The Rings of Power (2022-24)The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power
Developed by J. D. Payne & Patrick McKay
Season 1: 8 episodes (September 1-October 14, 2022)
Season 2: 8 episodes (August 29-October 3, 2024)
Quite apart from its dramatic failures (and successes), which have already been thoroughly analysed by a number of commentators, The Rings of Power also purports to be "based on" the material in the appendices to J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, along with sundry other writings by him about the early stages of the struggle with Sauron.
Now that two series of the show have appeared, and everyone who watched them has at least had the chance to consider them as a whole, it might be a good time to revisit that claim.
Tolkien's work on the appendices to his novel took so long that the publication of the third volume, The Return of the King, had to be delayed for almost a year. Even then Tolkien wasn't satisfied. He thoroughly overhauled them for the 1966 revised edition, as well as adding a new index.
Here's what they look like in situ:
A bit on the dry-as-dust side, you might think, but then that's always been part of the book's appeal: the sense of reality imparted by all of these scholarly chronologies and other details. Most readers probably skip them, but real fanatics - such as myself - tend to pore over them tirelessly as the culmination of each rereading.
The trouble is, there's not enough of them. Tolkien could only hint at the immense body of lore he'd been creating - or 'discovering', as he preferred to describe it - since before the First World War.
In particular, the complexities of reducing to order his account of the Elves of the First Age, The Silmarillion, and trying to make it consistent with his other published writings, were so intractable that Tolkien was unable to manage it before his death in 1973. The book only appeared posthumously, in a drastically shortened and rationalised version created by his son Christopher (with the help of future fantasy novelist Guy Gavriel Kay).
Inspired, presumably, by the unexpected success of this very demanding book, Tolkien's son followed it up with another collection of scraps and fragments called Unfinished Tales. By now it was clear that the appetite for stories set in Tolkien's world had not died with him. If anything, it's only grown greater over the years.
Nothing if not scrupulous about his sources - and piqued at the suggestion that he was in fact the real author of The Silmarillion and these other posthumous works - Christopher Tolkien decided to publish a history of the composition of his father's legendarium in the form of a scholarly edition of the bulk of the surviving manuscripts.
Christopher was well qualified to do so, having trained as a linguist and scholar in his father's footsteps. But his daring decision to retire from his job as an Oxford lecturer in English language in 1975, at the early age of 51, proved an excellent bet. He was able to spend the rest of his life working on his father's legacy in comfortable ease, in the South of France. He died a few years ago, at 95.
The History of Middle-earth, the keystone in his arch, took him some thirteen years and twelve volumes to complete (13, if you count the index). It includes a blow-by-blow account of the composition of both The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings, from their earliest beginnings to the radical rethinking of the original Elvish legends Tolkien was still engaged in at the time of his death.
The important thing to stress about all these publications, early and late, is that they lean most heavily on the first and third ages of Tolkien's imaginary history:
- The First Age, the period of the war with Morgoth, up to the drowning of Beleriand, is described (mostly from the point of view of the Elves) in The Silmarillion.
- The Third Age, from the fall of Sauron at the hands of the Last Alliance, to his rise and eventual defeat in the War of the Ring, is the subject matter of The Lord of the Rings - though only the last part of that story is recounted in Tolkien's novel.
Akallabêth, it should be noted, means "downfall" - in the Adûnaic language native to Númenor. The Quenya (High Elvish) translation of this word is Atalantë. Hence, it would seem, our own word "Atlantis."
An enlarged version of the Akallabêth is included in the Unfinished Tales. More recently all of Tolkien's writings on the subject have been gathered and re-edited by Middle-earth enthusiast Brian Sibley.
Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,The other great event of the Second Age was the creation of the Rings of Power. Tolkien's short essay on the subject, "Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age", is also included in The Silmarillion. His account hinges on Sauron's ability to disguise himself as "Annatar, Lord of Gifts," and to try and persuade the Elves of Middle-earth to try to emulate the glory of Valinor, beyond the sea:
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne;
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, one Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them;
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
It was in Eregion that the counsels of Sauron were most gladly received, for in that land the Noldor desired ever to increase the skill and subtlety of their works. Moreover they were not at peace in their hearts, since they had refused to return into the West, and they desired both to stay in Middle-earth, which indeed they loved, and yet to enjoy the bliss of those that had departed. Therefore they hearkened to Sauron, and they learned of him many things, for his knowledge was great. In those days the smiths ... surpassed all that they had contrived before; and they took thought, and they made Rings of Power. But Sauron guided their labors, and he was aware of all that they did; for his desire was to set a bond upon the Elves and to bring them under his vigilance.The Lord of the Rings also has some interesting things to say about the creation of these "Rings of Power." Gandalf informs Frodo that:- J.R.R. Tolkien, “Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age”
[quoted from Tolkien Essays]
The lesser rings were only essays in the craft before it was full-grown, and to the Elven-smiths they were but trifles – yet still to my mind dangerous for mortals. But the Great Rings, the Rings of Power, they were perilous.Of the 20 "Great Rings", only Celebrimbor's final three were made without the direct involvement and supervision of Sauron. The Tolkien Gateway article on the subject specifies that:
When Annatar departed from Eregion, Celebrimbor went on to forge the Three Rings using the knowledge he had gained from him, but without his involvement, and finished them around [Second Age] 1590.Sauron went on to create the One Ring around S.A. 1600, on his own, in the heart of Mount Doom.
As soon as Sauron put on the One, the bearers of the Three [Galadriel, Círdan, & Gil-galad] became aware of him and took them off in fear and anger. They defied Sauron and refused to use the Rings.
- Saruman the White - Curumo - Curunír
- Alatar the Blue - Morinehtar - Haimenar
- Gandalf the Grey - Olórin - Mithrandir
- Radagast the Brown - Aiwendil - Hrávandil
- Pallando the Blue - Rómestámo - Palacendo
So far so good, one might say. The Rings of Power series hinges on both of these plotlines: the growing estrangement of the inhabitants of Númenor from the Elves of Valinor, their friends and mentors in previous times; and the machinations of Sauron in suborning Celebrimbor and the Elven smiths of Eregion.
But what of the wizards - or Istari - another principal theme of the TV show? When did the five wizards (pictured above) first appear in Middle-earth? In the chapter about them included in Unfinished Tales, Tolkien mainly gives etymological details about their various names in different languages. It is, however, clear that none of their activities can be reliably dated before early in the Third Age.
Mind you, there is a hint in one of Tolkien's very last writings, "The Five Wizards" - included in The History of Middle-Earth, vol. XII: The Peoples of Middle-earth [384-85] - that:
The 'other two' came much earlier ... when matters became very dangerous in the Second Age. ... Their task was to circumvent Sauron: to bring help to the few tribes of men that had rebelled from Melkor-worship, to stir up rebellion.This reads to me more like a note-to-self, a reminder to tidy up the matter of the five wizards, than a settled historical fact. It's notable that Tolkien uses the two names Morinehtar and Rómestámo - "Darkness-slayer and East-helper" - here and only here. Elsewhere, in the account of the "Blue Wizards" in Unfinished Tales, he refers to these two as Alatar and Pallando. In another scribbled note, reproduced in the same section of The Peoples of Middle-Earth, he states:
No names are recorded for the two wizards. They were never seen or known in lands west of Mordor. The wizards did not come at the same time [my emphasis]. Possibly Saruman, Gandalf, Radagast did, but more likely Saruman the chief (and already over mindful of this) came first and alone.So, yes, when it comes to the wizards, there is some - tenuous - justification for including them in The Rings of Power. They were never a very settled part of Tolkien's mythology, unfortunately, despite the huge importance of Gandalf and Saruman in the latter stages of the story.
As for the "Harfoots" included in The Rings of Power, Tolkien's essay "Concerning Hobbits," at the beginning of The Lord of the Rings, specifies Stoors, Fallohides, and Harfoots as the three main types of Hobbit:
The Stoors grew facial hair and had an affinity for water, boats and swimming and wore boots; the Fallohides were fair, tall and slim, an adventurous people, friendlier and more open to outsiders. Finally, the Harfoots were the most numerous and instituted the living in burrows.The Tolkien Gateway goes on to specify that they come into the records "not earlier than the early Third Age where they were living in the Vales of Anduin in Wilderland, between Mirkwood and the Misty Mountains".Tolkien Gateway: Hobbits
Some time near the beginning of the Third Age ... uneasy because of the growing numbers of alien men from the East who passed the Greenwood and ... the rising Shadow of Dol Guldur ... They took the arduous task of crossing the Misty Mountains, beginning thus their Wandering Days. Some of the Stoors, however, returned ... and it is from these people that Gollum would come many years later.
By now it should be apparent that one of the main problems with the TV series is:
CHRONOLOGY
Ptolemy, and the other astronomers who succeeded him (up to the age of Copernicus), concerned themselves mainly with "saving the appearances." It didn't matter how many conplex cycles and epicycles they included in their description of the structure of the universe as long as they preserved the Platonic principle of perfect circles moving at uniform motion with (of course) the Earth at the centre. The result was some very harebrained schemes indeed.
The problem of reconciling the plot of The Rings of Power with Tolkien's own writings on the prehistory of Middle-earth requires similar feats of legerdemain. Among other things, it involves accepting huge leaps - literally of thousands of years - between the chronology of the Second Age and that of the Third Age.
One can certainly understand the temptation to include the story of Númenor in a series of this sort. And the Númenorean scenes are some of the most impressive in the whole show. Sauron did indeed visit the island, and successfully suborn its people, thus leading to the catastrophe of the inundation. But all that happened during the last days of the Second Age, between S.A. 3255, when Ar-Pharazôn usurped the sceptre from Tar-Míriel, and S.A. 3319, when the world was changed, the island sank, and Sauron was forced to return to Middle-earth as a disembodied spectre.
The forging of the Rings of Power, however, took place roughly between S.A. 1500 and 1600, a millennium and a half earlier.
If we agree with conventional Tolkienian chronology, and set the advent of the wizards (or at least the three featured in The Lord of the Rings) around c. Third Age 1000, you'll appreciate that it's a bit difficult to pull them into the story as well - rather like including King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon as one of the combatants in the Second World War:
S.A. 1600 - S.A. 3300 - T.A. 1000 = c.2,700 years.
It's not that I'd accuse the makers of the show of ignorance of the finer details of Tolkien's chronology. They have access to the same printed - and, increasingly, online - resources as the rest of us. And they have, it would appear from the credits, Christopher Tolkien's son Simon as their principal consultant. I'm forced to conclude that they know exactly what they're doing, which (I'm afraid) makes it far worse.
Does it matter? Is concocting a kind of atemporal Tolkien soup an acceptable approach to the carefully designed historical framework of his works? Well, I guess it depends on your point of view. Simon Tolkien disagreed with his father on the question of whether or not the Tolkien estate should cooperate with the Lord of the Rings: "It was my view that we take a much more positive line on the film and that was overruled by my father." It led to a long estrangement between the two.
Certainly some liberties were taken in the films - some swapping around of characters, some condensing of storylines - but they remained remarkably faithful to the original, considering the concomitant need to reach an entire new audience. I don't myself feel that the same is true of The Rings of Power, but then I do have the disadvantage of having read all of the materials they're drawing on to make their soup.
Whhich brings us to another, perhaps less cut-and-dried matter:
CHARACTERISATION
I'd accept that many of Tolkien's protagonists are a little underdeveloped in narrative terms. This is not really the case in novels such as The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, where the characterisation may be secondary to the action, but is still perfectly adequate for its purpose. They were, as a result, comparatively easy to translate to film.
In his more mythic or historical writings, though - such as those collected in The Silmarillion - little scrutiny of the inner psychology of his epic heroes and heroines is supplied. And this, again, can be seen as appropriate to their genre.
It's a natural enough, even necessary desire to fill in the gaps of many these characters - Galadriel, Elrond, Celebrimbor, even Sauron - for the purposes of drama. The trouble is, given the urgent desire of the producers and writers to create a follow-up series for the hugely successful Game of Thrones, the characters in The Rings of Power seem in many cases to have been reduced to stereotypes of a type familiar in the Age of the Reality Show.
Far from the courtly aristocrat of the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films, for instance, this Galadriel more closely resembles a gung-ho action queen from Survivor. I myself find the new-look Galadriel far more entertaining, but she's a little hard to reconcile with Tolkien's original vision. Galadriel is, after all, one of the major characters in The Silmarillion, and has a complex back-history which is largely ignored here.
There've been two Saurons so far in this production. The first, Jack Lowden, played him as a hotheaded brawler; the second, Charlie Vickers, more like a backstabbing game-player from The Traitors. The true Sauron was, admittedly, a bit of shapeshifter, but the endless intrigues with rival Orc-captains, and vain attempts to disguise his identity do stretch credulity - and genre - a little.
I suppose the haircut doesn't help - there were some unintentionally amusing scenes during the siege of Eregion where Elrond tried unsuccessfully to fit a helmet over his carefully coiffed locks. I find that I just can't warm to this new Elrond. I understand that he's meant to be a politician, and that he's already a bit on the back foot as a mere half-elven immortal, but does he have to be quite so mean to his old pal Galadriel all the time? She is, after all, invariably right, so it's a bit odd that Elrond's constant weird changes of tack haven't yet managed to undermine anyone else's faith in his judgement.
A Big Brother contestant, perhaps?
As for Celebrimbor ... well, what can I say? He just never seemed remotely like the heir to the great First Age craftsman Fëanor he's presumably intended to be. Again, there's the terrible haircut (or is it a wig?), and the fact that he always looks half-stunned. Maybe an unsuccessful suppliant from The Shark Tank or The Dragon's Den? He certainly comes across as a vainglorious, credulous buffoon.
But then, none of them seem the sort to inspire much respect among others - let alone faith in their leadership skills. There are no Ian McKellen Gandalfs or Viggo Mortensen Aragorns here.
I could go on, but I accept that such reactions are bound to be subjective. Some viewers may admire the aspects of the production I find most disconcerting - the Scots-accented dwarves, for instance - not to mention the supremely irritating Ewok-y antics of the Irish-accented Harfoots, whose smug motto:
Nobody goes off-trail and nobody walks aloneseems somewhat belied by their tendency to abandon anyone, injured or simply careless, who falls behind, and then to recite antiphonally the names of such lost ones before each new migration.
It is, after all, a fantasy world - but my point is that it only tangentially resembles Tolkien's fantasy world. Tolkien's characters may be somewhat over-decorous and dignified at times, but The Rings of Power turns the dial far too far in the opposite direction. It's all kitchen-sink melodrama, with a complete lack of gravitas or restraint.
Mind you, given the material they have to work with, many of these actors do exceptionally well. My favourite, as I mentioned above, is Morfydd Clark's Galadriel, but both versions of Sauron - Charlie Vickers in season 2, and Jack Lowden in series 1 - are very much on point. He's so slimy, and plausible, and loathsome: hats off to the pair of them.
But really, where's Roland Barthes when you really need him? His amusing analysis of the excesses of Hollywood hairdos in the essay "The Romans in Films" from Mythologies might well have been written with The Rings of Power in mind.
My final category is a little more difficult to define. I'd like to refer to it as:
FIDELITY TO THE KNOWN FACTS
if it weren't that those "facts" have had to be deduced from decades of painful cogitation and self-correction by Tolkien himself, multiplied by a legion of commentators - starting with Christopher Tolkien, but now carried on by successors such as Douglas A. Anderson, Carl F. Hostetter, Tom Shippey, and the husband-and-wife team of Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull.
I guess that it seems to me that the creators of The Rings of Power have looked at the details of Tolkien's world and asked themselves "what extra stuff can I squeeze in here?" rather than "how can we best reproduce this on screen?" I can't help feeling that this is the direct opposite of Peter Jackson and his collaborators' approach to the movie trilogy. It's true that they had a more fully formed narrative arc to follow, but they treated Tolkien's creations - and, by extension, his fans - with a certain respect.
Cate Blanchett may have been a little too statuesque in her interpretation of Galadriel, but at least she's recognisable as the character from the book. Morfydd Clark, by contrast, plays her more like Lara Croft. There's hardly a moment when she isn't fighting, arguing, sneering, or generally busting up the scenery. Not that I dislike that, exactly. Her super-abundant energy is actually one of the best aspects of the whole production. It's just that she seems a bit too - what exactly? - adolescent to be one of the major players of the First Age, an Elven leader from Valinor, immensely more learned and respected than virtually any other Elf left in Middle-earth.
Did the producers choose the Second Age because there was so little about it (comparatively) in Tolkien's literary remains? It was open season on the rise of Sauron because Tolkien had always concentrated more on the vexed tale of the Silmarils than on the earlier history of the Rings of Ppwer.
That'd be fine if they'd done much with it - but did they have to include a scene where Sauron is killed by his own orcs, then forced to reconstitute himself as chopped mince, and crawl about eating rats until he finds a human or two to provide him with a new backbone? It's the stuff of B-grade horror movies, not the kind of epic particularity which fleshed out even the longueurs of Game of Thrones.
There are certainly plenty of good things about it: the set designs, some of the action sequences. But the title credits are accompanied by music so similar to that of The Lord of the Rings that they set up an unfortunate scale of comparison. The Rings of Power ends up making even The Hobbit trilogy look good!
As for the credits themselves, they're so obviously meant to remind us of the intricate clockwork of Game of Thrones that, again, they end up checkmating themselves. I'm sorry. It's just not an appropriate level of emulation for this production.
The Rings of Power is, after all, still pretty good when weighed against farragoes such as The Witcher or House of the Dragon. But then again, it should be, given it's supposed to be one of the most expensive productions in television history.
Frank Herbert's son Brian had a vexed relationship with his father, whom he felt never took him seriously as a writer or a man. It's hard not to read the decision to create - in collaboration with Kevin J. Anderson - a series of prequels and sequels to the Dune series which now greatly outnumber the original six novels as some kind of act of Oedipal revenge:
"As of 2024, 23 Dune books by Herbert and Anderson have been published."- Wikipedia: Dune (Franchise)
Might the same be postulated of Simon Tolkien? His own father Christopher did, after all, essentially disown him over the question of faithfulness to his father's Lord of the Rings. What better revenge than to 'consult' on a deliberately anachronistic and discordant series of adaptations such as this?
Whatever the reasons for it, I wish the end result had turned out better than this.
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