Rings of Power Ep. 3 Review
Continuing my reviews for Amazon's Rings of Power in an unedited format.
We are now 3 hours into this series, 3 whole episodes and I still don’t know what the stakes are. Imagine sitting through most of the Fellowship of the Ring and not knowing what’s at stake and what the characters goals are. What are the protagonists goals? What are the antagonists goals? I can’t tell you. All I know is that Galadriel wants revenge on Sauron and she’s the only elf who still believes he’s out there. But that seems more like motivation, she doesn’t really have plan or a path to get there.
The entire premise that everyone but Galadriel thinks Sauron is gone does not work for me. Sauron is an immortal being. The elves were fighting him, chasing him, and he essentially slipped away, escaped, disappeared. And their conclusion is that this wicked immortal sorcerer us just gone for good and the war is over? Why?
The writers and directors have a lot of work to do to make Galadriel likable. And I hope it happens sooner than later because I don’t think I can sit through another season let alone 5 of this Galadriel. She’s centuries old but she acts like a spoiled teenager or royal brat. In every scene she’s in, she is teeming with contempt. She’s one dimensional. They need to do the work to make her empathetic. And the slow-mo horse riding shots did not accomplish that. I laughed out loud and I can’t wait to see the memes.
There’s a big problem with the depiction of the eves in this show. Reading Tolkien and watching Jackson ‘s film, you get a real sense that the elves truly are majestic, otherworldly beings. They have this etherial glow and grace about them. They are proud and powerful, but they are also wise.
But in Rings of Power the elves are barely distinguishable from the mortals. They just have pointy ears.
The elves are portrayed as stupid in this show. Halbrand says his home in the Sutherlands was destroyed by orcs. How did the elves miss that when they have soldiers stationed there? And how did they miss the orcs digging this massive trench in the Sutherlands? That trench is enormous. The orcs must have been attacking villages and kidnapping people to build their workforce and dig it for a long time. It’s a gigantic operation. Somehow there’s not even a whisper about it among the elves until it’s too late and they all get captured.
Many of my complaints may be addressed in future episodes, but for now I have questions and would be surprised if the show addresses them all.
The show continues to look very expensive. Hats off to the production team. It's great to have practical orcs back. But the writing and characters fall flat. I don’t want this show to fail, but it’s essentially a billion dollar experiment to see if a big corporation can buy a smash hit.
I think the scripts could have really benefited from beta readers outside of Hollywood’s typical circle and then another round of revision to tighten up plot points, dialogue, and characterizations.
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