Rings of Power
The Rings of Power is an Amazon Prime TV series based on The Lord of the Rings, especially the appendices. It "covers the major events of Middle-earth's Second Age: the forging of the Rings of Power, the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, the fall of the island kingdom of Númenor, and the last alliance between Elves and Men." (wikipedia)
Season 1
things I enjoyed
Numenor
Numenor was my favorite part of this series! I loved the renaissance Mediterranean concept, the interior design, and the beautiful costumes.
hobbits
I liked how their pre-migration celebration and Sadoc's book of hieroglyphs and star maps seemed to hearken back to a pre-christian Europe. I also liked how it highlighted their ability to quickly camouflage themselves like little woodland creatures.
elves
it seems like in Tolkien's works there are different, almost conflicting sides to the elves - on the one hand they remind me of ancient nobles from Germanic legends, but on the other hand they are also supposed to have this unquenchable lightheartedness and childish sprite-likeness as well (which I have yet to see anyone portray except for Legolas joking around a little bit). while I like Peter Jackson's elves, I think they did lean a little too much to the ethereal side - like 2d suncatchers that just kinda hang there and glow - and it was refreshing to see a new portrayal of the elves as more flawed, with more interesting and real-feeling personalities.
dwarves
I thought their underground gardens were really cool. While watching the scenes with the dwarves, I felt myself being reminded of passages from the books, so overall I think it was a really good portrayal.
Galadriel 💕 Sauron
ok it's not canon but i find myself completely unable to resist this concept 😂😂😂
On the first watchthrough it seemed hard to square Galadriel getting deceived deceiving herself and falling for him with the book's assertion that she mistrusted him from the beginning. However, the second time watching, I realized that she did in fact distrust him at first and only developed a better opinion of him after he got back Feanor's dagger. It's obvious they're trying to make Halbrand parallel Aragorn and I'm not sure exactly why or where they're going with that but it does make me wonder how that would color her perception of Aragorn and his relationship with Arwen later.
It also seemed at first like he purposely showed up in the middle of the ocean on the raft just to pick her up and everything went according to his schemes, but my opinion about that has changed as well. I think actually his original plan was just to go to Numenor, and he was genuinely pushing back on her attempts to drag him away to be "king of the southlands". He changed his mind and decided to go along with her because he had started to fall in love and their conversation the night before the voyage left him feeling like he had a chance with her.
weaknesses
props
many of the props (armor, weapons, tools) were so obviously fake, in stark contrast with the high-quality WETA workshop props crafted for the LOTR movies. and that scene where Arondir is "chopping" the tree without using any force at all 🤣 probably because his axe will fall apart or the tree will fall over if he does LMAO
script
there were a lot of moments where it seemed like they were saying really vapid things while trying to act like it was profound. and although it was fun how the characters' speech was peppered with colorful expressions related to their cultures, it felt too overdone with clever references seeming forced into almost every sentence.
choreography
the disappointment here was mainly with Galadriel, she did not have nearly as much grace or coordination as Eowyn from the LOTR movies, her stunts did not have that "cool" factor like the other elf characters, it ended up being really hard to make-believe that she was actually a commander-level fighter.