The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

[Ser Drewy]

First clip from Rings of Power

[Corvinus85]

The other elf looks like he never saw the light of the Trees. (maybe he didn't)

[Darryk]

Are they supposed to know Sauron is a bad guy yet?

I feel like I'd be looking forward to this series if it wasn't Tolkien, but because it's Tolkien some of the potential story decisions are doing my head in.  If the meteor man is Gandalf then 

[Corvinus85]

9 minutes ago, Darryk said:

Are they supposed to know Sauron is a bad guy yet?

I feel like I'd be looking forward to this series if it wasn't Tolkien, but because it's Tolkien some of the potential story decisions are doing my head in.  If the meteor man is Gandalf then 

Sauron was a known quantity in the First Age. The elves know him. It's the fact that he disguises himself as Annatar that allows him to succeed.

[Calibandar]

 

Still feels like he's either Sauron or an Istari of some kind going by everything he's saying there.

[Calibandar]

1 hour ago, Corvinus85 said:

The other elf looks like he never saw the light of the Trees. (maybe he didn't)

Think thats Halbrand , human character who travels with Galadriel.

[Corvinus85]

16 minutes ago, Calibandar said:

Think thats Halbrand , human character who travels with Galadriel.

No, Halbrand has longer hair, and I think she only meets him after the ship wreck. I think this scene is something early in the first episode.

[Calibandar]

Another featurette, in which the filmmakers say there will be an actual Fellowship.

 

https://www.etonline.com/the-rings-of-power-details-a-new-era-in-middle-earth-every-good-quest-needs-a-fellowship-exclusive

[Ran]

2 minutes ago, Calibandar said:

Another featurette, in which the filmmakers say there will be an actual Fellowship.

It's almost audacious how dedicated they are to making the 2nd Age as familiar as possible to LotR fans. It takes a special kind of brilliance to be so lacking in imagination when given such a canvas to play with.

[Frey family reunion]

4 minutes ago, Ran said:

It's almost audacious how dedicated they are to making the 2nd Age as familiar as possible to LotR fans. It takes a special kind of brilliance to be so lacking in imagination when given such a canvas to play with.

Sigh.  It's kind of like the lack of imagination that Disney showed when they slavishly repeated the beats of the original Star Wars trilogy for their sequels.

[Werthead]

8 minutes ago, Calibandar said:

Another featurette, in which the filmmakers say there will be an actual Fellowship.

https://www.etonline.com/the-rings-of-power-details-a-new-era-in-middle-earth-every-good-quest-needs-a-fellowship-exclusive

Cheesy.

I hope they mean that any group of characters who join forces to go on a journey is just called a fellowship and they don't actually have a whole grandiose scene where the "Fellowship of Fucking Up Sauron Cultists" is explicitly formed (I think one of the Middle-earth tabletop RPGs did this, where instead of "the party" they were called "the fellowship,").

[Corvinus85]

Very dismissive of The Hobbit. What happened to calling it a company? The Company of Galadriel. Or the Company of Meteor-Man.

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 hour ago, Frey family reunion said:

Sigh.  It's kind of like the lack of imagination that Disney showed when they slavishly repeated the beats of the original Star Wars trilogy for their sequels.

Yes.  That’s one of my complaints with most of Disney’s Star Wars shows.

[Ser Drewy]

2 hours ago, Ran said:

It's almost audacious how dedicated they are to making the 2nd Age as familiar as possible to LotR fans. It takes a special kind of brilliance to be so lacking in imagination when given such a canvas to play with.

It's pretty odd since Tolkien's own overview of the Second Age gave it pretty distinct tonal and thematic identities across its period. I feel very little we've heard about Rings of Power so far seems at all aligned with how Tolkien himself described the era. 

Also am I the only one thinking Galadriel, Tar-Miriel and what looks possibly like Bronwyn in this new video all being sword-wielding warriors looks... a bit lacking imagination for what powerful women can be?

[ASOIAFrelatedusername]

5 hours ago, Ser Drewy said:

First clip from Rings of Power

Pretty convenient that not only is part of that rock still hot enough after centuries, especially when the rest of the rock is cold enough that water freezes within seconds, but also that the heat signature is in the shape of the Eye

It is just dumb writing masquerading under pretty sounding words. If that is supposed to be indicative of the show's writing quality, then well at least we were forewarned.

3 hours ago, Calibandar said:

 

https://www.etonline.com/the-rings-of-power-details-a-new-era-in-middle-earth-every-good-quest-needs-a-fellowship-exclusive

I would have expected this too be some pr bs about how the team are such good friends (and possibly about how only 11% of them are liable to attack their fellows for power), but their really are that committed to pandering. I expected nothing and was still disappointed.

[The Marquis de Leech]

We don't know the context of the "Fellowship" here. It's not as if Tolkien didn't use his own groups of travellers on a Quest outside Frodo's one (Beren, Luthien, and Huan, Thorin and Company).

9 hours ago, ASOIAFrelatedusername said:

Pretty convenient that not only is part of that rock still hot enough after centuries, especially when the rest of the rock is cold enough that water freezes within seconds, but also that the heat signature is in the shape of the Eye

Pretty convenient that Bilbo Baggins randomly puts his hand on the sodding One Ring in the tunnels of the Misty Mountains?

I mean, we're dealing with magic and story symbolism. If you're going with a Sauron Was Here symbol, what else would you use?  

[The Marquis de Leech]

10 hours ago, Ser Drewy said:

Also am I the only one thinking Galadriel, Tar-Miriel and what looks possibly like Bronwyn in this new video all being sword-wielding warriors looks... a bit lacking imagination for what powerful women can be?

Galadriel's the warrior. Tar-Miriel is, well, a Queen, and Bronwyn is supposed to be a healer.

[ASOIAFrelatedusername]

1 hour ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

Pretty convenient that Bilbo Baggins randomly puts his hand on the sodding One Ring in the tunnels of the Misty Mountains?

I mean, we're dealing with magic and story symbolism. If you're going with a Sauron Was Here symbol, what else would you use?  

It was a incredible coincidence that Bilbo found the Ring, yes. You might even call it a plot hole if you were so inclined. However that coincidence only required physical proximity between Bilbo and the Ring (and Gollum). Notice how I am not complaining about how Galadriel and company have stumbled on the cave where Sauron was long ago. I am complaining about something that does not appear to make any sense within the laws of physics or the laws of magic. Recall how the heat from Sauron's Hand faded from the Ring in less two years. Since we reasonably can assume that the heat remaining requires a strong metaphysical connection between Sauron and the object, why does this random rock stay warm enough for that trick to work after (I presume) centuries, but the One Ring does not?

And yes, it is problematic that the heat signature forms the Eye symbol. If you leave footprints or handprints they are not in the shape of your initials. Unless you want to say that Sauron carefully traced the lines of his own symbol onto that rock or specifically used magic so that the heat signature would have that shape, any trace he left behind would not look like the Eye.

It does not make any sense.

[Werthead]

7 hours ago, ASOIAFrelatedusername said:

the laws of magic.

Tolkien had no laws of magic, and would likely recoil in horror from the suggestion (I suspect he and Sanderson would not get on). Magic in Tolkien works pretty much how he intends it to, and sparingly.

Quote

It does not make any sense.

The magic of Durin's Door remained intact and apparently fully functional for tens of thousands of years.

The level of vagueness in Tolkien's magic pretty much allows for anything, as long as it's not too overtly in-your-face and powerful (long before GRRM, Tolkien was the master of "low magic" as a setting).

[ASOIAFrelatedusername]

26 minutes ago, Werthead said:

The magic of Durin's Door remained intact and apparently fully functional for tens of thousands of years.

The door were INTENDED to have an inscription that shows up under specific circumstances. Are you saying that Sauron intentionally carved his symbol on a random rock?

28 minutes ago, Werthead said:

The level of vagueness in Tolkien's magic pretty much allows for anything,

Really? Even with the admitted vagueness of Tolkien you can not adopt an "anything goes approach". The heat of Sauron's hand is proven in universe to fade within a timespan of less than two years and that was with the item Sauron shared the greatest connection with.