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


Ser Drewy

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3 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

 

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. 

They also seemed unaware of the troubles in the Southlands. Considering Numenor's geographic location, and not being aware of what's happening in Mordor, whatever contact they have with Middle-earth is likely constrained to the coastal areas, at best. 

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There is no immigration problem, it is just one elf. The argument is presented partially as an immigration issue, but think they are having a bit of a go at fears over automation and Artificial Intelligence there as well, as the elves do not tire. The guild guy seems like someone planted by Pharazon, they shake hands in the end. If anything, Pharazon seems to be priming the population to accept what is coming next, which is going to war against Sauron in Middle Earth.

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5 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

They also seemed unaware of the troubles in the Southlands. Considering Numenor's geographic location, and not being aware of what's happening in Mordor, whatever contact they have with Middle-earth is likely constrained to the coastal areas, at best. 

They do know what is happening in Mordor, there was a spy in the dungeons who sent back word. Presumably Numenorean spies are all over Middle Earth. 

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50 minutes ago, Veltigar said:

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. 

Meaning that I felt the show was tying it’s threads together a little more so that each plot seemed to have some connection to the others, giving them a sense of relevance. It gave me hope that the show would improve and be enjoyable by the end, or that a second season might learn from the mistakes of the first. 
 

But yeah I don’t think I’ve been paying close enough attention to really critique the stupidness of the show, I find it mostly too dull to make me want to think too hard about 

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21 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Meaning that I felt the show was tying it’s threads together a little more so that each plot seemed to have some connection to the others, giving them a sense of relevance. It gave me hope that the show would improve and be enjoyable by the end, or that a second season might learn from the mistakes of the first. 
 

I see. That was definitely the case. They did their best to bring some disparate threads together, although the way they went about it left a lot to be desired :) 

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1 hour ago, Veltigar said:

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

It really doesn't.  There's nothing that precludes her from concurrently searching out Sauron and also establishing Lothlorien as a realm over thousands - or even just one thousand - years.  The notion is absurd.

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The show has depicted her as the proverbial rolling stone gathering no moss....being on a thousand year quest where she's always on the move.  She has no meaningful relationships with anyone and can barely even have a conversation without insulting the other person.  The idea that show Galadriel has already made some strides to establish Lothlorien is purely wishful thinking.

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1 minute ago, Cas Stark said:

She has no meaningful relationships with anyone and can barely even have a conversation without insulting the other person.

She very clearly had a relationship with Elrond (although not the one I would have preferred).  And Gil-galad, for that matter.  And all the elves that she went to on the ship to Valinor.  Celeborn's absence is notable, sure, and I don't like how little reverence the other two paid to her in the pilot, but once again you're ignoring what actually happened in the show and instead projecting your own dislike.  She's clearly an elf of high rank - if she wasn't why would Miriel be listening to her in the first place?  Why would virtually everyone of nobility immediately know her name upon her arrival?

You're right, I don't know if she's been establishing Lothlorien or not in the last thousand(s) of years, but there is nothing in the show that suggests she isn't.  People can have side-quests that devolve into obsessions within a single lifetime.  You all are rushing to conclusions because you simply don't like how the show is depicting her.

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16 hours ago, ASOIAFrelatedusername said:

Gondolin is mentioned, yes, but not in the Jackson movies. It is unlikely that they are going to throw yet another place name at casual viewers who have no connection to the place. Elrond just giving this shortened explanation would basically make him Maeglin-in-name-only.

Also considering that there was the rumour about him being Galadriel's brother and that Elrond is not involved in the Southlands plot and might never be, Maeglin is unlikely. Add to that that Elrond is too young to remember Maeglin, so the reveal would be less emotionally impactful than if it is someone Galadriel knew personally. He probaby got the burn scars from the battle in the prologue.

Whatever it is though, I am sure that it is going to suck.

You are right. If they don't explore Maeglin more, he will be, at best, Maeglin-in-name-only. But your earlier post implied there's no way for them to do that, which I'm not sure of. 

5 hours ago, mormont said:

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.

I don't particularly have issues with her character. But a male with that character will also typically be in a plot where he is right. Or we might get flashback scenes to establish the intensity of said character's pain, which makes their current behavior more easy to sympathize with.

They're doing very little of that in this show. They need to delve deeper into their version of Galadriel. And sooner rather than later. 

3 hours ago, ASOIAFrelatedusername said:

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.

We don't know all of this. Tolkien changed his mind on some of this quite a bit.

Which isn't to say they're doing a great job with her character at this point. They could have made her more complex and layered and still have the same plot events occur, and I'd be happier. 

3 hours ago, ASOIAFrelatedusername said:

 

 

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8 minutes ago, DMC said:

She very clearly had a relationship with Elrond (although not the one I would have preferred).  And Gil-galad, for that matter.  And all the elves that she went to on the ship to Valinor.  Celeborn's absence is notable, sure, and I don't like how little reverence the other two paid to her in the pilot, but once again you're ignoring what actually happened in the show and instead projecting your own dislike.  She's clearly an elf of high rank - if she wasn't why would Miriel be listening to her in the first place?  Why would virtually everyone of nobility immediately know her name upon her arrival?

You're right, I don't know if she's been establishing Lothlorien or not in the last thousand(s) of years, but there is nothing in the show that suggests she isn't.  People can have side-quests that devolve into obsessions within a single lifetime.  You all are rushing to conclusions because you simply don't like how the show is depicting her.

Well, she was rude and insulting to Gil-galad, too. Those elves who threw their swords down?  Yeah, I'm sure they would have been on board with another side quest.  She's an asshat. It doesn't matter that she's of high rank, I never disputed that, which only makes her charaterization as an impuslive, rude jerk more grating.

This all feels very deja vu to me from GOT, where people created these detailes explanations of why YZA made sense, and the show would explain it all in due course...which never happened.  GOT was sloppy and people didn't want to believe it.  Same here.

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1 minute ago, Cas Stark said:

This all feels very deja vu to me from GOT, where people created these detailes explanations of why YZA made sense, and the show would explain it all in due course...which never happened.  GOT was sloppy and people didn't want to believe it.  Same here.

Or, it's just whining about minor details that the vast majority of viewers don't really care about.

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9 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

We don't know all of this. Tolkien changed his mind on some of this quite a bit.

Generally by making her more virtuous, which would does not favor her characterization in the show.

1 hour ago, slant said:

They do know what is happening in Mordor, there was a spy in the dungeons who sent back word. Presumably Numenorean spies are all over Middle Earth. 

That spy report was burried in a liberary in the elf-friendly part of Numenor and it looked pretty ancient.

11 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

???

When Galadriel and Elendil visit a "House of Lore" in episode 3, at ca. 34 minutes, they show the mark of Sauron to a Lore-master who gives then what looks like a pretty ancient report of a spy.

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On 9/15/2022 at 4:05 PM, Cas Stark said:

If not 'character driven'  it should at the very least have better characterization.  The poor characterization is the main reason why the show feels flat and by the numbers.  X happens, and now K happens, and now something else happens, with not much emotional resonance to any of it. Good characterization is even more important for a show where a lot of the outcomes are predetermined.  We know many of these characters won't die, so they need to be very well drawn to maintain interest and 'drama'.

Galariel, Elrond and Sauron won't die in the show as they are in the third age. We don't know who the Stranger is yet so cannot comment on that. But the rest of the cast... 

On 9/16/2022 at 12:14 PM, Werthead said:

The stuff in Numenor is okay, although Galadriel not knowing how to engage in basic diplomacy is odd. The actor playing Pharazon has potential. Elendil was a bit of a chump in this episode. Also a bit of a Deus Ex White Tree in how Miriel changed her mind on sending aid to Middle-earth.

Nah. He was perfect. It's fantastic casting. As for the White Tree - well, the influence of the Valar has already been expositioned (Miriel last ep) and now we've seen Miriel and Elendil recognising each other as one of the faithful of Numenor. It's an effective scene and fits the 'lore' as all those aggressive Tolkien nerds like to say.

18 hours ago, slant said:

They showed Adar with the voice "Sauron was said to have many names in days of old, perhaps this is one of them", it is a lot of misdirection if Meteor Man or Halbrand are Sauron after that. IDK why Adar has pointy ears though. I hope that if he is Sauron, they don't show him actually disguised as one of the elves. Why the orcs call him father is a pointed question, and a good clue about his nature. The way he talks about rocks and roots makes him look like a very old creature. Arondir takes the place of the audience when wondering what Adar is.  

It was jarringly American for Adar to use miles as a unit of measuring distance, they could have gone with leagues

Hmm. Who has pointy ears in the show? Also he said he was from Beleriand. So your question was answered in the episode and by others in this thread. Also, Tolkien uses miles in LOTR, so that is quite an odd complaint.

6 hours ago, DMC said:

More importantly, canonically, the Numenoreans are so incredibly stupid they come in all their splendor to get Sauron to submit as a prisoner, and within 75 years he has Ar-Pharazon and the vast majority of his people worshipping a death cult to, essentially, Satan, rife with human sacrifices AND THEN convinces them to somehow achieve immortality by sailing towards paradise and waging war with the gods/angels that inhabit the land.  Yeah, "they took er jerbs" sounds infinitely less stupid than that.

They went to beat him (militarily) not to capture but he decided that capture was better than getting beaten and would be just a different way of achieving the same ends. Hopefully the show will do that event justice.

5 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

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).

Yes. The line was that Numenor no longer sends ships to M-e at the behest of an elf, rather than them not going there at all.

5 hours 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.

Some people just really, really wanted for Galadriel to be as close to PJ's third age version as possible, and rather than accept that Tolkien wrote many different versions (of her past actions/motivations, and her character) insist that their take on the varied source material proves they are correct instead of allowing that the variation means we are even LESS certain of what she actually was like. The uncertainty means that as a character she is more maleable than most. So there's not that much room for gotcha moments here.

The simple answer for many in this thread is that if it's as bad as you say, then simply stop watching it.

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34 minutes ago, ASOIAFrelatedusername said:

Generally by making her more virtuous, which would does not favor her characterization in the show.

Virtuous with regards to the Kinslaying and following Feanor. But that version doesn't say anything about her being without pride or anger. 

 

Quote

So it came to pass that when the light of Valinor failed, for ever as the Noldor thought, she joined the rebellion against the Valar who commanded them to stay; and once she had set foot upon that road of exile she would not relent, but rejected the last message of the Valar, and came under the Doom of Mandos.

Even after the merciless assault upon the Teleri and the rape of their ships, though she fought fiercely against Fëanor in defense of her mother's kin, she did not turn back. Her pride was unwilling to return, a defeated suppliant for pardon; but now she burned with desire to follow Fëanor with her anger to whatever lands he might come, and to thwart him in all ways that she could. Pride still moved her when, at the end of the overthrow of Morgoth, she refused the pardon of the Valar for all who had fought against him, and remained in Middle-earth. It was not until two long ages more had passed, when at last all that she had desired in her youth came to her hand, the Ring of Power and the dominion of Middle-earth of which she had dreamed, that her wisdom was full grown and she rejected it, and passing the last test departed from Middle-earth for ever.

Millennia long desires to thwart someone who harmed her kin aren't outside Tolkien's conception of Galadriel. Feanor dies early, so we don't get to see this explored in the books, but rejecting the pardon of the Valar and staying back in Middle Earth to defeat a powerful enemy hardly seems alien to her character. Per at least one version of her, she came to Middle Earth driven by precisely such anger and pride. 

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14 minutes ago, Isis said:

They went to beat him (militarily) not to capture but he decided that capture was better than getting beaten and would be just a different way of achieving the same ends. Hopefully the show will do that event justice.

Right, of course.  I was just trying to demonstrate how ridiculous it was to say the lower class was being unrealistically "stupid" concerning their "they took er jerbs" sentiment when in actuality that makes perfect sense for any such society that is demonstrably isolationist and clearly singling out elves as the cultural "other."

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Just now, DMC said:

Right, of course.  I was just trying to demonstrate how ridiculous it was to say the lower class was being unrealistically "stupid" concerning their "they took er jerbs" sentiment when in actuality that makes perfect sense for any such society that is demonstrably isolationist and clearly singling out elves as the cultural "other."

Yes, othering never goes out of fashion!

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