“Three Rings for the Elven Kings…”
Why Amazon Prime’s New Show Stinks
By: Ava Spencer
It has been roughly nine years since the release of the last Lord of the Rings movie, The Hobbit, and the Battle of Five Armies. When the final piece of one of J. R. R. Tolkien’s best stories was finally produced on the screen, the end of the movie-making came all to an end…or at least that’s what people thought. While Tolkien completed his (book) series with The Hobbit, the movie world did not end there. In January of 2020, Amazon Studios announced the creation of a completely new, barely-based-upon-any-of-the-books, Lord of the Rings television series, that they called The Rings of Power. This TV show was officially released just a few weeks ago, on September 1st, 2022. Its purpose is to give a little insight into the backstory of the elf queen, Lady Galadriel, and the forging of the 20 Rings of Power (hence the title). Many excited people had been waiting and wishing for this new show to come out, and with high expectations about it too. “Since the previous Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogies had been so great, then wouldn’t this new production be?” Unfortunately, though, many LOTR fans were greatly disappointed, when it came the release day. Why were they? Well here are a few reasons.
“I didn’t like the way they made the Elves,” said Gabriel Spencer, a younger sibling of one of Regis high school’s freshman students,“ They just didn’t look like elves.” Gabriel thinks many fans can agree with his statement. In The Rings of Power, the entire show is centered around the elves; the tall, immortal, agile, archers whom we saw in the Lord of the Rings movies 1, 2, 3, and also The Hobbit. The elves make up most of the main characters in The Rings of Power; the leading figures being the Lady Galadriel, and the Lord Elrond (whom we will get to later) who are both elves. In the original movies and in the books, these two elves, and countless others, are known for their many unique characteristics such as; their long, straight blond (or brown/red) hair, and their ability to jump, run and fight with ease. In the new Rings of Power show, however, the elves are exactly what Mr. Spencer said; they do not look or even act the way they should.
For one, all of the elves have strange haircuts. Most of them barely even have hair, it’s all buzzed on the sides weirdly, or it is an odd cropped modern style. This is one of the reasons why most fans are hating on this show so much; Tolkein meant for the elves to sort of resemble angels, (and the orcs to be like fallen angels), not modern-day pop stars. In his book, he specifically explains that “The starlight glimmered on their hair, and in their eyes…Yet as they walked a shimmer, like the light of the moon above the rim of the hills before it rises, seemed to fall about their feet…” In his stories, the elves are supposed to be fair and magical and are meant to have important characteristics such as their long, straight flowing hair; which appears to be missing on all but one of the elves in TROP. This specific characteristic is important because it helps let the reader (or watcher) see the elves as mystic, angelical people. But unfortunately, not even all the girl-elves have present-day haircuts, which many fans found disturbing and untraditional to Tolkien’s works. Amazon is trying to modernize Tolkien’s medieval characters, and it’s upsetting many people. Also, another disappointing thing about Amazon’s elves is that they appear to be slow and not as active.
The whole show in many people’s opinion is very boring. Unlike the other totally “flawless” Lord of the Rings movies of the past (which were packed with lots of action and suspense), this new production is very slow-moving and overall pretty lame. “I fell asleep,” said a kid named Tristen (one of Gabriel’s friends), when he was referring to how much he enjoyed the first few episodes. It is true, at least for the present episodes, that the storyline so far has been tiring and uninteresting. Each episode is about an hour to an hour and a half long, and during that hour of your time all you watch is some elves talk or quietly walk around, and occasionally you see a fight scene, but those (since it’s all CGI nowadays) pass too quickly. In the show, the main characters are a young version of Lady Galadriel, and her friend Elrond (who is also very young). Galadriel is apparently a tired “soldier”, desperately searching for the “thought to be dead” villain Sauron, who killed her brother. ( That’s another thing that confuses fans, Galadriel is supposed to be a fair elven-queen, not a depressed warrior) . This though, as we know it as of now, is the entire storyline for the whole show. It’s going to be about a sad Galadriel and the forging of some magical jewelry…long story short. No matter how interesting that may sound to some people who have not seen the first eight episodes, it sadly is not.
Most people who have seen the latest Rings of Power episodes have said that it’s not worth watching. Amazon has failed to have it actually based on Tolkien’s work, and because of this many have said the show is cheesy and too modern. The changes that Amazon has made to Tolkien’s world are awful; first the elves and then Galadriel herself (these are only a few of the things they have ruined). Most people who have seen it, let’s just say…have not given the best reviews. So if you’re a hard-core Lord of the Rings fan, it’s recommended to not watch Amazon’s new Rings of Power, unless you want to see these poorly made mistakes yourself.
