The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

Very boring. Buy the audiobooks instead - despite audiobooks not having visuals, at least they have: plots, likeable characters, are interesting, are read by someone who cares about middle Earth.

(spoiler alert) This review is based on the first two episodes. [ The Good ]: Visuals, costume design and landscapes are stunning and it's easy to see a ridiculous amount of money was spent on eye candy. [ The Bad ]: Underneath the stunning visuals you mostly find hollow characters with recognizable names. For example most elves behave like humans with elf costumes and pointy ears. In my opinion the whole mysterious and dreamy atmosphere of the elf kind is missing. Already from the start we see very human-like behavior from some elf children bullying Galadriel, while you wouldn't expect this to happen to one of the greatest of the elves in all of Middle-earth (even in her childhood). And her only magical power is to make funky paper boats, really? Also she is convinced she could swim a thousand miles back to land somehow? The only personal thing about her so far is the fact that she hates Sauron and everyone else thinks she is only hunting a ghost (pun intended). Also there is a strong lack of amazing journeys. Characters suddenly appear in different places without any image of their travels. Other than that I dislike how the main Harfoot character Nori is completely fearless while finding the meteor-man. She reminds me of the curiosity of Bilbo and Frodo, but even they were far from being this reckless when looking for adventure. [ The Ugly ]: It's clear to see the producers are aiming for a modern version of a Tolkien series riddled with political correctness. The original LotR and The Hobbit films don't feel like they were made in modern times, because Peter Jackson aimed to portray the fantasy world of Tolkien as accurately as possible. As soon as you change or add something to the original work of Tolkien it's like adding extra color to a famous old painting. And maybe Tolkien did write about elf males with short hair, but it's so different from what we're used to. For me personally it breaks the identity of elves quite a bit and on top of that I can't help but feel the actors don't fully understand how to express true elfness. Overall two stars for eye candy and generic entertainment value.