simonemmanuelschouten

There is so much terrible about this show that it would take forever to sum it all up, but I will try to keep this brief:

This show has some impressive shots of mountains just like LotR. That is about the only good thing I can find to say about it. (Even this is marred by over-the-top CGI and poor costume design however and I feel rather generous giving it 2/10.)

EVERYTHING else is pure garbage somehow. I have no clue how they managed to mess up this bad but they did.

The meaningless, pseudo-wise lines that characters spout in lieu of proper writing is flat out embarrassing and painful to watch. Ignoring the comically bad voice-over at the start, less than 5 minutes into the first episode we get the most melodramatic speech ever about 'why it is that rocks can't float' and the lines do not get any better after this. Nearly everything every character says is just flat out dumb. You'll be rolling your eyes non-stop if you're actually paying attention to it. It is outright painful to listen to.

There are no redeeming qualities to compensate for this. The plot diverges from the Silmarillion immediately and the motivations of characters are incomprehensible and nonsensical as the teenage Marvel version of Galadriel does a bunch of stuff she never did in the books, with a group of what have got to be the most boring Elves in the history of Arda. After 12 minutes I was subconsciously rooting for the bad guys, that's how bad the main characters are. Sauron has clearly become some sort of serial murderer from CSI who leaves "mysterious signs". Hobbits make an obnoxious and unnecessary reappearance in the Second Age for absolutely no good reason. An Elf-Human romance (which are exceedingly rare in this universe to the point each one is known and this isn't one of them) is forcefully inserted because they wanted to make it clear they were going to rip-off literally every story element here no matter how unsuitable.

Even if you willingly choose to ignore the blatant and infamous race-swapping and love obvious analogies to unrelated race politics from one specific country in real life in the middle of a fantasy story (from a writer who himself abhorred allegory) because you believe every story has to be a perfect mirror of 21st century American demographics and anyone who thinks otherwise is a racist, there is still the question as to why half of the Elves inexplicably have SHORT HAIR when NONE of them have this in Tolkien's works. This shouldn't be an issue. Just make them like they are in the books for heaven's sake, how hard could it be?! And why is Elrond now an ambitious, industrialist politician? This is a 180 degree turn away from both his character in the original works and one of the CENTRAL THEMES in Tolkien's entire work!

The only answer is that the makers have nothing but disregard for the original work. They don't care about how Elves are in the book, or how the characters are in the book, or anything Tolkien actually wrote. Nothing lines up, and nearly everything is changed for worse. They chose to make their own cheap surrogate of what they thought the Jackson movies were, that takes keeps all of the worst elements of the Hobbit and discards all of the things that made LotR so great in the first place. The result is nothing but a watered-down, shallow imitation. An uninspired mockery that leaves no lasting impression because it is every bit as shallow as the show writer's interpretation and understanding of the original story.

Slow motion. That about sums up the worst part of this movie. Countless of times in this movie, simple actions are drawn out to take 10 times as long because the director decided the action of "Batman picks up a freaking object" should definitely be done in ultra slow motion.

And then there's the overall slow pace of the movie: the dialogue is slow and devoid of depth. It's like the director thought that by making everything slow things, the tension increases... It does NOT if you do it like this. This is one of the most boring movies I've seen in quite a while. The drama is boring, the action is boring, the plot moves at a snail's pace. Batman is clearly utterly invincible in every fight scene, the actual dialogue would make you yawn or roll your eyes even if it took half as long as it does, and about a third of the movie time is wasted on loooooong close-ups of actors' faces staring with a blank expression into nothing (because this is "artistic" of course).

The plot cannot make up for it. The acting wasn't bad, just mediocre. I wanted to scream "MOVE! DO SOMETHING" at the screen for multiple hours. I would have happily rated it even lower than 4/10 if the acting was a little more incompetent.

I don't care what million dollar actors play in this; this is NOT funny. In 5 episodes there were only ~5 jokes that were actually good and well-executed. And that wouldn't be bad if this was Breaking Bad, but it's not. It's clearly supposed to be a comedy because the plot is just inconsequential nonsense with no tension or relatable characters whatsoever. So the jokes are all that it's got going for it and... well, unfortunately most of the jokes are of the lowest grade.

It's a "haha, poop" and "haha, monkeys are funny!" level of entertainment. If that works for you then go for it, but if merely saying "Space Force" or "spacemen" out loud does not make you roll over the floor laughing, then don't bother because that's literally what this series hinges on. I reluctantly sat through 5 episodes and I'm glad I managed to laugh at all, but I can't sit through more of this. It's 90% BORING. And it's cringey and painful how they clearly try and try to be funny but completely fail to make up a simple joke or execute it. Utter failure of a show.

Just watch the trailer and nothing else. They took all the fun bits and stuck em in there; you won't miss anything by skipping the show itself.