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Review: The War of the Rohirrim

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Roughly half of The War of the Rohirrim‘s best decisions surface in its first scene. The opening gorgeously pans from a map of Middle-earth to its 3D details to a photorealistic shot of the Misty Mountains before being disrupted by a majestic eastle. The appearance of Héra establishes Shieldmaiden of Rohan as a tradition rather than a one-off title, permitting Éowyn (whose reprisal by Mirando Otto is immensely welcome) to belong to a larger history. Éowyn’s voiceover narration establishing that no songs have been written about Héra both builds a tragedy into her story and provides a hefty critique of Tolkien, who only identifies the character as “Helm’s daughter” in Appendix A.

The War of the Rohirrim establishes itself as a minor tale in the Legendarium, a trend Tolkien pioneered long before every attenuated nerd franchise latched onto it. And The War of the Rohirrim somewhat effectively utilizes the ambiguities of the three-page story from The Lord of the Rings by focusing on an unnamed character who’s tragically permitted to fall out of history. The Lord of the Rings, with Tolkien’s use of deliberate gaps and ambiguity in the historical record, is suited to the Rogue One approach. With Rohan, a crucial but less chartered territory of Middle-earth, that approach is a solidly logical idea.

Sadly, probably less than half of The War of the Rohirrim serves that end half as well as it deserves. The characters, while well-portrayed by their voice actors, are reducible to a handful of traits that rarely break out of two-dimensionality. Héra is Éowyn minus the everything, Helm’s mournful relationship with patrilineality is woefully underdeveloped, and Wulf is little more than a reactive revenge monster. At two hours and 14 minutes, The War of the Rohirrim has plenty of time to take its characters to interesting places. Instead we really needed to faff about with a Watcher in the Water eating a mûmak in Fangorn.

There are solid moments of pathos — a couple of character deaths bring some genuinely fantastic imagery. And a second act subplot featuring Helm leads the movie on a fun (if sadly aborted) detour into the numinous. But on the whole, this feels more like an elevated animated Superman movie than a worthy entry in the Legendarium. The hobbits’ description of Helm’s Deep’s founding in The Red Book of Westmarch probably packed more of a punch.

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Review: Eldest

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A week ago, I would have expected much worse from The Rings of Power than “slight structural mess.” I’m shocked the show has graduated to “collection of good scenes with some real gems in the mix.” If last week’s episode was an unexpected step in the right direction, “Eldest” stumbles off the trail a little bit before more or less getting back on track. I’m still not optimistic for the season finale, but seeing The Rings of Power embrace quality even for a minute is pretty unexpected.

After “The Eagle and the Sceptre” spent its runtime exploring how power changes families, “Eldest” goes smaller, focusing on the development of Tolkien’s characters before they became legends. The episode puts its characters in early chapters of The Fellowship of the Ring, essentially turning them into fantasy protagonists embarking on a quest. The strongest scenes are the ones with The Stranger and Tom Bombadil (and having Rory Kinnear play this role so soon after Men is funny). Letting not-Gandalf be a confused Istar in a post-regenerative haze figure out his purpose works better when Bombadil is leaning over his shoulder, instead of a couple of hobbits constantly asking “who is the Stranger?” Bombadil could easily be fanservice, especially in this show, but here he serves a thematic purpose, as the “Eldest” who shows not-Gandalf the nature of names and substance (“Who are you?” “Don’t you know my name yet? That’s the only answer”). It’s a nice little rebuke to this show’s exhausting tendency towards guessing games about a character’s identity – or at least a redirection. We’re graduating from JJ Abramsesque puzzle boxes to Steven Moffat-ish games.

Sadly, there’s still fanservice. Galadriel and Elrond’s encounter with the Barrow-wights adds fuck all to the episode, doing little other than extending the runtime and homaging one of the least interesting chapters of The Lord of the Rings. The whole sequence fucks the episode’s pacing. While things are finally starting to happen in this show, fewer things are happening this week than last. That would be fine, but four episodes into an eight-episode season, it constitutes a massive pacing problem.

There are other nice bits. Galadriel talking about her experience of Nenya actually lets us understand what the Three Rings do. The encounter with the Stoors is funny, and shows that tyrannical matriarchs are a hereditary problem in their tribe long before Sméagol’s grandmother comes along. And it’s always good to see some Ents. This episode isn’t great, but I’m shocked it doesn’t suck either.…

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Review: Elven Kings Under the Sky

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Sauron

J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay have learned nothing in the 685 days since the first season finale of The Rings of Power aired.

20 minutes into the 77-minute long premiere of Season 2, there’s nothing resembling a dramatic hook, no explanation of why we should be excited about a season of The Rings of Power, nothing resembling an argument for why The Lord of the Rings matters in 2024. We just get a lengthy flashback of Sauron making his way towards the events of last season. There’s no drama, no cutting aesthetics, no beauty that pierces like a sword or burns like cold iron.

Payne and McKay have completed the Marvelization of The Lord of the Rings. In 2024, The Lord of the Rings matters because it’s an established IP, and established IPs are exciting. Amazon wants you to be invested in this show because sometimes it’s recognizable, even if it takes great pains to avoid emulating the most visually appealing parts of the Peter Jackson movies. Nothing has tarnished Tolkien’s legacy quite like The Rings of Power since Peter Thiel or Camp Hobbit. But as long as Amazon can keeping profiting off Kiwis in a post-pandemic world, that’s probably fine.

Beyond that, I guess there are a few meaninglessly positive things you can say about this piece of shit. “Elven Kings Under the Sky” is the show’s best episode to date. At 77 minutes, it’s a slog where nothing happens, and it’s still failing to bring any of its plot threads together, but hey, McKay and Payne let Gennifer Hutchison write an episode, and she actually has a sense of drama, character, plot structure, and theme, not to mention any prior writing experience. The fact the showrunners only wrote the last two episodes of this season doesn’t exactly give you the idea they have any confidence in themselves, but hey, we got an actual writer this time around.

And for a minute, this pays off. The flashback section of the episode that explores Sauron’s past, while failing to make much sense at all (Sauron got killed by his minions, turned into Venom, and shapeshifted after eating an old woman?), at least gives the sense that Hutchison has read Tolkien. The coronation-turned-assassination, where the recast Adar (oh god) flips Sauron’s crown upside down to stab him, is the first compelling beat of visual storytelling this show has done, and feels like it could actually have come out of Tolkien. You can’t see it, because this show can’t do lighting worth a fuck, but there’s a compelling moment here amidst the intangible sludge.

Otherwise, I guess we’re just dealing with more of the same joyless, disconnected, boring gruel we got served two goddamn years ago. Sauron continues to lack any character, Galadriel is an insipid Éowyn remix, Elrond continues to be absolutely nothing whatsoever, and not-yet-Gandalf is still not yet Gandalf. The episode ends without any sense shit has actually happened. And despite the $9 trillion budget, this still looks like The CW produced that miniseries The Bible.…

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The Rings of Power: Partings Review

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“Partings” is The Rings of Power settling into a status quo. Characters in different locations face down interlocked threats, all of them vaguely pointing to Sauron, while their interpersonal relationships are threatened by Sauron’s return. Some subplots, like Durin and Elrond’s relationship, work quite well, while Arondir and Bronwyn fail to go anywhere. In short, we now know what an average Rings of Power episode looks like.

To give this show its minor due, we must concede the show has gotten stronger in its theming. It draws parallels between its sundry plots, indicated by titles like “Partings.” The Rings of Power has paired up a number of characters who seem to be working towards the Last Alliance of Men and Elves, or at least paving the way for the Second Age’s world. Elrond and Durin’s plot, which while contrived (all elves’ fates rely on Durin? Really?), uses mythology as a roadblock to character’s healthy relationships. Elrond’s devotion to his oath while Celebrimbor bullies him (and will probably close out Season 1 by crafting the titular Rings) is genuinely affecting, and works to give Elrond a character beyond “look at this guy you liked in the early 2000s.”

Galadriel and Míriel get a fair piece of the action too, guiding Númenor towards the Last Alliance of Men and Elves. Having women determine this part of the mythology is genuinely valuable, and admittedly even undermines Tolkien’s patriarchy ever so slightly. Turning Galadriel into simply a hot girl who swings swords good undermines this somewhat, but admittedly, this show is running so low on pleasures that I’ll take “hot sword lady.”

Not all of it works. Arondir and Bronwyn are still flipping a big nothing burger. Isildur’s character lacks content outside of “will be important later,” amounting to little more than a failson rather than the tragic failed hero he really should be. Nori and not-yet-Gandalf are… perfectly fine, if hardly moving forward. The moment where not-yet-Gandalf pieces together language while adjusting to his new body is one of the show’s better moments so far.

As ever, the politics are insidious. This isn’t an artistic problem in itself — if it were, I wouldn’t be a D-list Tolkien scholar. But this show’s approach of “women take charge while men stumble in pursuit of their destiny” still validates a “women need to do the hard work approach.” And the valorization of high birth lionizes an upward mobility mindset that’s absolutely revolting to come out of Amazon.

This show hates commoners and poor people. Only those who align themselves with power or come from noble birth are moral people. This isn’t Tolkien, it’s Amazon with pointy ears. 

Which is to say this is one of the stronger episodes so far, and sees The Rings of Power becoming slightly less awful.

1. The Great Wave

2. Adrift

3. Partings

4. A Shadow of the Past

5. Adar…

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The Rings of Power: The Great Wave Review

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After the crescendoing disaster of “Adar,” The Rings of Power vaguely rights itself with this week’s “The Great Wave.” This episode actually had some themes, and a plot structure, and even a sense of momentum propelled by character moments. I’m vaguely shocked to report this after declaring The Rings of Power the worst TV show I’ve ever seen. The show’s inherent shortcomings are on full display, but “The Great Wave” shockingly takes advantage of its limits rather than surrendering to them like “The Shadow of the Past” or exacerbating them like “Adar.”

“The Great Wave’s” primary success is actually its plot structure. While some previous episodes were inhibited by the cast being separated by geography (and, to be honest, by a lack of drama or any connection between A, B, and C plots), this week’s episode deftly maneuvers between its myriad plots. The episode sagely pairs up characters in separate geographic locations, not unlike The Wire or Game of Thrones (though that’s not say it rivals even the intensely flawed Game of Thrones in quality, despite Bryan Colman’s fleeting presence). Galadriel and Míriel work out their problems in Númenor, Elrond and Durin rekindle their friendship in Moria, while Bronwyn and Theo… well, they do something, I guess.

This is genuinely hard to do. Having a geographically separated ensemble is often a recipe for disaster which even Tolkien only narrowly pulled off. It increasingly hampers George R. R. Martin, whose influence weighs heavily on The Rings of Power. The show has already botched the formula at least twice, although it partly circumnavigates the problem this week by altogether leaving the Harfoots out (thank Yavanna). Last week’s hour felt like a slog, while this one has a clear plot direction moving forward.

In “The Great Wave,” the show finally feels like it’s working towards something. The introductions of mithril and palantíri are irritating in how they expect the audience to care about them simply because they’re vital Rings lore, but they’re steps towards a larger project. Galadriel and Míriel are slowly founding the Last Alliance of Men and Elves in the face of Númenor’s destruction, while the Eregion-Moria plot is a well-paced tragicomedy where Elrond and Durin’s friendship is subject to history. Characters are trapped by their ancestor’s machinations, a thematic concern of Tolkien’s that the show finally seems aware of.

Indeed, theming is strong this week too. The protagonists are slowly drifting away from their people in the face of apocalypse. Númenor, Moria, and Eregion’s doom is a given, so the characters are tasked with surviving the apocalypse. This is a deft way to handle Tolkien’s themes in 2022, when the seas are boiling and the ice caps are melting. Míriel’s apocalyptic visions are powerful and feel more like The Lord of the Rings than much this show has done so far. In spots, the lore even becomes a machine for character drama, something I never expected The Rings of Power to do.

The show’s problems are still present, of course.…

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The Rings of Power: Adar Review

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In its second week, The Rings of Power seems to settle into whatever flavor of awful it’s fucked to be. It’s a 69-minute slog that infuriatingly avoids being “nice,” dragging along on the assumption that elves and hobbits are inherently dramatically compelling, and accidentally breaking into three-minute spurts of interesting stuff. Wherever this is going, it highlights Tolkien’s flaws and manages to make them worse. “Adar” is probably marginally more competent television than “A Shadow of the Past,” but it is sinfully ugly, and possibly the single most unpleasant episode of television I’ve ever seen.

Seriously, did this need to be over an hour long? And what is the point of it? Nori and her family are slightly-but-not-totally estranged from the Harfoots, non-Ian McKellen has said a couple words, Arondir begins and ends the episode in an orc prison camp (of which more below), Elendil and his family are introduced and apparently matter because fans will recognize them, and Galadriel and Halbrand… make some babysteps towards a plot, so minimal kudos there. But on the whole, this episode is aggressively pointless and lacking in events. Even its title character, who is mentioned once and appears at the end, has no role whatsoever in the episode. I repeat my mother’s question: who the actual fuck is this for?

I can hardly claim to be a typical Middle-earth fan. No such person would write something as absurd and eccentric as Nowhere and Back Again. But when The Rings of Power puts Númenor and Ar-Pharazôn onscreen, and even I, who knows their significance in Middle-earth, am bored shitless, something has gone very wrong. There are moments of promise: Lloyd Owen brings a tragic, kindly gravitas to Elendil, and Númenor’s immediate moral ambiguity avoids traps this show might easily have fallen into. But the whole enterprise is so drab to look at (Alan Lee’s absence is glaring) and its realization of Númenor’s problems are downright malicious. Númenor isn’t bad because it’s an avaricious ethno-state: it’s bad because its working class is a bunch of murderous thugs, leading to a grotesque out-of-place mugging scene where Halbrand, almost the show’s most interesting character, graphically maims and kills several people. It’s appallingly, unwatchably bad, and cruel for no conceivable aesthetic reason.

Halbrand is particularly infuriating here. Starting out as a vagabond who saves Galadriel’s life out of pity for a stranger, his presence as a homeless descendant of Morgoth’s followers almost makes him a break from the Hobbit/Dúnedan/Sinda mold Middle-earth keeps clinging to. For a little while, Halbrand is a counterweight to Galadriel, a normal personal who’s compelling for his interiority rather than anything mythological significance. And then, quelle surprise, Galadriel figures out that Halbrand is a pseudo-Aragorn lost king. This show can’t even rip off Peter Jackson right.

Where do you go with this? Everyone onscreen is stumbling around in boots they have no reasonable chance of filling. Morfydd Clark remains the show’s best paltry hope by merit of doing things Cate Blanchett wouldn’t have done.…

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The Rings of Power: The Shadow of the Past & Adrift Review

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There are margins of error for how bad Jeff Bezos’ The Silmarillion could be. Those margins widen when you factor in the two unknown Mormon showrunners from McLean, Virginia, the most corrupt city in Northern Virginia. The Rings of Power is further hampered by its need to recall the audience’s memories of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings while satisfying the Tolkien Estate by keeping the show self-contained. And then there’s the fact that Amazon essentially bankrupted its corporate client state New Zealand to produce this show. Everything about The Rings of Power’s conception is self-evidently evil. The question is what it does with that evil.

Remarkably, The Rings of Power just about keeps its damning circumstances at bay, if not quite escaping them. It broadly understands the assignment: do the Second Age for TV while connecting it to The Lord of the Rings. As a prequel, the show is a mixed success, utilizing recognizable iconography while broaching mythological ideas that Jackson’s (in my opinion, justifiably) protracted films lacked space for. It preserves The Silmarillion’s sense of the sublime and takes advantage of the Second Age’s relatively sparse material by filling in blank spaces. The series works to reconcile Jackson’s aesthetics with Tolkien’s mythology, trying to stay on the right side of everyone involved.

The problem is that this appears to be The Rings of Power’s main occupation. It studiously accomplishes the bare minimum, throwing hobbits and elves at the audience with a mild semblance of plot structure and nebulous sense of theming. Its desperation to recall the Jackson movies reminds me of The Force Awakens, but without that movie’s clarity of purpose. The first episode, “The Shadow of the Past,” hops from setpiece to setpiece, throwing Galadriel fighting a cave troll Legolas-style and then quaint little “Oirish” hobbits bantering about food and adventures with hardly a coherent theme to be found. It slogs its way through sixty minutes with a weirdly loose hand on tone, trying to open with a mythological prologue that awkwardly segues into Galadriel’s childhood bullying.

“The Shadow of the Past” is weirdly unable to grasp how to portray its characters, presenting them as tropes and icons before wrestling with any kind of interiority. Elrond (whose portrayal by young Ned Stark is a steep decline from Hugo Weaving) is only recognizable through his name, and lacks few distinguishing characteristics beyond that. Individual performances shine — Lenny Henry as a hobbit is casting genius, while Morfydd Clark plays a thoroughly convincing young Galadriel that recalls Cate Blanchett without imitating her. But on the whole, characters are reduced to ciphers, having less to do with dramatic arcs than “hey, remember this character?”

 The exception is Galadriel. Clark is brilliant, elevating her material, which sometimes turns her into “female Legolas” in a way that flatters Tauriel. Galadriel was always one of The Lord of the Rings’ most compellingly understated characters, serving penance for her disobedience to the Valar. Her “instead of a dark lord, you would have a queen” monologue is a virtuous character’s admission of profound rage and envy (and makes for my favorite chapter in The Lord of the Rings).…

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Of The Rings of Power and Amazon Being Fucking Evil

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Pausing Nowhere and Back Again this week for some words on this Amazon thing. We’ll be back with Lake-town next week.

Well, that was inevitable, even if knowing what to call a show is apparently a spoiler these days. It’s a less Tolkienesque title than Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age, but it scans, even if the existence of a series title with a subtitle is a moral atrocity. 

As The Rings of Power is a prequel show, the title indicates a focus on the Three, Seven, and Nine rings. Showrunners J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay (let’s hope they won’t be the next Benioff and Weiss) give the impression The Rings of Power will cover the Second Age, from “the forging of the rings, the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, the epic tale of Númenor, and the Last Alliance of Elves and Men.” Akallabêth stans rejoice, I suppose.

The period Payne and McKay describes lasts anywhere from 1941 to 2231 to 3409 years, depending on where The Rings of Power starts. That could be the founding of Númenor, Sauron’s time in Eregion, or the Rings of Power’s creation. It seems unlikely  that the series would depict any events that happen after the siege of Barad-dûr or Isildur’s death.

The Rings of Power apparently sticks to Tolkien’s overarching story and filling in the blanks, per the Tolkien Estate’s guidelines. It has unprecedented licensing to adapt portions of The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales, so the Tolkien Estate is clearly pleased with the series. This raises some concerns, as it may mean The Rings of Power is more traditionalist than its predecessors, Peter Jackson’s double-trilogy. At the same time, adapting Tolkien’s conservative mythology in the tedious Marvel Cinematic Universe era should be an interestingly strange sight.

I’m almost wholly unfamiliar with the show’s creative team, so I can’t predict their approach to Middle-earth. The job they’ve inherited, however, is fascinating. They have to work with Tolkien’s plots (outlines, really), which span millennia and contain scarce details. This will give the team ample room to concoct new stories within Tolkien’s framework. I wonder if each season will cover a particular era. Certainly there will have to be an almost anthology-like approach to it: characters will inevitably die between seasons. Maybe we’ll get The Lord of the Rings as True Detective. There are worse ideas than “Nic Pizzolatto writes elves.”

If the tone of this piece can accurately be called “cold,” there are a couple reasons for that. The rampant spoilerphobia of contemporary pop culture is a killer on enthusiasm. Before I watch a series or a movie, I like to know something of its story. As of now, we know basically nothing about The Rings of Power‘s creative approach. I’m not going to go ga-ga over this stuff unless Amazon lets its creators show they have an interesting story to tell.

There’s also Amazon’s involvement. If you’re reading Eruditorum Press, or if you’ve paid any attention to the world these past few years, you know Amazon is one of the most evil and destructive organizations in the world.…

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