Thank Eru, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is actually good

More than a year after its release date was announced by Amazon Studios, the much-talked-about prequel show to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is finally here. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power details the events of the Second Age of Middle-earth, when Elves were still grappling with their own immortality, Dwarves were building wonders in Khazad-Dûm, Harfoots (ancient Hobbits) roamed the wilds as nomads, and the evil lord Sauron was just beginning to get his jewelry-making game on.

While The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power doesn’t drop until September 2 (or 1, depending on where you live), we’ve seen the first two episodes and are here to give your our spoiler-free impressions of the series. We will not be discussing any plot points beyond the overall premise of the show. Amazon has been pretty quiet with the details, and considering how beloved Tolkien’s world is, it’s understandable that many fans have been skeptical about the new series.

We’ll get this out of the way right at the top: if you’ve been nervous about whether The Rings of Power will suck, you can lay those fears to rest. Thankfully, it’s pretty good. In fact, it might even be really good, although much of that will depend on where it goes in the rest of the season. Let’s get into it.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power first impressions

Out of the gate, the first thing I realized about The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is that it’s going to be a very cinematic show. The word “cinematic” can get thrown around a lot, but in this case I mean it very intentionally. Stylistically, The Rings of Power feels more like watching movies set in the Lord of the Rings world than it does watching TV. The visuals are breathtakingly enormous, with scenes that would look right at home in Peter Jackson’s iconic trilogy.

It’s impressive that in this age of digital effects and sound stages, The Rings of Power did quite a lot of practical effects work and on-location shooting. There’s plenty of CGI, but the locations and costumes add a realism to the show that makes it much more immersive. The orc costuming in particular is impressive; they may be even scarier than the Jackson films, which is not something I expected.

Another part of what makes the show feel so cinematic is the score by Bear McCreary. I could gush all day about McCreary’s score — I will never understand how the show didn’t make his involvement a bigger part of their marketing. But even being a fan of McCreary’s before watching The Rings of Power, I was blown away. The music is a huge part of what makes the show feel like The Lord of the Rings, even though it doesn’t actually reuse any of the songs from the Jackson trilogy. Different races and characters have different musical themes that incorporate a variety of instruments to make each stand apart; quiet moments have the type of playful instrumentation you’d expect in a movie, but rarely see in a show.

In short, the music and visuals of this show elevate it. Based on those alone, it is worth seeing. Fortunately, they are far from The Rings of Power’s only strengths.

A cast as sprawling as Middle-earth

Perhaps the biggest challenge facing The Rings of Power is that it’s trying to sell us on a bunch of brand new characters, many of whom aren’t from Tolkien’s work but were created just for the series. As a decent-sized Tolkien fan (ie. I’ve read The Silmarillion but can’t talk about it in Elvish), I liked many of the new characters. Nori Brandyfoot (Markella Kavenagh) and the other Harfoots in particular are a lot of fun. Morfydd Clark is solid as Galadriel, and Robert Aramayo does really excellent work as Elrond, capturing nuances that make him totally believable as a younger version of Hugo Weaving’s character from the Jackson films. There are plenty of characters to get invested in, we’re not even scratching the surface here.

Admittedly, some characters didn’t hook me as much as I would have liked. The plotline focused on Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova) and Bronwyn (Nazanin Boniadi) in particular took a while for me to warm up to. But overall, the characters are interesting enough that I enjoyed them on the whole.

There’s a feeling that, by the end of Episode 2, we’re just starting to get a feel for this huge cast. There are a lot of characters in The Rings of Power, with more slated to be introduced in Episode 3 and beyond. This show is even more sprawling than The Lord of the Rings in some ways, because it has characters all over the map on seemingly unrelated quests, who will presumably cross paths at some point in the future.

It’s a credit to The Rings of Power that it manages to make its varied geography and geopolitics clear even to the uninitiated viewer. It was always abundantly clear where we were on the map and how the dynamics of different groups played off one another in the aftermath of the bloody end to the First Age.

We’re going on adventure, but we’re going to take our time about it

I’ve said a lot of nice things, and that’s because I left watching The Rings of Power with far more positive thoughts than negative ones. It is, on the whole, very entertaining and enjoyable. That said, there are a few aspects of it I could see some viewers having issues with. One is the writing, which is overall quite good, but occasionally gets overwrought with its metaphors about light and darkness.

The show is also a bit of a slow burn. Both episodes that I’ve seen were just over an hour long, and were very dialogue-heavy with only a handful of action scenes interspersed throughout. It doesn’t feel like a slog by any means, but if you go in expecting Galdriel to be slicing up orcs for hours on end, you might be disappointed.

Along those same lines, the overarching story almost takes a back seat to the immersion. There is a sense that, for as many characters as The Rings of Power is introducing us to, the real thing it wants us to get invested in is Middle-earth itself. The inciting plot — which the marketing has not done a great job of conveying — is that after the dark lord Morgoth was defeated in the First Age, his lieutenant Sauron vanished. Galadriel, however, thinks Sauron is still out there somewhere, and is driven to find and destroy him for some very specific reasons. Many of the other plotlines function completely independently of Galadriel’s, but hers is the one that the show is built on, and it feels like all the other characters will eventually get wrapped up in it, which isn’t a spoiler because The Lord of the Rings exists and we all know Sauron is going to be important.

For the book-readers

The only types of fans I expect may have a problem with The Rings of Power are: 1) those who’ve already decided ahead of time to hate it based on the premise; or 2) those who are so married to the source material that any changes will be unacceptable. The Rings of Power takes place during an era of Middle-earth we know relatively little about and condenses a story that takes several thousand years to play out into a much shorter timespan. There are absolutely changes, and many inclusions of things that are never mentioned in The Silmarillion or Tolkien’s other texts.

That said, The Rings of Power feels like it’s doing a pretty good job of nodding to The Silmarillion as well. There is a sense that the people behind this show have a huge passion for Tolkien’s work; when changes are made, it doesn’t feel like it’s because they don’t get the world or themes, but to make the show work better overall. The Silmarils are mentioned, as is the War of Wrath (though if memory serves, I don’t believe it’s called by that name). This is not an adaptation trying to pretend that Tolkien’s previous worldbuilding doesn’t exist, but instead one that is using it as a firm jumping off point to build a story that serves almost as a bridge between those First Age events and The Lord of the Rings. The jury is very much out on how that will work out in the end, but the first two episodes are enjoyable enough that The Rings of Power bought itself some good will in my book.

Verdict

I went into The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power extreme skeptical and was pleasantly surprised by how good the series is. Since watching, I’ve been thinking about it almost non-stop, which is even more impressive when you consider that we’re also neck-deep in House of the Dragon. Amazon invested almost half a billion dollars in making this first season of The Rings of Power and it really shows. This is the studio’s big shot at creating a watercooler show, and honestly, if they’re not able to do it with The Rings of Power it’s hard to imagine them doing it at all. This one deserves to be watched and talked about.

So all in all, if you’ve been too scared or skeptical to get excited about The Rings of Power, I’m here to give you the good news: the show is solid enough that it’s worth giving a shot. Ignore the trailers; they do a horrible job of conveying just how great the series is. We’re going back to Middle-earth.

The first two episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premiere September 2 on Prime Video.

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