Amazon’s Fantasy Problem: Big Budgets, Bigger Disappointments
The Rings of Power recently finished its first season on Amazon Prime, joining the increasingly bloated parade of fantasy adaptations flooding streaming platforms. And while it dazzles on the surface, that polish is mostly skin-deep. It’s flashy, expensive, and technically impressive—but it lacks the soul and substance that make a fantasy series truly memorable. Ironically, that hollow grandeur might spell trouble for its sibling show, The Wheel of Time, which is already struggling to justify its existence.
Let’s talk numbers: The Rings of Power is officially the most expensive television show ever produced, burning through a staggering $58 million per episode. But The Wheel of Time isn’t exactly low-budget—its $10 million per episode cost is still hefty in today's landscape (for comparison, Game of Thrones capped at around $15 million per episode in its final season). Yet even with that kind of investment, it continues to underdeliver.
I called The Wheel of Time the most disappointing show of 2021, and sadly, nothing’s changed. With or without The Rings of Power overshadowing it, the writing and production need an absurd leap in quality just to keep it on life support, let alone finish the full saga.
And when it comes to the source material, blind loyalty to The Lord of the Rings lore continues to cloud objective judgment. While The Wheel of Time drags—sometimes to a painful degree—it still has a deeper and more ambitious story under the surface. Unfortunately, both adaptations seem determined to miss the point of the books they’re based on, just in different flavors of mediocrity.
The Rings of Power
Despite its massive budget and narrative freedom, The Rings of Power often feels like it’s adrift without the anchor of Tolkien’s books. The lack of direct source material, save for fragments from The Silmarillion, doesn’t feel like an opportunity—it feels like a crutch. Rather than crafting something bold or emotionally gripping, the show leans heavily on visual spectacle to distract from its shallow character arcs and inconsistent storytelling. While some might argue that fans are being overly nostalgic or purist, much of the criticism calling the show “underwhelming” and “unfaithful” seems warranted. The writing often sidesteps the emotional and mythological depth that defines Tolkien’s world, trading it for generic fantasy beats. In trying to appease everyone, The Rings of Power ends up saying very little of substance.
The Wheel of Time
The Wheel of Time’s failings announce themselves from the very first episode—and they only compound from there. The village raid scene is a chaotic mess of shaky cam and incoherent edits, turning what should be a gripping moment into a visual migraine. Instead of showcasing any actual choreography or worldbuilding, the camera often seems more interested in filming dirt. It’s a baffling choice, emblematic of a show that seems fundamentally at odds with the very material it’s meant to honor.
Worse still, the production design feels uninspired, the magic system is glossed over, and the foreshadowing—what little exists—is so clumsy it borders on parody. What should be a rich, textured adaptation comes off as aggressively generic, as if it were a fantasy show designed by committee. Unless the creatives behind it find the courage to reinvent the tone and embrace the depth of the source material, The Wheel of Time will fade into irrelevance—a glorified placeholder while audiences wait for better contenders like House of the Dragon.
