Daniel Harms

Honestly, this show was pretty mediocre. I would argue that it’s no where near as trashy as many of the reviews suggest, but it wasn’t great either. The dialogue got very cliche and failed to deliver real emotional impact. Oftentimes, emotional shifts between the characters were clumsily delivered (Galadriel at literally any point in the show is exhibit A). I think they tried to convey the grandeur and gravitas of tolkiens world by trying to make everything dramatic, but they only made it a little corny. If they clean this up, I suspect season 2 will be significantly better than season 1. On the other hand, I did like the soundtrack and the visuals were truly stunning (they were the only thing that lived up to the billion dollar budget.) the orcs were terrifying too. Elrond and Durin had a good subplot as well. Those things that earns this show a hard “C” in my grade book. And then I learned that they didn’t have the rights to the Silmarillion from the Tolkien family, and I wonder why in the world they made a LOTR rings show when they couldn’t stick to much of the lore :( Much of the depth of the history and scope of the silmarillion was lost, but I guess that’s inevitable in a TV show.