agree with you on sauron being deliciously manipulative (i.e. they finally stopped trying to hide it in the background and just revealed how he did all his machinations step by step). imagine if they did that in s1, instead of taking 6 or 7 eps just to build up a somewhat meh reveal. however, the elves are still very annoying... in particular, galadriel and her whiny refusal to accept any responsibility for her failures. meanwhile, her counterpart elrond refuses to see her point at all and just absconds with the rings, without providing an alternative to the crisis at hand... are these thousand year old elves or just selfish stubborn toddlers!?? oh, my master cildran thinks it's ok to use the rings, welp, guess i'm convinced now! despite him using the exact same argument that uhhhh they need to use the power for good, basically, to counter sauron's rise yada yada. sauron would seem a lot more maleficent if his opponents weren't so stupid. celebrimbor caved in 2 days cos he empathised with "halbrand" getting drenched in the rain? the murdered messengers do make a good point of intrigue; but who actually murdered them? why leave it sorta vague... it was a great chance to show sauron's slowly growing power: how he managed to locate those messengers, how he plotted to isolate celebrimbor, how he would use his own persistence to exploit celebrimbor's empathy... the ideas were all there but the execution just felt a little underwhelming. but when he did that IMAX forge reveal tho! YES DO MORE OF THESE GRAND MAGICKY ILLUSIONS! fake jesus annatar lets fkin goooooo (the impact would've been even more amplified if the leadup wasn't so crummy tho) the show also feels long because it WAS three freaking hours... it's literally an entire LotR movie length. except instead of one continuous journey for the A plot, they managed to make EVERYTHING feel kinda equally B plot? the focus on each set of characters in their respective POVs/locations just makes them all feel like "hey lookit me I'M the main character!!!" which is rather tiring to follow, especially if the viewer has 3 eps to binge in one go. how are they still getting this so wrong? if it were up to me, i'd divide up all the episodes into very clearly labelled "locations/characters" and then put them up as separate episodes. i would space the release, perhaps 1 ep every 2-3 days, averaging 2-3 eps per week, each one shortened to 30ish mins (or less). the binge model is just not good for heavy voluminous works which demand a ton of attention... but imagine if they just cut the entire season's worth of the stranger+harfoot's arc together into its own standalone series and released that as a separate binge, i wouldn't mind getting that out of the way quickly! alternatively, just make those ultra short and release them as "post-credits" style clips instead of forcing us to go thru their journey step by step. i feel like under all its frustrating flaws, there's a really compelling story... but the story is still being held back by its format. khazad-dum and numenor are literally spinoffs of the main elves vs sauron arc; but they're being injection-moulded into the chronology for... reasons? the stranger/harfoots arc doesn't even fit in at all to the main arc right now, and they're expanding the cast on that end too? so tiring to watch this >.
my one major gripe with season 1 was how Galadriel was written. I get the motivation for her being so angry and vengeful but it just never felt like Galadriel in those moments. There were glimpses of the Galadriel we know in there, like the boat scene with Isildur, the meeting with Elrond and when she escapes Mordor with Theo. I hope this season has more of That Galadriel and less "i will not stop until i wipe every last one of your kind", "maybe we should bring them into the light...", "There's a storm in me!" kind of Galadriel.
@@mygetawayart I don't think you're alone. I've heard this from other people. I found myself enjoying her presence and her storylines much more this time around. Maybe she grows on you a bit.
I've done an annual reread of The Silmarillion every year since 1978, so I try really hard not to be salty about this show. I find that I enjoy the totally made up characters better than the Tolkien-established characters. That being said, I was so not impressed with the first season that I had no idea that the second season had been released. I'll have to watch it and see what I think of it.
@@RedSonya4 I'm not entrenched in the LotR fandom in a way where I am too worried about book to show comparisons. But I did like this season MUCH better. It comes out tomorrow, so this is an early review with the blessing of Prime Video. Sauron was great this season. I think even if the other plotlines don't win you over, he's an incredible villain.
The Silmarillion barely says anything about the time between Gil-galad's letter to Tar-Meneldur and the arrival of Annatar in Eregion nor about the time before the death of Tar-Palantir.
@@RedSonya4 Why then mention the Silmarillion at all? And what do you mean by "I've done an annual reread of The Silmarillion every year since 1978, so I try really hard not to be salty about this show."?
