IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of Power • Hacker News Board

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

#761

Post by leaflets2 » Sun, Sep 04, 2022, 8:29 AM UTC

rufus_foreman wrote: post #670

nzealand wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While a third of the IMDB ratings are 10, another third of the ratings are 2 or 1. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7631058/ratings/?ref_=tt_ov_rt I think the reviews are being flooded by two extreme opinions If you look at the ratings from the top 1000 raters, you get a more normal distribution. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7631058/ratings?demo=top_1000_v... But it's really hard to trust anything about these numbers now…

>> While a third of the IMDB ratings are 10, another third of the ratings are 2 or 1 Makes sense to me. For the most part, a review is going to be either "it rocks" or "it sucks".

Is that a pretty primitive mindset by those reviewers? No nuances, either or. Still so common ...

Why don't they use the median instead (or maybe they do?)

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

#762

Post by pvaldes » Sun, Sep 04, 2022, 9:08 AM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #721

pvaldes wrote: post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is not such thing as a "medieval US" with American natives dueling with broad swords. Maybe in Las Vegas.

Sorry, I can't wrap my head around how this comment relates to mine. Can you clarify?

>> Sorry, I can't wrap my head around how this comment relates to mine. Can you clarify?

> I don't recall any implication that it was meant to be Britain or Europe only.

LOTR has a few clear mentions to America but is about the feelings of an English literature professor and ex-soldier seeing the good old times, gorgeous nature and European mythology that he loved, being replaced and crushed by industrial development and world war.

The themes are universal, could be adapted to other places and other mythologies, but would lose part of its charm in the process.

Under a disguise of epic fantasy the book is basically a metaphor of twenty century Europe in war times, and is filled with details token directly from his real war experiences and depicted metaphorically or directly. The kind of details that you can't invent or wouldn't notice, unless you had experienced it first. Details like describing how the infantry traveling long distances by foot towards the battle field, get out of the path and start walking into the fresh grass bordering the road to alleviate their sore foot pain.

That experience, plus his obsession to consistence, religious background (christian humanism) and expertise in European myths, old languages and literature, blends all together in a complex history that conveys an incredible sense of realism and immersion rarely achieved by other epic fantasy books.

Tolkien don't needs to be lectured about including strong woman characters in his work, or about the need to talk more about ecology, compassion or racism. Those themes are exquisitely treated in the book yet that is filled with a sense of adventure and a sublime love for nature (to the extent to mention how the raising sun in a foggy day illuminates the spiderwebs in the path).

About racism. This is not "uncle tom's cabin" by Peter Jacksons sake!. Most of the book describes different races allying to fight against the evil and befriending each other while accepting organically that they have other cultures and interests. So... Europe in the war. The book is as anti-racist as you can have

Tolkien didn't deserved that but, most of all, didn't needed to be "improved" like that

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

#763

Post by peoplefromibiza » Sun, Sep 04, 2022, 9:16 AM UTC

oblio wrote: post #589

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course they did. But Disney is not making culture, they are making entertainment for making money. Tolkien is culture, Amazon's rings of power is not. EDIT: sorry, misread your comment, no, not only in European cultures, it's consistent across the cultures throughout history. White is the light, first men loved light and hated dark, in darkness lure grave dangers. For example in African mythologies fairies are whi…

> Tolkien is culture, Amazon's rings of power is not. Funny. Culture is almost everything. If we like it or not, if it's high or low culture, that's a huge discussion. But for sure the TV series is culture. * * * Cool link! True, the association with light is strong, universally. Actually, there was also the social class factor in any culture where tanning is highly visible: aristocrats vs everyone else, who had to w…

> Funny. Culture is almost everything. If we like it or not, if it's high or low culture

Fair enough, point taken.

I should have phrased it better.

Let's put it this way: Tolkien was an intellectual and a Linguistic Professor, his works have cultural relevance, he was trying to write the new British mythology from the POV of a scholar, he wasn't thinking about writing a best seller to get rich.

Conversely, I love the Terminator, but Terminator has no cultural relevance, it is popular culture or pop culture, it lives among us, yes, but the reason why it exists is entertaining people that go to the movies.

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

#764

Post by hackerlight » Sun, Sep 04, 2022, 9:27 AM UTC

docmars wrote: post #738

hackerlight wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mandatory diversity For everyone except East Asian males. They are generally not allowed into the diversity club unless they're playing a martial arts expert. East Asian women get casted because, well, at least they're women. Maybe they can find themselves a nice non-East Asian boyfriend in the movie. East Asian men can go and screw themselves. God forbid if they included a conservative older white male who isn't p…

A melting pot devoid of individual culture or expression. It's ridiculous. They forced as many races as they possibly could into the same scenes, representing the "same" peoples to check a box for representation (cheaply) in the most homogeneous way possible, which is half the reason this show is so uninteresting. It removes the entire concept of having different nations with different people who are proud of their c…

> It removes the entire concept of having different nations with different people who are proud of their culture

That's not my issue. I dislike the concept of nations and national culture and borders, and I despise nationalism and ethnonationalism. I just want non-contrived diversity. That means sitcoms that have an actual diverse cast (including political conservatives, Asian and Middle Eastern men, redheads, ugly people, autistic people who aren't there as a gag, guys with small dicks, butch women, and so on) which represents the real world and doesn't alienate and shaft parts of the population for no artistic reasons. And that means a LoTR series that doesn't have diversity where it doesn't belong and where it doesn't make artistic sense.

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

#765

Post by sensanaty » Sun, Sep 04, 2022, 10:00 AM UTC

wizofaus wrote: post #756

sensanaty wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There’s been black people in Italy for pretty much all it’s history. You may want to also read a few history books. (Black moors, Alessandro de' Medici, etc ) I've always hated this disingenuous line of arguing. Yes, technically there were some black people in Italy, but these types of arguments always frame it in such a way that it seems like it was a common thing to witness for the average citizen. The large, lar…

"go to places like Serbia today as a black man and you'll be gawked at like you're an alien" But don't you agree this is something we should be trying to improve, and we could do so by ensuring that movie casting better reflects the more racially diverse situation we enjoy in the developed world (who produce much content exported to less diverse parts of the world)?

No amount of seeing black characters in a movie or show (or the flipside in Indonesia, seeing non-asian characters) is gonna make it any less strange for people when they spot them in real life if the reality for them is that every single person they ever interact with in their day-to-day lives looks like them.

I also don't see what exactly you're improving here either. Most people outside of the West that I've met don't care about diversity, at least not in the way American leftists seem to portray it. In my eyes, that Hollywood cast of elites making millions off of acting are all the same type of person regardless of their gender, skin color or any of the other superficial traits people usually judge diversity by, and I can relate to them as much as I can relate to a mosquito. Likewise, I might be Serbian by blood, but I feel about as Serbian as you probably do, considering I was born and have grown up in Indonesia. I relate more to Indonesians and stories revolving around Indonesia than I do anything coming out of the West (the influence of the Internet notwithstanding), yet by all superficial standards I definitely wouldn't be considered "diverse" enough for a lot of things considering I'm just another corpse-white dude.

I guess my point is that the US, and especially the Liberal/Hollywood idea of diversity isn't anything like what my friends and I would consider diverse at all, and I suspect a lot of people in the real world feel very similarly, though that's obviously hopeful conjecture on my part. I'll take my friend group consisting of every nationality that exists (and a lot of them are dual nationalities as well!) who have white skin color over the same number of Americans of every shade of the rainbow any day of the week if you ask me to make the most diverse crowd of people possible.

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

#766

Post by School-Cotton » Sun, Sep 04, 2022, 10:56 AM UTC

drekipus wrote: post #696

School-Cotton wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Ghost in the Shell reboot with Scarlett Johansson

Everyone hated that afaik.

IMO it wasn’t bad on its own. It was just bad compared to the original which is an all time classic.

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

#767

Post by webmobdev » Sun, Sep 04, 2022, 10:57 AM UTC

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #722

webmobdev wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an indian, I find this politically fascinating. As Noam Chomsky's Manufactured Consent pointed out, the US has always used its media to influence politics and culture both in its own country and outside. It appears the US now believes that it can "mainstream" the acceptance of certain vulnerable group by showing them more on TV and movies. (I do think this will work with the next generation in a decade or so). How…

I think one of the things that makes this contrived diversification poor, is that producers are hell bent on taking existing characters and stories and changing it up in a way that's somehow more permanent that just a simple reinterpretation. I'm sure there's plenty of productions of Shakespeare plays where they mixed up the casting. Old things are going to be a product of their times and there's an easy solution to…

Yes, it looks like Hollywood has got an order from above that every TV show made henceforth must have one prominent LGBT / person of colour / empowered women character (preferably all 3) and this condition creates a creative hurdle for writers, especially with old popular tales. And they are left with no recourse but to convert one of the existing characters to meet this requirement. However, I feel that Hollywood also doesn't mind the outrage it creates, and even feeds it, to generate free publicity for its show (as an old PR adage states, "All publicity is good publicity" - https://www.businessinsider.com/there-2011-2?IR=T ).

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

#768

Post by forgotpwd16 » Sun, Sep 04, 2022, 10:58 AM UTC

satyrnein wrote: post #636

dudul wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you name 10? I'm actually asking in good faith because I can't recall any "to white" race swapping in the past few years. All the ones I can think of were Ann Boleyn, the little mermaid, the coming beauty and the beast, the recent terrible resident evil, etc.

A current example is the movie Bullet Train, where Brad Pitt plays a character originally written as Japanese. But there are plenty of others, if you search for "whitewashing in movies" you can find lists.

An extensive list found in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitewashing_in_film#Examples_...

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

#769

Post by wizofaus » Sun, Sep 04, 2022, 11:00 AM UTC

sensanaty wrote: post #765

wizofaus wrote: post #756

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"go to places like Serbia today as a black man and you'll be gawked at like you're an alien" But don't you agree this is something we should be trying to improve, and we could do so by ensuring that movie casting better reflects the more racially diverse situation we enjoy in the developed world (who produce much content exported to less diverse parts of the world)?

No amount of seeing black characters in a movie or show (or the flipside in Indonesia, seeing non-asian characters) is gonna make it any less strange for people when they spot them in real life if the reality for them is that every single person they ever interact with in their day-to-day lives looks like them. I also don't see what exactly you're improving here either. Most people outside of the West that I've met d…

I'm not I entirely agree that frequently witnessing racial diversity in movies isn't going to affect the way you react to what you might see in your own neighbourhood. Our perceptions of what's "normal" absolutely are shaped by cultural norms and they can be spread by literature, TV and film as much as they can by lived experience. I'm a bit baffled by your description of a group of friends from "every nationality that exists" but all being white skinned - how on earth does that even happen? FWIW I'm not American but I have grown up surrounded by friends and colleagues from all over the world, and they very much do have a variety of skin colours, eye colours/shapes, and other superficial features that mark them as coming from various ethnic/racial backgrounds. There's literally no racial appearance it would be at all surprising to see featured among those in my suburb (e.g. there's a significant population of Somalians, who have very distinctive features, but plenty with an obviously Mediterranean background, likewise Chinese, Vietnamese, subcontinental etc. among a slight majority from the more obviously northern European ancestry that I share). I certainly would have found the experience of going to, e.g. Japan and seeing almost nothing but ethnic Japanese quite unnerving if I hadn't had some exposure to that reality via TV and/or movies beforehand. When I do watch movies or TV shows made in the US that somehow manage to avoid casting anyone who isn't white in a substantial role it's hard not imagine that somehow the producers/casting agents felt uncomfortable about living in a multi-racial world and were subconsciously trying to project a world that only existed in their imaginations.

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

#770

Post by nec4b » Sun, Sep 04, 2022, 11:09 AM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #725

nec4b wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>There were Roman emperors who were indigenous to (Northern) Africa. They were decedents of Roman people living there and not sub Saharan Africans.

Rome was a multiethnic empire. I don't see what being Roman or not has to do with ethnicity. The Roman people living there being ethically Berber, that is, African. The name Africa itself probably coming from the Afri Berber tribe. They were both Roman people and also ethnically African. And Berber tribes despite not being from subsaharan Africa did, through thousands of years of contact, have significant ethnic and…

By Roman I meant having Italic roots. It is a bit disingenuous to call them them indigenous or ethnically African. Especially because his father was of Punic origin and not a Berber as you are implying.