Re-forging the rings of storytelling

Amazon's long-anticipated series about the Second Age of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth, The Rings of Power, was released in the last couple days and brought with it my usual personal complications around Tolkien's work. I'm a long-time fan, having read pretty much everything he's ever written about his world (yes, including the collections of notes and letters; a lifetime ago, I worked for Borders and got'em on the cheap. I used to read a lot more then, too.) However, Middle-Earth became the bog standard for fantasy literature, TV, and films so long ago that there's some degree of disdain that now accompanies it. While I was fascinated by Peter Jackson's films bringing the world I'd known for so long to visual life, those felt like isolated instances and not something I was really interested in reengaging with on a creative level. If you'd asked me if I ever wanted to write a bog-standard, Western fantasy story at any point over the past thirty years, my answer would've been a resounding: "No." It's been done. I see no point in my doing it again. In that respect, it wouldn't be illogical to extend that to more productions about Middle-Earth. I thought The Hobbit was an overproduced and overlong video game with a half-assed script and didn't see either of the sequels. Consequently, I went into Rings with a certain degree of weary trepidation because I didn't expect to see anything more than the usual routine of orcs, elves, and dwarves. Having watched House of the Dragon tread heavily over the same ground that Games of Thrones did in the past two weeks certainly didn't help my attitude. But now that I've seen the first two episodes of Rings, I have to say that I'm not entirely convinced, but I'm at least more interested in watching episode three of that series than I am House. (Of course, I'm far more interested in the season opener of Rick and Morty on Sunday than anything else, but that's a (very) different story.)

One significant upside of Rings is the tonal shift that they've taken in terms of storytelling. In LotR, everyone but the hobbits seemed to know everything that was going down. The hobbits were the new players at the RPG table, while everyone else had read the Monster Manual years ago and knew just what to do and when to do it at almost all times. All the bad guys and good guys were clearly marked. The approach to Rings is somewhat different. Rather than being straightforward D&D, the atmosphere felt far more Diablo-esque, in that things were dark and murky and uncertain and everyone was attempting to figure out just what was happening during much of it. The hunt for Sauron in the far north; the skull-wearing goblin bursting from the ground; the sword that feeds on blood; the secret that Durin is hiding from Elrond; all of these things are not hugely innovative fantasy elements (far from it) but they were presented in such a way that even those of us intimately familiar with Tolkien's world were dropped into a bit of uncertainty, just like the characters were. That's a distinct advantage of the story being set in the Second Age, which has only just emerged from an almost-literal war of the gods (The War of Wrath between Morgoth and the Valar.) What that means is that everything is somewhat new, as Middle-Earth has lost about a third of its land mass and a lot of it has to be genuinely explored by the people in front of us. But since it had still been partially inhabited for thousands of years prior, one still gets the mystery of the "people who came before us" that has always been one of the enchanting parts of Tolkien's work (and subsequent epic fantasies by other authors.)

Certainly, one can't fault the notorious budget that was put into this series, as everything looked like it had just come out of a nine-figure film production. Also, unlike House, there was the occasional moment of interesting dialogue ("Why should we enter where sunlight fears to tread?") and the majority of the characters felt like something other than people slotted into roles to move the plot. I can't say I'm thrilled with the large presence of the Harfoot; both as a Tolkien fan (Hobbits don't appear until the Third Age, whereas the Harfoot were an offhand comment of his) and as someone who feels like this series should stand on its own (relatively) without pandering to the people who think that "Middle-Earth" means "goofy characters with big feet" by default. There are enough "regular Joe" humans present that I'm not sure we really needed more of the "people who have no idea what's going on" since, as noted, that's largely everyone in the first place. We don't need little roly-poly people for the audience to identify with. We have the real humans to do that with already, plus elves and dwarves who are a lot more emotional and approachable than Orlando Bloom will ever be.

On the topic of storytelling in the big picture, my friend, Nathan, did point out that in their condensed telling of the First Age at the beginning of episode one, they missed a rather grand opportunity to build upon the fact that the Noldor elves had pursued Morgoth to Middle-Earth against the wishes of the Valar and had slaughtered other elves in order to do so (the Kinslaying; one of several.) It was pride that created that war and that's a great dramatic building block that could have been carried by Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) and Elrond (Robert Aramayo) and everyone else who remembers what things were like before Morgoth was defeated and Beleriand sank into the ocean. I'm not sure how many people would have caught the note about Elrond not being allowed into the council because it was for "elf lords only" and Elrond, of course, is only half-elven; a topic that was ignored in Jackson's films. It's not beyond the realm of reason that those things might be included and/or elaborated upon later in the series (five seasons are planned) but it was an opportunity to inject it right away. Certainly, loading down newcomers with that much lore might be a bit much to ask. It's easier, for example, to present the ingrained dwarven distrust of elves as something personal between Durin and Elrond than it is to point out how the dwarves were actually created first by the Valar, Aulë, who was forbidden from awakening them because Eru, the big god, wanted his chosen folk, the elves, to come first. There's a fair amount of subtext built in there that's more complex than just "You missed my wedding!" and that's the same for a lot of Tolkien's world that didn't really become obvious to readers who may have only confined themselves to The Lord of the Rings. Is all of that necessary to tell a good story? No. But I think it helps tell one that can be a straight adventure story, like this one was for the first two episdoes, as well as a more involved political tale, like GoT was and House is attempting to be. Of course, much of that kind of story will likely emerge as we introduce the men of Númenór starting next episode (speaking of pride leading to disaster...)

So, if you haven't figured it out by now, I'm feeling a lot more positive about Rings than I am House. It wasn't earth-shaking. It wasn't mindblowing. It didn't even stray that far from the dread "bog standard." But it was solid and somewhat interesting and has me looking forward to the next episode to see where the showrunners take us both within the boundaries of Tolkien's tales of the Second Age and beyond. And whether the guy who fell in the meteor is Beorn (which was another very Diablo-esque moment, for anyone who played Diablo III, for example.)