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sunnyskywalker) wrote2022-12-12 06:13 pm
sunnyskywalker) wrote2022-12-12 06:13 pm
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Nobody Walks Alone: Survival in The Rings of Power
When The Rings of Power was announced, I was dubious, to say the least. But now that I’ve finally gotten a chance to watch the show, I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. If nothing else, it is really pretty. Elven cities at their heights! Khazad-dum in its glory! A Dwarf woman who sings to the stone! Numenor! Amazing details everywhere! Color instead of that grayish filter so many modern movies use in a vain attempt to look serious! Everyone involved in the costuming and sets (real and virtual) ought to get awards.
I also found myself enjoying the characters and plot, though. I’m some things will bother me more on a rewatch, and of course it could fall apart in future seasons. I’m willing to wait to see if they handle the colonial occupation theme well, but I suspect they won’t, for example.
But this isn’t about the good, bad, or ugly of the show. It started as a reaction to the few reviews and discussions I’ve read, including the Strange Horizons roundtable. I’m finding some of the reactions a little baffling, honestly.
For example, a lot of people seem to think that “which character is really Sauron in disguise” is a mystery the show drags out too long without making it interesting. My reaction was, “Um, was it supposed to be a mystery?” Because I figured out who he was after about three scenes, and that made it more entertaining. I won’t spoil it here since apparently some people wanted it to be mysterious, but just about every line out of Sauron’s mouth has a clever double meaning. If you enjoy watching Barty Crouch Junior gleefully tell everyone 90% of the truth because he knows they’ll interpret it wrongly, you’ll love Sauron’s performance. Anyway, it seems to me that the point isn’t “who is he” so much as “what horrible things will happen because other characters are mistaken about who is or isn’t Sauron.” It’s more suspense than mystery. But given the reactions, I guess the writers should have made that focus clearer.
More puzzling are the comments about the show being all over the place or unclear what it’s about. I thought there was an incredibly clear theme underlying every one of the plotlines: this is a show about how people survive horrific, community-destroying disasters. How much they’ll sacrifice to survive, and whether there are lines they won’t cross even if it kills them.
Galadriel had a really rough First Age, to put it mildly. She lost almost everyone dear to her. Now she’s convinced that Sauron is still out there, and if she doesn’t find him and stop him, all that sacrifice will be for nothing and it will happen again. But the elves under her command feel — not without reason — that her quest is going to get them killed. Elrond is worried that if she doesn’t give up being a grim warrior, she’ll lose herself. Gil-galad is worried that by seeking Sauron, Galadriel will prompt Sauron to act and encourage the very evil she’s trying to defeat.
Which is relevant to the next plotline, because the creeping evil is weakening the elves, and Gil-galad is not wrong to think that maybe they ought to solve that problem before taking on Sauron — if they do. Can he best ensure the survival of his people by piling them onto boats and sailing west now, or by searching for a way to counteract the effects?
To stay and survive, they need mithril, which the Dwarves are keeping secret. Furthermore, mining it is exceptionally dangerous, and King Durin III is inclined to forbid it — especially after four of his people are nearly killed in Prince Durin’s illicit mining operation. The king wants to make sure his people survive by avoiding the danger, and isn’t willing to risk them to save the elves. The prince wants to make sure his people and the elves survive by getting more of this critical resource. They’re both right, because the elves won’t survive in Middle-Earth without at least a little bit of mithril, and I suspect it will come in handy during the upcoming war (maybe we’ll see someone forging a coat of mithril mail?) — but mining for mithril risks disaster. (Even worse than they know! We know what’s down there…) The conflict imperils Durin and Elrond’s friendship. Can they save it and keep both their peoples safe, or do they have to choose?
Galadriel meets Halbrand, a Man who is willing to abandon his companions to the ocean if it means he might survive. But then he also risks himself to rescue her, after she’s rescued him.
They end up in Numenor, which has closed itself off from the elves and the rest of the world generally. There are arguments for that supporting their literal survival (by not getting them killed in foreign wars) and their cultural survival (not being subordinate to the elves) which characters will probably elaborate on in coming seasons. But the king is convinced that if they don’t restore their old friendship with the elves, their island is doomed. Elendil secretly supports the old ways, but keeps quiet about it in public so he and his family will also survive. Then he’s faced with the choice of whether to do the right thing and save an elf from drowning even if it means bringing her back to Numenor and risking everything else. Miriel is torn: trying to bring back the old ways could cause an uprising that might destroy the kingdom, and sailing off to fight in the Southlands is bound to be fatal for at least some of her people — but if her father’s right, not doing so will be fatal for everyone on the island. Which is the greater risk? Is one way right, so that they should do it even if it’s riskier?
The people of the Southlands survived in the past by serving Sauron. Now they’re living under Elvish military occupation, and survival means convincing the Elves that they’re not about to rise up and do evil. And they try to preserve their dignity by hoping that one day, their true king will return and raise them up. Others instead prepare for Sauron's return: “I’ll say this for our ancestors. They lived!” And it pretty quickly becomes obvious why bowing to Sauron might be tempting: their chances of survival otherwise are extremely bad. Even if they find their courage and come up with clever ways to kill a bunch of orcs, it won’t be enough. Lots of them are going to die, and the survivors are probably going to lose everything. If they’re going to suffer regardless, you can see why they might pick the option where more of them survive, because at least there’s hope while they’re alive.
Adar, the twisted-elf leader/father of the orcs, betrayed Sauron because he was tired of his “children” being sacrificed for Sauron’s experiments. Now he’s coopting Sauron’s plan to make a land where the shadows will lie. He’ll miss the sun, he says. But he’s going to give it up so his children can thrive in a land where the sun won’t burn them.
The elves Adar captures encounter a dilemma you don’t see much on TV: is it worth risking death to save an ancient and noble tree, or should they chop it down as ordered so they’ll survive themselves?
Sauron had a bad time in the last war he was involved in. What’s the best way for him to survive now, and live well if he can manage it? You can see him looking for opportunities, testing out ideas. And when he says he thinks his rule will help Middle-Earth survive and heal, he might not be lying. He probably at least wants to believe it.
The survival theme even carries through to smaller details, like the alloys subplot. It seems silly at first: why doesn’t it occur to them to alloy the mithril with something else? But it actually kind of makes sense: the elves think they need a large quantity of mithril and don’t think to alloy it with other metals because they’re in an abundance mindset. They’ve been at peace for long enough, and are wealthy and skilled and militarily dominant enough, that they’re used to having more than enough of whatever they need. (They probably get it in two hours from Elvish Amazon Prime.) It takes an outsider to suggest it — someone who says his land was metal-poor and so they survived by learning to do more with less.
And then there are the Harfoots. Strict rules about their migrations have kept them alive for a thousand years. Nobody walks off trail, and nobody walks alone. If someone causes too much trouble or is too sick or injured to keep up, they’ll leave that person behind so the rest of the group will survive. And they don’t talk to strangers, let alone help them; they try not to be seen. But Nori feels that maybe surviving isn’t enough and wants to learn about the world. "What good is living if we aren't living good?" And she’s convinced that the stranger who fell out of the sky is important and here to help, and they should help him. Everyone else thinks he’s way too dangerous and they should leave him.
But their old rules might not be enough if Sauron returns. Just one far-off catastrophe incidentally wrecks a major food source for the Harfoots. Sticking together and avoiding outsiders probably won’t save them this time; they’ll need help. But trying to get that help is risky. Nori might be wrong about the stranger being good. Even if she’s right, the stranger has little control over his powers, so his attempts to help might do even more harm. In addition, his presence might attract dangers that would have passed the Harfoots by otherwise.
At one point, the stranger says he is a peril. Nori counters that he’s not a peril, he’s good. But of course, he might be both. That’s a problem all the characters face: even if they make the right choice, they might fail or discover that they’re in a truly no-win situation. Even if the course they choose has the best chance of helping the greatest number of people in the long term, it might mean sacrificing everything else in the short term. So how do you live with that? The “Mordor origin story” isn’t important because it’s neat to see how it got all lava-strewn and shadowy (though it is). It’s important because we see the land and the people who were destroyed so that the orcs might thrive. We see the Man who helps bring it about because he feels that being a slave in a land of shadows is better than dying. We see the grieving teenager who doesn’t want to believe that his home is gone forever, and all the other shattered survivors who need to figure out what to do now that they’ve lost their entire homeland and most of their friends and relatives. Who need to live with that doubt that maybe they would be better off if they had submitted instead of fighting.
Given how we know things turn out, I expect the rest of the show to keep looking at these problems from different angles. What will you do to survive an apocalypse, and what is so unthinkable that you’d rather die? Does surviving mean more than simply staying alive? And it will have to continue with the idea that even your best effort simply might not be enough, even if you’re a legendary hero. You might be able to hope for nothing more than giving everyone a reprieve, because you’re too weak to do better.
But there will be hope. That reprieve will matter to a lot of people. And we’ll see how much people can salvage out of disaster by working together. We’ve seen the beginnings of that: the elves and dwarves collaborating and Celebrimbor brainstorming with a few friends, which ultimately leads to the Three Rings being forged; the Southlanders getting help from Arondir and the Numenorians; Galadriel and Halbrand rescuing each other in the ocean. Even Sauron basically tells another character, “I couldn’t have done it without you!”
Which seems very true to The Lord of the Rings, where nobody succeeds alone. Frodo intended to leave the Shire alone, but needed three friends even to get as far as Bree. The hobbits needed Strider to get to Rivendell. It took a Fellowship of the free peoples of Middle-Earth plus an Istar and the elves of Lothlorien to get anywhere close to Mordor. Rohan needed the Huorns and the Ents to mop up the surviving orcs and take care of is Saruman problem so Rohan would be safe while six thousand cavalry rode off to help Gondor — and the Huorns would have had a harder time if the Rohirrim hadn’t panicked the orcs, and the Ents probably would have failed if the orcs weren’t off fighting the Rohirrim instead of guarding Isengard. (In the books, the Rohirrim also needed the Woses to give them passage through their land so they could surprise the Witch King’s army from a direction he didn’t expect.) Gondor needed the Rohirrim. And Frodo would never have gotten to Mount Doom without Sam and Gollum — and Bilbo, who spared Gollum out of pity all those years ago. (And gave Frodo that mithril coat that saved him from being skewered in Moria.)
Contrarily, working alone brings disaster. Denethor brooding over the palantir alone was vulnerable to despair. Saruman might have dreamed of the great things he could do if he didn’t have other people checking him, but as soon as he stopped recognizing anyone as a peer, everything started going wrong for him. And we know what happened to the Dark Lord alone on his dark throne with his One Ring.
I don't expect to convince anyone to like the show, but I hope I've defended it from the accusation of thematic aimlessness.
On a lighter note, I am both dreading and hoping that the show will take one of the roundtable's suggestions for future seasons. Someone who could fit the survival theme — he's extremely powerful as long as he never leaves home. Someone who seems funny at first before taking a turn for the very strange... *menacing voice* Bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow...hey doll merry doll ring a dong dillo...
I also found myself enjoying the characters and plot, though. I’m some things will bother me more on a rewatch, and of course it could fall apart in future seasons. I’m willing to wait to see if they handle the colonial occupation theme well, but I suspect they won’t, for example.
But this isn’t about the good, bad, or ugly of the show. It started as a reaction to the few reviews and discussions I’ve read, including the Strange Horizons roundtable. I’m finding some of the reactions a little baffling, honestly.
For example, a lot of people seem to think that “which character is really Sauron in disguise” is a mystery the show drags out too long without making it interesting. My reaction was, “Um, was it supposed to be a mystery?” Because I figured out who he was after about three scenes, and that made it more entertaining. I won’t spoil it here since apparently some people wanted it to be mysterious, but just about every line out of Sauron’s mouth has a clever double meaning. If you enjoy watching Barty Crouch Junior gleefully tell everyone 90% of the truth because he knows they’ll interpret it wrongly, you’ll love Sauron’s performance. Anyway, it seems to me that the point isn’t “who is he” so much as “what horrible things will happen because other characters are mistaken about who is or isn’t Sauron.” It’s more suspense than mystery. But given the reactions, I guess the writers should have made that focus clearer.
More puzzling are the comments about the show being all over the place or unclear what it’s about. I thought there was an incredibly clear theme underlying every one of the plotlines: this is a show about how people survive horrific, community-destroying disasters. How much they’ll sacrifice to survive, and whether there are lines they won’t cross even if it kills them.
Galadriel had a really rough First Age, to put it mildly. She lost almost everyone dear to her. Now she’s convinced that Sauron is still out there, and if she doesn’t find him and stop him, all that sacrifice will be for nothing and it will happen again. But the elves under her command feel — not without reason — that her quest is going to get them killed. Elrond is worried that if she doesn’t give up being a grim warrior, she’ll lose herself. Gil-galad is worried that by seeking Sauron, Galadriel will prompt Sauron to act and encourage the very evil she’s trying to defeat.
Which is relevant to the next plotline, because the creeping evil is weakening the elves, and Gil-galad is not wrong to think that maybe they ought to solve that problem before taking on Sauron — if they do. Can he best ensure the survival of his people by piling them onto boats and sailing west now, or by searching for a way to counteract the effects?
To stay and survive, they need mithril, which the Dwarves are keeping secret. Furthermore, mining it is exceptionally dangerous, and King Durin III is inclined to forbid it — especially after four of his people are nearly killed in Prince Durin’s illicit mining operation. The king wants to make sure his people survive by avoiding the danger, and isn’t willing to risk them to save the elves. The prince wants to make sure his people and the elves survive by getting more of this critical resource. They’re both right, because the elves won’t survive in Middle-Earth without at least a little bit of mithril, and I suspect it will come in handy during the upcoming war (maybe we’ll see someone forging a coat of mithril mail?) — but mining for mithril risks disaster. (Even worse than they know! We know what’s down there…) The conflict imperils Durin and Elrond’s friendship. Can they save it and keep both their peoples safe, or do they have to choose?
Galadriel meets Halbrand, a Man who is willing to abandon his companions to the ocean if it means he might survive. But then he also risks himself to rescue her, after she’s rescued him.
They end up in Numenor, which has closed itself off from the elves and the rest of the world generally. There are arguments for that supporting their literal survival (by not getting them killed in foreign wars) and their cultural survival (not being subordinate to the elves) which characters will probably elaborate on in coming seasons. But the king is convinced that if they don’t restore their old friendship with the elves, their island is doomed. Elendil secretly supports the old ways, but keeps quiet about it in public so he and his family will also survive. Then he’s faced with the choice of whether to do the right thing and save an elf from drowning even if it means bringing her back to Numenor and risking everything else. Miriel is torn: trying to bring back the old ways could cause an uprising that might destroy the kingdom, and sailing off to fight in the Southlands is bound to be fatal for at least some of her people — but if her father’s right, not doing so will be fatal for everyone on the island. Which is the greater risk? Is one way right, so that they should do it even if it’s riskier?
The people of the Southlands survived in the past by serving Sauron. Now they’re living under Elvish military occupation, and survival means convincing the Elves that they’re not about to rise up and do evil. And they try to preserve their dignity by hoping that one day, their true king will return and raise them up. Others instead prepare for Sauron's return: “I’ll say this for our ancestors. They lived!” And it pretty quickly becomes obvious why bowing to Sauron might be tempting: their chances of survival otherwise are extremely bad. Even if they find their courage and come up with clever ways to kill a bunch of orcs, it won’t be enough. Lots of them are going to die, and the survivors are probably going to lose everything. If they’re going to suffer regardless, you can see why they might pick the option where more of them survive, because at least there’s hope while they’re alive.
Adar, the twisted-elf leader/father of the orcs, betrayed Sauron because he was tired of his “children” being sacrificed for Sauron’s experiments. Now he’s coopting Sauron’s plan to make a land where the shadows will lie. He’ll miss the sun, he says. But he’s going to give it up so his children can thrive in a land where the sun won’t burn them.
The elves Adar captures encounter a dilemma you don’t see much on TV: is it worth risking death to save an ancient and noble tree, or should they chop it down as ordered so they’ll survive themselves?
Sauron had a bad time in the last war he was involved in. What’s the best way for him to survive now, and live well if he can manage it? You can see him looking for opportunities, testing out ideas. And when he says he thinks his rule will help Middle-Earth survive and heal, he might not be lying. He probably at least wants to believe it.
The survival theme even carries through to smaller details, like the alloys subplot. It seems silly at first: why doesn’t it occur to them to alloy the mithril with something else? But it actually kind of makes sense: the elves think they need a large quantity of mithril and don’t think to alloy it with other metals because they’re in an abundance mindset. They’ve been at peace for long enough, and are wealthy and skilled and militarily dominant enough, that they’re used to having more than enough of whatever they need. (They probably get it in two hours from Elvish Amazon Prime.) It takes an outsider to suggest it — someone who says his land was metal-poor and so they survived by learning to do more with less.
And then there are the Harfoots. Strict rules about their migrations have kept them alive for a thousand years. Nobody walks off trail, and nobody walks alone. If someone causes too much trouble or is too sick or injured to keep up, they’ll leave that person behind so the rest of the group will survive. And they don’t talk to strangers, let alone help them; they try not to be seen. But Nori feels that maybe surviving isn’t enough and wants to learn about the world. "What good is living if we aren't living good?" And she’s convinced that the stranger who fell out of the sky is important and here to help, and they should help him. Everyone else thinks he’s way too dangerous and they should leave him.
But their old rules might not be enough if Sauron returns. Just one far-off catastrophe incidentally wrecks a major food source for the Harfoots. Sticking together and avoiding outsiders probably won’t save them this time; they’ll need help. But trying to get that help is risky. Nori might be wrong about the stranger being good. Even if she’s right, the stranger has little control over his powers, so his attempts to help might do even more harm. In addition, his presence might attract dangers that would have passed the Harfoots by otherwise.
At one point, the stranger says he is a peril. Nori counters that he’s not a peril, he’s good. But of course, he might be both. That’s a problem all the characters face: even if they make the right choice, they might fail or discover that they’re in a truly no-win situation. Even if the course they choose has the best chance of helping the greatest number of people in the long term, it might mean sacrificing everything else in the short term. So how do you live with that? The “Mordor origin story” isn’t important because it’s neat to see how it got all lava-strewn and shadowy (though it is). It’s important because we see the land and the people who were destroyed so that the orcs might thrive. We see the Man who helps bring it about because he feels that being a slave in a land of shadows is better than dying. We see the grieving teenager who doesn’t want to believe that his home is gone forever, and all the other shattered survivors who need to figure out what to do now that they’ve lost their entire homeland and most of their friends and relatives. Who need to live with that doubt that maybe they would be better off if they had submitted instead of fighting.
Given how we know things turn out, I expect the rest of the show to keep looking at these problems from different angles. What will you do to survive an apocalypse, and what is so unthinkable that you’d rather die? Does surviving mean more than simply staying alive? And it will have to continue with the idea that even your best effort simply might not be enough, even if you’re a legendary hero. You might be able to hope for nothing more than giving everyone a reprieve, because you’re too weak to do better.
But there will be hope. That reprieve will matter to a lot of people. And we’ll see how much people can salvage out of disaster by working together. We’ve seen the beginnings of that: the elves and dwarves collaborating and Celebrimbor brainstorming with a few friends, which ultimately leads to the Three Rings being forged; the Southlanders getting help from Arondir and the Numenorians; Galadriel and Halbrand rescuing each other in the ocean. Even Sauron basically tells another character, “I couldn’t have done it without you!”
Which seems very true to The Lord of the Rings, where nobody succeeds alone. Frodo intended to leave the Shire alone, but needed three friends even to get as far as Bree. The hobbits needed Strider to get to Rivendell. It took a Fellowship of the free peoples of Middle-Earth plus an Istar and the elves of Lothlorien to get anywhere close to Mordor. Rohan needed the Huorns and the Ents to mop up the surviving orcs and take care of is Saruman problem so Rohan would be safe while six thousand cavalry rode off to help Gondor — and the Huorns would have had a harder time if the Rohirrim hadn’t panicked the orcs, and the Ents probably would have failed if the orcs weren’t off fighting the Rohirrim instead of guarding Isengard. (In the books, the Rohirrim also needed the Woses to give them passage through their land so they could surprise the Witch King’s army from a direction he didn’t expect.) Gondor needed the Rohirrim. And Frodo would never have gotten to Mount Doom without Sam and Gollum — and Bilbo, who spared Gollum out of pity all those years ago. (And gave Frodo that mithril coat that saved him from being skewered in Moria.)
Contrarily, working alone brings disaster. Denethor brooding over the palantir alone was vulnerable to despair. Saruman might have dreamed of the great things he could do if he didn’t have other people checking him, but as soon as he stopped recognizing anyone as a peer, everything started going wrong for him. And we know what happened to the Dark Lord alone on his dark throne with his One Ring.
I don't expect to convince anyone to like the show, but I hope I've defended it from the accusation of thematic aimlessness.
On a lighter note, I am both dreading and hoping that the show will take one of the roundtable's suggestions for future seasons. Someone who could fit the survival theme — he's extremely powerful as long as he never leaves home. Someone who seems funny at first before taking a turn for the very strange... *menacing voice* Bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow...hey doll merry doll ring a dong dillo...
This is brilliant!
I guess maybe I did see this theme, but I was calling it different things. Things like "connection, commitment, friendship, loyalty, love". Those themes were absolutely everywhere, and the thing I picked out as uniting them was the concept of free will. Arondir can choose to keep hating and distrusting the low men of the south, or he can recognize the goodness he sees in them--as he told young Theo. The young boy, for his part, can continue resenting the elf who loves his mother, or he can accept him as a father figure. Nori can do the apparently right and safe thing and abandon the stranger, or she can reach out in empathy and help him.
The choice is key, and choices that are made out of empathy or love will, in the end, bear fruit.
That's what I saw, and I really loved this.
And Galadriel--oh my! There is so much there. I am thinking out a blog post--think I'll have to watch the show a fourth time to get all the imagery. It's brilliant! Anyway, my tentative title is "Ship and Stone: Images of baptism, drowning, and resurrection in Rings of Power". All of these images, or almost all, pertain specifically to Galadriel, the lady of water.
And wasn't Charlie Vickers marvellous? I can't believe he didn't actually know who he was playing until the third episode. It's interesting--somewhere around episode six, I was thinking: he can't be Sauron! Please don't let this character be Sauron! That would be so obvious. But--it was perfect, and he played it so well. As you say, he was clearly having a ball, and as HE said, he never told any lies--but every word out of his mouth had a double meaning.
Your final point? No! Please, no! Of course, Tom would have been around in the second age, but I'm not sure anyone in the cast of dozens would have occasion to visit his country. I'd love to see him, of course, but it would be so difficult to get him right. He's not simply charming or silly or funny--there's something numinous about him, something almost creepy. So what I'm saying is that he'd need to have a reason for being in the story, and he'd need to be done right. Not sure that's possible.
Re: This is brilliant!
I think I saw somewhere that they had the actor read speeches from Milton's Satan in screen tests, which is so perfect.
I was being slightly tongue-in-cheek about Tom, but the writers are doing such a good job of surprising me with their craft that if they do announce him as a character in a future season, I'd be willing to trust that it would make sense until and unless proven otherwise :-) And he definitely is creepy. Did you ever see that not-entirely-a-joke post someone made about how Tom Bombadil is the supreme evil in Middle-earth?
I'm really looking forward to your post when you get it together!