Rings of Power Season 2 Episode 1 Review | It STILL SUCKS | They Learned NOTHING From Their FAILURE

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destroying the world show him getting butchered by a bunch of rebelling Orcs turned into a pile of black slime from his spilled blood show him in the basement eating rats and bugs then getting captured and imprisoned by the same Orcs again I mean you'd probably get the same effect showing Darth Vader in the morning on the toilet taking a dump and then flossing the whole idea of an extended flashback showing what I jokingly call sauron's rise to power is terribly misguided it dispels any sense of mystery and Grandeur about Sauron turning him into just another bad guy and a boring one at that all this sorted and lengthy flashback achieves is making Sauron look degraded and cheap like some kind of Freddy Krueger or something just another horror character turned into a pile of black slime from his congealed blood eating rats and bugs limping around getting beaten and abused and you just wonder what the hell is the point of this do the so-called riters of this crap want us to what feel sympathy for Sauron identify with him is this like the acolyte where they're trying to make us identify with unsavory evil characters to blur the lines between good and evil this is absolutely and ultimately in conflict with with tolk's worldview and the whole point of Lord of the Rings to draw clear distinctions between good and evil a reflection of tolk's devout religious Faith seeing Sauron butchered by a bunch of Orcs turned into a loathsome pile of black goo that has to scavenge and feed on Vermin like a liquefied Renfield murders a woman gets captured by the same Orcs that butchered him in the opening scene and then seeing him Chained and beaten stealing an old man's Medallion to full guy lad re Al into thinking he's royalty later oh God this whole thing seems Rinky Dink Bargain Basement and just a sad pointless waste of time and that's rings of power season 2 in a nutshell as Sauron is degraded into a bland pedestrian meest so too is tol keen's franchise watching rings of power a number of things go through my mind all of them bad it amazes me how the cre creators of this show can make tolk's epic tale of Middle Earth seem so very small we've seen how expansive and epic tolking Lord of the Rings can appear on the big screen Peter Jackson showed us all what Lord of the Rings can be when handled with skill and love and yet there wasn't a moment watching rings of power that I didn't think ah this is wrong this just feels so wrong it feels so small so trivial I'm not involved emotionally in anything happening on the screen I don't care about any of the characters in the slightest and I don't believe these are real people or that this is a real world Peter Jackson's Trilogy had me Charmed and riveted from the first few minutes clear through to the final reel of Return of the King whereas this mini me version didn't once make me feel anything except boredom and at time anger and disgust with the Liberties taken with the source material I try to understand exactly why this is so after all rings of power is an expensive production just like the trilogy was and yet somehow where the trilogy felt like a massive epic with breathtaking environments battles and effects rings of power feels fake it feels perfunctory like somehow they're covering certain bases checking off certain items on an inventory going through the motions without any real passion or Vision the one thing rings of power should have nailed down given the enormous expense of this thing is the visuals this thing should look fantastic but all too often it just looks shabby the Rings themselves look like cheap costume jewelry I hear Kell binor is a master Craftsman but these Rings look like the kind of [ __ ] you get from a spirit store on Halloween the gray Havens in lynon look shitty even lynon for God's sakes even those parts of Lyon that aren't CGI look like [ __ ] because of the sickly greenish yellow color grading in the forest what's meant to look glorious and colorful looks kind of like the colors you'd find in a mad scientist's beers that kind of Nickelodeon slime green and puss yellow I don't know why they did it presumably the plants didn't really look like that in real life in short it just looks kind of fake and garish the costumes look exactly like that costumes cosplay gild Gad has a tiny bit of flab in his under chin and looks like he needs to lay off the Elderberry wine or something he doesn't project Authority he looks like he should be a middle manager at Costco or in an insurance office somewhere elron is at least written a little better and seems a little less annoying than he was in season 1 except for God's sakes can we talk about these elf the more I look at them the worse they seem They look fake they still out there's nothing graceful or elegant about them and damn it elves should be beautiful people not goofy cosplayers at ComicCon and don't get me wrong I've seen much better [ __ ] at ComicCon I don't mean to insult those cosplayers they work miracles on almost no money because of their love and passion and commitment but these dumb shits have all the money in the world so why does this look so crappy everything about this production manages to look small and amate chish they haven't expanded tolken universe they've shrunk it and wrapped it in plastic like Laura Palmer abandoned down by the river ultimately I think the visuals fail here not only because they look Flatout fake I think maybe it has something to do with the frame rate they show a shot at or maybe the designs aren't great or maybe somehow it relates back to the acting in the script dude how can the acting and script impact the special effects they're either good or they're not not right the more I think about it Harvey cthulu If rings of power has taught me anything it's how important it is for actors to sell the special effects in order for us to believe in the CGI backgrounds and creatures we need to believe the actors are really there and that they're engaged either moved by the beauty terrified by the Menace an actor who looks and feels like a cosplayer at a convention can stand in front of the best special effects in the world and make them seem cheesy and pedestrian not that rings of power is the best special effects by any stretch of the imagination I think the reason I'm unmoved by all the effects is with very few exceptions we've seen them done better over a decade ago in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings and frankly the scripts have failed us again with the scripts dude Doom [ __ ] scripts have nothing to do with special effects hear me out Harvey it seems to me the actors need to inhabit the special effects in order to sell them as real and they can't do that if they look and act like cosplayers now an actor can only do so much on his own he needs a compelling script in order to immerse himself in a role if the script sucks it can take an actor clean out of his part and out of the scene as a whole and I think that's what's happening in rings of power for the most part the scripts fail to humanize any of these characters they don't seem real to me not in the slightest they seem like placeholders serving the plot wherever it's going just kind of striding from Mark to mark saying their lines and the plot moves on to the next CGI scene then the next then the next and the end result is it's boring as hell if the characters in their various dilemmas and battles aren't engaging our attention you have more time to stare blankly at the effects and kind of notice anything wrong pick them apart in your mind only when plot character and visuals are all integrated and seamless does a story like this really work and it just does not work with rings of power watching this stuff I'm overwhelmed with the feeling why the hell am I watching this if I didn't have to watch it in order to review it I wouldn't that's the answer but then I wonder why is anyone watching this when there are far better things out there to watch who is this being made for exactly it certainly isn't for hardcore tolken fans because it just doesn't pass the sniff test for Canon Fidelity it can't be for just playing normies because it isn't terribly entertaining or fun it's a grim slog from point to point because I don't care about anyone or anything in the story and I pretty much just wish they'd all die so we could end this thing and go watch something good in Fellowship of the Ring I always tear up at boromir's death following his tragic moment of weakness I am deeply moved by Aragorn and Arwin at Rivendell by the little things Gandalf says as aide a look of doubt in a moment of great Danger these little moments breathe life into a narrative and it is these moments that rings of power is starved of gadriel has no subtlety no authenticity the character is wrong I can barely look at some of the dwarves they look so fake elron made an everlasting impression on me in the movies but then again the script was epic and the actor was a massive Talent so no surprise there this elrond seems more or less just Bland as hell he should be selling vacuums door too or something lightweight actors pedestrian scripts and effects that try and fail to rise above those limitations rings of power is just a colossal waste of time if you care at all about Excellence or entertainment there are certainly worst shows on television yes but honestly at this point no one deserves bottom of the barrel speaking of which let's talk a moment about the Fatal death blow to this series gadriel as far as gu Adriel goes I can't help but hate her because she sucks so bad in season 1 and that's the show's biggest problem we hated season 1 and there's nothing here strong enough to reverse that lingering assessment I loed this crap before and while season 2 episode 1 is less deeply offensive that hatred plays forward they had one chance to make a good first impression and they blew it gadriel duh bloody hell in this season she and Gil Gad are obviously tainted by Sauron obsessed with Kell binor Rings just like everyone else except for alron who to his credit thinks Sauron tainted them disguised as Hal brand and wants them destroyed even if it means the tree dies and the elves have to leave Middle Earth for valinor abandoning everyone to sauron's Tender Mercies the Orcs at least seem more or less like works in the first episode the rest of the acting is lost in the awful makeup phony sets crap color grading this whole thing is just plain shoty folks I've seen all three episodes and I may or may not do reviews of the other two but I doubt I'll watch anymore this thing is benal and anemic compared to what we know Middle Earth should be and the only ones who should watch this crap are YouTubers who have to review it from the center of the earth this is dictor Van doomcock bidding you all my friends stay angry [Music] [Music] h h