HT: Karen L. Myers.

Paul Tassi, writing in Forbes, notes the great discrepancy between the critics’ and the public’s reaction to Amazon’s billion-dollar take on Tolkien.

Amazon is not amused about the fanboy wars that have surrounded its billion dollar Lord of the Rings series, Rings of Power. Unlike its rival House of the Dragon, Rings of Power has become the latest front in the review bombing wars, the most recent since uh, She-Hulk. This happens a lot, okay?

The Rings of Power is getting slammed essentially everywhere that accepts fan reviews:

On Rotten Tomatoes, while its critics score is 84%, it has a 36% audience score.

On IMDB (which Amazon owns) it has a 6.2/10 with 25% of reviews being 1 star.

On Amazon itself, it has…nothing, because Amazon has disabled reviews of the series entirely. Normally when you watch an Amazon show or movie, whether it’s an original or not, it will have user star ratings there. But Rings of Power has zero reviews listed because Amazon didn’t want to be broadcasting its premiere with a low score right next to it, no doubt.

Why are fans mad this time? Take your pick of reasons. It’s a combination of racism, misogyny, and supposed unfaithfulness to Tolkien’s original work. Sometimes all three of these reasons are the same.

Among the reasons for the negative reviews:

Some fans are upset Galadriel is now a warrior instead of the sword-free sorceress she was in the LOTR trilogy. In general, the show has let its female characters slay out, including both Bronwyn and Galadriel.

There have been long, long running controversies about how the show has included black elves, dwarves and humans in this adaptation, as opposed to the overwhelmingly white original trilogy. Complaints are that this clashes with Tolkien’s original work and has led to debates about “whether dwarves can be black because they live underground.”

I read that the Harfoots having Irish/English country accents have offended some people in that region because they’re depicted as dirty, gypsy types.

Then just…take your pick of any number of things that die-hard Tolkien devotees see as the show departing from the source material, or skipping over parts that should have been adapted instead. The general idea is that Jackson’s trilogy was faithful to the work while this is not.

Again, I’m not saying any of this is correct, or even the majority opinion of fans, but all of it feeds into the reasons for the flood of low scores for the series.

RTWT

I found it interesting that Tassi had no difficulty identifying precisely what the enormous Tolkien fantasy readership base objected to, but had himself no such issues with what Amazon has done. His own god-like perspective as a card-carrying member of the PMC (Professional Managerial Class) elite immunizes him from any emotional attachment to the author and the author’s original vision and conceptions and his consequent inevitable consciousness of his own superiority naturally causes him to dismiss condescendingly those inferior members of the mass readership audience who do care about such things as “fanboys” motivated by “racism.” Naturally, the unworthy opinions of these people, the sort who would prioritize fidelity to an author’s vision and texts over Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, need to be censored and suppressed, coming from — what the generality of today’s journalists recognize as — “trolls.”

John Witherspoon statue at Princeton.

Princetonian Scott Newman spills the beans. Those elite colleges’ Wokery is only a hypocritical form of virtue-signaling. The little supposed revolutionaries are really the swiftest and most ambitious rats in the race, running all out for the status and the bucks.

[Elite colleges’] progressive ideals are mostly for show—as evidenced by the fact that the actual career paths of typical Princeton graduates are guided by a hunger for status and security, not social justice. No one I know mentioned “Goldman Sachs” or “McKinsey” in their admissions essays. But year after year, they flock to places like these.

What I’m describing is a kind of liar’s club. Hopeful high school students lie about their commitment to social justice in a bid to gain admission, while the universities themselves lie about all the risk-taking, world-changing mavericks they’re looking to nurture. Neither side dares to speak the grubby truth, which is that the undergraduate experience will be a pro forma exercise in leftist indoctrination that precedes a march into the hallowed halls of investment banks and management consultancies.

RTWT — This one is a good read.