State of the Author, Start of 2025

My plans for the New Year are always kind of vague, because “Mann tracht un Gott lacht” (Man plans, and God laughs).

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Rings of Power: Impressions of ep 208 and the Series to Date

Okay, let’s get the big important news out of the way: the official renewal of the series for season 3 is expected any day now, the show runners have pretty strongly shot down the suggestion that the Dark Wizard of Rhun (Ciaran Hinds’s character) is Saruman, and the writer’s room for season 3 is acquiring writers from The Crown and Coronation Street. The first is welcome news to anyone with half a brain, because it makes no sense for Saruman – who in LOTR had been seen for a long time as a helpful but perhaps flawed ally – to be Obviously Evil when Gandalf first encounters him. The second is promising news because one of the show’s most crippling weaknesses in these first two seasons was the writers’ inability to mimic Britspeak, especially the dignified idiom Tolkien used for the Elves and Dunedain. I hope the new writers help with that.

Anyway, on with the usual disjointed thoughts and spoilers for all kinds of things:

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Rings of Power: Impressions of Episode 207

Probably the best or second-best episode of the season, with the main defects being a couple of mildly bad turns of phrase(1) and some weird plot contrivances going around Galadriel. Keep in mind, though, that the middle of season 1 of this show really lowered the bar for all the other episodes before and since, so “best/second-best episode of the less flawed of the two seasons of Rings of Power made to date” is not the biggest compliment ever.

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Rings of Power: Impressions of Ep 206

*Waggles hand* Meh. About on par with the last one, maybe a shade less good. Charlie Vickers groupies and the idiots who think Middle Earth is all about the fight scenes might grade it more generously than I do. In other news, my cowatchers and I have been rewatching (and for the most part enjoying) the extended editions of the LOTR movies, and I may put up a post about that at some point in the near future. The main relevant points for now are that watching ROP and LOTR side by side a). really underlines how much better Jackson/Walsh/Boyens were at simulating Tolkienesque dialogue than the ROP team, and b). how much ROP unnecessarily remixes bits from the movies, especially bits that were so inane that I recognized them at the time I saw the originals in the LOTR rewatch but they’ve fallen out of my head by now.

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Rings of Power: Impressions of ep 204

Season one had an almost U-shaped quality graph, with opening and closing episodes that weren’t perfect but were at least trying to do interesting things and a stretch of middle episodes that felt laborious and contrived. Reader, we are once again sliding to the bottom of the U….

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Rings of Power: impressions of Episodes 202-203

Disclaimers: Spoilers below the cut for anything that crosses my mind, from Tolkien arcana to details from later episodes confirmed by reviewers, to the weirdest rumors about the later stages of the show.

Short summary: There’s still clunkers big and small, at a writing level, and there’s at least one major screwup in the choice of music to score a particular scene. But I enjoyed these, felt like these worked well overall, with the “earthier” 203 maybe being somewhat less good than the highly philosophical and mystical 202. I also feel like I’m getting a better sense of which first season choices in story-telling were justifiable, and which weren’t.

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Rings of Power: episode 201 impressions

The hour was so late and the episode was so long, we’d no rest nor comfort, no comfort but song, not enough rest to tackle 202 and 203. Unlikely to watch them before Saturday, so any posts on them would go up Sunday at the soonest. These are impressions, rather than deep thoughts, and below the cut, they include spoilers for anything that crosses my mind, including rumors about late-season-two plot developments.

The Short Version: so far, I really feel like the events of season one should have been covered in about four or five episodes, and the events of this episode should have been part of the second half. If we get to a moment in a later episode where I can honestly say: “I think season one should have ended here,” I will try to remember to point it out. Maybe the editing geeks who spend their time endlessly recutting the PJ Hobbit movies and the 1980s Dune will take a shot at ROP whenever it ends. ROP’s acting and visuals remain good overall, but dark scenes are barely watchable even in a dark room, and the day for night shooting in the Rhun scenes could have come out of the old spaghetti westerns that the Spanish location used for Rhun undoubtedly hosted at one time or another. Thought the directing was good if self-indulgent. Writing seems somewhat improved, but is a long way from flawless.

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Monitoring the Rings of Power Season 2 “official” reviews…

This was the only one that seemed addressed to the kind of viewer I am:

https://decider.com/2024/08/28/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-rings-of-power-season-2-on-prime-video-review

Yeah, I liked Krull, and the best fifteen or so minutes of Labyrinth and Legend, and the climax of Return of the Jedi, where Star Wars really doubles down on the fantasy. I liked Jason and the Argonauts and Seventh Voyage of Sindbad (even though I find stop-motion kind of overrated as a technique.) I liked Darby O’ Gill. I’m indulgent of the “Arwen and horse mystically rescue Aragorn” sequence in the Two Towers. I’m indulgent of the Hobbit movies, which somehow magically improve a fair amount in the extended version. This guy makes the case that ROP is flawed but also endearingly nerdy and mystical, and that’s probably the best summary of what it has going for it that I’ve seen.

(Disclaimer, watching at least the opener and maybe all three episodes this evening with my co-watchers; if I manage a reaction post it will probably land on Friday.)