In the main I enjoyed it but disappointed at certain aspects.
Not trolling. When the trailer landed I said it looked poor, itâs a bastardisation of JRRâs world. You disagreed. Having seen it (and given your post above) seems you might not be so fond of it yourself. Or am I wrong? And if anybody can explain the purpose of the Harfoots (aside from Amazon just trying to replicate the Jackson trilogy) Iâd be grateful. Not Gandalf could have arrived any point, any how. Having a troop of scruffy Irish murderers to introduce him is simply barking.
Oh and shit plastic armour in a billion dollar production. Itâs awful.
Roll on Monday morning for a proper fantasy epic. Team Daemon here 
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Watched Welcome To Wrexham. Its alright, quite Americanised but not bad.
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I wanted to like rings of power but I find it weak. I have struggled to get through it.
Part of it is creating a believable world, but at times the production values would not feel out of place in Xena warrior princess. In todays standards itâs not good enough.
The casting and makeup for many just look wrong. On the whole the orcs and dwarfs are good. Elves not bad but the humans and the hobbit like people are awful.
Many look superficially poor, dirty. Nondescript dirty grey seems the choice of costume. Which looks out of place when their face looks like a headshot for their next gig. The sailors (now Soilders ) resemble a clean cut boy band, rather than men have done a tough job or gone through hard training.
If that kid Theo was aiming for the awkward, annoying teenager he nailed it. But who ever cast him thinking, yep that looks like it would be thatâs womanâs son should be fired.
On race I do have an issue (but not one largely mentioned) as it appears tokenism (boom boom) it looks like one black human, hobbit, dwarf, elf. It could have been so much better if they had embraced different races.
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Claes played a more likeable character in
Well worth a watch.
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Black Numenorians, covered by JRR. That was the beauty of GOT. Those from the North were white, Those from the south were darker. It was consistent with what everybody would have looked like then. The build-up to ROP was all about diversity and representation, not story, character and plot. They put so much effort into keeping Twitter happy that they forgot to make a good show. The whole diversity thing is done brilliantly in HOTD with it actually being part of the plot.
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I know you literally donât give a shit about it, but keeping different coloured people within defined cultures and racial groups is not representation. It is the very opposite of representation. Itâs not about giving black people a job. Itâs about representing the diversity with society.
Our societies do not have all the black people in one geographical location and all the white people in another. So GOT is not âdoing it properlyâ.
These books, whether they are GOT or LOR, are not historical text. Somebody literally made them up. They are not sacred.
So when people get cross about a black elf or a black dwarf, I just want to say âDude, itâs a fucking Elf! Itâs a fucking Dwarf!â Complaining about the racial purity in the casting of a programme where there are dragons flying about, magic rings being forged, and wizards doing spells, says significantly more about you than of the programme.
Anyway, back to the programme. I really enjoyed it. My only real complaint was that they
Tried to cram too much story into the last couple of episodes.
I donât care in the slightest that it played a bit loose with the source material. You have to adapt when transferring to another format. And they are working from scraps. Peter Jackson made huge changes to the LOR books and his films are revered.
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I really like Andor so far.
Decided to give it a chance after I read on wikipedia that Nicholas Britell did the score and heâs my favourite of the newer composers, heâs brilliant imo. Might sound like a peculiar reason, but Iâm glad I did. Really enjoing the style of this show.
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There wouldnât have been diversity in society at that time. How many chinese people lived in England in the dark ages? Middle ages? Zero, none, nada.
I donât think have quite grasped how utterly absurd you are being.
How many Elves were knocking about in the Middle Ages? How many Dwarves? Dragons? Wizards? Balrogs? Talking trees? Orcs?
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Yeah, damn, good point. Itâs as if Iâd never realised it was all fantasy. Youâre going to tell me Starwars isnât true next.
Diversity and representation for the SAKE of it and advertising it massively in advance is purely ramming your own politics into somebody elseâs world. Your politics, guess what, not mine.
Peter Dinklageâs roll in GOT was not played by a 6ft woman. Why? Because the show runners tried to cast according to the source material. Remind me how elves are described? Galadriel a 5ft warrior bitch with the social graces of a drunk teenager at his first all you can drink Stella party? No, not at all, ever. But enjoy the show, ultimately thatâs all that matters. But if you can enjoy a program that shows people being hit by a pyroclastic blast at close range (hello Pompeii) thatâs caused by tons of water being used to jump start a volcano and surviving, youâll swallow anything. Put JRRâs world and story on the screen, not yours. You want your own cast, write your own story.
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There is some evidence for a Chinese presence in Europe during the middle ages. Certainly we know Chinese traders would reach Europe, living and working there is perhaps not so clear but dental examination indicates the possibility of a Chinese community in Germany dating from the 7th century (however this study did have some issues on how the data was collected). We do know they were actively trading with the Romans, so it is likely there was at least a small community in Rome.
Certainly we do know that Asians had a huge presence in Europe right throughout the middle ages with various military conquests by the Umayyads reaching as far modern Spain and Portugal which destroyed the Visigoths in the 8th century.
Black people have been documented living in England from about the 11th century. Firstly as slaves but by the 1400s as free men. Port cities such as Plymouth had fairly sizable black communities, mostly of Moorish descent, contemporary estimates had it at around 5% of the population.
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This I agree with. Not the diversity angle so much but the fact that it made it so much easier to see the lineages and royal lines. Colour blind casting is fine but sometimes you need the characters to look a certain way.
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Possibly even Trolls, Goblins and Wizards.
Seriously mate, youâre demanding an exacting standard of realism in a fantasy about monsters and magic.
What people who criticise the diversity casting of ROP need to be aware they are telegraphing here, is that they have absolutely no problem with suspending their disbelief to believe in ageless, immortal, magical creatures, but they do have a problem if one of them is black. Itâs not an opinion Iâd be comfortable owning.
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Not the same but similar. I posted this in the film thread. Sometimes a personâs âlogicâ can be illogical. 
That show has a lot of problems imo, but the colour of the skin of some of the actors isnât one of them.
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Coincidently, last night we watched Back to the Future with the kids. Me and the missus did exchange a few nervous glances as we remembered Martyâs plan essentially boils down to staging a mock sexual assault on his mother for his father to foil, which then turns into a real sexual assault. I donât think youâd get away with that today in a kids film, and quite rightly.
It isnât, itâs the pre-emptive massive fuss that was made to draw attention to it and so by definition showing why they did it. Not best actor for the roll based on talent. Thatâs the problem.
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Fair enough.
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Personally, really didnât think the black actors are the weak links in the cast in terms of talent
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