Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

To start, if I was reviewing the series based on set and CGI quality alone, it'd be 5 stars. This show is pretty. Its the everything else that makes this show something of the fecal variety. Before I go any further, I am a Tolkien nerd that wants desperately for this universe to be experienced by as many people as possible. I've read the books 30 times, I've seen the movies 30 times, I've devoted my entire left leg to an epic Tolkien tattoo because I love it that much. There is no cumulative piece of media that has been more influential on who I am as a person than Tolkien has. Why is the show bad? Well, the acting is bad, but I think that's because the writing is horrible. I mean, there's hormone-inspired fan fiction with better character and plot development than this show. In what I can only assume is a narcissistic compulsion to emulate Tolkien, the writers have produced a show that says a bunch of stuff but communicates nothing. There are too many simultaneous plotlines, which hurts character development and slows plot development, most of the characters are single-faceted, the few who aren't are given too little screen time to have any impact on story pacing. Even the characters I like, and there's only 2 of them, have done absolutely nothing to inspire me. I actually feel bad for the actors for having to act out such terrible writing, and to them I offer this apology: "I'm sorry they wrote you to be either unlikable or unremarkable, I don't know you, but I have zero doubts that you deserve better than this." Costumes are also bad. Armor pieces don't make sense from a functional standpoint, and even fail to make sense from all but the most ridiculous ornamental standpoints I have ever imagined. Your costume designers have to realize that armor is useless if the wearer can't move, bend, or look up. Right? Right?! Oh, and weapons, why do all the weapons look exactly the same? Elven warriors didn't procure their weaponry from a Northrop Grummann mass assembly line, those pieces would be crafted by dozens if not hundreds of craftsman, each with their own style and flare for smithing, there should be variety, even slight variations on the same design due to this. Your main characters, at the very least, should have weapons that are unique to them, if only to mark their importance (especially prudent given the writing's ongoing failure to accomplish this). I have a 3000 word rant about the lore breaking I decided not to include in this review, despite its relevance and influence on how I rate the show. The show is bad enough without the comparisons to lore, bad enough that I think my 1 star rating stands justified. I will say that maybe, just maybe, the reason the show is so bad is due to how far they've wandered away from the lore. That they are so far from even what individual characters could be doing that they can not use the lore for inspiration on how to progress the story forward.