The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

As a Lord of the Rings fan, I was eagerly awaiting the origin stories of Middle-earth. Of course, I have high expectations after Lord of the Rings, which is close to perfection in terms of time and fiction. Because they have a considerable budget and opportunities, that's why I gave my points by watching the first episode right away. Although it is the beginning part, I can say that I liked the first part very much. The character of Galadriel could have been more strong, but she is still successful. We will warm up to the characters better over time.

Characters: 8 Story: 10 Decor and venue: 10 Costume: 10 Music: 10.

A pleasant surprise, the cinematography is impeccable, the characters quite well done, the plot looks like a link between the stories of the First Age, the Silmarillion and the stories of the Lord of the Rings of the Third Age, the rhythm of narration is pleasant albeit a bit slow. If the outcome of the series will be to narrate how Sauron forged the Rings of Power, it will definitely be something to watch. Until this moment, I think that in general terms, at least the first chapter delivers. I think enough to be cautiously optimistic about what the next 7 episodes might turn out to be. I must add, again that I am pleasantly surprised.

We all know liberties were taken with this series so my review is not based on faithfulness to the source material.

A lot of the marketing for this show led people to fear it would be woke. I didn't see anything like that. I wasn't rolling my eyes or cringing at any virtue signalling.

The pace is a little rough in parts but since it's the beginning of the series I almost expect a little dawdling. There's a lot going on, things to be set up and introduced etc...

The characters and the story is engaging though, the cinematography was well done, and the score seemed to fit... so I'm honestly excited to see where this series goes.

Definitely give this a shot and decide for yourself.

My review so far, as of watching 4 episodes.

There is some great CGI (and some not so great), and really interesting environment and creature designs! Some of the characters have some decent/average acting, but most of the actors either over-act and don't really match the feel of the characters described in the source or are not believable inhabitants of that world.

The writing is probably my biggest complaint. Strange and distracting dialogue, weird pacing, and incredibly obvious and predictable plot progression. There is a general feeling of almost complete disregard for the source material.

The best storylines surround the dwarves. And they actually look, for the most part, like the source materials and the Peter Jackson movies established that they should look. "But Michael, this is its own series! None of the races have to look like they do in the movies!" Fair! But, they should at least look like the source material's descriptions and if the show isn't trying to look like the movies, why do the Balrog, the fell beasts, eagles, Sauron, and some of the races look so similar to the movies?

A lot of Rings of Power LOOKS decent (save almost ALL the arms and armor). And, I actually love the orcs' practical effects! But, the show generally feels hollow, hastily written, and over-acted.

Review after 2 episodes: Zero Tolkien vibes. Writing and dialogue incredibly bad, ffs how can you mess up the most important aspect with such incredible underlying material. With the insane budget you'd at least expect the visuals to be mind-blowing. A few good shots here and there but mostly generic fantasy wallpapers. CG looks expensive and fancy however at the same time bland and generic. Seems as though they tried to copy parts of the original LOTR trilogy (it's ridiculously obvious), picked apart the Silmarillion, mixed it back together, and executed it badly on top of that. Galadriel seems pretty well cast, she saved of little there was to be saved. But even her can't do magic with a terrible script. All other actors are, so far at least, mediocre at best.

There are so many weird decision for the plot that make either no sense or feel super rushed and uninspired. The writers or whoever picked them truly and utterly ruined a chance for bringing more epic Tolkien to the screen.

I really, really hope this was just a bad start, maybe they struggled to introduce the world to a broad audience, trying to reel in non-Tolkien fans, and it rly gets going from the 3rd episode on, but there's little faith left.