Amazon’s “Rings of Power” is not J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings.” It’s not Tolkien’s “Hobbit.” It’s not even Tolkien’s “Silmarillion.” These will, naturally, be the standards by which fans of the greatest author the fantasy genre has ever known will measure the series. And by those standards, some are already deeming it a failure.
There are proto-Hobbits (the migratory Harfoot people) where, according to Tolkien’s timeline, no Hobbits should be. Galadriel has been downgraded to a garden-variety warrior queen, de-mythologizing the ethereal feminine power she previously wielded. And the dialogue manages the weird trick of wedging modern American vernacular into otherwise self-consciously stiff folklorian speech.
.png)
.png)
