Rings of Power Episode 8 -Season finale - HONEST REVIEW | Lord of the Rings on Prime 

“Nothing much was happening in the Second Age. But then one day in Eregion, like, EVERYTHING happened!” - J.R.R. Tolkien

The title of this episode should have been "Suddenly." Suddenly everyone is in Eregion at just the right moment. Suddenly Halbrand's wound is healed. Suddenly Celebrimbor has a senior moment and forgets his craft. Suddenly Saurbrand has all the answers. Suddenly Galadriel is suspicious after hanging out with Halron for weeks. Suddenly the three elven rings are forged. Suddenly, suddenly, suddenly...

"Then this has all been in vain. The fandom has failed." "Not if we hold true to each other. We will not abandon Middle-earth to torment and death, not while we have strenght left!"

The 3 cultists were a waste of time, what was the point of them; they existed just to give Hobo-Gandalf his memory back, apparently. The Harfoots' carts are so important to them that taking the wheels off a cart is a death sentence, yet now all their carts are destroyed they don't need them any more. Adar's storyline was also pointless, because Sauron is now going to take over Mordor. Celebrimbor, the grandson of Feanor, is taking smithing advice from a human from the 'Southlands'? That is the biggest joke of this episode. They needed Galadriel's dagger to make the rings? What if she went to Valinor and didn't jump off the boat? Or it was lost in the volcano or whatever? I guess the story would be over at that point. Celebrimbor just happens to have 3 gems sitting in a box; how convenient, and a small plug of mithril is all they need now, apparently. The 3 rings are made in less than a day. Halbrand says 'mithril' yet Celebrimbor didn't tell him it was called that. The Numenoreans cross the sea in a day yet again.

Catacombs in a city of immortal beings cracked me really😂

Lore breaks aside. You're telling me the woman who was hell bent on finding Sauron learns he has been right there beside her the whole time, but let's him walk away? Doesn't go after him? Then lies to Elrond and convinces Celebrimbor to complete his evil plan? WTF.

Oh man, I've been watching you since episode 1, and it feels like I'm witnessing the slow decent of a man into madness as each episode was aired. Thank you for your sacrifice

"the showrunners are beyond dreadful" "the show works best as a torture device that if I am indeed the new dark lord, I would not force my enemies to watch it" HARSH!!! (but true)

They better start season 2 with galadriel waking up from a bad dream and finding celeborn next to her. And her telling that everything that happened in season one was just a dream and nothing is true. That’s the only way to save this garbage show.

What kills me is that Galadriel was able to recognize a CREST but she didnt know the line ended THOUSAND YEARS AGO. I don't get it lool

So, in the show called Rings of Power, the creation of the Rings comes almost as an afterthought. Not Sauron's masterplan all along, but something he randomly came by because he happened to be at the right time and place. /slow clapping/ Greeeeeeat writing there, Amazon!

Plot summary: "And EVERYTHING was Guyladriel's fault."

"If you like your life though, and want to change that, well, maybe this show is for you" , BRILLIANT lol

03:40 there's zero reason for the stars to be strange in the east. On a round Earth, people at the same latitude see the same stars. On a flat Earth, as Middle Earth was at this time in the 2nd Age, you'd be able to see all the stars from anywhere in the world

Halbrand didn't even have to admit to being Sauron. WTF was even the point of admitting that so quickly? He could have just said "you're right, I'm a nobody, but I told you that from the beginning. I TOLD you I took the pouch off a dead man. You invented all that stuff about me being king all on your own." And then they wouldn't have had to completely destroy the ring timeline by rushing it through in a matter of days and getting it all out of order. They could have taken their time while we watched Halbrand weasel his way into the elves' ears and chipped away at their defenses with his guile and charm and gifts. We could have GRADUALLY seen glimpses of his true nature, the way we did with Breaking Bad. I'm not even a writer, but I think I could have done a better job with half the budget.

The stars cannot even be 'strange' yet, since Arda is still flat. It doesn't become spherical until after Numenor is sunk

Well, the show is called "The Rings of Power". Yet, we spend a lot of time watching Harfoots marching while the rings creation took just a few minutes. The more so from numerous rings that were made we see only 3 being created. They completely ignored the 16 rings (so laters 7 for dwarves and 9 for humans) which were the ones made together with Sauron and which had corrupting powers. They also ignored the lesser rings made before them during centuries long process of learning how to make rings of power. So the show titled "The Rings of Power" absolutely ignored most of the rings and ignored Saurons corruption of the rings (as the 3 Elven rings we see in the show were free from his corruption). Unbelivable.

I have "watched" this mess of a show through reviews because I refuse to support Amazon anymore. I want to thank you as most reviewers have so much vitriol in their videos. You are calm and collected with a soothing feel. I can still feel the frustration but you aren't screaming and are obviously are trying to be objective. You have my sub for life good sir.

Elrond “I was there Gandalf, I was there two and a half thousand years ago. It should have ended that day. Which reminds me, where were you?” Gandalf “my alarm didn’t go off”

Predictions for season 2 : - Númenor is going to keep the black flags of mourning on their ships, and become a pirate nation who will venerate the skull and bones of their dead king. Their motto will be : “This is the isle of the dead, and the dead keep it”. - Galadriel will realise that despite everything, her love for Sauron is too strong, and therefore must be right. They will get married, and adopt an orphaned orc. Their wedding rings will be two new rings of power : “Two rings for the dark lord and his dark queen, to teleport them wheresoever they wish”. That way the show can keep messing with time and space, and feel it is justified in doing so. - Simon Tolkien will have a cameo role as his grandfather, somehow finding himself in his subcreated world, after having stepped through a wardrobe. He will walk around with an enchanted look on his face, marvelling at everything he sees, and repeatedly saying : “Yes, this is exactly as I imagined it.”

Even if it was not a Lord of the Rings series, it's still immensely bad written. It's absolutely absurd how dumb the dialog and the writing is. What a sad pathetic piece of garbage.

As a lifelong Tolkien fan, I just want to thank you for creating these honest and accurate reviews of the show, thus sparing the rest of us the additional anguish and pain of having to sit through them ourselves.

Galadriel: didn't give 3 pieces of her hair to Feanor cuz he was an arrogant guy Guyladriel: Introduces Sauron to Elven and Numenorian society, he is such a sweetie. Somehow misses, that there are no kings of Southlands for one thousands years of her life.

Another thing that is absurd: the non-Hobbits do not think of asking the powerful Istar to heal Sadoc who has only been wounded, but they thought of begging him to resuscitate an entire orchard of burnt trees. -_-

Wouldn't it be great if it WAS cancelled and HBO or Netflix made a version that was true to Tolkein's world and wasn't offensive or insulting or racist or just dreadful in every possible way. If only.

when Gandalf yelled "Im good" i left the room

Halbrand is Sauron - we knew that. Stranger is Fake Gandalf - but we cannot call him Gandalf, why? Because he came too early, I guess. Three mysterious figures in white cloaks think that Fake Gandalf is Sauron - No, he is not, 'He is goood!' Galadriel finds out that Halbrand is Sauron and confronts him - We definitely think that Sauron is right about everthing he says and she is responsible of everything happened and she is still insufferable. Harfoots try to help Fake Gandalf and Papa Harfoot dies - He was going to be 'decaravaned' soon due to his age anyway. Celebrimbor is stupid and tries to look smart. - Halbrand teaches him how to forge. Celebrimbor mixes all the MacGuffins in the show (except for Adar's sword) and makes three rings with instructions from Galadriel (Because nothing happens without Galadriel’s instructions in Middle-earth). - OMG those rings don't reflect the subtlety of elven designs at all. No Isildur - I think they will replace him with his non-canonical sister Eärien.

Galadriel's arc was fantastic! She was revealed to be the Keyser Soze of Middle Earth. She brought the Dark Lord back while simultaneously getting the Queen of Numenor blind in futile expedition that accomplished nothing except to give Ar-Pharazon the fuel he needs to seize power and eventually destroy Numenor. She even let Celebrimbor carry on with Sauron's plan ensuring his death and a war with Sauron that in the end in LOTR will cause the Elves to have to finally leave Middle Earth when those rings lose their power. Never has there been a villain of this caliber in Tolkien. Bravo!

When Sadoc died and no one mourned I realized then that death is a happy thing in Harfoot culture.

The showrunners repeatedly broke lore with no consideration for the CONSEQUENCES. For example, if mithril now heals corruption why is Durin's future Bane still evil after being trapped in a mithril mine for thousands of years? Far less, that it should also now be possible to "uncorrupt" the orcs, Adar, etc. "Don't know, don't care" say the showrunners? ;p~

Another thing that really bothered me is how suddenly Gandals changed his dialect from sounding more --Irish like the "hobbits" to suddenly switching to sounding more like Gandalf.

Why have a forge in a tower? I thought Galadriel was banned from any library in Middle Earth - she just takes any scroll she likes with her and they end up lost or damaged. And the song for the ending titles is to prepare us for the musical, isn't it? Please comment on the coming seasons as well. I enjoyed your observations very much. It is like watching "Plan B from Outer Space" with a comment track.

I wish I could unwatch all this series. It is corrupting my reading of Tolkien like a relentless cancer. I would gladly take an Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind remedy for this. Galadriel was the catalyst for Sauron to commit to his plan of Middle Earth conquest? These "writers" are beyond belief.

Where did all those ships comes from? If two ships were destroyed by fire, why couldn't they easily get two more ships since they have so many...Before going to Middle Earth...

This review was the best part of the whole series. Laughed out loud many times - the ratings were spot on

I think Joseph Mawie as Adar was a standout. He’s a fine actor and has real presence. His character was a red herring of course, ( maybe HE’S Sauron!). I hope he survives this wreck of a show and lands some good roles in the future.

I agree with your assessment of RoP. It is no epic tale like Tolkiens. The elves were not ethereal beings, but just pointy eared humans. Even Sauron was just a man and not a demi god. The magical power of the rings was not shown, they are just shiny tokens. The grandeur of fights and battles in Tolkiens stories was reduced to neighborly dramas in RoP, that were more fitting for a soap opera. I really, really, really hope the second season will be canceled.

I believe that Sauron was genuine in his desire to get away from his past. In Numenor he dedicated time and effort into trying to become an ordinary smith. A move which no one else saw and brought him no closer to forging the Rings of Power. He also begged Galadriel not to take him back to the South Lands/Mordor but she forced him. He even told her that he wasn't the Lost King of the Southlands and that he had just found the seal on a dead man. She's the one that lied to the Numenoreans about his heritage and he just went along with it because revealing the truth at that point would have been bad for both of them. If you argue that it was all an act and he was manipulating Galadriel's actions then that says more about how evil she is rather than him because he "manipulated" her by begging her to let him live in peace and not return to the site of his former evil. He could have only done this if he knew she was so sadistic, selfish and manipulative that she would force an unwilling man to go to the one place he begged not to be taken and that she would gladly lie and deceive the numenoreans to get her way. Mind bogglelingly awful writing.

My main comments for the show were "Wait! What?!" and "Even *they* wouldn't dare.... Oh. Okay, I guess they would."

Two part prediction for next season. 1) Isildur eats his horse to stay alive. 2) the horse is still okay and carries him back to Numenor.

So it turns out Sauron could have been a good guy, healing the world and making it a paradise, but instead we got thousands of years full of terror, deaths and sorrow just because stunning and brave Galadriel refused to bend down to the patriarchy as a Queen to a King. Got it!

I suspect what they're going to do is have the Elves create the rings for the Dwarves as an attempt to fix their broken relationship in season 2 and the human rings in season 3 because the Numenorians are demanding immortality. Then at the end of season 3, or maybe in season 4, we see that Sour-Ron has secretly forged the One Ring and it has power over the others because of Galadriel somehow. Then season 5 is everything they have to stuff into the end because they forgot to do it sooner.

The credit songs of the movies moved me to tears, at the end of RoP I rolled my eyes when the song started.

The guy who galadriel gets to look for the history of southern kings, he looks like a vulcan rather than an elf lmao

The whole dream scene on the raft is the more anti-Tolkien bit imaginable. It's exactly the opposite of how Tolkien saw his world and his characters. It's not just that they are contradicting the original story... they are contradicting the original CONCEPT itself.

I was so confused as to why "Gandalf" was talking perfectly English all of a sudden

There is no way this abomination doesn’t get canceled before season 2. Mark my words.

It was so tiring how much RoP stole from Peter Jackson's films. The way Feminem-Nazgul uses her staff to fight Dollar-Store Gandalf was a total rip-off of Saruman attacking Gandalf. The show runners even undercut their own "Strong Female Character" by making Galadriel incredibly stupid to be duped by Sauron in disguise; something that the real Galadriel would have seen right through.

I'm betting Sauron will be saving Isildur in Mordor and the two of them will become close friends.

I at least like that in the last shot, Halbrand's actor doesn't try to overplay being the bad guy. He doesn't do the overexpressive scowl that everyone else seems to do when they're trying to look tough. He just stands there with a subtle smirk on his face as he looks out toward Mount Doom. I at least liked that shot. For once, it did kind of feel like it could be something from Lord of the Rings, there seemed like there was just enough of using our foreknowledge about what's going to happen to make the scene better. We know what's in his head as he looks at Mount Doom, he's probably thinking about the Ring, and the fact that he doesn't overplay trying to look evil or tough, just having that minuscule smirk, doesn't take you out of the scene like so much of the show manages to do. For once, I was actually like "that part wasn't horrible. I actually kinda liked how that looked." And they didn't have him say some dumb one liner to spell it out for the audience, which would've ruined it because he doesn't need to say anything for us to understand what he's thinking about.

as far as I know, not even Christopher Tolkien actually tried to add new content to Tolkien's world and in the content he did write, there was an almost worshipful commitment and deference to whatever JRR Tolkien had written, which is also the case with Peter Jackson. That isn't the impression we get from Amazon, they instead give the distinct impression that they disapprove of Tolkien and want to put him in his place and replace his work with their own

Fully agree. Out of many, many issues I was most surprised how they managed to both make the show feel so small and a vast empty space at the same time. Obviously the worst aspect is that is was not merely untrue to Tolkein but more an anti-Tolkein with most of the characters being the opposite of their true selves. A ghastly abomination which made me abandon all hope for the human race. How did this ... thing get made?

The craft of the rings is ABSOLUTLY RIDICULE!!! They didnt even use the dwarf forge to craft the rings!!!!! Half of this series is Elrond crying for dwarf help…. (The dwarf forge is suppose to be a giant tower and they actually craft the rings in the workshop of Celebrimbor) Also… they said they need the purest gold and silver from valenor…. They melt a whole dagger made not only of gold and silver… but surely STEEL, and some sort of material like wood or leather for the handle…. It is impossible to have a good weapon fully make of gold and silver because those are too soft… if we struck a 24c gold sword on anything ITS going to bend or broke!!!!! So they melt the whole thing and make a mess worst than taking normal gold and silver to craft the mightiest powers of middle earth…. Juge by yourself if this show is good for you… but surely not for me

Galadriel spent centuries searching for Sauron and couldn't spot him literally inches from her while every normie knew who it was before the show even aired.

In a deleted scene, The Harfoots are almost noticed by an Elven messenger, but they hide under a log with the Stranger. Once the elf has passed, Poppy says, "Golly! I thought we were done for..." and points towards the rider, "...Take a gander at that elf!" Then the Stranger looks directly into the camera and says, "Gander...Elf...Gander Elf...?Yes...That will be what they will ca..." and it cuts to Muriel pegging Elendil.

This channel offers the most sober and down to earth criticism of this...äh..show..or whatever it pretends to be. I am reading Tolkien`s work for 3 decades now. Over and over again. Because it is deep and every time I find something new. Seeing something from a different angle than before. That is what Tolkien delivers to his readers. This show is nothing less than an abomination of his works. You want to sue Amazon because of this until the end of time? I would gladly join!

“As a Tolkien show though, my score would be -10/10” ……I laughed so hard that I shot my coffee out my nose laughing when you said this. Thank you for taking one for the team and watching this abomination so we didn’t have to. It is greatly appreciated. I’ll be back for your future videos on what a Second Age show should look like. Cheers 🤘

This is really a nitpick, but the direction on this show is so bad they didn't even seem to realize they had Earien drawing the *left* side of Tar-Palantir's face while she was sitting on his *right* side.

As I've said before, Morgoth showed more respect for Middle Earth than Amazon. We can only hope they change their minds and cancel it, but I doubt they can admit failure like that. So we'll likely be subjected to another season, but it's hard to see it doing well given that they've alienated the real fan base and normies will have forgotten it by 2024.

It was Halbrand all along 🎶🎶🎶

I don't watch the series after episode 3, and go straight listen to all reviewers on RU-vid when another episodes came out. Listening to you all is better than watch the actual series 😂

"IM GOOD" - 2nd age wizard great one liner... and the harfoots scream!!! Dude, its the same scream from Land before time, when sarah screams, she sounds like a baby triceratops.

They even stole the " stronger than the foundations of the earth" line from Peter Jackson.

I'm not watching any of this until the harfoots take a bath. Being nomads doesn't mean you can overlook hygiene, little folks!

RoP is what happens when a screenplay writer rolls a nat 1.

Well. That finished. Now all it's fans can get back to watching "Love Island". 😬

“I’M GOOD” Amazing writing

One of the very few on RU-vid that are actually telling it like it is about this show.

"... now the rest of the Harfoots just have to die!" I laughed much harder then I should have but yes, bloody psychos begone.

I was impressed with the graphics for a "tv show" if that word still exists in 2022. I thought most of the actors were talented but probably given poor direction. Too much cgi was added where it wasn't necessary and not enough was added where it would have helped, like making the blind lady actually look blind. The orcs looked good, the dark elf guy looked coolish, the scene where Galadriel and Sauron looked into the water looked good even if it didn't add anything to the show, i really liked the dwarves, the balrog looked fine for the 2 seconds we saw him. Even most of the sets looked thought out and detailed. I ended up liking Elrond even though when i first saw him i didn't think i was going to, i liked the dwarven actors (pretty much all of them). Now the problem is, anything I didn't just mention above, was done poorly and i pretty much only mentioned how things LOOKED. The story was skin deep, and darted around like crazy, i couldn't tell you how any of the songs or themes went, Galadriel has this weird Mary Sue quality and thats even considering the fact we know she has to live for the rest of the story to exist, i predicted all the twists in episode 1 or 2, whenever we met the characters, which isn't really a problem IF there are other twists to keep me engaged, but those were pretty much it. I still dont understand why Galadriel is involved in numenor, it kind of makes her a bad person because she essentially helps him make the One Ring and then when frodo goes on his journey she's like "oh, heres some items, goodluck". Her brother dies she goes to the end of the earth killing orcs. She births a dark lord, then retires in comfort? I don't really get it.

Shocking to find out that Halbrand’s name that sounds like “Hell Brand” would turn out to be Sauron…

The best thing that came out of this travesty is that I re-watched the LoTR trilogy again. That was a good movie series. I miss those days

"If you like your life and want to change that, then maybe this show is for you." Best summation.

Yes! Looking forward to hearing what you would have done for a second age show. Amazing! Thank you 🙏🏼

halbrand: hey celebrimbor grandson of Fëanor the greatest elven smith to ever live, have you heard of this thing called alloys where you combine metals to enhance its properties? celebrimbor: WHAAAAA 😱

TROP is the kind of show you expect to get from first time showrunners, who continue to say they respect the lore but don't. When Peter Jackson decided to make the Lord of the Rings everyone in a high level position on the film crew had read the books over and over and loved and respected Tolkien's work. They were always mindful of the thematic content and didn't put any of their baggage into the movies because they loved the mythology as Tolkien wrote it. J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay are NOT fans of Tolkien's work and it shows everywhere throughout this billion dollar dumpster fire. Their intent was to do the exact opposite of what Jackson did. No one in a high level position on this show is a dedicated fan of Middle Earth. The few true experts they hired like Tom Shippey were fired for disagreeing with Payne and McKay and what they were doing to the mythology. They have not respected the thematic material, canon or lore in fact, they have completely disrespected it. The unmitigated gaul of these two amateurs believing THEY know better than Tolkien how to write the second age of Middle Earth have produced a show that is bad across the board. Bad directing, editing, pacing, storytelling, acting, dialogue and generally all aspects of cinema except the CGI, and a billion dollars worth of that SHOULD be decent. If this story had nothing to do with Tolkien it would still SUCK! That they, in their infinite lack of wisdom, decided to dump ALL their PC and Woke baggage into the singularly greatest work of fantasy fiction of all time shows just how clueless they are. They wanted their story to reflect the world we live in today. Just one problem with that boys and girls, no one reads or watches fantasy fiction to be reminded of the world they live in. In fact, it is loved because it provides an ESCAPE from the world we live in today! Middle Earth is a fictional account of an English/Northern European pre-history. There were no black elves, black dwarf women without beards, black Harfoots/Hobbits or black or asian humans because those races did not live in this English/Northern European geographic location! Diversity has to make sense within the story parameters. The showrunners are total "Bad Reboot" untalented, uninspired and unsuccessful Hollywood hacks! The season ending "big reveals were laughable. Everyone knew Meteor Man was Gandalf even though he wasn't due to appear in Middle Earth for another thousand years or so. Everyone knew Halbrand was Sauron from the moment he appeared on screen. Warrior "Guyladriel" did not exist.....ever. Tolkien's Galadriel was so much more powerful than TROP's Guyladriel because she used her intellect and sorceress powers of persuasion to get what she needed. What she didn't need was to be a sword wielding, "Mary Sue/Karen", Zena warrior princess! Bezos must certainly be feeling buyers remorse for having hired Jar Jar Abrams incompetent production team. A billion dollars for a show that could have been great but for the clown car of talentless hacks that were put in charge of it. I hope the other 4 seasons get cancelled before the next 2 years pass. Let this abomination pass into history with all the fanfare accorded an unmarked grave. That's all it deserves. RIP TROP....you suck!

The series was terrible. It was typica "Bad Robot" company nonsense - which is where the Show Runners came from.

it's likely there are catacombs in an elvish city because the writers don't actually know what catacombs are. they used a thesaurus or some vague memory of the name of a dungeon from an MMO they played once, i'm guessing.

I wouldn't agree on episode 8 being the worst at all: ep5 (where we get to see Isildur trying to get to the ship for an hour) is unbeatable

I like how youtuber's point out the golden mine of available thumbnails, such as during the weird wide-lense shot with Galadriel and Sauron

honest review: it burns us, precious!

The Elves not having long hair is making me irrationally annoyed. It’s just a basic fact, when not adhered to ruins their whole magical aura. Come on!!!!

It would need a big slice of humble pie, but Amazon could scrap everything in RoP and start a complete new series. There is no saving it. I honestly think this would be the best way forward

And I can’t stand the fact they say we are limited by what texts they can get from lore and making excuses for sloppy writing . If you can’t adapt well don’t adapt at all!

This BS is the Silver Timeline they are trying to feed us over in Halo

Not certain if you mentioned it as I watched your vid on my second screen and wasn't entirely focused, but what bothered me so much about this show, in addition to everything you've mentioned, was the excessive use of slow motion when it was just unnecessary. Galadriel horse riding being the most prominent one, but there were others that were just extremely weird. In any case, looking forward to your upcoming videos. :)

I'm still unclear about how Miriel lost her sight during the volcano explosion. Were they burned out by hot ash? Crushed by rocks? Melted by bright light? If so how come they are perfectly intact? Maybe her blindness is due to a conversion reaction to the lines she has to act out brought to a head by the eruption.

There is absolutely zero chance that season 2 comes out and you don't review it! Too much good content there lol.

The dialogues - no wonder they ghosted Peter Jackson.🤔

It astounds me how some "tolkien experts" are still defending the show

Hail new Dark Lord! Great review as always. We thank you for your suffering on our behalf.

The fact that the showrunners apparently don't even know the stars are strange in the south, but in the east everyone sees the exact same stars as in the west, that says a lot.

I tried to watch this episode, but realized, there were no CHANCE, of me finishing it. So i watch you instead. The fact you actually managed the whole season is so impressive. So THANK YOU for the very hard work.

It really boggles my mind how bad the writing is. The things that bother me the most are the illogicalities and irrelevancies. So often stuff happens and then 15 minutes later something happens that makes the entire thing irrelevant. Starts in E1 with the raft thing, she floats on sea, gets picked up, they all get eaten by a monster, she floats again on sea, she gets picked up by the same raft again, they float in the water again and get picked up by a boat again. The whole thing was pointless. It would have so much better pacing if she was picked up by the boat without the whole raft scene. Or what about the scene where wood elf dude goes into the tunnel and is turned into an orc slave only to be send back by Not-Sauron with the information. What is the point of the slave scene then? It would have the exact same effect and run 100% smoother and logical if the wood elf dude just followed the tunnel, spied on the orcs and head back without being seen. It would achieve the exact same thing, elf dude tells village that there are orcs coming, without all the irrelevant boring nonsense. Same with the whole Elrond waking her up from the river, she doesn’t want to tell him what happened, they go forge the rings and then he goes back to find some piece of paper that magically didn’t float down the river. If he is going to find out what was the point of the whole scene 10 minutes earlier? It is insane that the writers couldn’t come up with anything more logical, more organic. How about she wakes up but acts as if nothing happened, goes to forge the rings and THEN Elrond finds out she kept quiet about Sauron dude. And all the dialogue is so flat, there is nothing dynamically going on 99% of the time, just people standing opposite of each other rambling off paragraphs of lazy exposition. The opening scene between Bilbo and Gandalf would just be two dudes standing facing each other. In LOTR Bilbo is constantly darting around, Gandalf is hitting his head knocking everything over. Even when they are sitting down they are constantly grabbing stuff, drinking/eating, smoking, standing up, sitting down again, etc. LOTR is mostly people walking, fighting, riding horses or resting. ROP is mostly just two people standing still talking about mindnumbing boring stuff. Again, it is just pure insanity how this is possible for a billion dollars. I read some comment saying that this is something big corporations do on purpose to kill popular franchises in order to open up the market, the level of incompetence in the writing of the series is so high that I really think that isn’t even that unreasonable in this instance. I have never written any movie and I don’t know how much the writers cost but I’m certain that I could’ve done a way better job for 1/10th of the price. For this kind of budget this is just unacceptable. Even if they cheaped out on the writing, relative to the overall budget you should still be able to get S grade quality. It is just a couple of people you have to pay, that is not what is going to eat up your budget, that would be the production and post-production. You just get one actual good writer who has written these things called books and can actually write a proper story, then you get a guy to work with the writer to get his story into a movie script, somebody who has actual experience doing that kind of stuff. You give them both a million for a year, then you still got 998 million for the series, so that is being pretty conservative considering how vital the story is. There is no scenario where you can’t get high quality stuff for that kind of money. There are hundreds of thousands of writers world wide who could die happy and at peace after landing a project 1/100th the size of ROP. I’m getting mad just thinking about it. This goes beyond the opportunity of a lifetime, everything should be overflowing with passion and dedication. And it feels like this stuff was written in a couple of days max. Like they just put all the cliché selling points on a whiteboard and quickly slapped together something you can’t even call a story around that and called it a day as fast as possible. It all feels like a first draft that wasn’t even made well. I know a little bit about writing and I know one of the biggest parts of good writing is rewriting. You need to go back after at least a night sleep and rewrite everything, going down each paragraph trying to find mistakes, ways to make sentences run better, or even entirely new texts. You should do this several times if you want to make something that is coherent, intelligent and comprehensive. ROP feels like a first draft that was written around memorabilia. How can it be that nobody read that garbage and said something? It goes beyond any matter of taste or interpretation. I want to like this series but it is unbearable. It is enraging, depressing how bad it is, how it is possible that a billion dollars can be wasted on something as low quality as this, how nobody involved had the intelligence, taste or will to put a stop to the molestation of such a great story.

Yeah, I gave Galadriel's actress the benefit of the doubt for being subjected to bad writing in the first few episodes, but she's really not a good actress. Any scene she's in makes me visibly cringe or roll my eyes due to the one note facial expression or overly dramatic reactions. Can't believe this was the best they could do for a main character smh...

This is one of the very few shows I have seen where I give absolutely 0 fucks about ANY of the characters. They should all have died in the volcano eruption and called it a day.

Your grades for the show are SPOT ON!

"The show works best as a torture device". Right on the nose. Truly, a generous critique.

We also heard nothing about the Ents. Another missed opportunity to have the old trees being cut down by the Orcs being an Ent grove, with the Ents choosing to flee or try and help but are driven off, making the Elves grief over cutting the tree down more understandable, along with the migration of the Ents and setting up their reluctance to get involved in any further events.

The only people who didn’t immediately predict that Halbrand was Sauron were those who came up with alternate theories about him being the Witch King or something…because they couldn’t believe the showrunners would make their big mystery so obvious. Turns out…that’s exactly what they did.