How 'The Rings of Power' Turned it Around
The First Season was meh. The Second Season Exceeded Expectations-- in fact, it was better than House of the Dragon this year.
I disliked the first season of “The Rings of Power.” I disliked it a lot.
Jeff Bezos’ billion dollar Tolkein-ish project generally looked fantastic visually; the CGI was outstanding, the grandeur was epic and the scale unlike anything ever put on television before. They just forgot one major thing; a story worth telling.
Much of the hullabaloo others said about the show I quickly discarded as stupid.
The more adamant Tolkein fanboys cried it didn’t align perfectly with what was written in Tolkien’s (worst) novel. To that I say “So What?” George R.R. Martin hit on a great way to balance the differences between his written works and shows by intentionally including ambiguity and space for discrepencies to exist; the stories are told by people, with flaws, intentions and biases who have cause for changing and controlling the narrative. Subtleties, discrepencies with the source material and continuity issues are not a reason not to like something.
An online bruhaha erupted over the casting of characters as POC. The purists cried about how Tolkien was ruined (really? does everyone in a fantasy world HAVE to be white and boring?) while the others called out the uproar as racist (it was, but it also wasn’t helpful to telling the story either). I didn’t have an issue with the casting but did find some of it a little distracting. House of the Dragon used the ethnic makeup much better because in that show there was a point to the POC casting (even when the characers were not written as such), making it clear to the world and the viewers the level of bastardy in the line of succession.1 In Rings of Power, it seems to have been done more randomly, just for the sake of it. I appreciate what they were trying to do but it did make some of the initial introductory scenes kind of jarring and clunky. Nonetheless, after the first time seeing these characters, that awkwardness goes away. Even then, the racial makeup of fantasy characters is not a reason not to like a fantasy story. The actors all did fine with what they were given.
No, what made the show bad was something much more basic; it was boring and the plot was practically non-existent.
It meandered from the north, to Valinor, to Numenor, to the Southlands, to…
Some unknown tall strange guy wandered around with some Hobbit-esque people with no real purpose. All they do is walk around and get in trouble.
There were Orcs digging a ditch for some reason. 2
It spent more time trying to be clever and hide from the audience key plot points. That didn’t build suspense, it made the audience simply not care.
Every person we meet, particularly those in power, are incredible bores.
There were practically zero stakes involved. There were people doing things but there wasn’t really any good vrs. evil, right vrs. wrong aspects to any of it. It was all just extrapolations of Middle Earth politics, which was as mind numbingly dull watching as it was as my typing it out right now.
They went from one end of Middle Earth to the other in half an episode, which makes watching the traveling in the Lord of the Rings movies feel like it could have been condensed to maybe 2 hours. On top of it, the reason was to go to war for a guy to reclaim an area of land, which even by those who assumed he was earnest, his only claim to it was through a name and an insignia of sorts. It wasn’t like anyone remembered him or even wanted him as their king.
And then finally, after most of the season not mentioning anything related to rings or reason or anything, in the very last half hour of the last episode, almost as an afterthought, it’s said they have to create three rings to save a tree. Yup. You read that right. Cue eyeroll.
Hopefully, you can see what I am saying here. I didn’t like it because the plot was weak and dumb. It was painfully bad. The characters were lame. There was no forward momentum of the plot. It had no reason for anyone to go out of their way and waste their time watching it.
There WAS however, a really great reveal in the very last episode, not just in what it was but how it was done. A character of the story was revealed to have been Sauron, the evil baddie of the Tolkien universe, hiding in plain sight the whole time. It was particularly noteworthy because through the whole first season HE was dull and boring, and then in the last episode, they made him interesting for the first time the whole season. Now, there’s something to be said about twists; sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t. This twist was well done, but seemed like a lot to swallow, like the writers just kind of jerked us around for the whole season.
So when The Rings of Power Season 2 came out, I wasn’t excited to watch any of it. I was just going to let it pass without thought. It had some threads out there that could become interesting, but I was, for the most part, giving up on it. Then a strange thing happened; out of boredom and flipping through channels, desperate to find ANYTHING to kill time to watch, I thought I would give season 2 a chance. I was so glad I did.
From the start, it was considerably better. Every choice and action had some stakes involved and a reason to care about the outcomes. The characters were more starkly drawn and for the first time in this, there was a plot worth following.
The frustrating things that slowed the plot down were minimized. We saw less of the Harfoots and “the stranger,” we spent less time in Numenor dealing with their byzantine political machinations.
Sauron, either directly or indirectly, towers over every scene. His malevolence provides an undercurrent to the whole show. Played perfectly this season by Charlie Vickers, he commands every scene he’s in and just a smirk or simple hand gesture carries with it huge weight and implications. Even when he’s not on screen, you can see and feel the effects of his presence.
They shifted the main point of view from a naive Galadriel, and changed it to the relationship between Sauron (appearing to the world as Annatar, Lord of Gifts) and master ringmaker, Celebrimbor (who Sauron deliciously glosses as “The Lord of the Rings”). The decline of the relationship demonstrates a spectrum of villainy and corruption. At first, it manifests as blatant appeals to Celebrimbor’s vanity. Then, it’s to his morals and sense of propriety. Finally, when the veneer has all faded away, he’s ostracized and enslaved. I looked forward to every scene between these two great characters.
They introduced some interesting characters but didn’t dwell very long on them. The stranger met Tom Bombadil, who most Tolkien fans kind of admire. There was a scene also with an evil wizard we have yet to figure out. In both cases, they are introduced, have some interetsting interactions and screen time, but they aren’t focused on too much. Seeds for future interest.
They made the dwarves much more interesting. By giving them a set of corrupted rings, we see the mindset and corruptive influences these have on the minds of those who wear them. It’s watching both the real time decline of Khazad-Dum and a harbinger of worse and far more evil things to come.
For the first time in the Tokien-iverse, they gave Orcs their own agency. They’re not mindless villains waiting to die like redshirts on Star Trek. The leader Adar, is a particularly interesting character who understands what is at stake, even if the other Orcs do not. There’s reason and purpose in what they do and why.
The penultimate episode aired last week, a huge battle sequence where the season’s separate threads all seemed to converge together. The battle itself was typical and strategically non-sensical, but the interactions between the characters and what transpired during it was top notch storytelling. We are finally seeing The Rings of Power go in the direction it needs to.
In an odd way, I find myself cheering for Sauron, the villain. The more the focus is on him and the evil deeds he does, the more interesting this story gets. As he gets stronger, so does the story. In an almost inverse of Paradise Lost, where we are introduced to Satan at his most heroic and epic and over the course of the story see him decline in size and stature, we were introduced to Sauron at his weakest, and witness his rise, which should culminate with the last great battle where Isildur cuts off the hand of Sauron separating him from the One Ring. A year ago, I wouldn’t care to watch how that transpired. Now, I’m on the edge of my seat anticipating it. (The final episode of the season airs on Amazon Prime, Thursday streaming).
PurpleAmerica’s Recommended Stories
I’m not a Tolkien fanboy by any means, but the stories are actually pretty good. I was first introduced to The Hobbit by the old TSR cartoon, but I read the book when I was in 5th-6th grade, roughly a chapter or two a day. I always loved it until Smaug died and then from there the story waned. Still, if you have a young boy, getting them engaged in reading is a huge thing, and there’s not a lot out there for young boys to read (trust me, having a young boy myself, he’s always complaining about nothing interesting).
The Lord of the Rings books were a little more advanced. For starters, they’re longer, and spread out over three books (you may remember the three separate movies that were made; with the exception of a few differences, they largely correlate to the books). They also deal with themes that are a little more darker and complex than what are contained in the Hobbit. There are a lot of reasons people (particularly young boys) love the series. The movies are excellent as well (The Return of the King, the last of the three released, won the most Oscars of any film, tied with All About Eve and Titanic; it really is a recognition of what was done across all three of the films, deservedly so).
The Simarillon is a mythology about the whole of Middle Earth that Tolkien tried to tell. It’s not always great reading and I didn’t care for it much. Some love it and worship it, others kind of dismiss it as overkill. Much of the details of Rings of Power are drawn from here, but there are liberties taken with the show that adherents to this book find frustrating and annoying.
PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Fact of the Day
PurpleAmerica’s Final Word on the Subject
Everytime I hear a particular word, I kind of cringe. Not out of some hatred for the meaning or anything like that. No, it’s actually out of memory, because whenever I hear it, I think of this scene….you know the word….
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Footnotes and Fun Stuff
And for those of you who take offense, perhaps not having seen House of the Dragon, at thinking me saying “by pointing out the bastardy in the line of succession” was racist, well let me explain that Queen Rhaenyra’s arranged marriage is with a man who is half-black (even though there is nothing in George R.R. Martin’s books indicating what I am writing here). All the members of his father’s side are black, with white hair signifying their Valyrian heritage. So it is OBVIOUS to everyone at court and otherwise (and made very obvious to viewers of the show) that when she delivers sons who are VERY WHITE with BROWN hair, they are clearly not of her husband’s line. This is a key plot point, as it is a major driver of the ruling family going to civil war. Though the sons are raised as legitimate heirs, they are clearly bastards, and those noble families who dislike Rhaenyra’s claim to the throne use the eventual succession as a factor in opposing her.
Eventually explained. In fact, the purpose of the ditch resulted in one of the best moments for the first season.