Rings of Power: part one: What's going on?

 the cinematography of ROP is beautiful. This is important, since I often criticize the visual choices of films. 

But who wrote the script? That was my problem.

Galadrial as warrior? Fine. Taking the place of Finrod, her brother who was killed. Fine.  But you know, she isn't very nice. Well, officers don't have to be nice, but they do have to have common sense, and a toughness that enables them to survive the stresses of combat. And this includes attention to logistics and the welfare of your men, which Galadriel doesn't seem to have. (the mutiny of her men in the face of starving and freezing to death suggest she needs to go to Officer Training school).

War is not a one person fight.

So where is Feanor? And the other brothers? Or the men who helped defend the elven kingdoms against Morgoth and company? 

Toward the end of episode one, the elves were allowed to go back to elvenhome... But what about their allies? In Tolkien's legendarium, the men that helped them in the fight also were given a safe haven island, i.e. Numenor. Was this mentioned or did I miss it?

When the elves were told they could go back to elvenhome, they went on a ship... standing up in the boat. Uh, what if the sundering seas got choppy? And Galadriel changes her mind and jumps into the water? What was that about? She's now a marathon swimmer?

The hobbits were nice, and one almost wishes that the script writer would have framed the story as being told by a surviving hobbit...  

I am leaving out the woke stuff: because the woke stuff is the least problem of part one.

Making hobbits black (not all of them, just some of them)? No problem (the Harfoots did have darker skin than the othet hobbit tribes). But there are other forms of prejudice you know, and the Irish Times was annoyed at the dumb Irish cliches:

for Irish viewers the $1 billion series evokes less welcome memories. It features a race of simpleton proto-hobbits, rosy of cheek, slathered in muck, wearing twigs in their hair and speaking in stage-Irish accents that make the cast of Wild Mountain Thyme sound like Daniel Day-Lewis. 

Tolkien was famous for his attention to detail, and one of the reasons that the Jackson films worked was that Jackson retold the story without too many distortions, and allowed fan input to pressure him into keeping close to the story. In contrast, Amazon didn't ask for fan input until a few months ago.

as a result, they lacked feedback that would have helped them clarify the holes in the plot, and maybe even notice how the time and energy trying to be woke actually distracted from their real problem: Telling the story to make it enjoyable.

All of this is about part one: One does hope the plots improve in later episodes.