I Watched Rangz of Power so you don’t have to – Part 2: Galadriel is the Worst Commander Ever

In my first piece on Amazon Studio’s billion dollar Rangz of the Kangz project I was left with the impression that the show was actually pretty White. There was even an entire group of children who were all White, which you just don’t see nowadays from (((Hollywood))), even in a fantasy world.

The girl they cast as young Galadriel was really adorable. The ears are a nightmare, and the dialogue is somehow more horrifying. But even with that she made my inner father come out and want to pinch her little cheek after gently telling her to shut up about boats seeing the sky and stones seeing the ground or whatever it was the horrible scriptwriters gave for this poor child actress to say.

But since I left for the weekend and came back I was thinking about it, and I realized that I’m okay with this. Sure, the writing for the show is beyond horrible, but the cinematography is pretty.

Sure, it has a Marvel comic book movie feel, where every shot is over the top trying to impress, but that’s not the worst sin a movie can make. I can live with that. Give me some pretty images and an all White cast, and I’ll forgive a lot of –

Nevermind, the Shire’s in Newark now.

My internal monologue

Yeah, that was my reaction as well, but I’m actually skipping ahead a bit. This show cockteased White People at me for just over fifteen minutes. Back at minute six, in the still entirely White Middle Earth, Galadriel is off being a huge bitch to everyone, and pretty much being the worst commander you could possibly have.

The show thinks they’re making her a huge badass by being an intolerable little cunt who trods all over her subordinates. We start off with her doing some very unnecessary parkour mountain climbing involving daggers while monologuing to us about how no one else believes her weird hunch that Sauron is still alive. Then we see shots of her team below fumbling their way up the mountain about half a click below her.

The show doesn’t even pretend that these people like or even respect her. She’s outright hated by all the other elves because she’s a huge bitch. In fact, not only do they not show her being liked or respected, they go out of their way to establish the opposite with the first conversation we see her have with what is presumably her second in command at the summit.

Elf Lieutenant: Commander Galadriel, this company has followed you to the very edge of the World. But none who ever dared search for this last stronghold has ever found anything.

It’s been years since the last orc was sighted. Is it not possible that the other commanders are right, and our enemy is no more? Night is closing in. How long can living flesh endure where even sunlight fears to tread?

Perhaps we would be wise to camp here, and tomorrow begin the journey home.

You know he’s making some good points Galadriel. Her monologue already established that nobody else believes her weird theory that Sauron is still alive. Then this dialogue establishes that nobody has seen an orc in years. They also don’t explain why anyone would think this random patch of rock and snow would secretly be the lair of the bird spikes guy.

He had a lot of pidgeons landing on his head. Had to get rid of them with the cost effective solution.

Of course, through metaknowledge we know damn well that she’s right, but that’s the only way we know she’s right. The show has done nothing to establish her as anything other than a crazy bitch, which is exactly how everyone treats her.

Luckily they gave themselves the perfect opportunity for Galadriel to lay out her reasoning for her soldier. Or at the very least she can be honest, and admit that she doesn’t have anything other than a hunch. Maybe she can even agree, but say that she simply can’t rest without finding out.

I just thought of three decent responses for her off the top of my head, but this is a billion dollar project. Surely, they’ll have some extremely passionate speech where Galadriel rallies the troops, and –

Galadriel: We are losing the light.

Aaaaaand she makes an angry face like she’s PMSing and then ignores his extremely valid concerns.

We’re then immediately treated to this dramatically unnecessary scene where one of the Elves falls over. Her second in command tells her to stop and she’s like “LOL fuck that.” But then he actually gets her attention and she realizes that one of the Elves has fallen, so she stops the entire expedition and gives him this spare coat she magicked out of nowhere. Or maybe it’s her own coat. I was more focused on the fact that he slipped, and is now getting a coat, and trying to make this sequence of events make sense in my mind. Perhaps better footwear would be in order.

But we can’t miss the forest through the trees, because everything about this sequence is horrible. First of all, you could completely cut this sequence out. It has no bearing on the plot, and in a minute her troops mutiny anyway, so it’s not like her compassion helped. Second, she’s a horrible commander if she doesn’t even bother finding out why her underlings want her to stop before saying no. Third, these Elves are supposed to be elite soldiers, and yet they’re all acting like gigantic pussies. Fourth, if the point was to establish that she’s desperate to find the secret lair, why immediately undercut that with her taking unnecessarily long to do a random thing for a guy who slipped?

If you’re thinking about it at all you’re probably thinking about it more than the showrunners. Through the magic of this being a work of fiction they stumble upon this lair thing in the middle of the snowstorm. Galadriel somehow divines that this was the place all the orcs gathered, because food is apparently not really a concern for them, even though that most definitely contradicts Tolkien. But frankly, we can’t focus on worldbuilding errors like that when we’re treated to dialogue of this quality.

Random Elf Commando: My hand is past feeling.

Galadriel: No, this place is so evil our torches give off no warmth.

Galadriel then goes around literally punching things, which works and they find a secret path. I’m not making this up, but there’s too many stupid things to keep track of we can’t really get bogged down here. They then find this shrine type place inside the lair, and the showrunners decide to make Galadriel seems smart and competent by making the other Elves act like retards.

What follows is a sequence of events where they just keep getting confirmation after confirmation that Sauron is alive and he’s got a metric fuckload of orcs with him and her commandos are all like “yeah but like I’m cold and I want to go home.” They find a goddamn orc brutally magicked into a goddamn wall, they have a magical altar that boils water immediately, they literally find Sauron’s mark. And these guys are like “I haven’t had a gourmet meal in three months, send me home bitch.” 

This is basically the level of dialogue we’re dealing with here.

Galadriel: This is it, we found Sauron’s secret lair. It’s really evil and creepy looking. Also, tons of orcs could have been stored here as a halfway point.

Elf Commando 1: Yeah but like, why does it matter that we just found evidence that the evil guy we’re fighting against is still alive, and has tons of orcs. We haven’t seen any orcs recently, and if you can’t see the enemy army it doesn’t exist.

Elf Commando 2: Yeah, what Steve said.

Elf Commando 3: I’m cold. I wanna go home.

*Chorus of elves agreeing*

Galadriel: But this is his lair.

Elf Commando 4: I don’t see any secret passages. It’s not a real lair unless –

*Galadriel punches random wall revealing a secret passage*

Galadriel: Look, a secret passage.

*They head on in*

Galadriel: Oh my god, an orc is literally burned into the wall. Looks like something Sauron would do.

Elf Commando 1: Yeah but that looks like it happened a long time ago.

Galadriel: That’s kind of a non-sequitur. I didn’t say Sauron did that yesterday.

Elf Commando 3: My feet hurt. I think I’m getting frostbite.

Galadriel: And this altar, it makes our water instantly steam despite it being incredibly cold in here.

Elf Commando 2: Whatever.

EC4: Not my problem.

EC3: I’m hungrrryyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

Galadriel: It’s literally Sauron’s mark right here.

EC1: Who cares? Whoever left this magical mark that could only have been left by Sauron could be dead somehow.

Galadriel: We have to go further north. We need to make sure we trace –

*All Elf Commandos Together* I WANNA GO HOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMME

Seriously this makes no sense. First we had Galadriel being a huge bitch that the audience is just supposed to side with because we know that she’s right because we’re watching a show. Then, after she gets her stupid hunch proven correct beyond a reasonable doubt her underlings start acting like retarded whiners for no reason. And then they get attacked by a cave troll.

The first time I watched this battle sequence the painful, and I do mean truly painful stupidity of the fight choreography distracted me from the painful stupidity of this entire sequence of events. The attack by the cave troll feels like it advances the story due to editing, but it actually doesn’t. Galadriel does some stupid sword twirling things, they kill the troll, and then everyone throws down their swords for no apparent reason and tells Galadriel to fuck off. And that’s it, we get credits and then we switch protagonists for a while.

No, it doesn’t suddenly make sense if you watch it yourself. They find 100% of the evidence they need to justify a further search, a cave troll attacks, and then they are like “fuck this bitch,” and they throw the weapons they would need to defend themselves against further cave trolls down and do a weird passive aggressive mutiny. This is what I mean when I say that this is the worst writing I have ever seen in a big budget production. It’s so dumb I feel compelled to rewrite it.

Here’s how a non-retard would write this sequence of events to accomplish the same thing, but better.

1. Don’t have Galadriel be a huge bitch on the top of the mountain. Have her admit that she can’t prove her hunch is reasonable, and ask the other Elves to follow her anyway.
2. For bonus points, have her express remorse at having dragged the men out here, and apologize that she doesn’t have a smoking gun proof.
3. Have them agree to carry on, but then get attacked by a cave troll just after finding the secret lair.
4. As an aside, make it clear that finding the secret lair in and of itself doesn’t mean Sauron has thousands of orcs.
5. The troll attack and subsequent deaths are the last straw, and they all pack up and leave. Only she goes on alone.
6. For bonus points, have her second in command be very loyal and want to stay with her, but have her order him to take the rest safely back. This establishes her as a caring and empathetic commander, and willing to take personal risks for the greater good. It’s also less stupid than the coat giving scene by an order of magnitude.
7. She then finds the room with the orc in the wall, as well as the shrine with Sauron’s mark.
8. If you really want two characters to find these things so there can be dialogue between them, have her second in command be there with her, but maybe some evil trap kills him after they find everything and explain it to the audience. This would also establish how dangerous Sauron is to the audience, and give us an opportunity for further drama.

There you go, you now have a sequence of events that is objectively better in terms of making sense, characterization and plot. And it took me less than five minutes to not just come up with this, but type it out.

This isn’t hard, these people are just retards.

We’re seventeen minutes in. We’re about to get to the Unsportsmanlike-Hobbits. You know, those hobbits with afros and high crime rates. The hobbits who really like playing baskteball despite being 4 ft tall. Those ones.

But I want to officially state that this show is too stupid to be even tolerable even with just pretty White People on the screen. This is not just a bad experience, this is pain. And trust me, it somehow gets worse.

I still don’t know wtf they were doing with this guy…

Imagine a show so outrageously bad that it compels me to put everything else on hold just to write about how dumb it is. Well, you don’t have to imagine anymore.