Reflection and Analysis

Rings of Power - Disecting Reviews (9/22/2022)

So, I've been looking through the "positive reviews" for Rings of Power, and what do those say about those supporting the show?

I'm going to start with a review left three hours ago on Rotten Tomato (RT) by someone named J G, but I'll start by saying this particular reviewer has only ever reviewed Rings of Power. Their review starts off by saying the following.

"Triggered wannabe fans and so-called Tolkien purists that review bombed this show should just watch something else."

So, I actually take issue with this idea of review bombing, but over in my book Fellowship of the Fan I actually note that if review bombing is a real thing then shows are far more likely to be positively review bombed to counter negative criticism of a show then they are to be negatively review bombed, yet the narrative that review bombing is going on is based on this narrative that those criticizing the show are simply racists despite many funny enough liking Disa, including myself.

And having actually dealt with an actual so-called Tolkien purist back in the day, the person leaving this review honestly has no idea what they're talking about in that regard, because what I remember was these so-called Tolkien purists telling people they couldn't create an Elf OC with any hair color that was canon because those hair colors made the Elf character a Mary Sue, so if you changed a blond haired Elf to having brown hair you could fly under their radar.

The ones being called "so-called Tolkien purists" are people who are actually going back to the books as the two showrunners claimed they were doing and pointing out the errors, but they also recognize that Tolkien was a linguist and said what he meant to say, not something close to that—which is one of Mark Twain's rules for writing, which I say the writers of the show would do a good job learning. And one of the things we've pointed out is the cringe way people take his own words out of context to support their interpretation of the canon, rather then interpreting Tolkien through the lens of his time.

Actually, I'm rather tired of this so called "modern lens" that people are applying, because this so-called "modern lens" is actually a very unrealistic view of the world which ignores everything that's come before it simply because old is bad. This includes, by the way, any movie or television show that has an all Black cast, or one that has a strong female lead, or that has featured LGBT rep because apparently it doesn't exist, but the diverse cast are being used as a shield against criticism for bad writing.

And—if diverse casting were an issue, why then is it that us supposed so-called Tolkien purists have been asking why they didn't make the Harad people of color?

Instead, Rings of Power decided to whitewash Tolkien's ethnically colored racial group and present them as unclean heathens whereas the one member who is colored gets to actually bathe and is meant to be seen as a competent leader because of girl power despite actually showing quite a bit of incompetence as do our other three female leaders. Which, as a female fan of Tolkien, I'll take my Eowyn female empowerment over this any day. But, apparently powerful female characters didn't exist in canon.

Which of course makes us the wannabe fans, us who want the lore to be stuck with and any changes made to the canon to be justifiable, and no—the so-called "modern lens" doesn't count.

It's not J G here who just so happens to have taken the time to write a singular review on RT while not touching any of the other Middle Earth adaptions, for which there are actual works that came before Jackson of which I've seen all of them.

Should we watch something else?

Well, isn't this show supposed to be made for Tolkien fans? I mean, why else would one take on an existing IP if you weren't trying to draw in that fanbase, so contrary to what people say, Rings of Power was made for Tolkien fans, otherwise they wouldn't be needing to use an existing IP, right?