Rings of Power: A New Thread to Rule them All

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

7 hours ago, Werthead said:

No, they've only greenlit a second season. If the show falls massively below expectations then they won't make the five seasons regardless. It would be quite humiliating I think for them to cancel it, after Bezos staked so much on it, but they also won't keep throwing away vast sums of money.

I actually don't think they'll care that much. Obviously they don't want it to be a failure, but I don't think the main goal with this series is to get a real return on investment. 

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I actually don't think they'll care that much. Obviously they don't want it to be a failure, but I don't think the main goal with this series is to get a real return on investment. 

Well, the main goal was clearly for this to be the tentpole for their streaming platform, so yeah I think they'll care quite a bit.

[Myrddin]

So, Elrond is so far into the friend zone with Galadriel, he marries her daughter instead?

[The Bard of Banefort]

The big question now is whether we should keep calling this Rings of Power or if we should just give up and call it Lord of the Rings.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

53 minutes ago, Mithras said:

I think the meteor man could also be Saruman. He came first after all.

Not in the second age and he sure as shit didn’t arrive via “meteor”.

[Ser Drewy]

16 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Not in the second age and he sure as shit didn’t arrive via “meteor”.

I mean, neither Gandalf or Sauron arrived via meteor either. It's just a bit of silliness the show is going with. I guess they liked the idea of maybe giving the "Man in the Moon" hobbit rhyme an actual backstory.

[DMC]

3 minutes ago, Ser Drewy said:

I mean, neither Gandalf or Sauron arrived via meteor either. It's just a bit of silliness the show is going with.

It would make sense if it's Earendil!

[Myrddin]

Not that arriving in a meteor makes much sense, but I never really "got" how the wizards appeared in Middle Earth in the first place. Or how Gandalf died and was sent back but whiter. I just kind of accepted it an moved on.

I do like how they visually handled the ship returning to the west (not the Galadriel bailing into the water part). The light portal was a good visualization.

[The hairy bear]

10 hours ago, ASOIAFrelatedusername said:

- Speaking of Feanor: The Oath, the Kinslaying and the Helcaraxe are missing. The former is excusable because it does not directly pertain to Galadriel, but the latter are not. If they want todelve into her backstory, then such defining events need to be included. Not having the rights is no excuse.

Well, I'd give them a pass for not including what they are legally forbiden to include.

It's not like there are not plenty of other fronts where we can bash them.

10 hours ago, ASOIAFrelatedusername said:

Lindon looks suitably pretty, yet why do we need random Quenya? The only that this does for me is making writers come off as pretentious.

A benevolent interpretation would be to assume that all elves casually talk Sindarin among themselves (that we hear as English), and Quenya remains untranslated. I think it works with what we've seen so far (the battlecries from the First Age, and Elrond deferring to Galadriel welcoming her in her native language at Lindon).

10 hours ago, ASOIAFrelatedusername said:

The elves should really have been replaced by the Numenoreans as the occupying force (well the entirety of the show should have been rewritten). It would make so much more sense and you still could have had a forbidden love story. Hell you could have had Isildur and Bronwyn hook up if you wanted to involve a canon character and give Isildur some conflict (and appeal to the casuals).

It's too early to tell where they want to go with that subplot (although I dread it). But this suggestion seems a far more interesting, realistic and fitting to the setting than what they are doing.

9 hours ago, Ser Drewy said:

It's... kinda eh. I didn't see much point in the First Age prologue - seems an expensive way to do something that could have been explained in two minutes. Not at all a fan of the way they present Finrod's death. Or the weird way they chose to borrow iconic FA scenes for rather indistinct moments (Oath of Feanor, Hill of Slain). Music was nice, though. It certainly looks expensive in many places.

It seems as if they felt obliged to do a prologue (narrated by Galadriel) just because LotR had one. It could have worked, but I agree that it came across as a little bit weak.

I assume the "weird way" of depicting First Age iconic scenes that you mention is due to the lack of rights. The appendixes do not mention the Oath of Feanor or the Hill of Slain, so they can't show something that can be unequivocally identifiable. For this reason, I guess, they introduce major variations such as having Finrond taking the "Oath", or having Galadriel stack the helms.

[ASOIAFrelatedusername]

9 minutes ago, The hairy bear said:

Well, I'd give them a pass for not including what they are legally forbiden to include.

It's not like there are not plenty of other fronts where we can bash them.

Well then maybe they should not have chosen to set their show in the 2nd Age in the first place. Or have Galadriel be a site character and told the prologue from another perspective where the ommitted material is not so important. That is also the issue with Galadriel's mangled character: Nobody was forcing them to include Galadriel as a main character, she could have been a side character in the Eregion plotline for example.

9 minutes ago, The hairy bear said:

A benevolent interpretation would be to assume that all elves casually talk Sindarin among themselves (that we hear as English), and Quenya remains untranslated. I think it works with what we've seen so far (the battlecries from the First Age, and Elrond deferring to Galadriel welcoming her in her native language at Lindon).

Well personally I just find it irratating and think they are sounding pretentious (I running with the elves and there constant spouting of nonesense that is supposed to sound profound)

The fundamental issue with the show is I think the same as with Jackson Hobbit. They want to needlessly force the source material into something that it is not and can not be without losing its identity.

 

[Argonath Diver]

Well my brother and I watched it and had a blast.

I haven't read the Silmarillion in a dozen years or more, despite a Tolkien themed user name. 

We laughed at a bunch of the ridiculous bits (her jumping off and swimming was a chefs kiss, wow was that a silly idea of the writers). For the shows sake we agreed that the ship was taking a westbound wormhole a hundred miles off the coast of Lindon, not on the far side of the Great Sea. 

Like Zorral, I suppose this forum isn't the place for non-book aficionados to comment on the show. I'm here for the spectacle and dwarves playing a hilarious dwarf drinking challenge. Will continue to have a blast despite the timeline truncation and elf ninja chicanery that got an eye roll. I do empathize with our many true Tolkien scholars here, as the show was certainly dumbed down for the masses compared to his work.

Frankly I had a hell of a lot better time watching it than the Hot D, but i know I'll remain a tiny minority on that opinion here.

[Werthead]

48 minutes ago, DMC said:

It would make sense if it's Earendil!

I think Earendil would be unequivocally elf-looking (since Elrond is), so I suspect not.

Also, I think people are missing the fact that the only people who saw the meteor were in Middle-earth. Galadriel and her team did not see it, and they were right next to Valinor. So I think it is more likely that that meteor originated from elsewhere, probably NW of Lindon if it could be seen by Gil-galad, then Team Elrond, then in Rhovanion. The origin point is more likely in the far NW of Middle-earth or even Helcaraxe (unless it can change direction mid-flight, then it could have come from anywhere).

[DMC]

8 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Also, I think people are missing the fact that the only people who saw the meteor were in Middle-earth. Galadriel and her team did not see it, and they were right next to Valinor. So I think it is more likely that that meteor originated from elsewhere

Well, I hope you're right, but she was pretty busy at the time.  Just because she didn't see it (or even we didn't see her see it) doesn't mean it didn't come from ~ Valinor.  I doubt it, but that could be intentional misdirection.

[SeanF]

9 hours ago, Werthead said:

It was okay. Khazad-dum I think was the standout, Owain Arthur was outstanding as Prince Durin, moving from proud dwarven bluster to a family man to a friend angry at having been left hanging for too long. Dwarves have been very undersold in any fantasy TV show or movie that uses them, even LotR to some extent (as Gimli devolved into comic relief in the movie trilogy and in the book was just kind of hanging out there), and one of the sole saving graces of the Hobbit trilogy was how it tried to give the dwarves more depth and more of a sense of civilisation (although they then got sidetracked by the romance and battle scenes and kind of forgot about the dwarves in the company in the end). This tried the same thing and was much more successful.

The Southlands I think was the weakest story of the bunch. None of the actors were very good (Arondir is the weakest link in the main cast), the plot dynamics were weak and the Arondir/Bronwyn romance didn't really gel as we are introduced it mid-flow. It would have made more sense to have had it established from the start here. The idea of having elves keeping an eye on former allies of Morgoth/Sauron is also fine, but keeping that going 1700 (or 3400, depending on how they're treating the timeline) years later with zero sign of Sauron being around feels extreme, even for the elves. 

The elves were mostly okay, at least to start with. Elrond is fine, but the actor was a much better Young Ned Stark. Gil-galad was okay, probably the most Jacksonian of the elven performances, the depictions of Lindon and Ost-in-Edhil did feel inverted (Lindon should be the glittering city by the sea, Ost-in-Edhil should be smaller, although being over-engineered did feel on-point for Celebrimbor). Morfydd Clark was occasionally outstanding as Galadriel (the light Welsh accent and rolling Rs felt appropriate for the language) but hamstrung by an odd script that tried very hard to spell out her motivations but seemed to leave them confused. There's a very interesting idea here about elves' immortal memories making it difficult to move on from trauma and pain, but I feel that's probably better-handled in a Scott Bakker adaptation (ha!) and not a Tolkien one.

G

I did read a very good fanfic about Galadriel's trauma and pain.  In this case, it revolves around her guilt and horror over resorting to cannibalism during the crossing of the Helcaraxe.  What makes it far worse for her is remembering how good dead elves tasted when she was starving.

It really brought home how much of a curse elven memory is.  For us, time is a healer.  For elves, it can never be.

[Clueless Northman]

1 hour ago, Myrddin said:

Not that arriving in a meteor makes much sense, but I never really "got" how the wizards appeared in Middle Earth in the first place. Or how Gandalf died and was sent back but whiter. I just kind of accepted it an moved on.

I don't think Tolkien was explicit about it. Still, he said that Cirdan was one of the first who saw/greeted Gandalf, and he gave him his ring because he knew where he was coming from, more or less who he was, and why he was sent to Middle-Earth. Meaning either he came as a spirit Maia and took physical form again in the Havens, or he came by boat. I assumed the latter for a very long time, but reading the Nature of Middle-Earth and parts of HOME, the former might be a possibility. 2nd coming was more obvious, his spirit was sent back to his old discarded body on Zirakzigil, inhabited it once again, more or less healed during the process.

 

1 hour ago, ASOIAFrelatedusername said:

Well then maybe they should not have chosen to set their show in the 2nd Age in the first place.

This. Forever this.

[Zorral]

1st ep, which I saw after the second one, due to who knows what happened there on ap, about which there seems to be no reporting:

 

@Lord Varys– Laff me, laff at me, laff at me!  Say, “I told you so!” You have the right. 

I am referring to the books to say why I liked the first episode very much. And as it the first episode should, made me appreciated the second episode more.  I put this all behind spoiler tags so nobody has to read it.

Quote

 

The poetry that threads throughout LOTR concerning Middle Earth's distant past provided much to the reader’s sense of wonder and enchantment, the larger-than-life heroism of an age of history/legend. But the Rings of Power is the present of that Age of Legend. In this ROP present, it is not enchanted and lovely for those fighting the battles and run over by the wars, any more than is it is in the later poetry made from past battles and wars for those living and dying, and doing the fighting and surviving.

However, the first episode does provide us with the enchantment and wonder of the poetry, tales and epics composed about this age of Middle Earth via what we get to see of this truly beautiful world, presented to us living in an age in which the world’s beauty is decreasing by increasing destruction.  But it too is taken for granted by those for whom it is their world, just as we have taken for granted that beauty ourselves.  We are not nostalgic for what is, only what is gone.  And we know well, some of us even in our own time, how almost inevitable it is to craft our nostalgia into something particularly superior to our present, and always much more beautiful. 

We rapidly learn of the past catastrophes from the Dark, and the looming threat of its imminent return. We already know the earlier wars of Sauron in which he was ultimately defeated left in its wake immeasurable loss, grief, suffering and death. We recall it remembered and memorialized in poetry much later, in the waning days of elves in  LOTR’s Middle Earth. We are informed  without being told this is an eternal cycle of reformed, creeping corruption that inevitable overwhelms the world in Ragnarök. That scene with Elrond trying to describe and memorialize the wars that now are over, when we already know the wars are returning tell us that – not to mention that sign of the destruction of basics for the farmers, the corruption of a cow and her milk. During a different time in the Great Cycle Frodo and Sam even talk about his process while in the midst of their ordeal in Mordor – “Do you think they’re make a song of us, Mr. Frodo?” We see Bilbo and Frodo try to do much the same later after their parts concluded in the Great Cycle of \Wars Between Light and Dark.

So we are provided our knowledge via nostalgic enchantment, against a background of beautiful, fascinating spectacle to our own eyes’ currency. What I would love to know, which I never will know, is whether anyone who doesn’t know this material beforehand has this reaction?

 

Other reactions:

Additionally to Queen Disa, and once we got to see his face acting, instead of full body bombast  in second episode, in this one I was almost as immediately won by a a sort of Southlands Ranger elf, Arondir, part of  the elf border guard force overwatching a land of men who had been corrupted by Sauron.* As happens so often these outposts and forces are dismantled and disbanded just when they need to be enlarged. Dropping safety measures as the threat materializes … seems … familiar. That we see these humans view the elves as an occupying military force is important information because, of course they would!  So would we.

A most brief Ent sighting in confluence of 'meteor' and Galadriel's Refusal.

The Harfoots appear to be a transhumance people, not nomads, strictly speaking. Which would explain how they eventually become hobbits and settle down. At this stage in their culture though, they seem proto/druidic, at least some of them.

What in the world are those guys wearing megafauna moose horns for?

Observed above was the silliness of the elves in mail climbing ice crags  -- but don’t we know that elves don’t react to cold and heat the way humans do?  That was rather undermined – or not? – by Galadriel’s observations in the chambers that it was the heart of evil due to flame providing no perceptible heat.

I’m so sorry I didn’t get to see this first episode first.  I really appreciated what and how it accomplished so much successfully.

 * Is it a coincidence that the two characters who immediately drew me in are non-canon?
 

[IFR]

2 hours ago, Argonath Diver said:

Well my brother and I watched it and had a blast.

I haven't read the Silmarillion in a dozen years or more, despite a Tolkien themed user name. 

We laughed at a bunch of the ridiculous bits (her jumping off and swimming was a chefs kiss, wow was that a silly idea of the writers). For the shows sake we agreed that the ship was taking a westbound wormhole a hundred miles off the coast of Lindon, not on the far side of the Great Sea. 

This is probably the best attitude with which to watch this show.

I'm disappointed because I wanted to enjoy this show as something legitimately good (as with Hot D), but I suppose some entertainment can be found watching it through a Mystery Science Theater 3000 lens. RoP certainly opens itself up repeatedly to that manner of viewing it. So I can see how it would be fun to mock the incessant stupidity of the writing, while also enjoying the fruits of that obscene special effects budget.

Although again, it's a pity Amazon couldn't produce a fantasy that is good because it is intelligent and well written.

[Slurktan]

For Celeborn my thought is he will be the lord/king of Lorien. They did make the distinction already that the elves we are dealing with this far are high elves.

[Zorral]

3 minutes ago, Slurktan said:

the elves we are dealing with this far are high elves.

 Arondir is a sylvan elf.  Is that a high elf?  I honestly don't know, but if that is the case, that they aren't, it would also explain his immediate relatableness as a character. 

[Slurktan]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

 Arondir is a sylvan elf.  Is that a high elf?  I honestly don't know, but if that is the case, that they aren't, it would also explain his immediate relatableness as a character. 

No they are not, I was referring to the elves with Galadriel. But whatever. Point being I don't think we will see Celeborn until they make contact with Loren through Moria.

EDIT:  Completed both episodes now.  Honestly the Galadriel stuff is the worst part of the show thus far.  Her revenge chase whatever is just not needed.  Loved the Dwarves stuff, I quite like what I presume is the orcs taking over what is to be Mordor.  I liked the Harfoot stuff oddly enough, I liked that they were hiding and on the move constantly.

Also the meteor guy clearly is Sauron what with evil music cues and killing lovely fireflies.  However I think he's going for a long con there.  How better to make a good appearance and pretend to not be a servant of Melkor then to show up later on with cheerful Hobbit friends in tow and say you are a friendly chap?