I have watched the first two episode, (all viewable as of today). If you've seen it or intend to, I'm wondering how you feel about it.
At this point I'm viewing The Rings of Power as a some-time Tolkien fan -- mind you, not as a Tolkien scholar or "lore master": I don't claim that much expertise. I have read The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and The Silmarillion, all multiple times, plus The Unfinished Tales, but my most recent reading was over a decade ago.
Amazon paid US$250 million for rights to produce the TV/streaming version. The included the use of the four Lord of the Rings books, including the extensive Appendices, and The Hobbit. (Same as the rights Peter Jackson had for his LoTR and Hobbit films.) However The Rings of Power series is supposed to reflect events in the Second Age, a momentous epoch in Tolkien's mythology. The Second Age is dealt with in Appendix A of the LoTR, but more extensively in the compilation of Tolkien's earlier work, The Silmarillion, especially as pertains to the main series character, Galadriel. Amazon's contract specifically forbade them from any usage of or reference to Silmarillion or other Tolkien material -- apparently writers had to "work around" anything that could be so construed.
So for hard-core Tolkien fans the series was hopelessly enfeebled by this omission of key material. On the other hand produces were permitted to add events and characters that didn't directly contradict any thing in the Tolkien work were included. As a result, the Rings of Power series is inevitably consigned to being a diminished and trivialized play on the genuine Tolkien mythos however successful it may be dramatic and/or cinematic terms.
Such is my retirement boredom that I will continue to watch but without great expectations, as least from a Tolkien aficionado's POV
At this point I'm viewing The Rings of Power as a some-time Tolkien fan -- mind you, not as a Tolkien scholar or "lore master": I don't claim that much expertise. I have read The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and The Silmarillion, all multiple times, plus The Unfinished Tales, but my most recent reading was over a decade ago.
Amazon paid US$250 million for rights to produce the TV/streaming version. The included the use of the four Lord of the Rings books, including the extensive Appendices, and The Hobbit. (Same as the rights Peter Jackson had for his LoTR and Hobbit films.) However The Rings of Power series is supposed to reflect events in the Second Age, a momentous epoch in Tolkien's mythology. The Second Age is dealt with in Appendix A of the LoTR, but more extensively in the compilation of Tolkien's earlier work, The Silmarillion, especially as pertains to the main series character, Galadriel. Amazon's contract specifically forbade them from any usage of or reference to Silmarillion or other Tolkien material -- apparently writers had to "work around" anything that could be so construed.
So for hard-core Tolkien fans the series was hopelessly enfeebled by this omission of key material. On the other hand produces were permitted to add events and characters that didn't directly contradict any thing in the Tolkien work were included. As a result, the Rings of Power series is inevitably consigned to being a diminished and trivialized play on the genuine Tolkien mythos however successful it may be dramatic and/or cinematic terms.
Such is my retirement boredom that I will continue to watch but without great expectations, as least from a Tolkien aficionado's POV