The mega-budget fantasy series, which serves as the prequel of J.R.R. Tolkien's 'The Lord of the Rings' film series, debuted its first two episodes on Thursday night, September 1.
- Sep 3, 2022
AceShowbiz - Amazon Prime Video apparently has responded to fans' bad reviews for "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" after the new series debuted its first two episodes on Thursday night, September 1. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the streaming platform holds the reviews for 72 hours to weed out trolls.
The mega-budget fantasy series, which serves as the prequel of "The Lord of the Rings" film series, has a "rotten" 37 percent as its average audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, compared to an 87 percent critics score. It is said that Amazon suspends the reviews on its site to avoid being "review bombed" just like people did to Disney+'s series "She-Hulk: Attorney at Law".
The Marvel show, starring Tatiana Maslany as the titular character, was confirmed to be "review bombed" on Rotten Tomatoes with an 88 percent critics score distinctly different than the initial 36 percent audience score. The audience score later rose to 50 percent. As for review bombing, THR defines the term as the phenomenon when a group collaborates to upload negative reviews for its "perceived cultural or political issues rather than its actual quality."
Back to "The Rings of Power", "Lord of the Rings" die-hards expressed their disappointment in the show following the premiere. "Nothing short of cringeworthy," wrote Eric. S. of the show on Rotten Tomatoes. "The writing is worse than what you could expect to see on CW. It truly seems to have been written by a Barely graduated High Schooler that managed a C- average in creative writing. It's a smoldering dumpster fire."
"Visually it was good, but man was the story slow paced and dull," added Matt L. Another critic, meanwhile, wrote, "This was completely awful, very artificial looking with no heart. What a disgrace." Some people also slammed the show over its diverse casting as one review read, "Reflecting world diversity in Middle Earth is an odd goal, albeit good for marketing maybe, but it was clearly more important than making a functional TV series."
Even before the premiere, the show's producers did anticipate backlash over the show's diverse cast. "It felt only natural to us that an adaptation of Tolkien's work would reflect what the world actually looks like," Lindsey Weber, executive producer of the series, previously said. "Tolkien is for everyone. His stories are about his fictional races doing their best work when they leave the isolation of their own cultures and come together."
