I've read the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and seen the movies, but I never paid much attention to the appendixes, the Silmarilion, the Book of Lost Tales, and the various other Middle Earth ephemera. So I went in to the new Amazon series The Rings of Power, about the events of the First Age, with few fanboy expectations. I watched the first 66 minute episode on Amazon Prime.
Scene 1: I always thought that Undying Lands, where the Elves went when they tired of Middle Earth, was a sort of heaven, but here it's a regular place, lit by lamps instead of the sun, and the Elves aren't actually Undying -- they're newly-created, so they just assume that they won't die. And there are bullies -- all black-haired -- who gang up on the young Galadriel (blond) before her brother Finrod (Will Fletcher, above) intervenes. They exchange aphorisms.
Scene 2: Galadriel narrates a whole trilogy worth of plots: the evil god Morgoth extinguishes the lamps, so the Elves have to leave the Undying Lands and go to war in Middle Earth. He's defeated, but his henchman Sauron is still around, so the Elves spend hundreds of years patrolling, looking for him or his Orc-minions.
The narration ends with Galadriel and her troops (actually six people) still looking for clues to Sauron's whereabouts. She pushes on and on, into the north country, until her troops, led by Thondir (Fabian McCallum), tire of her constant aphorisms and lay down their swords, stating that they are going home.
Scene 3: The Harfoots, who will eventually evolve into Hobbits, are nomadic hunter-gathers that look and act like Irish Travelers. A young girl named Nori is frustrated with her circumspect existence, and wants adventure (like a certain Bilbo Baggins centuries hence),
Scene 4: When Galadriel finally makes it back to the Elf Middle Earth headquarters, her boyfriend Elrond (Robert Aramayo, left) tells her in aphorisms that the troops didn't mutiny: she did, by disobeying countless orders from the High King Gil-Galad (Benjamin Walker) to give up the search. But he forgives her. He has declared that the danger is over, so all of the Elves can return to the Undying Lands.
Scene 5: Nori of the Harfoots, still being frustrated and longing for adventure.
Scene 6: Galadriel and boyfriend Elrond talking in aphorisms some more.
Scene 7: The early Anglo-Saxon village of Men, a racial group that went gung-ho for Morgoth 70 years ago, and now is being closely monitored by their Elf overlords. So, Hitler died about 70 years ago. Should we be carefully monitoring the Germans? They hate the Elves, and especially stoic Vulcan-like Arondir (Ismael Cruze Cordova), who is constantly snooping around, looking for problems. It doesn't help that he has a human girlfriend, a healer named Bronwyn-- interracial (or inter-species?) relationships are strictly forbidden by both humans and Elves.
Suddenly Arondir and his colleague Medhor (Augustus Prew, left) are called back to the base: High King Gil-Galad has called off the search and is sending them all home. Good news, right? Well...um...
Scene 8: Girlfriend Bronwyn and her teenage son Theo (Tyroe Muhafidin) are preparing herbs. Arondir drops by to tell her he's leaving, but first he'll go to the eastern town of Horndern to investigate some cattle being poisoned by evil grass. She offers to go along, since she grew up there.
Meanwhile, son Theo wants to show his friend Rowan (Ian Blackburn) a cache of treasure he found in an old barn. Well, they're not really friends -- Rowan makes fun of him for having no father and a mother who's involved with an Elf. The treasure includes a weird dagger marked with Dark Lord Sauron's symbol, which starts to glow and pull Theo to the Dark Side.
Scene 9: Galadriel and her group sing as their boat sails toward the Undying Lands, here pictured as a bright light. Meanwhile, High King Gil-Galad and Elrond, back in Middle Earth, discuss in aphorisms that the evil might not have been vanquished after all. The Harfoots agree -- "the sky looks strange."
Back on the ship, Galadriel remembers one of her dead brother's aphorisms and at the last minute refuses to go into the light. She jumps off the ship -- and is left floating in the middle of the ocean. I hope she knows how to teleport!
Scene 10: Everyone in Middle Earth watches as a a flashing light zooms across the sky. A comet! No, it can't be -- whatever it is crashes near the Harfoot camp. Nori rushes to investigate and finds a flaming thicket, and in its midst a naked old guy. I'm guessing Gandalf. He's one of the istari, sent directly from God to help Middle Earth. The end.
Beefcake: None.
Other Sights: Lots of woodlands, some exteriors of Elvish castles.
Heterosexism: Two boy-girl relationships are centered so far.
Gay Characters: None specified so far, and no same-sex pairings for gay subtexts. I doubt that there will be any.
My Grade: All of the mysticism and magic of the Undying Lands has become banal, the Elves are portrayed as a bit totalitarian, and the gay subtexts that informed the original are gone. C.
Depends. How well did AfD do in the last election?
ReplyDeleteI love fantasy adventure but for reason never got into Tolkien. I did have a boyfriend who loved the books so we watched all the movies even the endless "The Hobbit" well at least those had some good looking men and plenty of gay subtext. I watched the opening scenes of this show and found it an expensive bore.
ReplyDeleteArguably, the ineptly-named Elanor 'Nori' Brandyfoot and her best friend Poppy, evidently intended to remind us of Frodo and Sam, could turn out to be a close or even affectionate couple. Of course, Nori is less like Frodo or Bilbo and more like Ariel and Belle. She doesn't just demonstrate her desire to see what's beyond the borders, but tells us about it. All that's missing is a Menken/Ashman song.
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