The second season of The Lord of the Rings: Ring of Power begins. This is a big deal for Amazon Prime Video, as it looks to justify the $1 billion it reportedly spent on the five-season deal in 2017. But for the rest of us, the show itself could be hit hard again. Taking a backseat to the discourse swirling around us. Because while the first season of Ring of Power may have been a little slow at times, it was nothing compared to the absolutely intense backlash it received.
Some of these were more justified than others. The show’s very existence feels unnecessary, and its point seems to be inflating the peripheral details of JRR Tolkien’s stories. At times, acting was very dangerous. It also featured many of the most questionable accents ever seen on screen, with an Irish accent so bad that The Irish Times dubbed it “Famine Cosplay.”
But, as a grim corollary, much of the backlash was racist in nature. Hardcore Tolkien fans objected to the casting of black actors (including Lenny Henry, who plays Halffoot, one of the show’s original hobbits). Elsewhere, the decision to give one woman a dwarf beard sparked the ire of those who either rebelled against the idea of a beard on a woman or were outraged that her beard wasn’t as big as they thought. This made the show a potential target for review bombers, people who deliberately and maliciously give low user ratings to shows they disagree with ideologically, trying to drag down their overall ratings. .
This was also what Amazon expected. Last year, the studio’s chief, Jennifer Salke, said pessimistically that “insight into global audiences also gives us insight into the darker side of how people manipulate reviews.” Therefore, we have decided to postpone the event for 72 hours as a precautionary measure. Allows moderators to filter out malicious reviews based on Rings of Power user ratings. But guess what? This also caused backlash, with theories online that Amazon was protecting its $1 billion investment rather than allowing free speech, with a swarm of Redditors saying things like: did. Tell people that. ” and “The fact that they control what people can say about the show means[the show]is complete garbage.”
Ring of Power isn’t the only band facing backlash. There seems to be a lot of that at the moment. “The Boys” (also a Prime Video show) suffered a catastrophic drop in user ratings on Rotten Tomatoes this year. While the first season garnered an impressive 91% score from users, this year’s Season 4 only garnered 54%.
Trash Tolkien…Tanya Moody in The Lord of the Rings: The Ring of Power. Photo: Ross Ferguson/Prime Video
It wasn’t The Boys’ best broadcast, with everyone feeling like they were drying their powder for next year’s finale, but a lot of the bad reviews are due to the fact that the show learned too late that it was a satire. America in the Trump era has a sense of coming from angry Republicans. This is corroborated by the Rotten Tomatoes page, which states, “The people running the show believe it’s their job to make the show not to entertain, but to spread their own values and beliefs.” It’s full of half-hearted reviews that say things like, “I think of it as a job,” which obviously imply something like this: One character develops compassion: “The French are assholes.”
Damon Lindelof knows about review bombing. His 2019 Watchmen series had to overcome tremendous backlash before it even began. First, original co-producer Alan Moore was publicly hostile to the film adaptation, and then Lindelof not only had the audacity to cast a black woman in the lead role, but also to adapt the show’s 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. It was used as an inciting incident. . Despite worldwide critical acclaim, a group of noisy users bombarded Watchmen’s RottenTomatoes page, lowering its score to 43%.
“I’m only open to criticism that I think is valid from my point of view,” Lindelof says of his response to Watchmen. “But review bombing happens disproportionately because beloved intellectual properties are woke, have too many women, too many people of color, or are sympathetic to LGBTQIA+ issues. is.”
Does knowing that these reviews are politically motivated make it easier to deal with plummeting user ratings? “I can totally and completely dismiss it because… Because in many cases, the parties don’t even see it,” says Lindelof. “Once you’ve seen a piece of work, you don’t care about any criticism. However, the criticisms that individuals make in the context of review bombing usually occur before they even see that review. I don’t mind tasting my food before I spit it out.” please.”
Lindelof is correct in that most of the backlash tends to occur against shows that already exist in some form. Just look at True Detective: Night Country, which was released earlier this year. Issa Lopez took over “Night Country,” which was widely seen as having regained its form after creator Nic Pizzolatto’s three seasons of declining performance. But noisy factions were still protesting about the new female-led direction, fueled by Pizzolatto’s inexplicable decision to amplify negative comments through his Instagram account.
A force that can’t be ignored… Amandla Stenberg from “The Acolyte”. Photo: Lucasfilm Co., Ltd.
Then there’s The Acolyte, the latest Star Wars series to air on Disney+. Perhaps it’s because the film features a female showrunner in Russian Doll’s Cape Leslie style, or perhaps because it’s an attempt to expand the Star Wars universe, a vocal minority of fans are online as much as possible. We slam the show above, and one IMDb reviewer calls the show less than . “Cultural vandalism.” When the show was canceled after just one series, star Amandla Stenberg denounced the “extreme conservative bigotry and vitriol, bigotry, hatred, and hate speech against us that is rampant.”
Of course, backlash often does not represent a real reaction. Despite everything, “Night Country” received the highest ratings of any True Detective series, and “The Acolyte” consistently ranked in the top 10 most-watched shows on all streaming platforms. Meanwhile, Watchmen won 11 Emmy Awards, one Peabody Award, and was HBO’s most-watched new series since 2017.
Still, backlash from fans doesn’t always occur. If you search for “TV show backlash” on Google today, you’ll find a results page dominated by just one show. Piglets is an ITV sitcom from the Green Wing creative team, and to say it’s had a rocky time would be a massive understatement. The show follows a group of apprentice police officers, and before it aired, the Police Federation issued a statement condemning the title.
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“A new ITV show titled ‘Piglet’ is highly offensive to police officers who risk their lives every day to protect the public by providing emergency services,” the statement read. are. “The choice of words used in the title of the TV show is terrible.” Additionally, more than 100 complaints about the show were made to Ofcom.
“We worked with police officers during development, and they really said they thought the name was funny,” sighs James Henry, one of Piglet’s creators. “Since this is about cadets, I thought it would be funny to call them. But it got a lot of people’s support.”
A fair cop? …Piglets. Photo: Ricky Darko/ITV
How has Piglet’s treatment changed Henry’s reaction to the show? Fortunately, he seems optimistic about all of this. “I have a lot of sympathy for people who don’t like it,” he says. “Maybe they had a bad week and just wanted to laugh at something and this wasn’t working for them. There’s a visceral reaction to comedy, and at least a reaction. The people who did gave it a chance. Everyone sat and watched it for at least 10 minutes, but they didn’t have to.
“It’s a really stupid comedy,” Henry says. “This isn’t a story about people overcoming trauma or mental health issues. There’s more serious stuff underneath, but most of it is about people being stupid and misunderstanding each other and falling, and I I’ve always been a big fan of it.”
While the backlash may be loud enough to make the news, there is evidence that it doesn’t affect how the show is received. As of this writing, The Boys is Prime Video’s most-watched original show. Ring of Power was clearly the most-watched original show of all time. And in its first week of broadcast, Piglet became the second most-watched comedy on British television.
Additionally, when a faction is trolling a show, true fans often come out and defend the show even more vehemently. “Someone sent me a link to the Empire podcast, and I was nervous about listening to it, but the host was raving about it,” Henry says. “He saw the first three episodes and loved it.”
So while you might think the public backlash must be upsetting to those who worked so hard on the show, it often isn’t. If you stick to your vision, enjoy your work, and maintain a healthy perspective, it’s surprisingly easy to weather the storm. Of course, it also helps to know that it’s not always suitable for everyone. “The other day I found a school report from when I was 10 years old,” Henry says. “It says: ‘James’ sense of humor is not necessarily shared by others.’ So this is nothing new.”
