OP was rather quick at responding for request for a link. I thought it would take weeks, but was sent within 24 hours, if I remember correctly. Much appreciated for that. The challenge for me was getting my friends together to watch this, but the stars aligned and we watched it last night. The group was me, one friend that watched the original show with me, and one friend who had seen the online fallout, but never actually watched the show.
First off, I want to say this is very watchable. I know of a few other fan edits that exist of The Rings of Power and most of them are unwatchable. They’re either put together by crazy people, or by people who should be never let near a video editing tool again other than MS Clipchamp. This version is by far the best fan edit I’ve watched. I didn’t plan on making it through the entire film, but OP looks like they knew what they were doing, more or less.
At time of writing, Rings of Power Season 1, on Metacritic, has a user score of 3.0. Which I believe an accurate rating for the original show. I would give this fan edited film a 6.0 out of 10 based on all other films I’ve watched. Still not good, but literally double that of the original, and I think it could be made better.
My friend who had not seen the show thought this film was mediocre, at best. Which is good, considering the Metacritic score mentioned above. The friend who has seen the show, found a new distain for the show, after hating it already, because this fan edit proves that if someone competent was at the helm, Rings of Power could have been good.
I absolutely love the fact that this film, cuts out, basically, all the cringe from the show. The harfoots are basically non-existent, other than the necessary scenes with the man who falls from the sky. The cringe dialogue between The Queen and Galadriel is gone. Same with the dwarves. Basically, everything bad and unnecessary is gone. It’s so refreshing to be told a story and not laughing at the screen because you can’t believe a professional, half a billion dollar show actually put that in their show.
That being said, I do have a couple gripes. I don’t like that the subtitle font changes based on when OP overlays audio from a different scene on top of what’s being shown. When you realize that’s what’s happening, it ruins the immersion. Which I honestly didn’t expect I’ll get out of this fan edit, so good job, but could not the subtitle track been separated from the original and spliced in to the existing on the films?
Another major area for improvement would be the ending. The ending felt rushed. Pacing was very good, pretty much all the way up to where the villagers defend themselves. After that, it sort of falls apart. The show also kind of falls apart from that point too, so I don’t know how much was from the compressed time frame compounding issues from the original. Also, the reason Galadriel and Halbrand ride off to the forge is kind totally skipped over. It shows Halbrand injured, then on a horse, then riding away with no explanation of what is going on. Would be, and was, very confusing for people who have never seen the show. Also the voice over during the second to last scene is not tonally consistent with the rest of the film. Seems almost lazy, although I know it was probably a lot of work to get it the way it was.
Other than those things, I have no real problems with the edit. But with those improvements I think it could be a 7/10. Which, based on the original, is amazing OP was able to do.
TL;DR: I think the ending needs a revisit, but twice as good as the original and very appreciated.