In the finale of the second season, “The Rings of Power” opens up its million-dollar register and, despite some highlights worth seeing, reveals all the well-known weaknesses in full force.
With the previous seventh episode of the second season, the Amazon series “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” delivered its climax to date in terms of dramaturgical, narrative and staging last week with the battle for Eregion, even if everything was far from smooth was – a more detailed review can be read at DIGITAL TELEVISION. Now the recently released eighth episode presents the big season finale. And yes: there are undoubtedly highlights worth seeing. But that doesn’t prevent all the weaknesses that have plagued the series since the beginning of the first season – and there are quite a few of them – from blatantly becoming apparent again.
Rattle off and put off
To avoid spoilers, story details should be left out here. Instead, the focus is on weighing up the content and craftsmanship qualities and weaknesses. But this much can be said that in the approximately 70-minute running time of the latest episode, all the storylines that the series has ever opened were actually placed. So it goes to the dwarves in Khazad-dûm and the battle between elves and orcs in Eregion as well as the western men in the island kingdom of Númenor. Furthermore, it’s the turn of the so-called “lower” people in the southern lands near Modor as well as the “mysterious” wizard in the eastern land of Rhûn on the side of the hairy feet… cough… hobbits.
Accordingly, the finale of the second season often jumps back and forth between many different scenarios. Most of them don’t get enough airtime to build effective drama or lasting emotional weight. This structural shortcoming is particularly noticeable in the case of the dwarves in their mines – here an ancient terror awakens from the depths, but the problem is surprisingly quickly put to rest (for now). Even more unsatisfactory is the watered-down story of the wizard at the hairy feet: sorry for this SPOILER, but yes: of course it’s Gandalf! Who else? It’s taken the series long enough for this long overdue and in no way surprising revelation. What remains is once again just a consolation of a possibly more dramatic development in the third season, which will probably only come in about two years, and that is simply far too little.
Shine and magic
The conspiratorial coup among the people of Númenor, on the other hand, is more exciting, but it doesn’t get nearly enough time in this episode to develop adequately. At the end of the second season, Sauron now has his greatest and most impressive moments to date. Actor Charlie Vickers gives the versatile master manipulator a pleasingly complex face, who expresses his fascinating contradictions in a kind of sadistic gentleness. Here we actually manage to create a noticeable tragedy. After all, it should be clear that Sauron is the most threatening scourge in Middle-earth.
It’s happened many times before, but once again it should be appreciated how magnificently the series shows off its technical strengths: the tumult of battles, dramatic rock falls underground and, above all, the high-quality work of the costume and make-up designers as well as the set designers are clearly that Salt in the soup. The visual splendor and directorial power are a feast for the eyes (unfortunately the orchestral soundtrack is rather generic). So if you’re looking for a blockbuster-ready, sometimes bombastic fantasy spectacle, “The Rings of Power” is undoubtedly the right place for you.
Dialog Debacle
However, anyone who particularly values content and narrative qualities will be confronted in this episode with all the narrative weaknesses that have unfortunately manifested themselves as the basic DNA of “The Rings of Power” since the start of the series. It’s abundantly clear that the superficial dialogues once again tell the audience everything twice or three times over. Apparently you don’t want to think for yourself. Not an ounce of room for interpretation is left between the lines. In this way, any depth that might arise here and there is trampled down.
But when series characters who were in life-threatening distress in a previous scene suddenly appear out of nowhere somewhere completely different, there isn’t a single word of explanation because… that’s just the way it is. This narrative debacle simply cannot be put into words.
The Great Omission of “The Rings of Power”
There is also a fair amount of intrusive kitsch and pathos. Of course, Tolkien’s original books already have this kind of “high fantasy kitsch” and are often brimming with lofty pathos. But Amazon’s “The Rings of Power” simply takes away this kitsch and this pathos and almost completely leaves aside the mythologically rich and metaphorically profound substructure that Tolkien conceived and developed over his entire life. This is a massive oversight that simply misses (or worse, doesn’t understand) the qualitative core of The Lord of the Rings brand.
The additional disappointing thing is that there is hardly any hope of improvement in this regard in the coming seasons. According to the numbers, “The Rings of Power” is currently clearly the most watched series on the streaming service Prime Video. This success gives Amazon the justification not to make any decisive course corrections, but to simply carry on as before. So there will most likely be no enjoyment of the upcoming third season without constant gnashing of teeth and without the feeling that there was so much more to it in terms of narrative.
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Source: www.digitalfernsehen.de
