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Notes -
That would be a decent excuse if they were doing anything right, like getting themes right, character personalities right, or anything of the sort. That they have butchered the timeline is only sin #587 in the show.
Compressing the timeline is a venial sin. I do get why they're doing it, of course you want to have Galadriel and Elrond and Gil-galad and the Forging of the Rings and Tar-Míriel and Pharazon and the Drowning of Númenor all happening at the one time because that is big and exciting.
It's not the worst thing they've done by a long shot. The mismatch between the CGI (big impressive city) and the physical sets (main square that fits in about sixty people at maximum, side streets for recruit training and not a barracks, dockside set that can squeeze in three ships to be a mighty fleet) is the glaring kind of contrast that sticks out. The Southlands is something like four villages (including the destroyed ones) and they all hole up in one watch tower and then they acclaim their new 'king' and uh, this is it? A rabble of raggedy farmers is the entirety of the realm? It's too small for the story they want to tell.
I'd say compressing the timeline adds to the "smallness," though. In canon, many of the relationships among the immortal characters evolved over actual centuries or millennia; there wasn't a "we're on a clock here, get with the program" issue. Sauron does the whole captain of evil armies more than once, but a number of his big accomplishments put him in the insidious corruptor role, instead--Annatar in Eregion, "captive" Sauron in Numenor. Corruptor villains done right take time to develop, otherwise you get Palpatine's "Dew it" and Anakin's "guess I'm slaughtering children now, oh well."
I only realized reading this how better it would have been to cut a bunch of useless stuff from attack of the clones, and use it to build up the Anakin/Palpatine thing earlier. It's like they wasted #2 and tried to cram too much into #3.
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Deviations from the source material are about problem #500 with this show. It's really shoddily made.
The writing is the big problem. When they try for the profound, or the aphorism, they end up like a lead balloon (which probably sinks because it looks down at the darkness, not because it's made of lead, right?) They try for 'Tolkien high style' and end up like - sorry any Mormons reading this - sounding like Joseph Smith's Bible fanfiction. They would do better to stick to plain and simple language, because they cannot do elevated speech for love nor money.
Give me the meat, and give it to me raw is the least of it.
I am really impressed by Joseph Mawle, even under the prosthetics and with this level of script to say, he can act in a convincing and affecting manner. I like Adar much more than the 'heroic' characters I am supposed to be cheering for.
Better writing (and better acting by some characters, naming no names) would make up a lot for cheap costumes, small scale, and 'everyone teleports over vast distances'. Maybe no deciding to swim home in a short trip of three thousand miles would help, too.
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