Amazon’s new billion-dollar venture into Middle Earth has drawn intense backlash from countless die-hard Tolkien fans (like myself) on multiple TV rating platforms, especially Rotten Tomatoes, where the first season has thus far received an average audience score of 39%.
Because of this harsh condemnation by the fanbase, I came into “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” looking for reasons to critique and found a handful early on. The plot of the first episode was as unhurried and dull as a cave troll. I turned it off after 20 minutes, but later returned to give it a second chance, and I’m glad I did.
The series takes lore and storyline liberties to an extreme that neither the original “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy nor “The Hobbit” ever did. With the introduction of completely new characters and the appendation of noncanonical lore to old favorites, many Tolkien enthusiasts are finding that it’s been stripped of the nostalgic feel that the Peter Jackson films provoke. Perhaps, while weighing the potential alienation of the fanbase through such extreme diversion from Tolkien’s works, Amazon ought to have heeded Galadriel’s eternal words: “Stray but a little, and it will fail, to the ruin of all.”
While “The Rings of Power” doesn’t align with traditional Tolkien lore, it rapidly metamorphosizes into a binge-worthy series in its own right. After slogging through the first episode into the second, the plot picks up to a gallop, with the constant introduction of new themes, characters, and cliffhangers that left me wanting to skip class. At some point during the second episode, I mentally detached the series from the classic movies and began to see that, for those watchers who are just arriving in Middle Earth, “The Rings of Power” is emotionally engaging and leaves their curiosity piqued with questions that are answered by the Peter Jackson films.
As captivating as these new stories are, they aren’t my favorite part of the series. Admirers of the original films will know that the landscapes were almost entirely recorded on the North Island of New Zealand, and the new series is no different. Amazon brought something new to the table by incorporating a wider range of geography on the island, with more emphasis on the coastal regions which never got much airtime in the Peter Jackson films. It’s been nearly a decade since the last of those films came out, and the Amazon production team has really leveraged new cutting-edge CGI technologies to bring grand cities and small towns alike into higher resolution and greater realism.
As of the fourth episode, I would give the series four stars out of five. Whether you are brand-new to Tolkien or a seasoned LotR lorehound, I encourage you to give “The Rings of Power” a chance.
While you’re lying in bed as evening fades to night, binging “Rings of Power,” weighing whether or not to press “Next Episode,” and you have a midterm exam the next morning, remember that procrastination is like a journey to Mordor: “Little by little, one travels far.”
