To
rehearse my pedigree once more, I was introduced to Tolkien in 1972 in Third
Grade; read The Hobbit in 1975 and The Lord of the Rings in 1976;
watched the Rankin Bass Hobbit in 1977 and the Bakshi LOTR in 1978; got my first
copy of The Silmarillion in 1979, and every posthumous Tolkien
publication from then on, including the complete The History of Middle-earth
in fourteen volumes from 1983 – 1996 to The Nature of Middle-earth just
one year ago in 2021. I saw the explosion of ‘Ringers’ with the Jackson movies,
suffered through his Hobbit films, and in 2020 mourned the death of Christopher
Tolkien, the gatekeeper of his father’s legacy. I am not of the first
generation of Tolkien’s readers, nor even the second Hippie generation. I
cannot write in elf-runes. My first love for Tolkien and for Middle-earth grew
in isolation, almost in secret, in a small Texas town, away from fandoms and
encouragement, almost amid contempt.
I
have chanted my qualifications. Now I feel rather like one of those priests,
scarred and crippled by the Julian persecutions, who were called by Constantine
to pronounce for the newly accepted Church what is heresy and what can
legitimately be affirmed. It is a daunting feeling.
Well.
We ate lunch. We got comfortable. We settled down and spent a couple of hours watching
the first two episodes of The Rings of Power. We talked about it a bit
and found that we pretty much agreed about it.
It
wasn’t good. It wasn’t absolutely horrible. It was a billion dollars’ worth of ‘meh’
(so far).
Let’s
consider the ‘not horrible’ bits first. The first thing you will find on most
positive reviews of ROP is that its design is visually appealing. This is true;
the cities, the towns, and the wild lands tend to be quite pleasing, the
costume design mostly adequate, and the background music does its job without
being particularly intrusive - or inspiring. These are of course cosmetic
festooning; no series will survive just on good looks. The one verified glance
we get at Sauron is static but satisfying.
The
actors do a fair job as well, considering the material they have been given to
work with. I particularly came to like the characters of Celebrimbor and Elrond,
who were not as objectionable as we had been led to believe they were going to
be. I enjoyed nearly everything about Khazad-dûm, and
even found the much-reviled Disa to be pleasant, if not lore-accurate (no
beard). Elanor (Nori) Brandyfoot and her friend Poppy are an interesting pair,
and not simply a gender-flipped Frodo and Sam, unless you’re thinking of the
clownish Sam in Bakshi’s LOTR.
Alas,
now I must turn to the ‘not good’ portion of ROP.
The
worst thing, of course, is that it is not Tolkien. It is playing with a few of
Tolkien’s action figures, and with the skeletal outline of The Appendices of The
Lord of the Rings, which are informational and not exactly narrative. There
is much that could be done with that, even so, but the writers and showrunners
seem to be fixed on studiously subverting the lore whenever possible. They want
to make a Middle-earth that conforms to modern sensibilities, when Tolkien’s
Middle-earth did not even conform to the sensibilities of the time that it was
written. It is, instead, a yardstick that measures and is measured by the age
in which it is read.
Tolkien’s
work, and especially The Lord of the Rings, is, to borrow a phrase, a
heartbreaking work of staggering genius. Every attempt to adapt it has been
flawed, even Jackson’s much touted trilogy of movies. It is not essentially a
franchise, it is not ‘intellectual property’, save by unhappy chance and the ‘dirty
devices of this world’. It is this, not being a troll or gatekeeping, that makes
those who love Tolkien hold anything that has to do with Middle-earth to high
standards. We do not wish it to change but to grow; we do not want to see a
shoddy suburb spring up around it.
ROP’s
Elves are not Elvish. Tolkien’s Elves (even the lowest) are distant and aloof
from other races, even displeased if interfered with, but not snooty. ROP’s
Elves are politicians: they set up an occupation force in the East, among other
things. In Tolkien, there is no Elvish word for ‘politician’ though there are
plenty for other kinds of rulers. Although there are examples of Elves Behaving
Badly (Feanor and Maeglin – Elf princes - spring to mind, but also Saeros in
the tale of Turin) it is hard to imagine Tolkien’s elf-children (in the Days of
the Bliss of Valinor, no less) acting quite as Orcish as they do in the
Prologue. Elf/mortal pairings are referenced in ROP as being rare and ending in
tragedy (quite canonical), only to be subverted with a look that says “Well, we’re
getting one now,” thus repeating one of the most ill-advised story lines from
Jackson’s Hobbit movies.
And
one just weeps for the lore. For every good instance (the entrance into Khazad-dûm
is not yet ‘The Doors of Durin’ which Celebrimbor will later help decorate)
there is a terrible ham-handed element that makes anyone with even a passing
acquaintance with Tolkien’s work shudder.
Among
the worst is the naming. Middle-earth (more than many works) is based on words,
on language, on names: Tolkien, as a philologist, did very careful building
that way. There is so much background available, which need not have been
referenced, but worked with behind the scenes to make sure that what was
invented didn't clash. Instead, we get several abominations that make the ‘toxic’
fandom boil.
Take
for example the name Elanor Brandyfoot. Not only does her nickname ‘Nori’
pointlessly recall one of the dwarves from The Hobbit, the name of Elanor
for a hobbit would not have been possible until the Third Age when Sam Gamgee
named his daughter after an Elven flower he saw in Lothlorien. Brandyfoot would
also be impossible, because the ‘Brandy’ element had not entered their naming
tradition until they had crossed the Baranduin (Brandywine) River and founded
the Shire. It seems the writers just wanted a ‘Hobbitlike’ name without any of
the inner historical significance.
Whenever
anyone tries to sound profound, they produce wisdom on par with a bumper
sticker. The Harfoots’ idiomatic references to carts and wheels seem forced. The Tirharad insults about Elves seem
strangely reminiscent of those that have been used about Vulcans. The name of
Hordern seems to needlessly recall (to me at least) the name of Michael Hordern
who voiced Gandalf on the 1981 BBC radio show. And so on … and on.
BUT …
all these things being considered, is it the absolute dumpster fire that many
are proclaiming? Well, no, not exactly. But it is certainly not the unmitigated
success that others are exalting it as, either. Like I said, it is one billion
dollars’ worth of ‘meh’. It can best be enjoyed by divorcing it in your mind
from Tolkien, Middle-earth, or The Lord of the Rings, and thinking of it
as an alternative timeline, a bit of ascended fanfiction, like The Iron
Tower trilogy. It is mediocre, a questionable C at best, which is
disappointing for a Tolkien … well, it’s not an adaption; maybe an association,
I guess? But for just another TV series, it's watchable. There are storylines with a bit of intrigue that one wants to see play
out (Is the Stranger Gandalf, despite appearing in the Second Age? Does his ‘cold
fire’ have anything to do with the heat-draining presence of evil in the
Snow-Troll's chamber? Is the Stranger Sauron, or some other evil?), and that act as
just enough of a lure to prompt further viewings.
John and I have tentative plans
to gather again every weekend and watch until the season’s end. Will we boost
the numbers of an unworthy series? Perhaps. In the long run it will not matter.
Tolkien and Middle-earth will remain as they are, and we will at least have had
the pleasure of a day’s visit and an interesting critical discussion afterward. And that's all I've got to say about it at the moment. 
