The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (Page 3 of 6)

On that we can agree.  +1.  You get a full, "You're not wrong there, lad." from me, but it'll just upset Merc if we start talking about how bad it is...

Bear McCreary's score for Rings of Power is beautiful, especially the end of 104.

As for your other points:

1) Bad, bad, horrific actor performance
-Isn't that a believability failure in the writing?  I don't mind the acting, but I have my concerns with the writers and producers behind the camera.  I think the actors are emoting properly and in it, I just disagree with some of the choices that've been written for them.  None of the dialogue for this era really exists, so it is a very difficult job to write.

2) Too beautiful to be real, aka falls deep into the Uncanny Valley
-Yes, this is my main complaint, it looks way too digital and clean, and I like your descriptors, "synthetic" and "artificial", as that's exactly how I see it too.  I discussed this with a friend of mine, and that artificial look is sometimes created in the frames per second.  Lord of the Rings was shot on film at 24 frames per second like most movies, whereas The Hobbit movies were shot digital at 60 fps, and it creates a sharp look to every detail, and unfortunately, it's very immersion breaking for a fantasy, to me, and doesn't have the proper look.  It tends to look like a documentary, not a drama.

3) Just a boring, not well paced story
-Ya, with all the stories going on in this it's a lot to chew, and I think 8 episodes will only make the pacing worse.

If it's $1 billion / 40 = $25M/episode, Does this feel like that to you?  Straw poll perhaps someone? 

After reading the CNN Article, every contemporary choice, however subtle, already makes me question what I'm watching unfortunately, that is, what is subtext, and what is lore?  From time to time, it's immersion breaking.

I guess it is a mix of things.

One thing is the visuals.... take a look at the Galadriel photo used in the CNN article you posted. Is that Galadriel for you? Or more like Jean d'Arc from a mediocre reenactment group? I mean... she is a beautiful woman in armor.... emphasis on woMAN... not one of the oldest most powerful elves in Middle Earth.

They did not put in any effort in to make her (or any other of the elves) look like the mystic eternal and timelines beings they are supposed to be. You can like or not like the PJ movies or Cate Blanchett or Liv Tyler. But the elves in the movies like Arwen (Liv Tyler), Celeborn (Marton Csokas), Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) are just so much more believable. Even Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) as Elrond worked for me. Was it the great actors, the right set and props or the artistic "70s soft-pornoesc" blur filters applied (aka the director/producer decisions)? Doesn't matter. All of these... Rings of Power does not have.

Second is the cheesy and bad dialogs and writing. Yeah, it might be a difficult job to come up with dialogues but hell... that is the job of screen writers. And if you look at the budget, they should have hired the best of the best of the best.
But to me, it feels like none of the writers actually into this. I would have expected them to read every single bit of world building by Tolkin. Even see every youtube clip from Nerd of the Rings, as that guy does a tremendous job of explaining that world and setting. Maybe they have... but judging from what has been put up on screen.... I doubt it.

Sure there is of course also an element of the directions given by the directors and producers.

But I think a great actor with a lot of talent could probably make all of this work. If you are just a mediocre to bad actor, then all these problems get magnified and make it painful to watch. Morfydd Clark runs around most of the timing with the facial expression of a pissed of teenage girl which was just told "No more TikTok for you this week, Missy!" and lacks any of the grace, charm and aura of what I would expect from a Galadriel.

Really great actors go more than the extra mile to learn as much as they can about the character they will play and world which it lives in. Who hasn't heard the stories about Leonardo DiCapri preparing for The Revenant, Christopher Lee to portrait Saruman, Daniel Day-Lewis for Gangs of New York or even Tom Cruise working for his role as Lestat?

But when you see those cringe-worthy interviews of the Rings Of Power cast about their roles and the world these characters live in... it becomes clear they never read a single word outside their manuscript about the world or character they are portraying. That is both just lazy and ignorant. Even great actors have to prepare, mediocre actors have to work much harder. But obviously, they didn't and none of them have the talent to just "wing it".

Are dwarfs just "smaller than usual humans" for you? Hobbits are "also normals humans but even smaller than dwarfs but with a lot of hair on the foot"? How about Orcs? Like humans but with green skin, pointy ears and bad teeth?

You either accept that there a specific differences between races in fantasy settings and where elves are not just humans with pointy ears or you can just forget about the world setting.

105...totally forgot that bit of Elf-Dwarf lore but...meh...I'm losing interest.

If there's any having to just "wing it" with a 1 billion dollar budget, that's a serious executive producer problem, lolz. At this point (105) it's the big picture decisions and the overall approach to the source material that doesn't seem fantasy enough to me (cinematography, story writing, directing, editing) that has taken me further away from the story, moreso than the acting, but you're right, there are some scenes that could use another take, and some actors that could be swapped for someone better, but not before the Director of Photography and Executive producers.

Rosamund Pike in The Wheel of Time has far more charisma, appeal, and chops than anyone so far in Rings of Power, however, it shouldn't be star power that brings you into Tolkien, it should be the production of the fantasy world and it's history.

To do this well, they'd need one person in charge of everything with a beating heart of Tolkien's vision to do everything by the book to get the look and feel correct, and this is not that, at all.

Excellent so far (unlike HOTD). Hope they carry it on. What's with the negativity? I don't understand.

agreed. Still hoping for more but we're at episode 5 so don't know if it's coming. It feels like the story is being dragged out

I do.  Maybe not much, but a lot more than I do with any of those completely unlikeable characters in HotD.

I don't know how, but I don't think so. Let's find out next episode.

Ok. So I haven’t started this show yet… but is the general consensus that’s it’s good and not to focused on the political agenda that it tries to portray (based on previous posts in this thread)?
Is it a good show that’s worth picking up?

Brothers! What we do in life...Echoes in Eternity!

+1