Greetings, reader!
Well, season 1 of Amazon's high-budget, opinion-splitting Middle-Earth series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power just wrapped up - due to scheduling conflicts, I haven't been able to watch the season finale yet, but as this review was promised for today, I'm doing it based on the content of the seven first episodes.
The thoughts of this Tolkien mega-fan, in a nutshell, are these: a part of me wanted to hate the series due to ethical issues in its production and its somewhat reckless playing with Tolkien lore, while a part of me wanted to love the series as it is a massively hyped big-screen adaptation of some of my all-time favorite literature - yet I was able to do neither, as the series ended up being aggressively mediocre. Not the terrible nightmare that many fans feared, but also not the fantastic masterpiece Tolkien's books deserve. There was a lot to like, a lot to dislike, and a whole lot to unpack. Here are the top 5 best things about the series, and the top 5 worst!
Semi-spoiler alert: I won't go into major story details or plot twists so the text is generally spoiler-free, but I do discuss the general direction of the story and characters involved et cetera, so if you want to go into the series without knowing anything beforehand, then I suggest skipping today's post.
#5 in the good: The music
Sure, it's not on par with the Lord of the Rings soundtrack, but let's be real - very few pieces of music ever written are on that level. The soundtrack of The Rings of Power, both Howard Shore's main theme and Bear McCreary's instrumental score, is very atmospheric and it fits Tolkien's fantasy world well.
#5 in the bad: Clickbait cliffhangers
I have no problem with cliffhangers in general - in fact, I often enjoy them a great deal. But the cliffhanger endings in this particular series just feel forced, as if the writers were thinking "Gosh, a lot of people won't like this series, so let's make sure they feel a need to watch the next episode even if they're not having a good time". In addition to the cliffhangers, it seems obvious that the series shamelessly plays into the modern culture of fans speculating and theorizing on the internet: since such discourse is obviously good publicity for the series, there are a few unnecessary-feeling mystery storylines that seem to be created purely to fuel online speculation.
#4 in the good: The diversity
I find it amusing that this seems to be the biggest problem with the series for a whole lot of people, but I have it in the positives. Yes, it makes the series look different from typical medieval fantasy stories, but with good reason: the classic medieval-fantasy aesthetic was created during a time when racism dominated our beauty standards and general social norms, which is why the Elves and humans and other wise heroes are always fair-skinned Aryans, which is an obviously fucked-up thing.
Sure, conservatives are pissed off about the presence of Elves and Hobbits with varying skin colors in this series, but I for one applaud the decision to move away from the more harmful conventions of the fantasy genre into a more inclusive territory. If you can handle the appearance of orcs, wizards and ice monsters in your fantasy series but a Black Elf is too much for you to handle, I can thoroughly recommend taking your thoughts away from internet discussion forums and into therapy.
#4 in the bad: Some of the subversion is a bit much
While the cultural diversity mentioned above is nice, I do think that in some cases the series goes a bit overboard in making its characters look different from what we'd except from Tolkien lore - namely the instances that aren't anyhow about inclusivity and preventing stereotypes, but where the show appears to just be edgy for the sake of sparking conversation.
Many of the Elves having short hair is a good example: the trademark long hair of the Elven race is a major presence throughout Tolkien's works, and I don't really know who this decision was made for (if there is a campaign for short-haired people's rights to be represented within every fantasy race due to centuries of such discrimination, I'm not aware of it). The same goes for the Dwarf women not having beards: such a missed opportunity! We all remember the legendary conversation where Gimli describes the bearded Dwarf women, and the series just ignores that?
#3 in the good: The costume design, hairstyling et cetera
I mean, the series is expensive as hell and it shows. That might not be a good thing in all cases, as the aesthetic often feels a bit over-produced and plastic. However, it means that elements like the costumes, hairstyles and makeup (as well as much of the set design) are absolutely magnificent. The variations, differences and details in the costumes of the different peoples of Second Age Middle-Earth really help in fleshing out the rich intrigue of Tolkien's fantasy world.
#3 in the bad: Filling the story with fantasy clichés
I don't even mind that the story contains a lot of stuff not directly based on Tolkien's books, as this was actually necessary: the series is based mostly on the appendixes of The Lord of the Rings and a few chapters from The Silmarillion, which means that Tolkien has written the main events but not the details, character motivations and other such things. So, the writers had to fill bits of the story ("How did this event come to be?" "Why was character X in place Y?" et cetera) with original material, which is totally fine. Much less fine, however, is how this original storytelling contains minimal creativity, and an abundance of generic fantasy clichés.
I especially despise the whole narrative where Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) is the only one who believes that Sauron is returning, and wants to investigate it but the high-ranking Elves forbid her from doing this. This fucking cliché can be found in every fantasy / sci-fi story ever written, which is strange because it's not all that interesting of a narrative to begin with. Very often, clichés are clichés for good reason, but the whole "The Evil Power is returning, and only our One Brave Hero believes in it, and the Dumb Good Guy Authorities are so convinced of the Evil Power being gone that they forbid One Brave Hero from investigating it, making for some forced drama and an eventual I-told-you-so moment" premise just isn't interesting enough to justify it being in Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia, Doctor Who, Star Trek, Percy Jackson, Game of Thrones and every other goddamn fantasy/sci-fi story ever made. So it certainly has no place being forced into this story as well.
#2 in the good: I like how the story really goes places
Much like the diversity being #4 in my positives, this one is funny because many others have criticized this aspect of the series. I've read many negative reviews about how the series jumps from place to place, juxtaposing the fore-Hobbits and Dwarves and everything imaginable into the story instead of focusing on the main story. I disagree; since they're making a series following Middle-Earth in the Second Age, why not take the opportunity to show us what intriguing stuff was going on with the various peoples and cultures of Middle-Earth at that time?
Writers and critics (especially the self-important internet 'critics' who love to pretend like they are experts in storytelling while copy-pasting every smart-sounding complaint they've ever heard to justify why the new Star Wars movies ruined their childhood) these days tend to over-empathize the lack of anything "extra" in the story: everything is supposed to directly relate to the main story and character archs, otherwise it's irrelevant. While I do see this as a dramaturgical point, the thing is that it doesn't compute with the fantasy/adventure genre at all!
In fantasy/adventure, you should absolutely be able to take the story into all sorts of directions as a means of exploring the compelling fantasy world you've created. I swear, if Tolkien had written The Hobbit in 2022, he would've been crucified by the mob of internet critics because many of the cool side adventures don't directly contribute to the main point of the story or the character development. So, while there's a lot that I don't like in The Rings of Power, I'm all for the "let's see what's going on in this part of Middle Earth! Then let's take a look at what these folks are up to!" brand of storytelling, which feels quite thematically loyal to Tolkien's own style of storytelling.
#2 in the bad: Hard to ignore the ethical issues
This one would bother me even if the substance of the series was on a masterpiece-level - and as the series is very much not a masterpiece (did I mention how I fucking hate the storyline of the Elves ordering Galadriel not to investigate Sauron's return? Because I fucking hate it), this becomes one extra reason to be slightly upset by the series as a whole.
For those not familiar with the controversies behind the series, the main one is Amazon itself: while no TV-producing mega-company is morally perfect, Amazon has gained an especially notorious reputation in the last years for the inhumane conditions it subjects its workers to while paying them very little and splashing money on projects like "let's make the Lord of the Rings series a million times more expensive than any TV series needs to be!". This feels personally offensive to Tolkien fans, as the author was extremely skeptical of humanity's abuse of the enviromnent, and the role that money and greed have in our corporation-driven society, which is why it feels painfully ironic that Amazon is producing a series based on Tolkien's works.
Another issue is the fact that the series wasn't shot in New Zealand, which sucks on multiple levels: both the level that the nature of New Zealand looks more like Middle-Earth than any computer-generated CGI imagery ever will, and the level that the Lord of the Rings shooting locations in New Zealand are a point of national pride for New Zealanders, and has been a major financial revenue for the country. The people of New Zealand are rightfully pissed off about the fact that this new Middle-Earth project isn't being shot in their beautiful country, and knowing background facts like this does dampen the viewing experience.
#1 in the good: Moments that make the Tolkien fan in me squeal with excitement
This one is a difficult one to explain, as it has to do with a way in which I seem to differ from most movie/TV fans. Generally, when a book is adapted into a movie or a series, fans of the book seem to be of the opinion that no adaptation at all is a better option than a flawed adaptation: if the movie/series isn't perfect, it shouldn't have been made. My unpopular opinion is a total disagreement with this thesis. Of course, a perfect or near-perfect adaptation is the ideal situation, but let's be real - we hardly ever get that. And if the choice is between an adaptation that is flawed but gets much of the stuff right, or having no adaptation at all, I'll take the flawed adaptation any day of the week.
People seem to think that a flawed adaptation somehow takes away from the original, 'ruining' their favorite book and therefore impacting their relationship to it in a negative way. I've always found this thought process bizarre - the book will still be there, for you to enjoy in all its perfection, but with the adaptation, you also get to see some of your favorite characters and places coming to life on the big screen! And while it may not be equal to the source material, I still see it as something that expands on its greatness, rather than taking away from it. For example, before Denis Villeneuve's Dune came out, I was very grateful of David Lynch's 1984 Dune existing. As chaotic and somewhat poor of a film as it is, it does get many of the book's characters and events right while missing the mark on some, and I easily would've preferred a world where Lynch's Dune is the only existing adaptation of the book than a world with no Dune film. I find it a bit toxic to think that any less-than-perfect adaptation of your favorite books should have no right existing.
And that brings to me why the best thing about Rings of Power, even though it is on many levels a flawed adaptation and not as good as Tolkien's texts deserve, still is the fact that it does get much of the material right if not all of it. I love Tolkien's fantasy world and lore, so even if the series had many elements that I didn't enjoy, I still found a great deal to like in the parts of the story that it nailed. As a Tolkien fan, I found it touching to see the Dwarven Kingdom of Khazad-Dûm in all its glory, I found it intriguing to follow the forebears of the Hobbits wandering around Second-Age Middle-Earth, and I found it absolutely epic to finally see the mythical kingdom of Númenor on the big screen. As much as I was disappointed in the series as a whole, I was still able to enjoy the positives as I don't subscribe to the black-and-white reviewing policy of internet-era fantasy fans, and the biggest positives most definitely were the instances where some of Tolkien's greatest creations came to life.
#1 in the bad: This adaptation of Middle-Earth, while adequate, is absolutely nothing compared to Peter Jackson's
While I can enjoy a flawed adaptation in the things it gets right, that doesn't change the fact that it is just that - flawed. Quite strongly flawed, in this case. With the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, Peter Jackson accomplished the impossible and actually created the big-screen adaptation of Middle-Earth that Tolkien's works deserved - I'm not saying that the films are as good as the books (are they ever, really?), but that they live up to them, which is a majestic feat.
And having seen that version of Middle-Earth, with its unique characteristics and vibrant milieus, you can't help but feel a bit empty when watching Amazon's version - an even higher budget and more massive production scale, yet much, much less magic and personality in what the world looks and feels like. Comparing Jackson's adaptation of Tolkien's fantasy world to this one is like comparing Appetite For Destruction to Chinese Democracy, Liverpool FC to Manchester City, or a home-cooked meal by your mother to the version you can buy from the goddamn grocery store.
Thank you for reading! Tune in next week for my list of the greatest Halloween-themed episodes from television shows.
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