Rings of Power: a few thoughts

This is Joseph.

SPOILERS!

Amazon made a Rings of Power show set in the second age of middle earth. There are some tough decisions to make when doing this sort of show and I think it is useful to think about the options with a prequel. The downside (of both prequels and historical epics) is that we already know what happens and so certain types of suspense are lost. If you watch the Hobbit after watching the Lord of the Rings, there really is no tension in whether or not Bilbo survives. 

I think there are three solutions to this problem:

1. Focus the story on somebody that we don't know anything about. Arondir is a good example of this in the Rings of Power. Were he and Bronwyn to be the main characters then we'd not know anything about how their story ends. They could end up being secretly quite important to the events of the second age or involved in things that happened far away from the main characters of the third age.
2. Engage us in the characters and make us feel empathy for the decisions that are made. This is a common focus of historical epics -- we all know that the Great Heathen Army will lose to Alfred the Great in Vikings, but watching it happen is still interesting as we get drawn into the stories. This is especially effective if there are parts that are not part of the popular understanding of the period that really deepen the story. Henry VIII in the Tudors was a good example (lots of that story was ahistorical but it was great to see them start with the young and optimistic king and not the well known later part of his reign).
3. Put the events into a completely different context. We all think of Galadriel as a hero but what if she was conspiring with Sauron? A good example of this inversion is Dances with Wolves, where we are forced to think of the American occupation of the frontier in a different context.

I think that the biggest problem with the Rings of Power is that it failed to commit to an approach and that weakened everything about it. By doing #1 and #3, it lost the ability to engage people with the tales that they loved (which is ok, but a choice). A very faithful adaption (even with some cinematic alterations) could have worked. A story about the doomed love of an Elf and Human is very Tolkienesque (see Beren and Luthien) and could be set in regions that simply don't get much treatment. A lot could happen in, for example, Rhun, that people like Elrond might be largely ignorant of in the future. Or the Blue wizards could be the main Istari -- we never did find out what happened to them leaving a ton of possibilities. 

The last option would have been the boldest and it is where I thought that they were going. But it doesn't work if you don't increase the stakes. After all, in Lord of the Rings the wise note that Saruman could be of great help to the white council if redeemed. Why are they so sure? One possibility that would be quite interesting is if Galadriel had followed that path in the past (and, long redeemed, nobody feels the need to constantly bring it up). That would create totally new context for her temptation with the ring and her challenge to Sauron in the Hobbit trilogy. It would make us look at her completely differently and make her character richer. 

I was briefly deceived by Sauron but puzzled it out and rejected him before any real harm could be done is a much less compelling redemption story. What if this was real? 

That would make the whole thing about the challenges of visions of the future in Galadriel's mirror make a lot weightier at the end of the third age. 

Now I could be wrong. There are seasons to go and maybe some twists await us. But I think that is the reason that the first season fell a bit flat despite strong acting, decent writing, gorgeous visuals, and a deep well of source material.