Amazon Stops User Reviews to Stem Backlash on Woke ‘Rings of Power’

If you want to review Amazon Prime’s new series ‘Rings of Power’ on the online platform, well, you can’t. At least not for a while, as the streaming giant temporarily halted reviews amid scathing reports on just how bad and woke the new series is. Even if you love the wokeland fantasy storyline inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien’s beloved books, you can’t tell Amazon about it.

Amazon Prime Video instituted a 72-hour delay for all new user reviews so that each review can be read, evaluated, and approved for posting on Prime Video. Amazon says it is taking this unprecedented move in order to determine whether the reviews are real and come from actual human beings who want to express their love, or hate, of the new series, or if the reviews are coming from a ‘bot.’ ‘Bot’ is the term used to describe a software application that is designed to imitate human activity on the Internet.

However, plenty of people are calling foul on Amazon’s decision to halt reviews, as it appears the company wants to remove most negative comments about the new series, rather than determine which ones are from ‘bots’ or ‘trolls.’

According to industry mag ‘Variety’, as reported by Breitbart, the real issue is to get ahead of the ‘review bombs’ that have crept up on other online review sites. “The series appears to have been review bombed — when trolls flood intentionally negative reviews for a show or film — on other sites like Rotten Tomatoes.”

Amazon has temporarily shut off user reviews for The Rings of Power on Prime Video, claiming to take this action so it can filter out “trolls” leaving negative comments about the new series. https://t.co/i8fj5OG5Yw

— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) September 5, 2022

Rotten Tomatoes has emerged as a leader in movie and television review aggregation. However, it is ideologically influenced by leftist politics, and its separation of reviews between movie critics and the general viewing audience shows this. The Tomatometer is the professional movie critic score for a movie or TV show, whereas the Audience Score represents the opinions of, well, everyone else. ‘Rings of Power’ received a solid 84% from professional critics, but regular folks who submitted reviews gave the woke show just a 39% rating. Audience comments run the gamut, but there appears to be a coalescing around casting decisions as actors of color play elves, dwarves, harfoots (what?), and other fantasy folks, something that isn’t really reflected in Tolkien’s books.

As Variety reports, Amazon Prime Video has had some practice reviewing its reviews, aka censorship, with ‘A League of Their Own,’ a new series based on the highly successful 1992 movie starring Geena Davis, Rosie O’Donnell, and Madonna. In weeding out the reviews ‘posted in bad faith,’ ‘A League of Their Own’ appears to be a success, boasting a 4.3 out of 5-star rating on Prime Video, with a whopping 80% of users giving the series five out of five stars. Amazon is expected to announce new reviews on Sunday, and it will be interesting to see if it successfully conquered the ‘reviewscape’ by eliminating the trolls, and the fairly assessed, well-written critiques of a show that appears hellbent on promoting woke values more than celebrating the spirit of Tolkien’s storytelling.

But it remains to be seen whether Amazon will take one step further and eliminate user reviews entirely, as did competitor Netflix after comedienne Amy Schumer’s special was roasted over the coals for its unwatchable content a few years ago.