The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power - Season 2 Episode 4 Review

what is happened everybody James Hancock here back to review episode four of season two of The Lord of the Rings the rings of power and I think it's safe to say it will not be generating the same response or the same level of enthusiasm as episode four of season 2 of House of the Dragon I ended up watching the second half of that episode five times it was uh one of my major uh highlights of the summer but we're officially halfway through season two it's crazy it's it just came back and we're already halfway through the season and we've watched basically or we've endured the same level of running time as one of the extended editions of one of the uh Lord of the Rings trilogy by Peter Jackson like think about the extended addition of the two towers and all those glorious scenes you know Gandalf fighting the ball rock or the siege of Helms Deep and then compare that to what we've seen in the first four hours of season two of The Lord of the Rings and rings of power do you feel like you've enjoyed a similar level of uh entertainment or a similar experience because it's starting to feel like never has more money been squandered or wasted to deliver so little entertainment and I imagine that some of you are coming to the same conclusion that I have this might be the worst show of the last decade or at least the worst show that I'm that I've seen I'm sure there are plenty of shows out there that are worst but I don't want to see them like I have a finite amount of time on this planet I I would rather read good books I'd rather watch good movies I'd rather Play Good video games and I'd rather watch entertaining shows and I'm some I'm sure some people gonna say well if you don't like it well then don't watch it trust me when the ratings start coming out in a couple weeks from like from neelon and whatnot y'all yall going to want every single viewer you can get your hands on whether they're hate watching it or love watching it or just totally indifferent but the reason I keep watching it is that at least ostensively the shows about the uh the second age of Middle Earth and I just feel compelled to assess the full damage of the catastrophe it's a little bit like going back to your hometown after like a tornado or a hurricane or an earthquake or an act of God has destroyed it you just want to see how much has survived but also I think we've been looking at this whole catastrophe all wrong because for the last week I've seen a lot of lively debates online about which story beats or which story details are faithful to tolken spoiler alert none or which ones are simply misguided but forget all that like the problems with the show run much deeper than whether or not it's adhering to tolken I feel like we we are all myself included giving the show too much credit because no matter how much the show might butcher tokens work that's almost immaterial in comparison to how much this show is failing at just basic fundamental levels it's boring it's like this snail paste like ordeal filled with Bland unlikable characters and on what level can you consider that a successful show like TV is supposed to be enjoyable supposed to be the Opium for the masses as they say accessible crowd-pleasing entertainment that the entire family can like can get their TV dinners and watch a show at night and I feel like I guess I guess my question would be does anybody feel like they're having a blast when they watch the show because I spend most of the of the time fighting the urge to sleep or even worse just laughing out loud at the ridiculous wooden dialogue with all these actors trying to roll their RS like M like even if the word doesn't have any RS you can see like they're trying to find like you know some imaginary R in there that they might be able to uh to roll but I feel like if this show were wildly entertaining like the fans of the show could tell all the tolken fans or the tolken enthusias to just [ __ ] off like take Peter Jackson's original trilogy it was successful because it was epic it was emotionally stirring and I have no idea what like what percentage of the fan base of the original movies were tolken readers but I'm assuming they were in the minority but those movies made piles of money and they won like shelves of oscars and that sort of thing because the movies just seriously kicked ass like something the rings of power certainly does not but before I go any further let me plug some stuff of a more positive nature I recently recorded a lengthy rant celebrating all my favorite adaptations of jro tolken and animation liveaction video game so if you want a positive video If like if that sounds like it's more your speed check out the link in the description below or if you just want great fantasy in general like read a book by Joe abom I've got all those books up there they're nine novels in total and he's starting a new series they're fantastic or get some friends together and play some D and D or play balers Gate 3 I'm playing it again for like the sixth time it's an absolute [ __ ] Masterpiece or look at a Frank fretta painting watch Conan and the Barbarian or dare I say it read every single word that Jr tolken ever wrote Because when it comes to the the fantasy genre there's so many brilliant storytellers and artists that have made incredible contributions to the genre over the years or over the decades and I feel like every single one of them is just waiting to be discovered by you rather than wasting your time on this [ __ ] I watch this show so that you don't have to so let's just Dive Right In so let's start with big picture I think uh the Lord of the Rings the rings of power is starting to turn into one of those shows that people just watch in order to create content about it as opposed to watching it and just enjoying it on its own merits and obviously I'm exaggerating I no actual like stats or data to back up that assertion but it wouldn't surprise me if the great majority of people watching it are planning on talking about it on Tik Tok or uh YouTube or Instagram Etc and so forth but I have uh I'm coming to the conclusion I think season two somehow is worse than season 1 like set aside the fact that it's just a total Abomination it's not fun to watch it's not like if it were just like you know like good trashy fun I feel like that would be uh excusable but I just feel like we're has being uh subjected to complete and total incompetence across the board I'm sure on with within the casting crew I'm sure there's some people who genuinely sincerely want to make the best show possible but it's like it's so illc conceived like down at its core that it's somehow like like a rot almost like like the uh like the evil in the show that rot just continues to spread and corrupt and Destroy every single aspect of the show and just to put the complete failure of the show in perspective I'm part of a regular weekly role playing game session where I'm the dungeon master sometimes it's D and D like first edition second edition fifth edition right now we're playing uh MK Borg but these are grown men in their 30s 40s and 50s who like the fantasy genre quite a bit they're playing Dungeons and Dragons deep into their life deep into their life but I was very excited on Monday to have a little conversation about the Lord of the Rings rings of power but not one single person in the group had even bothered to watch the show like wow like here we have dieh hard fantasy fans who have been reading tolken and watching the movies and just watching fantasy in general their entire lives and they are still enjoying the fantasy genre and not one of them bothered to watch it like some people might say Well they're not true fantasy fans no I think they'd rather just spend their time doing anything other than watching this [ __ ] show and I've seen a lot of people defending the show saying that it's just simply beautiful to look at but I don't think that holds true either last night when I was watching episode 4 I started to realize like like for every expensive set for every beautiful shot or for every shot that's beautifully composed there just as many shots if not more so where the show looks cheap or looks rushed or just looks amateur and I feel like yeah we're watching a show an incredibly expensive Show run by and shot by amateurs who don't even understand like the basics of like how to deliver compelling drama to people where you're on the edge of your seat wanting to know what's going to happen to these characters that you love and you know once again one of the main problems is that there are no characters that we love on this show I find them all so forgettable or just outright unlikable or obnoxious that that it's hard to get you know invested in what their what their ultimate Fates might be like does anybody really care about what's going to happen to Nori and Poppy if that Whirlwind had just blown them away you know off of Middle Earth and they had never returned nobody would miss them but as I was watching episode four last night I started to realize that the show has fallen into this big giant trap of their own making where they introduced such a huge cast of characters and obviously all those characters they have to be used in their own little you know little arcs and subplots and that sort of thing or kill them off I mean that that would be my recommendation like if they don't come from the book if they're not called gadriel or gilgalad or Elon or elendil like kill them off they don't matter like like nothing matters with these characters that's going to ultimately like impact the uh the final fate of these characters or the final fate of the storyline in any way shape or form because we all know how the story ends like unless they just completely abandon anything and everything related to the last Alliance of elves and men but we know which characters are important to it and which characters are not but I think that's one of the reasons that the show feels so slow and so sedentary and just like has like a complete and total lack of momentum because they're trying to tell so many different stories simultaneously none of which matter it's like please just let something happen like I mean obviously this season's building toward a big giant war and a regon and hopefully maybe we'll see some interesting spectacle I'm sure we'll see gadriel doing somersaults and shooting shooting flaming arrows out of her [ __ ] like whatever nonsense they cook up for but it's like the rest of the cast of characters it's just enormous it's staggering how many speak roles there are with characters that where we don't know their names where if they were to disappear entirely from the show we would not miss them like what's that new character that they've been investing so much time in the the semi sort of love interest for Ailor uh estd I mean EST she's very cute she's very likable But ultimately she's totally irrelevant if she were to vanish the show would not suffer but this episode as advertised finally introduced Tom Bombadil into the show which was illc conceived from the word go because like even if he's been on Middle Earth since like you know the first acorns fell or the first Dew appeared on grass whatever you know poetic metaphor as they choose to uh to use in the show he only matters in the context of being a strange enigmatic character that is encountered by Frodo Sam Mary and Pippen on their way to uh to Brie and then on to Rivendell and so on and so forth and you know sings a lot of fun songs and he saves them from the uh from the barow whites and that sort of thing and they talk about them a little bit at the Council of Elon and then he falls out of the story entirely but he's there to create atmosphere and a tone like that first part of the Fellowship of the Ring before it really gets underway before they really realize just like the severity of the situation it that early part of the Fellowship of the Ring it almost feels more like The Hobbit like more like a children's adventure story so he's just like it's like bumping into a magical fairy out in the woods where he basically he's there just to set the tone for the world of Middle Earth but introducing him here is this very ser serious adviser to Gandalf not Gandalf like I know some people say it's not Gandalf it's one of the two blue Wizards if it turns out to be one of the two blue Wizards it'll um it'll still be lore breaking but I could actually accept that but in that the show is using Tom Bombadil does anybody expect that Gandalf not Gandalf is going to not actually turn out to be Gandalf and also why are they keeping in mystery we're 12 episodes deep like go ahead and reveal who that character is but getting back to Tom Bombadil like introducing him here as this very serious advisor telling this wizard or the stranger that he's going to have to do battle with this dark Wizard and Sauron Etc and so forth It's the complete opposite in tone of how Tom Bombadil is portrayed in the original book but like anytime the show breaks the lore changes the lore or does something for convenience think of the show as like a giant game of Jenga and kids love Jenga have a lot of nieces and nephews they love Jenga and they scream and yell and they have a blast when the thing finally Falls they love it they're actually eagerly looking forward to it but when you're dealing with a giant Epic story within an incredibly intricate specific history with all these cultures and languages and timelines and you know and multiple books fleshing out the world it's like a big giant game of Jenga and if you start tugging at the blocks in the wrong way or changing things well then the whole thing's going to collapse and obviously Amazon's hoping to get three more seasons out of this I don't know if they'll make it or not they can afford to just burn money whether people are watching it or not but if you're trying to tell a story where you disregard the history and the foundation it also negatively impacts what's to come and you can tell from the uh the overall visual aesthetic for the show that they're hoping for they they basically want people to feel like this could take place in the same world as where the Peter Jackson films eventually take place otherwise they wouldn't be so rigidly adhering to like the look of the elves and that sort of thing but if you start [ __ ] with the history and start [ __ ] with the lore well then the whole thing comes tumbling down and then it won't logically or seamlessly lead into the events to come and I feel like that's where um expedience and shortcuts uh on on the part of writers and directors that's where the show really starts to uh fall to pieces and along the same lines it continues to annoy the ever living [ __ ] out of me that there's all this tension between gadriel and Elon over whether or not to use the ring that's in her possession because until saon makes the One Ring which he has not yet done in this show the elves aren't even really aware that there's any downside to wearing those Rings the moment he creates the one ring and puts it on they're like oh [ __ ] he can like kind of read our thoughts to control Us From a Distance they take the Rings off and they have a big giant War about it but the Elven Rings were made without the interference of Sauron in any way shape or form like they they made the rings with his skill and his knowledge that he had imparted so therefore those rings are still subservient to the one ring but in the context of the show there's no one ring yet to worry about so they should be able to use those Rings willy-nilly for whatever the hell they want without a without a problem in the world but that's the problem with this TV shows it's constantly introducing stupid problems that don't make any sense so that the characters can then solve them like this whole idea that like you know the world was rotting and like dying Etc and so forth and that's what they had to make the Rings in order to save it that's a problem they just created and they just pulled out of their ass and it's I don't know I get really annoyed when a show introduces stupid problems so so the characters can just have something to do like give them some real problems pulled straight from uh the second age of uh tolken Middle Earth but I will totally take more scenes with elron and gadriel over all the scenes that we got with Nori and Poppy meeting I think his character's name is uh Mary Mack with that uh really silly haircut I mean oh my God another Hobbit that's not a hobbit they meet the STS this uh this episode and that's where the show really started to show how like you know it might be expensive it might have the occasional good-look shot but that set where the stores live it looked like like any kind of cheap interchangeable run-of-the-mill fantasy show and I was like all right this is once again we're we're watching a show created by amateurs who have no idea what they're doing and I mean I don't even know where to start with all this nonsense but like there's this one moment where I keep getting Nori and Poppy confused I believe poppy is the one who has the hots for Mary Mach Nori is the one who's kind of like you know like the Frodo standing but she's making this impassioned speech about how you know the strangers on this Quest that'll affect all their lives and blah blah blah it's like says who like where is there any evidence to suggest that this like this Quest drawn to find like you know these strange Stars over a hill that it's going to have anything to do with any body else walking or crawling anywhere on Middle Earth once again she's just bullshitting but like you can tell the show's trying to make this particular quest to have as much importance as the quest of uh Frodo and Sam taking the one ring to Mordor I'm sorry you can't recreate a quest of that importance unless it's actually froto and Sam taking the ring to Mordor once again like the uh the fraking harfoot never should have been on the show in the first place but this is what this is what happens when you introduce characters that should not be there you have to think of things for them to do and I feel like everything going on in Rune with the the dark Wizard and his Mass servants and that sort of thing this is easily the weakest part of the show and the show keeps introducing all these stupid Mysteries like when one of the masked goons of the dark wizard comes to the town of the stews and it's like if you want to know why we wear our spooky scary masks you're going to find out if the dark wizard ever has to come here and give you a Stern talking to it's like I don't know just tell them like pull the mask up like scare them there like what is the point of keeping it a mystery apart from just hoping that some people watching this show might tune in to episode five I'm I mean I'm going to be waiting on uh pens and needles for I guess in like three weeks we'll know the official numbers for this show I'm assuming that the season 2 premiere had a slightly lower turnout I know there's that uh that service I think it's called Samba which has their own way of measuring viewership but I'm not sure is as complete I'm not I'm I'm not I'm not an expert on uh neelson ratings and that sort of thing but I feel like neelon they at least have been around for longer and they take longer to to generate their numbers so I feel like their numbers are a little more reliable so I'm just going to reserve judgment on total audience until the official experts have weighed in but as I mentioned in my video last week this show has this horrible problem of taking scenes and lines of dialogue from Peter Jackson's Trilogy and then changing one or two words and then trying to use those lines verbatim and other scenes that are kind of similar like in this episode uh Gandalf not Gandalf gets swallowed by a tree and Tom Bombadil comes up starts knocking on the roots and basically stealing all of tree Beard's dialogue from The Two Towers when he saves Mary and Pippen from a similar fate it's like this is what's what drives me crazy about the show is that they seem to think that every story that takes place in Middle Earth needs to have the same scenes or the same beats like no matter which era in which a story might unfold somehow all all stories in Middle Earth are more or less the same like you know you're allowed to have different scenes and different adventures and different lines of dialogue but it's like they have such a stunning lack of originality they have no choice but to repurpose scenes that are you know much better depicted by much better filmmakers over 20 years ago and I remember well in advance of the release of the show The Writers were bragging about how like 25% of Tom bombadil's dialogue comes straight from jro Hulk's text I'm like so what like his he doesn't even belong in the story like stealing lines of dialogue from the third age when he's inter interacting with the hobbits once again it just you're just advertising your own lack of creativity and uh yeah just anyway I maybe I should just leave Tom Bombadil alone before I end up just uh blowing my goddamn brains out what else can we talk about we've got oh we've got Arend Deere and a seor and estrid and Theo I guess this is kind of I guess if you were to rate all the stories in their level of Interest I think gadriel and Elon they at least have the least boring and then the most boring is uh Gandalf not Gandalf and his two hobbit Companions and then in the middle we have all this nonsense with the uh the ant which once again they have there's no reason for for them to be there however there's a giant missed opportunity if they if they were hellbent upon including the ants in the storyline one of them is a as a woman or a female int and if you remember from The Two Towers uh one point tree Beard's talking to Mary and Pippen about how they lost all the female in and I feel like this was they missed this opportunity to explain like where did the female ins go it would have been a lie it would have been lore breaking but at least it would have provided an answer to a question that a lot of people felt after reading the novels Andor seeing the movies like well how come the ants are slowly but surely fading away and going extinct like where did the women go well one of them went into this show but they didn't really mention anything about it or capitalize on how that's actually a big deal to show a female ENT and the show is a recurring problem with they'll show us something that we're basically expected to forget only a few minutes later but like all that matters is something being potentially dramatic or entertaining in the moment but it has no staying power doesn't seem to stick like case in point would be estd when uh she steals a silder sword and one of the ants comes in and swats her like swats her into like a rock or a cliff face or a tree basically but it looks like if she were a 2,000lb like giant bull or rhinoceros it would have killed her like she would have been like liquid but she just goes against it falls down and later on when the CER like wakes her up she tries to kiss them like sorry like you might have like you know permanent brain damage or be concussed or broken bones but it's like they use that opportunity for a little weird meat cute moment that I guess some people would want to see like she just kind of tripped and fell down but then some stud comes along she's like oh well that I wasn't lying about my betro thatw like here he is blah blah blah like never mind that that uh that kiss with the Sodor it all just feels so random and it just feels like they're just kind of throwing down tracks in front front of a train with no idea where the train is going and I'm sure some people are going to defend this episode saying well we finally got some kick us epic action not really like that fight with the barow whites I mean they kept advertising that scene over and over and over again in the trailer like it was going to be some big dramatic moment like the like The Fellowship of the Ring coming up and over the hill or the time The Fellowship of the Ring when they're down in balon's Tomb fighting all those Orcs And trolls like it did not remotely deliver anything on that level I thought they uh that fight scene kind of sucked and then at leasts in this ridiculous moment where they realized that Adar and all the Orcs they're on the Move they're Mar they're marching on a rean they're about to have this big giant war and Gad realizes that the the power of a ring where it can like pull an arrow out of a wounded elf but suddenly she decides well I need to take on the entire Army by myself and y'all need to escape and take the ring with you it's like why not just escape with them like y'all are quick you're elves like you could probably kill whichever Orcs see you fleeing you could probably kill them with a few arrows like you've already proven that like glad gadriel can take on you know 100 Orcs all by herself who cares if there's like a uh you know a little Patrol that might have discovered you one wounded elf does not mean that gadriel needs to sacrifice herself so I just found that whole sacrifice to be in vain but it's a weird thing where they show her in combat like she could basically take on all the armies of Mordor all by herself but then she gets quickly captured and quickly gives up it just once again you're expected to forget everything that you've seen if she's that much of a badass I'm sure she could come up with a better plan and also elon's no slouch himself and they got a couple badass elves with them like I feel like five or six really talented elves could probably take out 100 Orcs so I just didn't understand why she felt compelled to sacrifice herself when they could just run off into the woods all all as a group and it would have been totally fine but I feel like gadra is always at her worst when she tries to come across as really tough and severe and she's saying like go back to the shadow it's like sorry you're not Ian McKellen when Ian McKellen says to the to the ball Rog go back to the shadow like Jesus Christ like I [ __ ] believe it like I might go back to the Shadow and I'm just I'm just watching the movie when Morford Clark says it it just doesn't work I feel like with with each and every single attempt to make her like the world's biggest badass it just comes across as the exact opposite she makes her into an object of ridicule and I feel like the way Kate blanch had handled the character and basically the original trilogy she's wise and she's powerful and she's calm and some people going to say well she's thousands of years older at that point in the second age gadriel is already thousands of years old she's one of the elves that's one of the earliest elves that's introduced in the story in the first age because at this point in the second age the character of gadriel has already lived for thousands of years she's already lived through an entire war with morgoth which was much more Grand and much more epic than the war we eventually see at the end of the second age like in the first age you would have battles where you'd have multiple dragons and multiple ball rcks on the battlefield all at once fighting elves and humans and dwarves it was completely totally [ __ ] insane gadriel seen all that that's she said in season one you have not seen what I've seen But for a character that's already endured several thousand years of sadness and loss she should come across as wise and experienced whereas this show always depicts her is just kind of like a like a headstrong child in a lot of ways and then the final insult of this episode was that [ __ ] horrendous song that uh wrapped up the episode as the credit started to roll and the only thing that spared me the misery of having to listen to more than a few seconds of it Amazon for whatever reason it went right into the uh the teaser for next week's episode as opposed to letting me endure all the credits all at once but it's like if you want to basically if you want to go into a a deep dark place full of depression and sadness go back and rewatch The closing credits of episode 4 and listen to that song in its entirety if uh if anything this that that song is even worse than this show if that is possible in any case it is time to wrap up this video I need to get packed for a little trip that I'm taking this weekend I'm heading down to Charlotte North Carolina to visit my godson and have a few plastic sword battles and that sort of thing he's three years old I'm sure our our battles that we will have over the weekend will be far more entertaining than anything the show could ever hope to produce but there won't be any more videos on this channel until Sunday night depending on how tired I am when I get back but I'll try to do a box office report uh about uh the box office for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice but I can't thank you enough for watching this video if you're here still here if you watch it in its entirety please remember to like the video subscribe to the channel hit that notification Bell but I hope everybody has a great weekend but more importantly as always onwards and upwards