2024-08-28 12:57:44
Anyone who screws up the first time will have everything in the tree in the second: Tolkien series “Dimensions of Power” returns to the screens with eight chapters that have been wildly determined. Will he do well this time? The critics.
If there is an accident in the first half of football, there is a locker room issue. Who knows if the same is true in the streaming business. The reason for this would have been presumably the most expensive series in the world: “Dimensions of Power”, Amazon Prime’s flagship project, which at least dropped way back in one season. Tolkien’s series should be to streaming what Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” movies were to cinema, but there was no great enthusiasm for the season. Amazon reportedly paid $250 million for the rights alone, but Tore didn’t want to spend that money: Season one was pretty lame.
And now? Season two started and, in fact, the team returned to the field as if a big troll had fought in the dressing room. The fun for the whole family is subito on – in Canada’s core, child protection has been raised by five years to “from 18”; and maybe the kick and rush of the opening level is enough for you: in the Dark hole of the shadows of the kingdom of Mordor, the dark leader of Sauron is torn apart by a bloody orc mob until it is nothing more than an abomination , amorphous mass. that only slowly recovers regaging his strength, drags him into the second age of Tolkien’s Middle-earth.
Now we also know where JK Rowling got Lord Voldemort from, and of course we still remember the moment of one of the “Dimensions of Power”: As a half-rim, ie in human form, Sauron (Charlie Vickers) almost has an elf hero. Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) turns to evil. In the second season, it is a woman from the past who gets the suspicion of the Elven King Gil-Glad (Benjamin Walker) and even arouses the suspicions of his best friend Elrond (Robert Aramayo): “Do you want to fight the darkness Is it the darkness calling you?”
Tolkien’s “Faust”
At one time they only set up the chessboard, which has been said apologetically in advance, at the second time you can now play, but that is actually not what makes at least the two opening games much better. In fact, they have finally focused on the important things, the story line is better and simply left the difficult parts for the moment. Similar events in the island of Númenor, where people leave the elves, do not appear at the beginning and even the monsters in the great location of Khazad-dûm have to wait for a while for their first appearance.
Instead, the “rings” go forward with the rings: those that have already been told by the elves are allowed to influence, while the Mephistophelian Sauron in a new form ingratiates himself with the elven blacksmith Celembrimbor (Charles Edwards) so that the The following rings were created: seven for the dwarves, nine for the humans and which Frodo the hobbit threw into Mount Doom much later in “The Lord of the Rings”.
And lo and behold: everything suddenly feels very Tolkien-like because if you deal with Tolkien’s themes here: good and evil, darkness and light, power, betrayal and – above all – death and oblivion instead of eternity. In the play Celebrimbors, for example, one of the most powerful stories that the Second Age of the Middle Ages has to offer, the play is opened by the artist, who wants nothing less than eternity for his work: Tolkien also wrote his “Faust” and the roles that Mephisto certainly occupied by Sauron.
But the heroine Galadriel is still allowed to grow, where the series relies on her model – which is only part: unlike her colleagues Gil-Galad and Elrond, she is prepared to fight evil with evil means if necessary and to get yourself dirty in character. This is all the more interesting because “Dimensions of Power” has allegedly “stolen” television. In fact, the series has a diverse cast, but the real politician Galadriel has nothing to do with purity. The Elvish shipwright Círdan, the second most famous painter next to Clembrimbor, was even allowed to make a thoughtful speech against the abolition of the custom.
Yoda in the Wild West
But, to compare football again: The leadership Sturm und Drang of the group “Dimensions” is over, with episode three many old problems have returned – and not the least of them are the tiring football renewals in which Númenor continues the nameless organizer, who passes to Adar of the sub-city, who also makes a return to the hobbies here called the foot harp or the Númenorean hope Isildur, scattered somewhere on the coast of the Middle East.
As before, the very similar stories, with which Tolkien often only designed the original, did not lead anywhere. What he adds often seems arbitrary, clichéd or, like Peter Jackson, copied. The wizard – who has no name until almost the end – is confronted with a kind of Saruman in the Sands of Rhûn (the great leader from “The Lord of the Rings”) and is allowed to meet the legendary Tom Bombadil there, who is in the book Tolkien is something. between a middle-earth Pan and an Edwardian book children’s hero, here but more like a Yoda in the Wild West.
And no sooner had he removed the languid coexistence of the Harfuß community from a time than the following people from the early Hobbit story were revealed. In the long ending to “The Lord of the Rings”, Tolkien called this group “rigids” – the appearance of “falskins”, which is also mentioned in the same place, is impossible. If the creators of the series could not think of anything else, they added a love story, so in Rhûn, in Númenor, in the coastal city of Pelargor and even in the Elvish Eregion, if in doubt, they kiss first. Tolkien, who is very fond of using ancient materials, is a very interesting man, in which one does not snog, but rather just dreams about him.
Speaking of the Middle Ages: Where he draws on Tolkien and doesn’t call some wild people running around like Hagen like the Nibelungenlied, the series deals with legendary heroes. Isildur (Max Baldry), for example, is known to loyal Tolkienists as the last ring bearer before Gollum. So the man belongs to Gawain or Parzival and, somehow, needs a dragon to fight him. But the series gave him a childhood trauma, as if he was the second child of the grandfather from “Success”. For Tolkien, of course, the basic rules of modern serial writing are a few degrees smaller.
So is the word tent wasted? Let’s put it this way: After a disappointing first half, the “Weights” team equalized early in the second. So the extension is reserved. And the penalty shootout won’t happen until season five.
“Power Levels” can be seen on Amazon Prime from August 29th – after the first three episodes in the weekly schedule.
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