Review by C.J. Bunce
Prime Video’s much-anticipated, record-setting big-budget, eight-episode series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has arrived with not just one but two episodes available for its opening weekend. Impossible not to compare and contrast with Peter Jackson’s six films based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth and its characters, the most striking difference is the deliberate, steady pace of this new story. Carefully introducing lead character Galadriel and using two entire episodes to build the first trilogy character’s backstory, the quick pacing of the movies is only echoed by distant Hobbit relation the Harfoots, who are every bit as spunky as the Bagginses of Bag-end. Future Elf-king Elrond firmly establishes stoic Elfdom literally thousands of years before The Hobbit, and viewers meet a Dwarf who would make Gimli proud many generations later. But the best of the series may be its characters new to those who know only the players in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
