Rings of Power: Three Threads for the Elven Lords (book spoilers)

[Arakasi]

I honestly never understood why they didn’t do the natural split for the hobbit and have it end after the fire in the trees scene where they are rescued by the eagles. (Well obv money) But that to me always seemed a natural spot to split the Hobbit into two 2-2.5 hour movies. It’s pretty much the midpoint of the book and gives enough set pieces for both halves. (Intro, dwarf dinner, trolls, Rivendel, goblin city, gollum and goblin fight before and Bjorn, Mirkwood, Elf Kingdom escape, Laketown, Smaug, battle and wrap up afterward)

[IFR]

4 hours ago, Ser Drewy said:

I reread the book a few years ago and felt the claims that Tolkien was 'very slow' and 'overly descriptive' pretty exaggerated. Even the Old Forest chapters, which are typically said to bog the story down,  I didn't feel really dragged and are actually pretty interesting in their own right. The main issue is Bombadil's a bit on the silly side. I think Tolkien should have toned down the hey-dol and leaned more into his mysteriousness. 

I agree with you. I'm currently rereading LotR, and I do feel that the beginning portion of the story has a rather creaky pace. I still like it though, so it didn't drag for me either.

I think Bombadil is my one major objection to the book. He's mildly interesting and infinitely annoying. And introducing someone early who can so easily resist the power of the Ring deflates the menace of it somewhat, which I think does no favors to the story.

Bombadil aside, once the hobbits meet Strider I think the pace goes along at a very pleasing clip.

It's really wonderful to experience this story again. I can see why Christoper Lee would read it annually.

[Leofric]

4 minutes ago, IFR said:

I agree with you. I'm currently rereading LotR, and I do feel that the beginning portion of the story has a rather creaky pace. I still like it though, so it didn't drag for me either.

I think Bombadil is my one major objection to the book. He's mildly interesting and infinitely annoying. And introducing someone early who can so easily resist the power of the Ring deflates the menace of it somewhat, which I think does no favors to the story.

Bombadil aside, once the hobbits meet Strider I think the pace goes along at a very pleasing clip.

It's really wonderful to experience this story again. I can see why Christoper Lee would read it annually.

I liked the Bombadil stuff.  The only part I always found dragging was Sam and Frodo's trips across Mordor after they escaped Cirith Ungol.  It felt like Tolkien was killing time by stretching out their trek, so the rest of the scattered Fellowship's adventures could be told in the same time frame.

 

I liked episode 3, the introduction of Numenor and Elendil and his family.   Not sure about Halbarand being an uncrowned King, it's a little cliche.  

Don't who the Meteor Man is supposed to be, but still hoping he will be a Blue Wizard, which will be confirmed when they follow the star chart to where the second meteor landed and his twin pops up.  Then the Blue wizards will save the proto-hobbits from being corrupted by Sauron and get them out of the Southlands before it becomes Mordor, where the shadows lie.

[Corvinus85]

3 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I dunno guys, from what I’ve seen a lot of ordinary rubes like myself find the Harfoots charming. This show might be messy, but it does nail the atmosphere of the LOTR universe, which is why so many people still liked the Hobbit movies even when book fans didn’t.

I agree that the Harfoots have been pretty good. Of course, they have benefited from being in each episode so far, thus allowing for more development of their society. We only got one episode with Dwarves, one with Numenor and as far as the Elves go, most of their culture has revolved around their link to the past and the idea of going to the Blessed Realm. The Men of the Southlands haven't been that well developed, they're basically your ordinary medieval fantasy peasants.

[lmanion]

4 hours ago, Werthead said:

I think the consensus - as much as can be reached - on the Hobbit trilogy even by non-book-readers is that there is a very good and maybe even excellent 3-4 hour single movie in the trilogy, with the problem that the full trilogy is 8.5 hours long. I've found myself hoping that Amazon Snyder Cuts the Hobbit by giving Jackson ~$30 million dollars to edit the whole thing down and redo what CGI needs to be redone to accomplish that. I think you could make something decent out of that, and the various fan cuts that try that are promising.

There's a lot of bollocks in The Hobbit trilogy but there is some great stuff as well (Freeman as Bilbo, Armitage's Thorin, most of the dwarves, Lee Pace's frankly ludicrous but also glorious turn as Thranduil, Cumberbatch as Smaug). It's not a complete write-off.

Problem with that is Jackson's movies and the parts of Tolkiens world involved are owned by Warner Bros not Amazon. Amazon only has rights to a very small portion that is not even all of the second age as far as I'm aware. Pretty sure this is why we have the harfoots and they are all really careful not to call them hobbits.

[Corvinus85]

56 minutes ago, lmanion said:

Problem with that is Jackson's movies and the parts of Tolkiens world involved are owned by Warner Bros not Amazon. Amazon only has rights to a very small portion that is not even all of the second age as far as I'm aware. Pretty sure this is why we have the harfoots and they are all really careful not to call them hobbits.

Amazon has the TV rights to LOTR with its appendices and The Hobbit. So they could have actually done LOTR as a TV show if they wanted to.

[DMC]

10 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

Amazon has the TV rights to LOTR with its appendices and The Hobbit. So they could have actually done LOTR as a TV show if they wanted to.

I think Imanion's point was they don't have the rights to Jackson's LOTR and Hobbit films.  Which sounds right to me considering WB owns New Line, but I dunno.  The rights stuff is just too complicated for me to keep up anymore.

[ASOIAFrelatedusername]

Nevermind that Jackson would certainly not edit the thing down significantly.