The Ring Goes Round and Round

I watched some paint dry last night for about an hour, but it was really expensive paint called The Rings of Power (etc, etc, etc). I can think of few such stark examples of ten cent imaginations working on a billion dollar budget.

Most people talk about how bad the writing is but the visuals deserve some mockery, too. Yeah, the sets and props clearly show the amount of detail a pile of money can buy. But there's not a single interesting composition, there's nothing interesting about the colour schemes beyond how well they imitate Pre-Raphaelite and John Howe paintings. It's like the director just shrugged and said to the production designers, "I don't know, do something expensive."

The action scenes are getting dumber, too. My favourite was Galadriel overpowering a group of armoured guards putting her in handcuffs. Okay, it's a bit silly they decided to turn Galadriel into a genius martial artist, but if you're going that route, and you have all this money, shouldn't you show us how she manages to do something like this? The best I can make out is she just kind of pushes the five guys twice her size with her little bare hands.

Is this elven magic? You want to weave some kind of story around Galadriel's prowess? No?

Again, the racial casting fits a clear pattern. A bunch of working class white guys in Numenor gather to protest elven immigrants taking their jobs. In Tolkien's lore, some Numenoreans became jealous of the immortality of elves. Tolkien, who hated allegory anyway, obviously couldn't and wouldn't have made this nonsensical caricature of Trump voters.

And, once again, no-one's East Asian except one or two background extras, which dispels the argument that the show's leaving East Asians for the Easterlings. I guess, as far as main characters went, injecting anachronistic racial diversity was important, but they thought Asians were a step too far. Or maybe they're just racists.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: The Energy of Jewellery: The Finger Cuffs of Sauron: The Golden Cheese: The King of the Hula Hoops is available on Amazon Prime.