Rings of Power: A New Thread to Rule them All

[SeanF]

On 8/17/2022 at 9:51 PM, Zorral said:

Trailers and stills both look like a calendar telling of a folk tale or something.

Tolkien imbibed the Nordic sagas and mythologies into every fiber of his being, from a very early period of his life. So arcs such as the Children of Húrin are where his imagination went.

There are the ages of heroes and gods. But this means Ragnarok and Armageddon are as inevitable as death, as betrayal and greed, confronting a foe that is more powerful, oneself will be a fool. But along the way there are a lot of funny moments, and beer!  Thor drinking the ocean dry in the Giants' Hall, because he thought he was drinking ale, for one instance. But in the end it will end in fire, pestilence and blood.  Then the rebirth.  Note: rebirth, not as in the Christian eschatology, redemption.

This vision infuses Lord of the Rings. But it does not infuse those who are trying to cash in on Tolkien w/o having the first sense of how he got to those 3 books known as The Lord Of the Rings.

LOTR was remarkable.  Only a devout Christian who,  at the same time, found a great deal to admire in paganism, could have written it, I think.

There are Christian themes, in the tale, but Tolkien doesn't preach.  And, a very big theme is the pagan one, that defeat is no refutation, and that even if defeat is inevitable, it's better to die in a good cause than to live on in shame.

[Ser Drewy]

9 hours ago, Werthead said:

I'm starting to wonder if the forging of the Rings is even in Season 1 and will instead be the main storyline of Season 2.

The only problem with that is that it makes the War of Sauron and the Elves the focus of Season 3, meaning you then have to rush through Sauron's imprisonment, corruption, the Downfall, the escape, the founding of the Realms in Exile, the Last Alliance and the final battle in two seasons, which would be very rushed.

I've wondered the same. Which feels bit odd, to be honest. The Forging of the One kinda feels like the natural climax in my mind. 

[Isis]

We know the show will tell the story of the last alliance. So it was never going to end with the creation of the One Ring. 

[ASOIAFrelatedusername]

Honestly we should completely drop the expectation that the timeline of events in the show is going to merely be a compressed version of Tolkien's. At this point I am fully expecting that Sauron will give Pharazon a Ring and incite him towards civil war against Miriel with evil Numenoreans, that the showrunners will combine the War of the Elves and Sauron and the War of the Last Alliance with Pharazon and Celebrimbor joining in and dying there, and the Downfall of Numenor happening at the sasme time as Sauron's.

[Ser Drewy]

51 minutes ago, Isis said:

We know the show will tell the story of the last alliance. So it was never going to end with the creation of the One Ring. 

I just meant Season 1. 

[Clueless Northman]

3 hours ago, Isis said:

We know the show will tell the story of the last alliance. So it was never going to end with the creation of the One Ring. 

Season 1 should lead up to the forging of the rings.

Heck, the entire last season should be about the realms in exile and the Last Alliance, and the Fall of Numenor would be the finale episode of the penultimate season.

Season 2 would be the war for the rings until Sauron is repelled. Season 3 would be the growing of Numenor until Pharazon takes over more or less - and the 7 and 9 corrupted by Sauron's rings. Season 4 would be Pharazon defying Sauron and taking him back to Numenor, and the corruption of Numenor.

Of course, that would be if you actually want to do a good job and therefore have genuinely the rights for Second Age, Numenor and the Rings. This basically means having full access to Akallabeth and Rings of Power chapters. Otherwise, you can only butcher the story and only a maniac or a greedy fool who doesn't care about Tolkien and source material would actually make such an endeavour.

[Isis]

7 hours ago, Ser Drewy said:

I just meant Season 1. 

Ah, ok.  I think that might be at the end of S2 perhaps. As that would leave Sauron at war with the elves &  goes to Numenor (S3), downfall of Numenor (S4), the last alliance (S5). Roughly.  

[Garlan the Gallant]

Apologies if this is not the right part of the forum to discuss this, but I can't seem to find a thread that is covering the sale of the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit rights to the Embracer Group. The coverage I have found online has been pretty crappy on this (though Wert had a great post about it). 

The two things that I don't understand, that I would love clarity on, are: 1) Why sell to the Embracer Group when Amazon would probably pay substantially more money for the rights and 2) Why did the sale occur before the ruling of whether the animated Rohan movie allows Warner Brothers to retain the rights to the movie?

I would love answers or at least speculation for these two questions!

[Werthead]

50 minutes ago, Garlan the Gallant said:

Apologies if this is not the right part of the forum to discuss this, but I can't seem to find a thread that is covering the sale of the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit rights to the Embracer Group. The coverage I have found online has been pretty crappy on this (though Wert had a great post about it). 

The two things that I don't understand, that I would love clarity on, are: 1) Why sell to the Embracer Group when Amazon would probably pay substantially more money for the rights and 2) Why did the sale occur before the ruling of whether the animated Rohan movie allows Warner Brothers to retain the rights to the movie?

I would love answers or at least speculation for these two questions!

For 1) it is possible that Amazon were not interested, or wanted to wait to see how RoP does before doubling down on buying into the Tolkien business more and the SZC moved without them. Another possibility is that Amazon were prohibited from getting involved due to some kind of no-competition clause in their existing contract with New Line/WB.

For 2), it's actually not entirely germane. Middle-earth Enterprises still holds the film rights and these are still licensed out to WB/New Line for the War of the Rohirrim movie. If it is ruled that WB still has the Middle-earth movie rights, then a large chunk of cash still goes to Embracer instead of the SZC, so they still benefit from it, plus Embracer gets all the ancillary stuff like control over certain merchandising.

I'm going to guess that the SZC actually got wind of the fact their case to retake control of the movie rights was not going to go anywhere, which explains the sudden price drop (from $2 billion to $700 million) and Embracer deciding it was still worth it for control of the video game rights, which is their main area of interest, and all this guff about character-based movies is simple tough talk which they know they can't sell (or they're planning to work with WB/New Line on said films anyway).

[Garlan the Gallant]

44 minutes ago, Werthead said:

For 1) it is possible that Amazon were not interested, or wanted to wait to see how RoP does before doubling down on buying into the Tolkien business more and the SZC moved without them. Another possibility is that Amazon were prohibited from getting involved due to some kind of no-competition clause in their existing contract with New Line/WB.

For 2), it's actually not entirely germane. Middle-earth Enterprises still holds the film rights and these are still licensed out to WB/New Line for the War of the Rohirrim movie. If it is ruled that WB still has the Middle-earth movie rights, then a large chunk of cash still goes to Embracer instead of the SZC, so they still benefit from it, plus Embracer gets all the ancillary stuff like control over certain merchandising.

I'm going to guess that the SZC actually got wind of the fact their case to retake control of the movie rights was not going to go anywhere, which explains the sudden price drop (from $2 billion to $700 million) and Embracer deciding it was still worth it for control of the video game rights, which is their main area of interest, and all this guff about character-based movies is simple tough talk which they know they can't sell (or they're planning to work with WB/New Line on said films anyway).

Thanks Wert! Much appreciated.

For further speculation, do you think there is any possibility of Amazon buying the rights to the The Silmarillion, The Unfinished Tales, and The History of Middle Earth if RoP does well from the Tolkien Estate? While there's not a lot of meat on the bones for what they bought for the Second Age, there is a ton of material not yet shown to the public from the First Age.

[Ser Drewy]

A new Khazad-Dum clip.

[Isis]

Doing a better job of marketing the show than Amazon

 

[Ran]

12 hours ago, Ser Drewy said:

A new Khazad-Dum clip.

Wow.

If I just heard the voices, and didn't know the location and the characters, I'd assumed this was amusing dinner chatter in the Shire. Felt very Hobbit-like.

[Ser Drewy]

Presumably the main and final trailer: 

I feel like Amazon are doing a pretty poor job of explaining what this story actually is.

[Ran]

23 minutes ago, Ser Drewy said:

I feel like Amazon are doing a pretty poor job of explaining what this story actually is.

On the contrary, I think they are doing a very good job of showing its substance.

[Ser Drewy]

30 minutes ago, Ran said:

On the contrary, I think they are doing a very good job of showing its substance.

Heh. 

Skimming the trailer, the image of Meteor Man and what I presume are some kind of warg is giving me Gandalf vibes. Feels like this could be Amazon's version of him doing fire magic and scaring the wargs away after Caradhras. 

This is something I've been noticing with this show: they really like evoking First Age or Third Age stuff.  Like the Hill of the Slain-inspired shot, or the obvious nods to the Helcaraxe.  I feel like that just cheapens those moments.

And some of the fight scenes are giving me serious The Hobbit Trilogy vibes. 

[IFR]

38 minutes ago, Ser Drewy said:

Presumably the main and final trailer: 

I feel like Amazon are doing a pretty poor job of explaining what this story actually is.

Wow. I'm not generally a conspiracy theorist, but it almost feels like Amazon Studios were able to scry my thoughts so they could design a trailer that was made to disappoint and irritate me as perfectly as possible.

[Corvinus85]

23 minutes ago, Ser Drewy said:

Heh. 

Skimming the trailer, the image of Meteor Man and what I presume are some kind of warg is giving me Gandalf vibes. Feels like this could be Amazon's version of him doing fire magic and scaring the wargs away after Caradhras. 

This is something I've been noticing with this show: they really like evoking First Age or Third Age stuff.  Like the Hill of the Slain-inspired shot, or the obvious nods to the Helcaraxe.  I feel like that just cheapens those moments.

And some of the fight scenes are giving me serious The Hobbit Trilogy vibes. 

Or the whole idea of the Elves having built a watch-tower in the 'southlands' and keeping a watch on the descendants of Easterlings. Much like how Gondor kept a watch on Mordor at the beginning of the Third Age.

Also, Finrod Felagund hunted the enemy and now Galadriel took up the job? mkay

[Corvinus85]

I'm just wondering why spend so little time promoting what the title is supposed to mean. Like Ran said, they're promoting the substance or really lack of it.

[The hairy bear]

With each new trailer, my anticipation for The Rings of Power diminishes. I really would come to watch the pilot in a much more positive mood if no trailer had been released.

Do they really believe that they can win the audience with aesthetics and brand name alone?