i'm a nerd and am waiting for the weekend. i've read all of the tolkein historical books a number of times but also understand that he was always actively changing the world as well. keeping an open mind.

I'm interested in what you think so hurry up and watch. You're much more of a cinemaphile than I am so I'm curious if you see same thing I did. I'd rather watch an 80s Italian Predator or Jaws rip-off than either of these so what do I know...

Also I never finished Season 8 of Game of Thrones. When Ricky Gervais shot the dragon out of the sky with the harpoons I said to hell with this. So I am not a GOT fanboy by any stretch.

Have you looked at reviews? It seemed there was a gap between critics and audience. I thought of WW84 where it was glowing praise for a week then it got buried. I don't think this is going to get buried but the praise seemed...overenthusiastic.

The reviews I've seen say it's one of the most visually stunning things they've ever seen but the actual storyline is slow through two episodes but they do have to introduce a whole new world.

But GOT is also going to have a huge amount of dragon fights so that wins.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

This is the take I had after the first episode. It looked great but Im not sure I have the endurance to learn all of this new stuff. I know some of the characters and places are familiar but I was getting sleepy there in the middle for a while. I rallied down the stretch though, I started getting a little more interested.

Enjoy the dragon fights. I’ve seen enough in my days of Dungeons & Dragons. Which I also think could have been made into a great series instead of really, really bad movies.

Lord of the Rings has dragon fights too. They show one in first 10 minutes. It looked pretty cool. There's a fight with an ice troll a little later that looked terrible. It was the worst CGI in the first 2 episodes. I could swear in ice troll fight they use an edited Wilhelm scream...

Not a huge fan of the casting or the template for this. I read the Tolkien books for decades before the Lord of the Rings films came out and I had my issues with those films as well. This series seems like it's cobbling together the vibe from the Goonies, Mad Max beyond Thunderdome and Willow among other things. It's as if the screenwriter is more influenced by late 20th century movies and pop culture than the Tolkien canon. I'll probably keep watching, but I'm not surprised that it's disappointing.

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"I give you my word as a Biden"

More woke shit.

ok, watched the episodes today. the first episode definitely had intro lag syndrome. a lot of exposition thrown at us while too much is going on and will hardly be easy to keep track of as we're introduced to new character after new character...the final one being...starman.

they try to keep the tone as close to the jackson adaptations as i think they could. we basically have female frodo and sam. we have an aragorn, kind of.

i don't mind the "diversity hires" for the actors. this is a fantasy fairy tale. i feel the same way about "sandman". it doesn't bother me and i don't thin it's "woke" just to hire non-white actors. unless they're preaching some message subliminally (which i'm not really seeing so far) it doesn't take away from the storytelling.

the second episode flowed better, but i think they're shoehorning some of the scarier monster stuff in to distract from a storyline that is extremely thin right now. the source material doesn't help much this time because these characters and relationships have to be filled in manually by the writers.

i will say at the end of the second episode i look forward to the third moreso than i did walking into the second episode. the first episode is very plodding.

the visuals are quite stunning, and the soundtrack *is* good. i'm impressed with that.

"Aragorn" guy is a disappointment. He seems to be very inept. He abandoned his post and instead of alerting the other elves he jumps in the hole and then starts running as soon as he hears something so I have no idea what his plan was. Maybe the mom he's trying to bang will give him some tips on how to fight (if he's still alive) since she didn't have any trouble and they faced the same thing...

The only time I laughed was when she jumped into the ocean. That seemed like a terrible plan.

I didn't understand the mark they were following in the beginning. He puts his mark on bodies and on objects in caves? The whole scene in that ice cave I thought was very badly done.

The parenting seems lax...2 episodes in and the kids were almost eaten by wolves and now they're playing with a half-naked beardo in the woods.

I read a review that said they were making mistakes with the lore so it doesn't seem like they even hired one of those Tolkien experts. Jackson had like 3 or 4 of them. They don't want any interference? I don't understand why they would do that.

i read that amazon didn't get the rights to the silmarillion so they're essentially flying blind to the backstory of the elves, which seems pretty central to the entire plot.

the reveal for the "meteor man" is also going to be a big let down if it isn't gandalf (which wouldn't make sense) or even sauron (which also wouldn't make sense). so i don't know why they're keeping his identity close to the vest. i guess it could be saruman, though.

Could be Tom Bombadil.

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"I give you my word as a Biden"

Very good guess.

Yeah my guess was tom bombadil. There is no written origin for him so they have freedom to do whatever.

um. its fine. While I'd love for it to be a true representation of the manuscripts, its also known that Tolkien loved changing up stuff all the time. So hopefully they do a good job. i don't care about the "diversification" of characters.

reading about the estate of Tolkien its pretty clear there is some tremendous infighting about what they should be allowing to happen.

Watched the first two episodes yesterday. The second one I kind of got distracted and was doing some other things. Not sure I will stick with it but would like to give it one or two more episodes before pulling the plug for sure.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

A few days ago Bezos is doing a victory lap at London Premiere and now he's got Musk taking shots. I would say the effusive praise at the beginning was suspect. How that happens I have no idea...we saw it with WW84 too. Even the people that are big fans of Lord of the Rings thought the pacing was slow. Now its just devolved into everyone giving it 5 stars or 1 star...

That’s the beauty of social media. Bring everything down to a pissing match. And make it loud.

I thought it interesting that the show released some statement supporting their diversity hires and crap. and it just seems like not that many people were complaining about that. many are complaining about all of the characters regardless of color, the show pacing, and the storyline itself.

Its almost as if they want it to be about race.

I liked it but I think I'll like it more when Bilbo shows up.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

More like Lord of the G Spot...oh...you said Bilbo.

Meh. Midgets in the forest.

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They don't want to address the real criticism. This show has some real problems. They thought they did a great job so it must be some kind of conspiracy. Hopefully this isn't the case and they're taking a look at what they're doing but film makers never seem to do that. I think the budget is a problem for them. People expect more when they hear a billion dollars.

it was the same thing with kenobi. there were some real issues but they wanted to make it about the one chick.

After Galadriel saves those dumb ol' men from the ice troll they decide to mutiny.

The supposedly trained warrior elf that's trying to hook up with human mom was attacked by an orc and ran and was captured (or hopefully eaten). The mom was also attacked by one and cut its head off.

Episode 3 was a train wreck.

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I'm already skipping over the pre-hobbit sub-plot. The rest was marginal at best. It's interesting how the supposed Alpha male characters like Halbrand and Elrond were cast to 5'9" 170lb actors.

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"I give you my word as a Biden"

Like nothing happened.

I like it. I have low expectations for the actual storyline and they are almost meeting those low expectations. It looks great and I'm a big fan of big people with beards who don't say anything and no one really knows if they are just crazy or smart or a wizard.

The orc fight thing was kind of stupid and this show doesn't have near enough dragons or incest.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

The next time I am feeling drowsy and need a nap I may watch episode three.

These new hobbits are terrible. The bird's nests in their hair is a very strange choice. Plus they don't seem to mind condemning each other to death.
Star Beardo needs to start doing something.
The fight at the tree stump was really bad. That is some sorry ass wire work. Really the 2 main battles so far, the ice cave and the tree stump both looked terrible.
The water jug scene had me reaching for remote. Also, who shot sergeant elf if orcs have to stay under cover in the sun?
Pretty amazing luck Aragorn and the elf woman that the legends say means trouble just happened to meet out in the middle of the ocean.
There was a very strange scene where Galadriel is on a horse and they do a slo-mo closeup and she has this big goofy grinning face and they held it for a long time...that was a really strange choice.
I don't think these people know what they're doing.

the actress who plays galadriel may be able to pull off elvish, but other than that she's been useless in this part. with all the money thrown at this, you'd think the casting would've been a stronger point. but most of the other actors are pretty good.

i actually think the show is gaining steam with each episode, but it's still wrought with too many characters that we're going to forget or not care about.