The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

[viper37]

To 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.

[garbon]

To 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.

[The Minsky Moment]

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.

[Threviel]

So 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.

[Threviel]

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.

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.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

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.

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

[viper37]

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.

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.

[grumbler]

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

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

[grumbler]

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.

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.

[Darth Wagtaros]

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.

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

[crazy canuck]

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.

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?

[Josquius]

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.

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.

[Tamas]

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.

[The Brain]

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

[Threviel]

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.

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:

Appendix 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.