Cydney

A schizoid snob’s dream film. All over the place. Music is too loud. Who are these people and why are they clapping? What’s even going on in this movie. Nope.

As a lifelong reader and follower of Tolkien’s works, I feel this delivers heavily, and accurately (to my imagination) on the visuals and sets, and significantly underdelivers on the magical qualities of the elves and their mannerisms. The condensing of timelines in the second age confuses a lot of the narrative and order of the storylines but I understand why they did it. Ultimately the show is supremely beautiful and well done, but has robbed the stories of much of what makes them feel ‘Tolkien-esque’, like the wisdom and agelessness and magic of the elves, and of the Numenoreans as well. Also the stories progress slowly and with so many new characters and dedicated Tolkien fans watching, they’d do better to let us know who some of these mystery characters are and why creating some of these new characters was necessary (harfoots, southland king, nice goblin-daddy [Sauron was noted repeatedly by Tolkien for his cruelty to his orcs so it better not be Sauron], elf-warrior and single mom duo, etc. It’s dangerous territory we saw Jackson fail at in his adaptation in the Hobbit. I am hoping it all comes together though and I’ll keep watching.