When I found out that Amazon was going to spend a BILLION dollars on making a Lord of the Rings series, I, like most Tolkien fans, was ecstatic. I saw every one of the original films in theaters and it became a holiday ritual with me and my immediately family that we would all go and see it together. When Return of the King was the last installment, we were kind of disappointed because that had been a part of our lives for years and we all loved it and talked about it a great deal. My brother mastered a Gollum impersonation that would crack us all up.
Later, I would purchase all of the DVD's, then buy them again when extended or collector's editions were released. I loved LotR and so did just about any person that I knew that was around me. The Hobbit trilogy is a different story but that is one of those things where I think the bar had been set so high that they were never going to be able to follow up on that. But a series that encapsulated lore that I was not even yet familiar with about the creation of the rings in the first place, well that had me extremely excited.
I can't think of a period in time where I had ever been as let down as I was with this series though, and I never even did finish watching season 1.
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I gave it a shot, I wasn't going to let the early reviews of the fandom dissuade me from at least having a go at it, but my goodness were the people that were deriding that series correct. It is extremely bad and I don't think that there are very many real fans of the story that feel otherwise. It became apparent really early on that the showrunners or creators were far more focused on inclusion and diversity than they actually were on telling a story that was good. However, I am not one of those people that is simply going to write something off because of the fact that there are minorities in certain roles... go ahead and do that because I think we are just kind of used to it by now and have accepted that it is going to be that way. The main problem that I had with Rings of Power is that the story, the action, simply the dialogue, is just plain stupid.
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Galadriel being so overpowered is something that really annoys me about RoP and LotR was never really like this. In the original trilogy, even our heroes had definitive weaknesses and they couldn't simply go into a fight with 20 enemies and win so convincingly that they have time to be arrogant about it. Ok, well maybe the kill count between Legolas and Gimli could be considered as such but this is nothing compared to how Galadriel single-handedly takes down a cave troll that took the entire "fellowship" a large amount of time to do as a team. She also had time to do it in an acrobatic way while never changing her facial expression. The girl-power was strong in this series and by the time she easily dispatched her 40th set of enemies, I was already sick of it.
I couldn't really tell you what happened in that series because I don't really care. It was obvious that the guy from the sky is Gandalf (even though that hasn't been revealed yet) and the person who was eventually revealed to be Sauron, well, we saw that telegraphed about 6 episodes before it ever happened. It was just really poor storytelling and focused entirely too much on the wrong things, and too little on actually getting us to care about the characters in question. They didn't make me like anyone in that series and the fact that they attempted to throw "the message" and unnecessary alternative sexualities into a series that is supposed to be about fantasy was too much. I have no intention of even hate-watching season 2. Honestly, given the fact that most people never even finished season one I am surprised that they are even bothering with a season 2. Amazon's ultimate objective is to make money and let's be real here, is there ANYONE that is going to sign up for an account to see a season 2 of something that had their viewers dropping like flies after just a few boring episodes? I think not.
Now let's compare this to House of the Dragon
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House of the Dragon also has DEI in it and this is evident. However, they don't make it all preachy and there doesn't appear to be a message either. Some people of different skin colors exist in parts of the world and that is fine. It doesn't define what the series is about though whereas with Rings of Power it is definitely a central part of what they are doing. Amazon went out of their way to make most of the main characters PoC and also far more powerful than whoever they are up against. House of the Dragon on the other hand, has character arcs and shows that there is no advantage whatsoever to being a certain color, let alone a certain sexuality. Why? Because it's a fucking fantasy who and this shouldn't have anything to do with it.
House of the Dragon isn't without its flaws of course and one of the main problems I have with it is something that cannot be resolved. There are so many characters, most of which have very difficult to remember names to the point where half of the time, I don't even know who the hell they are talking about. You figure it out though, if you care enough to look.
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The characters are developed wonderfully and almost entirely without that stupid whimsical methods that Amazon uses constantly in Rings of Power. Do we really need comic relief every 5 minutes? I don't think so.
I think I speak for a lot of the fans out there when I say that Daemon is an absolutely amazing character whose motivations we don't yet fully understand. In episode 3 he does this solo mission to a mostly abandoned castle with rain dripping all through the walls and ceilings. This is about a 7 minute sequence of events that involve almost zero dialogue and it is filmed wonderfully and has a constant sense of danger despite the fact that we weren't specifically told there was any danger. It is absolutely beautiful and I was on the edge of my seat during it.
We haven't seen many major battles yet in House of the Dragon but the few fights that we have seen have been wonderfully done with fantastic camera angles and a sense of danger that is presented by the weather, location, and music. Compare this to Rings of Power where the village totally abandons a wonderfully strategic stronghold as part of ruse to trick the invaders into having the entire building collapse down on top of them. They then have a very one-sided battle in a village instead where there is zero strategic advantage but because of the superhero like powers of the "good guys" of course they emerge victorious.
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Large scale battles are so common in Rings of Power that it is understandable that their budget went through the roof. However, I enjoyed this 7 minutes of Daemon wandering through and apparently abandoned castle on his own far more than the ludicrous massive fights involving far too much suspension cables to turn basically every character into a ninja of sorts. Thanks Crouching Tiger and The Matrix for employing the use of this sort of thing in a good way but jesus Amazon, it doesn't need to be in every damn scene!
House of the Dragon ticks a bunch of diversity boxes as well. The two main characters are both female, much of the staff and main characters are black or other minorities, but this is done in a happenstance sort of way rather than a way that appears to be re-educating the world as part of some sort of strange brainwashing campaign that has taken over much of entertainment especially if Disney or Amazon has anything to do with it.
Another thing that makes House of the Dragon absolutely superior to Rings of Power is that we, the audience, still don't know what to expect. Main characters are frequently killed off surprisingly and out of nowhere. Whereas in Rings of Power, once a main character is shown to us, we are already aware of the fact that they are basically invincible and are going to make it all the way to the end, emerging, no doubt, as the heroes of the entire thing. It's a foregone conclusion and therefore, there is very little in the way of reason for watching the show at all. When I fire up another episode of House of the Dragon, I have NO IDEA what to expect nor is there any sort of certainty that the characters we are taught to hate are going to meet an untimely death. They may, they may not... and that is the brilliance of this sort of entertainment.
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I mean, you already hate Aegon Targaryen don't you? He's Joffrey revisited sure, but we have no good reason to believe that he is going to be offed easily in a fight the likes of which Amazon would throw at us. Aegon would be easily dispatched probably by a woman if Amazon was in control of this and thank god they are not in charge.
The bottom line here is something that I have said about multiple different forms of entertainment in the 6 years that I have been writing this blog: Having a ton of money to throw at something does not a good show make. House of the Dragon certainly isn't operating on a shoestring budget but they don't have anywhere near the money behind them that Rings of Power does, yet it is an absolutely superior story and series. I have real emotions and attachment to certain characters in House, but the only emotions that I feel whenever I think about almost everything that happens in Rings of Power is sadness and disdain.