After all the talk here I watched the first episode. I saw no gay couples or any of the other allegations. Cinematography was well done. I don’t blame Amazon, many of the negative reviews are unverified.
I saw a contrived inter-racial romance between a black "elf" man and a white village woman. The slanderous rumor in her village is that her white husband deserted here because she was having an affair with an elf. We are supposed to approve.
I saw black hobbits and a cute white tomboy girl. No boys.
Yes, I am thoroughly tired of seeing blacks cast in unsuitable roles as obeisance to current political correctness. Can you say, "cultural appropriation"? The "woke" crowd sure can.
I saw Galadriel cast as a neurotic warrior-princess, defying orders from the male patriarchy and experiencing mutiny by her cowardly male squad of soldiers. It is a trope which has been used in dozens of other movies and they weren't any good either.
The old white guys cast as the elf high king and councilors look like a bunch of hair-salon poofters and metro-sexual politicians. Their decision to disband military forces makes no sense at all, considering that the high king admits that he knows "the shadow" is still extant somewhere.
Apparently, he does not want to stir up any trouble by keeping Galadriel around to find "the shadow".
The cinematography was stunning. That was the only good part of the episode.
Yes, I watched the first episode. That is all I will watch.
My wife, who did her college thesis on Tolkien was also impressed. We have both read the Silmarillion. This series has so many elements from that tome. I dare say...anyone who trashes this production has not read it nor do they really understand Tolkien.
Just my humble opinion. I'll watch as many as Amazon can give while I wait for Ringworld.
I been watching and it seems okay to me. I think it’s at least derived from the prequel to the LOTR trilogy, The Silmarillion. It’s the back story to Galadriel, Elrond, the Hobbits, probably Gollum and Sauron. I haven’t seen anything that really twists my shorts.
I made some fun of it and posted some 4Chan memes but I did wind up watching the first episode.
It was better than I expected, and a helluva lot better than "Wheel of Time" which was intended to be a major Amazon franchise.
It's no "Game of Thrones" but episode 1 didn't completely suck either.
And, yes, a multicultural cast is kinda to be expected in 2022 but it wasn't totally woke.
I'll probably give it a chance. And FWIW, other that "The Hobbit" I've not read any other Tolkien books and I still have yet to see the Peter Jackson films so I'm not really up on the lore.
I agree - I liked it. Possibly three things going on First the LOTR fanatics want it to be a literal interpretation of Tolkien’s mythos. A completely unrealistic expectation. I found reading the silmarlon to be more like a class assignment in a course I didn’t like than actual entertainment. Second you have the people who object to black elves, but I don’t remember Tolkien’s ever specifying a skin color for all elves. Third there are the jackasses who simply want to spoil things for other people - these are the sort of malicious busybodies who like to get on home owners assn boards and cause trouble for other people.