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Coming to the defense of a heartless multinational corporation and all that, but there is certainly an amount of VFX work in this preview that they would definitely not have finished in time if they had opened with it and wanted to keep with the current schedule, but the woeful state of the VFX industry is a topic all its own.
Overall the trailer looks pretty decent, someone said it looked 'glossy' and I definitely see that, there's a certain soft focus sheen to Amazon studio stuff that I'm not a fan of, but they've nailed the overall aesthetic which despite all the clickbait whining is the first actual hurdle they had, so good for them.
I do think they were a bit dishonest with the talk about 'before there was a sunrise' and showing the two trees, and then going on to show what is clearly Numenor and hobbits and men and everybody interacting with dwarves and so forth. I'm assuming that the shot of the trees (and possibly the narration as well, though that may be awkward trailer dialogue) is part of a flashback sequence, since I really can't see them trying to cram the (extremely metal) Feanor stuff into a series that already features Gil-Galad and Isildur and such.
I mean, there are plenty of blond white guys out there, but for me the Eminem comparison has as much to do with the '**** him and **** you too' energy we have in this one shot he's in in the trailer.
That said, Anson Boon has a sort of dual challenge in that depending on the needs of the story he's going to have to pull off self-proclaimed King of the Earth Sauron, prisoner dragged home in chains Sauron, and good friend with secret betrayal plot Sauron - with a possible side order of noble smithing-spirit Sauron, snivelling lackey Sauron, or even 'oh look at me, I'm a spooky Vampire!' Sauron to go with it.
I think it'll be up to the writers to see if they can capture all that range with the character, from interviews it looks like Boon is a reasonably charismatic guy who can definitely pull off the role, as long as the writers don't fall into that trap of having your scheming advisor do nothing but whisper obvious false promises in a sing-songy voice.
Watched it last night, it was really good, they've really put their best foot foreward.
Dripping with money, of course; money everywhere, but every cent is being put to work here with great production value in every shot.
More importantly, the direction behind it is ambitious, cinematography, acting, the music, all of this is movie tier, and barring some major misstep by either party this thing is going to go toe-to-toe with House of the Dragon the way LotR and Harry Potter did in the aughts. Star Wars is going to have to step up their TV game, for sure.
I especially appreciated the dialogue: Tolkien would write his characters speaking in a very structured way, and the show maintains that in the words while still having the characters speak with energy as if they were real people in the space and it works very well. It's especially noticeable with the dwarves and hobbits who manage to be quippy or boisterous without needing to fall into anachronistic modern dialogue like the Jackson films would.
Content wise:
Spoiler:
-Mostly elf action these first two episodes, principal characters being put up on the board.
-The show's set firmly in the first quarter of the Second Age, meaning save for some neccesary exposition on how we got here, there will be very little actual lore to base it off of, a few pages pages in the Silmarillion summarizing centuries worth of events. My fear that they were going to shuffle things around chronologically to show the trees thousands of years later than when they existed was unfounded.
-Many of the elven actors have mondo chins and it's going to take some getting used to - but I wouldn't bash any one character's casting.
-The dwarves were especially great, seeing Moria as a proper thriving Dwarf Fortress (complete with waterfalls to improve dwarven moods and tank your FPS) made me smile.
-Durin and Eldrond's interactions were also quite nice, and the idea that an elf will not talk to a friend for 20 years and not even think anything's weird about that while the dwarf in turn would take it as a seroius personal insult that would poison elf/dwarf relations for years without any of the elves noticing is tropey as all hell, but absolutely perfect.
-The hobbits are hobbits, they're called something else but they're hobbits. Here they're a nomadic people that live further out east, I expect they'll be our 'feet on the ground' for when disaster comes - most likely fleeing west to found the Shire.
-The tall spooky man who they meet may be a Maiar, come to earth in the Second Age instead of the Third Age - while this seems to be the most direct contradiction of established canon, its not one I particularly mind. If it turns out to be an origin story for Gandalf and his affection for hobbits I won't mind at all.
-They've pulled a little trickery with Galadriel here, the timelines match up with her being alive during the age of the trees, and she was part of the Noldor host that travelled over the ice to reach Middle Earth. She had a number of brothers who died in Middle Earth, but the one I think they're showing as her primary motivation is Finrod, who is notably the only Noldor that was permitted to return to life after leaving Valinor - if she had returned then he probably would have been there waiting for her. -Likewise, no Celeborn in sight - at this point in the timeline she'll at least have met him, but I suspect their relationship will become a plot point for her arc as well.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I would bet the change in lore and lack of Celeborn is due to a rights issue. The show has the rights to the LOTR appendices, but NOT to the Silmarillion. Everything in the show has to be based on extrapolations from the appendices, and likely has to be changed not to include material strictly mentioned in the Silmarillion.
I haven't read the appendices, but I definitely have read the Silmarillion.
Spoiler:
But so far we have Feanor referenced by name, Morgoth, the Silmarils, Aule is invoked a bunch by the dwarves, and of course, Celebrimbor. Are any of those not mentioned in the appencidies?
Am I the only one who remembers an absolute deluge of 'dindu nuffin' and 'kangs' memes infesting every corner of the internet immediately after John Boyega appeared in the first seconds of the first trailer?
Whether or not I am - can we save the Star Wars discussion for the Star Wars thread? This evergreen whining about it kills every thread it touches.
They need to ensure the show has as broad an appeal as possible, and that means going after the cinematic audience and more, not the hardcore fans of the books.
The issue is those are not opposing things. A true to the lore show would have had just as much appeal to the overall audience and not been unpalatable to the hardcore fans. The changes they've made are not drawing additional viewership, but it is driving some away.
Yeah, I never got that argument. LoTR got its start from having great world building based upon Tolkien's knowledge of mythology and a solid story with a well developed roster of characters. It feels like a very weak argument to say that to move away from that would somehow make it better, especially when they're setting this up as a prequel with existing characters that people know from the movies, so it's not like they're even trying to enter an unknown space of LoTR to carve their own story. If you try to appeal to everyone, you end up pleasing nobody.
I dunno, maybe I'm jaded? I've seen good movies that are terrible adaptations (the Shining, off the top of my head), I've seen good movies that have completely disregarded their own lore (Terminator 2), and I certainly remember book fans swearing that Jackson was a hack and his movies wouldn't make their budget back because they were upset by some lore breaking scene here or terrible action hero line there.
I see the argument that it's not faithful to the lore when it otherwise could have been - and we can probably agree on that point in a couple of instances, but for now we don't really know how much any of those changes are going to matter in the upcoming narrative, we might come out the other end of this thinking there's no other way they could have done it. More importantly though, I've never really considered Tolkien lore as a 'set in stone' kind of thing. I was always under the impression that he was operating under this kind of meta narrative about all these books having been translated by him from manuscripts written in elvish by Frodo, Bilbo and whomever else?
All that said though, we need to wait and see. They're bragging about the number of unique viewers on the first day, it's a marketing gimmick I'm not fond of but if they can retain it that would bode well for the show's future. For my part, I've shown it to a couple of friends from my Pathfinder group who aren't Tolkien fans, and it went over pretty well with them. They had a number of questions about the broader setting that I filled in with half-remembered Tolkien lore (which I'm pretty sure I got wrong plenty of times since I haven't read the Silmarillion since High School and my main refresher on its stuff is from Blind Guardian! ) and seem to be on board with it.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: Most of the adaptations that are better than the books they’re based on succeed because they diverge so much from the book. Look at Die Hard and The Princess Bride. The Godfather works as a movie because it cuts out about 60% of the book (some of which ends up in The Godfather 2), including most of the schlock.
Stephen King allegedly hated the Shining and its lack of topiary monsters. Michael Ende sued over Neverending Story (though admittedly that book spends the first half setting up an idealistic fantasy concept only to tear it down brutally in the second half - and they only adapted the first half...)
Let's not start wheeling in YouTube's famously gakky takes, that's not going to bring people's tempers down and I'd like for this thread not to get closed.
Grumpy Gnome wrote: I will also add it makes me incredibly sad that real world racial conflict makes this thread spend more time on skin color of actors than the use of plate armor instead of scale and maille armor.
This. Middle-earth is a mythological realm, all the peoples of the world springing out of it after they were placed there by Iluvatar. If some are black then they are because God made them so, and that is what they are. I'd prefer that to the show claiming they are explicitly Taleri or Vanyar.
So let's talk about the armour instead. Everywhere I look it's people complaining about the stuff they wear on the boat - and I'm not convinced that's not like, really old or ceremonial or something. The plate in the flashbacks looked fine, and the chainmail in the north sequence, with the stars woven in I thought looked really good!
Lord Damocles wrote:All this talk about minorities, but nobody is appreciating the quality writing that tells us that rocks sink because they look downwards, while boats float because they look upwards; but then how do you know which way is up if the light from the sun/tree reflects off the water. That's the less we should all learn, because the immortal elf who doesn't have a word for death won't be here forever.
...wha..?
I didn't mind the talk itself, in fact all the dialogue is really prosey which I like more than how the Jackson movies would alternate between prose and modern dialogue. As for him not always being there - yeah that's a strange thing to say, that's why it surprises her and he changes the subject, we're getting some cheeky foreshadowing, I think.
Grumpy Gnome wrote:I seem to recall reading various folks online talking about the Elves having armor like “the scales of fish” and Dwarves inventing maille. No mention of plate beyond perhaps vambraces? But I may be misremembering. It was a hot topic a few times over on the Lead Adventure Forum and forms part of the foundation of the Dark Ages aesthetics that several Tolkien fans have created.
Doing a bit of quick research on the plate armor, her “ceremonial armor” does not look as bad in the still as I remember… perhaps it was something with how it looked as it was being removed. It looked too much like a prop. Now, if the showrunners are going to sell me on Elven plate, the second photo does a better job. And that was the thing with Jackson. His vision of Gondor armor and Uruk-Hai armor was very different from mine…. but he sold it to me by looking cool enough for me to give him a pass on them.
I would not be keen to wear maille in Arctic cold.. but if I did, having cool looking stars in the armor is a nice touch. ⭐️
Edit: I did not mind the Green Man leather leaf amor. I was not particularly keen on it but nor did it bother me.
In addition to looking cool, by making it so different from the other armour we see it helps sell that these elves are operating in a far removed place, perhaps not even directly associated with the ones in Lindon.
Something about the boat armour looks flimsy, I saw someone compare it to paper plates. The armour we see Galadriel wearing in promo shots is also different than any we've seen before (this costume budget is crazy) and my first guess is Numenorean, but it looks like they are going to have a scale mail focus.
Unrelated to any of that...
Spoiler:
Is that broken, black, rune marked sword giving anybody else serious Moorcock vibes?
Grumpy Gnome wrote: Excellent set dressing and costuming across the board, except maybe the leather breastplates of the Numenorean sailors but the Royal Guard look good.
So it is leather!
I was having trouble with it last night and watched again this morning to try to confirm one way or the other, I'm not used to metal or leather being depicted that light tan colour and have been trying to puzzle out exactly what it was supposed to be - leaned towards leather due to it being less shiny than the polished metal breastplates of the guards on the land.
Good episode overall, we're still doing a lot of exposition for a show with only 8 episodes this season, but we've easily passed the 3-episode test. They managed to keep me interested in all three running narratives, the dwarves notably didn't steal the show like they did last episode, if only by virtue of not appearing - looks like they're going to have more focus next episode and I wonder if the plan going forward will generally involve them juggling three of their four parallel plot threads each episode?
Observations:
Spoiler:
-Numenor is as gorgeous as the previews have made it out to be - I don't know why but I was surprised the map of it we saw is the one Christopher Tolkien drew.
-We're once again seeing a younger, brasher, meaner Galadriel - Morfydd Clark does a great job of infusing a mix of pride and angry urgency into everything she does here and I'm here for it.
-I still feel to some extent she would work better as an original character.
-I get what they're going for with the riding scene, but it smashes through sentimental awe and lands squarely in corny territory. For all the talk of it it's incredibly brief.
-Speaking of original characters: I was dreading the 'hero character captured and enslaved' segments of this story the most, since they cover a lot of predictable beats, but Arondir continues to be a stand-out performance by Ismael Cordova that, and coupled with their willingness to be shockingly violent with the orcs and get on with an aggressive escape plan I think I ended up liking it better than the Numenor plotline.
-Meanwhile the Harfoot plot thread is my surprise favourite. Did not see that coming.
-Nori is confirmed to be short for Elanor - meaning the harfoots have encountered elves at some point (and not a dwarf named Nori travelling thorugh time, alas)
-A surprising show of depth from Sadoc, not only in refusing to de-caravan Nori or her family over what she did, but even when she told him all the weird stuff surrounding Meteor Man he took it at face value and thought about how it lined up with the legends, rather than just accuse her of lying like his character archetype would do. He also chewed her out for not reading the page herself right away if it was so important she had to steal it.
-I had my doubts that Meteor Man was Gandalf, but I'm warming to the idea more and more as it goes on. I swear I heard a little Sauron whisper from LotR when the page caught fire - I think this and the dead fireflies from last episode are because Sauron is already exhibiting some kind of control over the land.
Grey Templar wrote: Thats... no. No splitting of Sauron into fragments. That is kinda dumb and we've never had anything of the sort in the Legendarium.
He can take spirit form and travel quickly, but actually going full on multiple bodies and personalities is too far.
I agree, it'd be pretty hokey for all the 'potential Saurons' to turn out to be Sauron.
Though frankly I think people are overly fixated on finding Sauron in everything happening here (perhaps because Galadriel is so insistent on it!), Morgoth had other servants and so far and Adar is likely but one of them.
Meteor Man has a lot of ominous signs about him, but I suspect they're a red herring.
Halbrand has been shown able to make friends and influence people relatively easily, but I think if he was Sauron beating up those toughs in the alley would be counterproductive to his long-term plans.
Grey Templar wrote: Sauron wasn't originally evil you are correct. And his evil was very different from Morgoths. He was originally a follower of Aule, so he was a peerless crafter. Obsessed with order and beauty, and this led to a desire for control. Sauron's evil is one of domination and control. Morgoth's was an evil of total destruction and corruption to no purpose out of spite for the inability to create his own vision of the world.
Going to counter you on this one just because I'm listening to the Silmarillion again on audiobook (telling friends half-remembered Tolkien lore and how it may or may not be factoring into the series made me want to read it again) and Morgoth's desire to dominate others, whether it be his peers, the natural order of the universe, or the living beings that were foretold to exist is well established - and may well be the central tenant of Evil in the world.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/09/12 15:10:16
AduroT wrote: I am in no way complaining about the current conversations/speculations. However, do we want to do a book events that haven’t happened in the show yet in spoilers thing similar to what was done for Game of Thrones?
I don't think its necessary - strictly speaking relevant events from the books are critical to well known story elements from Lord of the Rings already, and whether or not the show is faithful to those events is largely up in the air. Do people who are watching the show without having read the Silmarillion or say the books published by Christopher Tolkien find it disruptive?
FWIW the Silmarillion describes these events from a million miles up in prose and style that more closely mimics the Bible so between the showrunners taking liberties with it and the individual reader's tendency to come away with a different interpretation of it there's a good chance these predictions will be way off anyway.
So when the show first dropped there were people speculating on exactly how much they would be able to draw from the Silmarillion or other works beyond just the appendices of Return of the King - that they'd be creating new lore whole cloth as part of the broader 'fanfic' criticism.
As each episode airs, it feels like they've anticipated this criticism, and have been inserting little references here and there to poke at it. Gil-Galad shows up in episode 1, Feanor gets name-dropped in episode 2. Galadriel points out (rightly) that she is of the Noldor in episode 3...
Spoiler:
and Adar talks about Beleriand in this latest one (which caught me off-guard because its completely absent from Galadriel's opening narration and the accompanying map in episode 1!)
I'm a little cooler on this episode than the others, if only because I feel kind of left on the hook for the hobbit stuff and I want to know what happens next!
Spoiler:
Numenor comes front and center here after establishing the basics about it in the B plot of the previous episode. I'm less interested in its plotline if only because I feel I know the most about it - they need to move the plot from point A to point B in order to get Numenor to the point where it's sending ships and colonizing Middle Earth and founding Gondor, etc. it's as well executed as the other plot threads in the show so that's fine.
I'd say Arondir's story comes in as the B plot this episode. We get payoff about Adar which I think really should have been incorporated into the previous episode somehow. He asks Arondir to do something and Arondir goes and does it, but along the way we get some running, some danger, orcs being nasty, etc. and that supplies most of the action this episode (no need to insert a street brawl into the other storylines this time). The only other interesting thing to come out of it is Theo getting confronted by Waldreg - confirming our suspicions about the sword and that some of the people here are loyal to the memory of Sauron.
And we get back to Elrond and Durin to see that some progress is being made on the tower/forge, the big secret from episode 2 is revealed to be mithril (not my guess, good on those who guessed right!) and Durin himself seems to waffle back and forth over whether he trusts Elrond implicitly or is stringing him along like his father wants him to? Their conversation about fathers is probably the most bizarre criticism of the show I've seen thus far: Elrond has some unique circumstances that prevent him from being able to settle things with his father, he says as much in this scene and it doesn't take more than the barest, most basic level of empathy to understand that Durin's going to feel just as torn up if he doesn't settle things with his own aging father.
Finally, Durin gives Elrond a piece of Mithril, which is the part that makes me wonder if he's proving he trusts Elrond more than he'll admit to his dad.
And... (bigger spoilers in a separate box)
Spoiler:
it's worth noting at this point that at least one of the elven rings of power (the one given to Galadriel, no less) is made from mithril.
Manchu wrote: Would have been nice to learn a bit more about Adar in E4 after the blurry face cliffhanger in E3. Or what the Orcs are doing, more specifically than eventually somehow establishing Mordor as their realm. Or something more about the Morgul hilt Theo stole from Waldreg’s barn. Or the identity of the Stranger.
These orcs specifically were digging their way from town to town searching for the sword (definitely not Stormbringer), hence the big moment where Theo lifts it up and the cloaked one is in awe, then goes chasing after him because he has it, right? Otherwise it looks like the villagers are...
Spoiler:
Preparing for some big confrontation with the orcs in the ruins of that tower, which may or may not be betrayed by Waldreg or some other members of the community...
I sure hope this isn't the arc they drop next episode.
Likewise, Meteor Man is still as mysterious this episode as he was last episode by virtue of his plot line never coming up.
I've seen people complaining about the Harfoots saying 'No one gets left behind' and then immediately going back on it. I assumed this was a line from episode 1 or 2 that I missed? Surely it's not the little marching song Sadoc was singing with the children in episode 3?
Because that one absolutely went "Nobody goes off trail, and nobody walks alone." and was accompanied by effigies of wolves and spooky birds that will surely eat naughty harfoots that go off trail or walk alone. No mention of commitments to not leave harfoots behind or even marginally complicated things like how to form search parties because again, it's a little marching song to teach children road safety.
People are clinging to Galadriel trying to swim across the ocean but I don't think it's the silver bullet people make it out to be. Tolkien elves are OP as all hell - swimming across the entire bredth of the ocean is a stretch even then, but Galadriel is hedging her bets here. She grew up in Valinor, she knows Ulmo has your back even when the other Valar don't, and if she is right and she is needed in Middle Earth, she can count on divine intervention to get her there.
And if she isn't, she'll just die, and be reunited with her brother.
Spoiler:
(Literally, she'd go to the Halls of Mandos - the sad irony being Finrod is one of the few elves permitted to leave the halls and return to Valinor proper, so he may well have been waiting for her at the docks on the other side, but she doesn't know that.)
So no, I don't think she's diving in and swimming to Middle Earth based on some expectation that she'll be able to make it on her own (as funny as it would be for all these episodes to just cut back to her for five or ten second snippets of her doing the breast-stroke). I suspect she, in line with all her dialogue expressing doubt about going to Valinor leading up to this scene, concluded that returning now was wrong, and that she had to, by any means, try to get back to Middle Earth, no matter the odds - because elves are chained to their destinies and the fate of the world in a way that men uniquely are not. And sure enough it seems to have paid off for her: a wrecked ship (explicitly not Numenorean, so they got swept out very, very far from home, wherever they're from) a horrible sea worm, Numenoreans, who live on and love the sea, etc.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/09/21 14:19:48
xerxeskingofking wrote:What i found slightly odder was the dis-connect of the people of numernor, who on one hand were clearly insular and happy in splendid isolation, away form the happenings of the wider world and against any intrusion form that wider world...yet at the same time happy to volunteer to nobly go out, fight and possibly die for that same world. it just seemed their mood whiplashed between the two, when i would have though it would need to pass through a imperialist "show them the glory of Numernor" stage inbetween.
Divine intervention aside it looks like we have a baked in population of true believers throughout the island's population (especially in the west with Elendil's folk) but there's a good chance a number of them are like Isildur and friends, who for whatever reason don't feel like they can succeed at home and are seeking opportunity and glory.
Grimskul wrote:I mean it's definitely not accurate to the relations the Numenoreans were shown to have with the Elves, especially up until that point, even in the show version and not the original lore, where there's like, what, one annoying elf in the city? It's not like there's a huge elf diaspora in Numenor taking up the city's resources or driving down their job market from cheap labour. Plus from what I remember there were several instances of Elves gifting Numenor several things for free with nothing in return, like the Palantir, so that would go against the idea of the elves being there to steal from them in some way.
The show's presenting it as a macro-scale echo of Elrond and Durin's problem. Galadriel returns expecting men to be faithful to their past alliance as though she'd been gone for a month only to find generations have passed and opinions have changed drastically as they are wont to do. To her, men seem capricious and fickle, to them she is haughty and entitled. It's an interpretation of the difficulty elves have in accepting the mortality of men specifically that Tolkien alludes to in the Silmarillion, but doesn't delve too deeply in save for the general idea that an elves found the speed at which men wither and die to be terrifying.
Grimskul wrote:It was the jealousy of the elve's immortality that was played upon by Sauron later on to Pharazon, who was tricked into thinking it was withheld from them. Not some bizarre modern fear of stolen labour that doesn't even match the events of the lore that the story is based upon.
Some people are speculating that Sauron is already there, but I think those events have yet to happen. The show's just showing that there is a lot of fertile soil for Sauron to sow dissent when he does arrive.
The Numenor plot was a complete waste this episode. We left them last episode ready to leave with Galadriel and for all the concern and politics and empty threats of them backing off we end this episode in the exact same place with the exact same people.
I could be generous and say we've gotten a more nuanced picture of the different Numenorean characters, I wasn't under the impression that Isildur's sister was going to be much of a factor once they left (or would leave with them for some reason) but instead she's put her foot down on not wanting them to go and has been left to stew in that, along with Pharazon and a few others.
But really, the showrunners don't need to have Galadriel's arc be a focus every single episode, the Harfoot arc had a migration montage, we'd be able to accept the Numenoreans not appearing this episode and understand that time had passed.
I at least appreciate that we're seeing more interaction between her and Halbrand though. I hadn't realized that element had been left hanging until they took it up again.
I'm also reminded that as much as I don't feel like this character is Galadriel, I do like her as a character.
Arondir's arc is definitely in the C-plot position this time around, but we do get some important events. Waldreg and company leave the group so we won't get any shifty undercutting from within - though he may return with critical information on the tower's defenses - or deliver an ultimatum or something. Theo's come foreward with Stormbringer, so more characters can puzzle about its nature rather than just having Theo wander off and hurt himself with it.
Adar isn't keen to be compared to Sauron, looks like. He gets confirmation that the tunnel is complete, so there is some greater purpose for it that will hopefully be revealed before the end of the season.
The preview for next episode seems to be promising a big battle scene at the tower, which is something I'm really looking forward to comparing against the movies and certain other expensive fantasy TV shows we all know.
The Harfoot stuff this time around feels like two separate pieces that should have been further apart. The rude, selfish, advisor one going around, telling Sadoc to leave the Brandyfoots behind with no show of remorse at all for Largo's condition only to immediately turn around and be rescued by Meteor Man, then go around, offscreen, telling the other Harfoots how great and noble he was for saving her.
Speaking of Meteor Man - he's learning to talk - and he has some ominous stuff to say, warning Nori in particular that he is 'peril' and that apparently even he is upset and scared about the incident with the fireflies. He also ends up hurting Nori while in some kind of trance, speaking in tongues.
On the one hand, we're seeing more ominous magic imagery with him, this episode we see him throw back wolves by striking the earth with his arm, hurting himself, and healing himself later by sticking it in water and having it freeze over him. Combined with the way he makes the wind kick up, trees bow, fire kick up, and fireflies to die - we seem to be establishing a baseline power set across the traditional elements, but to what end I have no idea. I'm still leaning away from him being Sauron, as he expresses severe regret over killing the fireflies, and shows he is worried about hurting Nori and the others, and seemingly regretful when he accidentally does so - there's some essential concern for other people that doesn't line up with the desire to dominate thing.
Also, we saw the white-robed cultists, including the woman many have mistaken for Sauron in the previews - They're seemingly after Meteor Man, but they've got a ways to go if they're only just now discovering his crater.
And we got music! Road songs, drinking songs, good honest pages of little poems in service to a theme. I knew it was coming in some way because Poppy's is on the soundtrack, but I'm glad it was used in the show and not just as a credits thing.
Now for Durin and Elrond.
Ok. Big silvery elephant in the room: Mythical origin story for mithril? I suspect it isn't true at all - Elrond says its 'apocryphal' and everybody is being way too aggressive in talking about the Elves and their 'Light' as if it were a literal resource they require to live, and not a quality of their souls intrinsic to them as bestowed by Iluvatar.
As for the legend itself: I don't think they're saying there's a secret fourth Silmaril - but that this tree grew around, or at least temporarily stored one of the extant three. Of those three, one is most thoroughly accounted for, flying through the sky as a star. The other two were claimed by different sons of Feanor who, according to the Simlarillion, threw themselves into the sea and a fiery chasm respectively - its neatly symetrical, with one gem each in the earth, the sea, and sky, but does not rule out conflicting accounts for what happened to them, as those two brothers did whatever they did with the Silmarils on their own without witnesses.
Which is why it bears repeating that Tolkien wrote these stories to be myths as written by people who existed in our really real world, and not factual accounts of real events in a fantastical place, as you might see in fantasy works these days.
But yeah, I think its complete bunk - the signs and portents are pointing to doom rising again from the east, maybe even literally just Adar's apparent plot to blot out the sun. Gil Galad is convinced it can't be that so is grasping at straws to explain it with (actually) magic metal and vital essence- you'd think someone would have noticed Southlands' watch company never came home and that might have given him second thoughts?
Mithril itself is not so wild and fantastic as all that, and it was never treated as such. Numenor has some (or will have some by trade after establishing contact with Middle Earth again, maybe?) the elves use it in all sorts of crafts that they gift and trade to humans and dwarves for - they even alloy it to make magic letters that appear only by starlight and moonlight, etc. We're right on the precipice of a golden age of love and trade between Elves and Dwarves and the idea that you need to motivate it with some existential threat to the Elves (real or imagined) is insulting to the audience. It can just be a cool metal, people!
I suspect there's going to be a reveal at some point that the Silmaril part never happened, and that the myth arose the way it did exclusively because of the Balrog. Then again, it'd be just as easy to say the elf in question was Maedhros, and that he fell into that pit while fighting a Balrog who'd come to claim his hard won Silmaril from him or something.
Also, Durin's antics with the table are fun Dwarf stuff, but I'd rather he hadn't done that. The actor's charismatic enough that he could have played the perfectly polite statesman and still demanded the table to show how desperate the elves were to make the deal work.
So, I appear to have come down with the flu. (Two rapid tests two days apart have consistently come back negative.) So, I am going to take the time I have now to be lucid and mobile to run down to the local drug store and get some fething nyquil.
I'll be back with a more detailed breakdown later, but I will say right now, I really enjoyed this episode and it felt like a pretty good payoff for the buildup we've seen so far. It's also amusingly, if one counts the hours, about where in the theatrical cuts Helps Deep happens and the Jackson Trilogy shifts tone noticeably.
stonehorse wrote:Well that episode is most certainly not family friendly.
A massive departure from the tone of the LoTR films, those can be watched and enjoyed by a family. This... not so much, which I think will limit the audience. It just feels like it is aping GoT and being edgy with the gore and limb hacking.
I will point out, for the record, that the Jackson films have tons of conspicuously bloodless arrow wounds, dismemberments and decapitations. People were very critical about it being too violent back in the day.
stonehorse wrote:
Azreal13 wrote: Thoroughly enjoyed that, and mummy and daddy said I can get the Collapsing Elven Watchtower Playset with Alexa™ Integration And Secret Dam Release Feature for Christmas!!
Anyone else think that the tower was a little too easy to collapse. I know Elves have shoddy workmanship, but that thing had all the integrity of play dough.
Its clearly deliberate to some extent, since the weak spot seems to be a rope that can only be severed by a precise arrow shot from within the keep. But I do question whether it would compromise the structure of the tower in a siege scenario - even that may be a side-benefit, since it seems engineered to collapse down into the mountainside approach.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/10/01 16:48:21
This episode exclusively focused on the Galadriel/Numenor and Arondir/Southlands plots lines, and reasonably so, since this is the episode where those two storylines merge.
More importantly a lot of stuff that we saw get gradually set up over the past five episodes get payed off here:
Spoiler:
We get Adar's backstory at last, and while some people seem to think it's a feint of some kind, I think we can take it at face value: He's an elf, possibly even one of the Quendi, twisted and corrupted by Morgoth and an ancestor of the Orcs.
Likewise his plan to kill the sun is completed and we see it was to use that tunnel he had the Orcs digging to redirect vast amounts of water underneath Mt. Doom to cause it to erupt, choking the Southlands in ash and dust until it may be a place where the shadows perpetually lie.
Galadriel's speculation that this can't be just his plan has some merit: the dam or whatever it was was covered in effigies of Sauron and the like, and was clearly very old. For all Adar's talk about wanting to be free of Sauron it seems that some element of all this was planned out well in advance.
Arondir finally works up the nerve to admit how he feels to Bronwyn and I was sure this was sure the moment that arrow went through her she was going to die. I was actually quite surprised she pulled through.
Halbrand, still clearly doubting himself, none the less takes up the title of King of the Southlands at last. Whatever that means after that ending I have no idea.
Honestly, I'd love it if the last two episodes focussed on resolving the other plotlines and we never find out what happens to Galadriel and company until Season 2 - but we already know better from the next episode preview.
Just some thoughts:
Violence.
Spoiler:
This got brought up earlier but I do think it does merit some discussion. Rings of Power is Rated 14+, the same in Amazon's arbitrary rating system as the PG-13 Lord of the Rings movies. It is, however, easily more violent, and the bulk of that difference is in its use of CGI squibs and blood effects that Netflix and other streaming services have been inserting casually into their original programming for years now.
It doesn't look realistically violent in Lord of the Rings when a guy gets his arm lopped off and there's no blood or anything, its equally unrealistic when someone gets their arm lopped off in Rings of Power and there's a big gooey splat of pudding thrown at the camera from out of the stump. It most certainly does not seem more realistic when an orc is trying to strangle our hero while a cartoonish amount of CGI blood is pouring out of his eye socket, in fact, at this point it just becomes obnoxious.
The only point where we become really, well and truly more violent than LotR is the scene where Bronwyn has her arrow wound treated. It contrasts so sharply with Frodo's stab wound where they had to make a goofy dissapearing CGI blade and jump through all sorts of other hoops to keep their PG-13 rating, only for RoP to have multiple closeups of blood gushing out of wounds, burn scars, etc. There's an old joke that you can basically get away with anything in a PG-13 movie as long as you don't swear or show more than 30% of someone's body, but in 2001 that scene absolutely would have landed you an R rating.
Original Ideas.
Spoiler:
AKA the 'fanfic' problem
Last episode we got the 'Elves needing Mithril to live' thing and it's a great example of how wrong things can go when these show writers try to work in their own ideas to flesh out the (very barebones) Second Age material that they have to work with (or exists, at all)
This episode we have a great example of a positive outcome from the same problem: Adar and Galadriel have a great little discussion about the Orcs and whether they deserve to exist and its pretty great.
Tolkien struggled with the orcs for a long time, he had trouble reconciling the idea of an entirely evil race, even at times wanting to renege on the idea that they were originally elves and perhaps were instead corrupted men, or even something else entirely. Galadriel, in her part of the argument, is drawing entirely from published texts: the orcs are a corrupted, ruined form of life, inherantly foul, creations of Morgoth etc.; and Adar's response is, I think, a well considered original idea that is informed by Tolkien's struggle to reconcile these ideas: None of the Ainur can bestow life, only Iluvatar. The ability to live, the right to live, is bestowed by the One and He has given that to the Orcs just as surely as he gave it to the Dwarves and the others.
As far as answers go its a pretty compelling one, even if it doesn't really help the underlying conflict at all.
Music
Spoiler:
Guys this music is so gorgeous, come on now.
Bear McCreary's use of simple leitmotif for different places and persons is coming together so well here.
I can't stop geeking out about it.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
AduroT wrote: I was expecting Arondir to get saved by one of the guys who called him knife ears in the tavern, and they could then share a brief, meaningful look of respect.
The guy who calls him knife-ears in the tavern is the guy who...
Spoiler:
was killed by Waldreg to prove his loyalty.
I think, anyway.
That said.
Spoiler:
Tredwill, the big burly villager in the sheepskin who said he was brave and shook his hand after the battle (and then got arrow'd) was one of the hostile villagers in the bar during that scene too.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2022/10/02 20:54:11
I've more or less moved on from the flu, but I've still got a lot of phlem and am coughing a lot. Appropriate then that this episode is called 'The Eye' and I should notice just before watching it that I popped a blood vessel in one of mine and I look like some kind of edgy anime villain.
After the events of last episode has effectively merged two storylines (sort of, see below) we have three major plot arcs this episode and for once it feels fairly comprehensive to the entire story of the show.
Galadriel et all:
Spoiler:
-After taking over last episode and stuffing it with action sequences, confessions of love, chase scenes, revelations, ominous dialogue and a twist ending, we were due for a cool-down episode and that's largely what's delivered here.
-Galadriel awakens to see the devastation wrought on the Southlands by the servants of the Enemy. The sky is choked with ash, the wails of the dying are carried on the wind, everything is burning.
-Then she kind of... wanders off?
-I can't overstress how weird it is for her to do this. At first I thought she might be in shock, but upon re-watching she's calling out for Elendil and the others, so what's the deal here? I feel like they were trying to convey that she way very far away from the Numenoreans when Mt. Doom blew its top, but that's not the impression I got last episode.
-While wandering in this way, she finds Theo, and takes him with her. At this point I thought she might be looking for the orcs (because that's what they end up finding), or maybe Adar, but they don't really give her a reason to think they've escaped (she doesn't look around in surprise at their absense, she doesn't go the barn where Adar was supposed to be and find him missing, etc)
-They do have some decent dialogue with each other though. Getting to the subject of how many orcs she's killed was a little awkward, but after he says it's good that she's killed so many, her line about it being dangerous to call evil deeds good struck me as one of the highlights of the show. I expect to hear it in a trailer at some point.
-She also confirms the existence of Celeborn - he's also gone to war and she hasn't seen him since. Between that and the line mentioned previously I think we're finally seeing the guideposts for Galadriel's arc going forward in the show: with Celeborn returning and trying to help her let go of revenge in lieu of guiding and helping others.
-A barn fell on Isildur! But of course we all remember from the previous episodes that tunnels have been dug all through the town and he is almost assuredly being swept downstream through a maze of underground rapids. And again he will almost assuredly wash up on shore and be rescued by Berek in a direct parallel to the scene in Two Towers where Aragorn falls off a cliff to pad out the runtime.
-Elendil and the Queen meanwhile rally the survivors and drive them back to their basecamp (again confirming there must have been a couple of days time between their arrival in middle earth and their arrival in the battle scene)
-The Queen reveals she was hit in the face with burning embers during the incident with Isildur in the barn, and is now blind - they chose to depict this injury using the subtle makeup technique known as absolutely nothing at all, as she looks awkwardly past the camera and tells the audience that she is now blind.*
-Back at camp, Elendil gradually has to accept that Isildur is dead (so that he can show up later dripping with water in a future episode) and sets Berek free so he can play his part in that sequence too. He then looks directly at the camera and tells the audience he regrets saving Galadriel.*
-Speaking of Galadriel - she and Theo get back to camp after a near miss with some orcs during the night. I find this interesting because some of the previous episodes have felt the need to shoehorn fight scenes into the narrative, and it looks like they might have had one here that they ultimately cut. Galadriel gave Theo her sword to defend himself if he needed to, and he carries it now like it very well saved his life - but we didn't actually see him use it.
-Halbrand is wounded - and leaves with Galadriel to go to Lindon and get Elvish medicine - this all seems really straightforward, but they mention explicitly that they found him on the road. I wonder if there's some special significance here?
-The episode's capstone is a shot where Adar and the orcs revel in their victory. He proclaims it's not the Southlands anymore and we get a long panning shot where the words 'Southlands' appear on screen, are burned out, and replaced by 'Mordor'*
*These scenes all feel like hasty and sloppy edits. Like some executive is listening to the people saying they're bored and keep checking their phones and is contemptuous enough of their viewers that they actually believe them. I hope I'm reading too much into this, because if the suits decide they need to go dumber everything I like about the show is going down the drain fast.
Meteor Man Superstar:
Spoiler:
-The Harfoots and company make it to the Grove without further harassment from CGI wolf monsters
-Nori is still clearly very shaken up after the incident with the ice, but it didn't lead to some silly 'go away I don't want you anymore' shaggy dog story scene and we're better off for it
-We see the eruption of Mt. Doom has caused some damage even as far out as they are. Nori doesn't want to ask the Stranger to fix it, but the other hobbits insist, and when she won't, Sadock asks him - and I like that we're seeing this reversal in their behaviour, as the entire village is coming to accept him, if not as one of them, then at least as a good thing, or even a friend.
-And once again we see him work some magic that seems to inexplicably lead to someone almost getting hurt. Only almost though. And after he leaves the damage is repaired so maybe it isn't that the magic is exacting a blood price, but he's exercising some evil that lashes out at the poor innocent harfoots as it leaves?
-Sadock, once again, proves himself to a decent upstanding fellow, gives the Stranger a scrap of paper with the star pattern he's looking for (did he restore it from the burned scrap from memory? was it a spare?) and directs him to travel west to the farside of Greenwood the Great (what would later be known as Mirkwood) and to seem the bigfolk settlements between it and the Misty Mountains.
-Nori also musters up the courage to give him an apple as he leaves, and though later she insists to her mom she was wrong all along and is 'just a harfoot' she proved there she's got a good, brave heart and will be a worthy protagonist for further seasons.
-The three witches show up a couple of days later. Per what others have said previously in thread, they're Easterlings from Rhun, which would put them as historical allies of Morgoth and later, Sauron. That doesn't really answer what's the deal with Meteor Man, or what they want to do to him, but there it is.
-Nori doesn't know anything about them at all, but sees they've deduced he's traveling west and straight up lies to them and says he was going south - another gut feeling?
-After they burn the harfoot camp and leave, Nori commits to chasing after the Stranger to warn him that he's being followed. I don't know what she intends to do if the witches find him, or her first?
-I am once again taken aback by how invested I am in the hobbit stuff. I really hope we get some kind of answer for Meteor Man, I'm ready for him to be Gandalf at the undocumented start of his journey, I'm ready for him to Sauron somehow ignorant of his destiny, please give me the answer before the end of the first season.
Durin v. Durin
Spoiler:
-The elven trade offer is a pretty sweet deal, it would basically represent a complete and comprehensive tithe of elven resources in exchange for the rare metal. The wood was probably most dearly offered in particular.
-King Durin's reluctance to treat with them at all seems to be at odds to his position when the mithril was first hinted at. I think we're meant to see it as illogical as Prince Durin does - but I think the change in position has to do with all the cave-ins that have been caused trying to mine it over the course of the show.
-Elrond employs both Empathy and Sympathy in dealing with the Dwarves in one speech, at once acknowledging that he can see the same flaws in the elves that the dwarves see (because he is, himself, apart from them) and demonstrating his own humility by kneeling before King Durin and pleading with him for aid. This doesn't really change the positions of either of the Durins, but it definitely seems to catch the attention of the dwarven nobles attending with them. I suspect this may come into play later.
-I like the conflict between King Durin and Prince Durin. The former is arguing, perhaps correctly, that they live in a setting with present gods who cause things to happen for a reason, and the latter is arguing, also perhaps correctly, that such considerations cannot come before one's love for one's fellow man (so to speak).
-This comes again in the scene with him and Disa. Durin seems ready to accept the tragedy of what is happening, but upon witnessing the leaf's blight being driven away by its proximity to the ore (as much as I dislike that plot point as I've outlined elsewhere) he can't bear to stand by and let it all go wrong. Durin IV is aggressively written against the dwarven stereotype and Owain Arther is knocking it out of the park.
-And that leads to a scene where they're digging in secret to find a safe route to a sizeable vein and they're found out (I really don't see why they were surprised by that, given the size of the earthquakes) and Durin III and IV get another one on one scene where the King tells him how he was weak as a child but he had a vision of him having a glorious future and it's both sweet and bitter - even though King Durin is that same dwarven stereotype played straight, it's still compelling to watch.
-Prince Durin is stirpped of his inheritence, Disa starts talking about overthrowing the king! For any of its shortcomings I appreciate that RoP has given us more good, not stupid dwarf content than all the hobbit movies combined.
-And of course, we're given a quick tease shot of a Balrog for the trailer. No, this doesn't mean Moria's about to fall, we're still well too early for that.
And just some quick observations:
Spoiler:
-Same Balrog as from Fellowship of the Ring, but not actually the same design.
--The horns aren't as rounded, consist of segments that turn at sharper angles at irregular points, overall profile is more angular
--Bigger teeth, fangs and tusks
--Bigger eyes
--Much like Sauron in the prologue, John Howe is clearly iterating upon the design from the movie rather than going for a drastic redesign, I wonder if people would have been confused if it had been one of his book balrog designs: a big black minotaur in black plate armour or something?
-So where was 'The Eye' in all this?
--All the other episodes have a title that pertains to something that happens in the episode. In the episode Adar everybody is talking non stop about Adar even if he doesn't appear in focus until the next episode, etc.
--But here, there are the Easterlings? One has a staff that kind of has an eye motif? Is that the Eye?
--Is it Disa? With her spooky glowy orange eyes?
--Is it the Queen's eyes? Which look fine despite her now being blind?
Had to rewatch the last episode a couple of times to organize my thoughts about it. I think my initial reaction was worse, and upon re-watching I've been more forgiving.
That said, I think at the end of the day the episode was midling overall and didn't really stick the landing like they needed to. But it doesn't ruin the series for me and it's not going to prevent me from watching it again at some point in the future, listening to the soundtrack while reading through the hobbit or the Silmarillion again, or watching its second season in some unknown future year because apparently they really did wait to see if interest was high enough in the first season before going to work proper on the second.
Observations, broken down by storyline because I think it worked out pretty good. I'm going to appologize in advance for the length, I've basically been adding to this over and over for the past couple of weeks while I was getting over this cough.
Tying up loose ends in Numenor
Spoiler:
-Ken Blackburn gets a great moment where, as the King lays on his deathbed being sketched by Isildur's sister, he begins speaking with her with an almost scary lucidity about the coming doom. He misidentifies her as Miriel, and I'm not entirely sure him saying she (Isildur's sister) is not queen *yet* is entirely a case of mistaken identity and not some hint that she may have some part to play with Ar-Pharazon usurping the throne.
-Since she's had access to the Palantir, perhaps she'll be some kind of Cassandra figure?
-The Queen is in the hold of the ship counting steps, Elendil corrects her and says its *nine* steps to the main post - at first I thought her plan was to pretend not to be blind.
-Elendil's regret for his part in how things played out is much more gracefully presented here. The scene in last episode where he turns and tells the camera the same thing is even more unnecessary than it first appeared.
-They arrive in Numenor to find the black banners flying, signifying the king died offscreen while they were away. Elendil, who affirmed he'd stay with her and help her in the previous shot immediately lets go of her and steps foreward dramatically while she asks confused what happened and why he let her go.
-We close out on Numenor with a shot of Pharazon standing over the king's deathbed, ready to step foreward and be a much bigger problem in later seasons.
The increasingly compelling adventures of Meteor Man and his Hobbit friends
Spoiler:
-Meteor Man is pursued by the three witches, their leader employing a shapeshifting magic that I'm actually OK with. They didn't really have any reason to use it any of the other times we saw them, and I think it supports my theory on what their nature is, more on that further down.*
-They've correctly deduced that he'd be drawn to the image of Nori because earlier she sprang to their defense (and their leader plucked some hair or an ornament from her head continuing her theme of casting spells based on things she must first touch) and while the bit where her eyes are the first thing to change, having the brass section loudly fart out a scare chord when it happens felt pandering and sucked the menace out of the scene.
-Also I believe that's the exact shot from the promos people were circling around and saying 'that's Sauron!'
-I groaned aloud when they announced that Meteor Man is Sauron and they're here to serve him. It's legit something I suspected from the moment he appeared in that crater, but by announcing it in the cold open they basically guaranteed he wasn't.
-That said, the show has been playing with biblical imagery throughout its run so far and the reveal that we have three wise women chasing falling stars to find their spiritual sovereign (who looks and acts like a thoroughly hemped up Jesus) is something I'm very much here for.
-They tell him they want to take him back east to Rhun, that a 'veil' has been placed upon him, cutting him off from his power.
-And even though we're jaded enough to know he's not really Sauron, I wonder if they're not actually wrong about the other things? He's clearly confused as to why he's here, but maybe he really has been cut off from his abilities for some reason related to his quest? At the very least, they knew he would come looking for that constellation, even if they didn't know who he actually was.
-Meteor Man has a sad, throws wind around, and they knock him out through more magic.*
-I actually like the little action sequence that follows, the hobbits fight in hobbity ways, sneaking around, making noise, throwing rocks and distracting while others sneak around and accomplish objectives, and in turn the witches use the tools we've been seeing them employ all this season, and the main one using her shapeshifting power to trick them into trying to rescue *her* is good fun menacing.
-The wizarding duel is a little too ostentatious to be authentic to anything Tolkien would wright, but it they're very deliberately invoking imagery from the movies here, which also has that problem. The short-haired witch again proves she's the most magically adept, capable of standing up to Meteor Man to some extent.*
-"Get away from me, or I will hurt you again." - I love the delivery of this line. Meteor Man believes he's Sauron and the only thing he can think to do is warn Nori to stay away so she won't get hurt, paying off a consistent unselfish quality that has been his throughline all season.
-And Nori, for her part knows she has no idea what the big picture in all this is and doesn't care, she's there to help her friend (and maybe save all her other friends who's she's inadvertently put in danger to save said friend) and cuts through all the doom and portent by being an earnest, uncomplicatedly good person.
-The witches realize their mistake, say he's not Sauron, that he's 'the other', 'the Istar', and Meteor Man declares 'I'm good!' and all of that feels added in post and is painfully awkward.
-When he banishes them, the three witches are shown in alternate forms (true forms?), all corpses in what appear to be different stages of decay, then they explode into moths and fly away.*
-*So... what exactly are the three witches? The first, loudest, and angriest voices cried out 'Ringwraiths?!' in performative outrage, but that's probably not the case, since the rings don't exist and the plot has made it clear that Sauron still hasn't figured out the recipe. Another potential option is that they are just ghosts, three generations of queens or mystics from Rhun all dedicated to serving Sauron - and while certainly possible as Tolkien allows for all manner of crazy ghosts in his setting, they also seem incredibly powerful, with the short haired one demonstrating mastery over fire and shape-changing stuff. I think by process of elimination they are supposed to be some kind of Miar, the same sorts of people as Gandalf, Sauron, the Balrogs, etc. many of which were turned to Morgoth and Sauron's service?
-RIP Sadoc, you defied every crotchety old hobbit authority figure trope you were supposed to embody and we didn't deserve you.
-Later, Nori and Meteor Man discuss what he's remembered, more's come back to him but he understands now that he needs to go to Rhun to seek his answers.
-And, naturally, we get confirmation that he's one of the Wizards as he explains the meaning of the word Istar.
-And, naturally, he's Gandalf, right? Of course he's Gandalf!
-The Harfoots get ready to leave, Nori's family know she wants to stay with Meteor Man, and offer her her pack and well wishes. Her goodbye with Poppy was very sweet and I wish she'd gone with them - yes it would be way too Samwise Gamgee, but I don't care.
-The hobbit/Meteor Man arc closes off with wise words for the ages: "When in doubt, Elanor Brandyfoot: always remember that I am Gandalf. That's me. I'm definitely Gandalf- do you think the folks at home have figured out I'm Gandalf? Oh I hope so!"
Galadriel, Halbrand, et all.
Spoiler:
-"The Sun began as something no bigger than the palm of my hand." Celeborn tries to tell Elrond that the Sun is a fruit from one of the two trees and bumps his head hard against the invisible wall of Silmarillion lore they're not allowed to talk about.
-Galadriel arrives and says they'd been riding six days without rest to get from the western edge of Mordor to west of the Misty Mountains. A figure I thought was completely silly but upon mathing it out... she probably could bypass the mountain ranges and take time off to sleep and still get there in under a week by horseback.
-Did they mention Halbrand had been hit by a lance in the previous episode? You'd think him having gone off and been the only one apparently attacked by orcs after the erruption would have raised more eyebrows.
-"And when I surfaced, all I could do was swim, and pray I had chosen wisely." - Galadriel and the showrunners acknowledging she went kinda crazy there.
-Halbrand discusses his past with Celebrimbor while tap dancing around the specifics "The Master I apprenticed to used to speak of the wonders of your craft.", "Nothing like your artistry.", "Where I came from...", "I've seen a trace of nickel added to iron..." and they all come rapidly one after another like an entire season's worth of suspicious dialogue all crammed into one conversation.
-In fact, this is probably the single biggest problem with this episode and its place in the series: After the Numenoreans decided to go to Middle Earth we had an entire extra episode where they decided to go to Middle Earth - this scene, this interaction with Halbrand and Celebrimbor is a point of similar significance: a point in which the destiny of the world changes, and it's been reduced to a *very rapid* back and forth quip fest because they simply don't have the runtime for them to interact and build a relationship. If this episode had been feature length (as had been rumored) or the extra Numenorean stuff hadn't happened and all the previous Galadriel events had been bumped up an episode then we probably would have been able to spend a good 30-45 minutes to build a rapport these two characters, give Celebrimbor time to open up to what he would assume is the secret wisdom of Iluvatar's impulsive second born children, and let the problems and their solution come up more gradually and organically.
-I love when they're discussing the size and shape of the object Galadriel asks if it can be a sword.
-The tree and the leaves being blighted is being treated less like an omen as the series goes on and more and more like the naked and unwelcome ticking clock added by the writers to up the sense of urgency that it is. It's annoying to see Gil-galad delivering most of these doomy portents too because when he isn't he's clearly playing the wise rational king he's supposed to be, not liking the idea of imbuing one person with the power to save the elves, even himself.
-Celebrimbor making the hard sell, and Galadriel subsequently confronting him about it is some great acting on the parts of Edwards and Clark, but its undercut by what I mentioned before about the problems of having Halbrand having arrived in Eregion all of 15 real time minutes ago.
-"Someone like me... Here... Working with the Elven smiths of Eregion. Thank you, Galadriel." You can hear the red alert siren going off in her head.
-"I'll never forget that. And I'll see to it that no one else does either." There's a little musical stinger here meant to make you feel uneasy, I think it's actually the first few notes of Sauron's big silly brass theme from LOTR.
-There's a mishap in the forge and Galadriel gets another scene where she's reminded of stuff she'd found while searching for Sauron. It's a reasonably good scene (that again feels rushed for being in the same episode as all these other ones) but I did notice two assistant elves adjusting beakers in the background instead of like, pulling shards of those beakers out of their bodies after that explosion which made me chuckle.
-This does lead into Galadriel confronting Halbrand on the very specific strange behaviour she's seen from him this epis- no wait, information about the Southlands' king she had one of the scribes dredge up.
-And for what its worth it's a good confrontation scene, she's already put the pieces together because of the stuff he's gotten up to since coming here, but she's clearly afraid of the answer. I'm not entirely sure why she choses to confront him at this point, she didn't chose the time or place, he came to her, could it be that she couldn't hold it in and wait until they were in a more crowded place with elven guards or something?
-"I have been awake since before the breaking of the first silence. In that time I have had many names." -Sauron legit hates the name Sauron, and I hope at some point we cover that the elves came up with it to make fun of his real name: Mairon.
-Sauron begins talking to her in visions, first as her brother in Valinor, then later as Halbrand. He gives her a very broad explanation as to what his intentions are, that he wants to fix the damage he's done to Middle-Earth, that he wants Galadriel to guide him as his queen, that she's his only hope for redemption and she must help him.
-In the past few weeks since this episode has aired, a lot of people are arguing that he's being honest here, and that Galadriel doomed Sauron and Middle-Earth because she couldn't let go of her hate. This is a bad take, and I'm going to outline why further down, but for the sake of argument here let me sum it up as: He's lying, she knows it, he bails.
-The visions close out with that scene of her drowning in the ocean, tangled up in debris, while explosions (thunder and lightning? war itself?) rage above the surface of the water, she's pulled out of it by Elrond, and I love that when he tells her the work is almost completed she runs into Celebrimbor's forge still gripping that knife and ready to go.
-She tells them Halbrand has left, and that he is dangerous and not to be trusted, but not exactly why- and when confronted on that part by Elrond she makes it clear she expects she'll get banished or something if the real reason comes out and she's probably right about that much.
-Celebrimbor is obviously upset but willing to stop the project based on her words, but she gives him an out: Halbrand's first choice was one thing (to rule them all) and his second choice was two, she sees how either option could sow division but if they dilute the power down to three beings that seek consensus or at least check each others balances they may be able to harness the power without playing into Sauron's plans.
-And while it is a bit of an ass-pull, Celebrimbor saying he needs gold and silver from valinor in order to do it gives Galadriel the moment we've been waiting for all season since the introduction of this dagger, where she has to let it go literally in order to, at least to some extent, step away from the raw grief for her brother that powers her quest for revenge, and start to take steps towards healing into the person we see in LotR. The line about true creation requiring sacrifice finally shows up and its not nearly as menacing as it was made out to be.
-The actual sequence where they forge the rings is pretty well done. I have literally no idea how jewelry is created so how much of this is fantasy world stuff and how much of it is 'real' jewelcraft I have no idea but that kind of adds to the mystique.
-The rings themselves look good, and distinct: can you imagine the uproar if they had just re-used the lotr props?
-With the rings forged, we close out on Sauron, still in the form of Halbrand, descending into Mordor, and the credits close on the ominous leitmotif we've had at different points in the show expanded into a full song with lyrics. The song itself discordant and unpleasant, but I wouldn't necessarily say 'bad' - just deliberately discordant and unpleasant by design.
This is coming out way more rambly than I intended it to, but after rewatching it a couple of times I think I've settled on it being a disappointing conclusion to the first season, but only mildly so. The first season throws a lot of balls in the air and there's simply not enough time to take the plots where they were at the start of the episode and get them to the point where they are at the end in a satisfying manner in the length of a regular episode. An extra twenty minutes would have done wonders here, an entire extra episode would have been better, even cutting out one episode worth of the extended stay in Numenor and introducing Celebrimbor to Sauron an episode earlier would have helped make their rapport more believable.
As it stand for the show itself, I'm overall positive about it, despite the disappointing season finale. The show itself was gorgeous to watch despite the occasional failed experiment by what is clearly an inexperienced studio trying to experiment with billions of dollars on the line. I'd say the effects work is cinema quality but Marvel has lowered that bar quite a bit - its really saying something when you really sit down and compare the effects shots of a scene like Halbrand and Galadriel on the ocean as the ripples all suddenly die off, or Meteor Man confronting the witches as a raging fire dies out and its just embers and trees and night sky as far as the eye can see, and compare that to a more mature production like House of the Dragon - who's episode that same week featured a much more obviously CGI dragon smashing through a floor that turned instantly to smoke as obviously CGI people ran around a foggy, dimly lit room. The sheer bulk of that budget is constantly on display.
I do worry that they tried to dumb some things down in these past couple of episodes in order to accommodate the people who claim its too difficult to follow despite not paying attention. Things tend to get really bad really fast when studio types let their contempt for their viewers' intelligence dictate how the show gets made.
Sauron
Spoiler:
So. At about the halfway mark of this episode we get the big reveal that Halbrand is Sauron. We've had some clues (along with a number of red herrings) all through the show and he truthfully admits point for point that his helping Galadriel has served his interests. He also offers Galadriel a very specific bargain: He tells her he wants to repair the damage he's done to Middle Earth, that he needs her help to do so. He offers her a position of equal power, an equal share of his plans, if only she will ally herself with him they will accomplish great things together and change the world for the better. He tells her she's already helped him, literally saved his life, and that only she can truly direct him towards redemption.
Here's the thing: He's lying.
How do we know he's lying? Ignoring source material that says wanting to fix Middle Earth was a favourite lie of his that he maybe, just maybe believed once, very early on, ignoring the future lore knowledge that the bargain he's offering is by and large the same one he offers Saruman in the 3rd age, ignoring the ways he's been lying to her from the very start with no indication of reluctance or doubt. Look at the way he reacts when Galadriel finally catches him:
-His first choice is to appear to her in the form of her brother, Finrod.
-As Finrod, he tells her what she wants to hear, that he's happy she kept his dagger, acknowledging her courage, how difficult it's been for her fighting for so long, etc. and then he says she completed the task that he could not.
-Galadriel catches this, and calls him on it right away: Finrod's task was hunting Sauron. She has not completed it.
-Sauron, as Finrod, lies again: Saying Finrod's task was to ensure peace, and that he realized that's what Sauron wanted too.
-Galadriel catches him again: Finrod didn't realize anything, or have a change of heart, he died.
-Sauron continues, tells her she can heal middle earth, all she has to do is lie by omission, let the others complete the work - and if she's considering it at all he manages to sink the idea by slipping back into character as Finrod, reminding her again that he murdered her brother and is now dangling him like a puppet in front of her.
She rejects his offer, and the vision changes. He subsequently feeds her new excuses, and in turn, offers new rewards for her cooperation - instead of a vague promise of healing middle earth by not blabbing to her friends, now he *needs her help* to fix it - and when that doesn't work, no actually he needs her to be his partner in this, his queen!
It's a desperation play on his part, ever more extravagant promises he has no intention to keep, (plus an unhealthy sprinkling of 'I'm the only one who sees your worth' that cuts a little close to Kylo Renn's abusive boyfriend talk in TLJ) which in turn become threats as she continues to resist him.
He also lets slip at this point that he knows about the magic blight stuff and the elves diminishing, despite them making a point of having Celebrimbor not tell him about it. Which probably means he's had an active hand in that part too - with the ultimate goal of dominating Gil Galad and his people.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/11/02 04:21:00
One of the problems of using the D&D alignment chart system for characters outside of D&D settings is there's a certain outside influence factored in that doesn't exist within their respective settings. Sauron can't be said to be explicitly Lawful Evil because the broader concept of Good and Evil being parallel and competing concepts powered by their own planes of existence and the agents thereof doesn't exist in Tolkien's setting, likewise Chaos and Order are not separate but equally influencial concepts (powered by their own influence on the planes of existance or otherwise) because that dichotomy was pushed by Moorcock as a response or contrast to Tolkien.
In Tolkien's setting, Order is Good, as all of existence is ultimately a creation of a supreme authority god figure in Eru Iluvatar (referred to obliquely as The One, in the show), with contributions from his servants, of which the Valar are merely the most notable and powerful. The Valar (of which Morgoth is but one) frequently occupy the roles of pantheistic gods, creating/nurturing aspects of their own conceptual domains, arguing with each other, etc. but due to their relationship with The One, are eternally small 'g' gods in a setting that has a big 'G' God - and as such are not actually any more 'primal' or 'elder' than the other Maia, simply more powerful - as such it's not that much of a stretch to look at Morgoth and Sauron in a master and apprentice role, though Sauron as a Maiar who'd previously served under Aule certainly brought his own ideas and skills to the table.
(As to where Darth Vader and the Emperor line up on the D&D chart it gets even more complicated as the exact nature of their motives has changed drastically over time, starting all the way back in 1977 when the Emperor was originally envisioned as a political figurehead that had all his real power usurped by the Military Industrial Complex, personified by Tarkin and Darth Vader)
Speaking of appeals to authority...
Grey Templar wrote: Honestly, the only way to salvage the show would be to completely redo it. They just broke too much of the lore and setting. Most major plot points happened incorrectly, out of order, or didn't happen at all.
That's a commonly touted solution to most things people on the internet don't like, but at the end of the day if you truly find it as heinous as all that, you'll have to fall back on the tried and true method of many a fantasy fan all through the ages: ignore it, and move on with your life.
Grey Templar wrote:The original Author has the liberty to hem and haw over his own work. People who are adapting the work after the fact do not have that liberty. Especially if you do a bad job of it.
Completely changing a character's personality to be inconsistent with the source material is bad unless it actually improves it. If it is just change for the sake of change or actively harms the quality of the story, it is bad. That is what happened with Galadrial.
To give an example of changing a character in a way that is superior to the original material. House of the Dragon and King Viserys. In the books, the king is just old and obese and dies from that. In the show, he is suffering from some sort of flesh eating disease that is wracking him with pain and suffering and eventually kills him, and this adds a dimension to his character and allowed for some truly amazing scenes(in a heartbreaking way). GRRM himself says that this was an improvement over the original way he wrote it. Tolkien isn't around anymore, and his work is far and away superior, so changes need to be measured and careful and only if they objectively improve the material.
Turning Galadrial from a wise and farsighted individual with magical powers due to her being one of only 2 elves in Middle Earth to have seen the Two Trees into a petulant, arrogant, childishly demanding person does not improve her character or the story in any way. And no, she should not be "still learning and eventually becoming the wise person we later see in the LOTR". No, she was very much a full grown adult prior to the darkening of Valinor. And her described personality is very much the same as during the LOTR.
Scrabb wrote: Inconsistency is always a sufficient complaint. Superman being portrayed in his next movie as a selfish Kryptonian jerk would be inconsistent and a good reason for a fan of Superman, as he has been portrayed until then, to dislike the material.
So we keep coming back to Galadriel specifically and its definitely the most vexing part of this show.
Let me start with how I agree with you: I don't think these changes are in service to the character, and I don't think it (or the show as a whole) are really all that faithful to Tolkien or his themes - even when they could be without hurting the product. While I can see why they felt the changes were neccesary to act in service of this story they're trying to tell, I remain skeptical that it's going to ultimately be of service to that story, if that makes any sense at all.
The part where I disagree: It is absolutely the decision of the creators of the show to make changes to a character in order to serve the story they are trying to tell. It's not the original author or the estate's call to make unless they work that into the contract when they sell those rights. Yes. It means sometimes, a lot of times, bad writers or bad producers make incredibly bad calls and they should absolutely be called out for it when they do, but at the end of the day they're the ones making the show. It's why Henry Cavill had to leave Witcher instead of throwing the writers out one at a time with his big super arms, its why Ursula Le Guin could only call out the producers of Earthsea for casting all of the brown-skinned island characters from her book with white actors and they made that awful show anyway. Next to the long list of terrible production choices we've seen over time, giving Galadriel a (at least so far) somewhat predictable getting over your PTSD arc is nothing, it's not even close to the worst sin of this show, certainly not enough to knee-cap it. Reserve judgement until it's actually run its course, or at least until they've actually crashed and burned.
Scrabb wrote: I'm also really okay with criticizing Amazon for wanting to do a Silmarillion show, failing to get the rights, and then deciding to try anyway.
Silmarillion was never on the table, it was the Estate that went around dangling the LotR TV rights in front of studios and taking proposals and the Silmarillion has some kind of licensing clause that means a third party is allowed some kind of preferrential right to match bids on it or something so they don't touch that, but have a loophole to address individual elements if deemed neccesary through consultation with the estate or something?
It's all really convoluted, from what I can tell. Thankfully the whole thing goes out the window when Tolkien's work enters the public domain in like 20 years. I look foreward to hearing people debate the authenticity of those resulting works!
That is indeed a solid woof. An doubly shocking considering how it generally fared better in the Nielsen ratings compared to House of the Dragon - though even then looking at the graph you can see it didn't climb the way HoD did.
The articles (the Kotaku one, and the one they reference) are worth a peek too, they outline some interesting industry complaints about Amazon Studios' approach and tendency to throw big money at projects and overrely on focus groups, which seems to handily explain the dazzling special effects and gradual increase in awkward expository dialogue as the season progressed.
LordofHats wrote: It's still baffling, as the Tolkein estate rather famously didn't want Amazon to make the series and refused them the rights to the Silmarillion.
Can we please put this to bed? The Tolkien Estate were the ones shopping the IP around taking series proposals from the different streaming companies, they accepted Amazon's proposal and apparently exerted controlling privileged to ensure Peter Jackson wouldn't be allowed to contribute, they are not helpless bystanders in any of this.
Grey Templar wrote: On the other hand, it would be hilarious if he did win. Or even just forced a settlement. Amazon being forced to admit(legally or "we didn't but here is money go away!") that they ripped off a bad fan-fic would just tickle me.
I don't think it's actually possible. From the synopsis it sounds like the only solid connective tissue is that there's a hobbit named Elanor in both, and the plaintiff can't claim ownership of that because she's literally Sam's daughter from the actual book.
) and seem to be on board with it.
