The Eagle and the Sceptre

Maybe too many plots to follow as Sauron weaves his trap. The storyis slow moving and the script seems dull lacking wit. The sets, costumes and cinematography are amazing, stunning and beautiful. But perhaps the different plays within a play gets tedious no single protagonist emerges but many to follow Luke in game if thrones.. Tolkien's kingdoms that of the elves, the humans ,the demons all struggle for supremacy. The actors seem to struggle with the boredom unlike Jackson's Lord of the Rings which was beautiful , fun and intriguing perhaps this one is hard to follow the success of that trilogy. The rings still hold the illusion and desires of the people. The war between good and evil continues Sauron fools everyone testing their desire for power.

So, I watched the first 3 episodes of this back to back with the first 3 episodes of House of the Dragon (I don't work on Fridays and had nothing planned).

I would argue that the visuals, the storytelling, and maybe even the acting were better than HotD... which is not saying much, honestly, but still. This season is not terrible. The acting is not terrible. The visuals are amazing. The music is very, very good.

Are we too spoiled? Sitting in our bedrooms, writing scathing reviews. Give it another 5 years and you can just prompt an AI to write something for you, but will you prompt it better than how these writers and actors have done it? Doubtful, honestly.

I am old enough to say with confidence that writing quality has declined in the past 25 years, in a very general way. What I don't know is if it is because writers feel that their audiences are stupider, or the writers themselves are stupider.

Still, this season thusfar has been good enough to draw me into the story. I want to see where it goes next... which is more than I can say of other recent shows like HotD Season 2 or Acolyte.

I find it odd that with such an astronomical budget, and fantastic source-material, they fail to make a show that really sparks ones interest.

This season will have 8 episodes, andnow after 3, nearly halfway, «nothing» has happened.

I fear it might rhyme with Game of Thrones, where they end up in a position having to bulk all the epic events into an all too short timeframe.

The trailer for Season 2 looks great, but I assume that 90% of the epic scenes are from the very last episode.

All in all the character development is somewhat lackluster, I personally don't feel anything for any of them, not even if I try, cause I genuinly WANT this show to succeed, but with the B-movie acting and writing, one starts to wonder where all the money went.. Hats off to the CGI and scenery, the show looks fantastic, but the people and conversations pale in comparison.

Elves are supposed to be behaved, conservative and wise, but at times this show displays them as reckless teenage human beings, which is a little disappointing.

I believe Tolkien himself had a clear image if the elves as far superior to humans and their moody nature.

Sauron, arugably the most powerfull entity in Middle-Earth at that moment in time, crawls his way to power through a path of weakness and inferiority.

He doesnt feel like the threat he is supposed to be.

These are only a few things to point out from a personal point of view, from a wide array of matters that fall too short to be worth the title of Lord of the Rings.

• Cheap character development
• Too slow build-up compared to the screentime
• Characters differ too much from source-material
• Writes/directors taking too many liberties to make this material their own.

The source-material is there, and it is fantastic The resources are there, and they are astronomical.

If you can't use the budget of a small country, to make a good show of a source-material that is already written for you, in great depth and detail, you are not good enough.

I want the show to succeed, I will watch the full season, but I am hoping to be positively surprised in the next episode, else I hope the owners will hire a new crew at the head of this show.

Like others, I thought the first series dragged, but I stuck with it. Then the first two episodes of season 2 dropped, and I thought things were looking up. Could it be that the showrunners, writers, and directors actually listened to all the criticism of the first season and injected some much-needed life into what should be a bit of an epic? Err... apparently not.

The overall impression from watching episode 3 of season 2 is that this has turned into a run-of-the-mill soap, complete with all the well-worn tropes and characters. It is simply set in a fantasy world. The writers are obviously more at home with daytime TV than adapting the masterpiece that is Tolkien's writing. They have taken the template of a soap and shoehorned Tolkien's world into it.

There are some flashes of good acting here, but they are few and far between. Although, I think a lot of the blame falls on the director. Even the best actors can appear wooden if the directing is wrong.

Of course, I will watch the rest of the season, but I am expecting the worst and hoping for the best. And what a sorry thing that is to say about a show based on the work of Tolkien.

I really wanted to like this and after the poor reviews for the first season I hoped there might have been a rethink. But no, just the same, still looks fantastic but also still slow, the actors struggling with an average script. Hard to escape the conclusion there is just not enough decent source material in all the various assorted add-ons in the original book. Every time I watch an episode I get drawn back to the original trilogy and have to ask, why bother? I feel sorry for everyone who worked on this to make it what it is, but at the end of the day - it's just not enough. I will stick with to the end but I'm really not sure why.