The Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power (season 1)

Set thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, season 1 of  The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power explores the Second Age of Middle-earth, focusing on the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron and the forging of the Rings of Power. The season follows various characters, including elves, dwarves, and humans, as they navigate the growing threat of Sauron and the political and social upheavals of their time.

The Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power Season 1 Review

Season 1 of The Rings of Power attempts and fails to mimic the scope and flavor of Peter Jackson’s epic original trilogy. Oh, it may look like The Lord of The Rings… some of the time, and it may share the names of characters and places from Tolkien’s seminal work, but it is not The One Series to Rule Them All.

While it’s not the earth-salting canon-breaking nightmare fuel that it is for super-fans of the source material, The Rings of Power remains a deeply troubled production even if you’re only a fan of the films. Its visuals range from beautiful fantasy landscapes to 25-year-old CGI, and its performances are equally uneven. For every thoughtfully nuanced performance, there is a wooden and unlikeable Galadriel suffering from TMJ and a reimagined and useless Elrond.

Ultimately, season 1 of The Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power suffers most from disjointed storytelling and over-reliance on uninteresting or amateurishly telegraphed mystery boxes in lieu of character-building and organic plot progression.

WOKE ELEMENTS

The Archetype

• Galadriel is the model for everything wrong with the portrayal of women in modern cinema.
  • She is a much-diminished reimagining of a grand legacy character from a beloved IP.
  • She is mean, arrogant, and totally unlikable, yet treated with reverence and deference.
  • She’s an unstoppable bad@$$ who can single-handedly and quickly take down monsters three times her size that obliterated a host of armed men moments before, and she can do it without getting a scratch or even breaking a sweat.
    • Legolas was an incredible Elvin warrior. Galadriel can break through 6-inch ice walls with a single half-hearted punch.
  • Her greatest weakness is not accepting just how wonderful she truly is.

I Am No Man

• Every woman is a tough go-getter and natural leader who good men follow, and evil men hate.

The West Harlem of Middle Earth

• Multiculturalism is not a natural phenomenon. Don’t believe me? Take a look at Japan, Iceland, and Armenia, to name a few. In fact, despite decades of being able to traverse half of the planet in less than a day, most of the real world remains comprised of relatively large groups of folks who look more or less alike. That’s because, without a very good reason to leave, people tend to stick close to home. Not so in The Rings of Power. Although it’s supposedly based on Tolkien’s incredibly detailed Wester European-inspired mythology (detailed enough to make provisions for non-white cultures), one in which travel from distant lands was fraught with all manner of mortal perils, every society and sentient species in this program reflects the various shades of modern Western society, and it is incredibly jarring every… single… time.

Hamfisted Modern Politics

• Each and every interpersonal plot setup is a lazy and obvious allegory for Leftist perceptions of “important” modern cultural issues (eg. racism, sexism, etc.).