[William Cloud Hicklin]

Battles, cavalry charges, erupting volcanoes. The latest episode of The Rings Of Power is the most action-packed yet, but even “epic” action cannot save this show from itself. Despite the flashy fights and explosions, the writing remains some of the worst I’ve seen in big-budget television. It’s actually worse than I ever thought possible.

I wanted so badly for this show to be good, but this is neither a good adaptation of Tolkien’s work or good generic fantasy. It’s a disaster, plain and simple.

I’ll reiterate what I’ve said a few times before: I’m rooting for the orcs at this point. The closest thing I’ve come to cheering in this show is the end of this episode when all those smug Númenoreans and Queen Smug herself, Galadriel, got caught beneath an erupting volcano.

[...]

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away the three Númenorean ships (with 300 men and apparently 300 hundred horses) are sailing across the ocean from Númenor to Middle-earth. Miraculously, they’ll make the 2,000 mile trip in time to save the day. The 1,800 mile sea voyage and 200 mile ride will take . . . a couple nights? Then they’ll charge all the way from the sea to Mount Doom in full battle regalia!

[...]

Not as silly as Galadriel looks in that ridiculous armor. Why is she even wearing such heavy armor if she just plans on dodging everything? Who thought this was a good idea?

[...]

I’ve come to a sad realization: The creators of Amazon’s The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power know how to create spectacle, but they don’t know how to tell a good story.

There it is, scrawled in blood on the wall. The writers and showrunners responsible for this show could have won me over with good fan-fiction. They could have tossed Tolkien’s lore onto a bonfire and I’d have been perfectly happy if they’d simply crafted an enjoyable story with characters I care about.


Unfortunately, The Rings Of Power is written so poorly it defies even my worst fears. Oh yes, I was awed and impressed by the opening two episodes just like many others. But my how quickly a badly written TV series can wear out its welcome once the shimmer fades.

“All that glitters is not gold” is the old aphorism; it’s the one Tolkien flipped on its head for “The Riddle Of Strider”—all that is gold does not glitter.

But The Rings Of Power knows only how to glitter, and it’s certainly not gold. It knows how to shoot pretty slow-motion shots of elves on horses or orcs leaping through the trees. It gets the giant statues of ancient elven kings and shining cities just right. It has a sweeping score that’s lovely to listen to—but is, like the show’s melodrama, perhaps a little too incessant. This is a show of spectacle and it gets the spectacle mostly right.

The problem is everything else.

[...]

Nothing is earned in The Rings Of Power. Neither the emotional nor the epic. Things just happen because the writers want those things to happen. Something happens and then something else happens. There are no real consequences, no real hard spots to get out of, just a string of events unfolding, frictionless and boring.

[...]

This is bad writing, pure and simple. Bad characterization. Choppy dialogue. Characters who don’t make sense and clearly dislike one another as much as we dislike them. Everything feels forced and contrived, especially in the Galadriel storyline.

I’m trying to envision the writing process here, how they came up with this story of all the stories they could spin. They had carte blanche to make up whatever Middle-earth fable they wanted and they give us this cobbled together nonsense with a cast of characters we can barely stand, tossed haphazardly into predicaments and events that ooze fake gravitas but have no real stakes.


I don’t get it. I really don’t. I really wanted to like this show and was completely willing to suspend my disbelief and treat it like expensive fan-fiction. But this feels cheap.

--Erik Kain, Forbes

In an earlier review, Kain mentions that the writers here are using the cheapest of cheap tricks to create ersatz "suspense"- keeping key information from the audience which the viewpoint characters in fact know. "What have I got in my pocket" isn't actually a riddle, nor is it actually good writing.