Amazon’s Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power series may have had to face down online trolls, review bombing and calls of wokeness, but as the debut of the show pulled in over 25 million viewers in the first 24 hours it seems that none of that matters. In a rare sharing of data, Amazon Prime revealed that The Rings of Power has “broken all previous records, marking the biggest premiere in the history of Prime Video.”
While Prime Video originals such as The Boys and Reacher have only had data revealed thanks to the likes of Nielsen’s Top 10 information, the fact that Amazon decided to specifically share data for their mega-budget Tolkien series seems like their way of countering the wave of 1 star reviews that have been dominating audience ratings on Rotten Tomatoes. In a statement released by Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke, she said:
“It is somehow fitting that Tolkien’s stories – among the most popular of all time, and what many consider to be the true origin of the fantasy genre – have led us to this proud moment. I am so grateful to the Tolkien Estate – and to our showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, executive producer Lindsey Weber, cast and crew – for their tireless collaborative efforts and boundless creative energy. And it is the tens of millions of fans watching – clearly as passionate about Middle-earth as we are – who are our true measure of success.”
Amazon Has Applied A Hold On All Rings Of Power Reviews On Prime Video
Amazon Prime Video introduced a 72 hour delay on the publishing of reviews earlier this summer, which has seen the streamer bring in new evaluation checks on reviews made in order to try and weed out reviews that have been created by bots or intentionally written as a “troll” comment. While some have said this is Amazon preventing people expressing their opinions about the show and leaving a bad review, one quick glance at some of the Rotten Tomatoes negative comments proves which weeding out some of these entries is becoming necessary.
While critics have been full of praise for the series so far, with their average score currently sitting around 85%, Rotten Tomatoes audience rating is languishing at 35% thanks to a slew of 1 star and even ½ star reviews made on seemingly new accounts and leaving one line reviews that can quite easily be dismissed. After even just the first several minutes of the series, there are few who can genuinely believe the show looks “cheap” as some of these comments claim, and while others have cited the characters’ “ridiculous way of speaking” as their reason for a pitiful score, there is no-one tuning into a Lord of the Rings series expecting to hear characters talking like they just walked out of Keeping Up With The Kardashians.
All in all, the launch of Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has provided Amazon will everything they could have hoped for, and while it will be a few weeks before we see if the series can hold its viewership, its debut has proven that there is still a lot of interest in the world of Tolkien. The first two episodes of the series are available now, with new episodes releasing weekly.