Series A return to high fantasy
I come from a family of Tolkein fans and every winter when it was rainy and miserable we would watch the Trilogy.
Even after all these years, remember all the chills, thrills, and heartache that I felt seeing the wonderful world of Middle-earth brought from pages to life.
I went into Rings of Power excited to see what it offered yet it was somewhat damped by online negativity yet once I saw it, all the feelings and wonderment of my childhood returned.
Having seen already many of the places in the trilogy it was amazing to see what I knew at different times and to see new places up till now only know from passing descriptions.
If you look closely you can see that the creators have an understanding of the lore of Tolkein and his creative philosophy regarding the legendarium, most clearly the ongoing debate of orcs' origins and morality ( This series has done something I personly never thought possible, made the Uruks sympathetic.) If there were no restrictions on the materials they could use it would be even better.
At first, I was against the inclusion of the Harefoot, preferring to see just see the story of Men and Elves and Dwarves in an age of mysticism and might, but they quickly won my favor reminding me why the Hobbit is such a well-loved character archetype, in a world forge by the clashing of great powers of Light and Dark there are little folk who need no great power to tell them to do good or be kind, they just are.
For the Canon character's portrayals, I find them very good and interesting. Galadriel's trauma shines strongest and is clearly part of a time-honored theme that vengeance is ultimately worthless, as her quest ultimately leads to the rebirth of the very evil she sought to stop, yet this does not make her unlikeable for she is still kind and wise even acknowledge that her quest is destroying her but doesn't know if she can let it go. In all this is how I would describe all the 'good characters' they are generally good-hearted with noble yet have their flaws and their actions can have ill results, they are rounded characters which I like. The friendship between Elrond and Durin was just sweet highlighting how the bounds of friendship can stand against the tests of their respective nations. All who have either read the books or watch the movie know of the tale of Isildur and Elendil, of the two high kings who battled the Dark Lord and whose legacy would be of folly and heroism, they start out as an awkward son and a concerned father all which works great for there character arcs as we know how it ends but not how it begins, after all, knights start as squires. Speaking of Dark Lords, when I watched the movie I was scared of Sauron even though he never appeared more than a flaming eye, his influence, and even name seemed to shroud the very air with malice. Now after all these years we finally see him in person my mouth went dry and rewatching I am always filled with a sense of unease when he appears. His motivation and how he sees himself is in line with Tolkien letter's another show of the director's knowledge of the source material.
With those introduced characters from the series I find just as amazing as the canon characters, it's a tie between Disa and Adar for my favorites, but I like the Harefoots as a whole as I mentioned earlier. I feel like their story is only beginning so I can only say that they have proven their worth and their defining attributes, what is to become of them is something we are going to have to wait and see.
Watching the Rings of Power has been like seeing part of my childhood. Another world even. High Fantasy is one of my favorite genera and seeing it brought to the small screen without losing any of the grandiose, has been a true delight.
Series Uninspired spectacle
Speaking as someone who has only the expected amount of nerdy passion for Tolkien's work, I can accept a certain amount of artistic licence when it comes to adaptations (from what I've read, the creators only had very limited source material to draw from, thanks to stifling legal restrictions). So, this review won't be about faithfulness to Tolkein or the canon-breaking inclusion of multi-ethnic Elves or god knows what else - it'll just dissect the story as it is presented on its own merits.
Unfortunately, it doesn't have many.
What distracted me most about Rings of Power is that it really, really doesn't want to be a TV series. It wants to be an epic trilogy on par with Peter Jackson's Middle-earth cinematic universe, complete with sweeping CGI spectacle, dramatic monologues, slightly corny dialogue, and excessive lore dumps. It's bizarre and off-putting in a way I've never quite experienced before, and I think it boils down to the inherent expectations of the medium clashing with what's presented onscreen. With live-action television, we expect a certain amount of pathos, realism and familiarity with the characters, as we spend far more time with them than we would in a single movie. The show seems intent on keeping most of the characters at arm's length, giving you little space to truly understand their personalities and motivations outside of what we're told about them. Instead, we're invited to focus on the admittedly impressive CGI sceneries that feel ripped straight out of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Galadriel is a perfect example of this breakdown of communication. Portraying her as a hot-headed warrior clad in armour was an odd but potentially interesting direction to take with her character, but I just couldn't vibe with her at all. We're clearly supposed to empathise with her dedication to eradicating evil in Middle-earth, but she comes across as inflexible, overzealous and frankly exhausting to put up with. Her only personality trait in this show is her hatred for Sauron. I don't expect all protagonists to be immediately likeable, but I like it when there's some shred of humanity to relate to on some level. By the end of the first episode, I just wanted Galadriel to take a bloody day off.
The other characters all come across as similarly one-dimensional - okay for a 90-minute action movie, not so much for an ongoing series. I don't doubt that there's ample time to fix this, but the first couple of episodes don't fill me with much enthusiasm.
Series ....better than expected. (season 1 spoilers, of course)
I must admit I approached this series with a large amount of trepidation when I saw that it wouldn't be able to use the bulk of the written material on the Second Age (most particularly Akallabeth), but I resolved to give it a chance. So how did it turn out? It ain't Tolkien, but nobody else is (not Jackson, not Bakshi, not anyone). But does that mean it's all bad? I don't think so.
First, the bad:
- Timeline compression. I understand why this was done, but I feel it reduces the epic scale of the original work. - A lack of focus on Eregion, and the teamwork of the Noldor and Durin's Folk. Where the hell's Narvi? - I didn't care for some of the introduced lore, mainly the idea of the Elves' fading being an urgent concern that could be alleviated by mithril, which gained its properties via a Silmaril (granted the truth of this myth is questioned in the show itself). - The Stranger is being heavily hinted at being Gandalf. I don't like this because we already know Gandalf. Why not let us get to know one of the other wizards? - Halbrand being Sauron. No Annatar. Sad times. - A lot of little lore nitpicks such as the names ("Brandyfoot", "Theo", ayfkm), and some stylistic choices like the fact that the Elves seem to have declared a ban on all sideburns.
The could-be-good-later: - Pharazon was kind of underwhelming. Maybe he will get his time to shine in the later seasons. - Isildur can't actually be dead, where the hell is he? - Really hoping we are being set up for Galadriel and Celeborn's tearful reunion (she never outright states that he's dead y'all).
Now, the good: - Morfydd Clark's Galadriel. She does differ somewhat from the text, as exactly how much front-line fighting she did is not clear, and she definitely did not stick around for the entirety of the War of the Jewels in any version. But that said, I find her very-well acted and in fact, prefer her performance over Cate Blanchett's (which honestly I never liked, and found her photo-negative freakout in Jackon's Fellowship to be, in short, stupid as hell), and I am very glad she never reaches that level of unpleasant hamminess. - Ismael Cordova as Arondir. He totally nails Elven gravitas. I loved the romantic scene between him and Bronwyn in episode 6, and I normally don't even care much about romantic plotlines. I'm surprised I got invested in one about two characters made up whole cloth for the show. - Everything with the Dwarves. Durin III is spot-on as a Dwarven king who is old and set in his ways, and leery of outsiders. Durin & Disa's scenes and Durin & Elrond's scenes were among the best in the show. - I was dead set against hobbits showing up at first, but I ended up loving whole Harfoots & the Stranger storyline. Really looking forward to Road to Rhûn starring Elanor Brandyfoot and Currently Unnamed Wizard Who Is Totally Not Gandalf Guys Come On. - Adar. Cool to see a progenitor uruk. Joseph Mawle does a great job here.
Series GQ Sauron trolling Elves for 557 minutes
First up, I read The Silmarillion and The Unfinished Tales in the lead up to this show so I could be properly annoyed and I do understand the bitterness of the most of the other reviews here... but I didn't hate it. There's positives here that I feel the hatedom are overlooking, Middle-earth: Shadow of War is still in my opinion the worst case of Tolkien's work and vision getting crapped on and the hypocrisy of some people letting sexy Shelob pass while complaining about this is lame.
Visually it's stunning, which is to be expected of the most expensive show ever made, but it truly is eyeporn, I really liked Durin and the Dwarves plotline (partly because of my pro-Dwarf, anti-Elf bias and the Balrog bit), the Meteor Man/Gandalf and Harfoots stuff was great (easily most intresting plot-thread), Elendil thanks to his actor Lloyd Owen is awesome, the fight scenes were cool and the Sauron-Halbrand twist was fun despite being obvious as hell and the acting was good.
Like others I really wasn't a fan of the changes made. Galadriel's Xenafication I think might've been okay if they kept her more benevolent attitude and didn't turn her into Lady Elf Jack Bauer who is "ohhh so edgy", Galadriel is the one goddamn character in high-fantasy you don't need to make edgy, everything about her literary version mocks anti-heroism because she's geuinely nice which is eptiomised with her moments with Gimli. Her using a sword I just found dull and reduced her to a Éowyn-expy. After reading Similarion and dicovering Elves like Lúthien can pull out Bayonetta shit I'd rather see that in live action and show had budget to do it. I didn't care for Arondir, Bronwyn and Theo; OCs should either be disposable or supporting and I just wasn't enaged by their plotline. The Númenóreans were alright, but reading about how badass they are in lore and seeing little of that on screen was dissapointing. I know fans were annoyed at Elves getting portrayed as pompus assholes, I didn't mind since I find most Tolkien Elves insufferable. I think it's a similar case with Federation in Star Trek, the original creator intended respective faction to be 90% good and crappy cynical modern creatives disagree. Halbrand being Sauron twist while I liked it, I think could've been done better, have him graphically shift from handsome dudebro to spikey Evil Overlord in real time. Also needed more time of him deceiving the Elves, they skipped over him help making sixteen of the rings.
Overall I think while nowhere near the LOTR film trilogy, it was okay and could've be amazing with better writing. I'd rather see The Silmarillion adapted and adapted well as well as better animated verisons of Hobbit and LOTR. Screw Lex Bezos Luthor though.
Series Bored out of my mind
First the elephant in the room: this is not LOTR. Not because it is an uninspired corporate money grab (it is, though), but because it doesn't feel like it in any field, be it aesthetic, plots, dialogues, characters, etcetera. I may be influenced by the Jackson trilogy, but if that's the case, it only shows Jackson nailed the story's style much better. If Amazon redubbed the series with new names and tried to make it pass as an adaptation of some off the shelf RPG, they would completely fool me and it would make more sense. Everything in this series looks new and shiny, but at the same time lacks a soul. Even the great landscapes feel like postcards.
About the politicky, I was surprised it turned out to be the least of the problems. Intentionally or not, Arondir is honestly the only elf in this mix who looks and behaves elven. The rest, WASP as they may be, are basically yuppies with long robes and ugly wigs, which was a huge turn off for me. As for the Numenoreans, but I cannot imagine a Nordic fetishist like Tolkien picturing his Númenor as Greek in style other than the basic premise, and this comes from a fellow Mediterranean. The Orcs had some intriguing Fremen-like imagery, but it turned out there wasn't nothing impressive under the robes. I like much more the portrayal of the dwarves and the hobbits, even if they still don't feel more Tolkienian than, say, Warcraftian.
Galadriel as a warrioress didn't bother me much either, it's rather her personality and characterization which I find absolutely grating and unrelatable. I'm also under the impression all the female protagonists of this series sound exactly like the same character, only with different disguises and ages, although that's hardly an oddity those days. Speaking about sound, there is nothing even remotely memorable in the soundtrack, which is shocking. Even the Hobbit trilogy had some songs I can still hum from the top of my head, but this product seems to have entirely forgotten about it.
I find many people complaining about the slow-as-molasses pacing, which I have to corroborate, although I would add it's not just the pacing which makes this series ungodly boring for me. The plot, twists, characters, and more or less everything are unengaging to some degree. I won't lie, I cannot honestly watch this series without multitasking, and it's a triumph of the will (geddit) that I'm able to soldier through it every week.
To conclude, I was convinced the series was going to be a 100% braindead story with excellent visuals and epic music, and instead found it a 70% with nice visuals and average music. And that's frankly much, much worse. I would have preferred human fears become reality and take the shape of transexual hobbits and obese elves fighting cisheterowhitepatriarchy or something, because at least I could have some chuckles a la good old South Park instead of spending one hour of boredom every week. But here I am, doing my duty. Keep struggling, strugglers.
Series Early Impressions: Slow Burner, Sputtering
As always seems to be the case with all geeky franchise adaptations, there is an unnecessary, all consuming argument about race and "wokeness" that surrounds the Middle Earth fantasy adaptation, The Rings of Power. There is always a battery of "true fans" who insist that a story is inherently ruined by the inclusion of black people. I find those discussions exhausting, especially as whenever I do watch these shows, my feeling is inevitably, "Really? This is what you were complaining about?"
The first thing you notice about Rings of Power is the visuals. In the prologue alone, we are treated to spectacular vistas and landscapes, stylized battlefields and dreamscapes. This show avoids the ubiquitous earthy tones of the Peter Jackson movies, choosing a wider palette to striking dramatic effect. Rings of Power is a triumph when it comes to cinematics in television. I felt like I was watching a movie rather than a tv show, and it certainly looks like the most expensive tv show ever made.
Storywise we have four threads with various combinations of dwarves, elves, humans, hobbits and, er miscellaneous. Some threads are definitely more interesting than the others, but all move along at an achingly slow pace. A slow burner should be expected when it comes to a Tolkien adaptation, but in this case it is not the good kind of slow. Parts are simply boring to watch.
What's making it boring are the characters. Tolkien wrote a lot of his characters and cultures as broad archetypes, who only become interesting when they have contrasting characters and cultures to bounce off of. Otherwise they just seem bland and samey. This is particular apparent in the early episodes of Rings of Power, where the fantasy races stick to their own kind. It's like if Star Trek only had Vulcans in it; that would be a boring show to watch too. It's only when the fantasy races eventually start to mix that their personalities, philosophies, ambitions and cultural differences start to clash, and that's exactly when the show becomes more interesting. Unfortunately it takes a couple of episodes just to get to that point. So whilst it does drag its feet, by episode three there are enough conflicting groups of people that the story does feel like it has meat and soul to it.
Whereas episode two was losing me, episode three has got me wanting more. The stakes are ramping up, the conflicts are becoming more apparent, the character interactions are more fun, and the show has plenty of twists and turns, with a couple of dark horse characters coming out to the front. I will be back for more.
Series Bland, bleh, and Not Tolkien.
If not for the names of the Elves, I wouldn't have known this series was supposed to be related to Tolkien at all. The only things it has going for it are the visuals, which are lovely, and the Harfoots are fun (even if their accents are a bit cringey). The Elves, on the other hand, are a disaster. Not only do most of them look like middle-aged office managers with bad haircuts (except for Elrond, who looks like he's twelve), every named canon character has been butchered, and canon was drop-kicked somewhere out to sea. Gil-Galad tries to ship Galadriel back off to Valinor to get her out of the way, which is so painfully wrong I almost turned it off right there. Galadriel swimming back to Middle-Earth made me facepalm, too. She's an Elf, not a Terminator. The first two episodes were a bland, generic mess of meh writing, bad pacing, and bad Elven costuming. The beautiful scenery and the Harfoots aren't enough to make me want to watch any more episodes. It's not the worst thing I've ever seen, but I can't call it good, either. It's the equivalent of a TV dinner compared to the filet mignon of The Silmarillion: it's consumable, but there's no real substance to it. 3/10, do not recommend.
Series Rings of Power is a commercial elfspoitation film by a committee which doesn't get or care about Tolkien.
Review of season 1.
Rings of Power is a commercial elfspoitation film by a committee which doesn't get or care about Tolkien.
Here's my take.
The good: It looks beautiful.
The bad: Writing, direction, editing, music.
The ugly: Not getting that the world-building and millennia-long history is one of the attractions of Tolkien's Middle-Earth tales. The misconstruction of Galadriel's character. The loss of the Elven Fall story of Feanor and the exile of the rebels including Galadriel.
They have licensed and are using the names of Galadriel, Gil-Galad, and Elrond, but the characters are nothing like in Tolkien's writings.
Amazon reportedly spent a tremendous amount buying the rights to create a multi-year streaming service based on the Lord of the Rings and appendices. They devalued that buy by crushing 3000 years of Tolkien's imaginary world's history down to 300 years. Gone is the sinking of Beleriand and foundation of Numenor; rediscovery of Middle-Earth, Tar Aldarion's difficult relationship with Queen Erendis; the War of the Elves and Sauron; the retaking and colonization of Middle-Earth by Numenor.
The show evidences that the production team could do a quite fine job of telling the history of the First Age in retrospect through oral tales, ancient documents, legends and flashbacks. The producers and showrunners evidently made a decision that they needed that time compression so that the human characters wouldn't age out with every time skip.
The world they created suffers a lot from sandbox syndrome. Numenor apparently has three ships and a couple hundred men, all conscripts and volunteers except the leaders. Proto-Mordor has one village and one orc gang of a couple hundred. Galadriel can ride on a single horse carrying a wounded person from Mordor to Eregion on the borders of Rivendell in six days.
The writing is so lackluster. Workmanlike, not terrible, but not Tolkien.
Some of the cgi in the backstory of the First Age is outstanding and the props, backgrounds, and costumes of Numenor are worthy of a better-written story.
The actors have done their best with the parts they were given. There doesn't seem to be much there though in terms of the actors actually enjoying themselves or giving full reign to their talents, with the possible exceptions of Sophia Nomvete as Princess Disa and Owain Arthur as Prince Durin IV of the Dwarven Kingdom of Khazad-dum. They carry what are written as some pretty wooden and drawn out scenes of domestic "as you know" storytelling with humor and some nice low-key chemistry.
Making Galadriel into an obsessed anti-hero is one thing, but why is she so unable to see Sauron when he is right literally under her nose? She doesn't seem much like the wise and insightful elf leader of The Lord of the Rings books.
2 of 5 stars, painful to watch
revised and updated after the end of season 1
Series Can't say I feel that strongly either way
Is this a blatant cash-grab on Amazon’s part? Yeah, almost assuredly. But that being said, I think there was still passion; I feel that at least some of the people behind the scenes did have a true love for the source material, and wanted to make something good. I think at the heart of the problem, is that approached it the wrong way. I’m not going to bother talking about the changes to Tolkien’s lore, mostly because I’ve only ever been a casual fan of his. I enjoy his work, but never got around to reading the deeper things like ‘’The Silmarilion’’, or his appendices; also, while I have nothing but admiration and respect for the man who helped define my favorite genre, I don’t really follow the extensive pieces people still write about him and his work. To that end, I’m approaching this very much as an average viewer, who didn’t have that strong an opinion going in.
I’ll start with the good, because I will argue this is some. First of all, the sets, costumes, and props of this show are top notch; I especially like the orcs, and the really good prosthetics they gave them. This was the most expensive series ever at the time of me writing this, and if nothing else, you can see the money on screen. The acting I also think is good, and I’d submit that the problems with the characters are more attributable to the writing, rather than the actors’ decisions. The soundtrack by Bear Mc Creary is also good, though I find it kind of funny how they stressed at one point that Howard Shore was making the opening theme.
The fight scenes in this show are fine for the most part. The choreography and staging are good, but there’s nothing really exceptional about them, mostly because the action scenes mostly just consist of killing orcs, and you can only really make that fun to watch for so long. I feel the movies were able to make it work because they had a variety of locations to make it interesting, and as of now at least, the show doesn’t really have that. By the by, the show suffers from a similar problem the Jackson movies did, in that in their desire to demonstrate the superiority of the Elves, they try a bit too hard; there’s a particularly eye-rolling scene which is really just Galadriel beating up a number of new recruits in Numenor, and it doesn’t really lead to anything.
The biggest problem with the show, and what truly brings it down, is in one, major issue: the writing. For starters, the dialogue can be surprisingly generic, and while there are a few good, epic sounding lines, most of it feels remarkably standard, and for what’s supposed to be an adaptation of one of the greatest wordsmiths of the age, it’s a rather glaring problem. Also, the story itself is misguided, relying on a combination of conflicts that overlap at various points (save the Harfoots, but more on that later), but seem just meander to and fro, with plot lines and conflicts introduced late in the story, like the writers weren’t really sure where they were going until halfway through. It also relies on mystery box based story telling, based on the idea o keeping the audience guessing throughout the season what something, or who someone is. In theory, I guess that can work, but with the series slow pacing, I found myself muttering “get on with it” a bit more times than ideal. I suppose at the core of the issue, is that the writing is too, for lack of a better word, "modern". You can see where other shows/movies may have influenced the writing of this, not to mention real-world relevancies at the time. I suppose there's nothing new with that, but one of the reasons Tolkien's work has endured for so long, is how timeless it is. I suspect, years from now, it won't be hard for people to look at this show and say to themselves "this was made in the 2020s".
On that note, the pacing can get mind numbingly slow; having rewatched it in anticipation of this review, I noticed entire episodes would pass where the story just seemed to spin its wheels, with nothing really moving forward, or being accomplished. The Harfoot’s story in particular is a quintessential example of Trapped by Mountain Lions, in that it has no bearing on the story, beyond trying to hint at another would be Sauron, and to be honest, you could skip through it, and miss surprisingly little. And to be frank, such a thing is not something I’d want to be associated with an epic fantasy.
In the end, my opinion in the first season is just “meh”, with no strong feelings in any direction. There wasn’t much to really make me mad, but not much more to make me really engaged in it. I suppose you could say that’s worse than having strong feelings either way; this is supposed to be Tolkien after all.
Maybe I’ll watch the second season if the urge strikes me, but I guess we’ll wait and see. At any rate, ratings of this show have been good, so I think there may be a slight possibility that there may actually be some people, who ‘’do’’ like this show, and to be honest, is it really anyone’s place to get in their face and tell them not to?