finished last week The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and this one did the same House of the Dragon, two of the most anticipated series and two of the most impactful so far this year. And although there are those who say that they cannot be compared because so and sothe truth is that not only can they be compared, but they must be compared.

With the releases so tied together (it was HBO who wanted it that way; Amazon was going for it from the start), it was done on purpose for your comparison… or rather for your competition, although one inevitably leads to the other. But when it comes to adaptations of popular epic fantasy worlds, the kind of production this is… how could they not compare?

While my opinion is more than clear, I looked at the great platforms for movie watchers and fans of the series to see what ratings they collected for both series and this is what I found.

metacritical

Metacritic collects reviews from supposedly professional media, which they call “metascores,” as well as user votes and opinions.

Metacritic:

• • Rings of Power: 71 (out of 100)
  • House of the Dragon 69 (out of 100)

Users:

• • Rings of Power: 2.5 (out of 10)
  • House of the Dragon: 5.2 (out of 10)

Rotten tomatoes

At Rotten Tomatoes, they do something similar, on the one hand, they take into account the ratings of specialized critics, and on the other, it is the users of the site who vote and comment on the content.

Metacritic:

• • Rings of Power: 85% (out of 100)
  • House of the Dragon: 85% (out of 100)

Users:

• • Rings of Power: 39% (out of 100)
  • House of the Dragon: 84% (out of 100)

IMDb

However, on IMDb, only user opinions are taken into account, even though it is the site that collects the most participation.

• • Rings of Power: 6.9 (out of 10)
  • House of the Dragon: 8.6 (out of 10)

FilmAffinity

Finally, I went through the Spanish version of FilmAffinity, where they collect professional reviews, but where the scores of the users of the site are observed.

• • Rings of Power: 5.8 (out of 10)
  • House of the Dragon: 7.5 (out of 10)

This exercise is just for fun, because this data means little unless it is drilled down into. The little he says, yes, it is House of the Dragon is upstairs Rings of Power.

However, it is worth noting that two rows, but above all Rings of Power were victims of the so-called bombing reviews, a bombardment of reviews, usually from the extremes, and also usually in negative terms. To this bombing reviewsyes, they responded to Rotten Tomatoes and especially IMDb, the Amazon-owned service, in the early days, suddenly, blocking the ability to vote and pulling down thousands of downvotes.

Amazon actually came under fire for censorship because they only applied it to an extreme that didn’t suit them, i.e. to fanboys who went straight to zero, but not those who did the same, but in reverse, voted a ten for a series that, if anything crystalline remains, is that it was a constant source of controversy (another example bombing reviews the average user rating of 2.5 on Metacritc is obvious).

On the other hand, and this is also worth commenting on, the enormous advertising expenditure that Amazon has spent gives a sense of distortion to the criticism of major portals around the world. It’s very striking how many major media outlets highlighted their criticism of how the Prime Video adaptation respected the essence of the source material when the most widespread criticism was among Tolkien’s work experts.

“The treatment of the Tolkien material is reverent and very faithful to the canon,” they wrote, for example, in their praise of the series in El País, while the best Tolkien adepts describe the series as “fanfic”. ”, refusing to call it an adaptation.

But that’s just one of the many controversies that have dragged on The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and it is not the object of this entry to enter there, pardon the redundancy. Also House of the Dragon It had its detractors. But speaking of criticism… let’s consider some context.

And which do you prefer? doRings of Power either House of the Dragon?