There have been two recent trailers for the next season of Amazon’s The Rings of Power series. One from Comic Con a couple of weeks ago (link) and the final one released before the second season starts on August 29th (link).
For illuminating discussion of both, I recommend the commentaries posted by the “Nerd of the Rings” (here and here). I don’t watch that much on YouTube (or anywhere, really), but I do follow the NotR and have enjoyed many of his videos about Middle-earth history. I think that he’s been pretty fair about the series – he gave the first season a 6/10 (see his review here), which strikes me as about right.
I had planned to post a proper review of season one myself, but I never got around to it. Suffice to say that I found it to be very much a “mixed bag.” The sets and scenery were top-notch: Númenor, Khazad-Dûm, and Ost-in-Edhil all looked absolutely amazing in my opinion. And some of the storylines were compelling (e.g., the Elrond-Durin relationship; the character “Adar”). But others were terrible (e.g., the whole “mithril-cures-Elf-cancer” storyline that the writers pointlessly invented; the portrayal of Galadriel’s character throughout the series). The writing was often disappointing if not cringe-inducing (e.g., Pharazôn’s “Elves-will-steal-our-jobs” speech), and the conclusion – with the lacklustre creation of the three Elven rings before any of the others – was not especially promising for the series’ future. Finally, the cavalier attitude of the writers towards Middle-earth canon – especially the compression of 1700 years of history into a few years for the sake of the series – still grates on me.
But I have to say that the two trailers (to which I linked above) have me somewhat excited to see how the second season turns out. A proper “Annatar-Celebrimbor” relationship would be great to watch (even if it unfolded absurdly quickly compared to Tolkien’s timeline). And I retain (probably a fool’s) hope that the “Stranger” will turn out to be a Blue Wizard rather than Gandalf.
Even though the second season starts on August 29, I probably will not be able to watch any episodes until mid-September, as I’ll be busy with travel and work. But I’ll post my thoughts here one I manage to watch a few episodes.
I don’t know that they have the rights to something that mentions the Blue Wizards. I have to give it a 1/10 though, set design doesn’t move me. 6/10 is what I’d call its max potential if they had fleshed out Durin and Elrond more. Unfortunately, placing the core of the series around the totally invented adventures of a psychotic Galadriel completely destroys anything they could have accomplished even if they had started reading Tolkien books instead of wiping their asses with them.
ReplyDeleteNo need to hold back, CRKrueger: just tell us what you really think! ;) (The Blue Wizards are mentioned in LotR but not their names. However, the series seems to be able to get permission to additional material on a case-by-case basis.)
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