Amazon’s “Rings of Power,” a show centered around Tolkien’s Middle Earth during the second age, isn’t doing well and it’s not hard to understand why. If you were to strip the fantasy setting away from the realm beloved around the world, it would be a relatively boring fantasy made for the modern era.
However, this is a boring fantasy using Tolkien’s vast and vital creation as a mask for sub-par writers and directors. It’s yet another established and popular creation being co-opted in order to push today’s mainstream leftist sensibilities including shallow efforts at “diversity” and, of course, heavy-handed feminism.
Tolkien’s fans were never going to be too pleased with the blatant bastardization of his world and his characters, and the divisive nature of modern politics was always going to have people turn against the show. In reality, those who are angry about the show for political reasons aren’t to blame for the division. Amazon consciously made the effort to inject all of that nonsense into Tolkien’s world, and as such, Amazon is 100 percent at fault.
Regardless, Amazon halted incoming viewer reviews on its site with the excuse that the show is being “review bombed.” As The Hollywood Reporter posted last Friday, the company accused viewers of coming in and posting bad reviews just to troll the show and dissuade people against watching it based on their own politics:
How The Rings of Power is doing on Amazon’s own user review ecosystem is not yet clear because the company has taken the unusual step of suspending user ratings for the show. An Amazon source says reviews are being held 72 hours to help weed out trolls and to ensure each review is legitimate. The source later claimed Prime Video started the policy this summer on all its shows.
“Review bombing” is when a group of online users post numerous negative reviews for a product or service due to its perceived cultural or political issues rather than its actual quality. Perusing Rotten Tomatoes’ audience reviews for Rings of Power, there are some one-star entries that meet the definition. “They wanted to involve such an important work with current politics and they have succeeded,” reads an example. “Nobody has a problem with seeing people of color in movies, series or stories … but this story was already written and should not have been sullied.” Opined another: “Reflecting world diversity in Middle Earth is an odd goal, albeit good for marketing maybe, but it was clearly more important then [sic] making a functional TV series.”
Going to Rotten Tomatoes, as usual, tells us an interesting story. Naturally, a show coopted with leftist sentiment is pleasing mainstream reviewers and the show sits at an 85 percent critic rating. Meanwhile, the viewer score is at a paltry 39 percent, and much of the complaints center around Tolkien’s lore being manipulated, bent, and broken for modern political reasons.
These bad scores aren’t good news, especially for “Rings of Power” in particular, since Amazon spent around a billion dollars to make it. You can see the money in various ways. The show is visually stunning to be sure, but the advertising and marketing of the show were extensive. Funny enough, it was the show’s marketing and press junkets that began to turn fans off.
With $1 billion on the line, Amazon turning its rating system off was understandable. The first few days of a release are integral. It can set a pace and allow for further advertising if it goes well enough. The more people that tuned in to watch, the more they could say it’s a breakout hit, attracting more people to view their expensive venture.
But the internet is vast and unforgiving. They abused Tolkien’s work and as a result, his fans are abusing Amazon. Even if the reviews were written with malicious intent, it’s an understandable reaction to the corruption of a great man’s material that found fond audiences across nations.
The lesson here is simple; stop using beloved works as a vehicle for modern politics.