I'm amazed that there are people looking forward to this show's second season. I was really hoping to like it, but they botched it so badly I can't see how they ever recover.
Say what now?
I thought it was phenomenal.
An average Rotten Tomatoes' audience score of 38% would put you solidly in the minority.
Some of the misses IMHO:
1. The ham-handed handling of Sauron (from the contrivance of randomly meeting Galadriel in the middle of an ocean to abandoning the
actual Tolkien story in the name of deception)
2. The Harfoots. All of them. All of the time.
Per Tolkien, Hobbits didn't do anything prior to the Third age, but I guess someone wanted an origin story???
3. "Fidelity" to Tolkien
Forbes: "Ostensibly, this is an
adaptation of Tolkien’s Second Age. The story, by showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, is drawn from The Lord Of The Rings and its appendixes, though unfortunately Amazon never bought the rights to The Silmarillion ... Then again, perhaps it’s all for the best that The Silmarillion remains outside the grasp of these creative butchers. Payne and McKay sold their vision of a Lord of the Rings adaptation thanks to what has been described as a ‘fidelity’ to Tolkien, yet nothing could be further from the truth "
4. Diversity:
How The Rings of Power got diversity wrong (and House of the Dragon got it right). tldr: TRoP used a formula, HotD used logic
My opinion lines up with Forbes' review:
Amazon’s “adaptation” is badly made TV with a nonsensical story built on wild coincidences, contrived plotlines and a blatant disregard for the various building blocks that make any story complete: Logical character choices, a sense of time and place, and narrative tension—not to mention an overly large cast of mostly forgettable and uncharismatic characters, some wholly made up for the show and others changed entirely as to be almost unrecognizable.
In every way that truly matters, The Rings Of Power fails from the writing to the acting to the presentation. It fails as an adaptation, neither enriching Tolkien’s work nor remaining true to it. It fails as a good fantasy, giving us generic tropes and melodrama rather than blazing new ground. And it fails as a compelling story, filled with cheap mystery boxes and unsurprising ‘twists.’