Amazon Pauses Reviews After ‘The Rings of Power’ Gets Review Bombed

Amazon Prime Video is reportedly putting a three-day delay on user reviews for all of their TV shows to help control bots or trolls who would otherwise flood the site with negative reviews in an intended effort to “bomb” the show. Prime’s ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ was initially bombed by negative reviews written by trolls.

An Amazon source confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter that the company is suspending reviews of its, reportedly, $1 billion dollar show “The Rings of Power” based on J.R.R. Tolkien's books, “The Lord of the Rings,” after Amazon bought the television rights to the property for $250 million in 2017. It is rumored to be the most expensive television series ever made.

After the first two episodes of Amazon’s billion dollar baby “The Rings of Power” premiered, trolls flooded the show with bad reviews, focusing primarily on the diverse cast and made claims that the choice to cast actors of color is not representative of the English author’s (Tolkein’s) vision. On Rotten Tomatoes, the professional critic review was at 84% while the user-submitted reviews was at 37%.

“They wanted to involve such an important work with current politics and they have succeeded,” wrote one negative reviewer. “Nobody has a problem with seeing people of color in movies, series or stories… but this story was already written and should not have been sullied.”

The Hollywood Reporter’s Richard Newby hit back against the racist reviews, pointing out that the books “didn’t often make a point to describe skin color” and that “Tolkien was very much opposed to the Aryan ideology popularized by the Nazis, and of colonialism in South Africa.”

Amazon didn’t put a pause on reviews for any specific title, but the baseball dramedy “A League of Their Own” experienced a similar fate when internet trolls attempted to sink the series with negative reviews because its LGBTQ+ and people of color characters were too “woke” and “historically inaccurate”. Marvel’s “She-Hulk” also experienced review bombing with a 36% audience score and an 88% critic score.

“Obviously there was going to be push and backlash,” said Mariana Rios Maldonado, who is a Tolkien scholar. “But the question is, from whom? Who are these people that feel so threatened or disgusted by the idea that an elf is Black or Latino or Asian?”

Amazon will use their review suspension to help weed out trolls and ensure every review is legitimate. Amazon will extend the 72 hour policy to all shows.