What Blew My Mind About Rings of Power Episode 1
Amazon’s new series, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, is finally upon us with the release of the first two episodes! Some spoilers ahead!
It has been a few years since I’ve seen one of the Hobbit films (did I watch all three? I can’t remember!) and even longer since I watched Two Towers for the first and only time. Return of the King? I haven’t seen it yet! I am very well prepared to watch more from Tolkien’s Middle Earth.
Just like starting House of the Dragon without having seen all of Game of Thrones, I was excited to dive into this series because it takes place a long time before the existing media. I still ended up doing a lot of research while watching though, often wondering oh is that place important, or what does this kind of creature do. I may have enjoyed the show more if I either kept myself from browsing wikipedia, or had just already been more familiar with this world.
What blew my mind about the show is that every single shot looks incredible. There are a few sequences, particularly the sort of historical recap towards the beginning of the episode, that is just stunning shot after stunning shot. Many you only see for a couple seconds and yet they’re packed with so many details, characters, and events. Then every change of location begins with a sweeping view of landscapes, such as when we first see Lindon with the sun shining from behind, incredible. I also enjoyed the maps turning into these landscape shots, not only does it look great but it gives a great sense of where these places are in relation to each other.
My favorite performances so far come from Morfydd Cark as Galadriel, Markella Kavenagh as Nori, and Ismael Cruz Cordova as Arondir, which works out great since they’re both the primary focus of the main story threads established in this episode! Arondir especially gives me a sort of rogue detective show vibe which I am most excited about on a character level. I did not enjoy the very brief moment with the ill cow though. I’m not sure he even wiped off his hand!
On an overall story level, I want to know what the heck that man in the meteor crater is all about! And how is Galadriel going to swim all the way back across the ocean? I know elves are immortal, but surely they need to eat to get energy? Maybe their ears are also gills. These are probably answers I would know if I had read any of the books.
One of the big questions I had was if Valinor is an actual place or just what the elves believe in as a sort of heaven that they go to die/retire. It seems to be an actual place, but I like the ambiguity in this show that it could be either thing. That moment when she remembers her brother’s words was nice, because I was initially annoyed that we didn’t hear what he said at the beginning of the episode! The visual of the golden light in the sky and reflected in the water representing their conversation on a much larger scale was very cool. Was coming so close to entering Valinor touching darkness, or is the darkness what she plans to find with Sauron?
Onward to episode two!
