f13.net

Apparently confirmed that this will focus on the Second Age--Numenor, the forging of the Rings of Power, the Last Alliance. Not a terrible choice.

Edit by Trippy: fixed subject

It gives a lot of leverage in telling the story. This will be on my radar.

Yeah. I mean, when you think of the way Tolkien describes Numenor in the Akallabeth, it's a pretty loose sketch rather than a fully-realized story. Rather Old Testament Kings of Israel stuff--Sauron as a charismatic seducer, corrupt and idolatrous kings, Byzantine court politics, but underneath it also a genuinely paralyzing fear about what happens to Men when they die. This isn't a world where God speaks to mortals even through a Moses but there are other beings around who know angels personally and know exactly what death means to them (basically, rezzing in a boring zone forever), which makes the very very remote and non-disclosing God of Tolkien's mythology even more frustrating for Men, especially Numenoreans.

Could be a way for them also to actually get into places like Umbar and the survival of some evil Numenoreans who really would be the opposite numbers of the Dunedain etc. Lot of places they can depict, lots of interesting story elements. I think they have the rights because this is all in LOTR in the Appendices in minimal ways, but even if the have the Silmarillion rights, staying away from the First Age is a good idea. I don't think there's a proper way to make the First Age look right visually--to give it the sense of scope and power and grandeur (even evil grandeur) that makes the Third Age look like a nursery school romper room.

So I agree it's highly unlikely Hollywood could come up with a proper way to portray this era in the way it deserves.... but man, ever since I saw the opening battle scene in Fellowship, I've always wanted to see what a depiction of the Silmarillion would look like on screen.  No way to do it as a movie, it would have to be some 10 part one of series on HBO Max or whatever.  But yeah, they'd have to shoot it and act out the entire thing in a very different way than most films do.  Pure mythological epic power in how all the characters interact with each other, not just the battles.  So many scenes from that book still stand out in my mind that would be glorious to see on screen (but again, they look amazing in my mind.  I'm sure the results when given to some random Hollywood hack would be less than so).   

It's a pipe dream, but seeing a well done take of this era is probably the number one thing I want from TV before I die.

That battle scene WILL in fact be in this series--it's from the Second Age, not the First Age. It's only treated in the last small part of the work collected in The Silmarillion, it's the Last Alliance of Men and Elves. It's a bigger battle with more power players in it than the battles of LOTR but the participants aren't that dramatically different than the LOTR folks--Aragorn is pretty much of the stature of Elendil and Isildur (it's why he can wield Anduril and summon the Army of the Dead) and the elves involved are pretty much comparable (or the same) as those in LOTR. The only big players in LOTR who are not around are actually the Wizards, who don't show up until a thousand years later.

Whereas the First Age? The elves involved are godlike by comparison--Galadriel and Cirdan are the only ones around in the Third Age who are from that time, and they were minor players back then by comparison to Feanor's children or many others. The great among the First Age elves go one-on-one with balrogs and even dragons. There's a dragon that makes Smaug look puny by comparison. There are armies of balrogs and many dragons. Sauron is around as much more powerful vampire who is nevertheless dwarfed by the power of his master Morgoth. Shelob is a puny little child of Ungoliath. Morgoth's fortress and lands makes Mordor look like a child's toy. Even the human beings back in the First Age make Aragorn, Isildur, etc., look like toddlers in terms of their power and skill. When the First Age ends, it ends because the gods themselves decide to listen to the pleas of Elrond's father and come to Middle-Earth in person to fight Morgoth--but even though there's a lot of Valar who come to fight him, the fight isn't just over in a flash but goes on for a good while and essentially destroys the entire landmass of northern Middle-Earth as it was in the beginning.

That's pretty hard to visualize in a way that gets all of that across to an audience.

I know man.  ;)  I just meant in that, when I saw that battle on screen, it was actually really close to how I envisioned it, so have forever held out hope for similarly good portrayals of older battles since.  I am a LOTR Nerd, and the Silmarillion despite all odds is probably one of my most favorite novels of all time.  I fully understand the issues going into this, haha.

This is what I was trying to get at before.  I have some amazing visuals in my head for these events..... but I doubt those will ever make it to screen.  It would require a director to take a tale and tell it from a god like perspective, and nobody really does that.

Somebody could do an amazing job at this whole series.... but most will probably do shit.  Best to let it just die in obscurity, but god, I can still dream.  Again, I love the Silmarillion.  Not just as a Tolkien/Fantasy book, but as one of my top books of all times.  I'm well aware this puts me in 'send them to the camps' territory, but here I am.

Just chiming in to say that I really enjoy the Silmarillion as well.  You're not alone.

I like it quite a bit too. I actually love thinking about the dangling storylines that it opens to imagine, really. Maglor is still wandering around the shores. Ungoliant is still alive somewhere in the south of Middle-Earth. The entire East by the Second Age is pretty open to imagination (especially since Tolkien's few notes on it are horrible rubbish and best forgotten). The culture of Numenor and the cities it founded in Middle-Earth is really open to imagination, especially as they developed further in the Third Age.

I think Tolkien does really well also with establishing the mythic scale of the First Age--it really does feel more Old Testament compared to the more Beowulf/Norse saga feel of LOTR.
 

So basically, what you are looking for is the "Hard Fantasy" equivalent of 300, dialed up to way past 11?

Had to refresh myself on who is behind this: (https://www.indiewire.com/gallery/amazons-lord-of-the-rings-explained-plot-cast/amazon-prime-executive-session-panel-tca-summer-press-tour-los-angeles-usa-27-jul-2019/)


Given that the article also says Amazon had to commit to five seasons (and the first season has 20 episodes), I'm somewhat baffled that they handed this thing over to a couple unknowns based partly on J.J. Abrams recommending them. Between that and the fairly unknown cast (the only name I recognized was the replacement Naevia from Spartacus)  Amazon seems to have made a fairly big financial commitment in order to get the rights to do the show and then entrusted it a lot of people without a proven track record. They've got J.A. Bayona directing the first couple episodes and he's at least directed some fairly good movies, but also Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. There's a couple writers who've done a few episodes each of a number of good shows, but the rest seem to have some fairly thin credits, worked on a good show or two but maybe only did 2-3 episodes, and there's a guy who wrote 11 episodes of Game of Thrones.

I don't know, it could end up being good. Certainly I'd be surprised if Amazon allowed something this high profile to be a complete failure. On paper though I'm just not seeing anything to suggest that anyone involved in this is up to the task of creating new stories set in Middle-Earth that are going to satisfy Tolkien fans, or fans who only know the Peter Jackson movies.

I had not been aware of this and am a bit nervous we're going to get LotR the series without any attempt to communicate how it's different from the world of the Third Age. Will keep hoping this covers some of that, playing through Shadows of Mordor got me all excited about LotR stuff again, especially an interesting look at fleshing out those big names: Sauron, Shelob and Celebrimbor. That does give me hope that there are some stories worth telling in the Second Age that won't just strip out the 'majesty'. I guess my biggest worry is they try too hard to avoid the mythicness of it making it hard to connect to and shoot too much for relatable characters and motivations.

It'll be interesting to see where they start. The very early Second Age isn't really described much by Tolkien--the vast destruction of the War of Wrath was still cooling. I guess if they wanted to go early, they could show Men settling in Numenor and building a beautiful, wise and powerful kingdom, and the Elves who remain building up Eregion and being good buddies to Men AND Dwarves. (That's another thing the series can do, almost has to do: show Khazad-dum in its full glory--it's already significantly built up by the end of the First Age, though under attack by orcs all the time.)

I would guess they might just do that in a prologue like the first LOTR did.

Then I think after that you've got your dramatis personae:

Celembrimbor
Sauron, in the guise of Annatar

That's a key early relationship. Annatar/Sauron comes along to teach the Elves the art of crafting Rings of Power and then works with them to make the Seven and the Nine. In the meantime, Sauron builds what must at first have been a rather small and hidden secret base in Mordor to secretly forge the One Ring. But however they depict it, Celembrimbor has to be one of the few who doesn't trust Annatar, because he learns the art of ring-forging but makes the Three entirely on his own and secretly from Sauron.

The making of the Rings also lets them introduce:

The nine men who become Ringwraiths. We literally know nothing about them--Aragorn says as much. So that's interesting! I've always assumed they were Numenoreans, so this could be the first way we get introduced to the politics of Numenor, which will have to dominate the second major plot arc of the show. But they could also be from Umbar, Harad, and the East, which would make some sense also.

The seven leaders of the Dwarves who take the rings surely have to represent the seven houses--so it's a chance to really dive into dwarf-lore, to show us other places besides Khazad-dum.

Then probably in the end of the first season, you've got the putting on of the One Ring, Sauron revealing his armies (which likely have to include men from the East, so there's another subplot they could explore if they're so inclined), and the beginning of his war on the Elves.

There's a good subplot in that about the Dwarves--we know they resist the power of the Seven but they bugger off during the war with Sauron--Khazad-dum shuts its gates, and the Dwarves get embroiled in a completely separate war with orcs at Gundabad. (The balrog doesn't come into play until the Third Age, though.) Lots of good drama in that--the failure to unify and the origins of the hostility between Dwarves and Elves. The Elves are very nearly destroyed, so there's a good half-season or full season of episodes right there if you want, about the war and about it growing more desperate all the time. We know the proto-Ringwraiths are on Sauron's side the whole time--they could be his generals over combined forces of orcs, trolls, and men. (Maybe even a dragon or two?) Good chance to explore the power of the Rings, too--the Three Rings have to be sort of the only thing that keeps the Elves alive. Then you've got the Numenoreans showing up to save the day--that's a great season ender.

Sauron still has power in Mordor after--so that sets the stage for the next season--the Numenoreans grow arrogant, they think they're hot shit, better than the Elves, the saviors of Middle-Earth. I kind of think of them in this point basically like the United States after World War II, with the Elves being Europe. Or maybe worse, like the US at the end of the Cold War. But there's a significant time gap here before you get to the next turn. When you get there, you then you get to see Sauron humbled and taken prisoner, deserted by all of his armies, and the whole great storyline of his corruption of Ar-Pharazon. Sauron is still good-looking, he establishes a cult of Melkor/Morgoth (so here there's a fucking great chance to do a deep dive on the legendarium--I mean, if you join that cult, it's because you think Morgoth was right!) and starts to sacrifice good Numenoreans who are faithful to Eru. That could be some great shit if it's done right.

And then you've got the Last Alliance, which could easily be the final season.

Not getting my hopes up too high on this, but I can't wait to see what they come up with.  The source material isn't the easiest to work with.

Just the fact that they are going for 20 episode seasons tells me they are probably not gonna be all that high quality.

Yeah, that's hard to really make sense of unless they're planning a whole bunch of weirdly talky bottle episodes where people just sit inside a simple interior and talk about forging Rings of Power. I hope they learned at least from watching Game of Thrones self-immolate that if you wanna be a fantasy epic, you gotta bring the epic pretty consistently and that fans will know full well when you're cheaping out on them by sending the inconveniently expensive CGI dire wolf out of the scene again. There are a bunch of expensive set designs and CGI exteriors that they can't skimp on if this is gonna work: Khazad-Dum in its glory, Eregion, Mordor, Numenor, probably Umbar, plus costumes etc.

Video wall tech should make a lot of that stuff cheaper.

https://twitter.com/VanityFair/status/1491759235402711047


I'm out. It's the one story I just didn't anyone to mess with, but here we are.

I don't see what the problem is. This is not a complete fleshed out story like the hobbit or lord of the rings, they obviously have to make up the majority of the characters.

Also revealed in the Vanity Fair interview: no nipples in Middle Earth, and no gore.


Which is pretty much right, just as long as they make the darkness great enough.

This is what I always assumed. And as much as I was nodding along to all of what Khaldun said as a fellow First Age nerd (ohhhhhhhhhh, how I would love to see Morgoth crush Fingolfin to death beneath his shield), I don't want to see them botch it the way I felt they did for Wheel of Time.

When I first heard they were doing the 2nd Age my first thought was it was a chance to do something cool with this. According to Tolkien's letters, Sauron really did repent after the destruction of Beleriand, mostly because he saw his former master who he thought was hot shit, defeated and humbled. Even so, Tolkien paints his repentance as real, except of for one little detail. I would love to have a scene when Sauron goes to Eonwe saying what a changed man Ainur he is, how things are going to be different now, and won't Eonwe please just let the last thousand years slide? And for a brief moment we could see the fate of Middle Earth in the balance, and it's salvation so close at hand. Then of course Eonwe will have to go, "nah man, this is above my pay grade. Come talk to my boss."

But of course even after that, we would get to follow Sauron's path from genuinely thinking he can make the world a better place, to raw Tyranny.

That would honestly be great, to have Sauron have an actual character arc. Maybe he starts thinking about ring-making because he's thinking, "hey, you know who actually kind of DID make something that wasn't just the will of Eru, that was genuinely original in creation? Not Morgoth, who just corrupted elves and made big lizards, but Feanor. Maybe I could do what I was drawn to in Melkor back in the dawn of time by imitating Feanor?"

So when Celembrimbor makes the Three in secret, maybe Annatar/Sauron is enraged not so much at the failure of his plan for dominion but because it feels like copyright infringement--the rings are MY thing, you fucking elf.

I dunno--but it would be powerful if the Sauron who ends up in Numenor egging the King and his court towards what he absolutely has to know is their own destruction has a real emotional reason for his malice and despair--he tried to repent and was denied, he tried to do something he thought might be good and failed, he tried to grow beyond his past and got pulled into the same old schtick, he tried to hang out with elves as a friend and got cheated, so fuck you, I'm going to trick you into your doom and you know what, I'm going to do it by telling you the truth, which is that when you die you disappear while other beings get to live forever in paradise. (A very Lucifer move: eat the apple! God is trying to keep you ignorant!)

I have no problem with them inventing new characters. They have to. As long as they're not stupid, it's absolutely fine.

I forget how much of this is brought through the appendixes, and how much was from Tolkiens letters, but Sauron's repentance goes roughly like this: Sauron repents to Eonwe, but Eonwe tells him he doesn't have the authority to absolve him, he has to go back to Valinor and appeal to Manwe, which Sauron is unwilling to do. But you know what? Sauron thinks, I was a Maia of Aule, not to mention I learned a shit ton from Melkor, who had no small knowledge of all the domains of middle earth, I have a lot of knowledge to offer the world. So he starts teaching some of the remaining Noldor shit, and they lap it up (none of the rings would have been possible without his knowledge, even the elven ones), but they do shit differently then he does. Okay, thinks Sauron, I know better than them, and I'm here to help, so any dissent is not just a slight against me, it's gonna slow down this whole project of making the world better. Which turns into, well, if you dissent from me (who knows best), you are fucking over everyone else, soooooooo, your opinion has to be silenced. To, since I know best, and the people I am trying to help aren't listening to me, I am going to have to over power them to get shit done. They have an army and I don't so........ (please dig deep Christians, we need phase cycling proton blasters- oh wait that was South Park  :awesome_for_real:).

That's where I hope there is some real fun to be had in the series. In LOTR Sauron is a Dark Lord (not literally a fucking eyeball Peter Jackson) incapable of like looking anything other than Darth Vader joins a Scandinavian metal band. No shit the Western world is against him. But this is a chance to show a good looking dude, who is charismatic, and may even seem helpful at times, telling people lies they want to hear. Done right, most of the audience should be nodding along  with Annatar's talking points for a moment or two before going, wait a second.... I also thought this was how the show was going to weave in some fun T&A. Annatar's a good looking dude, and he's not stuck with some of the more prudish versions of morality. Just off the top of my head, they could have made up a character who is Sauron's go between for him and  Ar-Pharazon, maybe as a hot chick who seduces him to get the ball rolling. But I see they are not going that way, which is fair enough I suppose. It is what Tolkien would have wanted.

Sauron was just misunderstood? Yeah, I'm down for that, but can they pull it off?

--Dave

Less Sauron was just misunderstood, more, there are multiple steps between honestly trying to help and trying to bash down the gates of Minas Tirinth with a battering ram named after the devils personal flail.

When you read Tolkien's actual account of Sauron in captivity (sort of) on Numenor, there's a TON of T&A really, not even implied--like actual satanic orgies and shit.

But there's also space for Annatar to be having a sexual relationship with an elf--Tolkien constantly describes how attractive and charismatic and seductive he is.

I don't know if you guys have seen the Superbowl trailers or not. Yeah, looks okay. I am skeptical we are going to get our political thriller involving the descent of Sauron though, and more of a fun adventure romp.

Sort of looks it. Room for that too in the Second Age, I think. We've never known who the Ringwraiths were beforehand, but at least a couple of them could be from Harad, from Umbar, from Khand or Rhun, or maybe northern Eriador, all places where there's stories we don't know at all but that are full of potential--rebel Numenoreans in Umbar establishing Morgoth-worshipping outposts, etc. Establish enough of a place like Rhun and then if they carry the story into the early Third Age you could even follow the Blue Wizards to there. We know the dwarves and elves in Moria and Lothlorien got along really well, so that opens up a lot of storytelling. I have no problem with anything they choose to do as long as it's GOOD and not third-rate Wheel of Time-ish stuff.

Yeah, I was mostly just going off the vibe of the trailer. Had a very LOTR the movies, but more. Especially FOTR and TT vibes. There was plainly a battle scene in there as well, and I got a very Isildur-ey vibe from the kid in armor looking up heroically.

I don't have a problem with showing the thousands of "little" stories of the Second Age either, including made up ones that follow the spirit of it. But the other trailer does show a sort of forging of a ring, and reads from the famous inscription on the One Ring, so pieces of its tale have to be in their somewhere I should guess.

I'm pretty sure that the Tolkien estate could come after them if the actual material of the Appendices is not used substantially, because that's how they established the right to do this in the first place, basically. The rumor is that Amazon negotiated and got conditional rights to use Numenor and other Second Age material from The Silmarillion after they established the Appendices rights but that the estate continued to withhold all First Age-related stuff from The Silmarillion. I suppose they could probably do a teeny bit of backstory on Sauron himself at any rate.

Edit by Trippy: fixed subject

Ar-pharazon: Ahhhh, the teenage years. I remember mine fondly. How about you?

Cuts to a picture of Edge Lord Vampire Sauron with an emo fringe, arm in arm with Luthien's Thuringwethil costume.

Sauron: Uhhhhhh, so how come there's no more dragons these days? What's the deal with that?

Sauron was a goth werewolf, and he would be getting his ass kicked by a dog or losing a freestyle rap battle to Luthien.

Yeah but he beat Finrod Felagund (my favourite character) at least!

The first season of Amazon Studios’ sprawling The Lord Of the Rings series will cost $465 million to produce. (https://deadline.com/2021/04/the-lord-of-the-rings-season-1-budget-rebate-increased-new-zealand-1234736222/)

Excellent.  I think that means we can expert at least a few years of content to be produced.

Better than throwing away money going to space I guess.

I know it had previously been mentioned that Amazon paid $250 million for the licensing rights alone so I would imagine that's being included here.

It doesn't. The production cost estimate is derived from the reported New Zealand tax credits they are getting for filming in NZ. That's separate from the cost to acquire the rights.

Main teaser https://youtu.be/ewgCqJDI_Nk

That looks amazing, you can see where the money went.

Hopefully it's good, just so ya'll can stop trying to force yourselves in enjoying Wheel of Time.

Whether it's good or bad at least it won't ruin a story I loved in its telling.

Does look good. Looks like they're going to try some visualizations of the First Age, however limited. I was looking at wikis to try and refresh my memory about what Sauron was doing at the end of the First Age and what he's up to at the point where he reappears in a fair guise as Annatar. I'm not sure how much of that is in the Silmarillion, how much is in the Appendices, and how much comes from all the stuff Christopher Tolkien has edited--and for that matter, how careful Amazon has to be to stick to the Appendices given the previously expressed hostility of the Tolkien Estate to anything that touches on the Silmarillion.

Basically the story goes:

1) Sauron sort of fades out by the end of the First Age, reasons unstated, but begs for mercy from the Valar at the end, only to run away because he's afraid of the punishment that awaits him.
2) He's not visible for a while--maybe off in the East, maybe just hiding until he thinks no one remembers that he's still at large.
3) He pops up in Mordor and starts building himself up as a power.
4) But then he decides in the heart of the Second Age to take on the fair guise of Annatar and teach the Elves the craft of ringlore.

At least some of that is in the Appendices. The reason I'm thinking about it is the stuff with Galadriel in the teaser--that will be interesting if she's been trying to track Sauron ever since the end of the First Age and has been trying to get everybody to preemptively attack Mordor once he starts building it up, but nobody else thinks it's that big a deal. It is, after all, the absolute height of the power and glory of Elves, Dwarves and Men in the entire history of the Second Age in Middle-Earth (well, the Elves are a bit diminished from their Middle-Earth First Age power but then again they're not hung up on the Silmarils any longer, nor are they dealing with the headaches caused by the Sons of Feanor).

Yeah, I liked how they at least tried to visualize some first age stuff.  I still dream of somebody doing an adaptation of the Silmarillion series with this sort of budget.  Mostly liked what I saw in the trailer, but pretty annoyed they forced in hobbits because I guess that's entirely what all of Tolkien is about.  -_-

Hard to say from this trailer, but looks like they might try to make the main characters hobbits again and that is just kind of annoying as shit.  Can we concentrate on one of the other (cool) races now?

It was the Oath of Feanor that caused the fucked up bullshit.

It looked pretty, but feels like it borrows way too heavily from the movies for its aesthetic, and the addition of Hobbits makes me think they are just going to rehash old narratives.

Want to see if it's possible to frameskip a 4K tv from all the bodies that would require throwing on screen at once?  The scope of the battles in the Silmarillion was absolutely massive.

I think technically it was the Doom of Mandos, as it follows Fingolfin and Finarfin's (but not Finarfin himself) kin as well. Until Earendil goes to Valinor and puts on a relief for Middle Earth concert.


Tolkien later stated that Sauron dipped when he saw the host of the Valinor coming for his boss.


I think that could be really cool. And of course, Mordor need not look like, well what it looks like, yet. Sauron still had the capacity for deception, and since he was Annatar now, we can surmise that he has stopped thinking being a giant bat/wolf/vampire is winning over the general elven populace. They could be like "Galadriel, why are you being such a bitch to Annatar? He already told us he doesn't know where Sauron is, but he totally saw him heading that way. Geez. I am gonna stay for his Ted Talk on How to put your soul into your creations though."

The Doom of Mandos was inflicted on the Noldor because of the Kinslaying.  Which they did because the Teleri refused to let the Noldor have their ships.  The force of the Oath of Feanor prompted the Noldor to take the ships.

cue: NEEEERDS

I mean sure, that is the progenitor event. But the Doom of Mandos gets put upon even those who didn't swear the Oath, or were even at the kinslaying, but tagging along later. It even affects places which otherwise don't come into contact with the Silmaril or the Sons, such as Gondolin.

And yes I am totally splitting hairs. Like debating whether the fist, or the telephone book is what bruised that perp's face.

Honestly, if they play it right, they could definitely end up with a really nuanced and layered version of Galadriel--like, she's the Cassandra who is trying to get everyone else to see "hello, every age has its own evils, and ours is Sauron" and even the other First Age survivors are like "naw, the Valar fixed it all, that guy in Mordor is some weak-ass punk, the orcs these days are a bunch of sissies compared to what we had to deal with, let's enjoy life and not create stress with the Dwarves and Numenorean Men". I like that, it's plausible backstory for her (and why she might feel very close to the Istari later on: look! the Valar have sent some Maiar who agree with me! Finally!)

But they really need to play Annatar as an actually good guy, or seeming so--he can't be evilling it up and twirling his mustache every ten seconds.

That would be awesome, but I fear a little too nuanced for what I suspect we will get. Like, I think it would be successful if it took til, say the end of the second season for Annatar to be "revealed" as Sauron (obviously for those who havent read the source material).  I doubt we will get that though. I would be happy if we get something like Ed Wesser as Mr Morden from Babylon 5. We know he's evil, and a used car salesmen on a civilizational level, but there's enough plausibility that people want to believe what he is selling.

Man, I really like the scene where Galadriel is talking to (I presume) Celeborn, and shes's like: man I've seen some shit. Nah, dawg, not like you have, I'm telling you, I've seen some shit." Especially as she would be, at that time, one of only 3 elves in Middle Earth that had actually seen Melkor before he was Morgoth. (And yes I know they reference the Kinslaying right after that).

Those hobbits are probably related to Smeagol in some way.

Beagol has entered the chat.

They kind of look like they're going for Rasta Hobbits.

New trailer is out. I don't think we are getting our political back and forth Khal. Looks okayish mind you, but not seeing anything but stark good and evil here.

I dunno, the Appendices are full of "people didn't want to listen to warnings about Annatar", so that at least implies some initial grey area where folks like this new sexy ring-making dude not because he exudes evil but just because HAI, it's the Second Age and darling it's been a while since we had any cool new shit to do.

I meant more the tone the trailers were exuding. Less, LotR with a splash of GoT, and more, giant sea creature chase scene, oh and we has Balrogs!

I have unclenched my cheeks a bit from this post. I suppose I'll give this a shot and probably end up enjoying it. Looks pretty.

It's safe from my ire because they are at least exploring an "open" area of Tolkien's world. An area not already covered in narrative but just hinted to. That gives them more latitude to work with, yet still not a blank cheque obviously.

Wonder if we'll get sexy Ungoliant.

Speaking of bad takes you've reconsidered.

That trailer makes it look like visual effects techniques haven't moved on at all since the films.

I can understand wanting to take the films look and feel. But blimey.

Show might or might not be good. But that trailer is not pretty.

That's ridiculous, that trailer was visually stunning.

Pretty is exactly what it is. If that trailer isn't pretty, I don't know what that word means.

I get it that you might wonder whether there's some other way to represent Tolkien visually, but the films managed to capture grandeur and scale pretty fucking well, so no surprise that they're following that.

The films that really needed another visual style (and one less film) were the Hobbit films. And if anyone ever made The Silmarillion, that might need a completely different visual style as well--the world of the First Age needs to be so monumental and intense and full of power and energy that it might almost need a really stylized form of animation. But for the Second Age? Following Jackson's lead is the way to go, and that trailer looks to have nailed that.

One can argue that Weta Workshop set the benchmark for practical effects back then and since the LotR movies favored practical effects and on-location shoots over CG and green screens wherever possible they (mostly) still look "state-of-the-art" today. And as others have said the teaser implies this series is copying the "look and style" of the movies which is why it looks like the teaser shots copied many of the same techniques, though I would argue the CG in the teaser hints at much better CG compared to the LotR trilogy, which is to be expected. And I'm assuming some of what were practical effects before are now CG.

Edit: for

I can't imagine how anything could ever compare to the stuff that Peter Jackson did, but this looks like it's going to be worth watching and I can't wait.

San Diego Comic-Con trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYnQDsaxHZU

The trailer is fine, but man the comments are gold.

New Trailer up. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8UAUAuKNcU)

I'm reminded of how obvious it was in the PJ movies when they were using Tolkien's dialogue vs when they wrote it themselves; every line in that trailer sounded like it was out of a CW fantasy show.  I'm sure there are still people around who can write dialogue for grown-ups (or intelligent children) but you'd never get any of their work past a focus group.

That obligatory griping aside, it looks pretty.

Thank you for saying what I was thinking. This is increasingly, looking fun, but empty. That is just based of trailers of course. There could be intriguing things going on that marketing does deem worthy of showing, it's been known to happen. A lot of it is going to hinge on how they do Sauron for me. He really better not be these skinny ass Slim Shady look-a-likes, because that is going to be hard to take seriously.

And if the brother she is referencing is Finrod Felagund, I am going to cry my face off if they do that properly (he's my favourite Tolkien character).

YT: An Introduction to The Rings of Power (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB4t6eImBNk)

A primer on the time period (the Second Age) covered by the show(s).

Critics reviews have been, shall we say, "mixed". I didn't realize until reading some of them that the two Showrunners had no show running or producing experience and the only credits for them that show up in IMDB previous to this show are as uncredited writers on Star Trek Beyond. Not sure why Amazon entrusted a literal 1 BILLION DOLLARS* to these two guys but here we are. Not sure we're going to make it all the way to Season 5.


* ~$500 million to buy the rights and another  ~$500 million to produce the show

Yeah.

What worries me a bit in the reviews so far is that they say that basically no effort whatsoever to catch the sort of formality and cadence of Tolkien's dialogue or language has been made--that everybody just talks 21st Century English in a pretty normal way. I think that's missing a major beat. I don't pretend that it's easy to do when you don't have any of Tolkien's writing to work from--it could be easy to be ridiculously stilted, it would take some really talented writers to hit the mark just right. But fuck if you're going to spend a billion on making it look good, push out a bit of money for the word-smithing too, eh?

I mean, it's to be expected.  But it's also the fundamental problem with trying to do a mass-market Tolkien adaptation on the screen -- the language is literally the entire point.  If you don't have the flowery language and the poetry and the songs and all that, what you're left with is a big-budget D&D: The Movie.

Pretty much, yeah. The language, the mood, the lore. I mean, that's the thing with the Second Age that they kind of have to understand--it's not quite living in the shadow of oh-fuck-everything-sucks-Men-will-rule-the-world. This is the *best time* in some ways in Middle-Earth's history. It's like 1962: material abundance, cool people are having a lot of sex that the squares haven't really gotten mad about yet, you can fly anywhere pretty cheaply and the flights are fucking fun, and so on. Melkor's out in the outer darkness, the elves and dwarves have built the coolest shit ever, there are no fucking Balrogs everywhere, there's Numenor before they get the Bad Ideas, and people are messing around with nuclear weapons ringlore before they know it's gonna blow up everything and that sexy nuclear engineer is actually Roy Cohn. There aren't ruins, really--sure, everybody knows the Beren and Luthien story and all that but most of what was built in the First Age isn't around as a ruin, it's fucking destroyed utterly and just a memory. All the shit that the Third Agers look at and say oh man back in the day that was amazing IS AMAZING.

This shit is a mess.

I fell asleep half-way through. It's just terrible. They just don't seem to understand the adage: Show, don't tell.

They don’t actually have anything to show. There’s about 25 minutes of story so far padded out to 2 hours. Even the people making the show seem to understand how dull it is because they feel the need to shoehorn in Galadriel action sequences to each episode.

It's boring. They spent all the money on visuals (and just imitated Jackson's aesthetic: there wasn't an original visual idea in the whole thing except maybe Ice Station Darklord) and no money on screenwriting, plotting, etc.

They bought the rights to LOTR and decided to make Wheel of Time or some other generic fantasy. I think they didn't really grasp how awash we are now in films and TV shows that are based on somebody's D&D campaign or somebody's knock-off Tolkien books.

They had to do at least one of three things: get the 'sound' of Tolkien's world right; craft a visual aesthetic that was unfamiliar and not just Jackson Redux that was appropriate to the Second Age; understand the setting and create a grand and distinctive plotline and characterization plan. So far they done fucked up on all of that. It's just possible that they'll grow into #3 but #1 and #2 were "get it right at the start or you never will" goals.

You're coming at it from the perspective of someone who is a fan of the books, and they're targeting people who like the movies. I think #3 is the only thing they had to do. They just didn't.

My man, they couldn't even make Wheel of Time with the rights to Wheel of Time. Same issue too. A fresh show runner who doesn't care at all about the world his benefactor purchased for him.

Hey, less than 30 years until LOTR is public domain and anyone can take a crack at it.  Decent CGI will be super cheap and within reach of indy filmmakers by then too.  There are bound to be a number of attempts by people who actually like the books, and although most of them will inevitably be bad, with any luck I'll live long enough to see the one that turns out to be watchable.

I had a discussion about something similar with my friends, that basically amounts to: What actually makes this Tolkien? What makes this part of his world? That Jeff Bezos decided to purchase this, and not just buying Malawi outright? I don't understand how this company can spend so much money on this, and WoT, but neglect to hire any actual writers to put even the shambling semblance of a soul into it.

Purchasing Malawi comes next. We're already on the cusp of it--Larry Ellison basically bought Lanai and it's pretty clear that anyone living there is living at his sufferance. I wonder how long it is before some zillionaire buys a country and then clears people out so he can do elaborate ARGs/LARPs there in the shadow of his Xanadu. Not long.

Anyway, this is a lot of money blown on something forgettable. It contributes to the sense that we live in a time of ennui: we have so much culture and it all makes the same dumb fucking mistakes. I guess it keeps some people employed, so good for that.

I'm gonna be contrary and say: I didn't hate it. It had pacing and character issues, but it wasn't bad. I think the Stranger is Radagast, who got very short shrift in LotR and The Hobbit. He's a Maiar, time he got some respect. He deserved better than some comic relief sight gags.

--Dave

Only watched the first episode and it's messy and about as subtle as a ton of bricks being dropped from a great height. Clearly the dude in the smoking crater is Radagast, the dude Elrond gets paired with is Sauron, and the elf ranger and hot healer woman made a baby half-elf. This is Peter Jackson LOTR fan fic cosplay.

Yeah this thing is a lifeless turd. The weird part is how shit the CGI was. Where did this 500 mil go?

The trailer.

The strangeness of paying that much for the appendices, when you really need the rights to the Silmarillion (or some qualified version thereof) to really get Galadriel and Elrond right.

The most grating bad decision so far is "mean elf kids in Valinor picking on Galadriel", which is just WTF if you're going to even lightly trespass into the narrative space of The Silmarillion.

That was such an incredibly bad scene. As was her dive off the boat - just really weird, stupid and unnecessary scenes.

I mean, have her dive off the boat just out of the harbor at the Havens. Works fine.

Could even have had a scene with Cirdan questioning her about whether she should go, since he's her actual contemporary, more or less. (He's older, actually? I think? And has a really different history.)

What's weird to me is how much little shit they dropped the ball on. Ok fine, you didn't the Galadriel in the books who stays in Doriath the whole time with her boyfriend Celeborn, and her best friend Melian, and from her "learned great lore and wisdom concerning Middle-earth". Ok, you wanted ton instead make Katniss Everdeen, doing sick kick flips to chop up ice trolls (I guess climate change hit Middle-earth as well, as they didn't make it to the Third Age). Alright, you don't have the rights to the Silmarillion, so instead of the complex and nuanced way the Noldor depart Valinor, you say they all hit the accept join party button and headed to Middle-earth. Sure, there is Hobbits in the Second Age now, and two living Durins, and Elrond is not an elven lord despite his lineage (I want to know who the fuck else was at that council lol). You know what, I can get past all that, with only a few grumbles, and it doesn't matter the smallest fuck to people who aren't as into the lore as people like me.

But go google images of Finrod and Gil-Gilad from the the show. Why the fuck does Finrod have such a sick line up and fade? They had clippers in Valinor did they? Why does Gil-Gilad look like Liam Neeson with a mullet?

So, did i drop the ball because I never read anything but the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings? Because I liked it, the visuals were absolutely gorgeous and I don't know enough about the Simarillion to feel offended about the adaption. Hell, if you compare it to the abortion that was the Hobbit movies its basically art.

I give your the "The elves are basically in elf heaven, so how can they be dicks to each other" point. That really was a WTF that almost killed my immersion once and for all. And the "Hey, we can top that Legolas shield skateboard scene with a Galadriel sword trampoline scene. Look how radical elves are". I guess this is the reason why everbody hates Elves in RPG campaigns, because they are always that darn perfect (and can obviously even swim in stormy waters for days). But I found it solid and endearing otherwise, even the Protohalfings that weren't supposed to exist yet worked for me because they were charming and gave the series a lightness that House of the Dragon lacks (which I also love, but definitely for completely different reasons).

Is this a "They ruined Lord of the Rings, there is no Tom Bombadil" moment (aka, somethings you have to adapt so that it works for a different medium), or a "Hey, lets make a video game tie in and call it The Hobbit" thing?

The Second Age, which is the period the show covers, is only a very small part of The Silmarillion, focusing on Númenor and not the forging of the Rings. The major events of the Second Age are listed in one of the appendices of The Return of the King but it's literally just a timeline.

Since Tolkein didn't write much about the Second Age the show is having to make up stuff to fill in the gaps between the major events. I haven't watched the show yet but based on the comments above what they've made up so far doesn't even reach the levels of bad fan fiction.

I think it's just about in the middle. I dont hate the Hobbits at all, in fact they are next to the only part where I felt any human emotion coming from the actors, and their diagolue isn't stilted like the rest.

I just think this thing is boring, even without being a LotR piece of media. Maybe the story picks right up, but I'm kind of worried that we've already seen about 95 percent of what was shown in the trailers.

The only reason to do proto-hobbits in this is to give viewers something they know and expect. Or to have the mysterious stranger be Radagast, way before the rest of the Istari, who aren't supposed to show up until the Third Age, way after all this shit. Or something else. It's just kind of unimaginative. If you really must do something new, Arondir is closer to the mark, in that he and Bronwyn can offer a look into the South and the East.

(Though all that stuff about how her people were loyal to the Great Enemy and all that--I don't think there's any reason in the legendarium to think that the place that gets called Mordor was part of Morgoth's rule in First Age Middle-Earth, he mostly hung out in the North (much of it ending up destroyed in the War of Wrath). I guess you could say that the volcanos are his fault, but that's about it. Sauron doesn't start hanging out there until...well, about this point in the Second Age, and then only part-time while the rest of the time he's doing groovy ringlore lessons up in Eregion.

At times, it doesn't just feel like fan fiction, it feels like cosplay of fan fiction. Just something so far removed from the original yet trying so hard to hit all the beats that are familiar to audiences. I don't particularly mind the Harfoots - it's pretty blatant that they intend to make the daddy Harfoot's broken foot the cause of the Shire being founded or something. Radagast falling from the night sky as a meteor feels like "we need a Gandalf character and some people might like this one!"

Every story beat they have seems to be telegraphed from orbit, and most of them feel like a bullet point list of things that a prequel to the Hobbit must have to make audiences feel like it's part of the series.

Ah, I knew they made up the Harfoots, I didn't know almost everything else is made up as well. So its basically a superfan DM using the original characters for his custom made LotR RPG campaign.

If that is Radagast, then they more than made it up, they're actively violating one of the more concrete things in Tolkien's legendarium--the wizards don't get sent until the Third Age.

I think it's safe to assume that they don't give a fuck and just want to make the closest thing to a Hobbit prequel they can make within the bounds of what they have the legal rights to.

Yeah. It's just going to be kind of stupid if it is him, though I suppose there needs to be some explanation for why the proto-hobbits pick up and head for The Shire, since most of them were living closer to Greenwood and the Anduin Vale at this point. There's some hint in Tolkien that it's because Sauron gets up to some nasty bullshit in Greenwood around Dol Guldur, which is why Greenwood becomes Mirkwood, and the proto-hobbits leave. I guess it would be fine if it turns out that there's someone who helps them do that; maybe Aiwendil (R's Maiar name) gets sent in a kind of Navy Seal mode by Yavanna for that purpose alone, because the Valar have a foresight that hobbits will be important to the Music of the Ainur or some such. And then he evacs out to Valinor after he gets them there; maybe he's freaked out enough by Sauron that he says on his next deployment that he really just wants to hang out with animals.

I know this is dumb, and very Very VERY probably not correct, but I had this brief inkling that the Stranger is Sauron. Yes I know Haemish is right, but here me out, here's how I would have done it. He's back, in whatever form, but golly gee whiz his memory is wiped (like my bulldog's memory when I point to the pee stain on the carpet), and he could have been left to "die"*, but he is nursed back to health by the Hobbity-ness of hobbits. He then helps them found the Shire, and it is that very Hobbity-ness that, and the secluded looked over nature of the Shire that is responsible for his downfall. yeah, he would have to forget the Shire again, but cmon man, he has a lot on his plate in the interim. Anyways he gets nursed back to health, the Hobbits rub off on him and he wants to help ME, which is how Annatar enters the picture. Ehhhh...ehhhhhhhhhh.....And yes, my only "evidence" for this is that the fire he fell in was cold to the touch, same as the One Ring after being put through anything less than Orodruin level fire.

And yes, he probably is Mr Cele-man towers sure are cool-brim-oh and let's put a forge in it, a really kickass forge-bor. I'm just riffing here.

*Remember this adaption already doesn't really care about being true to the lore, so Maia can die now.

So what we know about Sauron in Tolkien (since we're allowed to reference The Silmarillon fully and they aren't) is that in the First Age he's not the big scary motherfucker in armor that they show at the beginning of Jackson's LOTR films. He just isn't, never has been, because that's a One Ring look, which hasn't been made yet. In the First Age, he's beautiful and is described at least once as taking on a bat-like 'vampire' form (he has a servant who is a full-on, full-time vampire). Before he did the bat thing, he did the wolf thing, in the same battle (it's like being a pirate AND a ninja, right?). His whole schtick at this point in his career is being charismatic, seductive, inspiring, etc.. Also being a bit of a flunky to Morgoth, of course--he's not especially scary or badass compared to Morgoth's really AAA forces (balrogs and dragons).

So the show already fucked it up by showing Sauron in flashback as being the giant armored badass. At the end of the War of Wrath, Sauron begged for mercy and apologized for serving Morgoth, but before the Valar could get around to deciding what to do with him, he decided to quietly bugger off and hide because he figured he was likely to get chucked in the same Void as his former boss or worse.

We have no idea really what he's been up to. Sure, he could have been at Ice Station Darklord drawing arrows in stone or whatever. I feel like he's more likely to have been in the East and South of Middle-Earth doing some recruitment of future armies and maybe surveying where he wants to set up some strongholds/bases of operation. When he does appear in Gil-galad's kingdom offering to teach ringlore, we know that he's already has started to build up a stronghold in Mordor near Orodruin because that's where he's going to be forging the One Ring--he's already got that plan in mind. We also know from Tolkien that this is when Greenwood the Great starts to turn rather Mirky, due to some sort of Sauron fuckery.

If he's also up at Ice Station Darklord, that's presumably in part because Gil-galad's kingdom is in Lindon, which by the Third Age is a deserted wasteland after Arnor falls except for a little outpost at the Grey Havens.

The open question is how Sauron (aka Annatar) explains what who he is and where he comes from when he arrives in Lindon, which is the first place he tries to sell his ringlore. He can pass for an elf, so he could just claim to be a relatively reclusive Moriquendi who has never really been involved in various wars and so on, just studying the deep arts of the world or whatever. We do know that Gil-galad and Elrond smell a rat pretty quickly, so maybe his explanation, whatever it is, doesn't work.

But if he's the meteor man, I dunno; one would wonder how he forgets hobbits but also the Vale of Arduin is a long ways from Lindon, and Eregion is in-between them. Makes more sense for Annatar to come out of the North or from the east of Lindon.

Pffffft. "Makes sense" "Lore reasons". You aren't thinking like a hack writer. Repeat after me: Subverting expectations. That will get you to where you need to be.

What if, now hear me out, this the Hobbits Harfoots are right now, or heading right to....MORDOR (guitar distortion)!!! That's right. The Harfoots aren't the ancestors of Hobbits at all, but of the Mordor Orcs!!!

Of course this can't be Sauron while respecting any lore at all. Unless Sauron was on his way back to Valinor with Eonwe and his plane ran into Earnedil's ship or something. I think Haemish is right. Which if he is kinda robs the whole situation of nuance, but like I said, they already did that with the Noldor departing Valinor, so what the hey?

I thought about the stranger being Sauron, and I could see it. It would be dumb, certainly, but I don't think that would bother the writers in the least.

They are coding him as Gandalf pretty heavy, though. Everything he does any other Wizard could do as well, but Gandald already did in the Jackson movies. Losing his memory after a traumatic event, raising his voice on a hobbit to intimidate him, talk to insects to give them tasks, rambling on about Sacred flames. If he starts smoking a pipe and creating fireworks the next episode we can be sure.

Definitely either Gandalf or Sauron.  No one gives a fuck about Radagast or the Blues except for a few book nerds.  I only got to watch this last night, but I enjoyed it as an adaptation and without any concern that it would follow the book lore perfectly  We get that so infrequently that it seems silly to expect it from anything, especially genre fiction.  Even Douglas Adams kept writing new scenes for Hitchhiker's Guide every time it was adapted.

That was the case for Celebrimbor, Annatar, Eregion, Gil-Gilad etc as well, yet here we are.


If they cast true resurrection and bring the professor back to write a few scenes, I will promise to be more lenient.

Adams talked about that, how something would work in a book, but wouldn't work on radio, or TV, or movie, and so refactoring had to occur to produce a better product in the medium the property was being adapted to.

Which, I have to say, the professor obdurately did not get while he was alive--he fucking hated the entire idea of adaptation of his work and the few minor examples he saw (a preliminary script for a theatrical Hobbit, for example) made him furious. He sold the film rights because he really needed the money at the time when he did it, and he was unhappy about having to do so. You cast true resurrection on him and you're going to be dealing with a furious revenant who's going to murder everybody who has made a film or TV series from his work. Christopher Tolkien was pretty much repping dear old dad faithfully in this respect.

I don't think "nobody gives a fuck about X" is a good predictor of what they're going to do with this, because they have no choice BUT to introduce a bunch of folks that contemporary audiences of the Jackson films have never heard of, and at least some of them have some big narrative work to do no matter what. Gil-galad is with us all the way to the Last Alliance and he's got a bunch of Big Scenes, as it were.

And I have no objection to them making shit up if they want, if it's good. I mean, sure, take us to the East and come up with some freaky shit if you want. There ARE "Dark Elves" in Tolkien, for example, though they're not literally so like Drow. We don't know that much about some of them--they could be off in the East in the Second Age doing any number of oddball things. You could have Maglor wandering the beaches in the East singing sad songs, you could have Ungoliant in a spider-city, you name it. The Elves woke the Ents in the West, maybe the Moriquendi woke the stones or something. If they want to drop a Maiar we've never seen who isn't going to be a wizard into the middle of some proto-hobbits, that's fine with me too. It's just that when it turns out to be Gandalf, Radagast or Sauron that I scratch my head a bit and say hmmmmm what's the point.

Yeah that. The thing is, I kinda thought that doing the Second Age, which is comparatively narratively dark, was a chance to write their own shit their own way, with (largely) their own characters, as long as the bigger chess pieces on the board move their already determined paths. If you want tho change existing characters as radically as they have changed Galadriel, I will say what I said concerning Wheel of Time*: what is the point of even using the IP. Artistically that is. We all know why it was done financially.

That is why I am glad they don't have the rights to adapt the First Age, and hope no one ever does. Because THAT was the tale Tolkien wanted to tell, even more so than LotR. He shopped that to publishers and they, wisely from a publisher's perspective, told him to come back we with something more readable. But the First Age was his baby, and meaningful enough to him that he has Beren and Luthien inscribed on his and his wife's headstones, and not Aaragorn and Arwen.

*I'm just going to say right now, before I have to answer it, as much as I dislike this, it is astronomically orders of magnitude better than the Wheel of Time adaption.

In terms of pure visual craft, absolutely. And in terms of narrative coherence and frankly acting, also absolutely. The money does get you something.

Yeah. According to Tolkien, in The Letters of JRR Tolkien Sauron claimed to be, by the end of the Second Age, Morgoth's representative, and by the Third Age Morgoth returned. Which makes sense why he would be a clad the way he was and wield a mace (something the written lore makes no mention of). By the time of Finrod's adventures in Tol-in-Gaurhoth, Sauron woulda looked more like a bad Vampire the Masquerade cosplayer. Imma level with you. I kinda wanted to see that.

As a non-Tolkien semi-fan of Jackson's original trilogy, I watched the first two episodes and frankly was bored. Going into the Fellowship movie not knowing a whole lot about the actual story, I was at least entertained. This just seems boring - I had no desire to see the story behind Galadriel, and only faintly interested in how Sauron came to be.

Visually, it is pretty to look at but other than that I'll probably not watch the rest.

Sauron is unquestionably physical for a lot of his existence. When he's taken in chains to Numenor, it's not that long before he's let loose to basically run a sex cult in Ar-Pharazon's basement. I have to think the show-runners are sort of eager to get to that point because they're going to be able to come at Game of Thrones on its own ground and in a way that's completely lore-validated (well, I dunno how much they can actually use the gory details of the Akallabeth, where Tolkien is plainly trying to imitate some of the dirtier parts of the Old Testament...)  And for most of it, he's a seductive, dark, elvish-sort-of character who can change shape and deceive. He's much more Lucifer in his usual mythological sense, full of sinister beauty and temptation.

The giant with the mace makes sense in terms of the Last Alliance: he's lost all hope of seducing anybody not just because everybody still alive knows him for what he is but because he lost his fair shape when Numenor sank. (Just to give a sense of how fucking big that moment is, it's not just Numenor sinking, Eru makes the world into a sphere when it WASN'T before, it was a flat plane, more or less, and he evacs Valinor from being reachable by normal sailing.) And yet there's Sauron having physical shape and fighting the absolute top dogs of the Elves and Men to a personal standstill. So he's got to be some kind of fucking badass and he doesn't have an ordinary mortal shape anymore. Giant fucking armored deathmachine with a big mace is as good a visualization as you could ask for.

I have no problem if they want to make shit up from scratch in the Tolkien universe - knock yourself out, as long as it's good.

The problem this show seems to have is the same one that most of the Star Wars properties after the original trilogy has. They aren't making ENOUGH up. They keep trying to show us new stories with the same old characters whether those stories make any goddamn sense at all. The Galdriel of this one reminds me way too much of the Solo movie.

I agree that this is shitty.

I'm usually one to find something to love in the things people don't, but not here.

Still gonna have to watch it though because Tolkien. Not that they get Tolkien.

WTAF was this scene (https://youtu.be/XF6t_4g_YD4)? I had to pause and go looking for internet reactions!

Elves are freedom loving people and can't endure being locked in. So after 5 minutes imprisonment by the Numenorians she is enjoying the new freedom after her long suffering. And apparently so is the horse.

Joke aside, this is the poster child for form over function. So I guess they thought it made a good visual?

There's just such banal thinking going on. I'm still irritated about the entire Dain hates Elrond because he didn't come to the wedding from the second episode. I mean, for one, the appendices say: look this is the one time that Elves and Dwarves were generally friendly with each other and trading tons of stuff etc., so the whole K-D is closed and no elves allowed is just no, no, no. I mean, jesus, I know where they're going with this all--happy-go-lucky Elrond is going to be turned into grim stately Elrond by the enormous suffering of the war against Sauron, the Elvish-Dwarvish connection is going to be a very personal loss to him and Dain when it happens, but it's all about as subtle as a brick to the head and without any of the sense of mythic grandeur that Tolkien's work requires to keep it from being just Another Fantasy Epic like the ones he inspired.

I fell asleep in the latest episode so many times. It was goddamn boring. I think one of those little snap naps was during the horse riding scene, because I don't remember that bit. The whole Elf-fu in the tunnels of whatever the fuck that is supposed to be showing is super boring. The Harfoot drama is very boring. The surprise appearance of Numenor is mostly boring, as is the appearance of Isildur. It's clear the showrunners are making all these reveals as if they expect the viewers to know what the fuck they are and thus be shocked and amazed by them, but I'm pretty sure 80% of the audience won't remember what these places and people are at all. I barely remembered the names of Numenor and Isildur, and though I'm not some super fan, I am knowledgeable.

It's like they made a show that they think is going to wow the hardcore Tolkien nerds but can't even keep the casual fans interested. 4 episodes in and I am just absolutely not invested in any single character or story arc whatsoever.

Judging from the online conversation, they are very much not wowing the Tolkien nerds.

Just got the new episode notification on my phone, and my reaction was "not another one". There's nothing to look forward to. But I suppose I'll watch it.

4th episode finally felt like it went somewhere. The Galadriel/Numenor storyline didn't annoy me, nor did the Dwarven story. Hrondir and his clearly-half-elf love child in the Southlands, however, continued to bore the everliving piss out of me.

Lol this thing is just dead, huh.

(I've stopped watching. I can't even get worked up about it anymore, as I did with WoT, it turns out.)

I see it every time I open up Prime Video, and every time I think "maybe someday I'll get around to watching that," and then I watch an episode of Columbo instead.

Not quite sure what it is, but it has been decent enough that I've continued watching. I still think the Hrondir story in the Southlands is garbage and has yet to be even remotely interesting or well-acted.

Episode 5 was comically slow. It ran long at 1 hour 12, but nobody did much. There were more weird slow-motion scenes to fill the time.

To be fair, one of the episodes had Hobbit singing so I feel like all the Tolkien nerds should at least be happy about that.

THINGS HAPPENED!

After suffering thru Thursday night football and the forced advertising for the newer episodes, not a single scene they showed seemed interesting. Gorgeous scenery which I guess hits the correct notes, but nothing drew me in and made me consider picking back up with it. Just seemed boring, like the counter to the hyper-graphic Game of Thrones which I also watched 3 episodes before throwing in the towel but for the opposite reasons.

I have this vague feeling of guilt and a sense that I need to catch up but I'm not sure why I should. (I finished Ep 4.) It is really not grabbing me at all.

Episode 6 is legit good and pays off a lot of the build up IMO.

The very late unwrapping of the Macguffin was bad (and we'd also been unnecessarily shown to expect what was unwrapped - would have worked much better as an actual reveal).

Other than that, I'd now say episodes 1-5 were an extended first episode, and episode six was the second.

But is it fun?

No.

Episode 6...



wut? :uhrr:

I'd watched up to episode 7 and saw that 8 was actually the final one so decided to watch it in a fit of nothing better to do. I'm not going to bother with spoilers for all but one thing because it doesn't sound like anyone particularly cares about this -


Also super weird that the first 5 episodes seemed to go so slowly and then the last 3 feel so massively rushed. The pacing has just been dire, they really would have been better trying to cover introducing Numenor in a single episode and getting to the Southlands ASAP. This really felt like a waste of IP.

Yeah, it doesn't really work for me, though I think there are versions that could have? After all, elves kind of know all the elves that are running around elving-it-up, that happened after centuries and millennia. But they don't pay that much attention to specific men, and in human societies, there are plenty of people who sort of seem to come out of nowhere, even in Numenor. So I suppose when you stop to think about it the idea of a stranger elf that no other elf knows or can remember meeting seems pretty impossible.

Not going to spoiler anything because if you haven't watched it by now, just don't.

My biggest disappointment after the creation of Mount Doom was the attempted fakeout of Sauron being the Stranger, who it somehow turns out is just Gandalf in an adventure that was sort of hinted at in some of the books but never explained. I think it was literally one line about how he had an adventure in the West that no one speaks about or something. The actor was fine, but really disappointed they felt the need to go to that character rather than Radagast or another wizard for what likely will have no effect on the ring story at all.

Nah, you need Gandalf, Sarumon, and Radagast at some point.  The two Blue wizards can show up for a minute before fucking off to the East, too.  Now those two you could do something interesting about if you were a decent writer.  But the council of wizards formed to fight Sauron, so it makes sense for them to show up at some point in the show.

I actually liked the last half of this show more than house of dragons last 2 episodes. So it did something right. I feel like the only real complaint about the show is that its slow. Like painfully slow. And there's like 3 main plots when I feel like I'd rather follow one. Especially the pre-hobbit plot that felt unnecessary. It feels like a really long road trip to Miami. I don't like sitting in the car for 8 hours, but the party when you actually get there is pretty good. Also I'm tired of people complaining about Galadriel. There is like several hundred years between her and the character you end up meeting in LOTRs.

I can't think of a line about Gandalf having an adventure in the West that no one speaks about in any of the published books (not counting all the letters and drafts published by Christopher Tolkien).

More importantly, I *can* think of a line, quite a few lines, that say definitively that the Istari don't show up until the Third Age, period. Heck, if they were gonna do something off-mythos here, why not send a Valar incognito, maybe that's where they get the idea later on of sending their favorite servants to help out. Send Yavanna and have her escort the hobbits to the Shire, since that is actually something that Tolkien brackets as somewhat mysterious (how the ancestors of hobbits got to the Shire and how the Shire somehow didn't get caught up in all the trauma of the Second Age or the rise of Angmar in the Third Age).

Was that it?  The Istari came after Sauron's defeat to make sure he never came back?

I think the Valar were aware that Sauron would eventually regain his power, and that was the long-term mission for the wizards, but the first job may have been helping to counter the Witch-King of Angmar, perhaps, given the time frame.

Here's what's in the LOTR Appendices about them:


But it's really definitively Third Age, not before. I suppose one could just say "well actually they were sent there in the Second Age too only they didn't interact with any of the big guns among the Elves and Men so nobody important knew about them" and well, ok, I guess. In the wider legendarium, Tolkien did write that Gandalf's Maiar spirit was afraid to go to Middle-Earth and try to match Sauron and had to be pretty well ordered to do it by Manwe, so maybe this is the backstory to that--that Gandalf was vaguely remembering being sent there in the Second Age and getting his ass handed to him by Sauron, or something along those lines.

The only hint we have in the published texts that there are more than the the three named wizards who show up in LOTR is that Saruman refers to the "rods of the Five Wizards". In one of the earlier publications of Tolkien's notes he does talk about "the Blue Wizards" who seem to have had an idea that there was something in the East of Middle-Earth that they needed to go do. None of his notes really talk about that, so they either did what they were trying to do and that was that or they failed at and that was that, since they never came back.

Apparently in the most recent publication of Tolkien's notes, scribblings, and grocery lists, there's one document where Tolkien thought about the idea of a group of Maiar with similar instructions to the Wizards being sent to help watch over the elves prior to their full awakening.

**Pushes glasses so far up his nose they merge with his brain.**

Sauron only ever appears to the elves as a Maia. From  Unfinished Tales: 'In Eregion Sauron posed as an emissary of the Valar, sent by them to Middle-earth' Also, when you read his dialogue to the elves in The Silmarillion's Of Rings of Power and the Third Age, he cites Valinor and what it looks like, and speaks to them as a first among equals at absolute worst. Besides, Celebrimbor, a grandson of Feanor who was born in Valinor while it still had the Two Trees, was going to be shown all sorts of shit in the lore of Aule that he didn't know by some random human. That makes no sense. Sauron never hides what he is, only who he is.

The important thing is that this billion dollar fan fiction piece of shit misses isn't that Sauron tricked the Noldor. He's a shapeshifter. Of course he can. He could have appeared as a non-scowly Galadriel of he wanted to. That's dog bites man level of interesting. What makes it man bites dog worthy is how he deceives them. He tells them what they want to hear. That they can have a realm as beautiful as Aman while fully keeping their pride and not having to face the Valar. That they could have their cake and it too, as Tolkien himself said. Or, more pertinent to today; that they could retain the prestige and lifestyle they once had, if only they will listen to this suave liar.

I know Tolkien stated he didn't like overt allegory, but its hard to not see that the same one pops up again with the Numenorians. "Hey, you can be a young dynamic race aaannnd be immortal, just listen to me. Hey, there's lifeguards around here, right?"

If we're going to the wider legendarium, the thing that Celebrimbor is after is not "the prestige and lifestyle they once had", it's "preserving the greatness of the elves in Middle-Earth for all time" and "making beauty beyond what Middle-Earth was meant for"--which explains Sauron's seductiveness, because it's a repetition of Melkor's original sin--wanting to make something beyond the original Music, wanting to make Middle-Earth something more than what it was meant to be. But of course, since Tolkien was Catholic, his Creator gets away with some capricious inconsistency--say, on the creation of the Dwarves. (Another reason I think making the Stranger an incognito Valar fits better--Aule got away with it, so...)

These two themes are not mutually exclusive at all. In fact, the Elves were trying to 'make beauty beyond what Middle-earth was meant for' because they wanted the riches (not in wealth, but in arts, lore, etc) they had in Valinor, but in Middle Earth. I'm willing to concede that maybe I didn't chose the best word with 'prestige', but I think lifestyle is essentially correct, and I think the spirit of sentence was as well.

From the Silmarillion:

Sauron says to the Noldor in Eregion


Sauron is straight selling them 'Member Berries here. Considering that when the Noldor returned from exile they were not permitted to go back to Valinor, but had to stay in Tol Eressea, Sauron is selling the Noldor on their life from when they straight up lived in Valinor and were 'above' the Teleri.

From The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, pages 150-152. It's a long fuckin letter where Tolkien is explaining the whole Silmarillion, Akkalbeth, and Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age to a correspondent. We'll pick up in his description of the Noldor in the Second Age:

The point being, Sauron is selling them the past, even if it is not viable in their current environment, and they are receptive to it. He may as well as been selling a return to a post WWII American way of life, while he is partially sharing technology capable of, or at least appearing to be capable, of achieving it.

Just got done binging this over the last week or so, I liked it quite a bit. It's not amazing but it's not anywhere as bad as some people make it out to be. It's no LOTR movie quality but far beyond Hobbit movie quality. Not watching it at the same time as house of the dragon probably helped.

Considering how bad the Hobbit films were, that's a low bar to clear.

But yeah, it's not terrible at all. It's fine? It's even good? It's just, I dunno, less than it could be. It feels flabby in terms of directing and staging a lot of the time. Conceptually fine, technically kind of meh.

(https://i.imgur.com/uYX4QzP.jpg)

It had genuinely great moments...and a lot of plodding to get to them. So, perfectly on brand for JRR Tolkien.

--Dave

Bit of a low point, but can't hold it against her. Some people just look weird when they smile. She does have a very cute mean mug though.

I don't know, I thought it was fine right up until the volcano, and then it just fell completely off a cliff. It was still watchable, but goddamn did that moment just ruin it for me.

I finally got around to the last two and I ended up deciding that it really sucked, that it was in fact not merely fine. We've already talked about a lot of the reasons why.

The pacing is terrible. If you're going to spend time establishing the status quo, do it in three episodes at most and don't dick around with dumb melodrama, just establish that on Numenor, in Eregion, everywhere we turn, life is good. Show us what's about to be cast into chaos and suffering in all its splendor and complacency. Don't spend five episodes frittering things away on boring stories and underbaked characters.

Second, a show is bad when I can practically sit in the writers' room myself and listen to the conversation between the writers and showrunners. I can tell exactly what they decided to do here: 1) create problems for which the Rings will seem like solutions in order to explain why Men, Dwarves and Elves are keen to learn ringcraft rather than it just being "oh look a ring, can I have it?"; 2) Play "Hide the Sauron" to try and get people to invest in finding out who it turns out to be, which requires spending enough time with the three major possibilities to make each of them credible; 3) play around with newly fashionable 'there are no evil races' ambiguity to create a bit of tension about what is 'good' and 'evil' here. It's just all very transparent and unengaging in the end--the inexperience of the showrunners rises like a miasma around every episode.

Third, in lore terms it's just fucking dumb in several respects. There's no group of Men who served Morgoth in ancient times who have been hanging out in what will become Mordor. Morgoth didn't need a bunch of low Men the way Sauron will--he had fucking dragons, balrogs, mega-orcs, trolls, etc. by the metric ass-ton. I mean, sure, there were probably a few here and there who signed on with the probable winners, but they don't matter narratively and it's inconceivable that the Elves would station a bunch of observers to look over them. And just in what would be Mordor? Really? "The Southlands" is a big territory. If they were really going to have done something along these lines, put us in a town in the northeast of Umbar, southwest of what would become Mordor--the people who are going to be Gondor's enemies. Don't put them under Elvish supervision--maybe have an Elf who is stationed thereabouts as a spy. Have a group from the Havens of Umbar who've been sent northeast with mysterious orders--they're the guys who are going to trigger off the volcano. Have the Elf and maybe a few sympathetic humans (Bronwyn etc) trail them to see what's going on. I dunno--the whole village plot just seemed dumb as well as lore-violating. (It's also dumb in terms of the Numenoreans landing and going straight there--it's a long way from where they would have landed to where Orodruin blows up even with Halbrand leading them straight there.) 

If you're going to do some world-building in the "Southlands", do some goddamn world-building! Tell us about all those spaces on the maps where we know there might even be "evil Numenoreans", don't take us to the quintessential village of average-joe farmers.

And yeah, it doesn't really make sense for Sauron to be a human; the whole plot with the Stranger doesn't make sense. The idea that the Elves need mithril to survive is dumb. It's just dumb all around.

The village plot was the weakest part of it by far. It felt way too small scale to matter (maybe because there were like 50 people there total and you could tell it was that small), and there was absolutely no setup in that village for a "king of the southlands." Bronwyn and the elf's romance, what with the kid who is so obviously the elf's kid hanging around, was just really boring and bad. When the best part of the story is the fucking Dwarf's wife, you know there are problems.