‘The Rings of Power’ has inexplicably terrible writing

By far, my favorite example is the scene where Elrond challenges a mountain dwarf to a rock-splitting competition. As viewers (even ones unfamiliar with LOTR), we know the outcome of this contest. The only thing they need to show us are these two characters after the competition, breaking down their relationships as begrudging friends. Instead, we spend more than a minute-and-a-half watching a rock splitting montage. Completely pointless from a storyboarding and writing perspective, especially considering that the outcome doesn't circumvent our expectations.

My second favorite example is even dumber; the third episode has another pointless 90-second scene of Galadriel riding a horse and smiling in slow-motion. I'm not joking, the entire scene looks like one of those HDR demo shots you'd see on a TV at Best Buy.

The show is genuinely difficult to watch, but don't take my word for it. Watch the first episode for yourself and take a shot every time you audibly sigh, you'll never want to watch an Amazon original again.

Edit: links to both scenes below

- Elrond & Durin: https://youtu.be/KT6ldSEVHCU

- Galadriel Riding: https://youtu.be/4ZqMRAb3zKk

There’s also a great speech by Kevin Smith where he describes being hired to write Superman and he goes to the producer’s house to read the script. The guy is coked out, ranting about how there needs to be action every 10 pages in the script or the audience will get bored. He’s talking about spiders and says the main villain should be one. Then Smith says Superman’s kryptonian name, “Kel’al” or whatever, and the guy is like, who?

That’s the people making these calls sometimes. Most companies do not have a Kevin Feige.

Amazon especially is going to be an overly cautious and bureaucratic behemoth. Inexperienced as a whole despite whoever they hired. Meanwhile HBO just bought a Channel 5 documentary produced by Tim and Eric and A24 with total creative freedom. Risky. That’s the difference between shills and artists.

At least for me, Tolkien's work was always a slower pace, at times almost medidative experience. It's got suspense and action, but also a depiction of melancholy and beauty unlike anything else. And I feel the show is using these qualities well.

The dialogue, criticized by many, is actually very feasible and for the most part fits LOTR well (except a couple of infractions). Yes it's geeky, and sometimes unnecessarily heavy handed. Welcome to Middle Earth! That's part of the charm, and always has been, especially when something truly beautiful is being said.

I really don't know what expectations everyone had for this show, maybe a GOT clone, which thankfully it is not. Personally I feel like it was made for Tolkien fans like myself. I just hope they don't screw it up going forward.

Contrast this with Legolas who would often peer into the distance and then announce how many orcs there were in a raiding party far enough away that the others couldn’t even see them.

That’s actually one of my biggest problems with this show. I don’t get the sense that the elves are a different species with different abilities and a different type of soul. Especially in the opening scene of episode one, when you see a bunch of elf children acting like stereotypical human bullies.

I also really, really hate that halflings seem like they’re going to play a major role in world events. The shock value to the mythology of LotR was that the hobbits up until that point in history had been completely inconsequential. It kind of ruins the stories of Bilbo, Frodo, Sam, Pippin, and Merry if this is actually the second time that hobbits have shaped history.

It just feels like they are relying on the names and visual effects and the set dressing to carry the show, while they cram in a generic fantasy plot.

And clearly they love their plot more than their characters, dragging the characters by their hair to wherever the plot needs them to be, whether it makes sense or not. And even that could have been acceptable if at least that plot was something good, but I still don't see it. A lot of stuff feels like it should be going somewhere, but after 4 episodes, it's still not clear where it's supposed to be going, except towards those heavily foreshadowed disasters: Sauron's return, the fall of Numenor, and it looks like they're also going to throw Durin's Bane into the mix. 4000 years early.

It all looks great. I love how the Harfoots and the Orcs, Numenor and their ships, as well as the dwarfs, look. And there are some great, lovely, inspired scenes. But it's starting to look like it's all superficial. Everything is haphazardly taped together by awkward plot twists.

I really wanted to love this show. I still do. But they're making it very hard.

Still attracts a dedicated audience just like daytime soaps. Notice that the people who like the show don't really address the issues covered in the article. They don't care.

I do care and it is almost painful to watch.

How does the creature not understand the question of their name but understand the question of where they are from? Oops?

Why did the orcs return the elf's bow and arrow? How else will the elf rescue the boy.

Who swims with a full gown? Gotta keep it PG-13.

How can an elf who lives hundreds of years not learn any diplomacy? How the fuck would I know?

How can the orcs chase the boy out into the sun without any effects yet later burn in the sun? How did it become dark as night yet become sunny a short time later? Gotta reuse the orc sunlight device to let him escape.

A wheelbarrow of food is enough to feed how many people? Have they invented the horse drawn carriage?

BTW, where are the horses or horse like animals?

If you flee to a tower, you must have a plan for defense? Do you?

Does the actress playing Galadriel have any emotion other than anger and that freeze frame uncanny valley smile?

How did Galadriel get to the king again? One would think that her escaping once would result in many more guards to prevent a second escape.

Also those "sad dramatic slow motion death scenes" of those elf character dying were peak stupidity: we don't even care about them since they had 30 seconds of screen time and you give us slow motion sad dramatic scenes as if Frodo himself would deserve on his hypotethical death...

At times, the characters seem to give up any logical thinking, relying entirely on "feelings". Because Archimedes never existed in Middle Earth, a character believes for instance stones don't float because they don't "look towards the light". Another character believes that someone that literally fell from the sky in a fireball is important simple because "they have a feeling".

I could go on about how many scenes look like stock footage, but now I'm more curious as to how all these details don't affects how some viewers take it all in. I know each example individually seems minor, but the sum of 100 minor absurdities is a huge absurdity.

A majority of the stuff we are seeing these past 10 years is really bottom of the barrel writing. Occasionally something great will come along like BR2049. But for the most part the writers rooms have been terrible. This is unsustainable and will eventually bottom out as poorly written movies and shows (I mean, “content”) continue to lose money.

I very much think that it knocks it out of the park compared to a LOT of other recent works in fantasy genre, including the Hobbit trilogy.

An error here and another there do not make terrible writing. There are various interwoven stories in the Rings of Power, each of them consistent within itself, creating a tapestry that easily makes you buy into the world. It requires much less suspension of belief compared to many other works. Including the Hobbit trilogy, again. And don't even mention recent Star Wars flops. That was bad writing.

Amazon execs have no understanding of art/cinema. Don't expect much from the teams they organize.