To me that indicates their marketing budget was severely cut.

Anecdotally I heard people not LOTR fans confirm they didn’t even get past the first couple episodes, they found them so boring in season 1.

I found the execution so conspicuously poor when the budget suggested it would be competitive with HBO series, it felt like a clunky CW fantasy series, to say nothing of the changes to Tolkien, which I’d argue are an order of magnitude worse than anything Jackson did.

Again with season 2 out, I see more criticism and joyful mockery (it’s so bad YouTubers are having genuine fun talking about it) along those same lines of the acting and narrative. It’s not “hate” criticism, it’s comedic.

Even Amazon will only burn money for so long, just like Disney shutting the Acolyte down.

https://www.cougarboard.com/board/message.html?id=29659212