I think the show is "ok", but it is not as much epic as the film - both trilogy were....I expected the story to pick up a faster pace at the beginning, but after 3 episodes, which sums 3 hours, very few important things happened on the others 2h 30 min - which is an entire movie plot. Even considering it as a series, it feels incredibly slow to me, and Tolkien 'LOTR' universe have enough content for plenty of movies or plenty of seasons without any need to be slow or even rushing a bit.
It's a TV show. The pace feels fine to me, but I have watched a lot of TV including some REALLY slow-pace series that were pretty decent (like HBO's "The Leftovers" and "The Outsider"). Even GoT has a pretty slow pace overall. I think the difference is the level of detail -- I feel like GoT had far more granularity to it, whereas Rings of Powers still feels kind of like a "high concept" show that is moving slowly. That might be some of the issue. Are we getting real bang for our buck with the slower pace? I'm not yet convinced. At least Episode 3 did introduce some "mysteries" to resolve.
- Galadriel seems to me an entire different person - not only on actor but also on personality - than the one from the movies. For Elrond, it feels the same, it feels like a completely different person. I don't like this, I wish they were represent more closer to their former movies.
She is a different iteration of her character, once that we don't see as much of because Tolkien only covers her early history in more of a historical summary format rather than actual storytelling as he covers her in LotR, where she has been a leader in an established area of Middle Earth she can focus on nurturing. Elendil says in e3 that her eyes remind him of his children -- a daughter who runs fast and a son who runs blind. This is a far more single-minded Galadriel far more reminiscent of her actual kin -- a cousin of Feanor (of the Silmaril debacle), whose arrogance and headstrong nature lead that branch of the family to disaster. This is probably somewhat closer to the Galadriel of that time period, she is the only female Noldor in leadership of that lineage who wanted to go to Middle Earth to create a place she could rule. The TV series has modified this into her being the only one to persist in the dangers of Sauron and she is motivated by centuries of pain and loss.
- I didn't read the books yet I did listen to their resumes on you tube for hours, so I have a good notion of the general aspects of the story. But even in my own superficial notion I see there are deviations, for example no Istari (more or less the specific name for 'mage') did come to middle earth by meteor.
One might assume they didn't. I don't know if Tolkien's text actually says HOW they arrived, I would either by boat or that they simply became known as they wandered.
- So far the hobbits role on the general story of the series seems to be useless and it seems like you could remove all the hobbits scene and could still understand the plot perfectly - it feels like a filler.
Maybe. I'm assuming that The Stranger plot point will become more important over time. It's only episode 3, and they are dealing with multiple subplots.
- Racial diversity at this point feels... well, I have mixed feelings about it, it firstly feels incredibly awkward, strange, out of context, however the original movies and perhaps the books themselves were racist on a sense (that is controversial) and they are "trying to fix it", but its complicated specially if the original text is.
I don't feel like Tolkien much focused on skin color in his writing. He was just writing a story which had a lot of Germanic and Norse elements, so he was coming from a particular background; he wasn't really thinking sociopolitically. The world has changed a lot since then and his stories are now global, so of course they would seek to incorporate more diversified elements as part of connecting with a global audience.
I do like to have it clear where different lineages come from geographically so it makes sense, so my only issue so far has been just tossing in people with various skin hues but who seemingly just sprang up within one geographically located culture, and that's not really how skin color works... people have to migrate into those areas from their own area. Like, where did the dark-skinned elves migrate from? I'm just curious.
If they ever do an actually good Earthsea adaptation, or another fantasy story not from a white background, I wonder how that would be incorporated. (LeGuin's works had characters of either dark or red skin, centered in the archipelagos, although there were whitish skinned Kurds I think they were called from the North... Tenar was white-skinned.)
On the earlier LOTR movies, specially the first one, we were provided with a lot of implicit questions and not much answers. It really invited out curiosity to watch further the movie to find out the answers, and the movie slowly answers some of them through the story. So for example the Nazgul were mysterious in a sense but became more clear early; Sauro was more mysterious as well. On this series, they simply throw the answers before even the questions arrives and I don't feel any sense or instigation of curiosity.
I guess I never had that because I knew the books so well. I was more irritated by the films for simplifying and/or "ruining" book elements I found more elegant or interesting. Anyway, as noted, more mystery is showing up in e3 here. I was kinda eh on the first two episodes in that regard. Maybe this will improve.
Numenor looks an incredibly generic kingdom on this series (whereas, for example, Gondor at LOTR movies look quite original), I expected Numenor to be shown as more epic, more different and also with more questions to be later answered, and yet it is just a kingdom like any other on fiction.
You thought Numenor was more generic? Numenor was the SOURCE for Minas Tirith, being founded by Elendil and heirs after the land's destruction (as a counterpart to our Atlantis). Anything there came from Numenor. I thought it was perfect, as you could see all the elements that Gondor later incorporated as remnants of their time in Numenor. A nice callback to where Gondor came from.