It’s been almost 20 years since the Lord of the Rings movies gave the audience their first taste of fantastical adventure. A lot has changed since then — such films can now be made entirely on a green screen, and watching a spectacle in a movie theatre also doesn’t hold up the same way anymore. In an era where everyone seems to be asking if theatres can survive, Amazon has the perfect response in form of its web series Lord of the Rings web series The Rings of Power. The first two episodes of the series were made available for the purpose of this review and let’s just start by saying that watching big-screen spectacle on your humble home screens does not disappoint one bit.
When it was announced, The Rings of Power was projected as the streamer’s answer to HBO’s Game of Thrones, which eventually became the most-viewed show in the world, so of course, they were inviting comparison. The biggest point of comparison, that has now become a staple in this genre of television, is the humungous scale of the show. It’s fantastic to watch the cave cities of the dwarves ‘Khazad-dûm’, and the never-ending sense of the Sundering Seas so my humble suggestion would be – watch it on the biggest screen that you have and not on your phone. A lot of effort (and money) has been poured into the creation of this world that one might feel like they are missing out plenty as a casual viewer. It demands undivided attention and anything less than that could end up making you feel lost.