FWIW, I only read The Silmarillion once, in my teens, I think, and found it a slog. I tried reading some of the other Christopher Tolkien-edited stuff once, and it was even worse; I did not finish. So, for me, the idea of someone approaching the stories therein with little reverence, instead prioritizing audience experience, sounds like about the best I could hope for. I found TWoT exciting and fun, and look forward to another season. As with The Witcher’s gold dragon, I can forgive the occasional scene in which budget has clear impacts on the effect quality if there are also some nice exteriors with pleasant natural scenery.
What I would really like is for them not to rush too much. Reacher was fine, in a kind of stupid way, but some of the details pulled me out of it to the extent that it was always a few steps from engrossing. Set dressing, for example, reflected very little consideration of characters’ lives beyond the most superficial impressions. I feel like The Silmarillion has fewer well-developed ancillary properties (illustrations, games, etc.) than LotR, so it’s got less scaffolding for thinking about how things ought to look and connect. So that problem of making it feel like a world will be all the more difficult. Since so much of what sets Tolkien apart is his investment in parts of the history, myths, and language, I fear that mediocre work on the visual identity and sense of place would stick out all the more. It seems like it would take a lot of work, ideally with fewer people thinking it through over a longer period of time rather than a massive staff for a short while, to get that stuff up to scratch. And it feels like the way licensing windows tend to work means that losing a ton of time to the pandemic means they’re unlikely to have a team thinking carefully about stuff like what sorts of wood the dwarves of a particular city would have access to, or what techniques might shape the architectural options of the Númenóreans.
