It was fine. The visuals were outstanding but the pacing was a bit of a slog. Hopefully, it's because it's a slow burn and that there will be a ton of payoff later on not because it's simply a boring show. Unfortunately, I think it's going to be the later because so far it feels aimless.
I haven't been particularly impressed by any of the acting nor the dialogue and some of the writing was quite sloppy. Probably the worst was Elrond and Celebrimbor talking about going to Khazad-Dum and then in the very next scene they are there, dressed in the same clothes and they presumably walked all the way there by themselves.
As for the changes to the lore, there was one that I take a huge issue with. That is Gil-galad handing out pardons and allowing the elves to return to Valinor like prizes. This is such a fundamental change and it serves almost no purpose. There had to be far easier and better way to get Galadriel on her way to Numenor. There is no need to change such a huge part of the Silmarillion and to make Galadriel act like a retard (what was her plan to swim all the way back to ME? Really?).
And finally: "Looks can be deceiving." *wink*
Laying it a bit thick on there.
Last edited by ares834 on Sep 2nd, 2022 at 04:07 AM
Just watched both, enjoyed it. Has some issues and it’s not serious and political intrigue on a level like GoT, more high adventure fantasy, also far more lighthearted, but it does it well enough in the first two.
Production quality and visuals are WAY up there, make up, costumes, weapons, film locations and CGI, this was not cheap to make and you see that right away.
Arondir, played by a Puerto Rican actor, or the “Black elf” people were losing their minds over when the previews were released, he’s one of the better acted and interesting characters. As is Galadriel.
Haven't seen it yet, because I dread it worse than a root canal, but I did notice something very odd.
IMDB (owned by Amazon naturally) has some low reviews in its weighted score. But surprisingly, not a single user review under 5 is viewable. Not one. I find it extremely unlikely that even people just out to review bomb it would say exactly nothing.
And yet, despite Amazon's blatant manipulation of the review scores all the articles being written are about how it's being review bombed. It's always funny too how they ***** about review bombing but never note the opposite (review boosting?) and that RoP currently has more 10/10 scores than 1/10.
Last edited by ares834 on Sep 3rd, 2022 at 07:12 PM
It's pretty terrible. As I feared it bears little resemblance to any of Tolkien's actual works. Just a few familiar names of people and places sprinkled into it. The actual plot is just newly made up fan fiction. And bad fan fiction at that.
The dialog ranges from CW level mediocrity all the way down to cringeworthy.
Every second the Harfoots are on screen is a second you have to just suffer through.
The guy playing Elrond looks like a twink that should be staring in a film titled "Bathhouse Bottom Bitches IV"
And worst of all is Galadriel. They have taken one of the great epic characters of the Tolkien world and transformed her into a combination of Mary Sue, angry Karen, and Xena Warrior Princess. Going to be a tough go of it when people hate the character you are trying to present as the main hero of the show.
And last but not least it was just straight up boring. And I say that as a Tolkien geek who could just listen to someone read one of his books. These first two episodes were mostly just dull and unengaging. Other than mild upset at each point where they just absolutely raped the lore of Tolkien's second age storylines I felt nothing at all for this epic billion dollar fail.
According to Amazon it had 25 million views worldwide on the first day. Of course, without knowing the methodology they use that number is nearly useless. Even something as simple as does a person watching both episodes count as two views would make a massive difference.
On the other hands, Samba TV released their numbers. While they don't extrapolate to total number of viewers, they do allow for comparisons to other shows. RoP had 1.8 million views in households measured by Samba.
For comparison:
House of the Dragon was 4.8 million
Stanger Things Season 4 was 2.9 million
Moon Knight was 1.8 million
She-Hulk was 1.5 million
Kenobi was 2.14 million
Boog of Boba Fett was 1.5 million
So the numbers would be pretty impressive and good news for nearly any show... But not at all for the most expensive show ever made. If Samba's ratings are accurate, then RoP needs to greatly increase its audience or it will likely drastically reduce its budget going forward.
So a new episode came out and it's the best one yet though it's still merely fine.
Numenor looked amazing. And I was a huge fan of the Orc design. But there were plenty of problems as well...
The Harfoot storyline just flat out sucks. It kills any momentum the show starts to build up whenever it switches over to them.
Galadriel is also awful. They are trying to make her prideful but, instead of proud, she comes across as a petulant teen. She's this ancient elf born who has been raised amongst nobility, monarchs, and even literal gods and she can't manage an attempt at diplomacy with Numenor, not even a thank you for saving her life? It's ridiculous. The excuse is she is "young", but no she's not. She's younger than she is in LotR but she's still thousands of years old by this point and is one of the oldest beings alive in ME, far older than Gil-Galad or Elrond. Then there was that slow-mo horse riding scene... Yeesh. I have no clue how that got past QC.
And finally, the most damning flaw of all, it's just boring.
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