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


Ser Drewy

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15 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Oh, and yes, Galadriel being a millennia-old moron needing to get schooled in politics and diplomacy by a cowardly (in the sense that he runs away from his legacy) movie Aragorn-lookalike is really painful to watch. Why on earth would anyone ever want to create such a version of Galadriel? If they needed such a female Elf character why not go with Celebrían? We know nothing about her character and she could have been pretty young at that point in the show.

Some of Galadriel's cousins were not particularly noted for diplomatic skills, and her singlemindness is basically Feanorian at this point. Show-Galadriel is easier to think of as a gender-flipped Celegorm, with a superiority complex towards Men a mile wide.

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I will say that I do like this show's portrayal of Orcs (and I don't mean grumbling about CGI vs practical). So far, they've been threatening and even managed to win a fight. Adar's affection for them and their love for him is interesting. Thankfully, they've (so far) not been treated as embarassingly as Jackson increasingly portrayed them. I get the sense this show wants to treat Orcs and Dwarves seriously and not reduce them to cheap slapstick or OTT action scenes. 

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10 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Yeah, but there there is at least some kind of realistic aspect to it in the sense that immigration is a thing ... which it isn't on isolationist Númenor which apparently hadn't had any contact with Middle-earth for thousands of years at that point.

For fear of immigration you need the people to understand that concept and develop a fear of foreigners and the like - that's something the Númenóreans shouldn't have. Even less such a fear directed at the Elves who they might, perhaps, view as people trying to rule them and supplant their kings rather than steal their jobs. 

Numenor has contact with Middle-earth (why else would having a navy be a thing? It also looks like there's a fair amount of trade going on). It just doesn't have relations with Elves or a formal political Empire (albeit they do look down on the "low men", so there's interactions going on there).

They've just foisted Numenorean Imperialism onto the Elves at the moment. 

Edit: My full review of the thing.

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16 minutes ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

Some of Galadriel's cousins were not particularly noted for diplomatic skills, and her singlemindness is basically Feanorian at this point. Show-Galadriel is easier to think of as a gender-flipped Celegorm, with a superiority complex towards Men a mile wide.

Ok but that is not Galadriel. Granted the show did not start the whole thing about a character behaving like a family member instead of themselves, but many complain about Jackson's portrayal of Faramir without being told to just think of him as a younger Boromir.

Nevermind that it is not even clear if the showrunners made Galadriel more Feanorian on purpose.

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2 minutes ago, ASOIAFrelatedusername said:

Ok but that is not Galadriel. Granted the show did not start the whole thing about a character behaving like a family member instead of themselves, but many complain about Jackson's portrayal of Faramir without being told to just think of him as a younger Boromir.

Nevermind that it is not even clear if the showrunners made Galadriel more Feanorian on purpose.

Except that we don't know what Second Age Galadriel was like as a person. Having her start out as pseudo-Feanorian (her First Age self was Amazonian) and wind up as more wise and measured is a decent arc for five seasons. She presumably won't remain like this, it's just that the notion that any of the Noldor ought to be automatically "sensible" is a stretch. Not everyone can be a Maedhros or a Finrod.  

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2 minutes ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

Except that we don't know what Second Age Galadriel was like as a person. Having her start out as pseudo-Feanorian (her First Age self was Amazonian) and wind up as more wise and measured is a decent arc for five seasons. She presumably won't remain like this, it's just that the notion that any of the Noldor ought to be automatically "sensible" is a stretch. Not everyone can be a Maedhros or a Finrod.  

But we can infer a lot. We know that she was wiser than Feanor to begin with. We know that she has seen first hand the dangers of a single minded obsession. We know that she spent alot of time arround Melian and did not really participate in battles against Morgoth. We  know that she might have left Beleriand before the fall of Nargothrond even. We know stayed in Middle-earth not to hunt Sauron on a quest for vengeance, but the finally found a realm of her in Middle-earth. We know that she hand in the founding of Eregion and building an alliance with the dwarves of Moria. We know that she was already married and had a daughter at this point in time.

None of this leads to her characterization in the show.

Faramir also got an arc in Jackson's adaptation, the quality of which is up for discussion, but that did not justify his character assassination.

And no, I never claimed that "any of the Noldor ought to be automatically sensible". Galadriel is not any of the Noldor.

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3 minutes ago, ASOIAFrelatedusername said:

We know that she spent alot of time arround Melian and did not really participate in battles against Morgoth. We  know that she might have left Beleriand before the fall of Nargothrond even. We know stayed in Middle-earth not to hunt Sauron on a quest for vengeance, but the finally found a realm of her in Middle-earth. We know that she hand in the founding of Eregion and building an alliance with the dwarves of Moria. We know that she was already married and had a daughter at this point in time.

I mean, sure, most of this is the case, but I particularly like "we know that she might..."  And, I'm sorry, nobody can tell me why or why not she decided to remain in middle-earth after the first age.  Founding a realm and opposing Sauron are hardly mutually exclusive.

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2 minutes ago, DMC said:

I mean, sure, most of this is the case, but I particularly like "we know that she might..."  And, I'm sorry, nobody can tell me why or why not she decided to remain in middle-earth after the first age.  Founding a realm and opposing Sauron are hardly mutually exclusive.

I never said that they were mutually exclusive. However we know that she did not go on a thousand year long vengeance quest. There is also the Ban to consider, which the show omitted entirely.

Rights issues are no excuse for this. If they could not get the rights to characterize her properly, then they should not have made her a main character.

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9 minutes ago, ASOIAFrelatedusername said:

However we know that she did not go on a thousand year long vengeance quest.

Even in the pilot, I never got the impression she's literally been on a thousand year vengeance quest.  The logistics of that don't even make sense.  I haven't rewatched the pilot, but that sounds an awful lot like you projecting your own bias to the show making her the "commander of the northern armies," which I agree is kinda stupid.

Anyway, my point is I always viewed her staying - when reading the Silm and Unfinished Tales - as not only to establish her own realm, but also to fight Sauron.  Whereas you act like the latter is absurd.

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I am actually surprised at the reception this latest episode is getting here. So far, I was far more positive than most people, but I felt like this episode was the worst of the bunch we have had so far. While in the other episodes they were always teetering on the edge of the dumb/awesome divide (which is a hallmark of many a BBC fantasy/period production), I felt like they went   full MTV Shannara Chronicles in this one.

It's hard to determine where the difference comes from, but I felt the stupidity a lot of times came in too quick a succession and was overall unnecessary to keep things moving. Those elements together broke my suspension of disbelief just a little too much.

The whole foraging scene was excruciating to watch. From the people of the Southlands holing up in one moderately strong (and not exactly hidden) place without any supplies, to the idea of going out and plundering a fucking root cellar as if that would bring any relief to that many people, to the whole way that plot played out... It feels like all the Southlanders are suicidal at this point.

The comparison with South Park's immigration jokes has already been made, but that was another truly bizarre decision. I hardly recall anything about Galadriel from the Silmarilion (so I can't comment on their fidelity to the source), but at this point show Galadriel just doesn't feel like a real character with that track record should feel. She's just hopelessly outmatched by everyone around her.

The only mildly interesting things to happen were the introduction to Adar (way too brief) and the Khazad-Dum scenes which I thought were marred by exceedingly poor exposition dump dialogue about Elrond's father. I can place it since I remember reading that in the Silmarilion many years ago, but the way these concepts are introduced in this show is just terribly unnatural and forced. 

I hope the show will be able to pull itself back from the brink and return back to the level it had before. I want to be amazed by a succession of pretty pictures and not feel like my intelligence as a viewer is decreased because I'm watching this.

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9 minutes ago, Veltigar said:

I am actually surprised at the reception this latest episode is getting here. So far, I was far more positive than most people, but I felt like this episode was the worst of the bunch we have had so far. While in the other episodes they were always teetering on the edge of the dumb/awesome divide (which is a hallmark of many a BBC fantasy/period production), I felt like they went   full MTV Shannara Chronicles in this one.

It's hard to determine where the difference comes from, but I felt the stupidity a lot of times came in too quick a succession and was overall unnecessary to keep things moving. Those elements together broke my suspension of disbelief just a little too much.

The whole foraging scene was excruciating to watch. From the people of the Southlands holing up in one moderately strong (and not exactly hidden) place without any supplies, to the idea of going out and plundering a fucking root cellar as if that would bring any relief to that many people, to the whole way that plot played out... It feels like all the Southlanders are suicidal at this point.

The comparison with South Park's immigration jokes has already been made, but that was another truly bizarre decision. I hardly recall anything about Galadriel from the Silmarilion (so I can't comment on their fidelity to the source), but at this point show Galadriel just doesn't feel like a real character with that track record should feel. She's just hopelessly outmatched by everyone around her.

The only mildly interesting things to happen were the introduction to Adar (way too brief) and the Khazad-Dum scenes which I thought were marred by exceedingly poor exposition dump dialogue about Elrond's father. I can place it since I remember reading that in the Silmarilion many years ago, but the way these concepts are introduced in this show is just terribly unnatural and forced. 

I hope the show will be able to pull itself back from the brink and return back to the level it had before. I want to be amazed by a succession of pretty pictures and not feel like my intelligence as a viewer is decreased because I'm watching this.

I think personally my own opinion that this episode is an improvement is slightly based on the fact I mentally tune out when Numenor or the Southlands are on screen, so I mostly remember the better scenes. The more people talk about Numenor the more I remember just how bad it was.

Having said that my main criticism of the first 3 episodes is that they were just BORING. Mainly because they didn’t make it clear what the point of anything was. The show is pretty bad at outlining characters motivations and goals and the show hasn’t really made it obvious what it’s even about yet. This episode at least felt like a step in the right direction even if the rest was amateur level garbage 

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8 minutes ago, DMC said:

Even in the pilot, I never got the impression she's literally been on a thousand year vengeance quest.

From the first episode ca. 7:25

Spoiler

And there in the darkness [my brother's] vow became mine.

And so, we hunted.

To the ends of the earth we hunted Sauron.

But the trail grew thin.

Year gave way to year. Century gave way to century. And for many elves, the pain of those days passed out of thought and mind. More and more of our kind began to believe that Sauron was but a memory. And the threat at last was ended.

I wish I could be one of them.

Couple that with statements that place the overthrow of Morgoth at at least a thousand years prior to the show and the reasonable assumption that Finrod's death occured shortly after Morgoth's defeat, it indeed seems that Galadriel has been on the quest for quite a while, even if the show's chronology is a bit unclear about how much time elapsed.

16 minutes ago, DMC said:

he logistics of that don't even make sense.

You are right, they do not.

16 minutes ago, DMC said:

Anyway, my point is I always viewed her staying - when reading the Silm and Unfinished Tales - as not only to establish her own realm, but also to fight Sauron.  Whereas you act like the latter is absurd.

I do not. Galadriel can oppose Sauron in more lore-accurate ways.

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5 minutes ago, ASOIAFrelatedusername said:

Couple that with statements that place the overthrow of Morgoth at at least a thousand years prior to the show and the reasonable assumption that Finrod's death occured shortly after Morgoth's defeat, it indeed seems that Galadriel has been on the quest for quite a while, even if the show's chronology is a bit unclear about how much time elapsed.

Again, nothing in that spoiler quote of yours suggests she's literally been on "questing" the entire time.  It just indicates she's been vigilant about it whereas others haven't.  This is you projecting.

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6 minutes ago, DMC said:

Again, nothing in that spoiler quote of yours suggests she's literally been on "questing" the entire time.  It just indicates she's been vigilant about it whereas others haven't.  This is you projecting.

She does not say that she is merely vigilant, but that she was hunting Sauron to "the ends of the earth". Moreover it cuts to her right in the middle of hunting mission, suggesting that, yes, she has been on the hunt for that long. Did she take breaks, presumably, but considering her reaction to Elrond's suggestion later in the episode that she take a few days off, it is unlikely that these breaks lasted for a substantial amount of time.

Actually she constantly acts like her mission is time-sensitive even though according to her knowledge it really should not be.

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5 minutes ago, ASOIAFrelatedusername said:

She does not say that she is merely vigilant, but that she was hunting Sauron to "the ends of the earth". Moreover it cuts to her right in the middle of hunting mission, suggesting that, yes, she has been on the hunt for that long. Did she take breaks, presumably, but considering her reaction to Elrond's suggestion later in the episode that she take a few days off, it is unlikely that these breaks lasted for a substantial amount of time.

Yep, this is just the show establishing her motivation and you just whining about it.  Nothing more, nothing less.

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30 minutes ago, DMC said:

Yep, this is just the show establishing her motivation and you just whining about it.  Nothing more, nothing less.

I'm not sure how the discussion between you and @ASOIAFrelatedusername started, but as a neutral observer, I feel like the show heavily implies that Galadriel did indeed spent the past millennium actively hunting for Sauron.

The show doesn't outright confirm either reading, so its pointless to really discuss to death, but I feel like the balance of evidence is currently in favor of ASOIAFrelatedusername's position (even though that makes little sense for Galadriel, but I don't think this writing team cares a lot about these things).

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

I think personally my own opinion that this episode is an improvement is slightly based on the fact I mentally tune out when Numenor or the Southlands are on screen, so I mostly remember the better scenes. The more people talk about Numenor the more I remember just how bad it was.

 

  So basically, you skipped this entire episode :lol: That's an interesting tactic XD

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

Having said that my main criticism of the first 3 episodes is that they were just BORING. Mainly because they didn’t make it clear what the point of anything was. The show is pretty bad at outlining characters motivations and goals and the show hasn’t really made it obvious what it’s even about yet. This episode at least felt like a step in the right direction even if the rest was amateur level garbage 

In what sense would you say that it was a step in the right direction?

I felt like the show was going out of its way to be disagreeable this episode, which is a rather more active form of "audience fuck you" than just being passively boring. 

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You have to actively ignore what the show has said and shown to believe that Galadriel has not been on a vengeance quest for several centuries.  I would have to wonder though if she remained this much of a punk for a thousand years how none of her elven soldiers shanked her.  She is immature if she were a human of that age and level of responsibility, e.g. a commander, that she is supposed to be an elf and is this much of a jerk is dumb.  The show is dumb.  

I actually found the last episode was more boring than the previous 3, but maybe I'm hitting my tolerance level.

 

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5 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

You have to actively ignore what the show has said and shown to believe that Galadriel has not been on a vengeance quest for several centuries.  I would have to wonder though if she remained this much of a punk for a thousand years how none of her elven soldiers shanked her.  She is immature if she were a human of that age and level of responsibility, e.g. a commander, that she is supposed to be an elf and is this much of a jerk is dumb.  The show is dumb.  

Yeah, I agree here. I wonder whether the writers didn't think about the implications of her 1000 years vengeance quest or whether they simply don't care that it doesn't make any sense?

 

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3 hours ago, mormont said:

Theo and the other kid sneak out to go find food. They don't take the wheelbarrow with them: they don't have it when travelling to the village. And that makes sense, because sneaking out with a wheelbarrow would be tricky.

There's no sign that I recall of any carts or draft animals being in the fortress and if there were, the boys certainly couldn't sneak out with those.

All the animals in the village have been killed by the orcs so even if they could find a cart they'd have nothing to harness it to.

So they find a barrow in the village and use that to carry as much food as they can. They have no better options. This is poor planning, but they're teenage boys.

This is not stupid plotting. This is a viewer blaming the writers for something they didn't pay attention to.

Anyway, I wasn't expecting much from this series to be honest, and every episode does seem to have at least one scene that makes me roll my eyes (the slo-mo action scene this week, oh dear). And yet I find myself looking forward to watching it on a Friday, much more than I thought I would.

Loving Galadriel, I am here for a female lead that takes no shit, even when she maybe should. Again, a male lead with this character (headstrong, obsessed, but courageous) would be wildly popular.

Like Arondir too. Elrond is growing on me. I did enjoy his chat with Durin. 'You think you have a tricky relationship with your dad? Mine's literally a star!' Disa singing was amazing. The programme has some issues sometimes, but I'm in.

I know they don't take the wheel barrow with them.  My point was that risking your life for enough food to feed a small dinner party when there is an entire fort full of people....is silly.  The show is silly.  True, I had forgotten that all the animals were killed, which makes their plan even more dumb.  So they knew at the outset that even if they found any food, they could only bring back what they could carry.  His mother was right....hunting for rabbits was a better idea.

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