Fred Derry

Not so bad as some are saying, and not as perfect as others are paid to write, this LORD OF THE RINGS is really more of a Hunger Games set in Middle Earth with an assortment of beautiful young men and mostly women battling for their survival... The latter of course, as in females, providing a lion share of the heroics, which angers some but watching a beautiful Elf-girl in her young Xena Warrior days isn't so awful: she's trying to catch Sauron at the "ends of the world" which is like attempting to have Satan himself get stuck on fly-paper... The whole Good and Evil aspect is a bit too broad... Then the pre-Hobbits having to live in secret and, when the coast is clear of danger their secret world unfolds like those old gangster movies about bathroom-gin speak-easy joints when the cops aren't around and the dinner tables go back to become a craps game... Anyhow both of these Elf and Pre-Hobbit stories are involving enough, to see how the adventures will sustain, which is what a first episode is supposed to do, make the viewer want more... However once they get to the human "man" story about some kind of poisoned water it all gets very dull, and it's the last tale towards the end, petering-out when it's supposed to up the ante... The fact am back to watching a Charles Bronson Blu Ray instead of sinking teeth into episode 2 must prove its ineffectiveness but again, it was somewhat enjoyable, the effects of course were good, and it does seem like another world no matter how much they inject modern-day political auras in there... All that doesn't ruin the thing.