Rings of Power: A New Thread to Rule them All

[Caligula_K3]

I was surprised by how much I liked it. I haven't been following much of the news or internet drama about this show (and I'll always believe that anybody who spends their time review bombing anything needs to get a life), but I just didn't know if there was going to be anything here aside from Bezos' desire to have his own Game of Thrones.

But even though both episodes were too long, and even though the elf-ranger character and that whole plotline bore me, the rest has been really enjoyable. Sure, the hobbits are twee, but what can I say, I have a weakness for hobbits. The highlights, though, have been Galadriel (damn, that actress is good!) and, as of the second episode, the Elrond/Celebrimbor/dwarves storyline. The show and actors got me invested in these characters very quickly, and these scenes just felt fun.

Oh yeah, and the visuals are incredible, of course, and Bear McReary does his usual excellent work, even though I think he still isn't close to topping his BSG score. I'm looking forward to the rest! And I'm a little shocked to say that after two episodes of each, I'm digging this more than HOTD, which is the opposite of how I thought I'd react. If we're lucky, both shows will get stronger as they go along and we really might be in a golden age of fantasy TV.

[Zorral]

For me, fortunate to have two 'medievalish' fantasies to look forward to every week to get us through Hurricane Season.  Ever since 9/11 September is a month of constant anxiety here -- and it doesn't end with the end of the month.  Hurricane Sandy devastated so much of not only our region way from end of October but into November.

Honestly don't give a flip whether they are what the obsessed, self-identified with fictional characters think these shows should be.  None of that matters -- what matters is whether they make good, entertaining tv for me.

[SpaceChampion]

I think the only way to enjoy this is to find the ways that make this some kind of parody.  It would be funny as hell if the meteor hippie was due to the Valar or the Ainu yeeting Sauron off the island.  

 

 

[The Bard of Banefort]

So has Galadriel’s husband not been born yet? Because they seem to be setting up a romance with Halbrand. I suppose it could work, it he dies a human death and she’s still around for thousands of years afterwards.

[Darryk]

11 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

So has Galadriel’s husband not been born yet? Because they seem to be setting up a romance with Halbrand. I suppose it could work, it he dies a human death and she’s still around for thousands of years afterwards.

I heard the backstory is that he's presumed dead but is probably imprisoned somewhere. Weird that she doesn't mention him ever, not even in the prologue.

[Rhom]

I once saw an episode of Magnum PI where Tom Selleck fell into the ocean and spent the entire episode treading water and remembering how he treaded water with his dad as a kid.  He had to keep treading water until Halbrand… I mean TC found him in his helicopter.

[DMC]

14 minutes ago, Rhom said:

I once saw an episode of Magnum PI where Tom Selleck fell into the ocean and spent the entire episode treading water and remembering how he treaded water with his dad as a kid.  He had to keep treading water until Halbrand… I mean TC found him in his helicopter.

It reminded me of the LOST episode "Adrift" (where, granted, the characters had a much better reason for being adrift).  Which of course means Halbrand's secret identity is Sawyer and he's from that other island.

[fionwe1987]

3 hours ago, IFR said:

I honestly can't see it being otherwise at this point. Also, in episode 1 it's mentioned that there is no heat from the fire because of evil (as much as I shudder to quote that line in any form). It's also noted that heat cannot be felt from the fire around Meteor Man. And roughly concurrent with the observation of the meteor there was the decay around the land (evil milk, rotting leaf). Also, the meteor landed in the montage of Galadrial resolving to continue her hunt for Sauron rather than proceed to Valinor.

Yeah it's pretty strongly telegraphed. If this is meant to misdirect, it is done badly. 

But on the whole, I'm with the "it was surprisingly not bad". I say this especially in comparison to WoT, which now looks even poorer by comparison.

[TheReal_Rebel]

In terms of Lore, the show suffers from the Tolkien Estate holding tight-fisted-ly to the Silmarillion.  I understand their many reasons, but it is why I’m giving the show a lot of latitude.

I appreciate the clever ways the writers come up to the edge—like the War of the Elves being reduced to child Elves fighting; Morgorth destroying the Light of the trees then Elves going to Middle-Earth to fight him; and Elrond talking about the Silmarils to Celebrimbor, probably easier for non-book readers to understand.

I’m older than most of you and have dreamed of seeing the Second Age of Middle-Earth for 40 years and at the moment am enjoying the Rings of Power.

I suggest people who think the writers are going outside the Legendarium listen to this.

 

 

 

 

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, DMC said:

It reminded me of the LOST episode "Adrift" (where, granted, the characters had a much better reason for being adrift).  Which of course means Halbrand's secret identity is Sawyer and he's from that other island.

Varus and Pullo adrift on a raft of human corpses in Rome HBO. (At least NOT Uhtred in the enslaved eps of The Last Kingdom that was a horror show.)

[Macklunkey]

I'm a fairly casual Tolkien fan but this is absolutely fine as a show so far. 

The Stranger is very like Gandalf in my eyes and the actor actually looks quite like a younger Ian McKellen. 

I suppose it depends on how clever they are trying to be...is it more valuable for the shows popularity to have Gandalf in it? Or have a Sauron twist?

[Mladen]

@Werthead has a point. We just need to let this one be "just fine". Simply, there are too many factors in play that made this adaptation difficult, but then again, there are also many missed opportunities to just give them benefit of doubt. 

I don't know if anyone spoke about it and I apologize if I missed it, but what about the language? OK, dialogues are weird and all, but simply, this lacks Tolkien's language so profoundly that I cannot connect to it. I am speaking about that rich, poetic prose that made me make a vocabulary of all the beautiful new words when I read it 2 decades ago. I feel that the language is simply lacking Tolkien's genius, which is for me, in many ways deal-breaker. Yeah, I know Tolkien was unique in many ways but I still think that the writers could have made a language of the series a bit more, IDK, poetic, delicate, ethereal... I hope people understand it...

Overall, thoroughly unimpressed by the plot. I did like Morfydd Clark more than I thought I would, but I feel she is doing her best when the script is obviously "cutting her wings". Dwarves were the best part... 

Music is really sublime. And visuals are stunning. That would be all  

[Zorral]

24 minutes ago, Mladen said:

there are too many factors in play that made this adaptation difficult,

Good run-down on what is known of Galadriel's past history, what can be used, and what cannot.

https://www.tor.com/2022/08/31/where-in-the-world-is-galadriel-in-the-second-age-and-for-that-matter-where-is-celeborn/#more-708024

Coincidence the currently dueling screen fantasies of grimdark challenging the light are both prequels to their world famous predecessors >!<, and both are from unreliable chroniclers, historians and narrators, coming at both of them from as a variety of sources? Which emphasize different events, causes and even actions? And have their own agendas?  

[Denvek]

So as someone who's never read the Silmarillion or any of JRRT's other non-LOTR/Hobbit books, so I neither know nor care what the 'canonical' version of the Second Age is my initial reaction to RoP is that it's generally OK.

Southlands: The kid is obviously Arondir's son - we never see his ears and there's an explicit line in the scene where he finds the Evil Dagger where his friend was talking about how no one, not even the kid, knew who his father was. I expect the revelation of this to be the point where the kid kills someone he cares about with the Evil Dagger and properly starts on the road to Evil.

Dwarves: The best part of the show. Yes, they're stereotypical but Tolkien invented most of those stereotypes so this show can get away with it. Elrond's dinner with Durin's family made the friendship, and Durin's sense of betrayal at Elrond for forgetting about it, seem like a real relationship.

Celebrimbor I know from the Shadow of Mordor games, but I know those take a lot of licence with the canon so I'm not expecting this version of the character to take any inspiration from that one. But this Celebrimbor already seems like the kind of guy who could get invested deep enough in his work to be duped by Sauron into including the weaknesses in the Rings that let the One Ring control them.

Elves: The weakest part of the show for me - a lot of the dialogue seems to have been written to try and make it sound "Elven" and to my ear that makes it sound less natural and more like the lines are being read. Galadriel seems the best actor out of the Elves and hopefully she'll have better written scenes now she's interacting with humans instead of other elves. The lost at sea plot was dumb but from reading other posts above it seems like they didn't really have many good options to finagle her into the place the plot needs her to be.

Harfoots: Fine - they don't really do anything other than be established as proto-Hobbits so far with Nori as the Merry/Pippin equivalent wondering what the rest of the world is like.

Meteor Man is obviously Sauron and not any of the other suggestions upthread - if the foreshadowing was any more explicit it wouldn't be foreshadowing any more

• Galadriel is searching for Sauron
• The other Elves are convinced Sauron is gone forever
• Including the occupying force in Sauron's old land who are ending their occupation
• Weird bad creepy stuff is starting to happen again in Sauron's old land
• Sauron's sigil is shown a number of times, always in ways suggesting fire or heat
• A fiery meteor falls and creates a burning crater with a man in the centre
• It's clearly Sauron

[Zorral]

It's amusing that everything fans are objecting to regarding this Galadriel are in in Tolkien, according the admirable Tor critic's. cited above, round-up of Tolkien's own writing in All the Places Tolkien wrote of Galadriel -- including how often he retroconned her character and biography. However, that prior to Bilbo and Frodo, she is / was an actual warrior, with weapons, perhaps fighting and killing those she shouldn't have, which is how she ended up in Middle Earth, always fighting  Sauron's forces, hunting Sauron, runs through them all.

 

[Heartofice]

1 hour ago, Mladen said:

@Werthead has a point. We just need to let this one be "just fine". Simply, there are too many factors in play that made this adaptation difficult, but then again, there are also many missed opportunities to just give them benefit of doubt. 

I don't know if anyone spoke about it and I apologize if I missed it, but what about the language? OK, dialogues are weird and all, but simply, this lacks Tolkien's language so profoundly that I cannot connect to it. I am speaking about that rich, poetic prose that made me make a vocabulary of all the beautiful new words when I read it 2 decades ago. I feel that the language is simply lacking Tolkien's genius, which is for me, in many ways deal-breaker. Yeah, I know Tolkien was unique in many ways but I still think that the writers could have made a language of the series a bit more, IDK, poetic, delicate, ethereal... I hope people understand it...

Overall, thoroughly unimpressed by the plot. I did like Morfydd Clark more than I thought I would, but I feel she is doing her best when the script is obviously "cutting her wings". Dwarves were the best part... 

Music is really sublime. And visuals are stunning. That would be all  

There is a lot about the show that feels modern and unTolkien. There is one bit in the second episode where Elrond says something like ‘ .. and I know just the Dwarf’ and they cut to them travelling to see Durin. I imagined the Seinfeld music between that scene cut, it just felt so ‘TV’. I’m not sure why they did that. I find the tone of the entire show is something they really aren’t consistent with as a whole.

[Werthead]

2 hours ago, Mladen said:

I don't know if anyone spoke about it and I apologize if I missed it, but what about the language? OK, dialogues are weird and all, but simply, this lacks Tolkien's language so profoundly that I cannot connect to it. I am speaking about that rich, poetic prose that made me make a vocabulary of all the beautiful new words when I read it 2 decades ago. I feel that the language is simply lacking Tolkien's genius, which is for me, in many ways deal-breaker. Yeah, I know Tolkien was unique in many ways but I still think that the writers could have made a language of the series a bit more, IDK, poetic, delicate, ethereal... I hope people understand it...

I think the dialogue is an area where they do struggle. The Jackson trilogy used a lot of actual Tolkien dialogue straight from the book, sometimes even using dialogue from one cut section of the book and giving it to another character (I think some Tom Bombadil lines end up being spoken by Frodo or Gandalf elsewhere). When you're working with a lot of Tolkien language and cadence, it's easier to get into the swing of it and come up with stuff that sounds vaguely acceptable, so the non-Tolkien lines also sounded okay.

The Hobbit trilogy had the problem of there not being remotely enough Tolkien dialogue, leading to such delights as the "trousers" exchange between Kili and Tauriel.

RoP has an especial problem in that there is next to no Tolkien language to use at all, so they're kind of winging it, apparently by switching between an "arch" type of dialogue for the elves and a more earthy, relaxed style for the Harfoots and dwarves. That's working for the latter, but not for the former. I wonder if it would have been better to have had all the elf-on-elf dialogue in elven and subtitling it, maybe that would have helped the formality of it.

[fionwe1987]

8 minutes ago, Werthead said:

 

RoP has an especial problem in that there is next to no Tolkien language to use at all, so they're kind of winging it, apparently by switching between an "arch" type of dialogue for the elves and a more earthy, relaxed style for the Harfoots and dwarves. That's working for the latter, but not for the former. I wonder if it would have been better to have had all the elf-on-elf dialogue in elven and subtitling it, maybe that would have helped the formality of it.

This. They have access to some amazing invented languages that were designed to sound good. They should use it. 

[The Bard of Banefort]

You know that Camille Paglia quote about how there may have never been a female Einstein but there’s also never been a female Jack the Ripper? I feel like that applies to the dialogue here, especially when compared to HOTD. After two episodes each, HOTD dialogue has been consistently okay (which is something I think you could deduce from the trailers): nothing particularly noteworthy or memorable, but nothing cringey either. TROP dialogue has a wider range: there are some lines that are poignant and funny and clever, and others that are pure cringe.

To use a different, pop culture metaphor: HOTD is Marvel and TROP is DC. We’ll see how that holds going forward.

[IFR]

1 hour ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

TROP dialogue has a wider range: there are some lines that are poignant and funny and clever, and others that are pure cringe.

I can easily think of lines that are pure cringe from this show. Many, many lines.

But what lines do you think are poignant and funny and clever? I'm honestly curious, and I'm not going to write a snarky retort as a response or anything. I'm just surprised at this assessment.

I think Hot D has good dialog, for the most part. Characters have clearly differentiated personalities, nothing seems anachronistic, and sometimes good insight into human behavior is made ("The gods have yet to make a man who lacks the patience for absolute power.") The dialog also has a good flow to it.

It's not Cormac McCarthy, but I think it's a good deal better than serviceable.