With House of the Dragon pulling a record number of viewers for its premiere and only increasing for episode two, HBO Max is now employing a curious marketing strategy by releasing the entirity of the premiere, “The Heirs of the Dragon”, on their Youtube channel, for everyone in the USA to watch—free of charge:
The video is age-restricted, naturally, so you’ll have to watch it directly on Youtube, and it’s region-locked to the United States. Despite those restrictions, HBO Max is still freely sharing the first episode with an astonishing number of people. At the time of writing, the video was uploaded 8 hours ago, at night in the USA, and it already has about 40,000 views, and rising quickly.
Wild… this is definitely a flex.
?
Interesting… I’m curious what the motive behind this is…
As you say, it’s not like the premiere was wanting in terms of viewership…
Oh wow! Work!
Time-honored dealer tactic: The first hit is free to get you hooked.
I just hope this isn’t some means of competing with Rings of Power. There’s no need for it to be a competition…
I have a feeling the Galadriel Show, I mean, Rings of Power will crash and burn pretty hard, but we’ll see.
All I know about it is that Young Ned and Uncle Benjen are in it. [Robert Aramayo and Joseph Mawle]. The prospect of yet another Lord of the Rings/Hobbit sequel, spin-off or reboot hasn’t gotten me excited. “We’ll see” I guess.
The only sequel I’m looking forward to is the “Willow” series, mainly because I loved Joanne Whalley as Sorsha in the 1988 movie, and want to see her reprise her role.
Malcolm Ferguson,
That was my first thought as well however comparing the two is ‘apples to oranges’ in my humble opinion. ROP also isn’t geared towards adults only so I expect that might give them a bit of an advantage over HBO with respect to viewership numbers – if they can capture viewers imaginations.
I did watch ROP last night and visually it is stunning but it almost felt like a video game – it was a bit too ‘shiny and clean’. I’m not saying it’s bad, not at all but I find HOTD and GOT are/were more gritty and immersive. I may be biased though 🙂
Kathy,
Yeah, I wasn’t really feeling RoP (at least, from these 2 episodes). You can tell a lot of money & effort was put into it, but I was mostly bored while watching it.
I’m not completely writing it off yet though.
And yeah, I definitely agree that it’s an “apples & oranges” comparison.
Rings of Power is currently going through the same thing that most of these shows are going through nowadays. The critics say it’s the greatest thing ever in order to maintain their membership in the stunning and brave bingo card club, while most of the fans who just want a good product hate it.
The audience score on Rotten Tomatoes for Rings of Power is horrible. Whereas the audience score for HotD is very respectable. HotD will win easily.
Mr Derp,
I don’t feel like there needs to be any “winning”…
That’s lovely, but I don’t care. It’s my opinion.
Let me re-phrase.
I don’t care about any competition either, but they’re both reproductions/reboots/prequels/whatever of very famous fantasy stories and they’re being released around the same time. Comparisons are inevitable, at least in terms of how successful they are.
The ROP show is visually amazing. The story on the other hand is…well there is no story really. It’s like they pumped $60m an episode for unbelievable 4k color gradient wallpaper and said forget everything else.
I think both fantasy shows should do well.
I have not seen HOTD but I have seen the first episode of the Rings of Power (ROP). ROP is the most stunning TV show that I have ever seen. Well done! With many families investing in OLED TVs, they must be enjoying the visuals. Over the years, GOT won many technical awards – it would not have if competing with ROP. ROP is that remarkable. Lots of Emmys in its future!
ROP has a solid story and characters – enough to hold interest beyond these first 2 episodes. It does not have a Peter Dinklage but let us see how it goes for the cast.
The hate bombing from the users is in response to the diversity of the cast. This concerted response has been building up in the corners of the internet since the first trailers showed people of color as elves and in so many ROP roles. ROP is fully diverse – well beyond the one or two persons of color so far in HOTD. GOT’s Westeros was quite white as I suppose it was the “West”. But if you are going with Middle Earth then it should be as diverse as our planet. Bravo to Amazon!
Watching Rings of Power made me like HotD more, and I don’t say that to criticise ROP, I loved it. I cried during the first episode, I was so happy. But the two shows are totally different and it’s nice to bounce between the two. I’m a huge LotR and Tolkien fan, but I don’t feel precious about it, it isn’t being adapted from a novel, they have a lot of room to play in that world and I really enjoyed it. A lot of people decided to hate it months ago, they are still crying over Tolkien going woke. ROP has a diverse cast, get over it. I have no issue with people who just don’t like it, but people who review bomb need to get a life. Anyway apparently 25 million watched it in 24 hours, we’ll see if it continues
Mr Derp,
ROP is getting review bombed by a bunch of babies. They decided to hate it, long before it came out. They can hide behind Tolkien’s vision, but we all know why they don’t like it. A lot of people hate it because it isn’t a 100% faithful to Tolkien, which is completely unrealistic. ROP had a few negative reviews, some lukewarm and most of the positive reviews went something like ‘I was HUGELY skeptical, but it eventually won me over’. That doesn’t sound fake to me. It is in no way a bad show, it just isn’t
Jenny,
I don’t think it’s bad, but the first two episodes haven’t grabbed me.
Malcolm Ferguson,
This is the most common response i’ve seen from people who actually watched it. It looks nice but it hasn’t caught their attention. I think that’s totally fair based on the first two episodes. I had a great time but if I had to review it, i’d give it 7/10. It was a lot of scene setting, and the plot is a little bit vague at the moment. Darkness slowly creeping into the world. Only Galadriel has real purpose. I’m really curious about the rest of the Season, because we have seen nothing so far
Jenny,
It’s a 6/10 for me. Not a masterpiece, but not a disaster either. The dialogue is hit and miss and the elf/human romance storyline is weak, but I am enjoying Galadriel and the dwarves. Nori’s not bad either.
Just to confirm, when the reviews are bad it’s automatically a bad faith “review bomb” and there’s no way someone couldn’t like it, but when the reviews are glowing there’s no possibility of a “review bomb” in the reverse and everything they say couldn’t possibility be motivated by anything else? Sure, Jenny.
Young Dragon,
I think the dwarves are my favourite part so far. Then again, they always kind of were. I’ve always liked dwarves more than elves, and part of the reason I didn’t completely hate the Hobbit movies was that we got to see more focus on dwarves.
Jenny,
For example, I specifically recall someone here saying that they went out of their way to give GoT season 8 an overly glowing rating on IMDB to try and combat the bad reviews.
It happens on both sides, both for equally dumb reasons.
Also, you gave it a 7/10 and critics on Rotten Tomatoes are currently giving this an 84%, which means 8.4/10.
By your own grading, critics have seriously overreached with their praise for this show already, and we all know why. If people are “review bombing” this thing then the gushing praise from critics is a serious overreach as well. It goes both ways
Mr Derp,
That isn’t how RT works though, 84% means that 84% of reviewers gave it a positive review (or what RT deems to be a positive review) that could include rather lukewarm reviews. So I don’t believe that critics overreached, because a lot of reviews I read (which RT call positive) had a lot of caveats, and no score.
Mr Derp,
Unfortunately I have been following the response to this show for months and people hated it before they saw it. They have had to suspend user reviews for 72 hours to try and combat it. As I said, most people who have watched the episode have mixed opinions, which is perfectly fine. People don’t have to like it. I have just seen too many people complaining about black elves, it just makes me sad, and frustrates me. If people want to critique the plot and writing, go ahead
Young Dragon,
I think the elvish dialogue is very precious, as in, revised a million times. They really want to emulate Tolkien, and they have hit on some beautiful prose, and some rather stilted dialogue.
I think Nori is my favourite, I am very interested in this mystery man. The Dwarves are great too. I don’t know what to expect in future episodes, it could flop hard, but I was pleasantly surprised. Because I was nervous about it too, that big old Amazon logo really hurts it
I saw my dad watching RoP yesterday and he seemed to like it well enough. He’s a lifelong Tolkien fan who, when he left me in Toronto for what was my first time living on my own, advised me to read The Silmarillion for comfort. Oh Dad…
But then, when it comes to movies and media, he’s not really the most critical guy. No, he saves that for his offspring 😉 😭
I am ready for HotD tonight!
(i) The comments that this is not “Tolkien” are also racially inspired. They mean that this multiracial world is not the world that Tolkien created. (Yes, ROP does have some non-Tolkien changes (as I think did LOTR) but not many in Episodes 1 & 2)
(2) The hate bombing is long planned. I hate publicizing the names of blogs that foster this kind of behavior but you could look at RedState.com. (Please do not look !!) They have articles going back to Feb 2022, outlining that a multiracial ROP is not Tolkien (it does not have Tolkien racial arrangements) and that “gatekeepers” would ensure ROP fails. The “gatekeepers” would act!!! These articles/videos are all over the internet for months. This is not spontaneous in response to the recent screenings…
(3) What are Tolkien racial arrangements? Unfortunately in his writings – black skin was usually assigned to orcs and other lower evil being. Even before LOTR and ROP, there was a lively discussion if Tolkien meant to be racist esp since he was born in South Africa. However, it seems in his real life he was a perfectly decent non-racist.
(4) So we know this is hate bombing – look out for “not Tolkien, identity politics, woke,” etc.
(5) If live in the US, you should already know that many shows with black actors are hate bombed regularly. So their ratings do not rise (even when it is good work) and they continue to play out to smaller audiences than a decent rating would merit
Mango,
The Witcher and Wheel of Time were criticised by some parties for casting people who weren’t pale pink folk too.
It seems to be common with fantasy, because a lot of them have roots in Europe I suppose. People went bananas when Yennefer got cast in the Witcher. I’m just so so so tired of it. And it sucks because people have legitimate problems with these shows, but they get lost in a sea of hate. Steve Toussaint got online abuse, there were plenty of people complaining about GOT going woke with his casting, but GOT is such a juggernaut, it didn’t really dent it’s popularity. Plus GRRM is directly involved, that makes a big difference. The debate about the legitimacy of GOT post Season 4 is still raging to this day, but as far as we can tell, HotD is a pretty faithful adaptation and people seem to like it. Some might say too faithful, which causes its own problems, we’ll see.
Amazon have limited rights and nobody trusts them. Even with a group of Tolkien scholars on board. John Howe is working on it! I certainly trust him. I’m pretty flexible on accuracy, because ROP isn’t adapting a Tolkien story, it is taking bits and pieces from the Appendices. Other people hate that, and didn’t even give it a chance. I’m more sympathetic to them than people crying over Galadriel using a sword, they call her Guyladriel, get it? Yawn. I’m suspicious of user reviews for ROP because they are all half star, 1 star or 5. It should be a full of 2.5 – 4 star reviews
In my Sept 4 post, I said Tolkien seems to be a perfectly decent non-racist.
I wish to withdraw that remark (or emphasize the “seems”)
Yesterday, I read another article that made me realize I may need to reevaluate this viewpoint. And years ago, I read an autobiography that recounted an incident with a famous author – just last night I learned that the author was Tolkien.
So as of now, I do not know what to think of his views, but I am prepared to leave the question open until I become more informed.