'The lord of the rings: the rings of power', great return to Middle-earth

Said Fernando Savater, one of the first in our country to value (in

1976)

as a masterpiece (together with the editor of Tolkien's Minotaur novel, Paco Porrúa), that the best Peter Jackson's film version of the trilogy was that he had taken it seriously.

The same can be said for the creators of this

(Amazon Prime Video) series

that all fans of the original novel and Jackson movies expected a tad with the fly behind the ear.

Let's see what they were going to offer us, would we have to regret this new trip to Middle Earth?

It must be said, from the outset, that the treatment of the Tolkinian material is respectful and faithful to the canon, and, above all, that the series (at least the first two chapters, directed by the Spanish Juan Antonio Bayona) is stupendous and very exciting, with impeccable production.

What we have been able to see so far is a kind of prequel to

and

that minor novel compared to the great trilogy and that Jackson lengthened untold.

The plot is made up of elements from the appendices of

and other Tolkien texts, among the many that he designed to round out his literary universe and give it coherence.

let us remember, it is the great literary creation of the Oxford professor, a powerful work of a writer in a state of grace and endowed with an extraordinary mythical and symbolic resonance.

Nothing that Tolkien (and his son Christopher) did before or after, including that rather unreadable posthumous tome of biblical and Miltonian resonances that is

is comparable to the trilogy, the story of Frodo and the One Ring

More information

'The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power', Autumn is coming

The solution the producers of the series have found to get into the mess of revisiting Middle-earth has been to mix the existing Tolkinian material with new plots, ideas and characters (with Tolkien's grandson, Simon Tolkien, son of Christopher, as an adviser). ).

And the thing, as we have pointed out, works very well.

Some decisions would have resonated with Tolkien, such as making the main characters predominantly female: notably misogynistic, he would have been surprised to see how female empowerment has come to Middle-earth from him.

The great protagonist of the series is the elf Galadriel, that Tolkinian imitation of the Virgin Mary with pointed ears that Cate Blanchett embodied in the cinema.

Here, much looser, we see her at the beginning as a child, when she already points out ways and wonders about goodness and evil, light and darkness.

And she as a young warrior (the beautiful and expressive Morfydd Clark), commander of the armies of the wastelands (a title with as much sonority as that of General Máximo Décimo Meridio in

We are in a time after the war against Morgoth the Great Enemy of light, who was defeated with great effort and many losses, like that of Galadriel's older brother.

The elves, we are told with great Tolkinian orthodoxy, left Valinor, their quasi-celestial homeland, and traveled by sea to Middle-earth to fight Evil in fierce combats of which we are offered apocalyptic images with dragons falling in flames on masses of warriors (the shadow of

is as elongated as Sauron's).

Morgoth, then, fell defeated, but his lieutenant, Sauron precisely, "a cruel and cunning sorcerer", escaped.

Galadriel, a magnificent sword fighter, tracks him down in the frozen reaches of Middle-earth, in dark fortresses and abandoned bastions, to avenge her brother and root out Evil. Impressive sequences.

Some decisions would have resonated with Tolkien, such as making the main characters mostly women: notably misogynistic, he would have been surprised to see how female empowerment has come to his Middle-earth

But tired of fighting, the elven commanders decide that what was given is over, they decree the demobilization, that the bad guys no longer exist —ignorant despite their wisdom of what all Tolkinians know: that Evil never rests, it waits—, and they try to get rid of the girl by kicking her up, rewarding her with a return ticket to Valinor, which is like an elven Marbella.

All this is told in striking and wonderful images, devoted to Tolkien's drawings, so Arthurian at times, and also faithful to Jacksonian iconography.

There are very good ideas, such as the symbol of this primeval Ur-Sauron, a flaming satanic trident that prefigures the eye of the trilogy.

In the chapter on what could be improved, the appearance of some elven rulers, who seem to have come out of Eurovision, and Elrond's toupee.

In the series, the role of the hobbits is played by the hairy ones, a race of accommodating goblins and enemies of the problems that have the same virtues and defects as the people of the Shire.

And the hairy Frodo is, again, a girl, Nori, mischievous and eager to see the world, seconded by what seems to be a Sam-type friend, but gender fluid —another sign of the times, ours, not those of the Tolkinian Third Age—called Poppy.

They both find a weird guy out of the blue who I think is going to be a famous magician.

Another parallel plot is that of a prominent black elf as a kind of occupying force and police in the territory of human collaborators with Evil who falls in love with a healer woman abandoned by her husband, an interracial love that anticipates others that we already know. .

An image from 'The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power'.

And the rings?

Fine thanks.

In the series, which collects snippets of stories from

we meet the great elven goldsmith Celebrimbor, obviously famous and grandson of Fëanor, the carver of the silmarils, embarked on the construction of a great forge-tower in order to create something exceptional of great power (what is it?), for which he needs the help of the dwarves.

And there we have Elrond going to visit in a happy Khazad-Dûm (nothing to do with what the kingdom under the mountain will become) his curmudgeonly old friend Durin, who by the way also has an empowered wife…

Full of adventures (Galadriel lives one of being shipwrecked at sea with a human with whom everything seems to indicate that they will grow up), the series offers great enjoyment for Tolkinians and also for those who are not.

It will be necessary to see how the raised plots are developed and what the writers reserve for us, but it looks very good.

We are back in Middle Earth and wanting more.

Who was going to say it.

50% off

Subscribe to continue reading

read without limits

Keep reading

I'm already a subscriber