Sharrukin's Palace

Okay, I stayed up way too late last night binge-watching the first two episodes of “The Rings of Power.” Here’s a snap review based on my first impressions.

Initial reaction: I’m sold. A few potential spoilers to follow, so be careful scrolling down.

As a Tolkien geek, I had to be a little concerned that the studio didn’t have the rights to anything but the trilogy itself. There’s a lot of material for a story set in the Second Age that they don’t have available. On the other hand, there are the Appendices to the trilogy – more than enough material to tell a good Second Age story, even if one would have to fill in a lot of details.

What matters is whether the end result is recognizably rooted in the legendarium, and so far I have to say I’m very pleased. I’m already seeing some very interesting takes on known characters and cultures. Our introductions to Galadriel, Elrond, Gil-galad, and Celebrimbor are all superb. The other cultures we get to see – societies of men in “the Southlands,” the Dwarves of a living Khazad-dum, and especially a tribe of proto-Hobbits – all strike the right notes.

They are taking some liberties with the canon timeline. For example, they’re clearly going to be compressing a couple thousand years of Second Age history down into a single human lifetime. I suspect they’re also going to be rearranging a few events and making up a few out of whole cloth for the sake of the story.

(Meanwhile, yes, there are several roles cast with actors of color. I have absolutely no problem with that, and the idiots review-bombing the series on that basis can piss right the fuck off, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve long since reached the limits of my patience with that nonsense.)

A couple of bits of business did have me scratching my head. There’s a whole sequence with Galadriel in the second episode that struck me as just weird. No, I don’t think even a first-rank Noldo Elf can expect to be able to swim the Atlantic.

There’s also a character, identified so far only as “the Stranger,” whose role is a complete mystery. Putting down my bet right now: what we’re seeing is the first arrival of Gandalf in Middle-earth, several thousand years before he first appears in canon. Which is going to be a surprising but very neat bit of story, if I’m right about what’s going on there.

None of that was sufficient to pull me out of the story for more than a moment or two at a time. The story is otherwise superb, the character acting and development are very good, and the visual spectacle of the thing is just gorgeous. I suspect they’ve got a long-running success here, if they can keep up the pace and the audience doesn’t prove to have pre-judged the thing before it gets a chance.

I’ve been watching the roll-out of the upcoming series The Rings of Power with a great deal of interest. I’m generally skeptical about film adaptations of beloved literary properties – I often enjoy them, but I also often wish the developers would pay closer attention to the source material. In this case, it’s clear that Amazon is preparing to exercise a lot of freedom within the lore of Tolkien’s world.

On the other hand, as a writer myself, I’m always interested to see how cross-platform adaptation is done; especially how it can be done to work well as a cinematic presentation without doing too much violence to the source material. Whether Amazon is going to be able to manage the trick remains to be seen, but for now I want to jot down a few notes as to how I might have gone about it. Consider this a “side bet” of sorts – over the next few years, I’ll be patting myself on the back (or cursing under my breath) as I see how well or how poorly I’ve managed to anticipate how the story unfolds.

Tolkien geekery follows! If you’re not closely familiar with the source material, especially the appendices to The Lord of the Rings and the second half of The Silmarillion, feel free to skip the rest of this one.

What’s clear is that we’re going to see the story of the Second Age of Middle-Earth. This is the era after the defeat of Morgoth in the First Age; it’s the time during which Sauron – the great behind-the-scenes villain of The Lord of the Rings – first works his evil will on a massive scale in the world.

What’s also clear is that Amazon’s writers are compressing the timeline of the Second Age to a considerable degree. The major conflicts of the Second Age in Tolkien’s source material take place over several thousand years. It appears that many, if not all, of the same plot beats will be taking place in the Amazon series within a single human lifetime. Human characters such as Tar-Miriel, Elendil, and Isildur are going to be appearing in the series from the very beginning, whereas in the source material they don’t appear until the very end of the Second Age.

We know that the series is planned to have exactly five seasons. As it happens, I think the epic story of the Second Age breaks down neatly into five plot beats – so this is how I think they’re going to lay it out.

• Season 1 (The Long Peace) – everything up to about 1500 SA in the source material. Middle-earth is at peace, so we’re going to get plenty of character and setting development. We’ll also see plenty of foreshadowing that the kingdoms aren’t as stable as they look, and some kind of dark power is on the rise behind the scenes. Look for a character who appears to be an Elf and goes around tempting people to reach for their secret ambitions, probably going by the name of “Annatar.”
• Season 2 (The Rings of Power) – roughly 1500-1690 SA in the source material. Celebrimbor rebels against Gil-Galad, sets up his own kingdom in Eregion, welcomes Annatar, and creates the Rings of Power. Close to the end of the season we see Annatar revealed as Sauron, who creates the One Ring in Mordor. Celebrimbor and his allies reject Sauron and take off their rings, knowing that Sauron will respond with violence.
• Season 3 (The War against Sauron) – roughly 1690-1701 SA in the source material, but also conflated with events of the late 3200s SA. Sauron attacks the Free Peoples and nearly destroys Middle-earth. Eregion is laid waste, the Dwarves are put under siege, and Elrond goes off to build Rivendell for the first time. Sauron seems to be on the point of victory when Númenor comes to the rescue, defeating Sauron’s armies and capturing Sauron himself. Sauron is taken to Númenor as a hostage in the final episode of the season.
• Season 4 (The Downfall of Númenor) – roughly the late 3200s and early 3300s SA in the source material. Númenor, already suffering from social unrest and dissension, is corrupted under the influence of Sauron. If Pharazôn hasn’t already seized power before, he does it now and soon becomes Sauron’s puppet. He leads the Númenoreans against the Valar, triggering the Downfall. The sinking of Númenor takes place in the next-to-last episode of the season and is both cinematically gorgeous and horrible to watch. In the last episode we see Elendil and his sons leading a few survivors into exile in Middle-earth.
• Season 5 (The Last Alliance) – the later 3300s SA in the source material. The survivors of the last two seasons try to pick up the pieces in Middle-earth, but they soon realize that Sauron is back and preparing to march once more. They form a Last Alliance and fight a final war against Sauron. We’ll get to see the siege of the Dark Tower, and the last battle on the slopes of Mount Doom where Isildur captures the One Ring. The last episode will probably show us Isildur’s fate and the disappearance of the Ring, setting up the story of the Third Age.

I’ve probably missed a bunch of details. We’ve seen at least one Balrog in the trailers – are they going to be pushing the fall of Moria all the way back into the Second Age? There appear to be proto-Hobbits wandering around, and I have no idea how those are going to fit in. We’ll just have to see.

Still, I’m betting I’ve got the broad outlines down. I think there’s the possibility that the show will be able to give us all the great dramatic beats of the Second Age, even if they compress the timeline immensely for the benefit of a TV audience. It makes sense – difficult to build dramatic tension or handle the logistics of film production if you try to stick to a timeline of thousands of years, and you therefore have to keep replacing most of your cast. We’ll see if they manage to pull it off!