I didn't expect this to be very good after all of the criticism that I saw about this series online but I have to say that I am pretty astounded at how bad it actually is. I am struggling to even pay attention to it as the episodes go on but there are certain aspects of this that are just really bad.
The only interesting character thus far is the mysterious "Meteor Man" or as he is referred to in the credits "The Stranger," who crashed near a nomad Hobbit colony. Everyone else in the story is poorly written and entirely too "PG" for my liking.
I've gotten to the point now where I am watching this in my bedroom just before I go to sleep because this series is actually very effective in helping me to accomplish this because it is so damn boring. Forget about the issues that some folks had regarding the inclusion factor and how a bunch of minorities are placed in the cast despite the fact that this really doesn't make much sense in the Tolkien universe. This is not the problem at all. The problem is extremely poor writing and a story that simply drags on at a very slow clip. In 6, 1-hour episodes, very little has actually even happened. We haven't advanced the story much at all after 6 hours of viewing.
While none of the characters in the story are actually all that interesting aside, again, from the unnamed "Meteor Man" I have to say that the plotline that I find the most irritating is Elrond and Durin who are the Elf and Dwarf pals who are I guess, central to the story. I think the reason why this whimsical relationship that takes absolute ages to accomplish anything of note is because of the fact that Elrond was a rather major character in the LoTR films.
Amazon took a stoic, intelligent, and stern character from the films and books and turned him into some sort of comic relief boob whose every word is meant to be a joke of some sort but only the jokes are not funny. His dialogue, just like a majority of the dialogue spoken by everyone in this series is mostly unnecessarily comical and this wouldn't be so bad if all of the jokes didn't fall completely flat.
Another thing that I find very disappointing about this series in general is that despite spending a BILLION DOLLARS making it, the CGI looks really bad for the most part. I can appreciate how difficult that it must be to create a completely fictional world on screen but they are spending much more money than the films ever did to create it, so why does it look dramatically different and dare i say, quite cheap and bad?
Seriously guys? What the hell is that? I read an interesting article that showcases that most people agree with me on this where the Warg CGI was named "Worst CGI of the year." This obviously isn't true because there are certainly some low-budget films or shows out there that are far worse, but I think that the bar is set to a much higher setting when we are talking about LoTR and an astronomical budget.
I have only 2 episodes to go and I hope that the series has some sort of grand battle planned that is going to make all of this worthwhile because at this point I feel as though my time is completely wasted bothering to watch this at all. The story isn't good, the writing is terrible, and the action sequences are relying entirely too much on "weightless wire" special effects the likes of which we expect in Matrix films, not in a fantasy classic.