[SPOILERS] Rings of Power: Ah, Mithril, that's the good stuff!

[Mithras]

The Harfoots are not Hole-builders yet.

[The Bard of Banefort]

54 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

They aren't born in any real sense of the word. 

So wizards don’t have parents?

[Ran]

53 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

So wizards don’t have parents?

They are lesser angelic spirits, created at the beginning of time by Eru Ilúvatar, who haven taken corporeal form.

Edited October 6, 2022 by Ran

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 hours ago, Ran said:

They are lesser angelic spirits, created at the beginning of time by Eru Ilúvatar, who haven taken corporeal form.

Maiar.

[Werthead]

10 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

The Balrog looks the same because they are using John Howe.

The visual design of the Balrog as established in the Jackson films is owned by New Line/WB, so they needed their permission to use it. That's why they did the deal with New Line/WB in the first place, to presumably mitigate these issues when they arose (since they could change things for the sake of changing them, or leave them the same so viewers would immediately know what was going on).

[Ser Drewy]

2 minutes ago, Werthead said:

The visual design of the Balrog as established in the Jackson films is owned by New Line/WB, so they needed their permission to use it. That's why they did the deal with New Line/WB in the first place, to presumably mitigate these issues when they arose (since they could change things for the sake of changing them, or leave them the same so viewers would immediately know what was going on).

I do actually wish they had gone for a different balrog design. Nothing wrong with Howe's or the New Line Howe one, but I'd have liked to have seen something different from a horned behemoth. Across media, most balrogs seem Howe-inspired. Would have been interesting to have gotten something different.

Edited October 6, 2022 by Ser Drewy

[Werthead]

6 minutes ago, Ser Drewy said:

I do actually wish they had gone for a different balrog design. Nothing wrong with Howe's or the New Line Howe one, but I'd have liked to have seen something different from a horned behemoth. Across media, most balrogs seem Howe-inspired. Would have been interesting to have gotten something different.

Considering that each Balrog is essentially a slightly different individual and being, it might have been interesting to see another "type" of Balrog that is similar but different, sort of what they've done with the orcs, and the wargs get a different design every time they show up.

[Julisch]

I've read a mock theory that I find very interesting and wish it were true, even though I'm pretty sure the writers have no such imagination:

Bronwyn is Sauron!

Unfortunately it seems Halbrand will end up being Sauron, but I wish for a more surprising solution.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2022/09/25/heres-a-better-theory-about-saurons-true-identity-in-the-rings-of-power/?sh=69ad97cd3c72

[fionwe1987]

At this point, the only thing that will satisfy as a plot twist is the entire cast joining hands and saying "We are Sauron". 

[Farerb]

That "Who's Sauron?" Mystery box is so dumb and lazy. Tolkien never made any mysteries to who Annatar really was.

[3CityApache]

18 minutes ago, farerb said:

Tolkien never made any mysteries to who Annatar really was.

He also never made a TV show, which needs to keep viewer's interest from episode to episode somehow.

[The Bard of Banefort]

The problem with mystery boxes is that, while they lead to a lot of fan engagement and speculation, the resolution is almost always disappointing to the audience, who came up with theories they found much more satisfying. This happened with both Star Wars and GOT. The only show I’ve seen where they managed to match the fans in how elaborate the twists were was Westworld, which ultimately became too convoluted for most viewers.

[Farerb]

2 hours ago, 3CityApache said:

He also never made a TV show, which needs to keep viewer's interest from episode to episode somehow.

There are more than one way to keep viewers engaged in a show, not everything needs to be 'Lost'.

 

1 hour ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

The problem with mystery boxes is that, while they lead to a lot of fan engagement and speculation, the resolution is almost always disappointing to the audience, who came up with theories they found much more satisfying. This happened with both Star Wars and GOT. The only show I’ve seen where they managed to match the fans in how elaborate the twists were was Westworld, which ultimately became too convoluted for most viewers.

First season of Westworld was great, the rest of the seasons were just not interesting enough in my opinion.

[The Bard of Banefort]

2 minutes ago, farerb said:

There are more than one way to keep viewers engaged in a show, not everything needs to be 'Lost'.

 

First season of Westworld was great, the rest of the seasons were just not interesting enough in my opinion.

I only watched the first two seasons. From what I’ve heard, it continued to get increasingly more convoluted and hard to follow.

 

Just looking at the subreddit, almost every post is a theory about who Sauron is, to the point where it’s pretty funny. A lot of people hate the Halbrand twist. Maybe they’ll nail it in execution, but I think many people really just wanted another Aragorn. Isildur’s too much of a dope and Elendil’s just kind of there (although I like him as a character too).

That’s the thing about these franchises: they all claim to be their own thing, but the successful ones have certain archetypes, which you see with both HOTD and the Star Wars sequels. People can spend all day claiming that Rhaenyra is not the same as Daenerys, but at the end of the day, there’s still a dragon queen, a scheming “evil” queen (Cersei, Alicent), a dying king (Robert, Viserys), a sardonic rogue (Jaime, Daemon), a douchey boy-king (Joffrey, Aegon), a stoic Hand (Tywin, Otto), and a trickster (LF/Varys, Larys). What HOTD is missing is a Tyrion, and the omission has not gone unnoticed.

This is also why I think you could argue that Finn is the one truly unique character in the ST, since he doesn’t have a parallel character in the OT. Now if only they had any idea what to do with him. . . 

[Corvinus85]

3 hours ago, 3CityApache said:

He also never made a TV show, which needs to keep viewer's interest from episode to episode somehow.

If they decided to adapt LOTR in a TV show, what would they have needed to do to keep the viewer's interest? Make it a secret on who carries the Ring? Surely there are other ways to craft an engaging story besides placing a mystery box in the middle of it.

[RumHam]

4 hours ago, farerb said:

That "Who's Sauron?" Mystery box is so dumb and lazy. Tolkien never made any mysteries to who Annatar really was.

Is it fair to call this a mystery box though? I don't recall the show posing the question "which established character is Sauron?" This feels more like viewers trying to head off a more traditional plot twist.

[mormont]

Yeah, nothing in the show to date is saying to viewers 'Sauron is in disguise at this point' let alone 'which of these established characters is secretly Sauron?'

[fionwe1987]

26 minutes ago, mormont said:

Yeah, nothing in the show to date is saying to viewers 'Sauron is in disguise at this point' let alone 'which of these established characters is secretly Sauron?'

That's a good point. The mystery box aspect technically is only for the book readers. 

I will say that friends of mine who don't read fantasy have said they find the show entertaining, and not unlike the Witcher but better shot. 

I don't quite believe that was Amazon's goal, but the show is far from a failure. Nor is it only for us readers, so it's worth keeping that in mind.

But like with WoT, the show is quickly reaching the point where it's going to stop working for me. My quest for a good fantasy adaptation shall continue, I suppose.

 

 

[The Bard of Banefort]

The bigger issue is that, if Sauron is who the leaks say he is, and there’s no additional twist—like if he’s a vessel rather than Sauron himself—then show has tried so hard to throw us off that it makes the reveal rather nonsensical.

ROP probably is a huge show—if not as big as Amazon hoped—but is it big like GOT and Stranger Things, or is it big like Yellowstone and Modern Family? The first two are huge online, and have spawned passionate fandoms that garner a lot of attention (and sell a lot of merch). The latter are arguably even bigger, but they appeal to older audiences who just want to watch TV and don’t really care about fan theories or buying merchandise. Amazon surely wants the former audience, but they may have ended up with that latter.

(Granted, somehow Amazon of all platforms doesn’t have merch yet. Don’t know how they bungled that one).

6 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

That's a good point. The mystery box aspect technically is only for the book readers. 

I will say that friends of mine who don't read fantasy have said they find the show entertaining, and not unlike the Witcher but better shot. 

I don't quite believe that was Amazon's goal, but the show is far from a failure. Nor is it only for us readers, so it's worth keeping that in mind.

But like with WoT, the show is quickly reaching the point where it's going to stop working for me. My quest for a good fantasy adaptation shall continue, I suppose.

 

 

I definitely think that people who haven’t read the books (such as myself) are enjoying this show more than those who have. I haven’t watch The Witcher yet, but a lot of its fans seem to be people who haven’t read the books/played the games and love how schlocky it is haha. I wonder what the overlap between Witcher and Supernatural fans is?

And I’ll say this for the Hobbit: I think it probably had a bigger female fanbase than people realized. I was a teenager when those movies came out and I loved them, and I knew a bunch of other girls who did too. Obviously plenty of women love LOTR, but I think there was something about the Hobbit trilogy that appealed to ladies, whatever that was.

[SpaceChampion]

2 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

People can spend all day claiming that Rhaenyra is not the same as Daenerys, but at the end of the day, there’s still a dragon queen, a scheming “evil” queen (Cersei, Alicent), a dying king (Robert, Viserys), a sardonic rogue (Jaime, Daemon), a douchey boy-king (Joffrey, Aegon), a stoic Hand (Tywin, Otto), and a trickster (LF/Varys, Larys). What HOTD is missing is a Tyrion, and the omission has not gone unnoticed.

I thought it more that the Dance of the Dragons was deliberately written as a foil to ASOIAF.  The latter has foils within it already, notably Theon being a foil of Jon.  The Dance is a foil for a situation, which in the main hasn't happened yet:  fAegon, Dany, and maybe others, re-enacting the Targaryen civil war, to show a different way things could turn out.  This is more than archetypes.   It's not meant to turn out the same way.

Edited October 6, 2022 by SpaceChampion