‘The Rings Of Power’ Episode 3 Recap And Review: ‘Adar’ Reveals Galadriel’s Love Of Horseback Riding - "She loves riding horses so much that The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power devoted an agonizingly long slow-motion sequence to show us just how happy the elven lady is when atop a galloping steed. Seriously, this was not only a gratingly over-extended slow-mo scene, it was also the most we’ve seen Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) emote since this show started. Mostly, Clark’s version of Galadriel has been angry, determined or surprised. Here we got a whole bunch of happy, but in the most artificial way possible... Galadriel rides with Elendil to the Hall of Law, which is when we get the long, awkward slow-motion scene that would have been just fine if it were cut down to three or four seconds instead of fifteen or twenty... Honestly, I wish they would stop talking about Morgoth like everyone knows who he is. Other than Galadriel, almost nobody—and certainly no human—would even remember or know who Morgoth was. Few would have heard of Sauron. This is the stuff of ancient legend by now, but they talk about the dark god like he was a household name... Isildur (Maxim Baldry) seems like he could add a lot to the show and is well-cast. On the other hand, Isildur wasn’t born for another 1500 years after the Rings were forged, so our timeline here is deeply broken."
‘The Rings Of Power’ Episode 4 Recap And Review: An Epic Disappointment - "Last week Elendil compared her to his kids, now another human is comparing her to a horse. One of the oldest, wisest and most powerful elves in all of Middle-earth... She gets locked up mostly because she’s very, very eager to speak to Miriel’s father, the old king who was deposed for his love of elves. Elves that play virtually no role whatsoever in the day-to-day politics of this place and haven’t for centuries. Clearly something the populace should be very concerned with. When Ar-Pharazon and some guards come to take her to a ship where she’ll be sent back to her people (what she originally wanted so desperately!) she fights the guards and throws them into her cell... I know who Isildur is in the big scheme of things but this show has given us exactly zero reasons to care about his character. They’ve spent a tiny bit more time developing his sister, Eärien, a character invented for the show. But I’m equally nonplussed and uninterested in her character... the petals of the great tree start falling and that’s a sign from the gods that they made the wrong choice and so, through no skill or diplomacy of her own, Galadriel is welcomed back and Miriel commits to helping her in her cause, which I guess is to go fight orcs to save a much of miserable, grumbling, unwashed peasants we already despise... why would dwarves consider a mining accident that big of a deal? This must come with the territory. Even the most skilled delvers of the deep surely encounter a cave-in or accident from time to time... Here are the big problems I’m having with this show right now, in no particular order: I don’t care about any of the characters... Some I actively dislike, like Galadriel... The Númenoreans are all deeply unpleasant people and I’m fine if their island sinks under a great wave. Elendil is dull. Isildur is boring and in this episode he spends the bulk of his time arguing with his friends, which brings me to point #2 . . . . Everyone is arguing and bickering all the time... Sure, there were some arguments in The Lord Of The Rings but there were also many moments of fondness and friendship and so forth. These seem absent in Rings Of Power. Even among family members, like Elendil and his children, it’s just a constant dreary argument... The stakes just don’t seem important... Somehow this show manages to be extremely slow and still jump ahead with the plot in jarring ways... That’s a lot of plot development with very little character development. It’s rushed and slow as hell all at the same time, because this is a show about grand, sweeping spectacle but very, very little in the way of substance."
‘The Rings Of Power’ Episode 5 Recap And Review: This Is Just Getting Silly Now - "Theo is a deeply obnoxious character at this point. The less we see of him the better. I guess it’s interesting that the sword hilt he found is actually a key, but I think it would have been cool just to be a magic sword. Why are they making Bronwyn the leader of the Southlands all of a sudden? What experience or qualifications does a healer woman have leading soldiers to war? Why is she giving speeches about standing and fighting? Why is she telling this small gathering of villagers stuff like “I know I’m not the king you’ve been waiting for”? No crap, lady. You’re not a fighter or a leader of any kind. You got lucky and killed a single orc one time. It took Frodo and Sam and Merry and Pippin an entire trilogy before they came back to the Shire and took on the mantle of leaders of their people who had to fight back against the oppression of Saruman. But here in The Rings Of Power there’s no time for actual character development! Granted, half the people left to go bend the knee to Adar (who the old dude mistakes for Sauron, as though anyone outside of ancient elves would know who Sauron was after he’s been in hiding for thousands of years). Adar, meanwhile, is quickly becoming a cartoon villain. He makes an orc show his arm in the sun and it crackles and burns—orcs are now vampires, apparently. He also makes the old guy kill the younger guy because nothing binds an oath as well as blood. Bwahahaha! Arondir is, uh, just mostly standing around except for when he discovers the sword hilt is actually a key... All told, this storyline exemplifies the pacing problem with Rings Of Power. The show leaps forward in great, wobbly strides, giving us the first signs of orcs in one episode and then having us already headed toward all-out war with a fresh new master-villain. We skip past all the interesting character development that might have occurred with an actual story in place, and leap headlong into the conflict. These are the exact same problems we have, though on a grander scale, over in Númenor . . . . Númenor is just a total mess. Again, the pacing is all over the place. In almost no time, Galadriel has convinced the Numenoreans not just to help her out but to commit five ships and five hundred men to go with her to the Southlands where she’ll crown their rightful king who she just happened to meet on a shipwreck when she was swimming across the ocean after changing her mind about going to Valinor, who were then both rescued by Elendil, the guy who eventually leads the faithful Númenoreans off their doomed island and founds Gondor. Yes, Galadriel and her new pal Halbrand, the King of the Southlands, are rescued by Aragorn’s great-great-great-etc-grandpa in the middle of the ocean and within days of her coming home with him has convinced the Queen Regent, Miriel, to go to war with an unknown foe she’s heard about from one guy she barely knows... despite all that momentum, we’ve spent very little time actually getting to know these people or the place itself. Númenor is Generic Fantasy Metropolis incarnate. Very pretty, sure, but it lacks the feeling of a real place. There’s a scene of a guy rowing his boat down one of the city’s channels and what I was reminded of most was some of the more elaborate Las Vegas casinos I’ve been to. Númenor feels like a Las Vegas casino, all razzle dazzle and plastic. Its characters are just as shallow. Isildur has spent every second onscreen in some kind of argument with his friends and family and I’m not sure why. He seems like a pretty nice guy but boy are people constantly upset with him. When he let’s a rope slip during training he’s not only dismissed from the navy entirely, his two best friends are kicked out also. In a sane world, this might result in them being very upset at the prick who kicked them all out. In the lunatic world of Rings Of Power it means we get two straight episodes of these guys being really really angry at Isildur... Honestly, I’m getting frustrated just talking about all of this. The entire Númenor subplot is painful to watch. The characters are constantly bickering. Nobody but Halbrand is likable and he’s mostly just a cliché. Isildur is fine but he’s basically a blank slate—neither good nor bad, remarkably unremarkable, he can be whatever you want him to be, which seems mostly to be whipping boy for everyone else’s inexplicable ire."
‘The Rings Of Power’ Episode 6 Review: Not Even A Battle Can Save This Mess - "Battles, cavalry charges, erupting volcanoes. The latest episode of The Rings Of Power is the most action-packed yet, but even “epic” action cannot save this show from itself. Despite the flashy fights and explosions, the writing remains some of the worst I’ve seen in big-budget television. It’s actually worse than I ever thought possible... I’m rooting for the orcs at this point. The closest thing I’ve come to cheering in this show is the end of this episode when all those smug Númenoreans and Queen Smug herself, Galadriel, got caught beneath an erupting volcano... The Southlanders leave the semi-fortified tower and go . . . back to the village they originally left to find safety... Theo asks his mom to tell him what she used to tell him when he was a kid and it ends up being this long speech about “the shadow” and “finding the light” and I’m not sure if I should laugh or cry at the sheer pretentiousness of this show’s writers. This is not something a mother tells her wee babe and if it is it’s not something the child asks her to repeat. What about a lullaby or something normal? Why these ridiculous speeches? Maybe I won’t laugh or cry. This one actually kind of pisses me off. The orcs barely manage to defeat the villagers, and only by using a ruse in which they send human fighters in with the first wave and make it look like the good guys have won. Then they descend with their remaining forces to take the village. Remember, this is an army of orcs fighting a handful of peasants, but it’s still really touch and go. Adar may be inspirational but he really ought to have spent more time training his fighters if this is how difficult it is for them to take on peasants in an unfortified village. Bronwyn saves Arondir just in the nick of time, because yeah, it totally makes sense for healer ladies to save well-trained immortal elven warriors and not the other way around. Oh but then she’s wounded and Arondir gets to save her by healing her. The healer, you’ll note, does no actual healing. (Lots of last minute saving going on in this episode, including the cavalry’s perfectly-timed arrival. It’s annoying). Meanwhile, thousands of miles away the three Númenorean ships (with 300 men and apparently 300 hundred horses) are sailing across the ocean from Númenor to Middle-earth. Miraculously, they’ll make the 2,000 mile trip in time to save the day. The 1,800 mile sea voyage and 200 mile ride will take . . . a couple nights? Then they’ll charge all the way from the sea to Mount Doom in full battle regalia!... Galadriel and Miriel and Elendil and Isildur and the others in the meager fighting force know exactly where to go, I guess because Halbrand pointed at stuff on a map? Mind you, none of the people in this village know Halbrand so I’m not sure how he knew the orcs would be here. Presumably, wherever he was chased off from before he met Galadriel was not the same place, but okay. Don’t mind all the logical inconsistencies folks, just look at the pretty shiny things and pretend it’s all just fine. There’s another battle when the Númenoreans show up and none of the good guys of any importance are killed or even badly wounded. By the end of it, Bronwyn—who was on death’s door just hours earlier—seems totally healed and fine. When Galadriel chases Adar on her horse—dodging arrows in full plate armor—Theo says: “Who is that?” with enough awe in his voice to make even the staunchest defender of this show’s eyes roll... Why is she even wearing such heavy armor if she just plans on dodging everything? Who thought this was a good idea? The whole rank thing is so out of character for Tolkien. This isn’t a WWII movie. We aren’t supposed to be concerned with captains and lieutenants as if everyone, including the elves, keeps a standing army at their back and call at all times... Waldreg has taken the blade-key up to the tower and inserts it into the lock which breaks a dam and lets a bunch of water out of a nearby reservoir into the system of tunnels and trenches that the orcs just dug and then this, in turn, all goes into Mount Doom which—hey look it’s right there, it’s been right over there this whole time!—erupts, blasting the village and its occupants with fiery balls of magma and stone boulders. I hope it kills all of them, honestly, and wipes that smug, blank, annoying expression off of Galadriel’s face once and for all. I can’t remember the last time I rooted this hard against the good guys and for the bad guys in a show that wasn’t The Walking Dead, but I like Adar more than any of these characters and it’s not even close. Go team orc! Down with the tyrannical elves! Down with Númenor! Long live Sauron! May Mordor reign supreme! I’m honestly just bowled over by how bad this episode was. The key couldn’t just magically make Mount Doom erupt—it had to trigger a dam breaking (which could have been broken without it!) that required an elaborate system of tunnels that hadn’t been dug yet to be placed just so in order to flood the volcano. What if they’d used the key before the tunnels were dug? It would just poor the water out for no reason? This is the brilliant scheme of some dark lord? And who gets to initiate one of the most epic and world-changing events in the Second Age? Not Adar! Not Halbrand! Waldreg! Are this show’s writers high? If not, should they maybe get high? Whatever they’re doing they need to start doing the exact opposite and fast, that’s all I know"
'Lord of the Rings' TV series: What happens when 'wokeness' comes to Middle-earth - "critics of casting non-White actors in “Rings of Power” say their objections have nothing to do with racism. It’s about being faithful to Tolkien’s vision. Some point out they have also condemned the portrayals of White characters in the show, such as the elf Galadriel, who has been criticized for being not feminine enough. Louis Markos, author of “From A to Z to Middle Earth with J.R.R. Tolkien,” says casting Black and brown actors in “The Rings of Power” threatens story believability. He said Tolkien described elves, for example, as “fair-faced.”... “diversity isn’t a bad thing by itself,” but that when it becomes a major focus, the story takes a backseat to an ideological agenda. “If someone created a story about a great African kingdom of old, but one of the royals was White, people would naturally find this very out of place,” Morse says. “This would especially be an issue if the story was previously established as all characters having black skin.”... Marc Burrows, a critic and comedian, sees it as ironic that some Middle-earth fans have no trouble accepting giant, walking tree people and fire-breathing dragons, but “darker skinned dwarves are a bit far-fetched.”... Defenders of the series also say Amazon Studios isn’t being woke – it’s being savvy. All-White casts are no longer acceptable to modern audiences. “The Rings of Power” is being streamed in more than 240 countries. “They want to have as many people watching as possible,” says Coren, the Tolkien biographer. “So, morally, economically, culturally on every level, it (diverse casting) is the right thing to do.”"
Apparently the Rings of Power only airs in countries with white and black people
‘The Rings Of Power’ Is Abusing Fast-Travel Even Worse Than ‘Game Of Thrones’ - "“I wisely started with a map, and made the story fit (generally with meticulous care for distances). The other way about lands one in confusions and impossibilities, and in any case it is weary work to compose a map from a story.” ~ J.R.R. Tolkien...
I know this is “just a fantasy” or whatever, which is what fans will say when presented with this complaint, but even in fantasy worlds things take time. One does not simply charge into Mordor. By ignoring distances you make the world feel small, and what ought to feel epic in scope and scale starts to feel the exact opposite... Amazon’s writers are creating “confusions and impossibilities” by ignoring the map, as Tolkien would say, and it cheapens the entire story in the process and makes the Middle-earth of The Rings Of Power seem much smaller than the Middle-earth of The Lord Of The Rings, where even just leaving the Shire or crossing through a thick Old Forest, could be a dangerous adventure... Frankly, when Amazon set out to make their own Game Of Thrones I had no idea they were talking about Season 8, but that’s where we’re at in the very first season of Rings Of Power. Frankly, it’s extremely lazy for a show with this kind of budget to get this all so wrong. If each of our four stories is taking place at a different pace, the show’s writers have done a pretty lousy job at making that clear. The comet flew over everyone’s head not that long ago and rooted each of the four timelines in the present. Since then, we’ve seen nothing to suggest that these stories are taking place at wildly different speeds... Fans of fantasy fiction care deeply about world-building. A sense of space and time is integral to any good story, but especially stories in made-up worlds. My only hope is that the eruption of Mount Doom killed Galadriel and all the Númenoreans and the final few episodes will be about Papa Adar living a nice, quiet life with his orc children in Mordor. Maybe he’ll even teach the Harfoots a thing or two about how to care for one another."
According to liberals, if you can suspend disbelief for magic but not internal consistency, you're a bigot
Steve Toussaint Responds to 'House of the Dragon' Racism - "“They are happy with a dragon flying,” he says, of fans’ willingness to accept the fantastical elements of the show’s world. “They're happy with white hair and violet-colored eyes, but a rich Black guy? That's beyond the pale.”"
Documenting another example of demanding that you must suspend internal consistency
Luckily they didn't do too much wokefishing, because it was a good show and they didn't need to distract from that. But ignoring the fact that we explicitly know from the original text that the characters weren't white (even if you ignore what we know about the ASOIAF world, that it seems the black people come from the Summer Isles)
‘The Rings Of Power’ Episode 7 Review: Welcome To Mordor It Gets Worse Here Every Day - "I can understand how an immortal elven badass like Galadriel might survive the pyroclastic flow of a Mount Doom explosion. I’m a little more hard-pressed to understand how everyone else survived last week’s volcanic blast... Isildur was left for dead after the explosion, and two groups set out from Tir-Harad—or, rather, its smoking ruins—to find safety in the Númenorean camp that they never bothered to show us last week. It appears that Númenor has a skill that Amazon is most adept at: Packaging a lot of stuff into a little space—riders, horses, tents, furniture, healing supplies, food, servants, very small rocks, barrels of oil... Miriel says they sail with the tide, despite having wounded with missing legs who clearly would never make the 1,800 mile voyage alive. The Númenoreans basically stayed for a single fight and are now sailing all the way back... Galadriel seems very concerned with Halbrand, almost like she’s been celibate ever since Celeborn died in the First Age. “I will not condemn these lands to burn,” Halbrand tells her. They walk from the tent, presumably to head back to Lindon for “elvish healing” and the amassed villagers chant “Strength to the king!” despite none of them knowing they even had a king a week ago... Burrows asks the Stranger to heal the burned area and the wizard gives it a shot but hasn’t learned how to do magic without it seeming really scary. A branch on one of the burned trees breaks and almost lands on a Harfoot child. Between that and his scary incantation, the Harfoots reach their limit. No matter that he saved them from wolves recently. “Nobody walks alone” unless you do anything even remotely offensive and then you’re out for good. They kick the Stranger out, sending him off to fend for himself in this strange and perilous land. The next morning, the burnt landscape has been replaced with growing things, lush vegetation and fruit-filled trees. Everyone is very happy and excited but amidst this excitement nobody thinks to go after the Stranger and welcome him back and beg for forgiveness. The Harfoots are selfish and cruel, it would seem... Largo makes a speech about the values of the Harfoots. “We don’t slay dragons. Not much for digging jewels. But there’s one thing we can do better than any creature in Middle-earth. We stay true to each other no matter how the path winds or how steep it gets. We face it with our hearts even bigger than our feet. And we just keep walking.” As admonishment of the bad Harfoot custom of leaving people behind, this is very good. If it’s a description of how the Harfoots are, however, it’s a downright lie. No other culture in Middle-earth, including the orcs, is as harsh to their own as these little people... This show’s writers love to make characters argue all the time. There were almost no scenes between Elendil and Isildur this season that didn’t amount to squabbling. So it is with Durin Jr. and Durin Sr. Durin IV, the king, is a really terrible dwarf. Because of the enormity of the changes to mithril, which is now proven to actually save elven things from whatever rot has infected them as evidenced by the leaf in this episode, the entire elven people will either die or have to flee to Valinor in order to survive if they don’t get their hands on mithril by the coming spring. Note that none of this is even remotely true to the source material, but the show’s creators have invented it in order to create tension and urgency. It doesn’t work in the slightest, but that’s clearly the intent. Durin IV doesn’t care about the plight of the elves. Not even a little... When characters in this show aren’t regaling one another with stilted exposition, we get arguing and bickering... There’s no real reason given for Durin IV’s reluctance and refusal to mine the ore, especially when it’s right there... Mithril was traded from dwarves to elves for centuries. It was also found elsewhere, including the Southlands and Númenor... All told, another example of just how badly Amazon has spent its money, taking a huge gamble on untested showrunners who had literally no IMDB credits before making this show. What a disaster."
‘The Rings Of Power’ Episode 8 Review: A Dreadful Season Finale - "shame on everyone who had a hand in this travesty. I’ve never seen an adaptation of a major work so badly abused, so fundamentally altered or so disrespectfully handled as the creators of The Rings Of Power have treated The Lord Of The Rings. Tolkien’s creation barely shines through the dreck... Nearly everything that could have gone wrong has done so. Even my worst fears about this show’s quality could not match what we were actually given... The Harfoots show up and see that there are only two witches so they distract them and go to release the bound Stranger—but it’s actually the head witch! You know, the witch who is so much more powerful than the Harfoots that she had literally no reason to disguise herself in the first place. Then the Stranger shows up and there’s a big old brawl the head witch lights everything on fire, and the Stranger thinks he’s bad now but Nori gives him a cheerful pep talk and then hands him the head witch’s staff. Well, we knew he needed something to control his powers and the staff is that thing, it appears, because a moment later he’s put out all the flames and is standing tall and speaking clearly. He immediately steals a line from Gandalf telling the witches “From shadow you came and to shadow you will return!” “Wait, you’re not Sauron!” they cry. “You’re...” “I’m GOOD!” he says, making me question everything I know about professional writing in Hollywood, and then banishes them to, uh, the shadow with butterfly magic... Galadriel and Halbrand teleport all the way from Mordor to Eregion despite Halbrand having a wound that requires, ahem, “Elvish healing.” They must have ridden awfully hard to get there in just six days. People who are seriously wounded can usually ride at a gallop for days or even weeks with no complications, so nothing really crazy about this... Halbrand has been taken to get some “Elvish healing” from the healers that Arondir claims the elves don’t actually have and is miraculously better a short while later. He heads directly to Celebrimbor’s workshop and sounds very excited when he discovers that the elf he’s talking to is none other than the great Celebrimbor himself. He asks about the gems and the mithril and when Celebrimbor tells him they don’t have enough, he suggests using an alloy (hence the episode’s title, “Alloyed”). A master elven smith would never think of this, of course... It’s at this point, when Celebrimbor starts talking about forging a “new power” that Galadriel’s heckles finally come up. When she learns that Halbrand has given Celebrimbor advice, she’s instantly suspicious, though why it’s taken her this long is beyond me. She’s basically dragged him kicking and screaming all this way (after coincidentally running into him in the middle of the ocean—which, I just...words fail me—) and now she’s suspicious of him?... There is no king of the Southlands! The line of kings died out a thousand years ago and somehow she didn’t know that and didn’t bother to do like ten more minutes of research at the Hall of Lore in Númenor... Everything leading here relied on either truly radical coincidence or Galadriel being stupid (or both)... Instead of telling Elrond and Celebrimbor the truth, Galadriel tells them to make three rings instead of two, because of...uh...balance. They make the rings in fifteen minutes or so and stare at them in awe. The rings that took 90 years to craft. Of course, they don’t even make the first rings—the rings of men and dwarves--in the show. Galadriel even says the rings should be for elves only. Sauron would have been there for the forging of all the rings of men and dwarves. It was part of his plan—to get the elves to make those rings so that he could make the One Ring in secret and control all the others. Celebrimbor then forged the three elven rings without Sauron's knowledge. They only learn of Sauron's deception when he crafts the One Ring. But none of that is here! None of the most basic elements of the forging of the actual Rings of Power is here at all. Halbrand/Sauron spends a day in Eregion and leaves. How is this in any way true to the source? I understand that changes must be made to adaptations, but this isn’t a change. This is a complete rewrite of a pretty well-established story. And to what end? Oh, and in order to forge the rings they need gold and silver from Valinor. Mind you, lots of the elvish stuff in Eregion is likely made out of gold and silver from Valinor but they end up using Galadriel’s dagger instead—even though it’s the only thing she has left of her brother... Poppy is devastated that Nori is leaving. “Why does everyone I love have to go?” she asks, to which Nori says something like “We wouldn’t learn anything new if we didn’t.” Neither suggests the obvious: You can both go! It isn’t like Poppy has any family left in the caravan. She pulls her own cart by herself (walks alone, despite the chanting) and they’re BFFs. Go together female Frodo and female Sam! At long last Nori finally sets off with the Stranger and now we have a couple years to wait for another season about . . . well, not about anything Tolkien wrote, that’s for sure. But it’s comforting to know that the Rings Of Power and Mordor were all created within about a ten-day span! Nothing says epic fantasy like condensing thousands of years into a week and a half. That’s quality writing, folks... They added too much and cut too much when they had a perfectly good story to flesh out that Amazon spent hundreds of millions of dollars to purchase. Why not tell that expensive tale? Why make this other one up? I don’t understand. What an absolute disaster."
'The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power' Writer Continues To Double Down On Being "Immersed In The Text," The Actual Show Tells A Vastly Different Story - "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power writer Gennifer Hutchison recently made the media circuit to discuss the show’s first season after it came to its conclusion and she like the showrunners before her claimed she’s “immersed in the text.”... Ironically, despite claiming they were immersed in the lore and they wanted to capture Tolkien’s spirit, the show fails on all levels to capture much of Tolkien’s themes that he explored in The Silmarillion and the Second Age. Tolkien outlined these themes in Letter 131 to Milton Waldman. He wrote, “The three main themes are thus The Delaying Elves that lingered in Middle-earth; Sauron’s growth to a new Dark Lord, master and god of Men; and Numenor-Atlantis. They are dealt with annalistically, and in two Tales or Accounts, The Rings of Power and the Downfall of Númenor. Both are the essential background to The Hobbit and its sequel.”... The idea that the Númenóreans want to acquire immortality and are jealous of the elves isn’t even touched on at all. Instead it’s replaced by a cringe-worthy modern day political stump speech given by a blacksmith claiming the Elves are coming to take their jobs. Something that doesn’t fit in with Tolkien’s works and bizarrely is out of place in Prime Video’s own production. The Númenóreans are also not depicted as a grand people. They require training from Galadriel and the training is done in a back alley rather than in a proper barracks training ground. We don’t really see their greed and lust for riches in Middle-earth. Instead it appears they have almost no contact with Middle-earth albeit the show does make a minor reference to past colonies."
Amazon Executive Vernon Sanders Doubles Down On Diversifying Middle-earth For 'The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power' Season 2 - "he also tried to explain why the show hasn’t been greenlit for a third season despite claiming Amazon Studios is committed to five season... At the end of October, cast members Ismael Cruz Córdova, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, and Sophia Nomvete claimed they were victims of racism while speaking with Variety... Given the vitriol and hate Amazon Studios has directed towards Tolkien fans, it’s likely this will continue. It’s also highly likely the show will continue to bleed its audience in a similar vein to Star Wars as they continue to act like Grima Wormtongue."
Amazon Studios Executive Admits Company Is Still Being Intentionally Deaf About Fan Feedback For 'The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power' - "Amazon Studios and Prime Video embarrassed themselves when they claimed to have brought a number of The Lord of the Rings “superfans” to a special screening of the show’s trailer in Malorca. These superfans didn’t seem at all interested in The Lord of the Rings when they cut a number of promotional videos attempting to promote the show rather they put the focus on identity politics instead... Not only were these so-called “superfans” pushing identity politics rather than discussing Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings, one of them later admitted to not even watching the show... By the time of the events of the Second Age that The Rings of Power portrays, Sauron has already chosen his path and has completely rejected forgiveness, repentance, penance, and obedience. His interpersonal side has been consumed by his hate and lust for power. That’s not to say he doesn’t play the role of Annatar by deceiving the Elves and aiding them to create the Rings of Power. He clearly does this in Tolkien’s work, and it is indeed a role that he plays fueled by his hatred and lust for power. He deceives the Elves and uses their own pride to aid them in the crafting of the Rings of Power and eventually The One Ring. The Rings of Power completely casts this wildly interesting and intriguing story in the trash because they claim they wanted to “surprise” people. However, they didn’t just want to “surprise” people, they fell to the will of Sauron themselves and thought they could tell the story better than Tolkien. They can’t as the first season proves, and the fact that Sanders admits the focus on Sauron on the first season was try to humanize proves that. It also proves that despite whatever studies they have performed they are clearly not listening to Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings fans, but more importantly, they are not actually listening to J.R.R. Tolkien."