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 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
Amusingly, the unused version of his fair form from the Jackson movies actually got it down exceptionally well. Not the eminem wannabe.

As for the rest of it, i'm trying to be neutral, but the sliding timeline is what's hacking me off the most. Shoehorning hobbits in just because there must be hobbits because it's lord of the rings.

Remember this is all based on unpublished works, apocrypha, and such. Tolkien often changed his mind about background and details so it's not like there is a hard and fast timeline, only whatever state it was in when he passed away.

There is most certainly a coherent timeline. And Hobbits did not appear in records until early 3rd age, well after the events being detailed in the show.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
Amusingly, the unused version of his fair form from the Jackson movies actually got it down exceptionally well. Not the eminem wannabe.

As for the rest of it, i'm trying to be neutral, but the sliding timeline is what's hacking me off the most. Shoehorning hobbits in just because there must be hobbits because it's lord of the rings.

Remember this is all based on unpublished works, apocrypha, and such. Tolkien often changed his mind about background and details so it's not like there is a hard and fast timeline, only whatever state it was in when he passed away.

There is most certainly a coherent timeline. And Hobbits did not appear in records until early 3rd age, well after the events being detailed in the show.

True but the reasoning was that the Hobbits are seen as integral to a "Lord of the Rings" story and after discussion with the Tolkein estate, the Harfoots were chosen. They were the earliest known Hobbits. Given that all it says is they were first recorded at X in the Third Age, that's not really anything to stop them. The key point about Hobbits is that they hide away from "The Big People" and obviously they didn't just appear on the date they were recorded. It's hardly a universe destroying move to have them in.

No, but it is pandering in the extreme. Because Lord of the Rings, there must be hobbits. It's so incredibly shallow, it's actually painful. Besides, i can't help but imagine if some new species that's shorter than dwarves appeared, and had something to do with the events of the series, someone would have made a note of it somewhere.

A footnote perhaps?

 Olthannon wrote:

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
Amusingly, the unused version of his fair form from the Jackson movies actually got it down exceptionally well. Not the eminem wannabe.

As for the rest of it, i'm trying to be neutral, but the sliding timeline is what's hacking me off the most. Shoehorning hobbits in just because there must be hobbits because it's lord of the rings.

Remember this is all based on unpublished works, apocrypha, and such. Tolkien often changed his mind about background and details so it's not like there is a hard and fast timeline, only whatever state it was in when he passed away.

There is most certainly a coherent timeline. And Hobbits did not appear in records until early 3rd age, well after the events being detailed in the show.

True but the reasoning was that the Hobbits are seen as integral to a "Lord of the Rings" story and after discussion with the Tolkein estate, the Harfoots were chosen. They were the earliest known Hobbits. Given that all it says is they were first recorded at X in the Third Age, that's not really anything to stop them. The key point about Hobbits is that they hide away from "The Big People" and obviously they didn't just appear on the date they were recorded. It's hardly a universe destroying move to have them in.

It depends on how much of them they have and if they effect major events.

Hobbits do not even appear in the records of Middle Earth prior to mentions of them moving into what would become the Shire in the years after the establishment of Arnor. In the time period of the 2nd Age which is when this series is happening they are basically non-existent, living unnoticed in the corners of the world. Their triviality and not being important is actually what makes them so important during the events of the LotR trilogy.

So really, for the hobbits to work within this show they need to be passive observers and nothing more.

I see criticism of what this show looks like is removed from here as well as YouTube.

I have watched many youtube videos criticising Rings of Power on youtube.

I just wish it was not Lord of the Rings, because it looks nice. It just does not look like LotR IMO.

 StygianBeach wrote:
I have watched many youtube videos criticising Rings of Power on youtube.

I just wish it was not Lord of the Rings, because it looks nice. It just does not look like LotR IMO.

Yeah, if people want to make a fantasy show with your "insert modern social-political BS here" then make your own story and setting. Don't ruin other people's settings just because you can't create something compelling on your own.

 AduroT wrote:
A footnote perhaps?

Needs more exalts.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/lord-of-the-rings-power-amazon-show-tolkien-1235198137/amp/

This was on that list of suggested articles on Google chrome so I thought I'd have a read.

It's interesting and I like that if nothing else, they are aspirational. Release date is less than a month away now so I'm interested to see how it pans out.

One thing I will say really works in their favour is talking about the sets. A mark of a good show is limited CGI and clearly the absurd amount of money Amazon put into it means that they have a huge budget for the sets.

I went from hopeful to skeptical, now back to cautiously hopeful thanks to the latest trailers. Practical effect Orcs is a good sign. And I like the music. I am sure there will be bits I dislike but there will hopefully be more good than bad.

As for Hobbits, or Harfoots for that matter, I have no problem whatsoever with them existing before history records them. Isn't part of their magic is to generally remain unnoticed?

 Grumpy Gnome wrote:

As for Hobbits, or Harfoots for that matter, I have no problem whatsoever with them existing before history records them. Isn't part of their magic is to generally remain unnoticed?

Yeah, but the issue isn't them existing. The issue is them being on screen at all, and clearly going to be involved in the story. Which is canon breaking. Their "magic" being to be unnoticed is kinda broken if they get noticed.

Hobbits in the 2A should either be totally unseen on-screen OR have some sort of cameo appearance in a *nudge nudge wink wink* bit where we see them scuttling away in the shadows and some actually important character says "I wonder what that was?" and then we see nothing more.

The only way they can really redeem a hobbit storyline is if their story never fully intersects with the main story. Basically, inconsequential side characters who occasionally see stuff the main characters are doing, or have to deal with some consequences. "Oh my, the Big Folk are having a huge battle over there, we better run and hide" type thing. They can at most be disconnected observers of the main events.

I think thats both inaccurate and unreasonable.

The thing with the Hobbits isn't that nobody ever actually noticed them. It's that they are so incredibly uninteresting that there is no reason to record them. They are completely unremarkable. Hobbits could be walking down the road next to men and elf and history would only record the nobles who were there omitting that the Hobbits even existed exactly like the peasant with a horse and cart.

Funny thought. I think Amazon might not want to use the name Hobbit in case it clashes with whoever has the ownership of New Line Cinema (I think it's Warner Bros) because in all official material is harfoot this, and hardfoot that.

M.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Yeah, if people want to make a fantasy show with your "insert modern social-political BS here" then make your own story and setting.

Whenever I see stuff like this part of me always yearns for historically accurate, warts and all, TV series about one of the many multi ethnic/religious past empires. Of course it would probably get denounced as 'woke' because people can't accept that so much of what we think was conditioned by 19th century Europe and can't imagine the frankly alien mindsets from the past.

The_Real_Chris wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Yeah, if people want to make a fantasy show with your "insert modern social-political BS here" then make your own story and setting.

Whenever I see stuff like this part of me always yearns for historically accurate, warts and all, TV series about one of the many multi ethnic/religious past empires. Of course it would probably get denounced as 'woke' because people can't accept that so much of what we think was conditioned by 19th century Europe and can't imagine the frankly alien mindsets from the past.

The funny part is that I would love to see proper multi-ethnic empires and historical kingdoms but what we usually get are terrible TV series where focus on race swapping established historical figures that were white (Anne Boleyn being black anyone?) and inserting and disproportionately focusing on races that wouldn't be present in any significant number or way (Black vikings in Valhallla). It smacks of cowardice from how they aren't willing to take risks by using real historical settings outside of Europe or North America and instead just resorts to race swapping to gain virtue signal points since they know the typical person's historical knowledge is so garbage that they'd have to actually work to do a good job spotlighting other cultures.

 Miguelsan wrote:
Funny thought. I think Amazon might not want to use the name Hobbit in case it clashes with whoever has the ownership of New Line Cinema (I think it's Warner Bros) because in all official material is harfoot this, and hardfoot that.

M.

I don't think that is the issue. New Line does not have exclusive right to the term Hobbit as far as I can tell.

They're using Harfoot because they seem under the misconception that they're some sort of proto-hobbit when they're really just one of the 3 overarching clans that all hobbits belong to(Harfoot, Stoors, and Fallowhides). Harfoots are also the most common type of hobbit.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

The_Real_Chris wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Yeah, if people want to make a fantasy show with your "insert modern social-political BS here" then make your own story and setting.

Whenever I see stuff like this part of me always yearns for historically accurate, warts and all, TV series about one of the many multi ethnic/religious past empires. Of course it would probably get denounced as 'woke' because people can't accept that so much of what we think was conditioned by 19th century Europe and can't imagine the frankly alien mindsets from the past.

Not by me it wouldn't. If it was done in the proper historical fashion, and not the way it always gets done like Grimskul mentioned with race-swapping and modern social-issue shoehorning just to gain brownie points with whatever group is flavor of the month right now.

The_Real_Chris wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Yeah, if people want to make a fantasy show with your "insert modern social-political BS here" then make your own story and setting.

Whenever I see stuff like this part of me always yearns for historically accurate, warts and all, TV series about one of the many multi ethnic/religious past empires. Of course it would probably get denounced as 'woke' because people can't accept that so much of what we think was conditioned by 19th century Europe and can't imagine the frankly alien mindsets from the past.

What exactly does this have to do with his statement?

The issue with things like The Witcher Netflix series and now The Rings of Power is that corporations are making lazy cash grabs using known and popular franchies and mutilating the original stories and settings in the process. They know that no one will tune in for a series set in an original IP so they inject their messaging into whatever pre-existing franchise they can get their hands on. It's incredibly fething lazy. I don't know why people are defending billion-dollar corporations that are just making cash grabs.

If they really cared about the "woke agenda" they would be willing to sacrifice the bottom line to a greater degree and find women and minority writers to craft original stories and shows, but that wouldn't draw anywhere near the level attention as something with a built-in fanbase.

trexmeyer wrote:

If they really cared about the "woke agenda" they would be willing to sacrifice the bottom line to a greater degree and find women and minority writers to craft original stories and shows, but that wouldn't draw anywhere near the level attention as something with a built-in fanbase.

Well, the corporations care about it to the extent they can make money from it. Though I think there is also a small, but influential, sect of wokists who want to insert their agendas into existing fandoms specially because they are existing fandoms. They're really just cringy fanfic basement dwellers, the difference is they've gotten someone to throw money at them because their flavor of fanfic is the current flavor of the month. The difference is they're writing woke LotR fanfic instead of Goth Harry Potter teen drama fanfic.

So the Corporations think they can make a quick buck, both from normal corporate "gotta make money with what is popular" and small numbers of influential "true believer" wokists.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Well, the corporations care about it to the extent they can make money from it. Though I think there is also a small, but influential, sect of wokists who want to insert their agendas into existing fandoms specially because they are existing fandoms. They're really just cringy fanfic basement dwellers, the difference is they've gotten someone to throw money at them because their flavor of fanfic is the current flavor of the month. The difference is they're writing woke LotR fanfic instead of Goth Harry Potter teen drama fanfic.

Fanfic of the Rings!

I like how it sounds.

M.

In fairness, its not just this show.

Most every show and movie in the last 5 years meets the criteria of cringy fanfic.

Can't believe I'm doing this but can anyone tell me exactly what it is that is "woke" about this?
The term is a load of nonsense anyway but seriously, what is it that makes it so bad in your eyes?

 Gert wrote:
Can't believe I'm doing this but can anyone tell me exactly what it is that is "woke" about this?
The term is a load of nonsense anyway but seriously, what is it that makes it so bad in your eyes?

Instead of writing new stories with the characters and plotlines that they want to feature, they co-opt preexisting, typically popular material and bastardize characterizations and plot elements to serve their purpose. It's lazy. It shows a complete lack of artistic integrity.

Lord of the Rings was, by modern standards, a bit racist and sexist. Tolkien had apparently zero interest in writing female characters and barely made use of minorities. The "darker" men are peripheal. Changing this is a lie.

It would be no different than if someone adapted and whitewashed Earthsea. Stop fething with already finished stories. Do something new. Star Trek has been doing this for decades and succeeding.

trexmeyer wrote:

 Gert wrote:
Can't believe I'm doing this but can anyone tell me exactly what it is that is "woke" about this?
The term is a load of nonsense anyway but seriously, what is it that makes it so bad in your eyes?

Instead of writing new stories with the characters and plotlines that they want to feature, they co-opt preexisting, typically popular material and bastardize characterizations and plot elements to serve their purpose. It's lazy. It shows a complete lack of artistic integrity.

Lord of the Rings was, by modern standards, a bit racist and sexist. Tolkien had apparently zero interest in writing female characters and barely made use of minorities. The "darker" men are peripheal. Changing this is a lie.

It would be no different than if someone adapted and whitewashed Earthsea. Stop fething with already finished stories. Do something new. Star Trek has been doing this for decades and succeeding.

But we have done this for decades. That is pretty much 50's and 60's Hollywood. Take a story, change everyone to white Americans (plus British baddies), go.

I really only care about changes if the characters sex, ethnicity or nationality is part of the story. Go to an extreme - if Jesus is black (and plenty of North Africans and others knocking around the empire at the time, plenty of black Jews knocking around now), is any of the bibles message changed? If you make all the Dwarves in LotRs female does it change anything? Would anyone notice if it turned out Legolas was a female elf? From memory I think the only character where their sex was key was Éowyn as that is what enabled her to kill the wraith.

It was wrong to do so then and it is wrong to do so now.

 Grimskul wrote:

The_Real_Chris wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Yeah, if people want to make a fantasy show with your "insert modern social-political BS here" then make your own story and setting.

Whenever I see stuff like this part of me always yearns for historically accurate, warts and all, TV series about one of the many multi ethnic/religious past empires. Of course it would probably get denounced as 'woke' because people can't accept that so much of what we think was conditioned by 19th century Europe and can't imagine the frankly alien mindsets from the past.

The funny part is that I would love to see proper multi-ethnic empires and historical kingdoms but what we usually get are terrible TV series where focus on race swapping established historical figures that were white (Anne Boleyn being black anyone?) and inserting and disproportionately focusing on races that wouldn't be present in any significant number or way (Black vikings in Valhallla). It smacks of cowardice from how they aren't willing to take risks by using real historical settings outside of Europe or North America and instead just resorts to race swapping to gain virtue signal points since they know the typical person's historical knowledge is so garbage that they'd have to actually work to do a good job spotlighting other cultures.

I would be up for a great series set in the Achaemenid Empire! Some clickbait Cyrus title needed though.

trexmeyer wrote:
Instead of writing new stories with the characters and plotlines that they want to feature, they co-opt preexisting, typically popular material and bastardize characterizations and plot elements to serve their purpose. It's lazy. It shows a complete lack of artistic integrity.

Adaptations of things have existed since forever. This isn't new. Heck, most new things are adaptations or reimaginings of other stories because art is influenced by other art. The showrunners were pretty explicit that while they believe their interpretation of Tolkien's works is pretty spot on, they also never claimed to be the only correct interpretation.

Lord of the Rings was, by modern standards, a bit racist and sexist. Tolkien had apparently zero interest in writing female characters and barely made use of minorities. The "darker" men are peripheal. Changing this is a lie.

So the "big" thing with LotR being racist is that it is believed by some that Orcs are intended to be a characterisation of non-Europeans. There is one private letter that describes Orcs as:
"squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types."
And that's it. There's no other evidence to suggest Tolkien was racist. When he used "dark" and "black" as adjectives he used them in the biblical sense of the Darkness and the Light as representations of Evil and Good respectively, not as a metaphor for how non-Whites were evil or degenerate. In fact, Tolkien was famously anti-racist and was disgusted by the Nazi's racial ideology as well as the anti-German propaganda created by the British Government. If we're talking about the "East=Bad and West=Good" argument then Tolkien himself settled that years ago by saying:

As for sexism, not sure how LotR could be seen as sexist when Eowyn's tale is kind of a big deal.
All that being said, "apparently" is not a good basis for an argument.

It would be no different than if someone adapted and whitewashed Earthsea.

Most of the cast for RoP is white. Galadriel, Elrond, Isildur, Gil-Galad, Elendil, Celebrimbor, and a chunk of other characters are all still white. Forgive me if I don't think this is a valid argument to make when there are still very few PoC cast.

Stop with already finished stories. Do something new.

How do you know if are they messing with the stories if you haven't seen the show? Have you seen the scripts? Do you know exactly what it is the writers and showrunners are doing? If you know the exact lines of every single character and the exact story the show will follow would you mind cluing the rest of us in?

Star Trek has been doing this for decades and succeeding.

"Succeeding" isn't the term I would use. I would also like to point out that any time a new ST was introduced, there were people who hated it before it had even been released. TNG especially got a load of press about how it wasn't the OG crew and that some random Shakespearean actor had been cast as the lead.
If you cast your mind back to yesteryear, Peter Jackson's LotR films were also heavily hated before and during their release.

 Gert wrote:
Can't believe I'm doing this but can anyone tell me exactly what it is that is "woke" about this?
The term is a load of nonsense anyway but seriously, what is it that makes it so bad in your eyes?

Nothing they have shown from the show itself, so far, is explicitly woke. They haven't shown much.

What has been woke is the producers in interviews and articles about it saying how they want to modify Tolkein's stories to fit the "modern age" I believe was the word. They've been fixated on having Elves and Dwarves of Color "for the first time!", a concept that would be anathema in Tolkein's world. There is no "people of color" in his world, there is just people. A clear hyper-neoilliberal agenda they are focusing on.

This is concerning because people who get fixated on those things tend to slather and defile everything they touch with this stuff.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

The_Real_Chris wrote:

 Grimskul wrote:

The_Real_Chris wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Yeah, if people want to make a fantasy show with your "insert modern social-political BS here" then make your own story and setting.

Whenever I see stuff like this part of me always yearns for historically accurate, warts and all, TV series about one of the many multi ethnic/religious past empires. Of course it would probably get denounced as 'woke' because people can't accept that so much of what we think was conditioned by 19th century Europe and can't imagine the frankly alien mindsets from the past.

The funny part is that I would love to see proper multi-ethnic empires and historical kingdoms but what we usually get are terrible TV series where focus on race swapping established historical figures that were white (Anne Boleyn being black anyone?) and inserting and disproportionately focusing on races that wouldn't be present in any significant number or way (Black vikings in Valhallla). It smacks of cowardice from how they aren't willing to take risks by using real historical settings outside of Europe or North America and instead just resorts to race swapping to gain virtue signal points since they know the typical person's historical knowledge is so garbage that they'd have to actually work to do a good job spotlighting other cultures.

I would be up for a great series set in the Achaemenid Empire! Some clickbait Cyrus title needed though.

King of Kings I think would be sufficient.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Nothing they have shown from the show itself, so far, is explicitly woke. They haven't shown much.

So there's nothing you can find that fits your nonsense term but it's new so you've got to complain about it anyway. Why am I not surprised?

What has been woke is the producers in interviews and articles about it saying how they want to modify Tolkein's stories to fit the "modern age" I believe was the word. They've been fixated on having Elves and Dwarves of Color "for the first time!", a concept that would be anathema in Tolkein's world. There is no "people of color" in his world, there is just people. A clear hyper-neoilliberal agenda they are focusing on.

This is concerning because people who get fixated on those things tend to slather and defile everything they touch with this stuff.

If there are just people then why is it an issue that there have been PoC cast? If Tolkien didn't make explicit that people were one thing or another, is it not more accurate to have a wider variety of actors instead of just white Americans, Brits, and New Zealanders? And just to be clear, I'm not calling anybody racist because PJ's LotR doesn't have any non-white characters because it isn't.
As for your "hyper-neoliberal agenda", they didn't actually fixate on it until people made it something to fixate on. All that was done was a reveal of cast members then gakheads and scumbags jumped on it, at which point the showrunners said:
"Tolkien is for everyone. His stories are about his fictional races doing their best work when they leave the isolation of their own cultures and come together."
Tolkien explores the theme of "people of different ethnicities, backgrounds, and walks of life all coming together for a common cause. For me personally, as a viewer, I would have the expectation that [the series] would reflect the real world, as well as the world as I aspire it to be."
The show didn't make a big deal of it, people did when they started flinging gak because they saw brown people.

 Grey Templar wrote:
A clear hyper-neoilliberal agenda they are focusing on.

Can we leave out the ridiculous hyperbole? At most what we are seeing here is a very moderate and centrist agenda driven by market research and concern for profits, there is nothing "hyper" about any of it. Whether or not you like the changes in question they are indisputably minor and incremental.

This is concerning because people who get fixated on those things tend to slather and defile everything they touch with this stuff.

And yet for all the complaints of the right-wing outrage machine over "wokeness" the primary things bringing down movies/shows/etc are the same old flaws that have existed for as long as we have had storytelling: poor pacing, shallow characters, emphasis on spectacle over story depth, etc. It wasn't a Star Wars character having a "feminist" hair color that killed TLJ, it was the complete inability to understand pacing and assemble a coherent story.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gert wrote:
Adaptations of things have existed since forever. This isn't new. Heck, most new things are adaptations or reimaginings of other stories because art is influenced by other art. The showrunners were pretty explicit that while they believe their interpretation of Tolkien's works is pretty spot on, they also never claimed to be the only correct interpretation.

Exactly. If you want a LOTR story that does not deviate at all from the original text then go read Tolkien's books. They're all still there for you to read, nobody is taking them away. But when you have an adaptation it's inevitably going to have changes from the source material, and you may or may not like all of them. None of this is in any way new.