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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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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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