Whoever they are, I think we're well off-canon with them.
Interestingly...
Spoiler:
Their leader is the person whose headshot everyone took to be Sauron (and described as an "Elven school shooter) when it came out a few weeks ago. She's got a very androgynous look, but it's clear now that she has prominent breasts.
Sauron is never described as female in Tolkien, although he could (before his defeat and loss of the Ring) change his appearance to suit his purposes. So this *could* be Sauron, but it seems unlikely.
Canonically, an attractive Sauron worked with [the Elven artist-architect character] to create the rings. I don't think we'll have time for that in a single remaining episode, so it will probably happen next season.
Just finished the season finale, but I really don't want to say much until others have had the time to watch. I will say that it's a pretty good ending to the season, clears up quite a few questions, and sets a direction for the future. Unfortunately, I think we're going to be waiting quite a while for season two...
Huh. Well...I think I'll also wait to let others catch up. Didn't exactly unfold the way I was thinking.
I only wanted to add that the actress playing Galadriel is beautiful almost to the point where it's distracting me from the show. She genuinely seems other-worldly in some of the scenes. Not sure exactly the story behind her being cast, but I could almost believe she is an elf.
Wow. <vague sentence removed because it is too spoilerish>
I think this show is magnificent. I was never much of a LOTR nerd until the Jackson movies came out. (I liked the books more AFTER seeing the movies, but still prefer the movies.)
The wait for season two will be agonizing.
Black Lives Matter
"You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: they don't alter their views to fit the facts; they alter the facts to fit their views." - The 4th Doctor
I might be a minority here, but I thought the whole thing was just okay.
I was also lukewarm on the movies. I like the books, so it might be that I just prefer to read fantasy.
As far as prequels go though, this has Star Wars beat.
Highlights for me are;
Elrond and the snooty elf lords
Dwarves
Galadriel (her performance, not necessarily her plotline which I thought was hit & miss)
Marlon Brando
Scary looking orcs
Strangely cute warg
The two guys with moose antlers
Low points;
Númenor - the island kingdom chock full of tropes
Pretty much all the hobbit/stranger stuff
Goof ball "siege" tactics, both offense and defense
The 3 white robed women that wandered in from a comic book movie
And some nitpicky stuff regarding dialogue, camera angles, and heavy handed emotional beats
I quite enjoyed this from beginning to end. It's just a gorgeous show. It gets a little saccharine sometimes (the halfling goodbyes felt like they took half an hour of screen time) but it's nice to see a show full of light and hope, and I found it moving at times. However it does suffer from the prequel curse... the route to what's coming is a mystery, but the end is known. And the thought that it's likely fairly unfaithful to Tolkien's vision looms heavily in the background. (But that's the price we pay to continue playing in this universe, and it's mostly worthwhile?) It feels a little weird, like the plot of the Shadow of Mordor games... like everything we know about Tolkien's world has to be shoehorned in.
Major spoilers for final episode of season one:
Spoiler:
- I'm so happy at what the stranger was revealed to be. (Even though it may conflict with established canon from what someone mentioned.) I was earnestly upset at earlier the misdirection, however it wouldn't have been bad writing to show the corruption of such an endearing character either. Is he supposed to be one of the blue wizards of whom little is known? He's travelling in the right direction (east).
- The Halbrand reveal... I don't know if it was obvious, but it certainly wasn't unobvious either. It's fine. His appearance is a bit too human but I guess that's in keeping with his abilities. I guess it kind of resolves my minor nitpick that when he was declared king, it seemed like he only had a kingdom of about forty people. I'm really relieved he's something more than a trite Aragon knockoff. It also bugs me that Nori is obviously an analogue of Bilbo/Frodo, but I still like her. I'm sure that the show may subvert expectations eventually, but so far it hews too close to the familiar.
- Love Galadriel and her actor yes. Even if her character doesn't at all jibe with what I knew of her. (I'm fine with ignoring this.) The negative response to the odd horsey slow-motion scene was overblown, but I admit I'm kind of distracted every time I see her in slow-mo now.
- I'm a little bummed Adar isn't the big bad even though that would have been too obvious. Such a great character, so well acted.
- The world feels a lot different than it did at first. I think it suffers from the initial (too many?) storylines and characters being so disconnected, but I realize it was necessary for the setup.
- Arondir is just fantastic.
- The Númenóreans sailed all that way for what felt like spending two days in Middle-Earth.
- They succeed at showing the darker and more arrogant sides of the elves which makes them much more interesting, even if Gil-Galad comes across a little too menacing at times IMO.
- I like elements of the dwarves a lot and they feel like such an improvement over their portrayal in the Hobbit films, but they still feel a bit off from what I imagined.
I saw a commercial on late night TV. It said, "Forget everything you know about slipcovers." So I did. And it was a load off my mind. Then the commercial tried to sell me slipcovers, and I didn't know what the hell they were. -- Mitch Hedberg
Archinerd wrote: ↑Fri Oct 14, 2022 10:29 pm
I might be a minority here, but I thought the whole thing was just okay.
I was also lukewarm on the movies. I like the books, so it might be that I just prefer to read fantasy.
As far as prequels go though, this has Star Wars beat.
Highlights for me are;
Elrond and the snooty elf lords
Dwarves
Galadriel (her performance, not necessarily her plotline which I thought was hit & miss)
Marlon Brando
Scary looking orcs
Strangely cute warg
The two guys with moose antlers
Low points;
Númenor - the island kingdom chock full of tropes
Pretty much all the hobbit/stranger stuff
Goof ball "siege" tactics, both offense and defense
The 3 white robed women that wandered in from a comic book movie
And some nitpicky stuff regarding dialogue, camera angles, and heavy handed emotional beats
You are not alone. This show is must watch, but just barely. More due to the paucity of good fantasy available than any inherent quality. I did enjoy the original movie trilogy as it told the tale rather concisely. The Hobbit movies felt more like milking the franchise. The subtitle of the book was "There and back again" and was memorable for its brevity.
Just finished it, and I loved the season finale. The idea of having to wait two years for more of this is killing me.
Also, was it just me, or was anyone else blown away by the rendition of “Where the Shadows Lie” that played with the end credits? Beautiful, haunting, foreboding . . . and performed by Fiona Apple. Crazy good!
Just 'cause you feel it, doesn't mean it's there -- Radiohead
Do you believe me? Do you trust me? Do you like me? 😳
I am through episode 7 so far and am pretty disappointed as the show violates one of my firm rules - don’t let characters do stupid stuff. Examples:
Spoiler:
1). Galadriel jumping off the ship. Duh, where was she going to go, they were all the way across the Sundering Sea?
2). Rather than taking a ship back to the elves (as was offered her) to warn them and raise forces, Galadriel places her bets on convincing Numenor, which seems pretty iffy at the time.
3). So the Queen Regent decides to fight. Great, rather than taking troops from her veteran army, she decides to take untrained volunteers. And she takes only 500 hundred of them. Some “army”. Seems like a recipe for disaster. And still, no attempt to involve the elves (though is that coming maybe?)
4). The elves abandon their outposts because the threat from Sauron is gone. But an entire unit of scouts is captured by the orcs and goes missing, and nobody goes looking for them? No one is concerned?
5). The people of the South Land take refuge in a tiny tower, but nobody thinks to send messengers to the elves warning them or asking for help?[/spoilers]
Sorry but almost everyone in this show so far is incredibly stupid when it comes to decisions, and that is something I can’t stand.
I don’t know how movie/TV writing works, but do they have anyone who reviews scripts and critiques them and looks for plot holes or stupid actions by characters? Because this show badly needs someone like that.
Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions. – G.K. Chesterton
Grifman wrote: ↑Sun Oct 16, 2022 8:44 am
I am through episode 7 so far and am pretty disappointed as the show violates one of my firm rules - don’t let characters do stupid stuff. Examples:
As for your 1)
She explains this a little bit in a later episode FWIW
Definitely some things that made me go "hmmm" but nothing horrible. I'm pretty much in alignment with Sudy's comments above, (maybe didn't love it quite as much, but REALLY enjoyed it). My least favorite scenes were the Harfoots for some reason. Maybe too much time spent with them? Not sure. Possibly writing, over-acting? And yes, the goodbye scene shouls have been cut in half IMO.
Overall for S1 I give it a 7.5, maybe 8. It's something that my son likes to watch with the wife and me, so that probably boosts my score a little.
Last edited by Carpet_pissr on Mon Oct 17, 2022 1:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
It's like the story tries my patience sometimes, but the production remains grand. Some things are obviously CGI (and I know they're a layer on everything), but there's a lot that's real, or does a fantastic job of fooling me. Unlike HotD that generally looks great, but I get that "I'm in a video game" feeling more often.
I saw a commercial on late night TV. It said, "Forget everything you know about slipcovers." So I did. And it was a load off my mind. Then the commercial tried to sell me slipcovers, and I didn't know what the hell they were. -- Mitch Hedberg
Grifman wrote: ↑Sun Oct 16, 2022 8:44 am
I am through episode 7 so far and am pretty disappointed as the show violates one of my firm rules - don’t let characters do stupid stuff. Examples:
Spoiler:
4). The elves abandon their outposts because the threat from Sauron is gone. But an entire unit of scouts is captured by the orcs and goes missing, and nobody goes looking for them? No one is concerned?
5). The people of the South Land take refuge in a tiny tower, but nobody thinks to send messengers to the elves warning them or asking for help?
Spoiler:
There are a lot of weird things about the Southland plot (Particularly how exactly the eevil Sauron-marked sword is actually a lever for a sluice gate inside an elven tower.), but I have to give them a pass on these two. They were disbanding the outpost anyway, so the elves that got captured were probably in the process of leaving when they ran into orcs and got captured, and given that nobody knew there were orcs in the area and elves have somewhat of a loose definition of time they could probably have been missing for weeks or months before anyone higher up in the chain of command noticed anything.
And the elves were kind of prison wardens from the perspective of the Southlanders, so it's no wonder they didn't just go and ask the elves to send more of them.
hepcat wrote: ↑Sun Oct 16, 2022 8:10 pm
As dumb as it gets, it’s still miles ahead of Wheel of Time. That much I think we can agree on.
As someone who was introduced to the books more than 30 years ago, I mostly enjoyed the Wheel of Time series. I did seriously dislike the final episode which I thought was pretty much a messy disaster. I certainly wouldn't rank it as highly as I do Rings of Power or House of the Dragon, but I think it was pretty good for the most part.
Black Lives Matter
"You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: they don't alter their views to fit the facts; they alter the facts to fit their views." - The 4th Doctor
Are we sure of the identity of the stranger? I can think of a few people he might be. Obviously there is one strong contender, but it doesn't seem certain.
McNutt wrote: ↑Mon Oct 17, 2022 8:55 pm
Are we sure of the identity of the stranger? I can think of a few people he might be. Obviously there is one strong contender, but it doesn't seem certain.
McNutt wrote: ↑Mon Oct 17, 2022 9:08 pm
Saruman, Gandalf and Radagast.
I'm totally not trying to be dismissive.
I think Radagast is off - he was famous for being all about plants and animals and not really being there at all for the war of the ring, etc... It would be odd to make him the main player in this, IMO. And while it's kinda possible - I don't see them taking the Saruman story into the realm of "the Hobbits first instructed this wizard that he was 'good', and helped launch his life in Middle Earth" when Gandalf is sitting there as an alternative to that narrative.
Gandalf is just famous for being the Hobbit's wizard - this seems like it's not something we are supposed to further wonder about, I think they did their best to try and clear that up.
Radagast is a reach. I'm 90% sure he is Gandalf. However, he could be Saruman. That would sort of explain the three whatever they were mistaking him for Sauron. It would be an interesting twist for later down the road when we've all assumed it's Gandalf.
Plus, I thinknthere are other wizards in the mythos. Those are just the three I know
and the other 2 are the two Blue Wizards - who come as a pair.
"Their task was to circumvent Sauron: to bring help to the few tribes of Men that had rebelled from Melkor-worship, to stir up rebellion... and after his first fall to search out his hiding and to cause dissension and disarray among the dark East... They must have had very great influence on the history of the Second Age and Third Age in weakening and disarraying the forces of the East... who both in the Second Age and Third Age otherwise have... outnumbered the West."
edit: however, the 2 blue wizards are famous for traveling to the east, while the other wizards were said to be more focused on the west.
Last edited by Unagi on Mon Oct 17, 2022 9:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
This series is called The Rings of Power, which implies we are going to hear the story of all of the rings - not just the story of the elves' rings.
I assume the next season will start to wrap in either the story of the Dwaf-lord's or Mortal Man's Rings of Power... In fact - the Dwarf-lords are now totally 'set up' to want their own rings, once they hear what was done with that little nugget of mithril.
(is this all in The Silmarillion?)
Additionally, there are more Istari to meet, and I beleive they were all supposed to arrive around the same time. So I wonder if this season will be the season that follows Gandalf and the Elves (and Hobbits), and the next season will then wrap in maybe the Dwarf-lords Rings and perhaps the Blue Wizards... and then season 3 with Saruman and Radagast and the story of the 9 rings for the Mortal Men...
That would be a really cool story to tell. With Season 4 being the final season - One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them...
edit: I imagine I'm being an idiot - and of course, that's the plan...
I'm not an expert on the appendices and histories and licenses, but I do browse the wikis sometimes and it seems to me that telling the story of the first age would have been far more interesting. But I guess it also would have been less familiar to the average fan (though that certainly hasn't stopped them from throwing every possible reference into the series as it is, no matter how improbable).
I saw a commercial on late night TV. It said, "Forget everything you know about slipcovers." So I did. And it was a load off my mind. Then the commercial tried to sell me slipcovers, and I didn't know what the hell they were. -- Mitch Hedberg
I must say, it's a bummer to finish the work week and not have a new episode of this to watch!
Black Lives Matter
"You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: they don't alter their views to fit the facts; they alter the facts to fit their views." - The 4th Doctor
I'm sure there are by now a hundred hours of internet commentary on the differences between TRoP and The Silmarillion, but who has time for that?
I've read The Sil twice or more, but it has been a while. Without consulting either the book or various Tolkien online sources, here is my sense of what's being changed/fudged/compressed by TRoP:
--Hundreds of years of history are being collapsed into a generation or two.
--The essential Sil story of Numenor (aka Tolkien's Atlantis) is that an alluring and seductive Sauron arrives and persuades the leaders and most of the populace of Numenor to worship the memory of Morgoth. Eventually, Numenor sends a fleet and an army to attempt to conquer Valinor (home of the gods and destination of the elves). They are defeated and Numenor itself is sunk beneath the waves while a small remnant who resisted Sauron flees east to Middle-earth. These are the Numenoreans who found the kingdoms of Gondor (in the south) and Arnor (in the north).
--Those kingdoms thrive for hundreds of years before Sauron even reveals himself in Mordor. In fact the evil fortress of Minas Morgul was once a beautiful settlement of Gondor known as the Tower of the Moon before Sauron arose to seize it.
--(IIRC) Elendil and Isuldur were never Numenoreans but were rulers of Gondor possessed of pure Numenorean blood. The Last Alliance of Men and Elves against Sauron (where Isuldur took the One Ring from Sauron) takes place many, many generations after the sinking of Numenor.
--Sauron has a chance to spend many generations in secret and appearing a beautiful creature to the elves (even after the fall of Numenor), eventually becoming a chum to [the Elf who makes rings] in order to guide their creation and the creation of the rings for the dwarves and the rulers of men. (This is detailed in LOTR, so it will be the focus of the next one or two seasons of TRoP, but the timeline will be compressed.) Of course providing rings to the rulers of men requires time for different kingdoms of men to mature.
--The guiding path of TRoP is the conflict of Galadriel vs Sauron. All of the time compression we've seen and will see is to make that conflict more unrelenting and urgent. I think this might actually be a good dramatic choice, television-wise.
Holman wrote: ↑Sun Oct 23, 2022 6:47 pm
--(IIRC) Elendil and Isuldur were never Numenoreans but were rulers of Gondor possessed of pure Numenorean blood. The Last Alliance of Men and Elves against Sauron (where Isuldur took the One Ring from Sauron) takes place many, many generations after the sinking of Numenor.
No, that part seems reasonably accurate to the books, at least so far. Elendil and Isildur were both from Númenor and fled to Middle_Earth with other Faithful when it was drowned. Elendil founded the kingdom of Arnor while Isildur founded Minas Ithil, and the War of the Last Alliance took place about 110-120 years later, as far as I can make out. Where the Rings of Power timeline breaks down is that the rings should already have existed for over a millennium by the time Elendil was born.
I guess I'm just not clear on how they are going to find 9 kings to make rings for in this timeline, where Isildur is already a young man.
Also, I didn't picture the Elves' rings being made, and the understanding that Sauron helped them make them, but then the other sets of rings were still made... I assume that Sauron will be an entirely different 'person' to the dwarves, and then yet another person for the kings of Man... But it would seem like maybe some large time-jumps will be needed? No?
The dwarf rings, with the tension between the dwarves right now, I can see them acting on those rings next.
Holman wrote: ↑Sun Oct 23, 2022 6:47 pm
--(IIRC) Elendil and Isuldur were never Numenoreans but were rulers of Gondor possessed of pure Numenorean blood. The Last Alliance of Men and Elves against Sauron (where Isuldur took the One Ring from Sauron) takes place many, many generations after the sinking of Numenor.
No, that part seems reasonably accurate to the books, at least so far. Elendil and Isildur were both from Númenor and fled to Middle_Earth with other Faithful when it was drowned. Elendil founded the kingdom of Arnor while Isildur founded Minas Ithil, and the War of the Last Alliance took place about 110-120 years later, as far as I can make out. Where the Rings of Power timeline breaks down is that the rings should already have existed for over a millennium by the time Elendil was born.
Unagi wrote: ↑Mon Oct 24, 2022 10:10 am
I guess I'm just not clear on how they are going to find 9 kings to make rings for in this timeline, where Isildur is already a young man.
Yeah. I'll be sad if the Nazgul are really just nine former Regional Managers.
