The cinematography? Brilliant. The costume design? Okay…. The plot and storyline? This lifelong Tolkien fan thinks they did a very good job with it. 1. The changes they made to the original work make sense in trying to distill very dense, extremely difficult to follow narratives into an accessible story, that makes sense to casual fan. Their ability to do that was one of my deepest worries going into this…and they did well. 2. The best move was centering the tale around characters that are known to casual fans: Elrond, Galadriel, Gandalf. Although the had to serious compress the timeline in some areas, and flat out change it in other….I think the changes make the story pace better and make more sense as a tv series. 3. Ignore the negativity. The changes to Galadriel are true to Tolkien’s conception of a young Galadriel. Headstrong. Athletic. Ambitious. It laid the groundwork for a very interesting character arc and evolution of her as a person. [spoiler] When she finally figured out who Halbrand has been, and he speaks words to her that are important thousands of years later in The Fellowship of the Ring made my inner Tolkien geek laugh with joy. Well done.[/spoiler] Making her into a warrior was simply a necessary change to make her story relevant to a modern audience. Peter Jackson did the same to Arwen 20 years ago and everyone conveniently forgot it…or never realized it to begin with. Most of the negativity is coming from either hardcore Tolkien fans who hold to his works with an almost religious zeal. Resenting and overreacting to any changes that get made to his writing. Tolkien himself struggled to understand such individuals, and their attitude would make any adaptations of his works to other mediums impossible….. …or from people who are more invested the culture wars than they are in Tolkien’s works. (I won’t elaborate any further out of respect for CoC) Anyway, there was the same level of negativity from these same elements a generation ago when the LOTRs movies came out. It was just forgotten about, because the movies were so well made, and there was no social media to amplify the toxicity. In all seriousness. Job well done, and I look forward to what comes next.

Haven’t watched it, got no idea what’s it’s about.

I’ve watched every episode except the finale. Will hopefully get to that soon enough. But overall, I was pleasantly surprised looking at it as just a show. I love the scenery and to be honest the storyline is interesting enough to keep watching for what happens next. Even the variety of characters personality-wise intrigues me. Im also a fan of their choice of horses :D Unfortunately, I haven’t read deeply enough into the lore to check for accuracy. Maybe one day I can do that. However, from reading the LotR and Hobbit books as well as watching the movies multiple times, one of my biggest peeves is that the show doesn’t really [i]feel[/i] like LotR. It’s less… real, I guess. And some of the designs remind me too much of some modern, stereotypical fantasy film things. [spoiler]Numenor gave me this vibe. I could see their effort in armor and some of the clothing, but something about it all was out of place to me.[/spoiler] Some scenes looked kinda staged… dialogue maybe a little forced in some small places… But all those are nit-picks from me. I tried not to come in with high expectations. On its own, I quite like it. Compare it to the originals, it feels like a different world in many aspects, just with familiar names.

As someone who's only exposure to LotR is the movies, someone with no knowledge of the deeper lore... It was fine as a show, the production seemed to be top tier for the most part. I think the elven armor looks a bit cosplay-ish. However I was watching with someone who was very knowledgeable of the source material and they were practically having a heart attack and I could empathize with them if what they were saying is true. Seems lots of liberties may have been taken.

Anyone else notice the Harfoots spend like 50% of their time and energy just talking about being Harfoots

I liked it a lot. I’ve always liked how they did LotR in the movies than the books. Very beautiful scenery, kept coming back every Friday.