(courtesy IMP Awards)
The Bible has said it. Countless novels has ruminated on the idea. And it’s been observed more than once by everyone from social commentators to political experts that evil often wears a pleasing and amenable face.
It makes sense, of course.
After all, as a species we usually recoil from anyone who is obviously evil – though as current events are showing all too troublingly, not always – and so the smartly demonic operators cloak themselves in a pleasing visage, spout velvet-cloaked words of reason and persuasion, and get their way by evading the evolutionary reactiveness we all have to send threats packing.
Just how effective a tactic this is comes out in chilling fashion in the first three episodes (“Elven Kings Under the Sky”, “Where the Stars are Strange” and “The Eagle and the Sceptre”) of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power in which Sauron (a perfectly charming Charlie Vickers) convinces all kinds of people to do his terrible bidding; not only that, once he has charmed and deceived you, it’s even easier to do it all over again.
Even when a character knows Sauron is up to no good, such as master Elven craftsman, Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) who is wise to the deception, so he thinks, that Sauron aka Halbrand manipulated him into producing the three rings purported to restore Elven power and vitality ———- SPOILER ALERT !!!! ———- THEY DO, he eventually caves and produces the seven Dwarven rings and the nine rings for men.
Fair enough, he holds out for a while, but all Sauron, who ends up spinning a story about being a messenger named Annatar, sent by the Valar, god-like beings who apparently look after, reasonably badly it must be said given how much horrendous evil stalks the place, has to do is whisper some words about how other people have done Celebrimbor wrong and not recognised his innate greatness, and boom!, the Elven craftsman is making people and dwarf enslaving rings like nobody’s business.
Sauron needs that kind of cooperation and the rings because he doesn’t want to rule people physically, he wants their hearts and minds too, and what happens with Celebrimbor – and Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) and even the leader of the Uruks aka Orcs, Adar (Sam Hazeldine) – is emblematic of a creature, and good lord there’s one very creepy, black goo sequence that shows how primarily awful he is, who knows that looking beautiful and spinning a compelling, ego-stroking story is the way to get what you want.
And to keep getting what you want.
Over with the Elves, who are both the smartest people around and some of the very dumbest, Galadriel, the High King Gil-galad (Benjamin Walker) and Círdan (Ben Daniels), have all decided to sport the rings made for the Elves, and while the rings are ostensibly all about healing and genesis, they have some nasty side-effects, leading to nostalgia and procrastination.
While Elrond (Robert Aramayo) fights hard to stop the rings from being worn by anyone, even going so far as to do a runner and attempt to get them hidden in the depths of a sea, in the end, they do their corrupting thing, and while yes, the Elves get a renewed spring in their step and good things seem to happen on the surface, it’s yet another sign of how good Sauron is at putting on a pretty and friendly face.
The Dwarves are pretty much on the same path.
After some sweet talking by Annatar and Celebrimbor, who is gone baby gone down the cooperating with evil path (though, of course, he doesn’t realise this), prince of Khazad-dûm, Durin IV (Owain Arthur), his normally sensible wife Disa (Sophia Nomvete) and the King Durin III (Peter Mullan) all decide that helping get the Dwarf rings made would be a fine and wholly sensible idea.
Granted, some rather nasty developments have befallen Khazad-dûm, and the Dwarves believe the only way to restore things with some very powerful rings, but once again, no one begs to question why it is that someone would want to help them like this.
Sauron preys not only peoples’ vanity but their desperation and need for survival above all else, and while Men, Dwarves and Elves all see themselves as separate, they are all played pretty much the same way.
It’s proof that really when you’re evil, all you have to do is seem nice and reasonable and generous and the world will largely fall at your feet and buy what the hell it is you’re selling; while some, like Elrond, can see the danger and keep seeing the danger, many others do not, and that is where the trouble lies.
The only real hope in all of the first three episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, besides Elrond, are two Halfoots (precursors to the Hobbits), Elanor “Nori” Brandyfoot (Markella Kavenagh) and Poppy Proudfellow (Megan Richards) and the Stranger (Daniel Weyman) who are journeying through some fairly desolate areas in these episodes in search of somewhere the latter recognises as familiar.
You get the sense he is the key to something but so far, all you know is that bad people are attacking them and that alone means they are worth rooting for; not so much though the people of Númenor, a sea kingdom who, following their rather unsuccessful journey to Middle Earth to help save it from great evil, have fallen into infighting and civil war.
Grief will do that to you – they lost a lot of people, though, ahem, some like Isildur (Maxim Baldry) are alive and well, and being bothered by giant spiders, of which there are altogether too many in The Lord of the Rings – but it’s not helpful when someone like Sauron is whispering sweet nothings in everyone’s ears and setting himself for the Mordor-based power nightmare to come.
As this rather brief rundown of events will illustrate, there’s a lot going on in the opening episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power but for all of the narrative busyness, the second season still bears the elegance and narrative and dialogue richness of the first season, as well being wholly and alarmingly instructive on how we ignore the pretty face of evil at our own great peril.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is streaming on Prime Video, with the five remaining episodes of the second season releasing weekly until 3 October.