If you’ve been out of the house or on the internet in the last month, there is a production you’ve definitely seen advertised: The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, broadcast on Prime Video screens. In this production, which was released on September 2, we go 2000 years before Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.
After sharing the details of the discussions about the production that started before the series aired, let’s tell you what we saw in the episodes that have been published so far, how satisfied we are with what we see, how dissatisfied we are, and what we should expect. So let’s get started quickly:
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Weren’t all Tolkien characters white? Black Elf?
It’s possible. Depending on which fantasy fiction universe you are talking about, it can be blue, green or red. There would be black elves in the Lord of the Rings universe, at least. The elves who lived in the forest of Nan Elmoth were called dark elves, and according to most descriptions they had black skin. It fell into the sea with the rest of Beleriand at the end of the First Age. If the black elf we see in the series is a representative of this race, it may be. Well, without getting attached to this kind of story, would a black elf be just “Let there be a PoC (Person of color, an expression used to describe people of color.)”? Not in the Lord of the Rings universe.
After all, Tolkien is a writer who went through Oxford education and wrote during the war. Although great heroes save the world in Tolkien’s works, the simple kindness of ordinary people keeps evil at bay. Even Frodo and Sam generally have more casual character portrayals than hero portrayals. He developed a solution to the white character writing pressure that came at that time by not depicting the appearance of the characters as much as possible. Because if things don’t go well like Mark Twain, there is not much chance of getting a pickaxe and going down to the mines. So we can give the black characters a chance for now, it can be a tool that can even be used to deepen the characters.
Let’s get to the first two episodes now, it’s time to sit and watch for a long time.
In this section, it would be more accurate to divide what we saw in the first 2 episodes of the series into various titles. Therefore, we can make the first evaluation in three parts as image, sound and acting, and then move on to the story. So we can continue writing for a long time without the risk of spoilers.
The images are simply stunning!
Good luck to all of them, be it the visual effects team, the lights, the decor and costume-equipment makers. The same aesthetics as the Lord of the Rings movies are also present in this production. The overall color palette of the production is also quite wide, and although it is difficult to use very different tones together, the integrity of the series does not deteriorate. There is no problem in the part that our eyes see.
What about the part we hear?
Sounds are very important in fantastic productions, because it is very difficult to edit sounds. They put an unknown creature in front of you and ask you to make the voice of this creature. Or it may be necessary to transfer sounds that cannot be heard in nature. Someone has to imagine the sound of a dragon, a dinosaur. While The Rings of Power hasn’t had to discover anything new in this regard, the sounds are in harmony with the picture, and there are no annoying tonal transitions or crosstalk. Looks like we’re good at this part. The music is also very successful, although it is not a Misty Mountain Cold or The Bridge of Khazad-Dum level song, the music of the production is very good.
How is the acting, one of the most important parts?
This is where the construction starts to run into problems for the first time. Especially the acting of Morfydd Clark, who plays the role of Galadriel, seems quite problematic. If the director cannot direct the actor correctly, of course, the actors may have problems, but Clark’s problem seems more serious. As if the actor couldn’t get into the role of the character he played, we get a lot of Galadriel cosplay air from Galadriel. They have already made the character unrecognizable to rediscover the character in the series, and when the acting is bad, it is never filmed.
Among the remaining actors, Markella Kavenagh, who plays Nori, and Owain Arthur, who appears as Durin IV, stand out with their successful performances. Robert Aramyo, who plays Elrond, who looks like the character that the whole story is connected to in general, draws a soft-faced and strong communication skills to the character.
Scenario and flow: walking a dangerous tightrope
The Rings of Power manages to make you feel the sincerity, naturalness and magnificence we expect from the Lord of the Rings universe. Everything we can see and hear, from their songs to their costumes, is exactly what we wanted. When we look at the scenario, we see that many stories are progressing at the same time. If a series, especially an epic one is being written, of course, there must be more than one story, but the way the stories are connected seems to be a little weak.
Another point is that although we changed positions a lot in the first two episodes, we couldn’t see much about the world. This is worrying for the rest of the world. Because either it has not been decided how these parts will be handled or we are faced with a storytelling that is too slow to find a place in the flow of the story yet. The series is already 10 episodes, there is almost no trace of the people of Numenor in the first 2 episodes and in the 3rd episode introduction. The Second Age is an age of domination by the Numenoreans, especially in terms of the fight against the seas and Sauron. That’s why the story we have seems to be able to branch out even more and spread over a wide framework. While this may be beneficial in the long run, it may leave the story unfinished and feel incomplete in the short run.
In this case, the story will be too big to fit into a single season. So, how will the characters enter the story, the event progress and the pace of the production in general in a series that will span multiple seasons? We will gradually get to know the characters according to the first two chapters. The series will not bombard us with new characters. Although this is a good thing, it seems to disrupt the tempo too much.
Although JD Payne and Patrick McKay, the duo behind the series, have some reservations because they haven’t done a job of this magnitude before, we know that many experienced names have also signed productions that are far from satisfactory. For this reason, the young duo can be given a chance. However, some scenario dynamics are already showing glitches, which makes me a little skeptical. Techniques such as putting the main character in danger, giving the danger through his eyes, and establishing a bond between the audience and the character do not work in this production, because we know that the characters are in films that tell the future thousands of years. There is unnecessary waste of time and resources in narration.
As a result, The Rings of Power series offers us a fairy-tale fantasy universe, songs that erase the rust from our ears, an evil that is approaching step by step, and characters that will stand back to back against that evil, a production that seems to be invincible under its name, and it definitely deserves a chance. The drama is definitely a shiny and precious ring, but time will tell if it can become “Precious”.
The Rings of Power premiered on Amazon Prime Video on September 2, 2022. New episodes will be released every Friday.
You can subscribe to Amazon Prime here to watch content such as The Rings of Power, The Boys, Invincible, to receive free games and to take advantage of opportunities such as fast delivery and free shipping while shopping.
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