After nothing happened at the Ghetto Shire we switch back to the elf story. We’re introduced to Young Elrond writing some truly awful poetry.
The only sample we get is the following.
For centuries they have swept across crag and crook, sweeping away the last remnants of our enemy, like a spring rain over the bones of a dead animal.
He’s mulling over that last line when he is interrupted by some veiled lady. I’m reproducing their entire conversation below, lest someone complain I’ve misrepresented how nonsensical this is.
Veiled Lady: Harold Elrond! At last!
Elrond: Yes, it’s almost as if I didn’t wish to be found. What tidings.
VL: The council regrets to inform you that you won’t be permitted to attend the next session. Elf Lords only.
Elrond: Was there anything else?
VL: Yes, your friend has arrived.
Elrond: She is here, why didn’t you say so?
Bu… but… she literally just did.
One of the problems I have when writing is striking that balance between being entertaining and being blunt. There’s only so many times you can repeat the same thing before you get a phenomenon that was aptly described by one of my commenters on telegram.
So I’m sorry if I’m repeating myself, but I just can’t get over how sloppily written this show is. It’s like the awfulness is fractal in nature, where no matter how far you zoom out or in you’re dealing with the same amount of nonsensical terribleness.
Anyway Elrond meets up with his friend, who is revealed to be Galadriel. They exchange some pleasantries that are utterly inconsequential, and then go for a walk. Galadriel then asks to speak to the manager, which in this case is the Chief Elf Guy, and we cut back to the hobbits.
The little girl hobbit, Lorry, gives a little monologue about how much she wants to go out adventuring. Then her Black Mommy, not pictured above, tries to verbally slap some sense back into her, and that’s it. Nothing actually happened other than characters telling you their motivation and not actually doing anything.
We then cut back to the elves as the Chief Elf Guy announces that Galadriel and her surviving crew are going to the Grey Havens, or whatever it’s called. This pisses Galadriel off since she’s a real ShieldMaiden, and she’s desperate to get another bunch of he-elves killed by snow trolls while having their elf-balls freeze off. There’s a moment of tension, but then she accepts his gift anyway.
The elf-king guy was horribly miscast, given terrible direction, or both. He’s incredibly bad, but we’ll get back to him later in the episode.
In the meantime he throws a party for everyone in the elf kingdom, and Galadriel, being anti-social, is away from everyone else and admiring the shrine to her brother. Elves live for millennia, so of course she can’t spend one single night sipping wine and trying to be a normal person. Then she’d have to turn in her GirlBoss! card, and we couldn’t be having that now could we?
Elrond comes out to meet her and they have another one of these nonversations that we just had between the hobbits in the Ghetto Shire. If you don’t know what a nonversation is, it’s when you get characters in the same room talking forever, but nothing advances the plot, or even develops the characters themselves. Usually they bloviate about their motivations, but that’s about it. The latter seasons of Game of Thrones were infamous for these, but Rangz of the Kangz one-ups them by having them right from the start.
I’m not going to recap this entire, multiple agonizing minutes long nonversation, but this is the quality of writing we’re dealing with.
Elrond: Ah yes, your mystery sigil. I shared it with the high king.
Galadriel: Then why would –
Elrond: Because seeing a sigil does not mean you’re any closer to finding Sauron. It is over. The evil is gone.
Elrond here makes the same great point that the Elf Seargeant made on the top of the mountain in the beginning of the episode. Maybe there is something to everyone else in Middle Earth thinking Sauron is gone. It kind of seems like Galadriel is being a crazy biatch, but once again, this is a billion dollar production, so I’m sure that Galadriel will have some excellent and well reasoned –
Galadriel: Then why is it not gone from here?
The nonversation continues after Galadriel makes the bitch face with even more tedious talk about evil as if it’s a physical entity and not an abstract concept. They try to out “I’ve seen more evil than you,” each other, and then there are multiple attempts at Shakespearian dialogue that fall completely flat.
Elrond: If but a whisper of a rumour of the threat you perceive proves true, I will not not rest until it is put right.
Don’t bother trying to figure that one out, it just doesn’t mean anything. Eventually after nothing continues to happen the nonversation mercifully ends.
I can’t help but compare the Amazon Elrond to the LOTR/Jackson Elrond, and think the former comes out looking some distant way beyond terrible by comparison. I don’t know if it’s the actor, or the direction, but I get serious homosexual vibes from this guy, and it’s a lot worse in motion. In contrast, Elrond from the LOTR series was well written and even better acted. That Elrond was everything he was supposed to be.
And the same is true for Galadriel. Amazon’s Galadriel is this annoying cuntess who makes bitch face at everyone all the time, goes around doing sword parkour, and has an anti-social streak that borders on autistic.
Tolkein/Jackson Galadriel is beautiful, charming, mysterious, and more than a little dangerous.
But did she do any mountain climbing knife parkour? Did she needlessly jump 20 feet into the air before twirling her sword around for no apparent reason when fighting a cave troll? Did she act like a hormonal 13 year old spoiled brat? No, and that’s why Bezos’ version is much better.
That was fifteen minutes of runtime where basically nothing happened. Now it’s time to be introduced to the disgusting inter-species/racial fetish relationship between the White single mother and the Black elf.
But we’ll get there next time.
Kangz: written and directed by Amazon’s HR department.
Again, thank you for the awesome review!
It’s my pleasure. It’s simply so terrible that I feel compelled to document it.
This writing is so bad… you could write an entire article on the lack of artistry in just that first exchange. It’s as though the first rule of “show don’t tell” was a remnant of white supremacy they must discard.
I don’t want to pull a “I’m a high falutin playwright and have been writing plays for over 20 years” but I have, and even the plays I wrote at 18 were better than this trash.
>Elrond: Yes, it’s almost as if I didn’t wish to be found. What tidings.
The writer is an incredible fagot the soy dripping off this line is palpable. If your character wants to be antisocial you don’t just have him say it directly. Also we can assume that these elves have rules of decorum and so be well practiced at being polite. So you let Elrond Hubbard simply say “yes m’lady” and the actor can act and you let the audience feel smart for picking up on the implied hostility.
>VL: The council regrets to inform you that you won’t be permitted to attend the next session. Elf Lords only.
This line here is corporate HR speak, not compelling fucking dialogue. Presumably this elf lady would be miffed at elronds’ attitude so there would be some heat in the line. Also if you’re doing fakespeare, you might first read some Shakespeare and come up with a better line. Maybe “I come at the behest of the council, they wish to inform you that only lords will be allowed at the next session.”
Again, a line like that allows the actor to do their job and show contempt without sounding like a child saying “no girls allowed” at their tree fort.
I think this sort of terrible writing comes from being a mid-wit, but also with having no experience with actors or acting. When saying these lines it is not possible for even the most skilled actors to not come off as anything but retarded. (Also, why the fuck do they say “elf lords”? First off, in this fictional world these elves are not generally going to talk about other kinds of lords, but also do they think the audience is fucking retarded and needs to be reminded that these people are elves?)
>Elrond: Was there anything else?
Again the character sounds like a petulant child and there’s nothing for the actor to work with. Where is the artistry here? There is no reason your elves should sound like catty homosexuals at an HR meeting.
Im now questioning the whole point of this scene. It seems petty and unnecessary, and does nothing to drive the action forward, unless there is significance to the council meeting, in which case they could dwell on that more. If this scene was to tell us that Elrond is an antisocial prick, then bravo! The writing is even worse than I thought.
>VL: Yes, your friend has arrived.
Oh is this nigga supposed to be elronds’ servant or some shit? This line implies that she is familiar enough with Elrond to know his friends and is in the business of delivering him messages, but in that case the earlier line would need to change because in it she sounds like a representative of the council…
I know, these writers are just lazy low-IQ slobs who can’t be bothered keeping shit straight, no wonder they’ve been a homosexual couple (I mean writing partners) in the business for over ten years and this is their first credit.
>Elrond: She is here, why didn’t you say so?
You’ve already addressed this line so I’ll skip it.
To sum up, not everyone can be David Mamet or Harold Pinter but holy shit you could tighten up this script so much with just the lightest application of writing 101.
As for why these homosexual Mormons are running this show and not writers with talent? Well any writer with talent would tell the jewish executive broad that wanted to add a hobbit-like race to go fuck herself.