So I suffered through episode 3 of the Amazon series last night and I have to say that it just isn't getting better. The confusion I experienced before about them introducing too many characters as once is getting worse as they introduced even more characters to the mix. I don't remember the names of any of them and you'll just have to take my word on it that I am a long time fan of fantasy in general, have read LoTR (the original) and the Hobbit, and generally appreciate the world of LoTR. What I am seeing on screen deviates so much from what I expect of this franchise and I don't like it. Will I continue to watch? Yeah, of course I will because I am hopeful that they will pull this back and make it something good but I don't know how they can possibly do that at this point. I am 3/8 through the season and so far I have enjoyed very little of it other than the CGI.
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I will say this much in their favor: The scenery that they have created through a mix of CGI and what has to be extremely extensive set-design is absolutely stunning and real looking. Unfortunately that is where my praise ends for the most part.
Episode 3 sees us tackle 3 major things that I am guessing are all going to come together at some point. The movement of the caravan of little people (are they even hobbits? They look like it) along with the guy that fell from the sky. We also have the elf lady who arrives in some island city and her discovery of how Saramon is meant to be coming back and where that is going to go down, and the elf warrior who finds himself in a slave camp.
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The slave labor camp that the male elf character (again, no idea about the names because it just doesn't stick) finds himself in is a great scene with tons of amazing costumes but I can't shake the fact that how he ended up in this camp to begin with is profoundly stupid and just another one of those "amazing coincidences" that happens all too often in films and shows that have poor writing. He was just in some random cave running away from some sort of ground worm when he finds himself on a ledge and gets pulled through by some scary looking hands. This was how episode 2 ended and we find out the hands belonged to orcs that are running the camp in the beginning of episode 3. Give me a break. It would have been much more interesting if he had been captured some other way and honestly, there are a ton of ways that they could have made this happen. Am I to believe that all of his buddies who are also in the same slave labor camp just happened to go for a swim in the same tunnel? It's just stupid.
Back in the island kingdom where they apparently have a rather aggressive history with elves, or elf-lady hero who appears to be central to the story is held captive on the island for a few days and she immediately gets up to mischief.
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The island kingdom of Númenor (yes, I copy/pasta'd that) is absolutely stunning and at first I was thinking "bring on the multi-million dollar CGI!" but then it closed in on some of the shots that they couldn't possibly have CGI'd all of and it is very impressive.
One thing that annoyed me here was some really bad writing such as the mantra of the seafaring folk who continually chant "the sea is always right." urgh. Who's writing this?
In another scene we go to a hobbit festival of sorts where the caravan-lugging group is celebrating all the people that they had to leave behind because they were too slow.
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As they approach the celebration circle, they all chant something that ends with "you'll never be left behind" then they sit down for a speech that explains how if they can't keep up they will be left behind. It just doesn't make sense! Add to this the fact that this sequence takes entirely too long and almost nothing happens and you have a very frustrated me in my bed trying to remain focused on this billion-dollar presentation that is boring the hell out of me.
I will once again return to my near hatred of the music in this series. They really had something amazing in the films and since they apparently had a near unlimited budget in the creation of it all, how did they get this so wrong? There is virtually no music that happened up to now, including the cheesy drawn-out tune in the introductory credits that is seriously-trying-to-mimic-Game-of-Thrones. It's just really bad.
In the few action sequences that I have seen they are seriously relying on weightless wirework akin to The Matrix and it just seems really out of place in LoTR. Also, they have toned it down to a PG level and maybe this is the Game of Thrones fan in me speaking out but I don't like it. I get it ok, they want to be able to reach an audience of all ages and perhaps be capable of selling tons of toys to the kiddies, but is this what they had to do in order to achieve that?
Thus far I have been incredibly nonplussed by basically everything other than the CGI in this series. It's boring and this is something I never thought I would have to say about anything Tolkien related. I guess I should have taken hints from the Hobbit trilogy because those were pretty terrible and drawn out as well.
I hope they can pull it back together in the remaining 5 episodes but honestly, I am not hopeful that this is actually going to happen