Costumes, sets and other visuals of TROP

[Thinlómien]

Something most fans seem to agree on is that the visuals of The Rings of Power are impressive, even if our opinions on the rest of the show varies. TROP boasts some unprecedented CGI on the small screen, but I thought I'd like to make a thread on the visuals as a whole, perhaps centering especially on the practical effects such as costumes, make-up and hair, props and sets and how we as the audience like them. In the big scale of the other threads, I think details like these often go overlooked, which I personally consider a shame because they are one of the things I pay the most attention to while watching.

So, without further ado, which visual depictions of characters / places / etc do you like or dislike and why? Where do you think TROP has succeeded and where not?

Here's some of my thoughts based on the four first episodes (spoilers about what is depicted possible, but no actual plot spoilers):

THE GOOD

- I like pretty much everything about the Harfoots? Their camouflages are a clever and impressive visual nod to what Tolkien wrote about hobbits being able to disappear from the sight of the big folk. Also their costumes and hair, for the most part, look nicely like a more archaic but recognisable precursor of the hobbit costumes in the PJ movies.

- Númenor is stunning. The architecture, public art, city design? Great, and close to how I imagined. The ships? You can see some thought went into them. And I also like the costumes from Míriel's art deco headdresses to Pharazon's vaguely charlemagnesque robes to the sailors' simple but nice-looking seagreen tunics. I like the overall Byzantine vibe. (And also, looks like the Fall of Númenor will be visually pretty much how I always imagined it!)

- Lindon with the mellyrn (?) and Khâzad-dûm were impressive set designs, even if both had a bit of generic high fantasy vibe and could be something you could see in a recent(ish) video game (like Dragon Age or Divinity: Original Sin).

- The Orcs have so much more character with their skull headdresses and sun-covers than PJ's orcs ever did. Also the sickly pale look goes well with them avoiding the sun. Lots of excellent visual choices there (maybe apart from the fact that if shielding from the sun is so vital for them, you'd expect their structures to be a little sturdier. But now I'm nit-picking....)

- The sequence of the Elves sailing to the undying lands was - while content wise a little bizarre - very beautiful with the swan ships, the golden sunlight and the sea birds.

THE BAD

- Why do a majority of the male Elves have short(ish) hair? Where are the flowing locks Tolkien described and PJ embraced? Gil-Galad and Adar look so much better than Elrond, Arondir, "Finrod" and the rest of them.

- I am not a huge fan of Bronwyn's dress which looks like it's missing an undershirt. She's showing much more skin than anyone else in her culture or climate. Because she's not say a smith toiling in a hot forge or a prostitute advertising her body, I'm led to assume it's just because she's the conventionally attractive female protagonist of that plotline, and that's just sexist. (Likewise I'm a little confused about Disa's leg-revealing dress, but hard to believe it's supposed to be there as eye candy. Is it just to make her look "more feminine"?)

- Halbrand's t-shirt style seen in the previews is also not a huge hit with me, it looks way too modern. Combined with his ambiguous hairstyle that could as well be modern too, he looks he could be just some dude you could see on the street.

- Do the Elves really need to have pointy ears as the one distinguishing characteristic? That's not very inspired. Also it seems to vary from scene to scene whether the local humans can tell someone is an Elf without seeing their ears or not (see: Galadriel in Númenor, for one). Anyway, I certainly can't tell who's supposed to be an Elf and who a human without seeing the ears, and I think that's a shame.

- The warg. How could it look worse than PJ's wargs.

- The awkward slow motion scenes that keep coming.

I'M NOT SURE...

- Why does Arondir have a classic green man motive straight from a medieval cathedral depicted on his breastplate? Looks nice but ???

- The glimpse of the Two Trees was lovely, but the part of undying lands where child Galadriel was making her boat looked way too mundane.

What do you guys think?