Rings of Power: Season 1 Review
Oct. 15th, 2022 09:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
labingiThis show has ended up wildly skewed for me. There are parts I hate and parts I love. Therefore, I'm going to rank 'em, worst to best (as I experience it). I'll rate them 1-10, with 1 being worst, and explain why.
Scale calibration:
1 = I love Lexx, but that gender swap episode of Lexx that is just one interminable rape joke.
10 = The finale of Blake's 7, "The Body" in Buffy, Tyrion in Game of Thrones seasons 1-4.
Okay, here we go. Spoilers for Season 1 and book stuff
2.5 – Galadriel
The actor is talented and well cast, and she has a handful of not bad scenes. But on the whole, she is written as a one-dimensional, arrogant teenager whose only admirable traits are bravery and being athletic. I find this insulting to Tolkien's Galadriel, who is ancient, insightful, skillful in many different ways (e.g. crafts, music), and embedded in responsibilities to complex family relations. I buy that Tolkien's Galadriel could kick ass. But it should be an aspect of who she is, not the only thing she is. It's galling that the showrunners seem to intend her as a strong female lead. I do not like the message that admirable women are toxic men in women's bodies. This is gender regressive, not feminist.
I realize they intend her to have a character arc and she is intentionally written as arrogant and too angry. Arcs are fine, but this one is badly written. It's not a plausible starting point for an ancient Elf, it's written without subtlety, and when she does start to behave more maturely, which is welcome, it doesn't feel like character evolution; it feels like a different writer. I'm heartily glad Celeborn got mentioned, but his absence from all conversation for almost all the season is not explicable.
2.5 – Gil-galad
I'm ranking him as slightly less awful than Galadriel because he's not the protagonist, and I'll also give him a brownie point for being presented as, loosely speaking, good and not evil. I think the actor is trying, but he's too old and given nothing to work with. He's written as a stupid, conniving, petty bureaucrat in order to have cheap plot tension and make Elrond look smart. That makes no sense for the high king of the Elves in universe (why would he not be dead or deposed by now?). And it is deeply offensive to Tolkien's admittedly light sketch of a character who is possibly the most heroic and important figure of the Second Age. (Even his sole costume is awful.)
3.5 – Númenor
This covers a lot of ground. Some I like: I like the casting of Elendil and Isildur, most of the way they're written, and their relationship. The added daughter is fine. I like how they've dealt with Anarion, setting up early that "we don't talk about Anarion," which lets us know they haven't forgotten he exists and creates a mystery box I'm curious to see opened but don't need to see right away.
I also really like Pharazon's son. This is probably a personal tick. His appearance and acting feel like he just popped over from I, Claudius, and I like I, Claudius. Tar Miriel is also cast and acted fine.
I like the visuals a lot. One video I saw noted that it was implausible a major sea power has almost no boats in its harbors. Fair point, but overall, I like the costumes, architecture and general antique feel.
But the actual plot is shite. Tolkien handed them a good plot about an empire of Men falling into ruin due to arrogance, defiance of the Valar, and the desire for immortality. They replaced it with an incoherent jumble: Elves taking jobs or scary because they're immortal or there's a prophecy…. They created a society that's an unexplained mix of highly egalitarian, especially with regard to gender, yet about to fall to tyranny? One that's highly cosmopolitan (many races, not very mixed by time and isolation) yet isolationist? A major sea power with three ships? This is such bad worldbuilding it's close to no worldbuilding.
6 – Elrond and Durin
I know: everyone thinks they're the best thing in the show. And I get that; they have a lot of strengths: their friendship is palpable and has some nice, well-written moments, like chatting about fathers. Durin is a great character overall: witty and multidimensional with a fascinating relationship with his dad, and a great partnership with his wife. Disa is one of the best written characters in the show: fantastic and likeable but with an edge that could plausibly arc into a true tragic fall. Elrond has a fair number of well written scenes, of which the best may be the "lying" scene.
The thing that needles me about this plot is that the writers warp the story and characters around Elrond (and to a lesser extent Durin) to manipulate the audience into liking them. The greatest victim here is Gil-galad, who is written as a mirthless buffoon so that Elrond and Durin can share an implausible joke about a table and Elrond can be noble and have conflict over the mithril ridiculousness. That type of manipulative writing is the narrative version of real-life playing favorites to aggrandize some while denigrating others, the narrative version of school yard cliques ganging up on the unpopular kids, and for me it vitiates much of what would otherwise, indeed, be good development of a well-written friendship.
6 – The Southlands: Arondir and Bronwyn Edition
For me, Arondir, Bronwyn, Theo, and their community average out to a tie with Elrond and Durin. At their best, they're not as well written; at their worst, they're not as bad. They're less realistic and nuanced; they also have less narrative warp. The romance between Bronwyn and Arondir works for me. It helps that she's not a kid and has a teen son: she and Theo are a relatable family. Arondir is mature, skillful, and sensible. He and Elrond are the only Elvish characters who behave like Elves—and Arondir more than Elrond, in my opinion. I wouldn't mind if he cracked a smile now and then—but times are hard. I am curious about Theo's flirtation with the dark side; it could make a gripping and tragic story.
I like Bronwyn as a healer and tolerably effective fighter out of desperation; her fight scenes may be the most gripping and realistic in the show. I do not buy her as the sudden ruler of her people because she gave the alarm about the Orcs. I don't buy there isn't someone above her to take charge. I don't buy being the village healer is the natural path to this kind of power. I don't buy that a patriarchal society (even patriarchy lite) would take so easily to a woman who's not a warrior leading them in wartime. Making her the leader feels like another attempt to create a "strong female character" by putting her in a traditional man's role rather than letting her sit more plausibly in a woman's role and be strong. (I feel like telling the writers to remember Audre Lorde: they will not dismantle the master's house using only the master's tools.)
I don't buy villagers running off to join the Orcs. I'd buy it if they were captured, tortured, and coerced, don't buy they'd rather join the Orcs than run away.
7.5 - The Harfoots and Probably Gandalf
While I understand the disgruntlement of some about the Irish accents, I really love the Harfoots as a proto-hobbit concept. If the Shire's hobbits are like 17th-century English country folk, the Harfoots make sense as their ancestors 3000-ish years before. By analogy, I could imagine such a population in Europe a thousand years before Julius Caesar. They are charmingly hobbit-like in their love of food and fun, their humor, close-knit community, and fear of strangers. But they are also very different as a hunter-gatherer nomad society; it's interesting and mostly makes sense.
(I also want to push back only slightly on the argument that it demeans the Irish to see them presented as dirty and primitive. So hunter-gatherer cultures that live simply and don't have the same standards as us for washing are dirty and primitive? "Savages," one might say? I just think that one deserves a little more ideology investigation. Yes, I do realize that presentation corresponds to old prejudices against the Irish—just a slight pushback.)
Like many, I think a sour note is struck by the ease with which the Harfoots abandon people. This is so close to being interesting fictional anthropology and great drama, but the writers made it too easy. Abandoning a family because of a twisted ankle? Put the guy in the cart and leave some possessions behind! Now, if it had been a serious illness with fear of spreading or something, that might have sold dramatically. The other detriment to the Harfoots plotline is poor pacing, with basically nothing happening all season after Nori finds Probably Gandalf. These cons push it down to 7.5 for me.
But I really like Nori, Poppy, Nori's parents, and the old leader dude. And I really like Probably Gandalf. He's a great conception of what it might be like for basically an angel to descend to Earth in a human body (for the first time?) and be both very powerful and utterly stunned and baffled. And that bafflement over basic humanity makes Nori—a plain, good person—the perfect companion. Good casting too.
8.5 – Halbrand as Sauron
This concept is pretty much perfect; I have no notes. The only reason this is an 8.5 and not 10 is the general poorness of the series' writing overall: lackluster dialogue; no one noticing he wasn't actually wounded by his bad wound; when he comes on to Galadriel, why doesn't she note that his side "killed" her husband, etc. But, I mean, imagine this concept with the writing of House of the Dragon! That'd be a 10.
I know some complain that his identity was easy to guess, but character and theme are ultimately more important than a one-time interesting surprise, and this is a great concept for Sauron. It's even reasonably faithful to Tolkien in following the idea that Sauron briefly repented (partly out of fear) after the fall of Morgoth. It follows the lead of Tolkien in distinguishing Sauron from Morgoth in that Morgoth wanted to destroy and Sauron sees himself as the person who can properly order things. This season navigates him very well as a person genuinely shaken and trying to be introspective and maybe turn over a new leaf but too deeply entrenched in too many millennia of selfishness, ambition, and lust for power to really arrive at a new way of functioning—which is tragic. And I never thought I'd say I find Sauron tragic. I never thought I'd be sad to know he can't be redeemed or want to see him as a character in fan fiction. Because, let's be honest, Tolkien writes him as really, really boring. This is that good kind of adaptation that retains a core concept but mines it for new interest, the kind of real extrapolation on Tolkien that they decided not to do with Galadriel or Gil-galad or Elrond. But it works very well with Halbrand/Sauron.
8.5 - The Southlands: Adar and the Orcs Edition
About on a par with Halbrand for me but edging into "best" place is Adar and the Orcs. To be clear, Adar is not as deeply written as Halbrand. He's not as nuanced a character, but I'm giving him the number one spot because he's a type of character/concept I love and never see enough of: someone genuinely odd and ambivalent who lets me delve into a concept I have never seen before. He's at 8.5 instead of 10 also due to the generally poor writing of the show and just overall lack of screen time/development. But the concept and the performance I love.
This, too, is that good kind of adaptation: taking the original and deepening it by asking good questions about it. What about the Orcs? They didn't ask to be Orcs, and Adar is right they ultimately stem from Eru's creations, so aren't they creations of Eru, and if so, don't they deserve some compassion, some chance to live? I've been told Tolkien himself struggled with that question, and it's a good one.
Adar himself is also good piece of extrapolation on Tolkien. Tolkien tells us Orcs were bred from Elves, but as far as I know, he never did more than just mention it. It's logical and interesting to introduce us to one of those Elves. I'm not clear on whether Adar originally went with Morgoth voluntarily or was captured, and thousands of years later, I don't know if it matters much. If he was originally an innocent capture, he himself has been amply twisted. If he was originally a willing recruit, he's had centuries to learn better. He stands at an interesting crux between deplorable and heroic, clearly far removed from a normal moral compass and committing heinous acts, yet doing so, at great personal sacrifice, out of a genuine sense of duty to his children, a rather scary lot of messed up folks who will never properly be able to care for themselves: they're bred to be violent yet subservient and kind of stupid. He's a sort of anti-Frankenstein, a parent of monsters, whose crime is that he refuses to abandon them and, thus, enables their continuing monstrosity.
As with Frankenstein, I also appreciate that he is, in some ways, coded feminine. The experience of being saddled with burdensome children you are forced to love is (in terms of narrative tropes) more a feminine than masculine experience. I think it codes him as a rape victim, among other things. Though, in literal terms it's not unlikely he could be accused of rape, he isn't coded that way, at least, not this season. He's coded as the victim left holding the baby, as it were. All this makes him a highly unusual type of character. Even if he dies early next season without much further development, I'll be grateful for all the mental stimulation the idea of his character and situation has given me this season.
A Final Observation
Overall, these writers are better at understanding "evil" than good. (I put "evil" in quotes because I question the concept.) They do a great Sauron and Adar, a piss poor Galadriel and Gil-galad. And even Elrond, topping off the list of very good, is written very shallow. (Probably Gandalf is excellent, but (a) he also hasn't done much yet and (b) you basically just have to write him as Gandalf, who's already thoroughly established as a presence in Tolkien canon.)
This evil-tilt doesn't surprise me. Our whole society is strongly oriented around writing gray characters, dark characters, anti-heroes, dystopias, etc. We have very little recent cultural experience in writing very good people (Star Trek may be an exception). And very good people are hard to write. Almost by definition, they are mature and complex, and that's hard to capture. While the writer doesn't have to be that good, they do have to be able to conceptualize it, and I think many just can't. (For example, I'm still waiting for an adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov that doesn't write Alyosha as either a stone-faced moral judge (like RoP's Gil-galad) or a wide-eyed naïf. In the book, though he has shades of the latter, he is neither of those things.) RoP was/is a great opportunity to do the sorely needed work of writing the very good as genuine and interesting. They haven't, but maybe they'll get there yet; they have laid some groundwork for interesting arcs.
/cut
Scale calibration:
1 = I love Lexx, but that gender swap episode of Lexx that is just one interminable rape joke.
10 = The finale of Blake's 7, "The Body" in Buffy, Tyrion in Game of Thrones seasons 1-4.
Okay, here we go. Spoilers for Season 1 and book stuff
2.5 – Galadriel
The actor is talented and well cast, and she has a handful of not bad scenes. But on the whole, she is written as a one-dimensional, arrogant teenager whose only admirable traits are bravery and being athletic. I find this insulting to Tolkien's Galadriel, who is ancient, insightful, skillful in many different ways (e.g. crafts, music), and embedded in responsibilities to complex family relations. I buy that Tolkien's Galadriel could kick ass. But it should be an aspect of who she is, not the only thing she is. It's galling that the showrunners seem to intend her as a strong female lead. I do not like the message that admirable women are toxic men in women's bodies. This is gender regressive, not feminist.
I realize they intend her to have a character arc and she is intentionally written as arrogant and too angry. Arcs are fine, but this one is badly written. It's not a plausible starting point for an ancient Elf, it's written without subtlety, and when she does start to behave more maturely, which is welcome, it doesn't feel like character evolution; it feels like a different writer. I'm heartily glad Celeborn got mentioned, but his absence from all conversation for almost all the season is not explicable.
2.5 – Gil-galad
I'm ranking him as slightly less awful than Galadriel because he's not the protagonist, and I'll also give him a brownie point for being presented as, loosely speaking, good and not evil. I think the actor is trying, but he's too old and given nothing to work with. He's written as a stupid, conniving, petty bureaucrat in order to have cheap plot tension and make Elrond look smart. That makes no sense for the high king of the Elves in universe (why would he not be dead or deposed by now?). And it is deeply offensive to Tolkien's admittedly light sketch of a character who is possibly the most heroic and important figure of the Second Age. (Even his sole costume is awful.)
3.5 – Númenor
This covers a lot of ground. Some I like: I like the casting of Elendil and Isildur, most of the way they're written, and their relationship. The added daughter is fine. I like how they've dealt with Anarion, setting up early that "we don't talk about Anarion," which lets us know they haven't forgotten he exists and creates a mystery box I'm curious to see opened but don't need to see right away.
I also really like Pharazon's son. This is probably a personal tick. His appearance and acting feel like he just popped over from I, Claudius, and I like I, Claudius. Tar Miriel is also cast and acted fine.
I like the visuals a lot. One video I saw noted that it was implausible a major sea power has almost no boats in its harbors. Fair point, but overall, I like the costumes, architecture and general antique feel.
But the actual plot is shite. Tolkien handed them a good plot about an empire of Men falling into ruin due to arrogance, defiance of the Valar, and the desire for immortality. They replaced it with an incoherent jumble: Elves taking jobs or scary because they're immortal or there's a prophecy…. They created a society that's an unexplained mix of highly egalitarian, especially with regard to gender, yet about to fall to tyranny? One that's highly cosmopolitan (many races, not very mixed by time and isolation) yet isolationist? A major sea power with three ships? This is such bad worldbuilding it's close to no worldbuilding.
6 – Elrond and Durin
I know: everyone thinks they're the best thing in the show. And I get that; they have a lot of strengths: their friendship is palpable and has some nice, well-written moments, like chatting about fathers. Durin is a great character overall: witty and multidimensional with a fascinating relationship with his dad, and a great partnership with his wife. Disa is one of the best written characters in the show: fantastic and likeable but with an edge that could plausibly arc into a true tragic fall. Elrond has a fair number of well written scenes, of which the best may be the "lying" scene.
The thing that needles me about this plot is that the writers warp the story and characters around Elrond (and to a lesser extent Durin) to manipulate the audience into liking them. The greatest victim here is Gil-galad, who is written as a mirthless buffoon so that Elrond and Durin can share an implausible joke about a table and Elrond can be noble and have conflict over the mithril ridiculousness. That type of manipulative writing is the narrative version of real-life playing favorites to aggrandize some while denigrating others, the narrative version of school yard cliques ganging up on the unpopular kids, and for me it vitiates much of what would otherwise, indeed, be good development of a well-written friendship.
6 – The Southlands: Arondir and Bronwyn Edition
For me, Arondir, Bronwyn, Theo, and their community average out to a tie with Elrond and Durin. At their best, they're not as well written; at their worst, they're not as bad. They're less realistic and nuanced; they also have less narrative warp. The romance between Bronwyn and Arondir works for me. It helps that she's not a kid and has a teen son: she and Theo are a relatable family. Arondir is mature, skillful, and sensible. He and Elrond are the only Elvish characters who behave like Elves—and Arondir more than Elrond, in my opinion. I wouldn't mind if he cracked a smile now and then—but times are hard. I am curious about Theo's flirtation with the dark side; it could make a gripping and tragic story.
I like Bronwyn as a healer and tolerably effective fighter out of desperation; her fight scenes may be the most gripping and realistic in the show. I do not buy her as the sudden ruler of her people because she gave the alarm about the Orcs. I don't buy there isn't someone above her to take charge. I don't buy being the village healer is the natural path to this kind of power. I don't buy that a patriarchal society (even patriarchy lite) would take so easily to a woman who's not a warrior leading them in wartime. Making her the leader feels like another attempt to create a "strong female character" by putting her in a traditional man's role rather than letting her sit more plausibly in a woman's role and be strong. (I feel like telling the writers to remember Audre Lorde: they will not dismantle the master's house using only the master's tools.)
I don't buy villagers running off to join the Orcs. I'd buy it if they were captured, tortured, and coerced, don't buy they'd rather join the Orcs than run away.
7.5 - The Harfoots and Probably Gandalf
While I understand the disgruntlement of some about the Irish accents, I really love the Harfoots as a proto-hobbit concept. If the Shire's hobbits are like 17th-century English country folk, the Harfoots make sense as their ancestors 3000-ish years before. By analogy, I could imagine such a population in Europe a thousand years before Julius Caesar. They are charmingly hobbit-like in their love of food and fun, their humor, close-knit community, and fear of strangers. But they are also very different as a hunter-gatherer nomad society; it's interesting and mostly makes sense.
(I also want to push back only slightly on the argument that it demeans the Irish to see them presented as dirty and primitive. So hunter-gatherer cultures that live simply and don't have the same standards as us for washing are dirty and primitive? "Savages," one might say? I just think that one deserves a little more ideology investigation. Yes, I do realize that presentation corresponds to old prejudices against the Irish—just a slight pushback.)
Like many, I think a sour note is struck by the ease with which the Harfoots abandon people. This is so close to being interesting fictional anthropology and great drama, but the writers made it too easy. Abandoning a family because of a twisted ankle? Put the guy in the cart and leave some possessions behind! Now, if it had been a serious illness with fear of spreading or something, that might have sold dramatically. The other detriment to the Harfoots plotline is poor pacing, with basically nothing happening all season after Nori finds Probably Gandalf. These cons push it down to 7.5 for me.
But I really like Nori, Poppy, Nori's parents, and the old leader dude. And I really like Probably Gandalf. He's a great conception of what it might be like for basically an angel to descend to Earth in a human body (for the first time?) and be both very powerful and utterly stunned and baffled. And that bafflement over basic humanity makes Nori—a plain, good person—the perfect companion. Good casting too.
8.5 – Halbrand as Sauron
This concept is pretty much perfect; I have no notes. The only reason this is an 8.5 and not 10 is the general poorness of the series' writing overall: lackluster dialogue; no one noticing he wasn't actually wounded by his bad wound; when he comes on to Galadriel, why doesn't she note that his side "killed" her husband, etc. But, I mean, imagine this concept with the writing of House of the Dragon! That'd be a 10.
I know some complain that his identity was easy to guess, but character and theme are ultimately more important than a one-time interesting surprise, and this is a great concept for Sauron. It's even reasonably faithful to Tolkien in following the idea that Sauron briefly repented (partly out of fear) after the fall of Morgoth. It follows the lead of Tolkien in distinguishing Sauron from Morgoth in that Morgoth wanted to destroy and Sauron sees himself as the person who can properly order things. This season navigates him very well as a person genuinely shaken and trying to be introspective and maybe turn over a new leaf but too deeply entrenched in too many millennia of selfishness, ambition, and lust for power to really arrive at a new way of functioning—which is tragic. And I never thought I'd say I find Sauron tragic. I never thought I'd be sad to know he can't be redeemed or want to see him as a character in fan fiction. Because, let's be honest, Tolkien writes him as really, really boring. This is that good kind of adaptation that retains a core concept but mines it for new interest, the kind of real extrapolation on Tolkien that they decided not to do with Galadriel or Gil-galad or Elrond. But it works very well with Halbrand/Sauron.
8.5 - The Southlands: Adar and the Orcs Edition
About on a par with Halbrand for me but edging into "best" place is Adar and the Orcs. To be clear, Adar is not as deeply written as Halbrand. He's not as nuanced a character, but I'm giving him the number one spot because he's a type of character/concept I love and never see enough of: someone genuinely odd and ambivalent who lets me delve into a concept I have never seen before. He's at 8.5 instead of 10 also due to the generally poor writing of the show and just overall lack of screen time/development. But the concept and the performance I love.
This, too, is that good kind of adaptation: taking the original and deepening it by asking good questions about it. What about the Orcs? They didn't ask to be Orcs, and Adar is right they ultimately stem from Eru's creations, so aren't they creations of Eru, and if so, don't they deserve some compassion, some chance to live? I've been told Tolkien himself struggled with that question, and it's a good one.
Adar himself is also good piece of extrapolation on Tolkien. Tolkien tells us Orcs were bred from Elves, but as far as I know, he never did more than just mention it. It's logical and interesting to introduce us to one of those Elves. I'm not clear on whether Adar originally went with Morgoth voluntarily or was captured, and thousands of years later, I don't know if it matters much. If he was originally an innocent capture, he himself has been amply twisted. If he was originally a willing recruit, he's had centuries to learn better. He stands at an interesting crux between deplorable and heroic, clearly far removed from a normal moral compass and committing heinous acts, yet doing so, at great personal sacrifice, out of a genuine sense of duty to his children, a rather scary lot of messed up folks who will never properly be able to care for themselves: they're bred to be violent yet subservient and kind of stupid. He's a sort of anti-Frankenstein, a parent of monsters, whose crime is that he refuses to abandon them and, thus, enables their continuing monstrosity.
As with Frankenstein, I also appreciate that he is, in some ways, coded feminine. The experience of being saddled with burdensome children you are forced to love is (in terms of narrative tropes) more a feminine than masculine experience. I think it codes him as a rape victim, among other things. Though, in literal terms it's not unlikely he could be accused of rape, he isn't coded that way, at least, not this season. He's coded as the victim left holding the baby, as it were. All this makes him a highly unusual type of character. Even if he dies early next season without much further development, I'll be grateful for all the mental stimulation the idea of his character and situation has given me this season.
A Final Observation
Overall, these writers are better at understanding "evil" than good. (I put "evil" in quotes because I question the concept.) They do a great Sauron and Adar, a piss poor Galadriel and Gil-galad. And even Elrond, topping off the list of very good, is written very shallow. (Probably Gandalf is excellent, but (a) he also hasn't done much yet and (b) you basically just have to write him as Gandalf, who's already thoroughly established as a presence in Tolkien canon.)
This evil-tilt doesn't surprise me. Our whole society is strongly oriented around writing gray characters, dark characters, anti-heroes, dystopias, etc. We have very little recent cultural experience in writing very good people (Star Trek may be an exception). And very good people are hard to write. Almost by definition, they are mature and complex, and that's hard to capture. While the writer doesn't have to be that good, they do have to be able to conceptualize it, and I think many just can't. (For example, I'm still waiting for an adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov that doesn't write Alyosha as either a stone-faced moral judge (like RoP's Gil-galad) or a wide-eyed naïf. In the book, though he has shades of the latter, he is neither of those things.) RoP was/is a great opportunity to do the sorely needed work of writing the very good as genuine and interesting. They haven't, but maybe they'll get there yet; they have laid some groundwork for interesting arcs.
/cut
