Rings of Power ( No Book Spoilers) - Will I ever care about the Harfoots?

[Cas Stark]

7 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

It says a lot that I would have preferred them to give Arondir a really shit wig, that would have been less distracting 

Nothing could be worse than the Elvis pompadours that they have given to the elves.  He should be thankful they didn't saddle him with that hair style.

[Isis]

5 hours ago, SuperHans said:

Are we all in agreement that Theo is Arondir's son? 

I'm guessing regular human blood wouldn't be enough to ignite Sauron's light sabre...

 

No. I think he is someone else's son (another character we have seen).

I am surprised at how much more I warmed to the Harfoots in episode 3. Their folky little festival parade which is reminscent of many actual historic parades still seen in England and Wales today was fantastic. Obviously big modern day folk horror vibes too - making it instantly recogisable to anyone who has seen any of those films or shows. 

There was also really good visual storytelling through Poppy, where we see her sitting all alone and crying during the 'remembrance' bit, then later we see her pulling her cart by herself. This makes her reaction to the Stranger and her reluctance to help Nori make perfect sense. She doesn't want Nori to get punished for breaking the law of their society because she has experienced it first-hand herself. 

'Nobody walks alone/nobody goes off trail' - these are threats and/or laws to abide by and they are to be taken very seriously. I love that their culture is so primal and dark! None of this palsy-walsy helping each other out business. Nope. If you can't pull your own cart then you'll just have to get left behind. They literally tell Nori's family to go to the back of the caravan so that if they do fall behind they will be literally forgotten. 

I started off thinking that the Harfoots would be the least interesting element of the show to me, so this has really surprised me.

 

[Veltigar]

31 minutes ago, Isis said:

There was also really good visual storytelling through Poppy, where we see her sitting all alone and crying during the 'remembrance' bit, then later we see her pulling her cart by herself. This makes her reaction to the Stranger and her reluctance to help Nori make perfect sense. She doesn't want Nori to get punished for breaking the law of their society because she has experienced it first-hand herself. 

 

Not sure what you mean here, but I thought it was very heavily implied that her family died during one of the earlier trips, not necessarily that she was punished to draw a cart on her own. 

[Consigliere]

I've found the show to be watchable so far. No more than a 5/10 though. Amazon should've spent less on CGI and more on putting together a good writers room and on showrunners who aren't noobs.

[Denvek]

8 hours ago, SuperHans said:

Are we all in agreement that Theo is Arondir's son? 

I'm guessing regular human blood wouldn't be enough to ignite Sauron's light sabre...

 

Not any more. We saw his ears this week and they were human ears. Also, the random old guy who used to own the blade has clearly used it and he’s clearly not part-elf.

I saw a theory somewhere that he could be Halbrand’s son instead, which is really the only other important person who it could be, especially if the name Theo is meant to suggest that he might be an ancestor of King Theoden of Rohan.

[Darryk]

"There is a tempest in me!" 

Seems like every episode has at least one laughably bad line of dialogue that deserves to be a meme.

[Denvek]

Also, the title of this thread should be HarFEET.

[Isis]

15 hours ago, Veltigar said:

Not sure what you mean here, but I thought it was very heavily implied that her family died during one of the earlier trips, not necessarily that she was punished to draw a cart on her own. 

I meant that Poppy understands the way their society works better than Nori does. We learn that the rest of Poppy's family (parents and three siblings) are killed in an avalanche. As a result, Poppy is alone now. That means as the only person left from her family she has to pull her own cart with nobody to help her do it. If she cannot do it, she will be left behind. She is not being 'punished' directly because her family died but she is experiencing the effects of the norms of their culture.

Poppy's backstory explains clearly why she was so reluctant to help Nori do anything with the Stranger - because she doesn't want Nori to break the rules and get punished (e.g. decaravanned) because Poppy knows exactly how cruel their society is. Nori's mother Marigold says to Nori ' you might as well have written our names in the book of the left behind' (paraphrased), to be left behind is to risk death, i.e. your risky behaviour may well doom us to death/exile from the community. 

In the first couple of episodes it looks like Poppy is maybe just playing a foil to Nori, one being a risk taker, the other playing it safe. But after episide three we learn why Poppy is acting that way. She has good reason to be fearful of not following the rules.

 

[SuperHans]

20 hours ago, Raja said:

Really? Hadn't picked up on this at all tbh.

Hmm. I thought it was heavily implied in the subtext.

His mum has a forbidden lover, has done for years now. And Theo's dad has 'run off', sounds like nobody has a clue who he is.

And then Theo activating Sauron's hilt with his blood indicates there is something special about him. Elvish blood?

I dunno. We shall see.

 

[Werthead]

We do see Theo's ears in this episode and they're not pointed. He could still be Arondir's son, of course, but that would have been the most obvious way to signpost that.

[Zorral]

https://deadline.com/video/lord-of-the-rings-the-rings-of-power-episode-4-after-show-spoilers-tolkien/

The two actors for Bronwyn, Arondir, talk about their roles.  And, um, o noes, Cruz wears some nail polish and jewelry, as well as his Puerto Rican origins -- a little boy who always wanted to be an elf, but was told he could not be an elf because you don't look like an elf.

 

[Argonath Diver]

I sincerely hope he's Just Some Kid. Echoes of The Last Jedi - can't he just be an orphan? The eeeevil sword stabbed some dull innkeep, Theo can exist as his own entity and not a dang Abrams Mystery Man. 

I rewatched HotD through the first four eps last night. Man I wish these shows could merge somehow. The Martin series needs a single relatable character - I simply dislike every character introduced so far and find no joy whatsoever in the show despite noticeably stronger scripts and acting. And ROP is delightful to watch and yet veering more and more often into stupidity. 

I'm of the opinion that we haven't yet seen Sauron and he'll appear as something closer to what book readers expect. I predict Halbrand as a deposed Southern king who sees a return to power through a powerful new advisor, only to be given the first of nine rings and becoming the Witch King. 

 

[Ser Drewy]

On 9/17/2022 at 6:29 PM, Consigliere said:

I've found the show to be watchable so far. No more than a 5/10 though. Amazon should've spent less on CGI and more on putting together a good writers room and on showrunners who aren't noobs.

Rings of Power's writers room is actually pretty solid. They've got writers from The Sopranos, Breaking Bad and Mad Men. Though I suppose being a solid writer of, say, crime fiction or contemporary drama doesn't necessarily mean they'll excel at writing epic/mythic fantasy.

(Game of Thrones kinda serves as an example of that: David Benioff actually had some decent work in his past like The 25th Hour, but much of his original writing on Thrones was... lol)

[Caligula_K3]

Thanks for this thread! I used to be a big Tolkien lore junkie, but I don't remember enough to keep track of all the different conversations happening in the other thread. And it's nice to have a place to talk about the show without constant debates over how true the Galadriel character is to the way she's depicted in one Tolkien letter vs. another Tolkien letter.

I also agree - and hope - that the kid is just some kid. But I hope that other characters make it to the southlands soon, because that place really needs to get livened up.

I'm not sure where I stand on Halbrand's identity. He seems like the most obvious candidate to be Sauron out of our current cast of characters, but I could also see him becoming the Witch King. Either way, I like the actor and the swagger and charm he's brought to the role. If he is Sauron, you already get a sense of how he'll be able to manipulate others.

 

[felice]

10 hours ago, SuperHans said:

His mum has a forbidden lover, has done for years now. And Theo's dad has 'run off', sounds like nobody has a clue who he is.

A forbidden romance; I'm not sure it's been consummated? And if there hadn't been an obvious human candidate for Theo's father at the time he was born, I think the villagers' suspicions would certainly have fallen on Arondir!

[Raja]

1 hour ago, felice said:

A forbidden romance; I'm not sure it's been consummated?

This was also my reading of the romance between the two, I came away with the feeling that they're obviously into each other but haven't done anything about it.

Also, agree regarding the kid being a kid. I think because LOTR has had basically no content since the movies, and with it being a prequel, the guess work is turned up to 11 to try and figure out if the people we meet are 'x, y or z'.

Lastly, whilst I'm not the biggest fan of the harfoots, I really like Nori's musical theme. It's instantly recognizable and very good, imo ( Bear McCreary, the composer has done a lot of work and can come across as slightly generic, but I think the theme is on point)

 

[Heartofice]

11 hours ago, Ser Drewy said:

Rings of Power's writers room is actually pretty solid. They've got writers from The Sopranos, Breaking Bad and Mad Men. Though I suppose being a solid writer of, say, crime fiction or contemporary drama doesn't necessarily mean they'll excel at writing epic/mythic fantasy.

(Game of Thrones kinda serves as an example of that: David Benioff actually had some decent work in his past like The 25th Hour, but much of his original writing on Thrones was... lol)

The Showrunners past experience is:

Star Trek Beyond..

that’s it. 
 

[Isis]

I think the soundtrack is amazing. In case anyone wasn't aware, there are albums for each episode released weekly. Whereas the series album is divided into individual themes, the episode albums have tracks whuch blend different themes. It was great to see the scenes which accompany the White Leaves track from the series soundtrack in episode four. 

I read an an interview with Bear McCreary where he explains how the character themes sit with people or place themes, eg Nori/Harfoots and Durin/Dwarves. Very cool. 

[Consigliere]

4 hours ago, Heartofice said:

The Showrunners past experience is:

Star Trek Beyond..

that’s it. 
 

I'm actually surprised that the show has writers from The Sopranos, Mad Men and Breaking Bad. The dialogue and plotting is quite poor. I'd have expected a lot better from writers with those backgrounds.

[Zorral]

15 hours ago, Isis said:

I read an an interview with Bear McCreary where he explains how the character themes sit with people or place themes, eg Nori/Harfoots and Durin/Dwarves. Very cool. 

One of the After Shows has him speaking of his musical instrumental and compositional choices.  I particularly enjoyed his description of having sounds that were common for Numenor in the Third Age, and will have essentially disappeared in the Third Age of -- Jackson's films.  He was definitely trying for a suggestiveness of the ancient past, out of the Near East, going back at least to the first Babylonian Empire and beyond that too.  All of which will be gone by LOTR.  The visuals are the same -- which I picked up on first.  Which is normal around here, because over the years I've known so many composers going for a reconstruction of forever lost audio -- even for the 18th C -- for there is no way for us to know how it sounded, since there was no recording yet.  Some of them have worked at the world's opera houses, and on tv too, as with the ever popular Jane Austen adaptations, and other works like The Gilded Age.