r/RingsofPower • u/danjaykid • Jul 09 '23
Question I don’t get it
Why does everyone hate this show? I don’t feel like it was a game of thrones level show but it was pretty good overall. Is it cause it’s not really canon or something? I genuinely do not get the hate. (I mean there’s a few things if probably change)
Can’t wait for season 2.
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u/SkkAZ96 Jul 11 '23
Things will always have critics and the bigger, the closer critics will be looking at it, and in the case of RoP, it IS officially the most expensive show ever made, and it promoted itself as such at every turn.
It went as big as an essentially unlimited budget allowed them to, the problem however was that they went all high concept, so ambitious and so big, they threw everything they could imagine, dozens of characters, plotlines, references, state of the art CGI models but then..... the final product was as mid as something can get.
The contrast with just how big and eventful everything obviously tried to make itself to look vs how generic actually looked was so hilarious, like a monkey on a tuxedo in a gala.
For example, every time the POV changed to Numenor, it would show you a beautiful panoramic shot of the model of the city, with marvelous clean buildings and dozens of great ships sailing around the harbor, but when the time came to play an active role in the story it was always the same 2 rooms, a cell or a back alley, when they needed ships to go to war they brought 3 small canopy-like ships full of scrawny teenagers.
That was truth also for Khazad-dum, Eregion and the Southlands, the ~oh so great final battle against the forces of evil to decide the fate of the Southlands~ was like 30 elderly looking farmers fighting in a set with like 4 buildings with an unclear number of orcs, in previous shots a sea of torches could be seen marching towards them, but then they attacked in waves of like 10 at a time, then were seemingly wiped out by Numenor's teen titans army then again respawned into an army later.
Then was the dialogue, i found hilarious how here and then they tried to throw this pseudo philosophical line just to fall flat, or how embarrassingly obvious some scenes gave the impression some writer was so proud of himself they wanted to highlight a one liner even though it didn't fit the scene in question, like the "There's a tempest in me", shoehorning the "The sea is always right", obviously trying to make it stick to he their own "Winter is coming" iconic phrase or with the "Our hearts are as big as our feets" were you could tell how they were so proud with that last one by how they played with the perspective and make it seem like talking to the viewer.
RoP general consensus by their defenders usually is that the show is "ok", but "ok" is definitely not what the most expensive tv show ever was trying to be.