The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (Prime Video) is likely to prove divisive, depending not least on whether you’re watching it on a big screen TV or squinting at its glory on a phone or laptop. It’s so rich and beautiful that it’s easy to spend the first episode simply marveling at the scenery as you zip between lands of elves and dwarves, humans and harfoots. This is a TV made for big screens, although it’s certainly destined to be seen on smaller screens. It’s so cinematic and awesome that House of the Dragon looks like it was cobbled together in Minecraft.
This makes it difficult to judge The Rings of Power as an ordinary series because so much about it is extraordinary. It’s Tolkien, which means this world is already revered and loved by so many, whether in the form of the books, the Peter Jackson movies, or both. There is an extraordinary level of expectation before a viewer presses play. Add to that the fact that this is reportedly the most expensive TV series of all time – $465 million for eight episodes – and it’s hard to think of this as just another show. It’s an event, a spectacle, but if it’s not quite perfect, is it a failure?
The first 10 minutes of the opening episode set a fantastically busy, robust pace and tone. It begins quietly and beautifully, with a very young Galadriel sailing a paper ship to “the undying lands” of Valinor. Then there’s sharp gas, racing through centuries of history and war and, crucially, the overthrow of the dark lord Morgoth. I usually dread having to read primers before starting a new series—it should stand on its own—but this is where some homework might help.
“A world worth jumping into with all your heart”… The Rings of Power. Photo: Prime StudiosAs it settles in the twilight of the Second Age, Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) commander of the northern armies, the warrior of the wastelands who still hunts Morgoth’s lieutenant Sauron, is on a hunch centuries after most elves believe he has been defeated .
I love Galadriel the fighter. Brave, flawed, and haughty, she is as bloodthirsty as she is brilliant, scarred by the horrors of war. If that doesn’t sound like a lot of fun, wait till you see what she does with a snow troll.
If the elves bring the intensity, then there’s plenty of earthy light and joy in the Harfoots, Tolkien’s predecessors of the hobbits, preparing for their seasonal migration. The young Harfoots forage for berries and frolic in the mud, while their elders (including Lenny Henry) are on hand to explain how it all fits together through a not unwelcome exhibition of who lives where and what country they protect. The opening episode also introduces us to the Southlands, where elves and humans live uneasily together amid decades of post-war resentment.
It’s not until the second episode and the arrival of the dwarves that the immersive feeling blossoms – that feeling that this is a fully realized world worth jumping into with all your heart. The midgets anchor it and tone down some of the show’s more pompous instincts. It’s not much spoilers to say that the initial idyll will soon be shattered. The elves’ assertion that “our days of war are over” is more of a dream than cold political analysis. There are hints that decay is in the air from the get-go, and it doesn’t take long for those hints to become sirens blaring out warnings. When it gets scary, it really is scary. Towards the end of the second episode, things are breathlessly tense and far more gruesome than I expected.
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I have a few small reservations. There’s an occasional hint of “smell-the-fart” drama, which might be hard to avoid when every other line is a poker-faced aphorism like, “A dog may bark at the moon, but it can’t bring it down.” The pacing, too, is a little all or nothing. It either rushes through amazing action scenes or lingers on a single conversation or meaningful gaze. But those are quibbles and in the end the spectacle wins. This is tremendous television enjoyment, a cinematic feast. Now I have to just find someone with a huge tv to watch with them.