Review: The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, "Where The Stars Are Strange" | Season 2, Episode 2
The dwarves be delvin'
The dwarves are back! (Dwarfs?) Unfortunately, they’re not really doing a whole lot, which puts them about on track with everyone else in this show. I don’t mind slow pacing, but it requires intent and direction and tension; there are slow shows that exist primarily as a vibe, but Rings of Power is aiming for something grander and more epic, hence the stirring orchestral score and characters constantly looking concerned about things. The writers desperately need to create a strong sense of encroaching doom to make sure all those moments spent waiting for something to happen are loaded with portent. Unfortunately, despite their best efforts, they haven’t succeeded, which is why so much of the show (at least to me) now feels like an amateur production of a Pinter play: all pauses, with no meaning behind any of them.
It didn’t have to be like this. As a commenter pointed on my review of the premiere, things are supposed to happen slow in Middle Earth. There no planes, no cars, no trains, no form of transit faster than horseback, and it takes time to get from one place to another. One of the smartest choices Peter Jackson made in his adaptation of the novels was making plenty of time to show characters walking from place to place, using maps and the gorgeous vistas of New Zealand to create the illusion of geography that helped audiences connect with the sheer effort and willpower required to bring a small bit of jewelry across an entire continent. Elves and harfoots and Definitely Gandalfs do walk (or ride) in RoP, but you get the sense they do it because, well, that’s what happened in the movies—I have precious little understanding of where any of these places are in relation to any of the other places, and in a show that’s supposed to be about an entire land at risk from the forces of evil, it’s a problem when I have no idea who’s doing what where.