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[Spoilers] Rings of Power: Adar, can you hear me?


Ser Drewy

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To continue the prior conversations:

LOTR tends to move fairly swiftly. I think the slow pace of the Mordor trek is deliberate to create a sense of despair. It's funny coming back to it in contrast to later fantasy books where 1000 pages tends to be one volume out of several, yet Tolkien packs the entire tale in that length. 

The Harfoots were apparently pushed on the show by Amazon. Any show was going to have to include them, rumours suggest. I think McKay and Payne have done a decent job with them so far. It might be having two full Hobbit-centred books from Tolkien has helped with writing them although I think, based on episode 3, they presented them as overly callous with the Brandyfoots. So far Arondir is okay, but I think the lack of Browyn and Theo hurt episode 3: we're meant to care about elves who've had about 5 lines over people we've spent two episodes with already. Khazad-Dum is the best stuff so far. Galadriel has been the weakest. Maybe things will improve now with her meeting Miriel and Elendil, but I'm not really sure where Halbrand is going.

From what I remember the Trilogy's prologue was an on-and-off idea throughout the production until New Line put their boots down and demanded one. I think it does a decent job giving background for the story. I actually remember thinking the problem with Fellowship was we seem to be constantly repeating the same bits of exposition in the first hour. We get a 10 minute prologue, then we have Gandalf running around researching lore (that we already know), then he explains it all to Frodo. As I understand, the version we got was a combination of several openings they experimented with which might explain its (IMO) repetitiveness in that regard. 

 

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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)

Because MGM wanted three movies no matter what and they forced that decision on Jackson (and I'm at least 90% certain that they wanted it earlier and that's the real reason Del Toro left). Jackson's claims they reached the decision organically are pretty obviously face-saving bullshit (and some of the people who worked on the trilogy seemed very, very dubious about it), especially when you learn of all the reshoots they did to insert more stuff into the second film to pad it out more (the entire Tauriel-Kili romance did not exist in the original shoot and was added in pickups).

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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 now own MGM, who have a large part of the rights to the Hobbit trilogy and co-produced the movies with WB/New Line. I suspect if Amazon fronted the money for such a project, WB/New Line would have no trouble with it.

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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.

The rights to The Lord of the Rings were owned by the Saul Zaentz Company alone, but the rights to The Hobbit were split between Saul Zaentz and MGM (which is why Jackson made Lord of the Rings, he wanted to make The Hobbit first but MGM wouldn't entertain the idea). MGM is now owned by Amazon.

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36 minutes ago, Werthead said:

The rights to The Lord of the Rings were owned by the Saul Zaentz Company alone, but the rights to The Hobbit were split between Saul Zaentz and MGM

I'm familiar with Saul Zaentz's company owning the rights, but weren't they licensed to New Line, at least for Jackson's films?  Or has that run out already?

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So the Meteor Man leads the Harfoots out of Southlands that is soon to be Mordor. On the way, they pass through the territory of the ent-wives, learn agriculture from them and change their migratory ways for good. They permanently settle into a new land in the north, close to the ancestors of the Rohirrim.

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15 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

I didn't know Orcs knew cartography. 

Forensic anthropology, linguistics, archaeology, culture etc. provide us with new information almost every day of the surprising things our ancestors knew and could do.

 

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I re-watched the episode and have mostly unburdened myself of expecting logical, tempered scenes. It's just going to be a really fun show that's gorgeous and also pretty stupid. Not what i expected, but at least it's entertaining.

When Galadriel turns the sigil 90 degrees and realizes those are mountains, I consider it the second funniest moment after her looking at the water and coming up with the "swim back" plan. I don't think the showrunners wanted "laughing hysterically" as a reaction to their main character's scenes, but here we are. 

I'm still enjoying it much more than HotD, which has been utterly joyless for me.

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22 minutes ago, Myrddin said:

The dragons of Mordoth handed down the view from the air, allowing the image to pass it into common collective memory. 

Now that I think it about it, Sauron could transform into a vampiric bat. It all makes sense now.

Morgoth may have created the trolls, but Sauron invented trolling, carving out the map to his new secret hideout on the bodies of his enemies.

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Sauron is advertising his location to everyone, giving out specifics about it's geography. So the Valar naturally decided to place their secret agent at such a random location he doesn't even know where he is, and only knows that wherever he's supposed to be, he'll be able to see a particular constellation (that this would be a fairly large area is fine. The Valar can make constellations, so they don't think in Harfoot terms, when it comes to distance).

Very clever of the Valar, really. 

ETA: I know they could give some explanation for Meteor Man that would negate this criticism. I did this for a while with WoT, coming up with possible explanations, which, sad to say, despite being written up with little thought, proved to be more rational than what the writers did come up with. So far, I'm not sure whether the writers of this show will earn that courtesy or not. 

Meteor Man's current location could be an unintended accident. But I'm pretty sure the writers will also want to make a "meant to be" theme about wizards and hobbits, whether this proves to be Gandalf, Morinehtar or Romestamo.

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Having Meteor Man turn out to be Alatar is a convenient way for Amazon to have a Gandalf figure and yet be almost wholly a creation of the show. Late life Tolkien mentioned the two Blue Wizards perhaps fighting against Sauron's forces in the East. Seems to me the show could pluck their ears up at this and have MM/Alatar give honorable council to the Good Guys in the Southlands. That said, his pronounced introduction in the first episode makes me think he's going to be a major figure in the plot of the Rings - something Tolkien certainly didn't mention regarding his unexplored Istari.

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1 hour ago, fionwe1987 said:

Sauron is advertising his location to everyone, giving out specifics about it's geography. So the Valar naturally decided to place their secret agent at such a random location he doesn't even know where he is, and only knows that wherever he's supposed to be, he'll be able to see a particular constellation (that this would be a fairly large area is fine. The Valar can make constellations, so they don't think in Harfoot terms, when it comes to distance).

Very clever of the Valar, really. 

ETA: I know they could give some explanation for Meteor Man that would negate this criticism. I did this for a while with WoT, coming up with possible explanations, which, sad to say, despite being written up with little thought, proved to be more rational than what the writers did come up with. So far, I'm not sure whether the writers of this show will earn that courtesy or not. 

Meteor Man's current location could be an unintended accident. But I'm pretty sure the writers will also want to make a "meant to be" theme about wizards and hobbits, whether this proves to be Gandalf, Morinehtar or Romestamo.

A wizard crash lands precisely where he means to!!!

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34 minutes ago, Argonath Diver said:

Having Meteor Man turn out to be Alatar is a convenient way for Amazon to have a Gandalf figure and yet be almost wholly a creation of the show. Late life Tolkien mentioned the two Blue Wizards perhaps fighting against Sauron's forces in the East. Seems to me the show could pluck their ears up at this and have MM/Alatar give honorable council to the Good Guys in the Southlands. That said, his pronounced introduction in the first episode makes me think he's going to be a major figure in the plot of the Rings - something Tolkien certainly didn't mention regarding his unexplored Istari.

My only problem with the idea of MM being a blue is that the two blue wizards seemed to be a pair. Alatar and Pallando were described as friends, and Tolkien wrote that Alatar convinced Pallando to come with him.

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Absolutely agreed that Tolkien clearly wanted them to be a pair, and there's no evidence yet of that on screen. I only thought having a very powerful two characters in his writings, whom weren't developed whatsoever, would give Amazon suits the Gandalf-sized wizard very casual viewers would identify with.

I honestly don't know where they're going with him, it seems no one else does either, and I consider that a success - at least as of yet. If the reveal is as ridiculous as I fear it may be, the build-up thus far would be wasted. I think it's Gandalf for now, though the amnesia absurdity was a mistake - give him a grand entrance, sure. But, ugh, amnesia. Yeesh.

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Dumb question: Are we sure all the storylines are running concurrently?

Because he's been watching Westword, my brother asked me if there was any proof the Harfoots, Southlands with Arondir, and Galadrial/Elrod/Halbrand storylines are all contemporary with each other?  I started to say "of course" but then realized I wasn't sure.

Was there a commonality (like a comet) that level set the timelines with each other? 

Granted, I don't have faith that the showrunners are capable of this sophistication (from what I've seen so far --- happy to be proven wrong), but playing loose with timelines could be a good way to deal with the compressed timeline without so much compression.

Also, that'd be a way to have "Sauron" show up in multiple places (Halbrand/Meteor Man/Adar) at the same time, as they are all candidates.

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