The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

[crazy canuck]

OK, 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.

 

[Richard Hakluyt]

7/10 

[grumbler]

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.

[grumbler]

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. 

[viper37]

I didn't like the hobbits as Irish leprechauns.

Sacrilege.  They are not Hobbits, not yet. 

[Valmy]

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.

[grumbler]

Sacrilege.  They are not Hobbits, not yet. 

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

[grumbler]

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.

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.

[Threviel]

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.

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.

[Josquius]

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?

[Tamas]

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?

Because it attacked their heaven, duh

[Oexmelin]

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.

[viper37]

lone 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?

[grumbler]

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.

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.

[Zoupa]

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.