Why is The Rings of Power is worse than daytime soap opera writing? First, let me say I wanted to wait to pass judgement on this mega budget Amazon disaster and give it the benefit of the doubt. But after over 4 hours of screen time, reality sets in. This is bad writing.
Bad for any Fantasy a catastrophe for Tolkien.
Trying to judge this as a generic fantasy series at first without delving into the mismanagement of Tolkien lore. Putting aside, at first, the utter hubris and contempt the writers have for the source material. The writing is just poor. After 4 episodes there is little plot development. Much like Disney’s The Last Jedi, The Rings of Power has quick action scenes running back to back to distract you from the fact nothing is moving forward plot wise.
As an independent author and publisher, I know firsthand that the reader needs to be entertained and brought on a journey. It used to be called “The Heroes Journey.” The protagonist would be faced with a problem and actively be trying to solve it, and there would usually be an antagonist. After 4 episodes we have a “Karen” Łady Boss Elf who is sure the dark Lord is coming back but we really have no clue what he is doing or when he’s coming or what and we know little about him. Everyone else in the story is oblivious to her quest and filler.
Do not break the 11th Commandement, Thou Shall not Bore the viewer. The Rings of Power is worse than daytime soap opera writing!
A comedy of errors does not make for an entertaining plot. Whether we are dealing with the cute Hobbit-ish Harfoot or the xenophobic villagers, the scenes are just boring. Even with okay CGI fight scenes with Matrix like fighting from elves, it all seems random.Which makes the fights scenes have no value or stakes. If this wasn’t supposed to be based on Tolkien lore, I wouldn’t have watched this many episodes. I believe I would have given up halfway through episode 2.
Esoteric Monologues that don’t make any sense.
Do you know why a ship floats and a stone cannot? Because the stone sees only downward. The darkness of the water is vast and irresistible. The ship feels the darkness as well, striving moment by moment to master her and pull her under.
And at another point Galadriel says,
I have a tempest that rages inside of me… Lady Galadriel.
The point is when dumb people have nothing to say they like to use big words to sound smarter, but if they do not make a good point, it doesn’t make them appear intelligent.
Unlikeable 2-Dimensional characters. The Rings of Power is worse than daytime soap opera writing!
Actually, 2-dimensional is giving some characters more credit than they deserve. Chiefly, Galadriel, our main character, seems to have only one interest in life and that is stopping Sauron, whom everyone else believes is defeated. She has no other aspects to her character! And on a side note, her character seems completely removed from the enchanting Lady Galadriel in TLOTR. How are we to believe she becomes a subtle and charming complex mature elven lady? She is already thousands of years old at this point. She is rude, condescending, uncaring, and always right. Not relatable as a protagonist and she is a Karen who needs to speak to the manager.
Fighting the Patriarchy.
They have taken very strong masculine characters like Lord Elrond played magnificently by Hugo Weaving and replaced them with Robert Aramayo. And nothing against Aramayo personally, but the character appears very non-masculine. He’s a politician with a squeaky voice and looks timid. In the Lord of the Rings, Elrond was in wars and was demonstratively intimidating. The Rings of Power Elrond would not intimidate anyone. He looks like Doogie Howser. There is no prominent male, good guy characters in this series that are competent.
There is Adar, the dark-skinned elf. He is competent, but he gets captured and seems very emotional.
The plot stalls. The Rings of Power is worse than daytime soap opera writing!
Instead of a story that is progressing, we get interpersonal drama. Friends who didn’t visit. Characters who didn’t get the jobs they wanted. Harfoot, who breaks his foot, and the tribe is just gonna leave him. Elf hating xenophobic Numenoreans who give the south park speech: “They took our jobs!” but the story never progresses.
Cultural Appropriation.
I get it that we live in a culturally diverse civilization now, and I am glad it is. But I think it’s fair to look at the premise of The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien wrote TLOTR as a mythology for England. I know you could say but we have to be inclusive so everyone can relate to The Lord of The Rings. But I want you to think how offensive it would be to have a mythology for Africa and put white people in as the kings of Africa. It simply wouldn’t make sense. What if you watched the Black Panther and found out The Black Panther’s father, the King of Wakanda, was an old white guy? Wouldn’t that be offensive if not just confusing?
Ancient Civilizations were tribal.
We live in a more enlightened time, but in ancient times, people were more tribal. I know TLOTR is fantasy and you can do fantastic stuff with fantasy, but I have a hard time disregarding my disbelief. Because now we have the luxury of flying to the other side of the world in hours. Nations are more diverse but in a primitive medieval time period nations were ethnic monoliths. You wouldn’t have half the people black and half white; instead, you would have a blended culture where the ethnicity would be the same for 99.99% of the people.
It just seems off… The Rings of Power is worse than daytime soap opera writing!
And you certainly wouldn’t have a queen who was black when everyone else was white in the nation. It just wouldn’t happen in medieval times. It just is completely unplausible. Black Elves, there could definitely be black Elves, but look at DND lore you have the drow. You would have tribes of black elves. But everything just appears thrown together with token multi-cultural roles and strong women.
In conclusion
This is some of the worst crap that amazon has ever put out it make their version of The Wheel of Time look good. I don’t intend to watch anymore of the series and feel like 4 hours of my life have already been wasted by watching it.
Full disclosure, I love The Lord of the Rings. I watch the Peter Jackson movies several times a year. This has no resemblance to The Lord of the Rings movies. My review is not unbiased. I love Tolkien’s books.
Loved the Hobbit. I didn’t like how the Hobbit movies were stretched out, but they are still okay films. The Rings of Power is a power grab by an enormous company that chose woke ideology over substance. Amazon’s The Rings of Power needs to be thrown into the fiery chasm from wince it came.
On a more positive note…
Want to read a positive review about a great Fantasy Series on Netflix? Check out my review of The Witcher.
I must totally disagree. Jackson did more damage to Tolkein’s world than Amazon ever did.
Jackson took clearly described sequences from the book and rewrote them to his liking. Elven armies at Helm’s Deep? Faramir taking the Hobbits with him on his raid? And what happened to Glorfindel at the ford? Jackson was going woke before it was a thing.
And what he did to The Hobbit was an even worse abomination. The forbidden love story seems like bad fanfic, and the Orc vengeance quest, while feasible, has nothing to do with the story at hand.
Rings of Power, on the other hand, is expanding on a brief portion of the canon in ways that may be offensive to some, but as of yet has not changed anything written by Tolkein. That alone makes it preferable to the butchery Jackson did. And, BTW, your comment about Adar getting captured reminds me of Trump’s condemnation of McCain for the same reason. Not a good look, in my opinion.
Yes, the pacing is a bit slow to be sure. However, some digression is necessary for those watching the show who have not read the source material so that forces a slower show.
I agree with you on one thing the Hobbit was an abomination. The hobbit was the first fantasy book I read at age 12 and loved it. T remember reading the Lord of the Rings right after and was upset the Bible was old now and not the main protagonist. Where the Hobbit went wrong was adding useless stuff to the story yes the Dwarven and Elf forbidden love story seemed pushed and the dwarves riding down the river in Barrels while fighting orcs was circus BS.
But The Rings of Power is far less watchable than the Hobbit. Amazon’s Rings of Power has unlikeable characters and I watched Episodes 1-4 and learned nothing if the plot.Knock yourself out if you want to watch it I’m checking out. The actor playing Adar seems to be doing an okay job they all are it’s not their fault that they dealing with terrible writing. “The Sea is always right.” In that case we should all just throw our TVs into the sea.