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Quick question?

Where abouts does this fall in the timeline?

I’m aware Elendil and Isildur featured in the prologue of Fellowship, and alongside the Elves saw Sauron defeated, and the One Ring lost.

But what does that mean for Gondor and Rohan? Were they founded at that point, or in the relative peace that came after Sauron’s major setback?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Quick question?

Where abouts does this fall in the timeline?

I’m aware Elendil and Isildur featured in the prologue of Fellowship, and alongside the Elves saw Sauron defeated, and the One Ring lost.

But what does that mean for Gondor and Rohan? Were they founded at that point, or in the relative peace that came after Sauron’s major setback?

Rohan was founded in the 3rd Age, some 2,500 years after the Battle of the Last Alliance, and just over 100 years before the War of the Ring.

Gondor was founded a bit over 100 years before the Battle of the Last Alliance, by Elendil and the Faithful, so we should see that during RoP.

So I’m guessing Elendil and Isildue are Dunedin, like Aragorn and live for yonks?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So I’m guessing Elendil and Isildue are Dunedin, like Aragorn and live for yonks?

yes they have elf blood so long lived.

Cool. Helps me place events in RoP into better context.

I’m guessing the Balrog won’t be set properly loose for a few thousand years then?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Cool. Helps me place events in RoP into better context.

I’m guessing the Balrog won’t be set properly loose for a few thousand years then?

its not supposed to have been disturbed until the 3rd age so who knows...guessing its supposed to just go back to sleep now....

The timeline of events and the facts of the events have been dramatically changed from what was in the books, so putting in context based off of that is probably pointless.

Like the Wizards did not arrive until the Third Age, after the battle of the Last Alliance.

The waking of the Balrog in Moria happened in the Third Age not the second.

The fall of Numenor happened completely differently in the books.

The forging of the rings was in a different order - the three rings of the elves were explicitly the last ones to be forged.

Not to mention the changing of characters - many are completely different to how they are described in the books.

And some stuff is entirely invented, like the nonsense from S1 with the big tree somehow representing the fading of the elves and how they have to get mithril to stop it, and how the mithril is created in the first place.

I don't really know why they wanted to "adapt" this stuff when they didn't really pay any attention to what's being adapted. So it's best, if you don't know much about Tolkien, to just enjoy it for what it is and certainly not to look for consistency with his work because there really isn't any.

I’m definitely in that lucky camp, that for me the show is just another big budget fantasy show, albeit in a setting I’m mildly familiar with from the films.

Never read the books, and probably never will.

 Da Boss wrote:
The timeline of events and the facts of the events have been dramatically changed from what was in the books, so putting in context based off of that is probably pointless.

Like the Wizards did not arrive until the Third Age, after the battle of the Last Alliance.

The waking of the Balrog in Moria happened in the Third Age not the second.

The fall of Numenor happened completely differently in the books.

The forging of the rings was in a different order - the three rings of the elves were explicitly the last ones to be forged.

Not to mention the changing of characters - many are completely different to how they are described in the books.

And some stuff is entirely invented, like the nonsense from S1 with the big tree somehow representing the fading of the elves and how they have to get mithril to stop it, and how the mithril is created in the first place.

I don't really know why they wanted to "adapt" this stuff when they didn't really pay any attention to what's being adapted. So it's best, if you don't know much about Tolkien, to just enjoy it for what it is and certainly not to look for consistency with his work because there really isn't any.

Yeah that's fair - whilst I fully understand that book adaptions need changes but many of them done here don;t seem to have made the story flow better or make sense - to me at least

 Da Boss wrote:


I don't really know why they wanted to "adapt" this stuff when they didn't really pay any attention to what's being adapted. So it's best, if you don't know much about Tolkien, to just enjoy it for what it is and certainly not to look for consistency with his work because there really isn't any.

You see this a lot lately in the industry having been dried up of -actual writers- and resupplied with -adapters-, and it's one of the reasons I am still to this day very reluctant to publish my own fantasy novels (still working on the 2nd book of the eponymous 'leopold helveine' which is a fantasy story about a journalist dwarf getting caught up in the political maelstrom of two regions consequently, including all the friends he makes along the way.., its grim and doesn't depend on tropes or cliche's, focusses mainly on tensions and impossible choices with their far reaching consequences that ripple out.)

So what happens is companies aquire existing art/writing and use it as a template' like how most videogames these days are made from succesful templates rather than what you see in the independen/indy scene coming up with hits and misses, gambling along new approaches'.. because it's not about the art/writing but about ensuring returns trying to make money, while ironically losing money as people are turning away enmasse from this approach and result.

But.. we still have a lot of untalented and inexperienced, sloppy, overpraised and overpayed writers that live in a massive bubble thinking that their style of plagiary and boring personal lives hanging by a thin thread of political activism inserted into their scripts' is worth an audience.. and it is exactly such "writers" that are the 1: cheapest labor force and 2: most reliable to meet deadlines' so the most attractive to the industry.
Afterall a good writer may require many years to write a single book (I know I have) and make it crystaline in terms of everything that happens in it connected, and interesting/impressionate to the reader.

Another (main) problem is that there are generally too many cooks in screenwriters-land', this is called writer-rooms in which 10+ people all chime in with their "ideas" or rather conditioned nonsense' and emotional exaggeration to make of it a soup with a hundred flavors that tastes like nothing particular and therefor is to noones taste. This is a known issue that many good writers are talking about these days, but the industry has the money, the good writers do not.. so what you end up is the same prismatic soup dish regardless.

Best course of action is to simply not watch such shows and pray to the Sun that they get canceled (or rather first put shame where its due and then get canceled) for better writers and crew that keeps a canon' to succeed.

 Leopold Helveine wrote:

You see this a lot lately in the industry...

There's no 'lately' about it. Film adaptations of books have always had varying degrees of faithfulness to the original material. Disney was criticised for changing stories with their early fairly tale adaptions. The Wizard of Oz was a hugely influential movie that made significant changes to the source material. The Neverending Story scarred a whole generation of kids in the 80s, and was so, so different from the book. The Shining is held up as a pinnacle of it's genre despite once again being significantly different to the book.

The goal of an adaptation isn't always to directly copy the source, nor should it be. A story teller should always have some creative freedom to tell the story their way. If you personally prefer more accurate adaptations, that's entirely your choice... But that doesn't make it a failing of the show's makers if it doesn't meet your arbitrary requirements.

 insaniak wrote:

 Leopold Helveine wrote:

You see this a lot lately in the industry...

There's no 'lately' about it. Film adaptations of books have always had varying degrees of faithfulness to the original material. Disney was criticised for changing stories with their early fairly tale adaptions. The Wizard of Oz was a hugely influential movie that made significant changes to the source material. The Neverending Story scarred a whole generation of kids in the 80s, and was so, so different from the book. The Shining is held up as a pinnacle of it's genre despite once again being significantly different to the book.

The goal of an adaptation isn't always to directly copy the source, nor should it be. A story teller should always have some creative freedom to tell the story their way. If you personally prefer more accurate adaptations, that's entirely your choice... But that doesn't make it a failing of the show's makers if it doesn't meet your arbitrary requirements.

Not only this. But here is Leopold in another thread praising this exact thing...

 Leopold Helveine wrote:
Still have to watch ep3 (will when I get at home) but so far, 2 eps in this show has been absolute gold.
Even though you know that nothing can happen to penguin (atleast nothing can kill him) in this show.. you're still constantly at the edge of your seat when he gets in trouble and that is an acting-effort as much as really, really good writing.

This show blows most if not all other shows out of the water and into the firmament, hopefully through it' to never be seen again.
Seriously, when you watch this show you'll feel like canceling most other shows is the right thing to do.

Singing the praises of both "Oz Cobb" and Sofia Falcone despite both characters being massive departures from their source material.

I think the expectation that an adaptation will be somewhat similar to the source material is not an arbitrary or unreasonable expectation.

There are changes I don't mind, especially cutting stuff.

But changing characters completely is something that really bugs me, it's why I don't like the PJ LOTR any more, because all of the characters are coarsened and made lesser by the adaptation, and especially Frodo is changed practically beyond recognition. And I'm not talking about superficial things like appearance here, but the internal nature of the character.

The Dune movies for example cut a lot of the stuff about ecology that I really liked from the book to focus on the social and religious elements more. I thought it was a fine choice and a good adaptation, despite leaving out my personal favourite parts of the book, because it also didn't change them or say they weren't happening or important, and they communicated the character of the main characters well for the medium.

I don't feel that RoP represents existing characters well at all. Their best characters are the ones they invented whole cloth, and I'm not annoyed when they are on screen because there isn't the sense of disrespect to the original work to the same extent.

And yeah, I do use disrespect intentionally here. People doing adaptations are taking the name of someone else's work to make money for themselves. It's an exercise in branding. This is already kinda disgusting imo, but then to change it and alter the meaning of the original work in the pursuit of your money using someone else's work is really awful and hubristic.
Just make your own original story and sell me on THAT. It'd probably be more enjoyable for me. And no whining about how original stories don't get noticed - Tolkien's work was an original story at one point, somehow he managed it.

 insaniak wrote:

 Leopold Helveine wrote:

You see this a lot lately in the industry...

There's no 'lately' about it. Film adaptations of books have always had varying degrees of faithfulness to the original material. Disney was criticised for changing stories with their early fairly tale adaptions. The Wizard of Oz was a hugely influential movie that made significant changes to the source material. The Neverending Story scarred a whole generation of kids in the 80s, and was so, so different from the book. The Shining is held up as a pinnacle of it's genre despite once again being significantly different to the book.

The goal of an adaptation isn't always to directly copy the source, nor should it be. A story teller should always have some creative freedom to tell the story their way. If you personally prefer more accurate adaptations, that's entirely your choice... But that doesn't make it a failing of the show's makers if it doesn't meet your arbitrary requirements.

The point wasn't adaptation, the point was using succesful writings as a template because writers lack imagination and talent and are selected mainly for their ability to meet deadlines (because they lack imagination and talent).

 Lance845 wrote:


Not only this. But here is Leopold in another thread praising this exact thing...

Singing the praises of both "Oz Cobb" and Sofia Falcone despite both characters being massive departures from their source material.

Ah another one that ignores the context of my statements I see.
Again, the context is quality of writ, not wether something is canon even though I would enjoy canon over adaptation, which is irrelevant to my point.

Well your post doesn't come across that way at all. You kind of go on a rant about "adapters" instead of writers being hired into bloated writing rooms to produce adaptations of preexisting stories as opposed to creating something new.

You call it plagiary and even throw in politics for some reason.

Mostly it reads as you being bitter that writers get hired to do what amounts to a commission job by a studio instead of doing their passion projects and sitting in obscurity with some other day job.

I’m gonna repeat what I hope is a balanced opinion I gave much earlier in the thread, involving an adaptation of a fantasy world I’m very familiar with. The Watch.

Like those who have a love for Tolkien? I have a love for Pratchett, his writing, his politics and his ability to use silly fantasy tropes as a lens fo criticise stupidity in the real world. Pterry was a Sir. Pterry was a satirist. Pterry was a genius. But most of all? Pterry was bloody furious.

Now sadly, like Tolkien, Pterry has been gone for far longer than I’d like to admit. And like Tolkien? His works have had adaptations. And, like Tolkien? Pterry’s estate is in the hands of his child, Rhianna.

And so, to get back to my point? The Watch eventually came to be. A single series made by BBC America.

It’s not Discworld. It’s the loosest possible adaptation I think you could get away with and still claim to be a descendant of Pterry’s Masterworks. And it upset a lot of people, because it was so, so far from what fans of Discworld hoped for.

It was, by any measure? A Bloody Awful Adaptation. A waste of a license.

BUT

Let’s try to strip away my expectations as someone who’s read all but one Discworld novel (I’m saving that for my deathbed). Let’s strip away my literary prejudice.

And I have to admit…The Watch is not without its merits. And is in fact pretty good fun. Still a waste of a license like, but of its own curious merit,

Which brings me back to Rings of Power.

I’m Joe Public here. And whilst not perfect? I still consider it superior teevee, and happily entertaining.

Now, that doesn’t mean “therefore everyone else am STFU”. I genuinely and honestly respect your opinion, and all the factors that inform said opinion, of the show. But please. Respect my opinion, informed as it is by a single source, in turn.

I thought it was weird Lance noticed praise from Leopold for an adaptation in a different thread and used that against him in this thread while still refusing to acknowledge Leopold doesn't automatically impugn adaptations.

Respect my opinion, informed as it is by a single source, in turn.

Rings of Power does not provide material to have an opinion on Tolkien. If we can agree to separate RoP from Tolkien you and I can get along just fine. But if you want to talk about the symbolism of Sauron having 7 rings made for Dwarf Lords I'm just not even there for said conversation. (16 lesser rings were forged, from which they refined their skill in ring making and set to various lesser stations which remain unspecified. All originally purposed for Elves by Elves. That 9 of these lesser rings went to men and 7 to dwarves was not determined before they were made.)

Edit: Fun fact, Galadriel was actually the one person Sauron had to run out of town to gain his way with the elves under his benevolent disguise as she saw right through him from the start. The show squandered a ton of goodwill by deciding to use Galadriel, one of the most famous and important elves in the stories as their pow character for entanglement with Sauron. They would have done much better simply giving her character arc to a new character.

It'd be like making Carrot a blowhard who leaned on rank and was insecure.

I think you misunderstood my point.

I used The Watch as an example of a show which, on its own merits, is actually not that bad at all. But, still stands as an exceptionally poor Discworld adaptation.

One can enjoy The Watch entirely on its own merits.

That doesn’t mean you then have an opinion on Discworld. Only on The Watch. Because they’re kinda two different things.

It’d be like saying you know me, because you’ve met my cousin’s eldest kid. Sure, we share a modicum of DNA, but we’re not even remotely the same person.

 Lance845 wrote:
Well your post doesn't come across that way at all. You kind of go on a rant about "adapters" instead of writers being hired into bloated writing rooms to produce adaptations of preexisting stories as opposed to creating something new.

You call it plagiary and even throw in politics for some reason.

Mostly it reads as you being bitter that writers get hired to do what amounts to a commission job by a studio instead of doing their passion projects and sitting in obscurity with some other day job.

You're reading things into my post that aren't there, that is the only thing I can say here because it will be pointless to discuss your interpetation.

That some kind of political activism (DEI) is present in writer-rooms is established, that such is driven by subsidies is also known, this may be the bedrock of what empowers bad writers, but that is all again beside the point that the driving force is simply a commercial interest in profit which favors short term gains over stability, a well written show becomes a trademark, a badly written show becomes a money laundering operation.

Regardless, again; succesful writ is used as template, if good writers did that noone would cringe, everyone would praise it.
We all know what is going on with ROP.

I think you communicated perfectly and I demonstrated understanding.

 Scrabb wrote:
If we can agree to separate RoP from Tolkien you and I can get along just fine.

We agreed. I then continued to opine.

As Is Tradition!

I just want to shout out to the board that I love how we collectively just enjoy these silly Pitch Meeting videos for every pop culture release XD

Yeah, for all these recent very bad media projects, I don’t have to search out the channel because I know it’ll pop up here.

I don’t search em out, I’m subscribed.