Don’t read too much into that.
I love the show, and I only gave it a 4. 5 is for something truly special. It’s not Spirited Away, is what I’m saying.
Note that I would only give the Peter Jackson movies 4, as well.
I would give the 3 LotR movies 5s. They were really well done. The extended versions even more so. I have some complaints, but almost all minor.
The Hobbit movies would have been 3,2,1. They last was truly awful.
I didn’t even notice her height. To me it was the voice that seemed off, after being familiar with Cate Blanchett’s narration to open Fellowship of the Ring.
I would have given the 3 LotR movies 5s, too. But I would have given the Hobbit movies 1, *, *. Star for “didn’t watch”.
I’m tempted to agree. But when you spend that much money to get the rights to make a large-scale Tolkien series, it’s no surprise you’re tempted to think big and do as much with it as you can.
I really appreciate how Tolkien started LotR with a narrow focus, letting us see the world and learn about events through the eyes of one character, before broadening out. But the trend in much epic-scale modern fantasy seems to be to jump around between a whole bunch of different characters and settings and storylines that may or may not eventually converge, and Rings of Power seems to be taking that approach.
I know there have been at least one, and probably several, unofficial attempts by fans to edit the Hobbit trilogy down into a single movie. I haven’t watched any of these attempts, but I suspect you could get a pretty good movie that way, that fixes much of what’s wrong with the trilogy.
Would it be possible to do something like that with what we have so far of Rings of Power? I’m not sure.
I don’t think so. The Hobbit movies were full of annoying filler. The problem with RoP isn’t too much, it’s too little. Too little character development, too little drama. That’s why the last one was the best in season one.
Resons they’re a 4, not a 5, to me:
Faramir got shafted.
Stupid glowy Dead, like extras from a cheap horror.
Stupid troll and Ent designs
Board-surfing elf
Sean Astin was terrible.
Agree on Faramir, also Aragorn was a bit more EMO than I liked.
Do you mean the scrubbing bubbles dead for the Erech?
Cave Troll (which was suppose to be a large orc chieftain, was a dumb looking CGI. I was fine with the Ents.
Board-surfing Elf was silly, but hardly a major demerit for a 3 hour movie.
I disagree on Sean Astin, I liked his Samwise.
I didn’t love the warg designs, but that was minor.
They did such a great job capturing the look of Middle-Earth that I give extra points for that. Most of the casting was great.
Well you also know that Sauron will succeed in making the rings, that part of the end has to be his finger being cut off by Isildur, and the arc for Numenor …
There are events that are, shall we say, fixed points in time, that the story has to include.
Agree on Galadriel’s height.
I actually feel that major elements of the story presented could have worked wonderfully well. Part one being partly the arc of Galadriel going from driven and arrogant to realizing that her being such has brought disaster death and destruction upon all of Middle Earth, and grappling with the fact that Great Powers above Fate alone have made pushed her along that path … bringing her to a humbled low point, which we know she will rise from, but we don’t know how she will … Seeing how she becomes the person wise enough to know that she should not trusted with the power of the One Ring. And otherwise yes more focus on character development without as much melodramatic speechifying exposition, more by their actions.
I gave RoP a 4. I am much stingier with my 5s. The only TV shows that I would even consider for a 5 are Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, and The Good Place. And I need to round up to 5, since all of them had their 3 and 4 moments.
Movies? The Godfather, Casablanca, The Shawshank Redemption, Amadeus, Inception might be 5s. Not the LotR movies - those would be 4s mainly because I was pissed off at the portrayal of the Hobbits - emo Frodo; Merry and Pippen as buffoons with little of the growth shown in the books. Sam and Bilbo were fine.
The Hobbit movies? 2 (mainly because of the Bag End party scene), 1, and 1 (because 0 is verboten).
My university students’ only critique is that they think Elrond was miscast.
I would have agreed at the start, but he’s grown on me.
-@What_Exit yes, the dead that bounced like fleas leaving a dead dog and glowed like they were radioactive. Jackson does love going back to his cheesy schlock roots more than I care for.
I thought Sean Astin was great. I was really disappointed in Denethor – they made him a small-minded, bigoted, incompetent mess, while in the books he was a highly damaged, but well-meaning and intelligent leader.
Sean Astin was a giant ham. On rewatching, I’ve grown tò really loathe the way he says Frodo. Froh-Doh!!
Oh I can see why they did what they did, and you are right that the temptation is there to go hard or go home but at some point a strong and knowledgeable voice to steer them might have been in order.
I think it is notable that Peter Jackson was initially contacted by them but then was ignored. Not sure why but I think he would have had a lot to offer.
But that is the way someone with that accent would say that name.
Hard to say, LotR was done really well. The Hobbit Trilogy was crap. All Peter Jackson.
I suspect having done both more with less and less with more, Jackson would be in a well-informed position to say which was the better approach.
By stretching it out 2x its natural length? I’m not talking about his Mummerset accent, I’m talking about his personal diction when saying that name.