 What if I told you the two biggest heel lickers, particularly of a man who fancies himself a good lens flare, were able to get the contract for the single most expensive television show of all time, and not just any television show, but of the second age of Tolkien's master Middle Earth works? You probably think that you were crazy, but that's actually what happened. Hey guys, this is my review for the Rings of Power the first season. Now before we get into all the negativity and everything, I do want to say that for the crew who worked on this show, particularly the special effects department, definitely need the compliments they deserve, as well as some of the acting. From a few characters here and there, Bear McCreary, while not delivering a score as memorable as Howard Shore, definitely gave some good notes here and there. And overall, this could have been a lot worse. The first thing that needs to be talked about is how these two showrunners have absolutely no actual writing experience. They were ghost writers for J.J. Abrams, they were his heel lickers for quite a while, and J.J. somehow was able to use his silver tongue to get Jeff Bezos to agree to give these two mutton heads the keys to this franchise, the keys to this television show. How that meeting went down, I still have no idea. But one of my theories is that buying this was so expensive that they couldn't afford any other actually well-versed, well-trained television show writers. However, if you actually look at the two other projects that were proposed one by Warner Brothers and the other by Netflix, Warner Brothers wanted to turn the trilogy of Lord of the Rings trilogy into a television show. So, yeah, already that's a big no, and especially with what Warner Brothers did with The Hobbit. And then Netflix, Netflix wanted to do something along the same lines of The Similiarion and The Second Age, but they wanted to make individual movies for each character, kind of like the Marvel movies. So again, not good there. So technically speaking, we got the least worst option of the three. But how does the show actually hold up? Now, something I also want to say, I talked to someone in my family who is probably the biggest Lord of the Rings fan nerd I know. He's probably one of the most versed in Tolkien's works. He's read all the books. He read them before there was even films. So he's an OG fan, and he actually enjoys the show. Now, I understand that there are some Tolkien purists who don't like the show. I know that there are some who do, and I know there's a lot that are kind of in the middle. But for my sake, I think this show definitely thinks it's smarter than it actually is. But as a base product, it's still okay, which I guess it's kind of the best you could ask for in this situation. It's not outright trash. It does have issues. It does have narrative issues. It does have character issues. It does have storytelling issues. But there is still some gems, or at least some very dusty scratched ones, in amongst this rubble. The show follows Galadriel quite heavily in a story that's kind of a little bit of a stretch in terms of Tolkien lore about her want to avenge her brother's death, even though he was mulled to death by wolves. But technically those were Sauron's wolves, so I guess you could kind of go with that. Venge him by killing Sauron, who has disappeared, even though that didn't happen either. But what happens is she is so consumed with this journey of vengeance that she comes across people who are willing to help her, and instead of helping them are kind of working together, she is still so hell bent on trying to get back at Sauron that people suffer for her consequences for the most part. And she does get a little bit of humility, admittedly, quite a bit later on in the show, later than one would expect. But that's how it comes to be with the finale, which we'll all be serious here. I think the show writers definitely thought they were giving a few people a little bit of run for their money, but everyone predicted this ending. Some people didn't think this was going to happen because it was too obvious that they, like, no, there's no way. That has to be a red herring. That is too obvious of a choice for these characters to be who you think they are. Lo and behold, they actually exactly are what you thought they were going to be. So definitely points off for that. Anyone who was going on about the racist shit with these characters, all that aside, the two people of color who were prominent in this show, they are actually were some of my favorite parts of the show, except when the elf guy got kind of sidelined. His story is kind of prominent until about the seventh episode, and then he's just a sidelined character, even though he is the most on point stoic elf of this whole show. Another part I gotta give credit to is Elron Enduren. These were the best character interactions throughout the entire show. Every time these two were on screen together, whether it was in Confliction, whether it was in Conversation, or in some cases actual camaraderie, especially the camaraderie, those parts shone. There's a moment in the eighth episode where I felt actual emotion, genuine emotion between those two, and it wasn't just delivered through dialogue, it was delivered through looks and the acting and the music. So again, credit where credit is due, that part was great. How Duren's story ends at least at the end of the season, I feel was a bit of a cheap gag. I think they were kind of jumping the gun on that. For those of you who know what I'm talking about, I guess also I will say there will be a bit of a spoiler part at the end of this video, so just keep that in mind for after I do my rating. But now the issues that this show has, it takes a long time for things to get started. That's kind of given with Tolkien's work, but this one actually just goes to a quite lengthy degree. And also the Galadriel character is quite hard to get accustomed to. She's quite difficult to enjoy. Now I know that there's going to be a bunch of the sexists, what not, stuff being thrown around. I don't think it's really the actress's fault, it's definitely the writing. This writing again is written by guys who do not have a lot of experience. They are really good at kissing people's asses in the film industry, but when it comes to writing, actual story creation, the only time that the writing actually all of a sudden jumps up from grade school level to university level is when they are taking lines verbatim from the trilogy books, which that also too has got to be said. Why would you buy the rights to the books, the trilogy, and the Hobbit, but to make a show about the second age? Was that just not in the books? Was the similiarian the fall of Numenor? Was all this just not in the cards? Could you just not talk about it? Why were the unfinished tales off the table? That's an answer that we're still kind of looking around to see, but it seems that the instant that Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien died, his children, JR Tolkien's grandchildren, went crazy and they sold everything off. So that's unfortunately why we get what we get. But going back to Galadriel, she has this dominion about her where she's just confrontational with everyone, and sometimes you get it in that character that's driven by vengeance, driven by this goal blind to all else, but she starts to have arguments and confrontations with people for no reason other than to just have one to establish that strong female, female character rather than a strong female character. But that does change. Once events get along and get towards the end of the season, particularly episode seven, even a little bit of episode six is when you get to see that self-humility, that little bit of development of her character. Does it come way too late? And does it kind of make it seem like you're still wrong to assume anything about the character? A little bit. It's a little bit patronizing. And then at the end, the end, even though the idea is to show that she has put her own want and desires behind her, she's putting the betterment of her people ahead of her because of this complete MacGuffin bullshit that's happening with the darkness is enveloping the elves and the elves will lose their immortality because, again, some of the lazy, lazy grade school writing that these guys thought they were really good at is conflicting with the characters actually having development. That's kind of like the Catch-22 of this. When you have writing that's so basic, when you have writing that's so rudimentary, your characters can only evolve as much as the actors can do within the realm that they are being written into. So overall, did I like it? Some of it? I don't think I could rewatch it. Something that some people have talked about is the test of time. And normally TV shows aren't too much of rewatchable. They have a genuine realm of amazing acclaim to them, good ones to think of are Breaking Bad, Band of Brothers, those shows, the Sopranos, those are the shows that really hold up to the test of time. Even if they're not rewatchable, they still are accolated. The Lord of the Rings trilogy obviously is hugely renowned. It's very rewatchable, even the extended versions, and it's held to a higher claim. This show, even though the critics seem to be kind of pandering into the hands and basically spoon feeding goodness about this show, they can't hide that the audience has not enjoyed it as much. And I'm not talking about this whole review bombing bullshit. There was more people positively reviewing this show than there were review bombing it. The numbers can show on IMDb, which by the way, that whole fiasco where Amazon, who owns IMDb, were preventing people from being able to see any reviews about the show that were less than a six is some bullshit. That's an hypocrisy. That is some sauron level control there. They eventually changed it because of how many people were getting pissed off about it. And that too. If you look at any of the acts, like the external media, the interviews that have been done by the actors are especially the writers who have now somehow associated people who are critical of the show with fascists, that's not going to help you with building the brand. But I'm trying to look at this show from just the show itself. The only thing I take into account external from the actual show itself is the writer's lack of experience. But when it comes to how this season comes to an end, I feel it has room to improve. If they take a lot of the notes that have been said about this season and they put them into season two, I think that will work. I did have some moments. I did have some eye rolling moments. I did have some genuine fun moments though. So we'll see. How each episode costs $25 million, the only one. Like it is a complete bafflement to me. The only one that I can suggest that actually makes sense to that is the episode where a certain thing explodes. And the special effect slash set deck slash production design on that episode made sense. That made sense to me. The visual effects, sure they would have been high too, but not $25 million each high. I just watched the first episode of The House of Dragon. First take this. I'm not including all of the intricacies of the stories. Obviously there's a lot more detail. There's a lot more expansiveness to Martin's stuff than Tolkien. Tolkien is a little bit more of a fantasy era. Whereas Martin has fantasy but with real life elements like politics and whatnot. And then also the maturity. I'm taking that out too. Watching the first episode of The House of Dragons felt like watching something written by a university student. Whereas quite a few of the episodes of Lord of the Rings felt like it was written by a seventh grader. Not bad. Just incredibly simplistic. Incredibly easy to follow. So when it comes to the ending of the show where they think that they've taken the whole audience for a loop and there are some articles out there that are just thumbing this episode's twists. They were so clearly obvious that no one didn't think they were coming. They actually overthought it. I overthought it. I actually couldn't think. I was thinking, no there's no way this is actually going to happen. My final rating for Lord of the Rings, Rings of Power, the first season is a three out of seven. I was kind of veering on a four because again it's not as terrible as people are making it out to be but it's just not good. And I keep on reflecting back to the person in my circle who is a huge Tolkien fan. Been there before the movies were even conceptualized. Like read these books back in the day without the ability to look up the lore on the internet and all that stuff and he's enjoying the show. So I have to take that into account. I hope that the second season takes a lot of these notes and they take the fans actual genuine, the ones who are actually wanting this to be a good show and they take those notes to heart. But now talking about the spoilers. It was kind of a bit maddening to me that one Sauron, bad boy Sauron, was who we all expected it to be and his reveal was not as big of a woo as the writers thought it was going to be. And then the fact that Galadriel still agrees to making these rings, which doesn't make sense because aside from this, the only reason why it's attempting to make sense is this whole illness, this disease of the world is trying to kill off the elves immortality. But that's because of Sauron, who she just saw, who then teleports to fucking Mordor. And so she still agrees to do it and they make them themselves. It's so much of the writing in the last episode is so on the nose. You've still written quite obviously a Sauron, but he went from being pretty obvious Sauron to Palpatine episode three level of obvious evil. Just every line that comes out of the guy's mouth in this last episode is just, yeah, he's evil. He's pretty fucking evil. I loved the scene between Duran and Elrond though in episode seven. That was my favorite part where Duran is just so heartbroken that he can't help his friend, but then he sees that the leaf is healed by the Mithra, which another, like that aside as well, like, ugh. And the call for Elrond, Elrond! And you know he's going to help his friend. That part was great. I hope we get more moments like that in the next season. But anyways, guys, that's my very long winded, very long winded. I brought this out. I don't even know if you saw the smoke from it, but this is a really cool pipe. It's from a Queens pipe if you've ever seen one. They're really easy to put together and I actually really like them. But yeah, if you guys are let me know what you guys thought of this. Now, like, let's be, you know, kind of kind in the comment section because, like, this show just instantly brings out the urr, the aggression in people. If you have a disagreement about the show, that's fine. But let's talk about it in a civil manner, right? Let's try and discuss and see where we can find the things of what they could do better, like something like that, like does the hate, hate, hate, hate, hate. What's something you think had a good idea or could have been a good idea, but they didn't do these proper steps to make it good. If that's going to be some kind of your complaints. But if you also like the show, that's great too. Talk about what you liked about it. Anyways, guys, that's all from me. Sorry for the long winded review, but I pretty much got my point across a lot faster than the show did in the first few episodes, but we'll see. Anyways, guys, that's all from me. Hope you enjoyed this video. 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