11/20/2023
About this time last year I watched The Rings of Power. The experience was a legitimate rollercoaster. Anticipation, disappointment, intrigue, slight awe, amused observation, willful non-participation, and unexpected admiration are all words that applied to me at different points in my viewing journey. As I watched that long winding road, I found it full of peaks and valleys, with sharp turns and sudden movements that left my mind and emotions emotions thoroughly befuddled. At the end of it all, I considered myself fully disappointed and yet not at all disenchanted. Intrigued to a very high degr ee. And I daresay, a bit hopeful.
Which is what leads me to today. Today I decided on a whim that I was going to re-watch the series. It was quite random. I was in the middle of doing laundry in preparation for my brother coming to town for Thanksgiving, and sat down on my new couch in front of my new TV (both awkwardly situated in my square living room) to watch something. I had just finished the five-episode sprint at the end of the impeccable third season of Kaguya-Sama: Love is War and needed to decide what to watch next.
I find myself in that situation quite often. What comes next. At work: I'm almost done with that powerpoint, what comes next. In the morning: as I hit snooze on my fifth alarm, what comes next. Halfway through writing this post: what comes next. Chronic indecision in the midst of flagging discipline and unfinished tasks plagues my existence. So the quick decision to watch The Rings of Power came as a refreshing surprise. I thought I would waffle back and forth between my anime and Apple TV options, but I found myself once again, allured by J.R.R. Tolkien's wondrous world.
For some context, the world of Arda is quite dear to my heart. I don't know that there is another fictional universe that has impacted me quite so much (although the worlds of Talse Uzer and Red Rising probably come close). I've had a copy of the Hobbit from the time I was in grade school, with it's rich green cover and the depiction of Smaug on a pile of gold. The appendix of Return of the King I read twice as much as the book itself. Curiously enough, I never got a copy of The Fellowship and The Two Towers. But it was the Silmarillion that won my soul. That book helped me discover my own personal niche of fictional taste. Although I didn't have these words all those years ago when I first laid my eyes on the pages of that magnificent work. Now I know that it's the defining work of what I call mythic fiction. The stories we tell to inspire ourselves to more. That call us past the drudgery of everyday life. Those are the stories that I fancy. Worldbuilding galore. Tales of triumph and tragedy. And so many of them found within the pages of the Silmarillion. Beren and Luthien. Fingolfin before the gates of Angband. Earendil at the end of an age. There is almost nothing that quite captures my imagination such as these. It is that mind that finds itself watching The Rings of Power. And on second viewing, had these reactions to the first episode
confirmed disappointment. So much is weird. The emotional tone-setting scenes are quick and ineffective. The writing is somehow overly modern and overly poetic at the same time. The graphical composition makes foreground and background painfully at odds. The martial costumes of the elves are dim and impractical. And that goddang jumping off a sword scene is one of the most atrocious 10 second clips in all of fantasy film.
slight awe at the Harfoots. How their world seems so magical, so logical, so well-lived when put up next to the portrayal of the Elves is baffling. And Nori, while having some quite out-of-character sounding lines that seem like they are pulled out of an Elve's book of poetry, is one of the most compelling characters of the entire catalog of Middle-Earth films.
There is a penchant for falling in love with specific shots, even when it doesn't seem to make sense. Like I don't quite understand the purpose behind the sharp focus foreground/full-blur background type of shot when having conversations. Maybe it makes sense sometimes. But its a little jarring how often it's utilized.
I find myself liking the actress for Galadriel more and more. When put next to the other characters, and taking into account the literal lines she has been assigned, I don't know that I could consider the performance great. But I don't think it's bad at all. Emotions seem to come readily to her. It's not her fault the emotions conveyed are a square peg put in a round hole.
The little elf-woman romance gets developed real quick, I kind of like it more and more. THAT line, "I have said it already. A hundred times over, in every way but words." They should've just written a goddang romance in the middle of a horror and be done with it. That would have been a compelling if altogether departed from the spirit of the source content piece of art.
If you're still reading hopefully you realized by now that this was just a random brain dump on a Monday night and that I didn't really have a layout or a structure for this jumbling of words. Hopefully you came away with a thought or two to debate with your friends, or were at the very least entertained.