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Amazon Has Made the Same Mistake Twice With Rings of Power and Wheel of Time

Amazon Has Made the Same Mistake Twice With Rings of Power and Wheel of Time
Image credit: Prime Video

Well, the typical response to the statement at this stage probably would be "which one of their numerous mistakes you're talking about?"

But if you just look at the two series in general, you're bound to notice similarities between them in many things – colors, scenery, casting, acting (or lack thereof), you name it. It is noticeable that they were produced by the same studio.

And, well, you can also notice their comparable disregard for the source material.

The Wheel of Time might not have deviated from it quite as far as The Rings of Power did, but it is an adaptation of a novel, it did not have to make a plot from brief notes on an imaginary world's ancient history, it had much more source material to disregard, so to speak.

Rings of Power Made The Same Dumb Mistake The Hobbit Did

Both series take immense liberties with their respective sources, and, in a very similar fashion, often disregard the lore seemingly just for the sake of disregarding it (compare Moiraine slinging fireballs to orcs actively burning under the sun almost as if they were vampires).

Actually, the fact that the two series have a remotely similar look should already trigger some alarms.

Making a series visually distinctive (and various people within it visually distinctive from each other, just like you can immediately tell Rohan and Gondor apart in Peter Jackson's movies) is the primary duty of costume and set designers. If your costumes and vistas meld into some sort of generic fantasy-ish slop, you've failed.

And The Rings of Power only avoids that because it inherits designs for its elves, dwarves, and so on, from Peter Jackson's movies – nearly all of its attempts at original designs range from unmemorable to painfully generic and indicating a failure of imagination. For example, Numenor in The Rings of Power is Gondor with more of a naval focus, brighter colors and less sophisticated armors, instead of a civilization so great that by the time of The Lord of the Rings' events Gondor was a pale shadow of its pale shadow.

As the result, there is another glaring similarity between The Rings of Power and The Wheel of Time – they both ended up at that sort of series which is praised by critics and blasted by the audience. Robert Jordan's fanbase might not place their favorite books on the same pedestal as Tolkien's fans, but it too has standards, and expects an adaptation to have more respect to what it is adapting.