PRIME VIDEO – ON DEMAND – SERIES
Back to school in Middle-earth is like everywhere else: the joy of reunion is tempered by the prospect of going back to work. Between the ocean in the west and Mordor in the east, the play, for the viewer, has not changed: one must remember the tribulations that led each of the countless characters to the difficult passage from which they must escape; place, in time and space, each of the narrative threads and connect them to the central theme of this epic.
Good students are those who know. The Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion by heart, they will have an advantage, the cheaters too (this is probably the only series in which every character is the subject of a Wikipedia page). Good news: these mnemonic exercises will quickly pay off. In this second season of Rings of powerThe avatar of the universe imagined by JRR Tolkien (1892-1973), developed by JD Payne and Patrick McKay, unfolds with the same magnitude as in previous episodes. This time, the characters that populate this epic (and sometimes pompous) fresco come to life, giving flesh to familiar icons.
shakespearian rhetoric
The acquisition of Sauron (Charlie Vickers) is not in vain in this new vitality. The writers gave him the first place in the story. Changing his appearance as needed, Sauron becomes the embodiment of the corruption of souls. The dialogues, sometimes sententious, reach a certain majesty when they express the confrontation between Sauron and Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards), the elf goldsmith who allows himself to be convinced to forge the rings, the two performers injecting a good dose of Shakespearean rhetoric into their dialogues.
The character of Adar (Sam Hazeldine, who succeeds Joseph Mawle in the role), the father of the orcs, reveals an unexpected complexity, a rebel who defends no other cause than that of the monstrous creatures under his command. If he seems so human, almost historical, it is perhaps because he is “out of canon” to use Tolkienist terminology, because he sprang from the imagination of the series creators, rather than from that of the South African author.
But if we stick with the elves, the orcs or the ents (because there are ents this season), it is because the invitation promised, above all, spectacle. Led by Charlotte Brandström, the directors (mostly women) of Rings of power We have now mastered the art of digital warfare, as the final episodes will demonstrate.
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