching it. I don't believe in watching a series that would deeply hurt and grieve the author had he lived to see its production.
[1] > Even after the merciless assault upon the Teleri and the rape of their ships, though she fought fiercely against Fĕanor in defence of her mother's kin, she did not turn back.
[2] > Galadriel was the greatest of the Noldor, except Fĕ'anor maybe, though she was wiser than he, and her wisdom increased with the long years. [...] From her earliest years she had a marvellous gift of insight into the minds of others, but judged them with mercy and understanding, and she withheld her goodwill from none save only Fĕanor.
The philosophy behind the so called works IS to create a new type of hero, one that isn’t someone who takes responsibility, sacrifices, works hard and fails a lot.
That type of hero is purposefully removed from fiction because it contradicts what wokeness is about.
Its a contradiction in terms - you cannot be a spiritual scold or schoolmarm and mold a set of likable characters from this essence.
The problem is that they’re more focused on tying the series to Peter Jackson’s work and ensuring that children can watch it. The original stories were better.
I'm still thinking about it, but I do wonder if diverse casting works in European fantasy stories. The problem I have is that it generally pulls me out of the experience/ makes it less immersive. I welcome diverse castings in modern shows (though we don't need every show to follow a template 'diverse' casting). A common counter argument is, well you can suspend your disbelief and imagine a dragon, so why is a diverse community in a small village not ok? It just feels less immersive. Yes, I can go along with it - but I'm not sure it works. It feels like the modern world superimposed in a fantasy setting. I'd prefer to be sent to an alien world.
It is problematic, as years of discrimination in the real world for women/ethnic minorities were wrong and we should encourage equality in the corporate world. However the entertainment industry I wonder should in some ways be exempt. Maybe. One area where there isnt a discussion on 'diversity' is music and also novels. This is because there are tons of tons of novels and music bands to listen to. No one cares if a particular band is 'diverse'. So I wonder if the only solution out of all of this, is to have more shows - yes, make diverse inclusive European fantasy shows, but also make traditional european fantasy shows too etc. What I think will happen is that in such a scenario most European fantasy fans will choose traditional like shows. Because the story is more immersive and you are brought more into this old world. Maybe. Like I say, I'm still undecided. For modern/futuristic films I find diverse castings just as immersive.
The result is thus disappointing. And it does not create anything of value.
Because unsurprisingly, people are not paying to the the "first black elf". Nobody care. So it's just alienating the core fanbase because they are fed up seeing their favorite franchise being ruined by quotas, and racial war, especially when all other aspects are lacking (scenario, dialogues, poor yet expensive CGI, etc)
I just wish most of this company get broke and we start to see smaller studio producing interesting stuff around diversity.
As you can tell I have no fetish for diversity as it's a criteria I found useless in a workplace or in my entertainment. But from time to time, I would happily watch a high budget and original production about some fantasy world happening in Africa (like Game of Thrones is for England) or in Thailand or whatever with all the folklore around it.
Rather than seeing divisive comment about :
"Amazing, we finally have some diversity among LoR's elf, take that racist Tolkien"
or
"Disgusting, they put some black elf".
As usual, I really feel this modern world is not for me, it's ruining most franchises one after the other, yet it's not creating any new interesting franchises.
The poor, and sometimes forced and contrived execution of an LGBT or female or a non-white character does really seem unnecessary. To me as an indian, sometimes it looks like the white man's guilt is showing when they even rewrite historical characters and insert such characters doing things that they would never have been able to do (e.g. the enjoyable but oh so historically inaccurate heroine of Miss Scarlet and the Duke - in her period, she would have probably been committed to a mental institute for the things she does in the show. Or the deliberate ignorance of "victorian" values in British society in some recent "historical" dramas, just to show some character doing things that would be really out of character for them in their period - Indeed, one wonders why such obvious white-washing of history in such a crude manner?).
As a someone who is not an American but enjoys American tv, sometimes I feel that the reason such characters are deliberately shown poorly (with lousy acting or writing), is because even show makers resent being forced to include such character. Obviously this doesn't help.
If a story requires an LGBT character go for it. If it requires a person of colour, great. But they do need to get a good actor and make sure the writing and the direction all add value to that character in the show without any blatant sermonising (show, not tell, at least on shows for grownups). It's not as if the American media doesn't know how to do this - there have been so many good characters, even main characters from such vulnerable group portrayed beautifully in past TV shows.
(Or perhaps, I am wrong - all this has nothing to do with inclusive politics and is just a way to manufacture outrage and keep the American public distracted from the real political issues).
They're doing something cool by having the diverse cast, but the writing doesn't adjust to make a story that feels like it has a diverse cast
This is, indeed, not something everyone enjoys. But it is the more or less inevitable direction of the future.
The modern world is just that, modern. A medieval fantasy world has to play by those rules, in its own sort of ways. They're still walking and riding on horses, and magic is exceedingly rare in Tolkien's world. People don't just travel about.
Unsupportable. Tolkien was only concerned with giving England a distinct history. He probably didn't care about Europe and hated everything French.
Almost everyone assumes Middle-Earth is Europe. Try holding Tolkien's famous map of Middle-Earth up to a mirror to see that it is really strikingly similar to North America, too similar to be a coincidence. In fact, he got a lot of his Hobbit surnames from actual family surnames in, iirc, Kentucky; Baggins included.
The same goes for early europe. Plenty of people from either. There were Roman emperors who were indigenous to (Northern) Africa.
If the argument is that Middle Earth should reflect a proto-European history, should we just accept that everyone from the east are pictured as orcs; mindless, ugly, uncivilized brutes? Is everyone from Africa part of the Haradrim or the Easterlings? The comparison to a proto-Europe only works as long as you wilfully neglect the horribly racist parts of the comparison. Or are you okay with those parts too? If the addition of a black Harfoot, black elves, or Durin's wife being black is your critique of the show, then you should reflect on why you feel that way and why you're able to so easily excuse the clear racism in favor of defending "authenticity".
It's legit WILD to read some of the remarks about the show on reddit and IMDb. It's horribly racist rhetoric disguised as a defence of authenticity and staying true to Tolkien's work. If portraying the racist parts of Tolkien's work is * that * important, maybe we shouldn't make media based upon it?
"Middle Earth" was an old phrase used to refer to Western Europe in several Scandinavian languages. Tolkien, being a linguist, would have known this and chosen that turn of phrase deliberately.
If I'm watching a story about a Japanese Fantasy story - it will feel less immersive if you introduce a blonde character. Likewise with an Indian, or African story. Everyone would think this reasonable. What some people get upset about, is if we also say this about European fantasy stories. And I don't agree with this (the point that a tiny tiny fraction of people living in Europe may have been nonwhite in the 1400s and below I find mute quite frankly). I also find it... Not considerate to call someone racist for making this point. And quite frankly its a great example of where we are right now. Film and TV studios terrified in their casting decisions and feeling like they have to please the media etc. Nor am I convinced that global audiences want to see themselves in European fantasy stories. I don't want to see a blonde white guy (or black or Indian guy) in a Japanese Fantasy story etc. etc.
I do feel that including a multicultural diverse population in a European fantasy story does have a large risk of less immersion and I don't agree thats 'racist'. You can do it, but it's a different world and a different experience. What I'm arguing again, is fine do that. But not everything fantasy driven needs to be like that.
The lord of the rings trilogy was not diverse and quite frankly was astounding. Game of thrones was not diverse, and was astounding up to the final season.
The latter was savegly attacked by woke groups for not being diverse and I just so disagree with that view point.
Let's have diverse stories and let's have traditional too. There are lots of good fantasy stories by Western authors that do include diversity (fifth season, and Ursula la guin Wizard of the sea story etc.)
It sounds like a fart. Definitely lacking the talent of Tolkien to find the surgically precise word for each term, but I can understand the legal aspects of the need-for-control part.
The issue with the Rings of Power and similar things isn't the anachronistic racial composition of the cast. It's just that they're badly written and badly acted shows. And, more perniciously, the show's media team likes to draw all attention to the criticisms based on race to make it seem like the main criticisms are all about race to deflect attention from actual, fundamental flaws.
Note that it's a myth that everyone in pre-modern Europe was white. This is a white supremacist trope easily proven wrong by, say, digging into the representation of POC in medieval European art.
https://www.npr.org/2021/05/06/994325620/going-medieval-on-w...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/5-myths-about-the-mi...
Not really, unless you consider (as most did in the first half of last century) Irish and Italians to be non-white.
The south side is larger and more diverse than you seem to believe
But then, when stories are told and retold, it's not quite the same story each time. Jackson's LoTR follows the books closely, but is not the same. Some plots, like Tom Bombadil, are taken out. Some are modified, like the rivalry between Rohan and Gondor.
Partly it's cinematic but also partly it is about what story the reteller wants to tell. When the Orcs attack Rohan and civilians suffer and run away, it feels like Jackson wants to emphasize the suffering of "normal" people, which gets less attention in the books.
If the reteller has an angle to the story which introduced actors who don't fit the "Nordic white people" angle, it's up to them. It might not be a good angle to take for other reasons, but nothing wrong with having your own slant.
For me, my conclusion is that fantasy really is inclusive. If we had black Romans then why not black Elves? Maybe you can use that to say so etching interesting about race, in a context that mimics normal life but isn't bound by its constraints.
Or maybe it's just woke. I haven't seen the series yet.
It's been showing a lack of the first two so far.
Star Trek: Voyager first aired in 1995, so it's been a while. I can't really come up with any meaningful differences between the two cases.
Certainly my reading of "Tolkien's Elves" has always been that they're a very light-skinned (dwarves are more ambiguous). I don't overly care if Elves are black- or white-skinned, just as I don't really care about the skin colour of Vulcans in Star Trek.
Yet at the same time, it somehow feels a bit different. I'm having a hard time to articulate why, but I think a big part of the reason is that it feels more forced with all the rhetoric of the last decade or so where everything and everyone is part of "white supremacist culture" and whatnot over what seem extremely minor issues to me.
Tim Russ was hired to play Tuvok presumably because his audition went well in a kind of "colourblind" hiring that is now, apparently, racist (I have a lot of criticisms of Voyager as a series, but Tim Russ' portrayal of Tuvok is not one of them).
I think what people resent isn't the fact that there are black elves, it's the forcing of it, and that everything is scrutinized at a microscopic level for alleged "racism" (e.g. [1]), and that not going out of your way to be "anti-racist" is racist in itself (as if lots of people don't already have enough problems on their own). I suspect that if the LotR movies had black elves – 20 years ago and in a different time – few people would have raised a ruckus over it.
Fights like this are like argueing over the dishes as a couple: it's not really about the dishes; it's a silly outlet of general dissatisfaction.
[1]: https://theconversation.com/how-hollywoods-alien-and-predato...
Who exactly _forced_ Amazon to do this? That article is just another opinion on the internet. If this is the thought police I think Amazon's gonna be OK no matter how they cast the elves.
What's funny to me is the in-advance-defensiveness when people wanna complain about "woke" casting. Witness the ridiculous discussion about Pinocchio in this discussion driven by the anti-woke complainers, because nobody otherwise cares about a stupid Disney movie for kids. Getting offended at how Pinocchio is portrayed, and they call minorities sensitive LOL
I know exactly what you mean and I think bridgerton does a great job of it feeling just natural and normal. Acting seems normal in an alternate universe, this feels like what history could have looked like. So it definitely can be done well, but I think it's so much easier to have shows just ignore details and just take you out of it.
When I see a dwarf in a fantasy TV show, I don’t see the colour of the dwarfs skin - I see a dwarf. The fact that people are uncomfortable by brown dwarves is ridiculous. What a strange hill to die on.
I am flabbergasted that this is even a topic of such heated debate at the moment. It would appear we, as a species, are not quite as far along as I would have thought.
The mind boggles.
European history should be portrayed accurately, be it fantasy or reality. It seems that those that shout loudest about cultural appropriation are the first to glorify cultural appropriation when it suites their world view.
Hard disagree. Fantasy and SciFi can be fun because they don't look like the real world. So many works are based on alternate histories that it's mind boggling to read this statement. Should the enitre genre of historical fantasy not exist?
As a fan of hard science fiction, having a believable history is important, but doesn't have to match today's history. Sounds like maybe you just don't like that genre? But to say it should always be portrayed accurately is not correct.
Yes, it's important that the Second Age is portrayed in historically accurate fashion.
This so much. Mixed skin color withing the same race in a fantasy world makes little to no sense to me. Also the fact that dumb characters (say the hobbit girls for example) are always depicted as white to avoid cheap woke backlash is so much of a clear sign of woke appeasement. At least give African mythology a chance and bring it to our screens, that'd make a lot of sense and would also bring a breath of fresh air to the fantasy world. Wokewashing a LoTR series adaptation gives me vibes of forced and lazy inclusivity.
Somehow nobody complains about loss of immersion when characters are changed to white, which happens 100x more often.
I'm actually asking in good faith because I can't recall any "to white" race swapping in the past few years.
All the ones I can think of were Ann Boleyn, the little mermaid, the coming beauty and the beast, the recent terrible resident evil, etc.
Making characters and nations with real substance is far more fun than just going back and changing something for political reasons.
I would rather see an introduction of african type regions in allegory for empires like The malian empire, Abyssinian Empire, Ajuuran Sultanate, or others rather than throw blacks into european type settings.
Even if we wanted to add blacks into europe type settings we could at least add lore reasons.
Many blacks were in spain under muslim rule and even at times the rulers of muslim areas of spain were black.
Just say that part of the continent was invaded, bam you can add in non-whites in a european setting.
We can do these things tastefully and add interesting lore.
As a black man I find it insulting to be given token characters of no substance, I would rather no inclusion than low effort shoe-ins.
I think it might be worth thinking about whether this is actually "European fantasty" or just "fantasy" that you're used to as thinking of European. For a thought experiment, imagine a young adult today who has never consumed any sort of fictional media (novels, movies, etc.), but otherwise has the same education in terms of non-fictional things (math, science, history, etc.) that you might expect. If you showed them two portrayals of a Lord of the Rings setting that were identical except for one using only fair-skinned, European-ancestry actors, and the other with the type of "diverse" casting that you're describing, would the latter seem somehow less believable? I'm not convinced that someone who hadn't already been primed to expect fair skinned, European-ancestry actors in fantasy due to having already consumed decades of content with that sort of casting would somehow find that more "accurate" in a world full of elves and dwarves and orcs and other fictional races alongside humans. In a vacuum, I don't think there's really any sort of tension between elements of traditional "European fantasy" (dragons, wizards, sword fights, etc.) and diversity when set somewhere that pretty clearly is not supposed to be set in medieval Europe (or really at anywhere at all in the history of Earth); insisting that some small subset of the lore happening to resemble European fantasy somehow implies that the entire fictional world has to demographically resemble medieval Europe seems like much more of an imposition of external cultural expectations than casting diverse actors is.
Most fantasy shows that are in English use British accents. It’s what we expect. But why not use a heavy southern U.S. accent? If you van accept this world with dragons and magic why can’t you accept a southern accent?
If it deviates too far from our expectations then it just seems like a bit.
Rings of Power, as far as I can tell after watching a single episode, wouldn't be good even if every single detail was exactly as Tolkien imagined it. Because the quality is just not there.
I'll be watching it to the end though, it's not impossible that it might become good.
Diverse communities within those races is a jarring juxtaposition - they're both super racist and super not racist at the same time.
The problem a lot of people have is when they read LOTR for example they presume everything is supposed to be relatable only to people of european ancestry. Other than Tolkein being influenced by a european background there is little you can reasonably say it requires europeans for adequately portraying the character.
Stories are meant to be told and if you want to tell a fantasy story to an audience you don't go out of your way to explicitly exclude anyone resembling your audience. That isn't being woke, that is just capitalism. I wouldn't like Abe Lincoln or Hery VIII to be portrayed by a black person but LoTR, Narnia and other stories that are european-inspired but not set in europe don't need such restriction.
I mean where was all this outrage when Cleopatra was portrayed by a white woman for example?
If the actors are good it makes no difference other than the initial phase of "I didn't imagine this character to look this way" but the same goes for hair color, height, stature, etc...
https://twitter.com/erik_kaars/status/1418911714175750147?s=...
We're starting to see more people display courage and stand up to wokeness. It gives me hope.
To be clear, fully agree. If you include a person who doesn't fit the time and style of where they exist, you need to give me a reason or I won't believe it. Reality is very often unbelievable, and good fiction/immersion requires believability, not reality. (Sidenote: this usually has nothing to do with race and more often how they act.)
For music and literature though, I think it's mostly that the mediums are not visual and so defies our culture of memes or quick messages. Hard to point at a screenshot of text and get likes unless it's under a sentence long. Also, good readers know good writing, and reading is dense enough that the general public won't read. So there's no real reason to go after books.
I want more diversity myself, especially more representation of normal gay characters (problem is is even gay writers always write camp/fem gay characters). And gay characters that aren't old/single/don't show love/get killed off.
But ethnic representation, which is a more visual/cultural representation, is a tough topic. On one hand I want more people of all kinds in everything, on the other I sometimes wonder why non-western countries like China/Japan/India etc aren't being pushed in the same way.
Hmm, I haven't seen Rings of Power, but your statement seems to be a not-so-subtle for a Think Bigger call for revolutionary new fantasy story settings.
Not just stories, not even worlds, but complete mythical ecosystems.
I've read a few fantasy stories lately by non-white non-male authors that were good, even great, like The Fith Season. Others that I was too dismissive of, with my own ugly biased offhand remarks, like Binti.
Ironically, I'd rather roll up a character in the Binti universe. Which seems like one interesting Litmus test for a "Kuhnian Paradigm" shift in fictional work.
Could I imagine sitting around with friends in a campaign in this world?
We'll always have the classic fantasy setting. It uses metaphor effectively to tackle capitalism and war and minority issues. But you can ironically escape that now. I think others saw that before me too.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/the_lord_of_the_rings_the_...
In my opinion, Steam does the best job of handling this tricky problem by leaving all reviews up and transparently letting the user pick whether or not to include periods of "unusual activity".
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7631058/ratings/?ref_=tt_ov_rt
I think the reviews are being flooded by two extreme opinions
If you look at the ratings from the top 1000 raters, you get a more normal distribution.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7631058/ratings?demo=top_1000_v...
But it's really hard to trust anything about these numbers now we know Amazon has been deleting user written reviews that are negative.
It seems like a generic high-production-value fantasy show, not being particularly reliant on source material (and thus not really benefiting from being associated with Tolkien).
The acting is pretty average so far, and the storylines are too early to judge, but seem to gravitate to generic 'Good vs Big Great Evil' narrative. The pacing is also fairly slow to accommodate the TV series format.
Not sure why this elicits such a strong reaction? Is it because of how Amazon is treating its warehouse/delivery workforce?
The high reviews praise the set, setting, and production value.
The low reviews also like the set, but claim they spent too much on production value, and nothing on writing.
Makes sense to me. For the most part, a review is going to be either "it rocks" or "it sucks".
If not, this is real slimy.
Some really excellent TV series have taken more than a whole 26-episode season before they find their rhythm and get properly good. ST:TNG is a classic example, but I'm pretty sure you can come up with others. And some people are claiming that a new series totally worthless, not based on the first series, but based on the first episode? Are you kidding me?
I mean, is it OK if the first episode of a series is unevenly paced, and contains too much exposition, and clunky "tell, don't show" dialogue about who the main characters are and what their deal is? No, no it isn't. We should ask that writers do better, and trust audiences to have the patience to learn who characters are through action over the course of a few episodes.
But just because they don't do those things, is it really worth writing off the next 5 (or however many) seasons of a show, based on one episode? Who does that? What does anyone gain from that?
OK, there's a lot of prestige serialised TV out there now, and you probably can't watch all of it even if you wanted to, so some culling is probably necessary at some stage. But does anyone really have to write something off quite so soon? You can't even give it half a season to try and get up to speed?
I don't get it.
There are only eight episodes, so if two first two suck then that's a quarter of the series/seasons that sucks.
The first two episodes are also 90 minutes long, so we're three hours into the story. That's as long as the extended edition of The Fellowship of the Ring movie: how much of a story were they able to tell in that? How much have they told in TRoP?
Contrast with with House of the Dragon which has also released two episodes (out of ten). What are people saying about that?
Yes, the series can be 'saved' in the remaining six episodes, but it just seems… wasteful? (of time, effort, money) … to do what they did.
It may not be fair, but I have more important things to do with my time than give mind share to mega corp projects which are poorly executed.
These aren't some small teams labours of love which I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt to.
Anyway, IMDb ratings are getting totally unreliable to me. I wasted hours of my life that won't come back, watching some show called The Terminal List that scored a solid eight. Carnage of Asimov's Foundation is 7.4 and that... thing, The Wheel of Time 7.1.
I wonder if there's a way to see evolution of rating, for me Star Trek Discovery seasons are nine, seven, two, pass... but it's holding at 7 right now.
The show is not faithful to the book but it has good production value, a fairly interesting story and is overall very watchable. The passing is sometimes questionable but 7.4 seems like a fair rating to me.
The ironic thing here is that most of the reviews from critics of this show have been positive. Not necessarily wild raves, but, you know, pretty positive.
It's possible that the Critics Just Don't Get It, Man, or whatever trope people will pull out to explain why professional critics should be summarily dismissed and only the users reviews are real opinions that we should listen to, but I'd argue that it's also possible that fandom in general has become entitled to the point of toxicity over the last couple of decades. After decades of good "genre" movies being few and far between and good genre television, especially fantasy and superhero, being even more vanishingly rare, now we've got it coming out of our ears and we are, apparently, really fucking pissed off that what we get doesn't match the unattainably perfect shows in our heads or something. And this isn't even getting into the way today's politics have crept in, but it's extremely hard not to notice that a substantial subset of fans angry with The Rings of Power or Ms. Marvel or The Sandman or whatever are specifically calling out changes that they have to preface with "I'm not racist, but...". I suspect if they'd made a TV version of The Sandman 20 years ago, before any and all attempts at diverse casting would be met with outrage by a loud minority, and cast a black actress as Death, the predominant reaction would have been: "Huh. Weird, but maybe she'll be pretty good in the part, let's see."
I haven't seen The Rings of Power yet, and I don't know if I will, but based on most of the reviews from people who aren't in the Angry Angry Fan Brigade, I expect it to look really good, have solid casting, have somewhat pedestrian plotting, and suffer from somewhat clunky dialogue. I also expect it to feel unnecessary in the grand scheme of adaptations. But I don't expect to be some kind of affront to Tolkien fans everywhere, and I think the AAFB just needs to chill out about this, like they need to about so many other things. (For context, I feel Jackson's LotR adaptation looked really good, had solid casting, and had somewhat pedestrian direction, most notably in Jackson's inability to let any moment anywhere remain small and quiet.)
Yep. That's what enables Prime Video's X-Ray where you can see details about the actors and music of a particular scene while watching, and what also makes it impossible for competitors such as Netflix to have a similar feature. If IMDB were separate, the data would probably be accessible to anyone.
It would be entirely possible for Netflix to build a similar dataset, and Amazon Prime Video doesn't have any significant advantage here by its association to IMDB (as would be the case if e.g. all production companies would be required to deposit X-Ray data themselves to IMDB to be eligible for major awards).
Given that Prime Video seems to base its user-facing catalog organisation on IMDB, and that that one is probably the most convoluted of all the streaming providers, I'd argue the are even shooting themselves in the foot by being too closely aligned.
I also think that minute to minute music and actor info is not sourced from IMDb. And I’d be surprised if Netflix couldn’t at least to it for their own properties.
I think there is a fundamental difference in how the two services go about things. On Netflix it can be quite the challenge to even see cast and director and it is difficult to browse by such categories. Netflix sees themselves as the purveyor of advanced recommendations.
I've been downloading those dumps for years. Long before Amazon bought them. And their usage policy has always been incredibly restrictive.
Now maybe if Amazon dodn't buy them IMDb would be more willing to sell that data somehow. But, they have always been very very stingy with it. So it's not just Amazon coming in and locking things down.
(Shortly after Amazon bought IMDb, they retired their old whacky dump format and converted to CSV instead. Of which I am thankful.)
Some reviews also mentioned other things they don't like, like costumes not being good or fights being cinematic instead of subdued or characters appearing where they shouldn't be if you take Silmarillion into accord ... but I have not read even one review that didn't include some version of "I hate it because it has black people in it" - whether calling it political, woke, "not true to source with regards to casting" or whatever.
I am not overstating it - literally one hundred percent of reviews I have seen were about people not liking it because there are non-white people in it.
Until some years ago, I‘d just have a glance at the score/stars and make my decision.
By now, if something is rated low but my gut feeling tells me that it could be off, I always do a quick check of reviews, and 90% of the time I go „Okay, it’s the racists again“.
Also: „high critics score, low audience score on Rotten Tomatoes == racist and/or LGBTQ-haters being racist and/or LGBTQ-hating“ is a frighteningly precise heuristic.
Are there any black guys mentioned in those books? If not, not sticking to script is a valid complaint ( see how annoyed people were with Game of Thrones departure -- it is not a question of race; it is a question of movie not matching image in your head ). If yes, its downvoting for the sake of a different political ( anti-woke ) agenda.
The narrative is really awful - it feels like the characters are reading verbatim from a book, rather than reciting a screenplay adaption. The acting and behaviour of characters is very wooden, stiff, amateurish and unrealistic - maybe that's just what happens when actors have to recite such "formal" narrative, or maybe it's the actors' ability. The narrative and acting are totally unconvincing.
Thus far, the set, lighting CGI have been pretty disappointing too - I don't really understand why everything has to look like it's straight out of a cartoon, with eye-popping saturation levels. Or why all the CGI looks too "smooth" and strangely lit to look authentic. Or why so many of the buildings etc just look so... improbable.
All the characters look like they just came out of a salon - obviously brand new, pristine clothing, make up absolutely plastered on with a trowel, not a hair out of place etc. It looks very silly, and adds to the overall amateurish vibe.
And what on earth was that nonsense with the elves all standing in formation, perfectly upright and perfectly still, on the deck of a small boat sailing across an ocean?!
Overall, I felt like I was watching a theatre play, rather than a TV series. I think I read Amazon spent half a billion dollars on it, which is true sounds basically fraudulent.
I also want to add that I've been using IMDB for something like 20 years, and have rated over 1,000 movies and TV shows - what Amazon have done here is totally destroy my trust in IMDB ratings :(
She-hulk got review-bombed before the first episode came out. After watching it and enjoying it, my frustration at the fact that it's tough to criticize it without feeling lumped together with sexists wasn't at the "woke" crowd, but rather at the people who'd buried it in negative reviews before it even aired simply because they hate anything with a wiff of liberal politics.
In my experience, people directing anger the other way frequently end up declaring that they are now, in some capacity, on the side of the irrational crowd in question, with a "YOU made me do this" rationalization, which is pretty highly transparent.
Note that this is not to say there is no such thing as people doing the unfair lumping-in you describe on an individual basis, which is indeed its own problem.
But also note that, if you frequent the places where people feel more free to be openly anti-woke, you will find that those who would like to make irrational anti-woke criticisms also exaggerate the more acceptable criticisms you describe. This is because the show or movie is beyond merely "badly written" for them and has triggered their "hate" feelings. So, some amount of reviews critical of non-political/racial/etc things like pacing end up being magnified anyway by the hate the reviewer has underneath.
The fact LOTR was boring and uneventful makes the other flaws more glaring.
Instead, go read a full review written by a trusted curator.
Unfortunately the 'tech' industry loves these type of aggregator websites because of the advertising and affiliate link opportunities. So our public perception of things beccomes more skewed over time due to the Rotten Tomatoes' and Yelps of the world.
That's the point, trusted curators have been drifting further and further from what the majority of people find good for a long time.
What critics find good and what the target audience finds good are not the same: https://youtu.be/eFRWDZBH8Dc?t=745
Reading reviews just biases taste anyway. My plan is to watch the series, recommend it to my friends if I like it, and continue ignoring everything written on the Internet.
Deleting reviews to “guarantee” success is just sad.
You want to make a release like this “a cultural event”. The latest Jurassic Park was everywhere. They even partnered with Walmart and decorated the outside of their buildings with giant posters of dinosaurs. I’m also remembering one of the Pirates of the Caribbean films: posters, buses, soda drinks, commercials, and even the snack Pirates Booty we’re all for a limited time only covered in the film logo.
Honestly, just watch the first scene. It's hilariously soulless.
(This is all my opinion. Others are entitled to feel differently)
And deleting negative reviews by bigots at least would be more defensible than deleting negative reviews from fans of Tolkien who take issue with the treatment of the work they love.
EDIT: I still haven't seen the show yet and I originally thought the issue with review bombing was similar to people like me hating the show foundation on Apple TV... I see now that people claim that a lot of negative reviews were due to the race of characters and people claiming the "show is too woke". In that case, it's actually more of a similar situation to Lightyear. Still, it's very interesting to see the differing treatment of Lightyear, a pixar property compared to this, an Amazon show.
1. https://www.thewrap.com/imdb-shut-troll-infested-message-boa...
I much prefer the critics' scores - and right now they're 84% on RT [2] and 71 on Metacritics [3]. Which are reasonable numbers.
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7631058/ratings/?ref_=tt_ov_rt [2] https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/the_lord_of_the_rings_the_... [3] https://www.metacritic.com/tv/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-ring...
A fanatic, while crazy, has skin in the game. Their time and money.
I'll take a fanatics POV over an experts everyday of the week and Sundays too.
But I still got a reminder that this show was available when I asked what time it was the other day.
Shame the amount of engineering effort that went into that system, only for it to be destroyed by absurd business strategy. I’m sure a couple PMs got a “level 2 to level 3” promotion out of it or something.
The thing that's got me interested is the entrance of Gandalf (I presume.) Dropped in from the heavens like an alien, found in a smoldering crater, clearly baffled by up-close Arda, can't speak "the" language, mystified by corporeal-ness, almost simian. The writers had enough of a clue to see the opportunity in making Gandalf's backstory a meaningful subplot, so they're developing it with some care, and that's pretty cool.
Also, the Elves aren't perfect, one dimensional beings it total harmony with all things. You've got politics, cowardice, rebellion and other stuff there. Morfydd Clark's Galadriel is ok. Reserving the benefit of the doubt there because there is a long way to go and it's a huge part for any actor.
Finally, Owain Arthur's Durin in Khazad-dûm was well acted (if not entirely well written at points.) Very memorable.
I think people are expecting a life changing experience from TRoP and aren't getting it, or something. It's just more streaming TV, and far from the worst of that. House of the Dragon is ok too, but one nice thing with TRoP is the absence of soft porn and disturbing torture scenes. That stuff is fine for HotD but it's also good to see story telling that won't resort to that.
Aside from that I agree, so far TRoP has been close to or better than expected. I'm not sure what people expected here but at any rate it's too early. You would't want to judge LotR based only on the initial chapter either.
Back to your statement: where did you get that people "are upset not because the show is bad but because it's not as bad as they expected"? Are there really that many people with the desperate desire to mock it? OTOH, nearly 40% rated it a 10. Where does that come from, then?
I suppose that a few people with bots could also be an explanation.
It’s not Shakespeare, but it’s nowhere near as dire as the anti-hype suggests. If it had come out without any connection to Tolkien, or the truly cringeworthy marketing, I think it would be doing fine.
And also, prequel/sequel stuff that was not originally mapped out by the author is usually crap.
I think that's the complaint.
Is review bombing somehow illegitimate? If so, what separates a "bomb" review from a legitimate review?
Review bombing goes both ways, somehow we always only hear about one side.
There are excellent shows that are woke / inclusive (Arcane) and they are universally liked by much of the same audiences.
Then there are medicore shows that are woke / inclusive (Foundation) and they get mixed reviews again from similar audiences.
According to this action by IMDB which is owned by Amazon, if you rated the show below a 5 then you are automatically a bigot. Which seems heavy handed, and like a big conflict of interest to say the least.
And that is clearly happening here
(It may also be true that some percentage of those who cancel Prime for this reason may rejoin Prime a couple of months from now when the Prime retention machine sends them a 'We miss you!' email trigger offering free trials of Prime for x months to get them back back).
The Rings of Power - 6.2 stars (42K ratings)
House of the Dragon - 8.8 stars (75K ratings)
RoP IMO is quite a lot better. I enjoyed the first episode.
I watched the show with two other people, of very different interests and ages. We all enjoyed it immensely.
- The sets, costumes, and cinematography are fantastic and at times breath-taking. The level of detail in the costumes is amazing, and I can't really imagine them being better. - The acting is first-rate. IMO it's better overall than the acting in LoTR, or at least as good, and better than in most shows you'll watch. I did not see an actor that was not all-in for their role, and the many accents are beautifully done. This is the most important quality of any show for me. - The language in the script is elevated, and there are some beautiful lines. Scenes are allowed to develop, without the need for the rapid cuts many shows feature/rely on. - Plot is fine! I have not seen where it will go yet, but there are some big plot points, and subtle tensions developing. I had no problem here.
I love LoTR, but am not a dedicated Tolkien fan with rules about how things must be. I am fine with spin-offs, re-imaginings, alternate worlds, whatever! IMO the goal here is to entertain, to capture the imagination, and to do work that shows dedication to the craft and I think the show easily succeeds in all of those. I would probably watch a full season just for the production value alone.
Also, the whole race thing: What? To me it's a complete red herring and everyone in the show belongs there. This is not just gate-keeping, but racism plain and simple. If countering that racism is your only reason to watch the show, that's a good enough reason.
While the style of the characters clothing is there, it all looks brand new, totally pristine. Just like the characters themselves, all of whom are plastered with impeccable make up. I found it looked silly and amateurish.
On the narrative, I found it overly formal, like it was being recited word for word from Shakespeare or something - it doesn't feel at all like a screenplay, more like actors reading from a book. And I think this impacts terribly on the acting, which I found to be wooden, stiff and unrealistic.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220903104125/https://www.imdb....
https://web.archive.org/web/20220903104126/https://www.imdb....
https://web.archive.org/web/20220903104131/https://www.imdb....
https://web.archive.org/web/20220903104824/https://www.imdb....
indeed all show zero results.
Anything higher than a 5, does show results:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220903104206/https://www.imdb....
https://web.archive.org/web/20220903104208/https://www.imdb....
https://web.archive.org/web/20220903104210/https://www.imdb....
https://web.archive.org/web/20220903104822/https://www.imdb....
https://web.archive.org/web/20220903104818/https://www.imdb....
Now, one can have lots of opinions about 0/10 reviews, but they surely have just the same right to exist as similarly extreme 10/10 reviews.
<< As a REAL Tolkien fan, I couldn't have asked for any better. Anyone who complains otherwise isn't a Tolkien fan, but a Peter Jackson fan, and can't accept someone new showing their creative vision for the lore.
<< They STORY is ALSO EXCELLENT IF you LISTEN! (Abhorrently, that seems so infinitely difficult for some to do). TRUE, that there is a much longer than necessary scene 2/3's of the way through which almost put me to sleep (and it is the reason I am not giving this a 10)
<< As said above, I will not deny there is some mediocrity, but I cannot fathom why/how a massive 30% of all the ratings are 1 stars... does not seem genuine to me.
<< This is honestly already on par or better than game of thrones
<< Listen...we know it is not book accurate. Much of The Lord of The Rings and Hobbit movies (modern era non cartoon versions) weren't either. NO length of television show or movie could capture what Tolkien put on pages. So GET OVER IT.
I agree they should have kept at least few 1s for pretends.
https://babylonbee.com/news/rings-of-power-review-game-of-th...
but the trailer did make it seem compelling
https://babylonbee.com/news/exclusive-scene-from-the-rings-o...
Steam gets the scale this right by only having up or down reviews, and collecting reacts to the review to sort out what people think of the review.
They shouldn’t have removed all negative reviews, and it earned its 3/10. But having a tighter scale removes the 1/10s outsized drag on the average.
However, I'm going to complain that people quick to accuse any criticism of racism/sexism/anythingism might just end up willing whatever blame they put on people they dislike into existence, to their own detriment.
Personally, I get it. The LoTR trilogy is a timeless classic. Of course, nothing can compare.
1.) I wrote a review with 5 stars and tried to submit it. There was a red error message saying the text would be below 600 characters so I couldn't submit it.
2.) I copied a lengthy random text into the submission field so it was 1000 characters++ - still the same error message
3.) I switched to a 6 star rating. Suddenly the error message magically disappeared and I could submit it.
4.) I toggled back and forth between 4, 5, 6 and 7 stars. After a few tries I could submit the review with 5/10 on Sept 5th.
5.) I even got a confirmation email with a link where I can track my contribution. Text said "Thank you for your contribution - this item is awaiting processing by our data editors. Estimated processing date - 6 September 2022"
6.) You can guess yourself if my review has been processed... Like all other reviews below 6/10, it doesn't show up on the review page. 6/10 is still the lowest reviews available: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7631058/reviews?sort=userRating... =>>> Try by yourselves if you experience the same stuff. We've had reports of deleted reviews, too. I guess it's clear that they're manipulating on a large scale. I wouldn't be surprised if the 6.7 overall rating is manipulated, too.
This is not a "owned by amazon fuck bezos" comment. All review sites are bogus. All review numbers are bogus. YouTube like/dislike ratios, reddit vote counts, it's all bogus. You can't rely on anyone else telling you whether you should like something or not. That shortcut is gone forever. People will game it in an effort to game your life.
I went through the top 10 movies from every year for the past 22 years, and this is what I found.“
[1] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/t he-story-behind-the-worst-movie-on-imdb/
This show didn’t have the source material to pull dialogue from and so they come up with these ridiculous boat and rock analogies that are laughably stupid. Aside from that, most of the show is boring. The entire second episode for Galadriel was pointless. The hobbits are annoying, the soap opera romance between the Persian girl and the black elf is excruciating, really the dwarves are the only fun and well acted part of the episode.
The elves have no majesty. In LOTR, the elves were always this demigod-like beings who move and act with supernatural grace but in this they just seem like rich people.
It just isn’t LOTR
I’m writing this while wearing a Lord of the Rings t-shirt. I love Lord of the Rings, but I’ve leaned my lesson. I’m going to trust the reviews and not waste my time watching this show.
As for the show itself I can't comment since I haven't seen it.
Why would they erode trust in their platform like this...
This kind of shit makes me want to never watch the show in spite.
They have kept their data open and downloadable https://m.imdb.com/interfaces/
They did shutdown the forums. But moderating is every companies nightmare these days.
Their reviews and ratings are world class and very accurate
(There are known issues like nationalism in certain countries, but it's easy to cope)
This is disappointing. But no other company would ever rate their own streaming with accurate ratings like Amazon do.
It must be be disappointing to spend over half a billion $ and end up with the mess they have. They do delete brigadeing like when people downvoted Godfather to get The Dark Knight to 1.
Maybe wait and see?
