"One will always corrupt, two will divide; with three, there is balance."
Hello everyone!
The season finale is behind us, and with it, the mostly lackluster first season as a whole.
You may find this a harsh sort of criticism but, considering the incredibly high budget that Amazon threw at what I think they wanted to consider their flagship fantasy series purely because of the name attached to it - Tolkien - it really didn't deliver as much as it could have.
I've seen shows with a five time lesser budget do SO much better!
It felt as if, BECAUSE of the budget, the show creators thought they could do anything and people would love it precisely because of the money.
Newsflash, we don't watch shows for the money. We don't watch them for politics, either. We watch them for good, quality storytelling.
The Rings of Power didn't achieve most of its goals, so let's look at the finale, Alloyed, to wrap it all up.
Links to previous episode reviews can be found at the bottom of the page, as per usual.
Three plots are left to dissect for this one, beginning with the Stranger, who's making his way through Greenwood when he loses the apple Nori gave him, chases after it, and runs right into the three Mystics. The creepy Eminem-looking ladies bow before him and tell him he's Sauron, and that the stars he's looking for can only be seen in Rhûn - incidentally, also the place where he'll regain his memory AND his powers.
Then they proceed to do weird ritual-y things with him until the Harfoots come to the rescue, during which the leader ends up stabbed to death, but the Stranger takes up a staff and reveals himself to be (in his own words) good, sending the Mystics back to the shadow. But! Not before they reveal he's the 'other', the 'Istar'.
After this and Sadoc's death, Nori packs up to go on an adventure with the Stranger (who can now somehow speak in full sentences, indicating a time passage but the whole time passing thing has been a weak spot for the show overall), who tells her that 'when in doubt, always follow your nose'.
GOD I hate that they're making him Gandalf. I really do. WHY couldn't he have really been Radagast or one of the two Blues?
Elsewhere, the Queen of Númenor is trying to teach herself how to walk about without her eyes covered so she doesn't let anyone know she's blind when Elendil comes to have a little chat and they discourse about why he pulled Galadriel from the sea when he could have left her there, and in the end, tell the audience that being one of the Faithful means making hard sacrifices.
I'm still not sure why she then puts on a bandage to show EVERYONE something's up with her eyes, but the harbour is covered in black flags indicating the King is dead, so it's moot point anyway. The King managed to pass on his urgent message about Númenor's demise unless they return to the old ways to Elendil's daughter, who also discovered the Palantír at the top of the tower.
Whether or not she uses this information to tell her father or someone of the other faction remains to be seen, but seriously, these dying kings need o tell their prophecies and warnings to the correct people for once! (Yes, looking at you, Viserys).
And now, to Galadriel and Halbrand, who have defied Middle-Earth geography (which again doesn't help with depicting time passage in this show whatsoever) and dragged themselves to Eregion where Halbrand can be healed, Elrond can ask questions Galadriel skillfully deflects or outright avoids, and Celebrimbor can preen in front of Halbrand even though how he wandered off from his healers remains a mystery.
Then again, Celebrimbor reveals himself to be an idiot anyway, not knowing a thing about alloys and needing Halbrand to tell him how to stretch the small amount of mithril the Elves possess from the fragment Durin gave Elrond, so I really don't know what to tell you.
At least the show runners remembered Gil-Galad is someone who's ACTUALLY GOOD, and he immediately dismisses the idea of a mithril-imbued crown - indicating, rather correctly, that it should not be worn by just one person - and shuts the project down, ordering Eregion to be dismantled and its people returned to Lindon.
Elrond convinces the High King to give them just a spit of time more, and Halbrand moseys in to help, though I will say watching their spectacular, explosive failure is kinda funny on screen.
They then figure out maybe they shouldn't FORCE the metals together, but rather COAX them, gently.
And there's stuff Celebrimbor spouts that makes Galadriel suspicious - for the first time since the series began - so she digs into the Southlands, discovering HEY WAIT A SECOND! THERE IS NO KING!
Lady. It's not that difficult honestly. YOU'RE THE ONE WHO JUST DECIDED, HALBRAND NEVER SAID HE WAS. Unfortunately this is a sort of plot hole thing that just kept getting bigger and bigger as the season unwound.
Then comes the confrontation during which Halbrand admits he's "been awake since before the breaking of the First Silence" which, by the way, for those who don't know is BEFORE the world was formed when the deities that created it started singing.
He proceeds to do a little mindy-whimey on Galadriel, first going back to the time her brother was still alive, where we supposedly learn that Finrod whispered one needs to touch the darkness one more time to be able to figure out the difference between that and the light, then end up on the raft where Sauron is all giddy and congratulating Galadriel on reminding him of his purpose, that he CAN heal Middle-Earth, and should forget all the dark stuff he's done in the past, put it behind him, like she suggested, and keep going forward.
Oh and also, he wants to make her Queen. She's basically the only one who's even remotely like his equal and everyone else is beneath her, so why not say yes?
The problem she sees with this solution is that healing Middle-Earth and ruling it are two different things, so she denies him, and nearly drowns in the river where he leaves her still under the influence of his mind trick, but thankfully Elrond fishes her out of there, nearly gets stabbed for his troubles, and doesn't get any answers to his questions because Galadriel studiously avoids any reasonable explanation as to why they shouldn't deal with Halbrand anymore, or why he's gone.
Also, they need THREE rings, and she sacrifices her brother's dagger because it's apparently the only pure silver and gold directly from Valinor.
Celebrimbor then forges the Three Elven Rings (geez they're ugly), but Elrond isn't satisfied so he goes down to the riverbank again, where he finds the scroll of the Southlands in the water and makes some connections on his own, though he doesn't voice them. But Galadriel knows that he knows (at least partly) so I expect tension in season two.
And as for Haluron? He's back in Mordor, baby, again making Middle-Earth seem about as big as your neighbour's backyard.
The show ends with the Ring verse sung by Fiona Apple, put to music by Bear McCreary, and mostly leaving fans dissatisfied, at least from the reactions I've been seeing. Or, at least the dissatisfaction cancels out the satisfaction, which is the exact opposite as with House of the Dragon, where the positive heavily outweighs any negative.
This show has been plagued by this, and by inconsistencies, weak writing, pacing, as well as bizarre decisions. Completely overlooking problems with the lore (and the fact they're not just basing things off Tolkien now but willfully changing origin stories and his canon) some of the actual writing just doesn't make sense. Characters profess themselves to be of the "nobody's left behind" mindset, but in the next scene can't be bothered to help one of their own with a broken ankle which he got while helping the lot of them!
A commander wonders who'd leave their own people behind, but does it herself not just once, but pretty much all the time.
Everyone hikes everywhere on foot, forgetting Middle-Earth is a vast landscape. Galadriel and Halbrand supposedly made the trek from outside Mordor to Eregion in six days by horse - but if you remember, the Fellowship was going to walk forty days from outside Rivendell to the Gap of Rohan alone. With a horse, we can say that's probably halved, so twenty days, and if we go with Eregion instead of Rivendell, we can approximate around ten to fifteen days to travel along the bottom end of the Misty Mountains alone!
The presentation suffered massively in this show, and while there are definite good spots like the visuals, the music, the casting, etc., the problem here for the most part was that Amazon made the show for political reasons rather than to actually tell a good story. I guarantee you that if the writing had been good, no one would have complained over racial diversity.
But if Hollywood keeps checking boxes rather than telling stories, even billions of dollars won't save their productions from flopping! I'm jealous of those who actually like this stuff, because I want to. I dearly WANTED to like Rings of Power. I'm sorely disappointed. We got too much fluff padding and the real, important stuff for only about five minutes.
And I want better from show and movie makers alike.
Also stop making excuses that they didn't have a lot to work with. Considering they were plucking information straight out of the actual Lord of the Rings trilogy that's not even remotely true, and the Appendices are also not just a glossary of names for Christ's sake! The story is written out, as is the sheer scope of it through the Tale of Years.
If that's too difficult to follow then thank GOD no one gave out rights for the Silmarillion.
Until next time.
xx
*images and video not mine
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