After watching the first two episodes, this is what I sit back with.
Good
- Great sets, the dwarfen, human, and elven cities generally look really good, it's fun to watch the giant expensive sets.
- Nori, the comet guy, Dorin, the black elf guy, I think they do a good job and fit their role.
- The Elrond actor is good but his head shape is fucking weird.
- The comet storyline is interesting, even if it turns out to be Gandalf.
- There are tons of stories they can build on, it feels like things are just starting to turn.
- The ork "horror" scenes towards the end of the second episode were pretty good, even if orks are sort of ruined by LOTR where human heroes can kill 10.000 of them easily.
Bad
- Unfortunately, I find the main arching story of Galadriel looking for Sauron to be strange, she's supposed to do it alone? because of her brother dying? they needed to spend some time building reasons for why she is so extreme in her goal, the tiny scenes with her brother don't do it justice. I feel I still don't get her resolve or why she thinks she can fight Sauron and his orks alone.
- I disliked how all the Hobbits in the LOTR trilogy were these cartoon idiots, only Frodo and Bilbo seemed "normal". It's the same here with the harfoots, Nori is normal, but the village people seem cartoonish and idiotic.
- They sometimes overdo the "fly-by" nature shots, half of the transitions are flying by drone shots.
- The show starts with Galadriel getting picked on by elf kids, and told to turn back over and over by her crew when they climb the mountain, the show is too desperate to show how desperate and extreme Galadrien is to find Sauron, they overdo it, feels forced.
- The troll fight was weird looking, you could see the wires, and all her crew was bashed against rocks by the troll and was completely fine 3 seconds later with no marks
- Galadriel planned to swim back over the ocean after she jumped from the elf boat? isn't that...stupid? she was tired when she came to the raft, so she likely would have drowned not for that.
- The raft getting utterly destroyed by the big fish only for the guy to conveniently sail around on this little part of it.
- The guy swam 300000 miles straight down to save Galadriel without getting tired.
- The black elf was fine, but his relationship with the women (and I expect that kid to be their child from earlier) was kinda lame, not much chemistry, I hope they don't do too much with it. That kid was annoying too.
- That kid randomly breaking the floor because of "mice".
- All these weird-ass haircuts look completely weird. Elron would be cooler with long hair. You can smell the hair products through the screen.
- Elrond and Calembrimbor casually walking 8389393893834 miles to the dwarf kingdom with no hint of how.
- Some of the dwarfs in the background looked weird. Especially the ones who "collected" Elron at the gates.
- The Galadriel actor is fine, she does an ok job, but not great, she can't carry the show.
, it's gonna be hard to follow any dramatic scene with her in it, hopefully she is gonna improve rapidly...
