My backlog is rather long at writing time, so by the time this post comes out, there will be quite a few months of distance. But perhaps it will be interesting to see how time might change my perspective hot off the end of the second season.
But that's enough preamble, let's talk about The Rings of Power, the Amazon Prime show.
- The visuals are beautiful - there are many scenes I wouldn't mind hanging somewhere. The various nature scenes, special trees, cavern settings or vistas of Numenor are amazing.
- The music is great but I find it plays a more subdued role as compared to Howard Shore's score. There are many scenes in the Lord of the Rings where the music is carrying half the movie.
- The characters and the way they're brought to life are very engaging.
- I don't very much like the disjoint-ness of Nori/Gandalf's story and absolutely everything else.
- The show does seem to have a bit of a problem with scale. The elven court is a handful of people, the defense line of Eregion feels like a couple dozen elves at most, the dwarves's arrival also just has a few of them on screen. The second season spends a ton of time in Celebrimbor's workshop and those scenes are invariable excellent. The teleporting from one place to another when traveling and the fact we only see very few people sometimes makes things confusing - Numenor sends her queen, why doesn't she have a much larger expedition?
I don't mind much the changes to the stories (Tolkien seems to have done much of that himself), and I certainly don't mind filling in the gaps. The result is an interesting, engaging, entertaining story, and I'm here for that.
I wish the producers and crew the best for the future seasons, and I hope they continue to craft something to the level they've done so far.
Happy tales!
PS: Mr. Devereaux has more extensive and interesting thoughts, but paraphrasing him, "it's fine if you enjoy it", so there you go.
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media review
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