So, going in, if you haven’t read my previous #JamesAndTheSecondAge posts, you’re totally not obligated to read them, but I’m likely to refer back to things I’ve said recently. Also, I know not everybody has seen these episodes yet (and some of you don’t have Amazon Prime – I respect that choice!), so here’s how I’m going to handle spoilers. This post will be only very mildly spoilery – like, if I was reviewing the original Star Wars movie, I wouldn’t tell you “Obi-Wan is killed by Vader” but I might say something like “the decision to kill a major character halfway through the film surprised me, but I think it’s clearly the right choice for developing the character of those affected by the loss”. So, if you really want to avoid ALL little hints about the show, skip this post. I’ll put more explicitly spoilery observations in the "comments" portion of this post below.
I know the big question on most folks’ lips right now is – is this show “faithful” to Tolkien? Anybody who’s been on the Second Age journey with me thus far knows how complicated a question that is. Tolkien wasn’t faithful to Tolkien – famously so, in fact, constantly rewriting his own work – and understanding even what version of his tale we’re talking about can be tough, especially with material like the Second Age, which he mostly did not publish in his lifetime. That said, I’d say, as one of your resident Tolkien nerds, to me it’s not breaking any new ground on that front – it’s easily in line with Jackson in terms of how faithful it is. This is a slightly backhanded compliment, of course, because Jackson in fact messes with a LOT – cutting whole characters and scenes, inventing some new ones, radically altering the characterization of major figures, and even at times tinkering with the metaphysics of Tolkien’s work in ways that are not at all consistent with the novel. And yet we love those movies! In part because he’s faithful to a LOT of the original work, but maybe more importantly, most of the tinkering PJ did in making the films felt to us like it was in the spirit of Tolkien’s work, eliciting reactions in us that “work” with the novel even if technically speaking it’s a pretty radical departure. I’d say that you’ll likely find this to be true of The Rings of Power if you watch with an open mind – it feels like Tolkien’s world even when there are some inexplicably new/altered takes on that world (and there are).
And the maybe even bigger question on most folks’ lips is – is this show good? Worth watching? My honest response after two episodes is a resounding “absolutely!” Now, do I love it as much as the Peter Jackson movies? How could anyone possibly do that yet? We’ve had over 20 years with those films. I’ve watched them so many times I know every single line of dialogue and camera move by heart. I know every wrinkle on Gollum’s face better than I do my own (I mean, his face has stayed the same for 20 years and mine’s changed a little). But this is WELL above the level, in my opinion, of the Hobbit trilogy that Jackson made – and even those films have a lot to enjoy in them with some beautiful visuals. This is more than that – you’ll see things we’ve never seen on screen before, and you’ll see sides of Tolkien’s imagination that until now we just had to piece together from scraps and isolated sentences. If you, like most people, rate Jackson’s LOTR trilogy a 9 or 10 out of 10, I have a hard time believing you won’t find these first two episodes in at least 6.5-7 territory (good but not enthralling), and to me, honestly, they’re playing up much closer to 8-8.5 territory (very good, honestly, and maybe going to be great once I’ve seen the whole season). It’s not shocking to anybody that Bear McCreary’s music is beautiful, or that the scale of the practical effects work by folks like WETA is astounding and lovely, to say nothing of the costuming. The acting is genuinely really great top to bottom, for me – a couple of characters I’m not connecting to yet, but far more of them are so vividly realized that I can already feel myself picking favorites and bouncing in my chair a little when they pop back onto screen. The writing is always going to be where I quibble with a Tolkien adaptation – as much as I love some of the writing choices in the Jackson films, this is their weakest point, to me. I was expecting to find the writing a lot more clunky in this show – the writers are so new at what they’re doing, and unlike Jackson’s writing team, which had 1,000 pages of dialogue to just lift directly off the page, there’s almost zero lines of dialogue from the Second Age available to these folks, so I figured a lot of the language would just not fit quite right. I can point to some lines I’d edit, but overall the feel of the conversations was great, in my ears, and I think they’ve figured out how to write dialogue for the Second Age that sounds Tolkieny (as opposed to ripping off other series’ tones, like Game of Thrones or The Witcher, which just have different universes to play in, love them or hate them).
I’ll save more specific interpretations/predictions for the comments, but overall there’s a surprising level of commitment to getting the timeline right – specifically there’s one setting and set of characters we haven’t seen at ALL by the end of Episode 2, which really shocks me…but to me it’s the right call given the sequence of events they need to set up if they’re following Tolkien’s overall cause-effect sequence for the Second Age. There’s certainly compression happening here, but there aren’t enough time markers yet for me to know exactly where they’re trying to position everybody. And to all the Tolkien nerds grouching about elements from the First Age being “wrong” (the first episode has some pretty extensive backstory flashback material for one character who is, as they say, older than the Sun), folks, do the homework. Amazon has the rights to LOTR, not The Silmarillion – if you read the scraps about the First Age in the Appendices (even more scanty than the Second Age scraps), most of the things people are fussing about them “not getting right” or “missing a piece” are things that simply aren’t in Tolkien’s canon of published material in the first place. To the extent that we’re getting those things “wrong”, too, let’s remember (as I have had to do in reading about the 2nd Age) that Tolkien always thinks about POV – the version of events the show gives us about the 1st Age is the version that character might tell. Leaving out some twists and turns, polishing up character choices and situations in a way that justifies them being who they are as we meet them in the Second Age, and rationalizing the choices they’re making. I think it’s pretty brilliant, honestly.
I was open going in about my skepticism regarding including the Harfoots, one of the proto-Hobbit communities, in this show…and I’ll be honest, I still don’t know why they’re here in plot terms. But as a viewing experience? These folks are utterly charming – this vision of an earlier era in “hobbit” society is incredibly detailed, and the casting and writing for all the stuff happening in that little nomadic village is really wonderful to immerse in. Even if they’re mostly here to act as a breather from more lofty/intense elements in the show, I think that’s okay. Time spent with these little folk is always great. And to switch to the “big folk”, I love how the series is working with the Elves – what would it be like to be impossibly ancient? LOTR doesn’t play with that very much, beyond isolated scenes, and I love that The Rings of Power uses it constantly to remind us of the gap between an Elvish perspective on time and the perspectives of Humans and Dwarves – it’s a source of mistrust and tension and confusion, and it’s working SO well, to me. To say more would be to spoil things too much, I think, but I will say that a conversation Elrond has in particular really drove this home to me – caught me off guard, honestly, and hit me emotionally. I love that. And while I’m still avoiding spoilers, I do just want to say that I am really pleasantly surprised at how the showrunners are drawing inspiration from the material they don’t have the rights to – I see flashes of a lot of the things I’ve read this last month in the show, hints that the series wants to capture the flavor of Tolkien’s thinking about this era in Middle-earth even if they’re going to play fast and loose with a couple of the rules of his universe.
And while there’s a lot of show left to go, I really appreciate the tensions already in place that I can imagine driving conflict as we go forward: the series understands the backstories of these characters (those they’ve invented and those they’re borrowing from Tolkien directly), and I’m really impressed at how successfully they can create conflict and even opposition between characters who are “good”. That’s what I keep coming back to – it would have been easy to rip off the Tolkien brand but fill his universe with elements from other series. Crass use of nudity and sex, for instance, or just thematic elements that make no sense in this world (an orc sidekick for an elf main character, or something). The fact that the series has its own feel, and that the feel of it is so close to my understanding of this universe, makes me glad. I hope it can remain distinctive – maybe even get better at it – as it goes forward.
I think I’ll leave it there for the post – my spoilery thoughts will go in the comments, so meet me there if you want to talk about whether I think X really is Y, or whether I’m grouchy about A ordering that B. And if you haven’t given the show a try yet, I think you should. Even if you end up disagreeing with me!
Comments:
All material below this point contains SPOILERS. If you want to watch the show first, STAND CLEAR.
Okay, the Meteor Man. Let’s get down to brass tacks here – the showrunners clearly understand that we’ve really only got two plausible options here. This is either Sauron or one of the Istari – only a Maia spirit could survive that kind of plummet, as our Harfoots even manage to articulate (well, they don’t mention the Maiar but they eliminate other possibilities for us – it ain’t Glorfindel, alas). They’ve also written and directed this in a way that I think really carefully walks the line between those choices – is this guy harrowing because he’s evil and he’s slowly realizing it, or because he’s here to stop evil and he’s terrified he won’t be able to get the job done? Is his relationship to fire that of a powerful fell spirit who can wield it for cruel purposes, or that of a powerful noble spirit who is, well, let’s just say it out loud, a “servant of the Sacred Fire, wielder of the Flame of Anor”? Sigh. I hope it’s not Gandalf, but I think it likely is, based on my rewatches – the little firefly whispers are definitely a nod to Gandalf whispering to the moth on the pinnacle of Orthanc (one of the nine thousand things that happen in Jackson’s films but NOT the novel), the fire stuff suits his character so well, etc. My guess is that, if they go this route, they just think it’s too natural to say that Olorin (Gandalf’s actual name) came on some other mission for the Valar, forged a bond with the Harfoots, and that explains why later in the Third Age, when a mission comes back to Middle-earth in the form of the Istari, he’s clearly got an assignment that includes keeping an eye on them. If I have to live with this, I will, but I would REALLY appreciate it if they kept him well away from the big players – there’s a reason Gandalf needs Elrond to fill in all that Second Age detail at the Council of Elrond, and this younger Olorin fellow certainly can’t take on Sauron single-handed, etc. But then why is he here? I’ve got to reserve judgment and just wait and see. I still hope he’s a Blue Wizard, since if they’re going to call an audible on the Istari timeline from the Tale of Years, I’d like one more consistent with Tolkien’s thinking about the Second Age, but there’s nothing blue about this dude. Honestly, he reads so much like Jackson’s Gandalf, the more I watch him – the way the camera plays with his eyes, or the look and feel of him angry, just resembles so much the early scenes with McKellen in Fellowship. I’m nervous about this, though – brilliant as Weaving and Blanchett were as performers, we don’t really get to know Elrond and Galadriel in the LOTR films, and I think therefore their new actors, Aramayo and Clark, have a lot of room to explore those characters in the series. But McKellen is SO familiar to us, and SO indelible, that I just worry about Weyman having to carry that weight as a performer. If I’m wrong and this is another Wizard, I’ll be delighted. Oh, why don’t I entertain the possibility of Sauron here? I just think it’s not only hard to explain why you’d drop him with the Harfoots, but the show itself doesn’t have a metaphysics that accounts for this – the show’s premised on the idea that Sauron endured and is in hiding somewhere….why would that guy suddenly fall from the sky? How did he get up there? So no, this isn’t Sauron – or if it is, we have a lot to learn about their idea of Sauron’s backstory. What do you think?
Okay, so, the crankypants Tolkien nerd conversation centers around Galadriel mostly – which isn’t shocking, a lot of these people are misogynists and they don’t like women with weapons who make their own decisions. But some of them aren’t, and I do get the non-misogynists' concerns. I’ll touch on a couple of them here and if we want to go nerdy on more, folks, take us there. So, first of all, there’s complaints that Galadriel isn’t where she’s “supposed to be” in the Second Age, which, as you know if you’ve followed my posts, Tolkien himself never figured out where she was supposed to be. The accounts in the Unfinished Tales make it clear that he found the Appendix version unsatisfactory but never pieced together the right answers. No matter which of his timelines we take, none of them present a woman who was, as he once said, basically the most powerful and gifted Elf who ever lived other than maybe Feanor. Now, do I love every move they’ve made here? No, I wish she had a husband named Celeborn but she pretty clearly doesn’t (same goes for her missing a daughter named Celebrian) – if they exist they’re sure off the radar in a MAJOR way. But let’s face it, the showrunners have given us an Elf woman who is the person Tolkien wanted to imagine – astoundingly gifted in combat, physically strong and resilient in ways that go beyond anything even the toughest of her kind can accomplish, proud and ambitious and cocksure like someone who didn’t QUITE learn Feanor’s lesson and who will someday need to “pass the test and remain Galadriel” when a hobbit offers her the most powerful artifact in existence. Like many things in the show, I think the vibe is totally right, and I’ll try not to grumble too much about the missing pieces – much like I think the vibe of the hobbits fleeing from the Bucklebury Ferry to Bree is right in PJ’s Fellowship movie, even though it leaves out Crickhollow and The Old Forest and Tom Bombadil and the Barrow-Downs, all of which honestly is really important. But PJ makes his film work, and so far this characterization of Galadriel works for me.
Another element like that is Gil-Galad “rewarding” Galadriel and her elf platoon with passage to the West. As lots of nerds have observed online, yeah, that’s not his job. It’s the Valar who issued the ban keeping the Elves in Middle-earth during the First Age, and then opening up the right to return after Morgoth’s defeat. Gil-Galad issuing tickets for travel to Valinor is like my five year old writing me a “movie ticket” so I can watch Totoro with her on my own TV. I had permission already, thanks. But here’s what I’m going to say – the metaphysics of that permission are totally wrong, but the POLITICS are fantastic. I mean, look at that scene – Gil-Galad’s got a problem. He’s High King but there’s this woman who is magnificently powerful and incredibly ancient and she’s going to chase her vengeance quest forever. As he remarks to Elrond later, he’s worried she will CAUSE the emergence of evil, and as a guy who’s getting to reign as High King in the Age of Peace after the end of the War to End All Wars, he needs to get rid of her. So he orchestrates this beautiful ceremony, praising and thanking her and her comrades so effusively that when he caps it off with an offer she can’t refuse, he’s maneuvered her into a corner. Sure, later, she ponders refusing it anyway, but Elrond’s ready (as Gil-Galad’s close adviser) to finish the work of persuading her. And that’s not to bash either of the dudes – Gil-Galad genuinely thinks he’s protecting the kingdom, and Elrond thinks he’s saving his friend from herself. That’s the beauty of the scenes, I think – that we can see how, again, good people find themselves at odds with each other. So, do I love the idea here of Gil-Galad controlling access to Valinor? I do not. But I love what that dynamic is doing for our insight into the characters, and I can just hand wave the rest a little by saying, maybe, that all the Elves in Lindon (for this series, anyway) swore an oath to remain until released by the High King, and so there’s a presumption that they’re all ready to head West the moment he gives them clearance, or something.
Let’s just hit some things at high speed here that I would be glad to advance as predictions. I think Galadriel’s weird Sundering Seas arc (which I didn’t love the first time around, but it grew on me on rewatch) is just designed to combine her wild-eyed commitment to vengeance with Numenor’s instability. I’ve theorized throughout my read of the Second Age that an easy move for The Rings of Power would be to have Miriel commit Numenorean forces to helping the Elves fight Sauron – that would alienate the King’s Men faction in a way consistent with Miriel’s allegiance to the Elf-friends from Tolkien’s legendarium, and potentially open a crack that allows Pharazon to seize power away from her. So I’m REALLY interested to see what kind of conversations Galadriel and Miriel have. The discovery of mithril (the gleam inside the chest opened by the Durins MUST be mithril – the Arkenstone is in Erebor, not Moria, and the Silmarils are all gone, but “moria-silver” being discovered would make sense to me) I think will surely drive tensions between Dwarves and Elves – my guess is that the smith-cooperation between those races in Eregion will have an element of jealousy as each side tries to siphon away ideas from the other for their private ends. I fear that Prince Durin, who I am LOVING as a character, will be easy for Sauron to ensnare with a ring. But let’s hope not. Halbrand reads, to me, like a Nazgul in waiting – more so than Theo, the poor kid who picked up something that looks for all the world like a Morgul-blade. I don’t know why Halbrand was at sea, but he’s hiding a lot. And to be clear, I don’t think he’s Sauron himself – I doubt we’ve seen that character yet. I just can’t tell why Halbrand was out there, or where he was going. I hope we get more insight into him soon. And I have no prediction about Lenny Henry as the aging patriarch of the Harfoot band, but isn’t he wonderful? Give me more Lenny Henry in general, but especially as a grumpy amateur Harfoot astronomer. Okay, I’m sure I have more to say but let’s stop here for now and see what y’all have to say.