Watched the second episode of Rings of Power. I particularly enjoyed the dwarves and Elrond.
👍Agree. Elrond's visit to Khazad-dum and scenes with the dwarves Durin and Disa are easily the best part of the series so far.
Visuals are great in the series.
The Harfoots are entertaining.
Arondir (not a lore character; created for the series -- in a drug-induced haze I suspect) is a blight on the series and all that's good and decent in the world.
Galadriel vacillates between being rather boring and a bit of a bitch. Maybe she'll improve as she spends more time in Middle Earth. Worried that her and Halbrand (not a lore character; made for the series) are going to start banging given some of their scenes. That'd end the series for me as by the time of the show -- midway through the second age -- Galadriel has been married to Celeborn (absent from the series so far) for more than 1500 years and she's still married to him thousands of years later in the third age in which LOTR occurs.
The pacing is a bit slow, largely owing to cameras lingering for effect on still, non-speaking faces time and time again (soap opera style melodrama? or brazenly trying to stretch running time? 🤷♂️)
Overall it's ok. If Galadriel lightens up and Arondir dies a horrible, agonizing death it'd improve to good. If they veer back a bit and stay in the lanes of Tolkien lore it might turn out great.
Galadriel is certainly not the etherial wise woman she was in LOTR. Yes, I thought she was married to Celeborn already. Since he played such a minor part in the LOTR movies, it might have been nice to expand his story in this series. Halbrand brings a bit of lightness to her dark side. He may be of use when she brings destruction to Numenor.
I think Arondir was put there for the action because he certainly doesn't have a personality, Elven or otherwise.
The first appearance of the Harfoot was cool. I like Burrows, but I think he could have been given a little more substance. He seems like merely a Keeper of the Book and not a wise man/elder. I've yet to see the purpose of The Stranger other than preventing Nori's family from being Left Behind. It seems like The Stranger's weight added to the cart was the cause of it being bogged down in the first place.
Elrond is also very different from the Elrond in LOTR. In those movies, you got a sense of power, tightly controlled. In this series, he's a wealthy Roman lolling around. But it's just the beginning.
I'm reading the appendices again and so far, so good. I'll certainly read the prologue to LOTR as well as The Hobbit. I'm watching the Hobbit movies because I'm so desperate for some JRRT again. All I'm accomplishing is remembering why I was so disappointed in the first two movies. Maybe I should read The Silmarillion but my reading time is better spend catching up with the LOTR books.
Yes, The Rings of Power is OK but I have yet to be invested in any of the stories except for the dwarves. I'll keep watching.