‘The Rings Of Power’ Review
A Breathtaking Return To Middle-earth And ‘The Lord Of The Rings’
A shadow has fallen over Middle-earth. A fiery comet burns its way across the sky. Something is making the grass die in a remote village in the south, and turning the cows’ milk black.
An enemy, long forgotten, is stirring.
This is the end of a long slumbering tranquility. For thousands of years, ever since the dark god Morgoth’s servant, Sauron, was defeated and driven from the land, the people of Middle-earth have lived out their days in peace. Men and dwarves have long since consigned the ancient evil to legend. Even the elves have forgotten the danger, lulled into complacency across the long centuries.
Only the fiery elven scion, Galadriel, remains on the hunt, seeking high and low across the land for any sign of Sauron, the memory of her brother’s murder still burning inside her.
Thus we set the stage for The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power, Amazon’s lavish fantasy epic that recounts the forging of the Rings by Celebrimbor—and the One Ring itself, created to rule them all and in the darkness bind them.
I came to this series a skeptic, but after watching the first two episodes, I walk away a believer. What showrunners Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne have created is something simply staggering in scope and scale, in raw beauty and magnificence. It is nothing short of a masterpiece—and a welcome return to Tolkien’s legendarium.
Beyond the splendor of this Golden Age of Middle-earth—its shimmering elven citadels and cavernous dwarven halls still bustling with industry—we have a story peopled with characters we immediately want to root for, and whose fates are tied up in grand adventures, deep mysteries and the relentless tide of history.
Alongside Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) we meet a young Elrond Half-Elven (Robert Aramayo), a diplomat and advisor to the elven king, Gil-galad (Benjamin Walker). He is instantly likeable, a charming and affable contrast to the elder statesman he becomes.
In the far reaches of the Southlands—a region that will one day be known as Mordor—the elven soldier Arondir (Ismael Cruz- Córdova) stands watch over a human populace that views his kind as an occupying force—all but Bronwyn (Nazanin Boniadi) who has captured his heart.
And wandering the hills and valleys of Middle-earth are the nomadic Harfoots—Hobbits, though of the wandering variety, long before the Shire was settled in the west. Young Nori (Markella Kavenagh) itches for adventure, seems to find trouble wherever she goes, causing headaches for her father and their leader, Sadoc Burrows (Lenny Henry). The Harfoots are every bit as endearing as their cousins in Lord Of The Rings, and their homes are every bit as cozy as a Hobbit hole.
In Khazad-dûm, the bustling mountain hall of the dwarves, we meet prince Durin (Owain Arthur) and his wife Disa (Sohpia Nomvete) and see the dwarven kingdom in all its old glory, long before it fell to ruin and fire and ancient evils. This is a time of wealth and prosperity across Middle-earth, a striking contrast to the fallen, almost post-apocalyptic landscape of The Lord Of The Rings.
There are signs of change. Ominous portents.
A mysterious stranger falls from the sky. A leviathan plumbs the depths of the sea. A village smolders in the night, its attackers nowhere to be seen. And a powerful elven smith plans his magnum opus—a means by which to harness the powers of old and make Middle-earth fairer still.
Over all of this we hear the swelling orchestral melodies of a score so lush and beautiful, one can only listen in awe. Howard Shore, who wrote the score for Peter Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings, wrote the title theme here as well, but Bear McCreary (Outlander, The Walking Dead) composed the rest of the score, and it’s every bit as gorgeous as the cinematography and special effects, drawing you into the colorful, richly detailed tapestry that is The Rings Of Power one note at a time.
(The score was recorded with a 90-piece orchestra in London, with a separate 40-piece choir recorded in Vienna singing songs in languages Tolkien himself invented).
Beyond just the epic grandeur of The Rings Of Power, the show’s creators have crafted characters we care about. There is humor, heroism, danger and mystery, all the elements of a good story, and all driven by these various elves and dwarves and hobbits and men who we can’t help but fall in love with, much like we fell in love with Gimli and Sam and Eowyn and Gandalf before.
Does it make something of a mess of the timeline Tolkien set out in his notes? Absolutely. Does it run rampant with lore changes and other adaptation excesses? I think that goes without saying. But more importantly, this show feels like Tolkien to me. It captures the spirit of The Lord of the Rings the same way Peter Jackson captured it in his adaptation of Tolkien’s books—and better, I’d argue, than his Hobbit trilogy.
A while back, series director J.A. Bayona said in an interview that “The Rings Of Power is not television. It's a new form we're creating here." At the time, I found this overly cocksure and perhaps a touch arrogant. What makes a TV show more than a TV show?
Now I understand what he meant.
10/10 Lembas Loaves. Don’t miss this one, folks.
The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power drops its first two episodes this Thursday, September 1st. You can see what time the show goes live in your time-zone here.
If you enjoy weekly recap/reviews and hearty discussions about TV shows and fantasy books and other nerd stuff, please follow me here on this blog. I’ll be reviewing this show as well as HBO’s House Of The Dragon every week here and on my YouTube channel.
I’ll go into more detail, obviously, in these recaps and discuss more of the minutia, including my small quibbles which I don’t go into here for fear of spoilers. I’m excited to hear what everyone thinks of the show!
Further Reading on The Rings Of Power from your humblest of narrators:
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Haven't seen the show.
What is all the negative press about?
I went into this with an open mind. I could only get through Episode 1. Didn't even watch Episode 2. It was, except for the visuals, both boring and ridiculous. Galadriel was one-note, and there is no way that ROP's Elrond could ever have turned into the Peter Jackson character,(to say nothing of Tolkien's) no matter how many thousands of years he had to develop. Having seen the total misunderstanding of these two, I couldn't bear to stick around to see what else they butchered.