A new trailer might seem promising, but the show has a lot of work to do to become worthy of Tolkien’s legacy.
It’s a bumper crop for Lord of the Rings “content.” More than 20 years after the release of Peter Jackson’s film trilogy (which is returning to theaters in June), last week brought news of a new movie focused on Gollum. And yesterday, Amazon Prime released the first trailer for Season Two of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, out this August:
The show aims to tell the story of the Second Age of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Legendarium. Jackson’s trilogy depicts the end of the Third Age. The extended lifespans of some Tolkien characters mean that some of them appear in both ages and in both properties, while others are new to it. Elements of the Second Age affect the Third.
But after its first season, the Rings of Power is no longer a theoretical proposition. We have seen what its attempt to bring the Second Age to life looks like. With perhaps a fool’s hope, I labored mightily to give the show a chance, and then the benefit of the doubt. Yet by its end, I could not help being disappointed. And in the time since Season One’s finale, I’ve begun to think that I not only went too easy on the show during its initial rollout, but also that even my mixed concluding assessment was too generous.
It is now incumbent upon Rings of Power to earn my trust back. (And I doubt I am alone in this.) Some of what appears in this first trailer might seem promising in this regard. It focuses mostly on characters directly involved in the fight against Sauron. You have to go to the behind-the-scenes featurette (also out yesterday) to get even a glimpse of the proto-hobbit Harfoots, whose story in Season One seemed largely a waste of time. And Sauron, presented as the outright center of this season, now bears a greater resemblance to his Annatar form, which suggests that the Rings of Power showrunners might be serious about their promise to tell “a canonical story” now.
But wait a minute: Why did fealty to Tolkien’s text have to wait until the second season? That admission in itself speaks to the overriding flaw of the show thus far: its unjustifiable deviations from the source material. As I have explained before, “some degree of interpretation and deviation is inevitable.” Parts of Season One, however, went far beyond what could be justified in service of compression, simplification, artistic license, etc. As far as I can tell, for example, the timeline of the Rings of Power themselves — their forging, when Sauron reveals himself, etc. — is now mangled beyond repair. (And don’t get me started on the way the show treats mithril.)
To be fair, some of the show’s faults are inescapable. Bizarrely, it lacks rights to The Silmarillion, which presents the story of the Second Age most fully and straightforwardly. It is instead restricted to information about the Second Age related in the appendices of The Lord of the Rings. But maybe that ought to have inspired second thoughts about whether the show was worth doing in the first place.
The Lord of the Rings as written by J. R. R. Tolkien is a transcendent, powerful work, a modern mythology that proceeds subtly yet clearly from a richly Catholic imagination. I’ve committed myself to seeing if Season Two of Rings of Power, at least, becomes more worthy of that legacy. If not, and if modern tastemakers continue to delve too greedily and too deep for “content” from Tolkien’s world without living up to its spirit, then we’re better off not having all these products — or at least, not watching them.