SERIES REVIEW: The Lord of the Rings - The Rings of Power (episode 1) (2022)
As a great lover of fantasy, do you ever feel like you’ve been completely ripped off? Not all geeks feel this way surely, for the sci-fi lovers of the world have, among others, Firefly and Battlestar Galactica to name a few, which were very solid shows more or less throughout. However, fantasy-lovers are like wanderers dying of fantasy-show-thirst in the desert, with so few good shows to watch and all the time in the world to consume media, yet we are stuck with - let’s face it - total crap like Legend of the Seeker (which was only good for the first episode that followed the books) or Sword of Shannara (which is just a, frankly, old and generic story at this point and was hardly done any justice even if I had been a fan of the books). Thus, you can imagine everyone’s collective enthusiasm when Game of Thrones came out! Finally, there was a show that was gritty and realistic and utterly fantastic… well, for six or so seasons until they ran out of material and patience for their own project. Yes, that’s right, fantasy lovers are truly parched and desperate for anything that resembles a good series from start to finish.
Naturally then, we were all very excited when Amazon Prime’s Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power was announced. Big budget, Bear Mcreary doing music… seemed like a good idea, apart from the whole, you know, being made by a huge, disgusting corporation. Well, it seems that huge, disgusting corporation has truly no idea how to find anyone who can write a story or characters worth a damn. Yes, that’s right, I’m fully on team “Rings of Power was absolute crap.” Don’t get me wrong, the music and scenery were fantastic, but as for the rest of it? Pretty terrible, if you ask me.
[spoilers from the first episode starting here]
Admittedly, I was told that the show is “pretty okay” and “an absolute travesty” before I started watching it, so I decided to go into it with an open mind and hope for the best. Immediately, however, I started to hate what was happening. The viewer is introduced to Galadriel, who we all know from the movies to be beautiful, strong, benevolent, corruptable, but self-aware and wise. They try to force their audience to think Galadriel is sympathetic because she was bullied by a child. Yes, first things first, we see her making a boat that is too good for what kids can handle, while aggressive children throw rocks and insult her. We are expected to believe that elf children are just as obnoxious and stupid as human children, which I find… weird and unrealistic. I could see elves bullying each other through passive aggression and snobbiness, but active aggression and throwing rocks? No, that seems like a stretch.
Then, we are introduced to her brother and her one and only reason for living, apparently. There’s no parents or other siblings or friends to ever have an effect on her life, just this one brother, who gives her an absolutely ludicrous metaphor about why rocks sink and ships don’t—which sounds like the insane ramblings of someone who’s been mixing too many drugs together—before giving some secret advice that the viewers can’t hear.
We then get a flashback with some history about Middle Earth and the battles therein that, frankly, isn’t very interesting and the action scenes aren’t very compelling, while at the same time, the visuals are melodramatically artistic but make no sense: we see Galadriel walking through a field of the death in the same (albeit up-scaled to size) outfit that she wore as a child. It’s a generally baffling scene where we found ourselves thinking “why is she there, why is she in that completely impractical outfit on a post-war battlefield, and why is she just holding that and looking wistful? Also, who skinned all those heads and left them separate in a big pile?” As I said, the visuals make zero sense.
The next bit of nonsense is seeing a dramatic climbing of the The Wall in the North… wait, sorry, wrong series. Nevertheless, we see elves—I repeat, elves—using really basic human tools to try to climb a wall of ice next to an active waterfall, which just made me think… aren’t elves strong and nimble and great craftsmen? One would think they could probably jump a good amount of this distance and would also probably have some really quality ropes and gear to use, but Galadriel is far too badass to need such things to reach her goal, I guess. Better do it the hard way.
Also… what is her goal? She just seems to be searching the far reaches of the world and demanding to go farther, hoping to find Sauron somewhere, but she’s just… looking for symbols that might be somewhere but whose meaning she doesn’t even understand? There’s no plan on how to find Sauron, nor is there logic or sense to her constant forcing of people to follow her whims, when it seems as though she doesn’t even have a basic plan beyond “go further than anyone else into unlivable places.” She remains completely unsympathetic as a character as she - with her glorious, god-like strength - can go on regardless of weather or availability of food and water or pretty much anything, wanting to leave anyone behind who can’t keep up. It makes you wonder why she has a team with her at all, for how necessary they are to her. Furthermore, we’re also expected to think that she doesn’t grow as a person, forge new connections or relationships with other people, nor does she in any way overcome her grief of losing her brother after CENTURIES. Whatever happened to time healing all wounds? Elves are timeless, which is supposed to be why they’re so chill and zen about most things, so unbothered. Is she really an elf? Perhaps Galadriel was Sauron the whole time! Le twiste!
One more thing… when in such a frozen and evil place that nothing lives and no warmth can be found, how do ice trolls live and what do they feed on? More nonsense without logic.
We then meet the Harfoots, who are all backwards sociopaths, but never mind that for now. We meet Elrond, who is relatively likeable apart from his horrendous hairstyle (seriously, was it so hard to just let elves have long hair, like in the lore? Why do half of them look like they’re trying to be Patrick Swayze in the ‘90s?), only for him to ask Galadriel to tell him about her journey and she responds with one of the truly cuntiest lines I’ve ever heard in anything, calling him a politician who’s trying to placate her with pretty words. Yeah, the one person in the world who seems to like her (though we don’t in any way understand why) just gets the same emasculating shit from her as everyone else.
Jump back over to the Harfoots, where we learn that Elanor Brandyfoot aka Frodo… wait, sorry… Nori has an adventurous spirit and wants to know more of what the wild world has to offer. This is all fine and dandy, except for the fact that their culture (not necessarily just in this first episode) is rather quickly portrayed as very nomadic, which—to me—would suggest that the Harfoots are likely to see far more of the world than Men, per se, and you’d think after regular seasonal migrations that Nori would have actually seen quite a lot of the world, especially considering how much distance they seem to cover in their migration. They also have a nice mantra wherein they state that nobody strays from the path and nobody gets left behind… unless you make a mistake of any sort, in which case, fuck you, we leave you behind.
We then meet a town of Men briefly, where we find out that they hate elves, despite the fact that there are few elves really around and they don’t seem to do much other than check in that everything is okay and keep an eye on things. Bronwyn and Arondir are likeable enough, though their story arc is completely rushed at this point, without enough scene setting to get us particularly invested in them. They have a clear romantic tension that is actually one of pleasantly few romances in the show, but it would have benefited from more… foundation?
Then, we finally return to Galadriel on a ship that will return her to Valinor and truly everything about this scene is upsetting. Firstly, the beginning of the show immediately states that the distance between Valinor and Middle Earth is many thousands of miles, but they are portrayed as standing in full dramatic ceremonial armor on a very small boat that has no wheel, rudder, sails, or crew. The warriors are weirdly (and if I may say, uncomfortably) undressed by strange veiled (elf?) women… why are those people getting to go to Valinor? Are there servants who just randomly get banished to heaven whenever anyone else is sent back? Actually, you know what, after they creepily undress people, they sort of just vanish off the boat. What’s that all about? Then, the uncomfortable undressing results in the armor just being tossed aside on the deck… why couldn’t they undress themselves? Why were those elves on deck at all? Better yet, why not wear whatever they want, considering this is probably a several-month journey? Then, as pure-light-Jesus appears, Galadriel has second thoughts and decides to just… swim back to Middle Earth, again, some thousands of miles back, with no plan or rhyme or reason. I swear I was fully convinced that the show would cut, next episode, to her just back in Middle Earth, having swam the whole way.
[end spoilers]
So yeah, that’s my take on the first episode, and the whole show that follows doesn’t really do any better. The music is fantastic, the visuals are pretty spectacular, but the characters are pretty weak and the story is riddled with plot holes and loose ends, while much of the story is driven forward by random moments of deus ex machina. Frankly, it’s a complete travesty of storytelling.
But… this is what we’re used to, right? Good fantasy simply isn’t for us. We’re not allowed to have deep characters with meaningful development and strong story arcs. We’re not allowed to dip into the existing lore and use it to create something magical and wonderful and special. Nah, let’s just let men try to write strong women, who are always just mannish and assholey, rather than allowing women to write their own. This show is just so problematic on so many levels, I could write an essay on every episode. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time or energy for that, so I will leave you with a few of my favorite sarcastic YouTube videos about the show, for your amusement.
Seriously, Amazon… pull your heads out of your asses. Do better next season. Because you all know that we’re going to watch it anyways. We need it.
