21 minutes into it and it’s already pissing me off. The writing is lazy, and it’s supper woke. Galadriel and the frost troll, good grief. Amazon didn’t learn anything from Rey “Skywalker.” Mary Sue on steroids.

Seeing Valinor in it’s glory, from a distance, for about two seconds was interesting, it disappointing. Finrod? Waste of a character. Not one shot of Morgoth. My Silmarillion is rusty, but they’ve fully skipped over all the most epic stuff in the book so far, right? This show is a mess.

Welcome to the "new normal."


It's sickening how much the quality of the movies have gone down in the last 20 years. Stories and acting matter less, messaging and CGI mean more. We saw it with LoTR ---> The Hobbit ---> now this shit. Disappointing.

Just wait for the transsexual ringwraiths........Aragon: "They were once men."

I watched the first two episodes with one of my daughters yesterday. We both thought it was molasses slow. Repeated and extended smart phone use by both of us slow.

I hated the actor they cast as Elrond
too. It was like they were looking for a GQ model when the role calls for a Quigley, John Wayne, Dirty Harry, or Daniel Craig type instead.

The Harfoots, or proto Hobbits story arch was entirely unnecessary, especially as Hobbits are mentioned only once in the Silmarilion.

Granted, Christopher Tolkien is a horrible writer, but Amazon could have done much better.

Amazon has now butchered both The Wheel of Time and Tolkien. Hollywood seems to think they can always improve a popular novel when they make it into a movie. They never do and never learn. They always forget that the original story was successful based on the original author's ideas.

I watched both episodes today. Slow yes. But woke? I didn't see it.

quote:

Originally posted by IrishWind:
I watched both episodes today. Slow yes. But woke? I didn't see it.

You’re shitting me.

quote:

Originally posted by P220 Smudge:

quote:

Originally posted by IrishWind:
I watched both episodes today. Slow yes. But woke? I didn't see it.

You’re shitting me.

Nor did I. With the exception of lots of different race people interspersed with each of the groups of people. Which was a little artificial, and did remove the suspension of disbelief a few times, but I hung through it. Unavoidable I suppose.

A female lead, sure, but it played well. She's a damn good actress.

What is the meteor guy? A wizard?

S.L.O.W.

Wife and I watched it and first we are not rabid 'ring' fans... but are familiar with the story and of course have seen both the ring movie and the Hobbit ones... as well as read the books more than once... but never could get into the Simarilian (sp?)

Yes, just a tad slow and I do have to agree with someone above... the Elrod dude as well as the Elf King... just don't fit... I do like the girl playing the hero though... she's pretty tough...

And I also am wondering just who the meteorite guy is.

I can see where y'all are coming from with the racial mix.. but I guess the justification is it is fantacie ..... and that is in a lot of TV movies and shows now.....

Gladriel is interesting. I like her so far. I do agree I can't see the Elrond in this show becoming the Elrond we see in TLOTR/Hobbit movies. As for the meteor guy, I'm guessing he is one of the wizards like Gandalf or Radagast.

First episode was boring. Wife lost interest rather quickly.

We are struggling through the first episode. Like getting up and leaving the room, “don’t pause it for me” kind of struggle. Boring.

Amazon has suspended user ratings due to poor results. It seems IMDB is actively editing their user ratings, as well. There are no ratings below 6 stars on IMDB, which is telling.

To be frank, I haven’t read The Silmarillion in years, but what I’m watching on the screen doesn’t line up with anything I remember reading. My main issue with it is that Galadriel is now the main character, which isn’t the case in the book, and she isn’t like this in the book. There were several posts worth of discussion before the forum backup, but in short, they’ve utterly skipped over much of the badassery in the actual book in favor of creating a story about Galadriel being the strongest, smartest, most talented elven warrior while all the men around her are utterly incapable of anything, which is not at all in line with the book. Her band of companions at the beginning? Useless, only she could do anything about the frost troll. Gil Gilad? Total moron and has to try to reign her in, except her can’t because woman. Then there’s the rest of it. All the lead characters who are somewhat honorable or likeable are all minorities or people of mixed race or black. I guess it’s 2022 and we have to have that, but two protagonists have been invented out of whole cloth: the harfoot girl (there’s no harfoots in The Silmarillion, as mentioned already), and the healer lady from the town. The former is a plucky type who is the most fearless of her tribe of cowards and the latter goes from panting breathlessly in terror in a cupboard to plopping a severed off head down on the table in an inn full of men who didn’t listen to her. The wizened leader of the harfoots is the only black guy in the camp, Durin’s black wife wears the pants to an almost emasculating degree, the one male elf who doesn’t come of as totally clueless is mixed race. All the white men so far are utter morons.

Again, it’s 2022 and apparently we have to have all that stuff, but my biggest problem is that out of a whole book full of truly epic characters and stories, we’re picking up somewhere in the middle or past third of the book, and watching fan fiction stories that don’t take place in it. Morgoth’s rise and fall are so much more epic in scale than the written stuff about Sauron and yet we pick up in a time where he’s already long defeated and barely mentioned. Now, there’s a long breadth of time covered in that book, and they can do that, but it’s a little disappointing. What’s more disappointing is that all the epic warriors of the book are completely unmentioned in favor of creating fan fiction stories about one woman who was just an elf maiden in the book, and two others who never appear. The Silmarillion is a fantastic work, if a bit Old Testament in tone and rather dry at the beginning, but it’s loaded with stories far more epic in scale and tone than anything Tolkien wrote after the Hobbit. It’s all the lore and myth behind the lore and myth, and this show? It’s not that. They chose to “improve” what Tolkien wrote when all they had to do was put it on a screen and it would’ve been amazing. Worse than that, what they created is badly written, and yes, boring. I’ll drive the point home with an image:


If you didn’t read the book, I guess I can see how you’re not seeing what they did, which let’s be honest, is probably going to be about 98% of the viewership. We’ll see where they go with this, but I’m waiting for an openly gay, bi, or trans character. Maybe some trans polygamists. Gotta represent everyone.

quote:

Originally posted by Orguss:
Amazon has suspended user ratings due to poor results. It seems IMDB is actively editing their user ratings, as well. There are no ratings below 6 stars on IMDB, which is telling.

This is my shocked face.

Amazon doesn't own the rights to The Silmarillion so this series isn't it and can't be it.

quote:

Originally posted by r0gue:
What is the meteor guy? A wizard?

I'll take a wild guess that he's Gandalf.

One always should expect the first episode of a series to be somewhat underwhelming while the plot and characters are introduced but I thought episode 2 was even worse than episode 1. If the next episode doesn't get any better I'll probably not waste my time.

quote:

Originally posted by IrishWind:
I watched both episodes today. Slow yes. But woke? I didn't see it.

There were black hobbits and a black dwarf. That is woke to some.

Yes, it is a little slow. Have you ever read the Silmarillion? It is slow as all get out. It is nothing but slow. It is so slow, I can't read it.

I am not a Tolkien first-order nerd, and it may not have perfect fealty to the Silmarillion, but for Christ's sake, does it really have to? Watch it for what it is.

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:
Watch it for what it is.

What is it?

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:

quote:

Originally posted by IrishWind:
I watched both episodes today. Slow yes. But woke? I didn't see it.

There were black hobbits and a black dwarf. That is woke to some.

And a black elf. And all the white male elves are cowards, or powerless, or bullies...