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Notes -
The reviews I've seen seem to agree that the visuals are great, but the writing - not so much. Slow to get started, keeps jumping from one character to another. I've only seen the trailers, and I didn't like them. Galadriel has been turned into a Mary-Sue, she can take down an ice troll all on her own with a twirl of her sword while her useless male companions just stand around. That's not good writing. They do seem to be taking the standard "bullied girl learns to stand up and fight back, and keeps going even when all the useless men around her tell her to stand down!" Strong Female pattern, which is okay if you want to communicate quickly to a general audience that knows nothing about the characters that this is Kick-Ass Important Lead. But it's not Galadriel.
They have five seasons (if this season is a hit). They have time to establish characters and plot. I hope it gets better from here on in, now that the two introductory episodes are over. I think the best way to approach this is as "Generic TV fantasy show with characters that have the same names, but have nothing to do with Tolkien's characters". That way, it will avoid raising the blood pressure of the canon-knowledgeable, and whatever Amazon does with the characters, we have the consolation of "Well, that's not really Elrond or Gil-galad or Celebrimbor, it's just guys with the same names". And they can appeal to general audiences who know nothing but maybe vaguely remember the movies and like the idea of a family-friendly escapist hour of TV/streaming service (no tits or much gore so far, as distinct from House of the Dragon).
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