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  • The episode starts off great specif. allusion in the voiceover to the thing where a pre-Copernican and/or pre-Yom Revii physical universe were once the actual factual state of Arda; clear illustration of theme on the nature of evil being a pointlessly spiteful and deliberately malicious destruction of creation’s beauty given form and shape via intentional action what with the other children getting their rocks off and then just wrecks it for me by doing one of my least favourite things! The thing where a character says something and we don’t get to hear what they’ve said! I hate it! Stop it! Stop doing this!
  • oh, wow, that’s Crassus from the final season of Spartacus (‘10-’13) as the Watchwarden. Neat!
  • I don’t know. It’s ... pretty good!? Kind of videogame-y but whatchagonnado!?!?!?1? Maybe I just have nerd blinders over my eyes, can’t see the flaws, but I liked it a lot. Or maybe the problem is that the nerd blinders have slipped off my eyes. Maybe it’s that I’m insufficiently versed in the canonical lore, y’know, it’s been a First Age since I’ve really had a solid handle on what happens to who in what order. In any case, it helps that it’s got the right vibes. And there’s a certain playfulness at work in how it handles things like violence (vide the killing of two orcs in one thrust by Finrod; Galadriel using the outstretched sword of her second-in-command to vault her way to a headshot on that snow troll; or how uhhhhh whatshername, ummm, trans milf who wants to get btfo’d, she’s dressed in blue, okay, Bronwyn, ImdB says Bronwyn, and her son Theo despatch that Morgoth-worshipper) which is the one thing I kind of figured would fall by the wayside when they were picking’and’choosing what elements of the Jackson stuff to keep and what to ditch.
  • Still kind of weirded out by the casting of Not Cate Blanchett and Not Hugo Weaving and ... Not Ian McKellen (!?). Sometimes there’ll be insert shots of, like, Galadriel where it seems they’ve digitally retouched her face to make it appear more like the role’s originator? Or chosen a lens with a different focal length!? I don’t know. Sometimes the actress looks like herself and sometimes she doesn’t!? Weird. Weird weird.
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I really liked this - looks fantastic and sets the time frame up nicely for those that will not be familiar with the pre- Hobbit storyline.

Slower for sure in content, but some interesting characters and from the whole cast, I was only really familiar with Lenny Henry as Sadoc, and the chap who plays Celebrimbor who I have seen in a bunch of stuff.
So that’s nice going in to a show with new faces. I get the point above about different people playing Elrond and Galadriel - but these 2 are in good form. There was a close up on the eyes of Galadriel and I would swear they did a bit of effects to mirror Cate at one point, but I’m sure it was really down to the similarities between the actresses.

Who is the stranger then? Gandalf or Sauron would be the obvious hints, but I don’t think it’s either as it doesn’t fit in with Tolkien’s work for either character (won’t add here in case it’s classed as a spoiler), so fresh character? Or one of the other Wizards? The 2 Blue wizards never got any really screen or book time, so that would be good. Nice mystery!

Loved the scene setting and the references to the Silmarils and Morgoth. And I do love a good use of a map! Very LOTR! 
High hopes for the rest of the series.

 

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  • oh, wow, that’s second Naevia, y’know, slightly less hot but better actress Naevia from Spartacus (‘10-’13) as the Númenórean Queen Regent. Neat!

  • Look, I’m not saying it’s great. The writing reminds me a little of the following : 1) point’n’click mystery games 2) Terry Brooks novels 3) neural network outputs 4) Seattle area newspaper advice columns (“Dear The Stranger, I am a 198-year old veteran of my decadent island nation’s naval service. I’m unsure how to encourage my children to follow in my footsteps and am somewhat ambivalent about my larger society’s commitments to eternal race war. My son is hesitant to continue in his chosen career which disappoints me greatly yet I am nonetheless very very proud of my daughter for getting into our local pagan equivalent of Stanford after she was initially waitlisted. How can I best serve Manwë and Ulmo in our fight against the Enemy, Melkor?”) and 5) that Warcraft movie made by David Bowie’s kid. But, still! I’m enjoying it! If you dump ships and horses and scrolls and swords and magnificent vistas and cityscapes on screen in just about any old order I’m going to be pretty entertained! Love to see loathsome creatures snarl and snap at the camera! Love to watch colours and shapes! Love to hear sounds!

  • something like half the characters on the show didn’t show up this episode!?!? I mean, it’s not so bad, at least the elves in Lindon get alluded to via both dialogue and set dressing. But that guy’s whole deal is his relationship with that lady and neither her nor her kid rate a mention? Either his buddy or the Watchwarden should’ve at least been all like, “Told you so! This is what happens! This is the fallen nature of Man made manifest!” but instead they’re just making escape plans and getting their carotids sliced open by orcs? Dumb!

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  • 2 weeks later...

4th episode!

 

 
  • Love the little dwarven helmets whose fronts open’n’shut like cupboard doors!
  • Calling my shot now, placing my bets. Figure there’s good odds that this Adar fellow is Eärendil.
  • Lego® Duplo®-las catching an arrow in midflight and firing it back. Love to see it!
  • Feels to me like the juggling of the different people in the different places is, just, deeply inexpert. Main cast kept offscreen! Whoever does show up gets dealt short shrift; it felt like there were multiple scenes missing during the dwarvish sections! I counted three instances where little half-lines of dialogue were looped/ADR’d into the tail of a sentence in order to beat into the head of the audience something or other which must have seemed important to some exec but felt relatively unneeded to me, just stuff we already knew or was better illumined elsewhere in the episode e.g. the relation of the Southlands to Morgoth, Elrond’s father’s deal, the timing of events on the show. I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe my hearing is going. Maybe this is a great way to tell a story. Sure doesn’t feel that way to me!

 

 

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I really hope the writing improves. That scene where the Numenorian gets the crowd all riled up with this "Elves are gonna take our jurbs!" talk was unbelievably cringe. While there was growing animosity between the elves and the Numenorians as the second age progressed, it had nothing to do with hot button culture war issues in current year America. This was exactly the kind of thing I hoped they wouldn't do and feared they would. I could go on about a host of other goofy things and the serious pacing issues, but I'll leave it here for now.

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5th!

 

 
  • Profanity, even if interrupted prior to completion, seems utterly out of keeping w/Tolkien’s sensibilities. And, hey, you me and any Bavarian senior citizen with access to an edit bay can easily see dwarves defecating but surely surely surely elves don’t poop!?!?!? How would that even — their digestive systems — internal organs — if they can survive off the merest crumb of lembas for weeks then naturally — the Elven intermixture of feä and hroä — just doesn’t seem possible.

 

  • What? Mithril is made from the light of a lost Silmaril? Dumb! Stupid! This is like when they decided Death Stars and lightsabers had their energy generated by the same crystals! Duuuuumb! (I do not think the obvious etymological connection between the two words is enough to justify the conceptual intertwining of these two distinct things.)

 

  • All in all though : the best episode so far. Everyone showed up for once! Things are happening! Songs are being sung! A fun action sequence! Hands are being clasped to biceps! Can’t complain too much. Love to see warthogs thrown through the air back down to the forest floor! Love to see the hand which did the throwing healing itself by the innate arcane arts unlocked from deep within the instincts of an embodied Maiar!
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Lord, gimme strength. I've watched all the episodes of this show so far, and it's just a mess. The writing, the cliches (slow motion fighting! another king in exile!), whatever the hell Galadriel is doing, the piggy-wolves. Also, how did the producers spend eleventy-one zillion dollars on the show but it looks so much like a bad 80s fantasy flashback? Every time the Harfoots are on screen, aside from their being so ridiculously a stereotype of the big-trottin' Irish, I expect them to break into a chorus of "Safety Dance".

 

I suspect my biggest issue is that I know too much Tolkien. I literally screamed at the TV in the episode where Elrond is being all mopey and some generic elf tells him he can't go to the council because "only elf-lords" are allowed. "THE FUCK? Only elf lords? The son of Earendil the Mariner? Great-grandson of Beren and Luthien? Literal descendent of a Maia? Goddamn it!" Also the explanation of how mithril was created caused me physical pain. The Elves had mithril; see Bilbo's song about Earendil:
A ship then new they built for him
of mithril and of elven-glass....

Yes, I'm a big Tolkien nerd, and this show feels like an homage to Tolkien as written by someone whose drunk friend saw the Peter Jackson LoTR movies and told him about them, never saw the movies or read a Tolkien book himself, but decided to write a fan-fiction based on the drunk friend's poor description. I might catch the rest of season one some rainy Sunday after its last episode airs if I have literally nothing else to do and can't find the video for "Safety Dance" on YouTube.

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I have to agree with all the comments here. It’s not what I expected, but I will stubbornly be watching it each week and keeping my fingers crossed we see improvements.

Very odd take being done when considering how much Tolkien wrote about this world. It just doesn’t feel like the same place at all at present.

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I’m really enjoying it as high fantasy fun with a Tolkien flavor. I know how screwed up it all is compared to his actual story. I’m thinking of it like all those Tolkien knock off books that were published in the 80s instead of actual Tolkien itself. It’s making me want to read the Silmarillion again but honestly I doubt that’ll ever happen because I don’t hate myself THAT much 

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7 hours ago, Darth Krawlie said:

I’m really enjoying it as high fantasy fun with a Tolkien flavor. I know how screwed up it all is compared to his actual story. I’m thinking of it like all those Tolkien knock off books that were published in the 80s instead of actual Tolkien itself. It’s making me want to read the Silmarillion again but honestly I doubt that’ll ever happen because I don’t hate myself THAT much 

 

58 minutes ago, Quetzalcoatl said:

Wow.  Reading these comments, I'm glad I haven't watched the show.  I'm a Tolkien purist, and the things I've been reading here are just blasphemy.  

I haven't watched it yet, and still on the fence, really. But it seems based on the comments that Amazon's LOTR is for people who haven't read the Silmarillion.  Am I right in assuming its more a dumbed down Cliffs notes version?

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No, the Silmarillion is mostly about the 1st age, this is the 2nd age. They actually don't even have the rights to the Silmarillion.

Im a Tolkien fan, but not to the extent others are. I've read LOTR probably 5 times, read the Silmarillion two times through and certain segments I enjoy more than that. Not claiming to be any kind of Tolkien expert or scholar and probably aren't as concerned about changes to the lore as others may be. 

I like the show so far, I think some of the things its doing thematically are really good. Im not sold on the mithril thing but also not going to flip over it. If you hold the lore too dear then you should probably just not watch, it will just infuriate you. 

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When we were all stuck in our homes during Summer 2020 with no place to go, I read the Silmarillion, LOTR, the hobbit, and some of those stories that were later fleshed out and made into books by Christopher Tolkien putting his father's notes together.  Maybe if I hadn't become so knowledgable of all things Tolkien that summer, I might have been able to enjoy this series, but now, no.  For some people, Tolkien's legendarium borders on sacred, and having absorbed it all, I get why now.  It's not something that can just be retconned without upsetting a lot of people.  It's blasphemy I tell you.  Blasphemy!!

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Yeah I've read LOTR probably half a dozen times at least, the Hobbit 2-3, Silmarillion twice. I know it doesn't fit. There are things that I don't like (the aforementioned mithril, half of everything in Numenor, etc), but I mean, come on. They're just stories. They aren't setting any books on fire. You can like both things separately from each other.

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fujdjffhigdraahjsgskgg.


This show just gets stoopider and stoopider (imo--your mileage my vary, and that's okay, because people are allowed to like things, and it's okay to disagree). I have now resolved to grudge-watch every new episode.

Also, THAT IS NOT HOW VOLCANOES WORK.

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Sixth!

 

 
  • Arondir doing Home Alone (1990) on the Orc army. Fun!
  • Did they ... did they skip a scene where Theo sees where the sword is hidden!?!? The last we saw of it Arondir was wrapping it up in cloth and taking it away from the village, right? Right after he breaks a hammer trying to smash the sword to pieces on the anvil?
  • Did the ... did the Queen Regent and Isildur have any preexisting relationship? Have these characters talked to each other at all? Why’s she just telling him to go? Like, lady, lives are on the line. Did you come all this way to hang back with your bodyguards!?!?!? Go! Everyone should go! You should go! Kill some orcs! Save some villagers! Your ancestral line that even now sleeps beneath the mount of the Meneltarma on beds of gold would be ashamed! What, you want to live forever!?!1? Sounds like SOMEBODY’S jealous of the immortality of the Eldar!
  • I feel like this is sort of obvious but I gather just about half of everybody here is ending up as a Nazgul by the time we get to Season 3. Theo’s going to be a Nazgul. Not the kid himself probably the grown-up actor who’ll play the role. Lord Himmelbrand’s going to be a Nazgul. Isildur’s friends going be Nazguls. I thought last week Bronwyn was going to be for sure Nazgûlling it up, still can’t rule that out, she could very well end up as as a Nazgirl with a Morgirl-blade.
  • It was neat-o to have Galadriel do the thing where she dodges a spear on horseback once but it was real excessive to have that happen twice in one episode. When, I don’t know, when Legolas does the Bruce Lee move where he knocks out an opponent without even looking he doesn’t do the exact same thing fifteen minutes later!
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 9/24/2022 at 6:33 PM, Darth Krawlie said:

Yeah I've read LOTR probably half a dozen times at least, the Hobbit 2-3, Silmarillion twice. I know it doesn't fit. There are things that I don't like (the aforementioned mithril, half of everything in Numenor, etc), but I mean, come on. They're just stories. They aren't setting any books on fire. You can like both things separately from each other.

I wanted a bonafide Tolkien adaptation.  If other people can enjoy the show, good for them.  Not saying they can't or shouldn't, but I can't stop thinking about what this show could have been: a show that was true to what tolkien wrote, an accurate and faithful adaptation.  Peter Jackson was able to pull it off, so why not Amazon?  I guess that required more effort and thinking than what Amazon is accustomed to?   Admittadly, Jackson made some changes too, but nothing so drastic that it altered Tolkien's legendarium or changed the DNA of Tolkien's world.  You get the sense from Jackson's films that those are films that are set in Tolkien's Middle Earth.  But, like someone said above, this show sounds more like fan-fiction written by someone who is drunk or high and only has second-hand knowledge of Tolkien's works.  I'll pass.  

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