The first two episodes of “The Rings of Power” have finally been available on Amazon for a few days. The “Lord of the Rings” series polarized fans of J.R.R. Tolkien’s works, partly because of the inclusion of people of color. Shortly after the start, it is no longer possible to leave reviews and ratings about the series on the Amazon page of the series.
“The Rings of Power” review: First episodes of the “Lord of the Rings” series raise high hopes
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As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, the Amazon series was probably the victim of so-called review bombing. This describes the practice of “fans” mass posting negative reviews to give films and series a bad reputation. This is not about the actual criticism of the work, but mostly about dissatisfaction with politically charged decisions by the makers. Most recently, the Marvel series “She-Hulk” was showered with bad ratings by viewers. Amazon has responded by no longer allowing the rating of “The Rings of Power” on the streaming provider’s site. Existing reviews have also been deactivated.
Discrepancy between critic and audience rating
According to a source at Amazon who spoke to The Hollywood Reporter, reviews are only supposed to be disabled for 72 hours to find out which reviews are real and which were written by trolls. In the meantime, however, much more time has passed. The source also claimed that this practice has been in place for all series since this summer.
Currently, The Rings of Power has a 39% user score on Rotten Tomatoes compared to a critics score of 84%. On IMDb, also owned by Amazon, the series has a 6.8/10. It remains to be seen how many of the negative reviews of the “Lord of the Rings” series on Amazon will ultimately be sorted out because they are not legitimate criticism of the work. Of course, the concern that the group will beautify the rating of the series and not allow legitimate criticism is not entirely unjustified.
