Is The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power worth watching every week?
Unlike some of the major press sites, I had to watch the premiere of Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power series on September 1st, like most everyone else. So, I made sure to adjust my schedule to be able to catch the show in the morning. Once morning rolled in, I realized that Amazon had changed their usual launch time from early morning to 9 PM ET (or 8 PM CST). Not cool. Maybe I missed the fine-print, or maybe it was a last minute change, I don’t know. But now I had to somehow adjust my time again to catch it later that night. Somehow managing to adjust my schedule, I was ready with time to spare. Once the clock hit the promised time… nothing. I checked the time from different sources, including Google’s standard time, to see if I was too early but, no, I was on time. In fact, by this point, it was late – several minutes late.
All that preamble was basically to say that I did not start out this show in a good mood.
I won’t go on about how, if Amazon was trying to catch prime (heh) time viewing then they should have actually had everything on time or maybe even early, or the change in timing that they could have advertised better (okay, maybe I’m trying to deflect my mistake here), or the lack of sleep from adjusting to this, but as the show finally started (did I mention it was several minutes late?), I was thinking to myself that this better be awesome.
And it wasn’t.
But that is not as bad as it sounds. [Edit: I tried to find a way to connect this line to the next paragraph since it had some pun-tential but I couldn’t. I wanted to highlight that I saw it though.]
Firstly, to add to my not-great mood, the audio for the first two episodes (each episode clocking in at over an hour each) was not very well done. Considering that they spent so much money on the series – which we assume a majority was on the visual effects and props and sets – you’d think they wouldn’t set the audio levels to be as distracting as it was. It seemed like the dialogue audio was set low, but then the music would be set inconsistently – sometimes high, sometimes low – which often times ended up competing with the dialogue or outright overriding it, making it hard to even hear the subtitles (yes, that bad!). I was constantly readjusting the volume with my remote. And while I could attribute some of it to my TV itself, the fact that they seemed intent on pushing the volume of the music over everything else at “key” times through the two episodes is the main factor in dampening my enjoyment of the show. Maybe if you had some sort of audiophile viewing set-up, you’d enjoy it more, but for a normal TV set-up, it was annoying.
As for the dialogue, it was… Tolkien-esque. It very much felt like you were being submerged (re-submerged?) into the realm of Middle-Earth. The dialogue, especially in the first episode, felt overly flowery at times, but overall it felt familiar to one who has made the journey to Middle-Earth before. So if you liked the movies, you’ll feel comfortable as the story draws you in.
And this leads to a bit of a downside here: the story itself. No, the story, so far, is not bad. I eagerly look forward to seeing more of it. And that is the problem. These first two episodes were basically just build-up. If you imagine the first season of the series to be an extra-long Lord of the Rings movie, then the first few episodes are basically the set-up for the later action. Knowing the pacing of the movies, it may take a few more episodes to get things set-up. And when waiting for each episode every week, like the pre-streaming TV days, uh… yeah, it’s going to be painful. It might be better for you guys to consider holding off diving into this series until a few episodes have been released. For me, however, it is a bit too late; I’m going to have to deal with the pain of waiting for a new episode every week.
On to the visuals: It’s amazing.
Although that basically says it, I’ll go into more detail for those that need it. The world of The Lord of the Rings is rich in substance, and the way it is brought to reality through the series is just as rich. It’s phenomenal. The blend of visual effects and actual elements is so seamless (unlike Disney’s She-Hulk) to the point that even someone like me who has some experience in this field has a hard time telling them apart (actually, in most cases, I can’t!). If you can remember (or imagine) the feeling of how amazing the work on the original Lord of the Rings movies felt like at the time of their release, then dial that up to post 2020s technological-advancement levels and you’ll get most of what was shown in the first two episodes of The Rings of Power. Whether that holds up over the course of the entire series is something we’ll have to wait and see.
So, is it worth waiting for each episode each week? My recommendation is that you wait for at least a few episodes to stream before starting or else you’ll have to deal with the painful wait each week. Unfortunately, it’s too late for me, so I’ll have to watch it week-by-week.
One thing I’d like to leave you with before I go is this: there are a lot of tidbits for those that are hardcore fans of J.R.R. Tolkien. Some are quite obvious while others are less so. Either way, the fans should enjoy picking up the extra details.
New episodes stream every Friday on Amazon Prime.
Oh, and… well, this might be a bit spoiler-ish, but at the moment I’d label it more of a prediction.
Keep an Eye on Theo.
