Yes, I know, it’s not game related, but I just had to put my two cents in. I watched the two first episodes, and the only thing it did for me is leaving me baffled how this show could cost 1 billion dollars. The scenery looks nice from time to time, and while it looks good, it doesn’t impress. It’s like graphics for games, it just doesn’t do it for me alone anymore, and most of the backgrounds are computer graphics anyway – the cheapest CGI there is. Been there, seen that, you need better art direction to wow me, which you would think 1 billion got you.
The woke aspects of the series are not so bad, but it has the worst kind of forced diversity. They have just inserted random black people into societies/tribes dominated by whites. Genetics be damned, I guess. Am I just to assume people pop into existence black? Like the black elf, he is the only one, from what I can see. Why, though? Was he born black? You know, they could have made him come from another faraway tribe or something, but as it works now it makes zero sense. It would be like watching something out of African mythology and having random white people in the story but providing no explanation why. It just undermines the authentic nature of it all, especially considering the movies coming after this prequel.
Let’s leave that behind for now, and go back to the series. Well, they couldn’t help making Galadriel a superhero chick, and boring as hell to boot. The series starts with an adventuring session, a small group of adventurers looking for something, with Galadriel leading them. They meet a frost troll that makes short work of her party, but as in by law, you got to have a badass heroine, so they made her have an anime moment. She jumps over the frost troll and basically kills it in 5 quick sweeps with her swords, not even looking at the troll doing so. It’s so disappointing and boring – why not make it hard to kill, like in Jackson’s LOTR movies? You could have added a lot of tension to the scene, showing Galadriel’s skills as a commander instead. Maybe having her give orders to ambush, just something interesting and exciting, but nope. She had to have her superhero moment, killing all action and tension in 2 seconds, only succeeding in getting my eyes rolling.
After this action scene, the show tries to establish its characters, but it does it in the worst imaginable way possible – by having them talk a lot! And I mean excessively much. The dialogue isn’t even good, it’s just a bunch of platitudes, metaphors, people trying to sound deep, trying to make profound statements after each other. It doesn’t work, it’s just painful to listen to, and in general, the acting conveys no emotions or feelings. It’s all so wooden and bland.
The only thing I liked in the show was the harfoots, aka proto hobbits that according to the lore shouldn’t exist. Beyond that, most of the scenes with the harfoots felt okay, and at times a bit cozy with an obvious throwback to the Jackson movies. It got me wondering why they don’t wash, though. All the hobbits seemed very dirty. They weren’t the only ones lacking washing water. As usual, when depicting a medieval type of society, everything is dirty and muddy, except for the main characters of course who have spit and polished armor and clothes. It’s very noticeable when you get to see the human faction. The healer among them, one of the important characters, is clean and well-kept, but everyone else looks like something out of a Monty Python sketch.
There isn’t much else to say without going into nick-picking mode. Overall, it was just boring, and the people I watched it with thought the same, and they are usually much less critical than I am. The main plot seems a bit cast aside too, it has something to do with Sauron returning, but it just seems so slapdash how it’s being told. Some characters seem to care, some don’t, and then you have all these side stories in the middle, just making the main plot muddled. It feels like this series didn’t need to be made, it got no grandeur to it, no real vision of a tale required telling. It’s just a corporate production that might be worth a watch, but seemingly leaves you empty – a soulless production in other words. I mean, I watched two episodes yesterday, and nothing stood out, making me have trouble remembering even what happened. It was that dull!
Thanks for watching.
/Thomas
PS. It should be noted as of this moment, IMDB (Amazon-owned by the way) is currently suppressing reviews that gave the show 1-5 in score. I think they still show up in the general score because it is rather low. Around 6 at this moment, but if you search for any reviews in that bracket, none will show. And I know there were reviews because I read some earlier before they got removed. Apparently, it’s to protect them from “review bombing” which is just a bullshit made up term. Positive review bombing is okay, as you can see, though. Giving the show a 1 might be a bit too harsh, but 10? Come on… Anyway, it’s absolutely disgusting behavior that puts the integrity of IMDB at risk.
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