Live data from Hacker News

IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of Power

old.reddit.com

611–620 of 841 posts

Re: IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of Power

#611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. An Italian was talking about an Italian story. They're Europeans. What did you intend this statement to contribute?

The reality is that at least as a North American, nobody even knows it is an Italian story. We all know Pinocchio from our childhood. Nobody knows it’s Italian. So watching a Disney movie, I’m not watching an Italian movie featuring an Italian story, just watching Disney. I’m watching a common fable. And in that case, I really don’t see why everyone HAS to be white. Not asking to change the original Italian book here…

[deleted]

Re: IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of Power

#612
post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately that's really how Tolkien's mythology tends to work. White skin is associated with purity, darker skin with corruption and evil (or at least, between the two, "civilized" and "uncivilized".) It's a trope that's carried on into sci-fi (particularly Star Trek, where the more animalistic or violent races also tend to be darker - see the Klingons who get portrayed as darker-skinned and more aggressive with…

This is correct, but what to do about it? Just keep rolling with basically racist concepts because we like the other aspects of the mythology? Or explicitly overturn the racist parts, and keep the rest? I like the second one, but apparently many other commenters are perfectly comfortable with "white=good".

D&D is at least trying to do the latter - they just issued an apology for the Hadozee - a slave race of monkey people for which the unfortunate implications are obvious. At least to some people.

Of course we're still left with the archetype of race mapping to moral alignment in general which is gross, but at least it's something.

And of course every single time anyone tries to decolonize (I'm going to use that word specifically because it irks certain people) fantasy and sci-fi, there's a controversy like the one we're in the middle of now. Some people have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the twentieth century.

[0]https://www.thegamer.com/dungeons-dragons-spelljammer-advent...

Re: IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of Power

#613
post #6

Interesting to contrast the IMDB rating with Rotten Tomatoes, not owned by Amazon, which currently has an audience rating of 38%. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/the_lord_of_the_rings_the_... In my opinion, Steam does the best job of handling this tricky problem by leaving all reviews up and transparently letting the user pick whether or not to include periods of "unusual activity".

What is interesting? It’s just review bombing.

Does IMDB act this way for non-Amazon movies?

If not, this is real slimy.

Re: IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of Power

#614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want the best actor for a role, not one with the right skin color. You can hedge around the skincolor issue all you want, but that's the basis for your complaint.

If the best actor for Black Panther was white would you have an issue with that?

Well, the Black Panther being a black superhero character, with African background, which is important to the story, means the "best actor" should include those qualities.

It's not just about "best" in acting abilities alone (as if those can be taken in abstract regardless of the story), but best in fitting the character and the role.

So you're kind of making the parent's point.

Re: IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of Power

#615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, I like the political intrigue. It's also a reminder that the quest for power is never ending, and even when one wins, it's never lasting. But, to your point, it's not that dissimilar from other quest for power dramas. I told a friend the new GoT is a bit like Succession with dragons. The quest for power is part of the human condition, which is why I think so many enjoy the stories in whatever form they are to…

> For me, I like the political intrigue. Have you watched The Expanse ? If you like faction-y stuff, it's worth checking out.

Of course, and read many of the books :)

Re: IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of Power

#616

To be maybe controversial... I'm still thinking about it, but I do wonder if diverse casting works in European fantasy stories. The problem I have is that it generally pulls me out of the experience/ makes it less immersive. I welcome diverse castings in modern shows (though we don't need every show to follow a template 'diverse' casting). A common counter argument is, well you can suspend your disbelief and imagine…

Well, in Tolkien's case it was meant to be proto European mythology. It would also look out of place to place a lot of European or Asian characters in a proto African mythology story. I don't think it's racist to have a story set in a place where peoples of a particular race are all that habitate there. The modern world is just that, modern. A medieval fantasy world has to play by those rules, in its own sort of ways…

> Well, in Tolkien's case it was meant to be proto European mythology.

Unsupportable. Tolkien was only concerned with giving England a distinct history. He probably didn't care about Europe and hated everything French.

Almost everyone assumes Middle-Earth is Europe. Try holding Tolkien's famous map of Middle-Earth up to a mirror to see that it is really strikingly similar to North America, too similar to be a coincidence. In fact, he got a lot of his Hobbit surnames from actual family surnames in, iirc, Kentucky; Baggins included.

Re: IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of Power

#617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, I like the political intrigue. It's also a reminder that the quest for power is never ending, and even when one wins, it's never lasting. But, to your point, it's not that dissimilar from other quest for power dramas. I told a friend the new GoT is a bit like Succession with dragons. The quest for power is part of the human condition, which is why I think so many enjoy the stories in whatever form they are to…

I really like Succession, but sorry, Dragons is nothing like that. There is no political intrigue, just people in costumes making fairly obvious moves.

They both seem fairly obvious, yet still enjoyable. The one thing a GoT based show has going for it though, is they have historically not been afraid to kill off major characters. That willingness to kill characters keeps the audience a bit on their toes.

Re: IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of Power

#618

To be maybe controversial... I'm still thinking about it, but I do wonder if diverse casting works in European fantasy stories. The problem I have is that it generally pulls me out of the experience/ makes it less immersive. I welcome diverse castings in modern shows (though we don't need every show to follow a template 'diverse' casting). A common counter argument is, well you can suspend your disbelief and imagine…

The main problem with diversity, is that most of the time it's a performance. And it's often done with bad actors, who will spend hours and hours on talk shows, describing how they are proud to be the first X to have played in this role.

The result is thus disappointing. And it does not create anything of value.

Because unsurprisingly, people are not paying to the the "first black elf". Nobody care. So it's just alienating the core fanbase because they are fed up seeing their favorite franchise being ruined by quotas, and racial war, especially when all other aspects are lacking (scenario, dialogues, poor yet expensive CGI, etc)

I just wish most of this company get broke and we start to see smaller studio producing interesting stuff around diversity.

As you can tell I have no fetish for diversity as it's a criteria I found useless in a workplace or in my entertainment. But from time to time, I would happily watch a high budget and original production about some fantasy world happening in Africa (like Game of Thrones is for England) or in Thailand or whatever with all the folklore around it.

Rather than seeing divisive comment about :

"Amazing, we finally have some diversity among LoR's elf, take that racist Tolkien"

or

"Disgusting, they put some black elf".

As usual, I really feel this modern world is not for me, it's ruining most franchises one after the other, yet it's not creating any new interesting franchises.

Re: IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of Power

#619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say European, except for the fact that Tolkien wrote the story, what part of the show thus far has given you an explicit European feel? Did the Harfoots resemble British subjects, or do the race of men have to be from the European continent because of their skin color? Which city did Lindon look like? If we're already in a fantasy setting, why is there such a focus on relating the setting of the fantasy to o…

You honestly deny that middle earth is not based on Europe? Everything Tolkien wrote was drenched in that reference frame.

Middle-Earth most definitely is not based on Europe and claiming such is unsupportable. The geography and map of Middle-Earth is absolutely nothing like Europe, no similarities whatsoever, and no geological process known could make it similar. On the other hand, Middle-Earth is strikingly similar to a mirror image of North America.

Re: IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of Power

#620

To be maybe controversial... I'm still thinking about it, but I do wonder if diverse casting works in European fantasy stories. The problem I have is that it generally pulls me out of the experience/ makes it less immersive. I welcome diverse castings in modern shows (though we don't need every show to follow a template 'diverse' casting). A common counter argument is, well you can suspend your disbelief and imagine…

As a European, I find it absolutely absurd that peoples immersion is “being broken” by seeing non-white people in a fantasy show.

When I see a dwarf in a fantasy TV show, I don’t see the colour of the dwarfs skin - I see a dwarf. The fact that people are uncomfortable by brown dwarves is ridiculous. What a strange hill to die on.

I am flabbergasted that this is even a topic of such heated debate at the moment. It would appear we, as a species, are not quite as far along as I would have thought.

The mind boggles.

Post reply on HN