There definitely is something weird with the visuals, somehow looks really grand but somehow unreal. Really it's the script that lets it down, I'm only on episode 3 but some of the dialogue with the island queen is just so weak, and just some odd stuff like 'the sea is always right', could they not have found a deeper motto of some kind? The hobbits are ****, and the elves seem a bit to flawed and human seeming compared to how they are portrayed in the books.
It's not a bad show overall, but just not epic and awesome, which is what LOTR should be.
Wokeness, meh, it's not really ruined it, they've ticked some boxes and I do get the feeling any female character is automatically going to be kickass and always in the right but I don't think they've gone that hard with it. Maybe they could've put some more effort into writing a good script instead of making it fit a certain set of values, but that might not have made any difference...
Overall, 5/10, wouldn't be watching if it wasn't LOTR.
I think it has failed in every regard to some extent, the wokeness is pretty low down on the scale. What the continual barrage of politics from the cast and showrunners for the last six months showed me about where their heads were at in planning and production was far more important than some casting choices that I disagreed with. It showed where their main concern was, because it certainly wasn't a "faithful adaptation as can be to Tolkien within the restraints of the medium and the material they had access too" - it was "It's going to be "updated" for modern audiences, and we're going to pay scant regard to the source material, because we know best".
This is why from the first glimpses they showed us, and how they spoke to the fan base, I was worried, and here we are. Anyway I've said my peace on the woke element and I don't want to go down that rabbit-hole again. The script, story, and pacing are just so bad a GOT level cast would not have saved it. And I actually think the portrayals of Disa and Andurin are certainly both "A" tier at least. As a whole the acting is pretty meh and that's being charitable.
I honestly think they may have had a sketch of a story planned out, but very little detail, instead they had bullet points, and things they wanted to hit, not just about politics either, as there's call-backs to PJ all the way through it, but collectively they didnlt have the talent to pull something as big as Tolkien off, especially as they've thrown the Lore out the window. The entire thing is built on contrivance, coincidence and mystery boxes. You can tell they did not know what they were doing with the Harfoots as their entire portrayal as a people makes literally no sense at all. Not surprsing as the showrunners have no resume whatsoever, they'd be lucky to be interns on a show of this magnitude. They make Dave and Dave look like Kubrick and Speilberg.
I still hope this can be turned round and saved from S3 onwards, because i'm betting it is too late for S2. But knowing the absolute hubris of this giga-corporations and their creatives they hire I can't see it, because that would be them admitting they were wrong and the fans were right.
