Well, the Rings of Power is old news by now...but whoa! What a wonderful experiment in...something?

Expectations are strange things, especially when they are subverted in a good way. There are shows and movies that are terrible when you expected them to be a hit, and on even rarer occasions, those that turn out way better than you expected.

But there are also those that make all the dumb mistakes that you predicted, falling for every predictable cliché that you were worried about, ignoring and contradicting many aspects of the source material just as you expected, and pushing social commentary and anti-Tolkien allegory with the finesse of a Hill-troll. Take a seat folks, and get ready for a chilling review of the Rings of Power!

The LOTR community seems to be divided between those that love the show for being LOTR content, those that hate it for whatever reasons, and those that just moderately dislike it. I generally fall into the second group, but in the coming Part 2, I will be giving some more redeeming qualities at the end.

Overall score: 3/10 to 4/10, depending on how I am feeling.

The Rings of Power was one of the most anticipated shows in recent cinema...and by anticipated, I mean dreaded. Any Tolkien fan worth their salt could see exactly where the winds were blowing on this one. This show is a clumsy, non-lore-friendly piece of politically charged corporatized Tolkein fanfiction only loosely based on the books. Sigh...

Now that we have suffered through six episodes, with another coming out tomorrow, we have seen exactly what a bomb this show was. Really, I don't like to hate these types of things, but...WHY?! WHY?! YOU HAD A BILLION DOLLARS, BEZOS! FOOL OF A TOOK!

Also, where is Celeborn?

Have you seen this elf?

Name: Celeborn, Lord, Husband of Galadriel

Last Seen: Eriador

Age: Old

Let's start with the good things before I pick this thing to whimpering shreds.

CGI, imagery, costume, and set design: 9.5/10.

With the exception of some patchy CGI in a few places, the art is amazing. The CGI is great, and the designs are awesome, with no small credit to the TOLKIEN ARTIST THAT WILL NOT BE MENTIONED IN A CRITICAL REVIEW!

The dwarves are spectacular, the orcs are amazing, (thanks, WETA!), and the only designs that I am shaky on are the white Numenorean armor. (Really, it looks like...what? Fish scales? Hahahaha...)

Lindon is great, and I experience a massive nerdgasm when they showed The Pits, the Battle of Sudden Flame, and a few half-assed shots of the War of Wrath, Khazad-dum, Numenor...really, I can't say that anything went wrong with the costume and set design, at least according to me.

Why not a 10/10? Because of everyone's favorite beings: the Quendi, the Eldar, the Firsborn, the Elves!

There is an issue with the Elves as a whole. First, short hair. While there is no lore against Elves having short hair, they really didn't have to make it so common, for continuity reasons. Second...most of them don't really look like Elves! They look like D-list actors with ear prosthetics. Why don't they look ethereal?

"But Gorthangthecruel, you overly aggressive masterful masticator of media, the Elves were more grounded to Middle-earth in the Second Age! Of course, they look less ethereal, their fea aren't burning them up from the inside!"

Sure, but it just breaks the design in ways that no one really likes. Please, stop making excuses for this. Stick to CONTINUITY and the ORIGINAL TRILOGY FILMS that we all loved and were a massive success, and also what this show has tried to DISTANCE itself from.

The success of the design makes it so that all criticisms should be directed at the PLOT, not how the show itself looks. This also makes it somehow more irritating, as the way to fix the show's issues would be to just give a better script!

Unfortunately, that is where the fun ended...sort of. Let's take a look at other critical building blocks of this show before we talk about characters, plot elements, and the episodes themselves.

Acting: 5/10

Okay. I am going to go easy for this one, and give credit where credit is due. I think that many performances were either good or only mediocre because the role and somewhat Tolkienian dialogue didn't suit them. Arondir has given a very good performance, along with Saur-I mean, Halbrand, Adar, the freaking orcs, Durin, Elendil, and Elrond.

But our main issue here is Guyladriel, the Girlbarian, Warrior of the Wastelands, Scourge of the Orcs, Commander of the Northern Armies of the Noldor! Morfynd Clark has NOT given a very good performance, although I would say that a lot of that is only because of the writing and dialogue she was given. Now, her honest attempt at acting will only be remembered for its flaws...a shame, and one that could have been avoided with (A. more competent casting and (B. better writing.

Karl Marx Trumpazon clearly doesn't seem fit for the realistic fantasy role. Broywn's actress has done the best with what she has been given, but as you will see, it's not much. With Girlsildur...well, the writing comes full circle again. Gil-galad could use some improvement in the way he talks to make it a bit more Tolkienian, and Grandmabrimbor simply isn't quite fit for the role due to his FREAKING AGE! I get what the showrunner was going for in making Celebrimbor a sort of kindly, elderly figure, but that simply is inaccurate to the lore. Celebrimbor needs to be young, muscular, and hungry.

Diversity: Poor portrayal, but mercifully vague.

Since we knew that this show was supposed to reflect the WORLD WE LIVE IN TODAY, a greater representation of people of color, women, and other minority groups was necessary, (and probably should have been done anyway) although it didn't turn out well.

Let's take a look at the uber-violent and sexualized Game of Thrones show. They implement racial diversity in a sensible and realistic way in the setting of the world that the Rings of Power has not.

For example, Wesstorosi is essentially white people: the faction, while the Dornish is more Medditerantian. Across the Narrow Sea we have Asian and Arabic actors, and further south we have black characters because that is how they would look in that area.

In Rings of Power, it is impossible to tell what a particular people group looks like. Who knows what a Southlander looks like? We have white guys. Asian guys, and black guys. Also, Numenor. Of course, they look varied because they are a massive colonial empire...but the lore got screwed over in that regard because Trumpazon says that they DON'T HAVE ANY COLONIES! How does that make any sense?

The Dwarves I can tolerate with a willing suspension of disbelief, because who knows what the Blacklocks looked like? (-_-) Also, we have our FIRST FEMALE DWARF IN A MAJOR ROLE! You go, girl!

The main point of contention on this issue is Arondir. There almost certainly weren't any EOC, unless there was a Haradric Avarian strain in some of them. Don't you see WHY Arondir was cast and portrayed like this? Because Amazon wanted to distract people from the show's failings and make it seem like any complaints were of racist origin. This is so dishonorable because I actually like Arondir and think that he has given a great performance, (no thanks to the writing) but people are only going to remember him as the token diversity elf.

But thank the Valar that we don't have any LGBTQ characters yet. They pretty much don't exist in Middle-earth. I read a great explanation on the LOTR subreddit about why this is not discriminatory, I'm sure you can find it.

No LGBTQ characters...yet. I mean, did Tolkien specifically write that Galadriel and Miriel DIDN'T scissor?

Writing: 1/10. Fool of a Took!

Oh Eru, now it gets really abysmal. The entire plot seems to have been written with a Cliffnotes understanding of the books, and an even weaker grasp of how the characters in a LOTR world would behave or actual human behavior. It is so riddled with contrivances, timeline inconsistencies, and cliches, featuring some of the worst psuedo-Tolkienien dialogue to ever reach my ears from such a well-funded source.

It just is so bad! I could devote hours and hours of text about every little error that could have been fixed with a few keystrokes, but eventually, you have to realize that the entire plot needs to be redone.

Let me put this in perspective: if you were in charge of writing a billion-dollar TV show and were a devoted Tolkien fan with some above-average writing experience, (like yours truly) wouldn't you review your script over and over and over again, looking for plot holes and continuity errors and lore contradictions? I would hope so, but that clearly didn't happen here.

The timeline is...please grab your vomit bags, dear reader. HOW DID THE DWARVES BUILD THAT TOWER SO FAST? Just have the tower in place, but the Dwarves will contribute the magical mithril-smithing technology! HOW DID THE NUMENOREANS SAIL TO MIDDLE-EARTH IN WHAT, TWO DAYS?! WHAT IS GOING ON?! We know that the timelines are united because of Totally Not Gandalf's meteor, but from there the pacing is just horrible. Do better, showrunners!

I will go over the major plot holes and easily solvable things in the individual episode reviews. May the Valar save me, I haven't even mentioned the HARFOOTS yet!

Also, the lore accuracy is so, so flawed. You know what I mean, I'll get to it in the episode reviews.

PART II: THE SETTING, LORE, AND PORTRAYAL OF THE SECOND AGE

Brace yourself, because it doesn't get any better...mostly. Let's show how the Second Age is interpreted, and how the storylines work toward a cohesive narrative...not!

Numenor

I have the biggest issues with how Numenor is portrayed out of EVERYTHING. Get ready...

Instead of a picture of a massive colonial empire, lusting for the eternal life of the Elves and almost ready to attack Valinor and rule Middle-earth out of their own fear of death and envy of those higher than them only barely restrained by an aging Tar-Palantir, they are reduced to an allegorically nationalistic, xenophobic society led by a girlboss that could have been portrayed way better, and reduced to a pure object of ridicule.

First, no mention of the Ban, the want for eternal life, or anything like that. Just 'they stopped welcoming elven ships because they got too arrogant.'

Remember THE SPEECH? Yeah, that speech.

Guy: "Now folks, I know y'all is a good bunch o' civilized folk. So you oughta know that them knife-ears are gonna take our hard-earned JURBS!"

Guy 2: "Yeah, yeah! They're gonna take our JURBS!"

Guy 3: "No elves! Make Numenor great again!"

Trumpazon: "I will not allow illegal undocumented elven immigrants into Numenor! We built the Great Sea Wall, but we need to build more of it!! They won't take our JURBS if I'm the king!"

SERIOUSLY?! THE GREAT SEA WALL?! They could have been way more subtle than that. The only thing that they have to do more is given Trumpazon orange hair and a cheesy tan. I also noticed that this scene is meant to show that Trumpazon is a POPULIST. I wonder what that could mean....

Since we all know how much Tolkien loved allegory, this scene should be perfectly good in a Tolkienian narrative. But it isn't. An immigration allegory, nationalism, and populism all in one speech! Good job at making pure cringe!

This is the Amazon version of Numenor: grossly oversimplified and made into a mockery of the real thing, and the causes that led to the coming Downfall.

Those causes would be overweening pride and arrogance, cruelty, human sacrifice, disregard for natural law and limitations, disobedience to God and higher powers and authorities, neglection of sacred duties, sin, and primal corruption. All these values seem to be pretty toned down in modern entertainment, huh?

Regardless of your opinion of the ORANGE MAN, the point here is that instead of using some kind of symbolism, they moved to anti-Tolkien allegory with a bunch of redneck Numenoreans yelling about how the knife-ears are gonna take their JURBS. Do better!

They are making it about Nationalism, Patriotism, and Racial Superiority. This alone is unforgivable to me, (smokes a joint) and no other aspects of the show get better from there.

HARFOOTS

The Harfoots are a bunch of psychopathic Irish Hobbits that will leave their wounded and disabled to die if they fall even a little behind on their pointless migration. Also, the leader is black, because the show is meant to REFLECT THE WORLD WE LIVE IN TODAY.

Nori and her bumbling companion are clearly meant to be a female Frodo and Sam, right? That probably could be a good story in the hands of COMPETENT SHOWRUNNERS, but that isn't happening this season. Cast the Harfoots into the fire! Destroy them!

Orcs

They look awesome, but there are these little things that make them just a bit...well, first, they have COMPASSION. They MOURN THEIR DEAD. Maybe Adar taught them, but let's take an outward step.

If we take Orcs at face value, they are corrupted elves and Men made into a bestial, soulless state, created by the Mbelekoro (I used Mbelekoro for more dramatic effect) without the sanction of Eru, making them an irredeemable race of PURE EVIL. You don't need to extrapolate on that!

The show's view of the orcs is stemming out of Tolkien's later writing concerning them, and probably the idea that ALL cultures are acceptable and good in their own way, even if it is Orkish brutality. Anti-Tolkien and unnecessary symbolism. (But thankfully not allegory.)

Lindon and Eregion

Alright. Gil-galad is kind of a jerk, Elrond is a beta, and Grandmabrimbor is too old for the role. Aside from the timespan issues with the tower, there is another issue that is far, far worse.

Due to the corruption in some leaves that Gil-galad is seeing, along with some comments that he made about 'the life of the Eldar is waning' tells me that the show is going to make the reason for the forging of the ROP to save the elves' lives, not because of Grandmabrimbors desire to make realms just as beautiful as Valinor. See what they're doing with this?

Alright, this is getting way too long. I will post another part that talks about the characters and the episodes. May the Valar save me, I know too much...

Comments, criticisms, questions, and angry rants are welcome!