Peter Bartell

For me, this is nearly unwatchable. I'm sticking with it through episode 6 so far just because it's LOTR (sort of) and it has pretty production values. The story, though, is a jumbled, disjointed, uninteresting, slow moving mess that is populated by emotionless, drivel spewing mannequins.Many have cited poor acting and poor casting as problems. I don't disagree. But it's really more the script, directing, and overall vision that creates the 'poor acting' isnt it? I mean, someone looked at it and said YES. DO THAT. Maybe it's more in a Great Britain style of drama than I'm accustomed to. Still, there are attempts at injecting drama and emotion into scenes: but they are clumsy, dated and ineffectual. Take the stone faced Galadriel scenes which go into slow motion or blow her hair or have sweeping camera passes and swelling music in an attempt to convey, well ANYTHING! Sorry, but a close up in slow motion of a mannequin's face is still only as emotive as a mannequin. Then Galdriel finally convinces the Queen to send ships to Middle earth and she slow walks on to the ship... triumphantly, happily, eagerly? No, rather mannequinly actually. Even when her buddy the man King smiles at her she doesnt respond other than brief eye contact. Twice. Oh they have a hearty wrist handshake which is meant to symbolize a successful joint effort and congratulations, and, well, that's just going to be enough emoting out of her. I had to laugh at another clumsily envisioned scene that tried to add tension by tilting the camera. It was when Galdriel was trying to get Sauron Jr. to spill the beans in the barn. What a long boring, dialogue laden scene that was. So, why not tilt the camera? Reminded me of the cheesy Batman TV show of the 1960xs. But at least in Batman they knew it was a campy, comedic gimmick. And they got the effect they wanted with it. Not so in Rings of Power. I think there should be a director's cut (or an editor's cut) which compresses the first 6 episodes into about two. I think there is enough good content for a somewhat engaging two hour movie. It comes down to the script. There is about 2 hours of undramatic plot on the page, stretched into what, 8 or 10 hours? So, again. For me it is barely tolerable.