Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

It's annoying to watch 1200 years or so of Second Age history scaled down to a little thing that happens while Elendil is in his mid-50s, or a subject as intriguing as the growth of the alliance between Celebrimbor's elven smiths and the Moria dwarves at Eregion constantly abandoned in favor of some inane Elrond-Durin buddy drama. Smaller things also cloy---how every UK accent under the sun is represented but any character who pronounces the names "Morgoth" or "Numenor" suddenly becomes as Scottish as Groundskeeper Willie, or how the opportunity to show a First Age map when Galadriel narrated the Noldor's return Middle Earth was completely blown, or how Galadriel summed up the Eldar's full-scale war against Melkor with the Trump-v-Clinton-evoking phrase "we resisted." But the real problem with the megabudget Tolkien adaptations is how dumb they are. These production teams, with all the time & money in the world, can pore over Tolkien's insights into the dynamics of policy & statecraft---his ability to depict characters at once archtypal & deeply sympathetic, confronting or debating momentous decisions in wrenching doubt and with clear-eyed reckoning of the costs---and evidently make nothing of them except scene after scene of uptight British people bickering over inanities. And if that's all they're making out of the books, that's all they're getting out of the books. And that is truly sad.