Rings of Power is Not Very Good: Breakdown and Analysis - Part 3: Adar

"Our hearts are bigger than our feet." "I got a splinter in my foot." "May you rest in peace."

This depiction of Galadriel just feels so... brutish. There's such a stark difference between the ethereal strength and beauty that she 'should' be, rather than this forced, angry, arrogant and insufferable scowling brat we have flailing about.

Just regarding Galadriel's height, and you are quite right to take note of it, she is very specifically described by Tolkien as an unusually tall female, even amongst Noldor elves, at 6'4".

I like how in Peter Jackson’s movies at no point did you ever not realize someone was an elf. You didn’t need to see their ears, they were elves becaus they were huge, beautiful/slightly otherworldly looking, often glowed or had a halo effect around them, and acted different from humans. In this one hide your ears and no one would be the wiser because they’re all short, dark skinned, and mundane to downright ugly people.

You know what would have helped the orcs avoid the sun,.. all those trees they burned down around their trench You know what chopping the trunk of a tree down doesn't solve,.. the roots that are actually in your way. You know what might fell a tree, chopping away at it's roots until they're no longer enough to support it. "Legolas, what do your elf eyes see?", "A giant-arse trench in a mile wide swathe of burning desolation!"

Between you, Disparu and Little Platoon, I am very glad to see that Rings of Power is launching another generation of Youtube longmen careers. Much like The Last Jedi, there's a silver lining to all the tosh

"Nobody goes off-trail" is not some philosophical musing, it's a warning. "Nobody walks alone" is not to encourage the bonds of familiarity, it's a threat. If you do either of these things, you will be left behind. And then you'll be laughed at.

In LotR, the opening tells us: 1. The Shire is beautiful and worth protecting. 2. Sauron and his orcs are evil and live in a rocky barren land. 3. If Sauron gets The Ring back, places like the Shire will be like Mordor. We start out knowing what’s at stake and what the heroes must do. Most of this is conveyed visually. At this point in RoP, we still don’t know what, why, when or where. What will happen if the Orcs find what they seek? Dunno. What happens if Galadriel doesn’t get back to Middle-Earth? Dunno. What happens if the Comet Man disappears in the woods? Dunno. What happens if the Elven forge isn’t built? Dunno.

That scene between Galadriel and Elendil honestly baffles me. She's supposed to be our protagonist and Elendil has done nothing at all to classify him as evil, or even morally corrupt, so WHY did they think audiences would respond positively to seeing Galadriel threaten to murder him???

Seems like the writers have a similar issue to Bethesda, where they vastly underestimate the passage of time. Galadriel is what, 4,000 years old at that point? She should not act like a petulant teenager.

I have never even noticed, that the elves in the orc pits were the same ones from the second episode! They didn't have enough screen time or impact that I even remembered them! I just wondered where the orcs have got two other elves from 🤷‍♀️

"Who is this mortal who speaks as if he has the slightest idea who I am?" "Bitch I'm the mortal who saved your life."

Also, the whole thing with Harfoots and Nori's family comes off borderline like that the Harfoots aren't celebrating a festival and making sure everybody knows how they stick together and help each other but more like that they are rubbing it in to those who are gonna get left behind especially with Nori's mother saying how they gonna get left behind immediately after Nori's father's accident and with how Poppy is pulling her cart all alone despite not being caught as the one who brought in the stranger, this is also suggesting that the Harfoots have a tradition of leaving few behind as a sacrifice to wild animals and such in order to ensure the safe passage to the rest And I am going to stick with this theory

The scene where the Harfoots describe how they leave people behind for any reason does explain one thing: Why the hobbits hide from "big folk". Would you want these monsters in your lands? They apparently devour everything in an area, potentially leave some troublemakers behind, and move on to a new area to despoil.

I’m sure plenty of people have already mentioned this elsewhere in the comments, but the royal family of Numenor are the descendants of of Elronds twin brother, something Galadriel would be well aware of. So between the queen, Elendil, and others, Galadriel is repeatedly threatening to murder all the next-of-kin of her supposed best friend.

Here's something I've been wondering. If Amazon was so gung-ho about "diversity" in this show, why then didn't they take the opportunity to use Tolkien's description of harfoots being "browner of skin" and cast EVERYONE as brown?? It makes actual sense in the lore and wouldn't be seen as tokenism. But NOPE, they cast TWO characters as the token "diversity" characters in a race of people who don't ever get together with anyone outside of their group from what we can tell and call it a day. It's just one of the many things in this show that are completely baffling.

The warg bit is also dumb in another way. Wargs are a sapient species, like the eagles or, for that matter, humans. And they are allied with the other evil ones (though when actually working together, do tend to snack on goblins/orcs). But, basically, the orcs here have enslaved an allied evil race, which would cause issues, and the show treats the critter like it is a dog, rather than a sapient species, which would definitely hold a grudge about being enslaved. But I guess the writers thought, "It looks like a dog/wolf, so it must be an animal." It is like they haven't read the books. The wargs are one of the five armies at the Battle of Five Armies, FFS. And while someone watching the show shouldn't have to read the books to know what things are, the writers of the show should.

Why GuyLadReeee-el first insist the Queen regent give her a boat, and later tries to steal one, when she could just swim to Middle-Earth instead, as it's only half the distance she initially wanted to swim - is beyond my understanding. But how anyone could trust 2 muppets with a $1 billion show is even further from my feeble mind to grasp, so there's that.

Harwin Strong, the strongest knight in the Seven Kingdoms in the time of "the House of the Dragon", was played by an actor who was 5'11 at most. But the actor brought energy and swagger to the role, knocking men about like ragdolls, you didn't notice! Acting makes all the difference, which makes Galadriel's 5'3 coming across 5'nothing all the more unforgivable.

I mentioned this in the Ep 2 video actually, but the Harfoots plot is so terrible. - They laugh off people that died stung by bees, stop and think how many stungs would take to do that and how gruesome it actually is and they just laugh it off. - Tons of Harfoots not carrying anything that could've perfectly helped the two carts left behind. - In later episodes they'll tell the carts are vital to the Harfoots, yet back here they'll just leave two of those behind for no reason. - If getting injured means you are left behind why would anyone do anything to help one another in this community? This is a dystopia setting, but they are painted as the Hobbit's predecessors.