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[Spoilers]Rings of Power 3: Tolkien’s actual writing… who needs that?


Ser Scot A Ellison

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58 minutes ago, baxus said:

To be honest, I am yet to read a good review on RoP coming from a critic that explains what they really liked in the show that made sense.

They are out there! But it depends on what you mean when you say 'that make sense'

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Well, I guess that the lowest bar for a review to make sense would be "it fits reality of what the show is like".

For example, if someone tries to tell me that Galadriel's story is interesting and well-written when it's obviously not, that's not going to make sense.

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30 minutes ago, baxus said:

Well, I guess that the lowest bar for a review to make sense would be "it fits reality of what the show is like".

For example, if someone tries to tell me that Galadriel's story is interesting and well-written when it's obviously not, that's not going to make sense.

In fairness would someone unfamiliar with the books notice the problems with Galadriel’s story?

 

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13 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

In fairness would someone unfamiliar with the books notice the problems with Galadriel’s story?

 

I haven't read the Silmarillion - I've tried, a few times, but just couldn't get on with it. IMO, it's just not very good.

Galadriel  jumping from that ship was incredibly dumb. Yet I can't understand why people are getting incredibly angry about the prospect of a magical being who can literally live forever having any trouble swimming a few thousand miles.

But I really enjoyed this show.

 

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8 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

What's more incredible? Living forever, or swimming for twenty days?

Well, by the standards of the material we have… the swimming. Elves can still die, they still need food and water etc. They can’t just limitlessly excert themselves forever.

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5 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

Well, by the standards of the material we have… the swimming. Elves can still die, they still need food and water etc. They can’t just limitlessly excert themselves forever.

Precisely.  Elves can die from hunger, exposure, and injury.  They just don’t age the same way Humans do.

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A 5,000-year-old Galadriel behaving like an angsty teen was worse than the swimming thing. The high king had to send her to her room (Valinor) because everyone was sick and tired of her. Made a character that was supposed to be one of the lynchpins of the show unbearably annoying and unlikeable for me.

Then there's the bit where the people of the Southlands are looking in awe at the "Commander of the Northern Armies" and all I could think was, there's nothing actually portrayed in the show to inspire such awe. What Northern Armies? The rag-tag bunch in the first episode who promptly deserted because Galadriel was such a shit leader?

There's also the part where the town made out of wood was hit full on by a massive pyroclastic flow and most of the people there just got a bit dusty - that was also worse than the swimming thing. A big budget to buy some pretty CGI didn't distract from the poor plotting, dialogue and pacing.

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8 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

 

An absolute classic. One of the earliest YouTube memes (think it's almost as old as YouTube).

Unfortunately the guy who made it died recently. RIP

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1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

In fairness would someone unfamiliar with the books notice the problems with Galadriel’s story?

Would you say that if we take into account RoP material only, Galadriel's story is ok?

Let's forget everything from the books. Galadriel's family, her husband, her status and wisdom and blah blah blah, and just talk about this angsty teen jumping overboard to swim across the ocean and perform genocide on Orcs and kick Sauron's ass only to not notice having him in front of her for a whole season etc. Is that a good story?

 

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The swimming thing never bothered me, I could easily handwave it as a 'yeah elves can do that'

Well I say it never bothered me, it bothered me at the end because it basically led to her meeting Sauron, and that plot is so batshit stupid and contrived, and so central to the entire point of the show that it completely undermines basically everything RoP is doing. I mean that everything Sauron does on this show makes little sense and just diminishes (into the west) his character, making him completely unintimidating.

The show bored me so much that I didn't think too hard about what was going on at any point, I struggled to pay attention as it was.

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3 minutes ago, baxus said:

Galadriel's family, her husband, her status and wisdom and blah blah blah, and just talk about this angsty teen jumping overboard to swim across the ocean and perform genocide on Orcs and kick Sauron's ass only to not notice having him in front of her for a whole season etc. Is that a good story?

No.

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17 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

The swimming thing never bothered me, I could easily handwave it as a 'yeah elves can do that'

Well I say it never bothered me, it bothered me at the end because it basically led to her meeting Sauron, and that plot is so batshit stupid and contrived, and so central to the entire point of the show that it completely undermines basically everything RoP is doing.

This was precisely my issue, until my brother pointed out that Sauron has a palantir. And perhaps he looked in his palantir and saw Galadriel jumping from that ship and then began his plotting. That explanation was good enough for me, and allowed me to continue enjoying the show.

I really hated the Harbrand reveal though.

 

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1 hour ago, Spockydog said:

This was precisely my issue, until my brother pointed out that Sauron has a palantir. And perhaps he looked in his palantir and saw Galadriel jumping from that ship and then began his plotting. That explanation was good enough for me, and allowed me to continue enjoying the show.

I really hated the Harbrand reveal though.

 

Wait… how does Sauron have a Palantir at this point?  The Palantiri were gifts from the Eldar to the “Faithful” shortly before the fall of Numenor…

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12 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Wait… how does Sauron have a Palantir at this point?  The Palantiri were gifts from the Eldar to the “Faithful” shortly before the fall of Numenor…

No idea. I'll ask my brother. 

Anyway, it seems to me that superfans of books, any books, would be happier in life if they just ignored any TV or movie adaptations of the things they love. 

Because they are never going to meet expectations, and watching these terrible, terrible adaptations is just going to make them miserable and send them ranting to the internet. 

Personally, I never read WoT, loved the adaptation. Same with RoP. Same with Shadow and Bone. Same with HotD. Same with Warcraft.

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Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but even JRRT couldn't make his mind up about several aspects of his lore, and kept changing stuff. So getting arbitrarily upset over changes made by the writers of RoP seems a little unfair. 

n.b. This is not aimed at anyone in particular. 

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24 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Personally, I never read WoT, loved the adaptation. Same with RoP. Same with Shadow and Bone. Same with HotD. Same with Warcraft.

I've never read WoT, the Witcher books, Shadow and Bone, Fire & Blood or ever finished the Silmarillion, but I can still tell when something is objectively good or bad outside of that. I can judge RoP on what it does on screen, in IMO it falls down on most of the basics. 

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