The Lord of the rings, The Rings of power full series review

It’s over and what a divisive run it’s been. Never before have I seen such a divide between fantasy fans. Many wrote it off without watching it, well, I did watch it. Every. Single. Episode. So I think I can judge it fairly. In short, the Rings of Power is a lesson to all writers in how to write poorly.

Inspired by doesn’t mean what you think it means

If you read my review of episode 1 then you’ll see that I was genuinely hoping that RoP would be good. That first episode showed some promise, but oh boy did things quickly go downhill from there. 

Now, I’ve had people tell me that ‘it was just taking inspiration from Tolkien’s works’. Well, that doesn’t fly when instead of taking inspiration it decides to play fast and loose with those works and yes the same criticism can be made against Peter Jackson’s movies, but at least he stayed true to the semblance of the stories they were based on. The creators of this show literally make stuff up that is so much worse than the material it’s based on. I’ve even read people saying it;s better than the movies…. No, just, no.

If you’ve read the Silmarillion and Tolkien’s other works you quickly realise that the RoP showrunners didn’t understand Tolkien’s works or even worse, actually had the gall to think they could do a better job than the master of fantasy did. The showrunners' nerve to compare RoP to Jackson’s trilogy is like comparing a 5 year olds finger painting to the fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel! 

I get that they were hamstrung by what they were allowed to use due to licensing issues but I say that is a poor excuse. Amazon boasts this is the most expensive show ever made, why didn’t they cough up to buy the rights to the rest of Tolkien’s works? What we got was Lord of the Rings in name only. 

I could get into the comments the showrunners have made on social media regarding this but I don’t want to give their idiotic views any more airtime. Let’s just say that this meme sums up their logic -

This review will not focus on the controversy and debates around it but instead it will concentrate on the show’s biggest issue: the writing.

The Characters

Let’s start with perhaps the most important part of any good fantasy story, the characters. 

We’ll begin with Galadriel, the character that the showrunners have ruined the most and the main character we experience the show with. She is quite frankly one of the most unlikeable characters ever put to screen. Every scene she’s in, she’s a bit of a d**k. Always surly, always brash and someone who has little to no compassion or irredeemable qualities. In episode 6 she literally advocates for genocide and torture. In episode 1 she makes it clear she’s happy to abandon her comrades in arms for no apparent reason and she’s a know it all to every single person she meets. More on her later.

The new characters the showrunners invented are all bland, boring and are clearly just the poor persons version of much more beloved characters. We get knock off female versions of Frodo and Sam, we get a cheap knock off of Aragorn without any of the charm. We even get an even more wooden version of Legolas. Aside from the blatant lore breaking, not one of the new characters are likable and it says a lot when you and your partner cheer when the bad guys appear. 

The best characters by far are Elrond and Durin. So much so that it feels like their scenes were written by a completely different writing team. Their scenes are genuinely humorous and emotional and we believe in their friendship wholeheartedly. In fact, it’s those two characters that kept me watching more than anything else. The actors playing them do a fantastic job and I cannot fault them at all. 

The plot

So we have mostly unlikable characters, what about the plot? Well, after watching the season finale it’s clear that this series could easily have been cut down to just 4 episodes max. The main plot point of ‘who is Sauron’ was guessable from literally the first episode. 

Again this is the writing team's fault. It’s so poorly done and so in the viewer's face that it might as well have the characters shout out exactly what they’re doing and who is who. It’s a case of the writers not trusting their audience to have the intelligence to be invested in the story, they’re seemingly always worried that the thickos at home won’t understand what’s going on. Hate to break it to them but they are not Tolkiens, in fact I’d say they’re at the level of highschool age writers and that is an insult to young writers who no doubt would do a better job.

The biggest sin of this show, however, is that it’s just, well, boring. For vast amounts of time not much happens and as the characters are so unlikeable for the most part I just didn’t care. The Harfoots are the prime example. They’re just knock off Hobbits who the writers desperately want us to like. And yet the way they’re written achieves the opposite. The scene in the last episode where they say goodbye to each other was so long, so drawn out the writers may as well have been screaming ‘YOU WILL FEEL SOMETHING’. I did not. In fact I wanted to fast forward every scene they were in.

Also what’s up with this show stealing lines from the movies and books? They reveal things (massively lore breaking things btw) using them as well and it just comes across as massively lazy. 

Another issue is the feeling of scale this show has. Somehow despite all the flashy CGI the world of Middle Earth feels small. Perhaps it’s down to characters traveling instantly to other locations or as I suspect it’s another consequence of the bad writing. None of the battles were well done and on such tiny scales it was quite laughable at times. Other fantasy shows such as House of the Dragon have a fraction of the budget and feel far grander and larger in scope than Rings of Power does. 

I could probably go on for another thousand words about why this show was such a disappointment. I wanted it to be good, I really did but alas it wasn’t to be. One thing I will say is that I truly hope Amazon gets in new writers for the next season as the finale does set things up for what could be interesting. Try and stick closer to Tolkien’s works and it could be a massive turn around. I just don’t have much hope it’ll be the case. 

Overall Series score - 3/10 

Terrible writing, unlikeable characters, boring plot, incredibly poor action scenes make this first series a major disappointment. Some parts do look good, but again some parts such as some of the outfits and armours look incredibly poor and cheap. Just where Amazon spent a billion on I don’t know.