With the first three episodes now released, the first act of the series is pretty much set in stone and in all the disarray, confusion and online hate I see a lot of potential as well.

I’m definitely not on the bandwagon of trashtalking the show down and beyond - which is the norm these days for attention, togetherness and views and clicks, but I’m definitely agreeing on a lot of the constructive criticism of the show.

I’m not going to beat around the bush on this edit, so I’ll just go straight to it:

The Major beats of my changes:

-> Film/series color graded slightly (too remove a tad bit too much of children-fantasy-look at certain scenes) and a slight grain (nothing too noticeable) added.
-> Removal of dialogue too on the nose, way too Hollywood (keyword: predictable structuring of dialogue or “suspense lines”)
-> Characters will show up when important to the plot, and grow organically and steadily into the show - even with it’s very thin plot (up until Ep 3 at least). This way, it won’t feel as slow-paced and characters that are not yet of importance won’t waste your time on the screen.
-> Harfoots/Hobbits plotline is sharpened and structured. Ep 1-2’s storyline and introduction of (so far) many unimportant characters is extremely tiresome and will annoy most “attuned-to-cinema” viewers.
-> Galadriel has an intruiging backstory and actress imo, but her way too strong introduction and at times very tiresome dialogue (all mostly issues from the first 2 episodes, episode 3 way better here) is doomed to set a lot of audiences into shock and cringe mode. Therefore, Galadriel’s way too IM A STRONG FEMALE introduction is finely tuned into something more of a “IM A STRONG CHARACTER” introduction. This way, she can grow organically into the story and not come across as a character with too strong a skillset and personality for the viewer to understand that she - as all other good characters in a good story - will grow and learn as one.
-> CGI Wolf from Ep 3 is gone. I was surprised at how bad the CGI was here when everything else has been beautiful, and also the logistics of the “action” scene were disappointing and insulting.

… and then loads more.

LOTR being my favorite trilogy of all time, this is an edit more for me than anything I’ve ever edited before. I think there’s things to salvage here. And Ep 3 was a vast improvement in character development.