The Great Wave

It's as if a door opened and we walked through it into a reality not available before. The amazing beauty of the worlds has been there, but that alone was not enough, although it was a lot.

With Wayne Yip's excellent direction of episode 4, everyone has finally come alive and everything has begun to come together in the beauty of the stories unfolding, the writing, the acting.

When the stunning and powerful frontal shot of King Durin on his throne filled the frame, I surrendered. I realized most of the episode had passed as if in a minute and I was deep in it and 'The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power' was happening.

I think, at the moment, the lowest point of the season, only the events in Khazad-Dum lift the fortunes of a bland episode without any major narrative thrust: the island of Numenor is rapidly turning into a prison for combative Galadriel and the (not surprisingly) diplomatic Halbrand. The obsessive attention to every single detail or prop is always incredible, and sometimes you almost forget you're watching a fictional product, given the realism and attention to the smallest scene details, but this time it's not enough. After over 1900 years a new war is upon us and everyone, apart from (some) inhabitants of the southern lands, seem to not care, reveling in their indolence... and inevitably one of them is the enemy in disguise...

Some of the attractive dialogues and a dose of mystery and excitement in one episode in attempts to reveal some ambiguous facts. Is this the beginning of the black darkness? An interesting fourth episode and expresses the extent of the escalation of events, a gradual and calm process in this big world. I see events coming on the way and a strong conflict will happen, but will it be soon? The acting side is better than the previous one, and the dialogues are also very attractive. Do not get carried away by the insincere reviews and judge the series impartially. I see it as an upcoming masterpiece.

So let me say that the CGI is very good, at least for the Númenor and Khazad-dum part. Costumes are also excellent. But you can see that most of the money is spent to CGI+other supportive equipments but not screenwriting.

1) There is a time-lapse scene for the Elrond-Durin part, but the screenwriting is so terrible, most of the viewers will get confused. You have to tell the story way more better than this.

2) You literally left the village couple days ago. Dude, you really didn't take any food with you, Jesus. Such a bad writing!

3) I won't mention Galadriel's part again, she looks like an immature human, not one of the greatest elves alive.

There are other bad parts, but I won't take my time to mention them. You do not have to respect original LOTR lore, you can always write something new, if you are talented enough! This show reminds me the last season of Game of Thrones, where screenwriting was terrible since there was no book to look at!

Episode 4 of Rings of Power is actually pretty great, for the most part. Like previous episodes, the dialogue and acting is very average and the story is muddled and confused. We are now 4 episodes in - 4 hours of screentime and yet the story is still barely progressing, I feel like at times I'm watching something pointless.

That being said, there is a lot to like in this episode, for one - the music. Bear has composed a great soundtrack for the series as a whole, but it isn't more present than it is here. There are truly some fantastic themes throughout this episode. The visuals are amazing, as usual but the standout has to be the story within Khazad-dûm. Elrond and Durin have a very good on screen friendship and both actors play well off each other. Disa is also entertaining, even though I haven't been fond of the actress during the marketing of the series. Every scene that takes place within Khazad-dûm was great and I would rather see an hour of just that than everything else that took place elsewhere in the story.

Like the past 3 episodes the characters are still what drag this down. Despite me being able to look past all the lore breaking nonesense the series has been doing so far. The Arondir and Bronwyn relationship is still as bland as it was in episode 2, Galadriel is still a grumpy college student. The problem with this show is that they are trying to balance too many characters at once. They have invented all these new characters, when they should have been focusing on the central ones, top give us time with them. We have seen them for 4 hours now, and only 3 are even remotely interesting.

I will keep up hope that the series will get better, despite this being a pretty solid episode. Maybe in the future of this series does get a season 2, they will vastly improve on everything that has made season 1 poor.

6.5/10.