The most depressing thing is, if you are critical of the show you're just a hater and weirdly a Tolkien purist.. Which is strange to me because most people who've read the books or know the world and it's characters would be your target audience? Surely?
The firing of Shippey (a Tolkien expert) the Showrunners getting the gig because they asked JJ Abrams to put in a good word for them... hiring largely unknown actors and focusing more on representation than writing a good story. I'm telling you right now if they didn't make such a big deal out of a black elf or a black female dwarf, nobody but your standard racists would have cared. Look at House of the Dragon nobody cares about the Velaryon's being black, of course your average racist is but on the whole, nobody cares, if they're good actors then that's all that matters. Although it's fiction I do believe characters should be represented as they are written though, but it's fiction so there's a lot more room to wiggle on that. I was a fan of Idris Elba being Bond for example not because we need representation but he's suave as f*** and would have pulled it off easily i.e. a good actor.
The shows main cast are largely made up characters.
Bronwyn: an utterly pointless character she was picking herbs or some ****, and nobody gave a f*** about her in her community, now she's the defacto leader of the Southlanders a band of 50 or so people which this show seems to put massive importance on but seemingly for no reason whatsoever. Watch Episode 6 where she gets hit by 2 arrows but they only remove one and she nearly bleeds out but magically survives. She has plot armour but she's a made up character she can die and she should have.
Halbrand SPOLIER POSSIBLY Literally too obvious to be Sauron but he is going to be isn't he? He's off to the Elves with Galadriel... who are building a forge... it's too obvious isn't it?
I could literally write pages on this show. Literally pages of everything that is **** about it. Visually it looks great. Could have even done a better job about the trees and their destruction and the silmarils but nope. In the prologue when Galadriel's brother dies (
spoiler he's reincarnated and in Valinor in the books) look at the elf behind him whilst he's shouting in the weirdest fight scene ever. The bloke is stabbing thin air
The whole thing is a **** fest. The directing, writing, acting and editing.
Lastly, this goes to show how stupid the show is, why did they desperately need that sword hilt to move one rock to allow the water to flow and spark Mount doom? they could have just moved the rock? Nope. They had to find that hilt it was so important! no chance someone with a brain couldn't be like hey lets save time, lets just kick this rock out that's blocking the water