LOTR: Rings of Power

[Unnatural]

That explains sooo much now, thank you. Looking back, yep I see what you mean, the Ents and eagles definitely come off like that in hindsight with plenty other pieces. 

[tbarrie]

While I'd agree that Tolkien doesn't always foreshadow things as much as I'd like, I don't see how the Ents specifically are a deus ex machina. Tom Bombadil when he first shows up, okay, sort of. The Dead Men of Dwimmerberg, yes. But the Ents are well-established as part of the story by the time they start affecting the plot in a meaningful way.

[Contentious C]

Yeah, I just finished this, too, and, um, it's not good.

I think the biggest onus for that falls on the writing and plotting, since the first ep is OK and the last 3 and a half get stronger, but in between, ooooof.  It's so boring.  There's staying true to a style and then there's hamstringing yourself with it; I wonder if, at times, it doesn't veer too far into the latter.

There's a part of me that understands *why* Galadriel is at the center of all these different events, since that's how TV shows frequently work, but all the little details where she says something or does something small that suddenly becomes The Thing We Needed gets old really fast.  Also, the ending for the Elves makes precious little sense to me, but I haven't checked the details from the books in a long time, so I don't recall how it's explained there (I'm in the camp who can't stand any of the Jackson movies, so it's not like I care what happened in them).

[JLSigman]

19 hours ago, Contentious C said:

Also, the ending for the Elves makes precious little sense to me, but I haven't checked the details from the books in a long time, so I don't recall how it's explained there (I'm in the camp who can't stand any of the Jackson movies, so it's not like I care what happened in them).

The books won't help you, as the production was not allowed by the estate to use anything from the Silmarillion or the various History of Middle Earth books. They could kinda sorta allude to it (like we got with the Two Trees), but not really.

[Contentious C]

That certainly explains why they skipped over all the stuff at the beginning.

But nevertheless, looking into how the story is explained in the books (even just the mainline ones), they act like they were "tricked" but that's kind of my point about the show: you have one person who knows for certain the provenance of the rings and another who strongly suspects, so sabotage should be the expected outcome.  And if they had the option to fuck off of Middle-earth altogether, why didn't they?  It's not like they actually voice their concerns in a meaningful way; sure, they have their Dwarf & Human buddies, but largely we're just supposed to intuit that Elrond & Galadriel care *so much* about their mortal friends that they're willing to take the "L", but it just doesn't really work at all within the context of what they actually did with the show.  It wouldn't explain a thing about Gil-galad or Celebrimbor, who would have undoubtedly taken the "fuck off to Valinor" option if they knew the situation.

Edited October 28, 2022 by Contentious C

[TheVileOne]

On 10/28/2022 at 6:30 AM, JLSigman said:

The books won't help you, as the production was not allowed by the estate to use anything from the Silmarillion or the various History of Middle Earth books. They could kinda sorta allude to it (like we got with the Two Trees), but not really.

The fact they spent all this money for a Lord of the Rings prequel series and didn't even get the rights to the material they needed says a lot about what Amazon Prime did here. 

[Kuetsar]

1 hour ago, TheVileOne said:

The fact they spent all this money for a Lord of the Rings prequel series and didn't even get the rights to the material they needed says a lot about what Amazon Prime did here. 

I think it's more the rights aren't for sale thing than Amazon wouldn't buy them. . . .

[TheVileOne]

2 hours ago, Kuetsar said:

I think it's more the rights aren't for sale thing than Amazon wouldn't buy them. . . .

Than they still wasted their money.

[odessasteps]

I guess the issue for them is what's the cost/harm ratio of irriatating/angering the relatively small percentage of the potential audience by changing things from the books. 

Which I guess is true of all licensed IP, whether it's Marvel or GOT or HP.  How many people know the source material and will they be bothered enough by changes to not support the project?

[A_K]

Morfydd Clark is absolutely awful. Blachett, while having relatively minor screen-time, was one of the defining and most triumphant performances in the original trilogy. Clark has absolutely none of her gravitas and, to be clear, the character she portrays is still intended to be thousands of years old.

The show in general will probably come to be seen as symptomatic of the easy-money excesses of the past few years. Very doubtful it retains this kind of production budget for the entirety of its run.

[tbarrie]

On 11/4/2022 at 5:32 PM, odessasteps said:

I guess the issue for them is what's the cost/harm ratio of irriatating/angering the relatively small percentage of the potential audience by changing things from the books. 

Which I guess is true of all licensed IP, whether it's Marvel or GOT or HP.  How many people know the source material and will they be bothered enough by changes to not support the project?

I'd argue there's a difference in scale of the problem between adapting Tolkien and Marvel, though. Fans of the Big Two comics universes are used to the fact that dozens of different creators have handled these characters and put their own spin on them. So they're likely to be okay with adaptations making changes as long as the end result is good.

By contrast, Tolkien's legendarium is pretty much entirely the result of one man's creative vision. As a result, I'd imagine the faithful are more likely to get pissed off at changes.

[Matt D]

I think I said this before earlier in the thread (but I've said a lot of things) but it's really the 2000 Fox X-Men movie of The Second Age.

• Rogue is in the Shadowcat/Jubilee role.
• Mystique is part of Magneto's Brotherhood
• Cyclops, Jean, and Storm are X-Men but Wolverine isn't yet.
• Magneto has basically the same origin. Xavier's is streamlined (no Lucifer/Juggernaut)
• Etc.

Here are a bunch of pieces more or less taken from the source material. Let's streamline some and move a bunch of others around in time and change the order of a few and take the core of some others.

It just felt so bizarre because Tolkien's second age is presented as history.

[Robert S]

On 11/5/2022 at 12:40 AM, A_K said:

Morfydd Clark is absolutely awful. Blachett, while having relatively minor screen-time, was one of the defining and most triumphant performances in the original trilogy. Clark has absolutely none of her gravitas and, to be clear, the character she portrays is still intended to be thousands of years old.

I agree that Galadriel might be the weakpoint, though blaming it on Morfydd Clark alone might be too simple. The writing did not do her any favours and I am sure if she got better direction she could have performed better, more in line with what we conceive Galadriel should be like. Standing up to the performance to one of the best actresses of her generation is a huge task anyway, and Blanchett had much more to work with.

[Dolfan in NYC]

Jesus....  that number doesn't seem good.