The One Ring of Power - Or at Least a 180; Why Amazon is Now a Fraud of Itself, and A Sign of the Times with More to Come

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Amazon changed the World, not only with implementing revolutionary sales and shipping logistics, but also with providing a generally free-form system that allows consumers to rate and to review products. [In full disclosure, I have equity interests in Amazon.]

Amazon spent more than $700M for the rights and production of the first season of Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. It was released on September 2, 2022, a couple of days ago, and Amazon has now suspended reviews on Amazon and IMDb.com (Internet Movie Database) which Amazon owns (if you didn’t know).

Because Amazon is the quintessential model for online consumer reviews, and because Amazon suspended reviews for the first two episodes of its new own movie series, we know it has an excuse. And, because it is one of the most powerful and influential companies in the history of the World, we know that excuse will sound like a good excuse. Here it is: the bad reviews are fraudulent. (Aka, there’s fraud in the election.) But, here’s my own take on it, after watching the episodes of the movie: the movie is not that good.

Now, look, you might love the series so far, and that is fine. Whether someone loves the series so far is a matter of opinion—not right or wrong—it’s an opinion. If you think Game of Thrones was superb overall, we share that opinion. If you think Lord of the Rings by Peter Jackson was superb, we share that opinion. If you think The Rings of Power was superb, we don’t share that opinion, but that’s not the real issue. The real issue is that Amazon has boldly closed off the review conversation when Amazon’s entire core being is about reviews and ratings. It’s who Amazon is, or was, or now sort of is, except for itself.

Amazon complains that it is getting “review-bombed” with false or politicized reviews because of all sorts of new-normal current social debate issues. Sure, we can all understand that Amazon is getting review bombed at some level, but it does not follow that, even if so, it is not a bad series, so far anyway, or that the review conversation should be wholly censured from public contribution or view. So, at least from my viewpoint, it’s a convenient excuse, and perhaps the stated rationalization is true, but I don’t trust it.

Sometimes, a production studio will take a chance on direction, such as taking a chance on a Peter Jackson, and it gets lucky. Here, Amazon took a chance on direction and it got unlucky, in my view. I can count the ways that I thought it was mediocre, being the first two episodes. It has nothing to do with current social issues. Bad acting, flat delivery of lines, punch lines trying too hard, the sets feel like sets, abrupt camera-work, disjointed plot and scenes, musical score that too often intrudes like a comedy laugh-track. Yes, it does have epic scenery and digital image clarity; but, so does my screen saver. It seems to me that it was so expensive that it ran scared. Indeed, Rings of Power was trying so hard that the weight of its effort caved in on itself. When I’ve watched great movies, like Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings, I am so engaged in the movie that I forget that I am watching a movie. Here, I simply never forget I am here and the movie is there, and I am watching this thing, a movie. If I am thinking about the fact that I am watching a movie, it’s not a good movie, at least for me, so far.

Amazon is a passive conduit facility or it is not. Amazon is now setting the precedent of treating its own products with an unfair competitive advantage. Will it do the same now for everyone? What are the standards? Did it do the same for the overall highly-rated HBO competitor released a couple of weeks ago, House of Dragon, for which the 1-star reviews are still being published on IMDb that Amazon owns? No.

In the law, this implicates the concept of “the whole truth.” That is, it may be true that there is review-bombing, but the whole truth I’ll suggest is that Amazon is using that factual exception as a general rule excuse to slow down and to chill the bad review conversation to try to avoid seeding the market conversation against its own self-interest. This gives the series an unfair competitive advantage, allowing the series more time to try to save itself. Amazon.com and IMDb.com are two major review sites, and Amazon owns them both. (RottenTomatoes.com gives the movie a 38% audience score, and Metacritic gives it a 1.9 audience score, neither of which Amazon owns.)

There is a bigger picture here. This is another warning. To see the thing from the seed. Another powerful media company—in a ring of powerful media companies—that controls the horizontal fabric of social interaction manipulating the rules of conversation in its own self-interest. Sure, it is “private enterprise,” but it’s a sign of more things to come in light of private media as American social conversational infrastructure. More censuring and manipulation of the social conversation, commentary and criticism.

Amazon will say it is correcting it, even while it is doing it.

Tyranny starts this way, and it starts with mustard seeds—the little things—that grow and replicate until so entwined and entangled in culture that it’s too late to eradicate.

Okay, Amazon, it might not be against the law for you to do it, but people are watching you—or perhaps not.

It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of citizens and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The freemen of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise and entangled the question in precedents. … We revere this lesson too much … to forget it. James Madison “Memorial and Remonstrance,” Rives and Fendall, Letters and Other Writings of James Madison, 1:163.

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Gregg Zegarelli

The One Ring of Power – Or at Least a 180; Why Amazon is Now a Fraud of Itself, and A Sign of the Times with More to Come