The battle of epic fantasies on the small screen is in full swing! Two weeks after the premiere of HBO’s House of the Dragon, Amazon Prime Video has finally dropped the LOTR prequel, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. And while critics’ reviews were fairly positive, the audience reaction has been a mixed bag, to say the least.   

Set thousands of years before the events of The Hobbit and Fellowship of the Ring, the Amazon show will follow the rise of Sauron and the early life of Galadriel (played by Morfydd Clark) and Elrond (played by Robert Aramayo). However, unlike the two live-screen film adaptations, The Rings of Power isn’t based on any specific set of novels, but instead on the mythology created by Tolkien.   

Apart from taking the risk of straying away from Tolkien’s work, Amazon has also bet big on the show, allocating a whopping $715 million for one season, with $465 million contributing alone for the first eight episodes. The good news is, that critics have seemed to react positively so far, with the show earning an 83 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes.   

For instance, The Hollywood Reporter’s Daniel Fienberg describes the show as “a promising start.” adding, “In the second episode, the story starts to actually move along and there are characters and scenes that I found utterly charming in the way a show like this requires for long-term survival, even if some of the effects and epic scale diminish a tiny bit. It’s technically impressive, reasonably ambitious, packed with Easter eggs that I’m certain I’m not versed enough to get and, with my interest in different plotlines already varying wildly, it could fall off a precarious cliff at any moment.”  

However, some fans seem less than impressed by the first two episodes of the show, calling the script and storyline “clunky” and “boring”. Here’s a more detailed look at what folks on the internet have been saying.