Is it just me, or had anyone else lost all hope for good Lotr shows after Rings of Power? I saw lots of potential squandered by poor writing, and I fear more Lotr content is just going to be more content, not good stories.
Christopher Tolkien was blocking a lot of things. Even the Jackson films sneaked by and wouldn't have been made of he could have stopped it.
He's dead now, and the new heirs to the rights like money. They also have about 20 years before the copyright expires. Which isn't that long; that's about as much time between now and the Jackson films. To keep ahead of the clock, they're greenlighting a lot of garbage and risk running their franchise into the ground.
With the infinite amount of excellent content available online, there is no point on wasting your time and attention or mediocrity. It was obvious from the news before launch that it will suck, so I waited, and the reviews confirmed it, so I didn’t bother.
Wrongcolor criticism, one can phrase it. Both in what you imply by "bad faith" and in the reason you do that, as it comes from a different pole of the society.
Only many of them were not that kind of complaints, so you only have your human social instincts to blame (and those who abuse those - it's similar to being scammed).
It's a bit like Disney played the "racist fans" card against those who didn't like their Star Wars movies. So even those people who said and say they loved them have mostly lost interest to Star Wars in that very period.
It became socially dirty to criticize those movies, but the amount of the "approving" fans who still left the fandom shows the real reception.