It’s finally over, the season that is, but considering how it’s going, I would not be surprised if this is the end for good. I wouldn’t cry any tears if it was. Regardless, it was an entertaining watch. To see millions of dollars endlessly being burned away like it holds no value. It’s like the creator, owner or whatever, is just too proud to let it go and call defeat. Too much damn money has been invested, and if they by a million to one chance got one episode right, it would be all worth it, right? It’s crazy honesty, because this finale was horrendous.
Balrog fun
Let’s speedrun through this, as I don’t want to give it too much thought. Seeing as the creators do not either. The dwarves unexpectedly open up a path into the lair of the Balrog. Well, King Durin does, as the designated mining area only has one guard. Meaning, King Durin easily overcomes him. And once again, everything feels incredibly small, like there are only five dwarves that live in Moria. Couldn’t they get a few more movie extras? You know, to make it somewhat livable and believable? Everything that happens in the show is like this, with the bonus of distance or scale not meaning anything.
Durin the son, and Durin the King, has a family moment played off as a sad thing. It has absolutely no emotional impact, since nothing is earned in this show. After this supposed “teary” moment, King Durin finally drops the corrupted ring, but it was all too late. The Balrog smells the meat of dwarf and comes knocking. King Durin dies battling the Balrog, which does not even have a cool action scene. He just dies, and this leads to the pathway collapsing. So, this was it? I thought we were finally going to see the Balrog go postal on the dwarves, but nope. No awesome final stand. Nothing happens, with no payoff. I also must point out that the wall to the lair of the Balrog was no more than a few centimeters thick. It really felt like the Balrog could easily smash through it if he wanted too. I guess he is happy sitting on his fiery ass and just wait instead. The thing with the dwarves of “digging deep and greedily” never comes true. The script writers tried, but like everything else in Rings of Power, it comes off as a cheap theater production made by a bunch of first-year art students, instead of a well-crafted expensive TV show by veterans in the business.
Galadriel, Adar & Sauron
Before we start to talk about the trio of dumb, let’s just quickly go over the fate of Eregion. As I said in the last post, the dwarves show up at the last second and kill the orcs. What is damn weird here, is when refugees are shown leaving the city, it’s still in full blaze. The whole city is on fire. Did the dwarves suddenly switch sides and decided to sack the city? What is going on here? They won the battle! And the city itself is next to a river. It shouldn’t be too hard to extinguish the flames. Instead, the refugees run into the wilds where the remaining orcs are… Oh well.
On Sauron. He decides to torture and eventually kill Celebrimbor, but not before Celebrimbor gets Sauron to cry by calling him a slave to the rings, or some such. I didn’t understand why Sauron got upset over this, still, a tear was released from his eyes. Very dramatic, don’t you think?
Galadriel gets captured by the orcs again when trying to flee the city. However, this time, Adar wants peace for real and an alliance to defeat Sauron. Galadriel agrees, accepting a peace between the orcs and the elves for all the future of Middle-Earth. Happy times, right? No, you see, the sad orc Captain we have seen in every episode trying his hardest to get our sympathies suddenly betrays Adar. He and his orc brothers stab him to death. They decided being called children was not good for morale, and randomly signed up with Tyranny R Us, aka Sauron, instead. I’m not sure at all what prompted them to do this. Maybe the lost battle? Surely they didn’t think Sauron would treat them better, as the Captain orc got to experience firsthand. Moments after turning side, he gets killed by Sauron for showing weakness, or maybe he just annoyed his new master. Ironic. A funny moment for sure, but was the point of trying to humanize the orcs, when it just led up to this farce? Didn’t they themselves believe in the message, or did they just write themselves into a corner, considering the orcs are evil in Lords of the Rings?
Galadriel and Sauron have a sword duel over the corpse of Adar, and it’s pure muck. It’s overly choreographed and showy, and worst of all: lacking tension. It’s also weird seeing Sauron dancing around with a sword, especially if you remember him as the giant, terrifying black knight in Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring. Galadriel escapes and meets up with the survivors of the siege, which is basically everyone except for Celebrimbor. Even the black elf Arondir survived. In one scene, you see him pick himself up, and start massacring orcs, like nothing happened to him. I clearly remember seeing him being mortally wounded in a fight with Adar. This is awful and above all disappointing. He was dead, for crying out loud!
Numenor, the city of dull
Then we have the Numenor side story, which is only outclassed in dreariness by Gandalf and the half-lings. Remember last time when the Queen was regurgitated and spat out, meaning that she was innocent? Well, screw that, it’s time for a hostile military takeover. Instead of accepting defeat, the new self-appointed King decides to round up and lock-away everyone involved in the old faith. Am I to believe a strong old faith like that has no supporters in the military or in parliament or whatever system they use? The soldiers just start rounding up people with no opposition at all. The Queen decides to stay in Numenor, while the Captain flees, but not before being given Narsil (the legendary sword) by the Queen. For season 3, if it ever gets made.
If that wasn’t enough, we also get to follow Isildur back in the swamps of Middle-Earth. Nothing important happens, except one thing that had me surprised. Ships from Numenor are apparently docking in the village he resides in. What is damn strange about this, is that we had no indication of this before, from what I can recall at least. To me, it felt like this place was at the far end of the world, but I guess I was wrong. Was Isildur even cut off from the world? What makes this even weirder, is that these sailors already have news of what happened back home. This, of course, disappoints Isildur, but how did they know? How could the sailors know of these events? How fast are these ships even? Is Numenor just a stone-throw away, or something? As I said, distance, time, scale, or anything involving normal passage of time-things, makes no damn sense in this show. You can go from Mordor to Lindon in one day, or it randomly takes five years – whatever the script writer decides at that moment.
Grand elf
Then finally we have Gandalf. He finally realizes that he is in fact Gandalf. He also finds his damn staff. Absolutely nothing goes on in this part of the world, which makes everything involving Gandalf and the half-lings come off as padding. Remember that weird mercenary type with the skull mask that followed the gang around the deserts of Rhun? He died, unceremoniously. Thrown into the wall by a random wizard. What was even the point of him?
And with that, the season is over. We have slowly crawled towards the end of the second age. A remainder, Peter Jackson translated three major books to three films, all of which had pretty good pacing with plenty of “movie magic”. Rings of Power are now 16 episodes in and very little has happened. Nothing in this show feels right. There is no magic, no tension, no good characters, and the characters that are supposed to be heroic are anything but that. The villains are also odd. Sauron appears like a confused child, not entirely sure what he is supposed to be doing. It’s hard to imagine that he will become the mysterious and overwhelming dark lord of Mordor at one point. Adar and the orcs are hilariously bad. His whole idea of creating a country for orcs goes wrong at every turn, and as I said last time. It would cost him everything, and it did. We kinda knew that, but the idea is not entirely without merit. However, it was incredibly poorly done, especially since it ends up as a joke anyway, as mentioned. Oh well. Until next time, if we get a next time.
Thanks for reading.
/Thomas
Tom's Gaming Vault 