'The Rings of Power': These Go to Eleven
Missing the point of 'The Lord of the Rings' in the first ten minutes.
It’s funny: Hand someone a thick book and tell them it’s a history of the world and they will roll their eyes and complain. Hand someone a thick book and tell them it’s the history of a fake, made-up world and they will spend the next three weeks power-reading it and emerge, gaunt and starry-eyed1. At least, this works when the person in question is a fan of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. People who can’t remember when World War I started can reel off the names of every King and Queen of Númenor like it ain’t no thing2.
So of course Amazon would spend one fucking billion dollars on the chaotic, bottomless world-building Tolkien engaged in outside of the actual reader-facing books he published. After all, people will show up. And can you blame us? For decades and decades fantasy had been treated as clown work, childish stuff intended for children and morons3. After putting up with shit like The Circle of Light, Excalibur or Highlander, fans of epic fantasy are simply delighted that someone is spending any sort of money on their genre, and we’re finally getting some good entertainment.
As you might expect, the series The Rings of Power makes some changes to Tolkien’s source material. That’s understandable; the mess of background stuff Tolkien left behind isn’t a unified story—it’s a bunch of stories and legends and myths and scraps and poems and more poems4. Being faithful to it would require 145 hours of screen time and approximately 170,000 actors, and would make almost no sense. Instead, Amazon has wrought a through line with a protagonist and a discernible plot, centered around Galadriel’s white-hot hatred of Sauron5.
Which is fine, really. Adaptations are called adaptations for a reason—there are always changes required to shape things into teleplays. But the folks involved with The Rings of Power have missed one of the most important things about Tolkien’s universe, and it’s evident within the first 10 minutes of the show: There’s too much power in The Rings of Power.
All Shall Love Me and Despair!
One of the primary things Tolkien is concerned with in The Lord of the Rings is power, yes—but in Tolkien’s universe, power hits a little different than in most of the epic fantasies that followed in its wake. For Tolkien, power is subtle and consuming. His characters actually rarely use power—you can count the number of times Gandalf does any sort of actual wizarding on on hand6. Mostly, the powerful characters in this universe hide, dissemble, and plot. They rely on wisdom and patience, not fireballs and kickass battle skilz. When people complain that LOTR is really just a lot of people walking places, they’re not entirely wrong—most of the powerful figures in the story exercise their power very, very carefully.
At the same time, power is depicted as extremely dangerous. The more powerful you are, the more likely it is you will be consumed by that power. Sauron literally pours all of his essence into the One Ring, becoming incorporeal7. Saruman becomes a shell of his former glory when he pursues power. Gollum, Frodo, and Bilbo are slowly consumed by the power of the Ring, the nine human kings are transformed into the Nazgûl—generally speaking, power is dangerous stuff in Tolkien’s world. That’s why the Elves hid their rings of power when Sauron put on the One Ring and revealed his influence over them—better to hide than to fight8.
Yet in the first ten minutes of Amazon’s slow, talky adaptation, we are given Galadriel (Morfydd Clark), badass Snow Troll killer. When she leads her band of Sauron-hunting elves into an abandoned fortress seeking clues, they’re attacked by a Snow Troll, and Galadriel’s band of merry warriors are so clumsily overmatched by this monster one wonders what they intended to do if they actually caught up with Actual Dark Sorcerer Sauron9, but that’s beside the point. The point is that Galadriel performs some slick Hidden Dragon-style sword moves—several of which, preposterously, have her facing the camera, steely-eyed as she delivers behind-the-back murder—and absolutely owns the Snow Troll without breaking a sweat10.
Is it a bad scene? Not necessarily. It’s handled well, and offers the audience a quick burst of action in what turns out to be a very, very slow and very, very talky first episode11. But it’s all wrong, because it’s not what the powerful do in Tolkien’s universe. Tolkien treats power like a trick of the light that vanishes the moment you try to use it12. When Gandalf encounters a Balrog in the mines of Moria, what does he do? He fucking runs. And only when the party is trapped does he turn and use the power he has.
The Age of Streaming
Does this mean The Rings of Power is a bad show? Not necessarily, although it sure looks like a bad show so far. The point isn’t that transforming Galadriel into a kickass warrior princess is a terrible thing, it’s that it isn’t really in line with the source material. This is, of course, subjective. I’ve seen plenty of reviews online praising how the show captures the spirit, look, and feel of Middle Earth from Tolkien’s writings—and they’re not wrong. In terms of design and tone, it’s kind of spot on, and the urge to make the protagonists kickass power brokers makes sense—see, again, all the complaints about all the walking in LOTR. No one wants a faithful adaptation that has most of the powerful characters sitting around in golden halls urging caution for six hours straight13. A little Snow Troll-killing action certainly adds to the cinematic qualities of the show14.
But it doesn’t inspire confidence. Tolkien’s approach to fantasy storytelling is, of course, an outlier today, where even mainstream fantasy has been touched by the grimdark and the faux-realism of A Song of Ice and Fire and other hugely successful modern series. People tuning in to The Rings of Power are no doubt hoping for more Helm’s Deep battles and more Gandalf/Saruman wizard duels than lengthy scenes of hobbits riding on Treebeard’s back while he slowly explains things, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But you have to be careful: It’s easy to lose everything that made Middle Earth unique in the first place—playing with this sort of narrative power can consume a story and made it like every other CGI nightmare.
Of course, if you’ve never actually read the books, you likely don’t care, and that is also fine. I’m kind of used to writing 1,000 words no one cares about. It’s part of the gig.
Next week: Tom Cruise the ever-living.
Similarly, try to teach someone math and they will kick and scream. Introduce them to gambling and they’re suddenly capable of calculating a 15-leg parley in their head.
Then again, I know the ERA of every Cy Young Award winner, so maybe I shouldn’t be throwing stones around.
As my brother, Yan, is fond of saying, most SFF TV shows take the approach that since there’s magic or advanced technology in their universe, anything can happen without explanation or justification.
So, so much poetry. So much.
The challenge the producers face is not making Sauron too cool. I guarantee you if I met 2nd Age Sauron in his “beautiful” disguise, I’d be his Grima Wormtongue. Christ, I’m a dork.
Peter Jackson’s films showed us why this was wise: The wizarding battle between Gandalf and Saruman can’t not look like two old men pointing sticks at each other and grimacing.
Sauron really got a cheese deal, if you think about it: Hey, wanna become lord over the dimwitted, the greedy, and the weak and by the way you’re basically a vapor and if someone drops a ring into a heat vent you’ll burn away? Sounds good, sign me up.
I know this for I am wise. For example, I choose not to fight my urge to Day Drink; instead, I hide it.
Insult his sartorial choices viciously, one imagines. They are High Elves, after all.
To the show’s credit, at least they don’t have Clark wearing a steel bikini while she does this.
This is pretty much a requirement: You need to offer your audience something exciting right out of the gate to jazz them up. Then you can spend 100 pages or three episodes discussing galactic trade treaties.
Similarly to my charm and charisma. In the shower, practicing a speech? I am Charm Incarnate. On stage, giving a speech? I am sweat and sorrow.
Or composing poems about the marathon council meeting that just concluded.
That’s why I start all my public appearances by physically attacking someone randomly chosen from the audience. Really gets the energy going.
Ah, I'm late. Sorry.
2). Sad but too true.
11). Oh god.
I tried to read The Silmarillion as a lad. What?