romansamurai

Reviewers giving this poor reviews based on 3 relieved episodes should wait. A lot of people confuse a series show with how tv series used to be in the episodic nature. They forget that many of series like this are basically a 8 or 10 hour movie. Give it time to build up for crying out loud. However even as it stands the episodes are well paced. First episode gives a little background on the characters while second gives background on locations and it is well done. Very well done. Characters introduced as needed and most of them don't need an emotional attachment to viewers. Only a few do and even then what attachment do you need to the character for it to matter when they are kidnapped or murdered? Some people who give this show a poor rating either didn't watch it, don't understand it or compare it to something else. For what it is supposed to be, it does it exceptionally well.

Action is great and that's that this show is. An action thriller movie split into 10 parts. Solid 8. Maybe 8.5 even if it continues at this pace. Had to leave a review now because so many people are already leaving poor reviews. If you want to do it now, do it per episode. Not for that while show.

Even my 11 year old thought this was a poorly written and directed movie. No real love for detail, plot or characters found anywhere. This was a difficult watch and I watch the hallmark channel movies with my wife regularly and even tolerate them. Yet this was somehow harder. It's like someone just made this to make a movie for holidays to say they did. There's better movies out there to watch for holidays. This one isn't worth the time.

To explain a little more: The characters are shallow, 1 dimensional and 180 on the spot without real buildup or growth. Scene setting quality is really poor. Holding a list of presents for an entire country and talking about how much work still left and the whole list is maybe 10 names tops. Packing manually for every kid in the country? Seriously? I mean a lot of stupid things they could have easily written off to "Santa or Elf magic" but instead decided to make mundane and boring as hell. No depth at all. And acting is very shallow and poor. Maybe a 4-7 year old crowd might enjoy it. But my 11 year old was bored, my wife who watched hallmark channel movies was bored and I honestly wanted to do anything else than watch this train wreck.

The writers did not read the books. That's simple and obvious. If you're a fan of the books and have been imagining what this would look like on the screen for years, you'll hate this.

If you never read the books or read only one or two and long ago, you might like it.

It's pretty. But it takes a lot of wait Jordan carefully crafted and set up (both characters and themes as well as locations and history) and just tosses it out that window.

It's a hard watch as a fan. If you remember the plot and characters well, you'll be disappointed that so much is completely ignored and changed altogether.

As a fan, this is a 2/10. They got some locations well and some overall story parts too.

As someone who never read the books it's an easy 6/10. Its no LOTR. But it's ok for what it tries to do.