The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

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Season 1
Season #: 3, 2, 1
User Score
3.0

Generally unfavorable reviews- based on 2938 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 711 out of 2938
  2. Mixed: 141 out of 2938
  3. Negative: 2,086 out of 2938

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User Reviews

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  1. Cecily_Cambell
    Sep 5, 2022
    0
    This show has been ruined by extremely weak casting and many of the actors are unlikeable. The Harfoots were sooo boring I went to put the kettle on. Maybe one day someone will make a 'fan edit' that cuts out all the Lenny Henry scenes and black elf scenes that drag this show down, and I might watch it then, but for now I'm out.
  2. MorviCool
    Sep 5, 2022
    0
    Everything from the costumes and camera angles, to the dark-skinned elves is awful. Are you at all?
  3. RuMiK
    Sep 5, 2022
    2
    Some of the effects and cgi looks nice and all but , plot characters really lacking, plots that don't exist, lines that try to sound wise and profound but are totally nonsense, some visuals/costumes don't fit the universe.
    How i wish it was good, sadly it isn't
  4. Andreycko
    Sep 5, 2022
    2
    Why did you ruin my favorite movie? Some elves are not beautiful, it was boring to watch, I put 2 only because of the good graphics.
  5. PointOfViewGun
    Sep 5, 2022
    8
    As someone who have read every single Tolkien book out there I welcome this addition that shows us how things could have been at a completely different time than what we're used to from Jackson's movies. It's certainly beautifully made. It's a very promising start.
  6. DariusTowers
    Sep 5, 2022
    6
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Tengo algunas cosas para decir sobre la serie. Parto de la base de que todo lo que es efecto especial, fotografía, escenario y diseño de la indumentaria es genial. Pero es lo único bueno de la serie. La trama zafa, se siente como que las distintas tramas las unieron como pudieron y hay algún que otro agujero argumental, lo cual asumo que como son los primeros dos capítulos serán respondidos con el avance de la serie.
    El mejor arco argumental es el de Elrond y el enano, no le tenía fe, pero me sorprendió. En cuanto a Galadriel, es la clásica heroína cabeza dura, no piensa mucho las cosas, es obstinada y llega a un punto en que su actitud parece molesta. Con respecto a la parte del elfo y la humana, va bien y quiero saber para donde apunta.
    La trama de los "hobbits" es la más densa con la de Galadriel, la verdad no me interesa en lo absoluto, por lo que no voy a poner nada.
    En términos generales, más allá de todo lo que se viene diciendo de la serie y todo esto que estuvo pasando en los últimos días con IMDB, es regular. Yo le tenía fe por los avances y un poco me decepciono, aunque pudo haber sido peor.
    ¿Soy el único que tiene la sensación de que los Elfos de la serie no parecen Elfos?    … Expand
  7. keshka
    Sep 5, 2022
    0
    Terrible show. Boring and has nothing to do with Tolkiens world. I don't understand why do they have to push the political agenda into fantasy worlds.
  8. Stevethepopo
    Sep 2, 2022
    0
    Unimaginative plastic multinational slog. An offensive parody made by 4yo writers and with blatant and overall bad acting.
  9. PeaBeDoo
    Sep 5, 2022
    9
    I am thoroughly enjoying this adaptation. The sets and production value are outstanding and, so far, the various story/plot lines that are unfolding are even more interesting and engaging that I was expecting. The casting is not perfect, but still very good. Really enjoying the fleshing out of the backstory before The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings that is based on the appendices found inI am thoroughly enjoying this adaptation. The sets and production value are outstanding and, so far, the various story/plot lines that are unfolding are even more interesting and engaging that I was expecting. The casting is not perfect, but still very good. Really enjoying the fleshing out of the backstory before The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings that is based on the appendices found in The Return of the King. I feel the negative views written here are very unfair, or little more than negative trolling. Give several episodes a watch and decide for yourself.… Expand
  10. Jouny
    Sep 5, 2022
    2
    The Rings of power has a lovely score and some breathtaking shots. Unfortunately, they don't come together to create a unified world, but leave us unsatisfied and left out, knowing that this could have been lord of the rings. What is left is a cheap feeling world devoid of plot, characters, or internal logic, with every character taking actions because they are doing these things, ratherThe Rings of power has a lovely score and some breathtaking shots. Unfortunately, they don't come together to create a unified world, but leave us unsatisfied and left out, knowing that this could have been lord of the rings. What is left is a cheap feeling world devoid of plot, characters, or internal logic, with every character taking actions because they are doing these things, rather than the plot demands. Nothing is character driven, or even plot driven. The characters happen to make random choices based on what occurs in their world without any cohesiveness or sanity. I wanted to judge this as its own show, but the emphatic and incorrect references to the legendariam make it impossible, and it further rips the world apart by failing to be internally consistent with its lore, and neglecting the practicality and sense of space which defines high fantasy. It fails as a Lord of the Rings show, it fails as a TV show, it fails to have a plot in the episodes, or a narrative arc nascent in the first 2 episodes, and it still fails to have characters, or even an enthralling world. Whoever wrote this doesn't understand what makes any narrative, from Gilgamesh to A Song of Ice and Fire, work. The audience should be offended that the producers thought this was compelling enough to make available as a work of fantasy.… Expand
  11. adryanmihai
    Sep 5, 2022
    1
    A disgrace to Tolkien life work. Steer aways from this garbage woke nonsense. Cinematography is nice but aside that the first 2 episodes are shallow, boring and filled with bad dialogues and a cheesy script and a garbage plot. 2/10
  12. Discord96
    Sep 5, 2022
    0
    Nothing but a CGI fluff piece that adds nothing to the lore of Middle Earth, in fact, it corrupts what was written in order to make a generic fantasy to appeal to intersectional yanks who think they can warp a beloved replacement mythology for England and make it another piece to push modern-day politics

    Avoid like Isengard Edit: Also notice how all those who claim to be "fans of    Nothing but a CGI fluff piece that adds nothing to the lore of Middle Earth, in fact, it corrupts what was written in order to make a generic fantasy to appeal to intersectional yanks who think they can warp a beloved replacement mythology for England and make it another piece to push modern-day politics

    Avoid like Isengard

    Edit: Also notice how all those who claim to be "fans of Tolkien" are also the same ones slandering Tolkien fans in the reviews here by calling them bigots for not respecting what is established?    … Expand
  13. 1234qweasz
    Sep 5, 2022
    0
    Amateur screenplay, mediocre acting, awful direction, and fake/sterilized imagery.
  14. wilall138
    Sep 5, 2022
    1
    Awful WOKE CRAPOLOA!!! Quit hiring for diversity first off! Second Tolkien is rolling like a rotisserie in his grave after this rubbish
    Butchers his work! I think a roomful of chimps and one turtle wrote this
  15. LokiElis
    Sep 5, 2022
    2
    It doesn't feel much like Tolkien's Middle Earth much like a CW vampire show!! The Elves are more like humans than Elves and nothing happens in the first episode. Might have to watch one more episode just to make sure but I really can't see this getting any better! Galadriel has turned into the an obnoxious woman that just wants to argue with everyone and not listen to advice. Not theIt doesn't feel much like Tolkien's Middle Earth much like a CW vampire show!! The Elves are more like humans than Elves and nothing happens in the first episode. Might have to watch one more episode just to make sure but I really can't see this getting any better! Galadriel has turned into the an obnoxious woman that just wants to argue with everyone and not listen to advice. Not the Galadriel Tolkien created. There numerous pointless scenes and the dialogue/writing seems CW bad!! Elrond seems to just be a very gay version of Tolkien's Elrond.. There is too much messing with characters to appeal to the very few but loudest rather than just making a really good show!!… Expand
  16. Matabufale
    Sep 5, 2022
    1
    Le doy un uno por el cariño que tengo ala saga verdadera acabo de ver el segundo capítulo i lo más seguro que no vea el tercero
  17. dc0315
    Sep 5, 2022
    1
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. The writing is bland at best, nothing like what you get from Tolkiens work. The characters are all quite bland and Galadriel is a farcry from the Galadriel Tolkien created. Many characters are far away from the source material. It is an aesthetically beautiful series with no intrigue to draw you in.

    It is also VERY slow. Not a slow burn mind you but just SLOW.

    The fact that the whole fellowship almost died taking out a troll and in the 1st 10minutes Galadriel slays a Troll with barely cutting a sweat or even looking at it, totally stops you from really caring about this character. The whole 2 episodes are more about trying to make you go "WOOOOOW, slaaaay girl" and yet failing at that too, its just too easy and the characters are very one dimensional.

    Also, its not about being a racist, at all, but if you are using Tolkiens work and he never describes elves as being black or Harfoots being black, why create black characters of such race? For me, it took me out of the world i know. Its not like there weren't black fans of tolkiens work before this series, so why do this?

    Also, Harfoots didn't exist yet!

    Also, if you remove "LoTR" from the name, it's just another 2nd rate CW fantasy series, that got a huge budget to make it aesthetically beautiful yet with bland writing and boring 1 dimensional characters.Summary: Boring, slow & not Tolkien characters    … Expand
  18. danielperki
    Sep 5, 2022
    0
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Dont like how they portrayed the characters and Galdriel feels arrogant. And Elrond was the commander of the elven forces not Galdriel.… Expand
  19. LakisUchiha
    Sep 5, 2022
    0
    Abomination.
    Stop taking successful material and corrupting it in the name of profit.
    Make something original and push your woke agenda there so noone sane watches it.
  20. Real-Galadriel
    Sep 5, 2022
    2
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Bronwyn seems like the Joyce Byers of “Rings of Power.” She’s a single mom whose son finds a mysterious object, which leads to all kinds of trouble for the neighbors. I guess Arondir is the Sheriff Jim Hopper of the series. BTW, it’s impossible to get a fade haircut in Middle Earth because there are no electric razors. Amazon should have given its "Galadriel" a different name. She's nothing like the character in the books nor the Peter Jackson trilogy. Morfydd Clark's acting is as bland as Amber Heard's. The dialogue sounds like it was written by a child.
    "You don’t know what’s down there." — Bronwyn
    "That is the reason I must go." — Arondir    … Expand
  21. TlatoaniDaz
    Sep 5, 2022
    1
    The story is a snore fest the casting of "Galadriel" is terrible and the lore is not Tolkien. It's simply not Tolkien.
  22. NickGreen90125
    Sep 5, 2022
    10
    Imagine, for a moment, that you'd never heard of JRR Tolkien, or Peter Jackson, or The Lord of the Rings. You just heard there's a great new fantasy series coming out that you have to watch. You switch on - are you disappointed?

    From the opening shots, you can see that these creators mean business. The designs, effects and cinematography are the best you've ever seen in a TV show, in    Imagine, for a moment, that you'd never heard of JRR Tolkien, or Peter Jackson, or The Lord of the Rings. You just heard there's a great new fantasy series coming out that you have to watch. You switch on - are you disappointed?

    From the opening shots, you can see that these creators mean business. The designs, effects and cinematography are the best you've ever seen in a TV show, in fact, better than in many movies. You meet characters, many of them - there isn't much time to get to know them, but the scripts and actors do a great job at nailing them down very efficiently, so by the end of the first hour they are growing clear in your head: the driven, obsessive, implacable Galadriel, the shrewd politician Elrond, the world-weary King Gil-Galad, the stolid soldier Arondir and his forbidden mortal crush Bronwyn, and her truculent, secretive son Theo. You meet the ramshackle, chaotic Harfoots and the feisty Nori who is always pushing boundaries and getting into scrapes; it feels like more than an hour must have passed, because already these people are starting to feel like old friends.

    Is it Tolkien? Yes and no. Yes in a good way - it's a new story grown in the same soil as the original books, based on Tolkien's barely-sketched synopsis of the Second Age of Middle Earth. And also No - but again, in a good way. It recognises that a story whose genesis began nearly a hundred years ago can be raised, developed and adapted to modern storytelling styles and methods. It doesn't have to stagnate, and be merely a literary relic - something that was written once, long ago. The Rings of Power returns Middle Earth to how it should be: a living, breathing, ever-growing and evolving land of myth.

    If you're a fan, watch it. If you've never got into Middle Earth before, still watch it. This might finally be your way in.    … Expand
  23. Jennerwein
    Sep 5, 2022
    3
    Some beautiful landscape and scene pictures and the music is really nice, but after the first two episodes there is a big feeling of disappointment. The characters are weak portrayed, the dialogues are abysmal and pseudo-intellectual, not a glance of the beauty of language from Tolkiens works is in this show. Up until now, the plot is just shockingly dull.
  24. Heasly
    Sep 5, 2022
    0
    Far from cannon. There was absolutely no respect for the lore. Tolkien fans have every right to be upset.
  25. Cjoseph
    Sep 5, 2022
    2
    Very bad casting, and not just the forced diversity. Elrond is boring and weak. Gil Galad is also boring. The Harfoot scenes are a joke - just silly.

    The elf/woman plot line just uninteresting. The dialogue between those two characters is exceptionally bad. Just flat.. no epicness . No character I find interesting or epic. The dialogue is the worst part. Pseudo profound to the point of    Very bad casting, and not just the forced diversity. Elrond is boring and weak. Gil Galad is also boring. The Harfoot scenes are a joke - just silly.

    The elf/woman plot line just uninteresting. The dialogue between those two characters is exceptionally bad.

    Just flat.. no epicness . No character I find interesting or epic.

    The dialogue is the worst part. Pseudo profound to the point of being cringe. No Ian mckellen to save the day.

    Not to mention the slaughtering of Tolkien's world.

    Even for casual non Tolkien funs this is boring.

    The visuals can be pretty but that's not nearly enough.

    The music is also surprisingly nothing to write home about    … Expand
  26. ZheakanRUS
    Sep 5, 2022
    3
    Скучно, сюжет не очень, некоторые герои деревянные, графика только хорошая но слишком много ее (3 только за графику)
  27. megid0
    Sep 5, 2022
    0
    “Evil cannot create anything new, they can only corrupt and ruin good forces have invented or made"
    J. R. R. Tolkien
  28. JevvyReacts
    Sep 5, 2022
    2
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. I started watching this and so far I've been cringing throughout. It looks pretty but it stinks of terrible writing already. The acting is like they're reading the script instead of actually acting, for the for the most part. The music is okay but doesn't do anything when there's terrible dialogue and **** characters. I think I don't want to continue watching this visceral and brutal disrespect for Tolkien, on his death anniversary no less. This was such a disappointment despite me lowering expectations, my expectations were exceeded by how bad this really was. I had to stay caffeinated to sit through the entire episode and for the most part just laughed out loud. Wait, is this a comedy or are they trying to disrespect Tolkien even more? The dialogue is so terrible they seem as if they are reading from a teleprompter instead of actually acting. What is this? A Shakespearean tragedy? Yes this show is definitely a tragedy, a billion dollar tragedy. Wow. I went in hoping it was going to be good but it really fell flat and completely went off-road from Tolkien lore. That took me out of the show as well but what took me out was the dialogue, most of all. The costumes already look terrible, especially the armour!! At one point it looked like paper plate armour on Guy-Galadriel. Some of the characters are insufferable already and it's the FIRST episode!! Galadriel is by far the most unlikable already, I couldn't help but facepalm and roll my eyes every time she blatantly insulted someone or did warrior things. It is completely off-character for her, she was already supposed to be the most powerful of the Noldor!! What does she have to prove?? It's frustrating! The haircuts in this show!! Is there a barber shop in Middle-Earth I didn't know about?? It just takes you out of the immersion of the story and your eyes would start wandering off elsewhere.

    (To everyone who thought this review was before the show came out, I have an Amazon subscription. I am working on a video essay covering all the reasons why this review is 2 stars.)    … Expand
  29. CancelPrime
    Sep 5, 2022
    0
    This show does not sound like, feel like or look like how you imagine Lord of the Rings. The 'elves' are old-faced and terrible. Why one of the characters has an 18th century style wig like this is some costume drama, I don't know.

    The dialogue is corny, not sounding Tolkien-esque at all, and the acting is wooden for the most part. Characters have such a range of different accents, even    This show does not sound like, feel like or look like how you imagine Lord of the Rings. The 'elves' are old-faced and terrible. Why one of the characters has an 18th century style wig like this is some costume drama, I don't know.

    The dialogue is corny, not sounding Tolkien-esque at all, and the acting is wooden for the most part. Characters have such a range of different accents, even those from the same community, that it really breaks the immersion.

    The show has no respect for Tolkien or his vision, messing up his timeline, cutting out plot points in a way that makes the whole thing make no sense and the people involved look stupid, focusing on characters that aren't in the lore or changing the character of existing ones entirely.

    The musical score is overused, filling every second of silence and trying to make it more epic than it is, not letting people take it in.

    The main character, Galadriel, is nothing like Cate Blanchett's perfect rendition of her, instead she is insufferable and even unlikeable. Her action scenes look like something out of a Marvel movie, which is out of place here (and yes, those Legolas superhero scenes were out of place as well, but not as offensive as he wasn't the main character by a long shot).

    Amazon pays no homage to Tolkien or even Peter Jackson's superb example of how to bring LOTR to the screen, instead says 'we can do it better', forcibly changes things like the aesthetic of the elves, relies far too heavily on CGI, and falls flat on its face.

    There is nothing redeeming here. Cast it into the fire.    … Expand
  30. vlajko
    Sep 5, 2022
    0
    First two episode are pure and utter garbage! Its 1bil dollars disaster.
    Maybe in 3rd ep we will see Optimus Prime fights T1000, cant wait...
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Awards & Rankings

1
#1 Most Discussed TV Season of 2022

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
71

Generally favorable reviews - based on 40 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 31 out of 40
  2. Mixed: 9 out of 40
  3. Negative: 0 out of 40
  1. The New Yorker
    Reviewed by: Jo Livingstone
    Sep 16, 2022
    80
    Adar’s début drips with signifiers. ... When Adar informs Arondir in Episode 4 that he has been told many lies, some that “run so deep even the rocks and roads now believe them,” it is still a thrill. Tolkien succeeded in creating a mythic world, one that has now grown vast enough through acts of typological repetition and imitation to conquer television, too.
    Read full review
  2. Slant Magazine
    Reviewed by: Chris Barsanti
    Sep 16, 2022
    63
    With war brewing and the forging of the rings seemingly still far off, the first half of The Rings of Power’s first season constitutes little more than stage-setting for the struggle to come. Given the lack of quests and central commanding figures, it often makes for less-than-gripping drama. However, given that there are four more seasons already planned, and potentially dozens of new characters to be introduced, the slow and throat-clearing build is possibly a good sign.
    Read full review
  3. TV Guide Magazine
    Reviewed by: Matt Roush
    Sep 9, 2022
    90
    The Rings of Power is a reminder of what drew many of us to epic fantasy in the first place: wonder. ... This series set in an ancient realm displays one dazzling and painterly landscape after another. Power also doesn't skimp on action. [12 - 25 Sep 2022, p.10]
    Read full review
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