Lord of the Rings Minute Dueling Genre Productions

I generally enjoy this podcast but every once in awhile there’s an episode where they disagree on the topic and I find one of the hosts really annoying when this happens. She can’t agree to disagree ever and is sometimes really condescending to her partner. While there aren’t many episodes like this, there are a few and at least for me I find the arguments obnoxious. Most of the time the podcast is a great companion to the movies.

I am sure the hosts have seen the movies but they seem to only have a base knowledge. I don’t find their conversations very insightful and they don’t seem to be in sync on what actually happened in each minute and the constant references to future events is odd for this format. They seem to struggle to analyze and present info on the current minute. Doubt I will carry on as I have seen the movies on a regular basis and don’t find them offering anything beyond my own knowledge.

Take this review for what’s it’s worth. I’m only 3 1/2 episodes in and so far this feels more like the hosts just wanted to have another podcast and less an examination of the movie. I am a huge fan of Lord of the Rings as well as all of Tolkien’s work. That being said I was super excited to find this podcast, as late as I did. The first episode, I get it there’s not a lot to talk about. It’s title screens and voice over work. I thought they did well with what was available. Granted most of the episode was the hosts introducing themselves and their relationship to the movie. I was a little shocked that Cassandra hasn’t seen the movie since high school. For claiming that this series is one of her favorites, not seeing the movie again for that long makes her claim a bit suspect. The other host, his name escapes me at this time, seems very knowledgeable about the subject. The fact that he was so into the books and the movies I figured he would be able to provide good backstory context or bits of trivia, but he doesn’t. The second episode provides an opportunity to talk about the elves, dwarves and men that are gifted rings. Other than a “hey that’s Galadriel” there is nothing discussed. Even moving into the third episode, there’s very little talk about backstory, trivia, movie making, casting, writing....etc. The hosts just seem to be wasting the opportunity to break down the movie “a minute at a time”. More time was spent talking about Return of the King and The Two Towers than these three minutes of the first movie. It is very audacious to take on a project like this and not be prepared to discuss the subject matter. Maybe if they spent more time researching the topic and less time plugging their other projects and trying to sell “merch” it would be a better product. I’m going to give it a few more episodes and hope it gets better. If it does, I will provide an updated review with a better rating.