What would you buy with hundreds of millions of dollars?
The Lord of the Rings: Ring of Power, which opens Thursday night on Amazon Prime Video, features gorgeous landscapes, noble underground palaces, orcs by bushels, chaotic battles, and even Send a message to the series’ current fantasy contest. The most expensive series in television history wears its price tag on its face. of reportbut the consensus is that it makes Smaug a comfortable bed.)
Inspiration is something money can’t buy. The growing field of franchise-based television usually intends to do the opposite. We’re buying the right to give millions of fans another helping of what they’ve already eaten.
“Rings of Power” is no exception. Thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and Peter Jackson’s film adaptation, we turn the clock back to a time when the title’s fateful magical trinkets were forged. And its first season offers fans a well-executed version of the familiar. ballet archeryfrenzied conflicts between elves and dwarves, rising evils, and even fascinating cursed artifacts.
But if the ambitious first season doesn’t reinvent the ring, it’s a breathtaking replica that adds some new filigree. More importantly, it ultimately creates its own swashback and storytelling magic from time to time.
The “same thing but different” feeling is immediately apparent in the (re)introduction of the mighty elf Galadriel (Morphid Clarke). Cate Blanchett played her in her films as a wise and regal Lady of the Canyon, but people can change in millennia. Here, she’s a young, stubborn and deadly warrior with the “Crouching Tiger” movement and the conviction that the once and future great villain Sauron is still alive and scheming. .
Explore the world of The Lord of the Rings
The literary world constructed by JRR Tolkien, now adapted into a new series on Amazon Prime Video, has inspired generations of readers and viewers.
Inexplicable legal incantations and incantations limit its rights contract, so “Rings of Power” works in Tolkien’s margins, using the six appendices of his trilogy as sources . Where Jackson adapted his three novels, rich in character, sacrifice, and comedy, showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay jumbled up the genealogy as Wikipedia-like as they were in the series’ era. Some Second invented an alphabet to describe his age. “The records of events in Middle-earth are short and brief, and their dates are often uncertain.”
But the margins leave room for creativity. Tolkien was also thoughtful enough to create several characters who were naturally immortal, such as Galadriel-like elf and half-elf companion Elrond (Robert Aramayo). He is now a young aide to High King Gilgalad (Benjamin Walker), who sees Galadriel’s obsession with Sauron as a nuisance. Elsewhere, Payne and McKay squashed timelines, reinvented mythology, and filled many gaps with invented characters and settings.
Great sagas will be written in the Turkienosphere about the freedoms they have taken. But I’m a Middle-earth-level Middle-earth lover (I’ve read “The Silmarillion”, please don’t speak). Cuenya), I’m reviewing a TV show. And in its look, its themes, and its sound (a celestial score by Bear McCreary and a theme by Howard Shore), the show is certainly talk-ish, if not 100% Tolkien.
And the differences between the show and the books may not be as significant as the differences between Jackson’s films. You’ll have to build a world, evolve your character, and develop your story arc over time.
So when Galadriel seeks an ally in his search for Sauron, the two premiere episodes brightly directed by JA Bayona establish several story lines with Entish prudence. (Numenor, a human kingdom like Atlantis whose rise and fall dominate the Second Age, but even the opening hours are not taken into account.)
The dominant elf that inhabits a series of Thomas Kinkade paintings has ambitions of its own. These include sending Elrond to negotiate a pact with Durin (Owain Arthur), the unfriendly dwarven prince of Khazad Dum. Balrog Infestation But here it is a thriving, cavernous marvel. And at an outpost deep in the land of men, the elven warrior Alondil (Ismael Cruz Cordova) seeks out the human healer Bronwyn (Nazanin Córdova), whose downtrodden neighbor in the last war chose to side with Sauron. Boniadi) has a forbidden love.
High fantasy so far. But, as Tolkien realized, without a human character of his scale (or below) with a spark of personality, the great men’s actions risk becoming stiff. (It’s a lesson so far lost in HBO’s “House of the Dragon,” begging Arya Stark or her Hot Pie to cut through the rigors of the family tree.)
That’s where the Hobbits come in – or here, the Hafuds, a secretive, nomadic band of forest-like little vagabonds who live more precariously than Bilbo’s domesticated offspring in the Shire. Nori Brandyfoot (Markella Kavenagh) is another type of Tolkien variation. A young dreamer who craves adventure. One day, fate appears in the form of a meteor. Within her burning crater, she finds a mysterious stranger (Daniel Wayman) with wizard-like tendencies, whose identity remains a mystery. (speak, my friend, If you have any guesses. )
The invented exploits of the Harfoots and their starman guests can drive purists hard. I don’t mind; they give heart and a common touch to a story that could otherwise soon become a tapestry of live-action unicorns. Like the casting of the residents, it features more female characters and actors of color than the film does, but the story is entirely based on European mythology.
One of the attractions of Tolkien’s stories is their unabashed seriousness, their willingness to deal with questions of right and wrong and honor. They are anti-modern, anti-anti-hero. This could make ‘Rings of Power’ an outlier in TV fantasy environments since ‘Game of Thrones’. “Rings of Power” catches up to “Thrones” in the amount of blood spilled, both in human red and orc black, but its sensibilities are far more idealistic.
Still, there are small hints of moral undertones in the early stages – some of which are political intrigues in various courts, especially in Galadriel. Invited to One Ring In the film, she imagines herself to be a queen “fearful as dawn.”
In young Galadriel, determination borders on fanaticism, and justice is overshadowed by ruthlessness. Welcome to the world of the first part. However, “Rings of Power” can complicate her by showing that her ultimate blissful wisdom is not easily or well obtained. As (Will Fletcher) tells her, in an early flashback of taking corny risks and surviving it, “Sometimes we can’t know.” [light] Until you touch the darkness. “
The troubled, obsessed, Carrie Matheson-like Galadriel may not be purely Tolkien. interestingand that’s what “Rings of Power” needs, not only to be faithful, to sustain itself over multiple seasons. , the spectacle doesn’t get you there on TV.
After all, this is a ring-making story. Anyone can throw gold at the screen.It takes imagination to shape it into something valuable.