[Sr. Mints]

I'm no Tolkien purest, and I really don't care if changes are made from the source material (all of which I've read.) In fact, I don't think there is any story from any fictional universe that I'd consider untouchable when adapting it to screen.

It's actually pretty weird to me that people get bent out of shape over a sentence in some appendix of a time that Tolkien himself didn't even explore that deeply or write too much about. I mean as a huge geek I can appreciate the passion, but I guess that's just not how I roll. My own mom initially refused to see Return of the King in theatre because Shelob wasn't at the end of TTT, we had to drag her on Christmas Day.

Anyway..

The story itself in the first two episodes was engaging, but dials up the pace in episode two. The feeling of something truly evil and menacing coming together with basically everybody except Galadriel failing to realizing it makes for an exciting viewing experience. It's really cool to see the dwarf kingdoms in their heyday.

They're steering us to think meteor man is either Sauron or Gandalf (or Saruman or the crazy brown wizard), but maybe those seem a bit too obvious. I'm gonna say it'll be one of the unseen blue wizards who arrived in the second age during the time of the forging of the one ring.