There are rings of power.
The creators of Amazon's The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power know how to create spectacle, but they don't know how to tell a good story
It is written on the wall. Good fan-fiction could have won me over. I would have been happy if they had simply made an enjoyable story with characters I cared about.
The Rings of Power is so bad that it defies my worst fears. I was very impressed by the first two episodes. A badly written TV series can wear out its welcome in a hurry.
All that glitters is not gold, according to the old aphorism, which was flipped on its head by the author of the novel.
The Rings of Power knows how to glitter. It knows how to film elves jumping through the trees on horses. It gets the statues of ancient elven kings. It has a sweeping score that is lovely to listen to, but is also a little too melodramatic. This is a show that gets the attention it deserves.
The problem is more than one thing.
Galadriel's journey in Nmenor is just embarrassing. The elven version of a steamroller was how she arrived there after being rescued. From the moment Galadriel enters the door, the queen regent demands to see the king and then asks for an army.
Miriel has to get her to stop by locking her up and then taking her away from the elves. She takes her people back and commits them to a war in a strange land. Everything happening in Nmenor is just a way to get to the next part of the story. The plot should be moved forward regardless of how many characters are killed. The Black Speech spy note is one of the great examples of shoddy writing in this show.
The creators of Rings Of Power make everyone argue with each other all the time. All anyone seems to do is argue, whether it is Elrond and Durin, Nori or Galadriel.
The people Galadriel wants to save are evil and stupid, and some of them are ready to help Sauron. We are supposed to care about Galadriel trying to save them from the enemy.
The story of Elrond and Durin and Durin's wife Disa is spinning differently than everything else. If the rest of the show were willing to take its time, that would work well. I don't mind that the show is slow. A show that did a good job at developing its characters would be perfect. The show is too long and rushed at the same time.
The Harfoots have been written into a weird corner. The little folk chant "No one walks alone!" while leaving their elderly and sick behind to die.
The new bad guy is Adar. Initially, I was excited about him. He was a bad guy until he let Arondir go and deliver a message to the humans.
The writers couldn't come up with a better way to get Arondir out of there. You were trying to create tension.
We have something. There are a lot of big, dramatic moments. Arondir is set free, rescues Theo just in the nick of time, and then they run through the woods and escape dozens of orcs because they shoot blasters and arrows at each other. At this point, we should rememberBoromir. There are a lot of things that are related to the Jackson trilogy. There were a lot of reminders that those movies were better.
There isn't anything earned in The Rings of Power. The emotional and epic are not related. Writers want those things to happen. There is something happening and something else happening. There are no consequences, no hard spots to get out of, just a string of events.
Galadriel got her army by being a jerk for a few days. We are going to fight. We don't care Arondir is back and his tidings are very bad. We don't care.
Bad writing is what this is. It was a bad characterisation. Dialogue is choppy. We dislike characters who don't make sense and don't like each other as much as we dislike them. The Galadriel storyline felt forced and contrived.
I want to imagine how they came up with this story of all the stories they could tell. They had carte blanche to make whatever Middle-earth fable they wanted and they give us this cobbled together nonsense with a cast of characters we can barely stand.
I don't know what to think. I don't I was willing to suspend my disbelief and treat the show like a fan-fiction piece because I wanted to like it. This doesn't feel expensive.
I was excited to watch this show with my children. I don't think I'll bother That verdict is pretty damning.
We will keep watching Locke & Key and waiting for the next two seasons of The Dragon Prince. There is always a way to get us to watch The Lord of the Rings. Andor is close by. There are a lot of good things to watch right now. I will keep watching so I can review.
Nori, that's right.
Bad writing can't be saved by money. There will never be enough spectacle to paper over a bad script.
The Rings of Power doesn't have a sense of adventure.
There is a thought here.
The show should have started small. Picked one or two and planted them and gave them time to grow.
This small group of characters will give us a reason to care about and root for them.
Put those characters into tight spots that create tension, give them tough choices that are as painful for us to watch as they are for the characters to make, and move the story along through organic character motives and interactions that make sense and unfold naturally.
Instead of rushing at it all at once, slowly build towards the epic, era-spanning, globetrotting, world-changing stuff.
One has to leave the Shire first and trek to Rivendell, listen to elves sing, and see beauty and peril, and over the course of it all, one grows and changes. The adventure is in the heart as much as it is along the winding roads and crooked vales.
Tell a good story first. Let the story go into your fantasy. Not in the other direction.
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