[tenpies]

I think that many of us are coming at this with Peter Jackson's trilogy in mind (and the extended editions at that), but we have - probably intentionally - forgotten the exceedingly mediocre The Hobbits trilogy.

If you use that more recent work as the baseline, then I can see how the episodes released so far place the series fairly in the "watchable, but forgettable" category.

I do hope Amazon releases some UHD stills of the cities though. The team who handled those did an exceptional job.

[rdtsc]

> forgotten the exceedingly mediocre The Hobbits trilogy.

True. That could have been a 2 hour movie or at most two episodes. However, one difference is that the characters there do not seem that much at odds with the book or the first three movies. Galadriel in the Amazon show, on the other hand, just doesn't feel like the book or the movie Galadriel so it's a bit jarring. For their large budget, the dialog and characters should have been done a bit better I thought.

[riffraff]

> the characters there do not seem that much at odds with the book or the first three movies

well, The Hobbit itself as a book is at odds with LoTR, being a children fairy tale rather than an epic.

Just compare the scene where they get away from trolls in The Hobbit with the the trolls attacking Gondor in the movie. The change of tone is insane.

OTOH, it's pretty silly to be angry about it :)

[midoridensha]

>True. That could have been a 2 hour movie or at most two episodes.

It was: check out the fan edits. So far, my favorite is the Maple Films Edit. It's about 4 hours long and it's pretty great. It cuts most of the crap and leaves all the good stuff in.

>Galadriel in the Amazon show, on the other hand, just doesn't feel like the book or the movie Galadriel so it's a bit jarring.

Galadriel here is thousands of years younger than the version you saw in Jackson's movies or the LotR books. Presumably she's matured.

[danaris]

From what I've heard in others' descriptions of her depiction, Galadriel in the Amazon show also doesn't much match her depiction in The Silmarillion.

[kixiQu]

> That could have been a 2 hour movie or at most two episodes.

https://hobbitfanedits.fandom.com/wiki/Hobbit_Fanedits_Wiki :)

[wardedVibe]

Watched one of these (forget which), and it was actually a decent movie.

[Fiahil]

> we have - probably intentionally - forgotten the exceedingly mediocre The Hobbits trilogy.

I consider myself a good Tolkien fan, and I really liked the Hobbit trilogy. There is no consensus on how it was universally accepted.

As to the Rings of Power, it tooks 90 years for the elves to forge their rings. Let's see how they're going to translate that in their story.

[TomSwirly]

The Hobbit trilogy wasn't mediocre - it was just astonishingly bad and worse, they added a huge amount of material that had nothing to do with the book.

The Hobbit is a single book that is shorter than any of the three LoTR books. There was no reason to make three movies out of it other than greed.

[midoridensha]

The Hobbit fan edits are actually quite enjoyable movies. Of course, they all remove that huge amount of extra material, so...

[ngold]

That is exactly what I was terrified of. I just watched the first episode a couple hours ago. It's pretty good. Not as good as the trilogy, but heaps better than the hobbit.

[adastra22]

I've been telling people to forget the Peter Jackson movies exist (LotR and Hobbit). This is a different vision of Tolkien's world, and trying to compare them is apples to oranges. If you go into it with just the expectation of it being high fantasy with high production values, I think your average viewer would enjoy it.