Galadriel in “The Rings of Power”
I’m not sure what to make of the rave reviews on Amazon. The Rings of Power Season 2, but I’m tempted to say the critics must be crazy. I’ve said it before and Eru know I’ll say it again. With only 39 reviews at the time of writing this article – before the first three episodes are released this Thursday, August 29 – the show sits at an astonishing 85% Fresh, 2 percentage points higher than the 83% of the first season (which had 491 reviews).
Critics have only watched three episodes of the season, so this rating is based only on the episodes viewers can see this week. In Season 1, critics only got two episodes (which I initially liked before losing faith in as the season went on). That’s not enough to judge an entire season of television, and I wish Rotten Tomatoes wouldn’t issue season ratings until the entire season is out and reviewed. But that’s another topic to discuss another time, although I’m putting my money where my mouth is either way.
Suffice it to say, I don’t trust this score. I don’t trust the critical consensus when it comes to shows like this or The Acolyte (I don’t think it deserves 78%) or Netflix’s bizarrely praised HitMan. It’s kind of strange that all these mediocre offerings are being praised so effusively. Have we run out of standards? The wider culture never had any, but shouldn’t critics have them too? What happened?
Then there’s the question of bias. Screeners only went to a few outlets. Was Amazon being selective in choosing who received these early screeners, hoping to get a better Rotten Tomatoes rating before the premiere? This sort of thing happens all the time. It’s not at all unusual. Consumers should be appropriately suspicious of early reviews, especially for TV shows. While I have to admit the trailers looked pretty good, I’m just not buying them. Like this season’s villain, Annatar, trailers can be deceiving.
Nevertheless, it would be nice if I were wrong and The Rings of Power was great. I would love to watch a brilliant show set in Tolkien’s Middle Earth. After season 1, I just don’t have any faith. Why should I?
Of course, I didn’t ask the sea if Season 2 will be an improvement over the first (which in and of itself isn’t a particularly big ask). I probably should. After all, the sea is always right. I’ll go to the sea and say, “Give me the meat and give it to me raw!” and the sea will say, “Do you know why a ship floats but a stone sinks?” and I’ll say, “Morrrrdor!” and we’ll all have a good laugh; the meat, the sea, and me.
To be honest, there were some good moments in the first season, and even a few good lines among all the bad ones. The orcs were really cool, with the best makeup and design of any orc on TV or in the movies. And some of the lines were really well done. “There can be no trust between hammer and stone” is a pretty good line.
But many of the better lines are just fragments of The Lord of the Rings twisted and stuffed into the mouths of these characters. “No matter how much suffering, no matter what the cost, not all who wonder or wander are lost” is hardly original, dear Harfoots. Most of the “deep” lines in the series are just kind of silly – sentences that try so hard to sound deep, but almost nonsensical upon closer inspection. “Sometimes to find the light we must first touch the darkness” is one such line. After all, if you are trying to find the light, we must assume that the darkness has already fallen upon us. That’s why you are trying to find the light in the first place!
There are many similar examples. And many, many more problems with the show, both in its loose adherence to Tolkien’s lore and world-building and in its messy storytelling. It was pretty, no question, but the costumes looked like costumes and the world felt artificial in all the wrong ways.
I haven’t seen any of them myself. The Rings of Power Season 2, but I’ll be watching it this Thursday and writing my review of the first three episodes right afterward and posting my thoughts on YouTube too (subscribe!). For now, I remain extremely skeptical of this effusive critical consensus, but I’m willing to let my skepticism be dissuaded. One must keep an open mind. An open mind is like a river in the darkness, always searching for a glimmer of hope amidst the shadows, like the sun on a green forest of gold, shimmering before dawn on the eve of eternity, in the moonlight of the midday sky. Or something like that.
