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The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power


Ser Drewy

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Seems like promotion for this show is beginning to pick up. Empire magazine are doing a spread on it in an upcoming issue. They will feature four different covers: one with Galadriel, one of Khazad-Dum, one with (terribly named) hobbits, and a special edition cover of John Howe's concept art for a snow troll. A new article has gone up with the showrunners where they mention they have the five seasons mapped out and know  what the final shot of the show. Also a new image from the show. 

https://www.empireonline.com/tv/news/lord-of-the-rings-power-five-seasons-fully-planned-out-exclusive/

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I suppose it's good that they have the entire series planned out. But what if season 1 has a poor reception? I have a feeling Amazon will not hesitate to step in. 

They say they are the stewards of Tolkien's world for this show, and everything they've created is to keeping in essence of Tolkien's writings, but I have a hard time believing that based on what they seem to be doing with the characters. For example, this Prince Durin IV, who apparently rules Khazad-dûm. Do they not realize how special the name of Durin is to the Dwarves of Moria? Where is King Durin III?

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If Season 1 has a poor reception they are kind of screwed, because they're already deep in production on Season 2. So it'll be halfway through the entire run before they can course-correct.

King Durin III appears briefly in the show before we encounter Prince Durin IV (Owain Arthur), apparently.

I suspect the show will be serviceable but will have several major clanging problems, mostly resulting from compressing the timeline to a single lifespan, which is a truly stupid idea and one I think they are going to be struggling to overcome. As a good example, it means they have to have Durin III (who was King of Khazad-dum when the One Ring was forged) and Durin IV (King of Khazad-dum during the Last Alliance) either right after one another or even overlapping, which violates the suggestion that they could be reincarnations of the same character (though Tolkien never 100% committed to the idea, he left the possibility open).

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If the writing and acting and other elements work for all those who aren't familiar with the Tolkien universe, or for whom their knowledge comes exclusively from Jackson's LOtR -- timelines and characters as Tolkien devised them way back when won't matter for these viewers.  Maybe? :unsure:

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2 minutes ago, Ser Drewy said:

He looks like a 70s-era politican or TV anchor. Very odd hair styling choice, but not the actor's fault. 

Not a fan of the Galadriel cover, just because it's such an undignified sort of position to put her in, but I guess it's more important to communicate badassitude.

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Celebrimbor is appears horribly miscast, probably the worst in this franchise since Frodo. For all of Shadow of Wardor's many many many many many many many many many autrocious faults, their design of Celebrimbor was not as bad (even if it was a rather generic). Also what is he wearing there?

34 minutes ago, Ran said:

Not a fan of the Galadriel cover, just because it's such an undignified sort of position to put her in, but I guess it's more important to communicate badassitude.

Honestly you I did not have the context (and do not pay attention to the ears), you would think that this would be about a Witcher spin-off series following adult Ciri.

Also (from the article)

Quote

And one of the central figures in the story is the character of Celebrimbor. He’s an Elven smith who was manipulated into helping create the Rings Of Power. We’re excited to be bringing him to Middle-earth. He’s very mysterious.”

The Feanoreans are many things, but they are certainly not mysterious (not more so than any other Elves).

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1 hour ago, Ser Drewy said:

I mean… is there anybody who doesn’t look wrong so far? 

I hear hobbits weren’t around in the second age - I didn’t know that so it doesn’t bother me much that they are included. HOWEVER. Will they have something to do in the story that’s relevant and if they do, does their role make sense in the context? And seriously. Costume design. Am I supposed to assume that they are dressed like this because they are prehistoric hobbits and the tailoring skills reflected in the costume design of LOTR developed over the period between the films? 

it gets worse for the dwarves. Let’s put the beard and the rest of the controversy behind us and just accept what we are given. The female monarch of Khazad-dum (which is a mainly underground city in the mountains) is dressed in a short sleeved light fabric gown. Why do you make these costume design choices? 

And the worst of the worst is Galadriel. Even if we accept that this persona is really not Galadriel but a fan-fiction version of her - the costume design still kills it because it doesn’t even make sense for the amazon Galadriel to look like this. And it still completely disregards every visual and written experience we have about what Tolkien elves look like.

It’s kinda like… you can make a Star Wars sequel and dress the Jedi in skintight latex suits and swap their lightsabers for light-whips and send them off to shepherd space pigs on Naboo, and still insist they are Jedi, but you know, 6 bloody movies say otherwise and nobody is ever going to take you or your Jedi seriously if you choose to do that. They just won’t, and it’s not anybody else’s fault (including the actors, yes) or -ism. It’s the decision makers’ fault who commissioned and signed off on these character designs. 

 

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35 minutes ago, ASOIAFrelatedusername said:

Celebrimbor is appears horribly miscast, probably the worst in this franchise since Frodo.

So what was wrong with Frodo?

Also... I couldn't zoom in to see, what were they saying about Batman Returns!  :lol: 

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1 hour ago, Ran said:

He looks like a 70s-era politican or TV anchor. Very odd hair styling choice, but not the actor's fault. 

Not a fan of the Galadriel cover, just because it's such an undignified sort of position to put her in, but I guess it's more important to communicate badassitude.

I think it speaks to a real lack of imagination that only way to denote a character is powerful is to make them a fighter. "Piss and vinegar" Galadriel just reads... fundamentally wrong for her, whatever Age she's in. 

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Wow, Celebrimbor really does look pedestrian. He should have been the one looking badass in a sense, a talented smith who chafed under Gil-Galad's rule until he went and made his own kingdom, likely always obsessed with the legacy of his house. Celebrimbor should be the main character of season 1. 

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1 hour ago, Rhom said:

So what was wrong with Frodo?

Far to young. Frodo in the book is 33 physically, which would probably put him into his mid-twenties appearance wise, and being actually 51 made him the oldest of the Hobbits. Not only did Wood look far too young for Frodo's physical age, he also did not feel like a mature-ish adult.

Not to mention that movie Frodo is a bit of a wimp. Compare, for example, the scene at the Fords in the book with the one in the movie.

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Celebrimbor does have "mid-life crisis Dad" energy, which I think can work for the character. I believe he is younger than Galadriel though, so casting him with an older actor is a bit odd unless they have him going on about the shit he saw during the War of the Jewels (Tolkien mentioned that elves could look older than they were due to stress, which the Fearnorians definitely went through).

I'm not too fussed about the costumes because they often look shit in photography and fine in motion (as in both the Jackson trilogy and GoT). Although we'll see because WoT and the first season of The Witcher did have problems with that.

So far, I'm really not buying the (originally dubious) claims this cost $60 million per episode. We'll have to see how the effects, location shooting and sets look to see if that was money well-spent.

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Agree that Celebrimbor looks awful. Most of that of course is down to their very bad choice of hairstyle for the Elves, which we already saw with Elrond. Its just wrong, and its gonna continue being odd when watching the show, largely because it deviates so much from how Elves have been established as looking by Tolkien himself, by a host of illustrators afterwards, and then by the LoTR and Hobbit movies. It would be equally odd to have beardless dwarves or Hobbits with hair to their waist.

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Tolkien describes the hair-length of maybe like four elves in the whole legendarium, so it's very far from canon that all elves have long hair all the time and never adjust their hair length, or at what speed elves grew their hair. We know Elwe, Olwe, Fingon and Celegorm had long hair at certain moments. Tolkien also drew a picture of Beleg in which he had long-ish hair, maybe shoulder length, but nothing like the very long hair seen in the films. Cirdan is also bearded, but I believe the elf extra who's playing him at the end of RotK is not.

If they are trying to share visual continuity with the Jackson movies, though, then it is out of keeping with that.

There's also the fact that Numenoreans and their descendants were beardless, and Tolkien specifically said that Denethor, Boromir, Faramir, Aragorn and Isildur did not have beards. But for some reason it's fine that they have beards in the movies.

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20 hours ago, ASOIAFrelatedusername said:

Far to young. Frodo in the book is 33 physically, which would probably put him into his mid-twenties appearance wise, and being actually 51 made him the oldest of the Hobbits. Not only did Wood look far too young for Frodo's physical age, he also did not feel like a mature-ish adult.

Not to mention that movie Frodo is a bit of a wimp. Compare, for example, the scene at the Fords in the book with the one in the movie.

I'd hardly call him a wimp. The character is portrayed as vulnerable, which worked pretty well I thought, but possesses a lot of inner strength to go through what he does.

I'm not really a fan of alpha-male heroes. Thought Frodo made a nice change from your usual cinematic hero.

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