Let me clear one thing here, yes, the Rings of Power is not exactly one to one with Tolkein's established lore, some may even say it is not very respectful to the lore, I am one of those people. However something not being Respectful to the original lore simply means that there is no conceivable way for you to even head canon these events as occuring in the same Universe.
That in its own write does not make a good or bad show. It can put a bad taste in the mouth of someone who is already a fan of the original lore, but it can and is often a very good piece of media regardless. Case in point: Shadow of Mordor. It is far from respectful to the lord of the Rings mythos and yet it is a widely regarded as an amazing game, I would say the same goes for Shadow of War but then there was a lot of controversy around that game because of micro-transactions and what not.
I personally do not care about Micro Transactions because some games need that to just break even, as much as I hate to say it.
But even in this case it wasn't the game being disrespectful that ruined it, it was something else.
But yes, the Rings of Power doesn't follow the sequence in which the rings were actually made in the original Lore. The three were made in secret by Celebrimbor after the Nine and the Seven were made, and the One was made shortly after.
There is of course the obvious to be noted that Sauron came first as Annatar the lord of gifts and not as Halbrand the... man...
But here is the thing, I am not watching the Rings of Power to watch a retreading of known Tolkein lore, would I like it to be respectful regardless? Yes, Absolutely.
But can I see the efforts that are put in order to make the original lore make sense anyways? Also yes.
And tell you what, Sauron's Manipulation is spot on, he can tell when something is about to go wrong and so he reveals another important piece of information to someone else, but is always careful to tell half truths or twisted truths that are true only from a certain point of view.
It is like I said before, this is the one thing this season and the previous gets right, dictators do not rise just randomly, they manipulate and charm their way upto the top.
But even in this there are issues, because the rings took a long time to show their corrupting influence, but here, they are just straight forwards corrupting and people don't trust them.
That's a problem because why would people then wear the rings so readily? I feel there is a lack of what we have seen in the Bad Batch, there was this episode where we saw the clone troopers go through a barricaded Separatist town, but there was heroic music and they were characters we knew, and then we completely forgot, that this is the empire now, they are the bad guys, we could have had a slow build up to the evil of the rings, but I guess that wasn't in the forte.
I would like to know add a caveat to my initial point, sometimes something is bad because it disrespects the Lore, because in a good story, components are woven together intricately to make everything work properly and shifting things around carelessly can make them loose their initial effect/charm.
Look at my first two articles for examples.
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