The Rings of Power doesn’t have any right to be good.
It’s funded by a megacorporation, for one thing. I don’t say that to demean big businesses or capitalism as a system. More just that big businesses have nearly the opposite goal compared to storytellers. Storytellers are searching for specificity and authenticity. They often challenge their audiences and emphasize minority opinions, which risks making people uncomfortable. They want loyally devoted fans without resorting to tricks. They prioritize humanity over profits. At least, that goes for most of the artists I’ve known.
And we’ve seen what happens when megacorporations take over the role of storytelling. I wouldn’t be the first to point out how much Disney has lost their way. They’ve applied business techniques to the wrong medium. They’ve market-tested and homogenized their Intellectual Properties to the point where everything feels the same, and Marvel is now indistinguishable from Star Wars or anything else. Episode 8: The Last Jedi was the first Disney film in years that had new ideas, and the public reaction sent Disney scampering away to the safety of their air-conditioned, Lysol-sanitized media vault from which they’ve let dribble a few half-hearted TV adaptations and more remakes.
I blame Disney for not having artistic integrity, but I don’t blame them for the fact that movies and television shows cost a fortune to make and can’t feasibly done by anyone else. I also don’t blame them for wanting the security of something they know will sell, after such a big investment.
No one else could make The Rings of Power. It had to be Amazon, or one of their corporate twins. The reason I was so afraid is because Lord of the Rings hasn’t yet been abused like most of the other big story universes out there. I’m of the opinion that the 2000-ish films were one of the great triumphs of cinema, and The Hobbit films were a disappointment when they released but have aged well.
But I’m also of the opinion that Tolkien was an abnormal storyteller who somehow stumbled upon the secret sauce, and his work is therefore inimitable. He didn’t care about the conventions of the day, and instead chose to do his own thing. That is anathema to the very process of blockbuster media production.
Add to that his Catholicism, which imbued his work with a sense of the divine, with providence, virtue, and eucatastrophe. What mainstream writer today has the guts or the ability to let their religious faith inform their work when it’s being commissioned by a company which pathologically has no opinions? Remember that one big-budget Catholic show that went viral and created its very own media moment? Nope, because that has never happened.
It’s even clear to me that the values of Lord of the Rings are not popular in fantasy these days, nor in any genre. We’ve been cut by the sharp edges of postmodernism, moral subjectivity, and nihilistic dread, and all we have are scars.
And then here comes something old, which immediately feels like something new.
The Rings of Power is different–and not just different, but actively counter-cultural–on every level. It’s the most expensive TV show ever produced by far. It was handed off to 2 unknown showrunners who haven’t done much before, which was a huge gamble. It doesn’t repeat tired TV tropes. It takes time for worldbuilding and exposition. It dwells on beauty.
The core difference of The Rings of Power is hard to articulate. But for the lack of a better term, it’s hopeful.
Yes, it has problems as well. It feels the need to state its themes directly instead of letting them infuse the characters and world. (One argument between two elves about “The eye of hope” was a bit on-the-nose for me.) But I’m ecstatic to be getting such big-budget treatment of headier themes at all. Asking for subtlety at this point would be expecting the impossible.
And I also think that Rings of Power wants to be different, and it wants people to notice. That’s what real art has always done.
The true test is whether a story is so good that I want to experience it, rather than just feeling like I ought to want it. And in that regard, Rings of Power is passing with flying colors.
