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Comment by StanislavPetrov | Hacker News Reader

>How the hell you are going to review a series based on just first 2 episodes?

The series may turn out to be worthwhile, but the first 2 episodes are objectively not good. The writing is poor, the dialogue isn't good, the characters are not compelling and the episodes themselves aren't well put together. I don't see how anyone can watch the first 2 episodes of this series and then watch the first 2 episodes of breaking bad and see any comparison. The vibes I got while watching this show reminded me of the last season of Game of Thrones after it had gone off the rails. The difference here is we haven't spent years getting invested in the story line and the characters, which kept us watching even as the quality was poor. I won't be tuning in for episode 3 and certainly won't feel like I've missed anything.

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I'm enjoying the show so far. I can totally see where you're coming from, too, but I think it's pretty disingeous to give a bunch of opinions and then slap the word "objectively" on them.

> I can totally see where you're coming from, too, but I think it's pretty disingeous to give a bunch of opinions and then slap the word "objectively" on them.

Whether something is entertaining or not is purely subjective. However, speaking in my capacity as someone who has worked in the film industry for the last 30 years, the writing of the first two episodes was objectively "not good". I think Hesh Rabkin put it better than I can, on Season 1, Episode 10 of the Sopranos when he said, "There’s one constant in the music business...A hit is a hit...and this, my friend, is NOT a hit." The same holds for tv shows.

> speaking in my capacity as someone who has worked in the film industry for the last 30 years, the writing of the first two episodes was objectively "not good".

You keep using the word objectively but it doesn't mean what you think it means. You did not like the writing, that's fine. I don't think it's fair to call it "objectively" not good. There were some awkward parts and some awkward scenes, but I personally found a lot of the dialogues to feel quite natural and compelling. The elves are a bit of a stiffer but that's part of the characters. It is plagued by some of what I call the modern "marvel" adventure quirky speech (especially some exchanges with Galadriel) where a lot of exchanges turn into funny quips back and forth but that's par of the course in the current movie industry.

On the other hand the cinematography, environments, special effects, sound stage (sauron's whispers in a 3D home theater system were just SO GOOD), and a lot of other stuff is absolutely amazing.

True but without a solid story and good writing no amount of special effects can make it good. At the end of the day the most important factor is a compelling good story IMO

Art has many different dimensions that people evaluate when they experience it, and many of them are subjective, but many of them are not. The objective ones are ones I will call "craft," and relate to the demonstrated skill of the artist. I will ascribe the rest of the dimensions to "vision." Craft is about how well the artist can convey the vision.

I am not in the film industry, but I am a musician, so here are a few examples from classical music: A performer who tends to rush the slow sections of music will often give bad performances: the vision of the piece is for that section to be slow, and a weakness in the performer's skill compromises the vision. A composer who writes music that is impossible to play has bad craft. A conductor who gives unclear cues and doesn't keep an orchestra together has bad craft.

I can still enjoy a performance where the slow sections are a little rushed if I like the piece, but that doesn't make it a good performance.

You are totally allowed to subjectively enjoy something that is objectively bad.

As surprising as it may seem, the art of writing has rules. Setting up character arcs, payoffs, hero journey, etc. These have been around for literally thousands of years. These 2 episodes are objectively poorly written.

We have no idea if character arcs and payoffs are well set up in the first two episodes because we haven't seen if anything is paid off or resolved later. It's been a while but I remember the first season of Game of Thrones being similarly slow and ponderous to start with. I enjoy the slower pace, it suits the scale of the conflict and it suits the source material which never felt like it needed to hurry along.

It's an episodic tv show with full season story arc. I think there's still some time before you can really judge the narrative structure in this case. As far as aristotelian narrative "rules" go the first episode seem to follow a classic aristotelian tragedy. A high born hero, set on a course of her own destruction. Anyway these rules are not really set in stone, over these past few thousands of years we aquired a multitude of narrative structures and plot devices. Of course Hollywood is obsessed with money and risk aversion so we tend to mostly see the most formulaic "classic" narratives.

BTW, I'd also claim that original tolkin narratives are not very good if you strictly judge them by these rules. The generous use of Deus ex machina to solve the plot climactic moments is just cringy.

can you please share the objective metrics for quality ?

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