The Critical Drinker just did an "Ask the Drinker" chat. The first 20-ish minutes are his summary and critique of the first two episodes of "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power," and he's about as negative as one might expect. Strangely, he didn't harp as much on the "woke garbage" theme as I thought he might: instead, he mentioned problems with acting, story, and some stupid plot points that were the result of bad writing. He did take some time to remark snidely on the whole "feminist Galadriel" trope: Galadriel is apparently being made out to be some sort of Mary Sue—always right, always more powerful, always with that spot-on intuition. True, you could say the same about a Gary Stu like Jack Bauer (and I've mentioned him as a counterexample in the past), but then again, Bauer gets captured and tortured a lot; he once caught a deadly, bioengineered virus; he's lost a long series of loved ones; and he's cracking up mentally, all of which makes him more fallible than the ideal Gary Stu.
I somehow doubt Galadriel will suffer any travails similar to those of Jack Bauer, but I might be wrong. There's a whole season of "Rings of Power" to look forward to (cough), after all. Plenty of chances for Galadriel to prove wrong about something, to be kidnapped and tortured, and to lose loved ones (but you know that's never gonna happen).
The Drinker often uses these chats as a way to collect his thoughts before he puts out a formal review—edited with voiceover and video clips and everything.
During Saturday's dinner, my buddy Charles joked that I should watch the series and give my opinion about it, but I think I should turn that around and ask Charles to watch the show and do a review since Charles is more of a Tolkienian than I'll ever be: he'll more quickly pick out where the show goes wrong and how egregiously it diverges from Tolkien. I imagine a viewing of the show's first two episodes would provoke a pages-long reaction on his blog.
What say you, Charles?
Well, we don't have Amazon Prime, so that might prove difficult.
ReplyDeleteThis feels like back when I didn't have a smartphone and thus couldn't be subjected to Kakao group chats.