Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I'm not sure where to begin with the show's actual execution, so let's begin by talking meta about things that went right with production: The visuals are stunning. Khazad-dûm is a masterpiece of visual CGI. (I think it is CGI.) The two trees look exactly how I imagined them, and while Valinor looks a bit less "gardeny" than I might've expected, Tirion upon Túna is exquisite. Now, I have to address everything else, which is objectively (politics of the moment aside) terrible. I'll address the subplots so far by region: (1) The Southlands storyline has a bit of promise. But the inter-species love story between Arondir and the human feels unnecessary and breaks too much with Tolkien's cannon. That said, because Tolkien never really covered this area of Middle Earth the writers' plans for this part of the story come across as semi-plausible if ham-handedly written. (2) The dwarves storyline is generally ok. The simultaneous Durins in a huge break in Tolkien's cannon, but otherwise, it hasn't been mangled too bad yet. The story here still has potential. (3) The harfoots should not even be in this story. Tolkien never talked about hobbits in the second age. It would be fine if the insertion felt natural, but it feels forced. Like they HAD to have a new Frodo-Sam duo. They didn't. Also, in episode 3 I found myself being torn away from better things for this and actually felt irritable. (4) The elves storyline has been mangled beyond repair. (a) Ships don't ascend to Valinor in the Second Age, (b) even Galadriel can't swim to Middle Earth from half a world away. In fact, the Noldor went through an entire kinslaying to originally get ships to sail to Middle Earth. (b) Elrond was not a politician. (c) Nobody really looks like an elf. And this isn't meant as a political statement -- I mean: Galadriels' brother looks unnatural with that ridiculous short hair-cut, and he's not the only one with a haircut that makes him look distinctly "un-elflike." (d) Galadriel has lived for well over 5,000 years at the time of the story and in Tolkien's work she was not a general, although she was the greatest among the eldar sans Feanor. In fact, she had the WISDOM to realize that Morgoth could not be beaten through strength of arms. The show made her 50 times less wise and a Xena warrior princess type. Horrific choice; the character has no depth. Also, she never visited Numenor. (5) Numenor was introduced in episode 3, but it doesn't change anything I said above. Visually stunning ad terribly written. Par for the course. All in all, I want to like this show. I really do. And I'm going to keep watching it if only for the visuals. But everything except the CGI is just horrific. The Silmarillion was my favorite book growing up, and I just re-read it before the show came out. The show is nothing like it. PLEASE DON'T LET THE SHOW TURN YOU OFF THE BOOK. Finally, at risk of getting scrubbed by the corporate overlords, I don't understand why Amazon would buy the rights to this franchise if it was going to ignore the entire pre-existing literature more or less. My guess is that they knew a huge budget wouldn't be enough to get people to watch a show, so they slapped the name "Rings of Power" on it to attract viewers like myself. This show feels a bit like a bait-and-switch con to true Silmarillion fans like myself. If there were a 1.5 star option, I would give it that for the awesome CGI, but I can't justify a full second star. I'm sorry. I'd rather watch Battlestar Galactica with a shoe-string budget and great writing than a show with a huge budget and unforgivably terrible writing. I'm sorry. It's just who I am.