Nolan Keck

The Rings of Power (2022) is the first-ever Lord of the Rings Prequel. As the events of everything that we've seen so far about Middle-Earth in The Hobbit and within the several productions made of The Lord of the Rings are set in a time period known as the end of the Third Age, the events within The Rings of Power are set at the end of the Second Age of the very same Middle-Earth. The Good: The Actors are fantastic and deserve a 10/10. The Cinematography and Music are all stellar, deserving of a 10/10. The 8-episode first season is very well crafted with a beautiful ascetic, making you feel as if you are in that world again. 10/10 The Challenges: 1. Perhaps the biggest 'leap of faith' in a show with a premise that has never been tried before, based on ecletic Tolkien apocrypha derived into a screenplay, is that all of these characters that are so familiar and prominent at the end of the Third Age are seen as interacting together at the end of the Second. For instance, the Wizards of Gandalf's caliber aren't even supposed to appear until 1,000 years into the Third Age, but somehow we see them at the end of the Second. 2. When the writing is clearly drawing storylines for certain characters that we learn about, read about and are prominent later to interact, it does so at the expense of realism and believability. For instance, did Galadriel really see Sauron face to face at any time? There are leaps of faith like this that the audience is asked to accept, but perhaps at the expense of believability of the story as a whole. Verdict: I still gave this show high scores for even attempting to do what they did - imagining a ground breaking story within the realm of Middle-Earth that isn't set within the Third Age - and it is the interpretation of a select few, even though it does have it's 'leaps of faith' that it's asking the audience to take. Overall, I enjoyed it as a thought provoking return to Middle-Earth and to lands that you only get to envision in the past tense while reading The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The Silmarillion covers events far different from the events within this series, since this series focuses on the end of the Second Age.