“Rings of Power” opens with heavy world-building, little action
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“Rings of Power,” the new Amazon Prime “Lord of the Rings” series, sure goes out of its way to create the same kind of feelings movie audiences got seeing “Fellowship of the Ring” for the first time. It opens with a voice-over from Galadriel while a choir musically sets an ethereal atmosphere. After that, we see the pastoral New Zealand countryside standing in for the land of the Elves, Valinor.
It feels comforting and familiar. Yet something feels not quite right. Something is missing. That something is the epic action sequences that made Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” films feel like epic adventures.
Throughout the first two episodes of “Rings of Power,” the worldbuilding and setup of the situation take center stage. This is necessary for the show to hook both Tolkien fans and newcomers, but it also means that the first helping of “Rings” unspools more slowly than cold tar.
Based on material from the appendices of the “Lord of the Rings” novels and set thousands of years before the events in Jackson’s films, “Rings” is a story of a mysterious spreading evil. Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) hunts Sauron, who led the forces of evil in battle against the elves, then disappeared. Though most of her peers seem sure that Sauron is dead, Galadriel is certain he’s hiding out somewhere and is determined to find him and end him.
Meanwhile, Bronwyn (Nazanin Boniadi) and Arondir (Ismael Cruz Cordova) investigate a sinister mystery in Bronwyn’s Village and Nori the Harfoot (Markella Kavenagh) assists a mysterious stranger. These story strands will likely come together down the road but for now, much of what’s happening is shrouded in mystery.
“Rings” does a lot well. The visuals and cinematography are beautiful and draw you into the world of Middle Earth. The cast delivers some good performances, particularly Boniadi and Clark and Robert Aramayo as Elrond.
The musical score by Bear McCreary is suitably evocative and majestic and really helps immerse your mind in the world and the story. The writers have done a fairly good job of juggling plot threads while uniting the different story elements in a way that feels like different perspectives on the same overall narrative, which isn’t easy to do.
The main flaw is that so far, the glacial pacing and lack of action are sucking out the energy and bogging the story down in dialogue scene after dialogue scene. Again, the world-building is necessary to build a foundation for the story, and we have a lot of time to know the characters, which will help later on when the story gets humming and the characters get into peril.
But it makes “Rings” feel less like an epic adventure and more like a Middle Earth travel vlog, where different characters explore different exotic locales. The action scenes that are there aren’t anything to write home about yet and the big battle in the show’s open prologue feels like a cosplay version of similar prologue scenes in Jackson’s films. I’m pretty far from a Tolkien fan so I don’t know if being one helps but to me, the show really feels like it could use a little more action to give it a more kinetic sense of movement.
You can stream the first two episodes of “Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” right now on Amazon Prime, with new episodes dropping every Friday.