{"id":97388,"date":"2022-10-14T23:38:21","date_gmt":"2022-10-14T23:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-rings-of-power-season-finale-amazon-has-more-battles-to-come-spoilers\/"},"modified":"2022-10-14T23:38:21","modified_gmt":"2022-10-14T23:38:21","slug":"the-lord-of-the-rings-the-rings-of-power-season-finale-amazon-has-more-battles-to-come-spoilers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-rings-of-power-season-finale-amazon-has-more-battles-to-come-spoilers\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ season finale: Amazon has more battles to come (SPOILERS)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n Editor’s Note: <\/b>The following contains spoilers about \u201cThe Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power\u201d season finale.<\/em>\n<\/p>\n

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\n CNN<\/span>
\n \u2014
\n <\/cite>\n<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power\u201d has ended its first season, with plans for several more to come. Yet the real battle for Amazon could be convincing everyone that its very expensive \u2013 and mostly underwhelming \u2013 gamble on JRR Tolkien’s Middle-earth saga has been a rousing success.\n <\/p>\n

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Amazon has acted like it’s thrilled with the show’s execution and performance, with Amazon Studios chief Jennifer Salke touting its audience numbers in an interview with Variety, while noting that the first season accomplished \u201cthe hard work of setting up who all those characters are.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

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After initial reviews admired the scope and visual grandeur, though, more critical voices have drifted into the naysaying column, pointing out \u2013 as the Daily Telegraph’s Duncan Lay put it \u2013 that the series \u201cmanaged to be both pretentious and boring.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n

Forbes’ Erik Kain sounded a similar note, writing that after the opening chapters, \u201cThe Rings of Power\u201d has demonstrated \u201chow quickly a badly written TV series can wear out its welcome once the shimmer fades.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

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A few barbs from critics are to be expected, and an earlier controversy surrounding the series and HBO’s \u201cHouse of the Dragon\u201d \u2013 involving greater inclusion of people of color, breaking up the monochromatic nature of these mythical worlds \u2013 perhaps helped distract from, or delay, more fundamental observations about the show and its flaws.\n <\/p>\n

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The eighth episode\/season finale underscored that point, offering belated revelations regarding Sauron and his identity, while presenting the actual forging of the rings, lovingly shot before fading into the threat to come.\n <\/p>\n

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At 70-plus minutes, it mirrored the season as a whole: Pretty, with a few visually striking moments, but slow and bloated. Where \u201cHouse of the Dragon\u201d has raced ahead using multiyear time jumps, generating ample buzz and viewership in the process, \u201cLord of the Rings\u201d \u2013 unlike Peter Jackson’s trilogy \u2013 has operated at something closer to a crawl. Heck, it took seven episodes just to see the name \u201cMordor\u201d flash across the screen.\n <\/p>\n

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\n <\/picture>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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‘Lord of the Rings’ stars defy racist critics after Prime show controversy<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Students of Tolkien canon can obviously revel in that, poring over the smallest of details. Still, it’s hard to escape a sense that this slow-motion advance has less to do with servicing the story than a calculation to stretch it out, given the commitment \u2013 \u200b\u200band perhaps the necessity to justify Amazon’s investment \u2013 \u200b\u200bto tease this out over multiple seasons .\n <\/p>\n

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For Amazon, those expenditures on \u201cThe Lord of the Rings\u201d \u2013 totaling hundreds of millions of dollars \u2013 make the pressure to deliver more than an academic exercise, but a property that could significantly influence the company’s long-term commitment to streaming.\n <\/p>\n

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Like Apple, Amazon has spent heavily on creating content, even if that’s not its core business. These deep-pocketed tech companies thus have different priorities than studios like Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery (the parent of CNN), since producing movies and TV is a peripheral enterprise for Amazon, not at the heart of its corporate mission.\n <\/p>\n

\n

Amazon has launched major hits, including the boundary-pushing superhero satire \u201cThe Boys\u201d and the Emmy-winning \u201cThe Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.\u201d In a short time, the company has established itself as a major player in entertainment.\n <\/p>\n

\n

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was personally involved in acquiring rights from the Tolkien estate way back in 2017, reflecting the company’s high-stakes bet. But the history of Hollywood is littered with outsiders who sought to buy their way into the business, before getting their noses bloodied and eventually engineering strategic retreats.\n <\/p>\n

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It’s become popular to refer to certain large corporations as being \u201cToo big to fail,\u201d and in TV terms, \u201cRings of Power\u201d is about as big as they come. Once you get past the hype machine, however, the series has yet to earn its place in the top tier of TV fantasy, much less any claim to ruling them all.\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers about \u201cThe Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power\u201d season finale. CNN \u2014 \u201cThe Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power\u201d has ended its first season, with plans for several more to come. Yet the real battle for Amazon could be convincing everyone that its very expensive …<\/p>\n

‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ season finale: Amazon has more battles to come (SPOILERS)<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[5],"tags":[1011,597,1522,8384],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":100367,"url":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/the-rings-of-power-season-2-is-already-moving-fast-through-production\/","url_meta":{"origin":97388,"position":0},"title":"‘The Rings of Power’ Season 2 Is Already ‘Moving Fast’ Through Production","date":"October 18, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Photo credit: Amazon Prime VideoSpoilers for season 1 ahead.With the first rings forged and the true identity of Galadriel's boyfriend\u2014er, sorry, mortal enemy\u2014revealed, the Rings of Power is finally ramping up just as its first season draws to a close. 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For eight exciting \u2014 if sometimes overwritten \u2014 episodes, Prime Video's new fantasy series \"The Rings of Power\" doled out hint after hint as to the identity of Sauron, the familiar villain of JRR Tolkien's popular novel \"The Lord of the Rings,\" leaving viewers to play\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Entertainment"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":90425,"url":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/rings-of-power-episode-8\/","url_meta":{"origin":97388,"position":3},"title":"Rings of Power Episode 8","date":"October 8, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"The battle is just starting on Lord of the Rings.Image: Prime VideoThe first chapter of the latest Lord of the Rings right is about to close and wow does it look like it's going to be massive. 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