Originally Posted by Bowser:
I've not read The Silmarillion nor am I a massive diehard fan of Tolkien's worldbuilding or his works. That said, this seems to be an awful telling of his world and vision of it (so far), but if you can remove your point of view from feeling like the show SHOULD be that, it's a pretty good fantasy show.
It is a difficult read. A lot of bland history & world building; kinda like reading the bible at times. So & so did this at this time which begat so & so & some such events, yea verily blah blah blah. There are stories as well, but not fully fleshed out.
For all intents & purposes those works are appendices for establishing the lore of Middle Earth. Tolkien was an absolutely brilliant writer. The writers for this show however, errr, not so much. And THAT is the real shame in this series. It's not about the casting decisions, it is the horrible storytelling, the stilted dialogue, and absolute lack of character development. It's typical CW level garbage writing. HOW can you allow that to happen, esp with $1B investment? (rhetorical question, the answer is hubris: the show creators think themselves so much smarter and better than everyone else... hell, they even fired their Tolkien lore expert because he kept pointing out their MASSIVE storytelling and lore-breaking mistakes) [Reply]
Originally Posted by mr. tegu:
I was actually coming in to post about this very scene as an example of just how ridiculously terrible this character is. The fact she takes out four men is bad enough but then they can’t even be bothered to show how she did it because even they know how implausible it is and would just come off as even worst if they tried to show it.
Even if that was a Greek Goddess like Athena or something, it's still just a terrible scene. You'd know Athena would be more capable of doing such a thing, but it's just bad. Like oh I grabbed your arm and then escorted all 4 of you into another room while a guy in the cell says "I'd advise against that" to the other one about to draw his sword.
A scene like that is what you'd expect from a home made movie, not even a B movie, some college kids with cameras trying to make a little movie for class is what that scene looks like. [Reply]
Preface: Non-book reader. Enjoyed the hell out of the LOTR Trilogy, enjoyed, but eye rolled a lot of the Hobbit Trilogy.
I keep tuning in. Not ENTIRELY sure why. I think part of the reason is because it is god fucking beautiful. And if they worked so hard on getting the places right, the story has to be good, right? RIGHT?
Upon reflection, I think the only character I give much of a shit about is Dhuran's wife. She is giving the most compelling performance by a fair bit. After E 4 I'm buying the relationship between Dhuran and Elrond and Dhuran and his father. E4 helped a good bit.
Giladriel was doing pretty well when dealing with the loss of her brother and deciding to bail on the boat to elf-heaven. But I can't bring myself to give much of a shit about any of the rest of it.
The human dude was one thing, but come on get on with that shit. The Harfoot crew isn't doing anything for me. There was some intrigue as to who that was, but similarly, let's get on with it. Arondir, I enjoy his scenes, but I can't say I'm compelled by the storyline. The southlanders, whatever. They're probably orc fodder, and that kid has some sort of significance, but I can't say I give much of a shit what it is. Halbrand, when he was trying to stay on the island, I was interested for a few seconds, then the rest of it lost my interest. The people leaving the island, that built some intrigue for me on a nice scene there.
If the LOTR trilogy didn't exist, this pace of exposition would probably be fine, but it does exist, and it appears that they care more about laying easter eggs than they do telling the story. Which, fine, lay the easter eggs. This may not work without it for the dorks, but focus on the story not the easter eggs. They've done such a marvelous job with the visuals, don't fuck up the story. [Reply]
Originally Posted by HC_Chief:
It is a difficult read. A lot of bland history & world building; kinda like reading the bible at times. So & so did this at this time which begat so & so & some such events, yea verily blah blah blah. There are stories as well, but not fully fleshed out.
For all intents & purposes those works are appendices for establishing the lore of Middle Earth. Tolkien was an absolutely brilliant writer. The writers for this show however, errr, not so much. And THAT is the real shame in this series. It's not about the casting decisions, it is the horrible storytelling, the stilted dialogue, and absolute lack of character development. It's typical CW level garbage writing. HOW can you allow that to happen, esp with $1B investment? (rhetorical question, the answer is hubris: the show creators think themselves so much smarter and better than everyone else... hell, they even fired their Tolkien lore expert because he kept pointing out their MASSIVE storytelling and lore-breaking mistakes)
Tolkien is not a difficult read at all. Try some Faulkner and tell me how difficult Tolkien is. [Reply]
