Following Amazon’s The Rings of Power premiering yesterday, users were quick to leave negative reviews and/or scores – so now Amazon has hidden reviews altogether from the show.
This isn’t the first and won’t be the last divisive Hollywood production that corporate critics love but the audience hates. The show’s Rotten Tomatoes score is still live with a staggering 36% rotten user score to the curious 84% critic score.
Frequent criticism on The Rings of Power, which currently only has two episodes available, point to changes from Tolkien’s original writings or the lack of his prose, considering the source is based on appendices and not original and edited novels.
Some key criticisms point to bad writing, bad CGI, the inclusion of dark-skinned elves, dwarves, and hobbits (there were none in Tolkien’s work). Some users also point to previous teases like female orcs (Tolkien’s original explanation was that orcs were born from mud and slime).
Amazon has reportedly halted user reviews for 72 hours (via THR) to “help weed out trolls” and ensure “each review is legitimate.” The source claims that Prime Video has been using this policy all summer on all their original production, not just The Rings of Power.
The real debate will be how far will Amazon go with combating what they deem “trolls”? Will they suspend all user reviews/scores like Netflix did with Amy Schumer’s atrocious “comedy”?
It’s worth pointing out Amazon, unlike Netflix, is a retail giant and sell more than their own programming – and rely heavily on product promotion via user ratings/reviews.
Many user reviews for The Rings of Power on Rotten Tomatoes have completely fair criticisms, like this one: “It looks fine for the most part, but it suffers from the same CGI problems of Star Wars I-III: actors on green screens trying to interact with sets that aren’t there. Without Tolkien’s verse to draw from, the script is lame.”
Some users even admit that they’d rather watch HBO’s latest Game of Thrones thingy: “Just an awful mess that put me to bed early. I’ll stick with House of the Dragon. ‘Evil cannot create anything new, they can only corrupt and ruin good forces have invented or made’ – Tolkien.”
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