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Rating: "We live in an age where the superfluous is our only necessity."
Announced with great fanfare after an eon-long gestation, "The Rings of Power," the half-apocryphal prequel to the Tolkien epic "The Lord of the Rings," has arrived on Prime Video and has been available on the platform since September 1st. What is presented is more of a documentary-style re-presentation of the Middle Earth ecosystem, one of the continents belonging to Arda's universe, inhabited by a varied and disparate fauna of creatures as wonderful as they are terrible. A sort of genesis, although in medias res, of everything that happened millennia before the events that filled the much more renowned trilogy.
Since there is no real narrative, just a rich glossary of elements to use, the possibilities were virtually endless, with a story that could have enjoyed the most disparate branches and bizarre characters. Instead, what is presented is an extremely didactic product that struggles to break free from its encyclopedic nature.
A monolithic fresco boasting a technical set of special effects, lighting, and impressive and solemn photography (after all, it has been discussed as the most substantial budget in history for a serial product), but it fails to speak about anything. Or rather, it fails to talk about something that is vaguely interesting.
The script is what animated the plot of previous works: evil seems defeated but waits in ambush, ready to strike when least expected. The same literary topos of sagas finds vitality in these shores, but dilated to the point of degeneration, so that from the first episode, the pace is slow, flattened. And to move the strings of this story is a cast of characters of which it is difficult to even remember them, due to the two-dimensionality that afflicts them. A well-stocked audience, but vaguely sketched, in which the average viewer struggles not only to empathize but also to seek to justify their existence (except for purely marketing purposes, but I do not intend to delve into this media circus).
Thus, a tedious, banal account, devoid of real jolts capable of arousing the viewer's curiosity, also disheartened by what was supposed to be an immersive experience, but that doesn't find full dignity precisely because of the immovable rhythm. Of unprecedented gravity, considering also the cumbersome legacy of "Game Of Thrones," the HBO series that more than any other has shown how far fantasy can go (for better or worse), becoming the emblem of 2010s television.
In short, a well-decorated package, with emptiness inside. Superfluous is a compliment to it.
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