When the Rings of Power was announced earlier this year and the first trailer dropped, I wasn’t exactly filled with excitement, hope or optimism. Reason One being that I didn’t see the need for anything related to Lord of the Rings to come out ever again. We got Peter Jackson’s excellent trilogy and that should have been enough. Reason Two was that the trailer looked like footage for a fantasy RPG that was due to be released ten years ago and the dialogue hardly seemed worthy of the title attached to it.

Alas, I decided to give it a watch when it arrived in September. Admittedly, I was in a rare slump of boredom and needed to pass a couple of hours so I thought I’d give it a chance.

And what was I treated to? Two hours of, largely, what the trailer already showed. Bright but bland visuals; Aspirational but flat dialogue and a protagonist that had been written like a villian.

Yes, Galadriel may well be the ‘good guy’ in this show but in name only. When you look at her motivations, objectives and agendas they read better as a villian hellbent on exacting vengeance for some slight long ago. Essentially, she’s Walter White gone full Heisenberg and with a similiarly thin sliver of a justifiable cause for her actions. She is unreasonable. impatient, violent, impulsive, traitorous, selfish, arrogant and narcissistic. This is not someone you get behind. This is someone you tray and stp or you walk away from altogether. How was this character allowed to be written this way? The Galadriel in the books is certainly not to be fully trusted. She does have a lust for power but has enough wisdom and good in her to not let it get the better of her. This iteration is a mindless animal that will threaten at will to get what she wants. And that’s all she does. Threaten. That’s not a sign of strength. That’s cowardice and empty cowardice at that. This Galadriel has all the machismo and bravado of chav on a night out with the lads wanting to look ‘tough’ just to impress some girls in the hopes he might pull. Hardly a noble endeavour.

And where’s the magic? Galadriel is a powerful sorceress and yet we are shown no powers at all. Another of Galadriel’s strengths was her combined use of magic with her femininity. She was subtle, fairly passive but could always influence to get what she wanted. She was always in control despite appearing somewhat aloof. But, with femininty being under attack in Western Culture, this Galadriel is a guy with long hair, a suit of armour and a sword. Effectively, Aragorn and Legolas put together but with a result that’s nowhere near as good as either. Certainly, far less noble.

And the actress isn’t good. Nowhere near the calibre of Cate Blanchett. Granted, this is a younger (by 3,000 years) iteration and maybe not as wise but the lore does not describe a younger Galadriel as being a reckless, empty being who only believes that what they’ve experienced is of most import regardless of its relevance or value.

In fact, none of the performances are particularly worthy of being in such a production. It’s highly concerning when the only name I recognise in this is Sir Lenny Henry. And Amazon reportedly spent £399million on the first series which is similiar, in today’s money, to how much Jackson’s trilogy cost which, if you include the extended versions, had a longer run time. How could they not secure respected film or television actors with such a budget? Could it be that any who saw the script politely declined and gave no reason other than ‘scheduling conflicts’? Were any actors even given a script to read or did Amazon figure they knew what their response would be, bypassed them, and went straight to lesser actors who’d work for the cash on offer rather than try to make a prestigious career?

It’s a shame because I can see that some of the actors are doing their damndest to make the material work with their performances, particularly Robert Aramayo who plays a younger Elrond. And, as earnest as he is, I don’t see him as becoming the Elrond we knew from Jackson’s trilogy.

The Elves, in general, are just too human. The dialogue too contemporary. There’s no ethereal, otherwordly nature to them. These are beings that treat centuries like days and yet they speak and act no better than an inexperienced human. Or perhaps that’s more a reflection of the writers?

And it’s not just the Elves. There’s a similar lack of depth, maturity and wisdom in the Dwarves, Harfoots and Numenorians. Ironically, the only ones that seem to have possess anything like these qualities are the Orcs and Uruks. Again, maybe that’s a reflection of where the writers are in their collective consciousness. Believing themselves to be some misunderstood but truly wonderful and talented people, if only others could see it. Just the kind of thinking a traditional villain would have.

I don’t understand the motivation for this series. Where there remains plenty of demand for comic book films and TV shows, there hasn’t, as far as I can tell, been any push for anything more from the world of Tolkien. Fantasy, yes, but Tolkien not so much. As I said earlier, we were given an excellent, lovingly crafted trilogy from Peter Jackson which may as well have been a recording of the main events that shaped the Third Age of Middle-Earth. The Hobbit Trilogy was not really needed either but was a half-decent return to Middle-Earth. With that, the fly in the ointment was that it was taking so long to get made that original director, Guillermo Del Toro, left the project to go and make Pacific Rim whislt Peter Jackson was brough back on board despite having gone on record to say he didn’t want to return. And look what happened. We got something that looked like Middle-Earth but just didn’t have the same warmth and depth of Lord of the Rings. Ultimately, a weak story in the form of fusing The Hobbit with the The Appendices from Return of the King, provided a set of films that didn’t live up to its predecessor.

And here were are again. About a decade after The Hobbit arrived about a decade after Lord of the Rings, we revisit Middle-Earth with further lack of lustre. On the surface, I can’t fault the costume design, set design or the bulk of the visual effects and CGI. For the most part, it all looks high quality which it should given the budget.

But it’s the very thing that let The Hobbit Trilogy down that’s missing. The writing. The story just isn’t there. This series lacked a coherent narrative and, as such, waivered between storylines of hunting Sauron (despite being shown no reason why), avenging a dead brother, saving the Elves, not upsetting the Dwarves, a maid becoming a leader of war that falls in love with an elf, a young Isildur that goes from useless to more useless and the Harfoots leaving their dead behind whilst tending to a Gandalf who’s not named Gandalf.

And not one of them is compelling. Outside of characters from the books and films, I cannot tell you who any of the characters are. They are devoid of any sparkle of personality. It seems to be a trend with a lot of pop culture TV and films now. Make the characters husks but as long as they’re pretty and exist in a shiny, colourful land people will watch. How hollow a pursuit. I saw the trailier for the French (at last!) adaption of The Three Musketeers this morning and my God did it look amazing. Everything I’d expect from the country that gave us that masterpiece. It’s the kind of story that’s been missing from film for too. A real one. One of human heart, endeavour, honour, pride, tragedy and betrayal. Things are too clean at the moment and trust the French to come along and give us a bit of dirt in the best way possible.

Anyway, back to this polished turd. The main issue is that there isn’t one. There are several. The score is uninspired but I can tell the composer has been trying to get subtle and elegant but fails on the important part. Being memorable. The visuals are too high definition to the point that the whole thing looks like a fantasy. You may say that’s the point, but remember, Tolkien was creating a mythology for England when he wrote The Lord of the Rings and its associated works. Therefore, it’s roots are embedded in Europe. And so, Middle-Earth is essentially an alternate version of England or Europe from thousands of years ago and back then, things were not clean. Yes, it can be believed the Elves would be so pristine. They are highly advanced in all respects, after all. But for the rest of the races, they should not be so clean in a world where toilets and sinks don’t exist. The Dwarves and Harfoots look remarkably well kept for people living under mountains and on the road who are also not averse to manual labour.

And on the subject of people, there is a race problem. This is likely going to be controversial, but Middle-Earth is set in Europe, mainly Northern Europe, so why do we have a Asian and African people here? Tolkien did point out in the prologue to Lord of the Rings that the Harfoots were ‘browner-skinned’ but anyone of any other colour was not mentioned as being in Middle-Earth but beyond it like those of Harad (based on Arabian/North African peoples) and beyond who were described as ‘black skinned’ or ‘dark men’. But they were not in Middle-Earth.

And since the climate of Middle-Earth is very similar to Europe, it makes no sense for other races to be there in the same way anyone from Middle-Earth wouldn’t suit being in the hotter, harsher climates beyond their continent. And yet, this series panders to the racial narcissists who cannot relate to anyone in a fictional show that doesn’t match their skin colour. A black Dwarf is a genetic impossibility since the pigmentation is dependant on higher levels of melanin being present in the DNA which is dependent on sun exposure. Dwarves are hardly exposed to the sun so why is there a black Dwarf? I say ‘a’ because there’s one and only one. Same goes for the black Elf (lives in a forest), Harfoot (lives in the countryside) and Numenorian (lives on the coast). There is one of each. Just one. How did they get there? There’s no story reason provided for why we only see one black member of these races. What could it be? It’s like the writers want to make some kind of point. Oh, right. We must be inclusive and diverse since this show ‘reflects the world we live in today’. I live in Scotland. It’s 96% white. I live in Glasgow which is pretty multiethnic. This show does not reflect my country. I’d rather it reflected Tolkien’s world but he’s dead and so is his son and caretaker, Christopher. Now that the creator’s longstanding guardian is gone, amateur writers think they can just run amok on a work that sits somewhere between legendary fiction and a sacred text? It’s insulting and so is this show. This is what happens when a fan (Jeff Bezos) thinks he can emulate the creator of the thing he’s a fan of. Bezos is not Tolkien. Tolkien was a linguistic expert and language professor at Oxford. He was a sergeant in the First World War and took part in the Battle of the Somme. His time was one of true, brutal terror and a very real possibility of losing a way of life to tyranny, madness and death. Bezos started Amazon in his garage selling books then, after devising a more efficient logistics method, went on to create a company that has nigh-on perfected delivering goods to people from its site. One man is humble, wise yet hardened by his time and gifted the world a fiction with no equal. The other has made a fortune from catering to convenience and impulse spending. Bezos may be a fan of Tolkien but I doubt Tolkien would be a fan of Bezos. In fact, Bezos may well be seen as a contemporary iteration of Sauron. Gaining power through fear, greed, deception and oppression.

I’ve wandered off, but I think it was worthwhile. Speaking of Sauron, the character of Halbrand was too clearly telegraphed as being the ‘secret’ antagonist. Anyone who has a vague understanding of story would see passed the ‘down-to-earth’ persona displayed when he’s introduced. Galadriel doesn’t even cotton on to who he is. Remember what I said about no magic? The real Galadriel would have sensed Halbrand’s dark power and grown concerned and suspicious. Maybe even scared. This one lacks any kind of intuition and literally has to be shouted at in the last episode. Because shouting in this day and age is the equivalent of being the slaughterer of millions and creator of dark, foul beings that would desecrate the world we live in. Yeah, these writers aren’t a patch on Tolkien. No skill, no thought and no life experience to draw from. This show has been nothing but an expensive (likely tax deductable, though) vanity project to inflate the ego of Bezos, the showrunners and the writers. I can’t even hate it or dislike it. That would require a substance to exist that is worth garnering such a response. This show has none and therefore isn’t worthy of a mild or strong response in the negative. And that, generally, sums it up.

Isildur, heir to the throne of Gondor, is a hapless, naive idiot with no real skills on offer and not a shred of the honour, courage and nobility required to become King of Gondor, Arnor and the Dunedain. Curiously, he’s shown as being Mediterranean or North African in his complexion yet, magically, he;ll grow up to become white. I wonder if that’s why he let the One Ring rule him?

His father, Elendil, is portrayed as similarly lacking in any ability to rule the same kingdoms. He’s effectively a ‘yes man’ with a sword that barely treads on the terribly fragile toes of Galadriel. He has no authority or agency and merely tags along at Galadriel’s whim.

And then there’s a bizarre sense of sentimentality to the show. It’s like the writer’s aimed for warmth, connection and friendship, missed completely, and ended up using it as a reason to resolve many a conflict. As long as the other person ‘feels’ good then the conflict’s gone, right? No, not really, but this lot think it does and so the plot gets to move along on its one-dimensional rails.

I’ve written this now. It’s out my system. My final comment is that, as result of this shameful attempt to cash-in on a great writer, I treated myself to some beautiful HarperCollins editions of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. I’ll do the same for the rest of Tolkien’s work, but these will do for now. I also bought the extended trilogy on 4K blu-ray despite not having a 4K TV yet. I imagine many others who watched this show did something similar.