Artan42 said:
I received the links for these a while ago but I was waiting on the Christmas holidays to watch them.
I’ve only watched this film so far and overall I’m really happy with it. Despite being a massive Tolkien book fan (though FA rather than SA admittedly) I never hated the show as it was (beyond the basic idea of trying to get 5 series out of the 10 paragraphs in the LotR appendices that Amazon had the rights to). But I think this film is probably the only way I’ll watch series 1 now.
The narrative is now strictly linear and follows each of the two main plot lines (Númenor and Khazad-dûm) in a satisfying manor and only introduces the Southlands when it becomes relevant. It also feels like long enough is spent in each plot to keep things moving unlike the frantic switching of the original. The most improved part was the cutting of the pointless switching of character motivations even within the same episode. Now the character arcs of ‘Halbrand’, Galadriel, and Míriel all follow logically and don’t swap back and forth over who wants to go and who wants to stay.
All of the major relationships are kept intact except for Isildur and his friends (which may cause an issue come the next film as at least one in in the Faithful).
There’s only a couple of minor issues I had:
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The first is I missed the opening in Forodwaith as I feel it’s important to the RoP version of Galadriel to show the extent of her hunt for Sauron and the actual finding of the glyph (though the context was there and still worked narratively).
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The second is the sending of Elrond to Eregion where Kelly B has instructions for him only for him to be directly answering to Gil-galad in Lindon the rest of the film. I don’t have any ideas for how that can be resolved due to the show completely ignoring, then speedrunning the friendship between Eregion and Khazad-dûm. It’s possible it’ll feel better come the next film.
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The third is minor, the resolution of the ‘Durin tricks the Elves to give him a table’ joke and when Elrond tells him the Elves are dying seems to take place far to far removed in the film and could be brought forward a bit.
The final bit is this film might have succeeded in making me not hate the ‘Mithril can stop the Elves from decaying in Middle-earth’ plot as (so far anyway) it looks to me like the edit is implying Gil-galad is specifically looking for Mithril and that Kelly B may already have the idea for the rings (or at least using Mithril for magic) but I’ll know more when I’ve watched the second film. This alone would make the edits vastly superior to the show.
The actual quality of the edit is well done as well. There’s no obvious cuts or splices and I didn’t hear any audio cuts or breaks and I don’t know if it’s had any audio edits or I’m just more familiar with the soundtrack (I’ve been listening to it a lot over the years) but it feels a lot more memorable like the LotR films.
Great feedback! Thanks so much for taking the time to write this out! I’m trying to look over the dates that I sent these to you to make sure you have the most up to date ones. (I’ll send you a new link as you proceed with the films)
- I agree, I miss the opening in forodwaith. It’s a very cool experience. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a way to cut it that didn’t feel rushed, and it just wasn’t worth the screen run time for an already long film. (Depending on your version of the film, I tried to fix the glyph reality a bit more by including the short conversation that Galadriel has with Elrond, showing him what she found.) To me, this was the best compromise. And for the viewer who watches this movie and then my third “Lord of Gifts”, the careful viewer will recognize the forodwaith castle in the opener of the first film as the same castle in the opening of the third.
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Yes this relationship CAN feel rushed, knowing that the show portrays them as having never met before. My hope is that for a first time viewer, the assumption will be that perhaps they were already acquaintances.
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I know exactly what you mean. I just could not successfully find another place to stitch that scene in. The combination of needing to space out other events combined with the difficulty in connecting the musical score of that scene with other scenes left me choosing to place it where it is. But I agree. Even in the show, I didn’t like that joke.
Regarding Mithril, I do my best to downplay it as much as possible, so that it is mostly just depicted as an exceptional ore required to make powerful rings, and that these rings can heal the Eldar. It’s not perfect. But it’s vaguely ambiguous enough to work I think. Hah.
Thanks for all the compliments. I too love the score and took special care in finding appropriate places for combining and transitioning them. Glad it worked!
