Someone releases something. And the internet has opinions. This is basically how it goes. Success is much less a game of producing a quality item and much more a game of how many waves of clout can be generated.

Clout.
If there is a concept I hate in 2022, must be this one. Clout is not money, is not power, inspiration or even influence. The fact that a lot of people may see content linked to a specific idea or brand. These people probably are not going to buy it, just come across to it in the tiny screen of their phone. But somehow, clout has become in the key that opens the door to money. Production companies, corporative entities and other groups of middle aged cis straight men that smoke cigars only will green light a project if somehow attracts enough little eyes in couples. This capacity is measured in clout. And does not matter (not really) if those millions of little eyes stop to consciously choose and consume (or purchase) a product. If that product is good, digestible or plain awful, matters even less. Because statistics and data and smart things so more people see something = more money.

It reminds me of the story of that girl on Instagram that had two million followers and yet she couldn’t sell more than thirty t shirts of her brand new clothing line. Sadly, in 2022 clout is the reigning religion and the superior entities withholding the money to fund any project will not play any other game. In the post-streaming era, every single platform wants to become somehow indispensable. And they may be approaching it all wrong. Big companies seem to seek to generate agitation, whilst trying to create a compelling product has totally taken a backseat.

An Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. And the human intellect seems to be running out. Pretty fast. In an era in which the attention span from the audience lasts about eight seconds, corporations have resorted into creating traffic, not valuable media products. This is why we have four Pinocchio movies coming out this year. FOUR.
Disney’s live action Pinocchio coming this fall.
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, on Netflix.
Pinocchio: A True Story, by Lionsgate films.
And Pinocchio and the Water of Life.
All this because Pinocchio’s copyright, the original 1881 Italian children’s book, has lapsed, making it public domain.

Amazon has spent a lot of money creating the Rings Of Power. 500 million dollars on the show itself and half of that get the juicy juicy intellectual property of the Tolkien universe. Well… almost. Showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay in an interview with Vanity Fair have stated,
“We have the rights solely to The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King, the appendices, and The Hobbit […] We do not have the rights to The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, The History of Middle-earth, or any of those other books.”

The takeaway here is how the Tolkien Estate wins in all this by basically compromising zero of their intellectual property and running away with all the coin. A lesson for everyone out there with any juicy original idea; Do like Warhammer, literally sell small portions of the IP as little golden nuggets and watch everything burn while you cash the check.

It has been a month and a half since Rings Of Powers has ended, and the gods of the internet are not very happy with it. And I am not going to get into the details of why…
Who am I fooling. Yes, I will. I will go in every single detail of why it’s a flawed show.

Was Tolkien a great writer? You can drag me for this but, I DON’T THINK SO. He was a very good writer and an amazing world builder. So much so that he built full languages in an imaginary world with thousands of years of history. He created a mind-blowingly amazing parallel universe that later Peter Jackson made into one of the best (If not the best) fantasy trilogies of all time. I love the books and movies so much that I could go on and on about why they are so incredible, and a lot of people have similar feelings on that matter. Some may say that it’s the power of melancholy, but it’s actually the power of well-planned passion projects with adequate resources. Not like The Hobbit. We do not talk about The Hobbit movies, they do not exist.

There are a lot of stupid reasons to hate Rings of Power. Like the race thing some people found so upsetting. Yes, we have black elves and dwarfs here, we try to convey the reality of our world in the media now, and the reality is that our world is diverse, get over with it. You also see winged dragons being mentioned when in the cannon they do not appear until the 3rd age and I don’t hear you moan about it.
There are also a lot of good reasons to hate Rings of Power like It’s fuelled by Amazon (and all the children of the most toxic late-stage capitalism) or its more than questionable writing.
I did not like the majority of the casting choices. After Cate Blanchet and Hugo Weaving I think is safe to say that every elf should be played by an Australian. Guy Pearce, Toni Colette, Heath Ledger, Nicole Kidman, Rose Byrne, Chris Hemsworth, Naomi Watts, Margot Robbie, Brendan Cowell or Richard Roxburgh are very valid elves and the list goes on forever. Really, someone should research this, beacouse the outlandishness of the Australian deserves to be investigated.

Worst part is probably the writing and the direction.

It feels rushed while slow, It’s mixing timelines and its internally inconsistent and space and time have no value. When the cannon is respected, they do change something to inconsequentially affect the plot, and when not, it goes against the cannon. At one point it becomes a game of ‘Who is Sauron?’ and ‘Who is Gandalf?’, and a production like this cannot live in the hype of pre-existing characters for its whole success.
Rings of Power is almost a reflection of our current society. Where political correctness meets class fight. It is race inclusive but is still tremendously classist. Elves are still depicted with a posh accent, while folk are given a northern British accent.

Ans let’s not even get into the metaphor of the boat that floats and the rock that sinks because I will definitely will need to get to the light while pushing through the darkness if I do. To enjoy this piece of multimedia I found necessary to disengage from anything prior, including the original material. It is quite hard to maintain the suspension of disbelief, even within the cannon. So many weird choices ended up affecting the overarching story in a negative way, even when they have gone against the lore.
And I say lore beacouse I took the time to count a couple of changes that don’t make any sense. Nerd alert.

CANNON	SERIES
Valinor is the paradise, so no daggers, no fighting, only good vibes.	Cliché deep conversation: “why does a boat float?”, loads of angst.
Some elves (the one who participated in Feanor’s oath) did sail in boats to the middle earth, but most of them, including Galadriel and Finrod did it by land, crossing the icy north of the Helcaraxe.	The elves follow Melkor by boat.
1st Age: Beleriand exists. 2nd Age: Beleriand is underwater after the Akallabeth.	Beleriand is omitted.
Sauron did not multiply orcs and was not haunted down. He did show remorse and pretended to be “good” again, to trick and betray everyone again, obviously.	“Who is Sauron?” hehe cheeky cheeky wink wink.
Galadriel was banned from Valinor because she refused to go once was offered entrance in the !st Age. Elves were allowed to move in between the undying lands and the middle earth somehow freely.	Gil – Galad decides that the war is over and takes the elves out from the middle earth.

Whatever story you want to tell, make it work. Edit the story in a way that makes sense for the media you are working on. Fifth Element was supposed to be a trilogy and someone came and trimmed that fat to fit in a exciting hour and a half movie where Bruce Willis saves the world kissing Milla Jovovich.

The thing is, if you really want to do whatever the fuck you want and tell whatever story you have in mind already, why spend all that money? Because all this could have been done placing it in a different fantasy world. Literally any. Basic medieval fantasy Europe. Would it be greenlighted if so? Probably not.

Because money wants to breed money and these days only existing IPs get the founding to function, always with the promise of an extended universe of 84 movies and 763 spin offs.
I am not mad at them for butchering the original idea, I am mad because it showed me the nasty inner works of a exhausted industry.

Game of thrones left a bitter taste in the most of us, so House of Dragon is setup for success, while Peter Jackson’s movies are amazing and well-remembered in our collective consciousness. And don’t get me wrong, I think that House of Dragon is great, but it’s playing a totally different game. A game in which people are thirsty for more Westeros content, and since the writers’ of the original series have fucked up so badly, everyone is approaching it with a very cold mind.

Rings of Power it’s just a very loud cash spending machine that wants to be remembered and heard no matter what. And then we have the fact that Amazon actively tried to shut down negative critics and all that social media / forum commentary mess that’s just sad.
I do not mind an story straying away from its original source as long as it makes sense in the big picture. They had all the means, they had the power, and yet somehow they failed.
Hardcore Tolkien fans won’t care because they perverted it too much. The tension between the invented storylines and the knowledge of the world that they demand is huge; and these geeks (like me) won’t disengage emotionally from the original material.

Casuals don’t care because they don’t know enough to enjoy it.

Why set it on middle earth then?
Why not invent a new story in a new setting?
It’s not that we are not creating new things, is that no one wants to give money for them. Everyone it’s too scared to start something new, and when they do, and it works, they want to milk it ad eternum.
I miss when Underworld could have five movies done withour an extended universe. I miss random little movies with little and impactful stories will pop up out of nowhere.

Create something new, damn it, do not be scared.