Haters gonna hate
this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2024
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Television
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Bored by incredible visuals and expansive, epic storytelling? Don't fucking watch it then.
Only watched episode 1 so far, I enjoyed it.
I really liked season 1, it had more criticism than it earned, most of which was 'it's not house of the dragon!'. The pacing was not as bad as was hinted, though it was clearly uneven, I chalked that up to a combination of elves being timeless and the transition between peace and war.
The only really nasty bits were the hobbit/stranger segments, they needed to work on that, and the strangers one line last season was abominable. It felt like they tacked on a very low-budget community theater production adapted from fan-fiction as an afterthought.
Ep1 felt like it was trying to start from the best bits of s1, if they keep that up, great.
It's not the movies, but as someone mentioned, it's better than the Hobbit trilogy, and my favorite book was always the silmarillion, I'll take more of this please and thank you.
"Boring" is becoming a stamp of approval for me these days. In the era of fast-paced TikTok brain rot, I applaud any media not caving to the modern attention span.
I really liked it as well, although it doesn't quite reach the quality of the movies, it's leagues better than the Hobbit movies.
My only gripe is that the story would work better if the main female elf wasn't Galadriel. At this point she is already supposed to be one of the eldest beings in Middle Earth and her relationship with her stepson Elrond felt more like he's her older brother.
To truly enjoy this show, you have to somewhat ignore the weight of the eons depicted in the source material. This is a weighty and ponderous mystical story, but the show has made the decision to compact thousands of years into mere decades for the sake of urgency and coherence in its visual format.
I do agree that another she-elf would be welcome, though. Galadriel needs a friend who isn't burdened by the weight of the audience knowing he'll someday be one of the last great elf-lords bearing the burden of his ancestors. She is fundamentally a lonely character, but it wouldn't hurt for her to have some relationships that weren't pure tragedy and conflict.
You nailed it, the silmarillion (even this chapter which is basically the Akallabeth) is an epic, and trying to compress it to a weekly drama strips much of the underlying atmosphere.
This isn't house of the dragon, this is an allegory about man and his mortality under the light of his hubris, and it's not going to have the same script bite as something from grrm.
I really like her somehow, she seems like an interesting elf, hot-blooded, basically what Treebeard would call "hasty".
I like seeing an elf that powerful who doesn't just sit around and say "well Sauron is putting thousands of babies into woodchippers, but that doesn't mean we should risk doing anything".
She's probably my favorite character, because she's a noldor who burns with the passion of feanor.
My unpopular internet opinion is that RoP Season 1 was actually pretty good, so if they stay on that path with season 2 I have little to complain about.
"An unsettling number of folks break into song" is a weird criticism for a Tolkien-based series. If anything, that was something the LOTR movies lacked.
I really liked season 1, so I'm looking forward to the second
I generally agree. I think RoP S01 had some issues though, so I don't think it was pretty good, but I'm looking forward to the second season.
I agree about the singing thing too. It builds mythology and culture in the series, which is good.
Me too, as long as it keep similar pace, Ill be happy.
I really tried to enjoy the first series but four episodes in it was just a chore to watch and I didn’t know what was going on or care about any of the characters. It just couldn’t keep my interest.
I read only 30% of people who watched the first series completed it and it’s the reason we now have ads in Prime. They signed a contract to do three series of it.
lol ads in prime. i guess i will continue pirating despite having a prime subscription.
Im curious, did you watch season 2 of HoTD? I had fun with with both RoP and HotD season 1, but the second season of the House was so mind numbingly boring we had trouble finishing it. Not to mention the underwhelming finale.
Haha! Well FWIW I enjoyed it enough to tune into this next season. It felt like a slow burn that should be building up to something interesting if Amazon took any fan feedback into account.