The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

Thursday

The Spectator

This month in culture: August 2024

The Instigators In theaters August 2, Apple TV+ August 9 Boston crime movies are back! Starring Matt Damon and Casey Affleck — and produced by Ben Affleck, of course — The Instigators is a heist comedy-thriller about a robbery that goes wrong, causing Damon’s therapist to get dragged along for the ride. Affleck/Damon productions have consistently been solid — from the ultimate Boston crime movie The Town to last year’s Jordan 1 sneaker-origin story Air — and this is directed by one of the best working action directors around, Doug Liman, who was responsible for The Bourne Identity, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Edge of Tomorrow and (the underrated) American Made.

culture

Wednesday

Robby Soave

The resurgence of Dungeons & Dragons

You are stranded in the middle of an unforgiving desert, and must take refuge from a sandstorm before your Hit Points deplete any further. You find a rock outcropping — after a successful Perception check, a false wall reveals a sprawling cavern. Inside is a long-lost tomb. There are markings: could this be the dreaded Dark Speech of that necromancy cult the innkeeper kept warning you about? You have no idea, sadly. You spent your downtime trying to seduce the elven serving wench instead of reading the innkeeper’s copy of Desert Cults: Their Languages. Trying and failing, mind you — as a dwarven paladin, your Charisma score just wasn’t up to the job. No idea what I’m going on about? Count yourself among an ever-shrinking minority.

Dungeons & Dragons

Sunday

Hannah Long

The heart of The Rings of Power

“Ours was no chance meeting. Not fate, nor destiny,” Galadriel says. “Nor any other words Men use to speak of the forces they lack the conviction to name.” The line is a bit pompous, but then so is the hotheaded elven warrior (Morfydd Clark) who speaks it in Amazon’s Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Pomposity aside, Galadriel’s words reveal why the work of J.R.R. Tolkien is unique in a crowd of fantasy competitors. Anyone can give us elves and dragons and wizards. But few can match the anguished, longing note of hidden Providence in Tolkien’s Middle-earth. The Rings of Power has not yet achieved such depths of feeling — perhaps it will not be capable of doing so — but it has shown prudence in its stewardship of the story’s heart, which is encouraging.

lord of the rings of power

Saturday

James Walton

Amazon’s Lord of the Rings series is brimming with ponderous aphorisms

Amazon’s much-heralded Tolkien prequel The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power began by answering a question that has puzzled humankind — and possibly elves — these many millennia. Why is it that a ship floats and a stone doesn’t? The reason apparently is because "a stone sees only downward," whereas a ship has "her gaze fixed upon the light that guides her." And this, I’m afraid, set the tone for much of the dialogue that followed in the two episodes released so far — as, to their credit, the characters managed to exchange an endless series of ponderous aphorisms without giggling.

lord of the rings