Rings of Power: S2 Episode 4 – Dark Forest of Darkest Darkness
Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is proving to be a notable malinvest on Amazon’s part. I’m honestly not sure what the business plan was for this program and that is assuming that it ever had one other than being a vanity project to impress Jeff Bezos’s mistress. If that is the case then The Rings of Power’s only notable accomplishment has been to make Mackenzie Scott Bezos the richest woman on the planet at $33 billion.
Now Amazon is now having to figure out what dish they can make with a crate of broken eggs that they can’t throw out.
My ever-sensible Darklings are likely wondering why Amazon doesn’t just throw this disaster into the Iron Vault of Tax Write-Offs? Truth be told, your Herald is wondering about the same thing. Since Bezos is no longer CEO, then they are no longer pursuing their boss’ vanity project. So why not bury it?
Because Amazon can’t.
I don’t honestly know why, but that has to be the answer. If it was a movie then I would say they had partially (or perhaps fully) financed it with presales. However, since it’s not in theaters or at least not for the kind of weeks-long theatrical release that would pay back a presale it must be something else. Whenever you take a tax write-off, there are preconditions attached and you are explicitly granting the IRS permission to open your books to see if you’ve met them. This government agency will take it badly if you have not.
My own guess is that there is a technology tied to this production that they would have to retire in order to get the write-down on the one billion dollars that has been pumped into this thing but clearly isn’t showing up on screen. My presumption remains that the first season was written almost fully by a new AI. And judging by the dialog, it’s still being used for Season Two.
We start off this week’s journey into darkness at Lindon. Elrond is putting together a major expedition of six elves to reach Eregion. In the legendarium, Galadriel’s daughter, Celebrian is Elrond’s wife (and Arwen’s mother come to that), and while we haven‘t seen or met her yet, the look on Elrond’s face conveys all the joy he’s feeling about being stuck on the road for several weeks with a mother-in-law who has been saying for a thousand years “Celebrían could have done so much better. I don’t know what she saw in you.”
These six elves on an absolutely desperate mission to reach Celebrimbor to warn him about the most evil being on Middle Earth about to do him harm… Set off on foot. This has obviously been done to remake Jackson’s famous shot of the Fellowship crossing a mountaintop. Que the eternal Rings of Power montage.
You just know that Galadriel is going to be doing some girl-bossing before the day is done.
Over to the Filthy Gully Dwarves. If you liked wandering on a mountaintop, you’ll love wandering in a desert. After some interminable footage of these barefoot urchins stumbling around on sand, (the production completely gave up on the hairy foot prosthetics, the actors kept having to walk with their toes pointed to the sides), they stumble into the Stools. In the legendarium, the Stoors were one of the three breeds of Hobbits. The Stoors lived by rivers and fished a lot. The Stools on the other hand live in the desert and dig holes in the sand. While revolting in their own right they are less so than the Harfoots. See? The Dark Herald can be nice.
Our third POV in this episode is from Elfagorn, Estrid, and Isildor, after some very prolonged, awkward, and off-putting flirting and simping. Elfagorn’s had enough. He was not fooled by Estrid’s half-assed attempt to hide the brand of Adar. He grabs her and shows Isildor the brand she did a bad job of disguising with a burn. Now Isildor the Perpetually Butt Hurt is all kinds of Gamma Male peeved at the girl who told him, ‘I kinda sorta almost like you maybe a little.’ Isildor has the stricken look of a young man who just found out his “girlfriend” sent those nudes to 38 other guys.
Over to Elrond and company, they are in the Dark Forrest of Darkness and it’s living up to its name. I can barely see what’s going on. I admit that isn’t really a bad thing, my imagination is far more likely to come up with something more entertaining than the AI did. As unbelievable luck would have it they found the dead messengers.
Something else is going on that I can’t make out and I can’t turn up my laptop’s brightness anymore without melting the screen.
Ah, got it, they are being attacked by the Barrow-Wights. This is a major problem because Tom Bombidil is currently in the deserts of the East. Galadriel’s Stab. Twist. Gut. approach doesn’t work on the mortally-challenged. However Elrond “remembers” some magical bullshit lore about killing them with the weapons they were buried with. Sadly, one of the elves whose name you can’t remember is red-shirted.
Speaking of Tom Bombadil. Hobo-Gandalf got swallowed by a tree in the exact same repurposed manner as Merry and Pippin.
Now we have something that is unique to this show. A repurposed scene of a repurposed scene. Tom Bombadil shows up and repeats a scene from Jackson’s Lord of the Rings where an Ent orders another Ent to barf up the hobbits using the exact same lines Tom Bombadil used in the Tolkien books. Although, in this case, Tom makes the tree puke out Hobo-Gandalf.
Tom Bombadil is a puzzle even for Tolkien scholars. He’s unusually easy to lift completely out of the books he appears in because he does nothing to advance the plot. He’s an odd temporary diversion for any first-time reader and tends to be both forgotten about and skipped over on subsequent readings. Tolkien never nailed down what Tom was. I would be very hesitant to call Tom Bombadil a Mary Sue, unfortunately, he does meet the key requirement of an all-powerful being that the universe rewrites its rules to accommodate. Immortal but neither a god, nor a demon, nor interested in helping others outside of his lands.
Tom Bombadil while a being of unequaled power on his own turf, never leaves those lands. Nor did he ever do battle with Melkor or Sauron.
Also, he didn’t trotty-ass out to the desert for no damn reason at all.
Tom gives Hobo-Gandalf a bath and some not-particularly useful advice. Although it is confirmed that the Dark Wizard is an Istar himself.
This raises the possibility that whoever the showrunner is now, he might be trying to be clever. Hobo-Gandalf is still credited as ‘The Stranger’ and the other known Istar as ‘Dark Wizard’. It’s possible the show is going to try and pass them off as the Blue Wizards who traveled to the East.
From Tolkien’s Letters:
“I really do not know anything clearly about the other two [wizards] – since they do not concern the history of the N[orth].W[est]. I think they went as emissaries to distant regions, East and South, far out of Númenórean range: missionaries to ‘enemy-occupied’ lands, as it were. What success they had I do not know; but I fear that they failed, as Saruman did, though doubtless in different ways; and I suspect they were founders or beginners of secret cults and ‘magic’ traditions that outlasted the fall of Sauron.”
Okay, that gives the producers a lot of wiggle room. Since according to this letter Tolkien himself didn’t know what happened to them.
Now in his Last Writings of the People of Middle Earth Tolkien returned to the matter of the Blue Wizards:
“Their task was to circumvent Sauron: to bring help to the few tribes of Men that had rebelled from Melkor-worship, to stir up rebellion … and after his first fall to search out his hiding (in which they failed) and to cause [?dissension and disarray] among the dark East … They must have had very great influence on the history of the Second Age and Third Age in weakening and disarraying the forces of East … who would both in the Second Age and Third Age otherwise have … outnumbered the West.”
Professor Tolkien’s intent clearly had changed. They might be able to get away with it by claiming to be following Tolkien’s first set of instructions. More likely they aren’t being clever at all, and it’s just Gandalf and some evil asshat they made up.
We go back to the Stools long enough for Nori to convince the chief of the Stools that they are cousins or something. The chief then reveals that they have a prophecy about finding the Shire. I feel so dumb just writing that.
Done with the Gully Dwarves until next week.
Elfagorn and Isildor are tromping through the muck with Estird being dragged behind them in manacles. Okay, where the hell is Isildor’s horse? He spends an entire episode getting his horse back and then doesn’t use it. Estrid and Isildor are bickering. Elfagorn silences them and orders them to follow him in Elvish, which neither of them speaks but this year’s writing algorithm has gotten so used to the elves bouncing back and forth between languages it did it by reflex.
Anyway, he declares Theo wasn’t taken by Wildmen.
We see Theo waking up in a cage made of branches at the top of a tree. His fellow prisoners are wildmen from the last episode.
Galadriel is getting more visions from her ring and I’m really getting annoyed by this. Galadriel’s ring Nenya had two powerful enchantments, preservation and concealment from evil. She used those to make and protect Lothlorean. The Three Rings never gave anyone visions because they were made without Sauron’s knowledge. They were pure and untainted by him unlike the Nine and the Seven. But this damn show is trying to repurpose Frodo’s temptation and give it to Galadriel.
Back to the other Forrest of Improper Lighting. They are attacked by a quick-muck monster and while I am loathe to give credit to this show for anything, the CG this year is a vast improvement over the first season. The dialog remains indifferent and once again this was just a repurposed scene from one of the Jackson movies. It doesn’t matter how many scenes they reshoot, it simply isn’t going to turn Rangz into the Peter Jackson movies.
Estrid saves them. So Isildor thinks she likes him again and unshackles her. She immediately steals his sword. Gammas. Never. Learn.
They are attacked by Ents. Again, the effects look decent. The dialog is still from Wish.com but the effects look like money was spent on them. Elfagorn convinces the Ents that they aren’t Orcs, so the Ents release their prisoners. Theo and Elfagorn hug. Aww.
However, Estrid’s fiance was among the prisoners and she immediately gives Isildor The Last American Virgin treatment.
Done for the week with the guy who is going to screw up the entire Third Age of Middle Earth all by himself.
We are in the home stretch. Elrond promptly wins the dumbest line of the evening. “My father once predicted that Celebrimbor’s life would one day be in my hands.” Eärendil was a sailor, he did not do prophecy. He wasn’t even a full-blooded elf.
Orcs attack and one of the elves looks like he’s being fitted for a red shirt but then… Galadriel uses Nenya to heal him! For fuck’s sake they’re turning the rings into a Sonic Screwdriver, whatever the plot needs it to do, it can do.
She hands Nenya to Elrond and then goes off to fight the Orcs on her own. These Orcs clearly aren’t family men and are behaving in a way that would be considered an ethnic slur in sixth edition Dungeons and Dragons, in other words, they acting like are Orcs are freaking supposed to.
Galadriel shoots two of them with flaming arrows and apparently, Orcs are incredibly flammable now because they burst into a head-to-toe inferno. However, Adar captures her handily so they can set up next week’s repurposed scenes.
I will grant that this season is different from the last. There are a few visuals that are genuinely stunning like Celebrimbor’s Forge. That was very obviously a live set. They built and lit it properly, I will give credit for that because it is justly due. However, the dialog is just as bad if less given to falling into the uncanny AI valley. Either they’ve improved the AI or the real showrunner now has the power of ‘no.’
The worst of it this year is the constant repurposing of Jackson’s scenes to induce memberberries. The entire plot is being driven forward, not by the story but in order to set up the next repurposed scene. The improved background details don’t change the fact that Amazon’s Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is no different from Disney Star Wars.
