Featured Image Credit: Amazon Studios
Topics: TV And Film, Amazon, The Lord Of The Rings
Last week, The Rings Of Power premiered on Amazon Prime and the critical reception has been very positive. The same cannot be said for the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, and after a shocking barrage of review bombs, Amazon has taken action to dampen the impact on the show.
The general consensus on the prequel is that it is a glorious homage to the scale that author J R R Tolkien gave to this iconic fantasy world that captured the hearts and minds of countless fans. And apparently, the showrunners left out the notes that Jeff Bezos wrote on the scripts, and it appears to have shaken out alright for the overall quality of The Rings Of Power. Fair dos.
Check out the trailer for The Rings Of Power here!
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On the other hand, a lot of the viewers are not pleased with the way that the $250 million that the CEO bestowed on the production was spent. "The beauty and creativity of Tolkien's LOTR has been replaced with a bland and uninspiring TV series which is completely divergent from the source material," said one. "Pathetic writing, terrible acting or serious over-acting, poor quality CGI yet good in other places, virtue signalling the likes of which the Valar have never seen," exclaimed another. I assume the "virtue signalling" is the existence of non-white individuals in fictional fantasy races which caused an unnecessary controversy before the show was released - Tolkien literally specified that the Harfoots were "browner of skin" and dark-skinned elves were present in drafts of The Silmarillion. Also, get. Over. It.
In response to the deluge of negativity from user scores on Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB, and its own streaming service, Amazon has switched off reviews for The Rings Of Power so there is no audience impression to draw immediate conclusions from. Of course, you can still see the middling review score pulled from IMDB, which Amazon owns, but for all intents and purposes, it looks like you're the only Amazon account holder to ever view the show, so revel in that seeming specialness for a bit. Whether or not the company will switch reviews back on in the future, or perhaps when the entire season is out, remains to be seen.