Dark Lords don’t do campaign speeches.
Nonetheless, season two of Amazon’s Tolkien adaptation, “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” opened with Sauron trying to persuade a small band of surviving orcs into accepting him as the new Dark Lord after Morgoth’s defeat. Worse still, his “Who else can you go to?” campaign pitch fails.
This is a poor beginning to the new season, though it is, thus far, an improvement over season one. But this just means the show has elevated itself from bad to mediocre. Part of the problem is that even if the showrunners realize the need to improve, “The Rings of Power” is still stuck with the poor decisions of last season. For example, a confused Gandalf is wandering around with a proto-hobbit or two in tow, utterly disconnected from the rest of the story (or anything Tolkien ever wrote about Gandalf’s origins).
But even if the creators of the show were unburdened by their poor decisions last season, they would still not know how to make television for grown-ups. In fairness, they faced a great challenge. It is hard to portray Tolkien sagas on the screen; both internal moral struggles and grand epics are difficult to film well. Depicting both simultaneously requires skill, as well as trust that the audience can pick up on subtleties of character and dialogue amid a sprawling narrative.
Unfortunately, the writers do not trust the audience to stick with a mature story and well-developed characters. Instead, they rely
