Ears, Pointy, Two

I’ve watched three episodes (all there is, so far) of Amazon’s billion-dollar Tolkien fanfic, Rings of Power, and I find my reactions mixed.

Public reaction so far has featured complaints that the series isn’t faithful enough to the source, but that complaint doesn’t have any weight with me. The filmmakers didn’t have the rights to the Akallabêth, and had to settle for the appendices to LOTR as a source. Drama is different than written narrative, and will inevitably take shortcuts, combi...