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


Raja

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13 hours ago, Consigliere said:

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.

The showrunners have the ability to rewrite anything coming from the writers. The showrunners are also the people responsible for the overall thrust and design of the show, and have the last word on the completed scripts.

Personally if I had a script by Gennifer Hutchison, who wrote some of the best episodes of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul (and is also a massive fantasy fan, and has single-handedly trying to get a Dishonored TV show made for years), I'd hesitate to rewrite it too much, but who knows with these guys.

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It's also just hard as hell to write a great epic fantasy show. I don't think people credit this enough. For worldbuilding, you need a constant flow of exposition. You have many complex plotlines at once, many of which won't intersect for a long time. In terms of dialogue, you often have to write in a very stylized, formal, and ornate mode, which frankly sounds terrible on TV unless you have real poetic talent. I have no problem believing that talented, experienced writers can have trouble with shows like this or House of the Dragon.

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13 hours ago, Consigliere said:

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.

Agree.  Although I could see that strange ramble about stones facing down and ships facing up being a great Salamanca rant....but I'm not seeing the same quality as the shows mentioned.

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As I have said elsewhere, I think the show has an excellent grasp of Tolkien's themes - better than Jackson, in that respect. It is also extremely clever, in its ability to make shout-outs to The Silmarillion, Jackson, or real-life history. The problem thus far has been the coherency of the plotting, though that is improving, and the occasional issue with dialogue.

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13 hours ago, Zorral said:

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.

 

I saw that one too. It's a cool concept. The one I was referring to was about how certain character's individual themes sound more harmonious than their respective kingdom themes sound, which I thought was interesting.

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7 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

As I have said elsewhere, I think the show has an excellent grasp of Tolkien's themes - better than Jackson, in that respect. It is also extremely clever, in its ability to make shout-outs to The Silmarillion, Jackson, or real-life history. The problem thus far has been the coherency of the plotting, though that is improving, and the occasional issue with dialogue.

I think even very good writers will always struggle to balance the numerous constraints and issues that can crop up during production. In an ideal world the plotting and dialogue would be a lot better, but who knows what directions or instructions the writers are given so they have to do the best with what they can. That’s why having such a massively inexperienced showrunner seems like an odd choice.

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Any (non-Tolkien history book reader) theories on the identify of Adar?

My wife is certain he's Galadriel's brother. He's called Father, so I'm leaning toward some other fallen elf who had a hand in the original corruption that created the orcs.

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31 minutes ago, Calibandar said:

im being a Blue Wizard as the second option. 

Please, this is NON BOOK. Nobody in the show has ever uttered those words. I don't know what they are I don't want them brought up here -- unless they do show up, but then it will be in the context of what the show shows us, not the book(s).

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What people are missing is that the timelines prior to LotR was the mythology, recalled legend, all turned into poetry over the spans of many millennia.  Which is what they've got in the timeline of LotR -- created, edited, fabricated, polished memory.

Their own times are far more shabby than those memories, legends and poetry of the first two ages.  It's remarked upon how Minas Tirith for instance looks beat up -- utterly non-shiny in the glorious manner we get to see in ROP's Númenor -- most elves had already left Middle Earth, there are no entwives, hobbits that nobody really is familiar with have become a people.

That's the thing about the distant past, it's poetry -- just like LotR's period became poetry in our own timeline.

But for the people who were alive in those ages, who are working, dying, fighting, struggling, raising families, facing all sorts of challenges -- and fought in the carnage of those awful battles, those eras we've turned into poetry are NOT poetry. The present is never poetry.

That's what I love about ROP -- this show is so aware of this and are constructing the show out of that.  This is its way of hitting that Tolkien concern, the continuing Cycles of Light Against Dark. The wheel never stops turning from one Cycle to starting it all over again.  Another way Tolkien's thought was infused with his great knowledge of nordic thought and saga;  Ragnarök always returns, and so then, a new beginning.
 

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After episode 5, "Partings" it's official. I love this show.  

Like all the others except the second one with the endless swimming, this episode moved very fast, while heightening the stakes' tension.  I don't know what all is going on, I don't know who everyone is, which is part of why we keep reading LotR too, or watching a program.

“Not all who wander are lost,” Poppy's road song – if it is the actor’s voice, that voice is beautiful. The Big Stranger is acquiring language and social education, saves his little group from death by warg/whatever with a Big Power Mover, but is wounded by the saliva/fangs turning his limb black.  Goes to a spring, intones words in a language for which closed caption gives no translation, and the water runs up the limb, turning to … ice?  But it heals him from whatever it is. The power of it blasts Poppy when she gets caught in it.  She runs away. Still don’t think Big Stranger is Sauron, due to the following scene with those closed shaved heads standing around Big Stranger’s landing site.  They don’t look … nice. Are they … female ... androgynous?

Again loving Durin and Elrond’s relationship. Elrond didn't exactly break his oath, since he discussed with Durin Gil-Galad's insistence the dwarves share the discovery of mithril, that Gil-Falad already knew of the substance and was on watch for its appearance, and why -- and that the Dark was returned.  So much depends on friendship and truth, even survival of peoples.

The Tree, from First Age, with roots delving multi-branching and deep into the Misty Mountains which magically create mithril, the only substance that magically can preserve the Light for all time.  Tolkien’s Nordic reimagining of the mythic World Tree.  This kind of building of significance of mithril beyond ‘magic&elves’ into the narrative of the Second Age is lovely, while providing that sense of enchantment that we took from LotR.  All the other Trees, as images and metaphorical statements are appropriate to Tolkien thematic use too.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Is it possible Halbrand is Theo’s father? The dark deeds he committed ... were they as evil as what that villager does to be taken in by Andar?  One likes too this mystery of both Halbrand and Andar's characters' seemingly deeply wounded, while each having conflict about their natures, which manifest in different ways -- one fleeing Dark, and then attempting redemption, the other, perhaps, having fled the Light, attempting to find community with the Dark's monsters -- which too, in this show are shown as more complex than Tolkien portrayed them in LotR.

We see Galadriel being a little more diplomatic than before.  Perhaps she and Halbrand are teaching each other good lessons?

Really liked this episode -- it's interesting too that the comic relief, appropriately Tolkienesque mild, comes from Elrond and Durin's relationship.

I wonder if I’ll live to see all 50 episodes.  Will the world survive to make and broadcast all 50 episodes? In the meantime, I'm looking forward even more to having this to watch back-to-back during dreadful January.

 

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21 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

a lot of the backlash pretty silly.

There is so much going on, as there is in the LotR books, it takes a lot of time to process it all, which is why the richness of the experience continues for so many re-readings.

As for instance, as mentioned the Big Stranger's arm wound inflicted by creatures of the Dark, paralleled by the Andar scene with an orc's arm wound from the Light - sun.  That's just another bit of the thoughtful compositional richness that we are seeing increasingly in this series.  I really wish we were going to have 10 episodes instead of the 8.

But maybe a lot of people find the visual - event parallelism, metaphors -- the poetry, which is integral to the sense of wonder and enchantment in LotR -- cartoonish? Whereas this brings me joy and delight, particularly since this sort of structural composition is so rarely if ever on tv screens.

 

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11 hours ago, Zorral said:

But maybe a lot of people find the visual - event parallelism, metaphors -- the poetry, which is integral to the sense of wonder and enchantment in LotR -- cartoonish? Whereas this brings me joy and delight, particularly since this sort of structural composition is so rarely if ever on tv screens.

I don't think that, that is where the problem is for most people. It's moreso that while the story itself is quite interesting, the storytelling is poor and sometimes even contradicts itself.

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I don't want to spoil anyone in the thread so I won't discuss my concerns with one aspect of this episode. Instead I will say what I enjoyed about ep 5:

The Harfoot storyline continues to interest me. Now that a little time has passed (a couple of weeks maybe) we see The Stranger managing a few words of speech. I still think it is ambiguous as to whether he is good or evil. It appears that the Mystics (great to finally see them appear) think he is Sauron, i.e. they are looking for the starfall/meteor. Much as the track 'This Wandering Day' is a saccharine horror which I skip in the soundtrack, it did work very well in context of the scene. From the maps it looks as if the Harfoots are heading towards the Southlands?

Durin is probably my favourite character in the show. Anything he does in a humourous vein is always perfectly pitched. The whole dinner/dinner table thing was great. The Durin/Elrond stuff is just really nice to watch. 

In Numenor, Pharazon is convincing as a leader. Same for Elendil. Isildur remains an untried youth - but I find the performance convincing - basically everyone he interacts with knows that he doesn't finish anything he starts. Halbrand got his guild badge for being a grass? Nice touch - betrayal has its benefits. Quite liked the Halbrand/Galadriel scene in the forge, although I will say that his side was more convincing than hers. When he asks why she keeps fighting and she says she cannot stop - I thought that was a bit trite. But I loved the sword training scene - a bit of levity is always welcome on the eve of war, right? I can see that Kemen and Earien are going to be super annoying! At first he seems to agree with Pharazon's reasonings, but then he seems to switch to just blindly follow what Earien tells him to do AND we don't even learn what her justifications are, sure she seems upset that Isildue os going, but she doesn't put any of this into words.

Adar seemed a bit more sadistic this episode, getting one of his orcs to burn themselves just so that he may muse on the nature of sunlight? That was a bit mean, after showing that he cares for the orcs last week. 

Bronwyn (whose accent is still wandering all over the place) wasn't very convincing in her speech so it's not that surprising to me that some people wanted to leave! I enjoyed the Theo and Arondir scenes though.

Episode six can't come soon enough because I need some answers about what is happening with the Elves. Also wtf with the weird placeholder elves at the dinner table who seemingly only existed to clear up afterwards?

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19 hours ago, Zorral said:

The Tree, from First Age, with roots delving multi-branching and deep into the Misty Mountains which magically create mithril, the only substance that magically can preserve the Light for all time.  Tolkien’s the show writers' Nordic reimagining of the mythic World Tree.  This kind of building of significance of mithril beyond ‘magic&elves’ into the narrative of the Second Age is lovely, while providing that sense of enchantment that we took from LotR.  All the other Trees, as images and metaphorical statements are appropriate to Tolkien thematic use too.

Fixed that for you.

19 hours ago, Zorral said:

As for instance, as mentioned the Big Stranger's arm wound inflicted by creatures of the Dark, paralleled by the Andar scene with an orc's arm wound from the Light - sun.  That's just another bit of the thoughtful compositional richness that we are seeing increasingly in this series.  I really wish we were going to have 10 episodes instead of the 8.

The Stranger injured himself when he performed his powerful magic act. 

Hey, do you think that any horses were killed when the two ships blew up? They had shown them loading horses on the ships earlier and all the ships were of the same size so I would think they distributed the horses among them.

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2 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

do you think that any horses were killed when the two ships blew up?

You are right!  If we can't do overt cruelty to women to entertain us, we swap in horsies!

2 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

The Stranger injured himself when he performed his powerful magic act. 

As for the trees, including Norse mysthology's Ygddrasil and the serpent, there are trees throughout Tolkien of significance, particularly magical significance.  Not to mention ents, so there I entirely disagree with you.  That the series's writers and production ran with the tree imagery and metaphors is creative, imaginative and in keeping.

Do not see this as fan fic at all. But then I've never read any fan fic of any kind for anything. I can't think of anything more useless and boring.

This thread is about looking at this as what we're getting on the screen in this series, which is why this is the non-book spoiler thread.  Evidently this means I enjoy and admire it a whole lot more than lore masters/fanners, who are determined to kill the series and drive away anyone who see this differently. :dunno:   (This applies as much to Got, etc. and ROP.)

I honestly don't understand this.  But we're seeing even here there are many reasons these days to refer to fan fash, which includes the neofascist party in Italy.

2 hours ago, Clueless Northman said:

nothing of what happens in the show comes from Tolkien, just some of the names and some vague ideas,

Um ... that's what there in the Appendices, isn't it?  And we don't want to talk about the Appendices here either, because that's book stuff, and this is the NON BOOK thread.  We are talking about what we get on screen.

You say the writing is incoherent.  It is then, for you., and that's OK, and you can stop watching such inferior stuff -- I do constantly, stop watching stuff that displeases me, due to lousy writing etc., yet many adore that junk.

But it's not lousy writing, particularly over all for others -- like I keep pointing out I admire how well they employ visually the tools of creating long (and poetic) narratives, including parallelisms and so on.

We come, we take out time, we watch, we are unexpectedly pleased.  Others weep. :cheers:

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10 minutes ago, Zorral said:

As for the trees, including Norse mysthology's Ygddrasil and the serpent, there are trees throughout Tolkien of significance, particularly magical significance.  Not to mention ents, so there I entirely disagree with you.  That the series's writers and production ran with that is a productive and good thing.  Do not see this as fan fic at all. But then I've never read any fan fic of any kind for anything. I can't think of anything more useless and boring.

Yeah, umm, it's all fan fic. This is the very definition of fan fic. It can be good fan fic that does a serious effort to pay tribute to the original creator, or bad fan fic where people take the story in whatever direction they feel like. I would say RoP falls somewhere in between at the moment but worryingly leaning towards the bad fan fic.

13 minutes ago, Zorral said:

I am looking at this as what we're getting on the screen in this series, which is why this non-book spoiler thread.  Evidently this means I enjoy and admire it a whole lot more than lore masters/fanners, who are determined to kill the series and drive away anyone who see this differently. :dunno:   (This applies as much to Got, etc. as to ROP.)

Sure, but then maybe don't mention what Tolkien did or didn't do.

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I enjoyed episode 5- it feels like there's more direction to everything and the pace is picking up, though still maybe a little too slowly for where we are in the season. As usual, Durin was a delight (that table!) and the harfoots were enjoyable. But Numenor was also more interesting this week, from the Galadriel/Halbrand conflict to that fun training scene to Pharazon's plotting.

The Southlands was the Southlands, but Adar aside, I'm resigned to that being a boring plotline at this point. I just hope the arrival of other characters shakes it up.

A few things I'm confused or a bit perplexed by:

1. Isildur's sister: why is she suddenly anti-expedition? This came out of nowhere for me.

2. Pharazon's son on the boat: what was happening there? Why was he trying to sabotage the expedition after his dad had just told him the ways they would benefit from it?

3. "We need mithril or the elves are going to die!" This seemed very, very silly to me- as silly as when in the ROTK movie Arwen suddenly was going to die if the ring wasn't destroyed. I very much hope that Elrond is being manipulated here.

These problems aside, I'm still really enjoying the show. It's so weird for me to go online and see the consensus is that it's terrible: everyone I know in real life is enjoying this show a lot more than HOTD, slow pace aside! Nobody thinks it's a masterpiece, but all this talk of "disastrous writing" online doesn't seem to reflect how much many people seem to be liking the show.

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