Casey Curtis

I grew up obsessed with LOTR. I've read all of Tolkien's work, seen all the movies (live action and the old 1978 cartoon), In my younger days I took time to speak broken Quenya. Point is, I know the lore and the world pretty well. I wont lie I was worried about this show because Tolkien's legacy has had such an impact on so many people, they really had to do it right. I like how they kept with Peter Jackson's aesthetic to the world, which was (fairly) true to the books. I had worries the attempts to make the world more culturally diverse was going to backfire, possibly making it feel shoehorned in and also just giving stupid racists more reason to speak; and I'm certain it put a lot of additional undue pressure on the non-white actors, that the rest of the cast was already under, to have go above and beyond to prevent giving those that would base their criticism on the color of a person's skin, instead of their acting talent, an inch to criticize. Everyone brought the thunder though, especially the actress that played Disa (Sophia Nomvete). I genuinely was floored by her performance. She had my wife and I laughing, smiling, and both wanted to give her a hug by the end of her screen time. Yes, Disa is a noncanonical character Only issues I took was with Elrond, but that is mostly because I didn't like the short hair and am just use to seeing Hugo Weaving portray him. Obviously, there was some slight deviation from the lore like how Finrond died (suppose to be from a werewolf sent by Sauron to devour Beren but was still killed by forces sent by Sauron), but that and the other slight deviations so far seem to have had 0 impact on the lore. Everyone giving this show flack I think either haven't watched it, were not going to like it no matter what was done for whatever reason, or think bashing something makes them seem smart or knowledgeable. If you haven't seen it, please do, it is incredibly entertaining.