As Amazon launches its new “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” series, it is running into serious pushback from fans and influencers alike.
Despite scoring 25 million viewers to become the best performing Amazon original ever, according to the company, the show has been hit with a barrage of negative reviews, most notably from Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who tweeted, “Tolkien is turning in his grave,” before continuing in a follow-up tweet, “Almost every male character so far is a coward, a jerk or both. Only Galadriel is brave, smart and nice.”
As Musk was tweeting, Amazon suspended user reviews of the show for 72 hours amid supposed review-bombing, which Amazon claimed were due to cultural or political issues rather than actual quality. Amazon claimed by suspending the reviews, it would prevent trolls and politically motivated posters from exerting influence over the show’s rating.
Anthony Palomba, professor of business administration at UVA’s Darden School of Business, claimed, “With social media, these tornadoes can just kind of develop out of nowhere. This screams to me that [Amazon] is very sensitive to growing this business, and being perceived as a major player in streaming.”
The user’s view over at Rotten Tomatoes was not able to be ameliorated by simply suspending reviews, and the series scored a user review rating of just 39%, compared to a critic score of 84%.
At IMDB, which is owned by Amazon, ratings crept slightly higher as the weekend went on, settling at 6.8/10 as of Tuesday. By comparison, House of the Dragon has an IMDB score of 8.8/10.
Palomba cautioned, “Part of this deals with super diehard people, but we also have to remember that these are people who operate in extremes. That’s not necessarily indicative of how the mass audience feels.”
Variety reported that Amazon spent $465 million on the first season of the show, with franchise rights to Tolkien’s work costing $250 million on top of that. By contrast the entire Lord of the Rings Series by Peter Jackson cost just $281 million to produce.
