Everyone Says How Bad Rings of Power Is, But Numbers Paint a Different Picture
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has a pretty underwhelming reception for a show with such amount of hype behind it.
Just look at the review sites which allow user reviews. The average user review score on Rotten Tomatoes is still only 39%. On IMDB the show got the less terrible 6.9 out of 10, which is still only mediocre.
That said, there is no question, that The Rings of Power was a highly viewed show, with few equals in terms of audience.
We've covered the question of its viewership recently. A large number of people must have liked it. So, why the poor review scores? (We're not going to take into account the allegations of review bombing by people who did not watch the series as well as the allegations of purging 1-star reviews, because neither can be proven, and assume that the scores roughly reflect the audience's opinion.)
Looking at review breakdowns, we can find that The Rings of Power gets a lot of both 10-star and 1-star reviews. This means that the Internet is polarized about the series, and while it has a sizeable fandom, it also has a sizeable and active hatedom, which voice is often louder.
This should not come as a surprise; the show was controversial before its first episodes even aired.
Those who like The Rings of Power mostly blame Tolkien's fanbase for being prejudiced against it and never giving it a chance. They have a kernel of a point somewhere.
Adaptations which wildly diverge from source material were the norm rather than exceptions for a very long time, and still remain common. Not being a 1:1 adaptation should not be held against a show, particularly when its literary source is just a brief overview of the distant past from an appendix and unpublished author's notes.
But does this hold true for a show which built most of its hype on the connection to Middle-earth, both that of the books and of Peter Jackson's movies? Which, in fact, even borrows so much of its visual design from its cinematic predecessor?
Those who like The Rings of Power say that we should give it a chance to stand on its own merit, but does it really have enough merit on its own? In any case, while it is clear that The Rings of Power achieved a significant success, it is also almost as clear, that its success was not proportional to expectations placed on it and enormous money poured into its production.