I would like to point out that Professor Drout's "review" was written BEFORE he saw the first two episodes. And relies more on his dissatisfactions with current Hollywood than with anything actually depicted in the first two episodes.
His thoughts after he watched the episodes, as posted on Facebook:
Quote:
"Watched the first episode of Rings of Power. Superb visuals, cringe-inducing dialogue, some excellent casting, and a plot--as much as you can tell from an initial episode--unable to escape contemporary cliches. The actress playing Galadriel deserves better dialogue, as she knows how to act with her facial expressions. The elf in love with a human is also a good actor. Neil Patrick Elrond and Gil-galad are pretty awful--they don't seem the slightest bit intelligent. The opening sequence was visually gorgeous, but "the mean boy threw a rock at my boat" followed by "pseudo-profound comforting advice from the doomed brother" is cliched crap (which wasted the awesome elvish origami swan boat).* What I most fear is that this structuring idea is going to be the contemporary cliche of "the men won't listen to the heroine, who is always right," because that gets Galadriel completely wrong.
*I kind of wanted the boat to go down into a storm drain and then, when one of the elf-children looked in, it would be Sauron instead of Pennywise in there.
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