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[SPOILERS] Rings of Power: "I am Sauron" "I'm Sauron" "I'm Sauron!"


Ser Drewy

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I think if this wasn’t a Lord of the Rings tv show I’d be mostly positive about it, but seeing as it is, it’s kind of a disaster.

Im not a book nerd, I do love the movies though. This has all the hall marks of cynical modern filmmaking getting in the way of making something actually good.

I mean it’s a prequel which is usually an issue, but they have also tried to piggyback off of Jackson’s movies as much as possible. I like the music but it is used in the same way as those movies, it’s visually similar but worse, and it is full of nods and winks and memberberries. 
 

I almost threw something at the tv when Gandalf did the follow your nose line. But having female Frodo and Sam in the show is so cynical and contrived on its own. There are just a whole list of things ripped straight from Jackson’s trilogy. It’s sad. 
 

Then the whole mystery box thing really does play on the audiences familiarity with Sauron and uses it as a device to keep people engaged. That feels very cynical as well. 
 

I can’t comment on how close this all is to Tolkien or not, but my big takeaway is that is exactly the sort of product you would expect from an enormous money making machine like Amazon.

 

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I read the books years ago and only have vague recollections of the details especially of The Silmarillion so I don't consider myself to be a book purist, far from it. RoP on its own merit is mediocre at best. The only thing this show seems to have going for it is that it looks pretty and has some good CGI. Pretty pathetic effort as far as I'm concerned for the most expensive television show ever. HotD is vastly superior.

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1 hour ago, sifth said:

Here are the facts as they are presented. MIB and Jacob's mother tells them "magic light is very bad and is a faith worse than death". Jacob throws MIB into magic light. Smoke monster appears. Did it exist before this? Did doing this action wake up the monster? Did doing this action transform MIB into the monster? These are all thing never told to us and left for us the viewers to guess, because this is how the show answers questions, lol

I'll grant that it's left ambiguous if the monster existed before Jacob throws the MIB into the light, or if him doing so transformed/created the MIB into the monster.  But this is a decidedly minor omission.  For all intents and purposes, the show thoroughly answers the question "what is the monster?" - it's the man in black.  Who they characterize starting during the Season 5 finale "The Incident."  Indeed, the entire final season is about figuring out how to kill him/it.  The monster is the MIB for the entirety of the survivors' time on the island.  Why does it really matter we're not sure how exactly that came about thousands of years ago?

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1 hour ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

 

I think the goal was to shock the viewers as much as possible. They couldn’t hint at Halbrand being Sauron until now because that would have made it less surprising. I think a lot of screenwriters took the wrong lesson away from the Red Wedding. 

Halbrand looking like Aragorn and being a long-lost king was definitely set up as part of the subversion. But at the same time, I think that Hollywood overestimates just how much people want to be shocked. I’d reckon more people would have preferred a second Aragorn to a secret dark lord, just like how they like having another ginger dwarf and    kind-hearted hobbit.

That said, I still generally like the show, much more so than book fans seem to. I think that when you love the source material, it’s always going to be a challenge to love the adaptation, which is my current predicament with HOTD.

I'm thinking something closer to how Westworld did the MIB reveal would have been better than what was done here.  Other than the overt 'hints' there isn't anything in the acting that suggests hidden depths or a secondary agenda.  When he gives Galadriel good advice it registers as straightforward, the same when he cautions her on her plan for genocide.  Not only is this stuff not consistent with 'Sauron' [why would he try to prevent Galadriel from going to the dark side???] but the acting does not reflect any sense of a hidden personna.  At least not that I saw, and I certainly will never rewatch this show to see what if anything I missed. 

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13 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

I'm thinking something closer to how Westworld did the MIB reveal would have been better than what was done here.  Other than the overt 'hints' there isn't anything in the acting that suggests hidden depths or a secondary agenda.  When he gives Galadriel good advice it registers as straightforward, the same when he cautions her on her plan for genocide.  Not only is this stuff not consistent with 'Sauron' [why would he try to prevent Galadriel from going to the dark side???] but the acting does not reflect any sense of a hidden personna.  At least not that I saw, and I certainly will never rewatch this show to see what if anything I missed. 

Him stopping her from killing Adar is definitely weird in retrospect, and gets back to what I was saying about how the show seems uncertain about whether he was penitent or scheming. They’ll probably try to play it next season as him having wanted Adar alive so he could make him suffer lol. Then again, he did say that he wanted Galadriel to be the “good” in their union, so who knows?

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1 hour ago, DMC said:

I'll grant that it's left ambiguous if the monster existed before Jacob throws the MIB into the light, or if him doing so transformed/created the MIB into the monster.  But this is a decidedly minor omission.  For all intents and purposes, the show thoroughly answers the question "what is the monster?" - it's the man in black.  Who they characterize starting during the Season 5 finale "The Incident."  Indeed, the entire final season is about figuring out how to kill him/it.  The monster is the MIB for the entirety of the survivors' time on the island.  Why does it really matter we're not sure how exactly that came about thousands of years ago?

As in our previous debates. The show felt like it was making the mystery of the monster up as it went along. One season it's a security system, the next a weapon for Ben to use on his enemies, the season after that it's the islands judge that the Egyptians worshiped. It's like the writers were scared to give a definitive answer and simply went with, "a guy who was thrown into magic light", almost as a way of just giving up. You all know I hate Lost and mostly watched it for Jeff Fahey, but to each their own. We're getting off topic about this anyway.

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10 hours ago, Isis said:

All of y'all that keep ragging on Lost and calling it a failed mystery box whatever are really telling on yourselves btw. Itw asn't about the mysteries it was about the characters.

It it wasn't about the mysteries, why every single season revolved about them!? What is the hatch? What happens if you don't enter the numbers? Why do they need to "come back"? Who are the Oceanic 6? Who is in the coffin?... I don't think you can blame any viewer who thought that those enigmas where important.

But most importantly, why should a have to choose between satisfying resolutions to the mysteries or well-developed characters? Can't we have both? I want both!!

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2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I almost threw something at the tv when Gandalf did the follow your nose line. But having female Frodo and Sam in the show is so cynical and contrived on its own. There are just a whole list of things ripped straight from Jackson’s trilogy. It’s sad. 

The follow your nose line is another example of how the writers have constantly tried to make these characters appear wise while spouting nonsensical stuff. Gandalf in the tunnels of Moria guiding himself by the smell of the air is one thing, but here he was standing underneath an apple tree on a hill. The evil witches had told him they came from the east so, umm, look at the sun.

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Elrond’s line about how “a journey is not always forward” or something like that was pretty cringe, but the actor salvaged it. He mentions the fact that he’s a half-elf a lot, but I wish we’d actually get a scene of him explaining that more in detail. In the premiere, Arondir’s friend mentioned that there were two human-elf unions that ended tragically. I’m willing to bet most viewers don’t realize Elrond descends from both of them.

Something ROP does a lot is having one character ask a question and another give an unrelated answer. That happened again this episode when Elrond asked Galadriel how she met Saurbrand and she gave a long-winded response that completely avoided answering the question.

If Sauron was able to access Galadriel’s memory of Finrod and their conversation from childhood, then I’m not sure why he wouldn’t be able to impersonate Elrond and recount how they met. Not saying that’s what happened, but I don’t think it was a surefire test. 

Elrond appears to have put two and two together regarding Halbrand, although I don’t know what this will mean for S2. Like Werthead said, it seems unlikely that they’d be able to drag this conflict out for five seasons, but S1 was so slow paced and covered so little ground that it’s certainly not impossible.

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It's funny to read the plot spelled out like this. It's almost like they wrote it for laughs.

This all seems like a complicated and almost unpredictable plan in order to trick the Elves into making the first Rings of Power...

Why did Galadriel not reveal Sauron's plan?

Part of the answer to this question is if Galadriel didn't agree to the rings being made, we wouldn't have "The Lord of the Rings." However, it almost seems out of character for her to willingly go along with a plan concocted by Sauron.

In the finale, Galadriel discovers that Halbrand has been the enemy she has been chasing this whole time. She tries to attack him but he pulls her into a deep sleep where they discuss her options: Join him to rule Middle-earth together or tell the elves the truth and risk dishonor.

Galadriel chooses a third option. She doesn't tell the Elves the truth, even her close friend Elrond (Robert Aramayo). Instead, she slightly alters Sauron's plan and instead requests for three rings to be created instead of two, hoping the third will hopefully create balance for whatever evil is in the rings. 

This fits her character since she has been hellbent on doing whatever she can to kill Sauron for revenge, including tapping into the darkness. However, it is a foolish thing to do when she just found out the rings were essentially created by the enemy of Middle-earth and doesn't truly know their purpose yet.

Plus, if it all backfires she will face more dishonor and distrust than if she put a stop to the rings...

It seems likely that he'll start heading to the kingdoms of men and dwarves to create rings for them next, but it's not exactly clear. Surely Galadriel and Elrond could just warn the other kingdoms of who Halbrand really is?

https://www.insider.com/questions-lotr-rings-of-power-season-one-finale-2022-10

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49 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

The follow your nose line is another example of how the writers have constantly tried to make these characters appear wise while spouting nonsensical stuff. Gandalf in the tunnels of Moria guiding himself by the smell of the air is one thing, but here he was standing underneath an apple tree on a hill. The evil witches had told him they came from the east so, umm, look at the sun.

The worst part is it makes Gandalf seem like a senile old codger who spouts off the same tired sayings for his entire life.

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4 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

In sum: the show sucks. Amazon doesn't know how to do fantasy, 

To be fair, most high fantasy shows flop. You either need to be ultra serious and limit the fantasy elements like GOT, or you have to embrace the cheese factor like Merlin. The Witcher is a “serious” show that is nevertheless saved by the audience’s love for schlock. Trying to match the tone of the PJ trilogy as close as possible was probably the smartest move Amazon could have made. 

As far as general audiences go, the issues with this show only really become apparent if you try to analyze them. If you only watch the season through once as a casual viewer, it’s easy to overlook how Saurbrand’s behavior contradicts itself or that characters seem to constantly misremember their own actions (i.e. Elrond saying he visited Durin just because they were friends). I think that casual viewers will like this show, while hardcores will continue to tear their hair out.

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25 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

As far as general audiences go, the issues with this show only really become apparent if you try to analyze them. If you only watch the season through once as a casual viewer, it’s easy to overlook how Saurbrand’s behavior contradicts itself or that characters seem to constantly misremember their own actions (i.e. Elrond saying he visited Durin just because they were friends). I think that casual viewers will like this show, while hardcores will continue to tear their hair out.

I agree. The Jurassic World franchise is complete and utter nonsense, and yet it is highly profitable. Bezos was clearly aiming to draw in this lucrative audience that doesn't object to even the laziest, most patently ludicrous writing so long as it's a familiar franchise, everything is easy and spoon-fed, and the budget is bombastic.

And there's really nothing wrong with that either. But it is frustrating for those who want some modicum of thought put into their shows, because producers will follow the money, and if the money is in the most obnoxiously stupid writing, then that's what we're more likely to get.

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9 hours ago, David Selig said:

So the show spent less time on the most important event of the season (Sauron convincing Celebrimbor to follow his advice) than on the scene where Nori said goodbye to the Harfoots (the latter was 7-8 minutes and it felt like 20, wtf were the editors thinking leaving all this in?). The priorities in this show sure are weird.

And I just had to laugh when Sauron taught the basics of metallurgy to the "master smith" Celebrimbor.

So Galaldriel knows making the rings was Sauron's idea but decides to go through with it without telling anyone? Seriously?

Let's make three rings because "one will always corrupt, two will divide". Say what now?

The non-Nori Harfoots risking their lives to save the Stranger felt really implausible. But at least this scene was quite spectacular visually.

 

I liked a lot of stuff in this episode. There are many developments and it for a show that was so slow paced the first few episodes many things are suddenly rushed. But I agree with your points above as well. The Nori goodbye scene was terribly long, I had to skip it forward twice. The only good thing about that goodbye is that we will very likely see much less of the Harfoots as a group in season 2. That it got so much screentime in itself was egregious, let alone compared to other scenes.

The show obviously does the Galadriel character no favors. The fact that we now have her actively know of Sauron's plan and still proceed with it is ...not great. Of course in the show, they proceed by making the Rings but have no knowledge that Sauron can make a Master Ring and they do not expect it...but why would they not wonder why he is helping them make the Rings when he is openly known to be Sauron and not Annatar? Tolkien would find this a tremendous folly I suspect.

In the end it seems they decide to go with the Three Rings as displayed, knowing its a bad idea, but they look so nice and gleamy so lets go for it?

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I’d be interested in how general audiences are reacting to the show. My gut feeling is they would mostly just find it kind of boring.. because it is mostly boring. 
 

If it was fun and a bit schlocky like the Witcher I could see why that would appeal, but this show just feels like nothing is happening and it drags on and on. That’s got to be much more of an issue for less committed viewers who will drop shows if they aren’t entertained constantly.

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59 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

To be fair, most high fantasy shows flop. You either need to be ultra serious and limit the fantasy elements like GOT, or you have to embrace the cheese factor like Merlin. The Witcher is a “serious” show that is nevertheless saved by the audience’s love for schlock. Trying to match the tone of the PJ trilogy as close as possible was probably the smartest move Amazon could have made. 

As far as general audiences go, the issues with this show only really become apparent if you try to analyze them. If you only watch the season through once as a casual viewer, it’s easy to overlook how Saurbrand’s behavior contradicts itself or that characters seem to constantly misremember their own actions (i.e. Elrond saying he visited Durin just because they were friends). I think that casual viewers will like this show, while hardcores will continue to tear their hair out.

All fair points, but the casual viewers are also unlikely to be retained if they're given nothing that gets them truly invested. From my circle of friends, that seems to be the case. None of them have read the books, and they watched the show, shrugged, and moved on. Two years from now, I'd be shocked if more than 30-40% will continue to remain dedicated viewers, and that's a fairly generous number. 

And if a rewatch will make the show suck, that also means few people rewatching episodes, which also isn't so great for Amazon.

I think the core issue is "casual viewer" has been sanded down and algorithmically defined as uninterested. Which results in shows that do not do much to hold viewer interest, making them forgettable. 

This show just isn't going to be part of the cultural conversation, much. And that's fine, but given what cachet LotR and Tolkien have, that's a huge waste. And I really don't see this driving many people to read the books, either. 

They truly could swap out the names, and have a derivative, dumb fantasy show that looks pretty. I might even enjoy that show. 

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