Patently evil
Demeaning J.R.R. Tolkien's beloved and timeless oeuvre by turning it into a tawdry corporate platform for the inane scribblings of adolescent minds and the invective of contemporary identity politics is the epitome of the self-serving, hateful, and soulless behavior that Tolkien himself decried as "orc-work."
The disparate plots are at best contrivances driven by haphazard decisions by the writing staff, full of coincidence, illogic, and no sense of geographical scale. At no point is any of the story driven by believable characterization. Each and every one of Tolkien's pre-existing characters that has been included in the show has been subjected to butchery that can only be described as malicious, and the new characters invented for the show have nothing to recommend about them to make the time wasted in their company anything more than a burden.
The creative team for this show doesn't seem to understand that "fantasy" as a genre does not mean "anything goes," with a willing suspension of disbelief made impossible by, for example, three major characters randomly meeting in the middle of the ocean and then later surviving a pyroclastic flow unscathed while buildings and extras around them are turned into cinders--at a location thousands of miles away that they apparently reached via supersonic travel.
One wonders why so much money was paid for the rights to use the name "Lord of the Rings" when nothing in the show bears any resemblance to Tolkien's work in terms of characters, setting, and, most importantly, themes. The creative team and marketing department have put more time and effort into berating and insulting would-be viewers through strawman proxies than they have into making any of this a story worth telling or hearing.
At one point, the writers have a character wonder why the orcs use an Elvish word ("Adar") for their leader, apparently ignorant that Sauron itself is an Elvish word meaning "the Abhorred." Fitting, because the creative team's abhorrent and hubristic language and behavior in various promotional interviews for this stillborn series makes it impossible to give them any benefit of the doubt that they will rectify even one of its multitude of failings in the second season.
In short, The Rings of Power is not only not a success, it is not even a near-miss; it is an unmitigated trainwreck from start to finish, primarily the result of the bottom-basement writing and direction, but also to a lesser extent due to production design and cast performances more suited to local dinner theater than the ballyhooed production this series pretends to be.
If they want to save this investment, the higher-ups must cut all ties with the everyone on the current creative team--not just the showrunners themselves--apologize for their divisive remarks apparently intended to drive fans away from the show, and start afresh with the first season relegated to apocrypha.
I give it a rating of 1 only because 0 is not an option.
