The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

[Werthead]

5 minutes ago, RhaenysBee said:

anyway, more photos, more random thoughts: 
the group photo around the table feels like Gil-Galad is hosting human, halfling and dwarf emissaries. I just don’t understand the concept of the Harfoots. The visual impression is overall a throwback to early 2000s sparkly digital art. 

I like the dinner party picture, it has a good vibe and the set looks quite ornate and visually impressive (the sets are so far doing a lot of heavy lifting for the only okay costumes and the sometimes-plasticy CGI).

The Harfoots, I strongly suspect, were studio-mandated. "How will people know it's Middle-earth without Hobbits?" At least they seem to be vaguely trying to fit in with what Tolkien said of the pre-Shire Hobbits, even if it's a bit early for them to be showing up in the NW of Middle-earth. And they seem to be front-loading this by saying that the Harfoots aren't very important to this story if no tales of them survive into the later eras.

[Corvinus85]

14 minutes ago, RhaenysBee said:

anyway, more photos, more random thoughts: 
the group photo around the table feels like Gil-Galad is hosting human, halfling and dwarf emissaries. I just don’t understand the concept of the Harfoots. The visual impression is overall a throwback to early 2000s sparkly digital art. 

Where are these photos?

[Ran]

27 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

Where are these photos?

These are some of the photos via Apple News.

The quote about every episode being full of action and more action than other shows that are around... not exactly what I think of when I think Tolkien.

[RhaenysBee]

55 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I like the dinner party picture, it has a good vibe and the set looks quite ornate and visually impressive (the sets are so far doing a lot of heavy lifting for the only okay costumes and the sometimes-plasticy CGI).

The Harfoots, I strongly suspect, were studio-mandated. "How will people know it's Middle-earth without Hobbits?" At least they seem to be vaguely trying to fit in with what Tolkien said of the pre-Shire Hobbits, even if it's a bit early for them to be showing up in the NW of Middle-earth. And they seem to be front-loading this by saying that the Harfoots aren't very important to this story if no tales of them survive into the later eras.

I’ll be curious what these scenes look like live. I assume the photos are edited to a varying degree and based on them everything looks disappointingly sterile and digital art-like to me. Maybe the live scenes will have a bit more grit and reality.

Yes I read that. What I don’t really get is the visual design that was created for them. From what I gather they are supposed to be nomadic halflings, which does show in the dwellings we see in the images. I suppose we will find out more about their culture, but visually the fairy-core aesthetic and the potato-sacks or dirt makeup they wear don’t really come together for me and neither feels in line with a nomadic people. I may be way off bass and there may be a perfectly sensible context for the fairy-core photos. I can’t take off negative bias glasses I have for this production. But let us all be positively surprised when the show airs. 

[Corvinus85]

2 hours ago, Ran said:

These are some of the photos via Apple News.

The quote about every episode being full of action and more action than other shows that are around... not exactly what I think of when I think Tolkien.

Well, on the bright side, they've shown GoT how to make the Kingsguard.  Gil-Galad of course needs to have nine. The Fellowship of the Kingsguard.

I do like the look of the Harfoots. Definitely more primitive Hobbits.

[Werthead]

9 hours ago, RhaenysBee said:

Yes I read that. What I don’t really get is the visual design that was created for them. From what I gather they are supposed to be nomadic halflings, which does show in the dwellings we see in the images. I suppose we will find out more about their culture, but visually the fairy-core aesthetic and the potato-sacks or dirt makeup they wear don’t really come together for me and neither feels in line with a nomadic people. I may be way off bass and there may be a perfectly sensible context for the fairy-core photos. I can’t take off negative bias glasses I have for this production. But let us all be positively surprised when the show airs. 

One of the Wheel of Time complaints was that the people looked too clean and too neat to be living in a supposed peasant village (which I think shows more about what people know about cliches than they do about the reality of living in a semi-medieval environment, where oddly people didn't want to walk around all day covered in shit). It is amusing with RoP that people are complaining the opposite, especially since it's possible their poorer appearance might be after a hard day's travelling and we see them looking much neater and cleaner in other pictures, perhaps during some kind of dinner or ceremony.

[Ser Drewy]

12 hours ago, Ran said:

These are some of the photos via Apple News.

The quote about every episode being full of action and more action than other shows that are around... not exactly what I think of when I think Tolkien.

Honestly, that sounds like a recipe for overkill. 

And yeah, not exactly the style one thinks of when reading Tolkien. Tolkien allowed quite long passages to go between action beats in his work. 

[RhaenysBee]

6 hours ago, Werthead said:

One of the Wheel of Time complaints was that the people looked too clean and too neat to be living in a supposed peasant village (which I think shows more about what people know about cliches than they do about the reality of living in a semi-medieval environment, where oddly people didn't want to walk around all day covered in shit). It is amusing with RoP that people are complaining the opposite, especially since it's possible their poorer appearance might be after a hard day's travelling and we see them looking much neater and cleaner in other pictures, perhaps during some kind of dinner or ceremony.

I don’t know Wheel of Time, I never read or watched any version of it. I suppose cleanness is an overall complaint as editing has taken a new level in the past ten years. Everything is overly refined and perfected, it hardly looks like real people in real costumes in real sets, like 90s and even 00s films used to. 

As for the Harfoots. I can believe that the characters are traveling and get sweaty and dirty - of course they would - just as long as the layer of regular makeup doesn’t show through. Again, the story may treat this with adequate consistency, their environment, lifestyle and appearance. It’s hard to judge the whole based on the photos only. The photos themselves scream over-edited, artificial, sterile and miles away from the known LOTR aesthetic, so I’m not surprised that there’s little love lost for them. But the live shots don’t necessarily have to be that way. 

[Garlan the Gallant]

Is Amazon also planning on buying the rights that went up for sale in February? I haven’t heard anything on that front in a while. 
 

While WoT was crap, I’d love to see Tulkas pin Melkor during the War for the Sake of Elves and I feel like this is my only shot.

[Ran]

More info at Deadline. Brian Cox will voice Helm, and Miranda Otto will reprise her role as Éowyn to narrate portions of the film, and that Gaia Wise will voice "Hera" or perhaps "Hèra", Helm's daughter who will be involved in the fighting and seems to be a primary character while Helm . (For those who don't recall their history, Freca attempting to threaten Helm into giving his daughter in marraige to Freca's son Wulf led to the conflict, when Helm took Freca outside of Edoras and killed him with a single punch).

I'm a bit confused by the use of "Hera", which is not at all an Anglo-Saxon name, but I suspect that it's one letter from "Hero" is what made them go with that. OTOH, I feel like maybe having Hild, Helm's sister, have her place leading the defense somewhere (presumably after Prince Haleth dies in Edoras) would make more sense and help set up Fréaláf's role. But I guess they figured a middle-aged woman would be less interesting as a primary heroine for the audience.

[Werthead]

7 hours ago, Garlan the Gallant said:

Is Amazon also planning on buying the rights that went up for sale in February? I haven’t heard anything on that front in a while. 
 

While WoT was crap, I’d love to see Tulkas pin Melkor during the War for the Sake of Elves and I feel like this is my only shot.

Warner Brothers have disputed that the rights are available. War of the Rohirrim was created as a way of holding onto the rights and according to WB they have fulfilled the terms of the contract, so the rights stay with them. The Saul Zaentz Company has disagreed. The sale of the rights is on hold whilst the involved parties go through arbitration. If that doesn't work, legal action may result.

The film and TV rights to The Silmarillion remain with the Tolkien Estate and have never been sold, so that has no bearing on them.

[Ser Drewy]

Our first look at the show's Orcs https://www.ign.com/articles/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-rings-of-power-orcs-exclusive?utm_source=twitter

I admit the Prince of Persia looking one threw me, but they seem pretty good overall. 

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, Ser Drewy said:

Our first look at the show's Orcs https://www.ign.com/articles/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-rings-of-power-orcs-exclusive?utm_source=twitter

I admit the Prince of Persia looking one threw me, but they seem pretty good overall. 

Yeah, they look okay. Jackson's orcs were so all over the place in design so having ones that look kind of similar but also different is okay (and Tolkien of course had different types anyway). At least they don't look like the ones in the Hobbit movies (urgh).

[Darryk]

Yeah the orcs look pretty much how you'd expect. I think they accepted they couldn't top WETA.

I get the impression Amazon interfere in the process more than Netflix and HBO do. Forcing them to put hobbits in (as someone in the thread earlier suggested they did) is the kind of thing Disney would do.

I also sensed a lot of interference in WoT.

I guess what can you expect of a company run by a megalomaniac.

[Werthead]

6 minutes ago, Darryk said:

Yeah the orcs look pretty much how you'd expect. I think they accepted they couldn't top WETA

The article does point out how tech has come on and the prosthetics are a lot more advanced this time around, cling to the face much more closely and can give the actor much more freedom of expression through the mask.

Quote

 

I also sensed a lot of interference in WoT.

 

They had "thousands" of notes for the first season and apparently very little for the second, once they'd kind of proved they knew what they were about (in at least making it a success for Amazon).

[SeanF]

On 6/10/2022 at 9:00 AM, Werthead said:

One of the Wheel of Time complaints was that the people looked too clean and too neat to be living in a supposed peasant village (which I think shows more about what people know about cliches than they do about the reality of living in a semi-medieval environment, where oddly people didn't want to walk around all day covered in shit). It is amusing with RoP that people are complaining the opposite, especially since it's possible their poorer appearance might be after a hard day's travelling and we see them looking much neater and cleaner in other pictures, perhaps during some kind of dinner or ceremony.

It’s easy to forget how recent are fitted showers in the UK.  When I was growing up, hardly anyone had them.  You took a bath, or typically, rubbed yourself down with a flannel.  Baths were a drag in medieval societies, unless you had access to a bathhouse or sauna, but flannels were widely used.

[Werthead]

4 hours ago, SeanF said:

It’s easy to forget how recent are fitted showers in the UK.  When I was growing up, hardly anyone had them.  You took a bath, or typically, rubbed yourself down with a flannel.  Baths were a drag in medieval societies, unless you had access to a bathhouse or sauna, but flannels were widely used.

Indeed, but baths are extremely ubiquitous in the world of the WoT, and but not quite so much in Middle-earth (and probably not as a major feature of a nomadic people, although they would be aware of the appeal of cleanliness).

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

7 hours ago, SeanF said:

It’s easy to forget how recent are fitted showers in the UK.  When I was growing up, hardly anyone had them.  You took a bath, or typically, rubbed yourself down with a flannel.  Baths were a drag in medieval societies, unless you had access to a bathhouse or sauna, but flannels were widely used.

What?  You rubbed yourself down with a flannel towel instead of bathing?

[SeanF]

20 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

What?  You rubbed yourself down with a flannel towel instead of bathing?

A wet flannel with soap.  That was the norm, in the 70’s and 80’s.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

24 minutes ago, SeanF said:

A wet flannel with soap.  That was the norm, in the 70’s and 80’s.

Thank you.  That makes more sense.