I watched it with english subtitles by Dave White & Jounin Ensio & Spiny Norman
The Lord of the Chromakeys
The lore goes that this is an adaptation of all four books and it is told from the perspective of hobbits. That's ambitious. But what that means is that they threw away all the battle scenes for budgetary reasons. And well, that is a direction. If it was what it says on the tin, even at a low budget it would be truly commendable.
Yet there's the narrator, Sam, who wastes time on chronologically re-telling the pre-history and on spoiling the Gollum twist. Only to then just abridge the entirety of The Hobbit to one sentence and show nothing but the riddles scene. Well, at least the challenging "pocket" scene was delivered rather naturally.
The first book is pretty much covered. But while the Tom Bombadil sequence is present it's not as cinematically good as in Hhraniteli (1991). The first meeting with the nazguls is also very abrupt. The council finishes the 5th episode. And then the party is abruptly teleported, with a hard cut and one sentence from the narrator, right into the middle of the moria fight. That lasts about a minute. And then instead of the Balrog fight, Gandalf just walks down the corridor and in a hard cut without change in sound just laughably falls into lava.
The second book is almost entirely missing. If it was Sam's PoV and properly directed that would be a choice. But instead of having Merry and Pippin recount the events later, the narrator awkwardly summarizes the biggest events of the trilogy in one sentence. Low budget is low budget but you have to have direction.
Jackson's LotR 3 is entirely missing the morals of the whole trilogy. Jackson chose a direction of simple heroics over the iron dream in the plot and the themes, even if he filled the imagery and the tone with iron dream instead of heroics. Meanwhile this adaptation didn't miss that the age of elders has ended and now it's the fourth age, the age of men and men-likes. Shire was unaware of the struggles of world, shielded by the suffering of others and it needed someone who can protect it from the coming events. Someone who was taught to stop being blind to the cruel world and to stand for oneself. The whole global world-saving adventure was not the point, it was just practice before the real fight of them saving the Shire without any help from elders, from magic, from elves and whatever. In the age of men even everyone just tainted by interaction with magic objects have to go to the "The Grey Havens".
The chromakey technology here is generations ahead of Hhraniteli (1991). Yet that adaptation had clear direction and general vision for the project. This one can't decide what to show and what to cut. It often tells and not shows, it abruptly jumps between segments and forgets to explain or show some pivotal scenes, which could be easily improved without any toll on the budget. This series needs better, you might say, direction. Without already knowing the source material this adaptation won't tell a tale - all the abrupt cuts and easily-fixable poorly delivered events can blur into an incomprehensible mess.
Gollum is trying his hardest. I didn't even realize that he also plays Aragorn. Young bilbo plays a specialness-challenged person for some reason. Frodo's take on the role is a choice. In some situations it's a very solid way to deliver those lines. Gandalf with a mane is cool. Boromir being a weeaboo is also very cool. With Aragorn looking plane i was afraid that the rest of the Gondor would be plain instead of weeaboo, but well, you can't be disappointed by something you never see.
All the title cards are fully lowecase.
The background music is a variation of jazz. But all the dedicated songs are quite good.
The Lord of the Chromakeys
The lore goes that this is an adaptation of all four books and it is told from the perspective of hobbits. That's ambitious. But what that means is that they threw away all the battle scenes for budgetary reasons. And well, that is a direction. If it was what it says on the tin, even at a low budget it would be truly commendable.
Yet there's the narrator, Sam, who wastes time on chronologically re-telling the pre-history and on spoiling the Gollum twist. Only to then just abridge the entirety of The Hobbit to one sentence and show nothing but the riddles scene. Well, at least the challenging "pocket" scene was delivered rather naturally.
The first book is pretty much covered. But while the Tom Bombadil sequence is present it's not as cinematically good as in Hhraniteli (1991). The first meeting with the nazguls is also very abrupt. The council finishes the 5th episode. And then the party is abruptly teleported, with a hard cut and one sentence from the narrator, right into the middle of the moria fight. That lasts about a minute. And then instead of the Balrog fight, Gandalf just walks down the corridor and in a hard cut without change in sound just laughably falls into lava.
The second book is almost entirely missing. If it was Sam's PoV and properly directed that would be a choice. But instead of having Merry and Pippin recount the events later, the narrator awkwardly summarizes the biggest events of the trilogy in one sentence. Low budget is low budget but you have to have direction.
Jackson's LotR 3 is entirely missing the morals of the whole trilogy. Jackson chose a direction of simple heroics over the iron dream in the plot and the themes, even if he filled the imagery and the tone with iron dream instead of heroics. Meanwhile this adaptation didn't miss that the age of elders has ended and now it's the fourth age, the age of men and men-likes. Shire was unaware of the struggles of world, shielded by the suffering of others and it needed someone who can protect it from the coming events. Someone who was taught to stop being blind to the cruel world and to stand for oneself. The whole global world-saving adventure was not the point, it was just practice before the real fight of them saving the Shire without any help from elders, from magic, from elves and whatever. In the age of men even everyone just tainted by interaction with magic objects have to go to the "The Grey Havens".
The chromakey technology here is generations ahead of Hhraniteli (1991). Yet that adaptation had clear direction and general vision for the project. This one can't decide what to show and what to cut. It often tells and not shows, it abruptly jumps between segments and forgets to explain or show some pivotal scenes, which could be easily improved without any toll on the budget. This series needs better, you might say, direction. Without already knowing the source material this adaptation won't tell a tale - all the abrupt cuts and easily-fixable poorly delivered events can blur into an incomprehensible mess.
Gollum is trying his hardest. I didn't even realize that he also plays Aragorn. Young bilbo plays a specialness-challenged person for some reason. Frodo's take on the role is a choice. In some situations it's a very solid way to deliver those lines. Gandalf with a mane is cool. Boromir being a weeaboo is also very cool. With Aragorn looking plane i was afraid that the rest of the Gondor would be plain instead of weeaboo, but well, you can't be disappointed by something you never see.
All the title cards are fully lowecase.
The background music is a variation of jazz. But all the dedicated songs are quite good.
