Languish.org

So, apparently it's the second age. https://twitter.com/lotronprime

Rumours have it that it will be about the forging of the rings and the fall of Eregion. I still believe that the best story is the fall of Númenor. Perhaps they'll do both.

Is that from a paid publicist?  Not really sweeping me off my feet.

?

My first reaction is this is a remake of the movie trilogy in TV form, but it seems that was not the case. 

After some internet searches, my understanding is that this is more like a distant prequel that takes place even earlier than the Hobbit movies?  So the majority of the cast probably won't be there, except maybe the Elves, Dwarves and wizards. 

I remember, at the beginning of the Fellowship movie, there was a scene about how Sauron was defeated.  Is this somehow an expansion of that scene? 

I don't think the dwarves live that long either.

Quote from: Monoriu on March 10, 2019, 08:34:43 PM
My first reaction is this is a remake of the movie trilogy in TV form, but it seems that was not the case. 

After some internet searches, my understanding is that this is more like a distant prequel that takes place even earlier than the Hobbit movies?  So the majority of the cast probably won't be there, except maybe the Elves, Dwarves and wizards. 

I remember, at the beginning of the Fellowship movie, there was a scene about how Sauron was defeated.  Is this somehow an expansion of that scene?

You're doing it deliberately, aren't you.  <_<

Quote from: mongers on March 10, 2019, 08:52:47 PM

Quote from: Monoriu on March 10, 2019, 08:34:43 PM
My first reaction is this is a remake of the movie trilogy in TV form, but it seems that was not the case. 

After some internet searches, my understanding is that this is more like a distant prequel that takes place even earlier than the Hobbit movies?  So the majority of the cast probably won't be there, except maybe the Elves, Dwarves and wizards. 

I remember, at the beginning of the Fellowship movie, there was a scene about how Sauron was defeated.  Is this somehow an expansion of that scene?

You're doing it deliberately, aren't you.  <_<

What are you talking about? 

Quote from: Monoriu on March 10, 2019, 08:58:30 PM

Quote from: mongers on March 10, 2019, 08:52:47 PM

Quote from: Monoriu on March 10, 2019, 08:34:43 PM
My first reaction is this is a remake of the movie trilogy in TV form, but it seems that was not the case. 

After some internet searches, my understanding is that this is more like a distant prequel that takes place even earlier than the Hobbit movies?  So the majority of the cast probably won't be there, except maybe the Elves, Dwarves and wizards. 

I remember, at the beginning of the Fellowship movie, there was a scene about how Sauron was defeated.  Is this somehow an expansion of that scene?

You're doing it deliberately, aren't you.  <_<

What are you talking about?

Languish has a lot of Tolkien nerds, I was guessing you were trying to provoke some of them.  :)

Well in that sense, yes.  I love the Lord of the Rings movies and I want to know more about this TV series. 

Quote from: Monoriu on March 10, 2019, 08:34:43 PM
My first reaction is this is a remake of the movie trilogy in TV form, but it seems that was not the case. 

After some internet searches, my understanding is that this is more like a distant prequel that takes place even earlier than the Hobbit movies?  So the majority of the cast probably won't be there, except maybe the Elves, Dwarves and wizards. 

I remember, at the beginning of the Fellowship movie, there was a scene about how Sauron was defeated.  Is this somehow an expansion of that scene?

The forging of the rings would be long before that scene.

If they're going to go that deep into the mythology they should just do the war for the jewels in the silmarillion.

Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 10, 2019, 10:58:33 PM

Quote from: Monoriu on March 10, 2019, 08:34:43 PM
My first reaction is this is a remake of the movie trilogy in TV form, but it seems that was not the case. 

After some internet searches, my understanding is that this is more like a distant prequel that takes place even earlier than the Hobbit movies?  So the majority of the cast probably won't be there, except maybe the Elves, Dwarves and wizards. 

I remember, at the beginning of the Fellowship movie, there was a scene about how Sauron was defeated.  Is this somehow an expansion of that scene?

The forging of the rings would be long before that scene.

If they're going to go that deep into the mythology they should just do the war for the jewels in the silmarillion.

No.  Very, very different stories.  The Lord of the Rings that the general public knows of is very much tied to the story they are presumably making.  The world is roughly the same geographically with only minor changes to the coastlines after Numenor sinks.  Mordor will be the same with Gondor, Rivendell, Lorien, Weathertop, and more locations eventually appearing in one form or another that appear in the films.  Characters seen in the opening to Fellowship will be there in addition to others from the films (Elrond, Gil-Galad, Sauron, Celeborn, Galadriel, Haldir, Tharanduil, with eventually Isildur, Arwen, Elendil, and the living version of the Army of the Dead showing up.  The Silmarillion material outside of the Second Age bits at the end will feature radically different geography, factions, and characters with only Galadriel, Celeborn, Sauron, and eventually Gil-Galad and Elrond showing up.

Can't see a show about the forging of the rings being too exciting unless they get really great writers. That's the kind of stuff better left in a prologue like the movies did.

Although the fact that they might include my namesake in the show has me mildly excited (he was an ICE character so I guess they won't, but hey...)

Let's look at the timeline of the second age.

1500-1600 The rings of power are forged and Sauron openly proclaims himself
1693 The war of the elves and Sauron begins
1697 Eregion falls
1700 Númenoreans show up and kick Saurons ass.
1701 White council founded
.
. Lots of shit where Númenor slowly, very slowly, turns against the elves
.
3209 Isildur is born
3262 Númenoreans kick Saurons ass again and this time captures him and brings him home
3319 Fall of Númenor, Arnor and Gondor founded
3430 War of the last alliance, the stuff shown in the beginning of Fellowship.


So, to cover both times in one TV series would be like covering Puzur-Ashur I and Sargon II in one TV series.

The cheap way of doing it is by fusing both timelines. As in, the Numenoreans capture Sauron in 1700. The backlash among diehard tolkienites would be huge, but I don't think the regular viewers would care.

After reading that timeline, my first reaction is that Sauron seems to lose time after time.  Then I realise that he rises again after each defeat.  Could be interesting to see his perspective. 

I wouldn't very much care, but I don't se how they could do the slow turn to evil of Númenor that way. In general societies don't turn from Norway to Afghanistan in a generation.

I still think the fall of Númenor and the war of the last alliance is the better story. You have good humans in western Númenor and in Arnor and Gondor, and you have dark Númenoreans everywhere else. There's tension between the Edain and the lesser men inhabiting the colonies where even good Edain can be shown to do bad stuff. There's hedonistic orgies and human sacrifice if you want to go full GoT. There's youthful heroes in Isildur and Anarion, and an Aragorn-type in Elendil. Sauron has a big part and can be shown as a Littlefinger evil schemer. There's material for a full show without all the human and dwarves dying of old age all the time. And, last but not least, you can have Legolas in it.

Quote from: Monoriu on March 11, 2019, 03:24:10 AM
After reading that timeline, my first reaction is that Sauron seems to lose time after time.  Then I realise that he rises again after each defeat.  Could be interesting to see his perspective.

He loses a few times in Silmarillion as well.

Is this in the period where the world was flat and you went up a sea bridge to heaven and all that craziness?

Quote from: Threviel on March 11, 2019, 03:32:25 AM

Quote from: Monoriu on March 11, 2019, 03:24:10 AM
After reading that timeline, my first reaction is that Sauron seems to lose time after time.  Then I realise that he rises again after each defeat.  Could be interesting to see his perspective.

He loses a few times in Silmarillion as well.

Not to mention that he was originally only the #2 baddy.

Quote from: Threviel on March 11, 2019, 03:31:45 AM
I wouldn't very much care, but I don't se how they could do the slow turn to evil of Númenor that way. In general societies don't turn from Norway to Afghanistan in a generation.

I still think the fall of Númenor and the war of the last alliance is the better story. You have good humans in western Númenor and in Arnor and Gondor, and you have dark Númenoreans everywhere else. There's tension between the Edain and the lesser men inhabiting the colonies where even good Edain can be shown to do bad stuff. There's hedonistic orgies and human sacrifice if you want to go full GoT. There's youthful heroes in Isildur and Anarion, and an Aragorn-type in Elendil. Sauron has a big part and can be shown as a Littlefinger evil schemer. There's material for a full show without all the human and dwarves dying of old age all the time. And, last but not least, you can have Legolas in it.

The slow turn would be difficult to convey in a TV show though. You'd probably focus on leaders being corrupted and that limits you to their lifetimes, hence why compressing the timeline would make sense from a TV perspective. It also helps pack the show with more events - If you want to do slow-burn in an epic show you need truly great writing like peak GoT.

Quote from: Threviel on March 11, 2019, 03:18:18 AM

3209 Isildur is born
3262 Númenoreans kick Saurons ass again and this time captures him and brings him home
3319 Fall of Númenor, Arnor and Gondor founded
3430 War of the last alliance, the stuff shown in the beginning of Fellowship.

This would by far be the better of the two options.  I still wish they'd gone with the Kin-Strife, but this could be amazing as well.  The downside is the already mentioned longer gaps inbetween events.

Quote from: Tyr on March 11, 2019, 03:36:05 AM
Is this in the period where the world was flat and you went up a sea bridge to heaven and all that craziness?

Yes and no, the downfall of Númenor is when the world turns round and the lands of the gods are moved from this world, creating the need for the secret bridge that only elves can travel on.

First trailer/teaser:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1483816516399218691 (https://twitter.com/i/status/1483816516399218691)

So it seems it will be the forging of the rings and the  war between the elves and Sauron. Lots of elves and unnamed orcs and immortal ring wraiths so low risk of confused viewer with them.

What will probably confuse is that every human and dwarf will only be around for an episode or two, since the story takes place over centuries and milleniums.

I read that the trailer was done with real forms and real metal and not entirely made on computer. Bodes well if that is the attitude of the production.

I have this nagging suspicion that they will merge the timelines of the forging of the rings and the fall of Numenor.

It's what I would do  :blush:

Quote from: Threviel on January 20, 2022, 07:16:22 AMI read that the trailer was done with real forms and real metal and not entirely made on computer. Bodes well if that is the attitude of the production.

Yup.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC_yTMST7mw (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC_yTMST7mw)

Tons of promotional pictures featuring more than 20 characters of the show have been published today, without saying who is who (and the pictures omit the heads). Here are a few of the coolest ones. Does anyone feel like trying to name who is who?

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FKriDhQUYAMuCkF?format=jpg&name=900x900)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FKrjbg0VQAMsOot?format=jpg&name=900x900)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FKrjaxYVQAcTBqY?format=jpg&name=small)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FKrj0aRVkAQjJvu?format=jpg&name=small)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FKrkjVaVIAIo3mY?format=jpg&name=small)

The full set is in the show's official Twitter account.

Quote from: Threviel on January 20, 2022, 07:16:22 AM
I read that the trailer was done with real forms and real metal and not entirely made on computer. Bodes well if that is the attitude of the production.

Oh, excitement level now increased!

Quote from: The Larch on February 03, 2022, 05:59:53 PM
Tons of promotional pictures featuring more than 20 characters of the show have been published today, without saying who is who (and the pictures omit the heads). Here are a few of the coolest ones. Does anyone feel like trying to name who is who?

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FKriDhQUYAMuCkF?format=jpg&name=900x900)

Durin III

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FKrjbg0VQAMsOot?format=jpg&name=900x900)

An elf, presumably Celebrimbor


(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FKrjaxYVQAcTBqY?format=jpg&name=small)

Ciryatur, commander of the Numenorean expeditionary force

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FKrj0aRVkAQjJvu?format=jpg&name=small)

One of the Blue Wizards.  I wonder what the show will name him, given that Tolkien never even hinted at their names.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FKrkjVaVIAIo3mY?format=jpg&name=small)

Dunno. A peasant type, it looks to me, but there were no peasant heroes in the War of the Elves and Sauron as told by Tolkien.

QuoteOne of the Blue Wizards.  I wonder what the show will name him, given that Tolkien never even hinted at their names.

I thought that might be Isildur, with the broken Narsil in hand.

QuoteDunno. A peasant type, it looks to me, but there were no peasant heroes in the War of the Elves and Sauron as told by Tolkien.

There are several non regal looking characters featured, I wonder who they might be:

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FKrm116UcAkivsb?format=jpg&name=small)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FKrlbQpUUAEyecR?format=jpg&name=small)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FKrlNRvVEAQitAX?format=jpg&name=small)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FKrkwJUVkAECYaS?format=jpg&name=small)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FKrkSkKVcA4pR40?format=jpg&name=small)

Quote from: The Larch on February 03, 2022, 06:49:12 PM
I thought that might be Isildur, with the broken Narsil in hand.

Possibly, since that does look like a broken sword, but Isildur had little or nothing to do with the Rings of Power.  He wasn't born until 1500 years after the death of Celebrimbor.

QuoteThere are several non regal looking characters featured, I wonder who they might be:

(snip)

Every saga needs spear carriers.  I suspect that Radagast is the first one, but the second is wearing a ring, which should be significant.  The rest?  Who knows?

Quote from: grumbler on February 03, 2022, 07:55:22 PM

Quote from: The Larch on February 03, 2022, 06:49:12 PM
I thought that might be Isildur, with the broken Narsil in hand.

Possibly, since that does look like a broken sword, but Isildur had little or nothing to do with the Rings of Power.  He wasn't born until 1500 years after the death of Celebrimbor.

The show is going to cover the whole Second Age, not just the forging of the Rings. It'll also feature the rise of Sauron, the story of Numenor and the last alliance of Elves and Men, according to the showrunners. Thus, I'd say that Isildur is a fair bet for that particular one.

Another of the pics is clearly Sauron:

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FKrnCB-UcAEvCVU?format=jpg&name=4096x4096)

I expect some of the ring wearer depicted include some of the nine men who eventually became the Nazgul.

Isn't that a very long time frame?  How many seasons are planned?  Or are they doing time jumps/multiple timelines.

Quote from: Jacob on February 03, 2022, 08:14:10 PM
I expect some of the ring wearer depicted include some of the nine men who eventually became the Nazgul.

Yeah, several of the pics scream "Generic King #1-9".  :lol:

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FKrjKd_UYAAbiGc?format=jpg&name=small)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FKrqx5lUcAUWiuv?format=jpg&name=small)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FKrmkqqVUAIY1pQ?format=jpg&name=small)

Quote from: HVC on February 03, 2022, 08:16:50 PM
Isn't that a very long time frame?  How many seasons are planned?  Or are they doing time jumps/multiple timelines.

I read that it's meant to be 5 seasons long, with the first two ones already ordered. The 1st season is going to be 8 episodes long, and I believe that the 2nd season was filmed already, back to back with the first one.

The wizards arrived in the third age, so at least Gandalf, Radagast and Saruman are out. There's one comment in Unfinished tales that the blue wizards arrived earlier, possibly around the time of the forging of the rings.

Allatar and Pallando are possible names for them IIRC.

When the show comes out I'm probably headcannon somebody in Celebrimbor's entourage as Celedhring  :P (he was a character in a MERP module, former assistant to Celebrimbor and later Sauron toady).

Gonna be really hard to do a Gandalf or Saruman that compare to the ones in Jackson's movies.

Quote from: jimmy olsen on February 04, 2022, 04:14:02 AM
Gonna be really hard to do a Gandalf or Saruman that compare to the ones in Jackson's movies.

Yep, it's going to be hard. Particularly because they won't show up in this (or at least, they shouldn't) :P

People are going to have a tough job filling Kate Blanchett's or Hugo Weaving's boots, though.

Cirdan was always a favourite of mine, will be fun to see.

I feel like the dark armored picture could be anyone, including a "hero". The Númenórean were all over in this era and black and silver were their go-to colors. The gold armored and ringed figure leans strongly toward Gil-Galad in my opinion and the one with sun motifs might be Anárion as he founded Minas Anor (Tirith). It certainly opens some interesting options with the presented images. I almost think Sauron might be the one in gold with the gold on their hands in their Annatar appearance and aspect.

This will probably be shit, like GOT/Hobbit shit. They will have a lot of tits too.

There is likely a large market for hobbit tits.

I temporarily hate myself for writing that.

The dice are rolling and this series could very well fail it's saving throw versus suckitude. Who knows? If they have a strong narrative plan and know how to write a long form character-based tragedy of corruption, then it could be great. If they are winging it, season by season, and be focused on the KEWL peeps versus the Bad Guyz, the odds are bad.

Yes, I think everything should be MacBeth, which is why Star Wars sucks. They tried, but could not do it. So they put a Death Star in like every movie to compensate.

Quote from: saskganesh on February 04, 2022, 11:22:10 PM
This will probably be shit, like GOT/Hobbit shit. They will have a lot of tits too.

There is likely a large market for hobbit tits.

I temporarily hate myself for writing that.

You know what was said in the intro to The Hobbit - "it was a Hobbit hole, and that means comfort".

Quote from: saskganesh on February 04, 2022, 11:22:10 PM
There is likely a large market for hobbit tits.

Had a look at Smashwords, because they're known cater to an eclectic range of interests, but there seem to be surprisingly few Hobbit/Halfling themed erotica titles. There seems to be a "Horny Halfling" lesbian series of ... short stories, I guess? The word counts of each title are between 6000 and 7000.

Maybe an underexploited niche?  :hmm:

Tons of incest and bestiality stuff, though, by the looks of it, and often combined into one story. Oh my.

Damn Larch and Grumbler, you guys know your lore!  :cheers:

I don't have a copy of the Silmarillion anymore but you have me motivated to download a copy and get to reading  :)

The Istari didn't come to Middle Earth till 1000 years into the Third Age, so I'd say they're off the table as the series seems to be focused on the Second Age.

Quote from: Benedict Arnold on February 05, 2022, 05:26:05 PM
The Istari didn't come to Middle Earth till 1000 years into the Third Age, so I'd say they're off the table as the series seems to be focused on the Second Age.

There are two stories about the arrival of the Blue Wizards.  In Unfinished Tales, they arrive about TA 1000.  In The peoples of Middle Earth they arrive about SA 1600.  Christopher Tolkien was unable to determine which story his father had decided on (if he had, indeed, decided on either). 

Quote from: grumbler on February 05, 2022, 08:26:25 PM

Quote from: Benedict Arnold on February 05, 2022, 05:26:05 PM
The Istari didn't come to Middle Earth till 1000 years into the Third Age, so I'd say they're off the table as the series seems to be focused on the Second Age.

There are two stories about the arrival of the Blue Wizards.  In Unfinished Tales, they arrive about TA 1000.  In The peoples of Middle Earth they arrive about SA 1600.  Christopher Tolkien was unable to determine which story his father had decided on (if he had, indeed, decided on either).

I thought it was only the blue ones that possibly came earlier. Would also be a good creative choice for the show, then they don't have to compete with Jackson's istaris.

Quote from: Threviel on February 06, 2022, 02:52:31 AM

Quote from: grumbler on February 05, 2022, 08:26:25 PM

Quote from: Benedict Arnold on February 05, 2022, 05:26:05 PM
The Istari didn't come to Middle Earth till 1000 years into the Third Age, so I'd say they're off the table as the series seems to be focused on the Second Age.

There are two stories about the arrival of the Blue Wizards.  In Unfinished Tales, they arrive about TA 1000.  In The peoples of Middle Earth they arrive about SA 1600.  Christopher Tolkien was unable to determine which story his father had decided on (if he had, indeed, decided on either).

I thought it was only the blue ones that possibly came earlier. Would also be a good creative choice for the show, then they don't have to compete with Jackson's istaris.

Yes, as I said, the arrival of the Blue Wizards is in contention.  It is unclear in PoME whether or not the other three Istari came at the same time or later.  Tolkien always had the idea that Gandalf came at the same time as Saruman and Radagast, but not necessarily the Blue Wizards (who were friends and came together).

Ahh, sorry, I missed the word blue in your text.

Jeez, I can't remember a single thing I read in the Silmarillion and youse guys have it memorized. :nerd:

Silmarillion was my bible in my teens, I've probably read most of it 50 times or so. It was my huge nerd thing I wasted my youth on.

Never could get into Unfinished tales or the even more obscure stuff and I haven't really read any of it (except Bilbo an LotR of course) since I turned 18 or so. It's more or less the only classic nerd thing that I still have somewhat of a passion for.

For me it's more The History of Middle Earth than the Silmarillion (Isn't it cool that the spell check knows how to spell "Silmarillion?").  Lots of interesting stuff there.  For instance, Strider was a hobbit for most of the writing process, only becoming Isuldur's heir fairly late.  Also, early on Tolkien was much more open about his idea that Middle Earth was our world a long time ago.

I had the same thought in Silmarillion.  :lol:

The books I read was not only Silmarillion, there were three companion books of which Silmarillion was one. One of them was the appendix and some other texts on the second and third age and one other was more text. One of the also contained a poem on Beorthnoth and some story about leafs.

Recently, with the nitpicking blog and some other analysis I've read, I've gotten a whole new respect for Tolkien. The man knew his shit well and his work, huge as it is, is surprisingly consequent and holds up well to review. Still light years ahead of any other fantasy writer I know of.

Yeah, Tolkien is probably one of the reasons I don't read much fantasy honestly - it's just not good enough in comparison.

Quote from: Jacob on February 07, 2022, 01:58:55 PM
Yeah, Tolkien is probably one of the reasons I don't read much fantasy honestly - it's just not good enough in comparison.

I think the problem is that far too many try to emulate (copy) his work.  Any reproduction is bound to be pale by comparison.  But every once in a while someone tries to do something original.  Martin is a good example, and one of my favs Guy Gavriel Kay.

By the way, Kay was actually on a high school basketball team and was a bench warmer (one of my partners was on the same team).  That little tidbit will be a bit more meaningful for people who read his early novels.  :)

The problem with Tolkien is that almost all his characters are cardboard cutouts. I still love his stuff, but damn.

Quote from: crazy canuck on February 07, 2022, 02:12:45 PM
I think the problem is that far too many try to emulate (copy) his work.  Any reproduction is bound to be pale by comparison.  But every once in a while someone tries to do something original.  Martin is a good example, and one of my favs Guy Gavriel Kay.

By the way, Kay was actually on a high school basketball team and was a bench warmer (one of my partners was on the same team).  That little tidbit will be a bit more meaningful for people who read his early novels.  :)

Yeah, Kay is someone I read and enjoy as well.

Martin is an ignorant hack. Sure, he can craft stories and tell them well, but he does not in any way what so ever grok history.

That pedant blog is a good read and a good place to compare Tolkien and Martin.

I started reading Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson (originally from a list of "fantasy series that supposedly end satisfyingly).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gardens_of_the_Moon

I kinda got stuck 25 or 30% in. He throws a lot of stuff at you and - as it seems to me at least - often presents it in a way as if you should be familiar with past events and certain places and characters he references. That can be great to draw you in and get you intrigued, but it also made me feel fairly lost.

It's a ten book series for those interested. :P

Quote from: Threviel on February 07, 2022, 02:21:36 PM
Martin is an ignorant hack. Sure, he can craft stories and tell them well, but he does not in any way what so ever grok history.

:wacko:

Quote from: The Brain on February 07, 2022, 02:15:07 PM
The problem with Tolkien is that almost all his characters are cardboard cutouts. I still love his stuff, but damn.

"Archetypes", dear the Brain. We call them "archetypes".

Quote from: Syt on February 07, 2022, 02:23:22 PM
I started reading Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson (originally from a list of "fantasy series that supposedly end satisfyingly).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gardens_of_the_Moon

I kinda got stuck 25 or 30% in. He throws a lot of stuff at you and - as it seems to me at least - often presents it in a way as if you should be familiar with past events and certain places and characters he references. That can be great to draw you in and get you intrigued, but it also made me feel fairly lost.

I abandoned the series at about the same point for the same reason. I don't think I'll ever return to it.

Quote from: Jacob on February 07, 2022, 02:23:42 PM

Quote from: The Brain on February 07, 2022, 02:15:07 PM
The problem with Tolkien is that almost all his characters are cardboard cutouts. I still love his stuff, but damn.

"Archetypes", dear the Brain. We call them "archetypes".

:blush: Sorry, George Lucas.

Quote from: Habbaku on February 07, 2022, 02:24:06 PM

Quote from: Syt on February 07, 2022, 02:23:22 PM
I started reading Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson (originally from a list of "fantasy series that supposedly end satisfyingly).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gardens_of_the_Moon

I kinda got stuck 25 or 30% in. He throws a lot of stuff at you and - as it seems to me at least - often presents it in a way as if you should be familiar with past events and certain places and characters he references. That can be great to draw you in and get you intrigued, but it also made me feel fairly lost.

I abandoned the series at about the same point for the same reason. I don't think I'll ever return to it.

In my case it might not have helped that I started it as audio book (and then switched to kindle).

Quote from: crazy canuck on February 07, 2022, 02:12:45 PM

Quote from: Jacob on February 07, 2022, 01:58:55 PM
Yeah, Tolkien is probably one of the reasons I don't read much fantasy honestly - it's just not good enough in comparison.

I think the problem is that far too many try to emulate (copy) his work.  Any reproduction is bound to be pale by comparison.  But every once in a while someone tries to do something original.  Martin is a good example, and one of my favs Guy Gavriel Kay.

By the way, Kay was actually on a high school basketball team and was a bench warmer (one of my partners was on the same team).  That little tidbit will be a bit more meaningful for people who read his early novels.  :)

I like Kay's stuff - his thing is to create fantasy worlds patterned after actual history, which I enjoy.

Another work of completely non-Tolkien fantasy is Gormenghast/Titus Groan, which I like but is not for everyone.

Quote from: Malthus on February 07, 2022, 03:28:13 PM
Another work of completely non-Tolkien fantasy is Gormenghast/Titus Groan, which I like but is not for everyone.

Yeah, those were pretty interesting. I read the frist two or three, but not all IIRC.

Quote from: Threviel on February 07, 2022, 02:21:36 PM
Martin is an ignorant hack. Sure, he can craft stories and tell them well, but he does not in any way what so ever grok history.

His job is to craft stories, not history.

Quote from: Eddie Teach on February 07, 2022, 04:18:48 PM

Quote from: Threviel on February 07, 2022, 02:21:36 PM
Martin is an ignorant hack. Sure, he can craft stories and tell them well, but he does not in any way what so ever grok history.

His job is to craft stories, not history.

Though he did craft a history, and a pretty good one.

I'm not particularly fond of Martin, but I can definitely see the itch he scratches for the folks that enjoy him.

Quote from: Threviel on February 07, 2022, 02:21:36 PM
Martin is an ignorant hack. Sure, he can craft stories and tell them well, but he does not in any way what so ever grok history.

That pedant blog is a good read and a good place to compare Tolkien and Martin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAAp_luluo0

Martins descriptions of logistics, strategy, tactics and so on are on a low level. It's like a school kid reading some history and playing some games and then building a world based on that.

Yeah, he writes a good story, but it's not consequent and it is unrealistic by its own standard and rules. He is not alone in that, he is head and shoulders above most fantasy writers, but that is damning with faint praise.

Quote from: Threviel on February 08, 2022, 03:35:41 AM
Martins descriptions of logistics, strategy, tactics and so on are on a low level.

Jeez, the guy is writing novels, not military essays. If you're bothered by that maybe you're too much of a nerd for those topics to enjoy the story, which is what really matters. Is the charge of the Rohirrim ok, then?  :P

I mean, Martin is in no way a perfect writer, there are other aspects of his writing and world building that I don't enjoy (IMO, the guy has no sense of scale whatsoever), but it's not something that prevents me from appreciating the story he's telling as a whole.

Quote from: The Larch on February 08, 2022, 04:05:00 AM

Quote from: Threviel on February 08, 2022, 03:35:41 AM
Martins descriptions of logistics, strategy, tactics and so on are on a low level.

Jeez, the guy is writing novels, not military essays. If you're bothered by that maybe you're too much of a nerd for those topics to enjoy the story, which is what really matters. Is the charge of the Rohirrim ok, then?  :P

I mean, Martin is in no way a perfect writer, there are other aspects of his writing and world building that I don't enjoy (IMO, the guy has no sense of scale whatsoever), but it's not something that prevents me from appreciating the story he's telling as a whole.

I was making a comment on Martins understanding of history and then I expanded on that, contrasted with Tolkien where the charge of the Rohirrim is very much an example of Tolkien knowing his shit.

I might be too nerdish. :blush:

Quote from: Threviel on February 08, 2022, 04:22:45 AM

Quote from: The Larch on February 08, 2022, 04:05:00 AM

Quote from: Threviel on February 08, 2022, 03:35:41 AM
Martins descriptions of logistics, strategy, tactics and so on are on a low level.

Jeez, the guy is writing novels, not military essays. If you're bothered by that maybe you're too much of a nerd for those topics to enjoy the story, which is what really matters. Is the charge of the Rohirrim ok, then?  :P

I mean, Martin is in no way a perfect writer, there are other aspects of his writing and world building that I don't enjoy (IMO, the guy has no sense of scale whatsoever), but it's not something that prevents me from appreciating the story he's telling as a whole.

I was making a comment on Martins understanding of history and then I expanded on that, contrasted with Tolkien where the charge of the Rohirrim is very much an example of Tolkien knowing his shit.

I might be too nerdish. :blush:

Might be, candle boy? :P

(https://preview.redd.it/cizuqhi370h81.jpg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d840fe3b10e69d317ecafe00c9c61041db3ad719)

(https://preview.redd.it/nugps2ny60h81.jpg?width=1334&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a5c499a9a8051d9a5632d17c7c3968bf1f3e7396)

(https://preview.redd.it/k0swwbsy60h81.jpg?width=2000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c612f9b0f1bdf31ac4de3f03437950a6447d09de)

(https://preview.redd.it/886mn5xy60h81.jpg?width=2000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0f86f3b8af4f72e95511dc16bbdca25b0d641af4)

(https://preview.redd.it/v1pc2e6370h81.jpg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=829ef0587d813817826e5ea0629fe8828afacc04)

(https://preview.redd.it/cplj42v370h81.jpg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4e2a9f6da543e471a8ed0d689c65bb28f965529c)

(https://preview.redd.it/ytqeuaa470h81.jpg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d847a3d6112fc807254d074bdbc7a8c5b5f50b3f)

(https://preview.redd.it/ddpg7ba470h81.jpg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c6a94c8bc5e43ae37c264705e4045c71bce87dcd)

(https://preview.redd.it/jo0ltta470h81.jpg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8d06dce610a2c2d46e0974cc911b6c8854735385)

So this is mostly going to be fan fiction?

Seems like the regular crowd will go apeshit over race again...

Is that supposed to be Galadriel in armour?

Dwarven women look very similar to dwarven men, so it is very unclear what the dwarvish looking woman is supposed to be...

The wood-elf might be whatshisname, the dude with the hill that drowned and got a hill named for him in Lothlorien.

Heh, thought the same on the black lady
The bottom photo confused me a bit at first. Thought "wait what? This is some real final fantasy style post apocalyptic stuff. Had no idea LOTR was like that..." Then I figured it was a photo of the set rather than of the product

Quote from: Threviel on February 10, 2022, 11:53:22 AM
Is that supposed to be Galadriel in armour?

Yes, in the original article it mentions who is each character in each picture. The guy sitting in the field is Elrond, btw.

QuoteDwarven women look very similar to dwarven men, so it is very unclear what the dwarvish looking woman is supposed to be...

It's meant to be "Dwarven princess Disa, standing at the entrance of Khazad-dum".

QuoteThe wood-elf might be whatshisname, the dude with the hill that drowned and got a hill named for him in Lothlorien.

If you mean the one with the torch, it's a new character created for the show called Arondir.

Quote from: Threviel on February 10, 2022, 11:53:22 AM
Seems like the regular crowd will go apeshit over race again...

Is that supposed to be Galadriel in armour?

Dwarven women look very similar to dwarven men, so it is very unclear what the dwarvish looking woman is supposed to be...

The wood-elf might be whatshisname, the dude with the hill that drowned and got a hill named for him in Lothlorien.

Agree with you on the charge of the Rohirrim (it's excellent in the book, ridiculous in the film).

How should dwarven women look, your opinion?

Regarding dwarven women, I quite like Pratchett's take on them, that they also have beards like the men, and distinguishing a male from a female dwarf is a very private affair.  :lol:

Quote from: Jacob on February 10, 2022, 12:28:52 PM
How should dwarven women look, your opinion?

Something that is book faithful and extremely boring.

Quote from: Grey Fox on February 10, 2022, 01:16:29 PM

Quote from: Jacob on February 10, 2022, 12:28:52 PM
How should dwarven women look, your opinion?

Something that is book faithful and extremely boring.

I'm not well versed in the secondary lore, but from what I've read there's nothing about that dwarf woman that contradicts what Tolkien wrote. Which is why I'm asking - it's very possible there's somthing I've missed or forgotten.

Quote from: Jacob on February 10, 2022, 12:28:52 PM

Quote from: Threviel on February 10, 2022, 11:53:22 AM

Dwarven women look very similar to dwarven men, so it is very unclear what the dwarvish looking woman is supposed to be...

How should dwarven women look, your opinion?

Larchie, Pratchett and Tolkien are in unison. They live secluded lives and look very similar to the men to the point that they are rarely seen, and if seen not recognized as women. http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Dwarf-women (http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Dwarf-women)

This to me seems like an excellent way to make the dwarves special and to have female warriors.

Edit: One thing Jackson did right, Gimli on dwarf women: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-PmAQ9Opu4 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-PmAQ9Opu4)

Edit2: One thing I recently understood that he and lots of other people did wrong on the dwarves. They are not the scots of Middle Earth, they are the jews of Middle Earth. Their language is even based on Hebrew. I don't see what that changes, but apparently that's how Tolkien saw them.

The human dude seems to be called Halbrand, someone with a mysterious past  :yawn:

He's one of the shipwrecked, together with Galadriel (Who is apparently some kind of action hero in this series).

His name indicates Dunedain, but they are still millennias into the future. The Numenoreans should be named in Adûnaic, so he's probably not one of them.

Who cares really, it's quite apparent that this show will be on the level of WoT and not a new Song of ice and fire. :cry: :bleeding: :x

Quote from: Threviel on February 10, 2022, 02:00:44 PM
Edit2: One thing I recently understood that he and lots of other people did wrong on the dwarves. They are not the scots of Middle Earth, they are the jews of Middle Earth. Their language is even based on Hebrew. I don't see what that changes, but apparently that's how Tolkien saw them.

Yes, definitely how Tolkien saw them, but it's not a good look to have your Jewish-based race also be bignosed and greedy...

How are they going to sustain this level of hype another 6-7 months?

Probably effortlessly, all they have really done is released a few pictures.

Elrond has a very punchable face.

Quote from: celedhring on February 10, 2022, 03:01:46 PM
Elrond has a very punchable face.

He also must have had a chin-ectomy at some point. :hmm:

Quote from: celedhring on February 10, 2022, 03:01:46 PM
Elrond has a very punchable face.

Had the same thought, I can't really remember how I pictured Elrond prior to the Jackson movies, but now he will always be Hugo.

Quote from: celedhring on February 10, 2022, 03:01:46 PM
Elrond has a very punchable face.

It's the same guy who played the young Eddard Stark in GoT.

I am on team Threviel/Realistic Candles.

It looks a lot more like "people in (cheap) costume" than a living, breathing world (that I think, with some notable exceptions, Peter Jackson was able to achieve).

Which one is meant to be a dwarf? The black lady?-she seems the one with the build.

Quote from: Tyr on February 10, 2022, 05:53:54 PM
Which one is meant to be a dwarf? The black lady?-she seems the one with the build.

Yes, and the one in the following picture as well, but that one has the traditional dwarven look we're all used to.

Quote from: Threviel on February 10, 2022, 02:00:44 PM
Larchie, Pratchett and Tolkien are in unison. They live secluded lives and look very similar to the men to the point that they are rarely seen, and if seen not recognized as women. http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Dwarf-women (http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Dwarf-women)

This to me seems like an excellent way to make the dwarves special and to have female warriors.

Edit: One thing Jackson did right, Gimli on dwarf women: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-PmAQ9Opu4 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-PmAQ9Opu4)

Edit2: One thing I recently understood that he and lots of other people did wrong on the dwarves. They are not the scots of Middle Earth, they are the jews of Middle Earth. Their language is even based on Hebrew. I don't see what that changes, but apparently that's how Tolkien saw them.

I interpreted the beard thing as a joke by Aragorn.
That most Dwarf women look like men in the time of Gimli may not be invalidated by the look of a dwarven princess.  If you look at medieval human princesses, they looked a lot different than peasant women.  I had pictures of some maternal ancestors here (gave it back to my aunt, it means much more to her than me), from the end of the mid-end 18th century (ca 1870-1880), so early colonization period for the village where my mom grew up; it was very heard to distinguish who was the man, who was the women.
As for the rest of the pictures... the one with the tree looks very, very, very synthetic to me. Maybe it's because the picture was retouched by Photoshop, I don't know.

After the disastrous and embarrassing Hobbit trilogy I just kind of decided emotionally that the Lord of the Rings trilogy was all the Middle Earth content I needed. So I am not really interested in this series at all...but hey there is always room for something good so I guess if it gets rave reviews I might check it out.

Quote from: Valmy on February 10, 2022, 09:43:11 PM
After the disastrous and embarrassing Hobbit trilogy I just kind of decided emotionally that the Lord of the Rings trilogy was all the Middle Earth content I needed. So I am not really interested in this series at all...but hey there is always room for something good so I guess if it gets rave reviews I might check it out.

This.

Quote from: Oexmelin on February 10, 2022, 03:26:03 PM
I am on team Threviel/Realistic Candles.

Ohh,  :blush:

And to expand on another thing, the story seems so tired and tropefull. Mysterious men with a troubled past, the single mom healer meeting an elf for forbidden love, the woman rising up to the demands of war (Galadriel being some commander makes me think that they are omitting Gil-Galad :cry:)

It just seems like a tired mess...

Quote from: Valmy on February 10, 2022, 09:43:11 PM
After the disastrous and embarrassing Hobbit trilogy I just kind of decided emotionally that the Lord of the Rings trilogy was all the Middle Earth content I needed. So I am not really interested in this series at all...but hey there is always room for something good so I guess if it gets rave reviews I might check it out.

Same.

I'll probably watch it at some point. Much like I'll get onto wheel of time eventually. But I'm not bouncing in my seat waiting as I was for the LOTR films.
But then things in general were exciting then.

And continuing my anal analyzing thing I just read today, in a totally unrelated place, that t-shirts were invented in the late 19th century and needed knitting machines.

Fuck it, fantasy shows should have historical advisors.

Quote from: Threviel on February 11, 2022, 05:25:45 AM
And continuing my anal analyzing thing I just read today, in a totally unrelated place, that t-shirts were invented in the late 19th century and needed knitting machines.

Fuck it, fantasy shows should have historical advisors.

Short-sleeved garments have been around since ancient times...

But I agree with Oex that a lot of the clothing gives out a renaissance fair vibe. Will see the finished product.

In the raft scene you can see the cameras.

Quote from: celedhring on February 11, 2022, 06:13:05 AM

Quote from: Threviel on February 11, 2022, 05:25:45 AM
And continuing my anal analyzing thing I just read today, in a totally unrelated place, that t-shirts were invented in the late 19th century and needed knitting machines.

Fuck it, fantasy shows should have historical advisors.

Short-sleeved garments have been around since ancient times...

But I agree with Oex that a lot of the clothing gives out a renaissance fair vibe. Will see the finished product.

Fusk it, anal analyzers should have historical advisors.

Quote from: The Brain on February 11, 2022, 06:15:59 AM
In the raft scene you can see the cameras.

:)

Quote from: Valmy on February 10, 2022, 09:43:11 PM
After the disastrous and embarrassing Hobbit trilogy I just kind of decided emotionally that the Lord of the Rings trilogy was all the Middle Earth content I needed. So I am not really interested in this series at all...but hey there is always room for something good so I guess if it gets rave reviews I might check it out.

The extended cut is much better, you should give it a chance.  But it's nowhere near the night&day difference of the original LoTR movies and their extended cuts.

It was already too long given the source material.

Yeah, hard to see how The Hobbit would be improved by lengthening.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 11, 2022, 06:42:56 PM
Yeah, hard to see how The Hobbit would be improved by lengthening.

Not hard top see how it could be improved by deletion, though.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 11, 2022, 06:42:56 PM
Yeah, hard to see how The Hobbit would be improved by lengthening.

An extra 180 minutes of those giant worms.

Quote from: grumbler on February 11, 2022, 06:48:22 PM

Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 11, 2022, 06:42:56 PM
Yeah, hard to see how The Hobbit would be improved by lengthening.

Not hard top see how it could be improved by deletion, though.

There's an edit that apparently does a solid job of making it tolerable. I downloaded it awhile back but haven't had the desire to give it a shot yet. It also removes all of the Dol Guldur material, which I enjoyed but is very much not vital to the plot. There seems like there would be almost too much editing to do to make it still coherent with all of the changes Jackson made.

Quote from: Threviel on February 10, 2022, 11:59:09 PM
Ohh,  :blush:

And to expand on another thing, the story seems so tired and tropefull. Mysterious men with a troubled past, the single mom healer meeting an elf for forbidden love, the woman rising up to the demands of war (Galadriel being some commander makes me think that they are omitting Gil-Galad :cry:)

It just seems like a tired mess...

I have no issue with Galadriel being a combatant. She was one of the leaders of the long march across the Helcaraxë and her original name was "man-hearted" or something to that effect. I have a hard time thinking she just sat by idly while only male elves and men fought. Having more women in a variety of roles is a plus in my opinion. As to Gil-Galad, I'm betting he's still in it as he made the cut for the Jackson films so is somewhat of an established character. The one I'll be intrigued if he shows up is Anárion since he was totally left out of the Jackson films to the level that even statues that were supposed to be of him were changed like the Argonath.

Good points on Galadriel, but she is never describes as a war leader for the elves of Lothlorien. But yeah, have her as a fighter. Not super important, but it does not fit MY view of her. She is described as being involved in Dol Guldur, but I always imagined that she was doing magical stuff rather than swordfighty stuff.

The later seasons might stretch to the fall of Numenore, bit otherwise Elendil and his sons are out.

First teaser for the show. It looks gorgeous, I must say.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7v1hIkYH24

It concerns me that they've cast both Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) and Isildur (Maxim Baldy).  Isildur was born at least four seasons after Celebrimbor's death. No reason to cast the character now, unless they are really compressing the story.

Also of concern is the description of Galadriel as being younger and more impetuous than the Galadriel of TLOTR.  Younger, yes, but still thousands of years old.  I'll be pissed if they present her as some young hothead.  It's already bad enough that they are destroying the mystique of the High Elves by showing them so closely.

I am definitely on team "too many candles" & "what ARE they doing to the lore" on this. I'm willing to give the show a look, but have low expectations going in, and will not watch it unless they're exceeded significantly.

Quote from: grumbler on February 14, 2022, 08:58:27 AM
It concerns me that they've cast both Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) and Isildur (Maxim Baldy).  Isildur was born at least four seasons after Celebrimbor's death. No reason to cast the character now, unless they are really compressing the story.

Also of concern is the description of Galadriel as being younger and more impetuous than the Galadriel of TLOTR.  Younger, yes, but still thousands of years old.  I'll be pissed if they present her as some young hothead.  It's already bad enough that they are destroying the mystique of the High Elves by showing them so closely.

The story in the book takes place over thousands of years. There might be a few time skips between seasons, but to make a comprehensible television narrative there was inevitably going to be a huge amount of compressing the timeline.

Galadriel was born in Aman, by the time of the war of the Silmarils she was already thousands of years old and had lived her life walking with the gods. In Beleriand she spent her time in Doriath and Nargothrond and into the second age she was the only surviving original leader of the Noldor. She was a ruler in Lindon and the founder of Eregion in the second age.

She was not some hothead by the second age and if she wanted warrioring and scouting to be done she had armies of high elves to do it for her, she was after all second in rank amongst all the still powerful elves in middle earth. Had she been a hothead in the first age she would have died in Dagor Bragollach, Nirnaeth Arnoediad, the fall of Doriath or the fall of Nargothrond. Even  surviving all that she would have died in the kinslaying at the mouths of Sirion. Instead she was thoughtful and careful and got the fuck away from superior force.

This shit will be a shitfest. If they haven't even bothered to read up on a main character and make her at least resemble the source material... Well... Fuck.

I've seen suggested that Machiavelli wrote The Prince as a young hothead. He was in his 40s...

And I like the idea of portraying some regular people doing regular stuff, but a cute single healer mum meeting an elf for forbidden love sounds like what a focus group would recommend to attract female viewers. There's no driving force with a vision behind this.

As long as the Speedo man is in.

And looking at the cast there's a lot of hobbits. The whole point of the hobbits was that they had never done anything even resembling something that affected the big world. They should not be in this. It's like they haven't read Tolkien and just gone with a fan-fic.

At least the candle ratio seems ok for now. :cry:

What I've seen alluded to in the webs (don't know if there's a source or just fans fantheoryzing) is that Galadriel is still mourning the death of Finrod and seeks revenge, which makes her act rashly.

Quote from: Threviel on February 15, 2022, 02:33:40 AM
And looking at the cast there's a lot of hobbits.

:o :hmm:

Does this thing really have a billion dollar projected budget?

Quote from: celedhring on February 15, 2022, 02:44:58 AM
What I've seen alluded to in the webs (don't know if there's a source or just fans fantheoryzing) is that Galadriel is still mourning the death of Finrod and seeks revenge, which makes her act rashly.

If she missed Finrod she could have gone west after the war of wrath and talked to him about it... The elves don't die.

Quote from: Threviel on February 15, 2022, 02:33:40 AM
And looking at the cast there's a lot of hobbits. The whole point of the hobbits was that they had never done anything even resembling something that affected the big world. They should not be in this. It's like they haven't read Tolkien and just gone with a fan-fic.

At least the candle ratio seems ok for now. :cry:

Maybe they do an anthology show that covers various eras and stories in shorter, multi-episode arcs, kinda like what Clone Wars did? Then you could throw in the Hobbits' fighting the Goblins under Bullroarer Took.

Quote from: HVC on February 15, 2022, 02:50:37 AM
Does this thing really have a billion dollar projected budget?

It will do well among people who only read Hobbit/LOTR or only read The Silmarillon once(like me).

Quote from: Eddie Teach on February 15, 2022, 03:23:25 AM

Quote from: HVC on February 15, 2022, 02:50:37 AM
Does this thing really have a billion dollar projected budget?

It will do well among people who only read Hobbit/LOTR or only read The Silmarillon once(like me).

Yeah, I'm not sure they are caring overly much about the die hards who will either begrudginly watch it or refuse to watch it out of hand. Not a broad enough base on which to build a tentpole.

Quote from: Syt on February 15, 2022, 03:20:45 AM

Quote from: Threviel on February 15, 2022, 02:33:40 AM
And looking at the cast there's a lot of hobbits. The whole point of the hobbits was that they had never done anything even resembling something that affected the big world. They should not be in this. It's like they haven't read Tolkien and just gone with a fan-fic.

At least the candle ratio seems ok for now. :cry:

Maybe they do an anthology show that covers various eras and stories in shorter, multi-episode arcs, kinda like what Clone Wars did? Then you could throw in the Hobbits' fighting the Goblins under Bullroarer Took.

I still maintain that the fall of Arnor would have been a much better and more concise story to work with. It would have ancestors of familair characters, familiar characters, familiar races, familiar places, and more. Also, since it is entirely from the Appendices in RotK that they have the rights to, it wouldn't have needed to possibly make-up things whole cloth to not mess with copyright. It would have been a fun, and fully finished, Game of Thrones-esque story without need of an RR Martin to finish it. Since most people have zero clue on the story and even those who might can be surprised and invested in "previously unknown" characters, it would have been perfect. I fear for what they're trying to work with now not least of all due to the maddening scope of the project. It simply involves too many players, too much time, and too much backstory.

Honestly, my biggest worry for the show, is that Eregion's and Numenor's stories are essentially the same. Sauron arrives, tricks the noblemen of the kingdom to commit an act of hybris, the kingdom ends up destroyed, and there's an alliance between men and elves that defeats Sauron in a war. I guess they are really going to conflate them, because telling them one after the other doesn't strike me as particularly interesting.

IIRC, one topic in which the showrunners have already stated that they're not going to be fully faithful to Tolkien is in the chronology of the 2nd age, in order to allow them greater flexibility about when and where particular characters can get involved.

QuoteWhile speaking with Vanity Fair about The Rings of Power, showrunners Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne confirmed that the series will significantly compress the timeline of the Second Age of Middle-earth, the era in which the show primarily takes place. That means events like the fall of Númenor and the forging of the Rings of Power won't be separated by thousands of years like they are in Tolkien's books. Instead, they'll all be developing and playing out at the same time.

"If you are true to the exact letter of the law, you are going to be telling a story in which your human characters are dying off every season because you're jumping 200 years in time, and then you're not meeting really big, important canon characters until Season 4," said Payne. "Look, there might be some fans who want us to do a documentary of Middle-earth, but we're going to tell one story that unites all these things."

Notably, Vanity Fair describes the decision as being Payne and McKay's "biggest deviation" from Tolkien's original work. It's already receiving divisive reactions from fans, and it's not hard to see why.

On a separate topic:

Quote'The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim' Sets April 2024 Theatrical Release

For those who can't have their fill of the Lord of the Rings in the upcoming Amazon series, there's The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim anime movie from New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. Animation which the studio has set for release on April 12, 2024 (not April 21 as reported by others; that's a Sunday). Warners already had the release date RSVPed for a New Line movie on the calendar.

The movie explores and expands the untold story behind the fortress of Helm's Deep, delving into the life and bloodsoaked times of one of Middle-earth's most legendary figures: the mighty King of Rohan – Helm Hammerhand.

The release comes 21 years after the culmination of the Lord of the Rings trilogy based on the iconic books by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Kenji Kamiyama directs with Oscar winner Philippa Boyens, from the screenwriting team behind The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies, executive producing and Joseph Chou producing. The writing team of Phoebe Gittins and Arty Papageorgiou have penned the screenplay based on a script from Jeffrey Addiss & Will Matthews. The Lord of the Rings returning creative team also includes Oscar winner Richard Taylor and esteemed Tolkien illustrator John Howe.

Is there a show from the "evil" side coming up? The overheard dialogue between orcs in RotK could set the tone.

Quote from: The Brain on February 15, 2022, 07:21:01 AM
Is there a show from the "evil" side coming up? The overheard dialogue between orcs in RotK could set the tone.

A series based on The Black Company would be cool.

Quote from: HVC on February 15, 2022, 02:50:37 AM
Does this thing really have a billion dollar projected budget?

Amazon paid 250 million for the rights and then greenlit 5 seasons or something like that.

Rumour has it that Bezos is a huge LotR fan, that's why I had such high hopes.  :bash: :face:

Quote from: Threviel on February 15, 2022, 07:42:28 AM
Rumour has it that Bezos is a huge LotR fan, that's why I had such high hopes.  :bash: :face:

Yup, in fact he personally tweeted the teaser trailer ahead of its Super Bowl debut.

Quote from: Threviel on February 15, 2022, 07:42:28 AM
Rumour has it that Bezos is a huge LotR fan, that's why I had such high hopes.  :bash: :face:

It'll draw in a ton of new Amazon Prime subscribers, at least for the first season.

Quote from: Threviel on February 15, 2022, 07:42:28 AM
Rumour has it that Bezos is a huge LotR fan, that's why I had such high hopes.  :bash: :face:

Probably also puts him in a position to make changes where he wants. :P

Quote from: Legbiter on February 15, 2022, 07:36:32 AM

Quote from: HVC on February 15, 2022, 02:50:37 AM
Does this thing really have a billion dollar projected budget?

Amazon paid 250 million for the rights and then greenlit 5 seasons or something like that.

I think it's around a billion all things considered. 250 millions for the rights (which apparently are *only* for the television rights, and don't cover every Tolkien material), and 100-150 millions per season, with 5 seasons expected to be made.

Just read something interesting/fishy regarding the rights Amazon acquired, and besides only being for television (no feature films for the big screen will come out of this), they don't include The Silmarillion or the Unfinished Tales.

The volume Silmarillion contains four "books" of which Quenta Silmarillion is the largest. The fourth is Akallabeth, the story of the rise and fall of Numenor in the second age and without the rights to that they might as well just make the series generic fantasy.

They will do Numenor, I guess it features in other parts of the stories for which they do have the rights.

I don't have the books at hand (they're at my parents' house) but there's plenty of stuff on the Second Age in the LOTR appendixes. Dunno if it's enough to recreate the basics of the story as told in the Silmarillion.

A guy on Twitter has gathered a bunch of public reactions to the first images and trailers for The Fellowship of the Ring back from 2001, History repeats itself.  :lol:

https://twitter.com/CMA_Hudson/status/1493611059822931969

Quote from: The Larch on February 16, 2022, 03:55:10 AM
A guy on Twitter has gathered a bunch of public reactions to the first images and trailers for The Fellowship of the Ring back from 2001, History repeats itself.  :lol:

https://twitter.com/CMA_Hudson/status/1493611059822931969

Yeah, I thought that was fun.

Quote from: The Larch on February 16, 2022, 03:55:10 AM
A guy on Twitter has gathered a bunch of public reactions to the first images and trailers for The Fellowship of the Ring back from 2001, History repeats itself.  :lol:

https://twitter.com/CMA_Hudson/status/1493611059822931969

I was going to say: this new series may very well suck but I am having a hard time blaming them for taking liberties with the story, if they do. Jackson's trilogy only made changes which were necessary and an improvement in translating the material from book to cinema. Yet he got flak for it from the LOTR nerds, despite the movies being absolutely great (and a huge success despite the nerd rage, even with fans of the books). So why would these guys worry about alienating the hardcore? They'll do that no matter what they try.

To be frank, my recollection is a bit different. I used to check this large Spanish LOTR forum when the movies came out, and most fans were pretty excited and supportive.

EDIT: Damn, it still exists and it still has the same layout  :lol: http://www.elfenomeno.com/

The LOTR movies had big problems, but overall were better than could have been feared.

I very clearly remember an anecdote from when I went to watch The Fellowship at the cinema. They did an intermission when Aragorn and the Hobbits arrived at the Weathertop, before their first battle with the Nazgul, and this guy 4 or 5 seats away from me, as soon as the lights went on, started bitching to his pals about how the scene in which Aragorn gave swords to the hobbits was a travesty because originally they found them in the Barrowlands and so on and so forth. It completely amazed me how, instead of being fascinated and marvelled for the aprox. 1 hour of film we had watched so far (which was my reaction), his first reaction was bitching about something ultimately inconsequential. There's no pleasing a certain fraction of the fandom, so they're best ignored.

Excellent points. I might be overnerding.  :blush:

I remember being blown away by the fellowship and then less and less impressed with TT and RotK.

My big issue is - and this may just be because it came out the day after the latest Jurassic World trailer - is the CGI. There were scenes in there that look like very cool and expensive video game cutscenes. It's not that I don't believe the world in the background is really there but, increasingly it looks like the actors aren't really there.

I'm sure it's just the stage we're at with CGI and there'll be a big leap to something better and mind-blowing soon but there's been a few big trailers lately that have had me wondering about that.

Is any of us really here?

Looking like a video game is where the hobbit lost me. The barrel scene.

Yes. It was an issue in the Hobbit. I think it's possibly just where we are with the tech. But we'll see - from the trailer it looks like this has that problem.

I remember seeing a production picture of The Hobbit that in retrospect was a big red flag. Ian McKellen, in full Gandalf gear, sitting in a fully green screen set pretending to be Bag's End, all by himself. He looked absolutely miserable in it.

Edit: I see it got memefied:

(https://i.pinimg.com/736x/c7/bc/8c/c7bc8cafaeeb2346408d29ee63762308--ian-mckellen-nerd-stuff.jpg)

So it appears that, when the showrunners said that they were going to "compress the timeline," what they meant was that they were going to make the fall of Numenor contemporaneous with the fall of Eregion and the loss of Moria.  These disasters are all apparently going to be the consequences of the possession of the Three, the Seven, and the Nine.

So it's going to be more a story "based on" Tolkien than Tolkien's own story.

It actually sounds quite good and showcases why the rings were dangerous.

Quote from: Sheilbh on February 16, 2022, 06:04:54 AM
Yes. It was an issue in the Hobbit. I think it's possibly just where we are with the tech. But we'll see - from the trailer it looks like this has that problem.

Somehow, HBO does this so much better (GoT looked great and you bought the world) - and the Star Wars shows look great too. I guess it's because they can draw from Warner and Disney's resources/expertise, while Amazon and Netflix are still newcomers.

Quote from: celedhring on February 16, 2022, 07:40:26 AM

Quote from: Sheilbh on February 16, 2022, 06:04:54 AM
Yes. It was an issue in the Hobbit. I think it's possibly just where we are with the tech. But we'll see - from the trailer it looks like this has that problem.

Somehow, HBO does this so much better (GoT looked great and you bought the world) - and the Star Wars shows look great too. I guess it's because they can draw from Warner and Disney's resources/expertise, while Amazon and Netflix are still newcomers.

Yeah it's being produced by absolute noobs. The teaser trailer is very unimpressive, looks like generic fantasy with mediocre CGI and hilariously miscast characters. Money can't fix creative bankruptcy. :hmm:

Quote from: celedhring on February 16, 2022, 07:40:26 AM
Somehow, HBO does this so much better (GoT looked great and you bought the world) - and the Star Wars shows look great too. I guess it's because they can draw from Warner and Disney's resources/expertise, while Amazon and Netflix are still newcomers.

That's a really good point and makes a lot of sense.

Quote from: celedhring on February 16, 2022, 07:40:26 AM

Quote from: Sheilbh on February 16, 2022, 06:04:54 AM
Yes. It was an issue in the Hobbit. I think it's possibly just where we are with the tech. But we'll see - from the trailer it looks like this has that problem.

Somehow, HBO does this so much better (GoT looked great and you bought the world) - and the Star Wars shows look great too. I guess it's because they can draw from Warner and Disney's resources/expertise, while Amazon and Netflix are still newcomers.

Does Netflix still count as newcomer? And it may be a wrong impression, but I feel they're much more decentralized and less hands on with their productions, plus farming out to many different producers from across the globe. All that combined may lead to a more uneven level of production quality in their library.

Quote from: Legbiter on February 16, 2022, 08:32:34 AM

Quote from: celedhring on February 16, 2022, 07:40:26 AM

Quote from: Sheilbh on February 16, 2022, 06:04:54 AM
Yes. It was an issue in the Hobbit. I think it's possibly just where we are with the tech. But we'll see - from the trailer it looks like this has that problem.

Somehow, HBO does this so much better (GoT looked great and you bought the world) - and the Star Wars shows look great too. I guess it's because they can draw from Warner and Disney's resources/expertise, while Amazon and Netflix are still newcomers.

Yeah it's being produced by absolute noobs. The teaser trailer is very unimpressive, looks like generic fantasy with mediocre CGI and hilariously miscast characters. Money can't fix creative bankruptcy. :hmm:

We msut have watched different trailers, I thought it looked really good, especially for a TV show rather than a movie. Yeah, we don't yet know who the characters are, but it is IMO at least visually promising.

Quote from: Syt on February 16, 2022, 08:42:11 AM

Quote from: celedhring on February 16, 2022, 07:40:26 AM

Quote from: Sheilbh on February 16, 2022, 06:04:54 AM
Yes. It was an issue in the Hobbit. I think it's possibly just where we are with the tech. But we'll see - from the trailer it looks like this has that problem.

Somehow, HBO does this so much better (GoT looked great and you bought the world) - and the Star Wars shows look great too. I guess it's because they can draw from Warner and Disney's resources/expertise, while Amazon and Netflix are still newcomers.

Does Netflix still count as newcomer? And it may be a wrong impression, but I feel they're much more decentralized and less hands on with their productions, plus farming out to many different producers from across the globe. All that combined may lead to a more uneven level of production quality in their library.

Yes, they're pretty hands off. IIRC The Witcher was done by Eastern European outfits, which are really great value for the buck (and it makes sense since the books are Polish) but it can't shake off the B-movie look.

But they are building their own infrastructure nowadays. The setup they have in Madrid is impressive. And they have huge facilities in New Mexico.

Surely some the variable quality is to target different user groups too. Some people are perfectly happy with low budget crap. To them it's good

Quote from: celedhring on February 16, 2022, 07:40:26 AM

Quote from: Sheilbh on February 16, 2022, 06:04:54 AM
Yes. It was an issue in the Hobbit. I think it's possibly just where we are with the tech. But we'll see - from the trailer it looks like this has that problem.

Somehow, HBO does this so much better (GoT looked great and you bought the world) - and the Star Wars shows look great too. I guess it's because they can draw from Warner and Disney's resources/expertise, while Amazon and Netflix are still newcomers.

Yeah, I overall like the Wheel of Time, but if I did not know better, I would think HBO just spent twice as much per episode or something on GoT. And I know that isn't the case at all.

The world just doesn't look nearly as real, even though they obvious spent a boatload on sets and production.

However, in contrast, I think The Expanse did have that "lived in" look to their world.

Some people are angry at the look of nondescript characters in their fictional universe:
Lord of the Rings: Debunking the Backlash Against Non-White Actors in Amazon's Adaption (https://getpocket.com/explore/item/lord-of-the-rings-debunking-the-backlash-against-non-white-actors-in-amazon-s-new-adaption?utm_source=pocket-newtab)

I'd never believe that possible!
;)

I wonder to what extent the whinging about bearded dwarf women is just trying to hide the racism.

Quote from: Tyr on March 08, 2022, 05:01:30 AMI wonder to what extent the whinging about bearded dwarf women is just trying to hide the racism.

Whining about dwarven women without beards is ok since Tolkien explicitly described them having beards. Whining about the colour of the peoples is stupid, since Tolkien actually didn't describe all folks explicitly and even the Edain, when described, range from blondest of vikings to swarthy and dark.

Om the one hand there are people that complain about things that are out of line with what Tolkien wrote, on the other are (most often) racist idiots that haven't read Tolkien enough.

Quote from: Threviel on March 08, 2022, 06:49:13 AM

Quote from: Tyr on March 08, 2022, 05:01:30 AMI wonder to what extent the whinging about bearded dwarf women is just trying to hide the racism.

Whining about dwarven women without beards is ok since Tolkien explicitly described them having beards.

This is not as certain as many present it. It seems very possible and is heavily implied but not stated outright.

http://tolkien.cro.net/dwarves/women.html

http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Dwarf-women

Also worth considering this new show is set in a different age when dwarves were far more in touch with the world.
My head canon, consistent with Tolkein, is that in the 3rd age dwarf women basically do a life of Brian when they go out and about. This wasn't the fashion earlier however.

QuoteWhining about the colour of the peoples is stupid, since Tolkien actually didn't describe all folks explicitly and even the Edain, when described, range from blondest of vikings to swarthy and dark.

Om the one hand there are people that complain about things that are out of line with what Tolkien wrote, on the other are (most often) racist idiots that haven't read Tolkien enough.

Rather we are seeing way over the top complaints about this one woman not having a beard despite it being a matter of debate about dwarf women's beardiness.
This woman also happens to be black.
I saw it with the witcher series too. A lot of complaints about the casting of triss- at first they had a definite racial spin but this wasn't cutting through so these days they tend to just concentrate on her not being hot. It's suspect.

Women don't own razors in Middle-Earth?

Quote from: Tyr on March 08, 2022, 07:16:53 AM

Quote from: Threviel on March 08, 2022, 06:49:13 AM

Quote from: Tyr on March 08, 2022, 05:01:30 AMI wonder to what extent the whinging about bearded dwarf women is just trying to hide the racism.

Whining about dwarven women without beards is ok since Tolkien explicitly described them having beards.

This is not as certain as many present it. It seems very possible and is heavily implied but not stated outright.

http://tolkien.cro.net/dwarves/women.html

http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Dwarf-women

Also worth considering this new show is set in a different age when dwarves were far more in touch with the world.
My head canon, consistent with Tolkein, is that in the 3rd age dwarf women basically do a life of Brian when they go out and about. This wasn't the fashion earlier however.

Both of those links seem to conclude that they have beards... But you have a point, it's not outright super-duper explicit.

Quote from: Berkut on February 19, 2022, 09:45:24 AM

Quote from: celedhring on February 16, 2022, 07:40:26 AM

Quote from: Sheilbh on February 16, 2022, 06:04:54 AMYes. It was an issue in the Hobbit. I think it's possibly just where we are with the tech. But we'll see - from the trailer it looks like this has that problem.

Somehow, HBO does this so much better (GoT looked great and you bought the world) - and the Star Wars shows look great too. I guess it's because they can draw from Warner and Disney's resources/expertise, while Amazon and Netflix are still newcomers.

Yeah, I overall like the Wheel of Time, but if I did not know better, I would think HBO just spent twice as much per episode or something on GoT. And I know that isn't the case at all.

The world just doesn't look nearly as real, even though they obvious spent a boatload on sets and production.

However, in contrast, I think The Expanse did have that "lived in" look to their world.

Remember that the Expanse was not created by Amazon, they just picked it up when the original producers dropped it.

Quote from: Threviel on March 08, 2022, 06:49:13 AM

Quote from: Tyr on March 08, 2022, 05:01:30 AMI wonder to what extent the whinging about bearded dwarf women is just trying to hide the racism.

Whining about dwarven women without beards is ok since Tolkien explicitly described them having beards. Whining about the colour of the peoples is stupid, since Tolkien actually didn't describe all folks explicitly and even the Edain, when described, range from blondest of vikings to swarthy and dark.

Om the one hand there are people that complain about things that are out of line with what Tolkien wrote, on the other are (most often) racist idiots that haven't read Tolkien enough.

They're nondescript characters in a fictional universe.

Had Jackson made Aragon gay and in love with Legolas to get with the time, I would understand, and probably share, the anger.

But one non bearded female dwarf, or even many of them, or the color of the skin of non descript characters: meh.

Unlike the Witcher with Ciri, it does not change anything to the story.  This show did change the skin color of some mages, minor characters in the story, and nobody batted an eye about it.

But Tolkien fans seems to want everything on their screen to be exactly like in their bibles, word for word, description for description.  I find it... disturbing.

I find it extremely boring.

Quote from: viper37 on March 08, 2022, 07:24:30 PMBut Tolkien fans seems to want everything on their screen to be exactly like in their bibles, word for word, description for description.  I find it... disturbing.

Is that true? I mean they certainly pointed out all the things that were different between the books and the original movies but they still were very positive overall.

Of course we are talking about Tolkien fans who have actually read the The Silmarillion and obsess over its details, so we are already talking about a fringe.

I don't much mind changes, compressing the time and having the rings made and Moria and Numenore fall at the same time is an excellent idea for example.

If they want unbearded dwarves I can live with that. I don't care about race. Might be fun to discuss, but not really important.

What I don't want is the tone changed. Lotr is realistic fantasy, I want to see it get the GoT treatment, not the Xena treatment.

Quote from: Threviel on March 08, 2022, 11:11:41 PMI don't much mind changes, compressing the time and having the rings made and Moria and Numenore fall at the same time is an excellent idea for example.

If they want unbearded dwarves I can live with that. I don't care about race. Might be fun to discuss, but not really important.

What I don't want is the tone changed. Lotr is realistic fantasy, I want to see it get the GoT treatment, not the Xena treatment.

Well not even GoT. Lord of the Rings is not gritty. But yes no Marvel type jokes and shit.

The BBC made a bunch of GoT Tudor period pieces after GoT became big and man they were just horrid as either GoT rip offs or Tudor period pieces. Bandwagon jumping can get pretty cringy.

Yeah, and what I see is Amazon rehashing the same old tropes that's been done to death... The mysterious stranger, the single mom living a strong life and so on. I would more like to see it in the style of The King (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King_(2019_film)) or Maximilian (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximilian_(miniseries)). But I guess the future of TV are focus group selected themes and no-risk re-hashing of tired old crap.

Lotr is not gritty, but it is a brutal world. Elronds wife tortured by orcs til she went a bit mad and so on, the books are full of stuff that can be made into GoT style brutal violence. I'm quite sure they had sex too. But since Tolkien knew his shit it's not the stupid unrealistic violence of GoT.

Quote from: Threviel on March 09, 2022, 12:03:44 AMYeah, and what I see is Amazon rehashing the same old tropes that's been done to death... The mysterious stranger, the single mom living a strong life and so on. I would more like to see it in the style of The King (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King_(2019_film)) or Maximilian (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximilian_(miniseries)). But I guess the future of TV are focus group selected themes and no-risk re-hashing of tired old crap.

It'll be a cringe, billion dollar fanfic with cancerous American culture war political inserts is my guess. You're basically torturing yourself holding out hope for this trash.

Quote from: Threviel on March 09, 2022, 12:03:44 AMYeah, and what I see is Amazon rehashing the same old tropes that's been done to death... The mysterious stranger, the single mom living a strong life and so on. I would more like to see it in the style of The King (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King_(2019_film)) or Maximilian (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximilian_(miniseries)). But I guess the future of TV are focus group selected themes and no-risk re-hashing of tired old crap.

Lotr is not gritty, but it is a brutal world. Elronds wife tortured by orcs til she went a bit mad and so on, the books are full of stuff that can be made into GoT style brutal violence. I'm quite sure they had sex too. But since Tolkien knew his shit it's not the stupid unrealistic violence of GoT.

Yes obviously brutal violence and epic destruction and tragedy occur in Tolkien's world but none of the cynicism of GoT. I mean I love GoT (well the books...I was not a huge fan of the show) but it is incredibly different from Tolkien. And trying use Tolkien to tell a GoT type story is doomed to failure and after the non-book scenes in the Hobbit trilogy I have a hard time expecting Tolkein-esque gold from modern show writers even without trying to be the next GoT.

Though I guess to be fair using GoT to tell a GoT type story when you don't have George RR Martin around is doomed to failure as we saw.

Quote from: viper37 on March 08, 2022, 07:24:30 PMBut one non bearded female dwarf, or even many of them, or the color of the skin of non descript characters: meh.

There was some (minor) outcry that for the adaptation of the Sandman comics a black actress was cast as Death. Granted, in the comics she's generally portrayed as a pale skinned goth girl, but the comics also establish that the Endless can take any form. Dream himself appears as black male in a story, or as a cat. So while I get that readers expect the "classic" look for the characters, the rules of that universe technically allow anyone to be cast. :P

Quote from: Legbiter on March 09, 2022, 12:11:16 AM

Quote from: Threviel on March 09, 2022, 12:03:44 AMYeah, and what I see is Amazon rehashing the same old tropes that's been done to death... The mysterious stranger, the single mom living a strong life and so on. I would more like to see it in the style of The King (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King_(2019_film)) or Maximilian (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximilian_(miniseries)). But I guess the future of TV are focus group selected themes and no-risk re-hashing of tired old crap.

It'll be a cringe, billion dollar fanfic with cancerous American culture war political inserts is my guess. You're basically torturing yourself holding out hope for this trash.

I mean...I wish I could say that you are wrong.

I had very low expectations for Peter Jackson's original trilogy and thought LoTR was unfilmable. It was nice to be surprised. It seemed like a miracle then and it increasingly seems like lightning in a bottle as time goes on.

But if LoTR was perhaps difficult but not unfilmable the Silmarillion...oh boy. That's the final boss of Tolkien adaptations.

My main objection to the portrayal of the dwarves is that it is often comic; this people built Khazad-dûm, they are impressive.

Brutal violence occurs in Tolkien's world, just like (straight) sex. But it's off camera (except combat between armed opponents).

Tolkien was born in 1892 and the sanitisation of violence and oblique to non-existent references to sex fit in with the late Victorian/Edwardian milieu in which he grew up. But....both sides practice genocide, there is cannibalism, Men are supplanting elves and dwarves because of all the sex and reproduction they get up to etc etc

If I was making this series I would be strongly tempted to go very dark, "the LOTR universe, but not as you have seen it before".

How many people even complained about the dwarf woman? I bet it's like 5 guys and 20 other joining in to flame the controversy. Even if it was a 100 of them that's basically a statistical error in the sea of English-speaking people with access to the Internet. It's a non-issue.

Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on March 09, 2022, 03:49:52 AMTolkien was born in 1892 and the sanitisation of violence and oblique to non-existent references to sex fit in with the late Victorian/Edwardian milieu in which he grew up. But....both sides practice genocide, there is cannibalism, Men are supplanting elves and dwarves because of all the sex and reproduction they get up to etc etc

If I was making this series I would be strongly tempted to go very dark, "the LOTR universe, but not as you have seen it before".

Yeah. Tolkien had seen some very heavy shit also, being wounded at the Somme and all. But unlike Martin he had a deep understanding of history. So yes, violent, but not ridiculously so. His descriptions from Silmarillion make it very clear that the good guys were taken as slaves by orcs, so you could more or less make it as horrible as you would like.

I like your take. Dark, realistic, real. That's how I'd like it.

Practical magic?

Quote from: garbon on March 09, 2022, 04:26:49 AMPractical magic?

The billion dollar TV adaptation we should have had.

Quote from: celedhring on February 16, 2022, 08:55:10 AM

Quote from: Syt on February 16, 2022, 08:42:11 AM

Quote from: celedhring on February 16, 2022, 07:40:26 AM

Quote from: Sheilbh on February 16, 2022, 06:04:54 AMYes. It was an issue in the Hobbit. I think it's possibly just where we are with the tech. But we'll see - from the trailer it looks like this has that problem.

Somehow, HBO does this so much better (GoT looked great and you bought the world) - and the Star Wars shows look great too. I guess it's because they can draw from Warner and Disney's resources/expertise, while Amazon and Netflix are still newcomers.

Does Netflix still count as newcomer? And it may be a wrong impression, but I feel they're much more decentralized and less hands on with their productions, plus farming out to many different producers from across the globe. All that combined may lead to a more uneven level of production quality in their library.

Yes, they're pretty hands off. IIRC The Witcher was done by Eastern European outfits, which are really great value for the buck (and it makes sense since the books are Polish) but it can't shake off the B-movie look.

But they are building their own infrastructure nowadays. The setup they have in Madrid is impressive. And they have huge facilities in New Mexico.

Netflix production is being done in Vancouver as well.

Quote from: Threviel on March 09, 2022, 04:22:11 AMI like your take. Dark, realistic, real. That's how I'd like it.

Nah, we have enough of that. When even Star Trek goes for post-collapse stuff, let's have some nice high fantasy Tolkien.

You could make a gritty Tolkien show (where we get to see Sam making those kids), just like you could make a clean GoT show (where stuff happens off camera). I think neither would give the feel of the books, which might not be the supreme measuring stick, but still I feel that something would be lost.

The history of the Rings of Power (bar the elven ones) is pretty dark, so you need to have some dark story elements, but they don't need to be shown on-screen.  Tolkien felt no need to show the process by which Morgoth got elf women to have orc babies instead of elf babies, even though the results were kinda central to the story of the First Age.

Quote from: Valmy on March 08, 2022, 09:43:05 PM

Quote from: viper37 on March 08, 2022, 07:24:30 PMBut Tolkien fans seems to want everything on their screen to be exactly like in their bibles, word for word, description for description.  I find it... disturbing.

Of course we are talking about Tolkien fans who have actually read the The Silmarillion and obsess over its details, so we are already talking about a fringe.

This' the ones I'm talking about.  They're a vocal fringe. ;)

Quote from: grumbler on March 09, 2022, 09:24:29 AMThe history of the Rings of Power (bar the elven ones) is pretty dark, so you need to have some dark story elements, but they don't need to be shown on-screen.  Tolkien felt no need to show the process by which Morgoth got elf women to have orc babies instead of elf babies, even though the results were kinda central to the story of the First Age.

A few years back I watched the 1948 film of Graham Greene's novel Brighton Rock : https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039220/

It had a "U" (universal) certificate but was nevertheless pretty chilling; the presentation of the nasty bits was subtle but very much there.....but the censors clearly thought that children would not spot all the implied cruelty and violence.

There should probably be more films/shows made with this approach in mind.

Plenty of cruelty and violence in cartoons for that matter.

Heh the poster child for cruelty in a children's movie is Watership Down. A children's movie about cute cartoon rabbits, it has a "U" rating in the UK - and features explicit genocide by poison gas, murder (among other things, a rabbit gets its throat torn out onscreen, in a shower of gore), and torture (a dissident rabbit has his ears torn off) ...

Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on March 20, 2022, 01:43:24 AMIt had a "U" (universal) certificate but was nevertheless pretty chilling; the presentation of the nasty bits was subtle but very much there.....but the censors clearly thought that children would not spot all the implied cruelty and violence.

There should probably be more films/shows made with this approach in mind.

Yeah - films and books (especially books) for kids often deal with incredibly dark themes. They often do it obliquely or through the perspective of a child. But I think people often get this wrong by thinking the big hits for children are childish books/films. They're really, really not.

QuoteHeh the poster child for cruelty in a children's movie is Watership Down. A children's movie about cute cartoon rabbits, it has a "U" rating in the UK - and features explicit genocide by poison gas, murder (among other things, a rabbit gets its throat torn out onscreen, in a shower of gore), and torture (a dissident rabbit has his ears torn off) ...

:lol: Yeah. Every year there is some TV channel that decides that would be a nice Easter weekend film to general horror.

I think the BBFC have said it would probably be a PG ("parental guidance") now.

This isn't about the new TV series, but IIRC this is a thread where LOTR nerds hang out, so here goes.

I am re-reading LOTR, currently on Chapter 2 The Shadow of the Past, and I have some questions about Gandalf's developing understanding of the nature of Bilbo's ring, from the moment he learnt that Bilbo had found it to the moment he headed to Hobbiton again to toss it into Frodo's fireplace.

So Gandalf learns about Bilbo's ring and its most obvious ability. He immediately recognizes that it is a Great Ring, ie a Ring of Power. Are the Great Rings only the rings mentioned in the ring verse, or are there lesser Great Rings? I get the impression from Gandalf's information that Sauron knows that Gollum's ring is identical with The One, since he knows that all other of those famous rings from the verse are accounted for. The Three are hidden (though it's not necessarily 100% clear that Sauron can know this with certainty, but Gandalf seems to believe that he does). Of the Seven Sauron has three and four have been destroyed by dragons. He knows the Nine well. But if Sauron knows this, why was Gandalf so unsure? Even if Gandalf wasn't at the time completely sure about the fate of the Seven or Nine (in theory one of the Nine could have been killed, who knows I guess), he would know that Bilbo's ring was statistically reasonably likely to be The One. Presumably likely enough to warrant a wee bit more action on Gandalf's part.

One more question: Gandalf claims that Sauron thought that The One had been destroyed by the Elves, until he learnt about Gollum's ring. Does this mean that Sauron isn't aware of the fact that the Ring's destruction would end him? Earlier Gandalf says that "only one Power in this world knows all about the Rings and their effects", and my impression is that he means Sauron, the Lord of the Rings. But maybe not?

General comment: obviously what a character says may be lies, but my guess is that Gandalf is being truthful with Frodo. Equally obvious is that a character may unknowingly have incomplete or faulty information and pass it on as truth.

Quote from: The Brain on April 26, 2022, 06:35:15 AMThis isn't about the new TV series, but IIRC this is a thread where LOTR nerds hang out, so here goes.

I am re-reading LOTR, currently on Chapter 2 The Shadow of the Past, and I have some questions about Gandalf's developing understanding of the nature of Bilbo's ring, from the moment he learnt that Bilbo had found it to the moment he headed to Hobbiton again to toss it into Frodo's fireplace.

So Gandalf learns about Bilbo's ring and its most obvious ability. He immediately recognizes that it is a Great Ring, ie a Ring of Power. Are the Great Rings only the rings mentioned in the ring verse, or are there lesser Great Rings? I get the impression from Gandalf's information that Sauron knows that Gollum's ring is identical with The One, since he knows that all other of those famous rings from the verse are accounted for. The Three are hidden (though it's not necessarily 100% clear that Sauron can know this with certainty, but Gandalf seems to believe that he does). Of the Seven Sauron has three and four have been destroyed by dragons. He knows the Nine well. But if Sauron knows this, why was Gandalf so unsure? Even if Gandalf wasn't at the time completely sure about the fate of the Seven or Nine (in theory one of the Nine could have been killed, who knows I guess), he would know that Bilbo's ring was statistically reasonably likely to be The One. Presumably likely enough to warrant a wee bit more action on Gandalf's part.

One more question: Gandalf claims that Sauron thought that The One had been destroyed by the Elves, until he learnt about Gollum's ring. Does this mean that Sauron isn't aware of the fact that the Ring's destruction would end him? Earlier Gandalf says that "only one Power in this world knows all about the Rings and their effects", and my impression is that he means Sauron, the Lord of the Rings. But maybe not?

General comment: obviously what a character says may be lies, but my guess is that Gandalf is being truthful with Frodo. Equally obvious is that a character may unknowingly have incomplete or faulty information and pass it on as truth.

I always thought that Gandalf considered it possible that one of the Seven had not, in fact been destroyed by a dragon.  Thus, the test. The point you made about Sauron thinking the One had been destroyed is one I hadn't even thought of, until you made it.

See, there are still things to be learned about TLOTR even after reading it all those times over all those years.

My understanding is that Gandalf initially thought it was a lesser ring and that the insight grew on him that it was a great ring as the years wnt by and Bilbo didn't grow older naturally.

Not much was known about the One Ring and Gandalf spent a lot of time with ancient documents in Minas Tirith, befriending Faramir on the way, until he found the text by Isildur that describes the text on the ring.

Not until he tested it in fire did he know for certain and if he along the way suspected one of the great rings it would be much closer to assume that it was one of the dwarven ones, like grumbler says.

I seem to remember that there's a part of the appendix that discusses this quite closely, but I haven't read it for 20 or so years.

Quote from: Threviel on April 26, 2022, 06:56:06 AMMy understanding is that Gandalf initially thought it was a lesser ring and that the insight grew on him that it was a great ring as the years wnt by and Bilbo didn't grow older naturally.

That was my understanding too. But now when I re-read the parts I noticed:

Quote'When did I first begin to guess?', he mused, searching back in memory. 'It was the year that the White Council drove the Dark Power from Mirkwood, just before the Battle of Five Armies, that Bilbo found his ring. A shadow fell on my heart then, though I did not know yet what I feared. I wondered often how Gollum came by a Great Ring, as plainly it was - that at least was clear from the first.'

Tolien Gateway on Gandalf is a bit ambigous, first there's:

QuoteDuring this period Gandalf visited the Shire frequently, especially his friend Bilbo Baggins, and his younger cousin, Frodo. He noted Bilbo's unusual youthfulness, despite his advancing age; the suspicious "magic ring" that Bilbo had acquired during his adventure began to weigh on his mind. Gandalf recalled the deceit Bilbo used in originally claiming it for his own-- Bilbo had later admitted to stealing it from Gollum. Gandalf could see that Bilbo was now very preoccupied with the ring. Such un-hobbitlike behaviour aroused his suspicions. In 3001 he organised Bilbo's Farewell Party, and before leaving the Shire, he convinced Bilbo to leave the Ring for Frodo. He then emphatically warned Frodo not to use it; Gandalf had begun to suspect that the "magic ring" was indeed a ring of power. [27] Around that time Gandalf became unpopular in the Shire, blamed for Bilbo's disappearance, even accused for plotting with Frodo to get a hold on his wealth.[27][25]

And then there's:

QuoteStudying the records in Minas Tirith, he found the Scroll of Isildur and pieced together the missing history of the One Ring; on his way back to the Shire he got word from the Galadhrim that Aragorn had finally captured Gollum and he went to Mirkwood to meet him. For days he interrogated him in order to verify what he already knew, in 3017. A great fear came over him when he learned that Gollum had been to the Barad-dûr. Sauron had tortured Gollum and learned not only of the "magic ring", but also the names "Shire" and "Baggins". And the effects that Gandalf had seen on Gollum and Bilbo convinced him that the ring of the story was not one of the Rings of Power: it was the One Ruling Ring of Sauron. Gandalf now returned in haste to the Shire.[25][28]

Interesting. I'd go with number one but I'm quite sure that there's an answer out there somehere where Tolkien expands on this.

It certainly seems possible that Gandalf simply misremembers during his chat with Frodo.

I always kinda assumed there were lesser rings, great rings, and rings of power (i.e., the rings from the verses). As for Sauron, I imagine he may have thought he would not perish per se without the ring (he still is a tenuous shadow after the ring is destroyed, IIRC), but become almost powerless. That he had to spend a great deal of time and energy remaking himself may have convinced him it was through his own strength of will, rather than being tied to the ring itself.

Great Rings vs Rings of Power is described by Gandalf, and my impression is that they are identical.

QuoteIn Eregion long ago many Elven-rings were made, magic rings as you call them, and they were, of course, of various kinds: some more potent and some less. The lesser rings were only essays in the craft before it was full-grown, and to the Elven-smiths they were but trifles - yet still to my mind dangerous for mortals. But the Great Rings, the Rings of Power, they were perilous.

One thing that appears to have thrown Gandalf off is Saruman's (dishonest) claim, as the foremost expert on Elven-rings, that The One had been washed out to sea. But what possible evidence could he have produced to support this? And while not technically impossible, it could have been stuck to a branch floating in the river for instane, it does seem unlikely in the extreme that a gold ring would be washed hundreds of miles to the sea. And if you look at more magical possibilities it seems unlikely that the Ring would have "wanted" to be washed into the sea.

Gandalf should have been more suspicious, but one attractive possibility is that Saruman used his famous power of speech to convince the Council against their better judgement. But what exactly was Saruman's game? He was always ambitious and vain, but he didn't look into the Palantir and become totally corrupt until around T.A. 3000, and the Rings were debated by the Council at their last meeting in 2953. And did Gandalf speak of Bilbo's ring at this meeting, or didn't he, and if so why not*? If he mentioned the ring then why didn't Saruman take steps to acquire it? Haughty Saruman, head of the Wizards, acknowleged master of Ring-lore, would let Gandalf sit on such an item, and not even attempt to study it?

*Likely an early feeling that Saruman was no longer completely trustworthy. But then keeping vital information about a Ring of Power from the Council at a meeting about the Rings... who's really untrustworthy, Gandalf?

New trailer


Looks good until 2:17 in and then it becomes The Hobbit :bleeding:

Also they continue with everyone having fires lit midday in sunshine by open windows but they omit all the smoke and coughing and fire watches...

Quote from: Threviel on August 25, 2022, 03:45:59 AMNew trailer

Looks good until 2:17 in and then it becomes The Hobbit :bleeding:

I liked the previous trailers but this somehow destroyed most of my desire to watch it. :(

The acting seems... lacking

Also weird that the death of Orodreth or Angrod or Aegnor would be Galadriel's main driver, one would think that Finrod's fate would be more of a motivation...

Edit: Or everything else about the enemy or the guilt of the kin-slayings...

It seems like a shit show... But I judged WoT too harshly based on the trailer so I'll wait for Ep. 1 before I judge it too harshly.

Edit2: Of course later Tolkien implied that Orodreth was the son of Angrod and the father of Gil-Galad, and even ignoring that he died with Glaurung close by so probably not him dying in the trailer, so it's even stranger that Galadriel would single out one of the twins as her main motivation...

Edit3: And Galadriel standing by his corpse taking his sword implies neither of them since the enemy won all the battles where they died and their bodies were in all probability not recovered, but an imaginary new brother.

Quote from: Threviel on August 25, 2022, 03:47:49 AMAlso they continue with everyone having fires lit midday in sunshine by open windows but they omit all the smoke and coughing and fire watches...

Not enough coughing?

Quote from: garbon on August 25, 2022, 05:22:01 AM

Quote from: Threviel on August 25, 2022, 03:47:49 AMAlso they continue with everyone having fires lit midday in sunshine by open windows but they omit all the smoke and coughing and fire watches...

Not enough coughing?

I'm not entirely serious, but in any pre-modern society you don't waste firewood by having constant fires going all day long. Fires were used for cooking and heat and sometimes for illumination. Smoke is not nice now and it was not nice then, they wouldn't have wanted to have fires burning around them when it wasn't necessary. It makes no sense in historical films to have torches or fires burning in the court yard at day in summertime. But almost every historical film has fires burning uselessly all day long and apparently so does the elves and men of Middle Earth. An let's not go into the economic aspects of deforestation, we did that with candles in the WoT thread.

Going back further and/or looking at the poor with bad  or non-existant chimneys a lot of ailments were because of fires burning inside, it's not healthy to stand around in smoke a lot. You would get cough attacks and especially eye problems.

Quote from: Threviel on August 25, 2022, 06:02:13 AM

Quote from: garbon on August 25, 2022, 05:22:01 AM

Quote from: Threviel on August 25, 2022, 03:47:49 AMAlso they continue with everyone having fires lit midday in sunshine by open windows but they omit all the smoke and coughing and fire watches...

Not enough coughing?

I'm not entirely serious, but in any pre-modern society you don't waste firewood by having constant fires going all day long. Fires were used for cooking and heat and sometimes for illumination. Smoke is not nice now and it was not nice then, they wouldn't have wanted to have fires burning around them when it wasn't necessary. It makes no sense in historical films to have torches or fires burning in the court yard at day in summertime. But almost every historical film has fires burning uselessly all day long and apparently so does the elves and men of Middle Earth. An let's not go into the economic aspects of deforestation, we did that with candles in the WoT thread.

Going back further and/or looking at the poor with bad  or non-existant chimneys a lot of ailments were because of fires burning inside, it's not healthy to stand around in smoke a lot. You would get cough attacks and especially eye problems.

On the bright side, there are very few candles.

Quote from: Threviel on August 25, 2022, 03:56:07 AMAlso weird that the death of Orodreth or Angrod or Aegnor would be Galadriel's main driver, one would think that Finrod's fate would be more of a motivation...

Edit: Or everything else about the enemy or the guilt of the kin-slayings...

It seems like a shit show... But I judged WoT too harshly based on the trailer so I'll wait for Ep. 1 before I judge it too harshly.

Edit2: Of course later Tolkien implied that Orodreth was the son of Angrod and the father of Gil-Galad, and even ignoring that he died with Glaurung close by so probably not him dying in the trailer, so it's even stranger that Galadriel would single out one of the twins as her main motivation...

Edit3: And Galadriel standing by his corpse taking his sword implies neither of them since the enemy won all the battles where they died and their bodies were in all probability not recovered, but an imaginary new brother.

Remember that they've ignored all of the event sequencing from Tolkien so that they can have Eregion, Moria, and Numenor all come to their dooms (presumably because of the rings) at about the same time.  So time doesn't mean much.  Having said that, Finrod was reincarnated so still alive, and the bodies of Aegnor and Angrond were destroyed by fire.  My guess is that the "new brother" is Celebrimbor.

Quote from: Tamas on August 25, 2022, 03:53:14 AMI liked the previous trailers but this somehow destroyed most of my desire to watch it. :(

Same here.  Except for the title, there is nothing Tolkienesque in this trailer.  It's clichéd melodramatic high fantasy.

Yeah that trailer was pretty meh. I still cling to the hope that it was just a trailer trailerizing things, but I admit it's a very thin straw...

Seems like a bit of a weird music choice.

Quote from: grumbler on August 25, 2022, 09:38:03 AMRemember that they've ignored all of the event sequencing from Tolkien

there's quite a bit more from Tolkien they ignored in their 'updating'...

Celebrimbor might perhaps perhaps be seen as a brother by Galadriel if we ignore all the kin-slaying that the sons of Feanor did. Sure, yeah.

But I mean, they have the rights to Silmarillion IIRC, no they don't, I checked.

That explains all of it, they have the rights to LotR, the Hobbit and the appendices.

So they have been forced to forge a story that can have nothing to do with Silmarillion, which explains it all. They're even quoted as saying that they hade to create a Toikienesque story more or less on their own.

So yeah, it'll be the last two seasons of GoT but from the beginning.

Ohhh, that significantly reduces my interest in this. 

it's fanfiction, and likely bad fanfic at that.

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

Quote from: Threviel on August 25, 2022, 03:45:59 AMLooks good until 2:17 in and then it becomes The Hobbit :bleeding:

They saw all the groaning at the ridiculous Legolas scenes from the LOTR and thought: let's do more of that, that is what people really loved about those movies. So they made three movies of it for The Hobbit.

Might as well keep it going I guess.

I watched The Hobbit. I guess I will have to ask myself if I am desperate for more of that kind of thing.

I'm hugely skeptical of the "we don't have the rights to the Silmarillion and thus we had to change things" claim. The Tolkien Estate has been involved in the production so they at least have their blessing on mentioning or not mentioning certain things. Otherwise, this would be a minefield from an IP law perspective. The lawyers at any company I have worked for would set the cameras on fire before letting the shooting go ahead with such a precarious IP position.

EDIT: Here are the quotes from the showrunner. Emphasis mine.

Quote"We have the rights solely to The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King, the appendices, and The Hobbit. And that is it. We do not have the rights to The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, The History of Middle-Earth, or any of those other books...We worked in conjunction with world-renowned Tolkien scholars and the Tolkien estate to make sure that the ways we connected the dots were Tolkien-ian and gelled with the experts' and the estate's understanding of the material."

Quote"There's a version of everything we need for the Second Age in the books we have the rights to. As long as we're painting within those lines and not egregiously contradicting something we don't have the rights to, there's a lot of leeway and room to dramatize and tell some of the best stories that [Tolkien] ever came up with."

So they don't have the rights to the Silmarillion, but they can't "egergiously contradict" it, and they have to gel with the rights holder understanding of the material. Might still be terrible, mind.

Wait so this entire series is solely based on the appendix to Return of the King?

Quote from: Valmy on August 25, 2022, 02:25:30 PMWait so this entire series is solely based on the appendix to Return of the King?

More on the concepts from that appendix.

Quote from: celedhring on August 25, 2022, 02:14:58 PMI'm hugely skeptical of the "we don't have the rights to the Silmarillion and thus we had to change things" claim. The Tolkien Estate has been involved in the production so they at least have their blessing on mentioning or not mentioning certain things. Otherwise, this would be a minefield from an IP law perspective. The lawyers at any company I have worked for would set the cameras on fire before letting the shooting go ahead with such a precarious IP position.

EDIT: Here are the quotes from the showrunner. Emphasis mine.

Quote"We have the rights solely to The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King, the appendices, and The Hobbit. And that is it. We do not have the rights to The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, The History of Middle-Earth, or any of those other books...We worked in conjunction with world-renowned Tolkien scholars and the Tolkien estate to make sure that the ways we connected the dots were Tolkien-ian and gelled with the experts' and the estate's understanding of the material."

Quote"There's a version of everything we need for the Second Age in the books we have the rights to. As long as we're painting within those lines and not egregiously contradicting something we don't have the rights to, there's a lot of leeway and room to dramatize and tell some of the best stories that [Tolkien] ever came up with."

So they don't have the rights to the Silmarillion, but they can't "egergiously contradict" it, and they have to gel with the rights holder understanding of the material. Might still be terrible, mind.

I think all that estate involvement means is there is not complete artistic freedom.

Quote from: celedhring on August 25, 2022, 02:14:58 PMI'm hugely skeptical of the "we don't have the rights to the Silmarillion and thus we had to change things" claim. The Tolkien Estate has been involved in the production so they at least have their blessing on mentioning or not mentioning certain things. Otherwise, this would be a minefield from an IP law perspective. The lawyers at any company I have worked for would set the cameras on fire before letting the shooting go ahead with such a precarious IP position.

EDIT: Here are the quotes from the showrunner. Emphasis mine.

Quote"We have the rights solely to The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King, the appendices, and The Hobbit. And that is it. We do not have the rights to The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, The History of Middle-Earth, or any of those other books...We worked in conjunction with world-renowned Tolkien scholars and the Tolkien estate to make sure that the ways we connected the dots were Tolkien-ian and gelled with the experts' and the estate's understanding of the material."

Quote"There's a version of everything we need for the Second Age in the books we have the rights to. As long as we're painting within those lines and not egregiously contradicting something we don't have the rights to, there's a lot of leeway and room to dramatize and tell some of the best stories that [Tolkien] ever came up with."

So they don't have the rights to the Silmarillion, but they can't "egergiously contradict" it, and they have to gel with the rights holder understanding of the material. Might still be terrible, mind.

It's complicated:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/08/19/embracer-lord-of-the-rings/

100% not interested.

I wish the people who are interested joy in watching, but yeah... hard pass from em.

I want to se Numenor in all its glory :cry:

This shitfest will make filming of Silmarillion impossible for a generation  :weep:

The Tolkien IP rights situation is complicated.  Film rights to the Hobbit and LotR triology (only) were sold in 1969, along with some limited TV and merchandising rights. The terms of those contracts are known since the contracts were disclosed in civil lawsuits. However, there were also confidential settlements between the Tolkien Estate and the film rights holders, the terms of which are not known.  We also don't know the precise terms of the Amazon deal.

It appears that Amazon acquired rights from the Estate and the Estate has a production credit on the Amazon project.  The Estate presumably still owns all rights in the Simarillion; HOWEVER, I believe the film rights holders in the Hobbit/LOTR have some rights in the appendices to LOTR which IIRC includes Second Age content.

Regardless, this is a pretty silly situation and one would have hoped the rights issues could have been worked despite all the legal minefields related to the Tolkien IP.

A couple more data points.
Under the original 1969 agreements, the Estate retained most TV rights, but the purchaser acquired an option to produce a TV series based on Hobbit/LOTR content, exercisable under certain conditions.

In 2012, the Estate was in a protracted lawsuit with the film rights holder over various issues, focusing on digital content and merchandising rights.

The lawsuit settled in June 2017 - terms are confidential.  The Amazon deal was done in November 2017.

It's reasonable to infer that Amazon was waiting for a settlement to clarify the legal status of the IP and that their deal is built around whatever the terms of the confidential settlement may be.  So any analysis of the situation is a guessing game.

So they don't really have access to the full Silmarillion, or Hobbits.  Some of htem haven't read the books, or even seen the movies.  THe trailers look like generic fantasy, the kind of crap that Hollywood has churned out for decades but without even the charm of something silly like Sword and the Sorcerer (charm as in its not horrible). 

To make it worse, my Youtube feed is full of reviewers gonig beserk because it looks like shit.  I want my Youtube feed back.

So the series is "Adventures of Young Galadriel"?  Meh.

Quote from: Darth Wagtaros on August 27, 2022, 10:59:18 AMTo make it worse, my Youtube feed is full of reviewers gonig beserk because it looks like shit.

Some reviewers always go berserk in advance of a series or movies based on known & loved material.
It's nothing really new here.  It's been like this since at least the first X-Men movies because Wolverine wasn't in a yellow spandex suit.

Quote from: viper37 on August 27, 2022, 12:26:34 PM

Quote from: Darth Wagtaros on August 27, 2022, 10:59:18 AMTo make it worse, my Youtube feed is full of reviewers gonig beserk because it looks like shit.

Some reviewers always go berserk in advance of a series or movies based on known & loved material.
It's nothing really knew here.  It's been like this since at least the first X-Men movies because Wolverine wasn't in a yellow spandex suit.

:yes:

Either the show is good on its own account or it isn't.  Fidelity to the Silmarillion seems to me an irrelevant criterion as that isn't what they are trying to do.

Quote from: Tonitrus on August 27, 2022, 12:12:20 PMSo the series is "Adventures of Young Galadriel"?  Meh.

More like "Adventures of middle aged Galadriel, already steeped in sorrow and experience fighting the dark god, but now fighting something far less" since she would have been alive for a lot of millenia already and have experienced the war of the jewels and the war of wrath.

But since they have to pretend otherwise it becomes "Adventures of young Galadriel".

Fucking hell, this is going to be horrible.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 27, 2022, 01:07:37 PMEither the show is good on its own account or it isn't.  Fidelity to the Silmarillion seems to me an irrelevant criterion as that isn't what they are trying to do.

It should be true to Silmarillion since that's what the world is building on. Without that they have to make up something else and then they'll make up some unrealistic generic fantasy lesser in quality.

Fidelity to the timeline is something else. Setting the fall of Moria and Numenor at the same time as the forging of the rings is a good idea for example.

But without Silmarillion Numenor, Celebrimbor, Galadriel, Gil-Galad, Elendil, Khazad-Dum, Sauron and so on are just generic characters/places and they might as well make another show.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 27, 2022, 01:07:37 PMEither the show is good on its own account or it isn't.  Fidelity to the Silmarillion seems to me an irrelevant criterion as that isn't what they are trying to do.

from what's visible and what was said they couldn't even manage fidelity to Tolkien's worldbuilding.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 27, 2022, 01:07:37 PMEither the show is good on its own account or it isn't.  Fidelity to the Silmarillion seems to me an irrelevant criterion as that isn't what they are trying to do.

Exactly.  Lords of the Rings were good movies on their own, but some people keep thrashing them because they didn't exactly follow the books line by line.  Then the same reviewers complain that a movie like Where the crawdads sings follows the books too closely and offer nothing original on its own.  Meh.

Quote from: Tonitrus on August 27, 2022, 12:12:20 PMSo the series is "Adventures of Young Galadriel"?  Meh.

"Young?"  She's like 5,000 years old by the time the rings get made.

Quote from: Threviel on August 27, 2022, 01:17:07 PM

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 27, 2022, 01:07:37 PMEither the show is good on its own account or it isn't.  Fidelity to the Silmarillion seems to me an irrelevant criterion as that isn't what they are trying to do.

It should be true to Silmarillion since that's what the world is building on. Without that they have to make up something else and then they'll make up some unrealistic generic fantasy lesser in quality.

Fidelity to the timeline is something else. Setting the fall of Moria and Numenor at the same time as the forging of the rings is a good idea for example.

But without Silmarillion Numenor, Celebrimbor, Galadriel, Gil-Galad, Elendil, Khazad-Dum, Sauron and so on are just generic characters/places and they might as well make another show.

Actually, it's not the Silmarillion they are working with, it is the Akallabêth that was published in the same book as the Silmarillion.  So, if the producers are saying that they don't have rights to the Silmarillion, that might mean nothing.

What they need the rights to is Akallabêth, Rings of Power, and the Second Age portions of Unfinished Tales.  None of those are more than outlines, though, so much more of the story will have to be invented than taken from JRRT.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 27, 2022, 01:07:37 PMEither the show is good on its own account or it isn't.  Fidelity to the Silmarillion seems to me an irrelevant criterion as that isn't what they are trying to do.

Well it matters if they are trying to do something with Tolkien's work. Otherwise it is middling-high concept generic fantasy.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 27, 2022, 01:07:37 PMEither the show is good on its own account or it isn't.  Fidelity to the Silmarillion seems to me an irrelevant criterion as that isn't what they are trying to do.

If they were not trying for some form of fidelity with the LOtR materials (and Grumbler makes a good point, it need not be the Silmarillion) then why bring Tolkien scholars into the project?

Quote from: crazy canuck on August 27, 2022, 03:54:28 PM

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 27, 2022, 01:07:37 PMEither the show is good on its own account or it isn't.  Fidelity to the Silmarillion seems to me an irrelevant criterion as that isn't what they are trying to do.

If they were not trying for some form of fidelity with the LOtR materials (and Grumbler makes a good point, it need not be the Silmarillion) then why bring Tolkien scholars into the project?

It need not be an either/or.
They can aim to have stuff fit the tolkein Canon where at all possible whilst still breaking it where they think it's better for the story.

Like the early series of game of thrones for example.

Judging by comments elsewhere I do see that separating the "it's not true to the books!" complaints from "why are there black people in it?" will not be easy.

I saw a trailer and the show looked ridiculous. I'm sure it will be popular.

Quote from: grumbler on August 27, 2022, 02:42:00 PM

Quote from: Threviel on August 27, 2022, 01:17:07 PMIt should be true to Silmarillion since that's what the world is building on. Without that they have to make up something else and then they'll make up some unrealistic generic fantasy lesser in quality.

But without Silmarillion Numenor, Celebrimbor, Galadriel, Gil-Galad, Elendil, Khazad-Dum, Sauron and so on are just generic characters/places and they might as well make another show.

Actually, it's not the Silmarillion they are working with, it is the Akallabêth that was published in the same book as the Silmarillion.  So, if the producers are saying that they don't have rights to the Silmarillion, that might mean nothing.

What they need the rights to is Akallabêth, Rings of Power, and the Second Age portions of Unfinished Tales.  None of those are more than outlines, though, so much more of the story will have to be invented than taken from JRRT.

I was talking about the volume Silmarillion, not Quenta Silmarillion in particular. Most of the history of the second age and Numenor are contained in the volume Silmarillion, to which the series producers have no rights and probably very limited access to use through the Tolkien estate.

What they can freely use is the appendices to LotR where appendix A is the most useful:

QuoteAppendix A: "Annals of the Kings and Rulers"
Provides extensive background to the larger world of Middle-earth, with brief overviews of the events of the first two Ages of the world, and then more detailed histories of the nations of Men in Gondor and Rohan, as well as a history of the royal Dwarvish line of Durin during the Third Age.
The embedded "Tale of Aragorn and Arwen" tells how it happened that an immortal elf came to marry a man, as told in the main story, which Arwen's ancestor Lúthien had done in the First Age, giving up her immortality.

And that appendix is not super duper useful when constructing a story set in the second age.

Quote from: Threviel on August 28, 2022, 06:12:44 AMI was talking about the volume Silmarillion, not Quenta Silmarillion in particular. Most of the history of the second age and Numenor are contained in the volume Silmarillion, to which the series producers have no rights and probably very limited access to use through the Tolkien estate.

Ah, so we know for sure that when the producers allegedly said they did not have the rights to the Silmarillion, they were talking about the volume and not the book that was published in that volume?

It would make no sense for Amazon to not buy the rights to use the material relevant to their story.  And it would make no sense for the Tolkien estate to sell the rights to make a show based on the Second Age and then not provide the rights needed to make such a show.

Though, in truth, the intellectual property the Tolkien estate has the rights to amount to people and place names and general story outlines.  Tolkien himself changed the story any number of times.

Investigated it and it seems like they possibly have some rights to Akallabeth and Quenta Silmarillion. The trailers have shown Tirion and the two trees and there seems to be some kind of deal with the estate. Perhaps Tirion and the trees are mentioned in LotR on the other hand.

They are not allowed to contradict the stuff they have rights to.

Everything is unclear to say the least. We'll have to wait and see.

Quote from: Tamas on August 28, 2022, 05:36:50 AMJudging by comments elsewhere I do see that separating the "it's not true to the books!" complaints from "why are there black people in it?" will not be easy.

:yes:

Way too many who clearly hadn't even read LOTR never mind the more esoteric stuff rattling off the same arguments at how a beardless dwarf woman was wrong- which a bit of research into their post history confirms they're just upset about dark skin.

This is increasingly a big problem in media in general I find. People criticising stuff for nonsense reasons serves to mask genuine criticism.

QuoteThe first 10 minutes of the opening episode set a fantastically busy, robust pace and tone. It begins calmly and beautifully, with a very young Galadriel sailing a paper ship in "the undying lands" of Valinor. Then it puts its foot down sharply, racing through centuries of history and war and, crucially, the overthrow of the dark lord Morgoth.

So that's that then, they have some rights to Silmarillion.

QuoteBut these are quibbles and, in the end, the spectacle wins. This is enormously enjoyable TV, a cinematic feast.

Sounds like Jackson's LotR, so it might be good then.

Ultimately, if it is good nobody is going to worry too much about book fidelity or black dwarves. Unlike LOTR, the other stuff is not widely read and not that many people are that concerned about the pigmentation of fictional races.

OK, that was actually pretty good.

Quote from: crazy canuck on September 01, 2022, 09:54:47 PMOK, that was actually pretty good.

Yes I was pleasantly surprised, but then again I was never a great Tolkien nerd/loyalist.

Quote from: Valmy on September 01, 2022, 08:32:47 AMand not that many people are that concerned about the pigmentation of fictional races.

yes, unlike Star Wars, apparently.  :shutup:

Watched the first two eps. The show succeeds whenever doesn't try to force the whole epic thing and kinda stays with the world and characters. Like the segments with the harfoots and the dwarves. The elves are too stuck up  :P

Maybe they should have just made the Elven equivalent of Grunts then.

Rivendell : The Lower Decks

Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on September 02, 2022, 07:14:32 AMRivendell : The Lower Decks

I'm willing to bet that if this thing is successful we'll get a million weird spinoffs.

Quote from: viper37 on September 01, 2022, 11:43:27 PM

Quote from: Valmy on September 01, 2022, 08:32:47 AMand not that many people are that concerned about the pigmentation of fictional races.

yes, unlike Star Wars, apparently.  :shutup:

They can be blue or whatever in Star Wars  :P

Quote from: crazy canuck on September 01, 2022, 09:54:47 PMOK, that was actually pretty good.

Really? Awesome then.

Is this the year of the fantasy show's big comeback after the end of GoT? Are expectations being exceeded? I sure hope so.

I will watch this and House of the Dragon this labor day weekend to salute the brave union leaders of the past.

Watched first episode. Compared to my zero expectations, its not bad at all.

Quote from: Valmy on September 02, 2022, 12:48:43 PM

Quote from: crazy canuck on September 01, 2022, 09:54:47 PMOK, that was actually pretty good.

Really? Awesome then.

Is this the year of the fantasy show's big comeback after the end of GoT? Are expectations being exceeded? I sure hope so.

I will watch this and House of the Dragon this labor day weekend to salute the brave union leaders of the past.

 :D

7/10  :)

Okay, it's MUCH better than the generic fantasy I expected from the previews.  Decent to good acting and a decent to good story.  I very much liked the fact that the show didn't just explain things from A to Z, but left things to be explained later (or, maybe, not at all - good mysteries are good.

I didn't like the hobbits as Irish leprechauns.  That seemed like a cheap and insulting shortcut to making them "cute."

I did like the fact that the writers understood that "into the West" meant to die.  The problem is that, in the Tolkienverse, this wasn't true until the end of the Second Age.  In the time of this story, elves could freely go back and forth between Middle Earth (and Numenor) and the Undying Lands.  Gilgalad and Galadriel stayed in Middle Earth out of pride, not out of duty.

Galadriel would have been a much more interesting character if she was Tolkien's Galadriel, with all her flaws.  Perfect Galadriel is imperfect.

The Istari are showing up way too early. 

Overall, though, good casting, good writing, and outstanding visuals.  This show wears its dolla dolla dolla on its sleeve.

Oh, and bad intro and concluding themes but good in-scene music.  Kinda surprising given that Howard Shore (who scored the LOTR movies) did the themes, but there you are. 

Quote from: grumbler on September 02, 2022, 08:29:40 PMI didn't like the hobbits as Irish leprechauns.

Sacrilege.  They are not Hobbits, not yet.  :P

Yeah aren't they some kind of tribal people who live between the Misty Mountains and Mirkwood in the 2nd age? I don't remember how or why I think that. I think that is why Gollum was there to find the ring.

Quote from: viper37 on September 02, 2022, 11:31:23 PMSacrilege.  They are not Hobbits, not yet.  :P

They don't call themselves hobbits yet, but they are clearly hobbits.  Names are just labels, not facts.

Quote from: Valmy on September 02, 2022, 11:32:44 PMYeah aren't they some kind of tribal people who live between the Misty Mountains and Mirkwood in the 2nd age? I don't remember how or why I think that. I think that is why Gollum was there to find the ring.

Actually, they are completely un-mentioned before the Third Age.  Sméagol was born in the third millennium of the Third Age, almost five thousand years after the death of Celebrimbor.

Quote from: grumbler on September 02, 2022, 08:29:40 PMI did like the fact that the writers understood that "into the West" meant to die.  The problem is that, in the Tolkienverse, this wasn't true until the end of the Second Age.  In the time of this story, elves could freely go back and forth between Middle Earth (and Numenor) and the Undying Lands.  Gilgalad and Galadriel stayed in Middle Earth out of pride, not out of duty.

The halls of Mandos are located in the farthest west and that's where the elves go when they die. Which may, or may not, have something to do with the saying.

And as I recall, and I'm very often recalling wrong it seems, the elves returning from the Middle Earth weren't exactly welcomed back to Valinor proper, they stayed at an island just off the coast, Tol Eressea or something like that.

I've only seen the first episode so won't jump to conclusions yet. But... Man that was a drag.
A better map to contextualise all this would be helpful.
I'm not getting the back story and why the elves moved to middle earth in the first place. Why do they care about the big bad?

Quote from: Josquius on September 03, 2022, 02:58:50 AMI've only seen the first episode so won't jump to conclusions yet. But... Man that was a drag.
A better map to contextualise all this would be helpful.
I'm not getting the back story and why the elves moved to middle earth in the first place. Why do they care about the big bad?

Because it attacked their heaven, duh

It's visually very nice, but the story beats really are a collection of cliches drawn from 20th - 21th century lazy fiction. Nice guy has become a disappointing politician; lone heroin understands the real threat despite  the blindness of bureaucrats; the Elven politburo prefers a convenient lie than an uncomfortable truth; angry young lad hates the foreign soldier who is otherwise fond of the land he occupies... The foreignness is placed squarely in the worldbuilding, rather than the characters and situations - which we have seen dozens of time.

Quote from: Oexmelin on September 03, 2022, 04:56:47 PMlone heroin understands the real threat despite  the blindness of bureaucrats;

Galadriel is really Hillary?  She alone recognizes the coallition of the deplorable forming in front of them? :P

Quote from: Threviel on September 03, 2022, 01:38:35 AMThe halls of Mandos are located in the farthest west and that's where the elves go when they die. Which may, or may not, have something to do with the saying.

And as I recall, and I'm very often recalling wrong it seems, the elves returning from the Middle Earth weren't exactly welcomed back to Valinor proper, they stayed at an island just off the coast, Tol Eressea or something like that.

It's actually a bit more complicated than that.  "Gone West" was the term British soldiers like Tolkien used as a euphemism for death.  So he used going "into the West" for those who left Middle Earth for Valinor after the end of the Second Age, because it, like death, was a one-way trip.  That wasn't true before the End of the Second Age; elves could travel back and forth.  Galadriel couldn't do that because she had been one of the leaders of the rebellion and was to proud to ask pardon.

Tol Eressea was an island off the coast of Valinor that served as a kind of way station for those travelling between Valinor and Middle Earth.  The formerly exiled Noldor tarried there for some time into the Second Age not because they were unwelcome in Valinor, but because they were ashamed of the Kinslaying and their other emotional excesses after the theft of the Palantiri.  There was considerable travel in the beginning from Tol Eressea to Numenor, which were within sight of one another.

It was ok.

I wish they could spend that kind of $ on an original story instead of Tolkien stuff. Most/all of the characters are caricatures.

Quote from: Oexmelin on September 03, 2022, 04:56:47 PMIt's visually very nice, but the story beats really are a collection of cliches drawn from 20th - 21th century lazy fiction. Nice guy has become a disappointing politician; lone heroin understands the real threat despite  the blindness of bureaucrats; the Elven politburo prefers a convenient lie than an uncomfortable truth; angry young lad hates the foreign soldier who is otherwise fond of the land he occupies... The foreignness is placed squarely in the worldbuilding, rather than the characters and situations - which we have seen dozens of time.

Yes, but (and I say that without much familiarity with the Silmarillion as someone going into this fairly blind) Middle Earth has always been more of a mythical setting, so its characters and plots being archetypes rather than complex and nuanced is kind of what I would expect from this. Contrast with Game of Thrones which for much of its runtime is inspired by medieval history and draws a picture from shades of grey rather than just black and white.

If The Stranger is an Istari, then I am okay with it being too early for them. He seems like an interesting character.

Yeah I mean, did I miss the complex characters in LOTR? Because I am not remembering them. That's ok not everything has to be a grim plaster of gray.

Tolkien characters are cardboard cutouts, so that's one area you don't need to worry about.

Watched the first episode and whoever did PR for this should be fired.

I don't understand how all of the publicity made it look so cheap when it's visually really impressive :huh: :blink:

Quote from: The Brain on September 04, 2022, 06:46:33 AMTolkien characters are cardboard cutouts, so that's one area you don't need to worry about.

Exactly.  Tolkien was mythtelling, and mythical heroes are archetypes, not complex original characters.  There are no complex and original characters in Star Wars, either.  Londo was about as close as it came.

Quote from: Syt on September 04, 2022, 12:50:27 AMYes, but (and I say that without much familiarity with the Silmarillion as someone going into this fairly blind) Middle Earth has always been more of a mythical setting, so its characters and plots being archetypes rather than complex and nuanced is kind of what I would expect from this. Contrast with Game of Thrones which for much of its runtime is inspired by medieval history and draws a picture from shades of grey rather than just black and white.

I understand that - and Tolkien understood that better than most, hence the Hobbits, as a device meant to humanize and translate the old, old archetypes of the epic in LOTR, as well as give voice to "ordinary" people trying to cope with things that went beyond their ordinary lives. Interestingly, the Hobbits now are perhaps even more foreign than they were in the 1950s. It was thus an easy device available to the authors of this show.

Martin's references for Game of Thrones were explicitly drawn not from the epic, but from history. The foreignness of Game of Thrones came from the fact that it was not a bad reading of history at all, and thus drew from a world that remained foreign for most viewers, complete with a deliberate targetting of "plot shielding" that often characterizes that fiction. Rather than Hobbits, Martin chose a few characters explaining their actions to a few unexperienced ones (along with imparting harsh and cruel lessons) to bring in the audience.   

But the authors of the Rings of Power didn't go for either of those things. Admitedly, transforming epic into history is difficult, and most of the time, it involves some sort of "disenchantment of the world" that I don't think would work in Tolkien's world. A group playing the same role as "Hobbits" may have worked better (and may yet materialize). Except this doesn't seem to be what they went for. They seemed to have decided to build familiarity through TV/action movie references. Instead of giving us characters that could translate a foreign world for us, they preferred to use the ultra familiar cheap tropes borrowed not from ancient epic, but from procedural TV / action movie: "Politicians, amirite?". I am expecting a senior elf to "pull rank" with a "you disobeyed a direct order", another one to claim jurisdiction over a crime scene, and Galadriel to use some canned "badass line" as she walks away from Elrond / Gil-Galad. Maybe Gil-Galad will say at some point that he's too old for this shit.

Yeah I don't think it's a Martin/Tolkien thing. And I think Martin is at least as much writing against Tolkien as writing from history - but maybe there's something around history being stripped back myth too.

I think part of it's TV I liked this from Joe Barton:

QuoteHeard someone say on a podcast that the weird thing about the Obi Wan Kenobi/Boba Fett shows was that you're watching Star Wars but filmed like an episode of CSI Miami. There's an uncanny valley feeling that the story you're watching is being told in the wrong way somehow
Lord of the Rings show looks amazing but I can't stop thinking about the white board in the writer's room with 'EP 2. Galadriel stuck at sea - meets stranger? - Start point/End point... What's her journey?' etc...

QuoteYeah I mean, did I miss the complex characters in LOTR? Because I am not remembering them. That's ok not everything has to be a grim plaster of gray.

I think there are complex characters in LOTR - and there are complex characters in myths, for that matter.

I think the difference is perhaps in the source of their complexity - for LOTR characters it is broadly an external force: it is the temptation of the ring. But I don't think it's possible to say Frodo/Gollum, Boromir, Faramir etc are simple characters - to an extent the ones who are simpler are either those who've been fully corrupted by, or interact with the ring least.

That's different from the type of story telling we're used to valuing which values internal, psychological complexity. I think we're in a bit of a turn against this and a turn to the external at the minute in story-telling.

Watched ep. 1

Pros:
Production values and scenery
Interesting with the elven military occupation, huge potential to see them fight and fall back from a victorious Sauron.
 
Galadriel as one if the mains makes sense

Cons
Galadriel as a simple commander being bossed around by her nephew (or great-nephew) is silly.

Same with Elrond, he was not a simple herald.

What's the point of hobbits already? Their whole schtick was that they had never done anything. Should have been left out, the role of identifiable dudes could have been done by early Rohirrim instead.

The whole stupid thing with Galadriel being the only one knowing the truth. But you can't have heroes without them having adversity to overcome.


All in all far better than I suspected beforehand.

Quote from: Threviel on September 05, 2022, 01:00:18 PMThe whole stupid thing with Galadriel being the only one knowing the truth. But you can't have heroes without them having adversity to overcome.

She's not the only one to know.  They all do.  She's the only one to care.

I am sad to agree with Oex ;) :P , but this is a common theme in tv/movies. 

Tbf, it is also a common theme in history.  It's not like the French did not know the Germans were preparing to attack them in 1940.  WWII wasn't exactly a surprise strike from Germany.  More than one commanders knew they were rearming by 1936, they knew the Maginot line would not stop them, they knew they needed tanks and airplanes.  Other people in higher places of power disagreed.

And the obvious parallel to the UK entering WW1, "we thought the war would be over quick as we shipped over the sea" :) .  I do not know if this was literally written in Tolkien's appendices, but the reference to WW1 is pretty obvious.

Ah well, I still like it. :)

Does the show include the creation of the Orcs, or do they already exist at the beginning?

Quote from: Admiral Yi on September 05, 2022, 10:24:02 PMDoes the show include the creation of the Orcs, or do they already exist at the beginning?

Already exist.  Morgoth had 'em.

Quote from: Sheilbh on September 05, 2022, 12:33:29 PMI think there are complex characters in LOTR - and there are complex characters in myths, for that matter.

I think the difference is perhaps in the source of their complexity - for LOTR characters it is broadly an external force: it is the temptation of the ring. But I don't think it's possible to say Frodo/Gollum, Boromir, Faramir etc are simple characters - to an extent the ones who are simpler are either those who've been fully corrupted by, or interact with the ring least.

For years I used to think that Gollum/Boromir/Denethor etc were the only not-completely-2D characters in LOTR. But they are not complex, they are just weak. As you say it's all about an external force. The only attribute that makes them different from the massed ranks of heroes is that they are weak. Thinking about it I find it hard to find any other significant attribute in Tolkien characters than strength/weakness (and most characters are firmly in the strong camp). Even the elf Legolas and the dwarf Gimli are essentially the same individual.

If you look at, for instance, Loki of Norse mythology he acts the way he does not because he's weak, but because of his (compared to Tolkien very complex) character.

Thinking more about it after watching ep. 2.

The parts where no-names are running around are the best so far. The elf dude investigating stuff in Mordor especially, it gives a glimpse of the world without having annoying badly done elements of the original story. Tolkien  has some clues as to relations between lesser ranked elves and humans, most famously the rumours of the lords of Dol Amroth so a love story where her son slowly falls to darkness and becomes a ring wraith (my guess as to the outcome) has potential.

The harfoot one is also interesting, but I would have preferred it if they were normal humans instead of proto-hobbits. Will nevertheless be interesting to see their interaction with a maia, presumably Annatar.

Likewise the Galadriel stuff. I think that story would work much better for me if it was some generic captain in the Elven armies and all the big names would just be supporting players. Say for example having Elrond, Celebrimbor, Galadriel, Cirdan and Gil-Galad be att odds on strategy and we get to follow some captain on her missions to support Galadriel.. It could be more or less exactly the same story, but they'd be free to do more stuff like love interests and stuff like that. Could even have a Martin moment and kill her off when it gets hot and have Galadriel step up as a war-leader.

Khazad-Dûm by the story is the main city of the main royal house of the dwarves and is by the second age probably thousands of years old. It should not have been a lowly mine 20 years ago, I don't know why they would have a need to tell the story like that. In my mind the story would have been improved by having the elves and dwarves be good friends at the start and then have that destroyed as the evil influence grows. We'll se where they are going I guess.

Quote from: Threviel on September 06, 2022, 01:57:23 AMIn my mind the story would have been improved by having the elves and dwarves be good friends at the start and then have that destroyed as the evil influence grows. We'll se where they are going I guess.

Agree.  In the Tolkien version, Durin and Celebrimbor were fast friends, and the Western Door to Moria was only built because the dwarves of Moria wanted easier access to trade with Eregion.  The show's depiction of the start of their relationship is silly and completely unnecessary.  That's a lot of screen time that could have been better-used later in the story.

Quote from: grumbler on September 06, 2022, 08:21:49 AM

Quote from: Threviel on September 06, 2022, 01:57:23 AMIn my mind the story would have been improved by having the elves and dwarves be good friends at the start and then have that destroyed as the evil influence grows. We'll se where they are going I guess.

Agree.  In the Tolkien version, Durin and Celebrimbor were fast friends, and the Western Door to Moria was only built because the dwarves of Moria wanted easier access to trade with Eregion.  The show's depiction of the start of their relationship is silly and completely unnecessary.  That's a lot of screen time that could have been better-used later in the story.

I agree. Durin is insecure and immature in this version of the story.  No need for the time devoted to that silliness.  It was also odd that Celebrimbor was surprised to hear that the Dwarves and Elves had been friends. 

I am beginning to doubt the statement that Tolkien scholars reviewed the material.

Having been brought in to look over material for TV, I can safely say that whatever experts or scholars say is usually easily dismissed whenever it conflicts with whatever is deemed "good storytelling"... Someone probably thought that Elrond and Durin falling out over not attending a wedding was the linchpin of major character growth and fine entertainment.

The original source material has very little to say about the Dwarves and Elves in this period, and nothing at all to say about Durin IV (probably why he was chosen as the main). It's clear that there were good relations but the exact when and how that came about isn't specified.

Quote from: Oexmelin on September 06, 2022, 10:37:53 AMHaving been brought in to look over material for TV, I can safely say that whatever experts or scholars say is usually easily dismissed whenever it conflicts with whatever is deemed "good storytelling"... Someone probably thought that Elrond and Durin falling out over not attending a wedding was the linchpin of major character growth and fine entertainment.

Well that explains it then  :)

Celebrimbor lived in eastern Beleriand and the sons of Feanor had good relations with the dwarven kingdoms. He would have been extremely well acquainted with them.

But I guess that for storytelling reasons they need to show growth (since presumably the bean counters have been told that it's necessary and therefore require it) in the characters and since Celebrimbor will get royally fucked up by Sauron they need to show him as weak and foolish since otherwise they would have to show Sauron as clever and intelligent and fooling everyone and that is difficult and demands something of the viewer and that is verboten in modern tv.

It's annoying that they don't strive to be better than formulaic storytelling of today.

What's our opinion on spoilers with regards to the books by the way?

I see that the series has already inspired Threviel to do free verse.

 :lol: He's using white text as a spoiler.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on September 06, 2022, 10:44:41 AMThe original source material has very little to say about the Dwarves and Elves in this period, and nothing at all to say about Durin IV (probably why he was chosen as the main). It's clear that there were good relations but the exact when and how that came about isn't specified.

True, but if the dwarves have built the Western Door (with elvish assistance), the show must be after what would be, in Tolkien's legendarium, the start of the friendship between the elves of Eregion and the dwarves of Moria.

Quote from: Habbaku on September 06, 2022, 11:32:08 AM:lol: He's using white text as a spoiler.

Hey, it works on my phone!

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on September 06, 2022, 10:44:41 AMThe original source material has very little to say about the Dwarves and Elves in this period, and nothing at all to say about Durin IV (probably why he was chosen as the main). It's clear that there were good relations but the exact when and how that came about isn't specified.

The show creates the scenario that there were good relations in the past - so much so that the main point of contention now is that an Elf had the bad manners not show up for Durin's wedding.  Silliness.

Quote from: crazy canuck on September 06, 2022, 01:14:44 PMThe show creates the scenario that there were good relations in the past - so much so that the main point of contention now is that an Elf had the bad manners not show up for Durin's wedding.  Silliness.

Yes, it is a major blot on the writers' copybook that they chose that as the bone of contention.

Quote from: crazy canuck on September 06, 2022, 01:14:44 PM

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on September 06, 2022, 10:44:41 AMThe original source material has very little to say about the Dwarves and Elves in this period, and nothing at all to say about Durin IV (probably why he was chosen as the main). It's clear that there were good relations but the exact when and how that came about isn't specified.

The show creates the scenario that there were good relations in the past - so much so that the main point of contention now is that an Elf had the bad manners not show up for Durin's wedding.  Silliness.

I wouldn't say so, it creates the scenario where Elrond had good relations in the past at a personal level (which he has squandered), rather than societal level.

The conflict between Durin and Elrond is really dumb, but the actor playing the dwarf is so engaging that I managed to  enjoy the scenes.

Quote from: grumbler on September 06, 2022, 01:19:48 PM

Quote from: crazy canuck on September 06, 2022, 01:14:44 PMThe show creates the scenario that there were good relations in the past - so much so that the main point of contention now is that an Elf had the bad manners not show up for Durin's wedding.  Silliness.

Yes, it is a major blot on the writers' copybook that they chose that as the bone of contention.

I feel that the show above all suffers - like the Hobbit movies interestingly - from "conflict sickness", the writers' perceived need to create a conflict at all times to make things "interesting" and "complex", no matter how manufactured it feels. Hence stuff like Durin and Elrond being at odds, or many of the Galadriel scenes.

It's hard in television to show the interesting conflicts, those within the characters, so the writers on many shows (like this one) focus on the low-hanging fruit of conflict between characters.

Imagine how much better the last few episodes of GoT would have been if it was Grey Worm who struggled with the idea of Dani's ambition, and he was the one to assassinate her.

I suppose it illustrates how relationships with elves can be problematic. The elf goes to a few poetry readings and dances, meanwhile the human ages and, on his deathbed, wondered what happened to his elvish friend.

Is it true that Galadriel says "It's Morbin time"?

Quote from: The Brain on September 08, 2022, 07:15:53 AMIs it true that Galadriel says "It's Morbin time"?

Yes.  That was the coolest moment of the episode.

 :lol:

I googled it, and I still have no idea what you guys are talking about.

Quote from: crazy canuck on September 08, 2022, 11:08:53 AMI googled it, and I still have no idea what you guys are talking about.

Power rangers reference.

I've watched it. It's... ok. Some parts don't make sense. Like half of the sea "adventure" seemed unnecessary, for example

Quote from: HVC on September 08, 2022, 11:11:25 AMPower rangers reference.

I've watched it. It's... ok. Some parts don't make sense. Like half of the sea "adventure" seemed unnecessary, for example

And a Morbius reference that prompted Sony into thinking their film had gone viral :sleep:

Quote from: HVC on September 08, 2022, 11:11:25 AM

Quote from: crazy canuck on September 08, 2022, 11:08:53 AMI googled it, and I still have no idea what you guys are talking about.

Power rangers reference.

I've watched it. It's... ok. Some parts don't make sense. Like half of the sea "adventure" seemed unnecessary, for example

It was a widespread internet meme from earlier this year where people talked about how awesome the Sony movie Morbius was (it wasn't), and in particular how he used the line "It's Morbin' time" (he doesn't).

The movie was initially a box-office bomb, but the popularity of the meme caused Sony to re-release Morbius in theatres, where it bombed again.


Had to google the connection to Power Rangers - apparently it's a take-off of their line "It's Morphin' time".

Quote from: Barrister on September 08, 2022, 11:51:00 AMThe movie was initially a box-office bomb, but the popularity of the meme caused Sony to re-release Morbius in theatres, where it bombed again.

This was, incidentally, very funny.

I hope it causes studios to ignore or at least sense-check most social media responses rather than, say, doing another Rise of Skywalker. Sometimes social media is right (Sonic's teeth), sometimes they're wrong and sometimes they're taking the piss.

Quote from: Barrister on September 08, 2022, 11:51:00 AMHad to google the connection to Power Rangers - apparently it's a take-off of their line "It's Morphin' time".

And I thought it was a play on "It's clobberin' time," the catch phrase of Thing from the Fantastic Four comics. :lol:

Quote from: Syt on September 08, 2022, 12:04:32 PM

Quote from: Barrister on September 08, 2022, 11:51:00 AMHad to google the connection to Power Rangers - apparently it's a take-off of their line "It's Morphin' time".

And I thought it was a play on "It's clobberin' time," the catch phrase of Thing from the Fantastic Four comics. :lol:

To be fair "It's Morphin' Time" might well be a take off of The Thing.

Quote from: Barrister on September 08, 2022, 11:51:00 AM

Quote from: HVC on September 08, 2022, 11:11:25 AM

Quote from: crazy canuck on September 08, 2022, 11:08:53 AMI googled it, and I still have no idea what you guys are talking about.

Power rangers reference.

I've watched it. It's... ok. Some parts don't make sense. Like half of the sea "adventure" seemed unnecessary, for example

It was a widespread internet meme from earlier this year where people talked about how awesome the Sony movie Morbius was (it wasn't), and in particular how he used the line "It's Morbin' time" (he doesn't).

The movie was initially a box-office bomb, but the popularity of the meme caused Sony to re-release Morbius in theatres, where it bombed again.

Bombed?  :mad:  The average person on the planet saw the movie 153 times!

Proof:

I'd laugh grumblarsaurus, but some Hollywood exec likely has figures that proves just that but will still state that the fillm was a loss too.

Really liked that 3rd episode.  For someone not familiar with LOTR outside of the 3 books and movies, I get a better feeling of the lore now. :)

It's a slow reveal, not everything is spelled out loud, you have to do some guessing, I still think Galadriel is a bit too stuck up for my taste, but it's still a great show.

[spoiler]
When the elves attempted to escape, the one (Crassus ;) ) that made it out of the pit received 2-3 arrows in the chest.  Where did they come from?  I couldn't see any orcs outside of the pit, and they're afraid of the sun... they came from the woods? So were there any hidden there that I missed?[/spoiler]

I loved the look of Numernor and Elendil is a badass.

Viper: There were some orcs in the background of that shot behind the shot elf. I think it's been established that they can go out in the sun while heavily clothed, they just hate it.

I saw ep 2. A step up from 1. Interesting to see a fantasy show where for one the dwarves are in the ascendancy.
Nice lampshading of elf long lifespans but kind of clunky.

Really can't get out of my head that galadrial was basically trying to swim across the whole Atlantic.

Galadriel and her plotline are terribly written and really drag the show down, imho. Other than that, the show is fine.

Quote from: celedhring on September 12, 2022, 09:41:12 AMGaladriel and her plotline are terribly written and really drag the show down, imho. Other than that, the show is fine.

She's one stuck up elf for sure.  And the way the actress plays her character, it's like there's never any one else in front of her, like she's doing theater.  I presume this is how she is directed to play her part, be the arrogant know-it-all-elf, until she comes back down to earth and be more likable.  Right now, you may know she's right about the urgency, you may know she's right about Sauron, but you can't help but want to smack her hard.  Real hard.

Why are the dwarves Scottish? :huh:

Quote from: Solmyr on September 12, 2022, 03:38:20 AMI loved the look of Numernor and Elendil is a badass.

Viper: There were some orcs in the background of that shot behind the shot elf. I think it's been established that they can go out in the sun while heavily clothed, they just hate it.

Yeah, in the scene just before that, they showed orcs putting on their layers of protection.

Quote from: Sheilbh on September 12, 2022, 10:34:34 AMWhy are the dwarves Scottish? :huh:

Because of this. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redcap)

Quote from: Sheilbh on September 12, 2022, 10:34:34 AMWhy are the dwarves Scottish? :huh:

Doesn't contradict Tolkien.

Quote from: Sheilbh on September 12, 2022, 10:34:34 AMWhy are the dwarves Scottish? :huh:

They were already Scottish in the Peter Jackson movies (and in countless other media) it's one of those weird clichés  :lol:

Quote from: celedhring on September 12, 2022, 10:39:00 AMThey were already Scottish in the Peter Jackson movies (and in countless other media) it's one of those weird clichés  :lol:

I don't think I'd ever noticed/realised before. How weird - or I thought that was just Gimli :lol:

Separately I have seen there's a bit of annoyance in the Irish press (rightly) at the awful cod Irish accents of the harfoots and that they actually look like quite racist 19th century stereotypes of the Irish. Wonder if that's something that Amazon might have a look at for the next season because it's not great - the accents are really bad (and I love Sir Lenny Henry).

Could have been worse...the orcs speak a kind of cod-Essex  :hmm:

Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on September 12, 2022, 10:51:44 AMCould have been worse...the orcs speak a kind of cod-Essex  :hmm:

:lol: Elves = RP, Dwarves = Scots, Hobbits = very outdated Irish stereotypes, Orcs = TOWIE/the Mitchell brothers.

Quote from: Sheilbh on September 12, 2022, 10:54:04 AM

Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on September 12, 2022, 10:51:44 AMCould have been worse...the orcs speak a kind of cod-Essex  :hmm:

:lol: Elves = RP, Dwarves = Scots, Hobbits = very outdated Irish stereotypes, Orcs = TOWIE/the Mitchell brothers.

Didn't the makers claim some kind of non-bigotry position? Or did I dream that?

Quote from: Sheilbh on September 12, 2022, 10:54:04 AM

Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on September 12, 2022, 10:51:44 AMCould have been worse...the orcs speak a kind of cod-Essex  :hmm:

:lol: Elves = RP, Dwarves = Scots, Hobbits = very outdated Irish stereotypes, Orcs = TOWIE/the Mitchell brothers.

It should hopefully reassure Daily Mail readers who are worried that the show is too "woke"  :lol:

Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on September 12, 2022, 11:04:54 AMIt should hopefully reassure Daily Mail readers who are worried that the show is too "woke"  :lol:

Sauron = inexplicably French :lol:

 :lol:

That would be great.

Quote from: Darth Wagtaros on September 12, 2022, 10:37:45 AM

Quote from: Sheilbh on September 12, 2022, 10:34:34 AMWhy are the dwarves Scottish? :huh:

Because of this. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redcap)

:huh:
What's the connection between dwarves and the redcap?

Quote from: Josquius on September 12, 2022, 11:55:50 AM

Quote from: Darth Wagtaros on September 12, 2022, 10:37:45 AM

Quote from: Sheilbh on September 12, 2022, 10:34:34 AMWhy are the dwarves Scottish? :huh:

Because of this. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redcap)

:huh:
What's the connection between dwarves and the redcap?

None, as I understand it.

I think the Scottish thing is a stereotype from RPGs (table top and videogames) where Dwarves. Affecting a shitty Scottish accent for Dwarf characters has been a tabletop stereotype for decades.

Quote from: Jacob on September 12, 2022, 05:36:30 PM

Quote from: Josquius on September 12, 2022, 11:55:50 AM

Quote from: Darth Wagtaros on September 12, 2022, 10:37:45 AM

Quote from: Sheilbh on September 12, 2022, 10:34:34 AMWhy are the dwarves Scottish? :huh:

Because of this. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redcap)

:huh:
What's the connection between dwarves and the redcap?

None, as I understand it.

I think the Scottish thing is a stereotype from RPGs (table top and videogames) where Dwarves. Affecting a shitty Scottish accent for Dwarf characters has been a tabletop stereotype for decades.

Funnily whilst watching this yesterday I commented on this same thing. Why do dwarves always have to be Scottish. Really curious where it sprung from. Given a lack of early fantasy film I don't think we can blame a treasure island style one actor set the rule trope

Surely as industrial miner types geordie would be more suitable.
Or if they're singing dwarves, as they are in tolkein, Welsh. :p

It is because they are greedy for gold like Andrew Carnegie and Scrooge McDuck. Oh and I guess a love of large two handed weapons.

And heavy drinking though I guess they kind of share that with all British people of any variety.

Quote from: Jacob on September 12, 2022, 05:36:30 PM

Quote from: Josquius on September 12, 2022, 11:55:50 AM

Quote from: Darth Wagtaros on September 12, 2022, 10:37:45 AM

Quote from: Sheilbh on September 12, 2022, 10:34:34 AMWhy are the dwarves Scottish? :huh:

Because of this. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redcap)

:huh:
What's the connection between dwarves and the redcap?

None, as I understand it.

I think the Scottish thing is a stereotype from RPGs (table top and videogames) where Dwarves. Affecting a shitty Scottish accent for Dwarf characters has been a tabletop stereotype for decades.

In some D&D lite novel the Redcaps were Scottish.  Or had Scottish accents.

Tolkien dwarves should really be Jewish. Would love to hear them pepper their speech with Yiddish words and claim it's Khuzdul. :Joos

I think it was RA Salvatore who established Dwarves were Scottish.

Quote from: Darth Wagtaros on September 13, 2022, 01:36:03 PMI think it was RA Salvatore who established Dwarves were Scottish.

Bruenor MacBattlehammer

Do the people in the show speak the correct Tolkien languages at least? Tolkien spent decades designing languages, if the show doesn't use them then that's a big fuck you to the dude.

Humble Bundle has a collection of Tolkien related books for sale. The bundle includes Tolkien and the Great War, which I've been eyeing for a while and was the only reason I picked it up, but some of the others there looked interesting.

Episode 3.

1: where did halbrand get all that money?

2: so many pointless gratuitous scenes to show off the budget.

What money? When? where?  Refresh my memory, please.

Quote from: viper37 on September 26, 2022, 06:32:31 PMWhat money? When? where?  Refresh my memory, please.

Rejected from a job at a short guys Smith he's in a pub and winds up some guild members then says sorry and announces drinks on me for the whole pub (as a ploy to steal a guild badge)

Quote from: Josquius on September 27, 2022, 04:46:58 AM

Quote from: viper37 on September 26, 2022, 06:32:31 PMWhat money? When? where?  Refresh my memory, please.

Rejected from a job at a short guys Smith he's in a pub and winds up some guild members then says sorry and announces drinks on me for the whole pub (as a ploy to steal a guild badge)

I presumed he'd stolen that money.

Quote from: Josquius on September 27, 2022, 04:46:58 AM

Quote from: viper37 on September 26, 2022, 06:32:31 PMWhat money? When? where?  Refresh my memory, please.

Rejected from a job at a short guys Smith he's in a pub and winds up some guild members then says sorry and announces drinks on me for the whole pub (as a ploy to steal a guild badge)

Ah, yes, same as Celedh.

It's slowly growing on me.

If it had been trailed as "based on Peter Jackson's 'Lord of the Rings' ", maybe some of the criticism wouldn't have happened?

the show is good, overall, but man, there is some lazy writing with the plot.

So, season finale definitely plays with and bends the lore... but I liked it.

(spoilers below)










The Stranger is pretty much confirmed to be Gandalf, and Halbrand is a more morally complex Sauron. This season's highlight was certainly the scenes between Elrond and Durin, hopefully more to come in the following seasons. I am wondering if they will move up the fall of Khazad-Dum to happen earlier than it did in Tolkien's chronology - Durin's greed for mithril certainly seems to point that way.

Anyway, it'll be a while before season 2. I think there was talk of 2024 at the earliest.

Just finished the finale and I quite liked it. The series is a bit of a slow burn and they play with the lore, of course, but so did the movies. And so far it feels true to Tolkien.

I liked it a lot. Very different from HotD but it should be. I'm eager for season 2.

I'm not a fan (and no, not because of the shit most online haters spew about the show, I just think the writing has been very mediocre), but this episode was probably the best of the bunch. Pity they rushed so much stuff after beating around the bush for most of the season. Sauron getting caught because of a verbal faux-pas was pretty dumb - but I do dig the idea of a more complex Sauron, although remains to be seen how much of it it's just a façade (although I think it's probably fine if it's one).

Fiona Apple reciting the verse of the rings might be my favorite thing in the world this October, though.

Yeah, Where the Shadows Lie was great.

My favorite bits of the show was them showing the Orc side of things. I'm guessing Adar is not in the books but I found his scenes really cool.

As always, the evil bits are the best parts of a show while the good side is kinda boring.

I liked a comment on Reddit that this week two major fantasy series had a dying king mistake someone for his daughter and speak of an apocalyptic prophecy. :D

Quote from: Solmyr on October 14, 2022, 11:54:51 AMI liked a comment on Reddit that this week two major fantasy series had a dying king mistake someone for his daughter and speak of an apocalyptic prophecy. :D

Yeah, I giggled at that bit when it happened  :lol:

Regarding your comment of the show maybe bringing forward the fall of Moria, I don't think they can avoid it after showing the Balrog onscreen.

I thought all in all it was a 3/5. Liked the scenery and the cast but the show was dragged down by lazy writing. Best exemplified by the hobbits in one episode being stone cold realists living in a harsh world and abandoning those that cannot keep up for the common good and in the next episode dropping all that, accompanied by speeches about never abandoning anyone, to go save some dude that they just sent away.

Sauron was done in a good way, but I don't really understand how they'll explain the 7 and 9 rings since the magic was apparently the metal mithril itself and not some magic crafting.

A lot of very trite dialogue which elicited cynical laughing in the Hakluyt household. There was also much rejoicing when, sure enough, the Orcs had working class southern accents  :P

I will refine my previous 7/10 down to 6/10.

Every friday my wife would surprise me by saying "shall we watch the Rings of Power tonight?"...because I had always forgotten about it over the preceding 6 days.

I maintain my 8/10. :P

5/10 here, and probably before this last episode it would have been a 4/10, but the show redeemed itself somewhat with a decent last episode. Although it's quite unforgivable that they dispense with the whole "Annatar tricks Celebrimbor to forge the rings" arc in like 15 minutes.

One good thing was the seamless use of actors of colour. I think one would have to be pretty bigotted to take exception to their casting. Hopefully it will now be absolutely routine for televised fantasy to have diverse casts.

Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on October 17, 2022, 05:24:35 AMOne good thing was the seamless use of actors of colour. I think one would have to be pretty bigotted to take exception to their casting. Hopefully it will now be absolutely routine for televised fantasy to have diverse casts.

I always keep thinking that if a milennia-old society like, say, Numenor or the Dwarves had dark-skinned ethnicities among them and they intermingled freely, the end result would be mixed race societies rather that ones where you have white people and then black people. But it's a very minor peeve, since trying poke at the plausibility of societies in fantasy worlds is generally a dumb idea.

Bringing Lenny Henry into this was a great casting idea, he's really engaging in that role.

India is a millenia-old society and has people with all sorts of colours  :P

Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on October 17, 2022, 05:24:35 AMOne good thing was the seamless use of actors of colour. I think one would have to be pretty bigotted to take exception to their casting. Hopefully it will now be absolutely routine for televised fantasy to have diverse casts.

Well said.

Quote from: celedhring on October 17, 2022, 05:54:50 AMI always keep thinking that if a milennia-old society like, say, Numenor or the Dwarves had dark-skinned ethnicities among them and they intermingled freely, the end result would be mixed race societies rather that ones where you have white people and then black people. But it's a very minor peeve, since trying poke at the plausibility of societies in fantasy worlds is generally a dumb idea.

Numenor's population was made up of three different stocks of people that Tolkien described in different ways. Of course the Dunedain that made up Gondor and Arnor was one people due to the intermingling of thousands of years on Numenor. So whilst different looks should be common in the early second age by the fall they should all be similarish. Which isn't really realistic since there would be surprisingly few generations since they lived for hundreds of years, so presumably the show is possibly on the more realistic side, if there is such a side.

But who cares about this silly minutiae. The casting was excellent and all of the silly discussion a non-issue.

Kind of weird that an elf who has been scouring Middle Earth to find Sauron didn't know there had been no King of the Southland for a thousand years.  Also weird the people of the Southlands did not know that little fact when their "king" was introduced to them.

The whole thing felt like really expensive fan fiction, but I still liked it well enough.

I hope the writing is better in the second season.

Quote from: FunkMonk on October 17, 2022, 09:36:05 AMThe whole thing felt like really expensive fan fiction, but I still liked it well enough.

I hope the writing is better in the second season.

Yeah, it looked very good.  If it had been a silent movie, I think I would have enjoyed it better.  As a Talkie, it was not great.

A solid 6.5 out of ten from me; it's stuff inspired/based-on Tolkien's mythic world, so better than 9/10th of what's available.

Quote from: crazy canuck on October 17, 2022, 09:29:13 AMKind of weird that an elf who has been scouring Middle Earth to find Sauron didn't know there had been no King of the Southland for a thousand years.  Also weird the people of the Southlands did not know that little fact when their "king" was introduced to them.

I mean, most people in the late Third Age also didn't know there was a King of Gondor.

Quote from: Solmyr on October 17, 2022, 02:51:06 PM

Quote from: crazy canuck on October 17, 2022, 09:29:13 AMKind of weird that an elf who has been scouring Middle Earth to find Sauron didn't know there had been no King of the Southland for a thousand years.  Also weird the people of the Southlands did not know that little fact when their "king" was introduced to them.

I mean, most people in the late Third Age also didn't know there was a King of Gondor.

There wasn't

Quote from: crazy canuck on October 17, 2022, 03:25:49 PM

Quote from: Solmyr on October 17, 2022, 02:51:06 PMI mean, most people in the late Third Age also didn't know there was a King of Gondor.

There wasn't

That would explain it.

Halbrand's initial presentation was as this show's Aragorn expy, so their roles are similar. Most people didn't know about Aragorn's existence and claim, same with Halbrand (if he was the descendant of the Kings of the Southlands).

Quote from: Solmyr on October 18, 2022, 02:46:33 AMHalbrand's initial presentation was as this show's Aragorn expy, so their roles are similar. Most people didn't know about Aragorn's existence and claim, same with Halbrand (if he was the descendant of the Kings of the Southlands).

You are correct that few knew about him specifically, but importantly he was well known to the elves and Gandalf, among others.

There was also a rich history known in Gondor.

Ok so I was angry at episode 7 because it was just so DULL DULL DULL.

In all honesty Episode 8 wasn't much better either except that I really liked what they pulled with Hallbrand. I totally thought they were building the series' Aragorn since they clearly went for a similar look as well. So that was well done.

Rest is very meh.

Quote from: Tamas on October 18, 2022, 10:01:07 AMOk so I was angry at episode 7 because it was just so DULL DULL DULL.

In all honesty Episode 8 wasn't much better either except that I really liked what they pulled with Hallbrand. I totally thought they were building the series' Aragorn since they clearly went for a similar look as well. So that was well done.

Rest is very meh.

I stopped watching halfway through episode 4. Been contemplating finishing it but.. meh.

I thought it enjoyable light entertainment.

Interesting read "On the Tolkienic Hero": https://scholars-stage.org/on-the-tolkienic-hero/

Quote from: Jacob on October 27, 2022, 12:26:53 AMInteresting read "On the Tolkienic Hero": https://scholars-stage.org/on-the-tolkienic-hero/

Seems to be written by a guy that hasn't read, say, Huckleberry Finn or The Sword in the Stone or any of the dozens of tales that follow the Hero's Journey with a reluctant hero.  Tolkien was just consciously applying it to romantic English pastoralism. 

Quote from: Tamas on October 18, 2022, 10:01:07 AMIn all honesty Episode 8 wasn't much better either except that I really liked what they pulled with Hallbrand. I totally thought they were building the series' Aragorn since they clearly went for a similar look as well. So that was well done.

I thought he would be one of the human kings corrupted by the Rings.

EDIT:
In retrospect, I realize he told us from the beginning who he was.  I just never noticed it.

Yeah, when his alleged royalty was first revealed I thought he'd eventually become one of the Nine.

Quote from: The Brain on April 26, 2022, 06:35:15 AMOne more question: Gandalf claims that Sauron thought that The One had been destroyed by the Elves, until he learnt about Gollum's ring. Does this mean that Sauron isn't aware of the fact that the Ring's destruction would end him? Earlier Gandalf says that "only one Power in this world knows all about the Rings and their effects", and my impression is that he means Sauron, the Lord of the Rings. But maybe not?

So now I'm reading the chapter The Last Debate, where they discuss what to do after the Pelennor. Here Gandalf describes the situation regarding the Ring, how Sauron would unlock ez mode if he retrieves it, and how Sauron would be reduced to a shadow spirit without power if it is destroyed. Then he says "Now Sauron knows all this". Now my impression is that this "now" is just a rhetorical use of the word, and doesn't mean "at this point in time, as opposed to earlier". I am not aware of any reason why Sauron would have learnt this in the period after Gandalf's talk with Frodo in Hobbiton. Theoretically Aragorn might have told Sauron when he facetimed with him using the Orthanc palantir, but this seems unlikely since the whole point of Aragorn's chat was to lure Sauron's attention away from the destruction of the Ring. Even if Aragorn hinted to Sauron that he had the Ring himself, even mentioning the possibility of its destruction would seem insanely risky given Frodo's mission, and for little obvious gain. Or could there be gain? It could be argued that we don't know if Sauron knows that the Ring can only be destroyed at Mt Doom, after all he thought the Elves had destroyed it (according to Gandalf at Hobbiton) so he doesn't know everything about the way it works. Aragorn's aim with the chat with Sauron was to draw his attention away from Mordor, and threatening to destroy the Ring would likely do that, provided Sauron believes it can be destroyed in other ways than at Mt Doom.

So it seems possible that Gandalf is correct both at Hobbiton and at the last debate, that Sauron's Ring-lore has improved in the months between these moments. But this feels unlikely to me, my guess is that Tolkien in that case would have mentioned something more about this aspect. But Gandalf being mistaken doesn't seem like an extremely likely occurrence either. And if he is, what does that mean for other things we've been told about Middle-Earth by Gandalf? Will those have to be reevaluated?

One other thing related to this: at the Council of Elrond Gandalf says "For he [Sauron] is very wise, and weighs all things to a nicety in the scales of his malice. But the only measure he knows is desire, desire for power; and so he judges all hearts. Into his heart the thought will not enter that any will refuse it, that having the Ring we will seek to destroy it. If we seek this, we shall put him out of reckoning." But Sauron believed that the Elves had destroyed the Ring, intil he learnt of Gollum's find. Back then Sauron accepted the thought of the Elves destroying it on little or no evidence, but now the idea is completely beyond him? The fact that several powerful Elves (and Half-Elves) are the same individuals now as back at the end of the Second Age, speaks both for and against such a change of heart. On the one hand, why such a completely different view of the desires of the same individuals? On the other hand, since those same individuals didn't destroy it when they had the chance Sauron might reason that they never will in a million years. Both Elrond and Cirdan urging Isildur to destroy the Ring suggests that the impportance of doing so was well known even then. But of course Sauron might never have learnt that they did this. In the misc. pile are some possibilities: Sauron simply suffering from dementia is the least interesting explanation, and I think not Tolkien's intention. As always of course there is the possibility of Mistaken Gandalf or Lying Gandalf. Same with Elrond.

Addendum: could Saruman have informed Sauron what would happen if the Ring was destroyed? I haven't looked at this in any detail, but it doesn't seem impossible. And Gandalf wouldn't be aware of this or have guessed it until after his talk with Frodo in Hobbiton, when he spoke to Saruman in Orthanc and was imprisoned. This could explain the difference between The Shadow Of The Past and The Last Debate. But not his claim at the Council of Elrond that Sauron doesn't consider destruction of the Ring, even if it isn't logically impossible in a strict sense. Maybe he guessed it only when he saw the palantir from Orthanc after Saruman's fall. I'm not sure if Denethor knew enough to inform Sauron, but either way he wasn't a traitor the way Saruman was. Or did Sauron wrest some vital info from him?

I think that the key difference between what Sauron thought when he first reconstituted himself, that the Ring was destroyed, and what he thought some 2000 years later, that no one would try to destroy the Ring, was that times had changed so drastically.

In c.1000TA, when Sauron was restoring his physical self and returning to Middle Earth, he would have learned of the total victory of the Last Alliance.  There would have been no threat to the Last Alliance that would justify keeping the Ring, so they'd have destroyed it right there at Mount Doom.

In c. 3000TA, he found out from Gollum that the Ring had not been destroyed.  Conditions are very different now, and the Ring now represented the means by which someone powerful enough to use it could restore order in the world.  There was now a use for the Ring, unlike in 0TA.

Does that reconcile your questions, Brain?  Or have I missed something?

It's one of the possible reasons for his changed perception regarding the likelihood of the Elves or their henchmen destroying the Ring. But he could just have easily have read the evidence the other waý I think. But it also touches on my first question, about Sauron's improved Ring-lore. There are so many uncertainties; we don't know if Sauron knew at the time of the Council of Elrond, when Gandalf claims that Sauron doesn't entertain even the possibility of the Ring being intentionally destroyed, that destroying the Ring would effectively destroy him as well. This information might have an effect on Sauron's reasoning on this.

FWIW my impression is that the most likely explanation for this whole mess is Mistaken Gandalf. We know that he doesn't have perfect knowledge and doesn't have perfect memory*. Exactly at which points he is mistaken though is very hard to say. And, if I were to guess, the reason behind Mistaken Gandalf is Inconsistent Tolkien. Which, if true, doesn't really reflect badly on him I think, the dude wrote and re-wrote hundreds of pages over many years before the age of computer search functions or similar.

*Of course he might have those things, but that would mean a much more unlikely Lying Gandalf I think.

Tolkien himself blamed his characters' incomplete knowledge or misunderstandings for a few inconsistencies in the text (I don't recall your issue being one of them).

Sauron's lack of a fear that someone would end him by destroying the Ring might also be due to the fact that he, for thousands of years, got along perfectly well "knowing" that the Ring had been destroyed at the end of the Second Age without eliminating Sauron's power.  He might have learned of the possibility that what he has "known" for two thousand years is wrong, but that's a lot of belief inertia to overcome.

Maybe.

My personal interpretation is that "no one would destroy the ring as everyone, in their hearts of hearts, lusts for power like I do" is a fundamental part of Sauron's world view.

However, when the ring was gone for millennia Sauron reluctantly developed the hypothesis that the ring must've been destroyed, as the only thesis that fit the available facts.

Then when the ring reappeared he immediately discarded the hypothesis and went back to his fundamental belief in the inherent corruptibility of mortals (and elves, I suppose).

I suppose, also, there could be an element of "since there's no practical way to destroy it" playing into Sauron's assumption that no one would destroy the ring. If Elrond, Gandalf, and Galadriel could each trivially destroy the ring maybe it would figure larger in Sauron's mind (though then it'd obviously be a whole different book).

That said grumbler's reading that Sauron's judgement changed because the conditions of each age differed is perfectly plausible to me, as is the Brain's "Gandalf was mistaken" suggestion.

One interesting thing related to these things is why Gandalf speaks with so much confidence about the knowledge and state of mind of Sauron. Without having read all the other Tolkien texts I assume that Gandalf and Sauron knew each other back in the day, but in late TA it's literally been thousands of years since Gandalf spoke with Sauron (I don't know if it's described in detail somewhere in Tolkien how the Council drove Sauron from Dol Guldur, but I'm not aware of any significant conversation between them then, though I'd like to be corrected). It's not like Gandalf has some general kind of great insight into people, he didn't see how far Saruman had fallen for instance.

Another thing: having gotten further in my current re-reading we know, as much as we can know anything in these books because it's from the narrator himself, that Sauron knew that the Ring being destroyed would end his power forever, at the latest at the moment Frodo put on the Ring in the Sammath Naur and claimed it for himself. Of course we still don't know when he came to this knowledge, which is key to understanding much about the late TA struggle.

Addendum: the Mouth of Sauron is described as knowing "much of the mind of Sauron" after studying sorcery under him and working for him for many years. This hints at knowing the mind of Sauron not being very easy or common.

Sauron is a known entity with all his shenanigans during the first age. He was captured by the Valar and perhaps Gandalf spoke to him then. At the very least the Valar would have given Gandalf instructions and guidance before sending him east and they can be assumed to be in the know.

Yeah, I think Gandalf knows Sauron much like the archangel Gabriel would know the cut of Baphomet's jib. Both Gandalf and Sauron are significant spirits who've been around since the beginning of creation more or less, and have faced off against each other in the cosmic war of metaphysical good vs evil.

Sure, Sauron may have had any number of individual personality traits - maybe he likes his morning coffee with cream - but he is also the arch-examplar of particular standpoint in the metaphysical battle of good vs evil since the dawn of creation, and that makes some things about his way of thinking clear to those who've known him for all that time.

Re: the Mouth of Sauron knowing the mind of his master, I took that as meaning that Sauron was callous and arbitrary boss of the highest order, but the Mouth - of all of Sauron's obsequious ambitious self-serving underlings - had a particular gift for anticipating what Sauron wanted. He was the best and cleverest lick-spittle, hence his high standing in the Sauron organization.

... I mean, that's all just my reading not some sort of "this is obviously the only correct interpretation" statement. Just my sense of it.

Quote from: grumbler on March 02, 2023, 09:37:10 AMI think that the key difference between what Sauron thought when he first reconstituted himself, that the Ring was destroyed, and what he thought some 2000 years later, that no one would try to destroy the Ring, was that times had changed so drastically.

In c.1000TA, when Sauron was restoring his physical self and returning to Middle Earth, he would have learned of the total victory of the Last Alliance.  There would have been no threat to the Last Alliance that would justify keeping the Ring, so they'd have destroyed it right there at Mount Doom.

In c. 3000TA, he found out from Gollum that the Ring had not been destroyed.  Conditions are very different now, and the Ring now represented the means by which someone powerful enough to use it could restore order in the world.  There was now a use for the Ring, unlike in 0TA.

Does that reconcile your questions, Brain?  Or have I missed something?

Was destruction of the ring one of the goals of the Alliance?  And if so, Sauron would have reasonably reached the conclusion that since they did not destroy the ring when they had the chance to do so, it was highly unlikely the ring would be destroyed now.

Quote from: crazy canuck on March 07, 2023, 11:21:24 AMWas destruction of the ring one of the goals of the Alliance?  And if so, Sauron would have reasonably reached the conclusion that since they did not destroy the ring when they had the chance to do so, it was highly unlikely the ring would be destroyed now.

I don't think that destruction of the One Ring was a goal of the Last Alliance because I don't think that they knew much about it. Celebrimbor and his assistants had been slain 1700 years earlier and a lot of knowledge about the rings would have been lost with them.  They did seem to know that the ring was forged in Mount Doom and could be destroyed there, but perhaps didn't understand its significance to Sauron's power.

Quote from: grumbler on March 07, 2023, 12:15:43 PM

Quote from: crazy canuck on March 07, 2023, 11:21:24 AMWas destruction of the ring one of the goals of the Alliance?  And if so, Sauron would have reasonably reached the conclusion that since they did not destroy the ring when they had the chance to do so, it was highly unlikely the ring would be destroyed now.

I don't think that destruction of the One Ring was a goal of the Last Alliance because I don't think that they knew much about it. Celebrimbor and his assistants had been slain 1700 years earlier and a lot of knowledge about the rings would have been lost with them.  They did seem to know that the ring was forged in Mount Doom and could be destroyed there, but perhaps didn't understand its significance to Sauron's power.

Thanks

At the Council of Elrond Elrond says "It [the Ring] should have been cast then into Orodruin's fire nigh at hand where it was made. But few marked what Isildur did. He alone stood by his father in that last mortal contest; and by Gil-Galad [deceased] only Cirdan stood, and I. But isildur would not listen to our counsel."

This gives me the impression that the importance of destroying the Ring was known to the greats of the Elven hosts, and likely to more people since it appears to have mattered that few were close at hand and saw that Isildur took the Ring. It also suggests to me that destroying the Ring was not a war aim of the Alliance, or more people would have inquired about the status of the Ring in the immediate aftermath of the battle. People in general seem to have been content with Sauron having been killed.

Addendum: that they considered the destruction important of course doesn't necessarily mean that they knew or guessed that Sauron could rise again if it wasn't destroyed. Maybe they just knew that it was an evil artifact likely to cause some grief and should be destroyed on general principle.

Thanks Brain, so perhaps a stupid question - who figured out that destroying the ring would destroy Sauron power - and how did they figure that out?

Quote from: crazy canuck on March 07, 2023, 01:32:43 PMThanks Brain, so perhaps a stupid question - who figured out that destroying the ring would destroy Sauron power - and how did they figure that out?

Very hard to say, I think. Mostly because Tolkien doesn't appear to have considered this aspect much or at all. Maybe Elrond or Galadriel pieced it together from scraps of information they had gotten from Celebrimbor. Maybe Galadriel saw it in her Mirror. Or some more direct divine revelation?

If it wasn't known until the TA it would stand to reason if Saruman, for many years the greatest of the Wizards and their expert on Ring-lore, somehow figured it out during his centuries of research while still uncorrupted, and shared that information instead of guarding it jealously. One way to make sense of Gandalf's comment to Frodo in The Shadow of the Past that only one power in Middle-Earth knew all about the Rings and their powers is if he meant Saruman. Sauron appears to have had gaps in his knowledge of The One that may not have been filled in until very late, and of course he never touched the Three and is an unlikely candidate to know all about them (Saruman at least knew their wearers very well and they would probably share info fairly freely when Saruman was still in his moral prime). Saruman spoke with authority on the Rings of Power in the Council, which suggests that Elrond and Galadriel couldn't match his knowledge. As I talked about above Saruman is also a reasonable candidate for leaking this information to Sauron in the last decades of the TA.

Addendum: it would also be nice for the Saruman story I think if he was the one who figured it out. Saruman having made an absolutely critical contribution to the cause of Good (even if he later came to regret it) makes his story richer I think.

I do like the idea of Saruman providing that aid to the Council before he fell victim to his ambitions, and that's a very reasonable take.  I don't think that you can make the argument that "only one power in Middle-Earth knew all about the Rings and their powers" refers to Saruman, though.  While he knew a lot, he didn't know how to make them.  Sauron did.

Speaking of ruing lore, one of the interesting theories I have seen proposed (and one indirectly supported by JRRT) is that the sixteen rings Sauron and Celebrimbor forged were all meant to go to elves. That's why Sauron donned a fair guise and convinced Celebrimbor to help make them, rather than just making them himself.  When Sauron left Eregion (still on good terms with Celebrimbor) he left all the rings behind.

It is unclear why none of the sixteen were given out in the approximately one hundred years between their forging and the forging of the One Ring.  Perhaps they were held back because Celebrimbor had begun heeding Gil-galad's warning about the real intentions of "Annatar."  The precipitating cause of the War of Elves and Sauron was Celebrimbor's refusal to hand over the sixteen rings to Sauron.  It was clear by that point that Sauron's plan to corrupt the elves had failed.

Why the sixteen were left in Eregion to be reclaimed by Sauron is another mystery. 

Anyway, the really interesting part of this theory is that, if the sixteen were meant for elves, there wouldn't likely be real any difference in their power.  Which means that the division into "Seven for the Dwarf Lords" and the "Nine for the Mortal Men" was entirely Sauron's choice. 

One would think that "Seven for the Dwarf Lords" was because there were seven "tribes" of dwarves.  But were there?  Two tribes, the Firebeards and Broadbeams, lost their mansions at Nogrod and Belegost at the end of the First Age and joined Durin's tribe at Khazad-dum.  Did they later leave, to maintain the seven tribes?

I prefer to think that they did, because that explains why there sere seven rings given to them, rather than six or eight.

If all of this is correct, then there are nine rings given to men because 16-7=9.

It's worth noting that JRRT himself said that the reason why the rings didn't work "right" with dwarves was because they were dwarves, not because of the rings.  The rings didn't turn dwarven wearers invisible, nor allow Sauron to control them.  They gave their wearers enough wealth to become targets for dragons and other major enemies, and maybe longer lives, but they were pretty much a flop... possibly because they hadn't been made for dwarves at all.

The most interesting ring-lore abut the Nine is, IMO, the fact that no ring was found when the Witch-King was killed.  It would seem that, once enslaved by the ring and turned to wraiths, they didn't need to (and maybe couldn't, being wraiths) wear their ring.

Anyway, that's my wall of text.  Thoughts?

Makes sense to me if all the Rings were meant for Elves; they were his main enemy. It also seems to me that the Rings generally didn't care about the race of the wearer, one of the Three worked fine for Gandalf, the One worked for (not out for) Isildur, Gollum, and Frodo/Sam. So the Dwarves seem to have been protected by their inherent rock-like resistance. Is it possible that maybe some Ring-fuelled extra greed and ambition helped make the Dwarves dig too deep in Moria? Even if this were so, this is a very delayed effect and very unlikely to have been what Sauron hoped to achieve with the Rings to the Dwarves.

Yeah, the lack of Ring on the Pelennor suggests that they were kept elsewhere, likely Barad-dûr at the time. AFAIK we're never told much about the "daily life" of a ringwraith, but presumably once you've become one you don't need to wear it to be wraithlike. It could possibly be argued that wearing it would grant some extra oomph power ("it's a desirable magic item so it must have in-game bonuses!"), but the Nine (and the Seven) were designed to enslave, not empower as such, so it's likely that going without it was fine since it had already served its purpose. The power of the Witch-King at this moment in time appears to flow from him channeling/operating under the might of Sauron, as projected over the Pelennor on that day. That's why he felt confident that he could kill Gandalf (in which, I like to think, he was correct). At Weathertop, far from Mordor, and with Angmar long dormant, he didn't dare confront Aragorn even with buddies around, and decided to wait for the Morgul blade to do its work. And AFAIK he didn't even know at that time that Aragorn was the heir of Isildur, even if he likely sensed that he was a noble Dunadan of high lineage.

One possibility of course is that, off-camera in the chaos of battle, a Rider of Rohan found the ring, and was promptly strangled by his friend who kept it for himself.*

*I don't actually think this. If Gandalf had expected the Witch-King to have left a Ring behind he would likely have inquired about it, and wouldn't have simply shrugged off a Ring of Power being loose in camp.

I have some more questions for Tolkien nerds:

1. When Sauron was still in Dol Guldur, as the Necromancer before revealed as Sauron returned, what did the Council think that he was? A human sorcerer? Some lesser unknown Maia? Something else?

2. Same question but about the Witch-King when he was ruler of Angmar. They didn't know that Sauron had returned, so I guess they didn't think that he was a Nazgul? Or? I mean some of the elves that confronted Angmar likely had encountered him in SA, did they recognize him? And if so, what did they make of the fact that he was around again?

3. When the Witch-King falls at the Pelennor his second-in-command, Gothmog, takes over. AFAIK the name is all the info we get in LOTR. Is there any more info from Tolkien on his identity? Middle-Earth Roleplaying (Gorgoroth campaign module) has him as a Half-troll, and Peter Jackson has him as John Merrick. Is this based on anything?

Quote from: The Brain on March 27, 2023, 12:02:20 PMI have some more questions for Tolkien nerds:

I'm definitely a nerd, but not an expert - so all of this is caveated by "this is how I always understood it"...

Quote1. When Sauron was still in Dol Guldur, as the Necromancer before revealed as Sauron returned, what did the Council think that he was? A human sorcerer? Some lesser unknown Maia? Something else?

I'm pretty sure Gandalf speaks to this at some point in LotR. IIRC it was some sort of "lesser eviL, there are so many"... so lesser unknown Maia or lesser Shelobesque bad thing, with a lack of specificity, or maybe some corrupted mortal. I don't get the impression that they felt like they had a comprehensive catalogue of all the beings - mortal or not - in the world, and that they assumed they could neatly fit the Necromancer into that theoretical catalogue.

Like... Tolkien nerds have a very clear and delineated canon of what exists in Tolkien's world, so there's perhaps a pretty clean process of elimination that can let the reader reach reasonable conclusions. But for the characters in Tolkien's world it's a lot less cut and dry. I think they knew there were all kinds of uncounted bad things lurking in the corners of the world, left-overs from Morgoth and Sauron's times. The Necromancer was one such, of whatever magnitude, who had remained hidden until then.

Quote2. Same question but about the Witch-King when he was ruler of Angmar. They didn't know that Sauron had returned, so I guess they didn't think that he was a Nazgul? Or? I mean some of the elves that confronted Angmar likely had encountered him in SA, did they recognize him? And if so, what did they make of the fact that he was around again?

I always thought the Witch-King became a Nazgul after the fall of Angmar. That sure, with the ring and the evil sorcery gave him inhuman terrible power, but the "bound supernatural slave of Sauron" state of being came afterwards.

Quote3. When the Witch-King falls at the Pelennor his second-in-command, Gothmog, takes over. AFAIK the name is all the info we get in LOTR. Is there any more info from Tolkien on his identity? Middle-Earth Roleplaying (Gorgoroth campaign module) has him as a Half-troll, and Peter Jackson has him as John Merrick. Is this based on anything?

No idea.

Quote from: Jacob on March 27, 2023, 01:18:37 PM

Quote from: The Brain on March 27, 2023, 12:02:20 PM2. Same question but about the Witch-King when he was ruler of Angmar. They didn't know that Sauron had returned, so I guess they didn't think that he was a Nazgul? Or? I mean some of the elves that confronted Angmar likely had encountered him in SA, did they recognize him? And if so, what did they make of the fact that he was around again?

I always thought the Witch-King became a Nazgul after the fall of Angmar. That sure, with the ring and the evil sorcery gave him inhuman terrible power, but the "bound supernatural slave of Sauron" state of being came afterwards.

According to the Tale of Years in LOTR Appendix B the Nazgul or Ringwraiths first appeared around SA 2251. And in SA 3441 when Sauron was defeated "the Ringwraiths pass into Shadow".

But now I see something very interesting in the Tale of Years (emphasis mine): "[TA] c. 1100 The Wise (The Istari and chief Eldar) discover that an evil power has made a stronghold at Dol Guldur. It is thought to be one of the Nazgûl". So that answers my first question. According to the same source the Nazgûl reappear  TA c. 1300, but of course this is not known to the Wise, who thought that at least one of them had returned at least two centuries before. So the Wise may have thought that the Nine could reappear without Sauron reappearing. Or maybe they thought that Sauron had reappeared somewhere, but not in Dol Guldur.

Quote from: The Brain on March 27, 2023, 12:02:20 PM3. When the Witch-King falls at the Pelennor his second-in-command, Gothmog, takes over. AFAIK the name is all the info we get in LOTR. Is there any more info from Tolkien on his identity? Middle-Earth Roleplaying (Gorgoroth campaign module) has him as a Half-troll, and Peter Jackson has him as John Merrick. Is this based on anything?

As far as I know it's not specified anywhere. He's presumably named after the leader of the Balrogs from the first age and probably Numenorean, easterling or an orc if I were to guess.

Quote from: The Brain on March 27, 2023, 12:02:20 PM2. Same question but about the Witch-King when he was ruler of Angmar. They didn't know that Sauron had returned, so I guess they didn't think that he was a Nazgul? Or? I mean some of the elves that confronted Angmar likely had encountered him in SA, did they recognize him? And if so, what did they make of the fact that he was around again?

When Angmar fell to Earnur, eventually the last king of Gondor, the witch-king fled to Mordor and took up residence in Minas Ithil turning it to Minas Morgul. He taunted Earnur and tricked him to his death. For the learned in the White Council and in Gondor his identity ought to have been very clear by then.

So sometime in the centuries that Angmar lasted his existence and identity became known.

The Witch King was not known to be a Nazgul until the Battle of Fornost, when he "revealed himself."  Certainly he could not have hidden his identity from Glorfindel, the most powerful elf in Middle Earth in the Third Age.

Gothmog (the Lieutenant of Minas Morgul) was probably not a Nazgul, as Tolkien would have probably acknowledged that in the text.  If I had to guess, I'd guess that he was a Black Numenorean like the Mouth of Sauron, as the Witch King would have found it very useful to not have to train a new lieutenant every few decades.  If not that, then I'd guess an Orc.

We know that three of the Nazgul were Numenoreans and one an Easterling.  The other five must have been Southrons, I guess, given the lack of other "bad guy candidates" in the Second Age.

Btw, how old is the Mouth of Sauron? We know from LOTR that he "entered the service of the Dark Tower when it first rose again". This means roughly 70 years before the War of the Ring (Sauron began rebuilding Barad-dûr in TA 2951) . As a Black Numenorean he has a good number of decades left in him at 100+ y/o. I know that in some derived works (like MERP modules) he is thousands of years old, but I am not aware of anything by Tolkien that suggests that he is unnaturally old. He has forgotten his own name, but that seems more connected to his focus and priorities than to old age.

Quote from: The Brain on March 28, 2023, 12:50:20 AMBtw, how old is the Mouth of Sauron? We know from LOTR that he "entered the service of the Dark Tower when it first rose again". This means roughly 70 years before the War of the Ring (Sauron began rebuilding Barad-dûr in TA 2951) . As a Black Numenorean he has a good number of decades left in him at 100+ y/o. I know that in some derived works (like MERP modules) he is thousands of years old, but I am not aware of anything by Tolkien that suggests that he is unnaturally old. He has forgotten his own name, but that seems more connected to his focus and priorities than to old age.

I had missed the "again" part of Barad-dur's rise and the arrival of the one who would become the Mouth of Sauron.  He's thus not nearly as old as I had believed before you pointed this out.

So... Happened upon the Rings of Power pitch meeting and I suppose this might as well be documentary.



Just about sums up my view.

I always wondered why the Queen didn't shut her eyes. :P

Quote from: viper37 on May 12, 2023, 11:56:46 AMI always wondered why the Queen didn't shut her eyes. :P

It would have been super easy... barely an inconvenience.

Queens are tight!

Youtube for a while was recommending me a movie review guy (with a drunk Scot shtick) whom I have grown very tired of and blocked from future recommendations because he was too "anti-PC" for my taste.

But I think where he had a point (specifically raised regarding Rey in the Star Wars sequels) is that script writers do not dare make female protagonists face the same challenges they are happy to make male ones do, like a villain who can beat them up initially etc. because then you have a woman being beaten around on screen which is bad optics. So female protagonists just end up cutting through everything like knife through butter from the start of the movie to the end.

That's true.

But from the same token, they also tend not to have women as action heroes, and tend to have women consistently the object of « motivational violence » for men action heroes. Have you noticed a woman is rarely motivated by threats of violence against her husband?

If they wanted a more realistic portrayal, they'd probably need to have Rey continuously have to outdo herself at any challenge, continuously being belittled by male Jedi, having her abilities doubted by drunk Tatooine guys, being denounced as having become a Jedi only as some mesure of affirmative action by the new corporate administration of the Jedi Temple.

The problem with these guys (which YouTube's algorithm also pushed for me, for a while) is that they are quite selective when it comes to the lazy writing tropes they loudly denounce. For some reason, it's always certain kinds of lazy writing that they are ranting against, while many others are just a-okay.

Quote from: Oexmelin on May 18, 2023, 03:22:54 AMThe problem with these guys (which YouTube's algorithm also pushed for me, for a while) is that they are quite selective when it comes to the lazy writing tropes they loudly denounce. For some reason, it's always certain kinds of lazy writing that they are ranting against, while many others are just a-okay.

Yeah, that's my issue with them too. There are oozles of lazy writing they seem very fine with if the protagonist is a brooding male.

In the end, lazy movies are lazy movies. As for good protagonists in action movies, I've always loved Imperator Furiosa. She's a strong-willed figher and a driver of the story, but not a kickass martial artist - Max subdues her easily. She's trying to escape to the place where she was born (the hero that wants to go back to the womb is such a traditional hero theme) instead of transforming her reality, and her journey makes her finally decide to attempt to do it. All in all, a traditional, well written, hero. (The great thing about Fury Road, besides the amazing action scenes, is how it needs so little to flesh out its characters - it's such a wonderful movie).

Oh, yes. Fury Road is, I think, the best action movies in recent years. It's also very earnest - there aren't a lot of quips, it's « quotable moments » are all true to character, and from the world (« witness me! ») rather than characters being smartasses, or winking obnoxiously at the audience.

Good points.

Quote from: Tamas on May 18, 2023, 03:05:57 AMYoutube for a while was recommending me a movie review guy (with a drunk Scot shtick) whom I have grown very tired of and blocked from future recommendations because he was too "anti-PC" for my taste.

But I think where he had a point (specifically raised regarding Rey in the Star Wars sequels) is that script writers do not dare make female protagonists face the same challenges they are happy to make male ones do, like a villain who can beat them up initially etc. because then you have a woman being beaten around on screen which is bad optics. So female protagonists just end up cutting through everything like knife through butter from the start of the movie to the end.

I used to watch him. He and others like him often devolve into the endless rant that I see on social media.  Even when they like something it is compared to whatever social issue is triggering them that week.

Also I feel like it depends on the film/style of action film - and star. In this thread for example, I can't remember seeing Aragorn get the shit kicked out of him. That's not the story they're telling.

It is a really cliched story beat in some action films, especially Marvel, but I feel it applies to their female characters too. but it's not every film with a hero.

And another example would be the big male action stars who literally have it in their contract that they can't be shown losing a fight - I believe that applies to Dwayne Johnson, Vin Diesel, Jason Statham and others, but that might just be gossip.

Quote from: Tamas on May 18, 2023, 03:05:57 AMBut I think where he had a point (specifically raised regarding Rey in the Star Wars sequels) is that script writers do not dare make female protagonists face the same challenges they are happy to make male ones do, like a villain who can beat them up initially etc. because then you have a woman being beaten around on screen which is bad optics. So female protagonists just end up cutting through everything like knife through butter from the start of the movie to the end.

I think this is why Prey, which was good, but not great, played so well for me. The woman in it is subjected to failure, sexism, challenge after challenge, and succeeds because of her distinct skills and ability to adapt, not because she's a woman in an action film.

Quote from: Sheilbh on May 18, 2023, 03:49:22 PMAlso I feel like it depends on the film/style of action film - and star. In this thread for example, I can't remember seeing Aragorn get the shit kicked out of him. That's not the story they're telling.

Aragorn is clearly outmatched by many of his enemies (and everyone is by Sauron).

He only confronts the nazgul with violence when the situation gets desperate (and that is our first impression of him).
Gandalf makes very much clear that he is no match for the balrog either.
And he is bested by a nameless troll at the gates of Mordor, where Pippin saves his life.

In the films Jackson also decides for some reason that he has to create a dramatic scene with him almost perishing to wolf-riders. But lets not speak of such folly.

https://www.pcgamer.com/the-guy-who-sued-amazon-for-infringing-on-his-lord-of-the-rings-fanfic-takes-a-massive-l-now-owes-dollar134000-to-the-tolkien-estate/

QuoteThe guy who sued Amazon for infringing on his Lord of the Rings fanfic takes a massive L, now owes $134,000 to the Tolkien Estate

Author Demetrious Polychron wanted $250 million for infringement of his book The Fellowship of the King.

Remember the guy with the balls so big he sued Amazon and JRR Tolkien's grandson, claiming they infringed on his Lord of the Rings fanfic with the Rings of Power TV series? In a shocking turn of events that no one (except literally everyone) saw coming, he lost badly and now owes the Tolkien estate $134,000 in legal fees.

The whole thing began back in 2017 when Demetrious Polychron registered his book, "The Fellowship of the King," with the US Copyright office. He then sent a letter to Simon Tolkien, director of the Tolkien Estate and grandson of Lord of the Rings author JRR Tolkien, describing the book and requesting a review of the manuscript.

After receiving no response, he hired a lawyer in 2019 and contacted the Tolkien Estate again with another proposal to collaborate on the project. The estate quickly said "no," at which point he personally delivered a copy of his manuscript to Simon Tolkien's home for consideration.

When that also went ignored, he informed Tolkien that he intended to "publish TFOTK, and an additional six book series, independently." And so he did in September 2022, right around the time The Rings of Power first aired. Shortly after that Polychron filed his lawsuit, claiming that The Rings of Power took ideas from The Fellowship of the King and demanding $250 million in compensation.

It all sounds quite silly, but as we noted when Demetrious filed his lawsuit, this sort of complaint can be a real headache, especially for writers who don't have the resources to go to war in a courtroom. Back in the days of Usenet and BBSes, Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski had (and has) a well-known zero tolerance policy against fans posting story ideas for fear that someone would try to claim ownership of an idea that appeared in an episode, while author Marion Zimmer Bradley once scrapped an idea for a novel she was working on because a fan who had written a similar story threatened to sue for co-authorship and half the revenues earned.

Similar things happen in videogames: In 2021, writer and photographer Clayton Haugen sued Activision over allegations that the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare character Mara was based on a character he created for a project called November Renaissance.

In this case, though, it seems the matter was more cut and dry. A BBC report says Polychron's case was dismissed, with the judge ruling in reverse: that Polychron's book infringed upon Amazon's show. The Tolkien Estate then fired off a lawsuit of its own against Polychron seeking to halt further distribution of his book, and last week a permanent injunction against The Fellowship of the King and the six sequels Polychron had planned was granted. The judge on the case also described Polychron's lawsuit as "frivolous and unreasonably filed," and awarded legal fees to the Tolkien Estate and Amazon in the sum of $134,000.

"This is an important success for the Tolkien Estate, which will not permit unauthorised authors and publishers to monetise JRR Tolkien's much-loved works in this way," Steven Maier, the Tolkien Estate's lawyer, said. "This case involved a serious infringement of The Lord of the Rings copyright, undertaken on a commercial basis, and the estate hopes that the award of a permanent injunction and attorneys' fees will be sufficient to dissuade others who may have similar intentions."

It was a bold gambit to be sure, but frankly I can't say I'm surprised by the outcome. I've reached out to Polychron for comment and will update if I receive a reply.

(https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/uD3Jnzw2Ka586UrvEDbx6A-970-80.jpg)

As we say in German: Tja.

(Difficult to properly translate in its meaning in this context ... "Oh well." or "Well, there you go." or "Well, what did you expect?" or "You fucked around and found out." or ... )

Is FOTK good or great?

Quote from: The Brain on December 19, 2023, 02:28:23 AMIs FOTK good or great?

No.  Nose too pointy.

But probably still better that that tv series