Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

To be upfront I'm a Tolkien fan. I want this to be great. Saw all the trailers, articles and interviews. It didn't look promising. But I'm giving it a chance. First 3eps? NOT good. I cannot imagine many, if any, Tolkien fans will be thrilled thus far. No real direction for a story that is Tolkien in name only. Acting is 70/30 to the bad. Only the Dwarves, some of the Harfoots and Elandil stand out as giving good-to-excellent performances. Only 1 of the "new" characters are at all interesting or bring anything to the story as of yet. Visually looks great. Most of the sets and real world shots are phenomenal. But cgi & green-screen are poor more often than not and perspective shots fail often. All but the dwarves costumes come up short. To be honest most of the rest come off as little more than cosplay. And the undershirts of printed on scale armor? Yikes. Orks look really really great though!! Dialogue is almost entirely awful. In my opinion it's the worst part of this show. Not one uttered line has made me think it would've been written by Tolkien. Really just sounds like a creative writing student trying to sound smart and bluster their way into a good grade on an assignment. A lead character in Galadriel who is wholly unlikable, unbelievable and painful to watch given what she has to work with from the script and directing. Biggest surprise were the Proto Hobbits that exist only cuz writers needed a hook to grab viewers were kinda cool, although unnecessary. And the opening title sequence? Hands down the most uninspired intro ever. Looks like an Etch-a-Sketch running amok. To those coming in with not having read any of the books or have seen only the Jackson films, just know this really isn't Tolkien. At all. Given what source material they had license to work with and the modern re-imagining they wanted to do I reluctantly give them credit for trying. But it's falling epically short of even being considered a Tolkien inspired story. It's a shame that we're not going to see the story of the Second Age done well.