My main reactions at the halfway point through the season... (PART 1)
I watched the first two episodes with a group of 8 friends while staying in a convention hotel. Thus, I was then hanging out with the people I watched the show with over the next several days, and interacting with Tolkien fans, some of whom had seen it, and some of whom were waiting to go home to watch it. The night after watching the show, this photo happened: (costume contest at Evening at Bree at DragonCon in Atlanta)
To me, by far the greatest delight of having a new show in the fandom is that there is new content to make jokes and memes about. Immediately, my friends started telling each other that they smelled of rotten leaves when we were wearing elf costumes, and doing the pep rally chant "I say Khazad, you say Dûm! Khazad! Dûm!" We had done the same thing with lines from Jackson's movies ("Get off the rooooooaaaaadddd" when a car went by, etc). And, honestly, with the Rankin Bass movies (did you know that almost any song can be turned into a rendition of "Rolling Down the Hole" from the Hobbit? and who doesn't enjoy bursting out into song with "Where there's a Whip there's a Way"?) To me, this is part of why hanging out with other people who love Tolkien is so much fun.
So, yes, I am happy to have:
from Bakshi and Jackson, and thus I am fine with:
from RoP. (Hey, getting on that horse in Episode 3 was the first real smile we saw from Galadriel!)
That is just to say...I am fine with the parts of this that are dumb if they are also fun. I did not like the pep rally chant for the dwarves, but I am fine with jokes about it after the fact. I am enjoying the experience of being part of this fandom.
I was surprised with the number of references/call-backs to Jackson's films. I was expecting zero. And yet, we get Elrond delivering a speech reminiscent of Gimli's before the (old) west gate of Moria (currently Khazad-dûm, naturally). We get an "it was deliberate" in Episode 4. And those aren't the only two. I am not sure why I thought this adaptation would pretend that no other adaptations came before it. But that clearly was my expectation, and I was surprised to find the case otherwise.
It was somewhat surreal to have the entire First Age summarized in just a few sentences. I suspect some of the content that was glossed over there will come out at a later time. We've revealed Elrond's family piecemiel - Elros on the tapestry in Episode 3, and Eärendil the Mariner in Episode 4. So, while Celebrimbor has spoken of Fëanor's beautiful craftsmanship...I have to imagine the Kinslaying will come up eventually.
Currently, my biggest concerns are centered around the concept and portrayal of "going into the west." It has always been treated as a metaphor for death. People often get to the end of Lord of the Rings and think, right, those people are all dead now. Those leaving Middle-earth are not returning. The song "Into the West" is often played at funerals/memorials...and was in fact written in memory of someone who had passed away. So, it's hardly out of character to think of going into the west as the end of someone's life....but....it's not meant to be. And it's not something bad or to be feared. The portrayal is (naturally) from Galadriel's point of view, so she is not yet ready and chooses another path. She's allowed to be scared or not want that yet. But...it is going to be difficult to walk this back to something good later! They've started pretty far over on the 'you don't want this thing to happen to you' side of the spectrum in their portrayal of going into the West, so we are going to have to follow someone there at some point to see that, well, actually, it's not bad at all - it is beautiful and everything they wanted and they're NOT DEAD. I liked the touch with the white birds, but I wish they looked more like...birds. The intense 'not a bird you've ever seen before' design came across as...well, weirdly fake.
But that can be fixed later. Making something scary in episode 1 doesn't mean it's scary forever. But those rather quiet veiled women who hang out with Gil-galad and act like priestesses or servants accompanying the elves into the West? That I DID NOT LIKE. Very little about that felt like it had any place in Tolkien's world. Can characters wear veils? Sure. But these subservient background elf women have a very strange vibe, and I can't really think of anything Tolkien wrote that would be like that. I mean, yes, Eöl the dark elf has his silent servants. I can see that. But honestly, I never thought his servants were all women. If they're not mixed male and female, then I would default to all male for his servants. I think what bothered me most about these characters was the mix of silent/veiled/subservient and the clear religious overtones of their role. Both felt out of place for female elves in Gil-galad's court.
The twist where Gil-galad was forcing Galadriel to accept the honor of going home to get her out of there was an interesting take and not what I was expecting at all. It made those stills of the elves accepting gold laurel crowns from Gil-galad better, but introduced some other issues.
One thing that bothered me in the first two episodes but got better in the third was the sigil representing Sauron. I was annoyed that it was a pitchfork for the devil rather than something actually associated with Sauron - an eye, some rune or word associated with him, etc. I am very much okay with a map of Mordor meaning 'Sauron' and having it revealed by turning the perspective was fine. I would have liked the map to not have been altered to make a pitchfork, but, hey, at least we've got Mordor=Sauron now.
I have been enjoying the game of "Is this Sauron?" I figure introducing one character per episode who is potentially Sauron, and then revealing actual Sauron at the end of the season keeps things interesting for the audience. We know Sauron is there...somewhere. Certainly, he's already doing some important stuff. So, a hiding in plain sight Sauron that Galadriel doesn't know about will work out well enough. Is fandom taking this too far? Yes, but that's fun, and you can always troll back suggesting that anyone put forward as possibly Sauron is actually Tom Bombadil.
Actual contenders seem meant to be: Meteor Man (no, it's Gandalf), Halbrand (no he's a king-in-exile character, so if he turns out evil it will be as a ringwraith), Adar (elf with delusions of necromancy?), Slim Shady (works for Sauron?)
