Ring of Power Review Question

This site use to be trusted 

@BadPenny​ agreed i loved using imbd for honest rating reviews but if they are doing this for something I thought was at least a 3 or 4 not a 10 cant even do that. Absolutely stupid

@BadPenny​ It's nearly impossible to deal with the right wing trolls that are offended by anything that is non-white.

@tommytoast​ The only reason you'd rate this show this low is because of white supremacy which is exactly what IMDb is trying to fight against.

@adrian​ 

It’s impossible to tell if this person is serious or not. These folks are a parody even when serious.

It’s now racist to not like a tv show, LOL… 

@adrian​ wow how ignorant are you. I'm actually not white so jokes on you for assuming this was about race. This show is not good. I don't give a crap what race they are. 

@adrian​ so any shows that "white supremacists" won't like must be only worthy of good feedback then? Any negative feedback is invalid against said show? How ridiculous. This is a mockery of rating systems.

I for one am not from USA so that stuff doesn't mean anything here, I have yet the watch the show, I might even be rating it over 6. Who knows. But this perversion of the rating system needs to stop if you want people to trust that they're real.

@Petern​ the show is tragically bad. In the spirit of fairness, I watched episodes 1 & 2. But after one & 1/2 hours, I was still only 20 minutes in - deciphering pseudo-intellectual dribble is not easy. Rings of Power is every generic fantasy ever made, all rolled into one. Think Eternals meets Thor meets Wheel of Time, who trundle off to Worzel Gummidge for tea and a plate of gore with scones and cream - before cartwheeling or ambling off - it varies from scene to scene, to the next who-knows-why. The script is a hodge-podge of I-want-to-seem-deep unintelligible nonsense, while the acting is reminiscent of a high school play. Meanwhile, Galadriel is a mean girl training for the Cross Channel Olympics. Durin actor Owain Arthur was fine but Aramayo is no Elrond and Charles Edwards' Celebrimbor is laughable. The Elves are plodding humans with stuck-on pointy ears, Harfoots are depicted as filthy Irish peasants with human feet and fake Irish accents, and a character who everyone suspects will turn out to be Gandalf called The Stranger bombed down to Earth in a ball of fire like Superman arriving from Krypton.

Amazon borrowed on the most read, beloved and acclaimed high fantasy scholarly books ever written, name-dropped characters and places then said, "We know better, here's Marvel meets Disney."

I submitted a similar review on 3rd September and it is STILL pending. Keep in mind that I am not from the States either, so accusations of racism have no meaning. Amazon owning IMDb is a fact I learnt just the other day. You may have missed the additional gem that they blocked reviews on their own site as soon as negative ones came in (the majority were about everything else BUT race.)

Agreed

I've just discovered that IMDB is a subsidiary of Amazon, which explains everything. The showrunners at Amazon know this show is an objectively poor adaptation of the LoTR franchise, and they will do everything in their power to hide that fact from us, the consumers.

They're running scared. Rather than take full responsibility for hiring these inept, amateur writers and actors that created this hot mess of a series, they choose to blame their viewers instead by pulling out the racism card. Pure hubris. Embarrassing stuff from Amazon.

IMDB (and Amazon by extension) has forgotten the universal truth of retail; the customer is always right. Always. No, you do not get to decide which type of customer is right. That's not how it works. Own your mistake, take the hit, and show the reviews for what they are.

You can't hide forever.

Also, when posting a review, I have to write at least 600 characters now, while many of the allowed positive ratings are even below 200 characters? Why was this limit increased now? 

I tried to post not so great reviews for The Sandman (Netflix), a League of their own (Amazon series), Rings of Power (Amazon Series), She-Hulk (Marvel/Disney), House of Dragons (HBO) - nothing on ANY of them

I posted 1 good review of Samaritan (Stallone/Amazon) it appeared the next morning for me.

IMDB is a disgrace to the entertainment industry. They have destroyed any credibility they might have had with this latest embarrassment of hiding negative reviews.

We need to bring more attention to this, I'm going to share this thread with every youtube content creator on my follow list, which is about 140.

@cinephile​ 

First you say: "all reviews are really helpful and speak volumes about the quality of the show".

Then you say: "I think IMDb's doing a wonderful job at censoring reviews"

I find it laughable that you think your post riddled with contradictions and stereotypes is helpful to Amazon/IDBM, but all you have done is point out the bias in their review system for this show.

Thanks for that.

As a side note: you come off as a shill, a supposedly "expert critic" brought and paid for by Amazon. Any integrity and credibility you may have had before your reviews of Rings of Power have diminished to the point of non-existence. We don't trust you guys anymore.

@cinephile​ 

1. Voltaire didn't say that, Evelyn Hall did. And what she said was entirely different:

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
- BUT WILL DEFEND are the keywords.
3. House of The Dragon has 897 User Reviews - Ratings vary between 1 star and 10 stars.
4. Rings of Power has 74 Reviews - Lowest rating is 6 stars
- which means 100s of ratings and reviews by people like me have been deleted
5. According to your logic, bots and trolls only attack Rings of Power and must be censored, but let them rip the hell out of House of The Dragon
6. My rating for Rings of Power is not there at all. My review is still pending. I'm an Oxford graduate of English Language & Literature. My college was not far from where Professor Tolkien once taught and wrote his books.
7. Who are you? A paid company schill?

@cinephile​ 

OMG - LOL. You're so lame you liked your own comment.

BTW, I checked your profile. You've given a ton of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5-star ratings. Welcome to The World of Bots and Trolls.

Obviously cinephile's post was sarcastic, one of the best examples of it I've ever seen.

@joecho​ 

Thank you for noticing. 😁

@cinephile​ 

Looks like I owe you an apology, dude. Your post went right over my head lol

@rlwieneke​ 

I have been on this forum for years, and on IMDb even longer.  I have learned that overtly criticizing employees and IMDb doesn't bring any changes. These specific issues about bots, trolls, and review censure come up frequently. Most often IMDb does nothing about it. They will post a canned response and merge all different conversations. When they do that, you know they have already made up their mind. There is nothing one can do except take it with a dose of humor to distillate one's frustration. 

When such things, or the reverse where IMDb doesn't filter troll reviews at all, happen as it did recently on the Anne Boleyn show, on Cuties, and countless Indian films, it is annoying. 

But, this time, I thought about leaving IMDb. What looked like manipulation for the benefit of the parent company was too much, for me. I have come to tolerate a certain percentage of fake reviews and rating manipulation, but when the rating manipulation comes directly from IMDb, it undermines seriously their reputation as " the world's most popular and authoritative source for movie, TV and celebrity content.". For a split second, I thought we had returned to the early days of film criticism when studios would prosecute film critics in defamation to censor opinions. Today, with the reinstatement of the reviews, I learned that IMDb's intentions weren't malicious, but still, the fact that it lasted for a few days concerns me, if they wanted to publish only positive reviews they could very well do so. In the age of social media, big corporations have a lot of power, especially when they control the media.

It may not have been malicious, but it was deliberate and it was deceptive and it was likely at the behest of the parent company. This site has no integrity and it's review process cannot be trusted. It's till useful to get information on who's in a movie, but they obviously allow manipulation of their review section.

Bots upvote just like they downvote. If they were truly worried about review bombing they would have stopped ALL reviews, but they did not - because (and probably at the behest of Amazon), it's all important to get people to watch for those for the "hours viewed" numbers, so in order to push that, they allowed all the positive reviews, fake or not. 

No Integrity. Big corporations have a lot of power, we saw them flex here, we've seen Disney flex as well and even Rotton Tomatoes bows under the pressure by deleting negative reviews, but never positive ones, even the obvious fake ones.

And you know,. EVERY review on amazon where it says "verified" comes from an account tied to a credit card account and phone number and address. Those were NOT going to be fake reviews from bots. It was a misdirection.  No Integrity.

It's a good thing we have so many youtube people who are willing to speak out against these powerful corporations and speak out about their deceptions, or a lot of people might not ever know.

@cinephile​ Are the reviews truly reinstated? That's probably less than half of the reviews, mine is still pending since September 3rd... Its even more shady that they decided to slide in a few bad reviews to give the notion nothing is going on anymore. They are still silently knocking up the overall rating and hiding an unknown portion of reviews... Perennial fraud.

@cinephile​ The voltaire line is criminally funny.  I'm going to plagiarize that :)

@cinephile​ 

It looks like I owe you an apology. So here it is, plus an explanation: Although I've used IMDb for years (general purposes, actors, trailers) - I never signed up because, quite frankly, I don't have time to review or even interest in doing so. With Rings of Power, however, I was furious.

Tolkien's Legendarium has rested by my bedside since I was 12. I travelled 8 hours by ferry to watch Fellowship with a friend - it was a pact we made. I still rewatch all three movies at least twice a year.

When The Hobbit came out, most Tolkien fans, including me, declared it a disaster. I suspect the studio interfered; perhaps Jackson's hand was forced. That said, there were some brilliant parts: Martin Freeman's Bilbo is a great example. After Rings, The Hobbit is a masterpiece by comparison. Quite an achievement, don't you think?

And even if Rings of Power went by another name and had nothing to do with Tolkien - it would still be tossed on the ever-growing rubbish heap of generic fantasy Hollywood churns out. "We spent a lot of money on this - eat it." There's no doubt that in places, Rings is visually beautiful. But no amount of money can obscure the awfulness of everything else.

Although I'd seen every Rings of Power trailer and read every interview - and knew what to expect - in the spirit of fairness, I vowed to watch the first two episodes.

My 2-star review is still pending. Probably because I'm a new member therefore a bot or troll - take your pick. I wrote about the tragic script, nonsensical plot and amateur acting. Was it scathing? Yes. Did it mention race? No. I already uploaded it as a screenshot somewhere here, wondering why the status was pending after 6 days. 

For the record, and because it appears to be a prerequisite for daring to criticize anything these days, I am not from the US or UK. My 'Aegean' skin type is not included in Tolkien's writings. He was very clear on this. Tolkien wrote folklore for his country and countrymen, to replace that which was lost. This is logical and normal. 

But the worst part? The show is boring. I found myself pacing the room, making endless coffees, and surfing the net. "This is horrible," I thought. "Why am I putting myself through this?". I had actually planned to edit my review once it went public - add the boring element and other things. 

At the time of review, I didn't know that Amazon owns IMDb. Oh, for the days of innocence.

Amazon's butchering of Tolkien's world and lore, the arrogance of various statements (paraphrase) "writing the book that Tolkien never wrote", attacking fans for not liking the show, and disingenuous accusations of racism are among the reasons I opened an IMDb account.

This was the one time I wanted my voice heard.

I'd always considered IMDb far better than Rotten Tomatoes. Now it appears they are as bad as each other.

But after the site's censoring for several days, and in my case, non-publication, I doubt I'll be leaving other reviews. I don't have the time or patience for a 600-character minimum. Nor do I care enough.

@cinephile​ Still not reinstated for me.  Still pending 9 days after writing.

@Joanna​

I don't have the time or patience for a 600-character minimum. 

Yet you did have time and patience for a 3000+ character post :)