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Indecisive lackadaisical melodrama with fantastic motifs modeled after Tolkien's world mixed with modern identity politics mimicing P. Jacksons LOTR style.

Amazon is playing with fire.

Showrunners and directors of The Rings of Power might be falling into a trap of unoriginality. Here's why. Its simple and obvious. They are mimicing, simulating Peter Jackson's style, intentionally, hoping for the best, or at least I like to belive that, but it could be somthing else, more malevolent. So many points in the show indicate to this. And I think that's just wrong. Bad approach. Insted of finding their own way, they only amplify Peter Jacksons uniqueness and genius. And based on the assumption that most copyes are doomed, this could be highly counter-productive for Amazon.

The biggest mistake, considering the first episode, is that everything is shown in such a way that the viewer's know, more or less, all part's of the story, so here we witness fast and constant jumps, which in my opinion is wrong.

Points that indicate to mimicing are many considering episode 1 ,,A Shadow of the Past'' (and it took me so long to figure it. Sich fetails will be notoced only by those who watched LOTR trilogy contless times): Naration of Galadriel followed by the wars of the past, then appearance of Hobbits/Harfoots, represented by two main Harfoot girls, both great actress by the way (indicating to Frodo and Sam). Some situations, like chemistry between the Elf guard and a village woman (same as Aragorn and Arwen in LOTR), silly and pointless fireworks, snow troll fight lacrdia, Galadriel killing the troll without any trouble (Moria troll fight in LOTR). Even Arondir in episode 3, when he says that he will cut down the tree is indescribably reminiscent of the moment when Frodo says that he will take the ring to Mordor. Are they making a remake or making fun of Jackson, or they are trying to simulate something perfectly made before?

Now back to the show. Watching the opening with the first episodes I felt some indifference, ambivalence towards the interpreted world. It turns out somehow as if I immediately thought something was wrong, and I must to figure it out, to reach an understanding.

At first, wasn't expecting much to be honest, but at least I was hoping for a bit more interesting interpretation of the story. Instead of this I somehow felt monotony and disconnection from the Tolkien world. I wonder how tho? How can u make such an error? I thought that wasn't possible because Tolkien is an amazing and absolutely extraordinary story teller, with rich story and beautiful imagination, narratives and powerful dialogs.

Well, behind this great visuals of the show, I felt there was something wrong with it, I just felt it, beside character development that is poorly executed, and the story that feels sluggish, uninteresting and distant. Then I remembered that I watched this before, somewhere else (Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring) but far better made. This is just below standard, same but diferent, soulless and empty. And it didn't hook me up that time, knowing this, remembering. It took me a while to figure it out, it cost me a re-watch of episde 1 to understand why is this so familiar to me. And when it doesn't hook you up, u know it's just something wrong.

Now plot felt soulless, almost empty. And the representation of Elf's is just bad, they are meant to be the fairest creatures in Arda, a far more beautiful race than Men, not casual humans with pointy ears.

It's pretty bad start considering episode 1, poor opening, unoriginal, souless, indecisive, lackadaisical, melodramatic with scattered structure which makes it even harder for me to rate this higher than 3.

However Episode 2 was already getting better. Is seemed like they were finding their way here. Orc scene was epic. Dwarfs are well made, Price Durin, played by great Owain Arthur, village woman Bronwyn by Nazanin Boniadi and Nori the Harfoot (Markella Kavenagh) carried the episode.

I'm not disappointed, nor sad, I'm not even angry, I'm just ambivalent and a bit impatient to see how this will unfold. Because I honestly don't see a passage pointing out usually in conclusion the lessons to be drawn from the story, therfore I don't find myself satisfied with what they showed. All I see is Galadriel driven by just pure mindless rage towards the one-dimensional entity of evil Sauron, as presented here.

However, acting is good, visuals are great, cinematography and camera work are marvelous, but they cannot make up for lack storytelling talent, combined with identity politics of a modern era that are implemented here, feels just highly unnecessary and nonsensical to me.

Why is the critical thought of The Hunt divided into two extremes, to the extent that it ignores - or simply does not see, or does not want to see - some of the universal messages that the film carries and successfully displays, compared to many other unsuccessful and ambiguous messages which are controversial or unclear? But are they? And also, why do some of critics superficially view this film as a incoplite political satire, a poor or loose representation of the ideas of films like "The Most Dangerous Game", Ready or Not; or nothing more but the senseless bloodthirstiness of a man, disire to "Hunt" and kill; or the failed attempt to refer to Orwell's Animal Farm, etc?

"This movie setting ''liberals against conservatives'' was initially pulled from release after being attacked by the President. But the movie is smarter than its critics", writes Caryn James. So, watching this film one-sidedly is truly ungrateful, and many of the critiques out there do not see or do not want to see the power of universal messages. Trump, who didn't specifically mention "The Hunt" by title, tweeted that "the movie coming out is made in order ... to inflame and cause chaos.'' Which was probably the main reason for divided values, terfore, the result of mixed score might be mostly politically motivated.

In essence, frstly, The Hunt has some great initial ideas, some of which are a bit misrepresented; secondly, some of which are somehow incomplete and unspoken, and thirdly, some of which are ambiguous to the point of complicating the analytical procedure and causing problems for the critical mind. Keeping all that in mind, these two ideas are clear - a call to constant critical thinking and questioning our reality, and even the truth of the information we are buried with in the modern world. That is, that we should never, and at no time, take for granted any of those informations out there. And the second: humanity's aspiration for power, totalitarian control of chosen or selected individuals, constant warfare and the destruction of others in one dystopian universe in which two ideological extremes escalate to the level of maximum intolerance leading to the manifestation of the inner destructive nature of man.

Therefore, the idea of a fighter for survival - a primordial idea - in an endangered situation, is woven into the protagonist called Criystal (Snowball), but without her, subjective, tendency to think and ask questions about it. She is persecuted, but unquestioningly kills her persecutors. (The authors here leaves viewers in a quandary, who probably ask themselves the following: Why doesn't the hero seeks the reson of his persecution? Why doesn't she look for the answers? However, what the hero knows, seeks and represents, viewers can later find as a confirmation in Crystal's story about the "rabbit".

Namely, Crystal, as a protagonist, functions in the film as someone who does not belong to either side. She was mistakenly chosen to be the victim of persecution, and all because of one wrong letter in her last name. That mistake later leads the persecutors to their death, because she is a skilled warrior that kills without questioning. The killing in the film is also symbolic: in reality, people die in terribly different ways - people who blindly follow false information on social networks, who are being ignorant proponents of conspiracy theories, racism, etc. But in a figurative sense, their ideology is what dies, and the message of the film is actually the death of the ideologies to which these people are attached.

But the killng can't happen in America, the land of law and democracy. For the killing to be allowed dislocation of space must occur. So the space in the film must be neutral as well, the persecuted realizes later that they are in Croatia. (Dislocation of time-space from the normal framework of the United States to Croatia - as one of the Balkan countries affected by the war - states that not only the reality is called into question by this displacement of space, but also that everything is allowed in a war-torn area).

Crystal, at one point, tells the story of a boastful rabbit who lost a race with a turtle because he accidentally fell asleep, only to later kill an entire family of turtles, and than sat down and ate their dinner. Don, at that point, asks Crystal: who is the rabbit then, is it Us, or Them? However, she gives him no answer, she looks at him quietly and than look's at the forest, couse something is coming out. (A that point, he asked a wrong question, couse he did not understood the point of the story. Nither did we, at that point) But, at the moment later, suprisingly, a dressed pig comes out of the forest. Dressed pig personifies humans, and it comes as the answer to Don's question: She is actually a pig who intends to destroy other pigs. The symbolic representation of the pig is ambiguous: abundance, power, relaxation, happiness... However, as the film refers to the Orwell's Animal Farm, that will lead us to a symbolic reduction to other meanings: the basis of the Communist Party, or pig--Napoleon as a representation of (Stalin), and on the other hand, Snowball (Crystal), as a rebellion pig. This means that she is neither, nor a rabbit nor a turtle, but a pig that intends to kill other pigs. The symbolic representation of the rabbit, in the universal sense, signifies rebirth, and it happens at the end of the film. Snowball (Crystal) becomes Rabbit at the end, her transformation into a rabbit symbolizes new life, freedom and procreation.

Forest, acording to Jung: is a mystical, wild, frightening and numinous place, which in mythologies around the world is inhabited by archetypal figures of the unconscious, or mythological creatures such as gods, demons, giants, dwarves, nymphs, witches, fairies, gnomes, various monsters and wild animals...The fear of the forest in analytical psychology is, in fact, the primordial fear of the frightening, dangerous and irrational forces that dwell in our unconscious - in this case totalitarianisam. Universlay, forset represents the place of sin, lust, contempt, deception, and Crystal understands the game very well, so she embrace the ultimate destructive element of it, and goes back to the forest in order to defeat the evil.

To see a more complex, symbolic representation of this film, and truly percive its universal messages - it is only possible if we simultaneously view the film as a form of artistic expression of ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings and messages that refer to some active topics in our devided society, such as: conspiracy theories, political situations, rasizam, missinformations, humans and its act of depresonalization into pigs, or descent at animal level etc.

Artists, or movie makers, indeed have a complete freedom in organizig, exposing, or deconstructing our reality, then justifying and making senseless ideas at its own discretion. Even a no meaning is a meaning on it's own. That is a nihilistic tendency of Modernism, and later Postmodernism - incompleteness, confusion of readers or viewers, intertextuality or referity, meaninglessness of meaning, dekonstructions and depersonalization, devastations of other texts, books or scripts of other movies, ect.

Zobel says that "this movie isn't controversial, that wasnt the point, and it's more like satirical action-thriller, then it is a horror. It is not even an anti-Trump movie, but anti everybody movie..." ''It is more like what we believe about one another. You say things in casual conversation or you use violent language talking about the other side. Let us show you what that looks like in practice."

As Damon Lindelof says: "The film they are talking about is not the film that we made. This film is not only about the elite hunting normal people for pleasure and sports, but at the same time, the film is about crazy conspiracy theories, it is about believing anything, it's about not understanding the other side, it's about the idea of the other side. I acknowlege that we live in divided times. But i also acknowlege that people don't like being devided. Ironicly, The Hunt was sort of designed to create a space where we could laugh at ourselvs, more ourselvs than one another."

With all this in mind, the film is well designed in a technical sense: camera work, screenplay, acting, and it constantly keeps a smile on the face.