Amazon’s streaming service, Prime Video, is burdened with what it hopes is its one true destiny: to create a fantasy series as popular as Game of Thrones used to be. Can it prevail? Fearsome enemy HBO is casting a long shadow with House of the Dragon, a show that has the major advantage of being a Thrones prequel, but Amazon has a big, iron-spiked prequel of its own. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has been given a colossal production budget that you can see on-screen in every scene. And it’s back for season two.
The game here, usually, is to transcend the fantasy genre while serving fantasy devotees. Game of Thrones was the biggest show on TV because it simultaneously pleased people who are naturally drawn to epic prophecies, mythical beasts and sudden disembowelments in kingdoms that have exotic made-up names (but are basically medieval England), and viewers who would ordinarily run a mile from that stuff. While Prime Video’s other big fantasy weapon, The Wheel of Time – yes, Amazon is so desperate to crack this market that it has an insanely lavish back-up fantasy show, in case the main one fails – has struggled to bridge this gap, but The Rings of Power is slightly different. It believes there is no crossover to be achieved, the Rings franchise being so huge that its fans and a mainstream audience are the same thing.
And so, season one was a lot of foreshadowing and nod-wink referencing, introducing younger versions of known characters, other characters we strongly suspected are younger versions of Rings stalwarts although they currently have different names, and places and peoples that similarly are ready to evolve into the familiar. Beneath all this was the question, who is Sauron? The villain of the story sneakily took other forms, so we spent the first series saying: “It’s him! Or is it him?” Then we found out who it was, but not everyone on-screen did, so now it’s: where’s Sauron and who is he hoodwinking?
The scenes featuring the machinations of an expert manipulator help The Rings of Power to overcome, at least for some of the time, the basic problem this prequel has, which is that a lot of it is lore, not drama. Characters often tell each other what has happened, what will happen or what definitely must not happen because if it does, Middle-earth will be doomed – all in the amusingly portentous tone that can make casual viewers think the fantasy realm isn’t for them. The Rings of Power isn’t helped on the latter point by the vocal affectation elves have, where they theatrically roll their Rs, but only for proper nouns: any mention of “Mordor” and the actors suddenly sound like Taggart announcing a homicide.
There are other sweeteners, however, the most obvious one being the show’s production values. If a giant spider attacks, it is convincing in its movement and in the details of its awful, huge spider face; when a gaggle of festering orcs is required, there are hundreds of them and they plausibly hum with rot and filth. Waterfalls, volcanoes, magic trees you don’t want to stand too close to and devastating, nuclear-like explosions are all spectacularly rendered, while the battle scenes – which the three comeback episodes could use a few more of – whirl and splat with aplomb.
The proto-hobbit Harfoots, who are dubiously Irish-sounding, are cute – if you don’t mind British and Australian actors doing slightly cartoonish accents – and the dwarves, who lean Scottish, are funny with a neat turn of phrase: “stubborn as a root-bound parsnip” and the like. They take some of the strain from the main gang, the elves, who are consumed with the serious business of safeguarding the three titular rings, each containing the mystical power of mithril, a rare ore. While the menfolk tend to be a stodgy morass of sententious pontificating and ludicrous side-swept hairdos, Morfydd Clark leads them well as the intense Galadriel, whose growing presence as a warrior is offset by the shame and uncertainty of having been fooled by Sauron “appearing in fair form” – in other words, in season one he was hot and she wanted to boff him. When others question whether she has got her lust for evil out of her system, she doesn’t look sure.
Drama that’s rewarding to watch is not totally absent then, but when Sauron – Saurrrrrrron!! – grandly says that the world “will revere you, the Lord of the Rings!” to someone we know is not the Lord of the Rings, because Sauron himself shall become the Lord of the Rings, as he was in the books and films of The Lord of the Rings, we’re reminded of the weakness of The Rings of Power, which is that it’s just a bit too … Lord of the Rings-y. While that’s the case, it will struggle to conquer the Earth.
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