I really feel like when I started watching this show I really got into it, maybe its the fact of seeing a Tolkien made property again that got me really excited, and for the most part this show does look beautiful, some great locations and sweeping shots and good cinematography, locations like Khazad-dûm looked amazing, the atheistic was great. Some great set design and a soundtrack I love. You can tell for sure where the large budget went because you can see it.
First off I am not huge into Tolkien, I have read the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion and Beren and Lúthien. So I wouldn't consider myself an expert or really up to date on the lore, so I am coming at this show from a casual fan of Tolkiens work so I am not going to pretend that I know every detail.
My biggest problem with the show overall is the dialogue, the story and the lack of development on world and character building. There are moments where the show shines. The Elrond, Durin and Disa scenes were a treat whenever they were all on screen, so much so the show suffered when they were not on screen, there were also arcs that felt pointlessly added, like the Harfoots, by the time the season was over I thought to myself that if you take out the Harfoot arc nothing would have been lost. The scenes with them were not bad at first, in fact when I started watching I thought they were charming, seeing Lenny Henry as a Hobbit as someone who is a fan of his stand up comedy, brought a huge smile on my face. Unfortunately the Harfoots wore out their welcome the more the show went on, they became a crutch that seemed to slow the plot of the main story down.
Unfortunately I felt many of the characters didn't feel explored enough, once again outside of the Elrond (Robert Aramayo), Durin (Owain Arthur) and Disa (Sophia Nomvete) characters, everyone else either felt too flat or undeveloped. And they were the bets part of the show, the drama between Durin and his father the connection with his wife Disa and his long time friend, Elrond really got the most out of me.
The Galadriel character (played by Morfydd Clark) who was the main protagonist of our story, came across really unlikable and felt very different to the book interpretations of her that I know. A headstrong, bitter, cynical and selfish character that I found very tiresome to watch. She had moments towards the end where I felt her character was starting to warm with me and she showed signs of her character I knew, but overall, I just didn't feel the writing and directing did her justice. I do not feel its the fault of the actress, I think she did well with what she was given but I am not sure what direction she was given during her scenes, because most of the time he expression ranged from 'I want to cry' to 'I want to yell at you'. Juist this constant scowl.
The Arondir (Ismael Cruz Cordova) and Bronwyn (Nazanin Boniadi) was a welcome break while also providing some set up the main plot towards the end. Unfortunately the romance between the two didn't feel genuine to me like a lot of the characters in this show I felt no real connection to them I was rooting to know more about Arondir becuase he seemed one of the more interesting characters, but so little was given about him, he felt a bit empty to me. The story Southlanders even felt convoluted by the end.
Speaking of connections most of the time side characters were killed off and treated very haphazardly and thrown aside and forgotten about very quickly, even after the village battle scene (which I will get to), the death of so many of the villagers resulted in no mourning at all, all these people died and funnily enough like the audience who never felt a connection to them when they died, it seemed even the characters didn't either because there was no mourning, they just move don as if no one died. Womens, men, and children had died and there was no recognising, it, this happens at least three times in the show, death just doesn't matter here if you are an extra or a side character. There was a time in the show earlier on when two people die and the person they are connected with reacts to their deaths but because we do not know them that well it was hard for me at least to care about them. Its hard to feel for anyone when there is a lack of emotion or feeling given.
This brings me onto pacing, with every episode I felt the show moved too fast and too slow at the same time, characters needed more time to develop and developed very slowly that made any connection feel lacking, meanwhile the story moved way too quickly and felt rushed to a point scenes came and went in a blink and you miss it moment. I barely had any time to connect with anyone, any thing or any place they visited, time and space was completely thrown out of the window.
Every episode was very uneventful out of six episodes in where there was one battle scene, all of the other episodes were just set ups, if you like your shows to be heavy exposition through explaining, on top of more explaining, then you are in for a treat.
With that said the battle scene itself in the sixth episode I enjoyed, it got pretty gory in parts too which I think is a welcome addition to Tolkien adaptations. I didn't mind that too much, there was certainly tension around that episode and felt like the only episode with actual stakes, and seeing the horse charge to save the day felt the closest I have seen to feel compared Peter Jackson movies.
As mentioned before the dialogue was very odd, the writers tried their best to make the show sound very poetic in a way most Tolkien works are, you saw it written well in the Peter Jackson movies when they were not adding their own modern inserts into the movies. But here in Rings of Power it happens a lot, the writing would switch to this poetic Tolkien written acting to very modern lines, and would often lead to it feeling very disjoined. I am not sure what was going on in the writing process and I will not pretend to know, but it would have helped if they had someone there to help their with the dialect of Middle-Earth. The writers did rely a lot of nostalgia or familiarity of the books and movies by adding in quotes into this show from the books/movies and felt very forced in a way to make you remember that this is a Tolkien story you are watching.
I found the main story arc to be one of the weaker stories of the show (barring the Harfoots which was the weakest), which shouldn't be the case for the leading story and hero of your show, this should be the arc you want to see again and again and want them to come back to, instead it just took the wind out of me, there was also a lot of weird real world inserts, that felt very out of place in Tolkiens world, the 'Elfs took our jobs' speech got a laugh out of me for sure. There were several moments like this that felt out of place and really pulled you out of the show.
Minor gripes were some of the design choices, like the short haired elves, which I had a hard time at seeing first, but as the show went on I didn't pay too much mind to it, the elves all looked like wrinkly British politicians over the eternal youthful elves that Tolkien described them as, but it was a minor nit pic. Another minor gripe was the use of a map in the earlier episodes to track travel which was strangely abandoned half way through, as well as the appearance of text on screen title of a place reveal that only appeared once, it felt very inconstant.
Overall the show does feel clumsy in places, it tried to be Tolkien but falls very short, there is effort, but ultimately that effort is bogged down by some awful decisions in the story and character departments that really take me out of really appreciating this show for what it could have been, I feel all the actors did the best with what they are given but the story just didn't hold up for me, and it dragged a lot until the sixth episode, only to then fall again after it.
My only hope is that they can learn from this in season two (if there will be a season two) and try and fix the issues they had and make an even better show. And a show that maybe I can really get into and not one where I feel underwhelmed and uninterested for 80% of it.
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