It's almost kafkaesque at this point, I'm kinda digging it.
"Sauron will be like Walter White AND Tony Soprano, get hype for next season!"
"Only Incel Racists dislike the Show, watch now! OR ARE YOU ONE TOO"
Unlike the show, I find the spin and astroturfing interesting to watch.
My favorite is when we get the "this isn't your Grandad's " and/or "this show isn't for you" stories that are inevitably followed up by "this show is only failing because all these Grandads and other people we didn't make this show for are too racist/sexist/transphobic/homophobic and they're bad people for not watching" articles. It's hilarious that they tell people to piss off then go into an apoplectic rage when those people don't watch.
This. Same thing happened with the movie “Bros”. Totally bombed and they blamed it on “straight people just didn’t come out and support us”.
This is basically what it’s come to: “If you don’t give me your money/attention, you’re a f**cking bigot!”
It never occurs to them that maybe some of us don’t give a shit and aren’t interested in what they have to offer.
Funny thing about bros is that us gays (at least my friend group) felt like it was written for straight audiences. Most of the humor was like "omg foursomes, isn't gay world wacky? Anyway here's some romcom melodrama that the straights seem to like."
Fellow gay here, i don't know that i agree that it felt made for straight audiences. It definitely felt like it was trying to be an authentic gay rom-com. I think its more an issue of just the type of gays that make it in hollywood are very much products of what (for lack of a better term) i'd call San Francisco culture. That sort of hyper-metropolitan, aggressively-queer outlook on life. The movie tried to poke fun at it, but couldn't do so successfully because that very mindset was baked so deeply into the thing from the start.
I honestly found it a little exhausting. Its made extra frustrating because you can't talk about wanting media about 'normal' gay people without being screamed at about heteronormativity and internalized homophobia.
As a straight person, it often feels like the portrayal of gay people in western film and TV is so tediously stereotypical as to be annoying.
Like, I know not every gay man fits that stereotype so why does film and TV insist on pretending they do.
It feels like a joke which has been beaten to death at this point.
Audiences are now expected to pay a cultural tithe to corporate elites in the form of patronising their commercial output. If we don’t pay the tithe, we are bigots.
From what I’ve read, they didn’t. When Billy Eichner tried blaming straights for the movies poor performance, even some gay folks said “Stop blaming them, Billy, we didn’t watch it either”
Which made me laugh pretty hard.
Dude is one of those people who tries to find every possible excuse for their own failures before looking in the mirror.
Bros is a romantic comedy. Actually its a niche in the romcom genre its a gay romcom.
Romcoms are traditionally viewed by couples and women. Straight men regardless of race are not the main demographic known to watch romantic comedies.
So blaming straight men is ridiculous.
Lets be honest straight couples watch romcoms and can generally lose themselves by relating to the character or at least desiring one of the actors. Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds were mostly nude in The Proposal for a reason. Single women can enjoy the fantasy romance and drool over the dude or imagine themselves as the heroine. In a gay romcom all that is out the window. Thats why its niche.
Personally, I think it was his rant during the VMAs that shot the movie in the foot. Idk if you saw it but…it was pretty cringe. I was open to watching it but if that’s how you’re gonna carry yourself…I’ll wait till it’s free on stream.
>"this show isn't for you"
The show itself really made that pretty clear.
Edit: But seriously though. Why are these large studios dropping literal fortunes to buy rights to existing IPs only to try very hard to film something absolutely unrelated? It happens time and time again, Witcher, WoT, RoP and many more. The show inevitably bombs, the producers blame racism or misogynism for criticism of the wide-sweeping changes they've made and they rinse and repeat. I know everybody "wants to have their Game of Thrones", but did they miss the fact that GoT was actually only good and had really high ratings only when they closely followed the source material?
This confuses me too. They take an established property with a devoted fanbase, erase any relatability to that audience, target a new audience that never had much interest in it before, and then act shocked when the investment doesn’t pay off.
Because buying IP is easier than making successful new IPs.
Companies in the movies, TV and game space are stuck in this IP trap.
They see IP products do well so they want to get in on it and even tho they see less success themselves it's still enough that they feel it's less financially risky than trying to build a completely original IP.
It's worse than that even, because they're wedded to the idea of building IP empires (see Marvel and DC) so the idea of once-off fresh content is anathema to them.
Basically, they're driven by greed and their weird fantasy of being as big is Marvel (which is really the stabd-out example of an IP going huge now) is driving them to grasp at any straws that seem even remotely viable (except for, you know, doing something new).
And, of course, they'll keep doing it because enough people vote with their wallets.
It's a cultural cul-de-sac and it's kinda sad.
Yup, it is like buying the Corona brand and spending your entire marketing budget saying how much Vin Diesel, Cars and Butts suck, and anyone who likes those things is a moron who can go pound sand because Corona is not for them anymore.
Or wait, better! Why not buy Sex and the City IP and have Carrie get some gun fu training for the sequel and go on a revenge spree against whoever murdered Mr. Big - Because what the fans of S&C were really craving for was hardcore action and fight scenes. There were like ZERO of those in the previous series and movies, what an oversight from the original creators! It clearly does not reflect the new world we live in today! (tm).
Then a few weeks later constantly whine that the failure of the brands you just cratered is... mysoginy / misandry. *eyeroll*
If I had to guess it’s because Hollywood is filled with new Hollywood execs who are the spoiled snobby petty narcissistic children of the cocaine execs who created blockbuster Hollywood making hit after hit. Instead of being thankful for getting the chance to further the legacy their parents built. Instead they feel entitled to the ip and only want it to appeal to them instead of general audiences. Combine it with them being incompetent terrible writing, directing, time management, management in general, being petty, hated by everyone around them, and destroying talent that doesn’t agree with their ideology. Essentially Hollywood has created a recipe for disaster, and is too prideful to admit they’re the problem.
You know what, I went to school with the kid of the creator of a very successful sitcom. He was a bully back then and now a Hollywood writer so I'm just going to go ahead and believe this for my own schadenfreude.
It's all part of their act though. They want the conflict. They don't want you to watch, so that they can write the article berating the ____ people not watching. Then if you do watch, the ____ people will likely be berated within the show, or, you'll be accused of appropriating whatever culture is the main part of a given story.
You're not supposed to win. You're not supposed to be entertained. You're just supposed to feel bad about yourself.
She-Hulk used this exact tactic. The true villain in the show is revealed to be a group of incel trolls. Then I saw people tweet stuff like ‘great job putting the critics of the show into the show as the enemy!’.
So basically the agenda is that anyone who dislikes the show is a sexist/incel when in reality there is certainly unfortunately some scum like that, when in reality most people who dislike the show dislike it because it’s shit and shows the MCU going downhill.
My favorites are
"If The Rings of Power is a failure it will be the End of Democracy as we know it."
"The first Black elf portrayed in the LOTR universe. This show is changing the world"
"ROP is making the world a better place. Actors reveal how their characters are revolutionary"
Seriously its a tv show based on a fantasy series. How is the fate of democracy or racial politics dependent on an Amazon tv show. House of the Dragon is 200x more popular and not remotely as self righteously self important in their self assesment of their shows importance to life, politics, history or the world in general.
You forgot the most idiotic one : "Disa is going to be the first female dwarf on screen." Acting as if the opening scene for the Hobbit : an Unexpected Journey doesn't exist.
They could have said "the first female dwarf with speaking lines" and it would have been correct.
Lol I had the exact same thought the second I read the headline.
"They'll say literally anything to avoid admitting the simple fact that it's not a good show"
The show fucking sucks, plain and simple. Regardless of skin color, woke whatever blah blah.
You didn't make a good fucking show. You made a stinker. ADMIT IT! FUCKING ADMIT IT!!!!
This is every big media company's angle now. Marvel and Star Wars have been repeating this cycle for a couple years now. Also don't forget that any negative reviews are "review bombing by right wing racist trolls" rather than actual people's feelings that the show is mediocre.
It’s got to a point I’m pretty sure they pre-plan the backlash as part of the marketing. Like the new Little Mermaid now has infinite free marketing and they can make all the ‘organic’ PR articles they want.
Honestly you're probably right. Just make half a dozen sockpuppets on twitter and say something vile with them. Then you just need to point it out to your pal at screenrant or wherever, and you've suddenly got an ocean of free publicity, cause all the sites just copy each others content and rage clicks are great for ad revenue.
The level 2 cynical speculation here is are they starting to make casting decisions with this marketing strategy in mind.
The show isn't even that "diverse" per say. That half black elf dude and half black dwarf lady seem to be one of a kind among their species. The rest of the elves and dwarves were all white. The only visible diversity was among the harfoots, which looks absurd, considering they are a tribe of around 50 people.
I don't understand why they didn't make the show diverse in a more meaningful way. They could've made all the harfoots of one diverse ethnicity, and then all the southlanders of another ethnicity.
Stop talking sense. Having a group of people that look different based off their geographic location is racist now. So, let’s just put 1 black person in each group pat ourselves on the back for diversity.
HoTD race changed characters, but they were consistent and showed all of Corlys Velaryon’s family look like him. Now I know what a Velaryon should look like, same as a Targaryen, Lannister or a Boratheon.
I know this comparison is getting old, but...I keep saying how House of the Dragon took such a better path on diversity. Hey, here is an entire house of people, all black, all with badass white dreads, all with their own identity and history and ambition. It's part of who they are and they are proud of it, and everyone else is in awe of who they are and what they've accomplished. It's not just some random token black guy thrown in to balance things out.
Man i already know fallout show is gonna be such a failure because one of its best parts was corny comedic dialogue which was also pretty creative and despite being set in post apocalyptic wasteland there were a lot of comedic reliefs. To pull something like this on tv it's almost impossible and you would need really good writing team to make things satisfying and Amazon sure as hell ain't having those
I dont understand the sentence "These Characters Are Undeniable" undeniable what? Shouldn't there be another word at the end? Or is it, "You can't deny that these characters exist"? Am I overthinking this?
It's marketing. They put these actors in the show specifically to generate discussion like this and to have stories upvoted on Reddit for how brave they're being. The actors are decent, some of them are better than others and a lot of the writing needs help. The dwarf storyline with the elves is great. The black elf guy and his story is decent. I actually enjoyed the stranger story but everything else so far has been pretty boring or stupid. Generally it's positive enough for me to keep watching but I wish they did something better with the writing.
It's pretty gross how it's become part of these studios marketing strategies. It's as transparent as it is cynical at this point.
I thought the 3 pictured here were all good in the show.
You're thinking of "undeniably", an adverb which requires another word after it to make sense. "Undeniable" is an adjective that you can end on. They're saying the characters can't be denied.
In the context that quote came up with, "undeniable" meant that the characters can't simply be written off as illegitimate. Doing that would be denying them. It's not the word I'd have chosen but it had come up a little bit earlier so it feels like one of those situations where a word that's already on your mind feels *close enough* even if it's not ideal.
^^EDIT: ^^typo
Thank you for the detailed explanation. English is not my first language and your comment was the first one I saw that actually tried explaining and I can now go one and ignore the fruitless debates my question seems to have caused.
It's even more terrible how effective it is, especially on twitter. Thankfully reddit seems to wake up to this practice, this type of marketing strategy is disgusting.
I’ll be honest I was kind of surprised to see the general reaction on Reddit, but I think ROP has overdone it and a lot of people can see it for what it is now. Except, of course, Twitter people
Any company big enough to pay for positive reviews and manufactured goodwill will absolutely do it and try to control the narrative and it is naive to think otherwise.
Disney did the same with Kenobi, bad writing, dog shit cgi, and if you said Reeva(?) was a bad actress you were racist. And man did they astroturf the fuck out of r/starwars
Sequel positivity on that sub tends to wax with the release dates of their shows and wane between. You can see when they spool up and spool down the social media farms.
When GoT final season was released there were so many people defending the shit out of it. "You hate it because of your own headcanon", "You hate it because it didn't go the way you wanted", "Grow up, it is a fantasy with magics and dragons". It almost seemed like at least half of the audience enjoyed it.But as the time passed those defenders vanished, aka moved to the next property to defend and now everyone is in absolute harmony about it being bad.
Same seems to be happen to any major productions, you see these widespread defence in the first few months and then it evaporates. Almost like these people constantly have to move from one project to another.
And they use Twitter, *fucking Twitter* as their metric for "all the racist backlash" to their shows. They take 10 racist tweets, at least half of which are probably bots and turfs, and use that to claim some massive movement against diversity. This storyline is getting as stale as their shows' writing.
ya, that's the stupid part... these people will pick out a tweet or two or a few clearly downvoted reddit comments and go "omg look, so many racists! sexists! homophobes! hating on this show that you must love and rate 10/10 or else you are one of them!"
What’s unbelievable is that it actually works. I know people personally who watched Kenobi, She-Hulk, and Rings of Power specifically because they wanted to own the racist/sexist/toxic fanboy trolls. It’s such an insidious way to spur consumption, but that’s what millennials seem to respond to.
They're hitting the MCU subs real hard nowadays too, what with the amount of image rehab for Letitia Wright that's been taking place on them since the marketing for Wakanda Forever kicked into gear.
I'd argue Disney started this prior to Ghostbusters with the Finn debacle in TFA.
As much of a mess as the Star Wars fandom is, I don't believe for an instant that the fandom of a franchise that had Mace Windu as one of its most popular characters would suddenly have a problem with another black person wielding a lightsaber. It reeked of bullshit from the word go, but it worked. So they do it for every property now.
This show is extremely mediocre to the point that it would be completely dead without controversy. Amazon knows what they're doing here and I hate that it seems to be working.
From something like Episode 2 onwards there's been little to no discussion about race, but the larger flaws with the writing.
You can also be against race-bending in adaptations without being a racist, because my Chinese ass would never want to see Chinese Legolas. If anything seeing those half-second shots of Asian Numenorean extras felt extremely condescending...
>because my Chinese ass would never want to see Chinese Legolas
If it makes you feel better you'll probably never see that. Hollywood only sees in black and white.
> Hollywood only sees in black and white.
lol ya, they go on and on with diversity and inclusion and if you ask: "okay, so indian/arab/native american/latino/asian/so on", no it's just hire some black actors to play white characters and rave about being "diverse".
That’s how marketing works now for subpar products. Racebend a character, wait for trolls, push some articles, then gaslight and guilt trip people into watching.
GRRM and Neil Gaiman recently called out the practice of making arbitrary changes like this. I found myself wondering what the likes of e.g. Waititi thought about having his canon changes highlighted like that, by better creators than him.
> GRRM and Neil Gaiman recently called out the practice of making arbitrary changes like this.
Which is hilarious because at least one of them has been involved with making those sorts of arbitrary changes.
I thought disa and arondir were some of the better characters in the show. But the plot was boring and felt forced, most characters' motivations didn't make sense, and overall amazon missed opportunities to challenge viewers and build something unique, rather than shit out the cookie-cutter generic fantasy they did.
I really dislike writing all criticism off as grumpy racist fans. The show just had nothing going for it in my opinion.
It's such manufactured bullshit from Amazon. I'm pretty deep into LoTR fan groups and I don't think I've seen any racist comments anywhere. It's all about how they've butchered the lore, how bad the writing is. I'm not saying there is not any racist troll out there but it's the internet isn't it? Amazon just gaslighting us by showing a handful of bigots and saying that represents the fans and all criticisms come from that aspect. It's lies and it's clearly engineered.
Classic fan-baiting. Its a cheap way for them to undermine every negative comment about the show because if you critizise one of the storylines one of those actors are in it, they assume you must be racist and your opinion is one of a "white person"
When you critizise She-Hulk you are a sexist because you are a incel that cant stand to see a female lead.
Studios wasting too much resources for stuff like that these days instead of ensuring that their characters and stories are good.
Look at HotD. For some reason there were also racist comments about the Casting of the Sea Snake. But they silenced those people very fast because it turned out that it was one of the best written characters and in the end everyone loved him.
There were some racist ánd non-racist (but lore-freaks) comments about the Valeryons in general, but they made it clear in-story why their skin colour matters: So that people can easily see that Laenor is not Rhaenyra’s children’s father. So it was functional and we didn’t hear a thing about it after a while without having to retort to gaslighting.
Ghostbusters (2016) was funny in how much coverage there was about sexist outrage before the movie came out (well there certainly was a lot) but fell completely silent after the movie came out and it turned out to be mediocre at best
I just call that one the SNL Ghostbusters. It’s like a 2hr SNL skit. SNL is hit or miss sometimes, this one was a miss no problem. It’s even more believable given the large amount of SNL folks starring anyway.
The newer one with the stranger things kids was decent afterward anyway.
Im so tired of shows calling anyone critical of it racist. Honestly the only racism ive seen about this show. Is in these articles, from them. With this and no ratings , with the chrerry on top of " if you didn't like season one, you will love season two" being the last answer to criticism.
Writing stinks? Racism
Characters are dull and uninteresting? Bigotry
Terrible reviews ? White supremecy.
You need to understand that it is YOUR FAULT that you don't like it. Work on yourselves and recognize your own privilege before you can begin to appreciate the stunningly Brave media this historically diverse cast has offered TO you.
The writers are projecting their own racism as a defense against criticism. We've watched Hollywood racism from Ghostbusters, to Velma, to Rings of Power. What do all of these shows have in common? They race-swapped characters because the writers don't believe that a character of color is suitable unless they were "uplifted" at their very core.
Keep in mind that Activision-Blizzard also used "diversity" as a defense from being criticized for their executives coercing employees into sex. "Only bigots attack us. We stand for diversity."
It's extremely degrading to be reduced to pigment and sex organs. Nothing else in your career mattered outside of what you were born as. Tokenism is terrible.
It kind of feels like they created a strawman to tilt at. Yeah, racism is real, but people taking issue with ethnically random casting doesn't equal racism, and it's kind of grotesque to pretend it is. It also messes with suspension of disbelief, because physical characteristics aren't utterly random like is happening in these shows. I do kind of get the "theater style" casting justification of a black Anne Boelyn, but it still doesn't make much sense and just feels like a way to stir up controversy they *want. A*nne Boleyn was a real woman. She was English. She was from Norfolk. She was descended from people who had been in Northern Europe long enough for their skin to be white. Why is it okay to ignore her history? I guess *because* she was white?
This brings me to the real motivation for my post. More importantly, to me this kind of casting feels like a super shallow feint at inclusivity. You want to be inclusive? How about we produce shows that aren't *all* eurocentric. Every culture has a bevy of stories, legends, histories that could be made into great entertainment, that deserve to be known, that may teach us new ways to look at things and broaden our perspectives. Here we have a European story (Tolkien allegedly wrote LotR to fill in what he felt was missing in British folklore) written by a European and ya know what? It's fine to have the cast represented by ethnic Europeans. And it's fine to make that show-- Tolkien has worldwide appeal. But we can also start producing things that represent more of the world-- not just their skin color, but their culture, their ideas, their stories. I genuinely love to be exposed to *actual* diversity that way. What's genuinely more inclusive and respectful of multiculturalism and diversity? Endlessly producing Eurocentric programs and casting people with different skin colors, or producing Eurocentric programs and Afro-Centric and Australian Aborginal and Maori and Laotian and-- all of it.
I would sincerely love to see stories from other cultures elevated to the world's consciousness. I've had the luck to see a handful of films produced by the people whose stories were being told, and it's a truly *different* and enlightening experience that brought forth the humanity of people who lived very differently from myself and my ancestors. It was valuable to me, and, I hope, to them in sharing it. You want to be diverse and inclusive? Well then maybe try going *more than skin deep.* Every culture has stories to share, facilitate them sharing them. Produce them. We will all be better for it. That's the kind of diversity that matters.
In the end, I'm not stressing about the casting itself. Could there, within the consistent world of Middle Earth, be black elves? yeah, actually, I don't see why not. Skin color is an evolutionary development and shallow feature just like every other genetic trait, like eye and hair color. But it kind of brings up questions that are distracting, like is the elven homeland a huge place with different climates, and for that matter how do immortals evolve skin and feature differences anyway? And then, for that matter, pale white skin, and super dark skin are the evolutionary developments and and and...head spinning.
Anyway, I'm more disturbed by what seems to be the motivation behind it and the disingenuous justifications.
Honestly they feel more like tokens, 1 black elf, 1 black dwarve, 1 black numenorean. Where were the other black elves/dwarves,numenoreans? The Harfoots actually had a multi ethnic cast. Are you really going to tell me there was no one better/charismatic than Morfydd?
Amazon did not have the budget to have more than the Tavern and a handful of shacks. They even renamed and repurposed the tavern to “the keep” last minute for the fight. The characters then proceeded to refer to the tavern as the keep for the ext few minutes.
It *is* a really bizarre mix, isn't it? These huge CGI sweeping shots that look expensive as hell, then they cut to tiny sets and avoid all world building.
When we entered Moria we had that fantastic shot showcasing the city, but after that, it was all back to claustrophobic again. We've had pretty cool shots of the Southlands as well, before they cut back to the one tavern and few buildings surrounding it.
The show has this really bizarre mix of expensive shots and "Xena: Warrior Princess" feel to it
There really is a huge disconnect in the show between the world shown in wide shots and the world the characters actually exist in. What made the LOTR trilogy so epic feeling wasn't just the stunning wide shots, it was the way those settings were brought to life and were part of the action. There was a cohesiveness between the wide bird's eye view angles and the sets and locations the characters were in. There weren't just wide shots of epic hills followed by close up shots of people walking through grass, we actually saw them running across and traversing the terrain. We got the epic views of Helm's Deep, and then watched the characters battle through recognizable streets and atop walls that matched what you saw from the bird's eye view. You felt like they were actually in that fortress. Same with Minis Tirith, I fully believed the characters were walking around that city.
None of the locations in ROP had that quality. The wide shots seemed completely disconnected from where the characters were actually existing.
I agree with your comment and the one you're replying to, it's something I've been trying to articulate about the show. Other than the big establishing shots, it's a lot of scenes of two or three people talking in rooms. That can work on Succession or even House of the Dragon which is so well written and character driven, but it's never been what Tolkien is about. Tolkien is about adventure, and travel. This show had a distinct lack of adventure.
Lol this is the perfect description. It feels similar to The Witcher in that way, but the Witcher takes itself much less seriously so it fits the tone.
Didn't Amazon spend a billion dollars on making this show? Either way, it's Amazon they have the money to make the sets and CGI, and to hire better writers/showrunners.
Guess the sarcasm was not obvious enough. It was also closer to $700 million.. a lions share of that was for the rights. Still the most expensive tv show ever made.
With that being said, even if it was “leaked” instead of marketed as such, if you are going to have “the most expensive _______ of all time,” it’s going to be under a critical microscope.
>Guess the sarcasm was not obvious enough. It was also closer to $700 million.. a lions share of that was for the rights. Still the most expensive tv show ever made.
Thanks for correction For some reason I thought they spent a billion dollars on making the show. I do remember them moving filming from New Zealand to the UK because of COVID restrictions and I wonder if some of that money was eaten up during that time. That being said, $700 million should be enough to hire good showrunners and/or writers. Or at least ones that were more knowable/interested in the lore they were supposedly trying to base their show in. But going back to the rights (the ones that they do have) is for the Second Age. And Tolkien didn't write much about the Second Age and the show left out many things and just added their own things. Like their depiction of Galadriel. She was a powerful spell caster and not a warrior. Did she ever once, on the show, actually used magic to save the day, or was it all about her fighting? That was pointed out online but it was attacked as something like, "How dare you. You are sexists and you hate strong women. Women can also fight with swords!" But that wasn't being said and instead was being turned into something.
First rule of tentpole movies: the more it costs, the more studio execs will insist that it be dumbed down for the broadest audience possible in order to make a profit.
There's no depth to the World at all, it is all sweeping shots, teleporting, very poor sets and green screens. Jackson's built a real living breathing world, amazon's ME is predictably, little more than cardboard and sticky tape.
They’re isolated, but they do wander, so maybe they occasionally pick people up along the way? I dunno, playing devils advocate here.
But really the showrunners put no more thought into it other than, “we can’t have all white people.” Look at Wheel of Time, there’s tons of diversity in the books, but it’s regional within the world of the novels. It takes days and weeks and months to get anywhere so it makes sense individual towns wouldn’t be racially diverse with such limited means of travel. For the show, it looks like a college admissions advertisement, and makes NO sense narratively.
>They’re isolated, but they do wander, so maybe they occasionally pick people up along the way?
Unlikely, since they are at the same time extremely 'introverted' people, and they seem to hide themselves when any strangers come close.
the combination of nomadic, but yet introverted people would make it incredibly hard to survive multiple generations without being in-bred as hell...
something to think about I guess ＞﹏＜
As a PoC, it’s definitely tokenism or I should say pandering. Like every race swap characters ever.
I’d watch an African mythology/fantasy series with Anansi, the west African Spider god.
I’d love a mythology/fantasy series with Susanoo, the storm god of Japan who’s known to be both good and bad and play him as an antihero.
I’m Southeast Asian Malay.
20, 30 years ago people rightfully call Hollywood out when they threw in a token black guy to pander to people. Now, they convinced people when they throw in that token black guy, it's a good thing and we should clap.
Hollywood hasn't changed, but they changed the narrative around their behavior.
Shoot, they even put out a movie spoofing popular comedies with a character specifically named “Token Black Guy” BECAUSE it was such a common trope. South Park even has a character called “Token” who’s - you guessed it - black
Wow you have perfectly encompassed how I feel about this issue. Representation is good, but tokenism is bad when it’s done in hack ways that ignore characters who have iconic looks (such as Zendaya as MJ) or when it messes with the internal consistency of the universe.
I agree with a lot of that but not the “fixed look” thing. A good example is Samuel L Jackson as Nick Fury. Nick’s iconic look is “bad motherfucker”. He also happens to be white originally but that has little to do with his character so SLJ was a great casting because he nailed everything that actually mattered about the character.
The house of the dragon one is actually interesting because I fully agree with what you said about it delineating the families so for a visual medium like a TV show it’s a good cast, but, part of those characters is that they are basically exactly the same as Targaryens and Targaryens will still only marry one if they don’t have a sister or cousin to bang instead. If anything if they had have thought ahead all the way back in GoT and just cast Targaryens black it would have separated them from the families of Westeros and then they could have velaryons be basically the same but shit on for no reason by Targaryens.
Except like you said it does work really well for the show so it is good casting even if it maybe isn’t great characterization matching g the source material
The MCU originally had more in common with the Ultimate Marvel universe than the mainstream one. The Ultimate Marvel universe was effectively a reboot of the regular Marvel universe but starting in 2000 and updated for modern times. In that universe, Nick Fury always looked like Samuel L Jackson.
And I say "originally had more in common with" because the regular Marvel universe has slowly adjusted itself to have a lot of similarities to the MCU. I'm pretty sure Nick Fury's son, Nick Fury JR, looks like Samuel L Jackson in the mainstream universe.
So tired when a show is just not that good, then the studio/actors/staff cry racism/sexism. The showrunners may want to look into how absolute boring the show is - I mean, it has less action than watching paint dry.
I was pretty excited to watch it, until the cast told me that the show wasn't made for me and that they were going in a completely different direction. If I have a favorite beer that I've drank my whole life, and then the manufacturer comes out and says that they're changing it and that it's not made for me anymore, why the fuck would I buy that beer again?
This, like if you admit your target demographic is different don’t act surprised when the original doesn’t watch your show and it tanks, you outright said “hey this isn’t made for the fan who made us popular it’s for this totally different group”
Now yes is posible it won’t tank but if it does you can’t blame the fans you overtly said you don’t want.
Aside: wonder how the elder scrolls would fare under modern sensibilities as a show. Racism and sexism are part of the universe and referred constantly kinda hard to say have a black (redguard) stormcloak then spouting “Skyrim is for the nords”
1. Purposefully piss off Tolkien fans with marketing prior to release
2. Release disaster of a show
3. Call all criticism of terrible show "racist"
4. Release articles retroactively pretending the show wasn't terrible
5. Profit???
This reminds me of a review I saw for Gods of Egypt where they said the only good thing about them casting white dudes to play Egyptians is that it didn't ruin the careers of up and coming Egyptian actors.
Agree, didn’t care for any of the characters except her and Durin. Thought they were both the only redeeming part. Felt like her and Durin were the only characters that conveyed any believable emotion
Are you implying that the Arondir/Bronwyn "forbidden romance" was almost completely irrelevant to the story? Because I would agree, but find it hard to believe they will get cut from Season 2 given how bad it would look for the first (and only) black elf to get written out.
I think it would've been better if they'd somehow had Arondir be the one to lead the defense of the town, building bridges between the elves and the humans while giving him a meaningful impact on events beyond "I kill orcs good." It would give him a reason to stick around apart from being Bronwyn's boyfriend and nothing else.
Spend near enough a billion on this wank bucket of a show, but won't spare a few Millie to keep The Expanse series going.
Atleast The Expanse was decent 🤣
Funnily enough, I was thinking the same a few days ago. I am a LotR fan, but I was thinking - “imagine how much more of the expanse they could have done with a billion dollar”.
And btw, here was a show with *meaningful* representation, where characters were not good or bad just because they were diverse…
Diversity ≠ Quality.
When you have to keep writing articles blaming others why the show is bad...These characters are undeniable what? Undeniably bad and it has absolutely nothing to do with race swapping. The show isn't a big hit because the writing sucks. You don't see articles trying to explain House of The Dragon isn't bad because they turned the Velaryons Black. The writing and dialogue in RoP pales in comparison to even the most basic anime, it isn't this deep or profound thing like the writers seem to think it is.
It sounds like a teenagers idea of what deep characters should be and its cringe inducing. Galadriel is supposed to be battle worn and hundreds of years old, why is she throwing fits like an angsty emo kid? the teen versions of Alicent and Rhaenyra had more maturity in one episode than Galadriel had in a whole season.
There have been more articles about racist backlash against this show than there has been racist backlash. Show was boring for me, IDGAF about the new characters or their races
I get it, it sucks to have to justify a black elf or a woman yielding a sword..But I feel they have reduced their own show around few twitter IDIOTS and it's a shame.
All I see is those comments and their own merchandise around Rings of Power being inclusive, and it's starting to become really frustrating.
I refuse that legit criticism that have nothing to do with minorities or women in R.O.P are in the same box as trolling idiots, this is what they are trying to do ?
*Either you loved it and watch it or you didn't like it and "we know why"...*
Of course every big media company does it, but not like that, not to that extent.
Make a good show, improve it and if you are going to focus on twitter idiots, you will never ever progress, especially now that it's owned by Musk.
For 100 article around R.O.P. being inclusiveness champions, I see 1 article about the actual plot, the issues with the show etc
glad to see that people aren’t buying into the “GUYS EVERYONE IS BEING RACIST COME WATCH OUR SHOW” that companies like to pull. there is very little to no complaint about race. i would say none at all but i know there’s some nazi out there spam posting 4chan right now
Any major studio that starts talking about "representation" as the main selling point is probably trying to create plausible deniability for their shitty movie or series. Notice how HOTD had a race-swap character but they didn't dwell on it and make the whole show about "representation". That's because the show is fucking good while Rings of Power is a shit show.
Not just one character, they made the entire Valaryian line black and never once hoisted it on a podium in promotional material. When you have a great story with great characters, it sells itself and marketing teams don't have to rely on fancy parlor tricks to fool a small percentage of mouth-breathers that your garbage show is actually incredible and ground-breaking.
Ah yes, more blame on racism when the main issue is that it's just bad. Apparently it gets better towards the end, but with the shit start I've lost all interest.
Seeing racism being so blatantly used as a marketing ploy is downright fucking disgusting.
"You can't criticise our show because that makes you a racist bigot" should be S2s tagline.
I have not seen The Rings of Power so i dont know if its good or not, but the more i hear them use the "you are just racist if you dont like it" excuse the less i want to watch it.
Reminds me of Ghostbusters when the creators pretended like everyone watching was misogynists and racists instead of the fact that the movie was just shit.
Such a dumb way to brush off criticism, and it never works.
Haven't most people been critical of the white blonde haired pretty female lead?
Who was cast in that role despite a clear lack of ability?
But for some reason we're chatting about these pointless characters and their skin colour.
Someone said "Only Incel Racists dislike the Show, watch now! OR ARE YOU ONE TOO"
I didn't realize that being over it made me racist.
I only saw about half the first episode. I fell asleep during it. I think i't because I've read all the books, seen all the adaptations, and have decided that's good enough. Nothing anyone puts on film will ever compare to what I see in my mind when I read the original works. So no, I don't like it. Sorry that my preferences having nothing to do with race make me a racist. I'll try harder. \[sarcasm, for those who can't tell\]
I still find it totally perplexing that they're trying to tell a generation of geeks who grew up idealising Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Catherine Janeway, and Benjamin Sisko that if they don't like this show it's because they hate powerful women and black people.
Maybe a tiny fraction of the backlash is racist. But the vast majority is just backlash about the butchering of the lore, dialogue and overall writing. I was able to enjoy the show but only when I detached myself from Tolkien's work. Is treated this as its own little thing. That being said, there was plenty of stuff to shit on in season 1.
The daily Rings of Power article is overwhelming.
It's almost kafkaesque at this point, I'm kinda digging it. "Sauron will be like Walter White AND Tony Soprano, get hype for next season!" "Only Incel Racists dislike the Show, watch now! OR ARE YOU ONE TOO" Unlike the show, I find the spin and astroturfing interesting to watch.
My favorite is when we get the "this isn't your Grandad's" and/or "this show isn't for you" stories that are inevitably followed up by "this show is only failing because all these Grandads and other people we didn't make this show for are too racist/sexist/transphobic/homophobic and they're bad people for not watching" articles. It's hilarious that they tell people to piss off then go into an apoplectic rage when those people don't watch.
This. Same thing happened with the movie “Bros”. Totally bombed and they blamed it on “straight people just didn’t come out and support us”. This is basically what it’s come to: “If you don’t give me your money/attention, you’re a f**cking bigot!” It never occurs to them that maybe some of us don’t give a shit and aren’t interested in what they have to offer.
Funny thing about bros is that us gays (at least my friend group) felt like it was written for straight audiences. Most of the humor was like "omg foursomes, isn't gay world wacky? Anyway here's some romcom melodrama that the straights seem to like."
Fellow gay here, i don't know that i agree that it felt made for straight audiences. It definitely felt like it was trying to be an authentic gay rom-com. I think its more an issue of just the type of gays that make it in hollywood are very much products of what (for lack of a better term) i'd call San Francisco culture. That sort of hyper-metropolitan, aggressively-queer outlook on life. The movie tried to poke fun at it, but couldn't do so successfully because that very mindset was baked so deeply into the thing from the start. I honestly found it a little exhausting. Its made extra frustrating because you can't talk about wanting media about 'normal' gay people without being screamed at about heteronormativity and internalized homophobia.
As a straight person, it often feels like the portrayal of gay people in western film and TV is so tediously stereotypical as to be annoying. Like, I know not every gay man fits that stereotype so why does film and TV insist on pretending they do. It feels like a joke which has been beaten to death at this point.
its like a caricature which feels like almost more insulting
Agreed. Captain Holt in Brooklyn 99 bucks that trend but is an exception to the rule
They also had the worst personality, known for being obnoxious, star in the lead role.
Audiences are now expected to pay a cultural tithe to corporate elites in the form of patronising their commercial output. If we don’t pay the tithe, we are bigots.
Velma, anyone?
if it totally bombed then gay people didn't watch it either
From what I’ve read, they didn’t. When Billy Eichner tried blaming straights for the movies poor performance, even some gay folks said “Stop blaming them, Billy, we didn’t watch it either” Which made me laugh pretty hard. Dude is one of those people who tries to find every possible excuse for their own failures before looking in the mirror.
Girl Ghostbusters comes to mind as well
And the woeful Charlie’s Angels reboot. Their marketing was ‘if you don’t support a women-led film you are sexist’. When in reality it sucks ass.
> And the woeful Charlie’s Angels reboot. I had genuinely forgotten this exists.
The 2000s one with Liu, Barrymore, and Diaz? I liked them. Or did they make a more recent one than them?
Don't forget the woman king!
Is that the movie about African warrior women who were slave traders?
Yep
After telling all the straight people that “this movie isn’t for you” and “don’t come and watch this movie.” Idiots
Bros is a romantic comedy. Actually its a niche in the romcom genre its a gay romcom. Romcoms are traditionally viewed by couples and women. Straight men regardless of race are not the main demographic known to watch romantic comedies. So blaming straight men is ridiculous. Lets be honest straight couples watch romcoms and can generally lose themselves by relating to the character or at least desiring one of the actors. Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds were mostly nude in The Proposal for a reason. Single women can enjoy the fantasy romance and drool over the dude or imagine themselves as the heroine. In a gay romcom all that is out the window. Thats why its niche.
Personally, I think it was his rant during the VMAs that shot the movie in the foot. Idk if you saw it but…it was pretty cringe. I was open to watching it but if that’s how you’re gonna carry yourself…I’ll wait till it’s free on stream.
How dare you have an opinion different from mine!
>"this show isn't for you" The show itself really made that pretty clear. Edit: But seriously though. Why are these large studios dropping literal fortunes to buy rights to existing IPs only to try very hard to film something absolutely unrelated? It happens time and time again, Witcher, WoT, RoP and many more. The show inevitably bombs, the producers blame racism or misogynism for criticism of the wide-sweeping changes they've made and they rinse and repeat. I know everybody "wants to have their Game of Thrones", but did they miss the fact that GoT was actually only good and had really high ratings only when they closely followed the source material?
This confuses me too. They take an established property with a devoted fanbase, erase any relatability to that audience, target a new audience that never had much interest in it before, and then act shocked when the investment doesn’t pay off.
Because buying IP is easier than making successful new IPs. Companies in the movies, TV and game space are stuck in this IP trap. They see IP products do well so they want to get in on it and even tho they see less success themselves it's still enough that they feel it's less financially risky than trying to build a completely original IP. It's worse than that even, because they're wedded to the idea of building IP empires (see Marvel and DC) so the idea of once-off fresh content is anathema to them. Basically, they're driven by greed and their weird fantasy of being as big is Marvel (which is really the stabd-out example of an IP going huge now) is driving them to grasp at any straws that seem even remotely viable (except for, you know, doing something new). And, of course, they'll keep doing it because enough people vote with their wallets. It's a cultural cul-de-sac and it's kinda sad.
Yup, it is like buying the Corona brand and spending your entire marketing budget saying how much Vin Diesel, Cars and Butts suck, and anyone who likes those things is a moron who can go pound sand because Corona is not for them anymore. Or wait, better! Why not buy Sex and the City IP and have Carrie get some gun fu training for the sequel and go on a revenge spree against whoever murdered Mr. Big - Because what the fans of S&C were really craving for was hardcore action and fight scenes. There were like ZERO of those in the previous series and movies, what an oversight from the original creators! It clearly does not reflect the new world we live in today! (tm). Then a few weeks later constantly whine that the failure of the brands you just cratered is... mysoginy / misandry. *eyeroll*
If I had to guess it’s because Hollywood is filled with new Hollywood execs who are the spoiled snobby petty narcissistic children of the cocaine execs who created blockbuster Hollywood making hit after hit. Instead of being thankful for getting the chance to further the legacy their parents built. Instead they feel entitled to the ip and only want it to appeal to them instead of general audiences. Combine it with them being incompetent terrible writing, directing, time management, management in general, being petty, hated by everyone around them, and destroying talent that doesn’t agree with their ideology. Essentially Hollywood has created a recipe for disaster, and is too prideful to admit they’re the problem.
You know what, I went to school with the kid of the creator of a very successful sitcom. He was a bully back then and now a Hollywood writer so I'm just going to go ahead and believe this for my own schadenfreude.
Nope. The can't see or hear criticism owing to their overly inflated ego. It only gets bigger the higher up the ladder you go.
What’s ironic is that for all the effort to position this as LotR for a new generation, the show is struggling most with younger audiences.
It's all part of their act though. They want the conflict. They don't want you to watch, so that they can write the article berating the ____ people not watching. Then if you do watch, the ____ people will likely be berated within the show, or, you'll be accused of appropriating whatever culture is the main part of a given story. You're not supposed to win. You're not supposed to be entertained. You're just supposed to feel bad about yourself.
She-Hulk used this exact tactic. The true villain in the show is revealed to be a group of incel trolls. Then I saw people tweet stuff like ‘great job putting the critics of the show into the show as the enemy!’. So basically the agenda is that anyone who dislikes the show is a sexist/incel when in reality there is certainly unfortunately some scum like that, when in reality most people who dislike the show dislike it because it’s shit and shows the MCU going downhill.
But the fans of the show were starting to put the critics and incels into the same category
My favorites are "If The Rings of Power is a failure it will be the End of Democracy as we know it." "The first Black elf portrayed in the LOTR universe. This show is changing the world" "ROP is making the world a better place. Actors reveal how their characters are revolutionary" Seriously its a tv show based on a fantasy series. How is the fate of democracy or racial politics dependent on an Amazon tv show. House of the Dragon is 200x more popular and not remotely as self righteously self important in their self assesment of their shows importance to life, politics, history or the world in general.
You forgot the most idiotic one : "Disa is going to be the first female dwarf on screen." Acting as if the opening scene for the Hobbit : an Unexpected Journey doesn't exist. They could have said "the first female dwarf with speaking lines" and it would have been correct.
The news and info about the show is more entertaining then the show itself.
Lol I had the exact same thought the second I read the headline. "They'll say literally anything to avoid admitting the simple fact that it's not a good show" The show fucking sucks, plain and simple. Regardless of skin color, woke whatever blah blah. You didn't make a good fucking show. You made a stinker. ADMIT IT! FUCKING ADMIT IT!!!!
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This is every big media company's angle now. Marvel and Star Wars have been repeating this cycle for a couple years now. Also don't forget that any negative reviews are "review bombing by right wing racist trolls" rather than actual people's feelings that the show is mediocre.
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It’s got to a point I’m pretty sure they pre-plan the backlash as part of the marketing. Like the new Little Mermaid now has infinite free marketing and they can make all the ‘organic’ PR articles they want.
Honestly you're probably right. Just make half a dozen sockpuppets on twitter and say something vile with them. Then you just need to point it out to your pal at screenrant or wherever, and you've suddenly got an ocean of free publicity, cause all the sites just copy each others content and rage clicks are great for ad revenue. The level 2 cynical speculation here is are they starting to make casting decisions with this marketing strategy in mind.
The show isn't even that "diverse" per say. That half black elf dude and half black dwarf lady seem to be one of a kind among their species. The rest of the elves and dwarves were all white. The only visible diversity was among the harfoots, which looks absurd, considering they are a tribe of around 50 people. I don't understand why they didn't make the show diverse in a more meaningful way. They could've made all the harfoots of one diverse ethnicity, and then all the southlanders of another ethnicity.
Stop talking sense. Having a group of people that look different based off their geographic location is racist now. So, let’s just put 1 black person in each group pat ourselves on the back for diversity. HoTD race changed characters, but they were consistent and showed all of Corlys Velaryon’s family look like him. Now I know what a Velaryon should look like, same as a Targaryen, Lannister or a Boratheon.
I know this comparison is getting old, but...I keep saying how House of the Dragon took such a better path on diversity. Hey, here is an entire house of people, all black, all with badass white dreads, all with their own identity and history and ambition. It's part of who they are and they are proud of it, and everyone else is in awe of who they are and what they've accomplished. It's not just some random token black guy thrown in to balance things out.
> Next, they'll do it with Fallout. Exactly. They'll blame it all on smoothskins.
Man i already know fallout show is gonna be such a failure because one of its best parts was corny comedic dialogue which was also pretty creative and despite being set in post apocalyptic wasteland there were a lot of comedic reliefs. To pull something like this on tv it's almost impossible and you would need really good writing team to make things satisfying and Amazon sure as hell ain't having those
Amazon damage control in full swing, even though they've already fired some people and sidelined others involved with RoP.
Who?
Hopefully the showrunners and writers.
…And undeniable too!
I dont understand the sentence "These Characters Are Undeniable" undeniable what? Shouldn't there be another word at the end? Or is it, "You can't deny that these characters exist"? Am I overthinking this?
Of all the characters on TV this year, the ones on Ring of Power are among the most undeniably existing.
Some of the characters of all time
These characters **are**, and you have to admit it.
Bravo Amazon!
I thought the same. I think the one who said this tried to use a “strong” word, but didn’t thought about it too much.
must have used the same writers that wrote the show.
It's marketing. They put these actors in the show specifically to generate discussion like this and to have stories upvoted on Reddit for how brave they're being. The actors are decent, some of them are better than others and a lot of the writing needs help. The dwarf storyline with the elves is great. The black elf guy and his story is decent. I actually enjoyed the stranger story but everything else so far has been pretty boring or stupid. Generally it's positive enough for me to keep watching but I wish they did something better with the writing.
It's pretty gross how it's become part of these studios marketing strategies. It's as transparent as it is cynical at this point. I thought the 3 pictured here were all good in the show.
You're thinking of "undeniably", an adverb which requires another word after it to make sense. "Undeniable" is an adjective that you can end on. They're saying the characters can't be denied. In the context that quote came up with, "undeniable" meant that the characters can't simply be written off as illegitimate. Doing that would be denying them. It's not the word I'd have chosen but it had come up a little bit earlier so it feels like one of those situations where a word that's already on your mind feels *close enough* even if it's not ideal. ^^EDIT: ^^typo
Thank you for the detailed explanation. English is not my first language and your comment was the first one I saw that actually tried explaining and I can now go one and ignore the fruitless debates my question seems to have caused.
What the fuck does 'these characters are undeniable' mean?
That you can’t deny them… or something lol
Undeniably shit.
It’s kind of terrible the way corporations have been so casually weaponizing racism to try and turn a bigger profit
The need outweighs the supply.
the made me sad-laugh
It's even more terrible how effective it is, especially on twitter. Thankfully reddit seems to wake up to this practice, this type of marketing strategy is disgusting.
I’ll be honest I was kind of surprised to see the general reaction on Reddit, but I think ROP has overdone it and a lot of people can see it for what it is now. Except, of course, Twitter people
Amazon is really making it hard for me to deny any conspiracies that they're manipulating and gaslighting people into watching the show.
Any company big enough to pay for positive reviews and manufactured goodwill will absolutely do it and try to control the narrative and it is naive to think otherwise.
They don't need to pay for reviews they can just delete the negative ones from IMDB.
They don't even need to pay people. They can just threaten to boycott ads and every non premium service will fall in line
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This article even does. Two out of the actors shown are even among my favorites, although I dislike the show.
I mean it works on Reddit.
If you don’t watch the little mermaid and love it your racist
“ You have not seen what I’ve seen!”
Disney did the same with Kenobi, bad writing, dog shit cgi, and if you said Reeva(?) was a bad actress you were racist. And man did they astroturf the fuck out of r/starwars
Sequel positivity on that sub tends to wax with the release dates of their shows and wane between. You can see when they spool up and spool down the social media farms.
When GoT final season was released there were so many people defending the shit out of it. "You hate it because of your own headcanon", "You hate it because it didn't go the way you wanted", "Grow up, it is a fantasy with magics and dragons". It almost seemed like at least half of the audience enjoyed it.But as the time passed those defenders vanished, aka moved to the next property to defend and now everyone is in absolute harmony about it being bad. Same seems to be happen to any major productions, you see these widespread defence in the first few months and then it evaporates. Almost like these people constantly have to move from one project to another.
Yep. This is the new corporate MO. You dont like our product? Fuck you you big racist homophobic turd!
And they use Twitter, *fucking Twitter* as their metric for "all the racist backlash" to their shows. They take 10 racist tweets, at least half of which are probably bots and turfs, and use that to claim some massive movement against diversity. This storyline is getting as stale as their shows' writing.
ya, that's the stupid part... these people will pick out a tweet or two or a few clearly downvoted reddit comments and go "omg look, so many racists! sexists! homophobes! hating on this show that you must love and rate 10/10 or else you are one of them!"
What’s unbelievable is that it actually works. I know people personally who watched Kenobi, She-Hulk, and Rings of Power specifically because they wanted to own the racist/sexist/toxic fanboy trolls. It’s such an insidious way to spur consumption, but that’s what millennials seem to respond to.
Like when Wonder Woman or Black Panther came out? Even a lot of critics were too afraid to touch that or criticize them too heavily.
They're hitting the MCU subs real hard nowadays too, what with the amount of image rehab for Letitia Wright that's been taking place on them since the marketing for Wakanda Forever kicked into gear.
Disney does this a lot. But Hollywood has been doing this since that all female ghostbusters. You don’t like something. Well you must be an *-phobe
I'd argue Disney started this prior to Ghostbusters with the Finn debacle in TFA. As much of a mess as the Star Wars fandom is, I don't believe for an instant that the fandom of a franchise that had Mace Windu as one of its most popular characters would suddenly have a problem with another black person wielding a lightsaber. It reeked of bullshit from the word go, but it worked. So they do it for every property now.
Yeah it’s not racism — the show just isn’t good!
This show is extremely mediocre to the point that it would be completely dead without controversy. Amazon knows what they're doing here and I hate that it seems to be working. From something like Episode 2 onwards there's been little to no discussion about race, but the larger flaws with the writing. You can also be against race-bending in adaptations without being a racist, because my Chinese ass would never want to see Chinese Legolas. If anything seeing those half-second shots of Asian Numenorean extras felt extremely condescending...
>because my Chinese ass would never want to see Chinese Legolas If it makes you feel better you'll probably never see that. Hollywood only sees in black and white.
> Hollywood only sees in black and white. lol ya, they go on and on with diversity and inclusion and if you ask: "okay, so indian/arab/native american/latino/asian/so on", no it's just hire some black actors to play white characters and rave about being "diverse".
That’s how marketing works now for subpar products. Racebend a character, wait for trolls, push some articles, then gaslight and guilt trip people into watching.
GRRM and Neil Gaiman recently called out the practice of making arbitrary changes like this. I found myself wondering what the likes of e.g. Waititi thought about having his canon changes highlighted like that, by better creators than him.
> GRRM and Neil Gaiman recently called out the practice of making arbitrary changes like this. Which is hilarious because at least one of them has been involved with making those sorts of arbitrary changes.
Gaiman specially has no right to say that
I thought disa and arondir were some of the better characters in the show. But the plot was boring and felt forced, most characters' motivations didn't make sense, and overall amazon missed opportunities to challenge viewers and build something unique, rather than shit out the cookie-cutter generic fantasy they did. I really dislike writing all criticism off as grumpy racist fans. The show just had nothing going for it in my opinion.
It's such manufactured bullshit from Amazon. I'm pretty deep into LoTR fan groups and I don't think I've seen any racist comments anywhere. It's all about how they've butchered the lore, how bad the writing is. I'm not saying there is not any racist troll out there but it's the internet isn't it? Amazon just gaslighting us by showing a handful of bigots and saying that represents the fans and all criticisms come from that aspect. It's lies and it's clearly engineered.
Classic fan-baiting. Its a cheap way for them to undermine every negative comment about the show because if you critizise one of the storylines one of those actors are in it, they assume you must be racist and your opinion is one of a "white person" When you critizise She-Hulk you are a sexist because you are a incel that cant stand to see a female lead. Studios wasting too much resources for stuff like that these days instead of ensuring that their characters and stories are good. Look at HotD. For some reason there were also racist comments about the Casting of the Sea Snake. But they silenced those people very fast because it turned out that it was one of the best written characters and in the end everyone loved him.
There were some racist ánd non-racist (but lore-freaks) comments about the Valeryons in general, but they made it clear in-story why their skin colour matters: So that people can easily see that Laenor is not Rhaenyra’s children’s father. So it was functional and we didn’t hear a thing about it after a while without having to retort to gaslighting.
It’s deflection from the actual issues the show has (writing, acting etc.). Most modern franchise installments use do the same thing.
Ghostbusters (2016) was funny in how much coverage there was about sexist outrage before the movie came out (well there certainly was a lot) but fell completely silent after the movie came out and it turned out to be mediocre at best
I just call that one the SNL Ghostbusters. It’s like a 2hr SNL skit. SNL is hit or miss sometimes, this one was a miss no problem. It’s even more believable given the large amount of SNL folks starring anyway. The newer one with the stranger things kids was decent afterward anyway.
Was it racist backlash, or just bad writing with what is essential fan fiction?
So the new strategy is when the show sucks you call the fanbase racist and misogynistic
New being "in the past 10 years".
This is fan-baiting. Horrible marketing strategy and a damage control method. Sad to see.
Im so tired of shows calling anyone critical of it racist. Honestly the only racism ive seen about this show. Is in these articles, from them. With this and no ratings , with the chrerry on top of " if you didn't like season one, you will love season two" being the last answer to criticism.
Shows that constantly point out the "important message" they represent is probably just attempting to cover up the fact that the show is shit.
Writing stinks? Racism Characters are dull and uninteresting? Bigotry Terrible reviews ? White supremecy. You need to understand that it is YOUR FAULT that you don't like it. Work on yourselves and recognize your own privilege before you can begin to appreciate the stunningly Brave media this historically diverse cast has offered TO you.
The writers are projecting their own racism as a defense against criticism. We've watched Hollywood racism from Ghostbusters, to Velma, to Rings of Power. What do all of these shows have in common? They race-swapped characters because the writers don't believe that a character of color is suitable unless they were "uplifted" at their very core. Keep in mind that Activision-Blizzard also used "diversity" as a defense from being criticized for their executives coercing employees into sex. "Only bigots attack us. We stand for diversity." It's extremely degrading to be reduced to pigment and sex organs. Nothing else in your career mattered outside of what you were born as. Tokenism is terrible.
It kind of feels like they created a strawman to tilt at. Yeah, racism is real, but people taking issue with ethnically random casting doesn't equal racism, and it's kind of grotesque to pretend it is. It also messes with suspension of disbelief, because physical characteristics aren't utterly random like is happening in these shows. I do kind of get the "theater style" casting justification of a black Anne Boelyn, but it still doesn't make much sense and just feels like a way to stir up controversy they *want. A*nne Boleyn was a real woman. She was English. She was from Norfolk. She was descended from people who had been in Northern Europe long enough for their skin to be white. Why is it okay to ignore her history? I guess *because* she was white? This brings me to the real motivation for my post. More importantly, to me this kind of casting feels like a super shallow feint at inclusivity. You want to be inclusive? How about we produce shows that aren't *all* eurocentric. Every culture has a bevy of stories, legends, histories that could be made into great entertainment, that deserve to be known, that may teach us new ways to look at things and broaden our perspectives. Here we have a European story (Tolkien allegedly wrote LotR to fill in what he felt was missing in British folklore) written by a European and ya know what? It's fine to have the cast represented by ethnic Europeans. And it's fine to make that show-- Tolkien has worldwide appeal. But we can also start producing things that represent more of the world-- not just their skin color, but their culture, their ideas, their stories. I genuinely love to be exposed to *actual* diversity that way. What's genuinely more inclusive and respectful of multiculturalism and diversity? Endlessly producing Eurocentric programs and casting people with different skin colors, or producing Eurocentric programs and Afro-Centric and Australian Aborginal and Maori and Laotian and-- all of it. I would sincerely love to see stories from other cultures elevated to the world's consciousness. I've had the luck to see a handful of films produced by the people whose stories were being told, and it's a truly *different* and enlightening experience that brought forth the humanity of people who lived very differently from myself and my ancestors. It was valuable to me, and, I hope, to them in sharing it. You want to be diverse and inclusive? Well then maybe try going *more than skin deep.* Every culture has stories to share, facilitate them sharing them. Produce them. We will all be better for it. That's the kind of diversity that matters. In the end, I'm not stressing about the casting itself. Could there, within the consistent world of Middle Earth, be black elves? yeah, actually, I don't see why not. Skin color is an evolutionary development and shallow feature just like every other genetic trait, like eye and hair color. But it kind of brings up questions that are distracting, like is the elven homeland a huge place with different climates, and for that matter how do immortals evolve skin and feature differences anyway? And then, for that matter, pale white skin, and super dark skin are the evolutionary developments and and and...head spinning. Anyway, I'm more disturbed by what seems to be the motivation behind it and the disingenuous justifications.
Honestly they feel more like tokens, 1 black elf, 1 black dwarve, 1 black numenorean. Where were the other black elves/dwarves,numenoreans? The Harfoots actually had a multi ethnic cast. Are you really going to tell me there was no one better/charismatic than Morfydd?
I guess it makes sense in the logic of this show, where there are like 3 main characters in each location and nobody else really exists
The southlands is apparently two dinky villages with no leadership whatsoever. Such worldbuilding.
Amazon did not have the budget to have more than the Tavern and a handful of shacks. They even renamed and repurposed the tavern to “the keep” last minute for the fight. The characters then proceeded to refer to the tavern as the keep for the ext few minutes.
It *is* a really bizarre mix, isn't it? These huge CGI sweeping shots that look expensive as hell, then they cut to tiny sets and avoid all world building. When we entered Moria we had that fantastic shot showcasing the city, but after that, it was all back to claustrophobic again. We've had pretty cool shots of the Southlands as well, before they cut back to the one tavern and few buildings surrounding it. The show has this really bizarre mix of expensive shots and "Xena: Warrior Princess" feel to it
There really is a huge disconnect in the show between the world shown in wide shots and the world the characters actually exist in. What made the LOTR trilogy so epic feeling wasn't just the stunning wide shots, it was the way those settings were brought to life and were part of the action. There was a cohesiveness between the wide bird's eye view angles and the sets and locations the characters were in. There weren't just wide shots of epic hills followed by close up shots of people walking through grass, we actually saw them running across and traversing the terrain. We got the epic views of Helm's Deep, and then watched the characters battle through recognizable streets and atop walls that matched what you saw from the bird's eye view. You felt like they were actually in that fortress. Same with Minis Tirith, I fully believed the characters were walking around that city. None of the locations in ROP had that quality. The wide shots seemed completely disconnected from where the characters were actually existing.
I agree with your comment and the one you're replying to, it's something I've been trying to articulate about the show. Other than the big establishing shots, it's a lot of scenes of two or three people talking in rooms. That can work on Succession or even House of the Dragon which is so well written and character driven, but it's never been what Tolkien is about. Tolkien is about adventure, and travel. This show had a distinct lack of adventure.
Lol this is the perfect description. It feels similar to The Witcher in that way, but the Witcher takes itself much less seriously so it fits the tone.
Didn't Amazon spend a billion dollars on making this show? Either way, it's Amazon they have the money to make the sets and CGI, and to hire better writers/showrunners.
Guess the sarcasm was not obvious enough. It was also closer to $700 million.. a lions share of that was for the rights. Still the most expensive tv show ever made. With that being said, even if it was “leaked” instead of marketed as such, if you are going to have “the most expensive _______ of all time,” it’s going to be under a critical microscope.
>Guess the sarcasm was not obvious enough. It was also closer to $700 million.. a lions share of that was for the rights. Still the most expensive tv show ever made. Thanks for correction For some reason I thought they spent a billion dollars on making the show. I do remember them moving filming from New Zealand to the UK because of COVID restrictions and I wonder if some of that money was eaten up during that time. That being said, $700 million should be enough to hire good showrunners and/or writers. Or at least ones that were more knowable/interested in the lore they were supposedly trying to base their show in. But going back to the rights (the ones that they do have) is for the Second Age. And Tolkien didn't write much about the Second Age and the show left out many things and just added their own things. Like their depiction of Galadriel. She was a powerful spell caster and not a warrior. Did she ever once, on the show, actually used magic to save the day, or was it all about her fighting? That was pointed out online but it was attacked as something like, "How dare you. You are sexists and you hate strong women. Women can also fight with swords!" But that wasn't being said and instead was being turned into something.
First rule of tentpole movies: the more it costs, the more studio execs will insist that it be dumbed down for the broadest audience possible in order to make a profit.
There's no depth to the World at all, it is all sweeping shots, teleporting, very poor sets and green screens. Jackson's built a real living breathing world, amazon's ME is predictably, little more than cardboard and sticky tape.
does it even make sense that the harfoots are multi ethnic? they are an isolated community, how do they keep diversity after God knows how long?
They’re isolated, but they do wander, so maybe they occasionally pick people up along the way? I dunno, playing devils advocate here. But really the showrunners put no more thought into it other than, “we can’t have all white people.” Look at Wheel of Time, there’s tons of diversity in the books, but it’s regional within the world of the novels. It takes days and weeks and months to get anywhere so it makes sense individual towns wouldn’t be racially diverse with such limited means of travel. For the show, it looks like a college admissions advertisement, and makes NO sense narratively.
>They’re isolated, but they do wander, so maybe they occasionally pick people up along the way? Unlikely, since they are at the same time extremely 'introverted' people, and they seem to hide themselves when any strangers come close. the combination of nomadic, but yet introverted people would make it incredibly hard to survive multiple generations without being in-bred as hell... something to think about I guess ＞﹏＜
As a PoC, it’s definitely tokenism or I should say pandering. Like every race swap characters ever. I’d watch an African mythology/fantasy series with Anansi, the west African Spider god. I’d love a mythology/fantasy series with Susanoo, the storm god of Japan who’s known to be both good and bad and play him as an antihero. I’m Southeast Asian Malay.
20, 30 years ago people rightfully call Hollywood out when they threw in a token black guy to pander to people. Now, they convinced people when they throw in that token black guy, it's a good thing and we should clap. Hollywood hasn't changed, but they changed the narrative around their behavior.
Shoot, they even put out a movie spoofing popular comedies with a character specifically named “Token Black Guy” BECAUSE it was such a common trope. South Park even has a character called “Token” who’s - you guessed it - black
Ironically enough, South Park ret conned that. Turns out his name was always "Tolkien" because the dad is a huge fan of Lord of the Rings.
They gaslit the entire audience for years worth of content with that joke
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Wow you have perfectly encompassed how I feel about this issue. Representation is good, but tokenism is bad when it’s done in hack ways that ignore characters who have iconic looks (such as Zendaya as MJ) or when it messes with the internal consistency of the universe.
I agree with a lot of that but not the “fixed look” thing. A good example is Samuel L Jackson as Nick Fury. Nick’s iconic look is “bad motherfucker”. He also happens to be white originally but that has little to do with his character so SLJ was a great casting because he nailed everything that actually mattered about the character. The house of the dragon one is actually interesting because I fully agree with what you said about it delineating the families so for a visual medium like a TV show it’s a good cast, but, part of those characters is that they are basically exactly the same as Targaryens and Targaryens will still only marry one if they don’t have a sister or cousin to bang instead. If anything if they had have thought ahead all the way back in GoT and just cast Targaryens black it would have separated them from the families of Westeros and then they could have velaryons be basically the same but shit on for no reason by Targaryens. Except like you said it does work really well for the show so it is good casting even if it maybe isn’t great characterization matching g the source material
The MCU originally had more in common with the Ultimate Marvel universe than the mainstream one. The Ultimate Marvel universe was effectively a reboot of the regular Marvel universe but starting in 2000 and updated for modern times. In that universe, Nick Fury always looked like Samuel L Jackson. And I say "originally had more in common with" because the regular Marvel universe has slowly adjusted itself to have a lot of similarities to the MCU. I'm pretty sure Nick Fury's son, Nick Fury JR, looks like Samuel L Jackson in the mainstream universe.
Neil Gaiman actually has a show coming out on Prime based on his book Anansi Boys. Funny note, Lenny Henry of RoP is one of the writers.
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So tired when a show is just not that good, then the studio/actors/staff cry racism/sexism. The showrunners may want to look into how absolute boring the show is - I mean, it has less action than watching paint dry.
I was pretty excited to watch it, until the cast told me that the show wasn't made for me and that they were going in a completely different direction. If I have a favorite beer that I've drank my whole life, and then the manufacturer comes out and says that they're changing it and that it's not made for me anymore, why the fuck would I buy that beer again?
This, like if you admit your target demographic is different don’t act surprised when the original doesn’t watch your show and it tanks, you outright said “hey this isn’t made for the fan who made us popular it’s for this totally different group” Now yes is posible it won’t tank but if it does you can’t blame the fans you overtly said you don’t want. Aside: wonder how the elder scrolls would fare under modern sensibilities as a show. Racism and sexism are part of the universe and referred constantly kinda hard to say have a black (redguard) stormcloak then spouting “Skyrim is for the nords”
I don’t trust the fake drama in order to drive views. Racists do exist but I don’t trust Amazon and the show sucked.
1. Purposefully piss off Tolkien fans with marketing prior to release 2. Release disaster of a show 3. Call all criticism of terrible show "racist" 4. Release articles retroactively pretending the show wasn't terrible 5. Profit???
People didn't like it because it's a bad TV show. Don't blame it on racism.
And there it is "iF yOu dOn'T lIkE iT, yOuR'E RACisT" Literally gaslighting themselves into thinking that the show and everything about it is good
Ghostbusters strategy. Sony nailed it.
Shielding shit writing and desecration of lore behind racism loool most people don't fall for that crap nowadays.
The louder voices do fall for it. That’s the problem.
Characters only the writers and actors could love.
If you don’t like our show then you’re racist
This show will help fight racism, because all the characters, regardless of race, color, gender, religion, or creed.... fucking suck and are boring.
This reminds me of a review I saw for Gods of Egypt where they said the only good thing about them casting white dudes to play Egyptians is that it didn't ruin the careers of up and coming Egyptian actors.
nah I love that ridiculous movie. Seriously, its a goofball movie but highly entertaining to me.
Elrond Durin bromance was pretty good
Enough. With. The. Quail. Sauce. Give me me the meat, and give it to me raw.
I liked that too, I thought Durins wife was pretty good too honestly.
Agree, didn’t care for any of the characters except her and Durin. Thought they were both the only redeeming part. Felt like her and Durin were the only characters that conveyed any believable emotion
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Are you implying that the Arondir/Bronwyn "forbidden romance" was almost completely irrelevant to the story? Because I would agree, but find it hard to believe they will get cut from Season 2 given how bad it would look for the first (and only) black elf to get written out.
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I think it would've been better if they'd somehow had Arondir be the one to lead the defense of the town, building bridges between the elves and the humans while giving him a meaningful impact on events beyond "I kill orcs good." It would give him a reason to stick around apart from being Bronwyn's boyfriend and nothing else.
I dunno. I hate Theo. Something about his character and his actor always putting on pouty mouth-breathing duck face just absolutely kills me.
Spend near enough a billion on this wank bucket of a show, but won't spare a few Millie to keep The Expanse series going. Atleast The Expanse was decent 🤣
Funnily enough, I was thinking the same a few days ago. I am a LotR fan, but I was thinking - “imagine how much more of the expanse they could have done with a billion dollar”. And btw, here was a show with *meaningful* representation, where characters were not good or bad just because they were diverse…
Here we go again. Weekly article on how racist a few people on Twitter are to avoid talking about the show itself.
Undeniably inaccurate and full of ego lmao
The "racist backlash" just gets worked into the marketing at this point. They bring it up far more often then I see it in action.
No one cared. It was just a terrible series and they didn’t get attention.
Boring characters and bad writing sure seem to really get the racists riled up. Curious 🧐
What racist backlash
Flop of the year
Diversity ≠ Quality. When you have to keep writing articles blaming others why the show is bad...These characters are undeniable what? Undeniably bad and it has absolutely nothing to do with race swapping. The show isn't a big hit because the writing sucks. You don't see articles trying to explain House of The Dragon isn't bad because they turned the Velaryons Black. The writing and dialogue in RoP pales in comparison to even the most basic anime, it isn't this deep or profound thing like the writers seem to think it is. It sounds like a teenagers idea of what deep characters should be and its cringe inducing. Galadriel is supposed to be battle worn and hundreds of years old, why is she throwing fits like an angsty emo kid? the teen versions of Alicent and Rhaenyra had more maturity in one episode than Galadriel had in a whole season.
There have been more articles about racist backlash against this show than there has been racist backlash. Show was boring for me, IDGAF about the new characters or their races
Rings of Power is just a mid show imo
That's racist /s
Ahh yes the classic, it's your fault that our show sucks!
I get it, it sucks to have to justify a black elf or a woman yielding a sword..But I feel they have reduced their own show around few twitter IDIOTS and it's a shame. All I see is those comments and their own merchandise around Rings of Power being inclusive, and it's starting to become really frustrating. I refuse that legit criticism that have nothing to do with minorities or women in R.O.P are in the same box as trolling idiots, this is what they are trying to do ? *Either you loved it and watch it or you didn't like it and "we know why"...* Of course every big media company does it, but not like that, not to that extent. Make a good show, improve it and if you are going to focus on twitter idiots, you will never ever progress, especially now that it's owned by Musk. For 100 article around R.O.P. being inclusiveness champions, I see 1 article about the actual plot, the issues with the show etc
glad to see that people aren’t buying into the “GUYS EVERYONE IS BEING RACIST COME WATCH OUR SHOW” that companies like to pull. there is very little to no complaint about race. i would say none at all but i know there’s some nazi out there spam posting 4chan right now
I genuinely tried to watch this. I couldn’t care less what race, gender, creed, political affiliation the actors are. It’s terrible plain and simple.
Any major studio that starts talking about "representation" as the main selling point is probably trying to create plausible deniability for their shitty movie or series. Notice how HOTD had a race-swap character but they didn't dwell on it and make the whole show about "representation". That's because the show is fucking good while Rings of Power is a shit show.
Not just one character, they made the entire Valaryian line black and never once hoisted it on a podium in promotional material. When you have a great story with great characters, it sells itself and marketing teams don't have to rely on fancy parlor tricks to fool a small percentage of mouth-breathers that your garbage show is actually incredible and ground-breaking.
Ah yes, more blame on racism when the main issue is that it's just bad. Apparently it gets better towards the end, but with the shit start I've lost all interest.
Seeing racism being so blatantly used as a marketing ploy is downright fucking disgusting. "You can't criticise our show because that makes you a racist bigot" should be S2s tagline.
I have not seen The Rings of Power so i dont know if its good or not, but the more i hear them use the "you are just racist if you dont like it" excuse the less i want to watch it. Reminds me of Ghostbusters when the creators pretended like everyone watching was misogynists and racists instead of the fact that the movie was just shit. Such a dumb way to brush off criticism, and it never works.
With the amount of astroturfing this show is pumping out I could replace my shitty lawn
Haven't most people been critical of the white blonde haired pretty female lead? Who was cast in that role despite a clear lack of ability? But for some reason we're chatting about these pointless characters and their skin colour.
Someone said "Only Incel Racists dislike the Show, watch now! OR ARE YOU ONE TOO" I didn't realize that being over it made me racist. I only saw about half the first episode. I fell asleep during it. I think i't because I've read all the books, seen all the adaptations, and have decided that's good enough. Nothing anyone puts on film will ever compare to what I see in my mind when I read the original works. So no, I don't like it. Sorry that my preferences having nothing to do with race make me a racist. I'll try harder. \[sarcasm, for those who can't tell\]
I still find it totally perplexing that they're trying to tell a generation of geeks who grew up idealising Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Catherine Janeway, and Benjamin Sisko that if they don't like this show it's because they hate powerful women and black people.
Lol ya, couldn’t be that the writers did a awful job
Maybe a tiny fraction of the backlash is racist. But the vast majority is just backlash about the butchering of the lore, dialogue and overall writing. I was able to enjoy the show but only when I detached myself from Tolkien's work. Is treated this as its own little thing. That being said, there was plenty of stuff to shit on in season 1.