Let's get the good stuff out of the way first. There were great visuals and sound. You can tell they took a lot of influence from the Peter Jackson films. It almost seems like this is supposed to be a prequel to those films, but since they recast Galadriel and Elrond and changed their characters so significantly, I'm guessing it's their own standalone thing, which is fine ... as long as it's good. But it isn't sadly.
So here's the bad stuff. First there were too many plot threads too early on. I understand they are adapting an epic story rich with lore. But you shouldn't front load your show with so many plot threads and characters. They need to give the viewer time to get invested. And they don't They jump from scene to scene, often times not even telling you the characters names. There's no time to get invested in any of them.
As someone who has read the books and is familiar with the lore, I was able to follow it and stay engaged, but I noticed my friends who hadn't read the books and were only familiar with the Peter Jackson films found it rather boring and confusing. They said the characters weren't very engaging or like-able and I must admit, Cate Blanchett's version of Galadriel was way more interesting and like-able than this one. As was Hugo Weaving's Elrond. I understand those actors are 20 years older since they filmed LOTR, and elves aren't supposed to age, but honestly I still would have preferred if they kept the original actors.
It also wasn't very faithful to the source material. There were a lot of deviations that contradicted what was written. Just a few examples off the top of my head: there aren't supposed to be Hobbits/Harfoots in the second age, Galadriel is supposed to married with kids by this point in the story, and the timeline is way too compressed. The period of time they covered just in the first two episodes was thousands of years in the books, but you don't get any sense of that scale of time. Nor do you get any sense of the great distance these characters seem to be "fast traveling" constantly throughout the show. When you read the books, you get the sense that this is a vast land that takes months to journey through, and that the history of this world is rich and full of depth. This world just seems like a super-simplified dumbed down version of Middle Earth. But not simplified enough for a non-book reader to be able to follow because of the all the plot threads.
And that's just scratching the surface. There were were many other examples of places where they contradicted Tolkien's lore. But if I went to all of them I would run out and space and I don't want to get into spoilers. I understand they didn't have the rights to the Silmarillion or the History of Middle Earth Books, so they had to base this story entirely on the summaries that appeared in the Appendices to Lord of the Rings. They had to fill in the details with their own story. I get that. But that doesn't mean they should deviate so far that they contradict what was already established by Tolkien. Especially if it makes the story worse. There are plenty of Tolkien experts out there who would have freely helped them stay true to Tolkien's vision. But I guess they had their own vision and didn't care enough to follow Tolkien's. It reminded me of the last season of Game of Thrones when the show runners ran out of source material that they were willing to adapt and rushed to the ending in a haphazard and over-simplified way. But at least the other seasons of Game of Thrones were good. This show lost its way right out of the gate.
In summary, I can't really recommend it. Maybe check it out of you're a Tolkien fan and want to see how they adapted it, but even then it's probably not worth your time. There are better shows out there. I give it a 4/10, which is generous. I enjoyed the visuals, and as a fan of Tolkien I still found myself interested in seeing someone else's interpretation. But I think they could have done a much better job adapting these stories. Maybe it will get better in future episodes. We can only hope. But I fear the damage is already done, it might be too late to salvage. I just wish show runners were spend a little more time and effort getting the script right before spending 1 billion dollars on a show.
