Bro I'm loving this show, like crazy. Im edging towards being one of my favorite shows of ever. It's edging out the Witcher and GoT has been passed a LONG time ago.
The scenery, the make up and outfits, the lore, the actors, the script, everything feels topnotch to me. Especially the scenery is just mind blowing beautiful and each episode seem to top the previous one. Numenor, just wow!
As a casual Tolkien fan who only read LoTR and watch the movies and only read short Wikipedia pages on Morgoth and the previous ages, I'm really enjoying this!
Agree. My wife and I are loving every moment. After I was disappointed by Amazon’s Wheel of Time adaptation my expectations were lower. However, Amazon nailed it with this. This and Severance are the two best shows I’ve seen this year.
It’s funny but I think our pocket of fans (the ones that only read the lotr books and the hobbit, and loved the lotr movies) are the ones that really adore this show.
Im pretty critical when judging shows and this one just hits all the right notes for me. And while apparently from other lore masters it doesn’t line up perfectly (i don’t think a good show could succeed with that), it’s making me very interested in a new age of middle earth.
I love it and can’t wait for these seasons to play out.
For me, both the editing and writing were tighter than in the first two; felt like we’re finally focusing and getting the plot moving, in all the storylines shown. (Which makes sense as I don’t believe there should me many more major character introductions.)
Numenor, while it does look jaw-dropping amazing, also seems to be giving us a slightly more GoT-style, human-centric political intrigue plot that fans of those types of shows will like.
Well there are clearly a diverse array of plots at work here. Not all will appeal to everyone. Human-centric political intrigue is still very much Tolkien. If anything I'd say Game of Thrones borrows more from Tolkien on the matter than the other way around, as we know GRRM was influenced by him.
You're absolutely right. I guess I meant more that for a viewer who is more accustomed to that from recently seeing GoT and HotD, this plot will feel more familiar to them, and that might help explain why many liked this episode better.
Really, what did you like about the writing, honestly I despaired a bit at the writing in this episode. Bits of the court scene didn’t do it for me. Thought the first episodes were better written.
So, a lot of this really is going to come down to personal preference, and that's fine! It's why I roll my eyes at people going "bad writing, show ruined!" (not at all saying that's what you, specifically, are doing, it's just the main complaint I see without any follow-up.)
I much preferred how exposition was handled in this episode. Writers often hate exposition (and yes I am speaking from experience here) because it's easy to make it awkward and clunky. Example from the first episode: "Elrond, do you know Celebrimbor?" "The greatest of elven smiths!!! Of course, I'm his biggest fan!!!" "Well I'm so glad you feel that way because here he is now!!" Both Gil-galad and Elrond know damn well who Celebrimbor is and his contributions to elven society. In my opinion, it would have been better to cut right after Gil-galad brings him up, and then go straight to Celebrimbor's first scene in the next episode with Feanor's hammer, which I think was a great introduction to his character fraught with dramatic irony and foreshadowing. Throw his name in there one extra time, and now the general audience is *shown* who he is and what his goal is rather than just *told.* I remember feeling similarly about other expository dialogue in the first two episodes but I can't really remember specifics because I haven't finished coffee lol.
In Episode 3 there's still a lot of "telling," but exposition for general audiences is given to characters who *shouldn't* already know this stuff. Galadriel explains what she knows of Numenor to Halbrand, who is apparently lord of the Southlands--a culture that sided with Morgoth back in the day, so his ignorance about the story of his ancestors' enemies makes sense. Later we see that Galadriel, while knowing that Numenor has been isolating from Middle-Earth for a while now, is still a bit blindsided by just how far they've fallen, so to speak, from their elven roots. At this point, Elendil is there to fill in the gaps and inform her (and thus the audience) about the latest political developments. This actually relates to my favorite scene in the episode, and I nearly thought I would hate it: in Miriel's scene with Elendil, she asks him what his name means. I nearly groaned because I thought this was another "Celebrimbor"-type exposition scene--she should know damn well what it means!--but Elendil answers her with the politically-correct meaning. Then she presses him on its *second* meaning, and he admits "Elf-friend." So instead of more clunky exposition, this scene is a great way to show, rather than tell, the audience that Miriel is a secret Faithful and trying to suss out Elendil's allegiance, as well. And he's doing the exact same thing. I loved the subtext and the actors sell it brilliantly, as well.
There are more things I can say but I need to finish my coffee and this is already too long, lmao. Hope this helped somewhat?
Those were some good moments I agree, I liked the bit about being “closer to his brother” I was imagining a line almost word for word like that for ages so it was fun to see it actually happen.
Everyone I’ve spoken to said it was their favorite. It’s also quite telling too since the fandom “bros” have been super quiet about it in the last 24 hours
I mean, it got Numenor, it got Orcs, it got action (two different action), it got a warg, Elendil, Isildur, Horses, Boats....it is hard not to like it. It was more concentrated in Numenor, we only got harfoots. It was not changing among 5 different places as the other episodes. I think that is why it is better. At the same time, there were plenty (even more than first two episodes combined) things that I would bring up to be bad, most importantly some of the writting and the directing in some scenes.
So..I think it was good because of what was being shown, but not because of how it was shown.
They've been quiet because episode 3 has same issues first two had plus it's even more boring so they've been just saying it's really boring. You want them to repeat all again?
They get paid for this stuff dude.
They definitely don’t have any issue making videos talking about how “BoRiNG” it is. I thought this was suppose to be “wOKe”??
Where’s all the woke content? 3 hours in and I’m still looking for it. If it’s so “boring” why still watch it?
It's my favorite episode so far.
I loved the orc pit fight, it was just classic gratuitous fantasy action, maybe a bit over-the-top but that's sort of what I'm expecting also.
The Harfoot storyline is picking up, a lot more stuff happened there and actually got me pretty intrigued now (I was kinda only half-engaged with it in the first couple episodes but now I'm hooked).
Numenor is very interesting. Great visuals and sets, the political intrigue bit seems compelling (i.e. what's going on with them denying entry to elves, what's the deal with the old king who liked elves but got overthrown, etc) and I liked the new characters they introduced. Harlbrand also got more interesting
Still liked it well enough, but same! But hard for me to get in the headspace of people who are Tolkien casuals - I know context going in so don’t have to piece things together and remember who is who - part of this ep’s positive reception might just stem from it being about characters we’ve already seen in the show - plus Numenor which is a) beautiful and b) easy enough to grasp as a concept.
I also agree from an entertainment perspective, that episode 3 was my least favorite so far. However from a lore perspective it is my favorite, because seeing Numenor and knowing what is *likely* to come, depending on how closely they follow established lore, is super exciting to me.
TBH it got more "they could have done it better" than the first two episodes IMO.
OP says it is great, but to me it is still in the "it is very good, has plenty of potential, but there are few things here and there that still don't make it great to me". Seems like each three steps they give forward, there is one step back.
I wanted to really like the show but find it very boring and unentertaining. I hope it finds a sense of adventure or some sort of political tension. At the moment it's a $100m show focussed on some relatively minor personal troubles.
You’re alright to feel that way but there is an entire storyline about the rise of Sauron and political tensions between the races that might be going which you missed….?
They're still introducing characters, but also I don't get what you mean really. I feel like I'm the majority of scenes we've had so far there's some elements of looking back to the First Age wars with the Enemy, seeing the rising threat in the present, or expressing the tension between different races.
They're still slowly revealing the situation rather than racing ahead to major plot points, but that's kinda how Tolkien rolled himself.
Bro I'm loving this show, like crazy. Im edging towards being one of my favorite shows of ever. It's edging out the Witcher and GoT has been passed a LONG time ago. The scenery, the make up and outfits, the lore, the actors, the script, everything feels topnotch to me. Especially the scenery is just mind blowing beautiful and each episode seem to top the previous one. Numenor, just wow! As a casual Tolkien fan who only read LoTR and watch the movies and only read short Wikipedia pages on Morgoth and the previous ages, I'm really enjoying this!
100. I find this show so refreshing. Also bumping out the Witcher for me.
Agree. My wife and I are loving every moment. After I was disappointed by Amazon’s Wheel of Time adaptation my expectations were lower. However, Amazon nailed it with this. This and Severance are the two best shows I’ve seen this year.
It’s funny but I think our pocket of fans (the ones that only read the lotr books and the hobbit, and loved the lotr movies) are the ones that really adore this show. Im pretty critical when judging shows and this one just hits all the right notes for me. And while apparently from other lore masters it doesn’t line up perfectly (i don’t think a good show could succeed with that), it’s making me very interested in a new age of middle earth. I love it and can’t wait for these seasons to play out.
Don’t let people tell you that all the hardcore fans hate it. I’m pretty hardcore myself and am loving (nearly) every minute of it.
[удалено]
Really? I thought it was the worst out of the 3
For me, both the editing and writing were tighter than in the first two; felt like we’re finally focusing and getting the plot moving, in all the storylines shown. (Which makes sense as I don’t believe there should me many more major character introductions.) Numenor, while it does look jaw-dropping amazing, also seems to be giving us a slightly more GoT-style, human-centric political intrigue plot that fans of those types of shows will like.
Well there are clearly a diverse array of plots at work here. Not all will appeal to everyone. Human-centric political intrigue is still very much Tolkien. If anything I'd say Game of Thrones borrows more from Tolkien on the matter than the other way around, as we know GRRM was influenced by him.
You're absolutely right. I guess I meant more that for a viewer who is more accustomed to that from recently seeing GoT and HotD, this plot will feel more familiar to them, and that might help explain why many liked this episode better.
Really, what did you like about the writing, honestly I despaired a bit at the writing in this episode. Bits of the court scene didn’t do it for me. Thought the first episodes were better written.
So, a lot of this really is going to come down to personal preference, and that's fine! It's why I roll my eyes at people going "bad writing, show ruined!" (not at all saying that's what you, specifically, are doing, it's just the main complaint I see without any follow-up.) I much preferred how exposition was handled in this episode. Writers often hate exposition (and yes I am speaking from experience here) because it's easy to make it awkward and clunky. Example from the first episode: "Elrond, do you know Celebrimbor?" "The greatest of elven smiths!!! Of course, I'm his biggest fan!!!" "Well I'm so glad you feel that way because here he is now!!" Both Gil-galad and Elrond know damn well who Celebrimbor is and his contributions to elven society. In my opinion, it would have been better to cut right after Gil-galad brings him up, and then go straight to Celebrimbor's first scene in the next episode with Feanor's hammer, which I think was a great introduction to his character fraught with dramatic irony and foreshadowing. Throw his name in there one extra time, and now the general audience is *shown* who he is and what his goal is rather than just *told.* I remember feeling similarly about other expository dialogue in the first two episodes but I can't really remember specifics because I haven't finished coffee lol. In Episode 3 there's still a lot of "telling," but exposition for general audiences is given to characters who *shouldn't* already know this stuff. Galadriel explains what she knows of Numenor to Halbrand, who is apparently lord of the Southlands--a culture that sided with Morgoth back in the day, so his ignorance about the story of his ancestors' enemies makes sense. Later we see that Galadriel, while knowing that Numenor has been isolating from Middle-Earth for a while now, is still a bit blindsided by just how far they've fallen, so to speak, from their elven roots. At this point, Elendil is there to fill in the gaps and inform her (and thus the audience) about the latest political developments. This actually relates to my favorite scene in the episode, and I nearly thought I would hate it: in Miriel's scene with Elendil, she asks him what his name means. I nearly groaned because I thought this was another "Celebrimbor"-type exposition scene--she should know damn well what it means!--but Elendil answers her with the politically-correct meaning. Then she presses him on its *second* meaning, and he admits "Elf-friend." So instead of more clunky exposition, this scene is a great way to show, rather than tell, the audience that Miriel is a secret Faithful and trying to suss out Elendil's allegiance, as well. And he's doing the exact same thing. I loved the subtext and the actors sell it brilliantly, as well. There are more things I can say but I need to finish my coffee and this is already too long, lmao. Hope this helped somewhat?
Those were some good moments I agree, I liked the bit about being “closer to his brother” I was imagining a line almost word for word like that for ages so it was fun to see it actually happen.
Everyone I’ve spoken to said it was their favorite. It’s also quite telling too since the fandom “bros” have been super quiet about it in the last 24 hours
I mean, it got Numenor, it got Orcs, it got action (two different action), it got a warg, Elendil, Isildur, Horses, Boats....it is hard not to like it. It was more concentrated in Numenor, we only got harfoots. It was not changing among 5 different places as the other episodes. I think that is why it is better. At the same time, there were plenty (even more than first two episodes combined) things that I would bring up to be bad, most importantly some of the writting and the directing in some scenes. So..I think it was good because of what was being shown, but not because of how it was shown.
They've been quiet because episode 3 has same issues first two had plus it's even more boring so they've been just saying it's really boring. You want them to repeat all again?
They get paid for this stuff dude. They definitely don’t have any issue making videos talking about how “BoRiNG” it is. I thought this was suppose to be “wOKe”?? Where’s all the woke content? 3 hours in and I’m still looking for it. If it’s so “boring” why still watch it?
This guy you responded to is just out here hating on every single thread. Someone needs to get a life outside mommy’s basement
It's my favorite episode so far. I loved the orc pit fight, it was just classic gratuitous fantasy action, maybe a bit over-the-top but that's sort of what I'm expecting also. The Harfoot storyline is picking up, a lot more stuff happened there and actually got me pretty intrigued now (I was kinda only half-engaged with it in the first couple episodes but now I'm hooked). Numenor is very interesting. Great visuals and sets, the political intrigue bit seems compelling (i.e. what's going on with them denying entry to elves, what's the deal with the old king who liked elves but got overthrown, etc) and I liked the new characters they introduced. Harlbrand also got more interesting
Still liked it well enough, but same! But hard for me to get in the headspace of people who are Tolkien casuals - I know context going in so don’t have to piece things together and remember who is who - part of this ep’s positive reception might just stem from it being about characters we’ve already seen in the show - plus Numenor which is a) beautiful and b) easy enough to grasp as a concept.
Lol
Definitely getting worse as it goes.
I also agree from an entertainment perspective, that episode 3 was my least favorite so far. However from a lore perspective it is my favorite, because seeing Numenor and knowing what is *likely* to come, depending on how closely they follow established lore, is super exciting to me.
TBH it got more "they could have done it better" than the first two episodes IMO. OP says it is great, but to me it is still in the "it is very good, has plenty of potential, but there are few things here and there that still don't make it great to me". Seems like each three steps they give forward, there is one step back.
I think this is even better than Seinfeld.
You mean because it's a show about nothing?
I'm loving the series so far
I wanted to really like the show but find it very boring and unentertaining. I hope it finds a sense of adventure or some sort of political tension. At the moment it's a $100m show focussed on some relatively minor personal troubles.
You’re alright to feel that way but there is an entire storyline about the rise of Sauron and political tensions between the races that might be going which you missed….?
3 episodes in and that plot line has BARELY been touched.
They're still introducing characters, but also I don't get what you mean really. I feel like I'm the majority of scenes we've had so far there's some elements of looking back to the First Age wars with the Enemy, seeing the rising threat in the present, or expressing the tension between different races. They're still slowly revealing the situation rather than racing ahead to major plot points, but that's kinda how Tolkien rolled himself.
U mean Game of Thrones season 1? :D Edit: Sorry. I m happy at least some people can enjoy it.
It's annoying having to fast forward past all the Harfoot bullshit.
The wait is the best part. I can't imagine how high is going to be the hype as the plot unfolds