Durgan vs Elfe: The Rings Of Power

Hot on the heels of Sad Dragon Family And Friends, here’s my review of the first episode of The Lord of The Power: The Rings of Ring.

In contrast to Game of Thrones, my level of fandom for Tolkien is pretty much non-existent: I saw the three LOTR movies once when they came out, liked them but didn’t love them, and have never read a single word of the man’s writing. I have zero familiarity with the material this series is drawing on, nor do I care at all about how faithful it is to said material.

So as a non-fan just looking for a high budget shiny fantasy series to watch, how was the opening episode?

The Rings Of Power takes place in Middle-Earth’s second age, a time that came before the third age but after the first age. I assume that means something else to Tolkienheads, but for normal people all you need to know is that this is long before the events of The Hobbit and The Lord Of the Rings. It’s prequel time, baby! Those always turn out well and are universally embraced by fans.

Anyway, the elves have finished up a long war against Morgoth, the first Dark Lord who attacked their homeland centuries ago, and everyone is convinced that the threat is gone and an era of peace is at hand. Everyone, that is, except for returning protagonist Galadriel, who is convinced that Morgoth’s lieutenant Sauron is still out there and getting ready to finish what Morgoth started. She is, of course, correct about this, and when the threat becomes apparent to the wider world the different races of Middle Earth have to start putting their differences aside to face it. Presumably this eventually involves forging the titular rings of power that cause so much trouble in the Third Age.

As I’ve said before when it comes to fantasy on the teevee, the opening episode needs to do a lot of work very quickly in terms of introducing the setting and characters. Arguably Rings Of Power is in a worse position in this regard than House Of The Dragon, as the latter is sufficiently similar to its original installment that the show only needs to get viewers caught up on the small number of changes, whereas Rings Of Power is like a thousand years before the books and movies and pretty much everything is different apart from the major races of Middle Earth. How does the show balance conveying all of this information while getting the actual plot moving?

Well, it…doesn’t.

Despite looking absurdly gorgeous, the first episode really left me cold due to its heavy-handed, expository writing. Characters come on screen and bluntly explain who they are and what their deal is, or engage in clumsy as-you-know conversations with other people. All the poetic faux-Tolkien dialogue in the world can’t disguise how hacky this is. I constantly felt that the storylines spinning up seemed like they should theoretically be very engaging, but the clunky writing kept me on the outside.

The episode’s editing is also rough, with a lot of scenes ending slightly too quickly so that the pacing feels off. Elsewhere, the episode continues with one character’s story when it seems like it should, for the sake of pacing, be cutting to someone else, and vice versa.

This was all off-putting enough that I didn’t end up watching the second episode, despite intending to. I’m going to go back and give it another shot at some point—the end of this first episode, when the actual plot kicked in, was already getting more interesting—but for the moment, House Of The Dragon wins this round.