I have watched both episodes. Eh. I mean, everyone has already said that it looks good. It should after what they spent, although outside of some vista and battle shots the original LotR trilogy still looks better. It's all a bit too clean here. Khazad-dûm did look cool though.
But 2 hours in and I don't care that much? Galadriel isn't really that interesting to me yet. Warrior Galadriel I'm fine, with. Tolkien himself describes her as "Amazonian" in this era but she just seems kind of generic so far. Lots of staring into the middle distance with a serious face is not enough for me to care about your main character, Galadriel or not. Generic unfortunately covers a lot of my criticism for the first two hours. In fact, that was my problem with all the elves. They were all missing that certain ethereal quality.
The Harfoots are fine, I didn't mind them. I've already decided I'm not going to get bogged down and super picky (unless it's really egregious) with the original creations the showrunners are inserting and the shuffling around and reimagining of a race like the Harfoots in the second age, because it's already established they are going to have to fill out this 50 hours somehow, so if that was to be a dealbreaker it's over before its started. So this I didn't mind too much and Nori was a character that I felt I wanted to root for straight away so good job there.
There were some really cool shots but the pacing was off and the dialogue was not good. It's so obviously trying to be deep and meaningful and Tolkien-esque but it's just a bit eye-roll worthy, to be honest, and this definitely isn't Tolkien. You can use his names and places but it's not Tolkien. To be fair I imagine it's REALLY fucking hard to nail his style in any convincing way so yeah.
Harsh? Perhaps, but I thought it was very flawed.
I'm going to give them a massive benefit of the doubt and say that boat man is not Sauron. Because surely not? "Looks can be deceiving." Really? That has to be red herring. Especially since if he ends up tricking Galadriel then this makes no sense later when she is the suspicious one when Annatar arrives in Eregion.
Meteor man? Gandalf? I mean, this would make NO sense unless they 100% do not give a fuck about the timeline (possible) and/or are worried that they desperately need another big name the normies know to sell this show. Another Istari? Possibly, but there is no way they were not "wink-wink, nudge nudging" the audience into thinking it could be Gandalf.
Things I liked?
As I said at the beginning I thought Khazad-dûm looked neat, and the dwarfs looked cool in their armor. Despite having real trouble with buying into the actor playing Elrond he came out of these two hours as probably the most likable character along with Nori. The whole going to dinner stuff was a bit silly but it at least felt engaging which was something the show was struggling with up to that point. Eagle getting smoked in the beginning was a wild shot. Sauron shot from the same sequence was cool, etc.
Fleeting moments though. The biggest problem is that it's just not that compelling yet and for a show that is basically an 8-hour film for its first season you'd hope they would do more to hook you in and I didn't feel it. You can almost sense they know this too. Like when they add the big meaningless sea monster into it to pick the pace up. It's like they know this is dragging.
So yeah, there we go. Pretty scathing. I didn't think it was terrible but I didn't think it was good either and when you're taking Tolkien's work and spending this much money, expectations should be sky high. I think the people making the show have good intentions but it's a big ask. I will definitely continue watching and I hope they find their upward trajectory but I'm far from convinced.