@killersushi: The visuals are good, and the sets are amazing... however, the writing is not that great, to be honest. The writers are trying too hard to sound smart, but they aren't doing a great job of it. Some of the metaphors, which are indicative of romantic-era writing, fall flat.
The snow troll putting to task the seasoned elves, only for Galadriel to do most of the work was a bit too much. They should have kept calm, went into a formation (headed by Galadriel), and by her commands, used teamwork to bring it down. Her willingness to go at it alone shows she is not to be trusted. Her selfishness and brass attitude against fallen elves show she has a kind of evil side to her (Elrond had to remind her how many elves need to die just so she can see her brothers wish to rid the world of Saruon). We also see many a times the overuse of the "Kubric stare". Outside looking in, she seems to be a villain in this movie, so far. It's seems not out of the question she turns her back to Valinor in order to raise an army of deserters to kill the king and take over the elves for herself in Middle Earth as her impulsion to rid the world of Saruon only turns her into evil itself. The writing is DEFINITELY telling this story. Selfishness, Obsession, Compulsion, and Recklessness are not heroic traits. Think Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars (also a poorly written on-the-nose story, that does at least borrow tried and tested narrative arcs). But we know it should not be: Galadriel is one of the good guys! Therefore, the tone was misplaced here, and if I were the editor I'd strike out these areas and ask to expand on them, or change them during the screenwriting process. It seems there's a modern trend in which when writing strong characters, writers seem to unintentionally make them evil. I hope writers soon realize this and improve upon it. I'll reserve some judgment here until I see more episodes.
Elrond also briefly became a different person, almost a comic relief in the second episode as if his character was suddenly given to a different writer, pushing him into a different area. It seems inconsistent.
Finally, many characters like Nori and Galadriel, Elrond, and Nisa frequently, and on-the-nose tell us why and how they are involved in the plot, rather than showing us through example. For instance, Nori doesn't have to tell us she's interested in the world as plain as she did. We knew she was a trouble-maker and adventurer through actions already. It's like for people who can't get the message, needed it to be told directly to them. It's indicative of poor writing. Many basic things you learn about in writing courses were ignored here. The list goes on.
On a technical level the show is decent, with good sound and cinematography. But, the storytelling was awful and never got me interested in this rendition of the RE world. I only saw the first episode and I felt the time jumps between 2022 and 2036 were just not done well or were coherent. I think presenting certain scenes as flashbacks and squarely keeping it in 2036 is better, but I also don't think the narrative pacing was there. It just seemed too slow and like a teen drama more than anything substantive of an RE flick.
I'm not really happy with the show. This is saying a lot because I don't feel the woke elements are that bad; I just think the story telling itself is bad.
This sentence summarizes the show, for me: "It's unclear how much of this will be featured in the show, or how much will deviate from the source material". I think, while yes it was okay for Peter Jackson to cut scenes with Tom Bombadil out, it didn't affect anything about the main-line series. Same with Sharky's rebellion in the end, (which would have made a nice side-story if it were released as a special for the DVD release, alas I digress)
If the showrunners for Amazon want to use the broad history of the Silmarillion as a guide, these big ticket things must be true, dialog and characters can change, but the mainstays should remain.
What happens after is anybody's guess, but I really hope they take it in an appeasing way. Here's hoping the soundtrack is equally as impressive. I wonder if they'll use any soundbites from Jackson's work?
Honestly, I don't think the movie sucked, but it was a big let down. It required a lot of prior Matrix knowledge and at best toyed with the lore rather than meaningfully tell a new story within it.
What I wanted was more of a reboot, a reintroduction so that the current generation understands sort of what the matrix is and follow plot lines about maybe another corner of the world. I would have loved to see an desert oasis domed city aesthetic with a different 'Neo' arising (which could be played by anybody), perhaps following clues of the original Mr. Anderson as a tie-in. Maybe introduce an archeology layer to it? Like an undercity that was the old sentinel pods, and then a source code disc from the Nebuchadnezzar... which starts off a prophecy first told by, you guessed it, Morpheus himself.
Then we could even tease the original Neo's return since the new 'Neo' would have the ability to sort of jump start the next iteration of the matrix, and maybe, just maybe get the old Neo and Trinity back.
The linguist is a genius! He recommended 'irate' base on wisdom. IDGAF on the computer science - I'm a CS major myself, and while 'later is technically the best' the linguist is likely using his wisdom and understanding of the English language to arrive at a recommendation that's still within the top 5 top best matches from a computer algorithm, that matches against all possible combinations. Wow.
Radnen's comments