Really interesting to hear your different viewpoints.
I am once again divided.All in all i think it was entertaining but had its weaknesses. Most of all i really disliked Galadriel, like Odola already stated she does not seem very elvish to me, she actually comes about like a very immature person, not a thousands of years old immortal.Also she is weak, greedy for drink and food, needs longer than Halbrand to recover...
- I understood her taking longer to recover because she had been swimming for goodness knows how long before she ended up on the raft + she nearly drowned. I don't see the problem with her being hungry at that point.
Worst was her horseriding scene , that was cringe, i had to cover my eyes, also her dialogue to Halbrand was terrible.
- see I liked the horse-riding scene because it showed something of the elvishness about Galadriel - she take joy in riding, she can live in the moment after her taxing experience (which includes being in a place where she is not wanted). I thought that the slomo went on for a bit too long but her smile was so warming. It reminded me of how Tolkien describes the Elves' perception of time (through Legolas) as moving both slowly and quickly.
The Proto-Hobbits also lost some of my sympathies, their dance-parade was awful, and like Galadriels dialogue to Halbrand was a bad Aragorn-ripoff Sadoc gave a bad Bilbo's birthday speech imitation.
- I thought it was good. It showed more of Harfoot culture which I think has been developed with some sophistication. I liked the nod to Bilbo's farewell speech. I thought the writing was good in this section.
Not good! I liked most of Numenor but... they seem to have cut out Numenors slavery and colonialism! All folks of seemingly mixed descend appear to be freemen, no Peregrini or Underclass citizens.I cannot support this, blinding out Numenors bad sides with slavery, racism and imperialism is a terrible decision!
- We only saw Numenor for the first time this episode so I'm not bothered that they didn't say anything explicit about colonialism. I think that they are going to be accusing the Elves of colonialism and so it will be nicely ironic if they are doing that themselves. One of the things I like about this series so far is that they are not trying to explain everything all at once (e.g. Noldor was mentioned for the first time here, suggesting that the division of elves may come up later - possibly when Celeborn and Oropher/Thranduil show up). The Valar were mentioned without explanation as well. That will get fleshed out. We got Elros and Anarion name dropped without much explanation so I expect to find out more about these characters as we go on in the show.
One possibilyt for colonialism is that it is once Pharazon seizes the throne that they start subjegating the humans of middle earth - which serves to push them further into Sauron's arms.
And what about Halbrand? The guy figgts well for a lower man who is supposed to be smaller and weaker than Numenorean humans, who are ... also a bad chouce, simply normal humans and NOT more strong, taller and more gifted than the lesser men. I am not sure how that story shall ever work out the way its supposed to be!
- We don't know enough about Halbrand to know anything about where he is from and what his story is. that will be a slow reveal I suspect. I'm not sure what you mean 'the way its supposed to be' because we don't know his story. He is called a 'low man' by the other working Numenoreans but that is their perspective.
That Warg was really bad cgi also!
- agree. I was disappointed by the Warg.
Quite disappointing, though the non-Tolkien storylines really reminded me of silmfilms Frame , which is interesting in itself for Silmfilm i think.
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