"The Rings of Power"

Ross Douthat has seen the first six episodes of House of the Dragon (HBO)—which I haven't, and probably won't, watch—and the first two episodes of The Rings of Power (Amazon Prime). The latter, based on Tolkien's pre-history of Middle Earth, interests me a lot. It begins Friday and I've been anticipating it with both hope and dread. Douthat reviews films and apparently received access to the series before the rest of us. From his response this morning to the initial episodes of The Rings of Power:

.... Great fantasy, to generalize, offers a conjunction of two storytelling modes: The mythic and metaphysical on the one hand and the political and historical on the other. At one level, the clash of good and evil, gods and heroes, the decline or return of magic, the specter of apocalypse. At another level, in the shadow of the greater conflicts, the struggles of kings and princesses and common folk, working themselves out with all the usual human confusions and shades of gray. ....

The Lord of the Rings is high-flown and sexless, certainly, but it is hardly short on shades-of-gray characters, dynastic detail or political intrigue. Many of its flawed and fallible figures — from Boromir and his father, Denethor, to Grima Wormtongue and his treacherous master, Saruman — would fit in easily in the landscapes of Westeros. So would more admirable but still complex characters like the shield maiden Eowyn. Tolkien celebrates and undermines hierarchy at the same time; his most important heroes are a man born to be king and a low-status servant from an unimportant backwater. And the drama of the One Ring itself is an acutely modern portrait of addiction and corruption; there is more harsh psychological realism in the arc of Smeagol/Gollum than in that of any Martin character. ....

By moving backward into Tolkien’s legendarium, [The Rings of Power is] set in a time that’s much more magical and mythic than the world of The Fellowship of the Ring or The Two Towers. The initial episodes excel at painting on that canvas; unlike with some CGI extravaganzas, you can see where all the money went. But the visual beauty of elf realms and dwarf kingdoms needs the contrast of mortal doings, personal and political, to humanize the myth, and the new show hasn’t found that footing yet.

Despite the best efforts of the actors playing young Galadriel and young Elrond, there’s only so much you can do with sonorous elf talk. (There’s a reason that elves are largely secondary characters in Tolkien’s novels.) The show’s humans and protohobbits, meanwhile, feel more like stock characters so far, avatars in a fantasy role-playing game, than successful vehicles for audience identification. ....

The Rings of Power needs more politics and personality and nonmagical conflict, and I’m hopeful that it can find them on the island of Numenor, the Atlantis-like kingdom that promises to loom large in the story but doesn’t appear in the initial episodes. ....

Ross Douthat, "With ‘House of the Dragon’ and ‘The Rings of Power,’ We’ve Entered the Age of Blockbuster TV," New York Times, August 31, 2022.