I didn’t make it past the first twenty minutes.
That’s the full viewing history. I’ve since watched clips, read extensive commentary, and confirmed what those twenty minutes told me: the writers don’t understand Tolkien’s characters, and the result is a show that has the surface of Middle-earth without any of the substance that made it worth adapting. I’ve read The Lord of the Rings more times than I can count. I know what Middle-earth feels like from the inside. Rings of Power doesn’t feel like it at all.
The rating is -1. The landscapes occasionally earn a 7 in isolation. Everything attached to the writing earns less than zero.
What Galadriel Actually Is
In Tolkien’s legendarium, Galadriel is one of the most powerful beings in Middle-earth. She has been alive since before the sun existed. She studied under the Valar themselves. She refused Fëanor — one of the greatest craftsmen in the history of the world — when he demanded her hair. She survived the Helcaraxë crossing, founded and ruled Lothlórien for thousands of years, and wielded Nenya, one of the three Elven Rings of Power. When Frodo offers her the One Ring, her refusal is among the most important moments in the entire trilogy precisely because the temptation is real. She has the power to use it. She chooses not to.
What makes Galadriel formidable is not combat ability. It is wisdom, restraint, foresight, and the hard-won understanding that unchecked power destroys everything it touches. She learned that lesson by watching it happen across thousands of years. That is what makes her one of the strongest characters Tolkien ever created — and one of the powerful female characters in all of fantasy literature.
Rings of Power turns her into an action hero who single-handedly kills an ice troll in the first episode. The writers apparently believed that “strong female character” means “woman who fights things better than everyone else in the room.” It doesn’t. That definition is shallower than the character it replaced. The show’s version of Galadriel is less interesting, less complex, and less powerful than the one Tolkien wrote — because the show replaced depth with spectacle and called it an upgrade.
Tolkien’s Galadriel is formidable because of what she chooses not to do. A character defined by restraint requires writers capable of understanding that restraint is a form of strength. Rings of Power’s writers weren’t.
Power in fiction is only meaningful when it has costs and limits. A character who can do everything is a character with no story. Galadriel’s power in Tolkien works because it is bounded by her own hard-won discipline — the temptation of the Ring is terrifying precisely because she could take it. A character who solos a troll in the opening scene has demonstrated capability, not power. Capability without cost is spectacle. Power with cost is character. Before you give your protagonist an impressive feat, ask what it costs them and what it reveals about who they are. If the answer is nothing, the feat is decorating a hole where a character should be.
Two Troll Fights: A Study in Contrast
The cave troll sequence in the Mines of Moria is a masterclass in ensemble action. Every member of the Fellowship contributes according to who they are. Aragorn and Boromir fight with swords because they’re trained warriors. Legolas uses his bow because he’s an archer. Gimli fights with axes because he’s a dwarf. The Hobbits are terrified but brave, throwing rocks and stabbing when they can. When Frodo gets speared, his companions rally around him. The scene works because every character matters and no single person dominates.
More importantly, the emotional architecture of the scene is doing as much work as the choreography. The audience isn’t just watching a fight. They’re watching nine people who have committed to each other being tested for the first time. Boromir’s protective instinct toward the Hobbits foreshadows his later sacrifice. Sam charging a cave troll with a frying pan tells you everything about his character in three seconds. The troll is a genuine threat — the outcome is uncertain, victory requires coordination and luck, and the cost is real. That uncertainty is what makes the scene land.
In Rings of Power, Galadriel essentially solos the troll. The other characters become spectators. This breaks the power balance Tolkien maintained across his entire mythology. Trolls are dangerous in Middle-earth. When one goes down easily, every other threat in the story is cheapened. If Galadriel can handle a troll alone without visible effort, what is supposed to feel dangerous to her? The answer the show provides is: nothing. Which means there are no stakes. Which means there is no story.
Jackson understood that the Moria troll works because it could win. Rings of Power’s troll exists to be a showcase. That is the difference between drama and decoration.
Ensemble action sequences are harder to write than solo sequences, and they’re almost always better. When your protagonist single-handedly defeats the threat, you’ve written one character’s competence. When your ensemble defeats it together, you’ve written relationships, dynamics, and the specific way each person contributes based on who they are. Every person who matters to the scene becomes more real when they have something specific to do. Write your action scenes by asking: what does this scene reveal about each character present? If the answer for most of them is “nothing — they watched,” rewrite the scene.
A Billion Dollars and Worse CGI Than 2001
Rings of Power reportedly cost close to a billion dollars. The CGI is among the worst in any major production of the last decade. Scenes that should feel epic look artificial. Environments that should immerse you instead remind you you’re watching a screen. The troll in the first episode looks less convincing than Jackson’s cave troll from 2001, which was built with a fraction of the budget and two decades less technology.
This matters because Middle-earth depends on immersion above almost everything else. Tolkien spent decades making his world feel lived-in and physically real. Jackson honored that by blending practical effects, actual New Zealand landscapes, and CGI that served the story rather than substituted for it. The Shire felt like a place you could walk into. Mordor felt like a place that would kill you. The environments weren’t backdrops. They were arguments about what these places meant.
Rings of Power’s environments feel like wallpaper. Expensive wallpaper, but wallpaper. The money went somewhere. It didn’t go to the screen in any form that serves the story.
Jackson’s entire trilogy cost roughly $280 million. Rings of Power spent more than three times that and produced something less convincing. The problem isn’t resources. It’s judgment. Understanding what makes Tolkien’s world work on screen cannot be purchased. It has to be earned by understanding the source material deeply enough to know what you’re trying to create. The people running this show didn’t have that understanding, and no budget compensates for its absence.
Production value in prose is specificity. The Shire feels real in Tolkien because of precise, earned detail: the round green door, the smell of pipe-weed, the particular quality of the light on the Hill. Not because he described everything, but because he described the right things with authority. Rings of Power’s billion-dollar problem has a prose equivalent: writers who spend pages on description that doesn’t land because the details aren’t chosen with understanding of what the place means. Specificity in service of feeling is world building. Specificity in service of itself is inventory.
The Sauron Problem
The Sauron storyline should have been the show’s strongest element. In Tolkien’s Second Age, Sauron disguises himself as Annatar — the Lord of Gifts — and deceives the Elven-smiths of Eregion into forging the Rings of Power. It is a story about manipulation, trust, and catastrophic misjudgment by people who should have known better. The dramatic tension should come from watching intelligent, experienced characters be played by someone smarter and more patient than they are. The tragedy is that the Elves are not stupid. They are deceived because Sauron is that good.
The show rushes through the deception in ways that make the Elves look incompetent rather than tragic. There is a difference between being fooled by a masterful liar operating over centuries and being fooled because the plot needs you to be fooled by next episode. The audience can always tell which one they’re watching. When characters make choices that only make sense because the story requires them to, the world stops being real and becomes a mechanism. Tolkien’s Elves were deceived despite their wisdom. The show’s Elves are deceived instead of it.
When your plot requires a character to be deceived, manipulated, or to make a bad decision, you must earn it from inside their psychology. The reader has to understand how this specific person, with their specific history and values and blind spots, could arrive at this specific mistake. “The plot needed it” is visible to every reader and it destroys credibility instantly. Do the work: what does this character want badly enough to ignore warning signs? What does the deceiver offer that exploits that want precisely? Sauron offers the Elves knowledge and craft — the things they value most. That’s why it works in the books. Find the equivalent for your characters.
This Isn’t a Diversity Argument
The Galadriel problem gets misread as a complaint about progressive storytelling. It isn’t. The standard isn’t ideological. It’s craft.
Murderbot is one of the most diverse properties in recent science fiction and it earns a 9. The Expanse has one of the most diverse casts in television and the first three seasons earn a 9.5. Both work because the characters are written as specific people with specific psychologies, and their identities serve the story rather than substituting for it. Nobody notices the diversity in those shows because the writing is good enough that every character feels real. That’s the standard.
Rings of Power fails not because it made Galadriel different from Tolkien’s version. It fails because what it made her into is shallower, less complex, and less interesting than what Tolkien wrote. The writers had one of the powerful female characters in all of fantasy literature and replaced her with a fighter who wins fights. That’s not progressive. It’s a downgrade dressed as one.
The source material was right there. The Second Age contains the forging of the Rings of Power, the rise and fall of Númenor, Sauron’s long deception of the Elven-smiths, and the Last Alliance of Elves and Men. Galadriel lived through all of it. A faithful version could have shown her navigating political alliances, recognizing Sauron’s deception before others did, wielding influence through wisdom and foresight. That Galadriel would have been more interesting, more faithful, and powerful in ways that matter.
Instead the writers either didn’t read the source material carefully or didn’t trust it to be compelling enough on its own. Either explanation is damning.
When you’re adapting a character, the question isn’t “what can I change?” It’s “what is this character doing in the original, and is there a reason it works?” Tolkien’s Galadriel is compelling because her power is defined by restraint and wisdom earned over millennia. If you change that, you need something equally compelling to replace it. “She fights well” is not equally compelling. Before you change a character’s defining trait, ask what that trait is doing in the original, why it works, and what you’re trading away. The change has to earn what it costs.
The Verdict
I didn’t finish it and I’m not going to. Twenty minutes and a substantial amount of subsequent research is enough to know what the show is and isn’t.
What it isn’t: a faithful adaptation of Tolkien’s Second Age, a coherent story about power and deception and the costs of hubris, a show that understands why Middle-earth matters or what makes its characters work.
What it is: expensive wallpaper stretched over a framework that has Tolkien’s names and locations and none of his understanding. A show that mistakes spectacle for stakes, combat ability for strength of character, and surface diversity for the harder work of writing people who feel real.
Jackson’s trilogy demonstrated that Tolkien’s world, faithfully understood and translated with craft, produces some of the best filmmaking in the history of the genre. Rings of Power demonstrates what happens when the same intellectual property is handed to people who either couldn’t or didn’t read what they were adapting. The contrast is instructive and depressing in equal measure.
For a detailed breakdown of exactly where and why Rings of Power fails as an adaptation — including a scene-by-scene comparison of the two troll fights — see the full analysis at The Writing King.
FAQ
Is Rings of Power worth watching for the visuals alone?
The New Zealand landscapes occasionally justify a moment’s attention. The CGI does not. Despite a reported budget approaching a billion dollars, the digital effects are among the worst in any major recent production — less convincing than what Jackson achieved in 2001 with a fraction of the resources. The visual achievement is in the locations, not in what was built around them.
Is this a complaint about diversity or progressive casting?
No. The standard is craft, not ideology. Murderbot and The Expanse are both deeply diverse properties that earn 9 and 9.5 ratings respectively because the characters are well-written specific people. Rings of Power fails because Galadriel as written is shallower and less interesting than Tolkien’s version. That’s a writing failure, not a political one.
What should Galadriel have been in this show?
Exactly what Tolkien wrote: a being of immense power defined by wisdom, restraint, and thousands of years of hard-won understanding about what unchecked power does to everything it touches. The Second Age gives her an extraordinary story to inhabit — political navigation, the recognition of Sauron’s deception before others, the forging of Nenya. That version would have been more powerful and more interesting than an action hero. The source material was available. The writers chose not to use it.
How does it compare to Jackson’s films?
There is no meaningful comparison. Jackson’s trilogy earned a 10+ across all three films because he understood what he was adapting and found the cinematic equivalent of what makes it work. Rings of Power earned a -1 because the writers demonstrably didn’t. The gap between them is not a matter of budget or technology. It’s a matter of understanding the source material deeply enough to know what you’re trying to create.
What would a good Second Age adaptation look like?
It would tell the story Tolkien actually wrote: Sauron’s long deception of the Elven-smiths as a tragedy of trust and hubris, the rise and fall of Númenor as a study in civilizational overreach, the Last Alliance as the moment when the cost of everything that came before finally arrives. Galadriel navigating all of it through wisdom and foresight rather than combat. The dramatic material is extraordinary. It was sitting there waiting. A show that trusted the source material would have been one of the great fantasy adaptations. Instead it became a case study in what happens when you have the rights but not the understanding.