I keep hoping this series will improve, but for myriad reasons, I can see now that this is not going to happen. In this episode, we are treated yet again to a series of vignettes strung together with some passable CGI and a borefest of dialogue.
The directing seems to be all over the place, and the script drags so much that I'm sure the writers were constantly talking about how many more pages they had to fill to meet their quota.
This whole series is about promise. We are lured in by the promise of the rich, detailed world that Peter Jackson and his team created with The Lord of the Rings movies and, later, The Hobbit. But this is all it is-a dream of what might have been.
Instead, what we have could be any daytime drama series done badly. Only here, we have fantasy instead of the usual contemporary themes.
This particular episode doesn't move things forward from where we have already been. It is merely repeating what has happened in the last couple of episodes.
The overriding impression is that everything is small scale. The effects and costumes are good, but each scene feels like it was shot on a stage with as few actors as possible.
The grand scale of The Lord of the Rings is nowhere to be seen. Whenever we expect large crowds, we see a small group standing around. Where there should be sweeping vistas of large Orc armies, we see only some lights from torches dotted around in the dark. There is never a sense of something big happening here.
The acting is at times wooden, but I don't think this is the actors' fault. They have a script that is lacking, and they are trying to bring emotion where there is nothing to base it on. I also have to wonder if they don't feel incredulous at having to speak lines that are dull, make no sense, and never move things along.
Only a couple more episodes to go, but based on the ones I have seen so far, I am not expecting anything good.
