I love it when something gets mixed reviews. It makes me so much more excited about reading, watching, or playing a piece of media if I know critics can't reach a consensus. If everyone says that something is bad, like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Lord of the Rings: Gollum, I know it'll probably be bad. If everyone says that something is great, the best piece of media ever made, like Shin Godzilla, I know it'll probably be worth my time. I'll still check them out no matter what, but my expectations will have been set.
If something has mixed reviews, though, I get really excited. Far more excited than if I'm tuning into something that received five-star reviews across the board. You see, I have certain reviewers who I trust and admire, whose tastes align closely with my own. And if they can't agree on whether something is fantastic or terrible, then I can't wait to make my own mind up. It's why I was excited for The Matrix Resurrections (it was fine), and it's why I'm excited for 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Rings of Power Season 2.
The reviews so far have been all over the place. calls it "stunningly boring". says it is "fantasy at its absolute highest level". labels it a "boring slog". verdict is that it's the "boldest fantasy show of the year".
Having only seen the first three episodes, I can't commit to a full review of The Rings of Power Season 2. The opening is quite slow, and my presiding feeling while watching the first three episodes was, "blimey, there's a lot of characters to recap". However, critics nearly unanimously agree that the show improves as the season goes on.
While coming first in a two-horse boldness race may not be the pinnacle of cinema, there's one line in Kaiya Shunyata's review of the series for Roger Ebert that stands out to me. "Rings of Power wants to showcase just how beautiful this world is, rather than hide its true genre behind the desire to be heralded as prestige television.”
Why does everything have to be prestige television these days? Why can't a show exist just to be fantasy fun? There's a couple of reasons.
First, the budget. At a rumoured half a billion dollars, The Rings of Power is . With that much money behind it, people expect 🍌a certain level of quality. In my mind, that was spent on the quality costuming, set design, and VFX in Season 1, all of whic🐎h seems to be ramping up this time around.
However, other people have different expectations. A big budget show, in some people's minds, should be winning BAFTAs and Emmys. It should be the pinnacle of modern television, to be studied by the writers and directors of the future. By modern standards, it should be dark and gritty with a tight script and political machinations far beyond the comprehension of us mere mortals. Basically, it should be 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Game of Thrones. While I admit the dialogue was poor in Season 1, there is more than one way to make a TV show. For every The Last of Us, you need a whimsical Fallout. Why can't The Rings of Power be fantasy's Fallout?
Secondly, is the lore problem. Tolkien crafted a wealth of mythology for Middle-earth, and fans of his books want to see it honoured to the word. The problem with this is twofold. Firstly, Tolkien very often contradicted himself, especially in texts that are basically his posthumously published notes scribbled in margins. Secondly, he wrote very little about the Second Age, when The Rings of Power is set. Sure, there are some key plot points outlined and Balrog-shaped anomalies that the show has already messed up, but there's no way a 50-hour TV show can condense tens of thousands of words worth of lore into a quick, breezy intro for casual fans.
Tolkien built a beautiful world. The Silmarillion is a majestic text, a fantasy bible in more ways than one. But we shouldn't expect a TV adaptation to be completely faithful, no matter how big a budget it has. The Fallout TV series was lauded for telling a new story in a familiar universe – it had all the vibes with new characters – so why can’t we treat The Rings of Power the same? Sure, it includes some familiar faces, but we know Tolkien’s descriptions of this story were scant. We also shouldn't expect it to fit into the modern definition of prestige television for the same reason.
The Rings of Power is someone else's vision of Tolkien's world. It has Elves fighting trolls, a shapeshifting villain, and 20 magic rings. Why can't it just be fun? The Rings of Power will never be enough for some people, and I agree that it will never be the perfect Tolkien adaptation. But I also think nothing ever will be. How can you realise the entirety of The Silmarillion on screen? I believe it's impossible.
The Rings of Power is grounded in Tolkien's ideas as much as it is his scent descriptions of this fictional time period. Morfydd Clark 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:told TheGamer she based the character of Galadriel in a "love of the earth and of the capacity for things to be beautiful and good," as much as she did the passages from The Lord of the Rings. Her vision of Galadriel is valid, and Amazon's vision of Tolkien is valid. It may be good, it may be bad, but I'm going to try to have fun with it either way. At the very least, I'll make up my own mind before writing scathing critiques online.
