LOTR series: a view of the Two Trees

[Jace, Extat]

5 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

Wouldn't be surprised if there's some shitty algorithmic storytelling tool that sniffed through the scripts of a bunch of fantasy stories and decided a "Who is X" format is associated with large audiences.

I sincerely hope these shows based on such formulas fail, then. And fail big. Amazon can absorb the shock of it, and hopefully we can all move on from such travesties.

Yes. Yes. Yes. A thousand thousand times yes. 

[Corvinus85]

The image of the Man hand grasping a Hobbit hand at the end makes me think that yes Sauron, i.e. The Stranger, i.e. meteor man will hang out with those proto-Hobbits then inevitably betray them, but not in any sort of terrible, horrific way; he'll just dismiss them because they are small and insignificant. And of course, the irony that thousands of years later their descendants take him down. To paraphrase Gandalf, I'm sure the writers think themselves terribly clever.

[fionwe1987]

14 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

The image of the Man hand grasping a Hobbit hand at the end makes me think that yes Sauron, i.e. The Stranger, i.e. meteor man will hang out with those proto-Hobbits then inevitably betray them, but not in any sort of terrible, horrific way; he'll just dismiss them because they are small and insignificant. And of course, the irony that thousands of years later their descendants take him down. To paraphrase Gandalf, I'm sure the writers think themselves terribly clever.

I doubt they're clever enough for it to not be a horrific, gory betrayal. 

[SpaceChampion]

 

[Daeron the Daring]

I'm just glad the LotR doesn't mean as much to me as other franchises (I've seen the whole thing a couple of times, that being said), so I (thank God) don't get mad over the many shit that is around the whole thing.

[Ran]

7 hours ago, Werthead said:

On a tangent, behold, Ran was correct!

As tends to be the case in matters Tolkienian. 

Honestly, I'm a lot more excited by this anime project than what Amazon is attempting, but that's because I roleplayed an Eorling for years and years online (it's where my nickname originates, and also where Linda and I first met) and have a great fondness for the Rohirrim in LotR. 

[DMC]

10 minutes ago, Ran said:

Honestly, I'm a lot more excited by this anime project than what Amazon is attempting, but that's because I roleplayed an Eorling for years and years online (it's where my nickname originates, and also where Linda and I first met) and have a great fondness for the Rohirrim in LotR. 

I was gonna say I'm encouraged by Boyens being an EP, but I suppose this is a better reason.

[Ran]

45 minutes ago, DMC said:

I was gonna say I'm encouraged by Boyens being an EP, but I suppose this is a better reason.

I'm excited for the reasons stated, I'm encouraged by her involvement!

ETA: Somewhere or other I have an alliterative poem made in the roleplaying days, about Freáláf Hildeson succeeding Helm after the end of the Long Winter. Helm makes an appearance, reincarnated as a monstrously huge mountain goat, or so the singer suggests. 

 

 

[Ser Drewy]

High on a hill was a lonely Hammerhand
Lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hee hoo!

[Not another Stark]

16 hours ago, Maltaran said:

Elanor is a Hobbit name from the books, it's what Sam named his daughter

Elanor Gamgee was the very first Hobbit ever to have that name. Sam borrowed it from Lorien, he had such fond memories of the place (and actually got a mallorn from there). There's no way any Hobbit would have such a name before the War of the Ring. These guys claim to be Tolkien fans but really seem to not have a clue.

6 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

The image of the Man hand grasping a Hobbit hand at the end makes me think that yes Sauron, i.e. The Stranger, i.e. meteor man will hang out with those proto-Hobbits then inevitably betray them, but not in any sort of terrible, horrific way; he'll just dismiss them because they are small and insignificant. And of course, the irony that thousands of years later their descendants take him down. To paraphrase Gandalf, I'm sure the writers think themselves terribly clever.

Discarding them like Saruman did later? Could be. That said, are we sure it's actually Sauron in a stupid copy of the Fall of the Angels? Some pondered if it was Gandalf, and I frankly wouldn't be surprised if they decided to think it was clever to show that Gandalf had connections with the Hobbits since his arrival on Middle-Earth - they would wrongly assume that Gandalf appeared early on as a younger man. instead of having always been the old curmudgeon we know.

[Calibandar]

11 hours ago, ASOIAFrelatedusername said:

Fuck this lie.

What I found funny was that they proved this statement

As noted above, Peter Jackson took many liberties with Tolkien’s text, and though not all were well-received, many, like Aragorn’s reluctance to be king, have become inextricably linked with some people’s understanding of Tolkien’s characters

to be true themselves

I will echo my reaction from the trailer, this is going to be a shitshow and I do not know whether to laugh or cry.

Not all were well received is certainly an understatement. This particular example is actually one of the most egregious ones, giving Aragorn this " character arc"  of being mopey and reluctant to take leadership, let alone his Kingship. Its one of the most poorly received changed among many so to mention it here as now being inextricably linked to the character...Film Aragorn was always quite different from Book Aragorn.

Its nice that they are quoting from the letter to Milton Waldman. But I'm sure their choice to cast a black guy as an Elf would have raised an eyebrow.

[Arakan]

On 2/11/2022 at 7:29 PM, fionwe1987 said:

However you see it, it's a bit much to ask audiences to buy that the Creator made his firstborn children to be all white, and the "best" of the second born are also all white. It's frankly weakens the story, and this is one change which I have zero issues with. 

This makes no sense. Tolkien based his stories, whether YOU like it or not, on Celtic and Germanic/Norse mythology. 

And if they wanted to go the multi-ethnicity route, there were multiple other possibilities. I am sure you know about the Haradrim et al..

One could have easily incorporated the evilness of latter 2nd age Numenorean imperialism and its effects on the people around the world, how it pushed many towards Sauron etc. That would have been great, nuanced story telling, not this woke culture tokenism. 

What Hollywood is doing is just lazy, checking all the supposedly needed boxes nowadays which of course leads to warrior Galadriel. 

Whatever, Hollywood is becoming a parody of itself. 

[polishgenius]

23 minutes ago, Arakan said:

This makes no sense. Tolkien based his stories, whether YOU like it or not, on Celtic and Germanic/Norse mythology. 

When Germanic mythology came to be, the cultural context was such that the cultural heroes and myths being white was just... how it was. When Tolkien borrowed from it for his world, he was writing in a context where its understandable he wasn't thinking about the consequences of adapting those myths that way for a whole world, but he wrote in a broad enough context and was influenced enough by his Christian faith in having a creator-god,  that it produced these potential issues. Now, in 2022, there's no reason not to understand that God's first and chosen children all being white is a profoundly racist idea, and while no-ones suggesting Tolkien meant it that way, mitigating it in a modern show is a perfectly sensible step, no matter the other lazinesses on show here.

[The Marquis de Leech]

On 2/15/2022 at 12:53 AM, Lord Varys said:

No, but hers is a very special case. The Vanyar clearly are *better* than the Noldor as a people in the sense that they never listened to Melkor, never took his advice to create weapons at war, never allowed his talk to cause strife amongst themselves.

Nobody ever said anything about the Vanyar actually ruling the other Elven people - merely that they are at the top of the Elven hierarchy. There is a clear hierarchy among the Elves:

Vanyar > Noldor > Teleri > Sindar > Nandor > Avari

And that hierarchy is marked both by the looks of the Elven tribes but, more importantly, by their cultural and moral and 'religious' achievements. The Avari are, in the end, the Elven equivalent to primitive, superstitious, heathen savages. And we have that kind of thing mimicked with the tribes of Man whose cultural and moral and religious achievements become ever greater and better the closer they get to the Eldar and the Valar.

Ingwe's position certainly also owes something to his connection with the First Elf ... but even more so to his status as the leader of the Vanyar during the Great Journey.

The cultural achievements of the Noldor dwarf the cultural achievements of the Vanyar. "Never listening to Evil" doesn't make you top of the hierarchy - especially in the context of an author who loves writing about paragons rebelling (Saruman was above Gandalf in the Wizarding hierarchy, of course).

[The Marquis de Leech]

46 minutes ago, Arakan said:

This makes no sense. Tolkien based his stories, whether YOU like it or not, on Celtic and Germanic/Norse mythology. 

Not Celtic, of course. Germanic and Finnish, with a decent helping of Classical myth.

Tolkien visualised Gondor as being analogous to Egypt. 

[Ran]

29 minutes ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

Tolkien visualised Gondor as being analogous to Egypt. 

Culturally, in a way, yes -- the monumental structures, the tombs and importance of lineages, and especially the preservation of the dead -- but geographically it's like northern Italy mostly. Of course, the Númenór story is very much Atlantis, and the earliest account of it claims it was passed on to the Greeks via the Egyptians...

(Gondor as the Romans seemed a more obvious comparison to me given the geography, including veneration of ancestors, elaborate monuments and tombs, but I think Egyptian embalming practices -- which were very advanced -- weighed heavily with Tolkien's view on the culture.)

 

[Arakan]

1 hour ago, polishgenius said:

When Germanic mythology came to be, the cultural context was such that the cultural heroes and myths being white was just... how it was. When Tolkien borrowed from it for his world, he was writing in a context where its understandable he wasn't thinking about the consequences of adapting those myths that way for a whole world, but he wrote in a broad enough context and was influenced enough by his Christian faith in having a creator-god,  that it produced these potential issues. Now, in 2022, there's no reason not to understand that God's first and chosen children all being white is a profoundly racist idea, and while no-ones suggesting Tolkien meant it that way, mitigating it in a modern show is a perfectly sensible step, no matter the other lazinesses on show here.

Strawman. Tolkien‘s works are best described as creating a pseudo-mythology for England. It’s still mythology, saga, legend, whatever you want to call it. My question for you: why not just accept it as what it is? Why the narcissistic, arrogant, egomaniac need of 21st century Hollywood to „improve“ on the source material? Why?

I offered an objectively much better path (which you ignored): after the war against Sauron and his subsequent defeat and retreat from Eriador and the coastal lands, the Numenorean Empire clearly devolved from a more or less benevolent power towards the indigenous population to a more and more evil, predatory and exploitive force who did not tolerate dissent in any shape or form. You want to add a meaningful story? Show those imperial Numenoreans through the eyes of the indigenous Haradrim! Show how Numenorean cruelty pushed them towards Sauron! This is a story of tragedy, of meaning, of importance. And you would open yourself up for a myriad of casting choices for Middle Eastern, African, Southern Asian actors! 

 

[Arakan]

28 minutes ago, Ran said:

Culturally, in a way, yes -- the monumental structures, the tombs and importance of lineages, and especially the preservation of the dead -- but geographically it's like northern Italy mostly. Of course, the Númenór story is very much Atlantis, and the earliest account of it claims it was passed on to the Greeks via the Egyptians...

(Gondor as the Romans seemed a more obvious comparison to me given the geography, including veneration of ancestors, elaborate monuments and tombs, but I think Egyptian embalming practices -- which were very advanced -- weighed heavily with Tolkien's view on the culture.)

 

I always considered the cultural relationship Numenor - Gondor/Arnor as akin to the idealized relationship of Ancient Greece/Rome to the East-Roman (Byzantine) Empire and the Holy Roman Empire. Gondor/Eastern Rome (Byzanz) even have a similar power flow: a short period of „almost as powerful“ (Justinian, Macedonian Dynasty in the case of Constantinople, around 1000 Third Age for Gondor, until the civil war) followed by a multi-century political, societal, cultural and economic decay…

 

[Arakan]

1 hour ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

Not Celtic, of course. Germanic and Finnish, with a decent helping of Classical myth.

Tolkien visualised Gondor as being analogous to Egypt. 

Sindarin is inspired by Celtic languages. 

[The Marquis de Leech]

1 minute ago, Arakan said:

Sindarin is inspired by Celtic languages. 

Specifically, Welsh. However, Tolkien doesn't really utilise Celtic myth particularly heavily, and (based off his letters) seems to have found it rather mad:

Quote

I do know Celtic things (many in their original languages Irish and Welsh), and feel for them a certain distaste: largely for their fundamental unreason. They have bright colour, but are like a broken stained glass window reassembled without design. They are in fact 'mad' (Letter 26)

I would also further note that while the original Book of Lost Tales was (via Dunsany and other influences) a sort of stab at a Mythology for England, by the mid-1920s, the legendarium was explicitly a Secondary World. Numenor/Atlantis was its own thing, of course, and invited closer links to our world (The Lost Road/Notion Club Papers) than other later material.