To say this show is terrible is an insult to the word “terrible”.
Even before I had started reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion and Lord of the Rings, I thought the show was innately bad. I had grown up on the Peter Jackson film adaptations and was expecting a show that would have the same look and feel as the original movies. Did I expect it to have woke messaging in it? Yes. But I expected that woke messaging to be kept to somewhat of a minimum for the sake of perserving the professor’s legacy. Now that I’ve read The Silmarillion, Lord of the Rings, and am still finding more Tolkien books to read, I can say with confidence that Rings of Power was written by Morgoth himself in the pits of Angband.
#1: Galadriel
If you went into Rings of Power expecting Galadriel to be as wise, awe-inspiring, and beautiful as she was portrayed to be in the books and movies, expect to be disappointed. Instead of the wise student of Yavanna, Aule, and Melian who would not only survive the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd ages of Middle Earth, but would be the chief adversary of Sauron during the Second Age, and would defeat the Ban of the Valar; we get a whiny, psychopathic, vengeful Galdriel who we all hate. No longer is she Galadriel, the elf who was greater maybe than Feanor, the mightiest of the Noldor. Now she is Strong Whaman! a 5’3″ warrior who can somehow take on adversaries twice her size and strength who has no character growth at all.
Throughout the show, Galadriel speaks down not just to her subordinates, but also to the people she claims to be her friends and to people who are her higher-ups, such as King Gil-Galad. It even reaches a point where she threatens to kill the people who are being nice and tolerating her behavior. Half the time I was expecting her to go nuclear because someone assumed her gender or told her to smile more (correction: smile less. We’ve all seen the meme). She constantly acts like an angry teenager who just had her phone confiscated for a month and still she somehow gets her way because everyone in the show is a pushover. Her rash, impulsive decisions make her more like her jerk-of-an-uncle, Feanor, than anything else and lead to Sauron turning evil.
Isn’t she amazing? Isn’t she powerful? Ladies, do you feel empowered and represented? Be like Galadriel; be a total pig! (Though let’s be honest, at least actual pigs are cute and when they die, they turn into delicious bacon.)
If I were an elf living under Galadriel’s reign of tyranny, I’d be asking Sauron if he had any job openings available.
#2: The Script
The entire script was written for the sole purpose of trying to make the writers look like they’re smarter than they actually are. While maybe the writers of Rings of Power think that they are absolute geniuses for coming up with the lines in the show, in reality they were absolutely hilarious to watch for all the wrong reasons.
Not only did the actors saying the lines look and sound stiff and uncomfortable, but the lines were often just fluff that were either trying to make us think of the movies or were straight-up stolen from the movies themselves. Don’t belive me? Look up some of the cringiest lines from the show on YouTube. As a writer myself, I would be beating myself over the head repeatedly if I allowed anything even closely resembling the dialouge in Rings of Power to be published in my books.
One of the worst lines in the show was Finrod’s speech to young Galadriel at the opening of the show, of which the link is shown here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VYZ6ZRRj9A.
To quote the youtuber, Disparu, in his review of the first episode, “What have you been smoking?!” No one asked for a lesson in buoyancy with high-elf, Finrod Felagund (see what I did there?). I don’t care if it’s supposed to be some metaphor for how we must strive against the darkness by looking towards the the light, it’s still stupid. Amazon apparently doesn’t know how a ship or a good metaphor works and this meme is their best guess.
#3: The Harfoots (Harfeet?)
I would happily join with Sauron if it meant destroying the Harfoots. There is no end to how much I despise these homeless Hobbits. They are easily the one of the worst things in the entire show. If they were compeltely destroyed, it would be a net positive not just for the world of Middle-Earth, but also for regular Earth as well since we wouldn’t have to watch them.
In the Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings in the prolouge called, “Concerning Hobbits”, Harfoots are mentioned as being one of the three types of Hobbit; Harfoots, Fallowhides, and Stoors. Harfoots are the smallest and most common type of Hobbit and most of the Hobbits in the Shire such as Frodo, Merry, Pippin, Sam, Bilbo, etc. are descended of the Harfoots. They had darker skin (which means they were more tan than other Hobbits) and were good at crafting. They had frequent interactions with the Dwarves and also had interactions with the Rohirrim, which is why much of their langauge (Hobbitish) is influenced by Rohirric.
Does this seem different from how the Harfoots act in Rings of Power?
It should.
In Rings of Power, the Harfoots are about as psychopathic as Galadriel. If you are even a slight inconvience to them, they boot you to the back of the caravan to be left behind to die. This type of behavior is one of the driving plot points of the Harfoot storyline and directly contradicts all the sappy, cheesy speeches about family and kindness that they give. Apparently, the writers wrote all of them to have Stockholm syndrome.
On top of that, instead of being outgoing and interacting with anyone, they stay hidden until the person passes, which as I pointed out before, contradicts what Tolkien said about them. In the first episode, when the Harfoots see the the two hunters have finally passed by them, they come out and seemingly recreate what I can only describe as the camp scene from Shrek 4. The show tries to recreate the wholsomeness of the original movies, but fails hilariously. While the Hobbits in the original movies looked happy, healthy, and hard-working, the Harfoots in Rings of Power look like they are homeless and possibly on meth. The entire time you’re watching them, you are hoping they take a shower at some point to get the trash out of their hair. I would rate the Harfoots 0/10.
#4: The Unnecesary, Random “R” Rolls
This is more of a pet-peeve of mine, but whenever I see clips of characters in Rings of Power rolling their R’s in random places to make things sound important, I get annoyed. It’s like nails on a chalkboard.
Contrary to popular opinion, I’m actually fine with Galadriel and Sauron having the R’s in their names rolled. The reason why is because that’s the correct way to pronounce their names in the languages of Quenya and Sindarin. In the Tengwar alphabet (which is used for Quenya and Sindarin) there are two letters that are used for R, Romen and Ore. Romen is used for R’s that come before a vowel (like in the Quenya name Sauron) and are rolled. Ore is used for R’s that come after a vowel and before a consonant or end of the word (such as in “Numenor” or “Finarfin”). Those R’s are not rolled.
With that said, as someone who can write in Tengwar as easily as I can write in English (no, I’m not kidding; I actually taught myself how to write in Elvish) and knows how it works in different modes, I get annoyed when words that would use Ore sound like Romen is being incorrectly used. Rolling the R’s in the names Finarfin, Numenor, Morgoth, etc. is incorrect to the Tolkienian lore and not rolling the R’s in names that actually do use Romen – such as Elrond, Durin, Halbrand, Arondir, etc. – is equally annoying to me. If they wanted to roll the R’s, Amazon should’ve made it where all the R’s are rolled correctly as they would be in the actual pronunciations of Elvish names and words or not at all. The Peter Jackson movies stuck to the “no-roll” policy, and Rings of Power should do the same thing at this point.
#5: Costuming
The costumes in Rings of Power should’ve been a high point in the show, but instead are just as bad as the rest of it. While I will admit that some of the costumes are pretty, they still look like something someone ordered from Party City or Medieval Collectables to wear to the local Reniassance Festival.
The prothestics used to create the pointy elf-ears and the Dwarves’ giant noses could be seen from the moon with how poorly blended in they were compared to the rest of the skin. Arondir’s armor didn’t look Tolkienian at all and every time I saw him in it, I was wondering at which shop at the Reniassance Festival I had seen the same generic tree-spirit/ent design on leather bags, braclets, walking sticks, costumes, etc.
In fact, none of the armor in general looked good.
The armor worn by the Numenorians look extremely plasticy and cheap and has been the butt of many jokes considering the built in moob protection. Galadriel’s armor is perhaps the only armor that looks somewhat good but once again throws dirt into the face of the lore. While I can get past the fact that its plate armor instead of chain mail, why does Galadriel have the Star of Feanor on her breastplate? In the books, Galadriel hated her uncle and would probably have rather run out into battle in a dress than wear armor with his symbol on it. Lore aside, in medieval Europe, any symbol you put on or over your armor was important because it signified where you came from. If Galadriel ever wore armor at some point in the books, it would be more likely that she would wear a symbol associated with her father, Finarfin, or her husband, Celeborn.
Moving on from the armor, the regular day-to-day clothing of the elves looks cheap and impractical compared to the elves in the Peter Jackson movies (which had a lower budget even when adjusted for inflation). Celebrimbor seems to be wearing a maternity dress, even when working in the forge, Elrond looks like he stole some bed sheets from a Roman senator, Gil-Galad’s costume looks like he’s gone to a cosplay convention and stole some gold leaves, Tar-Miriel has some really dumb hair accesories, and the costumes continue to decline in believability from there. Just look at some pictures of the costumes from Rings of Power and compare them to the costumes from LOTR. In the original movies, not only did Peter Jackson use the costumes to sell the character, but he also used lighting to make the elves look more ethereal and made sure to check and double check that the costumes were accurate with the designs that were drawn by the official Tolkien artists, Ted Nadsmith, Alan Lee, and John Howe. Viggo Mortenson (the actor who played Aragorn), even suggested that a whetstone be added to Aragorn’s costume because it wouldn’t be realistic if he didn’t carry one. Unfortunately, that attention to detail has been lost to the more important endeavor of pushing a message.
Until next time,
M.J.
The Tanuki Corner 
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