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The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: The Eye (2022)
Wasted Opportunity of an Episode
Episode 6 of RoP was an exciting culmination of various plotlines finally connecting, but episode 7 was a lot of fluff that poorly attempted to deal with the fallout of the previous episode. Not much happens in this episode, no storyline are advanced and it's difficult to grasp the purpose of watching this 70+ minute episode. As usual, it's beautifully shot but it bounces around the various groups of characters haphazardly and without any real purpose.
I'm sure many book readers will be upset by more plot points being retconned, but the larger issue with this episode is that you could get everything you need from it in a 2 minute recap.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Adar (2022)
Entertaining but Lacking In Many Areas
The cinematics, visuals, and similar elements of this show continue to be fantastic. It's also at a point in the story where it's expanding into other realms and cultures (Numenor, Orcs, etc.), so this is also an exciting part of the series.
The thing that sticks out and, in my opinion, is lacking is the writing and storytelling. There's a lot of (for lack of a better word) lazy dialogue that's added to explain the deeper lore or character history. For example, Muriel asking Pharazon who the captain (Elendil) is not only doesn't make sense for the greater lore, but I think it's also a device the writers use to quickly tell the audience who the character is. There's a similar moment when Halbrand doesn't seem to know what Numenor is so Galadriel just tells him the quick backstory. Just my opinion but this feels like lazy world-building. Strangely enough, mainly because she's such an important character to both the show and in Tolkien's universe, Galadriel's storyline is the only storyline that I've completely lost interest in. I do like Morfydd Clark and think she's doing as good a job as she can, but I'm just not interested in Galadriel's storyline.
Overall, I did enjoy the episode and think there are some interesting storylines developing, but I think it fell short
when it came to writing and world building.
Aquaman (2018)
Just as good with the volume off
This movie doesn't have much going for it aside from cinematics and CGI. The main plot point of the movie is a cool idea, but the execution of it is all over the place and occasionally cringe-worthy. It's also an odd take on Aquaman, in general. I don't remember him being a brute-force kind of superhero in the comics or show and I think it ends up making his character pretty dry and uninteresting. Bottom line, if all you're after all cool cinematics and explosions, then you probably won't regret watching Aquaman.
Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021)
Entertaining, but Not a Good Movie
I really wanted to like this movie and was excited to see it after all the hype, but it falls about as short as possible from being something substantial. That's difficult for me to say, mainly because I preferred the DC comics/universe to Marvel growing up, but this movie is all over the place and probably shouldn't have been made. It seems as if DC is seeing the success of the MCU and trying to ride that wave by forcing the DC Universe in your face without building it up slowly and organically like Marvel did. The DC Cinematic Universe has the potential to be as good or even better than Marvel's, but the current vision is a massively disorganized mess.
Vikings: The Revelation (2018)
It's Over - Vikings is Jumping the Shark
Overall, Vikings is a great show.
Jump into the 2nd part of the 5th season and it's a mess. The story is digressing, they're throwing in thoughtless twists, and, as a result, I don't care about any of the current characters.
Vikings: Moments of Vision (2018)
Slow, Disjointed, and Boring
You can tell that the goal of this episode, more or less, was to be an artful battle scene to end the first half of the season. What was the end result? A redundant, disjointed, mess of an episode that drags out over the course of an hour.
Black Mirror: Black Museum (2017)
Treehouse of Boredom
This episode begins in a pretty interesting way that makes it feel like Black Mirror's version of "Treehouse of Horror."
Unfortunately, there isn't much character development throughout the episode (the twist felt both forced and obvious), so the episode sort of leans on Rolo's little tales. The Doctor's story is fairly interesting, but the episode fades into boredom after that.
I like the idea of this episode, but it ends up taking a nosedive (forgive the pun). The characters are dull and the twist is obvious once you gaze past the red curtain. It's an unfortunate finale to the season, but it's worth a watch if you love Black Mirror.