The expectations from this show were really high and it is quite sad that even with such a tremendous scale it failed to meet them. After a largely disappointing premier (check here), the audio-visual experience of the world presented by The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power acted as its saving grace. Experience wise it is too good to be on TV but vision/direction wise, the series seemed to be struggling to find its ground. But that is in the past because LOTR: The Rings of Power Episode 3 has delivered a massively improved narrative and hyped fans for what’s to come. So, without further ado, let us get to the our verdict!
WARNING – MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD
Rating – ★★★★
Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Episode 3 Review – Still Slow But A Lot Better
My biggest and frankly the only criticism of the LOTR: ROP premiere was its sinfully sluggish pace. Well, I am pleased to inform you that the pace of the show has improved a lot and so have the narratives. Episode 3 titled “Adar” successfully introduced some more major players in the series but unfortunately at the cost of the players introduced in the premiere. I was surprised to see that none among Elrond, Durin, Theo and Bronwyn made an appearance in this episode. All of them seemed like major players in the premiere, however, to compensate their absence the show introduced us to Isildur, Elendil, and Adar.
While we are all familiar with Isildur (the King of Gondor who defeated Sauron but failed to destroy the ring), Elendir and Adar are the characters non-book readers aren’t familiar with. So, without spoiling anything, Elendil is the father of Isildur and Adar is who’s going to be the big bad of this season. The subtle yet hype-worthy introduction of Isildor was one of the high points of the episode, however, this episode too had some faults. The biggest issue still remains the pace as on one hand some narratives were handled brilliantly, and on the other some were just too sluggish.
The award for the most uninteresting and slow narrative in The Lord of the Rings: ROP Episode 3 goes to the Nori-Stranger storyline. Full of stupid and idiotic scenes (like Nori trying to get hands on a scroll which she could have taken once the elder left the room, and The Stranger almost burning the note holding it too close to fire), this subplot undoes the good work done by rest of the episode. Talking about the highest point of the episode, it was without any doubt the failed escape by Arondir and co, which showcased some cool action choreography as well as a nicely executed CGI Warg. The episode also finally introduced us to Adar and also hinted at the origin of the Amazon original character Halbrand.
As for the pace, the issue here is Amazon’s failure to deal with multiple storylines and characters in a episode. So, this episode as well we saw just 3 narratives, which could have been 5-6 if they included Elrond, Durin, Theo and Bronwyn as well. This is something Game of Thrones handled very skillfully, as dealing with multiple narratives and characters at the same time can easily fix the pacing issues. Honestly, it isn’t very hard to follow and viewers can easily follow 5-6 different narratives as they are fairly simple. Amazon needs to trust its viewers, as even with highly complex narratives, GOT managed to include like 6-7 of them per episode and viewers never got lost. So, yeah pacing can still be worked upon, even though this episode was much better in that regard.
Do I really need to mention the phenomenal and never seen before audio-visual experience it presents each episode review? I mean that’s pretty much visible and hearable, and anyone who denies that is either hell bent on hating this show or lacks good taste. So which is it for you?
Final Verdict – Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Episode 3 fixes most of the flaws of the premier and is the LOTR experience that we deserved. A lot happens in this episode but at the same time a lot more could have happened in it and we hope to see it climb higher and higher with each new episode. Until next time!
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For all those with short attention spans, good writing and good acting are not to be found in Super Hero movies. As someone who first read LOTR and The Hobbit as an adolescent the Rings of Power does a good job. It may seem slow to anyone who has not read a book of a 1000 pages or more; however, character development takes time. A good story takes time to create logos, ethos and pathos.
The acting is quite good and the visual effects are very good. Hopefully, this experiment will be successful.
Here’s to hoping that it turns out to be an amazing venture. It’ll only go up from here. Or so is what I’d like to believe.